Radetzky, Joseph Wenzel

(Count Radetzky von Radetz). Born Nov. 2, 1766, in Třebnice, now in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic; died Jan. 5, 1858, in Milan. Count, Austrian field marshal (1836). Son of a Czech nobleman.

Radetzky entered the army in 1784. From 1809 to 1813 he was chief of staff of the Austrian Army, and in 1813–14, chief of staff to the Austrian field marshal K. Schwarzenberg, who was commander in chief of the allied armies in the war against Napoleonic France. Radetzky commanded large cavalry units from 1815. He was commander in chief of the Austrian Army in northern Italy from 1831 to 1857 and at the same time, from 1849 to 1857, governor-general of the Kingdom of Lombardy and Venetia. In the Austro-Italian War of 1848–49, troops under Radetzky’s command defeated the Italian Army at Cus-tozza in 1848 and Novara in 1849 and suppressed the Revolution of 1848–49 in Italy.