HOCHE, Lazare (1768-1797), a French general of the time of the Revolution, was born of poor parents at Montreuil near Versailles, June 25, 1768. At the age of sixteen he enlisted as a private soldier with the intention of proceeding to the East Indies, but was sent instead to a depot of the Gardes Françaises. Having risen to the rank of sergeant, he, at the outbreak of the Revolution, made an important stand with a mere handful of troops against a large body of insurgents; and it was he also who, at a later period, defended the entrance to the chamber of the queen when her apartments were invaded by a revolutionary mob. He distinguished himself at the siege of Thionville in 1792, and at the battle of Neerwinden, 13th March 1793. Shortly afterwards he received the brevet of general of brigade, and was appointed to the command of Dunkirk, for his brilliant defence of which against the duke of York he received the chief command of the army of the Moselle. The purpose which he originally proposed to himself in this campaign was to cut the communication between the Austrians and Prussians, and, though foiled in this attempt by the superior forces of the duke of Brunswick, he succeeded by a masterly manoeuvre in effecting a junction of a portion of his troops with the army of the Rhine, and thus causing the Austrians to evacuate Alsace. Shortly afterwards he was assigned the chief command by the representatives of the people with the two armies, but, this promotion awakening the morbid suspicion of Robespierre, he was recalled and thrown into prison, and it was only the timely fall of Robespierre that saved him from the guillotine. On being released by the convention, he was so successful in pacifying La Vendée and Brittany that he was appointed to the command of the three ...