Descended from a noble family, Dagobert de Fontenille was major of the bataillon de chasseurs royaux du Dauphiné in 1788. Sous-lieutenant in the régiment de Touraine, he served in the Seven Years' War as an officer in Le Royal-Italien, and remained in that unit for the Corsican campaign of 1769. Whilst on Corsica he came into direct contact with the Bonaparte family. By his marriage on 8 August 1780 to Jacquette Pailhoux de Cascastel, he became master of the forges and formed a company to exploit the mines at Les Corbières and Le Razès under the jurisdiction of the abbey of Lagrasse with his cousin, Jean-Pierre François Duhamel, correspondent of the Académie des sciences and commissaire of Louis XVI for mines and forges.
When the French National Conventiondeclared war on Spain on 7 March 1793, de Fontenille moved to the armée des Pyrénées orientales, under general de Flers, and commanded an entrenched camp of 8,000 men. He repulsed a Spanish attack on this position on 19 May but was still forced to abandon it, though he then stopped an enemy column of 6,000 men marching on Perpignan. Made commander in chief of the Armée centrale des Pyrénées after de Flers was removed from this post, he seized Puycerda on 29 August 1793 and the whole of the Spanish Cerdagne within 24 hours, before defeating the Spanish again on 4 September 1793 at Montlouis, capturing 14 cannon and recapturing part of Le Roussillon. Made commander in chief of the armée des Pyrénées orientales in September after Barbantane's removal, he renounced this position after his defeat on 27 September at Truillas by the Spanish general Antonio Ricardos.
Fall from and return to favour
He was discharged for this defeat and returned to Paris to give an account of his conduct. He was imprisoned, then released and returned to his previous post at the head of the armée des Pyrénées orientales. Arriving back at Perpignan in March 1794, he could not obtain some battalions from Dugommier which had been put at his disposal. He nevertheless invaded Spain, where he removed several enemy positions and won various victories, taking Urgel on 10 April 1794, before dying of illness at Puigcerdà in April 1794. The Convention decided to engrave his name on the raised column at the Panthéon.
Family
François-Gilles Dagobert, a cousin of Dagobert de Fontenille via a cadet branch of the family, took up the revolutionary torch in 1793 at the time of the War in the Vendée.
