Karl Mack von Leiberich

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Karl Freiherr Mack von Leiberich was born on the 25th of August 1752 in Nennslingen, a small town in the Principality of Ansbach. He rose from a cavalry recruit to become one of Austria's most senior generals. And then, in October 1805, he handed Napoleon Bonaparte an entire army. What compelled a decorated veteran to surrender 25,000 men, 18 generals, 65 guns, and 40 standards without a decisive battle? Why did Napoleon, who had met Mack in Paris years earlier, describe him as one of the most silly men existing? And how does a man stripped of his rank, his regiment, and the Order of Maria Theresa end up reinstated in the army years later at the request of the very officer who escaped his catastrophic command? Those are the questions this story will answer.

• 2. A Cavalry Uncle's Legacy

  ›

  In 1770, at eighteen years old, Mack joined an Austrian cavalry regiment where his uncle, Georg Wilhelm Leiberich, served as a squadron commander. It took him seven years to become an officer. During the brief War of the Bavarian Succession, his staff work caught the attention of Count Kinsky, and through that door he gained access to Field Marshal Count Lacy, then regarded as the foremost soldier of the Austrian army. Lacy held the highest opinion of this young assistant.

  By 1783, Mack had been made captain on the quartermaster-general's staff. Two years later he married Katherine Gabrieul and was ennobled, taking the name Mack von Leiberich. The family name his uncle had carried into the regiment became the name the world would eventually attach to one of Napoleon's most celebrated victories.

  In the Turkish War, Mack served on the headquarters staff and distinguished himself in the storming of Belgrade in 1789. That same year brought both a promotion to lieutenant colonel and a public falling-out with the new commander-in-chief, Ernst Gideon von Laudon. The dispute grew severe enough that Mack demanded a court-martial. He left the front but walked away with a colonelcy and the Order of Maria Theresa. By 1790 Laudon and Mack had reconciled and stood in the field together again. During those campaigns, a severe head injury left a mark Mack carried for the rest of his life.

• 3. Praise and Blame

  ›

  At the field of Neerwinden, during the French Revolutionary Wars, Mack again distinguished himself. He played a leading role in the negotiations between Prince Josias of Saxe-Coburg and the French general Dumouriez. The young Archduke Charles of Austria, who won his own first laurels on the 1st of March 1793, wrote after the engagement: "Above all we have to thank Colonel Mack for these successes."

  Yet the same campaign that brought that praise also planted the seeds of Mack's fall from favour. The ultimate failure of the coalition allies in the Netherlands was ascribed to him, even though, as observers at the time noted, it arose from political and military factors well beyond his control. With the broader officer corps turning against him, only the Emperor Francis II remained a consistent supporter. By 1797 Mack had been promoted to Feldmarschall-leutnant, but the political ground beneath him was already unstable.

  In 1798, at the personal request of the Emperor, Mack accepted command of the Neapolitan army. The situation there was far more dangerous than he had anticipated. The quality of his new troops was poor, and the threat from French revolutionary forces was real. At one point Mack faced the genuine risk of being killed by his own men. He abandoned the command and took refuge in the French camp, where he was promised a return to Austria. Napoleon overruled that promise and sent him to France as a prisoner of war.

• 4. Napoleon's Verdict

  ›

  In early 1800, Napoleon Bonaparte met Mack in Paris. The impression Napoleon reportedly formed was blunt and total. He described Mack as a man of the lowest mediocrity he had ever seen, full of self-sufficiency and conceit, and believing himself equal to anything. Napoleon added that Mack had no talent, called him a boaster and nothing more, and concluded he was one of the most silly men existing, compounded by what Napoleon considered chronic bad luck.

  This verdict, delivered privately, reads less like a military assessment and more like a personal contempt. Yet Napoleon had seen Mack's record. He knew the Austrian had served on staffs under Lacy and Josias, had been decorated with the Order of Maria Theresa, and had commanded at army level. Whether Napoleon's opinion was accurate or the convenient self-flattery of a man who would later defeat Mack, his words shaped how history would read the eventual surrender at Ulm.

  Two years after that meeting in Paris, Mack escaped the city in disguise. An allegation followed that he had broken his parole, a charge that struck at the core of what it meant to be a gentleman and an officer in that era. The anonymous author of his biography in the 1911 Eleventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica judged that allegation to be false.

• 5. The Road to Ulm

  ›

  For several years after his escape, Mack held no active command. Then in 1804, the war faction at the Austrian court needed a general willing to push back against the peace policy of Archduke Charles. They chose Mack, making him quartermaster-general of the army with instructions to prepare for war with France. He worked hard within the time available to reform a force that had not been adequately restructured.

  When the war of 1805 opened, Mack served as quartermaster-general to the nominal commander-in-chief in Germany, Archduke Ferdinand Karl Joseph of Austria-Este. Ferdinand was inexperienced in command. Mack held the real authority, but his position was never formally defined, and his fellow general officers gave his orders minimal respect. The restructuring of the Habsburg military had been left incomplete. Mack adopted some of Archduke Charles's innovations and discarded others. His own inconsistency compounded the problem. As the campaign developed, he reversed Viennese policy repeatedly and then reversed his own decisions, steadily weakening a command structure that was already fragile before a shot was fired.

  Prince von Schwarzenberg would later play a central role in Mack's reinstatement, but in October 1805 Schwarzenberg was one of the officers who refused to be captured. He led a massed cavalry charge through the French lines and escaped. Most of the Austrian high command was not so fortunate.

• 6. Capitulation and Consequences

  ›

  At Ulm in October 1805, Mack surrendered the entire army to Napoleon. The figures were staggering: 25,000 men, 18 generals, 65 guns, and 40 standards. The general officers received a parole requiring them to abstain from combat with France, which removed the bulk of Habsburg commanders from service in the campaign of the Upper Danube that followed.

  After Austerlitz, a court-martial convicted Mack of cowardice. He was stripped of his rank, his regiment, and his honours, including the Order of Maria Theresa. He was imprisoned for two years. Released in 1808, he lived in relative obscurity for a decade. Then in 1819, with the allied victory over Napoleon having softened public memory of earlier disasters, Mack was reinstated as Feldmarschall-leutnant and restored to membership in the Order of Maria Theresa. The request came from Prince Schwarzenberg, the same officer who had escaped Ulm on horseback in 1805.

  Mack died on the 22nd of December 1828 at St. Polten. His career had spanned the War of the Bavarian Succession, the Turkish War, the French Revolutionary Wars, and the War of the Third Coalition, and it ended with the strange symmetry of disgrace reversed by the man who had ridden clear of his worst defeat. Leo Tolstoy gave him a brief appearance as a character in book two of Volume I of War and Peace, preserving the name in literary memory long after the military world had moved on.