DUKE OF (1735-1806), German general, was born on Oct. 9, 1735, at Wolfenbuttel. He received an unusually wide and thor ough education, and travelled in his youth in Holland, France and various parts of Germany. His first military experience was in the North German campaign of 1757, under the duke of Cumber land. At the battle of Hastenbeck he won great renown by a gallant charge at the head of an infantry brigade ; and upon the capitulation of Kloster Zeven he was easily persuaded by his uncle, Ferdinand of Brunswick, who succeeded Cumberland, to continue in the war as a general officer. After the close of the Seven Years' War, the prince visited England with his bride, the daughter of Frederick, prince of Wales, and in 1766 he went to France, being received both by his allies and his late enemies with every token of respect. After visiting Switzerland, Rome and Naples he returned to Paris, and thence to Brunswick. With the assistance of the minister, Feronce von Rotenkreuz, he rescued the state from the bankruptcy into which the war had brought it. His popularity was unbounded, and when he succeeded his father, Duke Karl I., in 1780, he was a model sovereign. He was per haps the best representative of the benevolent despot of the 18th century—wise, economical, prudent and kindly. He strove to keep his duchy from all foreign entanglements, and at the same time he continued to render important services to the king of Prussia, for whom he had fought in the Seven Years' War; he was a Prussian field-marshal, and was at pains to make the regi ment of which he was colonel a model one, and he was frequently engaged in diplomatic and other state affairs. He resembled his uncle, Frederick the Great, in many ways, but he lacked the supreme resolution of the king, and in civil as in military affairs was prone to excessive caution. As an enthusiastic adherent of the Germanic and anti-Austrian policy of Prussia he joined the Fiirstenbund, in which, as he now had the reputation of being the best soldier of his time, he was the destined commander-in chief of the federal army.
Between 1763 and 1787 his only military service had been in the brief War of the Bavarian Succession; in the latter year, however, the duke, as a Prussian field-marshal, led the army which invaded Holland. His success was rapid, complete and almost bloodless. Five years later he was appointed to the com mand of the allied Austrian and German army assembled to crush the French Revolution. He was so far in acknowledged sympathy with French hopes of reform that when he gave an asylum in his duchy to the "comte de Lille" (Louis XVIII.) the Revolutionary Government made no protest. Indeed, earlier in this year (1792) he had been offered supreme command of the French army. As the king of Prussia took the field with Brunswick's army, the duke felt bound as a soldier to treat his wishes as actual orders. (For the events of the Valmy campaign see FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY WARS.) The result of Brunswick's cautious advance on Paris was the cannonade of Valmy followed by the retreat of the allies. The following campaign of showed him perhaps at his best as a careful and exact general. But when Brunswick became unable to move or direct his army without interference from the king, he laid down his command and returned to govern his duchy. He did not, however, with draw entirely from Prussian service, and in 1803 he carried out a successful and diplomatic mission to Russia. In 1806, at the personal request of Queen Louise of Prussia, he consented to command the Prussian army, but here again the presence of the king of Prussia and the conflicting views of numerous advisers of high rank proved fatal. At the battle of Auerstedt the old duke was mortally wounded. He died on Nov. I o, 1806, at Ottensen, near Hamburg.
I-Iis son and successor, FRIEDRICH WILHELM (1771-1815), who was one of the bitterest opponents of Napoleonic domination in Germany, took part in the war of 1809 at the head of a corps of partisans. He fled to England after the battle of Wagram, and returned to Brunswick in 1813, where he raised fresh troops. He was killed at the battle of Quatre Bras on June 16, 1815.
See Lord Fitzmaurice, Charles W. F., duke of Brunswick (19o1) ; memoir in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, vol. ii. (Leipzig, 1882) ; and A. Chuquet, Les Guerres de la Revolution, vol. i. (1887).