FOOTNOTES:[18]Letter from an officer to a friend at Ratisbon, Oct. 25th, 1761.
FOOTNOTES:
[18]Letter from an officer to a friend at Ratisbon, Oct. 25th, 1761.
[18]Letter from an officer to a friend at Ratisbon, Oct. 25th, 1761.
Count O'Reilly,
CHAMBERLAIN OF THE EMPIRE.
Werewe to choose a hero for a military romance, he would be Andrew O'Reilly, who bore the high reputation of being the first cavalry officer in the Austrian service.
This distinguished Irish soldier of fortune, thelastof theélevesof the Lacys and others whose achievements in the third Silesian war and the Turkish campaign have already been recorded, obtained the rank of General in the Austrian army, Chamberlain, and Commander of the Imperial and Military Order of Maria Theresa, with the rank of Colonel Proprietaire of the 3rd Regiment of Light Horse.
He was born in 1740, and was the second son of James O'Reilly, of Ballincough, in the county of Westmeath, and of Barbara, daughter of Thomas Nugent, Esquire, of Dysart (grand-daughter of Thomas, fourth Earl of Westmeath). His brother Hugh was created a Baronet by George III., and subsequently assumed the name of Nugent. His only sister married Lord Talbot de Malahide.
Entering the Imperial service early in life, O'Reilly filled in succession all the military grades save that of Field-Marshal; but of those events in his stirring life which led to his elevation to a coronet, we barely afford a summary. One of the most important incidents in his early career is connected with his marriage; and while it illustrates the manners of the last century, is worthy of notice, for the remnant of old romance and chivalry it displays. He and a brother officer, Count Klebelsberg, uncle of Francis Count de Klebelsberg, who, in 1831, was President of the Government of Lower Austria, were rivals for the hand of the Countess Wuyrlena, a rich and beautiful Bohemian heiress; and aware thatbothcould not succeed, they determined to solve the difficulty of selection by a combatà l'outrance. The intended duel was, however, reported to the authorities, and both O'Reilly and Klebelsberg were placed under close arrest by the Director General of the High Police; but, resolved to achieve their purpose, they secretly left Vienna, and travelled post together to Poland, and meeting in the neutral territory of Cracow, fought their remarkable combat. The duel lasted long, for both were perfect swordsmen, active, skilful, and wary; but at length O'Reilly ran Klebelsberg through the body, after receiving many dangerous wounds in his own person.
The affections of the countess, with her hand and fortune, were the immediate reward of the soldier of fortune.
Rejoining the army, he served with great brilliance in the war between France and Austria. The forces of the latter were commanded by the Archduke Charles.
On the 14th June, 1800, he fought under General Melas, at the battle of Marengo. "Melas," says M. Thiers, in hisHistory of the Consulate and Empire, "placed General O'Reilly on the left, and Generals Kaim and Haddick on the right, to gain the road to Piacenza, the object of so many efforts and the salvation of the Austrian army."
On the 2nd December, 1805, that great day when "the sun of Austerlitz arose," and eighty thousand Frenchmen, flushed by rapid conquests, by the capitulation of Ulm, and the recent capture of Vienna, met the Austro-Russian army in one of the bloodiest battles on record—a battle, which, as General Rapp has it, "was a veritable butchery, where we fought man to man, and so mingled together, that the infantry on either side dared not fire lest they should kill their own men"—the star of Napoleon bore all before it; and the French, though losing thirteen thousand men, totally routed their allied enemies, with the loss of thrice that number, taking all their colours, baggage, ammunition, and one hundred and twenty pieces of cannon. On that terrible day, the politicalresult of which was an almost immediate cessation of hostilities between France and Austria, it was universally admitted that a succession of daring and brilliant charges made by the Light Dragoons of O'Reilly, "alone saved the Austrian army from total annihilation."
The Emperor Alexander declined the overtures of Bonaparte, and renewed the war next year. The field of Eylau gave his Russians a partial revenge; and ere long they reaped the fulness of it amid the flames of Moscow and the slaughter of Smolensko.
On the 12th of May, 1809, O'Reilly, for his services at Austerlitz and elsewhere, was appointed Governor of Vienna, with a powerful garrison; and in a few days after, the Eagles of Napoleon were at its gates. Shut up in the city with the troops, the Archduke Ferdinand resolved to defend it, though the French had already stormed and carried all the suburbs. In vain were flags of truce sent in; the bearers were not only refused admittance, but, despite the orders of O'Reilly, were even maltreated, and in some instances massacred by the people. The bombardment followed, and soon Vienna was wrapped in flames; but the Emperor Napoleon, being informed by O'Reilly that one of the archduchesses had remained in Vienna detained by illness, gave orders to cease firing.
"Strange destiny of Napoleon!" exclaims old General Bourrienne; "this archduchess was Maria Louisa!"—the future Empress of France.
On O'Reilly devolved the difficult and trying task of obtaining honourable terms for the capital of the Empire, from an enemy flushed by victory and the pride of a hundred hard-fought fields. He accordingly deputed the Prince of Dietrechstien, the Burgomaster, and the chief citizens to Napoleon, who inveighed bitterly against the obstinacy of the gallant Archduke Ferdinand, but lauded the coolness, bravery, and great presence of mind of the governor, whom he emphatically terms "le respectable General O'Reilly," and accepted all the terms proposed by him; but in the fourteenth clause stipulated that O'Reilly should be the bearer of the treaty to his master, to theend that he should honestly and faithfully lay before him the true position of the now half-conquered Austrian Empire—and this duty O'Reilly ably performed.
He served in the great battle fought near Aspern on the Marchfeld, during the 21st and 22nd of May, between the French under Napoleon, and the Austrians under the Archduke Charles.
In the prince's plan of the attack "to be made upon the hostile army, on its march between Essling and Aspern," it was ordered "that the cavalry brigade under the command of Veesy will be attached to the second column, and theRegiment O'Reillyto the third." This regiment consisted of eight squadrons of Light Dragoons, and the column to which it was attached comprised twenty-two battalions.
O'Reilly, with his cavalry, followed the column which marched from Seiring, by the road of Sussenbrunn and Breitenbe. Here O'Reilly, with several troops of Light Horse and Chasseurs formed the advanced guard, which met the enemy's cavalry at three o'clock in the afternoon, near Hirschstettin, while the other columns of the Austrian army drew the French back upon their position between Esslingen and Aspern, and while Lieutenant-General Hohenzollern ordered up his batteries, and the battle became general on all sides.
In close column of battalions, the line of the third column was advancing with great bravery, when the French cavalry fell upon them, sabre in hand, with such fury, that they were repulsed, and nearly lost their cannon. At this moment the regiments of Zach, Colloredo, Zetwitz, and the second battalion of the legion of the Archduke Charles, led by Lieutenant-General Brady, an Irish officer, "demonstrated with unparalleled fortitude what the fixed determination to conquer or die is capable of effecting against the most impetuous attacks."
The splendid cavalry of France turned both flanks of Brady's column, and penetrating between them, repulsed the Light Horse of O'Reilly, who came up at full speed to succour the soldiers of his countryman. Surrounded, the Regiment O'Reilly were summoned to lay down theirarms; but a destructive fire of carbines was the answer to this degrading proposition, and the French cavalry gave way.
The Regiment O'Reilly passed the night on the field of battle, which was lost by the Austrians. The market town of Aspern, on the north side of the Danube, was destroyed, and the loss of the Imperialists was frightful.
