Berthier: Carl Heinrich Wilhelm Anthing

Carl Heinrich Wilhelm Anthing (also styled in later life as Baron von Anthing or d’Anthing) was a German-born infantry officer who spent his entire active career in Dutch service under successive regimes—Dutch Republic, Batavian Republic, Kingdom of Holland, the First French Empire (after the annexation of Holland), and finally the restored Dutch state—reaching general rank and holding a sequence of field and fortress commands during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. He was born at Gotha (Saxe-Gotha) on 11 November 1766 and died at The Hague on 7 February 1823.

Anthing entered military life in Saxon service as a cadet and Fähnrich/Fahnjunker and transferred into the Dutch military establishment in October 1786, joining the subsidized Regiment Saksen-Gotha in the pay of the States General. His early Dutch service is documented in the fortress war on the Republic’s southern line during the War of the First Coalition. As an ensign in the 1st battalion of his regiment, he served during the siege of Willemstad (1793), a prolonged operation in which the garrison and covering forces were repeatedly pressed by French troops operating in the theater of the Meuse and Hollands Diep. By 1795 he was in the garrison of Heusden when the fortress was surrendered on 13 January 1795 amid the Batavian revolution and the collapse of the old States Army system.

With the reorganization of Dutch forces under Batavian auspices on 8 July 1795, Anthing entered the new Batavian army as a captain in the 3rd battalion of the 7th halve-brigade. His rise through field-grade responsibilities followed the Batavian pattern of assigning experienced officers to mixed garrison and field formations, and by 1798 he was serving as a deputy commander (plaats-majoor) of the garrison of The Hague with the titular rank of lieutenant-colonel. On 25 April 1799 he exchanged that post for operational command as commander of the 2nd battalion of the 6th halve-brigade, a posting that placed him in the main field force assembled for the expected Anglo-Russian landing.

In the Anglo-Russian invasion of Holland (1799), Anthing’s battalion fought in the North Holland campaign in the Franco-Batavian army. During the attack on the Zijpe line on 10 September 1799, close to Krabbendam, his battalion suffered an incident of confusion triggered by artillery—described in Dutch biographical reference literature as panic following the bursting of a shell and shouted calls to retreat—leading to a wider loss of momentum at that point of the assault. The aftermath was formal and severe: a large portion of the battalion’s officers were brought before a court-martial, though they were acquitted when the inquiry concluded that they had made the best possible efforts to arrest the disorder. The same sources record that the battalion’s reputation was subsequently repaired in action on 19 September 1799 at the battle of Bergen, where Anthing led his men forward with the battalion colour in hand, forcing the enemy from a defended bridge position at Schoorldam at heavy cost. In these 1799 actions he appears not as a staff officer but as a combat battalion commander whose personal conduct at the decisive point—remaining forward with the colour party and driving a crossing under fire—was treated by later Dutch compilers as the key fact distinguishing his performance from the earlier panic episode.

In 1800 Anthing served in Germany in the Batavian division under General Dumonceau during the winter campaign on the Main, and in 1801 he served with the reserve army in Hanover, remaining within the Batavian contingent integrated with French-led coalition warfare. By 1805 he and his battalion embarked from Texel as part of preparations connected with the projected descent on England and the employment of Batavian troops alongside French forces; Dutch biographical records describe his unit’s subsequent movement with the Batavian division under Dumonceau under the overall command of Marshal Marmont into the German and Austrian theater during the War of the Third Coalition, reflecting the continuing use of Dutch formations as an allied contingent rather than an independent national field army.

Under the Kingdom of Holland he advanced into senior regimental command. On 23 October 1806 he was appointed Colonel of the 4th regiment of infantry, which belonged to the Dutch division stationed in northern Germany under Dumonceau during 1806–1808 as reinforcement to French forces. In November 1808 he received command appointments in the royal Guard structure: first the regiment of Guard grenadiers and then the corps of Guard midshipmen (adelborsten), indicating court confidence in his reliability for elite and instructional formations. On 17 February 1809 he was promoted to major-general and immediately given field command as commander of the 1st brigade of the Dutch auxiliary corps. This corps served with the French X Corps and was used in northern Germany in the 1809 operations against Ferdinand von Schill’s rising and in subsequent actions against other Freikorps formations, including those associated with the Duke of Brunswick-Oels. In these assignments Anthing’s command function was that of a brigade leader operating under French corps direction, moving against irregular concentrations and enforcing security in a politically unstable theater rather than fighting set-piece line battles.

