Humbert, Jean Joseph Amable (22 August 1767–02 January 1823), French general and military adventurer, was born in Saint-Nabord, Vosges, France, the son of Jean Joseph Humbert and Catherine Rivat, occupations unknown. Older sources list his birthdate as 22 November 1755. Orphaned at an early age, Humbert enlisted as a sergeant in the National Guards when the French Revolution erupted in 1789. Three years later he had risen to lieutenant colonel, Thirteenth Battalion, Vosages Volunteers, and distinguished himself in suppressing peasant rebellions in the Vendée region of western France. A man of indefatigable action, Humbert also campaigned on the Rhine under Jean Charles Pichegru, Jean Victor Moreau, and Charles Dumouriez, and he became brigadier general on 9 April 1794 at the age of twenty-seven. In 1795 he accompanied the famous general Louis Lazare Hoche on a campaign against Royalists on the Quiberon peninsula, Brittany. A British-backed beachhead was crushed on 16 July, and Hoche thereafter accepted Humbert as a personal confidant. Hoche died in 1797, but he was undoubtedly instrumental in having his aide promoted to lieutenant general and entrusted to command an expeditionary force sent to support an Irish insurrection....
