Octavio Piccolomini (1599–1656)

Ottavio Piccolomini, portrait in Skokloster Castle

Octavio Piccolomini , also Ottavio (born November 11, 1599 in Florence , † August 11, 1656 in Vienna ) was Duke of Amalfi and a Knight of Malta . In the Thirty Years War he served as Imperial General Wallenstein and commander of his bodyguard , but turned against him in 1634. After Wallenstein's murder in 1634, Emperor Ferdinand II rewarded him with the rule of Nachod in Eastern Bohemia. In 1650 Emperor Ferdinand III raised him . in the imperial princes .

Octavio Piccolomini has remained a well-known figure to this day , not least because of one of the leading roles in Schiller's trilogy of drama Wallenstein .

Origin and family

The Italian noble family Piccolomini came from Rome and later settled in Siena . Octavio Piccolomini came from the Tuscan family branch of the Piccolomini-Pieri, who was founded by Pope Pius II (Enea Silvio Piccolomini) around 1450 with the adoption of the children of his niece Antonia Pieri and which went out in 1757 with the eponymous Octavio Piccolomini . His father Silvio Piccolomini (1543–1610) was a chief chamberlain and field master of the Grand Duke of Tuscany . His mother Violante Gerini came from a Florentine patrician family. Octavio's brothers were Enea Piccolomini (1586–1619), who was in imperial military service, and Ascanio Piccolomini (1597–1671), Archbishop of Siena since 1628.

In 1636 Octavio married Princess Maria Dorotea Carolina de Ligne -Barbançon (1622–1642). In his second marriage in 1651, he married Maria Benigna Franziska von Sachsen-Lauenburg , daughter of Duke Julius Heinrich von Sachsen-Lauenburg , who also belonged to Wallenstein's closest circle, but, unlike Piccolomini, ultimately remained loyal to him and was arrested for it, and of Anna Magdalena von Lobkowitz . His marriages were childless.

Military career

Octavio Piccolomini. Detail from the painting “Der Posto bei Preßnitz” by Pieter Snayers , Heeresgeschichtliches Museum , Vienna .

Piccolomini is considered to be one of the best examples of the rise of a general in the Thirty Years' War, which he was one of the few who participated and helped shape from beginning to end. At the age of seventeen in Lombardy he joined the Spanish army of the Habsburg King Philip IV . In 1619 he protected the city of Vienna from the Bohemian rebels under Heinrich Matthias von Thurn in the wake of the "Florentine Regiment" and in 1620 fought on the White Mountain as Rittmeister under Bucquoy , who became his first teacher. After Bucquoy's death in 1621, Piccolomini entered the cuirassier regiment of Count Pappenheim and rose to lieutenant colonel . He moved to the Valtellina War with Pappenheim in 1625 . While Pappenheim returned to Germany in 1626 to fight the peasant uprising under Stefan Fadinger in Upper Austria , Piccolomini stayed with his garrison in Milan .

Coat of arms of Ottavio Piccolomini Pieri d'Aragona

In 1627 Piccolomini entered the service of Wallenstein as an imperial colonel . At the same time he was the commander of his bodyguard and was entrusted by him with diplomatic missions. Shortly before and after Wallenstein's deposition, Piccolomini marched back to Italy, where he intervened in the War of the Mantuan Succession . When Wallenstein accepted the second generalate, Piccolomini was not there straight away; he was only back in Wallenstein's camp at Lützen . Since Pappenheim was killed in battle, Piccolomini immediately succeeded him and rode seven more attacks in which five horses are said to have been shot from under the saddle, while he was only slightly injured. After the battle of Lützen, Piccolomini was promoted to sergeant- general. After a successful battle near Steinau an der Oder , he was appointed general of the cavalry .

In the dispute between Emperor Ferdinand II and Wallenstein, Piccolomini was on the side of the emperor, as Wallenstein's military-diplomatic double play was most critically observed by his multinational officer corps, especially by the Italians and Spaniards. Piccolomini signed the first Pilsen lapel as reassurance for Wallenstein, to prove the loyalty of his highest officers. Piccolomini reported about it to the imperial court, whereby he achieved that Wallenstein was finally ostracized at the imperial court. At the same time he sat together with Gallas , Aldringen and Marradas at the head of the plot against the generalissimo. After Wallenstein and his brother-in-law Trčka were murdered, Piccolomini was rewarded in 1634 with the Order of the Golden Fleece , money and the great rule of Náchod in northeast Bohemia worth 215,000 guilders.

