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Title: Bessières (1858)
Description: Marx's biographical article on Jean-Baptiste Bessières, Napoleon's marshal and commander of the cavalry of the Guard.
Author: Karl Marx
Date: 1858
URL: https://marxismo.school/archivo/marx-engels/originales/1858%20Bessi%C3%A8res
---


*Written by Karl Marx about September 29, 1857, and published unsigned in* The New American Cyclopædia *(New York: D. Appleton and Company), vol. III, 1858, pp. 208-209. Text of the Cyclopædia, from the public-domain scans in the Internet Archive (newamericancycl21danagoog), with the OCR corrected against the page images; collated with the German version in Marx/Engels,* Werke*, vol. 14 (Berlin, 1961), pp. 133-134, and found complete. Misprints of the Cyclopædia are kept and pointed out in the notes of the translation.* [Traducción al español](https://marxismo.school/archivo/marx-engels/1858%20Bessi%C3%A8res)

BESSIÈRES, Jean Baptiste, marshal of the French empire, born at Praissac, in the department of Lot, Aug. 6, 1768, killed at Lutzen, March 1, 1813. He entered the constitutional guard of Louis XVI., in 1791, served as a non-commissioned officer in the mounted chasseurs of the Pyrénées, and soon after became a captain of chasseurs. After the victory of Roveredo, Sept. 4, 1796, Bonaparte promoted him on the battle-field to the rank of colonel. Commander of the guides of the general-in-chief during the Italian campaign of 1796-’97, colonel of the same corps in Egypt, he remained attached to it for the greater part of his life. In 1802, the rank of general of division was conferred upon him, and, in 1804, that of marshal of the empire. He fought at the battles of Roveredo, Rivoli, St. Jean d’Acre, Aboukir, Marengo—where he commanded the last decisive cavalry charge—Austerlitz, Jena, Eylau, and Friedland. Despatched in 1808 to assume the command of a division of 18,000 men stationed in the Spanish province of Salamanca, he found on his arrival that Gen. Cuesta had taken up a position between Valladolid and Burgos, thus threatening to intersect the line of communication of Madrid with France. Bessières attacked him and won the victory of Medina del Rio Secco. After the failure of the English Walcheren expedition, Napoleon substituted Bessières for Bernadotte, in command of the Belgian army. In the same year (1809), he was created duke of Istria. At the head of a cavalry division he routed the Austrian general, Hohenzollern, at the battle of Esslingen. During the Russian expedition he acted as chief commander of the mounted guard, and on the opening of the German campaign of 1813, as the commander of the French cavalry. He died on the battle-field while attacking the defile of Rippach, in Saxony, on the eve of the battle of Lutzen. His popularity with the common soldiers may be inferred from the circumstance that it was thought prudent to withhold the news of his death for some time from the army.