Jean-Louis Raduit de Souches

Jean-Louis Raduit de Souches

Count Jean-Louis Raduit de Souches (born August 16, 1608 in La Rochelle (now the Charente-Maritime department , France ), † August 12, 1682 in Jevišovice , Moravia ) was an imperial general.

Life

Born in La Rochelle as the son of the noble Protestant family Jean Raduit Herr von Bares and his wife Margaretha von Bourdigalle, he left France after the Huguenot War in 1629 and entered the Swedish military service. In 1635 he was promoted to captain and in 1639 to colonel . Because of the opposition to the Swedish general Torsten Stålhandske , he left for France.

Imperial military service in Moravia

In 1642 he joined the imperial army following the intercession of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm and distinguished himself in the Thirty Years' War in Moravia . For his bravery during the siege of Olomouc he was appointed colonel of a dragoon regiment by the emperor. On March 14, 1645 he was appointed commander of Brno . The successful defense of this city (May 4th to August 23rd) against a superior Swedish army under General Torstensson , which was reinforced in mid-July 1645 by a cavalry corps of Prince Rákoczi , brought Souches the highest recognition. In April 1646 he succeeded in recapturing the castles of Nikolsburg and Mailberg . For his achievements, Souches was promoted to general field sergeant on October 27, 1645, and on May 2, 1646, to become a baron. Emperor Ferdinand III. appointed him commanding general in Moravia in October 1645 and granted him 30,000 gold ducats with which Souches acquired the Jevišovce estate and a house in Brno in 1649. Previously, he had distinguished himself in the years 1646–1648 in regaining the places occupied by the Swedes in Lower Austria and Moravia (see Siege of Korneuburg (1646) ). As a native of France he remained suspicious of the upper imperial command and was watched with suspicion. On September 8, 1648 he was appointed Lieutenant Field Marshal . After the Great War, he was appointed commander at the military border and strengthened the Leopoldov fortress .

Fight against the Swedes and Prince Rakoczy

From 1657 to 1659 he fought in the Second Northern War and took part in the campaigns against the Swedes in Poland. In 1657, under Raimund von Montecuccoli , he commanded the imperial cavalry and was involved in the conquest of Krakow . He soon took over the command himself and from July 1658 participated in the siege of Thorn under the Polish hetman Lubomirski . On January 12, 1658 he was appointed Feldzeugmeister and Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial Artillery. In 1659 he led an imperial corps of 14,000 men to Pomerania , occupied Greifenhagen and besieged Stettin , where he had to break off the attack on November 16. In 1660 he took over the supreme command to suppress an uprising under Prince George II Rákóczi . At the end of August 1660 he could not prevent the surrender of the garrison of Grosswardein to the Turks. In 1661 he was appointed as the successor to the late Colonel Ogilvy in command of the Spielberg Fortress in Brno, and on March 5, 1663 he was elevated to the rank of count.

In the Turkish war

In the Turkish War of 1663/1664 he commanded the Northern Habsburg Army in Upper Hungary . He was promoted to Field Marshal on 20 January 1664 and was given the command of a strong corps with which he is in March before Bojnice reinforced with Hungarian auxiliary troops under Stephen Cobary and Mihai Bercsényi and on 17 April 1664, Turkish garrison the fort Neutra to Forced surrender. On May 8, his troops stood in front of the Levencz fortress , where on July 19, 1664 he was able to destroy an Ottoman relief army under Kücük Mehmed Pascha. This tactical victory strengthened the position of the main imperial army under Montecuccoli, who won a great victory at the beginning of August in the battle of Mogersdorf (St. Gotthard), which forced the Turks to make the peace of Vasvár on August 10th .

Command on the Rhine and recall

De Souches was appointed imperial chamberlain and appointed to the court war council. In addition, he later became commander of Komorn, commander of the Slavonian military border and temporarily city commander of Vienna .

In 1673, under Field Marshal Montecuccoli, he moved against the French on the Rhine and in the Netherlands . In particular in the battle of Seneffe (August 11, 1674) he damaged the undertakings of the Prince of Orange with his suspicious hesitation, which was explained by his stubbornness and insubordination, so that he was recalled. Souches died in 1682 on his Moravian estate in Jevišovce and was buried behind the high altar of the St. James' Church in Brno. The male line of his sex died out in 1736.

family

From his first marriage to Anna Elisabeth von Hofkirchen he had four children:

• Johann Ludwig Raduit de Souches ∞ Eva Eleonora Nothaft von Wernberg
• Karl Ludwig Raduit de Souches ∞ Maria Anna von Puchheim
• Anna Dorothea Caterina Raduit de Souches ∞ Count Karl Maximilian von Thun-Valsassina
• Eleonora Raduit de Souches ∞ Karl Joseph Ignaz von Puchheim

The son came from his second marriage to Anna Maria Salome von Lynden and Reckheim

• Ferdinand Ludwig Raduit de Souches

literature

• Petr Klapka: Jean Louis Ratuit de Souches (1608-1682). De la Rochelle au service des Habsbourg. Contribution à l'étude des migrations nobiliaires francophones dans les pays de la Couronne de Bohême aux xvii ^e -xviii ^e siècles, Honoré Champion, Paris 2015, 492 p.
• Bernhard von Poten :  Souches, Ludwig Raduit de . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 34, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1892, pp. 698-700.
• Carl Adam Schweigerd: Austria's heroes and military leaders. Volume 2, Google Books, p. 192ff .
• Christian d 'Elvert: The Swedes before Brno: A section of the Thirty Years War. For the celebration of the defense of Brno against the Swedes two hundred years ago. Brno 1845, digitized .

Web links

Commons : Louis Raduit de Souches  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Louis Raduit de Souches at geneall.net.

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b c d e f} Souches [Susa], Louis Raduit Graf de [Ludwig Freiherr Radwig de]; Field Marshal [1608 - 6.8.1682]. In: 30jaehrigerkrieg.de, accessed on August 16, 2019.
2. ↑ Ehren- und Gedächtnuß-Statua (honor and commemorative statue), which was cast by Ertz and erected in the Brno parish church of St. Jacobi, together with an attached grave inscription , digital copy .
3. ↑ The serene world. Or a brief genealogical, historical and political description, mostly of all eminent people living now (etc.) together with a brief description of the most noble knightly orders in Europe. Volume 2, Hamburg 1701, p. 622 (chapter “Counts of Reckheim”) at Google Books .