He was born as a son of
Princess Sophie of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld and Count
Emmanuel von Mensdorff-Pouilly, an army officer who served in the
Imperial-Royal Army of the Austrian Empire and held the post of
Vice-governor of the
Fortress of Mainz. By birth, he was member of the
House of Mensdorff-Pouilly, an old
Lotharingian noble family, domiciled in
Austria since the second half of the 18th century. His maternal grandparents were
Francis, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld and his second wife,
Countess Augusta Reuss of Ebersdorf. He entered the Austrian army in 1829, and he was promoted to captain in 1836 and major in 1844. In 1848–49, he fought in the
First Italian War of Independence and against the
Hungarian Revolution of 1848. In 1849, he was promoted to colonel and the following year to major general. In 1851, Mensdorff-Pouilly was appointed as the Austrian commissioner to
Schleswig-Holstein. In 1852, he became the Austrian ambassador to the
Russian Empire. He was promoted to
Feldmarschallleutnant in 1858. During the
Polish Uprising of 1863, he served as the governor of the
Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria.
Foreign minister , 1854 Mensdorff-Pouilly was appointed as
Foreign Minister of the Austrian Empire on 27 October 1864. Mensdorff-Pouilly's policies during his tenure as Foreign Minister for
Emperor Franz Joseph were often largely a continuation of the conservative traditionalism of
Count Johann von Rechberg und Rothenlöwen, his predecessor. Mensdorff-Pouilly, like
Rechberg, sought to maintain conservative dominance of the
German Confederation through an alliance between an
Austrian Empire and the
Kingdom of Prussia (in which
Prussia was the junior partner), and he steadfastly refused to consider
British suggestions that Austria surrender
Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia to the newly created
Kingdom of Italy. After Austria's defeat in the
Austro-Prussian War of 1866, Mensdorff-Pouilly resigned his functions in November of that year. After his resignation, he was appointed commanding general in
Zagreb and
Prague. == Marriage and children ==