Gustave Paul Cliseret, a French soldier, born in Paris, June 13, 1823. In 1841 he entered the military school of St. Cyr, and two years afterward was appointed sub-lieutenant. In April, 1848, he was made a major in the garde mobile, and took part in suppressing the insurrection of June. In 1849 he was retired on half pay, and opened a painter's studio. In 1851 he reentered the army as lieutenant in the chasseurs a pied of Algeria. In the Crimea (1855) he was wounded and promoted to a captaincy. In 1856 he joined the expedition against the Kabyles, and was named chevalier of the legion of honor. He resigned his commission in 1858, and in 1860 became attached to the staff of Garibaldi, was placed in command of the French legion, and in November received the brevet rank of colonel. In 1802 he came to America, entered the Union service, was attached to the staff of Gen. McClellan, and afterward served under Fremont in Virginia. In October, 1802, he was made brigadier general of volunteers. After some further service in the valley of the Shenandoah, he retired from the army, and in 1804 edited the "New Nation," a weekly journal in New-York, which advocated Fremont for president and vehemently opposed the renomination of Lincoln, He returned to France in 1867, but was expelled in 1809 for publications against the transcontinental railway project in the United States, in which some prominent French officials were interested.

He was subsequently for some time in New York, but returned to Europe during the Franco-German war in 1870. In Paris he affiliated himself with the assailants of the government of national defence, but soon after left the capital and engaged in insurrectionary attempts in Lyons and Marseilles, which proved abortive. In the following spring he became minister of war in Paris under the commune, and for a short time was at the head of military operations, but fell under suspicion of treachery to the cause and was for a time confined in the Mazas prison. After the downfall of the commune he succeeded in escaping to Switzerland. Sentence of death was passed against him in his absence in the summer of 1872. He has since resided near Geneva.