Joachim Murat
March 25, 1767 – October 13, 1815
Marshal of France and Napoleon's cavalry commander, King of Naples from 1808 to 1815.
Biography
Joachim Murat was born in 1767 at La Bastide-Fortunière in Quercy, the son of an innkeeper and postmaster. Intended for the priesthood, he left the seminary in Toulouse in 1787 and joined a cavalry regiment. An ardent republican during the Revolution, he rose from the ranks, and on 13 Vendémiaire in October 1795 he brought the cannon from the Camp des Sablons that let Napoleon Bonaparte crush the royalist rising in Paris.
He became Bonaparte's aide-de-camp and cavalry commander in Italy and Egypt, led the charge that broke the Ottoman line at Abukir in 1799, and played a key part in the coup of 18 Brumaire. In 1800 he married Bonaparte's sister Caroline.
Named a Marshal of the Empire in 1804, he led the cavalry at Ulm, Austerlitz, Jena and Eylau. He was made Grand Duke of Berg in 1806 and commanded the French troops in Madrid during the Dos de Mayo rising of 1808, before becoming King of Naples that August. He fought in Russia in 1812 and Germany in 1813, then made a secret deal with the Allies to keep his throne.
When Napoleon returned in 1815, Murat went to war with Austria and issued the Rimini Proclamation calling on Italians to unite, but he was defeated at Tolentino and lost his kingdom. After a failed landing in Calabria that October he was captured and shot at Pizzo on 13 October 1815.
