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"Perhaps in the pages of biography there never has yet appeared a more romantic or amiable character than that which was exhibited by this unfortunate nobleman. Born to the possession of illustrious rank and educated in the most polished court of Europe; the idol of its women, the example for its men; it is not singular that his mind should have been strongly tinctured with a taste for chivalry."

The Duc de Biron, Artist unknown

This memoir of the Duke de Lauzun, who later took the title of Biron and died as Citizen Armand Louis de Gontaut, appeared in February 1800 in the Monthly Magazine; it was almost certainly written by Mary Robinson, one of many women who knew him very well. She continued: "His person was manly and prepossessing; his countenance pleasing and benignant; his conversation lively, interesting and well-informed; and his temper so irresistibly fascinating that he seldom was known to lose the affections of those with whom he had once lived on terms of sociability."

Men liked him too: Talleyrand (that wily cynic who served under every government in all the twists and turns of French politics between the Old Regime of the 1780s and the reign of the Citizen King Louis-Philippe in the 1830) who rarely had a good word to say for anyone in fifty years of Machiavellian politics, wrote of Lauzun in his Memoirs that he was, "courageous, romantic, generous and witty."

He was born in 1747 into the height of the French aristocracy, and, according to Mary Robinson, early in life "conceived a marked predilection in favour of the English nation." He also conceived a marked predilection for an Englishwoman, Lady Sarah Lennox (she who was the object of George III's passion): she almost certainly returned his passion, but she was married to someone else. "Untoward circumstances produced a sudden separation," wrote Mary Robinson. "Lauzun's despair was undescribable. He experienced all the miseries of that gloomy vacuum which succeeds the interest of a warm and generous passion."

He returned to France, where he became "the darling of society; the ornament of the French Court; and the distinguished favourite of the unfortunate Mare Antoinette." How much favour did she show to him? We don't know. Lauzun's Memoirs indicate that it was a great deal -- but the Memoirs may not be authentic. Published in 1822 after the monarchy was restored, these highly indiscreet revelations were very embarrassing to the Bourbons, who wanted to show how virtuous everyone was in the Ancien Regime before the Revolution. Talleyrand, at that stage in his life working for the restored Bourbons, said that the memoirs weren't authentic -- for what his word is worth.

One of the less appealing features of the Ancien Regime was its preference for marriages of convenience rather than affection among the nobility: when still in his teens, Lauzun had entered into one with Amelie de Boufflers, the 14-year-old daughter of Charles Joseph Duc de Boufflers, in February 1766. The marriage was so unsatisfactory to both that they were permanently separated for most of their lives.

Lauzun -- romantic, idealistic, dashing, ambitious for glory -- was a certainty for joining the French allies of the American Revolution. He raised what soon became known as "Lauzun's Legion", which Robert A. Selig (see americanrevolution.org) calls "Rochambeau's most troublesome, colorful soldiers". Before heading off to America, Lauzun took a quick side-turn and led the French conquest of Senegal. But eventually Lauzun, his legion, and the rest of the French convoy arrived in Narragansett Bay on July 11, 1780.

According to Selig: "In the 18th century, few self-respecting officers in any European army with a regular commission in a line regiment would have volunteered for service in irregular light troops.... Such units often attracted dishonorably dismissed officers, adventurers, and cutthroats who made the lives of their subordinates miserable. Raised usually only for the duration of a conflict, volunteers were considered expendable in battle -- cannon fodder, as Frederick the Great called them. Even by French army standards these men were poorly paid.... Lauzun's Legion had its share of misfits."

Selig's site gives a good and readily available summary of Lauzun's American activities, so I shan't repeat them here, but will skip straight to the meeting between Lauzun and Tarleton, on 3 October 1781, outside Gloucester, described in both men's memoirs (and the opening scene in Bass's "The Green Dragoon.")

It's clear that both men were eager to engage the other. Lauzun was informed of the nearby presence of Tarleton's Legion, and of the fact that he was eager "to shake hands with the French Duke." Lauzun replied that he "had come there on purpose to give him that satisfaction." While the two Legions charged, Lauzun and Tarleton each went for the other; but in one of those irritatingly unsatisfying bits of history which a film-maker would be very tempted to improve upon, the encounter never happened: a wounded horse crashed into Tarleton's and knocked him off. Rescued by his men, he led them into a fighting retreat. The war was more or less over for both of them, as the British shortly after surrendered at Yorktown

Lauzun returned across the Atlantic first. He was chosen to take the news of the victory back to France, where he became as much of a war hero as Tarleton was soon to be in England. And there, his memoirs state: "I met in Paris Mrs Robinson, the first love of the Prince of Wales, of whom the English gossips had said so much, under the name of Perdita. She was gay, lively, open and a good creature; she did not speak French; I was an object to excite her fancy, a man who had brought home great tidings, who came from the war, who was returning there immediately; he had suffered greatly, he would suffer more still. She felt that she could not do too much for him, and so I enjoyed Perdita, and did not conceal my success from [his long-term mistress] Madame de Coigny.... Perdita left for England and was so insistent that I should accompany her as far as Calais that I could not refuse. It was a great sacrifice, for that very day I was engaged to dine with Mme de Coigny."

