Jules Brunet
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Captain Jules Brunet (January 2, 1838-August 12, 1911) was a member of the first French military mission to be sent to the Empire of Japan in order to help modernize the armies of the shogunate.
He was born in Belfort, in the Alsace region of eastern France. He was a graduate of the École Polytechnique (promotion of 1857), where he specialized in artillery.
Jules Brunet first participated to the French intervention in Mexico (1862-1867) sent by Napoleon III of France, where he received the medal of the Légion d'honneur.
He then arrived in Yokohama in the beginning of 1867, as a member of the first French military mission to Japan.
First French Military Mission to Japan
The military mission was able to train the army of Shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu for a little more than one year, before the Tokugawa shogunate lost to the Imperial forces in 1868 in the Boshin War. The French military mission was then ordered to leave Japan by Imperial decree.
However, Jules Brunet chose to remain. He resigned from the French army, and left for the North of Japan with the remains of the Shogunate's armies in the hope of staging a counter-attack.
The Hakodate war
Jules Brunet helped set up the Ezo Republic, with the leader of the Japanese shogunate's navy, Admiral Enomoto Takeaki, as the President. He also helped organize the defense of Hokkaido in the Battle of Hakodate. Troops were structured under a hybrid franco-japanese leadership, with the Commander in chief Otori Keisuke seconded by Jules Brunet, and each of the four brigades commanded by a French officer (Fortant, Marlin, Cazeneuve, Bouffier), seconded by eight half-brigade Japanese commanders.
The final stand occurred in the northern island of Hokkaido, in the city of Hakodate, where in June 1869 the shogunate forces lost a final battle between 800 shogunate soldiers and an 8000-strong Imperial army.
Rehabilitation
Jules Brunet was evacuated by the Dupleix and sent back to France for trial. He was quickly rehabilitated by the time of the Franco-Prussian War (1870 - 1871), and later rose to the position of Chief of Staff of the French army ("Chef d'Etat Major") under the Minister of War Chanoine (curiously, his senior officer at the French Military mission when he was in Japan) thirty years later in 1898.
Jules Brunet was partly the inspiration for the character of Nathan Algren in the 2003 movie The Last Samurai.
See also
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