His son and heir apparent, Wilhelm, had ruled the county of Hanau since 1764. Hanau lay a few miles east of Frankfurt. Wilhelm was his father’s equal in cupidity. On hearing of the results of the battle of Bunker Hill, he offered his grandfather, George II, a regiment and received an even higher price per man than his father had earlier.
Cassel and Hanau were not on good terms. Because of his conversion to Catholicism, Friedrich II constantly quarreled with his wife and son, despite their separation. In 1785 Friedrich II died and his son Wilhelm assumed his title and positions. Wilhelm was married to a Danish princess. His eldest son married a Prussian princess in 1797.
In 1792, with the death of Louis XVI, Europe mobilized against France. On 29 April 1792 a French corps of 35,000 advanced on the Austrian Netherlands border near Valenciennes. The Austrians moved a corps of 30,000 under the command of Duke von Sachsen-Teschen, commander of the Austrian forces in the Netherlands.
As tensions escalated, Austria and Prussia joined forces and began massing against the French. This alliance was formalized by the First Convention, signed on 31 July 1792. It directed that Hesse-Cassel would provide a force of 4,000 infantry and 2,000 cavalry. Hesse-Cassel’s involvement occurred principally because of English subsidies and its membership in the Holy Roman Empire.
In 1803 Hesse-Cassel was raised to an electorate and Wilhelm became Elector (Kurfürst) of Hesse-Cassel. Hesse-Cassel was to remain the only territory so styled after the end of the Holy Roman Empire. After 1800, Kurfürst Wilhelm I pursued a policy of neutrality toward Napoleon who, nonetheless, dissolved Hesse-Cassel after the battle of Jena (1806) and in 1807 united it with the Kingdom of Westphalia, while Hanau was allocated to the Grand Duchy of Frankfurt from 1810 to 1815. In 1809 an uprising of Hessian patriots under Oberst Wilhelm von Dörnberg against the French failed.
In the fall of 1813, as the Allies pushed Napoleon across the Rhine, the Kurfürst returned to his country and reestablished his authority. He reformed his army and it joined the Allies in their war against Napoleon. In 1815 a small Hessian force joined the combined German allies that were forming to fight Napoleon; however, the battle of Waterloo prevented their becoming involved in any further combat.
HESSE-DARMSTADT. The history of Hesse-Darmstadt begins with the division of Hesse into Hesse-Darmstadt and Hesse-Cassel in 1567. During the Thirty Years’ War Darmstadt sided with the Swedes and Cassel sided with the Catholics. The rivalry between the two grew when in 1605 a dispute arose over Hesse-Marburg, when its rulers became extinct. Hesse-Darmstadt suffered heavily during the War of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years’ War, where it was always loyal to Austria. In 1792 its domains consisted of the county of Catznellenbogen, the southern part of upper Hesse, part of the lordship of Epstein and the lordship of Hanau-Lichtenburg. It contained somewhat over 10,000 square miles and had a population of 350,000.
Prince Ludwig X, Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt, was born in 1753 and succeeded his father, Ludwig IX, in 1790. In 1777 he married his cousin, Princess Louisa Carolina, daughter of the late prince George William, uncle to the landgrave. Two of his sons, Augustus Friedrich Karl and Emilius Maximilian Leopold Augustus served in the Prussian army until 1806.
It was part of the First and Second Coalitions, providing a contingent to serve with the Austrian armies. After the destruction of the Holy Roman Empire at Austerlitz, it turned to the new power— France. After Napoleon’s victory over the Austrians, Hesse-Darmstadt was stripped of a number of provinces. On 12 July 1806 Landgraf Ludwig X joined the Confederation of the Rhine. In return for the 4,000 troops he committed to Napoleon’s armies the landgrave was increased to a grand duchy and Ludwig became a grand duke. Hesse-Darmstadt also received the province of Starkenburg and most of those territories stripped away earlier were restored. Between 1806 and 1813 Hesse-Darmstadt was a loyal ally to Napoleon. However, when the French armies withdrew to the west of Hesse-Darmstadt in October 1813, it defected to the Allies. It provided a small contingent that operated with the Allies during the 1814 campaign in France and mobilized in 1815, though its troops saw no combat. During the Congress of Vienna Ludwig X secured those provinces on the left bank of the Rhine, including the cities of Mainz and Worms, that he had lost earlier. He recognized the independence of Hesse-Homburg, which had been incorporated into his provinces. He retained his title of grand duke.
