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CHARLES V

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Originally appearing in Volume V05, Page 934 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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CHARLES V  . or IV . (1643-1690), duke of
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Lorraine,
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nephew of Duke Charles IV., was born on the 3rd of
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April 1643, and in 1664 received a colonelcy in the emperor's army . In the same
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year he fought with distinction at the
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battle of St Gotthard, in which he captured a standard from the
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Turks . He was a
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candidate for the elective
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crown of Poland in 1668 . In 167o the emperor made him general of horse, and during the following years he was constantly on active service, first against the Turksand subsequently against the French . At Seneff (1674) he was wounded . In the same year he was again a candidate for the
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Polish crown, but was unsuccessful, John Sobieski, who was to be associated with him in his greatest feat of arms, being elected . In 1675, on the
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death of Charles IV., he rode with a cavalry corps into the duchy of Lorraine, then occupied by the French, and secured the adhesion of the Lorraine troops to himself; a little after this he succeeded Mon tecucculi as general of the imperial army on the Rhine, and was made a field marshal . The chief success of his
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campaign of 1676 was the capture of Philipsburg, after a long and arduous siege . The war continued without decisive result for some time, and the
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fate of the duchy, which was still occupied by the French, was the subject of endless diplomacy . At the general peace Charles had to accept the hard conditions imposed by Louis XIV., and he never entered into effective possession of his
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sovereignty In 1678 he married the widowed queen of Poland, Eleonora Maria of Austria, and for nearly five years they lived quietly at
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Innsbruck . The
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Turkish invasion of 1683, the last
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great effort of the Turks to impose their will on
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Europe, called Charles into the field again .

At the

head of a weak imperial army the duke offered the best resistance he could to the advance of the Turks on Vienna . But he had to fall back, contesting every position, and the Turks finally invested Vienna (
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July 13th, 1683) . At this critical moment other powers came to the assistance of Austria, reinforcements poured into Charles's camp, and John Sobieski, king of Poland, brought 27,000 Poles . Sobieski and Charles had now over 8o,000 men, Poles, Austrians and Germans, and on the
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morning of the 12th of September they moved forward to the attack . By nightfall the Turks were in
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complete disorder, Vienna was relieved, and the danger was at an end . Soon the victors took the offensive and reconquered
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part of the
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kingdom of Hungary . The Germans and Poles went home in the winter, but Charles continued his offensive with the imperialists alone . Ofen (Buda) resisted his efforts in 1684, but in the campaign of 1685 Neuhausel was taken by storm, and in 1686 Charles, now reinforced by German auxiliaries, resumed the siege of Ofen . All attempts to. relieve the place were repulsed, and Ofen was stormed on the and of September . In the following campaign the Austrians won a decisive victory on the famous battle-ground of
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Mohacs (August 18th, 1687) . In 1689 Charles took the field on the Rhine against the forces of Louis XIV., the enemy of his house . Mainz and
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Bonn were taken in the first campaign, but Charles in travelling from Vienna to the front died suddenly at Weis on the 18th of April 169o .

His eldest son,

Leopold Joseph (1679-1729), at the peace of Ryswick in 1697 obtained the duchy, of which his
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father had been dispossessed by France, and was the father of Francis Stephen, duke of Lorraine, who became the
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husband of Maria Theresa (q.v.), and of Charles (Karl Alexander), a distinguished
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Austrian
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commander in the
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wars with Frederick the Great . The duchy was ceded by Francis Stephen to
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Stanislaus Leczynski, the dethroned king of Poland, in 1736, Francis receiving in-stead the
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grand-duchy of Tuscany .

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