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Jean-Louis Raduit de Souches

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Jean-Louis Raduit de Souches
Jean-Louis Raduit de Souches (unknown artist)
Commander, Imperial Army in Flanders
In office
1673–1674
Governor of Komárom
In office
1664–1682
Governor of Špilberk Castle
In office
1648–1663
MonarchLeopold I, Holy Roman Emperor
Military commander of Brno
In office
1645–1646
MonarchFerdinand III, Holy Roman Emperor
Personal details
Born16 August 1608
La Rochelle, France
Died11 August 1682(1682-08-11) (aged 73)
Jevišovice, Moravia
Resting placeChurch of St. James (Brno)
OccupationSoldier and landowner
Military service
AllegianceSwedish Empire 1629-1642
Habsburg Monarchy
RankField Marshal
Battles/warsHuguenot rebellions
Siege of La Rochelle
Thirty Years War
Defence of Stargard; Siege of Olomouc; Defence of Brno
Second Northern War
Kraków; Toruń; Siege of Demmin
Austro-Turkish War (1663–1664)
Battle of Levice
Franco-Dutch War
Seneffe

Jean-Louis Raduit de Souches (16 August 1608 to 12 August 1682) was a French-born professional soldier who served in the Swedish Army and later reached the rank of Field Marshal in the Imperial Army. Although a capable officer, his career was marred by a tendency to quarrel with others and he was removed from command in 1674.

Personal details

Jean-Louis Raduit de Souches was born on 16 August 1608, son of Jean Ratuit, Sieur de Barres (died 1614), and his wife Marguerite de Bourdigalea (died after 1636). Both parents were members of the Huguenot nobility, originally from Aunis, who owned property in the Protestant stronghold of La Rochelle.[1] His elder brother was killed serving with the French army in 1636, while he also had a sister, Marguerite (died 1654).[2]

His first wife Anna Elisabeth de Hoffkirchen died in 1663; they had two sons, Jean Louis (died 1717) and Charles Louis (1645- 1691), who both served in the Imperial Army, and two daughters, Anna Dorotha (1652-1724) and Eleonora. Anna Salome Aspermont-Reckheim (1648-1729) became his second wife in 1677; they had no surviving children.[3]

Career

Souches began his military career during the siege of La Rochelle, part of the 1627 to 1629 Huguenot rebellions against Louis XIII of France. When the town surrendered in October 1628, he went into exile in Protestant Sweden, where he joined the army led by Gustavus Adolphus which entered the Thirty Years War in 1630. By 1636, he was captain in an infantry regiment which unsuccessfully defended Stargard against an Imperial force; he narrowly escaped court martial after accusing his commanding officer of negligence. This was symptomatic of a quarrelsome tendency which followed him throughout his career.[3]

In May 1636, France formally entered the Thirty Years War in alliance with Sweden; the rapid expansion of the French army created vacancies for experienced officers and de Souches used the opportunity to return home. He was unable to obtain a satisfactory position and returned to Sweden in August 1639, where he was promoted colonel of a regiment in the force that invaded Bohemia in early 1640.[4] However, he later fell out with his superior officer whom he challenged to a duel in violation of military regulations; he resigned from the Swedish army in early 1642 and a few months later was appointed colonel in the Imperial army.[5]

Siege of Brno 1645; de Souches established his reputation with his successful defence

Over the next two years, de Souches took part in the 1643 invasion of Pomerania and an attack on the Swedish-held city of Olomouc in Moravia. Although both actions were unsuccessful, he impressed his superiors sufficiently to be given command of defending Brno in May 1645 against a force led by Lennart Torstensson; after a siege described as "one of the epic stands of the Imperial army", the Swedes retreated in August having lost 8,000 men.[6] This contributed to the failure of Torstensson's attempt to attack Vienna and helped speed up peace negotiations at Westphalia.[6]

De Souches was rewarded with promotion to the rank of general and granted lands outside Brno; when the war finally ended in 1648, he was placed in charge of supervising the withdrawal of Swedish troops from Moravia and made Governor of Špilberk Castle.[7] In 1649, he was elevated to the Moravian nobility on condition he converted to Catholicism within the next three years.[8]

