House of Poligny

The Tousch family hails from Alsace, more precisely from the small town of La Wantzenau.

Before it became French, the name was Tusch.

Jacques (1625-1689) and his son Mathias (1661-1703) were the last to bear the name in its German form.

Alsace came under the French crown in 1680, and the Council of State ordered the use of French from 1685, particularly in court documents.

 

Jean Adam Tousch (1691-1769) was an artisan shoemaker.

In 1727, he married Marie Apoline Kaas in the church of his in-laws' village of Bousbach in the northern Moselle region of Lorraine, more than 100 km from his birthplace.

Apoline's father had died a few months earlier and the land she inherited was to be her dowry.

Jean Adam became a farmer.

He had no less than 3 daughters and 7 sons from his marriage.

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Among this prolific progeny, a son Pierre Tousch (1746-1823) distinguished himself by joining the Lorraine Legion at the age of 19, where he was in turn a dragoon, brigadier, maréchal des logis and fourrier. 

When the Lorraine Legion was disbanded in 1776, he was incorporated into the town of Le Mans as second marshal-des-logis of the 2 ͤ squadron of chasseurs in the Chartres-Dragons regiment, the future 14 ͤ regiment of dragoons, where he spent the rest of his career.

He was appointed adjutant there in 1779 but became an officer in 1784 with the rank of lieutenant.

On 20 May 1791, he was made a knight of Saint-Louis.

That same month of May 1791, the 14 ͤ regiment of dragoons left Le Mans at the request of the municipality, unable to resist the pressure of certain agitators.

He was appointed captain on 10 March 1792

The declaration of war (20 April 1792) enabled Pierre Tousch, like many others, to show the full extent of his abilities.

He was appointed squadron leader on 9 October 1793.

His record of service since 1792 is described as follows: ‘He fought bravely in the affair of 2 Nivôse (22 December 1793) at Werte (= Woerth, Bas-Rhin) as well as in all the affairs at the unblocking of Landau, was wounded by a cannonball to the middle part of the stomach in the affair of 28 Prairial (16 June 1794) above Charleroi (Belgium), was always faithful and exact in his duties’. At the same time, the board of directors of the 14 ͤ regiment of dragoons responding to an enquiry by the Comité de Salut Public (Order of 19 April) also deemed him worthy of the post of brigade commander.

On the subject of his patriotism, we note: ‘The most refined and has always given proof of his attachment to the Republic’.

- Observations on his moral and political conduct: ‘Has always been exact in his duties and irreproachable in his conduct, he has always maintained good order and discipline and has shown the greatest zeal in enforcing the laws’.

- Abilities": “Can read and write well, knows arithmetic perfectly and manoeuvres to the point of teaching them”.

It also states: ‘Has always fought bravely in all matters in which he has been involved with the regiment. He was wounded by a cannonball during the affair of the 28th of Prairial, as well as by a whale blow to the lower jaw on the left side on the primidi without culottide above Mastreich’.

Tousch returned to his pre-war garrison town of Le Mans.

His career was coming to an end as the after-effects of his wounds and other health problems gradually made him unfit for service. 

He served in this regiment until 23 July 1801, when a decree from the First Consul authorised him to retire to his home. In addition to his campaign in Corsica (1769), Tousch served in the campaigns of 1792, 1793, 1794, 1795, 1796, 1797, 1798, 1799, 1800 and 1801, a total of ten campaigns...

Pierre Tousch takes the road to Le Mans, where happy memories of the years 1788-1791 carry him.

He married Guillemette Espagnol, widow of the late Mayor of Le Mans Rameau and owner of the Hôtel particulier ‘Sainte Barbe’.

The bride was seven years older than Pierre, and she predeceased him very quickly, dying in Le Mans on 4 July 1802, barely ten months after the wedding.

We do not know whether Pierre Tousch took much time to console himself for this rapid widowhood. In any case, the estate left to him by his wife is considerable. Joseph, the only surviving son of Raymond Rameau and Guillemette Espagnol, who was serving as a sergeant in the 73 ͤ demi-brigade de ligne, was no longer heard from, so in 1804 Pierre Tousch had his disappearance recorded by the courts:

As a result, he inherited his late wife's entire fortune.

Pierre Tousch had no children and now found himself at the head of a substantial estate.

He decided to visit his family in his native village at Christmas, unaware that death awaited him there.

He died in Bousbach on 22 January 1823 at half past seven in the house of his brother Jacques Tousch.

The declaration of inheritance made in Le Mans mentions his nephew Pierre Tousch as his heir.

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His other brother Nicolas Tousch (1740-1813) continued the family business in Bousbarch and married Anne Marie Wagner (1744-1815), from a family of landowners and aldermen who were direct descendants of Marguerite de Bassy (1606-1703), whose father Pierre and grandfather Jean were also aldermen and stewards.

