Count Ernst von Mansfeld

Ernst Graf von Mansfeld was an enigmatic and controversial figure. His unswerving attitude to life reflected a profound, latent and ever-present desire for personal recognition and this constant drive assisted him in the gradual rise to military prominence during the initial stages of The Thirty Years’ War. He was an adventurer, consummate negotiator, pragmatist, a professional cavalry and artillery commander, and an experienced and shrewd diplomat with exceptional organising skills and a penchant for pugnacity.

The Mansfeld family name became synonymous with nobility in the Duchy of Magdeburg when the Frankish, Holy Roman Emperor, Henry V, bestowed a reward of title and estates on a descendent that had bravely fallen in battle in the 12th century. Catholicism and military service remained through the generations of the family, and Ernst’s father – Peter Ernst I, Graf von Mansfeld-Vorderort (1517 – 1604) – was a staunch Catholic who accompanied Habsburg Emperor Charles V on an expedition to Tunis, Africa, and was subsequently appointed Governor of Luxembourg on behalf of the Spanish Crown. He was also a Knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece and was a veteran general from the Battle of Moncontour (3 October 1569) which left him with a shattered right arm.

Ernst was born on the 29 November 1580 at the Château La Fontaine in Luxembourg to Peter Ernst and his unmarried partner, Anna von Bentzerath. Before their deaths, his father’s first two wives had presented him with seven legitimate children, after which he decided not to re-marry. Ernst had two illegitimate siblings, Anna and Karl. He was not given his father’s Christian name but was named after Archduke Ernst, a brother of the Emperor. Although illegitimate, he received a proper education in Brussels where he was taught Latin and the classics.

At the age of 15, Ernst joined his half-brother Karl, who held command of the Imperial army in Hungary. Ernst’s initiation with war was rapid, brutal and direct, and he quickly became a competent artillery and cavalry officer.

With the death of his father and brother in 1604, the legitimate Mansfeld line ended and the illegitimate and penniless Mansfeld served as a colonel with the Habsburg forces of Leopold V. After six years of unhappy turbulence, Mansfeld pledged loyalty to the Calvinists, the circumstances of which were viewed by the Imperial crown as treason.

Operating as a mercenary, he prospered within the Ansbach regime. With well-rewarded promotion to a military adviser, came the opportunity to master diplomatic intrigue and success while filling his own coffers. His endeavours soon earned him the title of Marquis de Castel Novo et Boutiglière while he accumulated every loose florin of tribute, ransom, loot, defrayment and bribery.

Following the Prague castle defenestration, Mansfeld was given control of an army supported by the wealthy Duke of Savoy, Ansbach, and the Palatinate, and besieged the catholic city of Pilsen, which capitulated on 21 November 1618.

Filled with confidence, he pressed into Southern Bohemia to halt the imperial advance under Comte de Bucquoy. Their forces met at the outskirts of the small village of Záblatí, and after bitter fighting for almost seven hours on the 10th June 1619, Mansfeld escaped from the field with only 15 officers, abandoning his field chancellery to the Catholics.

He returned to Prague, and within weeks assembled another army and sequestered himself with it within Pilsen’s walls. Initial heart and asthma issues began to plague him as the Palatine elector, Frederick V, appointed him general of the Palatinate in November 1620. He vacated Pilsen and departed for the Upper Palatinate, where he amassed an army of over 20,000 men. Skirmishing with Tilly along the Bohemian border, Mansfeld was aware of the imminent accumulation of catholic reinforcements, and withdrew his force from the Waidhaus border pass and freely looted and pillaged the Upper Rhine until the halting grip of the 1621 winter.

After barely fending off Archduke Leopold at Haguenau, Mansfeld’s health failed and he collapsed, tired and ill-tempered, from severe gout on the 5th June 1622. He found a new paymaster in the Dutch and fought the Spanish forces under Spinola, and defeated Córdoba at the Battle of Fleurus on 29 August 1622. Within months, Mansfeld disbanded his army and retired to The Hague with his closest officers to recuperate.

He was cheered in the streets of London when he visited King James I on 24 April 1624, and was greeted as a hero by the French in Paris. On 17 June 1625, Mansfeld invaded Lower Saxony with Christian IV of Denmark and Norway. Deciding to separate, Christian ordered Mansfeld with 12,000 men to capture the tactically important passage across the Elbe River at Dessau. On the 25th April 1626 Wallenstein’s clever strategy and superior numbers defeated Mansfeld as he stormed the bridge, referred in history as The Battle of Dessau Bridge.

Within six weeks however, Mansfeld recovered to raise a fresh army of 6,000 plus 8 guns. Christian gave him another 7,000 before separating to pursue Tilly; on the condition that command be shared with Duke Johann Ernst I von Sachsen-Weimar (1594 – 1626), a decision that did not portend well. Friction, fuelled by divergent goals between the pair, ballooned into mutual disdain.

Pursued by Wallenstein across the valleys, Mansfeld’s and Sachsen-Weimar’s force advanced south through the snow-covered, treacherous passes of the Carpathian Mountains into Hungary to meet up with Bethlen Gábor. The physical stress of the crossing, Weimar’s continual stubbornness, the despair of Christian’s decisive defeat at Lutter am Barenberge and thirty years of strenuous and often Spartan life, eventually caught up with the now weak and spent general.

In early November 1626, he left his troops in Silesia with Weimar and Gábor, and departed for Venice, writing many letters and despatches as he pondered and formulated his future. Later that month, near the town of Sarajevo on his way to the coast, Mansfeld lost a large quantity of blood and was quickly moved to a nearby house. His last will was signed by his surgeon and a colonel. He died during the night of 29-30 November 1626, on his forty-sixth birthday, in the Bosnian village of Rakovica. The cause of death was believed to be tuberculosis, but this was never confirmed.

Mansfeld had belonged to both denominations yet had embraced neither, a mercenary to the core. He died impoverished, without property or descendants, leaving only a controvertible mark on Europe’s rich history.