Antoine de Lhoyer

Born in the French commune of Clermont-Ferrand, Antoine de Lhoyer was a member of a wealthy bourgeois family.

To further his musical education, he visited major European capitals, and by the age of 21 already enjoyed a reputation as a virtuoso guitarist.

By 1792, in Koblenz he had enlisted with the armée des Princes which joined with an allied army of Prussian and Austrian soldiers led by the Duke of Brunswick in an unsuccessful invasion of France in 1792.

He next travelled to St Petersburg where he was well received by the royal court, obtaining employment as a guitar teacher to the Tsarina and becoming a favourite of the Empress Elizabeth.

Eventually, in 1814, he became a sergeant in the elite Garde de la Manche du Roi after the Bourbon Restoration.

His life took another change in fortune with the abdication of the French King in the July Revolution of 1830 and the subsequent reorganisation of civil and military administration, losing his position as commandant.

Next he took his family to Algeria settling near the capital Algiers and then finally in 1852 to Paris where he died in poverty on 15 March during the reign of Napoleon III.