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Henri de La Tour d’Auvergne, vicomte de Turenne
Table of Contents
Henri de La Tour d’Auvergne, vicomte de Turenne
Table of Contents
 * Introduction
   
 * 
   Background and early military successes
   
 * 
   Command of the French forces in Germany
   
 * 
   Participation in the Fronde
   
 * 
   The Franco-Spanish War
   
 * 
   Last campaigns
   

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HENRI DE LA TOUR D’AUVERGNE, VICOMTE DE TURENNE

French military leader
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Written by
Ivo D'Oyly Elliott
Indian Civil Service, 1906–32.

Ivo D'Oyly Elliott
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Turenne, Henri de La Tour d'Auvergne, vicomte de
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Category: History & Society
Born: Sept. 11, 1611, Sedan, Fr. (Show more)
Died: July 27, 1675, Sasbach, Baden-Baden (aged 63) (Show more)
Role In: Battle of the Dunes Dutch War the Fronde Thirty Years’ War War of
Devolution (Show more)
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Henri de La Tour d’Auvergne, vicomte de Turenne, (born Sept. 11, 1611, Sedan,
Fr.—died July 27, 1675, Sasbach, Baden-Baden), 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.

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.

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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.

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.




PARTICIPATION IN THE FRONDE OF HENRI DE LA TOUR D’AUVERGNE, VICOMTE DE TURENNE

The same year marked the beginning of the so-called Fronde, an aristocratic
rebellion against Mazarin. Turenne’s family’s interests and the friendship of
Condé’s sister, the Duchess de Longueville, led him to intervene on the side of
the rebellion in the first war of the Fronde, precipitated by the unpopularity
of Mazarin’s fiscal measures. The cardinal at once sent a new general and
arrears of pay to the Army of Germany, and Turenne fled to Holland just when the
compromise peace was being negotiated at Rueil. He returned to Paris in May
1649.

When Mazarin arrested the overbearing Condé on Jan. 18, 1650, Turenne again
fled, joining the Duchess de Longueville at Stenay on the eastern border of
Champagne. They tied themselves by treaty to the Spaniards, then at war with
France, and waged war in Champagne until Turenne was completely defeated in the
Battle of Rethel (Dec. 15, 1650) by superior forces under Marshal du
Plessis-Praslin (César, later Duke de Choiseul) and narrowly escaped capture.

Mazarin’s voluntary exile from Paris and Condé’s release brought Turenne back to
Paris in May 1651, with his credit at a low point. In August 1651 he married the
firmly Protestant Charlotte de Caumont. He stood aloof from politics without
committing himself to Condé’s faction. It was his brother, the Duke de Bouillon,
who came to terms with the queen regent in March 1652, with the result that
Turenne was promptly put in command of one of the two divisions of the royal
army, each 4,000 strong, which had been assembled on the Loire River to oppose
Condé and his allies.



A few days later his courageous and clear-sighted action in blocking the bridge
at Jargeau saved the young king Louis XIV from capture by the rebels; and in
April, at Bléneau, he checked Condé and rescued his defeated colleague, Marshal
d’Hocquincourt (Charles de Monchy). His campaign of 1652–53, first on the Loire,
then before Paris, and in Champagne, was Turenne’s greatest service to the
monarchy: his resources were small, and but for his great skill he might have
been overwhelmed; yet he staunchly kept the queen regent’s court from taking
refuge far from Paris and thus enabled Louis XIV at last to reenter his capital.




THE FRANCO-SPANISH WAR

With the defeat of the rebellion, good troops from other parts of France could
be brought to reinforce those in the northeast and to prosecute the struggle
there against the Spaniards, with whom Condé was now serving. The turning point
came in 1654, when Turenne and his colleagues stormed three lines of trenches
and expelled the army that was besieging Arras. In 1658 Turenne surmounted the
physical obstacles to investing Dunkirk and, when the Spaniards advanced,
defeated them in the Battle of the Dunes (June 14), skillfully using the
difficult ground into which his enemy had unwisely moved. His victory enabled
him to hand Dunkirk over to France’s English allies and allowed him to move
freely in Flanders, taking Ypres and threatening Ghent and Brussels. The
Franco-Spanish Peace of the Pyrenees followed in 1659. For the second time
Turenne’s operations had won an advantageous peace.




LAST CAMPAIGNS

On April 5, 1660, Turenne was appointed “marshal-general of the camps and armies
of the King,” an extraordinary honour that implied that he might have been
constable (ex officio commander in chief in war) of France if he abjured his
Protestant faith. When he abjured in 1668, after his wife’s death (1666),
however, he was not made constable. The development of the Ministry of War by
the Marquis de Louvois enabled Louis XIV to command in person, and in the War of
Devolution (1667–68) and in the invasion of Holland (1672) Turenne marched at
his side. Then, when the German allies of the Dutch menaced the lower Rhineland,
Turenne was once more sent east of the Rhine, but with only 16,000 men, a
secondary command.



Yet these campaigns of 1672–75 brought him enduring fame. Turenne had long been
a master of “strategic chess moves,” but he was bolder now; he offered battle
more often and looked for opportunities when his more powerful adversaries were
weakened by detachments. By January 1673 he had broken the German coalition for
a time and by invading the county of Mark had forced the elector Frederick
William of Brandenburg to negotiate; he had also prevented the enemy from
crossing the Rhine. Later in the year his wider maneuvering against the emperor
Leopold I’s army had such success that he could have reached Bohemia; but
Louvois refused him reinforcement for a decisive operation, and when Turenne was
called back to cover Alsace, the emperor’s forces struck at Bonn and so broke
the French control of the lower Rhine.

Greatly superior German forces moved toward the Rhine in 1674. Turenne defeated
a detached corps at Sinzheim, near Heidelberg, on June 16 and ravaged the
Palatinate. But by September he was again west of the Rhine, with little hope of
barring the advance of the main enemy forces. At Enzheim, near Strassburg, he
attacked them on October 4, but he drew back before a decisive point was
reached; and as the Brandenburgers also joined the emperor’s forces, their
57,000 men seemed in secure possession of Alsace. Turenne replied in December
with the most famous of his marches. He turned south on the French side of the
Vosges, reappeared at Belfort, and, at Turckheim on Jan. 5, 1675, delivered so
heavy a blow on the flank of the main army that the Germans decided to recross
the Rhine. Alsace was saved.


Battlefield death of Henri de La Tour d'Auvergne, vicomte de Turenne, who was
killed by a cannon shot on July 27, 1675.

In June 1675 Turenne was on the east bank of the Rhine maneuvering against the
Italian field marshal in imperial service, Raimondo Montecuccoli, for the
control of the crossing near Strassburg. The armies were in contact at Sasbach,
and Turenne was examining a position when he was killed by a cannon shot on July
27, 1675. He was buried with the kings of France at Saint-Denis. Later the
emperor Napoleon had his remains transferred to the Invalides in Paris.

Ivo D'Oyly Elliott


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