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Title: The Cavaliers of Fortune
Or, British Heroes in Foreign Wars
Author: James Grant
Release Date: June 15, 2019 [eBook #59754]
Language: English
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THE CAVALIERS OF FORTUNE
Or
British Heroes in Foreign Wars
by
JAMES GRANT
Author of "The Romance of War"
London
George Routledge and Sons
The Broadway, Ludgate
New York: 416 Broome Street
PREFACE.
The biographies or sketches which compose this volume are prepared from
memoranda, the result of historical reading for my military romances.
The Memoir of Colonel John Cameron first appeared, with that of Count
Lally, &c., in the _Dublin University Magazine_ for 1854; and though
he cannot strictly be considered, a Soldier of Fortune, it is given
here with the rest. It was carefully compiled from a mass of private
papers and letters submitted to me by his brother, Sir Duncan Cameron,
Bart.; from several letters written to me by his brother officers; the
MSS. Records of the 92nd Highlanders; and--like the sketch of Count
O'Connell--from information readily afforded to me by the authorities
at the War-Office and Horse Guards.
In several instances, the brief _Biographie Universelle_, edited by
Michaud, has been of service to me in fixing dates--especially in the
account of the Lacys.
The Thirty Years' War, the Septennial War, and the War of the Spanish
Succession formed an ample field of enterprise for those Scots and
Irish who, having nothing better to do at home, sold their swords and
their valour to the highest bidder; and who, having but little hope
of attaining rank in the service of Britain, sought fortune, fame,
and a new home in the camp of the stranger. Thus many of the military
wanderers who form the subject of these detached Memoirs belonged to
the Sister Isle.
The Irish troops in the service of France covered themselves with
glory, as the Scots had done under Gustavus of Sweden; and by the
Memoir of their last Colonel, Count O'Connell, it will be seen that
they were faithful and true, as they had been valiant, to the end. They
filled Europe with the fame of their exploits, and have left their
bones on many a hard-fought battle-field; and, as their song has it,--
"They who survived fought and drank as of yore,
But the land of their heart's hope they never saw more;
For on far foreign fields, from Dunkirk to Belgrade,
Lie the soldiers and chiefs of the IRISH BRIGADE!"
Under the happier influences of the present time, our people are no
longer forced to seek their bread in foreign camps. The restless
military spirit which produced the Soldier of Fortune is now on the
wane; yet it is impossible, without emotion, to look back on the
exploits of those brave fellows who led the armies of Europe in so many
"king-making victories," and won by their swords those honours which
were denied them in the land of their forefathers.
26, _Danube Street_,
Edinburgh, 1858.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
ARTHUR COUNT DE LALLY, General of the Troops of
Louis XV. in India 1
COLONEL JOHN CAMERON, of the Gordon Highlanders,
slain at Quatre Bras 44
ADMIRAL SIR SAMUEL GREIG, "Father of the Russian
Navy" 85
ULYSSES COUNT BROWN, Marshal of the Armies of
Maria Theresa 112
MARSHAL LACY, the Conqueror of the Crimea 142
COUNT LACY, Marshal of the Imperial Armies 164
COUNT LACY, Captain General of Catalonia 168
LOUIS LACY, Mariscal de Campo and Commander of Leon 169
COLONEL BUTLER, of the Irish Musketeers under the
Emperor Ferdinand 178
MARSHAL CLARKE, Duc de Feltre, and Governor of Vienna 192
GENERAL KILMAINE, Commander of Lombardy, and the
Armée d'Angleterre 213
COUNTS O'REILLY, O'DONNEL, and the Irish in Spain 233
BARON LOUDON, Marshal of the Austrian Army 263
COUNT O'REILLY, Chamberlain of the Empire 292
COUNT O'CONNELL, Knight of St. Louis, and Colonel of
the Irish Brigade 298
MARSHAL MACDONALD, Duke of Tarentum 308
THOMAS DALYELL, of Binns, General of the Scottish
Army, and First Colonel of the Scots Grey Dragoons 356
THE
CAVALIERS OF FORTUNE.
LIFE OF THE COUNT DE LALLY,
GENERAL OF THE TROOPS OF LOUIS XV. IN THE EAST INDIES.
