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Jules Brunet in Ezo, at the end of the Boshin War (1869).

Jules Brunet (January 2, 1838-August 12, 1911) was a French officer who played an active role in Mexico and Japan, and later became a General and Chief of Staff of the French Army in 1898.

Jules Brunet was 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 graduated from the École Polytechnique in 1857, where he specialized in artillery.

Jules Brunet first participated in 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.

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.

The French military mission before its departure to Japan. Jules Brunet is seated in front, second from right (1866).

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. In a letter to Napoleon III, Jules Brunet explained the plan of the Alliance, as well as his role in it:

"A revolution is forcing the Military Mission to return to France. Alone I stay, alone I wish to continue, under new conditions, the results obtained by the Mission, together with the Party of the North, which is the party favorable to France in Japan. Soon a reaction will take place, and the Daimyos of the North have offered me to be its soul. I have accepted, because with the help of one thousand Japanese officers and non-commissionned officers, our students, I can direct the 50,000 men of the Confederation." Jules Brunet, Letter to Napoleon III.^[1]

French military advisors and their Japanese allies. Front row, second from left: Jules Brunet, besides Matsudaira Taro, vice commander-in-chief in the Ezo Republic.

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 Hokkaidō in the Battle of Hakodate. Troops were structured under a hybrid Franco-Japanese leadership, with Otori Keisuke as Commander-in-chief, and Jules Brunet as second in command. Each of the four brigades were commanded by a French officer (Fortant, Marlin, Cazeneuve, Bouffier), with eight Japanese commanders as second in command of each half-brigade.

The final stand occurred in the northern island of Hokkaidō, 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.

In an interesting postscript to his involvement in the Boshin War, Brunet spoke highly of Shinsengumi vice-commander Hijikata Toshizo in his memoirs. Praising Hijikata's ability as a leader, he said that if the man had been in Europe, he most certainly would have been a general.

Jules Brunet, with the rest of the French soldiers, was evacuated by the French corvette Coetlogon, commanded by Dupetit-Thouars, and then transferred to the Dupleix in Yokohama on which he was transported to Saigon. From Saigon he sailed to France onboard a commercial cruiser. Benefitting from popular support for his actions in Japan, Jules Brunet did not receive judgement, in spite of the Japanese request. He was quickly rehabilitated by the time of the Franco-Prussian War (1870 - 1871), but was taken prisoner by the Germans at the Siege of Metz. After the war, he played a key role as a member of the Versailles Army in the suppression of the Paris insurrection of La Commune in 1871.

General Jules Brunet (center, hat in hand), Chief of Staff of the French Army, 1898.

In May 1881 and again in March 1885, Jules Brunet received medals from the Meiji Emperor, which were given to him at the Japanese Embassy in Paris. It seems his former ally Enomoto Takeaki, then Minister of the Imperial Japanese Navy, played a key role in this late recognition.^[2]

Jules Brunet rose to the position of General and Chief of Staff of the French army ("Chef d'Etat Major") under the Minister of War Chanoine (his former senior officer at the French Military mission 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.

1. ^ "Soie et Lumieres, l'Age d'or des echanges Franco-Japonais", p81 (in French)
2. ^ 函館の幕末・維新 p.9

• "日仏交流の黄金期　Soie et Lumière, L'Âge d'or des échanges Franco-Japonais" (French and Japanese), Christian Polak, Hachette Fujingaho
• Polak, Christian, et al. (1988). 函館の幕末・維新 "End of the Bakufu and Restoration in Hakodate." ISBN 4-12-001699-4 (in Japanese).

• Franco-Japanese relations
• The Last Samurai
• Naval Battle of Hakodate