Maurice Benyovszky (1746-1786)
Maurice Benyovszky was a Hungarian count. He was born and raised in Slovakia part
of Hungary. Like his father and many Hungarian nobles he served as an officer in the
Austrian army. He fought in the Seven Years' War (1755-1763). Shortly after the war
he was called before a military tribunal accused of desertion and apostasy. He fled
to Poland where he joined the uprising against the Russians. Captured in 1770 he was
finally sent to the Kamchatka in eastern Siberia.
In 1771 he organized a revolt of mainly Polish prisoners. They captured a small ship
and fled to the Pacific Ocean. Passing the Aleutian Islands, Japan and Formosa they
arrived finally in Macau then a Portuguese colony. There they sold the ship and sailed
aboard a French ship to France stopping along the way at the island of Madagascar.
Through his diplomatic contacts, Benyovszky arranged an audience with King Louis XV
and took advantage of the opportunity to propose establishing a French colony on
Formosa or Madagascar. Finding the proposal of interest, the king declared him Governor
of Madagascar, awarded him the title of count, and assigned him to lead a French
military and trade mission to the island of Madagascar to establish colonial authority
over the island. In February 1774, Benyovszky landed his ship on the northeastern coast
of Madagascar, near Maroantsetra at Antongil Bay, accompanied by his party of 21 officers
and 237 volunteers. There the party established a fortified settlement called Louisbourg.
Benyovszky returned to France at the end of 1776 to request reimbursement for his
investments in Madagascar and to present new proposals for the colonization of the island.
He was promoted to the rank of general and was granted the military Order of Saint Louis
and a life pension by Louis XVI.
In 1777, Benyovszky gained audience with Austrian empress Maria Theresa. He used this
opportunity to offered his services and experience acquired abroad for the development
of the commerce of his native country, and asked her pardon and permission to return home.
As Benyovszky was then in service of France, whose queen was a member of the same Habsburg
dynasty as that ruling in Vienna, the court changes its attitude toward him and he is
granted amnesty on 17 October 1777.
His proposals for new approaches to colonizing Madagascar were rejected by the French and
the Austrian court. He then decided to join the Austrian army and fight in Prussia in the
War of the Bavarian Succession.
Later he visited the American colonies and offered there his services through General
Baron Steuben. But his offer was declined. He returned to Europe and approached first
the Austrian and then the British government to request support for an expedition to
Madagascar. But all his plans were rejected. Finally in the service of Austria he went
with a new expedition to Madagascar and conquered there a French military post. During
the following war with the French he was mortally wounded in 1786.