HOFER, ANDREAS (1767–1810). Hofer was born in St. Leonhard, the Tyrol, Austria, on 22 November 1767. Hofer rose from obscurity to prominence when the Tyrol was transferred from Austria to Bavaria under the terms of the Treaty of Pressburg. In 1808 Hofer was called to Vienna where he visited Archduke Johann to discuss starting an uprising against the Bavarians that would coincide with the attack by the Austrian main armies in 1809. Hofer raised an insurgency and began a guerrilla war that soon allowed the Austrians to reoccupy Innsbrück. The Tyrol was a side theater with the main Austrian armies engaging Napoleon and quickly being driven back to Vienna. After the conclusive French victory at Wagram and the following pursuit, the Austrians signed an armistice at Znaim. On 12 July the Austrians unconditionally surrendered the Tyrol and Voralberg to Bavaria and the French reinvaded the areas liberated by Hofer.
Hofer took up arms again, was elected oberkommandant of the Tyrol and for two months ruled in the emperor’s name. The Treaty of Schönbrunn (14 October 1809) again formally ceded the Tyrol to Bavaria, the French reoccupied it, and an amnesty was given to Hofer and his followers. On 12 November Hofer was deceived by news of Austrian military victories and rose again. Hofer was tracked down and betrayed. On 27 January 1810 Hofer was captured by Italian troops and sent to Mantua, where he was shot. In 1823 his remains were moved to a Franciscan church in Innsbrück where he assumed the mantel of a national hero.
HOHENLOHE-INGELFINGEN, FRIEDRICH LUDWIG, FÜRST VON (1746–1818). Hohenlohe was born of German nobility and was prince of the tiny Duchy of Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen. He entered Prussian service in 1768 and fought with the Prussians during the 1794 campaign. In 1806 Hohenlohe abdicated his principality, giving it to his eldest son because he was not willing to become an anachronistic and superfluous ruler under Württemberg suzerainty. When war erupted in 1806 Hohenlohe commanded the Prussian left-wing army facing Napoleon at Jena on 14 October 1806, where Hohenlohe was decisively beaten. He surrendered the remains of his army at Brenzlau on 28 October 1806 and was taken prisoner. Released at the end of the war, he returned to France in 1808. Hohenlohe returned to his estates and died on 15 February 1818.
HOHENLOHE-WALDENBURG-BARTENSTEIN, LUDWIG ALOYSIUS, FÜRST VON (1765–1829). Hohenlohe was born on 18 August 1765 of a German noble family ruling a tiny duchy on the Rhine. In 1784 Hohenlohe entered the military of the Palatinate. In 1792 Hohenlohe left the Palatinate to assume command of a regiment raised by his father for service with the émigré French who had fled revolutionary France. Hohenlohe fought under the Prince de Condé in 1792 and 1793, then entered Dutch service. In the defense of Holland Hohenlohe escaped encirclement by Pichegru and conducted a masterly retreat from the island of Bommel. Napoleon offered to restore him to his principality on the condition that he join the Confederation of the Rhine. Hohenlohe refused and his principality was given to Württemberg. After Napoleon’s second abdication Hohenlohe entered French service, and raised an infantry regiment known as the Légion de Hohenlohe on 9 June 1816. On 21 February 1821 this became the Hohenlohe Regiment, the ancestor of the modern French Foreign Legion, technically making Hohenlohe its father. Hohenlohe commanded this regiment in the 1823 campaign in Spain. In 1827 he was created a maréchal de France and made a peer of France. Hohenlohe died at Lunéville on 30 May 1829.
HOLLAND. Immediately before the French Revolution, Holland was a turbulent land torn by revolution. It had only been restored to the old order in 1797 when the King of Prussia sent an invading army that restored William V to the post of Stadtholder. When France declared war, its first target was the Lowlands, Belgium and Holland. Austrian Belgium was quic
kly overrun and the Prince of Orange found himself at war. War did not enter Holland until Pichegru’s army advanced north, sweeping everything before it and even having a force of his cavalry capture the Dutch fleet as it lay frozen in the ice at Texel. William V and his entourage fled to England.
The French then set up the Batavian Republic in Holland, establishing it along the French model. The English responded by seizing its colonies, capturing its shipping and crushing its navy at Camper-down in 1797. Under the Treaty of Amiens the Cape of Good Hope and the West Indian colonies were restored to Holland, but quickly stripped away again as war renewed in 1805. In 1805 Napoleon gave Holland a new constitution and Rutger Jan Schimmelpenninck was made supreme executive with the title of counsel pensionary. This lasted only until 24 May 1806 when Napoleon made his brother Louis King of Holland.
