Charles William Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick
Charles William Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick, issued the manifesto that helped destroy the French monarchy and was killed by the army he had underestimated. Born in 1735, he was a nephew of Frederick the Great, served with distinction in the Seven Years' War at Hastenbeck, Minden and Krefeld, and was regarded across Europe as one of the ablest soldiers of the age. He governed Brunswick as an enlightened despot — reducing debt, reforming taxation, supporting schools and the arts, and corresponding with Lessing and Mirabeau. In 1792 he was given command of the allied army invading revolutionary France. The Brunswick Manifesto, issued in July and drafted by French émigrés rather than by him, threatened Paris with total destruction and exemplary vengeance if the royal family were harmed. Its effect was the opposite of what was intended: it convinced Parisians that the king was in league with the invaders, and the Tuileries was stormed on 10 August and the monarchy abolished. He took Longwy and Verdun and then met a French army at Valmy on 20 September. The engagement was an artillery duel in mud; the French volunteers did not break as expected, and Brunswick declined to attack and withdrew. Goethe, present, said a new epoch had begun. He resigned in 1794 and refused Prussian command until 1806. At Auerstedt in October 1806, aged seventy-one, he was shot through both eyes leading the Prussian main army against Davout's single corps. He died of the wound weeks later, in flight. His duchy was abolished and absorbed into Napoleon's Kingdom of Westphalia within a year.
- Lived: 1735 CE – 1806 CE
- Nationality: German
- Roles: general, military_leader
