Jacques Boudin de Tromelin
Jacques Jean-Marie François Boudin, comte de Tromelin (1771–1842) was a French general of the First French Empire. He was born on 22 August 1771 in Ploujean (near Morlaix) in Brittany to a noble family with many army and navy officers. His father, Nicolas Boudin de Tromelin, and his mother, Geneviève du Buisson de Vieux Châtel, raised him in a military tradition. He studied at the École militaire de Vendôme and entered the regiment of Limousin in 1788, which was garrisoned in Corsica.
At the start of the French Revolution his family emigrated. Jacques joined the Armée des Princes in 1792 and fought on the Rhine and in western France, including the Quiberon Expedition of 1795. After the expedition failed, he escaped execution and went to London. He later returned to Britain, where he helped William Sidney Smith escape from captivity and, in a famous episode, took part in an audacious raid on the French coast.
Because émigrés captured on French soil were condemned to death, Tromelin briefly tried to pass as a servant named John Bromley to avoid execution. He was sent back to Britain, where he helped Smith escape. He was then personally made a knight of the Order of Saint Louis on his return to France. He joined the Royalist Army of Normandy, was captured in Caen in 1798, and fled eastward.
He served in Egypt and Syria as a major in the forces of the Ottoman sultan against the French invasion of Egypt. He returned to France in 1802 and was imprisoned at the Abbaye Prison. After a plot involving Pichegru, Cadoudal and Mehée de la Touche, Tromelin was released after six months, removed from the émigrés list, and made a captain in the 112th Line Infantry Regiment.
In 1809 he commanded a battalion in the Dalmatian Campaign, and after the Battle of Wagram he was promoted to colonel, commanding the 6th Croatian Regiment. In 1813 he became adjutant general to the Armée d’Allemagne. He was promoted to brigadier general and made a count of the Empire after the Battle of Leipzig.
During the Hundred Days he headed the Tromelin Brigade in the 6th Infantry Corps of the Armée du Nord and fought at Waterloo. He helped the provisional government obtain Napoleon’s passports from Wellington and contributed to ending hostilities in Paris. He took part in the 1823 Spanish expedition, fighting at Igualada, Caiders, Yorba and Tarragona, and finished as a lieutenant general.
In 1828 he published Observations sur les routes qui conduisent du Danube à Constantinople à travers le Balcan ou mont Hoemus, with reflections on Greece and European intervention. Tromelin rose to the rank of Grand Officier de la Légion d’honneur. He died on 3 March 1842 in Ploujean.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 14:23 (CET).