Friedrich Levin August von Arentsschildt (1755-1820)
Command Ratings
Friedrich Levin August von Arentsschildt (12 June 1755 – 10 December 1820) was a Hanoverian cavalry officer who continued his career in British service with the King’s German Legion (KGL) after the dissolution of the Electorate of Hanover’s army in 1803, later holding senior cavalry appointments during the Peninsular War and the Waterloo campaign and then returning to Hanoverian service as a general officer.
He was born at Winsen and belonged to the von Arentsschildt family of the Bremen knighthood. He entered the electoral Hanoverian army on 27 December 1770 as a Cornet in the 1st Kavallerie-Leibregiment (Jonquières). He was promoted to Lieutenant on 16 July 1779 and by 1792 held the rank of captain in the same regiment. During the War of the First Coalition he served in the Flanders theatre and distinguished himself in outpost fighting at Rousselaire (Roeselare).
In 1798 he was appointed Major in Hanover’s 10th cavalry regiment (light dragoons). Following the French occupation of Hanover and the dissolution of the Hanoverian army under the Convention of Artlenburg (1803), he transferred into British service and entered the newly formed King’s German Legion as a major. He was soon advanced to lieutenant-colonel in the KGL’s 1st Light Dragoons, and with that regiment served in the Peninsular War. On 25 September 1811 his regiment was notably engaged at El Bodón during the cavalry actions covering Wellington’s army.
Arentsschildt held repeated temporary and then substantive brigade commands. He commanded a cavalry brigade ad interim from March to May 1811 and again from July to September 1812. He was commissioned as an officer of the British Army in 1812 and became brevet-colonel in 1813; he was promoted to Colonel on 4 June 1813. From January to April 1814 he served as the actual commander of a cavalry brigade, and during the operations around Toulouse (10 April 1814) he was detached to Wellington’s staff.
From 1814 to 1816 he served as commander of the KGL’s 3rd Hussars (as regimental commander), and in 1815, after Napoleon’s return from Elba, he commanded the 7th Cavalry Brigade in Flanders and France, composed of the KGL 3rd Hussars and the British 13th Light Dragoons. He held this brigade command during the Waterloo campaign.
After the war he was placed on British half-pay in 1816, and on 24 December 1815 he re-entered Hanoverian service as a generalmajor. In Hanover he commanded the 2nd Cavalry Brigade and the 3rd Hussar regiment at Göttingen until 1818. He died at Northeim on 10 December 1820.
Sources
X (KGL) 11 Fuentes de Onoro; XX (Russo-German) 13 Germany; X 15 Waterloo