Coat of Arms of Rudolf Von Lichtenstein on the ceiling of the Castle Chapel of St George, Ljubljanski Grad, Ljubljana. The arms bear the legend 'Herward Freyherr von Aursperg A 1575'.
"Herbard VIII von Auersperg, Freiherr from 1550, Slovene name: Hervard Turjaški (15 June 1528 in Vienna – 22 September 1575 near Budacka on the Military Frontier) was a governor of Carniola supporting Protestantism, and an imperial Habsburg general in the wars against the Ottoman Empire.
Herbard von Auersperg was born into one of the oldest Austrian families at the time when the spreading of Lutheranism was at its fastest, and the danger of the Turkish invasion into the Habsburg lands at its greatest.
Herbard's father was Trojan von Auersperg, his mother Anna a Freiin (i.e. baroness) von Egck. After attending the municipal school in Vienna he was sent for several years to the court of Cleve which was among the many European relations of the Auerspergs. 1546 he started on his successful military career under Ivan Lenkovic at the "Windic" border (Upper Slavonian Krajina) and after only two years, hardly 20 years old, was made Captain of the strategically important Uskok centre of Zengg/Senj on the coast of Dalmatia in 1548, and in March 1550 he was made a baron (“Freiherr”).
Owing to his bravery and highly successful performance in a battle near Bosnian Novi (1566) on the Una river he was appointed "Landeshauptmann" (lit. "state captain", i.e. governor) of the Duchy of Carniola (1566–75), with his home at Auersperg Castle, in Slovene "Grad Turjak" or "Turjaški grad", which is why in Slovene the members of the Auersperg family are generally known as "Turjaški".
As a fervent follower of Luther's teaching Auersperg as governor favoured Protestant teaching in Carniola, befriended and was host to the great reformer Primož Trubar (
visit link) and, through his son Christoph von Auersperg, offered sanctuary at Auersperg/Turjak castle to the first translator of the bible into the local language, Jurij Dalmatin. As a renowned pillar of Protestantism Herbard von Auersperg thus opposed strongly the counter-reformatory measures of the Inner-Austrian Court in Graz and resisted the Catholic clerics in Carniola, who were mostly strangers to the land.
1560-63 Auersperg was charged with the responsibility for the defence of the Croat-Ottoman border and the Adriatic coastline, and 1565-69 for the Slovenian borderlands. Following the death of Lenkovic (1569) he rose to general in charge of all the Austrian Military Frontier area in the south-east, but lost his life in September 1575 in a battle at the Croatian border near Budacka fighting greatly superior Turkish forces. Auersperg was beheaded and his cut-off head was jubilantly exhibited on a spear during the triumphal march of the victor Ferhat Beg in Constantinople on 9 November 1575, but later was bought from the Turks by the Auersperg family. Tradition has it that, together with what Herbard's widow paid as ransom for the release of their son Wolf Engelbrecht (or Engelbert), who had been taken captive in the same battle, it made possible the erection of the grand Ferhat Pasha Mosque in Banja Luka.
"In order to revenge Herbard von Auersperg's highly esteemed head, to which the Turks had done likewise", the decapitated heads of two Ottoman pashas who while fleeing had drowned in the Kupa river – Hasan Pasha, the Beylerbey of Bosnia, and Mehmet, a nephew of the Sultan and the Pasha of Hercegovina – were also exhibited on spears after their crushing defeat in the Sisak brought about by Herbard's cousin, Andreas von Auersperg, so Valvasor reports."
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