Honoré Théodore Maxime Gazan de la Peyrière (; 29 October 1765 – 9 April 1845) was a French general who fought in the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars.
Gazan started his military career as a cannonier in the French Coast Guard. He was later appointed to the Royal Life Guards and, upon the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789, he joined the French National Guard. After service in the Upper Rhine valley and the Netherlands, he joined André Masséna in Switzerland in 1799, and fought at the battles of Winterthur, First Zurich, Näfels, and Schwanden. In August 1805, Gazan commanded of a division of the Army that encircled the Austrians in Ulm. On 11 November, under Joseph Mortier, his division provided the advance guard in the advance on Vienna. Mortier over-extended his line of march and Gazan's division was surrounded by Kutuzov's Coalition army; Gazan lost 40 percent of his force in the Battle of Dürenstein. Following the Prussian defeat at the Battle of Jena-Auerstadt, he transferred with Jean Lannes to the Iberian Peninsula. There he participated in the French capture of Zaragoza and in several important actions of the long Peninsular War, including the Battle of Albuera and the Battle of Vitoria.
During the Hundred Days, Gazan eventually joined Napoleon's cause, although he did not have a field command. In 1815, he judged Michel Ney's trial for treason but refused to reach a verdict. He dabbled briefly, and unsuccessfully, in politics in the 1820s. In 1830, he was raised to the French peerage and held a divisional command in Marseille, but by then was an old man, and he retired in 1832. He died in 1845.
Family and early military career Gazan was born in the small town of Grasse, in the Alpes-Maritimes. His father, a lawyer, sent him to the college of Sorèze, where he received military training. Gazan became a second lieutenant in the Coast Guard cannoniers of Antibes at the age of fifteen. In 1786, he was appointed to the Royal Life Guards, Company Écossaise. Later, he also joined the Freemasons.
French Revolutionary Wars At the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, Gazan returned to Grasse and joined the National Guard. In 1790, he became a captain and, in 1791, a lieutenant colonel of the local volunteer battalion of the Var. In 1792, with the declaration of war with Austria, he was sent to the 27th Regiment. His regiment first served garrison duty in Strasbourg, but in December 1793, participated in the Battle of Wissembourg. In May 1794, Gazan became a battalion commander of the new 54th Demi-Brigade. On 4 July, he routed the Prussians in Kuppenheim by ordering his drummers to beat a charge, convincing the Prussians that they were outnumbered. He was promoted to brigade colonel on 11 July and led his troops to victory against the Prussians at Trippstadt.
In 1796, he joined the Army of the Rhine, under the command of Jean Victor Moreau. This was his first campaign and he was promoted to brigadier general in recognition of his outstanding achievements at the Battle of Ettlingen. Gazan was wounded on 22 November 1796 and taken to hospital in Strasbourg for his recovery, where he met Marie Madeleine Reiss; after their marriage, she frequently accompanied him on his campaigns and they had several children.
Swiss campaign
On 4 April 1799, his superior and friend André Masséna transferred him to the Army of the Danube, at that time located in the northeastern Swiss plateau. There, he took command of a weak (under-manned) brigade at the small town of Winterthur, in northern Switzerland. On 26 May, Michel Ney, the newly appointed general of division, took command of the forward line protecting the main French force at Zürich. The following day, Friedrich, Baron von Hotze, arrived with close to 8,000 battle-hardened and experienced Austrian border troops, including the 12th Infantry Manfredini, a battalion of Hungarian grenadiers, and six squadrons of the Waldeck Dragoons. In the ensuing clash, Ney ordered Gazan's under-manned brigade to the center, where it was soon overwhelmed. In retreat, they safely crossed a bridge spanning a small river, the Töss, but the cavalry guarding the bridge was itself forced back. After stationing his batteries on a slight incline, to protect the retreat from the Austrians, the injured Ney handed command to Gazan, who organized and conducted the successful retreat.
A few days later, at the First Battle of Zürich (4 June 1799), the Austrian force overpowered the French lines. As part of the V. Division of the Army of the Danube, Gazan again commanded the rear guard after Massena's force disengaged from Archduke Charles' army and withdrew across the Limmat river. Later that year, he faced a combined Austrian and Russian force at the Second Battle of Zürich (27 September). His division repulsed Russian outposts at the Limmat river. He subsequently participated in the wild pursuit of the Austrians, resulting in a decisive French victory. He was promoted to division commander and continued in the campaign against Coalition troops in Switzerland.