He had 9 children, including a son, Pierre II Tousch (1765-1838).

The latter enlisted at the age of 21 in the Chartres-Dragons regiment (later to become the 14 Dragons regiment in 1791): his uncle, godfather and

namesake Pierre Tousch (1746-1823) was already serving there as an officer.

He spent his entire career there:

A brigadier in 1791, he was promoted to marshal-des-logis a year later and became an officer with the rank of second lieutenant on 8 August 1793.

In October 1794, a staff report described him as five feet four inches tall (1.708 m), in ‘robust health, with good eyesight and no infirmities’. It also noted: ‘Can read and write, knows basic arithmetic, has some knowledge of manoeuvres. Has fought in all the affairs in which the regiment has found itself, has always been faithful and exact in his duties’.

He was finally promoted to lieutenant on 20 April 1798 and then captain on 14 February 1800, an appointment made by General-in-Chief Bonaparte.

He was made a Knight of the Legion of Honour on 14 April 1807.

However, 1807 marked the end of his military career, and it was not long before it was also the end of his life.

On 10 June 1807, he was seriously wounded at the battle of Heilsberg.

The summary treatment provided first by the assistant surgeon of the 14th dragoon regiment, Creudal, and then by the chief surgeon of the Maastricht hospital, Chapuis, probably only slightly alleviated Captain Tousch's terrible pain.

On 10 October 1807, the regiment's board of directors sent the Minister of War a memorandum (supported by medical certificates) requesting that he grant Captain Tousch three months' convalescent leave “to restore his health, which has been extremely impaired by a serious wound”. On the following 17 November, the Minister granted this leave with pay.

The leave had not even been completed when the authorities decided that the after-effects were too serious for Captain Tousch to be able to continue serving in the armed forces.

On 24 December 1807 in Maestricht (Maastricht, Netherlands), the regiment's board of directors drew up a proposal for the retirement pay of Captain Pierre Tousch, commanding the 1st company of the 1 escadron.

The memorandum noted that ‘this captain is horribly mistreated, and deserves the graces of the Government, as well as his retirement’.

Tousch had indeed deserved well of his country. He had taken part in the campaigns of 1792 in the Armée du Nord, those of 1793, of years II, III, and IV in the Armée de Sambre-et-Meuse, that of year V es de Brest and in the camp of Boulogne, those of vendémiaire of year XIV, 1806, 1807 in the Grande Armée.

He had been, the memoir continues, at the battles of Austerlitz, Jena, Eylau and Heilsberg.

On 3 Thermidor An IV (21 July 1796), in Franconia, he had a horse killed beneath him.

He himself had been wounded by a spear in the chest on 19 Germinal Year VII (8 April 1799) at the battle of Mont-Thabor (Egyptian expedition) and a shot had shattered his lower jaw at Heilsberg (10 June 1807).

The regiment's surgeon noted: ‘Mr Tousch, the captain named above, was wounded by a shot to the right side of the lower jaw, in which the bullet passed inferiorly and obliquely from front to back, and is at this moment fixed near the upper edge of the jaw.

at this moment fixed near the upper edge of the scapula: as a result of this wound the axillary bone was shattered, the two 1st molar teeth were removed, part of the sternocleidomastoid muscle was damaged, considerable deposits were made in the anterior part of the lower jaw.

This accident left fistulous ulcers on the anterior part of the larynx, giving rise to fears of decay in this area. This officer has difficulty moving his head and chewing. His voice is

is weakened to the point that he has difficulty making himself heard, due to the lesion of the vocal organ. He is also partially deaf in the ear on the same side. As a result, I consider that the aforementioned captain is unable to continue his service.

In 1809 he married Jeanne Herbinot Destouches, aged 24, whose family name before the Revolution was ‘Herbinot des Touches’.

This family gave rise to great government clerks and, more recently, musicians, such as Jean Herbinot des Touches, musician of the wind instruments in the chamber of the King of France, Louis XIII (the ecclesiastic and scholar Mersenne said of the latter in 1636 that he played the musette to perfection)...

From then on, Pierre Tousch's life was that of a retired officer, an annuitant (especially after the death of his uncle (1823), of whom he was the principal heir) living in the private mansion of Sainte Barbe...

His family grew over the years and lived with Uncle Pierre I in this private mansion with its own park.

In no way can Pierre II Tousch's existence be confused with that of so many of his comrades-in-arms who languished under the Restoration on ‘half pay’.

On 11 December 1816, he swore an oath to Louis XVIII as a legionnaire. When he died in Le Mans on 29 June 1838, he was still living at ‘Tertre Saint-Laurent’ (Hôtel Sainte-Barbe).

He left Jeanne a widow and five children

Jeanne died in Le Mans on 16 October 1855.

Among the children, Léonide Tousch (1827-1882) married Count Louis Gustave Quentin de Poligny in 1855.

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