Having waited on the King of Sardinia, and settled their plan of future operations, he waited at Nice only until Captain Forbes brought over the Austrian artillery, &c., from Genoa, and until the forces collected for him by the Sardinians were reinforced by the troops from Piedmont, Milan, Genoa, and those which had been blocking up Tortona; and while they were collecting, at the head of a small force he reduced, by assault, Mont Albano, in the county of Nice.
In triumph, and in defiance of the French troops under the Marshal Duke de Belleisle, he passed the Var on the 9th of November, with a fine army, consisting of forty-five squadrons of horse, and sixty-three battalions offoot—in all, 50,000 men. Among these were twenty regiments of the Piedmontese. The wild Croats on their swift grey horses, and the dashing Hungarian Hussars, clad in their brown uniforms, formed his vanguard; and fell with such fury upon the French with their long lances and sharp sabres, that they swept all before them; while the British sailors, under Vice-Admiral Medley, drove the enemy from Fort Laurette, and thereby secured his left flank. Thus safely and victoriously he passed the Var, and entered Provence, the ancient patrimony of the House of Anjou.
With the assistance of a British bomb-ketch, he reduced and took 500 soldiers in the little isles of Saint Marguerite and Saint Honorat, on the south-east coast of France, opposite to Antibes, which he invested by land, while Admiral Medley cannonaded it by sea. Leaving Baron Roth with twenty-four battalions to press the siege against the Chevalier de Sade, he made himself master of Draguignan, with the loss of 2000 men, laid all the open country under contribution, and threw forward his outposts as far as the river Argens. During these arduous operations he was seized by a fever, which confined him to a camp-bed, but he soon relinquished it for his saddle.
The batteries opened against Antibes on the 20th of September. It was cannonaded for thirty-six days, and all its houses were demolished; but on collecting a numerous army, the Marshals De Belleisle and De Boufflers advanced to its relief, while other forces, amounting tosixtybattalions, were hastening forward from Flanders. Meanwhile the Genoese, driven to despair by the extortions and severity of the Marquis de Botta, resolved to break their Austrian fetters or die in the attempt. The circumstance of a German officer striking an Italian who refused to drag a mortar to which he was harnessed, kindled a flame; and all the Genoese rushed to arms, and forced the arsenals. The city barriers were stormed, the Austrians driven out, and two regiments, who defended the gate of Santo Thomaso, were cut to pieces. All these circumstances combined, obliged CountBrown to raise the siege of Antibes, abandon the projected expedition against Toulon, and repass the Var. This was executed on the 23rd January, 1747, but not without considerable loss, for his rear-guard was furiously attacked. Ordering a column of horse and foot into Lombardy to join Count Schulemberg, he lined the southern bank of the Var with his main body, and kept the French under the great Belleisle completely in check, till the King of Sardinia secured all the mountain defiles, to prevent them from penetrating into Piedmont.
Brown still continued that masterly retreat which excited the admiration of all military men, and even of his enemy, the brave Belleisle, who followed him across the Var on the 25th May, and retook Mont Albano, Villa Franca, and Ventimiglia, from his garrisons, driving back forty-six Piedmontese battalions with terrible slaughter at the pass of Exilles, where the Chevalier de Belleisle (brother of the marshal), Knight of St. John of Jerusalem, fell, pierced with three wounds. Meanwhile Brown, with a force diminished to 28,000, continued his retreat towards Finale and Savona. The despatch, which was sent to him by Major-General Colloredo, detailing the affair at Exilles, was published in theLondon Gazette. In Lombardy he ordered two intrenched camps to be formed; one to hold 14,000 men, to guard the banks of the Tanaro; the other to hold 11,000, and guard the Po, near Pavia; but fatigue and want of food soon compelled all to seek quarters for the winter. The King of Sardinia marched to Turin; Brown established his head-quarters at Milan, after winning the praise of all Europe by his skilful operations in Provence. While here, by the severity of his remonstrance, he forced Marshal Schulemberg to abandon his important enterprise against Bisignano, and draw off his division to assist the King of Sardinia in covering Piedmont and Lombardy.
The remainder of that year he occupied by innumerable skirmishes and movements in defending the Italian States of Maria Theresa; among these (after the great review at Coni) was the march upon the Dermont, the assault by the French upon Maison Meau, the attack upon forty-three French battalions who were intrenched near Villa Franca, and other affairs, until the peace so happily signed in 1748, when he was sent by his mistress to Nice, where, in conjunction with the Duke de Belleisle and the Marquis de la Minas, he skilfully adjusted certain difficulties which had arisen in fulfilling the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. In reward for his many great and gallant services, the Empress-Queen now made him Governor of Transylvania where he won the love and admiration of the people by his justice, affability, and honourable bearing.
In 1752 he was made governor of the city of Prague, and commander-in chief of all the troops in the kingdom of Bohemia; and in the following year the King of Poland, as Elector of Saxony, honoured him with the Order of the White Eagle, the collar of which is a gold chain (to which a silver eagle is attached), and first worn by Udislaus V. on his marriage with a daughter of the Duke of Lithuania. In 1754 he was raised to the rank of Marshal of the Empire.
After five years of peace the clouds of war again began to gather on the Prussian frontier, and Marshal Brown was summoned for thelasttime to the field. A quarrel having ensued between the courts of Berlin and Vienna, the warlike King of Prussia became alarmed by the hostile preparations that were made along the Livonian frontier, and resolving to anticipate the designs of his enemies, in 1756 invaded Saxony, and made himself master of Dresden. On the first tidings of this invasion, Marshal Brown put himself at the head of the army of Prague, and marched to relieve the Saxons; but this movement was anticipated by Frederick, who left 40,000 men to continue the blockade of Pirna on the left bank of the Elbe (where Augustus III. of Poland was shut up), and penetrated into Bohemia at the head of 24,000 soldiers.
Brown encamped at Kolin, while his compatriot, Prince Piccolomini, was posted at Konigingratz. From Kolin he marched on the 23rd of September to the fine old city of Budyn, which was surrounded by walls, and contains the ancient fortress of Hassenberg. Here he endeavouredto concert measures with the Saxons for securing their freedom; but Frederick, on being joined by another column of his army, under the great Scottish Marshal Keith, marched to encounter him.
Passing the Egra, Count Brown encamped at Lowositz, on the Elbe, and near the Saxon frontier, and there the King of Prussia came in sight of his army, in position, at daybreak on the 1st of October, with 65 squadrons, 26 battalions, 102 pieces of cannon, which formed in order of battle as they advanced, in that steady manner for which the Prussians had now become so famous. The infantry were formed in two lines, and the cavalry in three in their rear. Frederick's right wing occupied a village at the foot of the Radostitz, a wooded mountain; and on the Homolkaberg, in front of it, he had placed a battery of heavy guns; his left wing rested on the Loboschberg; and his centre occupied the fertile valley between.
The high and steep face of the Loboschberg was covered by vines, and intersected by many stone walls. Among these Marshal Brown advanced a large body of Croats, with several battalions of Hungarians to sustain them; a deep ravine and rugged rivulet lay between the army of Frederick and the Austrians, which consisted of 72 squadrons, 52 battalions, and 98 pieces of ordnance, being 70,000 men. Brown formed them in two lines, with his horsemen on the wings. He planted cannon in the village of Lowositz, and in redoubts on the level ground before it.
