Hector Regiment
military unit
The Hector Regiment (French - Régiment Hector, Régiment d'Hector or Marine Royale) was a French Royalist regiment within the Armée des Émigrés during the French Revolutionary Wars.
History
The naval officer Charles Jean d'Hector (1722-1808) was already an old man when he emigrated to Britain in 1791 to join the royalist forces. There he raised and commanded the 600-man Corps de la marine royale, exclusively made up of old naval officers. During the Quiberon Expedition that unit was known as the 'Régiment Hector' or the 'Marine Royale').
When his regiment was assigned to the Quiberon Expedition it left without its commander but with good morale and discipline, bolstered to 700 men by republican sailors freed from British prisoner-of-war camps and by sailors, officers and prisoners from Toulon and Brittany. However, the majority of its men were still officers from the pre-Revolutionary French Navy.
During its voyage to Brittany it learned of the expedition's failure on 21 July 1795. Reduced to 300 men, the regiment camped at the end of the peninsula. It fought bravely but was overwhelmed by the enemy's numbers.
During and after the expedition, many of its soldiers were shot by Republican firing squads.
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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 Sep 30, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q3455112. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1722, 1808, 1791 and 1795.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hector Regiment” 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.