In 1791, Nansouty then left the regiment to fill two consecutive military staff positions, first as deputy aid to Adjutant General Poncet de la Cour Maupas in the Army of the Centre on 20 December, then as aide-de-camp of Marshal Luckner at the beginning of 1792.

General of Division Michaud, the commander-in-chief of France's Army of the Rhine, noted in his report that Delmas's two regiments showed bravery and intrepidity every time they faced the enemy.

[10] The next significant moment of this campaign was the incident that occurred at dawn on 11 August 1796, while Nansouty and his men were temporarily attached to the "Corps of the Centre", under General Laurent de Gouvion Saint-Cyr.

[15] Nansouty's cavalry took part in several actions, beginning with the Battle of Engen, where the commander was noted for his able and daring manoeuvres, subsequently leading a successful charge against enemy infantry, whom he chased through the streets of the nearby city of Stockach, the locale of the French Army of the Danube's defeat a year earlier.

[18] During the initial phase of the campaign, Nansouty's division was at first attached to Marshal Louis Nicolas Davout's III Corps, with which it crossed the Rhine and then the Danube, before rejoining Murat's cavalry reserve.

[18] At around 10:00, after battle had been joined all along the front, Russian General Pyotr Bagration, who had won the cavalry action a few days earlier at Wissau, pulled his forces back from the advancing enemy infantry from the V Corps.

[25] As military operation resumed later in 1807, Nasouty's division was hastily directed towards the town of Deppen, where Marshal Michel Ney had managed to retreat with his Corps, after energetically extricating himself from a dangerous situation, with surprisingly few losses.

[26] At the beginning of June 1807, the Emperor reassessed his strategic situation and decided that he needed to move northeast, in order to prevent Bennigsen's Russian army from using the bridge at Friedland to cross the Alle river.

Napoleon drew up a plan, giving Marshal Murat two army corps and a powerful cavalry reserve, with orders to march on Königsberg, while sending the rest of the troops towards Friedland.

Leading the thrust towards Friedland was Marshal Jean Lannes's Reserve Corps (two infantry divisions and one cavalry brigade), with Grouchy's dragoons and Nansouty's horse carabiniers and cuirassiers temporarily attached.

Grouchy duly took command of Nansouty's leading squadrons, ordering them back to their initial position, then launched a desperate but successful charge with his own dragoons, arriving in the streets of the village and cutting off its Russian defenders.

On 22 April, the second day of the battle, Nansouty was at first sent to the Schierling plain, in support of Bavarian General Deroy, who, after several failed attempts, managed to take the town of Eckmühl from the enemy.

[39] In order to protect his retreat, Archduke Charles of Austria reunited his entire cavalry reserve, 44 squadrons in all, on either side of the Ratisbon road,[40] next to the village of Eggolsheim.

He found the heroic cuirassiers of General Jean-Louis-Brigitte Espagne charging, as they had done all day long, in a desperate attempt to stop Austrian attacks on the thin French battle line.

However, at around 21:00 in the morning, news that the great bridge over the Danube had broken, making the arrival of further reinforcements virtually impossible, forced Napoleon to call off his attack and order a phased retreat.

After most of the army had safely crossed an arm of the Danube onto the island of Lobau, Nansouty's men were also withdrawn from the battlefield during the night, with the French cavalry subsequently celebrated for their role in preventing a catastrophic defeat that day.

The next day, 6 July, Nansouty was at first directed to support Davout, on the French right, but when it became clear that the latter's sector was not threatened by the arrival of enemy reinforcements, they were ordered back into reserve in a central position on the battlefield, not far from the village of Aderklaa.

However, the Austrian cavalry promptly intervened, spearheaded by the Rosenberg chevaulegers and the Kronprinz cuirassier regiments, which caught the carabiniers-à-cheval in flank and repulsed them, pursuing them back to their lines.

[49] Bessières's charge, hastily organised with only the division of Nansouty, through murderous artillery fire and against masses of infantry prepared to receive them, had less tactical effect than at Aspern-Essling, but it did win Napoleon valuable time, allowing him to retake the initiative in this battle.

Despite Nansouty's best efforts, the extremely long and exhausting marches, the torrential rains and the absence of proper fodder took their toll on the Ist Cavalry Corps, with numbers reduced to half by this time.

Hostilities thus continued in early 1813 but Nansouty's wound did not yet allow him to return to action, so he was offered the prestigious position of Colonel-General of dragoons (16 January), in replacement of General Louis Baraguey d'Hilliers, who had just died of exhaustion.

He accepted to take the helm of the Guard cavalry, with a complement of 5,000 sabres, and including Guyot's Grenadiers-à-cheval, Letort's Dragons, Lefebvre-Desnouettes Chasseurs-à-cheval and Édouard Colbert's Chevau-légers lanciers.

The position of General Durutte's division, placed close to Saxon lines, was particularly tenuous and Napoleon soon came to its aid, with Nansouty in command of the Guard cavalry and horse artillery.

Here, two companies of horse artillery, under an officer called Marin, a veteran of the campaigns in Italy and Egypt and personal favourite of the Emperor, were almost completely destroyed, with their guns and commander captured by the enemy.

Charging Blücher's men from the front, Nansouty allowed Grouchy to magnificently fall behind the enemy columns, which they both then sabred and crushed, with the Guard cavalry subsequently participating in a highly successful pursuit.

Once across the Aisne with a few Polish lancer platoons, Nansouty launched a heroic pursuit, capturing enemy cannons and munitions, and taking a significant number of prisoners, among whom was the teenage Russian Prince Gagarin.

Two days later, Napoleon wrote to his War Minister to inform him that General Nansouty's health did not allow him to exercise his military duties and that he was authorised to take sick leave in Paris.

[70] The engraving on his tombstone reads: Here rests Étienne Marie Antoine ChampionComte de Nansoutyborn in Bourgogne on 30 May 1768Lieutenant-General of the King's Armies,Inspector General of Dragoons,Captain-Lieutenantof the 1st Companyof the King's Guard Musketeers,Grand Cordon of the Legion of Honour,Knight of the Militaryand Royal Orders of S. Louisand of Notre Dame du Mont Carmel,Grand Cross of the Royal Orderof the Golden Eagle of WürttembergDeceased in Paris on 12 February 1815"In all my life, I have not done any harm to anyone.

One of its illustrious members, Seigneur de Nansouty was instrumental in ensuring the allegiance of Burgundy to King Henri IV and was rewarded by the monarch for his fidelity by being named state counselor.

During this period, he severely mistreated one of his squadron commanders for not executing his order fast enough, and even sacked his chief of staff, Colonel de la Loyère, for a minor fault.