Draft:Charles Dumoulin (general)

He was born in his parents François Dumoulin and Marie Parjadis's guesthouse in Limoges - Marie's first husband Martial Rouffié had died and she had a son, Charles with him. He was baptised at a day old in the église Saint-Domnolet, with Charles as godfather. His father died in 1782 when Charles was 14. A good student, the parish's curé noted him at school. His education was sufficient for him to be appointeed a study master at the Collège de Lisieux in Paris aged 17.

At a judicial interview in year III of the French First Republic, Dumoulin stated that between 1785 and 1792 he had lived in Paris "where he was professor at the Collège de Lisieux".^[1] - this was an exaggeration as at his age he could only have been a study master of preceptor. He wrote poems and other works during this time.

The outbreak of the War of the First Coalition and Prusso-Austrian advances into French territory triggered large numbers of volunteers to the French armed forces. In 1793 Dumoulinbecame one of them as a lieutenant in the 1st Paris Grenadier Regiment, showing he had links to Jacobin circles.^[1] He set off from Paris with the armée du Nord to join the siege of Valenciennes and on 1 May, after fifteen days in his battalion's 8th company, he was elected a captain in its 2nd Company by that battalion's administrative council. On 28 July the stronghold surrendered with full honours of war, though Dumoulin and three hostages had to be handed over to the British.^[2]

He arrived in Munich the following year, where at a ball held by the Bavarian nobility he met again with the 21 year old Catherine-Eugénie von Eckart, only daughter of baron von Eckart, minister and friend of the King of Bavaria - they had first met a year earlier on his trip to Frankfurt-am-Main with Bernadotte's army. They fell in love, but her parents opposed the match and so he organised for her to flee to Paris on 20 June 1806,^[3] where they set up home in the hôtel d'Angleterre, still unmarried.

Her father lodged a complaint against him and when Napoleon was informed he ordered a double enquiry by Fouché and Berthier.^[4] Napoleon wrote to the latter on 7 July 1806 stating:

I send you a report whose subject seems rather extraordinary to me. It seems to me that there is no other course but to engage the young lady's father to have her marry general Dumoulin ; this is what prudence requires in such a case. Try to find out if general Dumoulin intends to marry this lady and speak to the king of Bavaria. After many outbursts, the father will feel that he will end up regretting it if the matter is not arranged this way. If she cannot arrange it and general Dumoulin refuses to marry the lady, my intention is to arresst him. However, put a wise prudence into all this.

The father also accused Dumoulin of previously marrying Victoire Kugler at Fech in Moravia on 5 January 1806, making any marriage to Catherine-Eugénie bigamous. When he went to take up his post in Munich, he was arrested by Berthier and dismissed from the army on 20 September 1806, but an enquiry by Grand Judge Claude Ambroise Régnier found that his first marriage did not exist in French law, he was innocent of bigamy and Catherine-Eugénie was of age and thus could legally follow him to Paris. Dumoulin declared his Moravian marriage null and void, as it had not been transcribed in the French registers, and Catherine-Eugénie's father finally gave his consent to the marriage. This occurred in the electoral chapel in Leipzig castle on 11 December 1806.^[5]

He was reappointed to the army at his old rank and set off for Italy under Eugène de Beauharnais in 1807, before being posted to Spain from 1808 to 1811. He took part in the campaign in Saxony in 1813 before retiring to his wife's estate at Schloss Bertholdsheim in Bavaria (near the town of Neuburg an der Donau) after the Battle of Leipzig. He did not take part in the 1814 campaign on French soil or in the Hundred Days. He won over Louis XVIII after Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo and was made a baron on 12 February 1817 and commander of Tarn department the following year. Ennoblement as a viscount came in 1821 and as a count the year after that. His final command was of the Bas-Rhin department from 3 September 1823 onwards. He was made a Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour on 23 May 1825 and retired on 18 July 1830, dying in Strasbourg.

Via his ten children^[6] he has several descendants in France and Germany with the surnames Du Moulin Eckart or von der Mühle Eckart - Henry de Pazzis, a descendant via the Beylié branch states that during the Franco-Prussian War three French officers with the surname Beylié faced three cousins with the surname von der Muhle who were officers in the German Army.^[7] One of them is the German writer Richard von der Mühle Eckart, a specialist in Richard Wagner^[8] Charles' only daughter Aimée du Moulin became the mother of general Léon de Beylié,^[6] whilst his son Jules de Moulin, a chasseur officer in Besançon, was the biological father of Jules Ménétrier, who claimed to be heir to the throne of France at the end of the 19th century.^[9]