Jean Baptiste Drouet
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Jean-Baptiste Drouet, Count d'Erlon (1765 - 1844) was a French general. He served as marshal of France.
Another person with the exactly same names
Jean Baptiste Drouet (August 23, 1754 - January 21, 1824) was a French revolutionary, chiefly noted for the part he played in the arrest of King Louis XVI.He helped his father in his duties as postmaster of Sainte-Menehould. The carriages conveying the royal family on their flight to the frontier stopped at his door on the evening of June 21, 1791 and the passengers, travelling under assumed names, were recognized by Drouet, who immediately took steps which led to their arrest and detection on reaching Varennes.
For this service the Assembly awarded him 30,000 francs, but he appears to have declined the reward. In September 1792 he was elected deputy to the Convention, and took his place with the most violent party. He voted for the death of the king without appeal, showed implacable hostility to the Girondins and proposed the slaughter of all English residents in France. Sent as commissioner to the army of the north, he was captured at the siege of Maubeuge (1793) and imprisoned at Spielberg fortress till the close of 1795.
He then became a member of the Council of Five Hundred - the legislature of France from August 22, 1795 until November 9, 1799, roughly the second half of the period generally referred to as the French Revolution. He was named a Secretary of it. Drouet was implicated in the conspiracy of Babeuf, and was imprisoned; but he made his escape into Switzerland and went from there to Tenerife ( also Teneriffe(en)), a Spanish island, where he took part in the successful resistance to Nelson's attack in 1797; he later visited India.
By the First Empire, he had become a docile sub-prefect of Sainte-Menehould. After the second Restoration he was compelled to leave France, but, returning secretly, he settled at Macon, under the name of Merger, and kept his identity hidden till his death.
This entry was originally from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica, partly re-written