During the Battle of Wagram (July 5th/6th, 1809), General Charles Étienne Gudin de La Sablonnière...
... badly wounded. Nevertheless, he took part in the Russian campaign of the Grande Armée alongside Marshal Michel Ney.
After the Battle of Smolensk (August 17/18, 1812), Gudin, as commander of the 3rd Division near Walutino, was wounded again on August 19 and died a few days later from his severe injuries. He found his final resting place on the edge of the battlefield. His heart was taken to Paris and buried there in the Père Lachaise cemetery.
In November 2019, Gudin's remains were discovered during excavations in a public park in Smolensk and were positively identified through a DNA comparison with those of Gudin's brother, Pierre César. The grave had been found based on the detailed descriptions in the memoirs of Louis-Nicolas Davouts, who organized the funeral...:
At the end of June 2021, a ceremony was held in Moscow symbolizing the start of Gudin's repatriation to France.
The bones were initially stored in the French Embassy in Moscow until they were transported to Paris for reburial on July 13, 2021...:
Slawa Ukraini!