Henri de Rigny

After spending several months in Special School in Brest, where he had been sent there to finish his studies, in 1798, he entered the navy as a midshipman with Admiral Étienne Eustache Bruix.

He assisted in the blockade of Porto Ferrajo and the Battle of Algeciras, and then he made the Egyptian campaign, and took part in the Saint-Domingue expedition, Corsica and Spain.

Embedded with the marines of the Guard in the Army in 1806 and 1807, he made in the course of two years these campaigns Prussia, Poland and Pomerania; fought at Jena, to Pułtusk, the siege of Stralsund and Graudentz, where he was wounded.

He soon raised the French flag daily in these waters against the Greek and Turkish pirates, his intelligent care settled in the Archipelago Police navigation.

In September 1827 the French government tasked him with the enforcement of the joint resolution by France, Russia, and England, who had united to wrest Greece from the Turkish rule.

Returning to Toulon for health reasons, in September 1830 he was appointed to the Board of Admiralty, and received the decoration of Grand Officier of the Legion of Honor.

Admiral de Rigny; portrait by
François-Gabriel Lépaulle (1836)
Henri de Rigny, Vice-Admiral, Commander of the naval forces of France, in the seas of the Levant (painted lithograph by Philéad Salvator Lévilly , National Historical Museum of Greece, Engraving Collection).
The Battle of Navarino on 20 October 1827.
Henri de Rigny (lithography executed by Antoine Maurin in 1835)
Caricature by Honoré Daumier , 1833.