Adam Philippe, Comte de Custine
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Astolphe de Custine
Custine, Astolphe de (1790-1857). Scion of a noble family—his father and grandfather were both guillotined, and his mother, née Delphine de Sabran, was Chateaubriand's mistress—Custine wrote a somewhat autobiographical novel, Aloys (1829), which reveals some of the tensions resulting from his homosexuality (he was involved in a public scandal in 1824 which rather served to liberate him). His most widely read book was his perspicacious La Russie en 1839 (1843), which created a considerable polemic. His correspondence is also of exceptional interest.
[Frank Paul Bowman]
Custine, Adam Philippe, comte de (ädäN' fēlēp' kôNt də küstēn'), 1740-93, French general. He served in the Seven Years War and in the American Revolution. Elected to the States-General (1789), he served in the French Revolutionary Wars and in 1792 took Frankfurt and Mainz. His failure in the campaign of 1793 led to accusations of treason, and he was guillotined.
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Marquis De Custine
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"Grace is always natural, though that does not prevent its being often used to hide a lie. The rude shocks and uncomfortably constraining influences of life disappear among graceful women and poetical men; they are the most deceptive beings in creation; distrust and doubt cannot stand before them; they create what they imagine; if they do not lie to others, they do to their own hearts; for illusion is their element, fiction their vocation, and pleasures in appearance their happiness. Beware of grace in woman, and poetry in man -- weapons the more dangerous because the least dreaded!"
"Nations have always good reasons for being what they are, and the best of all is that they cannot be otherwise."
"The love of their country is with them only a mode of flattering its master; as soon as they think that master can no longer hear, they speak of everything with a frankness which is the more startling because those who listen to it become responsible."
"The circumstances of human society are too complicated to be submitted to the rigor of mathematical calculation."
"A multitude of little superfluous precautions engender here a population of deputies and sub-officials, each of whom acquits himself with an air of importance and a rigorous precision, which seemed to say, though everything is done with much silence, Make way, I am one of the members of the grand machine of state."
"What annoyances are more painful than those of which we cannot complain?"
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Marquis De Custine
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Adam Philippe, Comte de Custine
Adam Philippe, Comte de Custine (February 4, 1740 – August 28, 1793) was a French general. Born in Metz, he began his military career as a captain in the Seven Years' War, where he learned to admire the modern military organisation of Prussia.
He next served with distinction against the British as a colonel in expeditionary force of the comte de Rochambeau in the War of American Independence. On his return to France he was named maréchal de camp (brigadier general) and appointed governor of Toulon. In 1789 he was elected to the states-general by the bailliage of Metz. In October 1791 he again joined the army, with the rank of lieutenant-general and became popular with the soldiers, amongst whom he was known as général moustache. General-in-chief of the army of the Vosges, he took Speyer, Worms, Mainz and Frankfurt in September and October 1792.
He carried on the revolutionary propaganda by proclamations, and levied heavy taxes on the nobility and clergy. During the winter a Prussian army forced him to evacuate Frankfurt, re-cross the Rhine and fall back upon Landau. He was accused of treason, defended by Robespierre, and sent to command the Army of the North. But he dared not take the offensive, and did nothing to save Condé-sur-l'Escaut, which the Austrians were besieging. Sent to Paris to justify himself, he was found guilty by the Revolutionary Tribunal of having intrigued with the enemies of the Republic, and guillotined on 28 August 1793.
His son was guillotined for attempting to defend him, and his daughter-in-law nearly shared the same fate, but survived, as did his grandson, Astolphe-Louis-Léonor, marquis de Custine.
Custine's invasion of the German Palatinate forms the background for Goethe's "Hermann and Dorothea", whose plot takes place in a small town near Mainz, flooded by refugees who fled their villages on the western side of the Rhine in order to seek refuge from the French troops on the eastern side.
References
- Alfred Nicolas Rambaud, Les Français sur le Rhin (Paris, 1880)
- Arthur Chuquet, Les Guerres de la Révolution (1886-1895; vol. vi, "L'Expédition de Custine").
Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Custine, Adam Philippe". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
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Oxford Companion to French Literature
The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French. Copyright © 1995, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
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The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/.
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