Prince Eugene of Savoy

Prince Eugene of Savoy-Carignano was the outstanding soldier of the Habsburg monarchy and, over six decades in the service of three emperors — Leopold I, Joseph I and Charles VI — one of its principal statesmen. He was born in Paris to a French count and Olympia Mancini, a niece of Cardinal Mazarin, and raised at the court of Louis XIV. Intended for the priesthood as a youngest son, he asked instead for a commission and was refused: Louis judged him too slight for soldiering, and a scandal surrounding his mother did not help. He left France in 1683 for the service of Emperor Leopold I, arriving in time to fight the Ottomans besieging Vienna, and distinguished himself there at twenty. At Zenta in 1697 he caught an Ottoman army crossing the Tisza and destroyed it, a victory that forced the Treaty of Karlowitz and pushed the Ottoman frontier out of Hungary. During the War of the Spanish Succession he formed with Marlborough one of the most effective partnerships in military history: the two combined at Blenheim in 1704, where a march up the Danube surprised a Franco-Bavarian army and knocked Bavaria out of the war, and again at Oudenarde and Malplaquet. He fought his own campaigns in Italy, relieving Turin in 1706 by a wide flanking march that broke the French siege. Against the Ottomans again, he took Belgrade in 1717 after defeating a relieving army twice his strength. As president of the Imperial War Council he reorganised Habsburg military administration and sat at the centre of Vienna's government, though his influence waned under Charles VI. He was also a serious collector and builder, and the Belvedere palaces in Vienna were raised for him. He never married and left no heir, and the fortune he assembled was dispersed after his death.

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