In the latter part of Bonaparte's celebrated Italian campaign of 1796-1797 the younger Kellermann attracted the future emperor's notice by his brilliant conduct at the forcing of the Tagliamento.

He was made general of brigade immediately after, and continued to serve in Italy after the Peace of Campo Formio, being employed successively in the armies of Rome and Naples under Macdonald and Championnet.

The dragoons stampeded through the Austrian infantry columns, causing a general rout, securing a French victory in a battle that seemed all but lost just an hour earlier.

[3] At the Battle of Vimeiro he led the grenadier reserve and, after the French defeat, used his considerable diplomatic skills in negotiating the Convention of Cintra.

At the Battle of Alba de Tormes on 28 November 1809, he led 3,000 troopers in a brilliant cavalry charge that routed the Duke Del Parque's Spanish army.

In this action, Kellermann was peremptorily ordered by Marshal Michel Ney to make a frontal charge on the Anglo-Allied line with the 770 troopers of Guiton's cuirassier brigade.

In the afternoon, Ney sent the III Cavalry Corps into a mass attack against the British infantry squares between Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte.

Kellermann was disgraced at the second Restoration, and, on succeeding to his father's title and seat in the Chamber of Peers in 1820, at once took up and maintained till the fall of Charles X in 1830 an attitude of determined opposition to the Bourbons.