Bougainville

Bougainville, Louis Antoine de, the navigator, was born in Paris in 1729, and after having acted as Montcalm's adjutant at Quebec, set out in 1766 on a voyage round the world. This occupied him for two years and a half. After his return he commanded several line-of-battle ships in succession and was employed to assist the revolted North American colonies in their struggle against Great Britain. In 1780 he was made a field-marshal in the French army, but from that time forward he withdrew into retirement, and when he died in 1811 the world in general believed that he had already been dead for a quarter of a century. His great work, Description d'un Voyage autour du Monde, was published in 1772.