Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick

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You may want Ferdinand's nephew, Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg (1735-1806)

Ferdinand (12 January 1721, Brunswick – 3 July 1792), Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, was a Prussian field marshal (1758–1766) known for his participation in the Seven Years' War.

The fourth son of Ferdinand Albert II, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, Ferdinand joined the Prussian army as a colonel in 1740. He was present in the battles of Mollwitz and Chotusitz. In succession to Margrave Wilhelm of Brandenburg, killed at Prague in 1744, Ferdinand received the command of Frederick the Great's Leibgarde battalion, and at Sohr (1745) he distinguished himself greatly. He took part in the Second Silesian War before leading part of the invasion of Saxony and Bohemia during the Seven Years' War in 1756. He participated in the Battle of Rossbach, and then became commander of the allied Hanoverian army.

During the ten years peace he was in the closest touch with the military work of Frederick the Great, who supervised the instruction of the guard battalion, and sought to make it a model of the whole Prussian army. Ferdinand was, moreover, one of the most intimate friends of the king, and thus he was peculiarly fitted for the tasks which afterwards fell to his lot. In this time he became successively major-general and lieutenant-general. In the first campaign of the Seven Years War Ferdinand commanded one of the Prussian columns which converged upon Dresden, and in the operations which led up to the surrender of the Saxon army at Pirna (1756), and at the Battle of Lobositz, he led the right wing of the Prussian infantry. In 1757 he was present, and distinguished himself, at Prague, and he served also in the campaign of Rossbach. Shortly after this he was appointed to command the allied forces which were being organized for the war in western Germany. He found this army dejected by a reverse and a capitulation, yet within a week of his taking up the command he assumed the offensive, and thus began the career of victory which made his European reputation as a soldier.

His conduct of the five campaigns which followed (in the Seven Years' War) was naturally influenced by the teachings of Frederick, whose pupil the duke had been for so many years. Ferdinand, indeed, approximated more closely to Frederick in his method of making war than any other general of the time. Yet his task was in many respects far more difficult than that of the king. Frederick was the absolute master of his own homogeneous army, Ferdinand merely the commander of a group of contingents, and answerable to several princes for the troops placed under his control. The French were by no means despicable opponents in the field, and their leaders, if not of the first grade, were cool and experienced veterans. In 1758 he fought and won the battle of Krefeld, several marches beyond the Rhine, but so advanced a position he could not well maintain, and he fell back to the Lippe. He resumed a bold offensive in 1759, only to be repulsed at Bergen (near Frankfort-on-Main), defeated by France in the Battle of Bergen on 13 April 1759, and again prevailed in a brilliant victory in the Battle of Minden in the same year. Vellinghausen, Wilhelmsthal, Warburg and other victories attested the increasing power of Ferdinand in the following campaigns, and Frederick, hard pressed in the eastern theatre of war, owed much of his success in an almost hopeless task to the continued pressure exerted by Ferdinand in the west.

In promoting him to be a Field Marshal (November 1758) Frederick acknowledged his debt in the words, Je nai fait que ce qua je dois, mon cher Ferdinand. After Minden, King George II, gave the duke the order of the Garter, and the thanks of the British parliament were voted on the same occasion to the Victor of Minden. After the war he was honored by other sovereigns, and he received the rank of field marshal and a regiment from the Austrians. During the War of American Independence there was a suggestion, which came to nothing, of offering him the command of the British forces. He exerted himself to compensate those who had suffered by the Seven Years War, devoting to this purpose most of the small income he received from his various offices and the rewards given to him by the allied princes. The estrangement of Frederick and Ferdinand in 1766 led to the dukes retirement from Prussian service, but there was no open breach between the old friends, and Ferdinand visited the king in 1772, 1777, 1779 and 1782.

In 1766, Ferdinand resigned, and retired to Brunswick and his castle of Veschelde, where he occupied himself in building and other improvements, and became a patron of learning and art, and a great benefactor of the poor. He died on the 3 July 1792. The merits, civil and military, of the prince were recognized by memorials not only in Prussia and Hanover, but also in Denmark, the states of western Germany and England. The Prussian memorials include an equestrian statue at Berlin 1863.