Everything about Lazare Carnot totally explained
Lazare Nicolas Marguerite, Comte Carnot (
May 13,
1753—
August 2,
1823), the
Organizer of Victory in the
French Revolutionary Wars, was a
French politician, engineer, and mathematician.
Education and early life
Born in
Nolay,
Côte-d'Or, Carnot was educated in
Burgundy at the
Collège d’Autun, an artillery and engineering prep school. He graduated from Mezieres School of Engineering, where he'd met and studied with Benjamin Franklin, at the age of twenty and obtained commission as a lieutenant in the
Prince of Condé’s engineer corps. Although in the army, he continued his study of mathematics. In
1784 he published his first work
Essay on Machines which contained a statement that foreshadowed the principle of energy as applied to a falling weight, and the earliest proof of the fact that
kinetic energy is lost in the collision of
imperfectly elastic bodies. This publication earned him the honour of admittance to a literary society. In that same year, he also received a promotion to the rank of captain.
Political career
On the outbreak of the
French Revolution in
1789, Carnot entered political life. He became a delegate to the
Legislation in
1791. While a member of the Legislative Assembly, Carnot was elected to the Committee for Public Instruction. Carnot believed all citizens should be educated and as a member of that committee, he wrote a series of reforms for the teaching and educational systems, but they were not implemented due to the violent social and economic climate in eighteenth century France.
When the Legislative Assembly dissolved, Carnot was then elected to the
National Convention in
1792. He spent the last few months of 1792 on a mission to Bayonne, organizing the military defense effort in an attempt to ward off any possible attacks from Spain. Upon returning to Paris, Carnot voted for the
death of
King Louis XVI, although he'd been absent for the debates surrounding the king’s trial.
On August 14, 1793 he was elected to the Committee of Public Safety where he took charge of the military situation as one of the Ministers of War.
The creation and victories of the
French Revolutionary Army were largely due to his powers of organization and enforcing discipline, with successes both in the actual theatre of operations and in obtaining fresh recruits by
conscription: the
levée en masse. It added significantly to discontent with the course of the Revolution in still
Bourbon-loyalist areas — such as the
Vendée, which had broken out in
open revolt 5 months earlier — but the government of the time considered it a success, and Carnot became known as the
Organizer of Victory. In autumn 1793, he took charge of French columns on the, and contributed to
Jean-Baptiste Jourdan's victory in the
Battle of Wattignies.
He had taken no steps to oppose the
Reign of Terror, but he, along with other
technocrats on the committee like
Robert Lindet and
Louis-Bernard Guyton de Morveau, turned on
Maximilien Robespierre and his allies during the
Thermidorian Reaction.
With the establishment of the
Directory in
1795, Carnot became one of the initial directors. His and
Étienne-François Letourneur's moderation was viewed as weakness, and it probably contributed to France's failure to capitalize on the
Treaty of Campo Formio. After Letourneur had been replaced by another close collaborator of Carnot,
François de Barthélemy, both of them, alongside many deputies in the
Council of Five Hundred, were ousted in the
Fructidor coup d'état of (
September 4,
1797), engineered by Generals
Napoleon Bonaparte (originally, Carnot's
protégé) and
Pierre François Charles Augereau. He took refuge in
Geneva, and there in 1797 issued his
La métaphysique du calcul infinitésimal.
In
1800 he was appointed
Minister of War by Bonaparte, and served in that office at the time of the
Battle of Marengo. In
1802, he voted against the establishment of Napoleon's
Consular powers for life.
Retirement
However, his
republican convictions were inconsistent with high office under the
First French Empire, and he resigned from public life - although he was later made a
Count of the Empire by Napoleon as
Lazare Nicolas Marguerite, comte Carnot.
In 1803 he produced his
Géométrie de position. This work deals with
projective rather than
descriptive geometry, it also contains an elaborate discussion of the geometrical meaning of
negative roots of an
algebraic
equation. Carnot returned to office in defense of Napoleon during the disastrous
invasion of Russia; he was assigned the defence of
Antwerp against the
Sixth Coalition - he only surrendered on the demand of the
Count of Artois, who was the younger brother of Louis XVIII and later Charles X.
During the
Hundred Days, he served as
Minister of the Interior for Napoleon, and was exiled as a
regicide during the
White Terror after the
Second Restoration during the reign of Louis XVIII. He lived in
Warsaw, and moved to
Prussia, where he died in the city of
Magdeburg. Carnot's remains were interred at the
Panthéon in
1889, at the same time as those of
Marie Victor de La Tour-Maubourg,
Jean-Baptiste Baudin, and
François Séverin Marceau-Desgraviers.
Impact
Carnot was able to survive and maintain a place of power during all the phases of the
French Revolution, from its beginnings in
1789 until the fall of
Napoleon in
1815. On the social and political front, Carnot was the author of many reforms that he thought to be for the good of the Republic. One of these was the proposal for compulsory public education for all citizens. He also penned a proposal for the new Constitution which included the “Declaration of the Duties of the Citizens” that held that there should be not only education but military service for all citizens of France between the ages of twenty and twenty-five. These proposals were in accordance with the Revolutionaries thinking of the times which held that men and women should be honored through ability and intelligence rather than through birthright, even though Carnot himself was nobly born. If not for this style of thinking, Napoleon Bonaparte may not have risen to the power he became as it was Carnot who had first promoted Bonaparte from Captain to General.
But perhaps his greatest achievements, in deference to the French Revolution itself, were those of a military nature. If not for Carnot, the modern waging of war with mass armies and strategic planning wouldn't exist. As a military engineer, Carnot favored fortresses and defensive strategies, but with the constant invasions decided to take his strategic planning to an offensive strike. From his intellect sprang the maneuvers and organization that turned the tides of war from 1793-1794. The basic idea was to have a massive army separated into several units that could move more quickly than the enemy and attack from the flanks rather than head on, which would lead to slaughter and defeat. It was his initiative to train the conscripts in the art of war and to place new recruits with experienced soldiers rather than having a massive volunteer army without any real idea of how to wage battle. He also created a new political strategy based on disrupting communication between enemy nations of England and Austria while concentrating attack effort on England. Carnot’s military influence and authority were eventually used to bring about the downfall of Robespierre.
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