Raimondo Montecuccoli (Italian pronunciation: [raiˈmondo monteˈkukkoli]; 21 February 1609 – 16 October 1680) was an Italian-born professional soldier, military theorist, and diplomat, who served the Habsburg monarchy.

Experiencing the Thirty Years' War from scratch as a simple footsoldier, he rose through the ranks into a regiment holder and became an important cavalry commander in the late stages.

He did good service at the first battle of Nordlingen (1634), and at the storming of Kaiserslautern in the following year won his colonelcy by a feat of arms of unusual brilliance, a charge through the breach at the head of his heavy cavalry.

[3] He fought in Pomerania, Bohemia and Saxony (surprise of Wolmirstedt, battles of Wittstock and Chemnitz), and in 1639 he was taken prisoner at Melnik and detained for two and a half years in Stettin and Weimar.

In captivity he studied military science, and also geometry by the way of Euclid, the history of Tacitus, and Vitruvius' architecture, all the while planning his great work on war.

[3] Returning to the field in 1642, Montecuccoli fought under Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in Silesia where he defeated a Swedish corps under Erik Slang at Troppau.

Montecuccoli was appointed to Generalfeldwachtmeister[4] and allowed to temporarily leave the Imperial army in Winter 1642 to fight in the First War of Castro as cavalry commander for the Duke of Modena.

[4] First substituting the diseased Melchior von Hatzfeldt in Franconia, he reinforced the main army under Matthias Gallas in late 1644 that was encircled by the Swedes at Bernburg after retreating from Holstein.

[4][3] For some years after the Peace of Westphalia, Montecuccoli was chiefly concerned with the business of the Hofkriegsrat, though he went to Flanders and England as the representative of the emperor, and to Sweden as the envoy of the pope to Queen Christina, and at Modena his lance was victorious in a great tourney.

[3] His actions were not only hindered by lack of supplies or the overwhelming numbers of the Ottomans but also by the Emperor's orders to only risk battle if there was the possibility that Vienna could get in danger.

[3] The Britannica names him "unequalled as a master of 17th-century warfare" because he "excelled in the art of fortification and siege, march and countermarch, and cutting his enemy's lines of communications.

Of this work, there are manuscripts in various libraries, and many memoirs on military history, tactics, and fortification, written in Italian, Latin and German, remain still unedited in the archives of Vienna.

[15] In 1934, the Italian navy launched the Raimondo Montecuccoli, a Condottieri class light cruiser named in his honour which served with the Regia Marina during World War II.