First published in five volumes in Amsterdam in 1740, the Histoire du prince François Eugene de Savoie is the work of Eléazar de Mauvillon (1712-79), a historian, grammarian and philologist from Provence who worked for a long time in the greater German area as teacher of French at the Collegium Carolinum in Brunswick and secretary to Frederick Augustus, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland. It is regarded by scholars as the most important 18th-century biography of Prince Eugene of Savoy-Carignano (1663-1736), a military commander of Italian origin belonging to a lesser branch of the House of Savoy, who led the Austrian forces to a series of brilliant victories. He defeated the Turks repeatedly on the Balkan front (1716-18) and the French armies of Louis XIV in the War of Spanish Succession (1701- 14), fostering Austrian hegemony in the Italian peninsula from the Duchy of Milan to the Kingdom of Naples. The Histoire enjoyed great success on its publication just four years after Prince Eugene’s death, as attested by a series of translations and reprints: Vienna in 1741, 1745, 1755, 1770 and 1777; Amsterdam and Leipzig in 1750; and Italy, where the elegant translation by Vittorio Amedeo Cigna Santi, published in Turin in 1789,¹ bears witness to the prestige accorded to Mauvillon’s work and its subject in the culture of Savoy in the late 18th century.² 

Though structured as a chronological account of the military actions undertaken by the Habsburg commander in accordance with its historiographic aims (in virtue of its meticulous precision and abundance of information, it can also be read as a military and political history of early 18th-century Europe), the Histoire is based on the model of classical and classicistic biography and in particular the rhetorical paradigm of the “exemplum virtutis” or example of greatness. It opens with the topos of the author’s supposed inability to do justice to the deeds “d’un des plus grands Capitaines qu’il y ait jamais eu; qui a brillé en Orient et en Occident” (one of the greatest captains that ever was, whose deeds shone in the East and West), thus taking up the long-standing literary model of the ideal from which the 17th- and 18th-century biographers of political and military figures drew inspiration. Mauvillon’s narrative is not, however, confined to rhetorical glorification of the war-like prince but focuses explicitly on his political virtues, which the author regards as guiding his military talents, devoting a great deal of space to the wisdom demonstrated in diplomatic negotiations and embassies.³ 

Unlike its celebrated antecedent, the Batailles of Jean Dumont (1720), the work is therefore not simply a historical record of military actions but also a discourse on the virtues that made its subject an example of military heroism and political farsightedness. It is precisely Prince Eugene’s “universality” and exemplary character that form the basis of Mauvillon’s work. Openly criticising the other biographies as overly eulogistic,⁴ he presents Eugene’s mistakes, hardships and defeats as well as his “grandes qualités” in an examination of their complex relations of cause and effect. 

Pietro Giulio Riga 

¹ Storia del principe Eugenio di Savoja 1789. 

² This translation is mentioned in the classic work Calcaterra 1933, pp. 441-442. For an overview of biographies of Prince Eugene, see G. Ricuperati, “In margine alla biografia di Eugenio: un principe fra libertinismo e illuminismo radicale”, in Comparato, Di Rienzo, Grassi 1991-91, pp. 445-460. 

³ Mauvillon wrote as follows in the introduction: “Mais ce n’est pas encore affez de le représenter comme un grand Capitaine, il faut le dépeindre comme un excellent Politique; car tel étoit le Prince Eugene.” 

⁴ Ibid., “Du moins je puis assurer d’avance qu’on ne m’accusera pas d’avoir composé un Panégirique, pareil à quantité de petits Livrets qui ont paru sous le titre d’Histoire du Prince Eugène.”