In 1654, Sweden attacked the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, initiating the Second Northern War when the fighting expanded to include Brandenburg-Prussia in 1657, Austria joined the anti-Swedish coalition. With de Souches in charge of the infantry, an army under Melchior von Hatzfeldt was sent to support Poland and helped recapture Kraków in August 1657. De Souches later commanded the Austrian contingent at the Siege of Toruń, whose Swedish garrison surrendered in December 1658.[9] In 1659, he was given command of an army of 13,000 which invaded Swedish Pomerania and besieged Stettin; before the town fell, the Treaty of Oliva ended the war in May 1660, while de Souches quarrelled with his colleague Raimondo Montecuccoli and was ordered home to Moravia.[10]

The 1663 to 1664 Austro-Turkish War began when Ottoman forces invaded Hungary and over-ran large parts of eastern and southern Moravia.[11] Having successfully defended Brno and Olomouc, de Souches was promoted Field Marshall in May 1664 and given command of one of three separate forces operating in Hungary, with the other two led by Montecuccoli and Miklós Zrínyi. Although he won a minor victory at Levice in July 1664, while Montecuccoli stopped the main Ottoman advance at Saint Gotthard in August, Leopold was concerned by the expansionist policies of Louis XIV of France and agreed the Peace of Vasvár a few days later.[12]

In October 1664, de Souches was appointed Governor of Komárom, an important town on the modern Slovakian/Hungarian border, and spent the next few years supervising the construction of new fortifications there, as well as other towns in the region. He also became a member of the Hofkriegsrat, or Imperial War Council, although his duties were largely nominal.[13] When Austria entered the Franco-Dutch War in 1673 as an ally of the Dutch Republic and Spain, he was appointed commander of Imperial troops in the Low Countries and took part in the Battle of Seneffe in August 1674. The Imperial troops suffered minimal casualties in what was the bloodiest battle of the war and his Allies subsequently claimed de Souches had ignored requests for support. One suggestion is he did so under instructions from Emperor Leopold, who wanted to conserve resources for the Rhineland campaign, which he viewed as having far greater strategic significance.[14]

Shortly thereafter, the Allies attacked the town of Oudenarde; siege operations commenced on 16 September, and the French began marching to its relief three days later. The Dutch and Spanish redoubled efforts to breach the walls before their arrival, but without advising his colleagues, de Souches withdrew the Imperial artillery off to Ghent. Since his troops would not fight without their guns, and the Dutch and Spanish could not face the French on their own, the Allies were forced to abandon the siege. After strong protests from the Dutch States General, de Souches was relieved of his command.[15]

References

  1. ^ Klapka 2012, p. 113.
  2. ^ Klapka 2012, p. 127.
  3. ^ a b Klapka 2012, p. 506.
  4. ^ Klapka 2012, pp. 149–151.
  5. ^ Guthrie 2003, pp. 142.
  6. ^ a b Guthrie 2003, pp. 142–143.
  7. ^ "Jean Louis Raduit de Souches" (PDF). GotoBrno. Retrieved 1 November 2021.
  8. ^ Poten 1892, pp. 698–700.
  9. ^ Klapka 2012, pp. 208–209.
  10. ^ Klapka 2012, p. 212.
  11. ^ Šístek 2021, p. 33.
  12. ^ Klapka 2012, p. 232.
  13. ^ Klapka 2012, pp. 238–239.
  14. ^ Troost 2004, p. 129.
  15. ^ Van Nimwegen 2010, p. 481.

Sources

  • Guthrie, William P (2003). The Later Thirty Years War: From the Battle of Wittstock to the Treaty of Westphalia. Greenwood Press. ISBN 0313052484.
  • Klapka, Petr (2012). Jean-Louis Ratuit de Souches (1608-1682) de La Rochelle au service des Habsbourg (PHD) (in French). Sorbonne.
  • Poten, Bernhard von (1892), "Souches, Ludwig Raduit de", Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (in German), vol. 34, Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, pp. 698–700
  • Troost, Wouter (2004). William III the Stadholder-king; A Political Biography. Ashgate. ISBN 978-0754650713.
  • Šístek, František (2021). Imagining Bosnian Muslims in Central Europe: Representations, Transfers and Exchanges. Berghahn Books. ISBN 978-1789207743.
  • Van Nimwegen, Olaf (2010). The Dutch Army and the Military Revolutions, 1588–1688. Boydell Press. ISBN 978-1843835752.
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