In the second half of the Thirty Years' War Piccolomini was involved in almost all successful actions of the imperial, such as the victory at Nördlingen in September 1634. From 1635 he fought against the French in the service of the Spanish Habsburgs. On July 4, 1635 he succeeded in relieving the city of Leuven in the Spanish Netherlands , which had been besieged by the French and Dutch. In 1636 he invaded northern France together with Johann von Werth , forced the crossing over the Somme , took Compiègne and threatened Paris . However, this opportunity was not used strategically. Piccolomini achieved his greatest battle success on June 17, 1639 near Diedenhofen in Lorraine, where he destroyed a French army under Maréchal Feuquières . For this victory in one of the last great battles of the Thirty Years' War he was rewarded and enfeoffed with the Duchy of Amalfi by the Spanish King Philip IV (as King of Naples by that name the III.).

In the autumn of 1639 Piccolomini was ordered back to Bohemia to support Archduke Leopold Wilhelm against the Swedes. He succeeded in temporarily driving the Swedes out of Bohemia. 1640 he fought against the Swedes under Banér conquered Hoexter , horrified Freiberg and commanded by the Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in Moravia and Silesia against Torstensson .

When Piccolomini, together with the Bavarian troops under Count Joachim Christian von der Wahl , pursued the Swedes through Anhalt in May 1641 and treated the small country very carefully, Prince Ludwig I of Anhalt-Köthen invited both military leaders to Köthen and probably took Piccolomini in the summer of 1641 joined the Fruitful Society . He gave him the company name of the compelling and the motto to disarm . The little moon diamond (Lunaria annua L.) was assigned to him as an emblem . Piccolomini's entry can be found in the Koethener society book under the number 356. There is also the rhyme law, with which he thanks for the admission:

The little Monraut 'is in a miraculous price' in
which she tore the iron of many a stallion:
The forcing 'I therefore and To disarm is called', have
time the enemy to force me to flow
and to disarm him: I will work 'I prove
it has, forced, had to give way to me a little longer.
But no, I don't force him: it is God who forces him, Who
makes weapons on my keyser.

After several Habsburg defeats, especially after the defeat on November 2, 1642 in the Second Battle of Breitenfeld , in which great losses of soldiers were to be regretted and the war chest was also lost, Piccolomini resigned the supreme command. From 1644 he fought again on the side of the Spaniards against the rebellious Dutch. In 1648, the last year of the war, he was briefly reappointed Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial Bavarian Army and Field Marshal. First he stopped the advance of the Franco-Swedish army on the Inn and a few weeks later was able to inflict one last defeat on the enemy units in the battle of Dachau . Shortly afterwards, the Thirty Years War officially ended.

In 1649/1650 Piccolomini took part as the Imperial Chief Envoy (Principal Commissarius) on the Nuremberg Execution Day, which negotiated the demobilization of the mercenary armies on Reichsboden. In 1650 Emperor Ferdinand III raised him. for the services acquired here in the imperial princehood and enforced Piccolomini's admission with a seat and vote in the Reichstag.

At the age of 57, Piccolomini died in a riding accident on August 11, 1656 with no descendants in Vienna. His body was buried in the Servite Church. But he kept against a tomb. His great-nephew Enea Silvio inherited the reign of Nachod and the imperial princes of the Piccolomini-Pieri line, which died out in 1757 with Octavio Piccolomini (II).

