Jan van der Croon

Jan van der Croon on an engraving from 1649

Jan Freiherr van der Croon (* around 1600 in Weert ; † November 6, 1665 in Prague ), also known as Johann de la Corona , from the Cron or Lacron , was an imperial officer in the Thirty Years War and long-time city commander of Pilsen and Prague. He was one of the few military men of his time who rose to become a general despite being of non-aristocratic origin.

Life

From soldier to officer

Siege of Breda 1624/25

Jan van der Croon was born in Weert, which was then Habsburg, now Dutch, into the Cool or Coolen family, which was also called Croon after the inn De Croon they owned. It is not possible to clearly identify who exactly his parents were. The temporary Mayor of Weert Jacob in de Croon was probably Jan's uncle, but is also classified as his father in some sources. His two brothers Franz (Frans) and Willem also became soldiers, Franz was a captain in the imperial service, Willem fell as a lieutenant colonel in Spanish service with the city of Lille .

Jan began his military career in 1624 in the Spanish army that fought the Netherlands in the Eighty Years War . His role model was presumably his uncle Giel Jonghen d'Ongarie, who also fought as a soldier in the Habsburg service. Jan was mostly called de la Corona by his contemporaries in the army . Under Ambrosio Spinola , Croon took part in the siege of Breda from August 1624 until the city was surrendered in early June 1625. A little later he switched to the imperial army as a pikeman and served under Albrecht von Wallenstein in his Hungarian campaign against the Protestant military leader Ernst von Mansfeld and the Holstein campaign against the Danes. In 1629 Croon moved to northern Italy in the imperial army under Rambaldo Collalto to support the Spaniards in the Mantuan War of Succession . In July 1630 he took part in the storming of Mantua by the imperialists, which was then heavily looted. Croon himself caught his superiors' attention through his achievements in the siege and in a small skirmish in which four French companies were defeated. He was promoted to corporal , while his uncle Giel fell as a lieutenant colonel near Mantua during this time .

After the Peace of Cherasco returned from Italy in June 1631, Croon joined the imperial league army under Count Tilly under the command of Johann von Aldringens in October . In April 1632 Croon fought in the Battle of Rain am Lech against the Swedes advancing to Bavaria , in which the army of the Catholic League was defeated and Tilly fell. Then Croon fought under Wallenstein both at the Alte Veste , after which he was promoted to lieutenant, and in the battle of Lützen , in which the Swedish King Gustav Adolf fell. After Wallenstein's murder in early 1634, Croon served again under Aldringen. During the siege of Regensburg he was wounded in enemy captivity, but was able to escape again on his own. At the end of July Regensburg surrendered to the imperial army shortly after Aldringen had fallen in fighting against a Swedish relief army near Landshut . Croon fought next in September in the Battle of Nördlingen , in which the Swedes were decisively defeated. He was then promoted to captain in Octavio Piccolomini's dragoon regiment .

With Piccolomini's troops, Croon moved to the southern Netherlands to support the Spaniards and in July 1635 took part in the successful relief of lions and the conquest of Schenkenschanze . In the winter he took part in two missions to supply the fortress, which was then besieged by Dutch troops, for which he was promoted to the rank of sergeant in the dragoon regiment of Johann Wilhelm von Kuefstein . The regiment stood in Bohemia or Saxony for the next year . After Kuefstein's death in early May 1637, Croon became the regiment's interim commander. From the base in Oschatz it undertook several raids on the Swedes, some led by Croon personally, who, among other things, inflicted the loss of 300 horses and several dead or captured officers.

The main imperial army under Matthias Gallas , which had returned from Burgundy, attacked the Swedes under General Banér near Torgau in mid-June , who barely escaped and retreated to Pomerania. At the side of Gallas' army, Croon pursued the Swedes and moved into quarters in Mecklenburg . For his achievements in this campaign he received the next promotion to lieutenant colonel. During 1638 he stood in Mecklenburg against the Swedes enclosed in Pomerania . During the retreat of the imperial at the end of the year due to Swedish reinforcements and the catastrophic supply situation, Croon attacked two Swedish regiments near Boizenburg on the Elbe together with Sergeant General Bruay , which were broken up in the process. Over the winter, croons troops were sent to quarters in Silesia . Here Croon was also in action in the following years against the Swedes, who penetrated the region from the beginning of 1639 and conquered several places.

