Mansfeld

Mansfeld, Peter Ernest, second count, was the natural son of Count Peter Mansfeld, the general of the Emperor Charles V. and governor of Luxemburg and afterwards of the Spanish Netherlands. Peter Ernest the younger, though legitimated by Rudolf II., was not given possession of his father's lands. He therefore left the imperial sjrvice, joined the Reformed Church, and became one of the leading Protestant generals in the Thirty Years' War, previous to which he helped the Duke of Savoy against Spain. Driven out of Bohemia, he for some time carried on guerilla warfare in the Palatinate, and defeated Tilly in 1622. Subsequently he took service with the Dutch, but in 1624 reappeared in Germany with an army which had been raised mainly in England. His career, however, being checked by the victory of Wallenstein at the bridge of Dessau (1626), he tried to join Bethlen Gabor, Prince of Transylvania, but was unable to obtain supplies to carry on the war. He died at Racowitza, in Bosnia, at the end of the same year.