Alfred de Noailles
(1784-1812)
BIRTH
1784
Alfred de Noailles
FATHER
Louis Marie de Noailles
(1756-1804)
MOTHER
Anne Louise de Noailles
(1758-1794)
SISTER
Adélaïde Marie Euphémie Cécile de Noailles
(1790-1870)
Alfred de Noailles (1784–1812), son of Louis Marie and Anne Louise de Noailles, served in Napoleon’s cavalry and as Marshal Berthier’s aide. He volunteered in 1805, fought at Austerlitz and became a squadron commander in 1812. He disappeared during the Berezina fighting on November 28. Death certificates reported a fatal head wound, although memoirs described capture by Cossacks. He married Léontine de Noailles in 1809; his precise death circumstances remain disputed.
BORN
Alfred de Noailles
Married Name
The exact date and place of Alfred, Vicomte de Noailles’s birth have not been established in the source used for this entry. The surviving biographical summary provides only limited evidence about childhood, schooling, and the daily circumstances of the household, so those details are not reconstructed here without documentation. What can be stated securely is that this person belonged to the interconnected family world from which HistoryGPS traces participants, relatives, and later descendants of the Revolutionary generation.
No distinct public profession or office for Alfred, Vicomte de Noailles is established by the source summary used for this entry. The surviving record is primarily genealogical and documents family identity rather than an independent public career. Additional claims about employment, public service, or accomplishments have been omitted where the consulted source did not support them.
CAREER
DEATH
Alfred de Noailles disappeared during the fighting at the Berezina on November 28, 1812, amid the disastrous retreat of Napoleon's army from Russia. His final service had been in the cavalry and as an aide to Marshal Berthier, and he had reached squadron command during the campaign. The surviving accounts do not agree fully on how his life ended. Official death documentation reports a fatal head wound, while memoirs describe capture by Cossacks. Those versions should not be combined into an invented sequence of injury, imprisonment and execution. What is clear is that he was lost during an exceptionally confused and deadly military withdrawal. The record does not establish a continuous medical course, a secure final conversation or the exact handling of his body. He was still a young officer, leaving a wife whom he had married in 1809. His family's wider military history helps identify him but does not resolve the immediate circumstances. The supported account therefore places his ending in the Berezina fighting, with the date attached to his disappearance and the reported wound retained alongside the alternative capture tradition. A precise cause beyond that evidence would convey more certainty than the sources allow.
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