of infidelity in 1800, after she had given birth to an illegitimate son while he was serving in Egypt: Jean-Claude Lannes de Montebello (Montauban, 12 February 1799 – 1817), who died unmarried and without issue, His second marriage was at Dornes on 16 September 1800 to Louise Antoinette, Comtesse de Guéhéneuc (Paris, 26 February 1782 – Paris, 3 July 1856), by whom he had five children: Louis Napoléon (30 July 1801 – 19 July 1874) Alfred-Jean (11 July 1802 – 20 June 1861) Jean-Ernest (20 July 1803 – 24 November 1882) Gustave-Olivier (4 December 1804 – 25 August 1875) Josephine-Louise (4 March 1806 – 8 November 1889) One succeeded in his titles and three others used the courtesy title of baron. One of his direct descendants, Philippe Lannes de Montebello, was the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art until 2008. Assessment Lannes ranks with Louis-Nicolas Davout and André Masséna as the ablest of all of Napoleon's marshals. He was continually employed in tasks requiring the utmost resolution and daring, and more especially when the emperor's combinations depended upon the vigour and self-sacrifice of a detachment or fraction of the army. It was thus with Lannes at Friedland and at Aspern as it was with Davout at Austerlitz and Auerstedt, and Napoleon's estimate of his subordinates' capacities can almost exactly be judged by the frequency with which he used them to prepare the way for his own shattering blow. Dependable generals with the usual military virtue, or careful and exact troop leaders like Jean-de-Dieu Soult and Jacques MacDonald, were kept under Napoleon's own hand for the final assault which he himself launched; the long hours of preparatory fighting against odds of two to one, which alone made the final blow possible, he entrusted only two men of extraordinary courage and high capacity for command. Lannes' place in his affections was never filled. Miscellaneous A chocolate cake, the "Gâteau au chocolat de la Maréchale de Lannes", is named after him. Notes References Clausewitz, Carl von (2018). Napoleon's 1796 Italian Campaign. Trans and ed. Nicholas Murray and Christopher Pringle. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas. External links 1769 births 1809 deaths Burials at the Panthéon, Paris 1 French military personnel killed in the Napoleonic Wars French military personnel of the French Revolutionary Wars French Republican military leaders of the French Revolutionary Wars Marshals of the First French Empire Names inscribed under the