PICH,EGRU, Charles, shiirl pesh-gril, French general: b. Arbois, of Jura, 16 Feb. 1761; d. Paris, April 1804. He was for some time a tutor at the College of Brienne, but soon exchanged this profession for that of a soldier and served with a French artillery regiment. He was chosen the commander of a body of volunteers from Besancon to join the Army of the Rhine. He was rapidly advanced, and in October 1793 was appointed general-in-chief of the same army. In 1794 he was selected as the fittest man to command the Army of the North, then beaten and de moralized. He defeated the enemy at Courtrai, Menin, Hoogelede, reduced to subjection Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp, Hertogenbosch, Ven loo and Nijmegen, crossed the Maas and the Waal on the ice in the winter of 1794-95, sub jugated Holland and entered Amsterdam in January 1795. Then he returned to Paris to enjoy his triumph. He was now at the height of his fame and was honored by the Convention with the title of savior of his country. Soon
after he set out to take the command of the army of the Rhine and Moselle, but in this post displayed none of his former energy, and enter ing into negotiations with the Bourbons was deprived of his command under suspicion of treason (1796). Having secured his election to the Council of Five Hundred, he was chosen its president (March 1797) and became the soul of the party hostile to the Revolution. He was proscribed and transported to Cayenne, but managed to make his escape the year follow ing. In 1803 he was in London, and there he allied himself with George Cadoudal in a con spiracy to assassinate Napoleon. Having gone to Paris for the purpose, he was captured by the police (1804) and committed to the Tem ple prison, where he was found strangled 5 April. Consult the 'Life) by Bouziers (1870) ; also Daudet, 'La Conjuration de Pichegru' (1901).