Laurent Jean François Truguet (10 January 1752, Toulon – 26 December 1839, Toulon) was a French admiral.
Life
Youth up to the Revolution
Of aristocratic origins, and the son of a chef d'escadre, Laurent de Truguet entered the gardes de la marine in 1765. He navigated successively the Hirondelle, Provence, Atalante, Pléiade and Chimère. He won several prizes, awarded to the best gardes by Louis XV. He became enseigne de vaisseau in 1773 and had already been in eight campaigns by July 1778, when war was declared against England.
In the war in America, he served on the frigate Atalante then on the vessel Hector under the comte d'Estaing, and took part in the battle at Saint Lucia. Lieutenant de vaisseau from 1779, in the land attack on Savannah, he saved the life of admiral d'Estaing despite being severely wounded himself, for which he was made a knight of Order of Saint Louis.
On the Languedoc then the Citoyen, he took part in various battles as a member of Guichen's then de Grasse's fleet (battle of Chesapeake, Battle of St. Kitts, Battle of the Saintes).
Major de Vaisseau from 1784, he cooperated in the tasks assigned to M. Choiseuil-Gouffier, ambassador to Constantinople, and was charged with instructing the Ottomans in the arts of fortification, artillery, metallurgy, naval architecture, and so on. Truguet commanded a brig, the Tarleton, with which he re-mapped the hydrography of the Dardanelles in 1785 and 1786, and in 1787 published a "Traité de Marine" (Naval Treatise) at Constantinople.
French Revolutionary Wars
On his return to France in 1789, he was sent to Brest in 1790 to take the command of a frigate there intended for a mission that was, in the end, rendered unnecessary by the course of events. He then made a trip in England for there to complete his naval education. Made capitaine de vaisseau on 1 January 1792, he was promoted as early as the following July to the rank of rear admiral, commanding the French naval forces in the Mediterranean from his flagship . He bombarded Nice, Villefranche and Oneglia, while general Montesquiou seized the Duchy of Savoy. That same year he and his fleet were instructed to cooperate in the Expédition de Sardaigne, a failed invasion of the island of Sardinia; he had moved to bombard Cagliari, when an insurrection broke out among the disembarking troops which obliged him to sail to the beaches and reembark them.
Passing Corsica, he was received by the Bonaparte family and began a romance with Elisa, sister of the future Emperor and the close relations with the family which he would retain to his death. On his return to Toulon in March 1793, he went to Paris, where he got the government to adopt a maritime penal code, that would prevent many future insurrections and mutinies but still provoke much discontent in France's naval bases. He was discharged at the end of 31 May that year and imprisoned at the time of the publication of the law of suspects, but was liberated on 9 Thermidor (27 July).
He was promoted vice admiral in 1795 and minister of the Navy by the French Directory from November 1795 to July 1797. During his two years in this ministry, he reestablished discipline and order in France's harbours and arsenals, recalling former officers discharged due to the Revolution. Under pressure from general Hoche, he presented a plan for the 1796 French invasion of Ireland to the Directory, with Morard de Galle commanding the naval forces. This operation proved to be a complete fiasco. He organized and sent a division of frigates into the Indian Ocean under the command of Sercey.
He strove to get the colonies to respect the 1794 decree of the abolition of the slavery, and supported the creation of a collège intended for black and mixed-race children close to Paris; this collège later had the sons of Toussaint Louverture among its pupils, but was closed by Decrès in 1802.
Truguet also took the initiative in composing a new collection of naval tactics that would be adopted in year V of the French Republican Calendar. He broke with the exclusively defensive conceptions of the collection of 1769. He officialised and systematised the practice of having a light attack squadron within each fleet. This collection was later completed by the collection of year IX, also inspired by Truguet.