Henri de La Tour d’Auvergne, vicomte de Turenne

Henri de La Tour d’Auvergne, vicomte de Turenne (born Sept. 11, 1611, Sedan, Fr.—died July 27, 1675, Sasbach, Baden-Baden) was a French military leader, marshal of France (from 1643), one of the greatest military commanders during the reign of Louis XIV. Beginning his military career in the Thirty Years’ War (from 1625), he subsequently commanded the royal armies in the civil war of the Fronde (1648–53), in the French invasion of the Spanish Netherlands (1667), and in the third Dutch War (begun in 1672). Napoleon later deemed him history’s greatest military leader.

Background and early military successes

Henri was a son of the Protestant Henri, duc de Bouillon, by his second wife, Elizabeth of Nassau, daughter of William the Silent, the stadholder of the Netherlands. When his father died in 1623, Turenne was sent to learn soldiering with his mother’s brothers, Maurice and Frederick Henry, the princes of Orange who were leading the Dutch against the Spaniards in the Netherlands. Though he was given command of an infantry regiment in the French service for the campaign of 1630, he was back with Frederick Henry in 1632.

In 1635, however, when Louis XIII’s minister Cardinal de Richelieu brought France into open war against the Habsburgs (later called the Thirty Years’ War), Turenne, with the rank of maréchal de camp, or brigadier, went to serve under Cardinal de La Valette (Louis de Nogaret) on the Rhine. He was a hero of a retreat from Mainz to Metz and was wounded in the assault on Saverne in July 1636. After a mission to Liège to hire troops for the French, he was sent to the Rhine again in 1638 to reinforce Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar at the siege of Breisach; he conducted the assault and won the respect of Bernhard’s German troops. Two campaigns fought in Italy, culminating in the capture of Turin on Sept. 17, 1640, confirmed his reputation.

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In 1642, when the French army was besieging Spanish-held Perpignan, Turenne was second in command. The conspiracy of the King’s favourite, the Marquis de Cinq-Mars, against Richelieu was then brought to light, and the Duc de Bouillon was arrested. Turenne remained loyal to Louis XIII and to Richelieu; but Bouillon had to surrender Sedan in order to obtain his freedom. When Louis XIII died in 1643, the queen, Anne of Austria, became regent for her infant son Louis XIV. She gave Turenne a command in Italy in the same year, but his brother’s conduct made him suspect to Richelieu’s successor, Cardinal Mazarin, and no fresh troops were sent to him. Anne made Turenne a marshal of France, however, on May 16, 1643.

Command of the French forces in Germany

On Dec. 3, 1643, news reached Paris that France’s Army of Germany had been scattered in the Black Forest, and its commander was dead. The command was given to Turenne, who made an effective army from this broken force—mainly Germans who had followed Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar. But he had barely 10,000 men and remained weaker than his Bavarian opponents, a fact that dictated his conduct from 1644 to 1648. The Rhineland was devastated, and Turenne could act only by marching far into Germany to seize control of new forage lands. Unless he could join forces with another army, therefore, he could do nothing.

In 1644 Turenne watched the Bavarians take Freiburg im Breisgau, appealed for help, and was joined by the small army of the Duke d’Enghien, Louis II de Bourbon, prince de Condé. The latter was younger by 10 years than Turenne but took command of both armies because a French prince was senior to a French marshal; even so, they were good colleagues. Three fierce actions near Freiburg induced the Bavarians to leave the Rhine River valley; and Enghien and Turenne took Philippsburg in September and gained control of the Rhine towns as far north as Bingen.

In 1645 Turenne, intending to effect a junction with France’s Swedish allies in Germany, marched through Württemberg. But in May the Bavarians made a surprise attack, and half of Turenne’s army was lost in the Battle of Marienthal (Mergentheim). Turenne fell back, and Mazarin sent Enghien to rescue him. Their united forces met the Bavarians in the Battle of Nördlingen and reached the Danube River but with such heavy losses in infantry that they soon had to return to the Rhine.

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In 1646 Turenne achieved his plan of joining the much stronger Swedish army, though Mazarin feared the Protestant supremacy in Germany that might be the result. Turenne crossed the Rhine at Wesel and met the Swedes under Field Marshal Carl Gustav Wrangel. The two commanders evaded the Austro-Bavarians on the Main River, marched straight for the Danube, and threatened Augsburg and Munich. The elector Maximilian I of Bavaria then began negotiations with the French and, by the Treaty of Ulm (March 14, 1647), abandoned his alliance with the Holy Roman emperor Ferdinand III. But Turenne was thwarted, and Ferdinand’s Austrians were saved, when Mazarin ordered the Army of Germany to operate in Luxembourg. Then, when the army reached the Vosges, the German cavalry mutinied and turned back across the Rhine. For three months Turenne marched with them far into Germany. In the end his powerful personality brought most of them back to the French service.

When Bavaria returned to the emperor’s side in 1648, Turenne rejoined Wrangel, and they reached the Danube, the Lech, and—after the Battle of Zusmarshausen—the Inn River, the nearest point to Austria yet attained by the French. Maximilian fled from Bavaria, and the emperor agreed to the Peace of Westphalia, ending the Thirty Years’ War.