At seven in the morning, and during a dense fog, the battle began between the Prussian left and the Croats on the Loboschberg, who continued firing till noon, when Frederick, seeing that Brown's right was his weakest point, marched from the summit of the mountain and drove down the Croats and Hungarians from the vineyards into the plain and ravine below. The marshal, believing that the fortune of the day depended on the retention of Lowositz, threw his retiring right wing into the village, where it soon gave way. He then led forward his left, but the infantry fell into confusion atthe village of Sulowitz, being exposed to a dreadful fire of shot and shell from redoubts and field-pieces, grape, canister, hand-grenades, and musketry, which mowed them down like grass, and drove them back in disorder; the marshal then ordered a retreat, which he conducted in so masterly a manner, that no effort was made to harass him. He fell back at three in the afternoon to a new position, so well chosen that Frederick dared not follow, but contented himself with keeping his line behind the ravine of Lowositz, though by sending forward a body of cavalry under the Prince of Bavern, he turned the marshal's left flank, a manœuvre which compelled him to repass the Egra, and again occupy his old camp at Budyn.
Such was the battle of Lowositz, where the marshal left 4000 of his men dead on the field, and in his retreat had to blow up his magazine, while the Prussians had only 653 killed and 800 wounded. Having failed to relieve the Saxons, he marched to Lichtendorf, near Schandau, to join the King of Poland, and made an attempt to force back the Prussians at the head of 8000 chosen soldiers; but the effort proved ineffectual, and Augustus III. was compelled to capitulate, and deliver 17,000 men and eighty pieces of cannon into the hands of Frederick—a mortification as bitter to the marshal as it was to the Polish monarch.
On the 14th he retired towards Bohemia. The Prussian hussars followed his rear-guard, and put 300 Croats to the sword. For his services he now received the Collar of the Golden Fleece—one of the first of European knightly orders.
In 1757 a confederacy was completed to punish Frederick of Prussia for his invasion of Saxony. France sent 80,000 men to the Rhine, under the Marshal d'Estrees; 60,000 Russians threatened Livonia; the Swedes gathered on the Pomeranian frontier; and Maria Theresa mustered 150,000 soldiers, the most of whom were stationed in Prague, under Prince Charles of Lorraine and the Marshals Brown and Daun. The Austrians were then formed into four divisions—one under Marshal Brown, at Budyn; a second under the Duke d'Aremberg, at Egra; a thirdunder Count Konigsegg, at Richtenberg; a fourth under Marshal Daun, in Moravia. Undeterred by this vast array against him, Frederick in April marched straight upon Prague, and driving before him a column under Marshal Schwerin, attacked Brown at Budyn, before Daun's division could join him from Moravia. On finding his flank turned, Brown fell back upon the Bohemian capital, and Frederick, leaving one division of his army under Marshal Keith, followed him fast with the rest, and gave battle to the Austrians on the 6th of May, at dawn in the morning.
The Imperialists under Marshal Brown were 80,000 strong; his left wing rested on the Ziskberg towards Prague; his right on the hill of Sterboli. In the front were steep and craggy mountains, which no cavalry could climb or artillery traverse; but the deep vale at their foot was lined by hussars and hardy Hungarian infantry. The battle was commenced by Lieutenant-General the Prince of Schonaich assailing the Austrian right with sixty-five squadrons of cavalry; a movement which Brown skilfully repulsed by drawing off his cavalry from the left, and overwhelming the prince by the united rush of one hundred and four squadrons. Thus outflanked, they were repulsed, after two charges, until General Zeithen hurled the Austrians back upon their infantry by a magnificent charge of twenty squadrons of hussars.
The battalions of Prussian grenadiers were routed by a discharge of twelve-pounders loaded with musket-shot, and the noble Marshal Schwerin, who, seizing the colours, placed himself on foot at their head, was shot through the heart; but his officers rallied the troops, and assailed the Austrian right, at the same moment that Frederick broke through their centre, and drove it towards Prague. A desperate struggle with the bayonet now ensued between the Austrian left and the Prussian right under Prince Henry: and Marshal Brown, while in act of issuing orders to an aid-de-camp, received a deadly wound in the body; and as he could ill brook the double mortification of a defeat and of resigning the command to Prince Charles of Lorraine, it became mortal. He was compelled to leavethe field, from which his right wing fled to Maleschitz, while the left followed the centre in hopeless disorder to Prague, leaving the victory to the Prussians, who by their own account had 3000 killed and 6000 wounded (by another account, 18,000 killed), 397 officers fell, many of them high in rank; 8000 Austrians were slain, 9000 taken prisoners, and 50,000 were shut up in Prague, while all the cavalry fled to Beneschau, and joined Marshal Daun. Such was the terrible and disastrous battle of Prague, and seldom has the sun set upon such a scene of suffering or slaughter as the field presented, for there were more thantwenty thousand killed and wounded men lying upon it at six in the evening!
Marshal Brown was conveyed by his soldiers into Prague, where he endured the greatest torture from his wound, which was aggravated by the bitterness of being disabled at such a critical time. Thus by the agitation and bitterness of his mind it became fatal, and fifty-one days after the battle he expired of mingled agony and chagrin, on the 26th of June, 1757, at the age of fifty-two.
Thus died Austria's most able general and diplomatist—and one of Ireland's greatest sons; one of whom she has every reason to be proud, for he was the military rival of Frederick of Prussia, and of France's most skilful marshals, and he filled all Europe with the fame of his exploits in the field and his talent in the cabinet.
A magnificent monument was erected to his memory, and his titles and estates were inherited by his sons, of whom he left two by his countess, Maria Philippina of Martinitz. One of these died at Vienna, on the 1st May, 1759, a major-general in the service of Austria: he expired in great torture, under wounds received in battle.
Memoirs of the Lacys.
Irelandhas given to the armies of Europe five brave soldiers, all kinsmen of the name ofLacy—viz., Marshal Lacy, who overran the Crimea in the service of Russia, and was the fellow-soldier of the great Count Munich; Marshal Count Lacy, his son, the friend of Leopold Daun, and, like him, a distinguished general in the Septennial War; Francis Anthony Count de Lacy, who died Captain-General of Catalonia: his brother Patrick Lacy, Major of the Ulster Regiment in the Spanish service; and his son, Louis Lacy, who fought with such bravery in the wars of the Peninsula, and wasChef-du-Battailonof the Irish in 1807.
All those Lacys were of the old Irish family of Bruree, and their native place originally was Athlacca, a parish in the county of Limerick, on the Maig. Many of this gallant race are buried there, in the ancient churchyard, where an old tomb is yet extant, inscribed—
"John, Thomas, and Edward Lacy, 1632."
The family followed to foreign wars the fortunes of the exiled James Fitz-James, Duke of Berwick, Commander of the first troop of Irish Horse Guards, and natural son of James II. of England and VII. of Scotland. He was married first to a daughter of the Earl of Clanricarde, by whom he had a son, the successor of his titles and estates in Spain, and who also became the friend of the Lacys.
The first of the family who rose to eminence was Marshal Peter Lacy, who entered the service of Russia, and commanded with such distinction and success against the Turks.
He served as a subaltern and regimental officer in thearmies of Peter the Great, and first learned the art of war in those sanguinary and desperate conflicts between the forces of the Czar and those of Charles XII. of Sweden, against whom Peter made an alliance with the Kings of Poland and Denmark in 1699, and with whom his general, the brave Prince Menschikoff, fought so many battles in the early part of the last century.
In the year 1736 Lacy had attained the rank of general in the Russian army, under Anne Ivanowna (niece of Peter I.), who at that time governed the vast and barbarous empire of the Muscovites. Count Munich, who, for her service, had left the army of the Elector of Saxony, was at the head of her troops. "He was the Prince Eugene of Muscovy," says Frederick the Great; "but he had the vices with the virtues of all great generals.Lascy(the younger), Keith, Lowendhal, and other able generals, were formed in his school." Sir Patrick Gordon, a Scottish soldier of fortune, had already disciplined the Russian army, and brought it from barbarism to an equality with others in Europe; and in the time of Lacy and Munich it consisted of 10,000 guards, 60,000 infantry of the line, 20,000 dragoons, 2000 cuirassiers, 30,000 militia, with Cossacks, Tartars, Calmucs, and other barbarians, in unnumbered hordes.
