Friedrich Hermann Schomberg
Friedrich Hermann Schomberg was a significant military figure in 17th century Europe, known for his diverse service across various armies during a tumultuous period marked by the Thirty Years' War and the Wars of the Fronde. Born around December 16, 1615, to a minor noble family, Schomberg was raised with a military focus, joining the army at a young age. His career began in the Netherlands before he participated in the Swedish army against the Catholic League and subsequently served in the French military. Schomberg's notable achievements include victories in Portugal and his role in deposing King Afonso VI, which earned him noble titles and recognition.
As a commander during the Glorious Revolution, Schomberg led forces in Ireland but faced challenges, particularly at the Encampment of Dundalk, which marred his reputation. Despite this setback, his legacy was solidified by his death at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, where he became a symbol of Protestant heroism. His military reforms in Brandenburg influenced future military organization and discipline in Europe, particularly in the Prussian army. Schomberg's life reflects the complexities of loyalty, faith, and military strategy in a time of religious and political strife.
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Friedrich Hermann Schomberg
German-born military leader
- Born: December, 1615 or January, 1616
- Birthplace: Heidelberg, the Palatinate (now in Germany)
- Died: July 1, 1690
- Place of death: Near Oldbridge, on the Boyne River, Ireland
During a fifty-seven-year span, Schomberg steadily gained a reputation as one of the most accomplished soldiers in Europe, holding a career as an officer and commander in several European armies. His life ended while he was in the service of King William III of England, in a battle won by English and Continental troops over Ireland, securing the English crown for William.
Early Life
Friedrich Hermann Schomberg (SHAWM-behrk) was born the son of Hans Meinhard von Schönberg, a minor Palatine nobleman at the court of Elector Frederick V , and Lady Anne Sutton, who had come to the Palatinate in the entourage of Frederick’s wife, Elizabeth Stuart , daughter of King James I of England. Even the beginning of Friedrich’s life, like much about him, remains enigmatic: His exact birth date is not known, though some scholars believe it to be December 16, 1615.
He was baptized into the Calvinist faith and trained from the earliest years for a military career, which he embarked upon in 1633, while still in his teens. For the first few months, he was enrolled in the army of the United Provinces of the Netherlands in the service of Stadtholder Frederick Henry. The young soldier, however, was eager to prove himself and to go where actual battles were being fought. So, in 1634, he joined the army of Sweden, which was part of a Protestant Alliance engaged in the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) against the Catholic League led by Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II.
Life’s Work
In 1635, when Cardinal de Richelieu brought France into the war on the side of the Protestants, Schomberg enlisted in the French army, where he would remain for four years. In 1639, he reentered the Dutch military forces, serving once more under Frederick Henry, then under his son, William II.
In 1650, Schomberg’s former mentor in the French army, the viscount de Turenne (Henri de La Tour d’Auvergne), appealed to Schomberg to return to France to assist him in quelling the insurgent forces of the prince of Condé (the Great Condé) during the Wars of the Fronde (1648-1653) against King Louis XIV . Schomberg distinguished himself to such an extent that King Louis took pains to keep him on.
Then, in 1659, he accepted a commission from King Charles II of England to journey to Portugal as military adviser. His mission was to prevent the Spanish from reconquering the kingdom of Portugal, which recently had made good on securing its independence. His services earned him an English peerage—Baron Tetford—and the Portuguese title of count of Mertola (1663). On June 17, 1665, he won his first major victory under independent command at the Battle of Montes Claros, turning back Spanish troops under the duke of Parma. In recognition of this victory, he was advanced to the rank of lieutenant-general. Engineering a military coup, Schomberg was responsible for deposing the emotionally unbalanced Afonso VI, king of Portugal (r. 1656-1683), and replacing him with his brother, Peter (Pedro) II (r. 1683-1706).
Schomberg left the Portuguese service in 1668 and returned to France. He participated in the early stages of the Franco-Dutch War of 1672-1678, gaining considerable notice through his capture of the stronghold of Maastricht in 1673. Dispatched to Catalonia in 1674, he suffered a temporary career setback with initial failures, but he redeemed himself in 1675 by capturing the fortress of Bellegarde. Louis XIV then conferred upon him the rank of marshal and title of duke.
Schomberg had by this time secured a reputation as one of Europe’s foremost commanders, but he was relatively inactive until the 1680’s, when Louis XIV’s increasingly vehement campaign against Huguenot Protestantism forced him to make a critical choice. Though he was not, strictly speaking, a Huguenot, and he was granted an exemption from Louis XIV’s religious strictures, he was so disturbed by the often brutal treatment of fellow Calvinists, and by the outlawing of Huguenot worship in the Edict of Fontainebleau of 1685, that he decided to go into exile, first to Portugal.
