Nicholas-Charles Oudinot was born April 25, 1767 in Barleduc, France. He came from a middle class family and joined the Army in 1783 as a sixteen year old private. By 1791 and first military crisis of the revolution, he rose to the rank of a Colonel of volunteers in the rapidly expanding French Army. After service in the Army of the Moselle he was made a Brigadier General at age 27. Even though he was a young man, by this time he had already served ten years in the army, been a hero in battle for the fort of Bitsch and seen almost three years of constant combat.
He served as a general in Napoleons Italian campaigns and onto the pivotal battles of Ulm, Friedland and Austerlitz. After this, as a Lt General, he was given command of a corps of German troops and was attributed personally by Napoleon of cutting off the enemy’s center line at the Battle of Wagram on July 12, 1809. For this act he was made a Marshal of France. Napoleon only elevated twenty six men to the rank of marshal between 1904 and 1815. The next year brought elevation to the status of the nobility when he was named Duke of Reggio. The Russian campaign, Napoleons greatest mistake, found Oudinot in command of the Grande Armée's Second Corps and was wounded seriously enough to relinquish his command. Even wounded, however he served again in covering the retreat that winter from Russia. The German campaigns of 1813 and French campaigns 1814 saw him commanding corps that was defeated ultimately by overwhelming forces. In the twenty years of the Napoleonic wars he had served in nearly every campaign and been wounded in combat an amazing 24 times.
When his warlord and master Napoleon was forced to Elba, Oudinot pledged allegiance to King Louis XVIII. When Napoleon landed in France and began his hundred day count down to Waterloo, Oudinot, now and old warrior with thirty years service under his belt, declined to join his old commander. This was remembered when the King was re-installed after Napoleon’s final defeat and Marshal Oudinot rose to head elements of the Royal Guard, knighted and made a government minister. He once again commanded troops in the Spanish war in 1823. He continued to serve his country until his death in 1847 where he had died at age 80, in his sleep. By that time the old warhorse was so nearsighted he could hardly see but he was still listed on active duty. His funeral, some thirty years after Waterloo brought out hundreds of aged veterans of Napoleon’s army, still in their moth eaten old uniforms and was widely reported in the papers of the time as the last muster of the Grand Armee. He was only survived by two other Napoleonic Marshals Soult and Marmont, who would both die themselves within another five years. His memoirs were published in 1894.
Chandler, David Napoleon's Marshals. London: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1987.
Griswold Rufus Wilmot Napoleon and the Marshals of the Empire 1855
