MANSFELD, CountEbnest of (1585-1626), a natural son of Peter Ernest, governor of Luxemburg and Brussels, was born in 1585. Trained by his godfather, the archduke Ernest of Austria, in the Roman Catholic religion, he devoted himself to the service of the king of Spain in the Netherlands, and to that of the emperor in Hungary. The emperor Rudolf II. conferred on him the rights of legitimate birth, and promised to put him in possession of his father’s lands in the Netherlands. As this promise was not fulfilled, he joined the Reformed Church, and in 1610 formally associated himself with the Protestant princes. From the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War in 1618 he fought steadily on behalf of the elector of the Palatinate both in Bohemia and in the Rhine country. In 1625 he was able to collect a powerful force with which he intended to attack the hereditary territories of Austria, but, on the 25th of Aprd 1626, he was defeated by Wallenstein at Dessau. He pressed forward to effect a junction with Bethlen Gabor, prince of Transylvania, but as the latter changed his policy Mansfeld had no alternative but to disband his army. When preparing to go to England by Venice, he became ill at a village near Zara, and died on the 20th of November 1626. He was a man of great courage and resource, and ranks among the most brilliant generals of his age.

See Reuss, Graf Ernst von Mansfeld im böhmischen Kriege 1618-21 (1865); Villermont, Ernest de Mansfeld (1866); and Graf Uetterodt zu Scharffenberg, Ernest Graf zu Mansfeld, historische Darstellung (1867).