Charles William Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel
Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
| Charles William Ferdinand | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel | |||||
 |
|||||
| Reign | 26 March 1780 – 10 November 1806 | ||||
| Predecessor | Charles I | ||||
| Successor | Frederick William | ||||
| Born | 9 October 1735 Wolfenbüttel, Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel |
||||
| Died | Script error: The function "death_date_and_age" does not exist. Ottensen |
||||
| Consort | Princess Augusta of Great Britain (m. 1764–1806; his death) |
||||
| Issue | Augusta, Duchess of Württemberg Charles George Augustus, Hereditary Prince Duke George William Christian Duke Augustus Caroline, Queen of the United Kingdom Frederick William Duchess Amelia |
||||
|
|||||
| House | House of Brunswick-Bevern | ||||
| Father | Charles I, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel | ||||
| Mother | Princess Philippine Charlotte of Prussia | ||||
Charles William Ferdinand (German: Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand, Fürst und Herzog von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel) (October 9, 1735 – November 10, 1806), Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, was a sovereign prince of the Holy Roman Empire, and a professional soldier who served as a Generalfeldmarschall of the Kingdom of Prussia. Born in Wolfenbüttel, Germany, he was duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel from 1780 until his death. He is a recognized master of the modern warfare of the mid-18th century, a cultured and benevolent despot in the model of Frederick the Great, and was married to Princess Augusta, a sister of George III of Great Britain. The botanical genus Brunsvigia was named in his honour.
Contents
History
Charles William Ferdinand (German: Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand) was the son of Charles I, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel and Philippine Charlotte, daughter of King Frederick William I of Prussia. Karl received an unusually wide and thorough education, and travelled in his youth in the Netherlands, France and various parts of Germany.
After the close of the Seven Years' War, the prince visited England with his bride, the sister of King George III, and in 1766 he went to France, being received both by his allies and his late enemies with every token of respect. In Paris he made the acquaintance of Marmontel; in Switzerland, whither he continued his tour, that of Voltaire; and in Rome, where he remained for a long time, he explored the antiquities of the city under the guidance of Winckelmann. After a visit to Naples he returned to Paris, and thence, with his wife, to Brunswick. His services to the dukedom during the next few years were of the greatest value; with the assistance of the minister Feonçe von Rotenkreuz he rescued the state from the bankruptcy into which the war had brought it. His popularity was unbounded, and when he succeeded his father, Duke Karl I, in 1780, he soon became known as a model to sovereigns.
Reputation
The Duke was a typical "enlightened despot" of the 18th century, characterized by economy and prudence. His habitual caution often made him draw back from potential reforms. He brought Brunswick into close alliance with the king of Prussia, for whom he had fought in the Seven Years' War; he was a Prussian field marshal, and was at pains to make the regiment of which he was colonel a model one, and he was frequently engaged in diplomatic and other state affairs. He resembled his uncle Frederick the Great in many ways, but he lacked the resolution of the king, and in civil as in military affairs was prone to excessive caution. As an enthusiastic adherent of the Germanic and anti-Austrian policy of Prussia he joined the Fürstenbund, in which, as he now had the reputation of being the best soldier of his time, he was the destined commander-in-chief of the federal army.
Military experience
Seven Years' War
His first military experience was in the North German campaign of 1757, under Prince William, Duke of Cumberland. At the Battle of Hastenbeck he won great renown by a gallant charge at the head of an infantry brigade; and upon the capitulation of Klosterzeven he was easily persuaded by his uncle Ferdinand of Brunswick, who succeeded Cumberland in command, to continue in the war as a general officer. The exploits of the hereditary prince, as he was called, soon gained him further reputation, and he became an acknowledged master of irregular warfare. In pitched battles, and in particular at Minden and Warburg, he proved himself an excellent subordinate.
Invasion of the Netherlands
He was made a Prussian general in 1773. After he succeeded to his title in 1780, he was made field marshal in 1787. In 1787 the Duke, as a Prussian field marshal, led the army which invaded the Netherlands in order to suppress the Batavian Revolution in the United Provinces (The Dutch Republic), restoring the authority of the House of Orange. His success was rapid, complete and almost bloodless, and in the eyes of contemporaires the campaign appeared as an example of perfect generalship.
French Revolutionary Wars
In the early summer of 1792, Ferdinand was poised with military forces at Coblenz. After the Girondins had arranged for France to declare war on Austria, voted on April 20, 1792, the Catholic Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II and the Protestant King of Prussia Frederick William II had combined armies and put them under Brunswick's command.
The "Brunswick Proclamation" or "Brunswick Manifesto" that he now issued from Coblenz on July 25, 1792 threatened war and ruin to soldiers and civilians alike, should the Republicans injure Louis XVI and his family. His avowed aim was:
to put an end to the anarchy in the interior of France, to check the attacks upon the throne and the altar, to reestablish the legal power, to restore to the king the security and the liberty of which he is now deprived and to place him in a position to exercise once more the legitimate authority which belongs to him.
Additionally, the manifesto threatened the French population with instant punishment should they resist the Imperial and Prussian armies, or the reinstatement of the monarchy. In large part, the manifesto had been written by Louis XVI's cousin, Louis Joseph de Bourbon, Prince de Condé, who was the leader of a large corps of émigrés in the allied army.
