"Adam Philippe, Comte de Custine (4 February 1740 – 28 August 1793) was a French general. As a young officer in the Bourbon Royal army, he served ...
in the Seven Years´ War. In the American Revolutionary War he joined Rochambeau´s Expédition Particulière (Special Expedition) supporting the American colonists. Following the successful Virginia campaign and the Battle of Yorktown, he returned to France and rejoined his unit in the Royal Army.
When the French Revolution began he was elected to the Estates-General and served in the subsequent National Constituent Assembly as a representative from Metz. He supported some of the August Decrees, but also supported, generally, royal prerogative and the rights of the French émigrés. At the dissolution of the Assembly in 1791, he rejoined the army as a lieutenant general and the following year replaced Nicolas Luckner as commander-in-chief of the Army of the Vosges. In 1792, he successfully led campaigns in the middle and upper Rhine regions, taking Speyer and Mainz and breaching the Wissembourg lines. Following Charles François Dumouriez´s apparent treason, the Committee of Public Safety investigated Custine, but a vigorous defense mounted by the Revolutionary lawyer Robespierre resulted in his acquittal." - (en.wikipedia.org 12.08.2020)