In the year 1736 the differences between the Czarina Anne and her hereditary enemy the Grand Seignior, came to a crisis; and she declared war, in consequence of the provoking outrages of the Tartars of the Crimea, and the neglect of the Sultan to her repeated remonstrances on that subject; and the Emperor of Austria concerted with her the plan of the new campaign against Turkey. It was agreed that a Russian army, under General Lacy (orLasci, as it is often spelt), should march against the city of Azoph; that another Russian army, commanded by the Count de Munich, should penetrate to the Ukraine; while the Austrians, under Count Seckendorf, should prepare to assault Widin, in Servia; and all these armies marched accordingly.
The Khan of the Crimea was, in those days, a powerful prince, who paid tribute to the Sultan, though he wasstyledEmperorby his Tartar subjects, and, being descended of the Ottoman blood, had a claim to the Turkish throne, on the extinction of the race of Achmet III. The sultans had the power of deposing them, and, being jealous of their rank and authority, allowed few of them to die at liberty. Thus most of the Khans of the Crimea have ended their lives in chains in the dungeons of Rhodez. Among his own people the khan could then, at any time, command an army of eighty or a hundred thousand men; but darts, arrows, and spears, with a few muskets, were their weapons, with wooden saddles and stirrups. His revenues were, the tenth of all captives, ablack mailpaid by the Poles and Muscovites, and twenty cart-loads of honey from the Moldavians. He had vast flocks, coined copper money, and maintained a guard of Janissaries, who bore his green and purple standard. The Crimea then contained several great cities, and, besides many noble monuments of the Genoese, was covered by the ruins of the Grecian age and power.
Lacy came in sight of Azoph in March, 1736. It stands on the left bank of the most southern branch of the Don, in a district full of dangerous swamps, and on an eminence, the only spot capable of bearing buildings in that bleak and barren district. The city was then of a square form, situated at the foot of an acclivity, and having a castle of great strength. Lacy attacked both town and castle with great vigour; and though assailed by incessant showers of bullets, arrows, darts, stones, and other missiles, shot by its strong garrison of Tartars and Turks, he took it by storm, after a twelve days' siege, and completely reduced it.
Field-Marshal Count Munich, with 100,000 men, was equally successful elsewhere.
Lacy next forced the far-famed lines of Perekop, which, till then, had been considered impregnable. They extended across the Isthmus, from the Euxine to the Palus Mæotis, and had been the labour of 5000 men for many years. The great ditch (from whence we have the name ofPerecopz) was seventy-two feet broad by forty-two feetdeep, and the rampart was seventy feet in height, from its base to the cope of the parapet. The town was defended by a castle, the residence of the Aga of the Guards upon the Don and Dnieper, and by six great towers mounted with cannon; but the whole of these ample fortifications were manned by an army which made the most pitiful resistance; for this Irish soldier of fortune forced them, sword in hand, at the head of his troops, cut to pieces all who resisted, and hewed a passage into the peninsula.
He took Bakhtchissari, which lies within twenty-two miles of Sebastopol. It then contained about 4000 houses, a mosque with a fine palace, and many stately tombs where the khans were buried. Around it were baths, gardens, and orchards; and near it, in the narrow valley, there still stands the now deserted mausoleum of a famous Georgian beauty, who was the chief wife of the Khan Khareem Gheraee.
While Munich was marching towards Bessarabia, Lacy overran the whole Crimea, and ravaged the country with fire and sword, up to the northern slopes of the Tauric mountains; but being foiled before Kaffa (on the sea shore), which was defended by strong walls, two castles, and a garrison under a bashaw, he was compelled, by the approach of winter, to retreat, after subjugating the whole country, and defeating more than 20,000 Tartars in one pitched battle.
"General Lacy," says Smollett, "routed the Tartars of the Crimea; but they returned in greater numbers, and harassed his Muscovites in such a manner, by intercepting their provisions and destroying the country, that he was obliged to abandon the lines of Perekop." The great Field-Marshal, Baron Loudon (descended from an Ayrshire family), served in this war, under Lacy, as a subaltern officer. Among the Scottish volunteers who also served there, were Colonel Johnstone; the gallant General Leslie, who, with all his soldiers, was destroyed on the Steppe by the Tartars; and General Balmaine, who stormed Kaffa.
After these triumphant operations, Lacy entered theUkraine, joined Marshal Munich, and together, in 1737, they laid siege to Oczakow, at the mouth of the Borysthenes.
Oczakow, orDziar Cremenda, had then about 5000 houses, a mosque, a palace, with a number of tombs of the Crimean khans, which stood among their gardens and orchards. It had a castle, built by Vitolaus, Duke of Lithuania, and therein a Turkish garrison had been established since 1644. Munich and Lacy assailed the town and castle on the landward side; but towards the sea they were attacked by the cannon of eighteen galleys. The Muscovites carried all their approaches with such impetuosity and perseverance, that, in a few days, the Turks and Tartars became filled with terror.
Among those who distinguished themselves particularly in this service were, General the Honourable James Keith (brother of the exiled Earl Marischal of Scotland), who was dangerously wounded in the thigh, and another Jacobite exile, Colonel Count Brown, a brave Irishman—"A Catholic," says Tooke, "who was compelled to seek his fortune in foreign countries, by the exertion of those talents which he would willingly have dedicated to the service of hisown."
The garrison, which consisted of 3000 Janissaries and 7000 Bosniacs, stoutly defended themselves; but Oczakow was carried by assault. A bomb set fire to the town, and blew up its magazine; Lacy and Munich seized this opportunity to lead on their stormers, and, pressed by the foe before them and the flames behind, the Mussulmans were nearly all cut to pieces; but not before they had slain 11,000 regular troops and 5000 Cossacks by bayonet and scimitar.
The rapid success of these two generals against the Crim Tartars awakened the restless ambition of Austria; and the Emperor believing that, if he assailed the Porte by the Hungarian frontier while the Czarina pressed her victorious arms along the shores of the Black Sea, the Empire of the Osmanlies would be finally subverted, declared war, and to co-operate with his troops, the CountBrown[11]left Lacy and Munich, and marched into Hungary at the head of a Russian column. But the hopes of the Emperor were frustrated! The Turks turned all their vengeance against him, defeated his generals, and besieged Belgrade. The Austrian Field-Marshal Wallace was defeated at Crotska, and the gallant Earl of Crawford who served under him as a volunteer, received a wound from which he never recovered. The troops of Brown were also routed, and he was taken prisoner. The barbarous Osmanlies stripped him quite naked, and bound him back to back with another prisoner for forty-eight hours. He was four times exposed for sale as a slave in the common market-place, and four times was bought by different masters, who treated him with the greatest cruelty.
He gave out that he was a captain to lessen the price of his ransom, and in this deplorable condition was discovered by an Irish gentleman, who communicated his story to M. de Villeneuve, the French ambassador at Constantinople, by whom he was generously ransomed for three hundred ducats, and sent back to Russia, where he died a general and governor of Riga, in 1789, in his eighty-eighth year.
