SAXE, iiimmANN MAURICE, Count of, one of the greatest warriors of the 18th c., was the natural son of Augustus II. (q.v.), elector of Saxony and king of Poland. and the countess Aurora von KOnigsmark, and was born at Goslar, Oct, 28, 1696. When I only twelve years of age, he ran off from home, made his way to Flanders, joined the army of Marlborough, and took part in tho capture of Lille and the siege of Tournay. With a boyish love of change, he joined the Russo-Polish army before Stralsund (1711), and after the taking of Riga, returned to Dresden, where his mother induced him, in 1714, to espouse a young and amiable German heiress. In the two following years, lie took part in the civil war then raging in Poland; but having quarreled with his father's favorite minister, be returned to Dresden, where the well-grounded jealousy of his wife made his life sufficiently disagreeable. Obtaining the annulment of his marriage, and a pen sion from his father, he came to Paris in 1720, where he devoted himself for sonic years to the study of military tactics, and originated and developed an entirely novel system of maneuvers, which was highly spoken of by the chevalier Folard, the celebrated- mil itary engineer. In 1726 he was elected duke of Courland, and for a time maintained himself in his new possession against both Russians and Poles, but was compelled to retire to France in the following year. Joining the army on the Rhine, under the duke of Berwick, he signalized himself at the siege of Philipsburg (1734), and decided the bat tle of Ettingen by a desperate charge at the head of a division of grenadiers. For these services lie was made a lient.gen. in 1736; and on the breaking out of the war of the Austrian succession, lie obtained the command of the left wing of the army which was appointed to invade Bohemia, and took the strongly fortified town'of Prague by storm with marvelous celerity. The capture of Egra W:IA similarly effected a few days after ' ward, and the rest of the campaign showed that his abilities in the field were not infe rior to his skill against fortifications. In 1744 he was made a marshal of France, and appointed to command the French army in Flanders, and on this occasion he gave deci sive proofs of the soundness and superiority of his new system of tactics, by reducing to inaction an enemy much superior in number, an.1 taking from him, almost before his face, various important fortresses. The following year was for him more glorious still; his army was re-enforeed, and though so ill with dropsy that he had to submit to tapping (April 15), lie laid siege to Tournay on the 22d, and on the advance of the duke of Cum berland to its relief, took no a position at Fontenoy, and awaited attack. He was as
sailed on May 11, and the desperate valor of the English for a time bore down every thing before them; but Saxe sped about on his litter, encouraging his troops, and when the critical moment came, the fire of his artillery disorganized the English, and a charge of the French completed the victory. Four months afterward every one of the numer ous strong fortresses of Belgium was in his hands. In 1746 Saxe, by a series of able maneuvers, threw back the allies on the right bank of the Maese, and gained (Oct. 11) the brilliant victory of Raucoux, for which he was rewarded with the title of marshal-gen., an honor which only Turenne had previously obtained For the third time, at lila ,- feldt (July 2, 1747), the victor of Culloden suffered complete defeat at the hands of Saxe, whose favorite system of tactics was again brought into full play; and the brilliant cap ture of Bergen-op-zoom brought the allies to think of peace. The Dutch, however, were still disposed to hold out, till the capture of Mnestrieht (1748) destroyed their hopes, and the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle followed, Saxe had previously carried on a correspondence with the Feat Frederick of Prussia, and he now took occasion to visit him at Berlin, experiencing the most brilliant reception. In the following year, Frederick wrote to Voltaire: " I have seen the hero of France, the Turenne of Louis XV.'s time. I have received much instruction from his discourse on the art of war. This general could teach all the generals in Europe." Saxe lived at his estate of Chambord for some time afterward, and died there of dropsy, Nov. 30, 1750. his work on the art of war, entitled Mea Reveries, was published at Paris in 1757.
Saxe was probably the greatest captain of his time, and a gallant and enterprising loader, hut he was a mere soldier, and the offer of membership made to him by the Academie Franeuise is sufficiently ridiculous. Saxe had, however, the good sense to decline the proffered honor, and he did so in a sentence, the extraordinary orthography of which accidentally rebuked. more than the most cutting sarcasm could have done. the mean sycophancy of the Academic. He wrote: " Its mule me fere de la caelemie; se/as m'iret come tine huge a un elms." Many biographies of Saxe have been written, but few of them are to be 'much de pended upon.—See Moritz von Sachsen (Dresden, 1863), by Karl von Weber; and the Nouvelle Biographie Gairale (art. " Saxe"). His character and genius are also well, though not flatteringly, portrayed in Carlyle's Life of Frederick the Great.