This monument, dedicated to the memory of the comte Louis de Bréhan de Plélo (1699-1734), was inaugurated in Gdańsk on 27 May 2014, a date marking the 280th anniversary of his death, in the presence of the Ambassador of France to Poland, Mr Pierre Buhler, of the Honorary Consul of France in Gdańsk, of the President of the Polish Senate Bogdan Borusewicz, of the local civil and military authorities and of veterans. It is composed of two pieces of a large block of black granite in its natural state, oval in shape, cut through its middle; these two parts are set against one another, on a small mound of stones serving as a base, so as to present two symmetrical faces bearing several light-coloured streaks. The left-hand face bears a text in French, inscribed in fine white letters directly on the stone, translated into Polish on the other; it begins with a quotation from Chateaubriand: ""My father dismounted and found himself in the memorable combat (…)." François-René de Chateaubriand, Mémoires d'outre-tombe. To the memory of Louis Robert Hippolyte de Bréhan, comte de Plélo, as well as of the officers and soldiers of the regiments of Périgord, La Marche and Blaisois, killed in combat on 27 May 1734 in order to break the encirclement of Gdańsk where the king of Poland, Stanislas Leszczynski, had taken refuge".
As the text indicates, the comte de Plélo, a man of letters and of action, a former cavalry colonel who had embraced a diplomatic career and been appointed Ambassador of France to Denmark in 1729, was the protagonist of a heroic and tragic episode of the War of the Polish Succession. This war broke out in 1733, when the Polish Diet elected, to succeed King Augustus II, Stanislas Leszczynski, supported by France but contested by Augustus III, supported by Austria and Russia. In 1734, the fortress of Dantzig (Gdańsk), where Stanislas Leszczynski had taken refuge, was besieged by 30,000 Russian soldiers; the French troops, numbering 1,500 to 2,500 men, received orders to break the encirclement but abandoned the attempt in the face of the enemy's crushing numerical superiority, in order to withdraw to Copenhagen. The comte de Plélo, considering that it would have been dishonourable to withdraw, then took the lead of the men who had remained on the spot and led the assault against the Russian troops; he was killed after having succeeded in forcing three entrenchments. The monument was erected on the initiative of the director of the historical museum of the city of Gdańsk, Mr Adam Koperkiewicz.