Count Maurice Benyovszky de Benyó et Urbanó (; ; ; 20 September 1746 – 24 May 1786)Most biographies base themselves on Benyovszky’s editor Wm. Nicholson in citing 23 May as the date of death; however, French sources documented by Prosper Cultru cite 24 May – see: Prosper Cultru: Un Empereur de Madagascar au 18ième Siècle: Benyowszky. Paris (1906) was a military officer, adventurer and traveller, and writer from the Kingdom of Hungary, who described himself as both a Hungarian and a Pole.Maurice Benyovszky: Memoirs and Travels, Vol.1 (ed. Wm Nicholson) (1790) and Vol.2 He is considered a national hero in Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia.
Benyovszky was born and raised in Verbó, Kingdom of Hungary (present-day Vrbové, Slovakia). In 1769, while fighting for the Polish armies under the Bar Confederation, he was captured by the Russians and exiled to Kamchatka. He subsequently escaped and returned to Europe via Macau and Mauritius, arriving in France. In 1773, Benyovszky reached agreement with the French government to establish a trading post on Madagascar. Facing significant problems with the climate, the terrain, and the native Sakalava people, he abandoned the trading post in 1776.
Benyovszky then returned to Europe, joined the Austrian Army and fought in the War of the Bavarian Succession. After a failed venture in Fiume (present-day Rijeka), he travelled to America and obtained financial backing for a second voyage to Madagascar. The French governor of Mauritius sent a small armed force to close down his operation, and Benyovszky was killed in May 1786.
In 1790, Benyovszky's posthumous and largely fictitious account of his adventures, entitled Memoirs and Travels of Mauritius Augustus Count de Benyowsky, Volume 1 and Volume 2 was published to great success.
His fate fascinated authors in the 19th and 20th centuries. His destiny became the inspiration for numerous plays, novels, and poems.
Biography Benyovszky's autobiographical Memoirs of 1790 makes many claims about his life. Critics from 1790 onwards have shown that many of these are either false or are highly questionable.J.G.Meusel: Vermischte Nachrichten. Erlangen, (1816) Alexis Rochon: Voyage to Madagascar and the East Indies (trans. J.Trapp) (1793) Journal Encyclopédique, Vol.71, Part 2 (i) Paris (February 1791) L.L.K[ropf]: Mauritius Augustus Benyowszky. In: Notes and Queries, Series 8, Vols.6 and 7. London (1895)Samuel Pasfield Oliver (ed): Memoirs and Travels of Mauritius Augustus Count de Benyowsky, &c London (1893) Vilmos Voigt: Maurice Benyovszky and his "Madagascar Protocolle" (1772–1776). In: Hungarian Studies, Vol.21, Part 1, (2007) Not the least is Benyovszky's opening statement that he was born in 1741, rather than 1746 – a birth-date which allowed him to claim having fought in the Seven Years' War with the rank of lieutenant and having studied navigation.Maurice Benyovszky: Memoirs and Travels, Vol.1 (ed. Wm Nicholson) (1790)
In old sources he is considered to be Hungarian, Pole, or even French.
Early years
Maurice Benyovszky was born on 20 September 1746 in the town of Verbó in the Kingdom of Hungary (present-day Vrbové near Trnava, Slovakia) in an old noble family.Drummond, Andrew (2017): The Intriguing Life and Ignominious Death of Maurice Benyovszky (2017) He was baptised under the Latin names Mattheus Mauritius Michal Franciscus Seraphinus (Hungarian: Máté Móric Mihály Ferenc Szerafin). The additional name Augustus (Ágost) may also have been given, but this is not clear on his baptismal record - a digital copy is available online here.