After a two days' conflict, there lay on that field the flower of the Austrian army; 87 field-officers, 4199 subalterns and privates, 12 generals (including the Prince de Rohan), 663 officers, and 15,651 soldiers were wounded; of these, Field-Marshal Webber, with 8 officers, and 329 men were taken prisoners, with 3 pieces of cannon, 7 powder waggons, 17,000 muskets, and 3000 corslets. The loss of the French was terrible! 7000 men and an immense number of horses were buried on the field; 29,773 wounded men strewed the streets and suburbs of Vienna; hundreds of corpses, gashed and shattered, floated down the rapid Danube and were flung upon its shores, where they lay unburied and decaying, filling the air with pestilence and the place with horror.
In October peace was signed at the camp of Schoenbrunn, and, divorcing the woman who had loved him when he had only his sword and his epaulettes, Napoleon espoused Maria Louisa of Austria; and Prince Charles, who by his accumulated blunders at the battle of Aspern, had thrown away the fortunes of Continental Europe, received from his Imperial conqueror the Grand Riband of the Legion of Honour. O'Reilly came in for a full share of the honours and decorations which were showered upon the Austrian army.
At the general peace of 1814 the Empire, exhausted by a war of five-and-twenty years, reduced her vast military establishments to 58 regiments of the line, 12 battalions of chasseurs, and 5 garrison battalions—in all, 1044 companies of fusiliers, and 116 of grenadiers. The cavalry were reduced to 36 regiments of cuirassiers, light dragoons, uhlans and hussars. Of the third regiment of light horse O'Reilly was colonel and proprietor. He was also High Chamberlain of the Empire.
At this time Louis Count Taaffe, a noble of Irish parentage, was Second President of the Austrian High Court of Justice, and General Count O'Donnel was Military Governor of Austrian Lombardy. One of the Emperor's most distinguished officers was General Count Nugent, who in the war of 1847-8 led 30,000 Austrian infantry to succour Marshal Radetzki, who was then opposed to the troops of Charles Albert.[19]Count Taaffe was a member of the new ministry formed on the 21st of March, in the year of the Austrian revolution: but he retired from office shortly before the appearance of the chartered constitution on the 19th of April.
O'Reilly lived to see Austria affected by the commotions which pervaded Europe after the French Revolution of 1830, when the Duke of Modena and the Archduke of Parma were obliged to quit these states, and a formidable insurrection broke out in the Patrimony of St. Peter—an insurrection to quell which 18,000 Austrian troops were marched towards the frontier; but O'Reilly was too far advanced in years to draw his sword again in the service of the House of Hapsburg. He died in October, 1833, at Vienna, after attaining the patriarchal age ofninety-two. He had long survived his countess, and died childless.
FOOTNOTES:[19]Nugent, a field-marshal in 1858, commanded 25,000 Austrian troops at the funeral of Marshal Radetzki, and acted as chief mourner.
FOOTNOTES:
[19]Nugent, a field-marshal in 1858, commanded 25,000 Austrian troops at the funeral of Marshal Radetzki, and acted as chief mourner.
[19]Nugent, a field-marshal in 1858, commanded 25,000 Austrian troops at the funeral of Marshal Radetzki, and acted as chief mourner.
Count O'Connell,
KNIGHT OF ST. LOUIS, AND COLONEL OF THE IRISH BRIGADE.
Thelife of this military wanderer presents, in his chequered career, the curious anomaly of a general and his soldiers being received into the service of their native country and native monarch, against whom they had previously fought with a bravery that too often gave the laurels of victory to his enemies.
Count Daniel O'Connell was of the same family as the famous political agitator who bore his name, and he sprang from an old Milesian race who held the rank of Toparchs in their own province. He was the son of Daniel O'Connell of Derrynane, and of Mary, daughter of Duffe O'Donoghue, of Anwys in the county Kerry, Ireland, and was born at Derrynane Abbey, in 1742. At the early age of fifteen, like others whose fortunes I have recorded, he left his native country to seek foreign military service, and in 1757 was appointed a Sub-Lieutenant of the Irish Brigade in the French service, in the battalion known as the Infantry regiment of O'Brien, or Lord Clare, and which bore the title of Clare until its dissolution, thirty-five years after.
In the preceding year war had been declared between France and Britain respecting their mutual territorial claims in North America. The former prepared a vast military armament to carry on the strife; and in the army formed on the 12th July, 1759, to be led by the Maréchal Princes of Condé and Soubise, were theIrishandScottishBrigades; and in the former was the Regiment of Clare, with which young O'Connell was serving as a subaltern. From this period, for some time, little is known of him, save that he served throughout the SevenYears' War, and at its close, for his good conduct, was promoted into a new corps which had recently been embodied.
In 1779, when France espoused the cause of America, and sought to harass the mother country in Europe, O'Connell was engaged in the expedition against Portmahon, which is the principal town in Minorca, situated on a rocky promontory, difficult of access from the landward, and defended by Fort San Philipo, in which there was a resolute garrison. O'Connell, with his new regiment, served under the Duc de Crillon at the siege, and conducted himself with such honour as to be specially noticed. The operations were severe and protracted, but in three years the Spaniards and their allies recaptured the whole island of Minorca, which at the peace of 1763 had been formally ceded to Britain.
In 1782, O'Connell served with the combined French and Spanish armament which blockaded Gibraltar, during that memorable siege which had commenced on the 12th of January in the preceding year. Having shown considerable skill as an engineer at Minorca, he was one of the council-of-war appointed to assist the Chevalier d'Arcon in conducting the grand attempt in which France and Spain had resolved to try their full strength for the capture of that celebrated rock, the key of the Mediterranean; and for this purpose, as already related in the memoir of the Lacys, 40,000 soldiers, with 200 pieces of cannon and 80 mortars, pressed the attack by land, while 47 sail of the line, 10 battering ships, and a multitude of frigates, mounting 1000 guns and having 12,000 chosen soldiers added to their crews, lay before the fortress by sea—and in that fortress, to meet all this warlike preparation, were only 7000 British soldiers!
The French army was commanded by Louis Duc de Crillon-Mahon, the representative of an ancient noble family in the Vaucluse, who had commenced his military career in the Grey musketeers, and served under Marshal Villars in Italy. He had direction of the whole attack; his engineers were the most expert in Europe, and brave volunteers came from all quarters to take part in a siege which attracted the attention and raised the expectation of all Continental Europe.
As a member of the council-of-war, O'Connell repeatedly opposed the plans of the Duc de Crillon and of the Chevalier d'Arcon, and declared their system of attack "worthless;" and the sequel, in the triumph of General Elliot, proved that his observations were correct.
In the grand attack he accepted command of one of the floating batteries.
Ten of these, mounting from ten to twenty-eight guns, had been built under the orders of M. d'Arcon. Their bottoms were of solid timber, their sides were sheathed with wetted cork, and filled with damp sand between the timbers. They had sloping roofs of raw hides and net—work to receive the bombs, which thus exploded harmlessly over the heads of the besiegers. These floating batteries were exposed during the whole time to that terrible fire of red-hot shot—a suggestion of General Boyd—which ultimately, by firing the great ship of Buenaventura de Moreno, struck the Spaniards with confusion and dismay.
O'Connell had one of his ears torn off by a cannon-ball; and by the explosion of a shell, which by its weight penetrated the roof of skins, he was covered with wounds and bruises of minor importance.
