Of peasant birth, Pichegru was nevertheless appointed by ecclesiastical influence as a scholar at Brienne. In the dearth of generals he was selected for promotion by Saint-Just as was Hoche at the time when Carnot discovered Jourdan. Having assisted Hoche in the conquest of Alsace when a division general and only thirty-two years old, he began the next year, in 1794, to deploy his extraordinary powers, and with Moreau as second in command he swept the English and Austrians out of the Netherlands. Both these generals were sensitive and jealous men; after brilliant careers under the republic they turned royalists and came to unhappy ends. Moreau was two years the junior. He was the son of a Breton lawyer and rose to notice both as a local politician, and as a volunteer captain in the Breton struggles for independence with which he had no sympathy. As a great soldier he ranks with Hoche after Napoleon in the revolutionary time. Hoche was younger still, having been born in 1768. In 1784 he enlisted as a common soldier and rose from the ranks by sheer ability. He died at the age of thirty, but as a politician and strategist he was already famous. Kléber was an Alsatian who had been educated in the military school at Munich and was already forty-one years old. Having enlisted under the Revolution as a volunteer, he so distinguished himself on the Rhine that he was swiftly promoted; but, thwarted in his ambition to have an independent command, he lost his ardor and did not again distinguish himself until he secured service under Napoleon in Egypt. There he exhibited such capacity that he was regarded as one of Bonaparte's rivals. He was assassinated by an Oriental in Cairo. Bernadotte was four years the senior of Bonaparte, the son of a lawyer in Paris. He too enlisted in the ranks, as a royal marine, and rose by his own merits. He was a rude radical whose military ability was paralleled by his skill in diplomacy. His swift promotion was obtained in the Rhenish campaigns. Gouvion Saint-Cyr was also born in 1764 at Toul. He was a marquis but an ardent reformer, and a born soldier. He began as a volunteer captain on the staff of Custine, and rising like the others mentioned became an excellent general, though his chances for distinction were few. Jourdan was likewise a nobleman, born at Limoges to the rank of count in 1762. His long career was solid rather than brilliant, though he gained great distinction in the northern campaigns and ended as a marshal, the military adviser of Joseph Bonaparte in Naples and Madrid.