[4] Remaining loyal to the king, he tried to take part in the defense of the Tuileries Palace during the Insurrection of 10 August and, as a precaution, had to hide for a time at the residence of the Duke of La Rochefoucauld.

[8] Bessières gave a fresh start to his military career on 1 November 1792, when he enlisted in the French Revolutionary Army as a simple cavalryman in the Legion of the Pyrenees, which later became the 22nd Chasseur à cheval Regiment.

[7] Serving successively under generals La Barre and Dugua, he notably participated in the Battle of Boulou, where the charge of the 22nd Chasseurs was decisive in dispersing the more numerous Spanish cavalry.

[15] He followed Bonaparte to Syria and distinguished himself at the Siege of Acre and then, after the withdrawal of French forces to Egypt, at the Battle of Abukir (25 July 1799) where he joined Murat in leading a series of cavalry charges that helped drive their adversaries back into the sea.

[16] In the official report on the battle that he sent to the Directory on 27 July 1799, Bonaparte noted: "chef de brigade Bessières, at the head of the guides, upheld the reputation of his corps".

[28] On 20 November, when Murat's cavalry had just been overwhelmed on the road to Olmütz by its Russian counterpart, Bessières restored the situation by counterattacking with four squadrons of the Imperial Guard, jointly with General d'Hautpoul's cuirassiers, and push his adversaries back to Raußnitz.

[29] While Napoleon planned to break the Austro-Russian center in order to divide the enemy forces and the situation was rather to his advantage, a potentially dangerous event for the French occurred when the Russian Imperial Guard, under the command of Grand Duke Konstantin, attacked the soldiers of the Vandamme division around Stary Vinohrady with the support of their artillery.

[32] The charges of the Guard cavalry led by Bessières allowed this final Russian attack on the Pratzen heights to be repelled, leaving the French in control of the plateau until the end of the battle.

[38] Remaining with Bernadotte's I Corps on the banks of the Wkra, Bessières, poorly informed by Tilly's light cavalry, lingered for three days at Bieżuń while the French army had launched its offensive against the Russians.

Cuesta's troops were no more fortunate against Mouton; battered by musket fire and a charge by the imperial cavalry, they joined the general debacle despite the resilience of a few rearguard units.

[48] The timid French pursuit was halted by the presence of the guerrillas, but the victory at Medina de Rioseco eradicated the regular Spanish army from the northern provinces and opened the way to Madrid for King Joseph.

[51] He wrote to Blake to urge him to lay down his arms, arguing that his cause was futile, and ordered the release of several hundred prisoners taken at Medina de Rioseco as a gesture of goodwill.

[53] Once he arrived, Bessières received the order to advance on Burgos but lost time, either because he overestimated the enemy forces or because he had known since 6 November that he was to be replaced by Marshal Soult at the head of the II Corps.

The decisive action of the French infantry against the Spanish lines was completed by a heavy cavalry attack led by Bessières, which cut down fleeing soldiers and seized numerous artillery pieces.

The defenders were pushed back to Madrid, to which Bessières, arriving on 2 December with the Guard cavalry and the La Houssaye and Latour-Maubourg dragoon divisions, sent an initial order for surrender.

A first contact between the two armies took place on 23 April: the next day, Hiller launched a counterattack and quickly put the Franco-Bavarian troops in a difficult situation, despite the resistance of the Wrede division on the hills southeast of Neumarkt.

[63] A controversy then arose between him and Lannes, under whose orders he had been placed, who accused him of not committing himself sufficiently against the Austrians; at the time, Bessières ignored this but a lively argument between the two men ensued that same evening at the bivouac.

Having located a weak point in the Austrian line, the French cavalrymen pierced and pushed back the enemy infantry that had formed into squares, cutting down a battalion of Grenzers in the process.

Bessières and Nansouty then turned to the right and charged the artillery of the Prince of Liechtenstein, but the Austrian cavalry intervened almost immediately and pushed the French cavalrymen back to their lines.

[66] Bessières, whose determination had not been weakened by this first failure, was preparing to launch a new assault, this time with the support of part of the Guard cavalry, when he was knocked unconscious after his horse was struck dead by cannonball.

[68] Bessières' charge, although carried out in haste with a single division, had the important tactical consequence of giving Napoleon valuable time, allowing him to regain the initiative in the battle.

A French army under Bernadotte's command was assembled to face the British, but the latter, plagued by fever, were repatriated at the end of August, with the exception of a garrison that remained in Vlissingen.

[71] Back in Paris, Bessières coldly received Napoleon's divorce from Joséphine, which he had opposed in the past, but this did not prevent the Emperor from spending a few days at the Marshal's estate, the Château de Grignon [fr].

[72] Bessières was named commander of the Imperial Guard in Paris on 19 January 1810; two months later, on 19 March, he was made governor of Strasbourg and in this capacity welcomed the new empress Marie Louise of Austria when she arrived on French soil.

The latter, after failing to expel the Anglo-Portuguese troops of General Wellington from the peninsula, retreated to the Spanish border and requested Bessières' assistance, particularly in order to be supplied with horses and food.

As the requests from the commander-in-chief of the Army of Portugal became increasingly urgent, Bessières highlighted his own difficulties, showed little inclination to cooperate and expressed his doubts about the strategy adopted by Prince of Essling.

[74] As a result, Masséna was forced to postpone his offensive twice before Bessières, realizing the need for immediate intervention to save Almeida and Ciudad Rodrigo, decided to send as reinforcements the Wathier and Lepic cavalry brigades (1,500 men) with six cannons and thirty carts.

Crossing the Desna, he forced the Russian general Miloradovich to retreat and camped with Murat in front of Kutuzov's army at Tarutino, where the lack of fodder and supplies was sorely felt, particularly among the cavalry units.

"[87] At the war council that followed this event, the Duke of Istria advised retreating towards Smolensk via Mozhaysk; Napoleon ended up choosing the shortest route, which already been taken during the advance into Russia.

After the crossing of the Berezina, the retreat of the French troops continued until Königsberg and, at the end of December, Bessières was recalled to France to oversee the reconstitution of the Guard and the cavalry reserve.