Jacques Anne Joseph Le Prestre, Marquis of Vauban

Jacques Anne Joseph Le Prestre, Marquis of Vauban (10 March 1754, in Dijon – 20 April 1816) was a French general of the Ancien Régime.

[Note 1] Entering military service in 1770, he was Rochambeau's aide-de-camp during the American War of Independence and was sent back to France with the general's dispatches in 1782.

Like most other officer of his corps, he emigrated around the time of Louis XVI's flight to Varennes, going to Ath, then Koblenz, where the comte d'Artois made him his aide-de-camp.

Tasked by Joseph-Geneviève de Puisaye with commanding a unit of Chouans charged with attacking the rear of the Republican army, he was prevented by the forces of Hoche and, tricked by false signals, forced to retreat.

He returned to France and stayed for a time in Paris, with police consent, until he was arrested in 1806 and held prisoner for a long while in the Temple.