Maurice was the son of Sámuel Benyovszky, who came from Turóc County in the Kingdom of Hungary (today partially Turiec region, in present-day Slovakia) and served as a colonel in the Hussars of the Austrian Army. His mother, Rozália Révay, was the daughter of a baron from the noble Hungarian Révay family; she was the great-granddaughter of Péter Révay, and the daughter of Count Boldizsár Révay de Szklabina. When she married Sámuel Benyovszky, she was the widow of an army general (Josef Pestvarmegyey, d.1743)
Maurice was the eldest of eleven children born to Sámuel and Rozália: only three of his siblings survived to adulthood: a sister, Márta (1749-1825), and two brothers, Ferenc (1753–1789?) and Emánuel (1754–1799). Both brothers followed military careers. In addition, there were three step-sisters and one step-brother, born to Rozália from her previous marriage – Theresia (1735–1763), Anna (b. pre-1743), Borbála (b. 1740), and Peter (b. 1743)
Maurice spent his childhood in the Benyovszky mansion in Verbó and studied from 1759 to 1760 at the Piarist College in Szentgyörgy (present-day Svätý Jur), a suburb of Pressburg (present-day Bratislava).Beňová, Jana: K Móricovi Beňovskému sa hlásia tri národy. SME, 24 August 2006 str. 33 When both his parents died in 1760, the family home and estate was the subject of litigation between the two sets of siblings.L.L.K[ropf]: Mauritius Augustus Benyowszky. In: Notes and Queries, Series 8, Vol.6. London (1895)
His mother tongue was Hungarian. Though no birth records have survived, his name in the records of the Szentgyörgy college appeared as a Hungarian nobleman, but for unknown reasons the following year's data were re-written to Slovak with a different handwriting.
Marriage and military service
In 1765 Benyovszky occupied his mother's property in Hrusó (present-day Hrušové) near Verbó, which had been legally inherited by one of his step-brothers-in-law. This action led his mother's family to file a criminal complaint against him, and he was called to stand trial in Nyitra (present-day Nitra). Before the conclusion of the trial, Benyovszky fled to Poland to join his uncle, Jan Tibor Benyowski de Benyo, a Polish nobleman. His flight violated a legal edict forbidding him to leave the country.
He was arrested in July 1768 in Szepesszombat (present-day Spišská Sobota), a suburb of Poprád (present-day Poprad) in the house of a German butcher named Hönsch for trying to organize a Confederation of Bar militia. Shortly after his arrest, Benyovszky was briefly imprisoned in the nearby Stará Ľubovňa castle. At around this time, he married the daughter of this butcher, Anna Zusanna Hönsch (1750–1826). A child, Samuel, was born to this marriage on 9 December 1768 (d. Poprad, 22 September 1772.)
Three, possibly four, other children later came from this marriage: Charles Maurice Louis Augustus (b.1774?, Madagascar?, d. 11 July 1774, Madagascar); Zsuzsanna Roza (b. 1 January 1779, Beczko, Hungary; d. 26 October 1816, Vieszka, Hungary); Zsofia, (b. 1781, Vieszka, d. 16 February 1817, Bory, Hungary).
Prisoner-of-war in Siberia This period of Benyovszky's life has only been documented by Benyovszky himself, in his autobiographical Memoirs. There exists no independent verification of his life in the period between July 1768 and September 1770.L.L.K[ropf]: Mauritius Augustus Benyowszky. In: Notes and Queries, Series 8, Vol.7. London (1895)
In July 1768, Benyovszky travelled to PolandMaurice Benyovszky: Memoirs and Travels, Vol.1 (ed. Wm Nicholson) (1790) to join the patriotic forces of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, who had organised resistance in the Confederation of Bar (Konfederacja Barska), a movement in rebellion against Polish king Stanisław August Poniatowski, lately installed by Russia. In April 1769, he was captured by the Russian forces near Ternopil in Ukraine, imprisoned in the town of Polonne, before being transferred to Kiev in July, and finally to Kazan in September.Maurice Benyovszky: Memoirs and Travels, Vol.1 (ed. Wm Nicholson) (1790) An escape attempt from Kazan brought him to St Petersburg in November, where he