Archduke Charles Louis John Joseph Lawrence of Austria, Duke of Teschen (German: Erzherzog Karl Ludwig Johann Josef Lorenz von Österreich, Herzog von Teschen; 5 September 1771 – 30 April 1847) was an Austrian field-marshal, the third son of Emperor Leopold II and his wife, Maria Luisa of Spain.

In 1809, he entered the War of the Fifth Coalition and inflicted Napoleon's first major setback at Aspern-Essling, before suffering a defeat at the bloody Battle of Wagram.

His father, then Grand Duke of Tuscany, generously permitted Charles's childless aunt Archduchess Maria Christina of Austria and her husband Albert of Saxe-Teschen to adopt and raise the boy in Vienna.

Charles spent his youth in Tuscany, at Vienna and in the Austrian Netherlands, where he began his career of military service in the wars of the French Revolution.

At first, falling back carefully and avoiding a decision, he finally marched away, leaving a mere screen in front of Moreau.

Falling upon Jourdan, he beat him in the battles of Amberg (August), Würzburg and Limburg (September), and drove him over the Rhine with great loss.

[1] In 1797 he was sent to arrest the victorious march of General Bonaparte in Italy, and he conducted the retreat of the over-matched Austrians with the highest skill.

His popularity was now such that the Perpetual Diet of Regensburg, which met in 1802, resolved to erect a statue in his honour and to give him the title of saviour of his country, but Charles refused both distinctions.

[citation needed] Supported by the prestige of being the only general who had proved capable of defeating the French, he promptly initiated a far-reaching scheme of reform, which replaced the obsolete methods of the 18th century.

The army reforms were not yet completed by the war of 1809, in which Charles acted as commander in chief, yet even so it proved a far more formidable opponent than the old and was only defeated after a desperate struggle involving Austrian victories and large loss of life on both sides.

[citation needed] Charles spent the rest of his life in retirement, except for a short time in 1815 when he was military governor of the Fortress Mainz.

The caution which the archduke preached so earnestly in his strategic works, he displayed in practice only when the situation seemed to demand it, although his education certainly prejudiced him in favor of the defensive at all costs.

Strategic points, he says, not the defeat of the enemy's army, decide the fate of one's own country, and must constantly remain the general's main concern, a maxim which was never more remarkably disproved than in the war of 1809.

The editor of the archduke's work is able to make but a feeble defense against Clausewitz's reproach that Charles attached more value to ground than to the annihilation of the foe.

"[12] The baneful influence of these antiquated principles was clearly shown in the maintenance of Königgrätz-Josefstadt in 1866 as a strategic point, which was preferred to the defeat of the separated Prussian armies, and in the strange plans produced in Vienna for the campaign of 1859, and in the almost unintelligible Battle of Montebello in the same year.

In 1796, Archduke Charles augmented these with his own Observationspunkte, writing of the Chief of Staff: "he is duty bound to consider all possibilities related to operations and not view himself as merely carrying out those instructions".