Description
Prince Eugene of Savoy-Carignan (1663-1736), French born of an Italian mother, was destined for the church, but fled France as a young man and chose the life of a soldier. He entered the service of the Habsburg Emperor Leopold I in 1683 and rose rapidly to become one of the greatest military commanders of the age, playing a leading role in the wars against both the Ottoman Turks and the French. James Falkner, in this the first full biography of Eugene to be published in English for forty years, reconstructs his military campaigns in compelling detail and describes his career as a politician and statesman. Eugene first showed his military genius during the siege of Vienna in 1683 where the Ottoman Turkish threat to western Europe was thrown back, and he commanded the Imperial army at the resounding victory over the Ottomans at Zenta in 1697. Most famously for English readers, he joined John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough in the victory over the French at Blenheim in 1704 and serve
