French Consulate Military Certificate 11th Cavalry Naples 1801

Description

Original French military certificate issued in Rouen on 8 Thermidor Year IX, corresponding to 27 July 1801, during the French Consulate.

The document was granted to André Nicolas Boulch, born on 24 March 1774 at L’Isle-Adam in the present-day Val-d’Oise department. He entered the 11th French Cavalry Regiment on 28 March 1792 and served during the campaigns of 1792 and 1793 followed by Years II to VII of the French Republic.

The certificate records that the cavalryman received a gunshot wound to the cheek during the Naples campaign. This campaign formed part of the French military operations conducted in Italy at the end of the eighteenth century. He was later discharged because of infirmities on 30 Vendémiaire Year IX. An additional handwritten statement confirms that these infirmities resulted from events of war.

Several officers signed the certificate. One of the signatures can be attributed with strong probability to Captain Nicolas-François Guérard.

Guérard was appointed captain of the 11th Cavalry Regiment on 28 October 1793. His career provides a direct connection with the War in the Vendée. Contemporary regimental records state that he was captured at Cholet by the Vendéan forces commanded by Maurice d’Elbée. He was still listed as a captain of the regiment in the French military register published in 1804.

This remarkable document therefore connects several important episodes of the French Revolutionary Wars: the fighting at Cholet during the War in the Vendée and the later French campaigns in Italy and Naples. It also preserves the individual history of a cavalryman who enlisted in 1792 and suffered a documented battlefield wound.

Handwritten certificate on laid paper bearing the original red wax seal of the military administration. Blank reverse.