[1] A schoolmate of Napoleon Bonaparte at the military school of Brienne-le-Château, Gudin made a career in the army of the ancien régime and the French Revolution.

[3][2] Gudin studied at the École de Brienne [fr] at the same time as Napoleon Bonaparte,[4] then joined the corps of gendarmes of the Maison militaire du roi on 28 October 1782.

Gudin attacked and captured the Grimsel Pass on 9 July, and then crossed the Furka to join General Lecourbe in the combat of Oberalp on 14 August.

[9] On 30 August 1805, Gudin's 3rd division was officially integrated into the III Corps of the Grande Armée, placed under Davout's command, and participated in the German campaign of the War of the Third Coalition.

Marching at the head of Davout's III Corps, he captured the village of Hassenhausen early in the morning and repelled, thanks to his squares, a charge of Blücher's cavalry.

After several hours of resistance, and when his position threatened to be turned, he was rescued by the Morand division, which arrived on the battlefield and then took part in the French counter-offensive against the faltering Prussian army, seizing the village of Eckartsberg.

The Petit brigade, belonging to the 3rd division, arrived on the field early in the afternoon and immediately went to the assistance of Morand and Friant, who engaged the Russians in fierce fighting.

[25] On 22 April, while Davout faced Archduke Charles at the Battle of Eckmühl, Napoleon, arriving from the south, deployed the Morand and Gudin divisions with the mission of turning the Austrian left wing.

[26] On 1 June 1809, the Gudin division was composed of 10,588-men divided into three brigades under the command of generals Leclerc des Essarts, Boyer de Rébeval and Duppelin.

[27] At the Battle of Wagram a week later, with an initial attack on the evening of 5 July against the village of Markgrafneusiedl by Davout's corps having failed, Napoleon ordered a second attempt the following day.

Despite fierce Austrian resistance, Gudin, who had personally placed himself at the head of the 85th Line, seized the Nieusedl plateau around noon and joined the rest of the III Corps.

The arrival of the Hohenzollern corps, which had come to support Rosenberg against the right of Gudin's division, temporarily put the 85th Line in a difficult position until the Austrian reinforcements were finally defeated.

The 3rd division took the suburb of Mstislav and there established a battery which, combined with Morand's and Friant's artillery, precipitated the evacuation of the city by the Russian army.

[34] On 19 August, while Gudin was visiting a religious monument on the right bank of the Dnieper with the Emperor, an aide-de-camp of Marshal Ney informed them that the latter's troops were held in check by the Russian rearguard, which was firmly entrenched on the Valutina Gora plateau.

His observations were poorly received and a lively dialogue ensued between the two men, which Gudin concluded with the reply: "you will see how my division knows how to take a position that it has been tasked with attacking.

"[36] At the moment when the 3rd division had just knocked down the centre of the Russian column and was on the verge of capturing the enemy position, Gudin was struck by a cannonball which severed one of his legs and seriously wounded the other.

He also dedicated a funeral oration to him in his 14th bulletin, dated 23 August: "General Gudin was one of the most distinguished officers of the army; he was commendable for his moral qualities as much as for his bravery and his intrepidity.

[34] On 6 July 2019, in a park in central Smolensk, archaeologists led by French historian Pierre Malinowski[40] found a coffin and skeletal remains that bore signs of trauma consistent with the historical record of Gudin's death (one leg amputated and another one wounded).

[44] Guidin's body was subsequently returned to France, and on 13 July 2021 the French Minister of Veterans Affairs, Geneviève Darrieussecq, accompanied by a guard of honour in Napoleonic uniform, officially received his remains.

His younger brother Pierre César Gudin des Bardelières [fr] (1775-1855) also followed a military career, reaching the rank of brigade general, and was made a Baron of the Empire by Napoleon in 1810.