His services, during this futile and disastrous siege, were considered so valuable by the King of France, that, on the recommendation of the Duc de Crillon, he was rewarded with the colonelcy of the Regiment de Salm-Salm; a German corps raised in the principality of that name; but this post he held for a short period, being removed to the regiment of Royal Swedish Infantry.
After this, in 1787, the government of France having resolved that the military economy of their army should undergo a complete revision and remodelling, appointed a military board, consisting of four generals andonecolonel to prepare reports and recommend alterations where necessary. The colonel chosen was O'Connell, who drew up a system of regimental economy, and a code of tactics, which were afterwards used with brilliant success against himself and his loyal comrades during the first campaigns of the revolution. When the labours of the board ceased,he was appointed to the onerous situation of Inspector-General of Infantry, with the duty of regulating the new uniforms and equipment of the Line, when many alterations and improvements were adopted in 1791.
He was succeeded as colonel of the Swedish regiment by Count Pherson, afterwards one of the principal agents in the escape of Louis XVI. from Paris.
O'Connell now enjoyed the reputation of being one of the most distinguished officers in France.
Besides his very extensive knowledge of mathematics and military strategy, says a French writer, he was well versed in the study of languages; and although Latin and Greek were to him alike familiar, he spoke with equal fluency French, English, Italian, and German. He had conceived a great predilection for the Erse (gallique) of the mountains of Kerry, and he was never more happy than when he could converse in this dear old idiom, of which he could so well appreciate the beauties.[20]
Now came the fatal, the culminating, point of the once splendid monarchy of France—the dark days of the Revolution; of the captivity and death of the weak, but unhappy Louis; of the flight or destruction of his nobles. Before the final catastrophe of the royal execution, a proposal was made by the National Assembly, which deeply interested Count O'Connell and others who had made France the land of their adoption. This was the intended expulsion from her soil of all foreign officers and soldiers who had served King Louis, including Irish, Scots, and Switzers. While this ungenerous measure was being debated, the gallant Duke of Fitzjames, in February, 1791, addressed to Louis XVI. a letter on behalf of the exiles; and this document is so remarkable in its tenor, that I may be pardoned in quoting from it one or two paragraphs. After briefly and modestly stating the services rendered by his father and grandfather to the line of St. Louis, he thus advanced the claims of the Irish in France:—
"Sire, my grandfather came not alone into France! His brave companions are now mine, and the dearest friendsof my heart! He was accompanied byThirty Thousand Irishmen, who abandoned home, fortune, and honour to follow their unfortunate king. For the descendants of those brave men, whom your ancestors deemed so worthy of protection because they had been faithful to their sovereign, I now entreat the same bounty from the great-grandson of Louis XIV. It is reported that the National Assembly propose disbanding the Irish regiments as foreign troops. The blood they have shed in the cause of France ought to have procured them the right of being denizens of that kingdom, even though their capitulation had not entitled them to that privilege.
"Sire, permit me to lay at your Majesty's feet the ardent wish of the Irish regiments, who are as much attached to France by gratitude as formerly they were to theHouse of Stuartby love and duty. If the Assembly now reject their services, they implore your Majesty'srecommendationto the prince of your family now reigning in Spain, presuming to assure you that the present will be worthy of being made by a King of France, and of being favourably received by a prince of your royal race.
"Fidelity and valour are their titles to recommendation! Of the former they expect an authentic testimonial from the French nation, as they have neverONCEfailed in their duty during a century, and wherever they have fought their valour has been conspicuous in battle.
"Sire, I entreat you to listen to their request; for myself I ask no compensation—for me there is none! The honour of commandingthemcannot be repaid. It secures my glory, as to lead them against a foe ensures immediate victory!"
But this spirited and touching letter failed to stay the popular clamour against these military strangers in the sequel.
In July the Assembly decreed that the standards of the Irish, German, and Liegoise infantry should be the tri-colour, inscribed "Discipline and obedience to the law;" but when the princes, Monsieur of France (or Comte de Provence) and Charles Philippe, the Count d'Artois, fledto Coblentz, the formal defection of several Irish officers hastened the destruction of the old brigade of immortal memory; and with it, after the 10th of August, disappeared the ancient Swiss, German, Italian, Scottish, and Catalonian regiments of the monarchy.
During the crumbling of that monarchy, O'Connell, though in secret communication with the princes at Coblentz, lingered in Paris until the close of 1791, when that strange convention was held at Pilnitz between the Emperor Leopold and the Prussian king, who formed a league to invade France and remodel its government. In a letter from Pavia, dated 6th July, the Emperor had already openly avowed his intentions in this new war, and invited all European powers to co-operate with him. At this crisis the French government proposed to place O'Connell at the head of one of their many armies levied to meet this European combination; but the count, despite the earnest recommendations of Carnot and of his friend the celebrated General Dumouriez, declined; and then, unable to withstand the issue of the suspicions which this refusal excited in Paris after the terrible 10th of August, 1792, when the attack of the Tuileries and massacre of the Swiss took place, he secretly left the city, and repairing to the princes, offered to them his sword and fealty at Coblentz; which, being within the Prussian frontier, became the head-quarters of all those emigrants and Prussian troops destined to form the army of the Prince of Conti, who vainly hoped to restore the line of St. Louis to the throne of his forefathers. His chief aid-de-camp was the Comte de Macarthy, an emigrant officer of distinction, a marshal-de-camp of horse in 1791.
O'Connell, relinquishing his higher claims among the crowd of noble applicants for service, accepted the command of a regiment as colonel, and left nothing undone to improve its discipline and efficiency, for his whole energies and enthusiasm were devoted to the reconstitution of the French monarchy.
The first of the French troops to proffer their loyalty, on this occasion, were the Scottish and Irish soldiers of the old Regiment de Berwick. The depôt of this corpswas then quartered at the strong town of Givet, on the frontiers of France, under the command of Sir Charles MacCarthy-Lyragh, who immediately marched his men to Coblentz, and joined the battalion. Sir Charles afterwards passed into the British service, when he was made a Colonel and Governor of Senegal, where in 1824 he fought a battle with the Ashantees, by whom he was slain and beheaded. The loyalty of the Irish brigade met with a warm response from the fugitive princes. "This offer," replied Monsieur to the deputation who came to proffer fealty, "will mitigate the sufferings of the king, who will receive from you with pleasure the same mark of fidelity which James II. received from your ancestors. This double epoch ought for ever to furnish a device for the Regiment de Berwick! It will henceforth be seen upon your colours; every faithful subject will there read his duty, and behold the model he ought to imitate."
"The colours of Berwick," added Charles Philippe the Comte d'Artois, "are, and always will be, in the path to honour, and we will march at their head!"[21]
The king perished, and then followed the campaign of 1793, a period most disastrous to the emigrants; but amid all the slaughter and merciless butchery, with which the republicans inspired the war—a war, to maintain which, the fiery zeal of Carnot enrolled no less thanfourteenarmies, mustering 1,400,000 men—O'Connell led his battalion with honour to himself and to the cause he served, till all hope was lost, and then with others he fled to England in the beginning of 1794.
Among those condemned by Robespierre's tribunal in that year, were two distinguished officers of the Irish brigade—General O'Moran, who defended Dunkirk against the Duke of York; and John O'Donoghue, General de Brigade in the Army of the Rhine.
