Adam Albert, Count von Neipperg (8 April 1775 – 22 February 1829) was an Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

n general and statesman. The son of a diplomat, famous for inventing a letter-copying machine, and a French mother, he was the grandson of Wilhelm Reinhard von Neipperg

Wilhelm Reinhard von Neipperg

Count Wilhelm Reinhard von Neipperg was an Austrian general.Born in Schwaigern, he descended from an ancient comital family from Swabia, his father Count Eberhard Friedrich von Neipperg having been an Imperial field marshal. He spent his boyhood in Vienna and in 1702 joined the Imperial service...

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Early life

Adam Neipperg was born in Vienna. At the age of fifteen, Neipperg enlisted in the French army at Strasbourg but, in 1790, he joined the ranks of the Austrians. In 1794, at Dolens, he received such serious bayonet wounds that he was left for dead on the battlefield; he lost his right eye in this battle. The following day, while burying the dead, the French found him still breathing and hospitalised him. Speaking French rather too well, he was assumed to be a traitor and sentenced to be shot once his health had returned. However, his convalescence was lengthy: by the time he recovered, the command having changed, he became part of a prisoner exchange. He also participated in the Blockade of Mayence. Neipperg then rejoined the Austrian army in Italy and took part in the Battle of Marengo in 1800.

Diplomat and General

In 1809, after the Austrian campaign, he was appointed ambassador to Sweden and encouraged Bernadotte

Charles XIV John of Sweden

Charles XIV & III John, also Carl John, Swedish and Norwegian: Karl Johan was King of Sweden and King of Norway from 1818 until his death...

 to enter in the coalition which was formed in 1813. In reward for this service, he was decorated by the Swedish king. Neipperg rejoined the Austrian army and fought at Leipzig where he distinguished himself sufficiently to be appointed as lieutenant field marshal.

In 1814, Klemens von Metternich sent him to negotiate with the King of Naples

Kingdom of Naples

The Kingdom of Naples, comprising the southern part of the Italian peninsula, was the remainder of the old Kingdom of Sicily after secession of the island of Sicily as a result of the Sicilian Vespers rebellion of 1282. Known to contemporaries as the Kingdom of Sicily, it is dubbed Kingdom of...

, Joachim Murat

Joachim Murat

Joachim-Napoléon Murat , Marshal of France and Grand Admiral or Admiral of France, 1st Prince Murat, was Grand Duke of Berg from 1806 to 1808 and then King of Naples from 1808 to 1815...

, who signed a secret treaty with Austria in order to keep his throne. Metternich's other intrigue was to try to distance Prince Eugene (stepson of the King of Bavaria and son-in-law of Napoleon Bonaparte) from the French. By negotiating with Murat, Neipperg was again playing the role of an agent in treason after the Peace of Fontainebleau

Treaty of Fontainebleau (1814)

The Treaty of Fontainebleau was an agreement established in Fontainebleau on 11 April 1814 between Napoleon Bonaparte and representatives from Austria, Hungary and Bohemia , as well as Russia and Prussia. The treaty was signed at Paris on 11 April by the plenipotentiaries of both sides, and...

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Marriages

Neipperg married Theresia, Gräfin

Graf

Graf is a historical German noble title equal in rank to a count or a British earl...

 von Pola (1778-1815) in 1806 and they had four sons. The senior male heirs still live at Schwaigern

Schwaigern

Schwaigern is a town in the district of Heilbronn, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated 12 km west of Heilbronn.-Neighbouring municipalities:...

 in Germany.

In August 1814, he was instructed to escort the Empress Marie Louise to Aix-les-Bains

Aix-les-Bains

Aix-les-Bains is a commune in the Savoie department in the Rhône-Alpes region in south-eastern France.It is situated on the shore of Lac du Bourget, by rail north of Chambéry.-Geography:...

 to take the waters. However, the true purpose of his mission was to prevent the Empress from joining Napoleon in exile in Elba. Neipperg, who had understood this perfectly, said on leaving: "in six weeks, I will be her best friend and in six months her lover". He did not need that long, Marie-Louise soon fell into his arms and talk of Elba never arose again. When Napoleon returned from exile, Murat once again allied with his Emperor triggering the Neapolitan War

Neapolitan War

The Neapolitan War was a conflict between the Napoleonic Kingdom of Naples and the Austrian Empire. It started on 15 March 1815 when Joachim Murat declared war on Austria and ended on 20 May 1815 with the signing of the Treaty of Casalanza...

. Neipperg commanded a corps during the war and played a crucial role in the decisive Battle of Tolentino

Battle of Tolentino

The Battle of Tolentino was fought on 2 – 3 May 1815 near Tolentino, in what is now Marche, Italy: it was the decisive battle in the Neapolitan War, fought by the Napoleonic King of Naples Joachim Murat to keep the throne after the Congress of Vienna. The battle itself shares many parallels with...

 despite not participating in the battle.

In 1815, he participated in the short occupation of France. In July 1815, as the Austrian army crossed the Rhone, he took the command of the troops in the French departments of Gard, Ardèche and Hérault. He was under the supervision of the field marshal de Bianchi, commanding the Austrian army in the south of France. He lived in Nîmes

Nîmes

Nîmes is the capital of the Gard department in the Languedoc-Roussillon region in southern France. Nîmes has a rich history, dating back to the Roman Empire, and is a popular tourist destination.-History:...

 and left the city with the rest of the troops on September 14, 1815.

Four months after the death of Napoleon in 1821, he married Marie-Louise in a morganatic marriage

Morganatic marriage

In the context of European royalty, a morganatic marriage is a marriage between people of unequal social rank, which prevents the passage of the husband's titles and privileges to the wife and any children born of the marriage...

. She had become Duchess of Parma, Piacenza and Guastalla

Duchy of Parma

The Duchy of Parma was created in 1545 from that part of the Duchy of Milan south of the Po River, as a fief for Pope Paul III's illegitimate son, Pier Luigi Farnese, centered on the city of Parma....

 in the final act of the Congress of Vienna

Congress of Vienna

The Congress of Vienna was a conference of ambassadors of European states chaired by Klemens Wenzel von Metternich, and held in Vienna from September, 1814 to June, 1815. The objective of the Congress was to settle the many issues arising from the French Revolutionary Wars, the Napoleonic Wars,...

 on 9 June 1815. From this union, three children were born, the first two before the marriage, whilst Marie-Louise was still legally married to Napoleon:

• Albertine, Countess of Montenuovo (Italian translation of Neipperg) (1817–1867), who married Luigi Sanvitale, Count of Fontanellato;
• William Albert
  William Albert, 1st Prince of Montenuovo
  William Albert, 1st Prince of Montenuovo was an Italian prince and Field Marshal Lieutenant of the Austrian Empire.-Early life:...
  
  , Count then Prince of Montenuovo, (1819–1895), who married Countess Juliana Batthyány von Németújvár;
• Mathilde, Countess of Montenuovo, born in 1822, but dying very young.

Neipperg died in Parma. The descendants of his second family died out in the male line in 1951.

Source

• Translated from: :fr:Adam Albert de Neipperg