Baron Franz von der Trenck

Trenck was born into a military noble family which originated from Pomerania on 1 January 1711, in Reggio in south Italy, where his father Johann Heinrich von der Trenck served as an Austrian officer. Although born in Italy, Trenk was actually a Prussian, but was an Austrian subject with large estates in Croatia, more precisely Slavonia. He spent his childhood mostly in Italy, Slavonia, and Hungary, which was not unusual since his father's job required frequent relocation. He was educated by the Jesuits at Ödenburg.

Trenck entered the Imperial Army in 1728 but resigned in disgrace three years later and decided to live peacefully in Požega, Slavonia. He married and lived on his estate for a few years. Upon the death of his wife who had perished in the Great Plague of 1738, he offered to raise an irregular corps of pandurs for service against the Turks, but this offer was refused, after which he entered the Imperial Russian Army as a mercenary. In Russia, he met and befriended Ernst Gideon von Laudon. However, after serving against the Turks and Tatars during the Russo-Turkish War for a short time as captain and major of cavalry, he was accused of bad conduct, brutality, and disobedience and condemned to death. Despite showing insubordination, he had gained popularity for defying an order to retreat. His sentence was commuted by Field MArshal Münnich to degradation and imprisonment.^[1]

After a time Trenck returned to Austria, where his father was governor of a small fortress, but there he came into conflict with everyone and actually took sanctuary in a convent in Vienna. Prince Charles Alexander of Lorraine, interesting himself in this strange man, obtained for him an amnesty and a commission in a corps of irregulars. In this command, besides his usual truculence and bad manners, he displayed conspicuous personal bravery, and in spite of the general dislike into which his vices brought him his services were so valuable that he was promoted to lieutenant colonel (1743) and colonel (1744).^[1]

Trenck earned most of his fame during the War of the Austrian Succession, as the leader and commander of a unit of pandurs, or paramilitary troops in the Imperial Army which specialized in frontier warfare, guerrilla tactics, and surprise hit-and-run actions, into which he recruited mostly Croatian mercenaries, experienced fighters from the Austro-Ottoman Military Frontier. Trenck's Pandurs soon became infamous for the atrocities they committed on the civilian population, some actions deemed brutal even by the standards of the day.

When the War of the Austrian Succession broke out Trenck rallied volunteers and marched for Vienna to assist Maria Theresa. While in Vienna, Trenck's Pandurs marched the streets before invading Prussia.^{[citation needed]} At the Battle of Soor, he and his irregulars plundered when they should have been fighting and Trenck was accused of having allowed King Frederick the Great himself to escape.^[1]

After a time he was brought before a court-martial in Vienna, which convicted him of having sold and withdrawn commissions to his officers without the permission of the empress, having punished his men without heed of the military code, and having drawn pay and allowance for fictitious men. Much was allowed to an irregular officer in all these respects, but Trenck had far outrun the admitted limits, and above all his brutalities and robberies had made him detested throughout Austria and Silesia. A death sentence followed, but the composition of the court-martial and its proceedings were thought to have been such as from the first forbade a fair trial as such, though most modern historians think the sentence to have been correct, even so. Nonetheless, concerns about the apparently arbitrary form of the proceedings meant that eventually the sentence was commuted by the Empress into one of cashiering and imprisonment. The rest of his life was spent in mild captivity in the fortress of Spielberg (Czech: Špilberk) in Brno, where he died on October 4, 1749.^[2] In his last will, he left the sum of 30,000 florins to the small town of Marienburg which had been sacked, burned, and razed to the ground by his troops.

Trenck's mummified remains can presently be seen on display in the crypt of Brno's Capuchin Monastery.

 

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• Regarding personal names: Freiherr is a former title (translated as 'Baron'). In Germany since 1919, it forms part of family names. The feminine forms are Freifrau and Freiin.
• Although Baron Trenck was not an ethnic Croat, even now there is phrase in Germany: "Wir sind Kroaten, wir sind panduren"^{[dubious – discuss]}, ("We are Croats; we are Pandours"), because many of his pandurs were Croatians.
• Franz is the first cousin of Friedrich Freiherr von der Trenck, who was serving in the Prussian Army. During the wars in Silesia, they were on different sides and Friedrich was imprisoned out of alleged conspiracy with Franz.
• Mark Twain included Baron Trenck in an ironic list of Tom Sawyer's "heroes" in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
• His story was the basis for the 1911 operetta Baron Trenck by Felix Albini, Alfred Maria Willner, and Robert Bodanzky.

Attribution:

•   This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Trenck, Franz, Freiherr von der". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 27 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 245–246.