At the same time were condemned, M. Murdoch, a Scotsman in the service of the Comte de Montmorin; and W. Newton, an English colonel of the Dragoon Regiment de Liberté, and formerly an officer in the Russian service.
In reduced circumstances O'Connell reached London, where he resided for a time in comparative obscurity; and where, for many reasons, his residence was far from being a pleasant one. Still, undiscouraged by the aspect of affairs in France, and by the numerous bloody defeats and massacres sustained by the emigrant troops and other supporters of the Bourbons, he took a warm interest in the attempts meditated in 1794; but fresh conflicts seemed only to fire the zeal of the republicans anew, till the French armies, following their victories, drove their enemies across the Meuse and then beyond the Rhine; after which they penetrated into Holland, revolutionized it, and succeeded in detaching Prussia from its alliance with Britain.
At this epoch O'Connell laid before William Pitt the plan of a new campaign, which so pleased that minister, that he made the count, then in his fifty-second year, an offer of military service under the British government. This he at once accepted, and proposed to form a new brigade to be namedthe Irish, and to be raised principally from remnants of the regiments of Clare, Lally, Dillon, Berwick, &c., emigrant officers, and men who represented the old brigade of King James; but here O'Connell's religion, which was strictly Catholic, prevented him, in those days of intolerance, prior to the Emancipation Act, attaining in the British service a higher rank than Colonel; and this rank he held till the day of his death.
The brigade consisted of six battalions, each of the strength usual on a war establishment; but O'Connell had the mortification to find himself gazetted by the Horse Guards Colonel of thefourthregiment instead of the first, to which he was justly entitled, by his previous position and general military character.
His commission was dated 1st October, 1794.[22]
The list of colonels was as follows:—
1st Regiment—the Duke of Fitzjames.
2nd Regiment—Anthony, Count Walsh de Serrant.
3rd Regiment—Honourable Henry Dillon.
4th Regiment—Count Daniel O'Connell.
5th Regiment—Charles, Viscount Walsh de Serrant,
6th Regiment—James Henry, Count Conway.[23]
Several of his old friends were appointed to the corps; among these were Bartholomew, Count O'Mahoney, Colonel, 1st January, 1801; John O'Toole, Colonel, 1805; and Colonel James O'Moore, who was appointed Major-General in 1801.
This brigade, which was embodied under circumstances so singular, instead of being sent to fight upon the continent of Europe, as O'Connell and his brother emigrants had fondly anticipated, after many changes in its constitution and organization, was ordered to Nova Scotia, to Cape Breton, and to the then pestilential West India Isles. The snows of America and the burning sun of the tropics soon had a fatal effect upon these unfortunate wanderers, and they were nearly all swept away by disease and death.
Of the six regiments, only thirty-four officers of all ranks were alive in 1818, on the Irish half-pay.
On the 25th December, 1797, O'Connell, weary of a service so heartless, and so little conducive to the welfare of the cause he loved so much, retired upon the full-pay of colonel unattached, and returned home.[24]
In 1802 he profited by the Treaty of Amiens, when peace was negotiated between Great Britain and France, to return to the latter; but the frail bond of unity was soon broken, and he was comprehended in the harsh decree which seized, as prisoners of war, all British subjects remaining in France.
At the restoration of the Bourbons in 1814 he regained his liberty, and Louis XVIII. restored to him his rank of General, and with it the Colonelcy of a regiment and the pension and Grand Cross of St. Louis, which he enjoyed with his retired full pay as a British Colonel. This was after the decree of the 16th July, by which the whole of the old army was disbanded, and the command conferredupon Marshal Macdonald, who remodelled a new army from the wreck of Napoleon's veterans.
O'Connell lived in tranquillity and honour, a remnant of other days and of old romantic sympathies, until 1830, when he was again deprived of his French emoluments for his unwavering fidelity to Charles X. and the elder branch of the Bourbons. After this he retired to his château at Meudon, near Blois, where he died, on the 9th of July, 1833, in the ninety-first year of his age, the oldest Colonel of the British army, and the senior general of the French.
Such was the chequered career of one of the last of the brave old Irish Brigade.
FOOTNOTES:[20]Biographie Universelle.[21]Scots' Magazine, 1791.[22]War-Office Records—communicated.[23]War-Office Record.[24]Ibid.
FOOTNOTES:
[20]Biographie Universelle.
[20]Biographie Universelle.
[21]Scots' Magazine, 1791.
[21]Scots' Magazine, 1791.
[22]War-Office Records—communicated.
[22]War-Office Records—communicated.
[23]War-Office Record.
[23]War-Office Record.
[24]Ibid.
[24]Ibid.
Marshal Macdonald.
Stephen James Joseph Macdonald, Marshal of France and Duke of Tarentum, was the son of Neil MacEachin Macdonald (a gentleman sprung from the branch of the Clanranald in Uist), who served in France as a lieutenant in the Scottish Regiment of Ogilvie, to which he had been appointed by the recommendation of Prince Charles Edward Stuart, whom he had served bravely and loyally even after the close of his disastrous campaign in Scotland, and whom he had followed into exile after materially contributing to that deliverance which was effected by the celebrated Flora Macdonald. He was one of the hundred and thirty Highlanders who gathered on the shore of Loch nan Uamh after the horrors of Culloden, and embarked with Prince Charles for France.
Neil MacEachin (i.e., the son of Hugh) had been a preceptor in the family of his chief, Clanranald, and being originally designed for the Catholic Church, had been educated at the Scottish College in Paris. He spoke French with great fluency, and to the exiled prince proved a faithful adherent, friend, and solace, in all his wanderings; and when Charles was so ungenerously committed to a dungeon at Vincennes by order of the French government, his captivity was shared alone by the brave islesman from Uist. According to Mr. Chambers, there is every reason to believe that he was the author of a little work entitledAlexis, in which he preserved a minute record of the prince's wanderings and dangers in the Western Isles of Scotland.
His son, the future Marshal of the Empire, was born on the 17th of November, 1765, in the old fortified town of Sedan, in the departement of the Ardennes.
Destining him for the profession of arms, he had him educated with the greatest care, and in his nineteenth year enrolled him as a cadet in the Legion of Maillebois, which was to enter Holland, and second a revolution there—a movement neutralized by the influence of Prussia.
In 1784 young Macdonald was appointed a Sub-lieutenant in Dillon's Regiment, a battalion of the Irish Brigade, which now included in its rank many Scottish emigrants and their descendants; and in this corps he remained a subaltern until the Revolution in 1792, when his colonel, the brave, loyal, and unfortunate Dillon, was murdered at Lisle, where his body was literally torn to pieces by the revolted soldiers and infuriated mob.
Although, like the 4th Hussars and the Regiment of Berwick, Dillon's battalion emigrated entire and joined the fugitive French princes, Macdonald remained in France;notbecause he did not share the loyal sentiments of his comrades, but because he loved the beautiful Mademoiselle Jacob, whose father had joined the popular party against the monarchy. This lady he afterwards married; and the influence of her family led him to embrace, or at least to adopt, the principles of the revolutionists, while he avoided their crimes and excesses.
The new government soon discovered that Macdonald was a bold, active, and intelligent officer, and at once gave him employment. He made the first campaign of the revolutionary war as Staff-major, under de Bournonville, and served afterwards in the same capacity with General Dumourier, acquitting himself so much to the satisfaction of these distinguished leaders, that, on the 1st of March, 1793, he was appointed Colonel of the Regiment de Picardie, the second regiment of the old French line, which was then in garrison at Thionville; and this ancient corps (which was originally raised by Charles IX. in 1562) he commanded in the first campaign in Belgium.
