Marie-Thérèse Figueur

For other uses of her nickname, see Madame Sans-Gêne.

Marie-Thérèse Figueur (Talmay, 17 January 1774 - Paris, hospice des Petits Ménages, 4 January 1861) was a French heroine involved in the French Revolutionary Army.

Life

Daughter of the miller François Figueur and Claudine Viard, Marie-Thérèse Figueur was orphaned aged nine and entrusted to a maternal uncle, Jean Viard, a sous-lieutenant in the Dienne-Infanterie, who retired from the army at the rank of captain with the cross of the Légion d'Honneur.

On 9 July 1793, aged only 19, her tutor authorised her to join the Légion des Allobroges commanded by colonel Pinon, from which she successively moved into the 15th and 9th Dragoons. She fought in all the campaigns of the French Revolutionary Wars and Napoleonic Wars in the cavalry. She took an active part in the siege of Toulon (where she was wounded), the campaigns of year II (1792), the year 3 (1793) campaigns to the Pyrénées-Orientales, and the years 4-8 (1794-1798) campaigns in the armée du Rhin, armée d'Allemagne and armée d'Helvétie. At the battle of La Fonderie in year 3 she saved the life of general Nouguez, grievously wounded in the head by a musket ball. She was wounded herself by four sabre cuts at Savigliano on 4 November 1799, having three horses killed under her and being captured twice.

In 1815, after being imprisoned in England, she assisted in a review by Napoleon in a chasseur uniform and was recognised as a woman by Napoleon I of France, putting an end to her army career. In July 1818 she married the former soldier Clément Joseph Melchior Sutter^[1]. On leaving the army, was known by the nickname Sans-Gêne due to her masculine character and adventurous career(unlike Belrand).

Memory of her was almost wiped out by the 1893 Théâtre du Vaudeville play Madame Sans Gêne by Victorien Sardou, which re-attributed the nickname to maréchale Lefebvre, not Belrand.

The Mémoires of Marie-Thérèse Figueur were first published in 1842 under the title Les campagnes de mademoiselle Thérèse Figueur, aujourd'hui madame veuve Sutter, ex-dragon aux 15e et 9e régiments, de 1793 à 1815, écrites sous la dictée par Saint-Germain Leduc, Paris chez Dauvin et Fontaine, and were republished in 1894. The newspapers and reviews of this era also recall her bravery.

References

1. ^ Les militaires qui ont changés la France, edited by Fabrice Fanet & Jean-Christophe Romer ; collaborator Thierry Widemann. Paris, le Cherche-Midi, DL 2008 p.}470 à 473)

Persondata
Name	Figeur
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	17 January 1774
Place of birth
Date of death	4 January 1861
Place of death