Johann Josef Wenzel Graf Radetzky von Radetz ( , )
(November 2, 1766 – January 5, 1858) was a
Czech nobleman and
Austria general, immortalised by
Johann Strauss I's
Radetzky March.
General Radetzky was
in the military for over 70 years, until his death at age 91, and
is known for the victories at the Battles of Custoza
(July 24-25, 1848) and Novara
(March 23, 1849) during the First Italian War of
Independence.
Early years
Radetzky
was born into a noble family at Třebnice (Trebnitz) in Bohemia (modern-day Poland
).
Orphaned
at an early age, he was educated by his grandfather, and after the
count's death, at the Theresa Academy at Vienna
. The
academy was dissolved during his first year's residence in 1785,
and Radetzky became a cadet in the
Austria Army. The following year he became
an officer, and in 1787 was promoted to first lieutenant in a
cuirassier regiment. He served as a
galloper on
Count von
Lacy's staff in the Turkish War, and in the
Austrian Netherlands from 1792 to
1795.
In 1798 he
married Countess Francisca von Strassoldo Grafenberg, from Tržič
. They would have five sons and three
daughters.
Napoleonic wars
In 1795
Radetzky fought on the Rhine
. Next
year he served with
Johann
Beaulieu against
Napoleon in Italy, but
disliked the indecisive "cordon" system of warfare which
Count von Lacy had instituted and
other Austrian generals imitated. His personal courage was
conspicuous.
At the Battle of Fleurus
he led a party of cavalry through the French lines
to discover the fate of Charleroi
, and at Valeggio sul Mincio
in 1796, with a few hussars, he rescued Beaulieu
from the enemy. Promoted to major, he took part in
Dagobert Wurmser's
Siege of Mantua campaign, which
ended in the fall of that fortress.
As lieutenant-colonel and colonel he
displayed bravery and skill in the battles of Trebbia
and Novi
(1799). At the
Battle of
Marengo, as colonel on the staff of
Melas, he was hit by five bullets, after
endeavouring on the previous evening to bring about modifications
in the plan suggested by the "scientific"
Franz Zach. In 1801 Radetzky was
created a Knight of the
Military Order of Maria
Theresa.
In 1805,
on the march to Ulm
, he received
news of his promotion to major-general and his assignment to a
command in Italy
under the
Archduke Charles of
Austria. He thus took part in the successful campaign of
Caldiero
. Peace provided a short leisure, which he
used in studying and teaching the art of war. In 1809 he led a
brigade in V Corps during the
Battle
of Eckmuhl.
Promoted lieutenant field marshal, he
commanded a division in IV Corps at the Battle of Wagram
. In 1810 he was created a Commander of the
Order of Maria Theresa and awarded the colonelcy of the 5th
Radetzky Hussars. From 1809 to
1812, as chief of the general staff, he was active in reorganising
the army and its tactical system, but unable to carry out the
reforms he desired owing to the opposition of the Treasury, he
resigned the position. In 1813 he was
Schwarzenberg's
chief of staff and had considerable influence on the councils of
the Allied sovereigns and generals.
Langenau, the
quartermaster-general of the Grand Army, found him an indispensable
assistant, and he had a considerable share in planning the Leipzig
campaign. As a tactician he won praise in
the battles of
Brienne and
Arcis sur Aube. He entered
Paris with the allied
sovereigns in March 1814, and returned with them to the
Congress of Vienna, where he appears to
have acted as an intermediary between
Metternich and Tsar
Alexander I of Russia, when the two
were not on speaking terms.
Italian campaigns
During the succeeding years of peace he disappeared from public
view. He resumed his functions as chief of staff, but his ardent
ideas for reforming the army came to nothing in the face of the
general war-weariness and desire to "let well alone." His zeal
added to the number of his enemies, and in 1829, after he had been
for twenty years a lieutenant field marshal, it was proposed to
place him on the retired list. The emperor, unwilling to go so far
as this, promoted him general of cavalry and shelved him by making
him governor of a fortress. But very soon afterwards the
Restoration settlement of Europe was shaken by fresh upheavals, and
Radetzky was brought into the field of war again. He took part
under
Frimont in the campaign
against the Papal States insurgents, and succeeded that general in
the chief command of the Austrian army in Italy in 1834.