Regimental owner and city commander

Pilsen around 1650

In 1640, Croon distinguished himself in the recapture of the castle and city of Lüben under Martin Maximilian von der Goltz . Von der Goltz proposed him for promotion, whereupon Croon was awarded the previous Dragoon Regiment D'Espaigne on August 28, 1640 with a nominal strength of 8 companies of 100 men each as the owner of the colonel and the commander. Croon had risen to become one of the few non-aristocratic regiment owners and from then on earned money directly from his operations as a war entrepreneur. Already in September he took part in the siege of Hirschberg . In 1641 he was involved in the reconquest of Görlitz together with troops from the Electorate of Saxony . At the end of May 1642, under Franz Albrecht von Sachsen-Lauenburg , he took part in the failed relief for the fortress of Schweidnitz , which was besieged by the Swedes , during which Franz Albrecht was fatally wounded and captured. Croon escaped capture and subsequently made several successful attacks against the Swedes who had moved on to Moravia . On July 5, he attacked the Swedish occupation of Littau . After the imperial army had pushed the Swedes out of Moravia and Silesia, Croon and his dragoons fought on the right wing of the imperial in November that year in the battle of Breitenfeld , which ended in a clear defeat.

In May 1643, Croon was instructed by the new Commander-in-Chief Gallas to take a position against the Swedes who had invaded Bohemia with his and Gallas' own dragoon regiment between Podebrady and Nimburg and to prevent them from crossing the Elbe and advancing against Prague. The Swedish army under Lennart Torstensson was able to cross the Elbe with a ship bridge at the beginning of June, but did not advance against Prague, but moved via Kolín to Moravia. After the main Swedish army withdrew for a surprise attack on Denmark at the end of the year , Croon and his regiment blocked the Swedish-occupied fortress of Glogau in Silesia in early 1644 . In March he took the Herrnstadt Castle in the area around Glogau.

When the main imperial army under Gallas set out in June 1644 to support the Danes, Croon and his regiment were also there. The campaign led the imperial up to the Swedish occupied Kiel , in whose storming Croon took part. When the Swedes under Torstensson bypassed the imperial army in Holstein to the south and threatened Saxony and the Habsburg hereditary lands with an advance along the Elbe , Gallas had to go back through the emaciated land with his army. In order to protect Saxony against the Swedes, Gallas took a camp near Bernburg , in which he was soon trapped and starved by the superior Swedish cavalry. Croons Regiment also suffered great losses, including a lost cavalry battle against the Swedes in mid-October.

Croon himself was hit in the arm near Bernburg by a musket ball. As a result of the injury and the unfortunate campaign, he asked his former commander Piccolomini from the camp in Bernburg, now in Spanish service, for another use for himself and his regiment. In December he recommended him to Walter Leslie at the Viennese court for a new position. In January 1645, Croon was back in Bohemia and was stationed as city commander in Pilsen. He could leave active field service with it. Part of his regiment under Bartolomeo Strassoldo was placed in Pardubice and successfully defended this city against Swedish attacks in October. Pilsen could also be asserted against the Swedes, Croon remained stationed there for the following years and had the city's neglected defenses expanded.

In August 1647, Croon and his regiment supported the imperial reconnaissance in the run-up to the cavalry battle near Triebl . His and two Croatian regiments ordered to Pilsen made it possible for the imperial under General Holzappel to know exactly about the Swedish movements and for the Swedes to lose more than 1,000 men on August 22 at the nearby town of Triebl . In the run-up to the battle, at Holzappel's instructions, Croon had additional powder made for the imperial family in Pilsen. On October 25, 1647, shortly after the main imperial army had withdrawn, Croon recaptured the Königswarter Schanze before Eger from the Swedes. He was then supposed to block the Bohemian border town and fortress of Eger, conquered by the Swedes in July, in order to regain it for the imperialists through starvation, but he was only able to seal off the city completely at the beginning of winter. Eger was not long from the fall when the Swedes sent General Königsmarck with strong cavalry to relieve the fortress at the end of March 1648 . Königsmarck broke Croon's blockade between Wunsiedel and Waldsassen and on April 6th brought 300 wagons of provisions and 100 head of cattle to the starving city.

Emperor Ferdinand III. had instructed Croon to strengthen the cities of Elbogen and Falkenau against possible Swedish attacks from the Upper Palatinate . In fact, Königsmarck penetrated Bohemia in June 1648, conquered the cities of Taus and Bischofteinitz , the castle Beschau and, after several days of bombardment, finally also Falkenau. On the other hand, he found the city of Elbogen to be too fortified and withdrew from there. On July 22nd, Königsmarck appeared unexpectedly in front of Pilsen with 2500 riders. He did not attack the city, but rode on to Bela , where he picked up 600 abandoned infantrymen. Croon's crew was not strong enough to effectively limit Königsmarck's actions. He moved with his entire troop via Rakonitz to Prague, which he attacked surprisingly on July 26th, taking over the Lesser Town . The Peace of Westphalia at the end of October ended the fighting in Bohemia. During the subsequent downsizing of the imperial troops, all dragoon regiments, with the exception of Croon's own, were disbanded.

