Jean-Pierre Lacombe Saint-Michel (Saint-Michel de Vax, 1751 – Saint-Michel de Vax, 1812)
Of noble ancestry, son of a bodyguard to the King, he entered as a supernumerary pupil in the artillery in 1764, was promoted to lieutenant 2nd class then to 1st class in the Toul regiment in 1767, then to captain in 1779. Elected as an administrator, then a member and vice-president of the directory of the department of Tarn in 1790, he was a member of the Legislative Assembly in 1791-92, sat on the left and was a member of the military committee. On 31 May 1792 he was promoted captain 1st class in the horse artillery (which he augmented by 9 companies as a legislator); on 31 July he was sent on a mission to the Soissons camp, then to the armée du Midi. He was reelected to the Convention in 1792, where he sat with the Mountain and was promoted to battalion chief. Sent on a mission to Corsica in February 1793, he was wounded, then promoted to brigadier on 17 November. He was again sent on a mission to the armée du Nord in July. He was elected a member of the Comittee of Public Safety on 3 February 1795, became a member of the Council of Ancients as of November that year and became its president on October 1797. Promoted to lieutenant general in 1798, he was sent as ambassador to Naples, but came back to France at the beginning of 1799 after hostilities began. He was named inspector general of artillery in May 1799, became commander-in-chief of siege artillery in the armée de réserve in 1800, superior commander in Piedmont in July, commander-in-chief of the artillery of the armée d’Italie until the end of the campaign of 1805, when he was wounded. He served in the Grande Armée in 1806-1807, commanding the artillery at the siege of Stralsund in 1807; then he became commander of the 10th military division (Perpignan) in 1808, and finally governor of Barcelona from February 1810. He went back to France for health reasons in September 1810. He was decorated as a knight of Saint-Louis in 1791, as a grand officer of the Legion of Honour and as a knight of the iron Crown (Cf. SHD, 7Yd 300, AN, LH/1425/32, Biard, Michel, Philippe Bourdin and Hervé Leuwers (ed.). 2022. Dictionnaire des Conventionnels. Ferney-Voltaire: Centre international d’étude du XVIIIe siècle).