Maurice comte de Saxe

For more information on Hermann- Maurice count de Saxe, visit Britannica.com.

Saxe, Marshal Maurice de (1696-1750), also known as Moritz of Saxony, French military commander and thinker, the greatest European general and military intellectual between the times of Marlborough and Eugène of Savoy at the start of the 18th century and Frederick ‘the Great’ in its second half. Hermann Maurice/Moritz was born in Goslar in Germany, the illegitimate son of King Frederick Augustus I of Saxony and later Augustus II of Poland (see Great Northern war). He began his military career as a boy serving under Eugène in 1709-10. His father made him count of Saxony, or, in its French form Saxe, in 1711.

Although Saxe could equally have fought against the French, he joined their service in 1719 and attracted attention through his unusually comprehensive training methods. In 1726 he was elected duke of Courland and would have married the future Empress Anna Ivanovna of Russia had it not been for Russian and Polish opposition. During the War of the Polish succession (1733-5), Saxe fought for France against Saxony, plus Russia and Austria, an indication of the slight national ties which bound members of the European aristocracy of that time. France came off worst, but Saxe was made a lieutenant general. He returned to France where he wrote his famous Mes rêveries, published in English as Reveries upon the Art of War in 1757. The work is not just one of military theory, but also a treatise on military life, which he lived to the full.

During the War of the Austrian Succession, Saxe captured Prague in 1741 in a surprise night attack. In 1744 he was made marshal of France. On 11 May 1745 he led 40, 000 French troops into action at Fontenoy, now in Belgium, against an Austrian-Dutch-Hanoverian force of 50, 000 under Cumberland. The French occupied Fontenoy and fortified it. They beat off the Allied attack, inflicting 14, 000 casualties while sustaining about 6, 000 of their own. Cumberland, hitherto hailed as the greatest British general since Marlborough, hastened back to take on less well-led opposition at Culloden.

Fontenoy gained control of the Austrian Netherlands for France. Saxe won victories at Raucoux (Rocour) in 1746 and Maastricht in 1748. Made marshal-general of France by Louis XV, he retired to the royal chateau of Chambord, where he died. He had many mistresses, and through one of hem was an ancestor of the French writer George Sand.

His Reveries upon the Art of War drew heavily on Machiavelli. Although a talented commander in the field, Saxe's view of warfare was highly formalistic, and he believed (probably rightly, in the context of his time) that an army of 46, 000 troops was about the limit that one commander could control. Like Frederick, he combined massive practical experience with limited dabbling in military theory. Over the next hundred years, the theoretical component of military power and military thought would gain weight. His work was still highly regarded a hundred years later.

Bibliography

• Paret, Peter (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy (Oxford, 1986)

— Christopher Bellamy

Hermann Maurice, Comte de Saxe (1696-1750), was a marshal of France. His active campaigns, methods of organizing and training troops, and general principles of warfare influenced both his own and later times.

Maurice de Saxe who is known as Marshal Saxe, was born in Dresden on Oct. 28, 1696, the first of the 354 acknowledged illegitimate children of Augustus II, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland. His mother was the Countess Aurora von Konigsmark. Like his father in "his fabulous strength, the immensity of his appetites, and his limitless lust," Saxe also possessed a high intelligence.

When he was twelve years old, Saxe entered the Saxon army. He fought in the battle of Malplaquet under the Duke of Marlborough and Eugene of Savoy. By the time of the Peace of Utrecht, he had participated in four campaigns in Flanders and Pomerania and had commanded a cavalry regiment. He served under Eugene in the war against the Turks, and in 1717 he took part in the capture of Belgrade.

In 1720 Saxe went to Paris, becoming a camp marshal to the Duc d'Orléans. When his father died, he was offered the command of the Saxon army, but he preferred to remain in France. Saxe fought in the War of the Polish Succession (1733-1738) as a lieutenant general. In the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748), after leading his troops in a successful surprise attack on Prague in 1741, he restrained them from pillaging the city.

In 1743, made marshal of France, Saxe was placed in command of an army assembling at Dunkirk for a proposed invasion of England. When France declared war on England in 1744, he took operational command of the main army in Flanders, led personally by Louis XV. Later Saxe took full control.

In May 1745 Saxe led his army of about 70,000 men to Tournai and invested the city, which was defended by 50,000 English troops. On May 10 he moved 52,000 troops to Fontenay to block an allied relief force, which he defeated. Then he took Tournai, Ghent, Bruges, Audenarde, Ostende, and Brussels. These battles, plus Rascoux in 1746 and the capture of Maastricht in 1748, firmly established Saxe's reputation. In gratitude for his services, Louis XV gave him life tenure of the château of Chambord.

There Saxe wrote Mes rêveries (My Reveries), his reflections on the art of war. His descriptions of how to raise and train recruits and how to establish garrison and field camps soon became standard procedure. Saxe stimulated acceptance of breech-loading muskets and cannon and invented a gun capable of accompanying the infantry. He rediscovered and initiated the practice of marching in cadence, lost since the Romans. He also modified the normal linear battle formations and tactics of his day by using an embryonic form of attack column that required less training and became the usual assault method a hundred years later.

A fearless man in battle, Saxe led a dissolute life of between campaigns. He died at Chambord on Nov. 30, 1750.

Further Reading

The standard works for information on Saxe are Leslie H. Thornton, Campaigners Grave and Gay (1925), and Jon Manship White, Marshal of France: The Life and Times of Maurice, Comte de Saxe (1962). See also Basil Henry Liddell Hart, Great Captains Unveiled (1927); Edmund B. D'Auvergne, The Prodigious Marshal (1931); and Thomas R. Phillips, ed., Roots of Strategy (1940).

Additional Sources

Liddell Hart, Basil Henry, Sir, Great captains unveiled, London: Greenhill Books; Novato, Ca., U.S.A.: Presidio Press, 1990.

Saxe, Maurice de, Maréchal (Goslar, 1696-1750, Chambord), a distinguished French general of German birth and upbringing. He was an illegitimate son of August der Starke of Saxony (see August II) and of his mistress Gräfin Aurora von Königsmarck. Baptized Moritz, he was created Graf von Sachsen. In 1720 he entered the French army and had an outstandingly successful career, reaching the rank of maréchal in 1744. He was the victor of Fontenoy (1745). He was noted for his attention to the welfare of the troops under his command, and of their horses.