General Enea Silvio Piccolomini
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Enea Silvio Piccolomini (ca. 1640 - 1689) was italian nobleman coming from a well known family from Siena in Italy, who served in the Habsburg army. He is known for leading a campaign against the Ottomans in Kosovo, Bosnia and Macedonia in 1689, and for setting on fire Skopje, the present day capital of the Republic of Macedonia.
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[edit] Origins
Enea Silvio Piccolomini came from the long-established noble family Piccolomini in Siena, Italy. His ancestors included two popes: Pius II (born Enea Silvio Piccolomini) and Pius III (born Francesco Todeschini Piccolomini), as well as the Generalfeldmarschall Prince Octavio Piccolomini, Duke of Amalfi.
His family can be traced down to Engelberto d'Ugo Piccolomini who received the fief of Montertari in Val d'Orcia from the emperor Frederick II in 1220 as a reward for services rendered.
[edit] Early Carrier
Young nobles left Siena individually and contacted the important Italian lobby in Vienna, hoping to obtain junior positions in some German regiment. In February 1660 Enea Silvio also left Siena to look for career in Vienna. Enea Silvio's father established him in an apartment in the imperial capital, with a page, two valets and a groom for his horses, while the youngster sought audiences with the emperor Leopold I, empress, the archduke and important ministers on the credentials of his famous ancestors.
A breakthrough came when he managed to obtain a position in the regiment of the minister Count Rabatta. Enea Silvio's situation, like that of other young German and Italian officers, was precarious. When the emperor dissolved some of his regiments in October 1660, he narrowly escaped complete unemployment and was happy to be a simple comet in his patron's cavalry regiment.
In 1675 Enea Silvio was a lieutenant-colonel on campaign. He describes some desperate and bloody engagements he fought against the French in the Rhineland under Montecuccolli.
Although his court patron, the empress Claudia Felicitas of Austria died in 1676, he gained sudden popularity with the court, and in January 1677 he describes himself as being feted by the emperor and all the ministers in Vienna - appearing to have as many friends at court as if he had never left it. The last letter from November 1681 shows him negotiating through the Dowager Empress Leonora for the positions of pages for his nephews; for him, they represented two more Piccolomini and Sienese in Germany.
[edit] Campaign in the Balkans
After the siege of Vienna (1683), emperor Leopold I mounted a series of campaigns against the Ottomans (see: Great Turkish War), to capture territories of the Balkans. One of these campaigns was led by then lieutenant-general Enea Silvio Piccolomini. In his last campaign in 1689 he led an autonomous army to conquer Kosovo, Bosnia and Macedonia. He burned the city of Skopje, according to some sources to prevent the spread of plague, according to others in retaliation for the siege of Vienna. He contracted the plague himself in Skopje and died at the moment of his apotheosis.
[edit] Sources
- The decline of a provincial military aristocracy: Siena, 1560-1740 by Gregory Hanlon.
- Richter, Die Piccolomini (Berlin, 1874)
- A. Lisini and A. Liberati, Albero della famiglia Piccolomini (Siena, 1899)
- Articles by A. Lisini in the Miscellanea storica senese, 3rd series 12, and 4th series, 17 and 189.
