Charles of Austria

Archduke, field marshal
(Florence, 1771 Vienna, 1847))

An Austrian general, he defeats at Essling Napoleon who will become his nephew in 1810.

Charles, the third son of Emperor Leopold II, was a military man, called because of his birth to be governor of the Austrian Netherlands. When he entered that position in 1794 he was already the general of an army corps.

During the first campaign against France in 1796 he commanded the army in Germany and revealed his ability as strategist. He succeeded in pushing Moreau and Jourdan back across the Rhine.

In 1797, at the head of the Army of the Alps, he bumped against Napoleon for the first time. The Treaty of Campoformio that followed hallowed the first of a long series of defeats by the man who in 1810 would marry Marie Louise, the daughter of his brother, Francis II.

In 1805 he commanded the Army of Hungary and defeated Massena at Zurich. But the capitulation of Mack at Ulm forced him to retreat to Carinthia. The Battle of Austerlitz on December 2 forced Austria to sign the Treaty of Presburg.

The Austrian court was divided between those who preferred peach and those who wanted revenge. The archduke put himself in the camp of the hawks and did not remain inactive; he pursued his reforms, created a territorial army, the home guard, and founded military schools.

The fifth coalition against France was newly checked during the campaign of 1809. The first encounter with the French at Eckmuehl (21-22 April) was a defeat for the archduke, but at the head of 95,000 men he succeeded in winning the Battle of Essling (21-22 May), which forced the French emperor to retreat to Lobau Island. The respite was of short duration; on the fifth and sixth of July the end of the fifth coalition was marked by the Battle of Wagram, in which the archduke was wounded. He retired after the Armistice of Znaim.

Some years later he married Princess Henrietta of Nassau-Weilburg. She gave him four sons, all soldiers.