The reverses on the side of Hungary overbalanced the success of Lacy against the Crim Tartars; the Emperor lost heart, and the Czarina, though victorious again at Choczim in Bessarabia, where, on the 31st August, 1739, the forces of Munich defeated the Turks and swept the right bank of the Dneister, fearing that she was about to lose her ally, concluded a treaty of peace, by which Austria ceded to the Porte, Belgrade, Sabatz, the island and fortress of Orsova, with Servia and Wallachia, while the Danube and the Saave were to be the boundaries of their empires; but the Czarina retained Azoph, the important conquest of Marshal Lacy, who, in obedience to her orders, demolished the walls and fortifications of thecity. To commemorate the exploits of him and Munich, she ordered a medal to be struck, having direct reference to the war in the Crimea, which was thenceforward to be an independent state. On one side of this medal was the legend—
"ANNÆ IVANOWNA, D.G., RUSSLE IMPECUTRIX."
On the other was an eagle, with the words—
"PACE EUROPÆ PROMOTA, TARTARIS, VICTIS, TANAILIBERATO, ANNO 1736."
Marshal Lacy ended his days in honour, and a noble monument was erected to his memory; but his less fortunate compatriot, Marshal Munich, incurred the displeasure of their capricious mistress, and was banished for twenty years to the most northern confines of Siberia. Recalled in his old age by the Czar Peter III., he was made Governor of Esthonia and Livonia; but died at Riga almost immediately after receiving that appointment, in his eighty-fifth year.
Joseph Francis Maurice Count Lacy, one of the great captains of the Seven Years' War, was the son of the preceding.
He was born at St. Petersburg, in the year 1718, and learned the art of soldiering under the eye of his father, and in the camp of Marshal Munich, in the service of the Czarina Anne, during her Crimean and Bessarabian campaigns.
At the age of twenty he was a captain, and to his knowledge and love of the art of war united a polished education, gained under the best masters in Germany.
In 1740, on the accession of Maria Theresa to the Austrian throne, he entered her service, with the permission of the Czarina, and there, by his talents, courage, and gentle bearing won the esteem of his soldiers; thus he soon attained a majority, and then the rank of colonel. He served in the Italian campaign as aide-de-camp to Count Brown, and at Viletri, had three horses shot under him. He distinguished himself still more at the siege of Maestricht, and obtained command of a regiment.
In the war of the Hungarian Succession, after the cowardice and extraordinary mismanagement of the Duke of Cumberland had covered the British army with disgrace in the Low Countries, by allowing it to be outflanked at Khloster Seven, by failing to defend the position at Maestricht, and forcing it shamefully to capitulate, on the 8th of September, 1757, and thus abandon our ally, Frederick the Great of Prussia, that warlike monarch only pushed on the war with greater vigour. In this disastrous contest the activity and vigilance of Count Lacy soon recommended him to the notice of Leopold Count Daun, a native of Bohemia, and son of Philip Lorenzo, Prince of Tiano, the pupil of Kevenhüller; and he improved the good opinion of that great soldier by his fascinating manner and courtier-like behaviour. The friendship of Daun soon won him the rank of major-general; and as such he commanded a brigade in his division, when, in 1757, conformable to the defensive system taken by Russia, Austria, and Sweden, the army of the Empress-Queen was broken into four great columns, to prosecute the war against the Prussians, French, and Bavarians, the violators of the famous Pragmatic Sanction.
One column, under the Duke d'Aremberg, was posted at Egra; a second, under Marshal Count Brown, was posted at Budyn; a third, under Count Konigsegg, held Reichenburg; a fourth, under Marshal Daun, occupied Moravia.
In his column were the brigades of Lacy and Lowenstein, whom Frederick of Prussia styles "two young officers who ardently sought to distinguish themselves." Lacy was then in his thirty-eighth year.
In Lusatia, during the winter of 1756 and the spring of 1757, these officers had given infinite trouble to the troops of Frederick. They had frequently attacked, sword in hand, his post at Ostritz, a Saxon town on the Queiss; at other times, his intrenchments at Hirschfelde, a manufacturing town on the left bank of the Neisse, and also at Marienthiel. Hirschfelde, which was garrisoned by one battalion of Prussians, they assailed at fouro'clock one morning, with 6000 men; two redoubts, which stood without the gates, each defended by two pieces of cannon, were repeatedly taken and retaken; but after losing 500 men, Lacy and his brother-brigadier retired, bringing off the Prussian guns as a trophy. These assaults were ineffectual, and many men were slain. Among others fell Major Blumenthal, of the Prince Henry's regiment—a brave officer. The Prussian corps of Lestwitz at Zittace, and of the Prince of Bavern at Gorlitz were harassed by perpetual alarms; and such was the activity of young Lacy and Lowenstein, that they kept them continually under arms, if not in action, during the winter months.
As a brigadier, Lacy bore a distinguished part in the battles of Reichenberg and of Prague, and in all the operations consequent to the invasion of Bohemia by Frederick the Great, whose policy it was ever to keep the scene of his wars as far as possible from his own territory; thus his army entered the Bohemian frontier in four columns, from Saxony, Misnia, Lusatia, and Silesia, under himself and Marshal Keith; Prince Maurice, of Anhalt Dessau; Prince Ferdinand, of Brunswick-Bavern; and the aged Marshal Schwerin. The division of the latter entered in five brigades, at five different places, and won the dangerous defile of Gulder Oelse from the Pandours, at the point of the bayonet.
Everywhere the Austrians were driven back before this sudden torrent of Prussian soldiers, who advanced against the position of Count Konigsegg at Reichenberg, where 28,000 men were formed in order of battle, under cover of strong redoubts, and among steep mountains covered with dense forests. But the lines were stormed and the Austrians defeated, with the loss of 1000 killed, among whom were two counts, a prince, and a general, while twenty officers, four hundred soldiers, and three standards were taken as an augury of greater victories. On hearing of this defeat, Leopold Daun marched with all speed from Moravia to reinforce the main body of the Austrians, which, when joined by the regiments of Prague and Bavern, mustered 100,000 men. Making afeint towards Egra (which drew off 20,000 Austrians inthatdirection), the King of Prussia and Marshal Keith marched against the other troops of the Empress-Queen; and, crossing the Moldau on the 5th May, turned the flank of the Imperialists, under the famous Ulysses Count Brown, whose steady defence made the Prussians waver and fall back. On this the venerable Marshal Schwerin, then in his eighty-second year, stung by the unmerited reproaches of the king, who urged him to advance, dismounted in the marshy ground, and taking an infantry standard in his hand, cried, "Let all brave Prussians followme!"
But at that moment an Austrian bullet pierced his breast; and falling thus, covered with years and glory, he closed a long career of faithful military service; but the Prussian foot pressed furiously on, and after three charges totally routed the Austrians, whose general, Count Brown, also received his mortal wound, as already related.
Finding the day irreparably lost, Count Lacy, Prince Charles of Lorraine, the Princes of Saxony and Modena, and the Duke d'Aremberg, with the remnant of their infantry, in all 50,000 men, took refuge in Prague, where the gallant Brown expired of his wound, on the 6th May. Meanwhile 16,000 cavalry fled to Marshal Daun, who had encamped at Bohmishbrodt the night before the battle.
The Prussians followed up their victory with ardour; Prague, with 100,000 souls within its walls, was invested closely; Frederick pushed the blockade on one side, and Marshal Keith on the other. In four days they had it completely surrounded, and cut off every means of supply, agreeably to the last words of Marshal Brown, who, when dying, said: "Tell Prince Charles of Lorraine instantly to march out and attack Marshal Keith, or all is lost."
Lacy and others proposed to assail the Prussians in the night, with 12,000 Austrians, who were to be sustained by all the Pandours and Hungarian Grenadiers; and thus to hew a passage, sword in hand, through Frederick's lines, and relieve Prague of the multitude of soldiers who were rapidly consuming the provisions of the people. An infamous deserter informed the Prussians of this gallant design, and thus they were all on the alert, when about two o'clock, in the darkness of a misty morning, a fiery tide of armed men rolled out of Prague, and assailing Marshal Keith at the bayonet's point, pressed desperately on towards the Moldau; but, after a fierce and desultory conflict, in which Prince Henry (Frederick's youngest son) had a horse shot under him, the Austrians were routed, and Lacy and other brave leaders were forced to fall back into Prague, with the loss of many killed and wounded.
