
Vincenz Ferrerius Bianchi (1 February 1768-18 August 1855) was a general of the Austrian Empire and was Field Marshal.
Biography[]

Bianchi at the 1815 Battle of Sessa Aurunca.
Born in Vienna, he took part in the French Revolutionary Wars in the Italian Campaign as a staff officer under Dagobert Sigmund von Wurmser and he captured Joachim Murat at Brescia. At the Battle of Rivoli in 1797 he was captured but released at Josef Alvinczi's request.
In 1805, Bianchi was appointed to command Austrian forces fighting in Italy alongside the army of Archduke Charles, and took full command when Archduke Charles was wounded in battle with Marshal Jean-Andre Massena's French army. He gained experience in the defeat of Northern Italian armies and the capture of the city of Milan later that year, assisting Austria's drive into French Italy. In 1812 he was forced to assist Napoleon's invasion of Russia as a reluctant ally of the French and he took part in the Battle of Leipzig against him in 1813 during the War of the Sixth Coalition.
In 1815 he took part in the Neapolitan War against King Joachim Murat of the Kingdom of Naples, leading the Austrian army in northern Italy. Although he was defeated at the Battle of Sessa Aurunca and the Battle of Castelfranco, Bianchi went on to decisively defeat Marshal Murat at the Battle of Tolentino and have Murat executed by a Neapolitan firing squad for his loyalty to the tyrant Napoleon. He became a Field Marshal and was arrested by rebels in the 1848 Habsburg revolutions but was freed from Treviso two months later. He died in 1855 in Styria, a province of the Austrian Empire.