Ernesto Montecuccoli

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Ernesto Count Montecuccoli (* 1582 ; † June 17, 1633 in Colmar ) was a colonel-Feldzeugmeister (general) of the Imperial Army and captain of the guard of the Roman-German Emperor in the Thirty Years' War with a great importance during his lifetime. Ernst (sometimes also Ernestus ) Count of Montecuccoli was the offspring of a highly respected noble family, who had been ennobled since 1369, in 1450 as counts , in 1530 as imperial counts with the great palatinate and in 1623 as nobles. Since 1630 he had been a field sergeant major and since 1632 a field war chief.

Life

origin

Ernesto Montecuccoli was - although he called him an uncle because of the great age difference - a distant cousin of the famous Austrian Field Marshal Raimund Montecuccoli . His father was Alfonso Montecuccoli , who in 1607 led a small fleet against the Turks as admiral of the Grand Duke of Tuscany. His brother was Girolamo Montecuccoli , secret chamberlain to the Grand Duke and commander of his German bodyguard and later Minister Leopold V of Tyrol in Innsbruck .

Military advancement in Austrian service and the beginning of the Thirty Years War

Ernesto had come to Germany from Italy and had been in the service of the then Archduke and later Emperor Ferdinand II from the age of 20. He quickly became Lieutenant Colonel, Colonel, Sergeant General and General Feldzeugmeister and rendered various services to Ferdinand. a. as a captain over his bodyguard, fought in Hungary, Transylvania, against the French and again in Hungary, where he was captured in 1612. After his family raised the ransom, he became a colonel in an imperial cuirassier regiment . In 1618 he was one of the three colonels who, on behalf of Archduke Ferdinand, arrested his opponent Cardinal Khlesl in the Vienna Hofburg (the other two were Heinrich von Dampierre and Ramboldo di Collalto ). In 1620 Montecucculi took part in the Battle of the White Mountains near Prague and in the following years became one of the most important troop commanders of Wallenstein , whom he temporarily represented as commander-in-chief during the campaign in Silesia against Bernhard von Sachsen-Weimar in 1626. In the summer of 1626 Montecuccoli smashed a 12,000-strong enemy army in Silesia and captured 35 standards , which Wallenstein sent to Vienna as trophies .

Use in the Netherlands

When Emperor Ferdinand in 1629 the allied Spaniards sent a 17,000-strong auxiliary contingent in the Netherlands to the Prince Frederick Henry of Orange through diversion ( "diversions" ) from the siege of the city 's-Hertogenbosch lure, the capital of the province of Noord-Brabant and a key position for the whole of Flanders, he transferred the command of Montecuccoli. This also defeated the Dutch in three field battles, conquered Amersfoort and caused no small horror. But after Wesel fell into the hands of Friedrich Heinrich, the Spaniards had to withdraw from the Netherlands again. While Montecuccoli was in Brussels to find winter quarters with Infanta Isabella , the Spanish governor, his army was attacked in the Belau by the troops of the Dutch field marshal Count Ernst Casimir zu Nassau , governor of Friesland, and had to be hit as a result Subtract comparison from the balance.

In the Mark Brandenburg and captured near Breitenfeld

In 1631 Montecuccoli served under two field marshals in the Mark Brandenburg . He was in command of the imperial garrison in Frankfurt an der Oder when there on April 3 of the present day. J. shot the citizens of his soldiers from their houses and opened the gates to the Swedes under Gustav Adolf . Montecuccoli and Field Marshal Rudolf von Tiefenbach barely managed to escape. His regiment was attacked on the evening of May 17th in Burgstall , where it was camped, by the Swedes under Wulff Heinrich von Baudissin and - like the Dragoons Holks in Angern and the Bernstein regiment in Beiendorf - "ruined" . H. killed, captured, or dispersed. Raimondo Montecuccoli , who recently led a company in his cousin's cuirassier regiment, escaped the catastrophe, as he later wrote, by taking refuge in a grove with the standard. The remnants of the regiment took part in the meeting near Breitenfeld , in which Raimondo was wounded and was taken prisoner. He was later able to buy his way out with the support of the Duke of Modena , Alfonso d'Este .

Fight in Alsace and death

In 1632 Montecuccoli set up a new regiment in Passau and moved to Alsace , where he took up his quarters near Strasbourg . From here he made several trains to Baden and Württemberg , conquered Bretten and Durlach and burned Knittlingen . When Duke Julius Friedrich von Württemberg-Weiltingen took to the field against him and he was defeated by the Swedes at Wiesloch on August 16, 1632 , he had to go under the protection of Field Marshal Hannibal von Schauenburg , crossed the Rhine at Philippsburg and retired finally to Breisach .

When the Rheingrafenstein Otto Ludwig in 1633 before the fortress Breisach caught after - turned whose defense Montecuccoli led to the fight, there was a meeting where Montecuccoli thrown from his horse and - hit in the right thigh and wounded in the head Colmar was brought . Although these wounds were not considered fatal, his "resentment and the resulting addiction" caused that he "had to give up his spirit" on June 17, 1633 .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Zedler's Great Universal Lexicon, Hall 1732–1754.
  2. ↑ In a letter of Frederick Richard Mockhel to Gustav Horn from August 12, 1633 in Strasbourg (according to a transcript in the war Wien ) 24 July is Wednesday, jul. / August 3,  1633 greg. named as the day of death; Hermann Hallwich : Wallenstein's end. Unprinted letters and files , Vol. I. Duncker & Humblot, 1879 p. 503 Note 1 ( Google Books ).
personal data
SURNAME Montecuccoli, Ernesto
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Montecuculi, Ernst Graf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION imperial general in the Thirty Years War
DATE OF BIRTH 1582
DATE OF DEATH June 17, 1633
Place of death Colmar