After this the Prussian batteries opened, and in twenty-four hours threw 300 bombs, besides many fire-balls into the town; its streets were soon sheeted with fire, and men, women, and horses, with the sick and wounded, perished in vast numbers. The city burned for three days; flames and starvation drove the citizens to despair. Seeing their loved Bohemian capital on the verge of destruction, they besought Lacy, d'Aremberg, and other commanders, in the most moving terms, to surrender; but war had hardened their hearts, and instead of complying, they drove out 12,000 persons who were considered as a mere incumberance. These unfortunates were hurled back by the Prussians to the walls of Prague, and thus the Austrians were soon reduced to eat their troop and artillery horses, forty of which were shot daily, and cut up for rations, or sold at four pence per pound to the wretched people, who still perished hourly by fire, shot, and famine.
Two other sallies were made, and the Prussian camp was kept in a state of perpetual alarm. In this defence, so disastrous to the city, Lacy was of incalculable service in harassing the Prussian trenches, by his vigilance and restless bravery. Contrary to the advice of Keith, the king, on the 13th of June, left a small force before Prague, and, drawing off his main body, marched against Daun, who defeated him in battle at Kolin, and forced him to leave Bohemia—a movement by which the blockade of Prague was abandoned; and the imprisoned Austrians received their deliverer with inexpressible joy. Lacy andother generals issued out, with their breasts full of ardour and vengeance, and followed the retreating Prussians over the Saxon frontier, sabring all stragglers who fell into their power.
To narrate all the military operations in which Count Lacy bore a part, would be to rehearse the history of the Seven Years' War. He owed his elevation and high consideration as much to his own bravery and skill as to the patronage and friendship of Daun, who consulted him on every occasion, and employed him in the execution of the most delicate measures.
Though by his vigour and decision he frequently urged Marshal Daun on many a bold enterprise, he was possessed of great coolness and presence of mind. "His ardour," says the historian of the House of Hapsburg, "never exceeded the bounds of prudence, or hurried him into attempts which might incur the censure of his patron." He was of great service in drilling and training the Austrian forces to perform those new and difficult manœuvres of which Daun was the inventor; he was a strict disciplinarian, a friend to order, and by his precept and example succeeded in introducing a degree of economy into every branch of the Austrian military service.
In 1758 the King of Prussia commenced the new campaign, and entering Moravia, invested Olmutz. General Lacy was then of great service in protecting the roads which led to Upper Silesia; and, when posted at Gibau with a large body of Austrians, he sent a detachment of grenadiers to Krenau, where they harassed the Prussian rear-guard, till they were driven back by Wied. When Frederick retired from Konigsgratz, Lacy and St. Ignan followed him with 15,000 men, and had many severe encounters with the Putkammer hussars, who formed the rear guard of the Prussians.
He served valiantly at the great battle of Hochkirchen, when the good old Marshal Keith, Knight of the Black Eagle, and Governor of Berlin, a general second to none in the Seven Years' War, was slain that day, when lighting on foot at the head of the Prussian infantry; and here ensued an affecting incident. After the battle, hisbody was shamefully abandoned by the routed Prussians, and stripped by Austrian stragglers. Thus it lay long on the field, undistinguished from the thousands of others which covered it. In this degrading situation it was found by Lacy, who was riding over the ground, and with whose father (old Marshal Lacy) the venerable Keith had served in Prussia, and by whose side he had been wounded in the Crimea. The count recognised the body, says Dr. Smollett, by the large scar of a dangerous wound which General Keith had receivedin his thighat the siege of Oczakow, and could not refrain from tears on seeing his father's honoured friend lying thus at his feet, a naked, lifeless, and deserted corpse; and it must have been an interesting scene to witness these two exiles—the young Irish Jacobite weeping over the old Scottish Cavalier—on that sanguinary field. Lacy had the body immediately covered, and interred with the honours of war, in the adjacent churchyard, from whence it was afterwards removed to Berlin.
Lacy, with Daun and Loudon, bore a conspicuous part in the campaign of 1760, particularly in those manœuvres by which the King of Prussia, notwithstanding all his skill and cunning, was frustrated in his Silesian operations.
Proposing to invade the Duchy again, he crossed the Elbe, on the 15th June, and was joined by the Prince of Holstein. On this, Lacy, who had been watching them, drew in his outposts, and retired to Zehaila. On his march Frederick passed very close to Lacy's camp, with his infantry covered by only four regiments of Saxon horse. These drove in Lacy's pickets; on which he shifted his ground to a position at the foot of the hills of Bockerdorf and Reichenberg. Frederick made preparations to assail them on the morrow, and only waited for reinforcements under General Hulsen; but Daun, who had crossed the Elbe at Dresden, and was hastening to the assistance of his friend, dispatched an officer to him, with orders "to shift his ground;" and together they took up a new position at Lausa, while Frederick occupied the place which Lacy had left by three regiments ofhussars, two of dragoons, and two free corps, which were attacked, but unsuccessfully, by Lacy in the night.
Both armies, Prussian and Imperialist, began their march for Silesia on the same day, each eager to anticipate and shut the other out. The former marched by the way of Crackau; the latter marched through Bischofswerder; anden routeDaun detached Lacy to Keulenburg, to cover his left flank; but Frederick attacked the young brigadier unexpectedly, and captured 200 of his rear-guard. The heat was so excessive at this time that eighty men dropped dead on the march. Lacy continued to harass the Prussian rear, till at Salzforstien Frederick turned and attacked his Uhlans with four regiments of horse, who in the first charge shot and sabred 400 men. At that time Lacy's whole cavalry were encamped at Rothen Nauslitz; but he brought them up by successive troops—for here again he was taken by surprise—and a desultory and destructive skirmish ensued, after which both parties separated. Frederick now decided it was necessary either to follow Daun, who had already reached Silesia, or to rid himself at once of the resolute Lacy, who hung like a wolf upon his skirts, and encumbered every movement. Thus, on the evening of the 8th of July, after making a feigned movement towards Gorlitz, he suddenly broke into Lacy's camp, and drove him beyond the defiles of Horta, where his Prussians passed the night, while the Austrians occupied the mountain of the White Stag. From this Lacy's small force was driven next day, and had to recross the Elbe at Dresden, from whence he marched to a position at Gros Seidlitz, while lines of circumvallation were drawn round the city. A letter written by Daun to Lacy, containing all his plans of the campaign, was intercepted here, and brought to Frederick, to whom it proved of great service.
On the 10th of August, Lacy lost his tents and baggage when escaping an attack meditated by Frederick, who was baffled by the timely arrival of Daun at Hennersdorf. Marshal Loudon invested Breslau, but raised the siege on Prince Henry of Prussia marching to its relief. Frederick then made his memorable march toprevent the Russians from forming a junction with Daun and Lacy; he passed five rivers, the Elbe, the Spree, the Neiss, the Quiess, and the Bober, though trammelled by 2000 caissons and a ponderous train of artillery; but he was unable to bring Loudon to action before that general was joined by Lacy and Daun. The three leaders then encompassed his camp at Lignitz, and his affairs seemed desperate; for Daun, after a reconnoisance, announced to Lacy and Loudon his resolution of storming the Prussian position by a night attack; but the subtle Frederick eluded them all, by suddenly and secretly passing the Elbe, and hastening into Saxony, whither Daun and Lacy followed him, at the head of 80,000 men. Then Cunnersdorf, the bloodiest battle of the Seven Years' War, was fought and lost by Frederick. In that field he had 20,000 of his soldiers slain, and all his generals killed or wounded. He made incredible exertions to retrieve the day, and his uniform was riddled by musket-balls.
