Death of La Tour d’Auvergne

Théophile Malo de La Tour d’Auvergne-Corret (1743–1800) was a French military officer.
Having joined the armies of the Republic, he demonstrated his bravery in Savoy as a member of the Army of the Rhine, then served in the Army of the Western Pyrenees, where he commanded up to 8,000 men, even though he was merely a captain of grenadiers. Forming the vanguard of the army, these grenadiers soon became
known as the ‘infernal columns’ and, under the leadership of La Tour d’Auvergne, whom they adored, carried out the most extraordinary missions, often proving decisive in achieving final victory. Napoleon called him the ‘first grenadier of the Republic’.
On 27 June 1800, on the evening of the Battle of Neubourg in Bavaria, he was struck in the heart by a lance thrust from the enemy cavalry.
La Tour d’Auvergne was also a fine linguist and a historian of the Celtic world. His death left him unable to see published his ‘polyglot dictionary’, in which he compared 45 languages with the Breton language, that he considered to be the oldest in the world.