He was sincerely attached to Dumourier; but, on the defection of that general from the Republic, after his fruitless attempts on behalf of the king, his retreat to the camp at Maulde, and the attempt to assassinate him on the 5th April, Macdonald did not accompany him inhis flight to the Austrians, but remained with the army, in which he was soon after named a General of Brigade. Under the celebrated Pichegreu he served with this rank in the Army of the North against the combined forces of Britain and Austria, and particularly signalized himself at Werwick and Comines.
The column of Pichegreu consisted of fifty thousand men. It penetrated to Courtrai, which was surrendered by a garrison that found it indefensible. Macdonald was next at the investment of Menin on the Lys, where a formidable resistance was made. The battle before this place lasted from eight a.m., until four in the afternoon, when the Germans, who had advanced to the relief, retired, and left Menin to its fate. A few months after saw all the Austrian Netherlands overrun by the victorious French, and the allies who had come to protect the province retiring in disorder beyond the Meuse. On this retreat the British and Hanoverians were particularly pressed by Macdonald, who followed them into Holland.
At the passage of the Meuse a Scottish officer named Macdonald came to Pichegreu's army with a flag of truce, and during the parley—
"You have," said he, "among you a general of my name; we wish much to take him prisoner."
"Have a care, monsieur," replied a French officer, "that he does not takeyou."
And next day this officer, with a party, was nearly captured by the column of Macdonald.[25]
The passage of the Waal on the ice, under the heavy batteries of Nimeguen, when leading the right wing of the Army of the North, was one of Macdonald's most brilliant achievements.
After many desultory movements, the discomfited allies had taken up a position beyond this river, which is a branch of the Rhine, and contested the passage with the French during the severe winter of 1794. The stream was a mass of ice, as the frost was unusually intense; thus the sufferings of the soldiers were great.
Resolved to avail themselves of the advantage which these sufferings gave them, the French had made repeated attempts to force the passage of the river. On the night of the 26th December, when an unusual gloom had settled over the frozen stream and snow-clad scenery, Pichegreu, with all his forces, advanced towards the boundary with such rapidity that he lost several cannon and soldiers. Next day he ventured on the ice and the swamps that bordered it, making a general assault upon the posts of the allies. Macdonald, with the right wing, pushed boldly between Fort St. Andre and the walls and batteries of the ancient town of Nimeguen, in which there lay a strong garrison. His orders were "to act as an army of observation, and prevent the British and Germans from supporting the Dutch, as the main attacks were to be made by the left and centre."
The latter, numbering 16,000 bayonets, crossed the Meuse in three columns, near the village of Driel, and invested Fort St. Andre and the fortifications in the Isle of Bommel; while Macdonald achieved with signal success the passage elsewhere, and formed his battalions in position beyond the frozen stream. Taken by surprise, the inert Dutch soldiers in the Bommeler-waard made but a show of resistance. They were driven out by the charged bayonet, and 600 of them were captured.
The French left wing advanced towards Breda with equal success, and stormed the lines between that city and Gertrudenberg in Northern Brabant; forced the entrenchments at Capellan in Gueldreland, and stormed Waspick. In this series of reverses the allied British, Dutch, and Austrians lost one hundred pieces of cannon, and had more than a thousand prisoners taken; while the French securely established themselves far beyond the contested river. Ere long all resistance to their progress ceased;every fortress, city, and castle submitted to them in succession, till the desperation of his affairs compelled the Stadtholder to seek refuge in Britain, while his allies retreated by the way of Amersfort to cross the Issel, abandoning Holland to its fate, and to the armies of Pichegreu and Macdonald.
For his services in this campaign the latter was now made a General of Division. Every officer under whom he served mentioned him with honour in their reports to the Directory; but while, with that openness which is characteristic of soldiers, his comrades thus rendered every justice and tribute to his worth and bravery, the suspicious representatives of the people, who followed the Army of the North, and thrust their officious counsels upon its generals, occasioned him constant anxiety. Their dislike of his Scottish name was never concealed, and his natural frankness unfortunately laid him but too open to their insidious attacks; till ultimately their animosity was gratified by the Directorydeprivinghim of his command. Of this injustice Pichegreu complained bitterly, and said, "My army will soon become disorganized, if thus wantonly deprived of its best officer."
"We have dismissed Macdonald," was the coarse reply of the Deputy St. Just, "because neither hisfacenor hisnameare republican; but we will restore him, Pichegreu, to thee, and with thy head shalt thou answer for him."
This opinion of the Committee of Public Safety so far influenced the Directory, that, until he replaced Championnet in Italy, Macdonald was never entrusted with an independent command. Soon after this mortification in Holland, the convention for a peace between France and Austria was held at Leoben, and on its conclusion he repaired to Cologne, and, quitting the army of the Rhine, joined that of Italy, where the bright star of Napoleon was now in the ascendant. By the nature of his frontier service Macdonald had hitherto little or no correspondence with the future Emperor, who having also imbibed the suspicions of the Directory, was long in discovering the worth or relying on the fidelity of the only Scottish soldier in his service. Macdonald appeared in Italy toolate to bear any part in the first events of the campaign of 1797, when the armies of the aggressive republic marched to spread their new political principles throughout the Italian peninsula; but in the following year he was at the invasion of the Papal States, with the terrible Massena and with Berthier, who proclaimed the republic at Rome, on which the Pope fled to Florence. One of the early measures of the French generals was the suppression of the English, Scottish, and Irish colleges, all the effects in which were seized and the students dispersed.
To the Pope they sent a tricoloured cockade and the offer of a pension, to which he made the following reply:—
"I acknowledge no uniform save that with which the Church has adorned me. My life is at your disposal, but my soul is beyond your power. I cannot be ignorant of the hand whence the scourge proceeds which chastises the sheep and afflicts the pastor for the errors of his flock; but I submit to the Divine will. Your pension I need not. A staff and scrip are sufficient for an old man who must pass the remainder of his days in sackcloth and ashes. Rob, pillage, burn as you please, and destroy the monuments of antiquity,but religion you cannot destroy: it will, in defiance of your efforts, exist to the end of time!"
Macdonald's Scottish surname was a puzzle to the Italians, who styled him Maldonaldo, Mardona, and every possible variety of the original. After occupying the States of the Church, and leaving Macdonald with his corps to overawe them, the French armies, whose line of march was everywhere marked by flames, plunder, and barbarity, advanced into Naples to expel the old Bourbon king, and erect an affiliated republic on the ruins of his throne. On this service our hero commanded under Championnet. Prior to this he had been charged with the duty of repressing the insurrections which broke out among the Romans, who massacred or assassinated the French soldiers whenever an opportunity of doing so occurred. The most serious of these risings was at Froisinone, a village in the valley of the Apennines. This hesuppressed with great severity, and, to strike terror into the peasantry, shot all prisoners taken in arms. The barbarities of the French, during their brief ascendency, are still remembered with horror in Italy. They and their partisans hunted and destroyed the Neapolitan royalists like wild beasts, and made a desert of all Apulia. It was in this province that Ettore Caraffa, Conti di Ruvo, and heir of the Duke of Andria, joined the invaders of his native country, and, after storming and reducing to ashes Andria, a prosperous and populous city in the province of Bari, he was so extolled by the Directory for his generous republicanism, that "when General Broussier carried the town of Trani by storm, Caraffa recommended that it should be burned also—and burned it was, with nearly all that were in it—the wounded and the dead, with those that were living and unhurt. They made, in fact, a hell of all that smiling Adriatic coast long before Cardinal Ruffo had passed the first defile in the Calabrias."
