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Ardant Du Picq

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Charles Jean Jacques Joseph Ardant du Picq (19 October 1821 – 18 August 1870) was a French Army officer and military theorist of the mid-nineteenth century whose writings, as they were later interpreted by other theorists, had a great effect on French military theory and doctrine.

Ardant du Picq was born at Périgueux in the Dordogne on 19 October 1821. On 1 October 1844, upon graduation from the École spéciale Militaire de Saint-Cyr, he commissioned a sublieutenant in the 67th. As a captain, he saw action in the French expedition to Varna (April–June 1853) during the Crimean War, but he fell ill and was shipped home. Upon recovery, he rejoined his regiment in front of Sevastopol (September).

Transferred to the 9th Chasseurs, a Pied battalion December 1854, he was captured during the storming of the central bastion of Sevastopol in September 1855. He was released in December 1855 and returned to active duty. As a major with the 16th Chasseur Battalion, Ardant du Picq served in Syria from August 1860 to June 1861 during the French intervention to restore order during Maronite-Druze sectarian violence.

Like virtually all his peers, he also saw extensive service in Algeria (1864–66) and, in February 1869, was appointed colonel of the 10th Line Infantry Regiment. He was in France at the outbreak of war with Prussia on 15 July 1870 and took command of his regiment, the Tenth Regiment of the Line.[2] He died on 18 August 1870 at the military hospital in Metz from wounds received at the Battle of Mars-la-Tour.

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