Karl Konstantin von Hessen-Rheinfels-Rotenburg

Prince Karl Konstantin von Hessen-Rotenburg (born January 10, 1752 in Frankfurt am Main ; † May 19, 1821 ibid), also known under the name Carl von Hessen-Rotenburg or " Citoyen Hesse", was a prince from a branch line of the house Hessen-Kassel and a general in the French army.

Live and act

Sixth member of a family with eleven children and the fourth son of Landgrave Konstantin von Hessen-Rheinfels-Rotenburg (* 1716 - † 1778) and Countess Maria Sophia von Starhemberg (1722–1773), brother of Karl Emmanuel von Hessen-Rheinfels-Rotenburg, he entered the military service of France around 1765. In his military career, he was given various rank positions one after the other: Commander Rittmeister in the Royal German Cavalry Regiment (April 28, 1765 - capitaine commandant), Commander of the Royal German Cavalry Regiment - " Régiment Royal-Allemand cavalerie " (May 5, 1772 - capitaine du régiment), Lieutenant-Colonel (April 18, 1776), second Mestre de camp (May 7, 1776), Mestre de camp in command (April 8, 1779), Mestre de camp in command of the 3 ^e régiment de hussards Esterhazy (February 26 1783), Brigadier des armées du roi in the cavalry (January 1, 1784) and Maréchal de camp on March 9, 1788. At that time, Carl Constantin was in Marseilles and sought out the Abbé Raynal, who was proclaimed after Charles' principles had been laid out would have: "Look, a person and not a prince!" On November 9, 1785, Carl Constantin was awarded the military order of knights. With his earnings and the pension payments from the king's treasury, he had an income of 16,000 francs.

As a supporter of the French Revolution , he joined the Jacobin Club . He was assigned to the 4th Division from June 30, 1791 to January 1792, then to the 10th Division until February 25, 1792, before becoming its commander. As the commander of the Perpignan Fortress , he and the city administration charged the Minister of War Narbonne with leaving the border with Spain open without a defense. On April 22, 1792 he lost his command and was assigned to the Rhine Army .

Appointed Lieutenant-General on May 22, 1792 , he left the Rhine Army in August and took command of the fortress of Lyon . After August 10, some officers of the Régiment de cavalerie de Royal-Pologne under the command of Carl Constantin were imprisoned in the fortress of Pierre-Scize and massacred on September 9 because, as supporters of the old regime, they had tried to incite their soldiers. On September 12, he replaced Count Felix von Wimpffens' authority over the 6th Division in Besançon , where he expanded the defensive positions of the fortresses in the Doubs and Jura departments . Fearing that they would lose the capable commander, the commissioners of the eight administrative sections in Besançon presented the services of Carl Constantin, which he had rendered to the city, before the national convention. On March 8, 1793 he was replaced by General Sparre and then joined the Revolutionary Army Des côtes de La Rochelle, which existed for a few months. On June 11, he took command of the Loiret department and then on July 25, command of the fortress of Orléans . There he took over the organization of 20 battalions of nine companies each , which were composed of original units of volunteer battalions of the republican revolutionary forces Armée du Nord , which were intended to put down the uprising in the Vendée . On August 8, General Rossignol wrote a letter of complaint about the work and the person of Carl Constantin to the Minister of War Bouchotte : “I am astonished that a foreign prince (Charles de Hesse) is tasked with organizing the army in Orléans that is under at the command of a sans-culottes . All Republicans think like me and swear to send someone more by birth and in principle. ”The minister replied:“ It is a foreigner who has served the revolution well. It remains to be seen until a general measure is taken. "

Affected by the decree banning aristocrats from military service, he was removed from office on December 17, 1793. He turned to the Jacobins to ask for wages and bread, but had to see how he was denied entry because of his prince title. A little later, Carl Constantin was imprisoned in the Palais du Luxembourg as a security measure and then transferred to the Saint-Lazare prison on May 15, 1794 . Released on January 11, 1795, he was then given control of the cavalry camp of the 17th Division.

The arrest of Marshal Luckner , his condemnation by the tribunal under Fouquier-Tinville and the subsequent guillotination on January 4, 1794 are said to be due to a denunciation by Luckner on the part of the "Citoyen Hesse".

Carl Constantin was retired on January 5, 1796. He devoted himself to journalism in the democratic press, writing in particular for L'Ami des lois by François-Martin Poultier and Sibuet in 1795, then for the Journal des Hommes libres by Pierre-Antoine Antonelle. Initially, like Antonelle, he was involved in the Conspiration des Égaux conspiracy and then in 1799 became a member of the neo-Jacobean Club du Manège towards the end of the French Revolution.

Since he was very critical of the coup d'état of 18th Brumaire VIII in November 1799, Carl Constantin was imprisoned in the conciergerie , which he was the last to leave, in order to be placed under guard in Saint-Denis . After the attack with the so-called infernal machine as a time - detonated bomb attack on Napoléon Bonaparte on December 24, 1800, Carl Constantin was listed as Charles de Hesse in the list of 130 outlawed Jacobins and banished to the Île d'Oléron . After his liberation in 1803 he was expelled from France.

In retirement in Switzerland , he lived on a pension that his relative Wilhelm I of Hessen-Kassel paid him. There he devoted himself to natural history . Residing in Basel in 1811, he predicted the overthrow of Napoleon by the Bourbons , then his return from the island of Elba and his brief reign of the Hundred Days in 1814, and around 1815 at the beginning of the Seconde Restoration that the Bourbons would be chased from the throne a third time would if the government did not go any other way. During this period the French government obtained his expulsion. He withdrew to Frankfurt am Main and applied for both permission to re-enter France and the payment of his pension without success. He died in May 1821 at the age of 69.

Web links

• Les généraux de division français de 1789 à 1815, letter H
• Hessen-Rotenburg, Carl Constantin Prince of. Hessian biography. (As of January 10, 2020). In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).

See also

• House of Hessen

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Arthur Maxime Chuquet: Un prince jacobin, Charles de Hesse, ou Le général Marat , p. 3-6.
2. ^ ^{A b c} Biographie universelle ancienne et moderne , Paris, Louis Gabriel Michaud, 1857, tome 19, p. 383-384
3. ↑ Jérôme Morin: Histoire de Lyon depuis la révolution de 1789 , Lyon, Ch. Savy Jeune, 1847, tome 2, p. 183-184 et 211-215.
4. ↑ Jérôme Morin, Op. cit. , p. 228
5. ^ Philippe Buchez , Charles-Prosper Roux: Histoire parlementaire de la Révolution française , Paris, Paulin, 1835, tome 22, p. 279.
6. ^ François Joseph Grille: La Vendée en 1793 , Paris, Chamerot, 1851, tome 1, p. 120.
7. ^ Jean Julien Michel Savary : Guerres des Vendéens et des Chouans contre la République Française , Paris, Baudouin frères, 1824, tome 2, p. 17th
8. ↑ Alexandre Tilly: Mémoires du comte Alexandre de Tilly pour servir a ̀l'histoire des mœurs de la fin du 18e siècle , Paris, chez les marchands de nouveauté, 1828, tome 1, p. 316.