PICHEGRU, CHARLES French general, was born at Arbois, or at Les Planches, near Lons-le-Saulnier, on Feb. 16, 1761. His father was a labourer, but the friars of Arbois gave the boy a good education, and the Pere Partault took him to the military school of Brienne. In 1783 he entered the first regiment of artillery, where he rapidly rose to the rank of adjutant-sub lieutenant. At the Revolution he became leader of the Jacobin party in Besancon, and when a regiment of volunteers of the de partment of the Gard marched through the city he was elected lieut.-colonel. Quickly promoted to the command of the army of the Rhine, in co-operation with Hoche and the army of the Moselle, Pichegru reconquered Alsace and forced the lines of Haguenau and relieved Landau. In Dec. 1793 Hoche was arrested and Pichegru became commander-in-chief of the army of the Rhine-and-Moselle, succeeding Jourdan in the army of the North in Feb. It was now that he fought his three great campaigns of one year. The English and Austrians held a strong position along the Sambre to the sea. After vainly attempting to break the Austrian centre, Pichegru suddenly turned their left, and defeated Clerfayt at Cassel, Menin and Courtrai, while Moreau, his second in command, defeated Coburg at Tourcoing in May ; then of ter a pause, during which Pichegru feigned to besiege Ypres, he again dashed at Clerfayt and defeated him at Rousselaer and Hooglede, while Jourdan came up with the new army of the Sambre-and-Meuse, and utterly routed the Austrians at Fleurus on June 27, 1794. Pichegru began his second campaign by cross ing the Meuse on Oct. 18, and of ter taking Nijmwegen drove the Austrians beyond the Rhine. Then, instead of going into winter quarters, he prepared his army for a winter campaign. On Dec. 28 he crossed the Meuse on the ice, and stormed the island of Bommel, then crossed the Waal in the same manner, and, driving the English before him, entered Utrecht on Jan. 19 and Amster
dam on Jan. 20, and soon occupied the whole of Holland. The former friend of Saint Just now offered his services to the Thermidorians, and after receiving from the Convention the title of "Sauveur de la Patrie," subdued the sans-culottes of Paris, when they rose in insurrection against the Convention on 12 Germinal (April I). Pichegru then took command of the armies of the North, the Sambre-and-Meuse and the.Rhine, and crossing the Rhine in force took Mannheim in May 1795.
When his fame was at its height he allowed his colleague Jour dan to be beaten, betrayed all his plans to the enemy, and took part in organizing a conspiracy for the return of Louis XVIII. His intrigues were suspected, and when he offered his resignation to the Directory in Oct. 1795, it was promptly accepted. He re tired in disgrace. In the Council of Five Hundred (May 1797) he was the royalist leader, and planned a coup d'etat, but on the 18th Fructidor he was arrested, and deported to Cayenne in 1797. Escaping, he reached London in 1798, and served on General Korsakov's staff in the campaign of 1799. He went to Paris in Aug. 1803 with Georges Cadoudal to head a royalist rising against Napoleon; but was arrested on Feb. 28, 1804, and on April 15, was found strangled in prison. He was a man of enormous strength and great personality.
There is no really good life of Pichegru ; perhaps the best is J. M. Gassier's Vie du general Pichegru (1815). For his treason, trial and death, consult Montgaillard's Memoires concernant la trahison de Pichegru (1804) ; Fauche-Borel's Memoires; Savary, Memoires sur la mort de Pichegru (1825) ; and G. Pierret, Pichegru, son proces et sa mort (1826) ; and Sir J. R. Hall, General Pichegru's Treason (1915).