It has been asserted that the manifesto was in fact issued against the advice of Brunswick himself; the duke, a model sovereign in his own principality, sympathized with the constitutional side of the French Revolution, while as a soldier he had no confidence in the success of the enterprise. However, having let the manifesto bear his signature, he had to bear the full responsibility for its consequences.
The proclamation was intended to threaten the French population into submission; it had exactly the opposite effect.
In Paris, Louis XVI was generally believed to be in correspondence with the Austrians and Prussians already, and the republicans became more vocal in the early summer of 1792. It remained for the Duke of Brunswick's proclamation to assure the downfall of the monarchy by his proclamation, which was being rapidly distributed in Paris by July 28 apparently by the monarchists, who badly misjudged the effect it would have (See text in link). The "Brunswick Manifesto" seemed to furnish the agitators with a complete justification for the revolt that they were already planning. The first violent action was carried out on August 10, when the Tuileries Palace was stormed.
Having already military restored the authority of the House of Orange in 1787, the Duke was less successful against French citizen's army that met him at Valmy. Having secured Longwy and Verdun without serious resistance, he turned back after a mere skirmish in Valmy, and evacuated France. When he counterattacked the Revolutionary French who had invaded Germany, in 1793, he recaptured Mainz after a long siege, but resigned in 1794 in protest at interference by Frederick William II of Prussia.
After the French Revolutionary Wars
He returned to command the Prussian army in 1806 during the War of the Fourth Coalition but was routed by Napoleon's marshal Davout at Battle of Jena-Auerstedt (14 October 1806). During the battle he was struck by a musket shot and lost both of his eyes. Mortally wounded the Duke fled before the advancing French Forces and died in Ottensen on November 10, 1806. His body was provisionally laid to rest in Christianskirche, before it could be transferred for burial in Brunswick Cathedral on November 6, 1819.
Ancestry
Children
_and_wife.jpg)
Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand's eldest son and designated heir, Karl Georg August (1766–1806), married Frederika Luise Wilhelmine, Princess of Orange-Nassau, daughter of William V, Prince of Orange and Wilhelmina of Prussia, in 1790. He died childless shortly before his father on 20 September 1806.
His successor, Friedrich Wilhelm (1771 – June 16, 1815), who was one of the bitterest opponents of Napoleonic domination in Germany, took part in the war of 1809 at the head of a corps of partisans, fled to England after the Battle of Wagram, and returned to Brunswick in 1813, where he raised fresh troops. He was killed at the Battle of Quatre Bras.
The remaining two sons, Georg Wilhelm Christian (1769–1811) and August (1770–1822), were declared incapacitated and excluded from the line of succession; neither of them married. The eldest daughter, Auguste Caroline Friederike (1764–1788), married King Frederick I of Württemberg. The second daughter, Caroline (1768–1821), married, with very unhappy results, her first cousin King George IV of the United Kingdom.
| Name | Birth | Death | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Auguste Caroline Friederike Luise | 3 December 1764 | 27 September 1788 | married 1780, Friedrich III, Duke of Württemberg; had issue |
| Karl Georg August | 8 February 1766 | 20 September 1806 | married 1790, Frederika Luise Wilhelmine, Princess of Orange-Nassau; no issue |
| Caroline Amalie Elisabeth | 17 May 1768 | 7 August 1821 | married 1795, George IV of the United Kingdom; had issue |
| Georg Wilhelm Christian | 27 June 1769 | 16 September 1811 | Declared an invalid; Excluded from line of succession |
| August | 18 August 1770 | 18 December 1822 | Declared an invalid; Excluded from line of succession |
| Friedrich Wilhelm | 9 October 1771 | 16 June 1815 | married 1802, Maria Elisabeth Wilhelmine, Princess of Baden; had issue |
| Amelie Karoline Dorothea Luise | 22 November 1772 | 2 April 1773 |
External links
 |
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.. |
 |
Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article Brunswick, Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand, Duke of. |
- Text of the Proclamation of the Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg, 1792
- Prussian Army during the Napoleonic Wars
References
- Lord Fitzmaurice, Charles W. F., duke of Brunswick (London, 1901)
- Memoir in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, vol. ii. (Leipzig, 1882)
- Arthur Chuquet, Les Guerres de la Révolution: La Première Invasion prussienne (Paris)
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
|
Charles William Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel
House of Brunswick-Bevern
Cadet branch of the House of Welf
Born: 9 October 1735 Died: 10 November 1806 |
||
| Regnal titles | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg Prince of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel 1780–1806 |
Succeeded by Frederick William |
| Belli- gerents |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Major battles |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Info |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- Articles containing German-language text
- Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica with no article parameter
- Interlanguage link template link number
- Pages with broken file links
- Articles containing French-language text
- 1735 births
- 1806 deaths
- People from Wolfenbüttel
- Field marshals of Prussia
- Princes of Wolfenbüttel
- House of Brunswick-Bevern
- Protestant monarchs
- German Lutherans
- Knights of the Garter
- Fellows of the Royal Society
- Military leaders of the French Revolutionary Wars
- German military leaders of the French Revolutionary Wars
- Prussian commanders of the Napoleonic Wars
- Military personnel killed in the Napoleonic Wars
.svg){kind=link}