Maurice de Saxe

Maurice de Saxe (1696-1750), French military commander in the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-48). Saxe was an illegitimate son of Frederick Augustus I, elector of Saxony (1694-1733) and, as Augustus II, king of Poland (1697-1733). Joining the French army as colonel of a regiment of German mercenaries in 1719, he soon won a reputation as a brilliant tactician. He was a lieutenant general in the War of the Polish Succession (1733-38), and during the War of the Austrian Succession he captured Prague in the opening months of the conflict; he was made marshal of France in 1744. The following year, as commander of French forces in Flanders, Saxe defeated a combined British, Dutch, and Austrian army at the Battle of Fontenoy. He won further victories over the allies at Rocourt (1746) and Lauffeld (1747), thus securing control of the Austrian Netherlands for France. His influential work on military science, Mes rêveries (My Thoughts), was published posthumously in 1756-57. Saxe was the great-grandfather of the French novelist George Sand.