Reign of Nachod

Nachod Castle

On May 4, 1634 Octavio Piccolomini received the Nachod rule, which had previously been confiscated by the emperor, together with the Rýzmburg ( giant castle ) and Třebešov ( Trebeschau ) rule . Since Piccolomini could not be present in Nachod during the war, he appointed his confessor, the Italian priest Paola Orsini, as administrator and the Italian Domenica Brunacci as commander. 1636 he acquired by the Prague Servite Miskolezy with the Vorwerk ujezd. In 1637 he was sold by the Imperial Colonel Stephan de Veruene de S. Mauritio Vestec (Westetz) and Heřmanický Dvůr (Hermanitz) , who had previously owned the Strak von Nedabilitz (Strakové z Nedabylic) , which had been expropriated after the Battle of White Mountain . In 1641 he acquired from Peter Strak von Nedabilitz Šonov . Piccolomini also added these places to his rule Nachod. In 1642 he obtained permission from the emperor to convert the Nachod rule into a family fideikommiss . He also asked permission to write his will in Latin because he spoke neither German nor Czech. Therefore, he also demanded that all submissions from his subjects and the city of Nachod be presented to him in Latin translation. In 1644, at Piccolomini's request, the emperor granted the town of Nachod a fair on Thursday (Tučný čtvrtek) before Ash Wednesday and a weekly grain and cattle market.

After his remarriage in 1650, Octavio Piccolomini chose Náchod Castle as his summer residence. From 1651 to 1655 it was expanded to include the Piccolomino building and redesigned in Baroque style. Carlo Lurago was responsible for the construction management .

As a strict Catholic, Piccolomini pursued the re-Catholicization of the city and the rule of Nachod. As early as 1642 he had appointed the Italian Antonio Liscutini as post- dean or dean , but he was not up to the office due to language difficulties. Therefore Piccolomini appointed two Jesuits . After they had not achieved the set goal - the return of the subordinates to the Catholic faith - by the end of 1650, he made the military available to them. Many residents who were not ready to convert fled to the neighboring Silesian duchies. The Jesuits stayed in Nachod until May 1654. Further recatholicization was to be carried out by the Capuchins . Octavio Piccolomini wanted to build a monastery for them in Nachod at the Glatzer Tor (Kladskà brana) since 1651 . The plans were drawn up by Carlo Lurago in 1656, but could no longer be realized due to Octavio's death.

Patronage

Piccolomini was not only a tried and tested military leader in the service of the Austrian and Spanish Habsburgs, but also an art-loving person who bought paintings everywhere. During his stay in Brussels, where the Cardinal Infante resided, the general paid the painter Daniel Seghers the high sum of 2,162 Pattacons in 1639 for purchases of paintings. Piccolomini maintained further contacts with the painter Jan Lievens , who was friends with Rembrandt , with the imperial chamber painter Cornelius Suttermans and with the north German painter Wolfgang Heimbach . The contacts with the Flemish battle painter Pieter Snayers , from whom he ordered twelve large-format battle paintings for his Nachod Castle, are particularly outstanding . Piccolomini gave the exact size of the picture and gave exact instructions for the representation of the troops involved, so that the paintings have documentary value. This so-called "Piccolomini series" represents the general's greatest successes on the battlefields of the Thirty Years' War. Today it is in the Army History Museum in Vienna. Octavio Piccolomini supported the Servite Order. He contributed large sums of money to the new building of the Servitenkirche in Vienna , which also houses his grave.

Drama character

In Schiller's Wallenstein , the role of Piccolomini's son Max Piccolomini is poetic fiction. However, Octavio Piccolomini had initially adopted his (distant) nephew Joseph (Giuseppe) Silvio Max Piccolomini and designated him as his heir, who, however, fell as a colonel of an imperial cuirassier regiment against the Swedes during Octavio's lifetime in the battle of Jankau on March 6, 1645. In the middle part of Schiller's trilogy, Die Piccolomini , father and son play the leading roles: While Max is wooing Wallenstein's daughter, his father intrigues Octavio against him and moves Colonel Buttler to apostate from the Generalissimo by claiming that Wallenstein once encouraged Buttler, in Vienna to seek his elevation to imperial count, while at the same time he thwarted this there in order to take Butler against the emperor. Buttler, whom Octavio orders to arrest Wallenstein, then appears as the unauthorized initiator of Wallenstein's murder, has his allegiance and him killed, Max throws himself into a hopeless battle and falls. The third part of the trilogy of drama, Wallenstein's Death , ends with the delivery of a letter with an imperial seal by a courier to Octavio, which reads: "To Prince Piccolomini". (Director's instruction: "Octavio is startled and looks painfully at the sky. The curtain falls." )