At the beginning of 1810 he held a sensitive and difficult fortress command as military governor of Breda. The end of the Kingdom of Holland placed Dutch commanders in an ambiguous position when French troops appeared without a declared state of war. In the Breda episode, Anthing attempted to avoid initiating hostilities while resisting the seizure of the fortress; Dutch biographical sources describe him agreeing to admit French troops only on the basis that they entered as those of a friendly power, after which they forced entry to his residence, seized the keys, and effectively took the place. He then declared himself relieved of his governorship, a resignation framed in these sources as a protest against a coercive takeover conducted under political pressure while King Louis was effectively constrained in Paris.

After the annexation of the Kingdom of Holland to the First French Empire in 1810, Anthing entered French service in his rank and served in the Imperial campaigns that followed. Dutch and German biographical accounts place him in Marshal Ney’s III Corps in the 1813 German campaign; he was wounded at Lützen (2 May 1813) and again at Bautzen (20–21 May 1813), with one later summary specifying that the Bautzen woundings were severe. He also served in the 1814 campaign in France, remaining within the body of former Dutch officers absorbed into the Imperial army. On 19 June 1814 he was appointed lieutenant-général by Louis XVIII, then sought and received discharge from French service on 6 August 1814 as the restored Netherlands rebuilt its own army structure.

Re-entering Dutch service, he was appointed major-general on 27 August 1814 and was soon selected for a Major organizational and command responsibility: the formation and leadership of the force intended for the reoccupation and defense of the Dutch East Indies. On 18 October 1814 he was designated to command the newly formed East Indies army establishment, and Colonel Hendrik Merkus de Kock was assigned to him as chief of staff, with rank arrangements tied to the date of embarkation. The force most closely associated with Anthing in this period was the Indies Brigade (Indische Brigade/Indiaansche Brigade), a composite formation recruited for colonial garrison duty and then retained in Europe during the renewed war of 1815.

In the 1815 campaign period the Indies Brigade was organized as a distinct Dutch-Belgian formation under Anthing’s command, associated with the 1st Dutch-Belgian division (Lieutenant-General John Stedman; nominally under Prince Frederick of the Netherlands). Its internal composition has been described in modern reconstructions as including the 5th East Indies Regiment of the Line (Oost-Indisch regiment No. 5) under G. M. Busman, the 10th and 11th West Indies light infantry battalions (Bataljon West-Indische jagers Nos. 10 and 11) under H. W. Rancke and Frederik Knotzer, a light battalion of flankeurs under Willem Schenck, and an attached foot artillery battery with 6-pounders and howitzers. Anthing’s brigade was posted in the Southern Netherlands on a security line intended to guard against outflanking moves from the Mons direction, with positions shifting from the Oudenaarde area to Halle near Brussels; these postings meant that his command did not fight at Quatre Bras (16 June 1815) or Waterloo (18 June 1815). After the Allied decision, the Indies Brigade was employed in the reduction and containment of French frontier fortresses in 1815, including Le Quesnoy, Valenciennes, and Condé, operations in which the brigade’s infantry and artillery detachments were used for blockade lines, siege duties, and the controlled occupation of captured works. Prince Frederick took leave of Anthing and his officers in mid-August 1815 during the march sequence around Valenciennes and Curgies, after which the brigade separated from the mobile army on 6 September 1815 to prepare for embarkation.

Anthing sailed with the initial colonial expedition from Texel on 29 October 1815 aboard the Admiraal De Ruyter with a large detachment of officers and men. Dutch biographical reference material describes a difficult voyage marked by sickness and severe shortages, with Anthing ultimately reaching Batavia in 1816 and assuming command authority in the Indies as the senior army commander. His tenure in the Indies included inspection travel and the submission of formal reports on the condition of fortifications on Java and Madura; he was removed honorably from that appointment on 23 January 1818, returned to the Netherlands in 1819, and was pensioned on 18 April 1820.

His recorded decorations and titles across regimes reflect the political transitions of his service. German and Dutch summaries credit him with, among other honors, the Danish Order of the Dannebrog (as commander) and French Légion d’honneur (at least as officer/commander in various accounts), and he was appointed a knight (3rd class) of the Dutch Military William Order in October 1815. In later usage he was styled Baron (including forms Baron von Anthing/d’Anthing), a designation also reflected in Dutch biographical headings. A surviving institutional trace of his career and social network is his Album amicorum, preserved in the collections of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek at The Hague and containing entries dated from 1784 to 1818, including inscriptions made during his Batavian-era service.

Sources

Carl Heinrich Wilhelm Anthing (1766-1823)

Command Ratings

Pictures