Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick

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Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick
Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick
This article is about Frederick the Great's field marshal. For Ferdinand's nephew, see Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg.

Ferdinand (12 January 1721, Brunswick – 3 July 1792), Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, was a Prussian field marshal (1758–1766) known for his participation in the Seven Years' War.

The fourth son of Ferdinand Albert II, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, Ferdinand joined the Prussian army as a colonel in 1740. He was present in the battles of Mollwitz and Chotusitz. After Margrave Wilhelm of Brandenburg was killed at Prague in 1744, Ferdinand received command of Frederick the Great's Leibgarde battalion, and at Sohr (1745) he distinguished himself greatly. He took part in the Second Silesian War before leading part of the invasion of Saxony and Bohemia in 1756 during the Seven Years' War. He participated in the Battle of Rossbach, and then became commander of the allied Hanoverian army.

During ten years of peace, he was in the closest touch with the military work of Frederick the Great, who supervised the instruction of the guard battalion, and sought to make it a model of the whole Prussian army. Ferdinand was, moreover, one of the most intimate friends of the king, and thus he was peculiarly fitted for the tasks which afterwards fell to his lot. In this time, he was promoted to major-general and then lieutenant-general. In the first campaign of the Seven Years' War, Ferdinand commanded one of the Prussian columns which converged upon Dresden, and in the operations which led up to the surrender of the Saxon army at Pirna (1756). At the Battle of Lobositz, he led the right wing of the Prussian infantry. In 1757, he distinguished himself at Prague, and served also in the campaign of Rossbach. Shortly after this, he was appointed to command the allied forces which were being organized for the war in western Germany. He found this army dejected by a reverse and a capitulation, yet within a week of his taking up the command, he assumed the offensive, and thus began the career of victory which made his reputation as a soldier.

His conduct of the five campaigns in the following Seven Years' War was naturally influenced by the teachings of Frederick, whose pupil the duke had been for so many years. Ferdinand, indeed, approximated more closely to Frederick in his method of making war than any other general of the time. Yet his task was in many respects far more difficult than that faced by the king. Frederick was the absolute master of his own homogeneous army, Ferdinand merely the commander of a group of contingents, and answerable to several princes for the troops placed under his control. The French were by no means despicable opponents in the field, and their leaders, if not of the first grade, were experienced veterans. In 1758. he won the battle of Krefeld, several marches beyond the Rhine, but could not easily maintain so advanced a position and fell back to the Lippe. He resumed a bold offensive in 1759, only to be repulsed at Bergen (near Frankfort-on-Main), defeated by France in the Battle of Bergen on 13 April 1759, and again prevailed in a brilliant victory in the Battle of Minden in the same year. Vellinghausen, Wilhelmsthal, Warburg and other victories attested the increasing power of Ferdinand in the following campaigns, and Frederick, hard pressed in the eastern theatre of war, owed much of his success in an almost hopeless task to the continued pressure exerted by Ferdinand in the west.

In promoting him to Field Marshal in November 1758, Frederick acknowledged his debt in the words, Je nai fait que ce qua je dois, mon cher Ferdinand. After Minden, King George II of Great Britain gave the duke the order of the Garter, and the thanks of the British parliament were voted on the same occasion to the victor of Minden. After the war, he was honored by other sovereigns, and he received the rank of field marshal and a regiment from the Austrians. During the War of American Independence, there was a suggestion, which came to nothing, of offering him the command of the British forces. He devoting most of the small income he received from his various offices and the rewards given to him by the allied princes to compensate those who had suffered in the Seven Years' War.

The estrangement of Frederick and Ferdinand in 1766 led to the duke's retirement from Prussian service, but there was no open breach between the old friends, and Ferdinand visited the king in 1772, 1777, 1779 and 1782. Ferdinand retired to Brunswick and his castle of Veschelde, where he occupied himself in building and other improvements. He became a patron of learning and art, and a great benefactor of the poor. He died on 3 July 1792.

The merits, civil and military, of the prince were recognized by memorials not only in Prussia and Hanover, but also in Denmark, the states of western Germany and England. The Prussian memorials include an equestrian statue at Berlin 1863.