Jean-Baptiste Kléber

Jean-Baptiste Kléber was born on 9 March 1753 in Strasbourg, in the province of Alsace, where his father worked as a master builder. He briefly engaged in 1769 in the French 1st Hussar Regiment, but resigned to study, from 1770 to 1774, architecture, partly in Paris with Jean Chalgrin. His opportune assistance to two German nobles in a tavern brawl obtained for him nomination to the military school of Munich. From this education, he obtained a commission in the Kaunitz Infantry Regiment Nr. 38 of the Habsburg Austrian army. He took part in the War of the Bavarian Succession but did not see major engagements. He was stationed alternately in the garrisons of Mons, Mechelen, and Luxembourg in the Austrian Netherlands. Finding that his humble birth hindered his chances for promotion[2] beyond that of an unterleutnant, he left the Austrian army in 1783 after serving seven years.[3]

Architecture

Town Hall of Thann

On returning to France, Kléber received the appointment of inspector of public buildings at Belfort.[2] Between 1784 and 1792, he designed a number of buildings both on public and private commission. Perhaps the most notable is the current town hall of Thann, Haut-Rhin (1787–1793), which was originally designed as a hospital but turned into an administrative building before its completion.[4] Other surviving buildings are the château of Grandvillars (often erroneously spelled "Granvillars"), built around 1790[5] and the canoness houses of the Benedictine abbey of Masevaux (1781–1790). Nine of these houses had been planned but due to the French Revolution, only seven were built.[6] The Musée historique de Strasbourg features a room dedicated to Jean-Baptiste Kléber that also displays a number of his sketches and architectural designs.

Portrait by Louis-Léopold Boilly, between 1793–1796

In 1792, at the start of the French Revolutionary Wars, Kléber enlisted in the 4th Battalion of Volunteers of Haut-Rhin.[7] Thanks to his military experience, he was at once elected adjutant and soon afterward lieutenant-colonel of the battalion.[2] At the defense of Mainz in July 1793 he so distinguished himself that, though disgraced along with the rest of the garrison and imprisoned, he promptly won reinstatement, and was promoted to brigade general in August 1793.[2]

Kléber was then posted to the Army of the Coasts of La Rochelle and deployed to Western France, where he took part in the suppression of the Revolt in the Vendée.[7] Although beaten at the Battle of Tiffauges on 19 September 1793, he maintained good relations with the representatives on mission and managed to keep his command.[7] A month later, Kléber contributed to the Republican victory at Cholet, earning him his promotion to general of division on 17 October 1793.[7] In these operations began his intimacy with General François Marceau, with whom he defeated the Royalists at the battles of Le Mans and Savenay in December 1793.[2]

When Kléber openly expressed his opinion that the Vendéans merited lenient measures, the authorities recalled him, but reinstated him once more in April 1794 and sent him to the Army of the Ardennes.[2][7] He displayed his skill and bravery in the numerous actions around Charleroi, and especially in the crowning victory at Fleurus (26 June 1794).[2] During the following years he served mostly in the Army of Sambre and Meuse on the Rhine frontier.[7] In the winter of 1794–1795 he besieged Mainz.[2] In 1795, and again in 1796, Kléber held the chief command of the army temporarily, but declined a permanent appointment as commander-in-chief.[2]

On 13 October 1795 he fought a brilliant rearguard action at the bridge of Neuwied, and in the offensive campaign of 1796, he served as General Jean-Baptiste Jourdan's most active and successful lieutenant, with his victory at Siegburg on 1 June that year enabling Jourdan to get the bulk of the French force across the Rhine.[2] After the retreat to the Rhine, Kléber again declined a chief command, and retired into private life in early 1798.[2] He returned to service later that year, first in the Army of England, then accepted a division in the Army of the Orient under General Napoleon Bonaparte.[7]

Egyptian campaign

Kléber wounded in front of Alexandria, engraving by Adolphe-François Pannemaker

Kléber followed Bonaparte in his expedition to Egypt but suffered a wound in the head at Alexandria in the first engagement, which prevented him for taking part in the Battle of the Pyramids, and caused his appointment as governor of Alexandria.[2] In the Syrian campaign of 1799, however, he commanded the vanguard, took El-Arish, Gaza, and Jaffa, and won a great victory at the Battle of Mount Tabor on 15–16 April 1799.[2]

