Charles Xavier Joseph de Franque Ville d' Abancourt , (1758-1792),
French statesman, and nephew of Calonne. He was [Louis XVI]
?'s last minister of war (
July 1792), and organized the defence of the Tuileries for the
10th of August. Commanded by the Legislative Assembly to send away the Swiss guards, he refused, and was arrested for treason to the nation and sent to Orleans to be tried. At the end of
August the Assembly ordered Abancourt and the other prisoners at Orleans to be transferred to
Paris with an escort commanded by Claude Fournier, ``the American.'' At Versailles they learned of the massacres at Paris, and Abancourt and his fellow-prisoners were murdered in cold blood on the
8th of September 1792. Fournier was unjustly charged with complicity in the crime.