Joseph-Geneviève, comte de Puisaye (6 March 1755 – 13 September 1827) was a minor French nobleman who fought as a counter-revolutionary during the French Revolution, leading two unsuccessful invasions from England. He later led a group of French royalists to settle in Upper Canada, but returned to England after a few years, when that effort proved largely unsuccessful. He remained in England until his death in 1827. Before the revolution De Puisaye was born in Mortagne-au-Perche, the fourth son of a French aristocratic family. His family intended for him to join a seminary, and sent him to the Collège de Laval at age nine, then the Collège de Sées and the Séminaire de Saint-Sulpice in Paris. The seminary's superior recommended against a religious vocation for Puisaye when he was seventeen, and he left the seminary. He joined the French Army in 1773 at age eighteen. Family connections through his maternal grandmother allowed Puisaye to obtain a commission as a second lieutenant in a cavalry regiment near the German border in February 1775. He was promoted to supernumerary captain in 1779 in a non-existent company. Unsatisfied with his military career, he returned to Mortagne-au-Perche in 1781 or 1782. In order to obtain the Order of Saint-Louis, de Puisaye purchased a colonelcy and an honorary position in the King's guard. He married Louise Le Sesne, the sole heiress of the marquis de Ménilles, on 19 June 1788. From this marriage he obtained an estate in Pacy-sur-Eure, Normandy, and he spent his time there or in Paris. There he was involved in drafting the cahier de doléance for the nobility of Perche, and they sent him as their delegate to the Estates General in 1789. French Revolution A revolutionary becomes a counter-revolutionary In the Estates-General he supported a constitutional monarchy and aligned himself with the Girondins. His liberal reformist political position enabled him to be made the commander of the national guard in the Évreux district in 1790. He stopped attending the National Constituent Assembly after its first session and was not re-elected in 1792. After the Jacobins outlawed the Girondins in 1793, Puisaye became a counter-revolutionary, but his earlier association with the revolutionaries left him untrusted among more conservative counter-revolutionaries. In Normandy Puisaye was in command of a local troop of federalists and royalists who were surprised by Republican forces in a July 1793 attack. The troops scattered and De Puisaye went