The campaign was not going well for the French as Napoleon withdrew and returned to France towards the end of 1799. Napoleon left Kléber in command of the French forces, without consulting Kléber before leaving.[8] In this capacity, seeing no hope of bringing his army back to France or of consolidating his conquests, he negotiated the Convention of El-Arish (24 January 1800) with Commodore Sidney Smith, winning the right to an honorable evacuation of the French army.[8] When Admiral Lord Keith refused to ratify the terms, Kléber attacked the Turks at the Battle of Heliopolis.[8] Although he had only 10,000 men against 60,000 Turks, Kléber's forces utterly defeated the Turks on 20 March 1800.[2] He then re-took Cairo, which had revolted against French rule.[2]

Kléber, son of an operative mason and a prominent freemason himself, was attestedly instrumental in bringing freemasonry to Egypt.[9] While he was negotiating with Sidney Smith in January 1800, Kléber opened a masonic temple in Cairo and thus created the Isis lodge (La Loge Isis), serving as its first master.[9][10][11] The motto of the lodge was the slogan of the French Revolution: Liberté, égalité, fraternité.[9]

Assassination

Assassination of Kléber, painting in the Musée historique de Strasbourg

Shortly after these victories, while Kléber was walking in the garden of the palace of Alfi bika, he was stabbed to death by Suleiman al-Halabi, a Kurdish[12] or Arab Syrian student living in Egypt. The assassin appeared to be begging from Kléber, but then took his hand and stabbed him in the heart, stomach, left arm, and right cheek, before running away to hide near the palace. He was soon caught, still in possession of the dagger which he had used to kill Kléber, and was later executed. The assassination happened in Cairo on 14 June 1800, coincidentally the same day on which Kléber's friend and comrade, Desaix, fell at Marengo. The assassin's right arm was burned off, and he was impaled in a public square in Cairo and left for several hours to die. Suleiman's skull was shipped to France and used to teach medical students what the French phrenologists claimed were the cranial features indicating "crime" and "fanaticism"[13]

Burial

Statue of Kléber on the Place Kléber at Strasbourg

After his assassination, Kléber's embalmed body was repatriated to France.[14] Fearing that his tomb would become a symbol of Republicanism, Napoleon ordered it held at the Château d'If, on an island near Marseilles. It stayed there for 18 years until Louis XVIII granted Kléber a burial place in his home town of Strasbourg.[15] He was buried on 15 December 1838 below his statue located in the center of Place Kléber. His heart is in an urn in the caveau of the Governors beneath the altar of the Saint Louis Chapel in Les Invalides, Paris. Kléber's name is inscribed in column 23 on the southern pillar of the Arc de Triomphe.

Kléber emerged as undoubtedly one of the greatest generals of the French revolutionary epoch. Though he distrusted his powers and declined the responsibility of supreme command, there is nothing in his career to show that he would have been unequal to it. As a second-in-command no general of his time excelled him. His conduct of affairs in Egypt, at a time when the treasury was empty and the troops were discontented for want of pay, shows that his powers as an administrator were little, if at all, inferior to those he possessed as a general.[2] While Kléber himself had a mixed view of Napoleon (including cursing at him and drawing mocking caricatures of him), Bonaparte thought highly of Kléber's skill, stating that there was, "No sight so splendid as watching Kléber go into battle", and he likened him to the God of War Mars.[16]

• Lycée Kléber
• Place Kléber
• Kléber (Paris Métro)
• Kléber (train)
• Manfred Stern, Austrian-born Soviet officer who gained fame in the Spanish Civil War under the pseudonym "General Kléber"

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Jean-Baptiste Kléber.

Attribution

• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Kléber, Jean Baptiste". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 15 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.

• Phipps, Ramsay Weston (2011) [1929]. The Armies of the First French Republic and the Rise of the Marshals of Napoleon I: The Armées du Moselle, du Rhin, de Sambre-et-Meuse, de Rhin-et-Moselle. Vol. 2. Pickle Partners Publishing. ISBN 978-1-908692-25-2.

• Philippe Jéhin, Jean-Baptiste Kléber : le lion indomptable : 1753-1800, Éditions Vent d'Est 2012, ISBN 979-10-90826-06-9
• Auguste Echard: J.-B. Kléber : un fils de l'Alsace, Charavay Frères Éditeurs, Paris, 1883 (sic) online version