Albrecht David Gabriel von Gross

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Albrecht David Gabriel Freiherr von Gross (* 1757 in Bern ; † November 19, 1810 in Weimar ) was a high-ranking military man who came from a Bernese patrician family and was in foreign military service. Among other things, he was lieutenant colonel and also emerged as a writer on military history.

Life

The Gross family , from which Albrecht David Gabriel von Gross descended, had several deserving high officers in foreign military service. Gross prepared himself for the promised career through thorough studies. His father was governor of Namur as well as major general and colonel of a Swiss regiment in the Dutch service. He also joined this regiment and received the rank of major in 1790 . During the Revolutionary War of 1794, he courageously defended the Grave fortress with great care under an 80-year-old commander against the French. Later he wrote an important account of the war events of that year in the Netherlands under the title Journal des principales opérations de la campagne de 1794 dans les provinces unies et les pays de la généralité… . This work brought him some notoriety.

When the Swiss regiments were dismissed as a result of the French conquest of the Netherlands, Gross returned to Switzerland and performed important services partly in the occupation of the border in the canton of Basel in 1796 and partly in the battle of Bern against the French in 1798. After the fall of Bern, he entered English military service and in 1799 took part in the unsuccessful British-Russian undertaking against Den Helder . In 1803 he left the English military service and was appointed by Duke Carl August von Weimar with the rank of chamberlain as head of the military academy established by this prince in Belvedere . He died in Weimar in 1810.

Various writings in French and German testify to his power of observation and insight into the military sciences , primarily with regard to the latest war events:

  • From the officer's service in the field , Gotha 1803
  • About the higher tactics or brief overview of the changes which the last war made necessary in the previous war system , 1806
  • Historical-military handbook for the history of war from 1792 to 1808; with map and atlas , Amsterdam 1808

A poem that Gross wrote in his youth was entitled Le premier navigateur, poème en quatre chants and was printed in Weimar in 1803.

literature

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ dates of birth and death according to the article on Gross in the General Encyclopedia of Sciences and Arts (1st section, vol. 92 (1872), p. 261 f.); according to the article in Samuel Baur's new historical-biographical-literary concise dictionary (vol. 6, Ulm 1816, col. 519) Gross was born on December 6th, 1756 and died on November 18th, 1809.


personal data
SURNAME Gross, Albrecht David Gabriel from
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss officer and military writer
DATE OF BIRTH 1757
PLACE OF BIRTH Bern
DATE OF DEATH November 19, 1810
Place of death Weimar