At Froisinone the Roman insurgents murdered the son of the Consul Mathei merely because his father was at the head of the new government. Macdonald offered from fifty to five hundred piastres for the chiefs of the insurrection, dead or alive. He issued a proclamation to the Romans inviting them to obedience and respect for the new authorities put over them, as being the only means of raising the Roman Republic to the rank she should occupy; and he concludes thus: "The great nation wills it so, and its will must be executed.—Macdonald."
Towards the end of 1798, as Commander-in-chief of the Roman territory, he ordained the Consulate to raise two regiments of horse and a battalion of infantry in each department.
The Court of Naples had now been subverted; under the protection of a British fleet and army, the king retired to Sicily, and a republic was supposed to be quietly established at the extremity of the peninsula, when the brave Calabrese, a race of hardy mountaineers, who were living in wild places in all the simple civilization of three centuries ago, rose in arms, and, unitingwith the Apulians from the plains, poured against the French in tumultuary hordes—half robbers and wholly patriots. Then began a war of torture and extermination. These new insurgents demanded a general from their foolish and feeble king; but, instead of a soldier, he sent them a priest—a man of peace to oppose armies led by such men as Championnet, Macdonald, Berthier, and Massena!
This was the celebrated Cardinal Ruffo, a descendant of the ancient princes of Ruffo-Scilla, whose now ruined castle crowns that rock so famed in ancient story, and opposite to the fabled whirlpool upon the Sicilian shore. In a remote corner of Calabria he unfurled the banner of Bourbon, with the cry of "Viva Ferdinand and our Holy Faith!"
This brought to the muster-place thousands, who swore upon their knives, daggers, crosses, and relics, to clear their native land of those lawless Jacobins and infidel republicans who were violating and desecrating everything, whether sacred or profane. The mountain robbers, who knew well the secret passes of that romantic and beautiful country—men who under their own government had subsisted by rapine and slaughter, led the van of the new movement. The cardinal cared little for the morals of his followers. Provided they were stanch, brave, good marksmen, and well armed, he received them all with an apostolical benediction, and left the rest to Providence and gunpowder. He marched at their head direct for Naples, where the French army under Championnet was cantoned; and, as he advanced, his wild and tumultuary army was increased, in every town and valley through which he marched, by sturdy peasants armed with muskets, daggers, and weapons of every description.
The fury with which these irregular hordes, clad in their picturesque costume, their Italian hats, and shaggy zammaras, assailed Championnet at Naples, with the advance of another column under General Mack from another point, forced Macdonald to march with his division, four thousand strong, from Rome, and retire to Ottricoli, a small town on a hill near the Tiber, aboutthirty-six miles distant. He left a garrison in the Castle of St. Angelo, which was summoned by Mack to surrender. He sent a copy of this document, which was imperious in its tenor, to General Championnet, who empowered Macdonald to reply, which he did in the following terms:—
Head-quarters, Monterozi, 29th November, 1798."The Commander-in-chief, sir, has sufficient confidence in me to recognise as his own the reply which I make to your letter of the 28th November. I well know that he has not given any answer to your letters concerning the evacuation of the forts and strong places; and one of these, we consider the Castle of St. Angelo. The silence of contempt alone was due to your insolent menaces on this subject, and this was the only answer that could be expected consistently with the dignity of the French name. You mention a regard for treaties, and yet you invade the territory of a Republic in alliance with France, and do so without provocation, and without its having given you the least reason for such conduct."You have attacked the French troops, who trusted in the most sacred defences—the law of nations and the security of treaties."You have shot at our flags of truce which were proceeding from Tivoli to Vicavero, and you have made the French garrison at Rieti prisoners of war."You have attacked our troops on the heights of Terni, and yet you do not call that a declaration of war!"Force alone, sir, constrained us to retire from Rome (and you, sir, know better than any one the truth of what I say), that the conquerors of Europe will avenge such proceedings! At present, I confine myself merely to stating our injuries; the French army will do the rest. I declare to you, sir, that I place our sick, Valville the commissary of war, and the other Frenchmen who have remained at Rome, under the care of all the soldiers whom you command. If a hair of their heads be touched, it shall be a signal forthe death of the whole Neapolitan army! The French Republican soldiers are not assassins; but the Neapolitan generals, the officers and soldiers whowere taken prisoners of war, on the day before yesterday, on the heights of Terni, shall answer with their heads for the safety of my wounded. Your summons to the commander of Fort St. Angelo is of such a nature, that I have made it public, in order to add to the indignation and to the horror which your threats inspire, and which we despise as much as we think there is little to be dreaded from them."Macdonald."
Head-quarters, Monterozi, 29th November, 1798.
"The Commander-in-chief, sir, has sufficient confidence in me to recognise as his own the reply which I make to your letter of the 28th November. I well know that he has not given any answer to your letters concerning the evacuation of the forts and strong places; and one of these, we consider the Castle of St. Angelo. The silence of contempt alone was due to your insolent menaces on this subject, and this was the only answer that could be expected consistently with the dignity of the French name. You mention a regard for treaties, and yet you invade the territory of a Republic in alliance with France, and do so without provocation, and without its having given you the least reason for such conduct.
"You have attacked the French troops, who trusted in the most sacred defences—the law of nations and the security of treaties.
"You have shot at our flags of truce which were proceeding from Tivoli to Vicavero, and you have made the French garrison at Rieti prisoners of war.
"You have attacked our troops on the heights of Terni, and yet you do not call that a declaration of war!
"Force alone, sir, constrained us to retire from Rome (and you, sir, know better than any one the truth of what I say), that the conquerors of Europe will avenge such proceedings! At present, I confine myself merely to stating our injuries; the French army will do the rest. I declare to you, sir, that I place our sick, Valville the commissary of war, and the other Frenchmen who have remained at Rome, under the care of all the soldiers whom you command. If a hair of their heads be touched, it shall be a signal forthe death of the whole Neapolitan army! The French Republican soldiers are not assassins; but the Neapolitan generals, the officers and soldiers whowere taken prisoners of war, on the day before yesterday, on the heights of Terni, shall answer with their heads for the safety of my wounded. Your summons to the commander of Fort St. Angelo is of such a nature, that I have made it public, in order to add to the indignation and to the horror which your threats inspire, and which we despise as much as we think there is little to be dreaded from them.
"Macdonald."
In his position at Civita Castellana, near Ottricoli, he was attacked by Mack with great determination. Championnet, in his despatch, states that the enemy were forty thousand strong, and advanced in five columns. "General Macdonald, surrounded on all sides, gave proof of his great talents. He received the attack with that courage which distinguishes the man of firm character, and by his able dispositions entirely disconcerted the enemy." His advanced guard, under Kellerman, consisted only of three squadrons of the 19th chasseurs à cheval, the first battalion of the 11th regiment, and two pieces of flying artillery. This handful of brave fellows routed Mack's first column, slew four hundred, and took fifteen pieces of cannon, fifty caissons, and two thousand prisoners, while they had butthirtykilled.
