Maurice de Saxe (Marshal of Saxony)

Maurice, Count of Saxony (1696–1750), was an illegitimate son of King Augustus II the Strong of Poland and Countess Maria Aurora von Königsmarck, who became the premier military commander of 18th-century Europe. Entering French royal service in 1720, Saxe was promoted to Marshal of France during the War of the Austrian Succession.

At the Battle of Fontenoy in 1745, Saxe—suffering from dropsy so severe he had to be carried onto the field in a wicker litter—commanded French forces facing the formidable Anglo-Hanoverian column led by the Duke of Cumberland. Anchoring his lines on fortified redoubts, he unleashed devastating close-range grapeshot and a ferocious charge of the Irish Brigade and King's Household Cavalry to win a decisive triumph with King Louis XV present. His posthumously published military treatise, Mes Rêveries (My Reveries), anticipated modern combined arms, uniforms, cadence marching, and skirmisher tactics.