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Prince Eugen von Savoyen in a contemporary paintingFrançois-Eugène, Prince of Savoy-Carignan, known as Prinz Eugen von Savoyen in German (October 16, 1663 – April 24, 1736) was a noted general.
Born in Paris, and a prince of the House of Savoy, Eugene was the son of the Comte de Soissons, a French nobleman. It was rumoured that he was the illegitimate son of Louis XIV, however, and Louis strove mightily to keep down his supposed by-blow. Eugene was rebuffed from a commission in the French army and, frustrated, joined the Austrian army as an officer in 1683. He would spend the rest of his life opposing Louis XIV and French ambition in Europe.
For the first part of his career he faced the Ottoman Turks on the battlefield, first coming to prominence during the last major Turkish offensive against the Austrian capital of Vienna in 1683. By the closing years of the 17th century, he was already famous for securing Hungary from the Turks, and soon rose to the role of principal Austrian commander during the War of the Spanish Succession.
In the opening shots of that war, he defeated French armies in northern Italy. As the area of French offensive action moved north (and as the war spread to include other nations such as England), he joined forces for the first time with his English counterpart, the Duke of Marlborough. Together they defeated the French in Bavaria at the Battle of Blenheim. For the next three years he was engaged in inconclusive fighting in northern Italy and Provence. He then moved north to Flanders, where he joined up with Marlborough again to win the battles of Oudenarde and Malplaquet. Unfortunately, the follow-up invasion of France that would have ended the war was blunted by the marginal victory of Malplaquet, and the retirement of Britain from the war. After one more year of fighting, Austria signed a favourable peace with France in 1714. In the same year he began construction of the Belvedere, a baroque palace in the 3rd district of Vienna. Construction of various parts of the palace complex continued until 1723.
One of the new Austrian possessions after this war were the former Spanish, now Austrian Netherlands. Eugene was made governor of this area, then later became vicar of the Austrian lands in Italy. Just two years after the end of the war against France, he led the Austrian armies during the Austro-Turkish War of 1716-18. He achieved a series of decisive victories, including the Battle of Belgrade that led to the Treaty of Passarowitz. This temporarily added northern Serbia and the Bosnian bank of the Sava river to the Austrian crown, and ended the Turkish threats to Vienna once and for all. Late in his life he engaged in one last war, the War of the Polish Succession. He died in Vienna in 1736, and is buried in a chapel of honor in the Cathedral of Saint Stephan there.
The World War II German warship Prinz Eugen was named after Eugene of Savoy.
See also
References
- Military Heritage did a feature about the Muslim Turks versus Christian Nobility 1716 battle and crusade at Peterwardein, and the success of Prince Eugene of Savoy (Ludwig Heinrich Dyck, Military Heritage, August 2005, Volume 7, No. 1, pp 48 to 53, and p. 78), ISSN 1524-8666.
- Henderson, Nicholas. Prince Eugene of Savoy. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. 1964.
- Mckay, Derek. Prince Eugene of Savoy. London: Thames and Hudson. 1977.
- Nicolle, David and Hook, Christa. The Janissaries. Botley: Osprey Publishing. 2000.
- Setton, Kenneth M. Venice, Austria, and the Turks in the Seventeenth Century. Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society. 1991.