Raimondo Montecuccoli
Raimondo Montecuccoli | |
---|---|
Born | Pavullo nel Frignano, Duchy of Modena and Reggio | 21 February 1609
Died | 16 October 1680 Linz, Archduchy of Austria | (aged 71)
Buried | |
Allegiance | Holy Roman Empire |
Service/ | Imperial Army |
Years of service | 1625–1675 |
Rank | Generalfeldmarschall |
Battles/wars | |
Awards | Order of the Golden Fleece |
Raimondo Montecuccoli (Italian pronunciation: [raiˈmondo monteˈkukkoli]; 21 February 1609 – 16 October 1680) was an Italian-born professional soldier, military theorist, and diplomat, who served the Habsburg monarchy.
Experiencing the Thirty Years' War from scratch as a simple footsoldier, he rose through the ranks into a regiment holder and became an important cavalry commander in the late stages. Serving the Habsburgs as war counsellor and envoy, he commanded their troops in the Second Northern War and the Austro-Turkish War of 1663–64 where he scored an impressive victory in the Battle of Saint Gotthard. Afterwards, he became president of the Hofkriegsrat and briefly returned as supreme commander of the Imperial forces during the Franco-Dutch War.
Montecuccoli was considered the only commander able to compete with the French general
Early life
Montecuccoli was born on 21 February 1609 in the Castello di Montecuccolo in Pavullo nel Frignano, near Modena.[2]
Early military service
At the age of sixteen, Montecuccoli began as a private soldier under his uncle, Count
He was again wounded at Lützen in 1632, and on his recovery was made a major in his uncle's regiment. Shortly afterwards he became a lieutenant-colonel of cavalry. He did good service at the first battle of Nordlingen (1634), and at the storming of Kaiserslautern in the following year won his colonelcy by a feat of arms of unusual brilliance, a charge through the breach at the head of his heavy cavalry.[3]
He fought in
Commanding officer
Returning to the field in 1642, Montecuccoli fought under
After his return from Italy in 1644, he was promoted to lieutenant field marshal and nominated as a member of the Hofkriegsrat, the Imperial War council.[4] First substituting the diseased Melchior von Hatzfeldt in Franconia, he reinforced the main army under Matthias Gallas in late 1644 that was encircled by the Swedes at Bernburg after retreating from Holstein. Trying to break through the Swedish blockade, he escaped Swedish attacks in the battle of Jüterbog and evacuated parts of the imperial cavalry to Bohemia.[7][8]
In early 1645, he rallied 5000 men in Silesia which he brought to the main army at the Danube in June. Under Leopold Wilhelm, he operated against George I Rákóczi who tried to conquer Hungary and to support the Swedish advance following their victory at Jankau. After Rákóczi's retreat and the Swedish defeat at Brno, Montecuccoli was sent back to Silesia which he defended over the course of the year 1646 against a larger Swedish force under Arvid Wittenberg. In 1647, victory at the battle of Triebl in Bohemia won him the rank of General of Cavalry, and at the battle of Zusmarshausen in 1648 his stubborn rearguard fighting rescued the imperials from annihilation.[4][3]
For some years after the
In 1657, he took part in the Habsburg expedition to support
His army participated in the struggle in
From 1661 to 1664, Montecuccoli
He retired from the army when, in 1674, the
Retirement and death
The rest of Montecuccoli's life was spent in military administration and literary and scientific work at
Montecuccoli died in an accident at Linz in October 1680.[3]
Assessment
Usually, it is evaluated that as a general, Montecuccoli shared with Turenne and Condé the first place among European soldiers of his time. For his success in halting the Turkish advance, he had been hailed the saviour of Europe.[3] He was also influential as a military theorist, with perhaps his most famous quote being "For war you need three things: 1. Money. 2. Money. 3. Money."[11] His Memorie della guerra profoundly influenced the following period of warfare.[3] The Britannica names him "unequalled as a master of 17th-century warfare" because he "excelled in the art of fortification and siege, march and countermarch, and cutting his enemy's lines of communications. In advocating standing armies, he clearly foresaw future trends in the military field".[12]
In Croatian historiography, however, Montecuccoli is mainly seen in a rather negative light for his roles in Austro-Turkish War (1663–1664). Croatian Ferdo Šišić described him as: "brave, prudent and educated man, but at the same time too meticulous and slow, which brought him in confrontation with Croatians and Hungarians."[13] He was known for his rivalry to the Zrinski family, especially Nikola Zrinski. According to Šišić, Montecuccoli is also seen as the main culprit for the loss of Novi Zrin in 1664, when he reinforced the defenders to delay the enemy but refused to use the Habsburg army under his command to relieve the fortress and attack the large Ottoman siege army.[13][14]
Family
In 1657, Montecuccoli married Countess Margarethe von
Bibliography
The Memorie della guerra was published at Venice in 1703 and at Cologne in 1704. A French edition was issued in Paris in 1712 and a Latin edition appeared in 1718 at Vienna, and the German Kriegsnachrichten des Fürsten Raymundi Montecuccoli was issued at Leipzig in 1736. Of this work, there are manuscripts in various libraries, and many memoirs on military history, tactics, and fortification, written in Italian, Latin and German, remain still unedited in the archives of Vienna. The collected Opere di Raimondo Montecuccoli was published at Milan (1807), Turin (1821) and Venice (1840), and included political essays and poetry.[3]
Memorials
In 1934, the Italian navy launched the
Notes
- ^ Guthrie 2003, p. 239.