In 1800, Gazan accompanied the Masséna's Army of Italy, as a general of division in the Corps of Jean-de-Dieu Soult. The 1st Division included the Grenadiers Piedmontais, the 30th Legne (light infantry), and portions of the 2nd, 3rd, and 78th Regiments Ligne (line infantry), totaling approximately 4,500 men. While Soult's Corps campaigned in central northern Italy, Masséna was besieged in Genoa by an Austrian army of 24,000 and a British naval squadron. Soult moved his Corps to the east to relieve Genoa. As part of Soult's Corps, Gazan participated in the battle at Bocchetta Pass (9 April), where he commanded the right wing, and again at the battle of Sassello (10 April). In both clashes, his division was outnumbered nearly three to one took heavy casualties French had heavy casualties. Later in the month, he participated in the clash at Voltri (18 April 1800). To relieve Masséna at Genoa, Soult organized several assaults on strong Austrian positions around the city. At Montecreto (13 May 1800), Gazan's division and the first column of Soult's main force (approximately 5,000 men), attacked a stronger Austrian position of 7,000, under command of Prince Hohenzollern. Soult was taken prisoner, General of Brigade Joseph Perrin was killed, and the cavalry commander, Jean-Joseph Gauthier, was badly wounded. The defeat could be seen from the ramparts at Genoa and caused the French garrison's morale to plummet; many units were already near mutiny and food was scarce. Gazan, who had been wounded, took his troops to Lozano and joined Louis Gabriel Suchet. There he commanded a division of the Army of Italy and fought in a French victory at the battle in Pozzolo (25 December) against the Austrians. He was appointed commander of the First Subdivision of the 27th Military Division in Piedmont. After the peace in 1801, Gazan returned home, but shortly after his return, received a new assignment as commander of a brigade in northern Italy, where he stayed until the declaration of the First French Empire in 1804.
Service during the Napoleonic Wars
Dürrenstein and Jena
In the War of the Third Coalition, Gazan initially was assigned as a division commander of Napoleon's Grande Armée in Lille, in preparation for the planned invasion of England; he remained there until the idea was abandoned. In August 1805, Gazan commanded of a division of the army that encircled Austrians in Ulm. On 11 November, under Marshal Mortier, his division provided the advance guard in the march against Kutuzov's army. As they advanced through a narrow Danube canyon, the division was isolated from the main force, near Dürenstein. By the small village on the Danube, famous as the prison of Richard the Lionhearted at the end of the twelfth century, he and his division were trapped in a narrow canyon, attacked by a Russian force at his rear and more Russians at his front. Gazan's division fought desperately for a harrowing day and suffered 40 percent casualties. He and Mortier were finally rescued by the arrival of the VIII. Corps' 1st Division, commanded by Pierre Dupont de l'Étang, but only after the loss of nearly 4,000 men. In addition, 47 officers and 895 men were captured, and he lost five guns, as well as the eagles of the 4th Infantry Regiment, and the eagle and guidon of the 4th Dragoons. As recognition of his conduct in "the immortal Battle of Dürenstein", he received the Officers Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor and the survivors of his division was sent to Vienna to recuperate. When Austria sued for peace, Gazan's division was sent to Würzburg in Bavaria, where it remained until Prussia declared war in October 1806.
Gazan's division fought in the French victory over Prussia at the Battle of Jena-Auerstedt (14 October 1806). At Ostrolenka (16 February 1807), Gazan's troops took three guns and two Russian colors. Otherwise, his troops stayed in their winter quarters. After the new peace treaty, Gazan's troops were sent to Silesia to restore order. In 1808, he was named Comte de la Peyriére.
Early Peninsular War
In October 1808, now attached to the VI. Corps, Gazan went to Spain with Jean Lannes and arrived at Zaragoza in December. The city was under siege and defended by Spanish under José de Palafox. Lannes ordered an attack on 22 January 1809 to capture the city in street by street fighting; when the French took a block, sappers tunneled under the houses and blew them up, which prevented Spanish street fighters from slipping into houses behind them. The method was effective but painstaking. Gazan's assignment, to take the well-fortified Jesus Convent. Palafox surrendered on 20 February. The VI. Corps occupied northern Aragon afterward.
In July 1810, Gazan's force guarded the valleys of Extremadura, near Alcantara. In September he fought against Spanish general La Romana. In Fary 1811 he crossed the Sierra Morena to guard the supply On 15–21 March, his 2nd Division of the V. Corps besieged and captured the small fortified town of Campo Maior, in eastern Portugal. There they captured 50 guns and the 100-man Portuguese garrison. As General Latour-Maubourg, four squadrons of dragoons and hussars and three battalions of the 100th Light Infantry moved the cannons to Badajoz the following week, a combined force of the 1st and 7th Portuguese Cavalry and the British 13th Light Dragoons, commanded by Brigadier General Robert Ballard Long, charged and scattered the French 26th Dragoons. In the melee, the drivers of the convoy were cut down, but instead of securing the convoy of guns, the British and Portuguese enthusiastically pursued the fleeing infantry for more than ; meanwhile, the French sallied out of Badajoz, carefully avoiding the fleeing infantry and its pursuers, and recovered all but one of the guns.