Lauzun must have been the only man in the world who would consider this journey a great sacrifice; but Mme de Coigny was to become the only woman in his life. His late mistress and his late opponent paired off together, and all three became part of the circles of the Duke of Orleans in France and the Prince of Wales in England once the war was over; in each country, the centre of the fashionable opposition to the ruling king.

Lauzun's friendship with the Duke of Orleans defined the rest of his career. When King Louis XVI, faced with an economy in a state of collapse, summoned the Estates General in 1789, Lauzun (now known as Biron after the death of his uncle, the previous holder of the title) was elected as a deputy for the nobility of Quercy, and was one of the foremost on the memorable day and night of August 4 1789 where the nobility and clergy voluntarily renounced their privileges and ended feudalism in France. Like many of those who had served in America, including Lafayette, Biron (as we must now call him) was a fervent supporter of the early years of the French Revolution. Many of his aristocratic fellows fled the country, including Mme de Coigny, who reluctantly accompanied her husband to London, especially after the abortive flight of the King to Varennes in the summer of 1791, when it became clear that the harmony and optimism of the first two years was over.

But Biron stayed on, and was chosen in early 1792 to go with Talleyrand on an important diplomatic mission to London. Their main aim was to keep Britain neutral in the developing war with Austria, but Biron had an additional task: to buy 4000 horses for the French cavalry. However, within a few days of their arrival, Biron was arrested for debt and thrown into a spunging house. It's not clear to this day who was responsible for this: the finger is usually pointed at the royalist emigres in London, who viewed as traitors to their class the liberal aristocrats like Biron, Orleans, Lafayette and Talleyrand. He was bailed out by the Earl of Moira (aka Lord Rawdon), who paid off one debt and smuggled him out of England before he could be arrested for another. His place as Talleyrand's diplomatic side-kick was subsequently taken by Chauvelin, a name familiar to readers of The Scarlet Pimpernel.

Back in France, Biron was one of the generals left over from the Ancien Regime that the new Revolutionary government was forced to put in charge of the army because of their military expertise, but never entirely trusted. The death rate among revolutionary generals was horrific, both in battle and on the guillotine (and sometimes, as with Dillon, formerly second-in-command of Lauzun's Legion, at the hands of their own men). The atmosphere of paranoia in France meant that any defeated general was automatically suspected of treachery, while a successful one was suspected of mounting a military coup -- and sometimes these suspicions were justified.

So perhaps the Revolutionary Tribunal was right to suspect Biron of dragging his feet when he was made responsible for putting down the rebellion in the Vendee in 1793; it was a bloody business, and Biron was never known for brutality; Mary Robinson suggested that "the sufferings of the ill-fated and persecuted Marie Antoinette impressed his sensible and philanthropic mind". Or perhaps it was simply that he was too well-known as the friend of the ci-devant Duke of Orleans, now known as Philippe-Egalite, who had earned the undying hatred of all royalists for voting for the death of the king without gaining the trust of the republicans, and went to the scaffold himself on 6 November 1793.

Whatever it was, Biron was recalled from his command, imprisoned, tried, and sentenced to death. On the last day of the year 1793, he was interrupted in his final meal of oysters by the executioner, to whom he offered a glass of wine, saying, "A man in your profession must need courage."

Let us give Mary Robinson the last words: "Here let the sensible reader bestow a tear, while reflection shews the progress of Biron's fall from power to degradation; from the most splendid altitudes of fame and fortune, to the gloomy platform of the guillotine; and, while memory transcribes his many virtues, his gallant actions, his amiable sensibility, and his romantic enthusiasm on the page of Time, let Pity efface with her spontaneous tears the frailties of human nature, and the last sad close of his unfortunate destiny."

Main sources:

• Bass, Robert D.; The Green Dragoon; (New York: Holt, 1957)
• Cooper, Duff; Talleyrand; (London: Orion, 1932, 2001)
• Lauzun; Memoirs; (Paris, 1822)
• Maugras, Gaston, trans. Osgood; The Duc de Lauzun and the Court of Marie Antoinette; (London: McIlvaine, 1896)
• M. R. (almost certainly Mary Robinson); Memoirs of the Late Duc de Biron; (Monthly Magazine, London, February 1800)
• Selig, Robert A.; The Duc de Lauzun and his Legion; available on-line through "www.americanrevolution.org", see links.