literature

• Arnold von Weyhe-Eimke: The historical personality of Max Piccolomini in Schiller'schen Wallenstein and its end in the battle of Jankau on March 6, 1645. A historical source study by Arnold von Weyhe-Eimke . Steinhauser & Korb, Pilsen 1870.
• Arnold von Weyhe-Eimke: Octavio Piccolomini as Duke of Amalfi . Steinhauser & Korb, Pilsen 1871 ( online ).
• HM Richter: The Piccolomini . Lüderitz, Berlin 1874.
• Hermann Hallwich :  Piccolomini, Octavio Fürst . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 26, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1888, pp. 95-103.
• Otto Elster : The Piccolomini regiments during the 30 Years War, especially the Alt-Piccolomini Cuirassier Regiment, regular troops of the Austro-Hungarian Dragoon Regiment No. 6, Prince Albrecht of Prussia. According to the files in the archives at Schloss Nachod by O. Elster . Seidel, Vienna 1903.
• Friedrich Parnemann: The correspondence between Generals Gallas, Aldringen and Piccolomini in January and February 1634. Ebering, Berlin 1911.
• Heinrich Bücheler: From Pappenheim to Piccolomini. Six characters from Wallenstein's camp. Sigmaringen 1994, ISBN 3-7995-4240-X .
• Jürgen Woltz: The Imperial Field Marshal Ottavio Piccolomini - a life picture from the time of the Thirty Years War . In: Josef Johannes Schmid (Ed.): Arte & Marte: In memoriam Hans Schmidt. A memorial from his group of students. Volume 2: Articles. Herzberg 2000, ISBN 3-88309-084-0 , pp. 93-145.
• Kathrin Bierther:  Piccolomini, Ottavio. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 20, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-428-00201-6 , pp. 408-410 ( digitized version ).
• Jan Karel Hraše: Dějiny Náchoda 1620–1740. Náchod 1994, ISBN 80-900041-8-0 , pp. 45-56.
• Lydia Baštecká, Ivana Ebelová: Náchod . Náchod 2004, ISBN 80-7106-674-5 , pp. 87, 94–99, 101f.
• Walter F. Kalina: The piccolo series of Pieter Snayer. Twelve battle paintings in the Vienna Army History Museum. In: Viribus Unitis. Annual report 2005 of the Army History Museum. Vienna 2006, pp. 87–116.

Web links

Commons : Octavio Piccolomini  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Works by and about Octavio Piccolomini  in the German Digital Library
• Entry on Octavio Piccolomini (1599–1656) in the Austria Forum  (in the AEIOU Austria Lexicon )
• Josef Myslimír Ludvík : Oktavian (Octavio), kníže Piccolomini z Aragona, vévoda z Amalfi. 1634-1656 . In: Památky hradu, města a panství Náchoda, i vlastníkův jeho. Biogram with family tree (Czech) online
• Reign of Náchod and its owners (Czech)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Barbara Stadler: Pappenheim and the time of the Thirty Years War. Winterthur 1991, p. 60.
2. ↑ Friedemann Needy: Pocket Lexicon Thirty Years War. Munich 1998, p. 175.
3. ^ Golo Mann : Wallenstein , Frankfurt am Main 1971, pp. 887f.
4. ↑ Thomas Winkelbauer: Stands freedom and princely power. Countries and subjects of the House of Habsburg in the denominational age. Volume I, Vienna 2003, pp. 104-108.
5. ↑ Golo Mann: Wallenstein . S. Fischer Verlag GmbH Licensed edition of the German Book Association, Frankfurt Main 1971, p. 1157 .
6. ↑ Jenny Öhman: The struggle for peace. Sweden and the Kaiser in the Thirty Years War. Vienna 2005, p. 128.
7. ↑ Günter Barudio: The teutsche War 1618-1648. Frankfurt am Main 1985, p. 439.
8. ↑ Ernst Höfer: The end of the Thirty Years War. Strategy and image of war . Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 1997, p. 237.
9. ↑ Joseph Bergmann : About the value of grave monuments and their inscriptions, as well as about the creation of a Corpus Epitaphioruni Vindobonensium. In the communications of the emperors. royal Central Commission for Research and Conservation of Architectural Monuments. Volume 2, 1857 (digitized on Commons)
10. ^ Walter F. Kalina: The piccolo series of Pieter Snayers. Twelve battle paintings in the Vienna Army History Museum. In: Viribus Unitis. Annual report 2005 of the Army History Museum. Vienna 2006, pp. 87–116.