Ernest Courtot de Cissey
French general (1810-1882)
Ernest Louis Octave Courtot de Cissey (French: [ɛʁnɛst lwi ɔktav kuʁto də sisɛ]; 1810–1882) was a French general and Prime Minister.
Biography
Ernest Courtot de Cissey was born in Paris, educated at the Prytanée National Militaire and, after passing through St Cyr, entered the army in 1832, becoming captain in 1839.
He saw active service in Algeria, and became chef d'escadron in 1849 and lieutenant-colonel in 1850. He took part as a colonel in the Crimean War, and after the battle of Inkerman received the rank of general of brigade.
In 1863 he was promoted general of division. When the Franco-German War broke out in 1870, de Cissey was given a divisional command in the Army of the Rhine, and he was included in the surrender of Bazaine's army at Metz. He was released from captivity only at the end of the war, and on his return was at once appointed by the Versailles government to a command in the army engaged in the suppression of the Commune.
From July 1871 de Cissey sat as a deputy, and he had already become minister of war. He occupied this post several times during the critical period of the reorganization of the French army, and served briefly as Prime Minister of France from 1874 to 1875. In 1875, he was elected senator for life.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q471302. VIAF identifies the subject as 24901795. The Library of Congress control number is no2018131781. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1810, 1882, 1832 and 1839.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ernest Courtot de Cissey” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.