General and Czech military commander

After the end of the Thirty Years War, Croon remained in the imperial service. In order to enforce the peace provisions, he was commissioned from June to October 1650 in Erfurt and other Swedish-occupied cities to ensure the evacuation of the places by the Swedish garrisons. In October he was appointed commander of Eger and finally in November of that year he was promoted to baron under the name of Johann Freiherr von der Cron , which was associated with admission to the Bohemian gentry . Until then he called himself Jan de la Croon . In 1651 he acquired real estate in Bohemia with the place Zahořany bei Leitmeritz and its surroundings, and he was also awarded the title of court war councilor . In 1652 he was appointed commander of Prague and deputy military commander of Bohemia and promoted to sergeant- general. In 1653 he became the owner of the previous Waldstein regiment, for which he handed over his old dragoon regiment to Peter de Buschiere, which would continue to exist under changing names until the end of Austria-Hungary in 1918.

In Eger and Prague, too, he was extremely active in expanding the defenses of the cities; in addition, as deputy military commander, he oversaw the maintenance and expansion of fortifications throughout Bohemia. After the Imperial forces entered the Northern War on the side of Poland against the Swedes in 1657, Croon was responsible for recruiting into Bohemia. In the same year after the capture of Krakow by his troops, Melchior von Hatzfeldt demanded that Croon be placed under him, who was to take command of the city. The Viennese court refused, however, because they considered croon to be indispensable in Bohemia. In the war against the Turks in 1663/64 he was responsible for the passage of German auxiliary troops to Hungary. In the last year of his life he was promoted to Lieutenant Field Marshal . Jan van der Croon died on November 6, 1665 in Prague and was buried there in St. Thomas Church.

Possessions

The Trinity Church in Zahořany

In 1651 Croon had the place Zahořany (today part of Křešice ) and the surrounding communities Horní and Dolní Týnec and Řepčice (today districts of Třebušín ), next to Lovečkovice , Tašov , Řetouň (today part of Malečov ), Valtířov (today part of Velké Březno ) and other locations. In 1663 he bought Divice (now part of Vinařice u Loun ) south of Laun . In Prague he owned two houses on the Lesser Town, one on the site of today's Palais Liechtenstein on the island of Kampa on the banks of the Vltava, the other on the Lesser Town Ring , which his heirs converted into today's Palais Kaiserstein around 1700.

With his fortune, Croon donated the construction of the Trinity Church in Zahořany, which was completed in 1657, and the design of the chapel for Mary Magdalene in the cloister of the monastery and pilgrimage site of Svatá Hora . In 1662 he donated the baroque fencing of the baptismal font of the Martinus Church to his hometown , which still bears his coat of arms to this day.

Reception and legend

In his hometown of Weert there is now the “Jan van der Croonstraat”.

In later historical considerations in his homeland from the middle of the 18th century, Jan van der Croon was often confused with Johann von Werth , who has the same first name in Dutch and whose last name is similar to Croon's birthplace. The fact that both come from neighboring regions, Croon from Limburg and Werth from the Lower Rhine , may have contributed to the confusion . Both also share a similar curriculum vitae with the rise from simpler circumstances to general and the elevation into the Bohemian nobility. The legend also arose in Weert that van der Croon was viceroy ("onderkoning") of Bohemia, a position that did not even exist, but to which his actually important post as vice military commander was wrongly upgraded.

In the 19th century, the author Josef Habets in particular advanced the processing of the mix-up. Nevertheless, some legends persisted, such as the alleged title of "onderkoning", which Josef Habets regarded as a synonym for the military command in Bohemia. Existing stories about Johann von Werth were even transferred to Jan van der Croon. In 1857, for example, the Dutch writer Emile Seipgens published a story about the shoemaker's servant Jan from Weert, who was once rejected as too poor by the beautiful woman Hanna to return to Weert as a general in 1635, where he met Hanna again, who recognized him and says to him " Oh, when ik dat could have weten " ("Oh, if I had known"). This story about Jan en Hanna was taken almost directly from the Cologne saga Jan un Griet zu Johann von Werth and moved from Cologne to Weert.

family

Croon was married twice, his first marriage to Margaretha von Birnbach, after whose death in 1663 he married Margaretha Blandina, née Mercenary von Söldenhofen and widow of his former regimental member Ernst von Schützen. Both marriages remained childless, which is why Croon had already adopted his younger brother Franz in 1662 and made him his heir. Since he died only a few weeks after him, the inheritance passed to his only daughter Franziska Blandina van der Croon († 1701), who later married Franz Helfried von Kaiserstein and had three daughters with him. The eldest daughter Barbara married Leopold Wilhelm von Waldstein and brought Zahořany into the marriage as a dowry, but Leopold Wilhelm sold the estate in autumn 1703.

