Fessler/Overview

Brigadier General Fessler (フェスラー, Fesurā) was the Amestrian military officer put in charge of securing the Kanda region of Ishval during the Ishval Civil War.

A petty and ignorant man, Fessler was more concerned with enhancing his reputation than with the lives of his subordinates and, in his obsession with clearing out his region before the other officers, made a number of hasty decisions which cost many soldiers' lives. When Major Alex Louis Armstrong had his mental breakdown from the emotional strain of massacring Ishvalan civilians, Fessler made it worse by berating him, and, even when his mistakes were devastating to his own troops, he referred to them as "home runs" so long as the mission objective was reached. When Colonel Basque Grand escorted Logue Lowe to Fessler with the hopes of gaining an audience with King Bradley, Fessler stubbornly refused and ordered all his soldiers to return to the fray, at which point he was shot point-blank in the chest by Grand's rifle.

Though there were several witnesses to the blatant assassination, all the soldiers present agreed that Fessler's death had been caused by a stray bullet, truly signifying how much they hated him and his methods. Fessler's post as commander of Kanda was succeeded by Basque Grand.

Trivia

 * His one major appearance, save for a single line in one of Armstrong's flashbacks, was cut from the 2009 anime.