Christian August von Wangenheim

Christian August von Wangenheim (also: Christoph August von Wangenheim ; born March 23, 1741 in Hanover ; † June 23, 1830 ibid) was a German military and court official.

Life

Christian August von Wangenheim was born as a member of the von Wangenheim family at the time of the Electorate of Hanover . In 1755 and 1756 he attended the pedagogy in Ilfeld and in the following year 1757 - at the time of the Seven Years' War - he joined the Kurhannoversche army . Two decades later, von Wangenheim was promoted to major in 1777 .

From 1782 to 1787 von Wangenheim was chief of the 16th Infantry Regiment in India and in 1797 was appointed major general. In India, Wangenheim commanded the 16th Hanoverian Regiment with 1,000 men from 1782. King George III had it recruited together with the 15th Hanoverian Regiment, also with 1,000 men, in 1781 to support the East India Company's struggle against Haidar Ali and his son Tipu Sultan and the south Indian principality of Mysore . Since Britain was on several fronts, u. a. in the American War of Independence , fought, so the overworked British troops should be relieved. Beginning with the embarkation of the regiments in September 1782, Wangenheim kept a diary which is one of the most important sources on the history of seafaring, especially the Royal Navy , and the colonial history of the British Empire. At the same time as the East India Fleet, a British navy set sail to break the Spanish-French siege of Gibraltar. So the journey led from Great Britain via Gibraltar and São Salvador da Bahia to Madras . Two names illustrate the importance of the diary source:

• Admiral Richard Howe (1726–1799) commanded the navy. Howe, who entered the Royal Navy at the age of 13, was already a famous admiral in 1782, having successfully led the English fleet in the American War of Independence from 1776 to 1778. He commanded the " Victory ", the 100-cannon flagship of the navy.
• Captain James Burney (1750-1821) commanded the "Bristol", a 50-gun warship. The "Bristol" was the lead ship of the East India Fleet, which fought against a French fleet in the Battle of Cuddalore in 1783. James Burney had accompanied James Cook on his last two trips to the South Seas and was friends with William Bligh (1754-1817).

When Wangenheim arrived in Madras in 1783, he was experiencing a key moment in British-Indian colonial history . Because the winner of the decades-long struggle between the British, the French and the Indian princely states for supremacy on the subcontinent was by no means certain.

In the four so-called Mysore Wars from 1767 to 1799, the British managed to play off all factions against each other and thus maintain the upper hand. The main enemy was the Kingdom of Mysore, whose rulers Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan practiced a skillful alliance diplomacy within India, but also with France and the Ottoman Empire. In addition, Mysore had innovative missile troops which, despite the general military superiority of European soldiers, wreaked havoc in combat. Even in the first Mysore War, Hyder Ali succeeded in imposing a defensive pact against the Marathas on the British in 1769, with which he had in fact won the day.

In the second Mysore War from 1780 to 1784, Hyder Ali formed an alliance with France. With this support he managed to put the British to flight on September 10, 1780 at the Battle of Pollilur and then to conquer the British Fort Arcot on November 3. This pushed the army back on Madras, and only the deployment of fresh troops under the command of Sir Eyre Coote, a highly experienced and tactically savvy general, made it possible to defeat Hyder Ali in several battles in 1781. The British troops also succeeded in taking the Dutch colony of Nagapatnam in 1781. Both sides emerged from these battles weakened: Hyder Ali could not defeat the British as long as they brought new troops unhindered by sea and the British suffered such high losses that they were forced to recruit new auxiliary troops in the Electorate of Hanover. After Hyder Ali died of cancer in December 1782, his son Tipu Sultan took over the rule. However, the French withdrew from the Indian theater of war in the summer of 1783 after peace was made in Europe between Great Britain and France. The Hanoverian troops were used successfully in the siege of Cuddalore against the French in 1783, but with high losses; the siege itself was called off after the news of the peace agreement reached Madras. Peace was also made with Tipu Sultan in the Treaty of Mangalore in 1784. The British had to recognize the previous borders of 1779, so this war was also a success for the Kingdom of Mysore and Tipu Sultan. Christoph August v. Wangenheim returned home in autumn 1785 because the hot climate and the exertions of the fighting had undermined his health. Christian Ludwig von Wangenheim was his successor in India .

Battle of Cuddalore 1783

In India he had a wounded French sergeant from the Royal Marine Regiment, who had been captured after a failed sortie on June 25, 1783 during the siege of Cuddalore , treated well. Two decades later (1803), when France annexed Hanover, the same Frenchman, meanwhile the commander of the occupation troops, namely General Bernadotte , turned to Wangenheim and thanked him retrospectively for his friendliness at the time.

After the Napoleonic Wars , the so-called French era , and the Congress of Vienna , Christian August von Wangenheim became a member of the “ provisional general assembly of estates ” in 1814 in the still young Kingdom of Hanover , and also in 1819.

Also in 1819 von Wangenheim was appointed court marshal of the royal seat of Hanover, but the sovereign of the kingdom resided continuously in England during the personal union between Great Britain and Hanover, which was still ongoing at the time .

See also

• Exhibition When the Royals came from Hanover . Hanover's ruler on England's throne 1714-1837 as part of the Lower Saxony State Exhibition 2014

Fonts

• Serving the British East India Company. Diary of the trip to Gibraltar, Sāo Salvador / Brazil and Madras 1782 to 1785 . Edited and commented by Steffen Arndt. Thuringian State Archives Gotha, Gotha 2017, ISBN 978-3-00-056082-8 .

literature

• Friedrich Hermann Albert von Wangenheim: Contributions to a family history of the Barons von Wangenheim of both tribes Wangenheim and Winterstein, on the basis of the previous two document collections, for his cousins ​​and friends , multi-part work,
  • printed as typescript with 7 lithographed heraldic panels, 12 photographs [panels] and 12 stem panels, printing: Göttingen: Universitäts-Buchdruckerei EA Huth, 1874, p.314 no. 339
  • New edition (reprint of the 1874 edition), Bad Langensalza: Verlag Rockstuhl, 2008, ISBN 978-3-86777-009-5 and ISBN 3-86777-009-3
• V. von Diebitsch, The Electoral Hanoverian Troops in East India. 1782 - 1792. , Chapter VI. Incidents in India over the past few years. Return of the troops to the home. in Hannoversche Geschichtsblätter No. 14, 1898, pages 106-108
• Wilhelm Rothert : General Hannoversche Biography , Vol. 3: Hanover under the Kurhut 1646-1815 ; Hanover: Sponholtz, 1916 (posthumously by his wife A. Rothert; also contains his biography), p. 521
• Ludwig von Sichart: History of the Royal Hanoverian Army , Volume 3, Section 2 (1756–1789), pp. 571 ff, 577. Hahnsche Buchhandlung, Hanover 1870
• Horst Kruse: Estates and Government - Antipodes? The calenbergisch-göttingsche Landesstands 1715 - 1802 , also dissertation 1997 at the University of Hanover, p. 297
• Klaus Mlynek : WANGENHEIM, VON, (1) Christian August. In: Hannoversches Biographisches Lexikon , p. 376; online through google books

References and footnotes

1. ↑ Compare the information under the GND number of the German National Library
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Klaus Mlynek: WANGENHEIM ... (see literature)
3. ↑ It is kept in the Gotha State Archives and was edited and published in 2017 .
4. ↑ cf. Ludwig von Sichart 1870, on p. 577 (see literature)
5. ^ Klaus Mlynek: Personal union. In: Klaus Mlynek, Waldemar R. Röhrbein (eds.) U. a .: City Lexicon Hanover . From the beginning to the present. Schlütersche, Hannover 2009, ISBN 978-3-89993-662-9 , p. 498.