Francesco Cetteo Macdonald (Pescara, 19 February 1776 – 19 August 1837)
Son of a noble officer of Scottish ancestry, Macdonald studied at the Naples Military Academy from 1789 to 1793, then served for two years as an ensign in the Reale Napoli regiment and was promoted to lieutenant 2nd class in 1794. In 1795 he passed to the royal bodyguards, where he was promoted to lieutenant 1st class, but then was removed from the corps for indiscipline; back in his previous regiment, he was in 1798 appointed aide-de-camp to the marquis of Pietromaggiore. He took part in the campaigns of Toulon (1793) and of Romagna (1798) against the French, but then adhered to the Neapolitan Republic, where he served first in the Campanian Legion from 26 February, then was promoted to captain of the Lucan Legion and also served in the general staff. After the fall of the Neapolitan Republic, he went to France. On 3 May 1800 he was given the rank of supernumerary captain of the grenadiers in the Italian Legion, with which he joined in the second Italian campaign. In the summer he was appointed captain of a company of explorers, then commander of the Domaso fortification. Towards the end of the year he was acting assistant major of the battalion of Italian grenadiers, then commanded a company of grenadiers in the 2nd Italian demi-brigade.
He re-entered service on 23 October 1801 as a captain in the topographer corps, where he became section chief on 7 September, then interim commander of the corps and director of the Depot in July 1803. In August 1804 he was made aide-de-camp to general Alessandro Teodoro Trivulzi, commander of the Italian division in France. He came back to Italy and to the topographer corps as a section chief in 1805, but towards the end of the year he joined the General Staff, where he was promoted battalion chief and was decorated with the Legion of Honour.
In March 1806 he went back to the Kingdom of Naples, where he served as a battalion chief in the engineering corps, distinguishing himself at the siege of Amantea in 1807. He was promoted to colonel on the 25 December 1810 and commanded the 7th infantry regiment. Employed in Poland in 1812, in 1813 he commanded an elite regiment which covered the retreat. He was promoted to brigadier after Möckern on 8 April, commanded a brigade and was made a commander of the Legion of Honour after Bautzen (20-21 May), where he was wounded. In 1814 he commanded a brigade at the siege of Ancona against the French and Italians. He was named War Minister on 31 May, lieutenant general on 21 August and a baron on 14 December 1814. In 1815 he commanded a division in the interior, but was beaten at Mignano. He followed queen Caroline Bonaparte in her Austrian exile and married her morganatically in 1817. Only in January 1831 were the couple allowed to leave the Austrian lands and settle in Florence. (MSA, WO 2854, 2856, Mariano d’Ayala, Le vite de’ più celebri capitani e soldati napoletani dalla giornata di Bitonto fino ai dì nostri, Napoli, Stamperia dell’Iride, 1843, pp. 419-434, https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/francesco-mac-donald_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/).