Maurice de Saxe
Maurice de Saxe | |
---|---|
Count of Saxony Maria Aurora of Königsmarck | |
Signature | |
Military career | |
Service/ | Army of the Holy Roman Empire French Royal Army |
Battles/wars |
Maurice, Count of Saxony (German: Hermann Moritz von Sachsen, French: Maurice de Saxe; 28 October 1696 – 20 November 1750) was a notable soldier, officer and a famed military commander of the 18th century. The illegitimate son of Augustus II the Strong, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, he initially served in the Army of the Holy Roman Empire, then the Imperial Army, before finally entering French service. De Saxe became a Marshal and even Marshal General of France. He is best known for his deeds in the War of the Austrian Succession and especially for his decisive victory at the Battle of Fontenoy.
Childhood
Maurice was born at
In 1698, the Countess sent him to his father in Warsaw. August had been elected King of Poland in the previous year, but the unsettled condition of the country obliged Maurice to spend the greater part of his youth outside its borders. This separation from his father made him independent and had an important effect on his future career.[1]
Military career
At the age of twelve, Maurice served in the
Upon his return to the camp of the Allies at the beginning of 1710, Maurice displayed a courage so impetuous that Prince Eugene admonished him to not confuse rashness with valour.[1]
He next served under Peter the Great against the Swedes in the Great Northern War. In 1711, August formally recognized him and Maurice was granted the rank of Count (Graf). He then accompanied his father to Pomerania, and in 1712 he took part in the Battle of Gadebusch. At the age of 17 in 1713 he commanded his own regiment of the Royal Saxon Army.[1]
As an adult, Maurice bore a strong resemblance to his father, both physically and in character. His grasp was so powerful that he could bend a horseshoe with his hand, and even at the end of his life, his energy and endurance were scarcely affected by the illnesses his many excesses had caused.[1]
On 12 March 1714, a marriage was arranged between him and one of the richest of his father's subjects, Countess Johanna Viktoria Tugendreich von Loeben, but he dissipated her fortune so rapidly that he was soon heavily in debt. The next year (21 January 1715), Johanna gave birth to a son, called August Adolf after his grandfather; the child only lived a few hours. Since Maurice had also given her more serious grounds of complaint against him, he consented to an annulment of the marriage on 21 March 1721.[1]
After serving the German Emperor
At the outbreak of the War of the Polish Succession, Maurice served under Marshal the Duke of Berwick, and for a brilliant exploit at the Siege of Philippsburg he was named lieutenant-general. In the War of the Austrian Succession he took command of an army division sent to invade Austria in 1741, and on 19 November 1741, surprised Prague during the night, and seized it before the garrison was aware of the presence of an enemy, a coup de main which made him famous throughout Europe; he thus repeated the exploit of 1648 of his maternal great-grandfather, Hans Christoff von Königsmarck. After capturing the fortress of Eger (Cheb) on 19 April 1742, he received a leave of absence, and went to Russia to push his claims for the Duchy of Courland, but returned to his command after getting nowhere.[1]
Maurice's exploits were the sole redeeming feature in an unsuccessful campaign, and on 26 March 1743, his merits were rewarded by promotion to Marshal of France. He had been given only 50–60,000 men to defend against an enemy army twice as large.[2] From this time on, he became one of the great generals of the age. In 1744, he was chosen to command the 10,000 men of the French invasion of Britain on behalf of James Francis Edward Stuart, which assembled at Dunkirk but did not proceed more than a few miles out of harbour before being wrecked by disastrous storms.[3] After its termination, he received an independent command in the Netherlands, and by skilful manoeuvering succeeded in continually harassing the superior forces of the enemy without risking a decisive battle.[1]
In the following year, Maurice with 65,000 men besieged Tournai and inflicted a severe defeat on the army of the Duke of Cumberland at the Battle of Fontenoy, an encounter determined entirely by his constancy and cool leadership.[4] During the battle, he was unable to sit on horseback due to edema, and was carried about in a wicker chariot.[1]
In recognition of his brilliant achievement,
Saxe invented a handheld light-artillery piece that he called an amusette, which fired a half-pound ball a distance of 4,000 paces at a rate of 100 shots an hour.[6]
In 1747 the title once held by
During the last years of his life, Maurice had an affair with a French lady, Marie Rinteau, who at that time was only eighteen years old. In 1748 she gave birth to a daughter, the last of Maurice's several illegitimate children. She was called
Writings
Saxe's work on the art of war, Mes Rêveries (My Reveries), was published after his death in 1757.[7] Described by Carlyle as "a strange military farrago, dictated, as I should think, under opium", it was praised by Frederick the Great and described by Lord Montgomery, more than two centuries later, as "a remarkable work on the art of war".
