page_title: Johann von Klenau
section_title: Family and early career
hierarchical_section_title: Johann von Klenau / Family and early career
caption_attribution_description: English: The castle in Benátky nad Jizerou (Czech Republic), where Tycho Brahe lived from August 1599 to June 1600. In February 1600, Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler met here for the first time.
context_page_description: Johann von Klenau, also called Johann Graf von Klenau, Freiherr von Janowitz, was a field marshal in the Habsburg army. Klenau, the son of a Bohemian noble, joined the Habsburg military as a teenager and fought in the War of Bavarian Succession against Prussia, Austria's wars with the Ottoman Empire, the French Revolutionary Wars, and the Napoleonic Wars, in which he commanded a corps in several important battles.
  In the early years of the French Revolutionary Wars, Klenau distinguished himself at the Wissembourg lines, and led a battle-winning charge at Handschuhsheim in 1795. As commander of the Coalition's left flank in the Adige campaign in northern Italy in 1799, he was instrumental in isolating the French-held fortresses on the Po River by organizing and supporting a peasant uprising in the countryside. Afterward, Klenau became the youngest lieutenant field marshal in the history of the Habsburg military.
  As a corps commander, Klenau led key elements of the Austrian army in its victory at Aspern-Esslingen and its defeat at Wagram, where his troops covered the retreat of the main Austrian force.
context_section_description: Johann Josef Cajetan von Klenau und Janowitz was born into an old Bohemian nobile family at Benatek Castle in the Habsburg province of Bohemia on 13 April 1758. The family of Klenau dates to the fifteenth century, and the family of Janowitz to the fourteenth. The family name of Klenau regularly appears in records after the sixteenth century.  The Klenau family was one of the oldest dynasties in Bohemia, and many of the noble families of Bohemia have sprung from marriages into the Klenau line. The original name of the family was Przibik, with the predicate von Klenowa. The family was raised to the baronetcy in 1623 with the certificate granted to one Johann von Klenowa  and, in 1629, to his son, Wilhelm. The Imperial councilor and judge in Regensburg, Wilhelm von Klenau, was raised to comital status in 1630, and to the status of Reichsgraf, or imperial count, in 1633.
  Johann Klenau entered the 47th Infantry Regiment Ellrichshausen in 1774, at the age of 17, and became a  second lieutenant in 1775.  After transferring to a Chevauleger regiment as a Rittmeister, or captain of cavalry, Klenau fought in the short War of the Bavarian Succession, also known as the Potato War.  Most of this conflict occurred in Bohemia (part of the modern Czech Republic) from 1778 to 1779, between the Habsburg Monarchy, Saxony, Bavaria and Prussia. The war had no battles, but was instead a series of skirmishes and raids, making it the ideal situation for a captain of light cavalry. In their raids, forces from both sides sought to confiscate or destroy the other's provisions, fodder, and materiel.
  In the Austro–Turkish War (1787–1791), one of the House of Habsburg's many 18th-century wars with the Ottoman Empire, Klenau served in the 26th Dragoon Regiment Toscana, and later transferred to the 1st Dragoon Regiment Kaiser.  His regiment repulsed an attack of superior numbers of Ottoman forces on 28 September 1788, at Zemun, near Belgrade, for which he received a personal commendation and earned his promotion to major. In his early military career Klenau demonstrated, not only at Zemun but also in the earlier skirmishing and raids of 1778 and 1779, the attributes required of a successful cavalry officer: the military acumen to evaluate a situation, the flexibility to adjust his plans on a moment's notice, and the personal courage to take the same risks he demanded of his men.
caption: Benatek Castle, in Bohemia, where Klenau was born.
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image DateTime": "2009:09:11 14:49:58", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "196", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "300", "Thumbnail YResolution": "300", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1282", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "11165", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/250", "EXIF FNumber": "11", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2009:09:11 14:49:58", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2009:09:11 14:49:58", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "261023/32768", "EXIF ApertureValue": "453435/65536", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1500", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1043", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "Interoperability RelatedImageWidth": "1500", "Interoperability RelatedImageLength": "1043", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "1134", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Custom"}