Louis Rossel (Paperback)

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Louis-Nathaniel Rossel was a French army officer and politician. On 19 March 1871 he became the only senior French officer to join up with the Paris Commune, and here he played an important r le as Minister of War. He was born in 1844 in Saint-Brieuc, C tes-d'Armor, but his father was a scion of a strongly republican Huguenot (Protestant) N mes family, and descended from Saint-Jean-du-Gard Camisards. His mother, born Sarah Campbell, was from Scotland. Rossel was educated at the Prytan e Militaire, and was executed in 1871 at the Satory military centre at Versailles. When Rossel began Minister of war (Louis Rossel replaces Cluseret, after Fort Issy is temporarily abandoned), he immediately ordered the construction of a new ring of barricades within the existing ramparts in case the Government forces penetrated the first line of defense. Rossel also tried to concentrate and centralize the 1,100 artillery pieces scattered throughout the city. Many were out of commission with their breechblocks stored in arsenals elsewhere in Paris, so that the only readily available guns were light pieces that fared poorly against the Government's heavy artillery.