Louis proved an enlightened ruler, even siding with his people against the dictates of the Continental System that crushed the Dutch economy. Napoleon found this intolerable. On 1 July 1810 Louis abdicated and Holland was formally annexed into metropolitan France. In the spring of 1814 it was invaded and liberated by the Allies. William V had died in England and his son, the Prince of Orange, returned to Amsterdam in December 1813 where he was given the title of sovereign prince. He united all of the Lowlands, including Belgium, the Bishopric of Liège, the Duchy of Bouillon, and Luxembourg, which he received in exchange for his share in the German inheritance of the Nassau family. He was crowned Willem I, King of the Netherlands, in Brussels on 27 September 1815.
HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. Founded by Charlemagne as a successor to the collapsed Roman Empire when he was crowned in Aachen cathedral in A.D. 800. In its early days it encompassed what is today France, Italy, Switzerland, the Lowlands, Germany and Austria. However, by 1789 it consisted only of what is today Germany, Belgium and Austria under the nominal leadership of Joseph II (1780–90), King of Hungary, Duke of Austria and Holy Roman Emperor. After the Thirty Years’ War its nature had changed from a spiritual to a temporal leadership. From 1556 to 1806 it was essentially a loose political confederation of German princes, both lay and ecclesiastical, under the presidency of the House of Hapsburg. This presidency was elective in theory, but had become essentially hereditary.
Napoleon Bonaparte broke the political bonds of the Holy Roman Empire with his crushing victory at Austerlitz, on 2 December 1805, and began restructuring the political nature of Germany to suit his desires. The last emperor of the Holy Roman Empire resigned the imperial dignity on 6 August 1806. However, earlier, in 1804, he had assumed the title of Hereditary Emperor of Austria as a riposte to Napoleon’s assumption of the title Emperor of France.
HOUDON, JEAN ANTOINE (1740–1828). Houdon was born in Versailles, France, on 18 March 1740. At the age of twelve he entered the École Royale de Sculpture. At twenty Houdon won the Prix de Rome and left France for Italy where he would live for the next 10 years. Houdon’s talent was such that he soon gained numerous royal patrons and even the patronage of a pope. Houdon prepared busts of numerous famous individuals, including d’Alemberg, Prinz Heinrich von Preussen, Berbier, Buffon, Mirabeau, Molière, Voltaire, Marshal de Tourville, the King of Prussia and George Washington. When Houdon learned of Rousseau’s death, he took a cast from Rousseau’s face and produced the head that now stands in the Louvre. When the French Revolution erupted, his work began to slow. Houdon was denounced to the Convention, but saved by his skill. Napoleon commissioned a nude statue in 1806, but Houdon had little work during the early Empire. He was, however, commissioned to decorate the Column of the Grande Armée intended for Boulogne. Houdon would produce busts of Marshal Ney, Joséphine and Napoleon himself, the latter winning for him the Legion of Honor. Houdon died in Paris on 16 July 1828.
HUNDRED DAYS. The Hundred Days is the term used to describe the period of Napoleon’s return to France and the Waterloo campaign. It was coined by the Comte de Chabrol-Volvic, Prefect of the Seine, when he greeted Louis XVIII upon his return to France and his arrival at Saint-Denis on 8 July 1815. His greeting was, “A hundred days have passed since the fatal movement when Your Majesty left his capital. . . .”
In fact Louis XVIII had fled Paris on 8 March 1815 and his return was 110 days later.
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IMPERIAL GUARD. The origins of the Imperial Guard are found in Napoleon’s need for a personal bodyguard. On 30 May 1796 (11 prairial Year IV), Napoleon ordered General Jean Lannes to organize a company of 50 Guides à cheval. The reason for the formation of this bodyguard lies in a peccadillo of both General Masséna and Napoleon. It seems that these two generals had engaged in a dalliance with some Italian ladies in Valeggio during the previous night. The security provided by Masséna’s division was lax. Both men were surprised in flagrante delicto by a force of Austrian hussars. Narrowly escaping capture by ducking out a window with his clothes in his hands, and ever sensitive to such a mischance, Napoleon chose to raise a reliable bodyguard to prevent any repetition of this misadventure.
From this tiny force, the Imperial Guard steadily grew in size and strength until it was a combined arms force consisting of infantry, cavalry, artillery, engineers and train. Its official establishment in May 1814 was 112,482 officers and men.
