Portrait of Georges Cadoudal

Georges Cadoudal (1771–1804) was a Chouan general and commander of the Catholic and Royal Army of Brittany.
The son of wealthy farmers, charismatic and endowed with Herculean strength, Cadoudal was initially a supporter of the French Revolution. He broke away from it in 1791 for religious reasons, then took up arms against it in 1793. Following the failure of the peasant rebellions in Brittany, Cadoudal moved to the Vendée region. As a captain in the Breton companies, he took part in every battle of the Vendée War. A succession of victories, defeats, the signing of peace treaties and the resuming of hostilities. . . until the rise of Bonaparte. Implicated in two attempts to assassinate or kidnap the First Consul (Napoleon), he was arrested by Fouché’s police, sentenced to death and guillotined in Paris, on the Place de l’Hôtel-de-Ville, alongside eleven other royalists.
A few years later, he was posthumously made a Marshal of France by Louis XVIII, and his family was ennobled.