Joseph Anton von Simbschen

Baron Joseph Anton von Simbschen (born October 6, 1746 Siebendorf in Transylvania , † January 14, 1820 Vienna ), was an Imperial-Austrian military master in the coalition wars .

Life

origin

Joseph Anton was born in 1746 in Siebendorf near Bistritz in Transylvania. His father, Colonel Karl Joseph, came from an old Transylvanian family, had been in command of the Slavonian border guards since 1753 , became the second owner of Infantry Regiment No. 53 and died in 1763 as a lieutenant field marshal and commander of the Timisoara border troops.

Early military career

In 1761 Joseph Anton joined the Infantry Regiment No. 26 "Puebla de Portugalo" as a cadet. In 1762 he was appointed lieutenant in Hussar Regiment No. 13 "Szécheny". In the War of the Bavarian Succession (1778/79) he served as a captain in the general staff under Feldzeugmeister Karl Leopold vom Stain . He took part in the campaign in Saxony in 1778 and 1779 and attended the clearing of the entrenchments at Gießhübl and the meeting in Weißkirchen. After the Peace of Teschen he was transferred to the Ottochan Border Infantry Regiment. In June 1783 he was promoted to major and in 1786 naval commander in Zengg, where he made a valuable contribution to building the fleet. Shortly before the outbreak of the Turkish War, Archduke Franz toured the Croatian coastal country. Major Simbschen, who mastered the Serbo-Croatian language, served as an interpreter and in the spring of 1788 as the companion of the future heir to the throne to Fiume.

After the outbreak of war against the Turks in 1788 he was assigned to the General Staff. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel (1789) and colonel (1790) and quartermaster general in quick succession . He took part in the capture of Dubicza and Novi, then he fought on August 9, 1788 near Begorstan and organized until July 11, 1790 the ceremony of Czettin. After the end of the war he came at short notice as a commander in the 1st Banal Border Infantry Regiment in the Banat .

Coalition wars

When the First Coalition War broke out in April 1792, he came to the Italian Mediterranean coast as Quartermaster General of the Lombard Army under Feldzeugmeister Joseph Nikolaus de Vins . On December 9, 1795 he received the patent for major general with rank of May 22, 1794. Until 1795 he organized the battles at Dego , Savona and Loano as chief of staff , and he also led the conquest of the fortifications of Rivièra di Ponente, at San Giacomo , Vado, Finale and Madonna della neve. On June 24, 1795 he claimed the position at Giuliano Torrente on the Ligurian coast.

In the 1796 campaign he took part in the battle of Wetzlar (June 15 and 16) and in the battles near Kirchheim, Friedberg (Hesse) , Limburg an der Lahn and Neuwied , transferred to Germany under Archduke Karl's command . He defended the fortress of Mainz against the French for nine weeks until the relief on September 9th , threw back the enemy near Wiesbaden and took Diez and Bingen .

In the 1797 campaign he led the reserve corps, with which he won the battles at Limburg, Wiesbaden and Königstein, lastly he kept Frankfurt a. M. before the looting by the French.

On March 25 and 26, 1799, he distinguished himself as the commander of an independent corps in the battle of Liptingen-Stockach , then advanced to Kehl on the Rhine and drove the enemy from Rottweil , Offenburg and Freudenstadt . At Stein he crossed the Rhine with Archduke Charles' avant-garde and attended the battles near Winterthur and Andelfingen. On June 7, 1799, he took part with his troops in the First Battle of Zurich .

After uniting with the Russians under Marshal Suvorov , he covered his retreat. Simbschen defended the canton of Uri, fought for the Teufelsbrücke and then went back through Graubünden to Glarus . With the patent from March 6, 1800 he was promoted to field marshal lieutenant on September 10, 1799 and acted as inspector of the German imperial troops.

In the winter campaign of 1800 he commanded a detached corps of 10,000 men in the Bamberg and Forchheim area . He threw back the opposing troops under Général de division Augereau at Höchst, Sprenglingen in the Spessart , at Geroldshofen and Pommersfelden . Then he defeated a French division under General Duhesme near Neunkirchen am Brand , covered the upper Palatinate and lifted the siege of Würzburg .

In the campaign of 1805 he served as a division general in Italy, between October 29 and 31 he commanded the right wing under Archduke Charles in the battle of Caldiero . On October 28, 1805, General of the Cavalry Count von Bellegarde ordered him to defend the trenches on the heights of Colognola Alta.

Simbschen were subject to 8 infantry regiments, 5 border guard battalions and 8 squadrons. In the battle against the French Italian army under Marshal Massena , he successfully defended the entrenchments from Belfiore di Porcile to Ilasi for three days against the stubborn attacks of the French division General Molitor .

Honor and ranks

For his military services in Italy he was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Maria Theresa Order on May 28, 1806 . On November 18, 1806, he was appointed owner of the 43rd Infantry Regiment in recognition of his 45 years of service. In 1806 he was appointed a division general in Agram, where he stayed for barely a year, because in June 1807 he was promoted to commanding general in Slavonia . In his new official residence in Peterwardein he succeeded the elderly Feldzeugmeister Freiherrn von Geneyne , who had held this position for sixteen years. In July 1809 Emperor Franz appointed him President of the General Military Appeal Court against his will , and on August 3 he was promoted to Feldzeugmeister . When Regiment No. 43 was dissolved as a result of the Peace of Schönbrunn , the Kaiser gave him the ownership of Infantry Regiment No. 48, which had just become free on November 23, 1809.

Retirement and indictment

In March 1808 Simbschen sent a trust to Belgrade , which on April 8th got in touch with Kara Đorđe Petrović , the leader of the Serbian struggle for freedom, and paid large sums of money for the uprising. When the Serbs were defeated by the Turks at Nisch in June 1809, Kara Đorđe asked for Serbia to be placed under Austrian protection, which would hand over the Danube line with the fortresses of Belgrade, Semendria and Schabatz to the Austrian troops. In order not to upset Russia and the Porte, Metternich had to reject the proposal. This failure also shook Simbschen's position; an imperial handwritten letter dated October 24, 1810 relieved him from the Peterwardein General Command and summoned him to Vienna. In November 1810 his personal application for retirement was approved by the emperor.

He was arrested in August 1812, but it was not until December 1813 that the court martial in Vienna brought charges of alleged embezzlement of funds. It soon turned out that his entire fortune amounted to only about 36,000 guilders, mostly from his wife Rosalie's former marriage property and previous savings. Staff auditor Gavenda tried to relieve Simbschen of his position as Feldzeugmeister, to deprive him of the Maria Theresa Order and pension and to impose a four-year prison sentence on him. On July 12, 1815, the court martial sentenced him to one year arrest. Simbschen presented Prince zu Schwarzenberg with a justification that invalidated the court war court's machinations against his person. Simbschen was only reinstated in the old Feldzeugmeister batch with an annual pension of 4,000 guilders on August 1, 1818, and the Maria Theresa Order including the former pension was reimbursed. He only enjoyed his rehabilitation for a short time and died in Vienna in 1820 at the age of 74.

family

Baron Joseph Anton married Rosalie von Wagner, a landowner's daughter from the Egerlande, in 1782, and their children later all became officers:

• Joseph (1783–1824), Colonel (1814)
• Ferdinand (1795–1873), Lieutenant Field Marshal (1849)
• Karl (1794–1870), Lieutenant Field Marshal (1854)

literature

• Franz Ilwof :  Simbschen, Josef Anton Freiherr von . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 54, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1908, pp. 345-348.