Claude Alexandre de Bonneval

Claude Alexandre, Comte de Bonneval , later Humbaracı Ahmet Paşa (born July 14, 1675 in Coussac-Bonneval , † March 23, 1747 in Constantinople ) was a French nobleman, soldier and adventurer who entered Ottoman services after serving in the war for France and Habsburg , converted to Islam and reformed the sultan's artillery .

Life

The Count of Bonneval as Achmed Pascha . The handwritten description of the picture reads: “M ^er. le Comte de Bonneval, appelé en Turquie Acmet Pacha, peint d'après nature par Liotard ” .

Bonneval came from an old Limousin family . At the age of thirteen he joined the Royal Marine Corps. After three years he switched to the army , where he was promoted to regimental commander. He served in the Italian campaigns under Catinat , Villeroi and Vendôme and in the Netherlands under the Marshal of Luxembourg and demonstrated his courage and great military talent. His brazen attitude towards the Minister of War in 1704 brought him before the court martial . He was sentenced to death, but saved himself by fleeing to Germany. Due to the influence of Prince Eugene , he received a general command in the imperial army. He fought in the War of the Spanish Succession , initially in Northern Italy , where in 1708, on behalf of the Roman-German Emperor Joseph I of Austria, he occupied a former imperial fief of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation , the County of Comacchio , in the Comacchio War. He then fought with distinction against France, where he took part in the Battle of Malplaquet , and then in the Turkish War against the Ottomans, where he was wounded in the Battle of Peterwardein .

The case against him in France was then dropped so that he could travel to Paris and there married the daughter of Marshal de Biron . After a short time he returned to the imperial army and fought with distinction in Belgrade . He could now have risen to the highest ranks, but fell out with Prince Eugene, with whom he had been close friends up until then. In 1724 he sent Bonneval to the Netherlands with an artillery squad, where his impetuous temperament embroiled him in a dispute with Ercole Turinetti Marquis de Prié , Prince Eugen's deputy governor. Prié had Bonneval captured and brought before a court martial that sentenced him to death at the instigation of Prince Eugene. Emperor Charles VI. however, pardoned him to one year imprisonment and exile . After his imprisonment, Bonneval was brought to Vienna, declared of all his dignities, and deported to Venice .

Soon after his release, Bonneval offered his services to the Ottoman Empire. He converted to Islam and took the name Ahmed. He was made pasha and called to organize and command the artillery of the Ottoman army . Bonneval contributed decisively to the Austrian defeat at Niš in the Russo-Austrian Turkish War (1736-1739), the result of which for Austria in the Peace of Belgrade (1739) meant the loss of northern Serbia with Belgrade, areas in northern Bosnia and Little Wallachia and Austria's reputation in the Lastingly damaged the German Empire and Prussia.

Bonneval rendered valuable services to the Sultan in the war against Russia and against Nadir Shah . As a reward he received the governorship of Chios . He quickly came under suspicion at the gate ; he was exiled to the coast of the Black Sea for a time . Bonneval died in Istanbul (Constantinople) in 1747 .

literature

• Brockhaus Konversationslexikon , Volume 7, Amsterdam 1809, pp. 131-135 ( online ).
• Charles de Ligne : Mémoire sur le comte de Bonneval. Paris 1817 ( online ).
• Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall : History of the Ottoman Empire. Vol. 7 and 8, Pest 1831 and 1832.
• Sainte-Beuve : Le Comte Pacha de Bonneval. In: Causeries du lundi (November 22, 1852) , Volume V, p. 397.
• Constantin von Wurzbach : Bonneval, Claudius Alexander Graf von . In: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich . 2nd part. Publishing house of the typographic-literary-artistic establishment (L. C. Zamarski, C. Dittmarsch & Comp.), Vienna 1857, pp. 54–58 ( digitized version ).
• Albert Vandal: Le Pacha Bonneval. Paris 1885.
• Albert Vandal: Une Ambassade française en Orient sous Louis XV: la mission du marquis de Villeneuve. Paris 1887.
• Max Braubach : History and Adventure. Shape around Prince Eugene. Munich 1950, pp. 275-353.
• Septime Gorceix: Bonneval Pasha. Paris 1953.
• Heinrich Benedikt : The Paschal Count Alexander von Bonneval, 1675-1747 . Böhlau, Graz a. a. 1959.
• Hans Georg Majer: Bonneval, Claude-Alexandre Comte de . In: Biographical Lexicon on the History of Southeast Europe . Volume 1. Munich 1974, p. 233 f.
• Abdülkadir Özcan: Humbaracı Ahmed Paşa. In: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslâm Ansiklopedisi . Volume 18 (1998), pp. 351-353 ( online ). (Turkish).
• Hans Georg Majer: Ahmed Paşa, Bonneval. In: Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE. Ed .: Kate Fleet, Gudrun Krämer, Denis Matringe, John Nawas, Everett Rowson. Brill Online 2016. Online text (restricted access). First seen online: 2012; first print edition February 2012, ISSN  1573-3912 . (English).
• Hermann E. Stockinger: The secret diplomacy of Prince Eugen and the plans to assassinate Count Pascha Bonneval, in Martin Mulsow (ed.), Criminals-Freethinkers-Atheists. Spaces of the Underground in the Early Modern Era, Böhlau 2014, pp. 203–234
• Julia Landweber: Leaving France, “Turning Turk,” becoming Ottoman: The Transformation of Comte Claude-Alexandre de Bonneval into Humbaraci Ahmed Pasha . In: Christine Isom-Verhaaren, Kent F. Schull (Ed.): Living in the Ottoman Realm: Empire and Identity, 13th to 20th Centuries . Indiana University Press, Bloomington (Indiana) 2016, ISBN 978-0-253-01948-6 , pp. 209-224 (English).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Christoph Gottlieb Heinrich : Teutsche Reichsgeschichte , 7th part, Leipzig 1797, pp. 539-540, here online .