Pierre Étienne René Marie Dumanoir Le Pelley was descended from a very old family of the Granville bourgeoisie, who had once earned a considerable fortune in maritime armaments and was ennobled by King Louis XVIII.

[1] His father[2] Louis Pierre Etienne Le Pelley (1733-1807), Sieur du Manoir, was a privateer captain, shipowner and bourgeois of Granville.

Pierre Dumanoir Le Pelley entered the navy at the age of seventeen in March 1787 as an élève de port and served in the Antilles until 1790.

However, Pléville resigned as minister on 8 Floréal year VI (27 April 1798) because of a disagreement with Bonaparte over the Egyptian campaign and after having predicted the Aboukir disaster of 2 August 1798.

[6][7] On 15 December 1796, a French fleet of 17 ships of the line, 14 frigates, 6 corvettes and avisos, 6 barges and 20 troopships carrying 21,000 soldiers under the command of General Lazare Hoche left Brest, France for Ireland.

[6][7] As soon as he left, the fleet became disorganised by the ruse of a British frigate which, in the darkness of the night of the 16th to the 17th, gave false signals to some of the French ships.

Burning fires and cannon shots deceived 6 ships and 6 frigates, which continued on their way, instead of obeying the vice-admiral who ordered them to turn back.

[8] When the day came, Justin Bonaventure Morard de Galles and Hoche, onboard the frigate Fraternité, found themselves alone and headed for Bantry Bay, designated for the planned rendezvous point.

Three other Rear Admirals commanded the divisions of the fleet: Blanquet du Chayla led the vanguard; Villeneuve, the rearguard; Decrès, the light squadron.

[8] The Battle of the Nile lasted two days, from 1 to 2 August 1798, and the ensuing disaster dealt a terrible blow to the esteem and power of the French navy.

[8] On 5 August of the following year, Napoleon, who had understood that he was needed in Paris and that he would be well received there, ordered Dumanoir and Rear Admiral Gantheaume - but without putting them in his confidence - to speed up supplies to the two old Venetian frigates, Muiron and Corrèze, already armed and equipped, and to give him notice of the movements of the British squadron.

On this occasion, Dumanoir received a sword as a national reward for his participation, and a few months later, at the age of twenty-nine, he was raised to the rank of Counter admiral in 1799.

This small squadron was commanded by Charles Alexandre Léon Durand de Linois, the only sailor from the Consulate and the Empire who could boast of a victory and who had fought in all the wars of American Independence.

On 3 July 1801, a short distance from Gibraltar, Linois sailed towards Cadiz and seized an English brig commanded by Lord Cochrane, who informed him that a strong enemy division was blocking the port he was heading for.

This slowness produced the results Linois had predicted; the English fleet was ready for battle when the French left Algeciras on 12 July 1801, at two o'clock in the afternoon, to reach Cadiz.

[5] As soon as the Peace of Amiens was signed on 25 March 1802, Bonaparte set about taking back the rich French colony of Santo Domingo, which had been in revolt against France for more than eight years.

On 22 July Villeneuve, now with twenty ships of the line and seven frigates, passed Cape Finisterre on the northwest coast of Spain and entered the Bay of Biscay.

In the ensuing Battle of Cape Finisterre, a confused action in bad visibility, the British, though outnumbered, were able to cut off and capture two Spanish ships.

Instead, perhaps believing a false report of a superior British fleet in the Bay of Biscay, and against the Spanish commanders' objections, he sailed away back to Cádiz, rendering Napoleon's planned invasion of Britain wholly impossible.

Villeneuve, who had retired to Cadiz with the combined squadrons of France and Spain, learned that the Emperor had just sent Vice-Admiral de Rosily by land to replace him in his command.

Secretly warned by Navy Minister Decrès, he hoped to prevent this disgrace by a bold move, and Villeneuve, until now so irresolute, took the decision to throw himself headlong into the enemy, rather than return to France with a mark of shame on his forehead.

But following a lof-for-lof transfer, his division found itself in the vanguard of the Franco-Spanish fleet and was spared by Nelson's attack which cut the centre and the rearguard.

Dumanoir fought against Commodore Strachan, lost his four ships, forced to surrender after a bloody battle lasting nearly five hours and wounded in the head, fell to the English.

[9] He remained for some time a prisoner on parole and returned to France in July 1806 where his conduct during the Trafalgar campaign was strongly condemned, particularly by some of the surviving captains (Lucas, Infernet, and Villeneuve himself).

[5][10] He remained unassigned, was brought before a board of enquiry in December 1809, and reprimanded; he demanded to appear before a maritime war council composed of senators Fleuriot and Bougainville and admirals Thévenard and de Rosily in March 1810, he was acquitted.

[6][7] Returning to France in July 1814, he received the title of Count from King Louis XVIII during the first First Restoration by letters patent dated 2 December 1814; he was made a Knight of Saint-Louis in 1815.

[6][7] During the Second Restoration, Dumanoir was elected on 22 August 1815 as deputy for the Manche département college in the "Chambre introuvable" - 1st legislature from 7 October 1815 to 5 September 1816 - and sat in the centre.