Pierre Yrieix Daumesnil (14 July 1776 – 17 August 1832) was a French soldier in the armies of Napoleon during the first Empire and Restoration, eventually rising to the rank of brigadier general. He lost his left leg after he was wounded in the Battle of Wagram; it was replaced by a wooden prosthesis earning him the nickname jambe de bois ("wooden leg"). In 1812, he was assigned to the defense of the Château de Vincennes. Vincennes was then an arsenal containing 52,000 new muskets, more than 100 cannon and many tons of powder, bullets and cannonballs—a tempting prize for the Sixth Coalition when it marched on Paris in 1814 in the aftermath of the Battle of the Nations. However Daumesnil faced down the allies with the famous words "I shall surrender Vincennes when I get my leg back" (Je rendrai Vincennes quand on me rendra ma jambe, with a sort of polysemic pun in French on two possible meanings of rendre - "surrender" and "give back" - that is lost in translation). With only 300 men under his command, he resisted the Coalition until King Louis XVIII of France ordered him to leave the fortress. Daumesnil rallied to Napoleon on his return, holding Vincennes once more against the large mass of Coalition troops. He managed to get a message to Royalist officer Louis-Victor-Léon de Rochechouart asking for help. He then surrendered and five months later he was retired by the Bourbons. When the Revolution of 1830 began, he was recalled and given the rank of lieutenant general. He died of cholera on 17 August 1832. Napoleon III awarded his wife a pension and the position of superintendent of the imperial house of Saint-Denis. Early years Daumesnil was born in Périgueux on 27 July 1776, the son of Jean Daumesnil, a shopkeeper, and his wife Anne. He was the youngest of five children but little else is known of his early years. He seems to have been an active but mischievous youth, liked and admired by his peers, but intolerant of injustice and not particularly dedicated to his studies. At age seventeen, he killed an artilleryman in a duel and was forced to flee Périgueux, walking to Toulouse to join his brother, who was a cavalry trooper in the Army of the Eastern Pyrenees. Career As it did for many young French officers, the French Empire offered Daumesnil the chance