[Archduke Charles, Duke of Teschen, Austrian Field Marshal.] Unpublished manuscript of English translations from his ‘Principles of Strategy illustrated by the representation of the Campaign of 1796 in Germany’ (‘Grundsätze der Strategie’).

In 1809, at the Battle of Aspern, the author of this work, the Archduke Charles, became the first man to defeat Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1814 his ‘Grundsätze der Strategie, erläutert durch die Darstellung des Feldzuges von 1796 in Deutschland’ was published in three volumes in Vienna. A French translation appeared in 1841, but there is no record of an English one (although JISC does throw up a work with a similar title published by ‘A Kearsey’ in 1928, the only copy it lists being in the National Army Museum). The present item consists of a total of 214 pages of text, in six uniform stitched foolscap notebooks, five of them retaining their plain grey wraps, the other lacking them. The paper is plain and underwatermarked. Barring two leaves, the notebooks have been entirely filled in in a neat early-Victorian hand. The translator has taken some care, with emendations and deletions throughout (those in Vol. Five in a reddish ink). A few difficult German words found in the margins of Vol. Two indicate that the translation is directly from the German, and not from the French translation. The present translation has certainly not been published, nor can one see how it could be. Despite the translator’s seeming care, it is difficult to establish which volume follows on from which, and there may even be overlapping. The arrangement of the text would appear to indicate that either (a) the translation was not intended for publication or (b) was intended to serve as a basis for a later full translation. If (a) is the case, and bearing in mind the workmanlike nature of the large notebooks, there is a distinct possibility that the translation was made by a trainee officer at a military establishment such as Woolwich or Sandhurst, and that it was never meant to be complete, the translator only working on the passages which he considered of importance to him (principally from the second volume, which deals with the nuts and bolts of the campaign). The spelling of ‘Theater’ in the title of Vol. Two opens up the possibility that the translator was an American. As the sequence, if there is one, is unclear, the following numbering is purely arbitrary. ONE: Title at head of first page: ‘Principles of Strategy illustrated by the representation of the Campaign of 1796 in Germany / With Maps & Plates / II Part / History of the Campaign’. (Despite the title there are no diagrams or illustrations in any of the six volumes.) This is the notebook that lacks its wraps. 48pp, foolscap. TWO: Begins, after 2pp of contents: ‘Part II Employment of the Principles of Strategy on a given Theater [sic] of War’. On front wrap: ‘2. / 1 vol.’ 48pp, foolscap. THREE: Begins with ‘Chapter Eighth’. On front wrap: ‘2nd vol.’ 28pp, foolscap. FOUR: Begins at ‘vol. 2 p. 228’. On front wrap: ‘5th vol.’ 24pp, foolscap. FIVE: Begins: ‘p. 266 2 vol. / 2 Augt.’ 42pp, foolscap. SIX: Begins: ‘Chapter 1’. On front wrap: ‘3 / 1 vol.’ 24pp, foolscap.