Emmanuel von Mensdorff-Pouilly
Emmanuel, count of Mensdorff-Pouilly (24 January 1777 – 28 June 1852) was an army officer in the Imperial and Royal Army of the Austrian Empire, and vice-governor of Mainz.
The Mensdorff-Pouilly family originated from the Baronie Pouilly in Stenay on the river Meuse in Lorraine. Albert-Louis, Baron de Pouilly et de Chaffour, Comte de Roussy (1731–1795) and his wife Marie Antoinette (1746–1800) emigrated together with their children during the French revolution. Their sons, Albert (1775–1799) and Emmanuel (baptised at Nancy on 24 January 1777), took the name Mensdorff from a community in the county of Roussy, Luxembourg.
The brothers entered military service against revolutionary and Napoleonic France, and Albert was killed in battle. Emmanuel married Princess Sophie of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, the daughter of Francis, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, on 22 February 1804 at Coburg. One of their sons, Alexander von Mensdorff-Pouilly, was Austrian Foreign Minister and Prime Minister of Austria in the 1860s.
Emmanuel was created Count of Mensdorff-Pouilly in Vienna on 29 November 1818. In 1838, Emmanuel purchased Schloss Preitenstein in the Plzeň Region of Bohemia, which remained the property of the Mensdorff-Pouilly family until 1945.
[edit] References
- Eddie de Tassigny: Les Mensdorff-Pouilly. Le destin d'une famille émigrée en 1790. Paris: Le Bois d’Hélène, 1998.
