Quoted from the website of the Chateau de Petit Thouars:
Aristide Aubert du Petit Thouars (or Dupetit Thouars as it was spelled during the Revolution) fought in the Independence war of America, sailed the seas seeking La Pérouse and died heroically in Aboukir during Bonaparte's campaign in Egypt ; captain of the Tonnant, he had his right arm shot away, then the left and finally one of his legs was taken off by a cannonball. Refusing to give up command, he insisted on being put in a tub of bran that was on deck and led his men until he collapsed from blood loss. One of his final orders was to nail the Tricolour to the mast so it could not be taken down in surrender.
Bran will never seem the same!
2 comments:
I think I've seen a Monty Python sketch of this scene.
We all have.
Can we ever excise it from our consciousness?
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