Clarke

Henri Jacques Guillaume, duke of Feltre, Marshal (1816),
Minister of war (1806-1814).
(Landrecies (Nord), 1765 - Neuwiller (Bas-Rhin), 1818)

This Frenchman of Irish descent was a curious sort of soldier who spent more time with papers than on the battlefield. His contemporaries said of him, "He was a swordsman who owed more to the work of his pen."

Clarke became an officer upon leaving the military school in Paris. He took part in the campaigns of the revolution in the army on the Rhine. Brigadier general in 1795, from the first of May of that year he had charge of the historical and topographic section of the ministry of war.In 1796 the Directory sent him to Bonaparte, then commanding the army in Italy, with the secret mission of watching the general and eventually making a treaty with Austria, but the two men were connected by friendship. From then on Clarke staked his fortune on that general.

The Directory discharged him, but after the eighteenth of brumaire Bonaparte, hereafter first consul, charged him with accompanying the Russian prisoners to their fatherland. In July of 1801 Clarke was plenipotentiary to the king of Etruria. In 1804 he was a state councillor and secretary to Napoleon. He took part in the 1805 campaign in Austria, then that in 1806 in Prussia. He was named governor of Berlin and Erfurt. On August 9, 1807, he replaced Berthier as minister of war. He held that position until the abdication of the emperor.
In spite of the money and the honors the emperor bestowed on him (he was made duke of Feltre in 1809 after having organized the defense against the landing of the English forces in Walcheren), he abandoned Napoleon after the first restoration. He followed Louis XVIII to Gand and it was the latter who gave him his marshal's baton in July of 1816. Louis XVIII named him minister of war on September 19, 1815, and peer of France on August 31, 1817. Clarke retired from the ministry of war in 1817 and died at his estate on October 28, 1818.