Karl Philipp von Schwartzenberg Biography

Dromo's Den

SCHWARZENBERG, A princely family, originally of Franconia, but later of Austria. About 1420 Erkinger von Einsheim purchased the Lordship of Schwarzenberg in Franconia, and in 1429 he was made Baron of the Empire by the Emperor Sigismund. Several of this family have been prominent in European affairs. The most notable are: 1. ADAM, Count of Schwarzenberg, was born in 1584 and became Privy Councilor of George William, Elector of Brandenburg. He was largely responsible for the vacillating policy of Brandenburg during the Thirty Years' War, a course most unfortunate in its results, and for this he was punished after the accession of the Great Elector, in 1640, by imprisonment in the fortress of Spandau, where he died March 14, 1641. 2. KARL PHILIPP, Prince of Schwarzenberg. He was born at Vienna, April 15, 1771, served against the Turks, and rose to the grade of lieutenant field-marshal in 1790. He commanded a division under Mack in the campaign of 1805 and took part in the battle of Austerlitz. He was appointed Ambassador at the Russian court in 1808 by the express wish of the Emperor Alexander, fought at Wagram in 1809, and after the Treaty of Schönbrunn conducted the negotiations preliminary to the marriage of the Archduchess Maria Louisa to Napoleon. Both in this capacity and as Ambassador at Paris he gained the esteem of Napoleon, and the latter expressly demanded for him the post of general in chief of the Austrian contingent of 30,000 men which had been sent to aid France against Russia in 1812. Schwarzenberg with his little army entered Russia from Galicia, crossed the Bug, and achieved some slight successes, but was afterward driven into the Grand Duchy of Warsaw and took up a position at Paltusk, where he concluded with the Russians an armistice which secured the French retreat. Schwarzenberg was much blamed for his dilatory conduct at the time, but Napoleon concealed any dissatisfaction he might have felt and demanded for him from the Austrian government the baton of field-marshal. After a brief sojourn at Paris, in April, 1813, Schwarzenberg was appointed to the command of the Austrian army of observation in Bohemia; and when Austria joined the allied Powers, he became generalissimo of the armies of the coalition, was defeated by Napoleon at Dresden, but the united army under him gained the great victory of Leipzig. On the return of Napoleon from Elba he obtained the command of the allied army on the upper Rhine and a second time entered France. On his return to Vienna he was made president of the Imperial Council for War. He died of apoplexy at Leipzig, Oct. 15, 1820.

The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XX (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 585.