François Marcellin Certain de Canrobert (1809-1895) was a French military leader, promoted to Marshal of France in 1856. He played an active – and bloody – role in the conquest of Algeria, during some fifteen years of incessant fighting. He also commanded the Army of the East in the Crimea (1854) and contributed to the victory at Solferino during the Italian campaign in 1859.
A staunch supporter of Napoleon III, he took an active part in the coup d’état of December 2, 1851. On December 4, on the boulevards Montmartre and Poissonnière, soldiers of the Canrobert division opened fire on a crowd of onlookers, demonstrators, women and children. The carnage ( with hundreds killed and wounded) crushed Parisian resistance to the coup d’état.
Under the Third Republic, long after Napoleon III had been deposed, Canrobert remained an influential member of the Bonapartist party, sitting in the Senate as part of the “Appel au peuple” group.