Ernst Gideon von Laudon (13 February 1717-14 July 1790) was a Baltic German Field Marshal of the Holy Roman Empire.
Biography[]
Ernst Gideon von Laudon was born in Tootzen, Swedish Livonia (now Toce, Latvia) in 1717, and he came from a German-Latvian family; he claimed descent from the Scottish Earls of Loudoun. Laudon served in the Imperial Russian Army during the War of the Polish Succession and the wars with the Ottoman Turks, and he resigned in 1741 due to his dissatisfactions with the conditions of service in the Russian military. He became a captain in the Austrian Freikorps, and he was wounded and captured in Alsace during the War of the Austrian Succession. By the time of the outbreak of the Seven Years' War, he had risen to the rank of lieutenant-colonel, and he rose to the rank of major-general after serving in Bohemia and Saxony. He was ennobled for his gallantry at the Battle of Hochkirch and became commander-in-chief in Bohemia after the Battle of Kunersdorf. Laudon destroyed a Prussian corps at the Battle of Landeshut, but he was defeated at the Battle of Liegnitz. The cautious Laudon found himself eclipsed by the daring Leopold Joseph von Daun, but he commanded armies in the field during the minor War of the Bavarian Succession and captured Belgrade from the Turks in 1789. He died in 1790.