Among the many gallant Irishmen, and those descended from the Irish
race, who served in the armies of France, and sought there those
honours and distinctions which political misfortune and studied misrule
denied them at home, I know of none more distinguished, and of none
whose name is more worthy of being rescued from oblivion, than General
the Count de Lally, the ill-requited leader of the troops of Louis XV.
in the wars of India.
Arthur Lally was the son of Captain O'Lally, of Tulloch na Daly, in
Galway, who passed over to France soon after Limerick capitulated to
Goderdt de Ginckel, the Dutch Earl of Athlone, and at the close of
that disastrous war in which the Irish troops withstood the army of
King William. Captain Lally obtained a commission in the regiment of
the Hon. Arthur Dillon, the same battalion in which the great Marshal
Macdonald, Duke of Tarentum, commenced his military career as a
sub-lieutenant.
Soon after he settled in France, Captain Lally married a French lady
of distinction. They had two children, the eldest of whom, Arthur, was
soon after his birth enrolled--according to a custom then prevailing
in the French army--as a private soldier in the company of his
father. In this capacity he served at the famous siege of Barcelona
under the Maréchal Duke of Berwick in 1714. His father being an
officer of distinguished merit, and his mother being by blood allied
to some of the most noble families in France, afforded young Daily
every opportunity for the improvement of his mind and person; thus at
the age of nineteen he was considered one of the handsomest and most
accomplished chevaliers in Paris.
Without having seen much active service, he had then been appointed
to a company in that gallant band of exiles whose valour contributed
to win many a victory for the House of Bourbon--the _Irish Brigade_.
His regiment--every member of which knew his father's worth and
merit--received him with satisfaction, and his _reception_ took place
early in 1718.
In the old French service this was an indispensable ceremony when
an officer first joined. His company was drawn up in front of the
regiment, with the drummers beating on the flanks. Dressed in full
uniform, with his scarf, sword, and gorget, Arthur Lally was led
forward by the general of division, who, when the drums ceased, raised
his cocked hat, and said:--
"De par le Roi! Soldats, vous reconnoitrez Monsieur de Daily, votre
capitaine de la compagnie, et vous lui obeirez en tout ce qu'il vous
ordonnera pour le service du Roi, en cette qualité."
Another ruffle on the drums, the company fell back to its place in the
line of the regiment of Dillon, and Arthur Dally was formally installed
its captain.
Though he was known by his education and spirit to have possessed all
those qualities which were requisite for the perfect soldier, uniting
a clear head and solid judgment to a light and joyous, but intrepid
heart, he was found to be equally qualified for the civil service of
the State; thus at the age of five-and-twenty he was sent by Louis XV.
to the court of Russia on a political mission of importance. On this
duty he acquitted himself ably, his fidelity on one hand securing the
confidence of the king his master, by his address and winning manner;
on the other, obtaining the esteem and admiration of the Empress
Catherine, whose husband, Peter the Great, had died about a year
before. On his return to France in 1725 he proceeded to Versailles,
where Louis XV., who had then attained his majority, and taken the
reins of government from the Regent Duke of Orleans, received him in
the most gracious manner, and promoted him to the rank of colonel of
infantry; and at the head of his regiment he had the good fortune to
acquit himself with distinction wherever he was employed.
He stood high in the favour of the two ministers who succeeded the
Duke of Orleans, namely, the Duke de Bourbon and Cardinal Fleury,
then in his seventy-third year, a mild and amiable prelate, under
whose moderate and conciliatory counsels France enjoyed many years
of peace and tranquillity. During service in France, Lally, though
somewhat proud and lofty in his manner, succeeded in gaining the
esteem and affection of the officers of his regiment, among whom--even
in those days of incessant duelling--he was fortunately successful
in maintaining the most perfect union and harmony, while by his
unalterable firmness subordination was equally maintained.