was recaptured and sent to the far east of Siberia as a prisoner.C.D and J.P. Ebeling: Neuere Geschichte der See- und Land-Reisen, Vol.IV. Begebenheiten und Reisen des Grafen Moritz August von Benjowsky […] wie auch einem Auszug aus Hippolitus Stefanows russisch geschriebenem Tagebuche. (1791) In the company of several other exiles and prisoners – most notably the Swede August Winbladh, and the Russian army-officers Vasilii Panov, Asaf Baturin and Ippolit Stepanov,Maurice Benyovszky: Memoirs and Travels, Vol.1 (ed. Wm Nicholson) (1790) all of whom played a major role in Benyovszky's life in the next two years – he reached Bolsheretsk, at that time the administrative capital of Kamchatka, in September 1770.C.D and J.P. Ebeling: Neuere Geschichte der See- und Land-Reisen, Vol.IV. Begebenheiten und Reisen des Grafen Moritz August von Benjowsky […] wie auch einem Auszug aus Hippolitus Stefanows russisch geschriebenem Tagebuche. (1791)
Escape from Kamchatka Over the next few months, Benyovszky and Stepanov, along with other exiles and disaffected residents of Kamchatka, organised an escape. From the list of thoseV.I.Stein, Samozvannoi imperator Madagaskarskii. (M.A.Ben’ëvskii).In: Istoricheskii Vestnik No.7. St Petersburg (1908) who participated in the escape (70 men, women, and children), it is evident that the majority were not prisoners or exiles of any sort, but just ordinary working people of Kamchatka. At the start of May, an armed uprising by the group overcame the garrison of Bolsheretsk, during which the commander, Grigorii Nilov, was killed.Ivan Ryumin: Zapiski Kantselyarista Ryumina o priklyutsheniyach' ego s' Beniovskim. In: Siberian Archive. St. Petersburg (1822) The supply ship St Peter and St Paul, which had been overwintering in Kamchatka, was seized and loaded with furs and provisions. On 23 May (Old Style: 12 May), the ship set sail from the mouth of the Bolsha River, and headed southwards.C.D and J.P. Ebeling: Neuere Geschichte der See- und Land-Reisen, Vol.IV. Begebenheiten und Reisen des Grafen Moritz August von Benjowsky […] wie auch einem Auszug aus Hippolitus Stefanows russisch geschriebenem Tagebuche. (1791)
Benyovszky's Memoirs state that the route taken by the ship, having rounded the southernmost point of Kamchatka, was generally north and eastwards, taking in Bering Island, the Bering Strait, Alaska, and the Aleutian Islands.Maurice Benyovszky: Memoirs and Travels, Vol.1 (ed. Wm Nicholson) (1790) However, in the time available (four weeks according to Benyovszky's own account), this 6000-mile itinerary is barely credible for a leaky ship and inexperienced crew. Such a route is completely absent from three other separate accounts of the voyage (by Ippolit Stepanov,C.D and J.P. Ebeling: Neuere Geschichte der See- und Land-Reisen, Vol.IV. Begebenheiten und Reisen des Grafen Moritz August von Benjowsky […] wie auch einem Auszug aus Hippolitus Stefanows russisch geschriebenem Tagebuche. (1791) Ivan Ryumin,Ivan Ryumin: Zapiski Kantselyarista Ryumina o priklyutsheniyach' ego s' Beniovskim. In: Siberian Archive. St. Petersburg (1822) and Gerasim IzmailovThe Three Voyages of Captain James Cook (ed. James King), Vol.2 (1821) ). Additionally, some of the events described by Benyovszky are so implausible that the entire voyage in this area must be considered a fiction.L.L.K[ropf]: Mauritius Augustus Benyowszky. In: Notes and Queries, Series 8, Vol.7. London (1895)
The ship landed at the island of Simushir in the Kuril Islands chain, and stayed there between 29 May and 9 June to bake bread and take stock of their supplies and cargo. During this time, the sailor Izmailov who was judged to be organising a mutiny and two other Kamchatkans were left on the island when the ship finally sailed southwards.Ivan Ryumin: Zapiski Kantselyarista Ryumina o priklyutsheniyach' ego s' Beniovskim. In: Siberian Archive. St. Petersburg (1822) Izmailov subsequently carved out a career as an explorer and trader in the Aleutians and the Alaskan coast, providing information to Captain James Cook in the summer of 1778.The Three Voyages of Captain James Cook (ed. James King), Vol.2 (1821)