Joseph de Montclar

Joseph de Pons et de Guimera, Baron de Montclar (1625–1690), 65 years

Joseph de Pons et de Guimera, baron de Montclar (* 1625 Montclar, Catalonia, Spain, † 1690 in Landau in the Palatinate ) was a French lieutenant-général under King Louis XIV.

Live and act

Joseph de Montclar was in command of the Alsatian army during the Dutch War . He led this under the command of Prince Louis de Condé and Marshal François de Créquy . At the end of 1676, Louis XIV and Louvois ordered the destruction of Haguenau , which Montclar carried out the following January. In 1678 he ended the campaign in Alsace by forcing Illkirch and Graffenstaden to surrender. As a reward, he was appointed military governor of Alsace in 1680 and received the personal title of nobility de Hohlandsbourg .

In the years of peace that followed, he developed a nursery for fruit trees on the land of the Marquis of Uxelles, Nicolas Chalon du Blé , in Kintzheim and Haguenau .

On November 10, 1688, at the beginning of the War of the Palatinate Succession , Montclar advanced with 6000 soldiers to the right bank of the Rhine. His mission was to burn down all the regions that refused to submit to the last building and to deport the inhabitants to France. He led the French army to Heilbronn and took part of the Palatinate, a campaign intended to intimidate the princes of the Holy Roman Empire , and destroyed large cities in Baden and Württemberg . The high point of its destruction was the burning down of Donauwörth . But Louis XIV's plan to break all resistance through pillage and paralyzing terror did not work. After tough negotiations, Montclar spared some cities against the payment of high contributions , for example the university city of Tübingen after negotiations with Johann Osiander and with the mayor Achatius Wolff being taken hostage .

1688 he received from King Louis XIV. And the military engineer Marshal Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban the job, the Landau stronghold to modernize. The old city walls were demolished and with the help of 16 royal battalions under the command of General Montclar and around 14,000 construction workers from the area, the renovation began in the spring of 1688, which was completed after three years.

Also Speyer was to be redesigned. Demolition work began on January 30, 1689, and the old city walls were torn down. Montclar had the cathedral dean and bishop Heinrich Hartard von Rollingen informed on May 27, 1689 that he had received the order "to set fire to the city, including all the churches and monasteries, except the high cathedral".

Above all, the destruction of the cathedral was a high priority for General Montclar. This massive stone building could not easily be set on fire. General Montclar made a seemingly generous offer to the residents to stack all their belongings under the roof of the cathedral that they could not take with them. The church will be spared. "Since there were by far not enough wagons to be found to take away the household appliances and furniture, everything that was left over was brought into the nave of the cathedral, which was soon filled with it," reports a Magister Hofmann. Eight German kings and emperors were buried in the Speyer Cathedral, including Rudolf von Habsburg. Their graves were broken into by the French on May 31st and the bones scattered in the area. Then they set fire to the abundant property in the nave and burned the building and the whole city down. Due to the tremendous heat, the vault in the western part was brittle and collapsed. The eastern part, however, withstood the flames.

Only a few months later he died in nearby Landau in the Palatinate in 1690 while inspecting the construction of the fortress. He was buried near the choir of the fortress chapel. The magnificent tomb that adorned his grave was relocated in 1959 and now stands next to the French gate of this fortress.

Since 1688 General de Montclar was a Knight of the Order of the Holy Spirit , the highest French knightly order, which is also depicted on his grave coat of arms.

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  Tomb for Joseph de Montclar at the French Gate in Landau in the Palatinate

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  Epitaph

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  Coat of arms from the grave

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  Order of the Holy Spirit

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  Plan of the Landau Fortress from 1702

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  French gate of the Landau fortress

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  The partially destroyed Speyer Cathedral around 1750

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Jan von Flocken: How the Sun King devastated Germany.
2. ^ Johann Osiander: Description of some of his deeds on TÜpedia.
3. ↑ The Sun King and his murder boys in the Palatinate War of Succession in the Palatinate

Lieutenant-général (France)