Jacques Balmat it turns out, possesses an extraordinary mountaineering sense, an unerring instinct for the crevasses and seracs of the glaciers ..." After the successful ascent, Balmat collected the reward offered 25 years before by Horace-Bénédict de Saussure to the first man who could climb Mont Blanc. On 3 August 1787 he assisted de Saussure himself to reach the summit with a party of about 17 people. During the Napoleonic Wars, Savoy fell under French control, and Citizen Jacques Balmat became a member of the council of the commune. He led an unsuccessful attempt to introduce Merino sheep into the Chamonix valley.
Louis Gabriel Deniéport Louis Gabriel Deniéport Louis Gabriel Deniéport (14 April 1765, Dieppe – 20 October 1805) was a French naval captain who fought in several battles, most notably Trafalgar, at which he was killed commanding the "Achille". Born to hotelier parents on rue de l'oranger in Dieppe, his godfather was Nicolas Boiloy, a businessman in the Saint-Remy parish, and his godmother was the widow Michel Martel, a businesswoman in the parish of Saint-Jacques. Like his brother Jean-Vincent Deniéport, Louis was a brilliant student at the Oratorian school and won the general prize in 1785, though he had to enter the Oratorian house