The Russians passed the Oder, and pushed a strong column into Brandenburg, under Count Czernichew, who was joined by a large body of Austrians under Lacy, and together they made themselves masters of Berlin, the capital, about the end of October. They levied a severe contribution upon the citizens, destroyed all the magazines, arsenals, and foundries, pillaged the royal palaces, and ravaged all the adjacent country, burning a vast amount of property and military stores; but they retired by different routes on hearing that the mortified Frederick was advancing to the relief of his plundered capital. And soon after he had his revenge at the battle fought near Toorgau, on the 23rd of November. There Lacy commanded the reserve of 20,000 men, who covered the causeway and several ponds which lay at the extremity of Daun's position, and on which his left flank rested; Lacy endured a severe cannonade at the beginning of the action. General Count O'Donnel commanded the cavalry. When Daun gave way, Lacy brought up his reserve, and twice with the bayonet he strove desperately and heroically to regain the day, but was twice driven back by the Prussians; nor did he abandon that disastrous field untilhalf-past nine in the dark November evening. By that time Daun, after receiving a shot in the thigh, had been borne away wounded, and O'Donnel had assumed the command of the broken and discomfited army.
"Although I have been in twenty-eight battles," says a Swiss officer, whose letter appears in a Scottish newspaper of the time,[12]"I never saw anything more dreadful than the field presented. It was near six o'clock, a most obscure night—to use the words of Harlequin,a night of ink—the only light we had was the infernal fire of the artillery and musketry, the horrid noise of the combatants rendered more dreadful by the night; the melancholy cries of the wounded, mixed with the sound of drums and trumpets, filled the soul with horror.Kill! Kill!was cried out everywhere. In a word, I never saw anything that better corresponded with the melancholy idea given us of hell itself!"
The Austrians, despite their 200 pieces of cannon, were routed and driven over the Elbe; 10,000 of them lay slain on the field, and four generals, 200 other officers, and 8000 men were taken, with twenty-seven stand of colours, and fifty guns, for of all Frederick's victories this was the most successful and glorious. He recovered all Saxony except Dresden, in the neighbourhood of which an Austrian division, under General MacGuire, another Irish soldier of fortune, was hovering. The troops of the Empress-Queen evacuated Silesia, while the Russians abandoned Colberg and retired into Poland; and thus closed the year 1760.
Leaving Lacy to watch the Prussian general Zeithen, Leopold Daun, accompanied by his countess, repaired to Vienna, and so soon recovered, that in the spring of the following year he was able to assist at the councils of war. Fifty thousand men were now prisoners on both sides. In February, 1761, Lacy, now a field-marshal, meant to have visited Finland (where his father had received extensive estates), to settle certain family disputes which had arisen; but the preparations for another campaign, andthe knowledge that his old friend Daun was about to resume the command, made him defer this journey for a time.
On the 21st of March, Marshal Daun departed from Vienna to join the army, and all the generals repaired to the head of their different brigades and divisions, for it was intended that the greatest efforts should now be made to crush the warlike King of Prussia. Daun took the command in Saxony; Marshal Count Loudon in Silesia, where he was to be supported by the Russians under Marshal Butterlin, whose train of artillery was tremendous. It consisted of no less than eight ninety-six-pounders, twenty-two forty-eight-pounders, seventy twenty-four-pounders, eighty-three twelve-pounders, eighty-six eight-pounders, and 106 lighter field pieces, drawn by 13,834 horses.
O'Donnel marched with 16,000 men to Zittau, from whence he was to assist the armies of Saxony or Silesia, as occasion might require, and he pushed one division as far as Dresden.
In June, Lacy's corps took post on the right bank of the Elbe, to preserve a communication with the division of his countryman. Several other Irishmen had high rank in the Austrian service about this time, and we may particularly note Nicholas Count Taaffe, who died a colonel-commandant in 1770, aged ninety-two, and was succeeded in his title and regiment by his son, Count Francis; and Count O'Rourke,[13]Knight of St. Louis, descended from an ancient family in the county of Leitrim, whose ancestors Cromwell is said to have stripped of an estate worth 70,000l.per annum.
On the Prussians, under Prince Henry, passing the Elbe in July, Daun reinforced Lacy with six battalions and some regiments of horse. In spite of their utmost efforts, Frederick, after fighting the Imperialists on the heights of Buckersdorf, where an Irish officer named O'Kelly ably defended their redoubts with only 4000 men, recovered the city of Schweidnitz on the 22nd July,though defended by 9000 men, underanotherIrish general named Butler. He then turned his eyes towards Saxony, and proposed to besiege Dresden.
After Loudon entered Silesia in August, some severe fighting ensued, especially at Munsterberg, and on the hills of Labedau. Lacy was then hovering with his troops near Grossenhayn, and encamping at Gros-dobritz, from whence he advanced his videttes as far as Strehlen along the Elbe—for Count O'Donnel still occupied Dresden or its neighbourhood.
In September, Lacy was sent with his brigade, 15,000 strong, by Daun, to join the Russians at Brandenburg, with orders to ravage all the electorate, which, while covered by the army of Soltikoff, he did so effectually as to compel Frederick either to shift his camp from Buntzelwitz, on which he had 466 guns with 182 mines, or to weaken his army by sending out detachments to protect the burning country. In doing the latter some of Prince Henry's cavalry were severely cut up by Lacy's dragoons in a forest near Reisa; and to avoid such unpleasant surprises in future, the Prussians cut down all the magnificent timber that surrounded the old castle of Hubertsbourg; but on Lacy's nearer approach they retired to Potsdam and Spandau. In October, Prince Henry of Prussia and Marshal Daun were both encamped—one under the walls of Dresden, and the other under the ramparts of Meissen, while their hussars and light troops fought together hourly, and Lacy hovered in the neighbourhood of Lusace, watching some large detachments of Prussians.
In December he again terrified the inhabitants of the capital by appearing suddenly within seven miles of Berlin; but on an overwhelming force under General Bandemer being sent against him by Prince Henry, he recrossed the Elbe and retreated.
Fortunately in 1762 there was concluded with the Court of Vienna a cessation of hostilities for the provinces of Saxony and Silesia. This partial truce induced the Princes of the Empire to sign a treaty of neutrality to save their petty dominions from the ravages of Frederick;and as Sweden and Russia, on the accession of the Czar Peter III, had concluded a truce with him, the Septennial War was thus left to be finished by the two powers which began it—Prussia and Austria.
In that year the Khan of the Crimea proposed to join the former, and indeed marched 5000 men towards the frontier of Poland for that purpose; but the death of the Czarina Elizabeth, and the consequent revolution in Russia, had so bewildered the poor Tartar, that not knowing what side to take, he timidly retreated to Perekop. On this Frederick recalled the Prince of Bavern from Moravia, with his troops, that together they might make doubly sure of Schweidnitz.