A common theme of the 18th century Age of Enlightenment was to emphasise the scientific method and the idea every activity could be expressed in terms of a universal system.[8] In one sense, Mes Rêveries followed this by subjecting "military affairs to reasoned criticism and intellectual treatment, and the ensuing military doctrines were perceived as forming a definitive system".[9] Written following Prussian expansion during the War of the Austrian Succession, Saxe rejected their rigid discipline; arguing the French character was fundamentally different and their tactics should reflect that, he advocated the use of a deep order or ordre profond, rather than relying on firearms.[10]
However, Mes Rêveries also challenged French military orthodoxy in arguing for a greater focus on mobile warfare, rather than fortifications; this was partly a legacy of
Saxe's Lettres et mémoires choisis (Selected Letters and Memoirs) appeared in 1794. His letters to his sister Anna Karolina Orzelska, the Duchess of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Beck, preserved at Strasbourg, were destroyed by the bombardment of that place in 1870.[1] Thirty copies had, however, been printed from the original.[1]
Legacy
After Maurice de Saxe's death in Chambord, a funerary ceremony was held for him in Paris, but as a Protestant, he could not be buried there. His remains were transported to Strasbourg and temporarily kept at the
Maurice de Saxe has been the focus of several biographical works. Many previous errors in former biographies were corrected and additional information supplied in Karl von Weber's Moritz Graf von Sachsen, Marschall von Frankreich, nach archivalischen Quellen [Moritz Count of Saxony, Marshal of France, according to archival sources] (Leipzig: Tauchnitz, 1863), in Saint-René Taillandier's Maurice de Saxe, étude historique d'après les documents des archives de Dresde [Maurice of Saxe, historical study according to the documents in the archives of Dresden] (1865) and in Karl Friedrich Vitzthum von Eckstädt Maurice de Saxe (Leipzig, 1861).[1]
A biography in English is Jon Manchip White's Marshal of France: The Life and Times of Maurice, Comte de Saxe (1696–1750) (Rand McNally & Company, Chicago, 1962). See also the military histories of the period, especially Carlyle's Frederick the Great.[1]
He is honoured in the
Ancestry
Ancestors of Maurice de Saxe | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Chisholm 1911.
- ^ White, p. 138
- ^ White, p. 132
- ^ White, p. 147
- ^ White, p. 181
- Hart, B.H.L., Great Captains Unveiled, pp.54-55(Books for Libraries Press, 1967).
- ^ de Saxe, Field Marshal Herman Maurice (1757). "Reveries on the Art of War". London. Archived from the original on February 5, 2008. Retrieved May 11, 2012.
- ISBN 978-0-393-00870-8.
- ISBN 978-0-415-56166-2. Retrieved 6 December 2012.
- ^ Smith, Bryan L. (Spring 2012), From Myth-Conceived to Myth-Understood: France's Revolutionary Ordre Profond Revisited
- ISBN 978-1-57958-246-3.
- ^ Hans Storck (26 July 2014). "Le tombeau du Maréchal de Saxe". Le Rouge & le Noir.
- public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Saxe, Maurice". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. This article incorporates text from a publication now in the
- White, Jon Manchip (1962). Marshal of France: the life and times of Maurice, comte de Saxe, 1696–1750. Rand McNally. ISBN 978-1-258-13994-0.