He ruled a German principality, commanded Prussian armies like his uncle Frederick the Great, and threw gasoline on the French Revolution by threatening Paris with destruction if the royal family was harmed. The manifesto backfired spectacularly.
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Photos 8
Carl Wilhelm Ferdinand von Braunschweig
Allegorie ter ere van Frederik Willem II, koning van Pruisen, voor zijn herstel van het stadhouderschap van Willem V, prins van Oranje-Nassau, 1787 Aan de verlossers der Vereenigde Nederlanden, Koning Fredrik Willem II,, RP-P-1925-97
Braunschweig Christianskirche
Charles guillaume de Brunswick 99577
Charles Guillaume Ferdinand-duc de Brunswick ag1
Clemens Kohl - Carl Wilhelm Herzog zu Braunschweig und Lüneburg
Clemens Kohl - Charles William Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick
Dekselkop met het portret van Karel Willem Ferdinand van Brunswijk-Wolfenbüttel, BK-NM-13861-1Awards 4
In their orbit 21
About this person
Charles William Ferdinand inherited Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel in 1780, a small state in the Holy Roman Empire, and ran it as an enlightened despot - his uncle Frederick the Great had shown him the template. Married to the sister of Britain's George III, he also rose to field marshal in Prussia's army, earning a reputation as one of the century's finest military minds. In 1792 he issued the Brunswick Manifesto, warning revolutionary France that any harm to Louis XVI would bring total vengeance from the allied powers; instead it accelerated the king's fall and radicalized the revolution. By 1806, facing Napoleon at Jena-Auerstedt, the old warfare he'd mastered was obsolete. A musket ball caught him in the battle; he died from the wound a month later, on 10 November.
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