- ^ a b Neuhaus 1997, pp. 44–47.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Chisholm 1911, p. 764.
- ^ a b c d e f g Schinzl 1885, pp. 183–189.
- ^ Black 2002, p. 162.
- ^ Paoletti 2008, p. 28.
- ^ a b c Brunelli 2012.
- ^ Höbelt 2016, pp. 414–415.
- ^ Petrić 2009, p. 133.
- ^ Schreiber 2000, p. 267–268.
- ^ See Chapter 6 of Book 3, A Warriors Life (2013), Roger Gard's translation of Servitude et grandeur militaires by Alfred de Vigny along with Gard's notes.
- ^ EB Staff 2012.
- ^ a b Šišić, Ferdo. Posljednji Zrinski i Frankopani na braniku domovine (in Croatian). Matica hrvatska.
Montecuccoli bijaše hrabar, razborit i znanstveno obrazovan muž, no suviše pedantan i spor u svojim zaključcima i odlukama. Poradi toga prekomjernog opreza njegova došao je u sukob s Magjarima i Hrvatima, a naročito sa Zrinskima, koje je iz dna duše mrzio želeći im propast; vazda je govorio, da se nad Magjarima i Hrvatima može i mora samo željeznom batinom vladati.
- ^ Schreiber 2000, pp. 172–173.
References
- Black, Jeremy (2002). European Warfare, 1494–1660. Routledge. p. 162.
- Brunelli, Giampiero (2012). "Montecuccoli, Raimondo". ISBN 978-8-81200032-6.
- EB Staff (2012). Raimondo Montecuccoli (Online ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica Inc.
- Guthrie, William (2003). The Later Thirty Years War: From the Battle of Wittstock to the Treaty of Westphalia (Contributions in Military Studies). Praeger. ISBN 978-0313324086.
- Petrić, Hrvoje (2009). "The stronghold of New Serinwar/Novi Zrin/Zrínyi-Újvár (1661–1664) – A part of Croatian and Hungarian History". In Kühlmann, Wilhelm; Tüskés, Gábor (eds.). Militia et Litterae: Die beiden Niklaus Zrìnyi und Europa. Tübingen: Walter Niemeyer. ISBN 978-3484366411.
- Höbelt, Lothar (2016). Von Nördlingen bis Jankau: Kaiserliche Strategie und Kriegsführung 1634–1645 (in German). Wien: Heeresgeschichtliches Museum. ISBN 978-3902551733.
- Neuhaus, Helmut (1997), "Montecuccoli, Raimund Fürst von", Neue Deutsche Biographie (in German), vol. 18, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, pp. 44–47; (full text online)
- Paoletti, Ciro (2008). A Military History of Italy. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 28.
- Schinzl, Adolf (1885), "Montecuccoli, Raimund Fürst von", Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (in German), vol. 22, Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, pp. 183–189
- Schreiber, Georg (2000). Raimondo Montecuccoli – Feldherr, Schriftsteller und Kavalier: ein Lebensbild aus dem Barock (in German). Graz: Styria. ISBN 978-3222128172.
- Sutherland, Suzanne (2022). The Rise of the Military Entrepreneur: War, Diplomacy, and Knowledge in Habsburg Europe. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-1501765001.
- Attribution
- public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Montecucculi, Raimondo, Count of". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 18 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 764–765. This article incorporates text from a publication now in the