They joined forces, and the prince encamped on the heights of Peilau. Scarcely had this junction been effected before the Austrians, under Daun, Lacy, and O'Donnel, entered among the mountains on the 16th of August, 1762, and after a skirmish at Langan Bielau, encamped with forty battalions and forty squadrons close by; while General Beck, another Imperialist, occupied the Kletchberg with twelve battalions and twenty squadrons. All night the Prussians were under arms; their cavalry bitted and saddled, their muskets loaded, and port-fires lit; every trooper slept beside his horse, and each gunner by his cannon. Daun assailed the Prince of Bavern in his position with great impetuosity. Lacy passed the village of Peilau with six battalions, which he skilfully kept concealed behind a hill whereon his artillery were posted. To cover his left flank, O'Donnel marched forty squadrons directly from Peilau, and three times his Imperial cuirassiers were repulsed from the valley, and by a volley of grape from fifteen six-pounders his confusion was completed. O'Donnel, with the loss of 1500 dragoons, fell back, and thus exposed the left flank of Lacy, who, after making great efforts to storm the heights occupied by the foe, was compelled to retreat; and next day Daun retired by Wartha and Glatz to Scharfneck, where he remained till the close of the campaign.
This was the last military service of importance performed by Marshal Count Lacy at that time; for soonafter, the war came to a close, by the treaty of peace, signed in February, 1763, by which it was agreed that a mutual restitution of conquests and oblivion of injuries should take place; and that Prussia and Austria should be put in the same position as when the hostilities began; and thus happily ended this truly atrocious strife, in which nearlyNINE HUNDRED THOUSAND SOLDIERS PERISHED. Prussia fought ten pitched battles, and lost 180,000 men; Russia, four great battles, and lost 120,000 men; Austria, ten battles, with the loss of 140,000 men; France lost 200,000; Britain, 165,000; Sweden, 25,000; and the Circles 28,000; while Austria found herself encumbered by one hundred millions of crowns of debt!
For fourteen years Lacy led a life of peace, devoting himself to the development of discipline in the Austrian army, till the death of the Bavarian Elector, on the 30th December, 1777, opened up a new prospect of aggrandizement to the Imperial Government, and again lighted the torch of war in Germany. The Elector Palatine, the Elector of Saxony and Duke of Mechlenburg-Schwerin laid claim to the vacant Electoral hat; but their voices were lost when the formidable and covetous House of Hapsburg also put forth a demand, and the Emperor Joseph and Marshal Lacy appeared with 100,000 men, and an immense train of artillery, at the celebrated position of Konigsgratz, above the confluence of the Adler and the Rhine.
The Prussians and Saxons broke into Bohemia, and compelled Loudon to retreat, and a year of the old manœuvring war and devastation followed, till the Congress of Teschen, by which Charles Theodore, Elector Palatine of the House of Neuberg, obtained the Bavarian hat, on the 13th May, 1779. The Emperor was compelled to relinquish his unjust claims, and tranquillity was restored to Germany, enabling Count Lacy, then in his sixty-first year, once more to sheath the sword; and this command which he held in the Bavarian dispute was the last act of importance performed by him in the service of Austria.
He had now the rank of Field-Marshal, which at theage of thirty-six he had declined, on the plea that his achievements were unworthy of it. He had the Grand Cross of Maria Theresa; he was a member of the Aulic Council, Chief of the Staff, and General of the Ordnance.
During his command-in-chief of the Austrian army, the following romantic incident occurred.
A young Neapolitan noble, who, by war or gambling, had been reduced to poverty, became anxious to obtain military employment in the service of Austria; and on being furnished with a letter of introduction to Lacy from another soldier of fortune who served in the army of Ferdinand IV., he travelled on foot towards Vienna. He reached the Austrian territories almost penniless, and one evening found himself at a poor wayside inn, not far from the capital. In the drinking room he met three officers who were also travelling towards Vienna; and they, with the frankness of German soldiers, invited the stranger to sup with them, and in the course of the evening he told them what were his views and wishes, and that all his hopes depended upon Lacy.
"I regret to say that your plan is a bad one," said one of the Austrian officers who wore the cross of Maria Theresa; "we have had a long peace, and so many of our young nobility are crowding to Vienna in search of military employment, that I fear there is little likelihood of Marshal Lacy being able to befriend a stranger."
Undeterred by this, the young Italian said that he was resolved to persevere; and he added an account of himself, of his family, their past importance and services in war, of his present necessity and circumstances; and all this was related with a candour and modesty which so pleased him who appeared the senior officer, that he said,—
"Well, sir, since you are resolved to try your fortune at Vienna, I will give you a letter to the Marshal Lacy; it may prove of use to you, for he knows me well."
Furnished with this additional credential, the Italian reached Vienna. He waited on Lacy and presented his papers; all, at least, save the Austrian officer's letter, which unfortunately he had mislaid. Lacy read them, andfrankly told him that to grant what he wished was impossible. Crushed by this, the Italian retired in desperation, for the state of his funds could ill brook delay. Three days elapsed, until chancing to find the letter he had obtained so peculiarly at the inn, he again presented himself at the levée of Lacy and delivered it. The marshal opened it, and on reading the contents, his face expressed the utmost astonishment.
"How comes it, sir," said he, with severity, "that you did not deliver this letter to me sooner?"
"Because it was mislaid; and from the casual manner in which it was received, I deemed it of little value."
"Do you know from whom it comes?"
"No," replied the Italian; "but the writer wore the gold cross of Maria Theresa."
"That officer with the gold cross wasthe Emperor—Joseph II. You ask me for a subaltern's commission, and he desires me to give you the rank of captain in a newly-raised regiment, and I have much pleasure in obeying his orders."
This young volunteer died a colonel of Hussars, and fell in battle against Custine, on the Upper Rhine, in 1792.
Lacy's plans of military reform won him a high renown in the Empire, to which he extended the mode of defence previously employed with such success upon the frontiers of Bohemia. He established the great fortress of Koningsgratz, and strengthened the defences of Theresienstadt and Josephstadt, which are still the admiration of all engineers. He regulated the war finance by a system of economy, still remembered with gratitude in Austria. True and faithful to the land he served, he was ever ready to sacrifice his personal interests and feelings for the good of the State. Of this he gave a prominent example in 1788, when Joseph II., having experienced only reverses in his contest with the Porte, was recommended by Lacy to entrust all to Baron Loudon (with whom he had ever been on terms of coldness), as being theonly generalcapable of repairing the misfortunes of the war.
Finding his health failing, he visited the Spa at Baden,and on his return to Vienna died, full of years and honours, on the 28th November, 1801.
He bequeathed to the Archduke Charles an extensive park in the environs, with a request that the people should have free use of it.
He had enjoyed the trust and confidence of Maria Theresa, of Francis I., and of Joseph II., to the full; and until he became enfeebled by time and wounds, he had more State patronage than any other subject in the empire. Frederick the Great had the highest esteem for his character as a soldier, and pronounced him the first tactician of the age, and assuredly the King of Prussia was no mean authority. They had often met in the field. With his characteristic acuteness, Frederick thus spoke of the two greatest generals against whom he led the Prussian armies.
"Iadmirethe dispositions of Lacy, but Itrembleat the onset of Loudon!"
Loudon, his companion and rival—of whom elsewhere—ended his career victoriously, after defeating the Turks and capturing Belgrade with the same soldiers whom Lacy had led to many a battle-field.
Francis Anthony Count de Lacy, the celebrated Spanish general and diplomatist, was the next member of this Irish family who attained an eminent position in the history of Europe.
He was born in Spain, whither his father had followed the Duke of Berwick, in 1731, and after receiving the usual rudiments of education, commenced his military career at the early age of sixteen, in the brave old Irish regiment of Ulster infantry, then in the service of his Most Catholic Majesty Ferdinand VI., who had succeeded his father, Philip Duke of Anjou, on the Spanish throne, in the preceding year, 1746.
Francis Anthony Lacy served with this regiment in the Italian campaign of 1747, which was undertaken to advance the claims of the Spanish Bourbons to the crowns of Naples and Sicily, and to the Duchy of Milan, which had been claimed by Philip V., as successor to the House of Austria; while he also demanded Parma, Placentia, and Tuscany, in right of his queen, though he had been obliged to relinquish themallby the solemn treaty of Utrecht; but such is the faith kept by princes.