The Italians of De Mert retired to the heights of Calvi, a steep mountain range, where, after a midnight march, during a severe December storm, Macdonald surrounded and attacked them a few days after, and by a flag of truce summoned them to capitulate. To this they made some ridiculous propositions, but he sent the following ultimatum:—
"The column shall surrender prisoners at discretion, or be put to the sword!"
On this they surrendered at once to the number of five thousand, with all their arms, fifteen standards, eight guns, and three hundred horses. Among the prisoners were the Marshal De Mert and Don Carello. After this, he returned to Rome, re-established the Republic, and then taking the route to Capua, followed Mack's Neapolitans,who fled before him. Mack was an Austrian general who had entered the service of Ferdinand of Naples to organize the patriots. For this purpose he had brought with him from Vienna fourteen experienced officers.
On the march to Capua Macdonald's soldiers suffered greatly from the constant rain and storms of snow, by the overflow of the mountain torrents, the destruction of all the bridges, and by the rifles of the armed peasantry, who mercilessly slew every straggler. The bravest men in the Neapolitan army were the mountain banditti; and many of these romantic desperadoes, who led armed bands, received the commission of colonel, and were decorated with knightly orders.
Fra Diavolo, a brigand by profession, was a colonel in the infantry, and cavaliere of San Constantino; the Abate Proni, a ferocious monk of the Abruzzi; Gaetano Mammone, a miller from Sora; and Benedetto Mangone—three outlaws and brigands, covered themselves with distinction in this horrible war against the French; but Benedetto was a veritable monster. "He never spared the life of a Frenchman who fell into his power; and it is said that he butchered with his own hand four hundred Frenchmen and Neapolitan republicans; and that it was his custom to have a human head placed upon the table when he dined, as other people would have a vase of flowers."
In March, 1799, a picquet of sixty Polish soldiers was captured between Capua and Fondi by the Calabrese, who put every one of them to death. In the Campagna Frenchmen were roasted alive by the peasantry, or tied naked to trees and left to be devoured by dogs and wolves. Stragglers were destroyed by every means barbarity could devise.
The King of Naples, who had come from Sicily, fled again; and General Mack, before he was blocked up in Capua, wrote in these terms:—
"Sire, of forty thousand men with whom I entered the Roman territory, only twelve thousand remain; and, of these, many are going over daily to the French."
Macdonald, with Championnet, laid siege to Capua,where Mack made a vigorous resistance and repulsed them; but the attack was renewed with fresh fury; the city was won by assault, and the remains of the Neapolitan army, who had gathered courage from despair, and whom shame for past defeats inspired with a glow of double vengeance, perished under the bayonets of the French. Their bodies choked the bed of the Volturno; and for six leagues from thence the road to Naples was strewed with their dead and dying, till even the conquerors grew tired of slaughter. When Mack yielded himself a prisoner of war to the General of Division, he proffered his sword, a handsome weapon, which had been presented to him by the King of Great Britain in 1795.
Championnet laughed, and returned it to him, saying—
"Keep your sword, M. le General, the laws of the Republic prohibit the use of British manufactures."
At this time the rage of the French army against their peculating commissaries was great, for they had suffered severely by the scarcity of provisions; but Championnet and Macdonald skilfully turned this discontent against the enemy.
"Soldiers," they exclaimed, after the fall of Capua, "your magazines are at Naples!"
"Let us march, then—to Naples lead us!" was the reply, and to the capital the fugitives of Mack's army were pursued. A dreadful slaughter was made among the Lazzaroni, for a fresh struggle ensued at Naples, and every house from which the troops were fired on was burned to the ground, and its inmates bayoneted.
Macdonald had distinguished himself in every engagement with the unfortunate Mack; but now a series of disputes ensued between him and Championnet, who had many troubles to contend with. Irritated by the devastations committed by the Sieur Faitpoult, Commissary of the Directory, the general commanding ordered him to quit Naples, with his horde of plunderers, within twenty-four hours. Faitpoult, instead of obeying, raised the standard of mutiny against Championnet, but was forced to retire.
The coarse reproaches of the Deputy St. Just stillrankled in the memory of Macdonald, who left nothing undone to gain the confidence of the Directory, and persuade the members of it that he respected their authority, while it is but too probable that he despised them in his heart. The Sieur Faitpoult had friends in the Directory; thus the firmness of Championnet in expelling him from Naples was styled mutiny to the Republic, and he was ordered to quit the peninsula, and resign his command to General Macdonald. Poor Championnet was placed under arrest; and, relinquishing his bâton to his more fortunate second in command, had to appear before a court-martial at Turin.
With confidence Macdonald accepted this new position, which was one of great difficulty; for the revolted state of Naples, and, above all, the turbulence and ferocity of the Lazzaroni, were sources of incessant alarm. To travel, or pass from town to town, without an armed escort, was at that time impossible; fighting, skirmishing, solitary assassinations, and wholesale massacres, were of daily occurrence, particularly in the province of Otranto, where the embers of revolt were still fanned by the presence of the brave old Cardinal Ruffo, who appeared at the head of his followers, clad in full pontificals, wearing his scarlet hat, and carrying his pastoral staff surmounted by a cross; and thus attired, in a sacred costume so well calculated to rouse the enthusiasm of Italians to frenzy, he led them to battle. Thus he gave them his benediction before it, and thus he said mass for the souls of those dead braves who died for "Ferdinand and the Holy Faith;" thus attired, at many a siege, he sprinkled the battering guns, like his drums and banners, with holy water, mingling, as it were, the smoke of the censer with the smoke of battle. Though the fiery spirit thus roused was restless and abroad, Macdonald ultimately forced the whole kingdom to submit, and completely mastered the capital, which he governed with firmness and moderation.
His order of the day, issued on the 4th March, 1799, amply details the many dangers which surrounded him, and the wise measures he took to guard against them. He threatened to make the clergy responsible for the violenceof the populace; but concluded by declaring his reverence for, and attachment to, religion, and his determination to protect all pastors and magistrates who conformed to the laws of the new republic. Five days after this, being informed that King Ferdinand had an intention of landing again, he published a proclamation, in which he somewhat oddly invited the people of Naples to rise against their native prince, and unite with France. Acting in concert with the Commissioner Abrial, he lowered the taxes levied on the people; and, filled by a just admiration for the memory of Tasso, he saved from destruction the poet's native town, Sorrento, on the southern side of the Gulf of Naples, where an insurrection had taken place. After this, the provisional government made him a rash and pompous offer of forty thousand auxiliaries.
In April, he generously released and sent to Captain Trowbridge, a British officer and eleven seamen, who had been cast ashore at Castellamare, during a tempest. He had treated them with every kindness as his countrymen. They were the crew of a prize, theChampionnet, privateer.
The entire command of the army in Italy was now bestowed upon General Sherer; and when that officer was defeated between the Lake of Garda and the Adige, on the 26th of March, he sent a despatch to Macdonald, desiring him to form a junction with his troops in northern Italy by forced marches. On hearing of the battle near the Adige, the Neapolitans again rose in arms; and the massacres of the French by wandering bands were again of daily occurrence; but, in spite of every natural and human obstacle, Macdonald effected the junction according to his orders. As his retreat from Naples would have been dangerous without an attempt to overawe the armed masses who hovered on the mountains, he attacked and took Lacava, Castella, and the gloomy little town of Avellino, before his departure. On the 26th May, he was in Tuscany, and united with the divisions detached by General Moreau. There were not wanting those who blamed him for losing time in combining his force with that of Moreau; but those who did so were ignorant of the nature of thecountry he had to traverse with his trains of artillery and baggage.