In 1836 he became a field marshal. He was now seventy, but still
displayed the activity of youth in training and disciplining the
army he commanded. But here too he was in advance of his time, and
the government not only disregarded his suggestions and warnings
but also refused the money that would have enabled the finest army
it possessed to take the field at a moment's notice.
Thus the events of
1848 in Italy, which gave the old field marshal his place in
history among the great commanders, found him, in the beginning,
not indeed unprepared but seriously handicapped in the struggle
with Charles Albert's
army and the insurgents in Milan
and elsewhere. By falling back to
the Quadrilateral and
there, checking one opponent after another, he was able to spin out
time until reinforcements arrived, and thenceforward up to the
final triumph at the Battle of Novara
on March 23, 1849, he and his army carried all
before them. He also commanded the Austrian troops who
reconquered Venice
after the
year-long siege of the rebellious
city in May 1848-August 1849. He became a Knight of the
Order of the Golden
Fleece in 1848.
His well-disciplined sense of duty to the superior officer had
become more intense in the long years of peace, and after keeping
his army loyal in the midst of the confusion of 1848, he made no
attempt to play the part of
Wallenstein or even
to assume
Wellington's role
of family adviser to the nation. While as a patriot he dreamed a
little of a united Germany, he remained to the end simply the
commander of one of the emperor's armies.
After his triumph in Italy, he was made Viceroy of Lombardy-Venetia
- the first and last not of royal Habsburg blood. In spite of his
success against Italian patriots, he is not remembered unkindly
even in Italy: he was regarded as a fair ruler (for an enemy) and a
gentleman who paid his debts. There is also a memorable anecdote of
his meeting the man responsible for one of the most significant
checks in the 1848 campaign, General Cesare Launier, shaking his
hand, and congratulating him on getting "a bunch of kids" (much of
Launier's command was made up of volunteer university students) to
fight so hard that Radetzky and his men seriously thought they were
facing crack professional Sardinian troops. Politically, he worked
to reconcile especially the lower classes to the Habsburg monarchy;
he could see the Industrial Revolution coming and hoped to use the
conflict of classes to isolate the patriotic party, made up mostly
of the upper and middle classes, from the rising working class. He
was ruthless in punishing rebellious soldiers - Hungarian troopers
who had passed to the rebels' side in 1848 were not even shot, but
hanged - and violent rebels, but very mild with unarmed opponents:
patriot leaders of European renown, such as Verdi, Manzoni and
Rosmini, were allowed to live in peace in the kingdom, while
Italy's other reactionary governments drove all their liberals into
exile. Already in 1849, at the end of the siege of Venice, he had
allowed the local patriot leaders to quietly slip away, and avoided
public martyrdoms. This was probably the best policy that Austria
could possibly adopt in the circumstances, but it was doomed
anyway; the events of 1848-49 had dug too deep a chasm between the
Italians and the Austrian government, and - as events in 1859
showed - it was only the power of Austrian arms that kept Austria
and her client states in Italy. It was part of Radetzky's good
fortune that he died one year before his whole work dissolved like
ice in an erupting volcano.
Death
He died in
harness, though in poor health.
Josef Wenzel Graf Radetzky of Radetz died on January 5, 1858 after
an accident in Milan.
On January 19, 1858, he was buried in
Heldenberg
in Lower Austria. The Emperor wished
that he be buried in the Capuchin crypt (the Imperial
Crypt in Vienna
). Radetzky bequeathed his earthly remains,
and the right to bury him, to Joseph Gottfried Pargfrieder, whom
decades earlier had settled his debts. In Heldenberg is an open-air
pantheon with warrior statues, the
Gedenkstätte Heldenberg
(literally translated as the Hero Mountain Memorial.) Radetzky lies
buried under a monumental obelisk.
Legacy
In military history Radetzky's fame rests on one great achievement,
but in the history of the Austrian army he is the frank and kindly
"Vater Radetzky" whom the soldiers idolized. In the year following
his death, another and greater Italian war broke out, and his
beloved army disintegrated and was defeated in every
encounter.
