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Philippe Henri, Marquis de Segur

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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MARQUIS DE (1724-1801), marshal of France, son of Henri Francois, comte de Segur, and his wife Angelique de Froissy, was appointed to the command of an infantry regiment at eighteen, and served under his father in Italy and Bohemia. He was wounded at Roucoux in Flanders in October 1746, and lost an arm at Lauffeld in 1747. In 1748 he succeeded his father as lieutenant-general of Champagne and Brie; he also received in 1753 the governorship of the county of Foix. During the Seven Years' War he fought at Hastenbeck (1757), Crefeld (1758) and Minden (1759). In 1760 he was taken prisoner at Kloster-campen. The ability which he showed in the government of Franche-Comte in 1775 led in 1780 to his appointment as minister of war under Necker. He created in 1783 the permanent general staff, and made admirable regulations with regard to barracks and military hospitals; and though he was officially responsible for the reactionary decree requiring four quarterings of nobility as a condition for the appointment of officers, the scheme is said not to have originated with him and to have been adopted under protest. In 1783 he became a marshal of France. He resigned from the ministry of war in 1787. During the Terror he was imprisoned in La Force, and after his release was reduced to considerable straits until in 1800 he received a pension from Napoleon. He died in Paris on the 3rd of October of the next year.

See A. de Segur, Le Marechal de Segur, 1724-1801 (Paris, 1895).