Henri de la Tour d’Auvergne de Turenne (French Marshal) earned the reputa- tion as one of France’s great generals during the Thirty Years’ War (1618-48) and the Wars of Louis XTV. Turenne became a master of unorthodox tactical maneuvers designed to achieve surprise and advantage. He also possessed the ability to assume command of defeated or demoralized armies and quickly motivate them to victory. His abilities to defeat larger forces with the minimum of friendly casualties earned him the love of his soldiers and the respect of his superiors. Turenne’s influence stems from his professionalism and longevity. During a career of fifty years he maintained a well-trained and disciplined army that preserved his country’s autonomy.
Born into a military family at Sedan on September 11, 1611, Turenne joined his uncle, Dutch general Maurice of Nassau, in 1625 as an army private. Along with the basics of being a soldier, Turenne studied the careers of Julius CAesar and Alexander the Great. Turenne experienced his first combat and distinguished himself for his personal bravery at the siege of Bois- le-Duc in 1626 at the young age of fourteen and earned promotion to captain the following year.
In 1630, Turenne, then nineteen, transferred to French service as a colonel in command of an infantry regiment. The Thirty Years’ War offered ample opportunity for a professional soldier, and Turenne took advantage. For four years he fought the Spanish, garnering praise for his assault and capture of the fortress of La Motte. He then fought along the Rhine River and advanced into Italy. During a decade of fighting, Turenne developed the reputation as a commander who weighed all options and acted with caution rather than impulse. Never attacking until he had as much information as possible about the enemy and the terrain, Turenne consistently defeated numerically superior forces with few casualties of his own.
In 1642, Turenne suffered a political setback and had his lands confiscated when his elder brother became involved in a conspiracy against the crown. Turenne quickly recovered, as he would during countless political changes and intrigue the rest of his life. In 1643, at only thirty-two years of age, he became a marshal of France and commander of France’s Weimar army.
When Turenne arrived at his new command at Breisach, he found his force of ten thousand totally demoralized by their recent defeat by Franz von Mercy’s Bavarian army at Tuttlingen. While he reorganized and trained his army, Louis II de Bourbon, Prince de Conde joined him, bringing seven thousand reinforcements. For the remainder of their careers, the two commanders would fight first together and then later against each other as they established themselves among France’s greatest generals. Although Conde brought a smaller army, he assumed overall command be- cause of his higher “blood” royalty status. Turenne expressed no difficulties with the arrangement; in fact, part of his great reputation resulted from his ability to work and cooperate with a variety of commanders.
During the following offensive, Turenne led his army through narrow mountain paths, attacking the Bavarian defenses from behind and winning the Batde of Freiburg in 1644. The following year, Turenne, again reinforced by Conde, decisively defeated the Bavarians and killed their commander, von Mercy, during the batde. Turenne, displaying his own personal character as well as his respect for a fellow professional soldier, erected a monument to Mercy where he fell.
In 1646, Turenne secredy marched his army down the Rhine and then to the southeast to join the Swedish army at Giessen. With this new alliance, Turenne won the Batde of Zusmarshausen in 1648, forcing Bavaria to sue for peace.
The end of the Thirty Years’ War brought litde tranquillity to anyone, including Turenne. Royal excesses and taxation, mixed with regional and family feuds dating back centuries, led to a series of revolts, or frondes, in France. During a series of batdes, followed by amnesties and realignment of allegiances, Turenne initially fell out of power and had to flee the country but in 1651 returned to command.
A year later, after yet more changes, Turenne found himself supporting young king Louis XIV against a rebellion led by Conde. The two old friends and allies fought each other in a sequence of batdes between 1652 and 1653. In every fight Turenne and his Royalist army defeated the great Conde, preventing the juncture of various rebel factions and enabling the king to solidify his throne and stabilize his reign.
Again, however, victory did not bring peace for Turenne because the Spanish remained at war against France. At Dunkirk in 1658, Turenne, this time allied with an English army, took advantage of low tides to maneuver his force along the beach and roll up the Spanish flank. In a four-hour battle, Turenne killed or captured sixty-five hundred Spaniards while sustaining only four hundred of his own casualties. The victory opened the way for Turenne to capture Ypres and threaten Brussels and Ghent, advantages which led to favorable terms for the French in die Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659.
In 1660, Turenne became marshal-general of the camps and armies of the king. When the War of the Triple Alliance broke out in 1672, Turenne took the French army along the left bank of the Rhine and for the next two years fought a series of successful actions against the Dutch and Germans. During the winter of 1674-75, Turenne led a surprise winter campaign that cleared the Alsace of enemy occupation. Before he could achieve total victory, however, on July 27, a cannonball struck and killed him, at age sixty-three, during a routine reconnaissance near Sasback.
During nearly a half century of warfare, Turenne achieved an impressive string of victories. In a period when politics often overwhelmed professional soldiers, Turenne managed to separate the two and loyally serve whoever held power at the dme. His maneuvers, enhanced by the use of terrain, rapid marches, and surprise attacks, exceeded the generalship of his rivals, and his conservation of manpower earned him the lasting affection of his troops.
Conde, as the superior self-promoter, has received more attention from historians than Turenne, but, in fact, Turenne proved himself the better soldier. Turenne enhanced the professionalism of the French army by buffering it from France’s internal conflicts and through his abilities garnered the loyalty and maintained the morale of his subordinate officers and soldiers. His tactical movements on the battlefield were so precise and well planned that they were often compared to chess moves. The more famous Duke of Marlborough, who served under him during the Holland campaign, frequently expressed his admiration for Turenne’s leadership and mentorship. When Napoleon I composed a list of those whom he considered the seven greatest commanders in history, Turenne was the only Frenchman so recognized.