Ernst, Graf von Mansfeld (c. 1580 – 29 November 1626) was a German military commander.
Mansfeld was an illegitimate son of Graf Peter Ernst von Mansfeld (1517-1604), and passed his early years in his father's palace at Luxembourg.
He gained his earliest military experiences in Hungary, where his half-brother Charles (1543-1595), also a soldier of renown, held a high command in the imperial army. Later he served under the Archduke Leopold, until t...
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Ernst, Graf von Mansfeld (c. 1580 – 29 November 1626) was a German military commander.
Mansfeld was an illegitimate son of Graf Peter Ernst von Mansfeld (1517-1604), and passed his early years in his father's palace at Luxembourg.
He gained his earliest military experiences in Hungary, where his half-brother Charles (1543-1595), also a soldier of renown, held a high command in the imperial army. Later he served under the Archduke Leopold, until that prince's ingratitude, real or fancied, drove him into the arms of the enemies of the house of Habsburg. Although remaining a Roman Catholic he allied himself with the Protestant princes, and during the earlier part of the Thirty Years' War he was one of their foremost champions.
He was despatched by Charles Emmanuel, duke of Savoy, at the head of about 2000 men to aid the revolting Bohemians when war broke out in 1618. He took Pilsen, but in the summer of 1619 he was defeated at the Battle of Sablat; after this he offered his services to...
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