Bucquoy, Charles Bonaventure de Longueval, comte de (Part 1)

Bucquoy, Charles Bonaventure de Longueval, comte de (Arras, 1571- Neuhäusel July 10, 1621). Imperialist GL [“General Obrister Leuttenandt”] and oberbefehlshaber (commander-in-chief) in the Bohemian War. The victor of White Mountain (1620) was KIA or MWIA at Neuhäusel less than a year later.

Bucquoy was descended from an ancient noble family of the Spanish Netherlands. His father had been killed at the Siege of Tournai (1581) serving under the Duke of Parma, and he himself made his first campaigns in the Spanish army under the Cardinal-Archduke Albert of Austria beginning in 1596. At Albert’s defeat by Prince Maurice of Orange in the Battle of Nieuport (July 2, 1600), he was a GWM and WIA at the head of his Walloon IR Bucquoy. In 1602, he was promoted GFZM. Subsequently, he served under Spinola in campaigns in the Low Countries and along the Rhine (1602-1609), which were terminated by the Twelve-year Truce between Spain and Holland. During this time he married Maria Magdalena Gräfin von Biglia of Milan, by whom he had a son, Charles Albert (q.v.).

In 1618, Bucquoy was promoted FM and awarded command of the Imperial army that was organized to put down the rebellion of the Bohemian Estates against the Emperor Matthias. The command was as much a recognition of Bucquoy’s military reputation as it was of the massive and timely intervention of Hapsburg Spain (and initially of the veteran troops of the Spanish Netherlands, which Bucquoy led into the war theater) in support of the near-defenseless emperor.