Enea Silvio Piccolomini (general)

Enea Silvio Piccolomini (ca.1640–1689) was an Italian nobleman coming from a well known family from Siena in Italy, who served in the Habsburg army. He is known for leading a campaign against the Ottomans in Kosovo, Bosnia and Macedonia in 1689, and for setting on fire Skopje, the present day capital of the Republic of Macedonia.

Enea Silvio Piccolomini came from the long-established noble family Piccolomini in Siena, Italy, which included two popes: Pius II (born Enea Silvio Piccolomini) and Pius III (born Francesco Todeschini Piccolomini), as well as the Generalfeldmarschall Ottavio Piccolomini.

Young nobles left Siena individually and contacted the important Italian lobby in Vienna, hoping to obtain junior positions in some German regiment. In February 1660 Enea Silvio also left Siena to look for career in Vienna. Enea Silvio's father established him in an apartment in the imperial capital, with a page, two valets and a groom for his horses, while the youngster sought audiences with the emperor Leopold I, empress, the archduke and important ministers on the credentials of his famous ancestors.

A breakthrough came when he managed to obtain a position in the regiment of the minister Count Rabatta. Enea Silvio's situation, like that of other young German and Italian officers, was precarious. When the emperor dissolved some of his regiments in October 1660, he narrowly escaped complete unemployment and was happy to be a simple comet in his patron's cavalry regiment.

In 1675 Enea Silvio was a lieutenant-colonel on campaign. He describes some desperate and bloody engagements he fought against the French in the Rhineland under Montecuccolli.

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