The Fauché twin generals of La Réole, three times sentenced to death and finally shot

Constantin and César Faucher, known as the Twins of La Réole, were brigadier generals of the French army and took an active part in the revolutionary movement. They came from a well-to-do family, studied under Voltaire and were friends with Mirabeau. The brothers were inseparable, and their lives proved remarkably alike: each of them captured a royalist standard in 1793, both were wounded, both rose to the rank of general, both were persecuted for political reasons, arrested in 1793 and released in 1795, and after the Revolution both held administrative posts in 1800. There is an amusing detail: in the service the brothers were obliged to wear different buttonholes so that they would not be confused. After their first trial the brothers were sentenced to death, but, contrary to the verdict, the sentence was revoked at the very foot of the scaffold. The years in prison badly undermined their health, and for several years they recuperated in their native parts. In 1803 they retired from the service simultaneously. And in 1814 they were made knights of the Legion of Honour. At that same time they were sentenced to death for a second time, by the English, who had seized La Réole. But in the end the brothers were pardoned. In 1815, under Louis XVIII, they were arrested on a charge of setting up a clandestine arms depot. At the trial the brothers, who had not been given the chance to hire counsel, defended one another with passion and secured a reduction of the charge, yet they were sentenced to death all the same. For the third time. Before going to their execution, the brothers kissed. They went on foot, in order to see all the friends who had come to look upon them. Before the execution they were made to kneel. The Faucher twins were shot.