Joseph Radetzky
(Joseph Wenzeslaus, count of Radetzky) Austrian military man (Trebnitz, Bohemia, 1766-Milan, 1858).Born into an old aristocratic family of the Habsburg Empire, he entered the army at a young age and fought in the wars against Turkey (1788-89) and against France (1792-1814).He played a prominent role in the final offensive of the European allies against Napoleon, designing the strategy with which they won at the Battle of Leipzig (1813).
After the war, the Congress of Vienna assigned to Austria the Italian territories around Venice and Milan, as well as a right of general control over Italy (1815).Radetzky was placed in command of the Austrian troops in Italy, with the task of maintaining the order established in the peninsula (1831).In 1836 he was appointed Marshal.The nationalist and liberal revolutions of 1848, whose main enemy was the Austrian occupier, forced him to withdraw with his troops.
However, it did not take long to regain the initiative, defeating Carlos Alberto I of Sardinia in the battles of Custozza (1848) and Novara (1849).Thus reestablishing dominion over Lombardy (Milan) and the Veneto, and militarily annulled the only Italian state capable of facing it, Radetzky toured Parma, Modena, Bologna and Florence, consolidating the order of the Congress of Vienna throughout Italy.
He continued as governor of the Lombard-Venetian kingdom until 1857, establishing himself as a symbol of imperial conservatism in the face of the aspirations of the Italians to national unification and liberal constitutionalism (which would become reality shortly after his death, in 1859-60).Instead, in Austria he was considered a national hero, which is why Johann Strauss (father) composed the Radetzky March in his honor.
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