The various units in the Guard were ranked as Old Guard, Middle Guard and Young Guard, the Old Guard being the most senior. The various units also had nicknames. The Grenadiers à pied and sometimes the Chasseurs à pied were known as the “grognards” or “grumblers.” Of the cavalry, the Grenadiers à cheval were known by the rest of the army as “the Gods” and the “Big Heels,” the latter because of their tall boots. The Chasseurs à cheval were Napoleon’s favorite. He usually wore their undress uniform and was buried in it. Their nicknames were “The Invincibles,” for reasons obvious in reviewing their battle history. However, the common troopers referred to them as “the Pet Children” in the sense of the “spoiled brats.”
ISABEY, JEAN BAPTISTE (1767–1855). Isabey was born in Nancy on 11 April 1767. He moved to Paris in 1786 and became a pupil of the painter David. Isabey soon received commissions to paint portraits of the Dukes of Angoulême and Berry, and Marie Antoinette. Isabey would receive commissions to paint the rulers of France until his death in 1855, including the Bonapartes. For Napoleon and Joséphine he arranged the ceremonies for their coronations and prepared the drawings that would eventually be published. Ironically, Isabey was paid for this commission by Louis XVIII. During the Hundred Days he paid homage to Napoleon; upon the return of the Bourbons he continued to enjoy royal favor and even took part in the arrangements for the coronation of Charles X. Napoleon III would grant him a pension and the cross of the commander of the Legion of Honor. His painting Review of Troops by the First Consul was one of his most important paintings and his portrait of Napoleon at Malmaison is probably Isabey’s best.
ITALY, KINGDOM OF NORTHERN. Formed on 25 May 1805 from the Cisalpine Republic (formed on 29 June 1797) when Napoleon was crowned King of Italy in the Milan Cathedral. On 7 June he appointed his stepson, Eugène de Beauharnais, viceroy. The kingdom contained the Duchies of Milan and Modena, part of Piedmont, Ferrara, Bologna, Mantua and Romagna. The year 1806 saw the addition of Venetia, and in 1807 the papal territories of Macerata, Camerino, Urbion and Ancona were added. After the 1809 campaign, parts of the Austrian Tyrol were added.
The kingdom had a contract that established it as a republic. The constitution had a bill of rights and abolished feudalism. It provided for an indirectly elected legislature and allowed for universal male suffrage. In 1805 an appointive senate was established that assumed the functions of a legislature. The legal system used was the Code Napoleon and the courts were restructured on the French model.
As Eugène governed, he opened his government up to men of talent and of all origins. His rule was enlightened and much was done to build and improve the infrastructure of the kingdom. The education system was brought under central control and the government provided salaries for scholars and made gran
ts to such men as Alessandro Volta.
In the fall of 1813 the Austrians invaded the eastern portion of the kingdom and steadily pushed Eugène’s army to the west. When the Neapolitans, under Murat, defected to the Allies, Eugène was forced to surrender all of eastern Italy to the Allies. To defend the kingdom Eugène fought and won one major battle, Mincio (8 February 1814), but because he was heavily outnumbered by the allied armies, he continued a slow withdrawal to the west. The kingdom died with the signing of the Convention of Schiarino-Rizzino on 17 April 1814 and the subsequent restoration of an Austrian hegemony over northern Italy.
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JANISSARIES. The Janissaries were the standing Army of the Ottoman Empire, or Sublime Porte. They were organized in 1330 and annually 1,000 Christian youths were taken every year and trained as infantry. Later those from Albania, Bosnia and Bulgaria were preferred. Service in the Janissaries brought with it great privilege and parents actually begged to have their children enrolled, even though they were converted to Islam. The strength of the force grew to 20,000 by around 1575 and to 48,688 by 1591. Under Ibrahim (1640–48) their numbers were reduced to 17,000 but began to increase again and had risen to 135,000 by the time they were destroyed in 1826. In the 17th century they had become a praetorian guard in the worst sense of the word. When Sultan Selim III attempted to organize and establish a properly disciplined force to take their place, they revolted and forced him to abdicate. Under Bairakdar Pasha of Widdin a new force was raised and drilled, and in 1806 the Janissaries rose again. They were repulsed and the uprising crushed, but the new troops were disbanded. They became so violent and demanding of the sultan that in 1825 Sultan Mahmud II decided to raise a new force. He had a fetva (religious order or command to all faithful Muslims) issued that stated it was the duty of all Muslims to serve in the military and established this new body of troops. On 10 June 1826 the Janissaries revolted in Et Meidan square in Constantinople and attacked and pillaged much of the city. The government drew together its forces and when the Janissaries refused to surrender, they were slaughtered. Those who escaped the fighting were taken before the Grand Vizier and hanged.
Historical Dictionary of the Napoleonic Era Page 20