High Street, Tonbridge,
Kent, TN9 1JP
Pierre Dumoustier entered Tonbridge in 1782 and left in 1785. The school comprised 54 boys in 1782. How a French boy born in St. Quentin came to be sent to Tonbridge is not revealed by any of the histories but Dumoustier’s later career makes him one of the most remarkable of Old Tonbridgians.
He joined the French army as a private in 1792, the year when the French Revolution was most under threat from foreign invasion. By 1795 he was a Captain and in 1804 he was promoted to Colonel of the 63rd line in Napoleon’s army, participating in the crushing Napoleonic victories of Ulm, Austerlitz and Jena in 1805-6 over the Austrians, Russians and Prussians. In 1802 during the year’s truce of the Peace of Amiens Dumoustier apparently visited Tonbridge to see his old Headmaster Vicesimus Knox.
Appointed Brigadier-General for his role in the campaigns of 1805-6, Dumoustier joined the campaign in Spain in 1809, serving in the Imperial Guard. He served all through the Peninsular campaign and at the Battle of Ciudad Rodrigo in 1811 was a General de Division. Ironically a Tonbridge contemporary, Archibald Campbell, was serving as a Lt. Colonel with Wellington’s Peninsular Army in the same campaign. In between he commanded a division of infantry against the Austrians in 1809 at the battles of Wagram and Marengo and was for a time ADC to Napoleon. At the Battle of Lutzen in May 1813 he commanded sixteen battalions of the Young Guard, distinguishing himself here and in the battles of Bautzen and Wurschen. At Dresden in August 1813 he was severely wounded and ordered to return to France by the Emperor, who was forced to abdicate in 1814. In 1813 Dumoustier was appointed Count of the Empire. When Napoleon escaped from Elba to begin his Hundred Days of power culminating at Waterloo, Dumoustier supported him and was exiled to Nantes on the restoration of the monarchy.
Following the 1830 revolution he was recalled to lead the National Guard in Nantes and this was approved by the new King Louis Philippe. Dumoustier died the following year in Nantes as a result of a riding accident. On the Arc de Triomphe in Paris is this inscription among the other Napoleonic Generals: ‘General Comte de l’Empire PIERRE DUMOUSTIER Grand-officier de la Legion d’Honneur, Lieutenant-General, Commandant de Divisions de la Garde Imperiale, Commandant la 12eme Division Militaire, Ne a St.Quentin le 17 Mars 1771, Decede a Nantes le 15 Juin 1831’.