Regula Engel-Egli

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Regula Engel-Egli

Regula Engel-Egli (born March 5, 1761 in Fluntern , † June 25, 1853 in Zurich ) was the wife of a Swiss mercenary officer in the service of Napoleon .

Life

Regula Egli's father was a former officer in the Prussian army. He separated from his wife three years after the birth of his daughter. Regula grew up in the orphanage and later lived with her mother in Chur . In 1778, at the age of 17, she married Florian Engel, a Graubünden officer from Langwies with a Swiss foreign regiment in the French army. For more than twenty years, Regula Engel accompanied her husband on his campaigns through Europe and Egypt. Often "Frau Oberst Engel" is said to have fought in the battle in uniform. After Napoleon's abdication in April 1814, the Engels followed him into exile in Elba, where they enjoyed the quiet life. Her husband and two sons were killed in the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, and Regula was taken to hospital in Brussels, seriously wounded in officer's uniform.

During this time Regula Engel-Egli became the mother of twenty-one children, of whom only five survived. Napoleon is said to have called her my little Swiss girl and was the godfather of her twins Napoleon Baptist and Napoleon Heinrich as well as her daughter Maria Louise.

After returning to Switzerland, penniless and alone, she started looking for her last five children all over Europe - in vain. She found her son Caspar dying in New Orleans, USA. In 1824 she returned to Switzerland after over forty years, where she published her memoirs. These sold so well that a second edition was reprinted.

In 1827, Regula Engel-Egli wrote a second part of her memoir, which appeared the following year. In it she provides the life story of a vital and courageous woman who was not afraid to consider the Napoleonic Army and the situation in Switzerland. Despite the good sales figures, she was in need of money and dependent on acquaintances; their hopes for a pension from the French army were not fulfilled. It was only twenty years after her return to Switzerland that she was allowed to stay as a boarder at the Zurich Predigerspital , where she died on June 25, 1853 at the age of 92. She had never visited her hometown Langwies .

Engel-Strasse in District 4

In Zurich's urban district 4, "Engel-Strasse" is named after Regula Engel-Egli.

Works

  • Biography of the widow of Colonel Florian Engel von Langwies, born in Bündten, Egli von Fluntern, near Zurich, containing the history of their origins, the fate of their youth, marriage and long journeys in the wake of the French armies throughout France, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Portugal , the Austrian and Prussian states, Germany and especially the expedition to Egypt and a later trip to America. Described by herself, revised by an older relative and accompanied by notes (= Swiss Fate and Experience , Volume 2). Rascher, Zurich 1914, DNB 579735311 , OCLC 9780920 .

literature

  • Regula Engel: Frau Colonel Engel: Memoirs of an Amazon from Napoleonic times. Limmat, Zurich 2009, ISBN 978-3-85791-587-1
  • Regula Engel-Egli: The Swiss Amazon. J. Walt, Schiers 1904.
  • Alex Capus , sky striker . Twelve portraits, Albrecht Knaus Verlag, Munich, 2008. ISBN 978-3-813-50314-2
  • Sabine Haupt: Family in War, Regula Engel between mother and 'Amazone' , in: Beatrice Sandberg (ed.): Familienbilder als Zeitbilder. Contemporary stories told by Swiss authors from the 18th century to the present . Berlin 2010, pp. 27–44.
  • Klaus-Dieter Regenbrecht : A myth is measured - the Rhine, romance and new spatial experience, essay, Tabu Litu Verlag, Koblenz 2019. ISBN 978-3-925805-91-2 .
  • Ursina Trautmann: As Napoleon's Amazon, she fought in Waterloo , in: Die Südostschweiz, August 8, 2015, p. 21.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Terra Grischuna 6/2209
  2. ↑ Brief synopsis of Limmat-Verlag «When do you read the memories of a woman who went to battle, gave birth to 21 children and was called 'my little Swiss woman' by Napoleon?" Munich Mercury .
personal data
SURNAME Engel-Egli, Regula
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Wife of a Swiss mercenary officer in the service of Napoleon
DATE OF BIRTH March 5, 1761
PLACE OF BIRTH Whisper
DATE OF DEATH June 25, 1853
Place of death Zurich