Born in Lyon the 3rd of July 1750, Barthelemy Regis was the son of Jean Dervieu, lord of du Villars and de Varey, and his wife Marie Pauline Anne Pujol. He did his studies in the College of Juilly and entered to the service the 4th of November 1766 as Deputy-Lieutenant in the Poitou-Infantry Regiment. He was promoted Lieutenant the 7th of April 1773 then served in the Regiment of Bresse in 1775.
The 4th of March 1780 he was embarked on the frigate "La Belle Poule" to share in the American Independance War. The 15th and 16th of July 1780, the frigate sustained a naval engagement against the British frigate The Non Such in front of the Yeu Island and the Loire mouth. He was seriously wounded during the engagement while his captain, Raymond Marie de Kergariou, knight de Coatles, from Lannion, and all the other officers were killed in action. For this achievement, Barthelemy Regis Dervieu du Villars was presented in Versailles to the king Louis XVI and received, from the king himself, the Cross of Saint Louis. Promoted to the rank of captain the 24th of September 1783, he must on the same year retire from the service owing to his wounds. He retired definitly in 1786, after seventeen years of service, getting ten years of favour for wounds and military achievement.
He lived in Lyon when, after the looting of the town arsenal, he was promoted, the 7th of February 1790, President of the Town Council (equivalent too the Mayor), then General Commandant of the National Guard. He had the responsability of organisation and presidence, the 30th of May 1790, of the Feast of the Federation in Lyon, and pronounced the solemn oath to the Republic, at the foot of the altar where the Abbey Nizier, cure of Saint Georges, was celebrating the mass. In April 1791, he was reelected General Commandant, after having married, the 8th of February 1791 in the chapel of the Penmarc'h Castle, Louise Jeanne Nicole Arnalde Denis de Keredern de Trobriand, his younger by 25 years.
But, after the reduction of Lyon revolted against the Convention (the siege had begun the 8th of August 1793 and lasted to the 9th of October), the Revolutionary Court, following the ferocious orders of Fouche, Couthon and Collot d'Herbois, sentenced Dervieu du Villars to death for five counts of indictment. Thanks to the courageous and audacious intervention of his wife who succeeded, by threatening Couthon with a pistol, to snatch the discharge of Dervieu du Villars, he could escape from the death sentence. After the 9th of Thermidor, he recouped his seized personal and real estate, but ever since he refused to play some political part and retired on his estate of Millery (10km north from Givors). He remembered himself these facts to the king Louis XVIII in an address where he said : " Having incured, after the siege of Lyon, five sentences to death from which he escaped miraculously, he retired wholly from the public affairs". However, his wife Louise Jeanne Nicole settled in Paris where, in her town-house of the street Basse Saint Pierre, she kept, known under her nickname of Fanny, a Salon well attended by the parisian intelligentsia of the time. She received, particularly, her remoted cousin Simon Bolivar, during his second journey in Paris.
The elder brother of Barthelemy, Claude Jean Marie Dervieu de Varey, born in 1749, was less lucky. He was Councillor to the Mint and, the 14th of March 1789, take a part in the Assembly of the Lyon Nobility. Then, after the 12th of April 1790, he was in charge of the police in the municipal organisation and, during the siege of Lyon, he had the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel of the National Guard. After the reduction of the town, he was condemned to death by the Revolutionary Court and guillotined the 26th of January 1794.
After the restoration of the Monarchy, Dervieu du Villars was appointed, in 1825, Honorary Field Marshall. In July 1829, he called for the cross of Commander of the Saint Louis Order, without success. He died in Millery the 21st of December 1837.
He had got, from his marriage with Louise Jeanne Nicole Denis de Keredern de Trobriand, three sons: Auguste, born in 1797, who was Captain in the Cavalry, Eugene, born in 1806, who did a career in the State Council as a Maitre des Requetes, and Charles Pierre, born in 1815.
(Some other details available in the Review "dan l'tan" of the french Association "Visages de notre Pilat", n° 10, p.140)