References
Notes
Further reading
Radetzky in history
- Alan Sked: The survival of the Habsburg Empire : Radetzky,
the Imperial Army, and the Class War, 1848. London ; New York
: Longman, 1979 ISBN 0-582-50711-1
- Oskar Regele: Feldmarschall Radetzky: Leben, Leistung,
Erbe. Wien: Herald, [1957]
Works by Radetzky
- Joseph Radetzky von Radetz: Denkschriften
militärisch-politischen Inhalts aus dem handschriftlichen Nachlass
des k.k. österreichischen Feldmarschalls Grafen
Radetzky. Stuttgart : J.G. Cotta, 1858
Correspondence
- Joseph Radetzky von Radetz: Briefe des Feldmarschalls
Radetzky an seine Tochter Friederike 1847-1857; aus dem Archiv
der freiherrlichen Familie Walterskirchen hrsg. von Bernhard Duhr :
Festschrift der Leo-Gesellschaft zur feierlichen Enthüllung des
Radetzsky-Denkmals in Wien. Wien : J. Roller, 1892.
These are Radetzky's letters to his daughter Friederike Radetzky
von Radetz, Gräfin Wenckheim, published to celebrate the unveiling
of the Radetzky monument in Vienna.
Biographies
(There has been no full-length biography of Radetzky in English).
- Franz Herre: Radetzky: eine Biographie. Köln:
Kiepenheuer & Witsch, c1981. ISBN 3-462-01486-2
- Franz Ferdinand Hoettinger: Radetzky : ein Stück
Österreich. Leipzig ; Wien : Höger, 1934.
- Joseph Radetzky von Radetz: Radetzky: sein Leben und sein
Wirken; nach Briefen, Berichten und autobiographischen Skizzen
zusammengestellt von Ernst Molden. Leipzig: Insel-Verlag, [1915]
(Österreichische Bibliothek; Nr. 10)
- Alessandro Luzio: Radetzky. Bergamo: Istituto italiano
d'arti grafiche, 1901
Military career
- Petr Havel and Andrej Romanák: Maršál Radecký: vojevůdce
pěti císařů. Praha: Paseka, 2000. ISBN 80-7185-297-X
- Viktor Bibl: Radetzky: Soldat und Feldherr. Wien: J.
Günther, [c1955]
- Hugo Kerchnawe: Radetzky: eine militär-biographische
Studie. Prag: Volk und Reich Verlag, [1944]
- Oskar Freiherr Wolf-Schneider von Arno: Der Feldherr
Radetzky. [Wien: Verlag der Militärwissenschaftlichen
Mitteilungen, 1934] (Reprinted from the second ed. of
'Militärwissenschaftliche Mitteilungen', No. 3)
- Hermann Kunz: Die Feldzüge des Feldmarschalls Radetzky in
Oberitalien 1848 und 1849. Berlin : R. Wilhelmi, 1890
- A. B. Gavenda and Franz de Vuko et Branko(eds.):
Feldmarschall Graf Radetzky, sein Leben und seine Taten.
Prag: Rohlicek, 1858
- Franz Schneidawind: Feldmarschall Graf Radetzky: sein
kriegerisches Leben und seine Feldzüge vom Jahre 1784-1850.
Augsburg: Schmid, 1851
- Johann Sporschil: Der Feldzug der Oesterreicher in der
Lombardei unter dem General-Feldmarschall Grafen Radetzky in den
Jahren 1848 und 1849. 2. Ausg. Stuttgart: Köhler, 1850
- P. S. Lebedev: Graf Radetskii i ego pokhody v Italii.
[n.p.], 1850.
- Bowden, Scotty & Tarbox, Charlie. Armies on the Danube
1809. Arlington, Texas: Empire Games Press, 1980.
Anecdotal Histories
- Anni Stern-Braunberg: In deinem Lager ist Österreich!:
Geschichte und Anekdoten um Feldmarschall Radetzky. Graz :
Stocker, 2000 ISBN 3-7020-0898-5
- Otto Stradal: Der andere Radetzky: Tatsachen und Gedanken
um ein Phänomen. Wien : Österreichischer Bundesverlag, c1981
ISBN 3-215-04438-2
- Franz Grobauer (ed.): In seinem Lager war Österreich:
Feldmarschall Radetzky in Geschichte und Anekdote. [Wien],
1957
Radetzky in drama and music
- Alexander Lernet-Holenia: Radetzky: Schauspiel in drei
Akten. [Frankfurt am Main]: S. Fischer, 1956.
- Johann Strauss: Radetzky
March (Opus 228)
External links