Ernst Gideon von Laudon | |
---|---|
Born |
Tootzen, Swedish Livonia |
2 February 1717
Died | 14 July 1790 Nový Jičín, Moravia |
(aged 73)
Buried | Hadersdorf, Vienna |
Allegiance |
Russian Empire Holy Roman Empire (from 1742) |
Service/branch | Imperial Army |
Years of service | 1732–1790 |
Rank | Generalfeldmarschall |
Battles/wars |
Russo-Austrian-Turkish War Austro-Turkish War |
Russo-Austrian-Turkish War
War of the Austrian Succession
Baron Ernst Gideon von Laudon (German: Ernst Gideon Freiherr von Laudon (originally Laudohn or Loudon) (2 February 1717 – 14 July 1790) was an Austrian generalisimo, one of the most successful opponents of the Prussian king Frederick the Great, allegedly lauded by Alexander Suvorov as his teacher. He served the position of military governorship of Habsburg Serbia from his capture of Belgrade in 1789 until his death, cooperating with the resistance fighters of Koča Anđelković.
The Laudohn family, of mixed German and Latgalian origin, had been settled in the estate of Tootzen, near Ļaudona in Eastern Livonia (present-day Latvia) before 1432. Laudon himself claimed a kinship with the Scottish Earls of Loudoun, which could not be established. His father Otto Gerhard von Laudohn was a lieutenant-colonel, retired on a meagre pension from the Swedish service. As upon the Great Northern War Livonia had been ceded to Russia according to the 1721 Treaty of Nystad, the boy was sent to the Imperial Russian Army as a cadet in 1732. During the War of the Polish Succession he took part in the 1734 Siege of Danzig led by Feldmarschall Burkhard Christoph von Münnich, he marched against French troops up to the Rhine in 1735 and back to the Dnieper River into the Turkish campaign.