Frederick Bianchi

Vinzenz Ferrerius Friedrich Freiherr von Bianchi, Duke of Casalanza (also recorded in Italian as Vincenzo Federico Barone Bianchi), was born in 1768 in Vienna and became an Imperial-Royal Austrian general most closely associated with the 1815 campaign against Joachim Murat in Italy, culminating at Tolentino and the subsequent Convention/Treaty of Casalanza. He entered Habsburg military service before the end of the 18th century and was in uniform through the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, with field and staff employment that placed him repeatedly in Italy, the Danube theatre, and later the Allied operations in France.

Bianchi began his career as an infantry officer and served through the late-18th-century conflicts of the Habsburg monarchy, including the Austro-Turkish War of 1788–1791. By the time of the War of the Second Coalition he was already in active employment in the Italian theatre and is associated with the 1797 operations in northern Italy, including Rivoli (January 1797), within the broad sequence of actions that ended with the Austrian retreat from Lombardy and the armistice/campaign conclusions that followed. His early advancement is not consistently presented with precise commission and company-grade promotion dates in readily available English summaries; as a result, the sequence of his initial steps through Unterleutnant/Oberleutnant/Hauptmann/Major/Oberstleutnant/Oberst cannot be date-fixed here without risking false precision. What can be stated securely is that by the first decade of the 19th century he was already senior enough to hold substantial regimental and staff responsibilities, alternating between line command and staff assignments.

In the period leading into the War of the Fifth Coalition, Bianchi held important staff employment and then returned to regimental command. He commanded Infantry Regiment No. 48 for a period before attaining general rank; in 1807 he was promoted to Generalmajor, marking his entry into the general officer ranks at a moment when Austria was rebuilding and reorganizing after the setbacks of 1805. In the 1809 campaign he distinguished himself in the operations on the Danube, particularly in the sector around Pressburg (Bratislava). Between 3 and 5 June 1809 he opposed Marshal Davout’s attempts to secure or maintain a bridgehead near Pressburg, an episode credited with earning him high decoration. In connection with these services he received the Knight’s Cross of the Militär-Maria-Theresien-Orden and, in the same general period, was promoted to Feldmarschalleutnant. After this promotion he was appointed to senior inspection responsibilities in Hungary as infantry inspector, placing him in the cadre of trusted general officers used for both field command and institutional oversight.

During the 1812 campaign in Russia, when Austria was compelled into an alliance with France, Bianchi served with the Austrian auxiliary contingent under Prince Schwarzenberg. He commanded a division within that force, operating on the periphery of Napoleon’s main advance and within the strategic constraints imposed on Austrian formations attached to French operations. While the larger campaign is vast, the securely attributable point is that Bianchi held divisional command under Schwarzenberg in 1812 rather than merely a staff billet, continuing his trajectory as a field commander trusted with independent handling of a substantial formation.

In 1813, with Austria again part of the Coalition, Bianchi served in the German theatre. He is associated with the fighting around Dresden and with the operations that culminated in the Battle of Leipzig (October 1813), where his command responsibilities were within the Allied effort that brought Napoleon to decisive defeat in central Germany. In the aftermath of Leipzig, Bianchi continued in senior employment as the war shifted westward across the Rhine and into eastern France. In early 1814 he appears in the operational record of the Allied Army of the South, where Austrian formations advanced toward the Saône and Rhône corridors against French forces under Marshal Augereau. On 11 March 1814, at the Battle of Mâcon, Bianchi commanded an Austrian corps element engaged by French troops under Musnier; the action ended in an Austrian success and formed part of the pressure that forced French withdrawals in that sector. The same operational sequence included further fighting in the region in March 1814 as the Allies tightened their hold on the approaches to Lyon and the Saône line, and Bianchi’s name remains attached to the corps-level handling of these movements and combats in the Mâcon area.

The campaign most directly and consistently connected to Bianchi’s name, however, is the 1815 Neapolitan War. After Napoleon’s return from Elba in 1815 and the consequent crisis in Italy, Bianchi received high command responsibilities against Joachim Murat, King of Naples. In the opening phase he commanded Austrian forces facing Murat’s northward drive; on 3 April 1815 he was defeated at the Battle of the Panaro (Castelfranco Emilia), where a smaller Austrian force under his command was compelled to retreat behind the Po in the face of Murat’s advance. Despite that reverse, the broader Austrian advance and concentration proceeded, with two Austrian corps operating on divergent lines, one associated with Bianchi and the other with Neipperg. The manoeuvre that followed created the operational conditions for Murat’s attempt to defeat the separated Austrian forces in detail.

Bianchi’s culminating combat was the Battle of Tolentino, fought on 2–3 May 1815 near Tolentino in the Marche. There Bianchi commanded the Austrian force that met Murat’s main army and, after two days of fighting, secured the decisive victory that broke Murat’s position and precipitated the collapse of the Neapolitan war effort. With Murat’s retreat and the disintegration of organized resistance, the concluding settlement followed within weeks. On 20 May 1815 the Convention/Treaty of Casalanza was signed, ending the war and restoring Ferdinand to the Neapolitan throne; Bianchi stood as commander-in-chief on the Austrian side for the agreement, with plenipotentiaries acting in the signing. Shortly thereafter Austrian forces entered Naples, and in the settlement Bianchi received the title Duke (Duca) of Casalanza, tying his ducal designation to the place-name of the armistice convention.

Bianchi’s later life extended well beyond the Napoleonic period. He remained an Austrian general officer after 1815 and eventually left active service; he died in 1855. His highest rank is often given in short summaries as Feldmarschalleutnant, and while he received a ducal title connected to Casalanza, the secure rank progression that can be stated here from accessible summaries is that he was promoted to Generalmajor in 1807 and to Feldmarschalleutnant in 1809. Further intermediate ranks (Oberst, Oberstleutnant, Major, etc.) undoubtedly preceded 1807, and higher general ranks (Feldzeugmeister / General der Kavallerie / Feldmarschall) are not securely attributable to him in the core biographical references used here, so they are not asserted.