Franziska Blandina was a granddaughter of Jan's second wife Margarethe Blandina, who was related to him before the wedding as the mother-in-law of his brother Franz. His brother's wife, Maria Blandina, thus became Jan's stepdaughter. After Franz's death, she married Hilfgott von Kuefstein for the second time, who thereby became Franziska's stepfather. Kuefstein was a brother-in-law of Johann von Werth, who had married Hilfgott's sister Susanna Maria in his third marriage. Susanna Maria later married Johann Ernst Gottfried von Schütz and Leipoldsheim, a son of Margaretha Blandina and thus stepson Jan van der Croons, in her fourth and last marriage. Ernst Gottfried took over from Werth's heirs also his original rule Benatek . There is therefore an extensive connection between Johann von Werth and Jan van der Croon via the Kuefstein family.

literature

• Emile Haanen: Jan van der Croon . In: De Maasgouw: tijdschrift voor Limburgse geschiedenis en oudheidkunde . tape 119 , 2000, pp. 243–256 (Dutch, showeert.nl [PDF]).
• Bernd Warlich: Croon, Jan Freiherr van der. In: The Thirty Years' War in personal testimonies, chronicles and reports ; accessed on March 6, 2021

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h} Emile Haanen: Jan van der Croon . In: De Maasgouw: tijdschrift voor Limburgse geschiedenis en oudheidkunde . tape 119 , 2000, pp. 243–256 (Dutch, showeert.nl [PDF]).
2. ↑ J. Verzijl: Croon (Jan baron van der). In: Philipp Christiaan Molhuysen , Petrus Johannes Blok : Nieuw Nederlandsch Biografisch Woordenboek . (NNBW), Verlag AW Sijthoff's Uitgevers-Maatschappij, Leiden, 1933, Vol. 9, Sp. 183, ( online , Dutch)
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n} Emile Haanen: De militaire levensloop van Jan van der Croon. A buttoned description. In: Stichting Historisch Onderzoek Weert. Retrieved March 6, 2021 (Dutch). 
4. ↑ ^{a b c} Emile Haanen: Van Jan van der Croon, listening to voornoemd article. In: Stichting Historisch Onderzoek Weert. Retrieved March 6, 2021 (Dutch). 
5. ↑ Otto Elster : The Piccolomini regiments during the 30 Years War especially the Cuirassier Regiment Alt-Piccolomini, regular troops of the kuk Dragoon Regiment No. 6, Prince Albrecht of Prussia. According to the files in the archives at Schloss Nachod by O. Elster . Seidel, Vienna 1903, p. 112 .
6. ↑ Bernd Warlich: Kuefstein, Johann Wilhelm Freiherr von. In: The Thirty Years' War in personal testimonies, chronicles and reports ; accessed on March 6, 2021
7. ↑ ^{a b c} Emilian Kleeberg: K. uk Dragoon Regiment Johannes Josef Prince of Liechtenstein No. 10, 1640-1893. St. Kossowski, Tarnopol 1893, p. 6-7 .
8. ↑ ^{a b c d} Bernd Warlich: Croon, Jan Freiherr van der. In: The Thirty Years' War in personal testimonies, chronicles and reports ; accessed on March 6, 2021
9. ^ Lothar Höbelt: From Nördlingen to Jankau. Imperial strategy and warfare 1634–1645. Heeresgeschichtliches Museum, Vienna 2016, ISBN 978-3-902551-73-3 , pp. 351–352.
10. ↑ Ernst Höfer: The end of the Thirty Years War. Strategy and image of war. Böhlau, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 1997, ISBN 3-412-04297-8 . Pp. 81-83.
11. ↑ Ernst Höfer: The end of the Thirty Years War. Strategy and image of war. Böhlau, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 1997, ISBN 3-412-04297-8 . Pp. 95-96.
12. ↑ Ernst Höfer: The end of the Thirty Years War. Strategy and image of war. Böhlau, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 1997, ISBN 3-412-04297-8 . Pp. 171-172.
13. ↑ Franz Alexander Heber : Bohemia's castles, forts and mountain castles. tape 5 . Prague 1847, p. 35 .
14. ↑ Ernst Höfer: The end of the Thirty Years War. Strategy and image of war. Böhlau, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 1997, ISBN 3-412-04297-8 . Pp. 216-217.
15. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Václav Zeman, Jakub Pátek: Zahořany / Zahorzan and its owners in a short historical review. In: Terra Sacra Incognita. Retrieved March 6, 2021 . 
16. ^ Josef Habets: Jan Van Weert, en Jan Van Der Croon: eene bijdrage tot de geschiedenis van den dertigjarigen oorlog . JJ Romen, Roermond 1862 (Dutch, full text in the Google book search).
17. ↑ Kuefstein family tree. Retrieved March 6, 2021 . 
18. ^ Rudolf Johann von Meraviglia-Crivelli : J. Siebmacher's large and general book of arms, fourth volume, ninth section. The Bohemian nobility . Bauer & Raspe, Nuremberg 1886, p. 169 .