Louis-Félix Guinement de Kéralio

He joined his brothers Auguste, Agathon and Alexis in the régiment d'infanterie d’Anjou as a lieutenant on 8 March 1746, aged 14. During the War of the Austrian Succession, he participated in 1746 in the siege of Tortone, the battle of Piacenza and the battle of Tidone on 10 August. His extraordinary valour at Tidone twice threw the Austrians, who wanted to bar the river crossing to the French, into disorder. In 1747 he fought in the attack on the fortifications at Montauban and Villefranche, then in the capture of Montauban, Nice, Villefranche and Vintimille.

Louis Félix Guynement was demobbed in 1749. Nevertheless, he decided to serve at his own expense in the regiment for 18 months, being recalled to it officially in 1751, before being made aide-major. In 1754 and 1755 he was put in sole charge of the regiment's manoeuvres and exercises, and in 1755 he was made captain. At the start of the Seven Years' War onwards he was retired from the ranks after being wounded when the regiment was encamped in observation at Calais in 1756 and retired to his birthplace of Valence.

On 25 February 1758 he was made deputy-director of studies and professor of tactics at the royal military school in Paris. On 31 July 1759 Louis Félix was made aide-major there and then promoted to major. He taught many future generals of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, such as Armand Samuel de Marescot, Louis-Alexandre Berthier and Jean-Baptiste Bernard Viénot de Vaublanc. In 1771 he was made a knight of the order of Saint Louis, and then was elected commander of the 3rd bataillon of the National Guard – the bataillon des Filles-Saint-Thomas - on its creation in 1789.

He was elected a foreign member of Sweden's Royal Academy of Sciences in Stockholm early in 1774. On 28 April 1780, he was also elected an academician of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres de Paris.

Around 1780, the chevalier de Keralio and the editor Panckoucke signed a contract to edit 4 volumes on "Art militaire" in the Encyclopédie Méthodique, published from 1784 to 1787, for which he wrote a preliminary discourse and several articles. From 1784 he wrote for the Journal des Savants.