Ferdinand, Freiherr

Freiherr

The German titles Freiherr and Freifrau and Freiin are titles of nobility, used preceding a person's given name or, after 1919, before the surname...

 of Wintzingerode (15 February 1770, Allendorf

Bad Sooden-Allendorf

-Location:The spa town of Bad Sooden-Allendorf lies in the Werra valley near the Hoher Meißner, right on the boundary with Thuringia, almost at Germany’s geographical centre, 33 km east of Kassel.-Neighbouring communities:...

 – 16 June 1818, Wiesbaden

Wiesbaden

Wiesbaden is a city in southwest Germany and the capital of the federal state of Hesse. It has about 275,400 inhabitants, plus approximately 10,000 United States citizens...

) was a German nobleman and officer in several different armies of the Napoleonic Wars

Napoleonic Wars

The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...

, finally ending up as a general in the Imperial Russian army

Imperial Russian Army

The Imperial Russian Army was the land armed force of the Russian Empire, active from around 1721 to the Russian Revolution of 1917. In the early 1850s, the Russian army consisted of around 938,731 regular soldiers and 245,850 irregulars . Until the time of military reform of Dmitry Milyutin in...

 and fighting in the War of the Sixth Coalition

War of the Sixth Coalition

In the War of the Sixth Coalition , a coalition of Austria, Prussia, Russia, the United Kingdom, Portugal, Sweden, Spain and a number of German States finally defeated France and drove Napoleon Bonaparte into exile on Elba. After Napoleon's disastrous invasion of Russia, the continental powers...

 against the French invasion of Russia and the subsequent campaigns in Germany and France. He appears in Tolstoy's War and Peace

War and Peace

War and Peace is a novel by the Russian author Leo Tolstoy, first published in 1869. The work is epic in scale and is regarded as one of the most important works of world literature...

.

Life

Ferdinand von Wintzingerode was born into a noble family of Thuringia

Thuringia

The Free State of Thuringia is a state of Germany, located in the central part of the country.It has an area of and 2.29 million inhabitants, making it the sixth smallest by area and the fifth smallest by population of Germany's sixteen states....

. His father, baron Wilhelm Levin Ernst von Wintzingerode (1738-1781), owned the Unterhof seigneurial domain near Kirchohmfeld. Ferdinand's first military service was in the Hessian Army

Hesse

Hesse or Hessia is both a cultural region of Germany and the name of an individual German state.* The cultural region of Hesse includes both the State of Hesse and the area known as Rhenish Hesse in the neighbouring Rhineland-Palatinate state...

, then as a volunteer in the Austrian army in the war against the Netherlands. He took part in the 1792-93 campaigns against the French and, after the peace of Campo Formio on 17 October 1797, he was offered a post as major in the Russian army. In 1800 the Austrian army gave him permission to fight in the war in Italy.

On 19 September 1801 he married the Polish countess Hélène Rostworowska (1783-1829), with whom he had one son. He became a major general and general aide de camp to Alexander I of Russia

Alexander I of Russia

Alexander I of Russia , served as Emperor of Russia from 23 March 1801 to 1 December 1825 and the first Russian King of Poland from 1815 to 1825. He was also the first Russian Grand Duke of Finland and Lithuania....

 in 1802 and was entrusted with diplomatic missions over the following years. Also, in 1805 in Berlin, he negotiated with Austria and Great Britain on behalf of the Prussians to form the three nations into an alliance against France. On 11 November 1805, at , he received the Order of Saint George. He returned to the Austrian army in 1809, where he was made field marshal. He led the advance guard of the first brigade of general Bellegarde's army on 20 May at , where he was wounded in the right leg.

He returned to the Russian army in 1812 to face the French invasion of Russia

French invasion of Russia

The French invasion of Russia of 1812 was a turning point in the Napoleonic Wars. It reduced the French and allied invasion forces to a tiny fraction of their initial strength and triggered a major shift in European politics as it dramatically weakened French hegemony in Europe...

. In it he was made lieutenant general and grand cross of the Military Order of Maria Theresa

Military Order of Maria Theresa

The Military Order of Maria Theresa was an Order of the Austro-Hungarian Empire founded on June 18, 1757, the day of the Battle of Kolin, by the Empress...

. On 21 October 1812 he led a unit of Cossacks trying to reach the Kremlin

Kremlin

A kremlin , same root as in kremen is a major fortified central complex found in historic Russian cities. This word is often used to refer to the best-known one, the Moscow Kremlin, or metonymically to the government that is based there...

 by challenging several French posts at the head of a Cossack unit, but he and his aide de camp Narichzin were captured by lieutenant Leleu de Maupertuis of the 5th Imperial Guard Chasseurs Regiment. He was freed by general Alexander Chernyshyov

Alexander Chernyshyov

Alexander Ivanovich Chernyshyov , General of Cavalry , was a Russian military leader, diplomat and statesman, whose career began in Napoleonic Wars. After Battle of Austerlitz, he performed successful diplomatic mission to France and Sweden and served with distinction in battles of 1812 and 1813...

 and fought at the battle of Lützen

Battle of Lützen (1813)

In the Battle of Lützen , Napoleon I of France lured a combined Prussian and Russian force into a trap, halting the advances of the Sixth Coalition after his devastating losses in Russia. The Russian commander, Prince Peter Wittgenstein, attempting to undo Napoleon's capture of Leipzig, attacked...

 before being promoted to general of cavalry at the battle of Leipzig in 1813. He followed the army of the North into Holland then rejoined the Prussian army under Blücher

Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher

Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher, Fürst von Wahlstatt , Graf , later elevated to Fürst von Wahlstatt, was a Prussian Generalfeldmarschall who led his army against Napoleon I at the Battle of the Nations at Leipzig in 1813 and at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 with the Duke of Wellington.He is...

 and fought in the Six Days Campaign

Six Days Campaign

The Six Days Campaign was a final series of victories by the forces of Napoleon Bonaparte as the Sixth Coalition closed in on Paris....

in 1814.