"Pierre Viriot was a promising French soldier who wound up on the bad side of both the Napoleonic and the Bourbon regimes. His sad tale shows the power of Napoleon's police to ruin a man's life.
A young hussar
Pierre François Viriot was born on September 20, 1773 in Nancy, in northeastern France. His father, also called Pierre, had distinguished himself as a soldier in the Seven Years' War. His mother, Jeanne Françoise Lemaure (or Lemort), gave birth to at least 11 children and was particularly long-lived, dying at the age of 95 (or 101) in 1827.
At age 15 Viriot entered a military training school at Pont-à-Mousson. At age 17, in January 1791, he enlisted in a regiment of hussars at Chamboran. After two campaigns in the Moselle, Viriot was sent to the Vendée, in the west of France. He fought against the royalists known as Chouans. In 1793, he married Marie-Françoise-Constance Calonne. They had four sons.
The Clément de Ris affair
By the fall of 1800, Pierre Viriot, then age 27, was a captain of hussars and bore the scars of 14 wounds – five from swords and nine from firearms. One of them had taken out his right eye. He might have gone on to a distinguished career in the Grande Armée. Instead, a temporary appointment forever scarred his life. Viriot was named to a court charged with judging the presumed kidnappers of French Senator Dominique Clément de Ris.
On September 23, 1800, Clément de Ris had been robbed and abducted from his home, the Château de Beauvais, near Azay-sur-Cher, in full view of his wife and servants. The brigands imprisoned him in a cave for 17 days, then set him free in a clearing, from which he returned home. First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte, who had appointed Clément de Ris to the Senate, instructed the Minister of Police, Joseph Fouché, to find the guilty parties…"
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