Jean Victor de Constant Rebecque

Jean Victor de Constant Rebecque

Jean Victor de Constant Rebecque (born September 22, 1773 in Geneva , † June 12, 1850 in Schönfeld , Silesia ) was a Swiss soldier who was in French, Prussian, British and Dutch services. He later became governor of the Flemish provinces .

family

He came from Switzerland and was the son of Samuël de Constant d'Hermenche and his mother Louise-Catherine (née Gallatin). The father was an officer in the Dutch service . In 1789 he married Isabella Catharina Anna Jacoba, Baroness van Lynden-Hoevelaken (1768-1836). His sons were Théodore Guillaume (1803–1858), Charles Théodore (1805–1870) and Willem Anne (1807–1862). The daughter Louise Isabelle (1808-1852) was married to Sylvius Wilhelm Graf von Pückler on Schönfeld. One cousin was Benjamin Constant .

Life

He first served in the French army from 1790 and was a lieutenant in the Swiss Guard in 1792 . After surviving the massacre of the Guard in the Tuileries Storm, he entered Dutch service. He fought against the French invaders in the campaigns of 1793 and 1794.

In connection with the French occupation of the country, he fled to England. According to some information, he then served in Prussian services. He entered the British military service as a lieutenant colonel in 1805 and was assigned to William of Orange-Nassau , the future king of the Netherlands, as a military advisor and aide-de-camp . With this he was deployed between 1811 and 1813 in the Spanish theater of war, where the Prince was Adjutant Wellingtons .

After the return of the Nassau-Orange to the now united Netherlands after the defeat of Napoleon in 1814, he was ranked Major General and Chief of Staff Wilhelm, who became the commander in chief of the new Dutch army. As such, Constant Rebecque played a significant role in building a functioning army under difficult conditions. After decades of belonging to the French sphere of influence and the service of numerous soldiers under Napoleon, the loyalty of many units was uncertain. Added to this was the distrust between the Catholic and French-speaking residents and the Dutch and Protestant citizens of the country. He managed to build an army of 40,000 men within a few weeks. The majority consisted of Dutch-speaking soldiers. However, only about half of the army was made up of regular soldiers. The rest were poorly trained militiamen.

During the summer campaign of 1815 , Prince Wilhelm commanded a corps of the Anglo-Dutch army under the command of Wellington. Constant continued to serve the prince as chief of staff. This lessened the danger that the overestimating prince posed to the overall strategy. Wellington also saw the Dutch units as unreliable and incapable of fighting against Constant Rebecque's insurance. Whenever possible, he mixed British, Hanoverian and Dutch troops.

In the run-up to the battle of Quatre-Bras , he had received the order on June 15 to gather the 1st Corps under the command of the Prince at Nivelles . On site, however, he came to the conclusion that the location was not suitable for the tasks. He recognized the strategic importance of Quatre-Bras for the French and, despite orders to the contrary, sent about 4,000 men there. These were mostly soldiers from the German Nassau ancestral lands under the orders of Karl Bernhard von Sachsen-Weimar . In doing so, he at least made Napoleon's plans more difficult. The French troops could be held up until Wellington could intervene with the main force in the fighting. He also took part in the Battle of Waterloo and once again helped Wellington in a critical situation with his orders.

From 1819 he was governor of the two Flemish provinces. After the defeat of the Dutch troops by the rebellious Belgians , he signed the surrender of Hasselt and Leuven in 1830 . He retired in 1837. He was promoted to baron in 1846.

literature

• Christopher Summerville: Who was Who at Waterloo. A biography of the battle. Harlow, 2009, pp. 90-93.
• Peter Hofschroer: Waterloo 1815: Quatre Bras, Ligny . Barnsley, 2005, p. 57.
• Bernard Cornwell: Waterloo. A battle changes Europe. Reinbek, 2015, pp. 80–83.

Web links

• Benoît de Montmollin: Constant, Jean-Victor (de Rebecque). In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .