Archduke Albrecht, Duke of Teschen

Archduke Albrecht
Archduke Albrecht, c. 1890s
Duke of Teschen
Reign	30 April 1847 – 18 February 1895
Predecessor	Charles
Successor	Friedrich
Born	(1817-08-03)3 August 1817 Vienna, Austrian Empire
Died	18 February 1895(1895-02-18) (aged 77) Arco, Austria-Hungary
Burial	Imperial Crypt
Spouse	Princess Hildegard of Bavaria
Issue	Maria Theresa, Duchess of Württemberg Archduke Karl Archduchess Mathilda
Names Albrecht Friedrich Rudolf Dominik
House	Habsburg-Lorraine
Father	Archduke Charles, Duke of Teschen
Mother	Princess Henrietta of Nassau-Weilburg

Archduke Albrecht Friedrich Rudolf Dominik of Austria, Duke of Teschen (3 August 1817 – 18 February 1895), was an Austrian Habsburg general. He was the grandson of Emperor Leopold II and one of the chief military advisors of Emperor Francis Joseph I. As Inspector General for 36 years, he was an old-fashioned bureaucrat who largely controlled the Austro-Hungarian Army and delayed modernization. He was honored with the rank of field marshal in the armies of Austria-Hungary (1863) and Germany (1893).

According to historians John Keegan and Andrew Wheatcroft:

He was a firm conservative in all matters, military and civil, and took to writing pamphlets lamenting the state of the Army’s morale as well as fighting a fierce rearguard action against all forms of innovation…. Much of the Austrian failure in the First World War can be traced back to his long period of power…. His power was that of the bureaucrat, not the fighting soldier, and his thirty years of command over the peacetime Habsburg Army made it a flabby instrument of war.^[1]