Maximilien S

French soldier, born in Ham, N France. He entered the army in 1791, by 1808 was a brigadier general, and retired after the defeat of Napoleon (1815). He was elected to the Chamber of Deputies (1819) where he led the Liberal Opposition, and was a constant advocate of constitutional liberty.

Maximilien Sébastien Foy (February 3, 1775 – November 28, 1825) was a French military leader, statesman and writer.

He was born in 1775, and educated in the military school of La Fere, and made sub-lieutenant of artillery in 1792.

In 1803, he was colonel of the 5th regiment of horse artillery, and refused, from political principles, the appointment of aide-de-camp on Napoleon's assumption of the imperial throne;

In 1807 he was sent to Constantinople to introduce European tactics in the Turkish service, but this object was defeated by the death of Selim III, and the opposition of the Janissaries. On Foy's return, the expedition against Portugal was preparing, and he received a command in the artillery under Junot, during the occupation of Portugal, and filled the post of inspector of forts and fortresses.

He was severely wounded at the battle of Vimiera.

In 1810, he made a skilful retreat at the head of 600 men, in the face of 6,000 Spaniards, across the Sierra de Caceres; and at the head of his brigade was wounded in the battle of Busaco. In July 1812, Foy was in the battle of Salamanca, and was one of those who, when Lord Wellington raised the siege of Burgos and retreated to the Douro, hung upon his rear, and took some prisoners and artillery.

On the news of the disasters in Russia, and Lord Wellington's consequent resumption of offensive movements, Foy was sent with his division beyond Vittoria to keep the different parties in check; and after the battle of Vittoria, at which he was not present, he collected at Bergana 20,000 troops, of different divisions, and had some success in skirmishes with the Spanish corps forming the left wing of the allied army.

In the affair of the passage of the Nive, on the 9th of December, 1813, and the battle of St. Pierre d'Irrube on the 13th, Foy distinguished himself, and in the hard fought battle of Orthez, on the 27th of February, 1814, he was left apparently dead on the field. but on the return of Napoleon, during the Hundred Days, he embraced the cause of the emperor, and commanded a division of infantry in the battles of Ligny and Waterloo, at the last of which he received his fifteenth wound.

In 1819, he was elected a member of the Chamber of Deputies, the duties of which he discharged until his death in November 1825;