Archduke Ferdinand Karl Joseph of Austria-Este

Archduke Ferdinand Karl Joseph of Austria-Este (25 April 1781 – 5 November 1850) was the third son of Archduke Ferdinand of Austria-Este and Princess Maria Beatrice Ricciarda d'Este, last member and heiress of the House of Este. For much of the Napoleonic Wars, he was in command of the Austrian army.

Ferdinand was born at Milan. He attended the Theresian Military Academy in Wiener Neustadt before embarking on a military career. In 1805, in the War of the Third Coalition against France, Ferdinand was commander-in-chief of the Austrian forces with General Karl Freiherr Mack von Leiberich as his quartermaster general. In October, his army was surrounded at Ulm. General Mack surrendered, but Ferdinand managed to escape with 2,000 cavalry to Bohemia. There, he took command of the Austrian troops and raised the local militia. With a total of 9,000 men, he set out for Iglau to distract attention from the Coalition's movements. He succeeded in holding the Bavarian division of Prince Karl Philipp von Wrede in Iglau thereby and preventing it from joining the Battle of Austerlitz.

In 1809, in the War of the Fifth Coalition against France, Ferdinand commanded an Austrian army of 36,000 men. In April, he invaded the Duchy of Warsaw, hoping to encourage a local uprising against Napoleon (see Polish–Austrian War). But the Poles rallied to Prince Józef Antoni Poniatowski. Ferdinand was victorious at the Battle of Raszyn, which managed to recapture Warsaw. In June, however, Ferdinand was compelled to withdraw from Warsaw, and to give up Kraków and Galicia as well.

In 1815, in the War of the Seventh Coalition against France, Ferdinand commanded two divisions of the Austrian Reserve. The following year, he was appointed military commander in Hungary.

In 1830, Ferdinand was appointed military and civil governor of Galicia, taking up residence in Lemberg. After the Revolution of 1848, he lived mostly in Italy.

Ferdinand never married. In 1850, he died at Schloss Ebenzweier in Altmünster near Gmunden, Austria.

Honours

Ancestry