Axel Urup


Axel Urup was a Danish military engineer and commander, Rigsmarsk and Supreme Court justice.

Biography

In 1621 he travelled abroad and served in the Dutch defence of Bergen op Zoom. Later he continued to England, France and Italy before returning home where he served as an ensign under Enevold Kruse in the Danish branch of the Thirty Years' War in 1625 and 1626. He was taken as a prisoner of war by Tilly at Battle of Lutter on 27 August 1626 but was part of an exchange of prisoners on 10 December.
In 1627 he was engaged as a military engineer but returned to the Netherlands in 1629 where he from 1 October participated in the Siege of 's-Hertogenbosch and was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel in Holger Parsberg's Danish regiment.
In 1630 he was charged with the fortification of various strategic localities in Jutland. In 1631 he founded the fortress of Christianspris just north of Kiel and was in 1635 granted it as a fief with title of Governor and Engineer of the Realm. On 7 April 1638 he was promoted to Colonel and ordered to establish a regiment of German soldiers. In December 1643, at the outbreak of the Torstenson War, he was taken prisoner when General Lennart Torstenson suddenly burst into Jutland but later set frii at Lübeck. From 1645 and until the fortress was abandoned in 1648, he served once again as governor of Christianspris. In 1647 he was in Copenhagen where he worked on the fortifications and completed the rebuilding of Christian IV's Arsenal.
On 25 November 1648 he was created Knight of the Order of the Elephant and granted Christianopel as a fief and in 1651 also the Fief of Copenhagen.
1653 he became commander of an infantry regiment on Zealand. During the plague of 1654 he remained in Copenhagen and governed the city in the absence of Joachim Gersdorff.
On 3 August 1655 he became a member of the Privy Council and that same year received large fiefs in return for the Fief of Copenhagen. He accompanied Crown Prince Christian to Hyldingen in Norway.
On 22 January 1657 he became commander of the Danish army in Scania during the Scanian War and St. Canute's Abbey, both on the island of Funen.