The elector of Brandenburg, who had, through his Edict of Potsdam of 1686, indicated his desire to welcome exiled Huguenots and offer them incentives to settle in his dominions, welcomed Schomberg in 1687 with open arms, conferring upon him the command of all troops in the electorate. Schomberg became, in effect, leader of the Huguenots in Brandenburg. True to form, however, Schomberg did not stay long in one place, particularly where there was no concerted military action. Stadtholder William III of the Netherlands convinced Elector Frederick III to allow Brandenburger soldiers to enter Holland to help him in his planned military expedition to England against his Catholic father-in-law, James II. It was further agreed that Schomberg be placed in command of the invasion task force, under William himself.
The fleet set sail in November of 1688 and made landfall at Torbay on the southern coast of Britain. The ensuing Glorious Revolution witnessed a brief face-off between James’s army and that of William and Schomberg. James’s nerve faltered, though, and he fled the country. Parliament instated William and his wife Mary II as joint sovereigns over England. At the height of his fame and success, Schomberg was voted an English dukedom, the marquisate of Harwich, the earldom of Brentford, and the barony of Teyes. Also, he was invested as a Knight of the Garter and granted 100,000 pounds sterling as compensation for the loss of his French estates and revenues.
When Richard Talbot, the duke of Tyrconnel, declared support for King James II, Schomberg was named to command a British expeditionary force to recapture the island for William and Mary. Leading a motley contingent of Huguenots and of Dutch, English, and German levies (troops), Schomberg was at first reasonably successful. His forces landed close to and soon occupied the town of Bangor in County Down in August, 1689. Belfast and Lisburn were taken with little or no resistance, but the Irish Jacobite army, which supported King James, refused to surrender Carrickfergus for five days. A quick advance took Schomberg’s forces to the city of Dundalk in September. There, in what was seen in retrospect as a huge miscalculation on his part, he halted, stalled, and, because he erroneously believed that the Jacobite army was much stronger than it actually was, had encamped on the marshy plain just north of the city.
The Encampment of Dundalk, as it became known, proved to be a disaster. A shortage of provisions, poor distribution and planning, and foul weather led to outbreaks of disease and to desertions. Some of the Huguenot troops were discovered to have been French Catholics who had infiltrated the ranks as spies. Morale became so low that some units were close to mutiny. More than seven thousand troops are believed to have died, and, as news of the deteriorating situation at Dundalk leaked out to the Jacobites, King James journeyed to the front to assume command. Caught in a sort of defeatist mind-set, Schomberg gave up the advance and withdrew northward to Lisburn, where most of his army remained from October of 1689 to April of 1690. William’s armies had captured all of Ulster, apart from the holdout Jacobite outpost at Charlemont in the County Armagh.
Infuriated at news of the calamity and disappointed at Schomberg’s performance, King William reinforced his army in Ireland with Danish, Huguenot, Dutch, English, German, and Scottish levies until it numbered some thirty-seven thousand men. Despite the fact that Marshal Schomberg successfully captured Charlemont in May, 1690, William personally took command the following month, and the duke was in disgrace. William’s treatment of Schomberg was noticeably cold, and he rejected out of hand much of his advice, as the armies faced each other in the climactic Battle of the Boyne on July 1, 1690. At a ford near the village of Oldbridge, Schomberg attempted to rally his men for a breakthrough assault, allegedly indicating to his Huguenots that there were French Catholic troops on the other side, and shouted “Forward, my children! Here are your persecutors!” Shortly thereafter, he was killed. Some accounts say he was surrounded and cut down by Jacobite horsemen, others that he was shot in the back of the neck, perhaps by “friendly fire.” His body was taken to Dublin, where it was buried in St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
Significance
Schomberg, despite his shortcomings at Dundalk, became, through his heroic death at the Boyne, a legendary Irish-Protestant hero and part of the iconography of Orange Order (a Protestant organization) celebrations in Ulster. His reforms in Brandenburg laid the foundation for the meticulous training and discipline that would later become a hallmark of the Prussian, and then the German, army to 1945.
Bibliography
Bartlett, Thomas, and Keith Jeffrey, eds. A Military History of Ireland. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. This work provides basic details describing the major military clashes and operations during the period 1689-1690, but there is little new insight into Schomberg’s last campaigns.
Maguire, W. A. Kings in Conflict: The Revolutionary War in Ireland and Its Aftermath, 1689-1750. Belfast, Ireland: Blackstaff Press, 1990. The author details the failure of Schomberg’s Dundalk campaign of 1689 and his subsequent fall from grace but is not totally unsympathetic in the treatment.
Simms, J. G. War and Politics in Ireland, 1649-1730. Edited by D. W. Hayton and Gerald O’Brien. London: Hambledon Press, 1986. An entire chapter is devoted to a detailed analysis of the destruction of Schomberg’s military reputation as a result of the Dundalk debacle.
Smiles, Samuel. The Huguenots: Their Settlements, Churches, and Industries in England and Ireland. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing, 1972. An old work originally published in 1868, but with still-useful insights on Schomberg’s military career and a dramatic account of his death.