Fersen, Hans Axel
Fersen, Hans Axel
FERSEN, HANS AXEL. (1755–1810). (Count von.) Swedish nobleman, French officer in America. Son of a famous Swedish soldier who had served in France before becoming a field marshal in Sweden, Fersen had been a captain in the Swedish service. He became mestre de camp in the French army on 20 January 1780. He was an aide-de-camp with Rochambeau in America, but at the siege of Yorktown he served as second colonel of the Deux-Ponts Regiment. He participated in the Swedish army's 1788 campaign against Russia. In 1791, Fersen organized the French royal family's flight to Varennes. He returned to Paris in February 1782 but was unable to organize another escape attempt. In the Swedish army he became a major general (1792), lieutenant general (1800), and grand marshal (1801). Accused by unfounded popular suspicion of having poisoned Prince Christian August in 1810, he was killed by an angry mob on the day of the funeral. Fersen's letters on the French expedition in America provide a variable barometer of the changing staff opinion on many things, including their commander.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barton, Hildor A. "Count Hans Axel von Fersen: A Political Biography to 1800." Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1962.
Barton, Hildor A. Count Hans Axel von Fersen: Aristocrat in an Age of Revolution. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1975.
Bodinier, André. Dictionnaire des officiers de l'armée royale qui ont combattu aux Etats-Unis pendant la guerre d'Indépendance, 1776–1783. Vincennes, France: Service historique de l'armée, 1982.
Fersen, Hans Axel von. Diary and Correspondence of Count Axel Fersen, Grand-Marshal of Sweden, Relating to the Court of France. Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley. Boston: Hardy, Pratt, 1902.
――――――――. "The French Army in the Revolutionary War: Count de Fersen's Private Letters to His Father, 1780–81." Magazine of American History 25 (1891): 55-70, 156-73.
――――――――. Lettres d'Axel de Fersen à son père pendant la Guerre d'Indépendance d'Amérique. Edited by F. U. Wrangel. Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1929.
Rice, Howard C., Jr,. and Anne S. K. Brown, eds. and trans. The American Campaigns of Rochambeau's Army: 1780, 1781, 1782, 1783. 2 vols. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1972.
revised by Robert Rhodes Crout