"General Macdonald has been here since the 5th instant," says a French letter from Florence. "We deem him the saviour of the French in Italy, and our confidence in him will not be disappointed. His army, which has advanced by forced marches, assembled here yesterday. It is full of ardour, and its zeal, which a few reverses have only fired anew, is a happy presage in our favour."
On the 13th June, he attacked Modena, and in less than two hours dispersed the Austrian division of Count Hohenzollern, which was in position upon the glacis of the place; and two thousand prisoners were taken by his French grenadiers. In an account of this affair, General Sarrazen, who led these grenadiers, mentions that when Macdonald was pressing on with the infantry of the line against thecavalry, he said to him—
"Macdonald, I shall remain with my grenadiers, and think you had better do the same."
"Do you not see, M. Sarrazen, that I have them all, as if caught in a mousetrap," replied the commander, joyously; and, when within a hundred paces of the Austrian horse, he required them to surrender.
"We yield," replied an officer, sheathing his sabre and riding confidently forward. Macdonald continued to approach until within pistol-shot of their line, when the treacherous German suddenly exclaimed, while unsheathing his weapon,—
"Draw sabres—charge!"
He threw himself at full speed upon Macdonald, who was far from anticipating a movement so sudden, and, after receiving three sword-cuts on the head, was thrown from his horse covered with blood. This was all done in a moment, and the German officer mingled with his squadron, which instantly took to flight. They were, however, overtaken and captured, and their leader, a youth of eighteen, was slain. Macdonald was at first supposed to be dead, for he lay stunned on the ground, having three deep wounds, with a contusion by the fall from his horse; yet he was in his saddle, and at the head of his columnon the 17th, when the advanced guard of the Russians, under Suwarrow, forced the French into position on the right bank of the Trebia, so celebrated for the victory of Hannibal over the forces of the consul Sempronius; and there, on this classic ground, ensued one of the bloodiest battles of the Italian campaign.
Macdonald had advanced by Reggio and Modena, to effect a junction with the army of Moreau, or to relieve Mantua; but being without pontoons, he found the passage of the Po impossible, as that river was swollen by recent rains, and, moreover, was defended by General Kray, with 10,000 irregulars, and twice that number of armed peasantry. On the 17th, his advanced guard was at Placentia; next day, he attacked and repulsed General Ott, near San Giovanni; but the advance of the Russians, under Suwarrow, changed the fortune of the field.
General Sarrazen states Macdonald's force at 40,000 strong; M. de Segur gives it at 28,000. On the bank of that stream, the most rapid and impetuous in Cisalpine Gaul, the contest was fierce and desperate; but the daring attempts of Macdonald to cross, at the head of his troops, were repulsed.
"On the 18th and 19th," says a journal of the time, "the battles were very murderous. The French formed a square four men deep and fought desperately, till a column of Russians passed the river up to their necks in the water, broke through with the bayonet, and made a dreadful carnage among them. On the whole, the French are supposed to have lost, since the 11th instant, 15,000 men in killed, wounded, and prisoners. Macdonald himself has received two sabre-wounds from a Hungarian hussar. Among the prisoners taken are 4 generals and 700 officers. Our loss consists of 4000 men killed and wounded, and 400 prisoners; but the latter were rescued in the pursuit, and 40 waggons with French wounded were taken at the same time."
The fury of the Russian advance threw Macdonald's centre into confusion. Sabre in hand, he strove to enforce order under a heavy fire of cannon and musketry; but was swept away with the panic-stricken mass of the 5th regiment of light infantry, among whom he became entangled, and who were flying in disorder, abandoning their muskets, knapsacks, canteens, and blankets in their eagerness to escape. By them he was hurried into the current of the Trebia, and narrowly escaped being drowned. This confusion was caused by a brilliant charge of 500 Cossacks, who rushed with their lances in the rest through a cloud of dust. A terrified French chasseur exclaimed,—
"The whole Russian cavalry are upon us—fly!"
Then it was that the 5th gave way, and the centre was broken, but still the flanks fought desperately; and had the division of Moreau been in the field, it must have been won for France; but on that day he was attempting to raise the siege of Tortosa. Three standards were laid at the feet of Suwarrow.
At Trebia, according to M. de Segur, who once served on Macdonald's staff, "during three days of a battle, the most desperate in our annals, twenty-eight thousand French withstood fifty thousand Russians, held the fortunes of the day in balance, and gave vainly to Moreau the time to strike a blow for France. The victory remained finally with Suwarrow; but, in his astonishment, the rude Muscovite exclaimed,—
"One more such success, and we shall lose the Peninsula!"
Meanwhile, Macdonald had been deceived in his expectations; his army was exhausted; he was severely wounded, and when it was necessary that he should retire, a torrent of foes behind opposed his retreat. Beyond this torrent, other foes awaited him. The courage of his soldiers failed;buthe, calm and serene, encouraged them, saying,—
"Be of good cheer, for nothing is impossible to the brave!"
With the remains of his shattered army he retired towards Tuscany and Bologna; and at Piacenza a great quantity of his ammunition and baggage fell into the hands of his pursuers. In the Directory there were men who now reproached him with having wished to gain a battle alone, or at least without the participation ofMoreau; but it was by the express command of that general, on whose part he fully expected assistance, that he attempted to force the passage of the Trebia, and break the left wing of the Austro-Russian army. Notwithstanding the desperation of his circumstances, he was not without hopes of making another stand; but, on being deserted by General Lahoz, a Cisalpiner, and his corps, which united with twenty thousand insurgents to gall his flight, Macdonald relinquished all idea of again giving battle, and continued his retreat towards the mountains of Genoa, followed by the troops of Generals Ott, Klenau, Lahoz, and Count Hohenzollern, and by hordes of brigands and guerillas, who murdered his men on all hands, and massacred them in the mountain passes.
With a flag of truce, he sent an officer to the Austrian general Melas, praying that he would treat with mercy the wounded Frenchmen whom he had been compelled to abandon in Piacenza.
"The request is needless," replied Melas; "Austrian soldiers know too well the duties of humanity to require such advice."
Wounds and fatigue had so severely impaired Macdonald's health, that he was fain to ask Suwarrow's permission to visit the baths of Pisa. This, the Russian with chivalry and courtesy granted at once; but, instead of visiting the celebrated Bagni di Pisa, the general returned to France, relinquishing the command of his column, after uniting it to the army of Moreau; and immediately on his arrival in Paris he was entrusted by Napoleon with the command at Versailles.
By this time the French had abandoned the whole coast of the Adriatic, and lost their conquests in Naples, where nothing remained of them but the graves of the slain.
During the past hostilities the domestic relations of the Republic had not improved in character or in spirit; and the feeble condition of the Directory afforded an admirable path by which the ambition of Napoleon might lead to a newer and firmer form of government. Returning hastily from his unsuccessful Egyptian campaign, he hadreached Paris; and entering at once into the schemes of Talleyrand and his friend Sieyes, a military conspiracy was formed to remodel the Republic as a Consulate, of whichheshould be the head. Whatever may have been the motives, or secret ambitions, which led the military chiefs to revolutionize France again, it cannot be denied that she benefited thereby; and the energy with which the essay was made, and the success it had, were a sure guarantee for the decision of future affairs.