Charles William Ferdinand of Brunswick
1735 – 1806 · Generation XXXI · Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel
Charles William Ferdinand of Brunswick (1735–1806). Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. Married Augusta of Great Britain in 1764. A nephew of Frederick the Great through his mother, he made his name in the Seven Years’ War, leading an infantry charge at Hastenbeck and serving under his uncle Ferdinand at Minden and Warburg. British crowds cheered him when he came to London to marry Augusta in 1764, though George III pointedly slighted him. Having helped rescue the duchy’s finances, he ruled from 1780 as a cautious enlightened reformer and paid for the young Carl Friedrich Gauss to attend university. As a Prussian field marshal he restored the Dutch stadtholder in a swift campaign in 1787, but the 1792 manifesto issued under his name, threatening Paris if the French royal family were harmed, backfired, and he withdrew from France after Valmy. Past seventy, he returned to command at Auerstedt in 1806, where a musket ball blinded him; he died of the wound weeks later at Ottensen.
Place in the family
- Charles William Ferdinand of Brunswick married Augusta of Great Britain, a great-aunt of Queen Victoria.
Partners
- Married Augusta of Great Britain (1737 – 1813) in 1764 — one child together
Children
- Caroline of Brunswick (1768 – 1821)
Life
- 1735 — Born
- 1764 — Married Augusta of Great Britain
- 1806 — Died