Military Figure, Educator. He was a professor of French and Military Science at Virginia Military Institute, a Brigadier General in the Confederate States Army, and a Colonel in the Egyptian Army. He was born in Paris, France, coming to the United States in 1842. The adopted son of a Virginia physician, he entered the Virginia Military Institute, graduating 4 years later. He then joined the faculty of his alma mater as a professor of French and Military Science, remaining there until 1861. When the American Civil War began, he was appointed colonel of the 16th Virginia. On December 24, 1861, he received a promotion to Brigadier General and command of a brigade of 3 regiments. During the Peninsula Campaign, he served in Major General James Longstreet's command. For his service at Williamsburg, he received a mild commendation in the reports, but for his disputed role at Seven Pines, he was mildly rebuked. After Seven Pines, he was stricken with a fever and became jaundice, leaving the army until December. In Spring of 1863 Major General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson chose his old VMI colleague to command Brigadier General William B. Taliaferro's brigade. He was the senior Brigadier of the Stonewall Division and, when its commander, Major General Isaac Trimble, could not return to command because of a crippling wound, he assumed command divisional leadership. With limited combat experience, and having been with the division less than a month, he led the division at Chancellorsville. He was responsible for moving his men into battle too slowly and for this, was relieved of his command on May 20, 1863. Instead of his superior officers realizing there was a lack of well-trained officers with battle field experience, he received the blunt of the blame. Assigned to General P.G.T. Beauregard at Petersburg, Virginia, he served under him during the operations there in 1864. At the end of the war, he was commanding Confederate forces at Lynchburg. He was paroled on May 22, 1865, signed the amnesty oath on July 7th, and received a presidential pardon on August 19th. He returned home, but financial difficulties forced him to sell his house and property. To earn money he lectured on Stonewall Jackson, and from 1866 to 1873 he was a principal at two North Carolina military schools. In 1873, he joined the Egyptian army as a colonel and became an instructor. He helped to lead a two-year scientific survey expedition from Cairo to central Africa, where he contacted a fever. He received the Osmanie Order of the Ottoman Empire for his service. Badly crippled in a fall from a camel, he returned to the United States in 1879. At that point, he lectured at various schools and wrote several magazine articles on his experiences in North Africa and in the Civil War. He was a clerk and translator in the U.S. War Department and Surgeon General's office from 1882 to 1894. He worked from home from 1891. He became too incapacitated to work in 1894, dying two years later impoverished in the Confederate Soldiers' Home in Richmond, Virginia. He was buried with military honors. His personal papers including a ten-volume diary are archived at the University of North Carolina.