Pierre Yrieix Daumesnil (14 July 1776 – 17 August 1832) was a French soldier in the armies of Napoleon during the first Empire and Restoration, eventually rising to the rank of brigadier general. He lost his left leg after he was wounded in the Battle of Wagram; it was replaced by a wooden prosthesis earning him the nickname jambe de bois ("wooden leg"). In 1812, he was assigned to the defense of the Château de Vincennes. Vincennes was then an arsenal containing 52,000 new muskets, more than 100 cannon and many tons of powder, bullets and cannonballs—a tempting prize for the Sixth Coalition when it marched on Paris in 1814 in the aftermath of the Battle of the Nations. However Daumesnil faced down the allies with the famous words "I shall surrender Vincennes when I get my leg back" (Je rendrai Vincennes quand on me rendra ma jambe, with a sort of polysemic pun in French on two possible meanings of rendre - "surrender" and "give back" - that is lost in translation). With only 300 men under his command, he resisted the Coalition until King Louis XVIII of France ordered him to leave the fortress.
Daumesnil rallied to Napoleon on his return, holding Vincennes once more against the large mass of Coalition troops. He managed to get a message to Royalist officer Louis-Victor-Léon de Rochechouart asking for help. He then surrendered and five months later he was retired by the Bourbons. When the Revolution of 1830 began, he was recalled and given the rank of lieutenant general. He died of cholera on 17 August 1832. Napoleon III awarded his wife a pension and the position of superintendent of the imperial house of Saint-Denis.
Early years
Daumesnil was born in Périgueux on 27 July 1776, the son of Jean Daumesnil, a shopkeeper, and his wife Anne. He was the youngest of five children but little else is known of his early years. He seems to have been an active but mischievous youth, liked and admired by his peers, but intolerant of injustice and not particularly dedicated to his studies. At age seventeen, he killed an artilleryman in a duel and was forced to flee Périgueux, walking to Toulouse to join his brother, who was a cavalry trooper in the Army of the Eastern Pyrenees.
Career
As it did for many young French officers, the French Empire offered Daumesnil the chance of advancement in his profession, as high military rank and honour were no longer the sole preserve of noblemen. He was a man of great energy and resourcefulness, with exceptional qualities of leadership. He started his military career as a regimental trooper and rose up the ranks on his merits, before becoming a senior officer in the elite Régiment de chasseurs à cheval.
Daumesnil was seriously wounded on 19 August 1794. When he had recovered, he joined his regiment in Italy, was promoted, with the rank of brigadier, to the guides of General Bonaparte, and became a "maréchal-des-logis" on 28 October 1797. While serving in Egypt, in Napoleon's Egyptian campaign, Daumesnil threw himself on a bomb that had landed at Napoleon's feet; the bomb failed to explode, but the incident endeared him to Napoleon. In his early days in the guides, he was notorious for misconduct outside the field of battle. One day in Cairo, he was arrested and sentenced to death with two other guides for rebellion in the countryside after a fight with line officers.
Bonaparte promised him his life if he would ask for pardon, but the offer did not apply to the other two guides and Daumesnil refused. The next day, driven to the place of execution with his companions, the offer was made again, and he refused again. "[…] But, as he set out to join the other two condemned men, he was held back. The salvo laid flat his companions, under his eyes, and they led him back to his cell. Bonaparte had decided to save him."
As a member of the Legion of Honor he fought in the wars of Austria (1804), Prussia (1806) and Poland (1807). He also fought on the battlefields of Jena, Eylau and Friedland. He followed the Emperor to Spain in 1808. In the uprising of 2 May in Madrid, it was he who, at the head of the horse troops of the Imperial Guard, commanded the main charge of the French cavalry against the inhabitants of Madrid in the main street of Alcalá. He had two horses killed under him by enemy fire during the engagement.