The Irish regiment of the young Count Lacy was with the army of the Count de Gages, the Spanish commander-in-chief, who had then under his orders the combined armies of Spain and Naples. Genoa had revolted against the Austrians; Marshal Boufflers had entered it at the head of 4500 Frenchmen, and thus encouraged, the Genoese resolved to die, rather than submit to the tyranny of the House of Hapsburg, whose armies made incredible exertions to recover it. Then ensued the passage of the Var by the Marshal Duke de Belleisle; the storming of Montalbano and other places; the investment of Genoa by the Austrians and Piedmontese, and other operations of that extensive campaign, in whichle Régiment Irlandais d'Ultonie Infanteriebore a most prominent part, more so, perhaps, than their enemies relished, till the naval victories of the British Admirals Anson and Warren in the East Indian Ocean, and those of Fox and Hawke elsewhere, forced Louis XV. and his allies to listen to those proposals by which peace was secured to Europe by the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, on the 7th October, 1748.
Passing through all the successive grades with honour to himself, Count Lacy, in his thirty-first year, obtained the colonelcy of the Ulster regiment, and, at its head, served in the war against Portugal in 1762, when Charles III. of Spain added to the calamities of his unfortunate neighbour Don Joseph, by invading his small dominions with a powerful army, which threatened with still further destruction his hapless city of Lisbon—then recently ruined by the great earthquake. One Spanish column, under the Marquis de Sarria, entered Portugal on the north; a second, under the Count O'Reilly, took Chaves; a third entered by Beira and spread along the Tagus. This wanton invasion was suggested to Spain by France, as a means of insulting an ally of their common foe—Britain—and also of extending by conquest the power of the Houses of Bourbon.
Britain supplied Portugal with arms, ammunition, and 10,000 men, under Brigadier General Burgoyne, who skilfully co-operated with the Count de la Lippe, a German, and with General Forbes, a Scot, who commanded the army of Don Joseph. Two regiments of Catholics were raised in Ireland especially for this service, and these are still existing in the British line.
In all the operations of this war Lacy acquitted himself with the greatest honour.
In 1780, he was appointed Commandant of the Spanish Artillery, and as such was employed at the famous Siege of Gibraltar, and was present with the army which, under the Duke de Crillon (the conqueror of Minorca), made "the last desperate and unparalleled efforts" to restore the key of the Mediterranean to the hands of King Charles III.
General Elliot of Stobs, in Midlothian, with 7000 men, valiantly defended the rock against 40,000 soldiers who assailed it by land with 200 pieces of cannon: and against the combined fleets of France and Spain, forty-seven sail of the line, seven three-deckers (the strongest that had ever been built), eighty gunboats, and a swarm of frigates and smaller vessels, which opened a shower of shot from 400 pieces of cannon against him.
The first shot was fired on the 12th January, 1780, and it killed a woman in Gibraltar. The Spanish camp was crowded by Frenchnoblesseand Spanish hidalgos, who had all hastened there to behold thefallof this great fortress.
Under Lacy, the Spanish artillerists fired with great precision and effect; but the determined old General Elliot defended Gibraltar with the most obstinate bravery; and General Boyd (his countryman) recommended, for the first time, a discharge of red-hot balls, which had the most disastrous effect upon the Spaniards by land and sea; for at least 1500 of them perished. The British fired 716 barrels of powder and 8300 rounds of cannon-balls (more than half of which werered hot) between the time of firing the first cannon and thelast, on the 2nd February, 1783, when the French and Spaniards were completelydiscomfited, and a peace was signed, which ceded the fortress to Britain for ever.
For his services Lacy obtained the Grand Cross of Charles III., and the rank of Commander of the Cross of San Iago, an old Spanish order of chivalry instituted by King Ramiro, in commemoration of a victory over the Moors, in 1030—their badge is a red cross in the form of a sword. He was also made Titular of the rich Commanderie ofLas Cazas Buenas, at Merida, in Estramadura.
After the peace between Spain and Britain was firmly established, he was sent successively as plenipotentiary to Gustavus III. of Sweden, and to the Empress Catherine II. of Russia (widow of the Czar Peter III.); and the success he obtained in his embassies proved that he had secured for himself and his royal master the love and esteem of the courts of Stockholm and St. Petersburg.
Immediately on his return fresh honours were heaped upon him; he was named,par interim, Commandant General of the Coast of Granada and Member of the Supreme Council of War; then Lieutenant-General of the Spanish Army, Commandant of the Corps of Royal Artillery, and sole Inspector-General of that branch of the service. He was also made Inspector-General of the manufactories of arms, cannon, and all the munitions of war throughout Spain and the two Indies.
In consequence of an unlooked-forémeutein Barcelona the governor of which had not fulfilled his trust, in March, 1789, Lacy was appointed to the important and arduous office of Governor and Captain-General of the Province of Catalonia. The Catalonians, who had long resisted the authority of the kings of Spain, and had frequently risen in arms to assert their independence and choose princes of their own, were still liable to partial insurrections against the viceroys, to whose yoke they submitted with sullen apathy, while they treated their monarchs with hatred and contempt, till the conciliatory visit of Charles IV. But Lacy contrived to win the love and esteem even of those sullen and jealous provincials, and in every step of his career gave constant proofs ofdisinterestedness, skill, and devotion to the king and country of his adoption.
He seconded with great energy the measures taken by the Spanish Government to prevent the principles of the French revolutionists from crossing the Pyrenees. "Et fut reconduire sur la frontière le consul de France, qui avoit tenu des propos indiscrets à Barcelone. Par le même motif," adds a French writer, "Lacy retenait dans catalogue les emigrés Francois."
The pupils of the Royal School of Artillery at Segovia obtained from Count Lacy the amelioration of their severe system of discipline, an augmentation of the number of their scholars and cadets, and the increase of certain branches of knowledge relating to their branch of the military profession, by the establishment of the schools of chemistry, of mineralogy, and of pyrotechny, of all of which he urged the creation.
Some have supposed that Count Lacy was more admirable for his lofty spirit, his sparkling wit, and tall and handsome figure—which approached the gigantic—than for his talents as a soldier; but his amiable and conciliatory character have never been denied, while his benevolence, his Christian virtues, and patriotism were extolled even by his enemies; for he stood too high in the favour of the Spanish King to have friendsalone. Such was Francis Anthony Lacy.
He died at Barcelona, in the time of Charles IV., on the 31st December, 1792, in the sixty-first year of his age.
On that occasion the most universal regrets were manifested at his funeral, which was conducted with great splendour and solemnity; and the officers and cadets of the Spanish artillery, by whom he was sincerely beloved, celebrated him in high eulogies, which were published in all the journals of Madrid and Catalonia.
Don Antonio Ricardo Carillo, of Albornoz, succeeded him as Captain-general of Catalonia.
Patrick Lacy, the brother of Count Anthony Francis, was major of the Ulster Regiment of Irish Infantry in the service of Spain, and died early in life, leaving a son named Louis, who was justly celebrated for his bravery, his misfortunes, and romantic history.
Louis Lacywas born on the 11th January, 1775, at San Roque, a judicial partido and town of Andalusia, six miles distant from Gibraltar, after the capture of which it was founded, in 1704. His father, Major Lacy, dying while he was yet an infant, his mother married an officer of the Brussels Regiment of infantry in the service of Charles III. Young Louis, at the early age of nine years, entered this corps as a cadet, with his stepfather, and accompanied it to Puerto Rico, one of the Spanish West India islands, which was used then as a penal colony; it had been so for two centuries before. Thus a strong garrison was maintained at the capital, San Juan de Puerto Rico.