Thus had passed the time until 1745, when Prince Charles Edward Stuart
projected his gallant and unfortunate rising among the clans in the
Scottish Highlands. Entering warmly into the design of restoring the
hapless House of Stuart, under which his father had served long and
faithfully, and with whom he had eaten the bread of exile, Colonel
Lally came boldly over to London. While his ostensible object was to
recover certain lands in Ireland, to which he averred his father had
a claim, his real errand was to serve the young Prince of Scotland,
to animate his friends, to excite the malcontents, to promise money,
titles, and prepare the Jacobites of South Britain for the tempest that
was gathering among the mountains of the north. By his boldness and
determination Lally met with the utmost success in London; but being
somewhat unwary, his plans and presence were discovered and revealed
by a spy to the Duke of Cumberland, who procured immediate orders for
his arrest.
Fortunately, however, Lally escaped those shambles to which "the
butcher" of the clans had doomed him, and escaping to France about the
time Culloden was fought, resumed the command of his regiment.
A war was then waging between France and Britain, and the fleets of the
latter had swept those of the former from the ocean. Admiral Hawke had
destroyed the French fleet at Belleisle, and in that year upwards of
six hundred prizes were taken by our cruisers.
Though the French armies performed some brilliant actions in the
Netherlands, where the Marshal-General, Maurice Count de Saxe, defeated
and covered with disgrace the troops of the Duke of Cumberland, Louis
XV. was compelled by naval disasters, and the internal distresses
of France, to conclude a peace, a congress for which met at
Aix-la-Chapelle in April, 1748; and the definitive treaty was signed in
the following October.
During this period, and until his promotion to the rank of
lieutenant-general and commander-in-chief in the East Indies, the life
of Lally--who had now been created a peer of France--does not present
any circumstance or incident worthy of attention. In 1749 he married.
In 1750 a dispute pregnant with hostility ensued between France and
Britain respecting their mutual claims in North America; various
circumstances which occurred in the East Indies about the same time
confirmed the idea that the short peace concluded in 1748 was about to
end. Each country prepared for war; but though many unfriendly acts
were committed, and bitter recriminations exchanged between the Courts
of London and Versailles, until Britain was threatened with invasion,
as a curb on her aggressive spirit, hostilities were not formally
denounced until the month of June, 1756. The declaration made by George
II. was mild and moderate in tenor and language, but the declaration
promulgated by Louis XV. was full of severity and opprobrium. Prussia
became the ally of the former; Sweden and Russia joined the latter.
In distant regions as well as at home the sanguinary struggle was
maintained, and in America France was stripped of all her possessions
by the army of the heroic Wolfe.
Immediately after the declaration of war, in the month of August, 1756,
the Count de Lally, as Lieutenant-General and Commander-in-Chief of all
his Most Christian Majesty's forces in India, was appointed to conduct
an expedition destined for those burning shores, so far distant, and
even at that period comparatively so little known to Europeans.
In support of this expedition the Court had destined six millions of
livres, six strong battalions of infantry, and three ships of war,
which were to co-operate with such an armament as the French India
Company could furnish; but the whole of the troops did not embark.
On the 20th February, 1757, the Count de Lally, accompanied by his
brother Michael, marched to Brest at the head of two battalions; and
though having only two millions of livres in the military chest,
embarked on board the ships of the Count d'Aché, who immediately put to
sea; but being driven into port again by contrary winds, the squadron
was detained until the 2nd of May.
Meanwhile, Major-General the Chevalier des Soupirs, Lally's second in
command, had already reached the Indian Ocean, having departed from
L'Orient, the principal port of the India Company, on the 30th of the
preceding December, with two battalions and two millions of livres,
with which he touched at the Isle of France, without accident.
The general had very ample and important instructions given to him by
the India Company. Some of these were to the following effect:--
"The Sieur de Lally is authorized to destroy the fortifications of
all maritime settlements which may be taken from the English; it may,
however, be proper to except Vizagapatam, by reason of its being so
nearly situated to Bemelipatana, which in that case would be enriched
by the ruin of Vizagapatam; but as to that, and the demolition of
all other places, the Sieur de Lally is to consult the Governor and
Superior Council of Pondicherry, and to have their opinion in writing;
but, notwithstanding, he is to destroy such places as he shall think
proper, unless strong and sufficient arguments are made use of to the
contrary; such, for example, as the Company being apprehensive for
some of their settlements, and that it would then be thought prudent
and necessary to reserve the power of exchange in case any of them
should be lost. Nevertheless, if the Sieur de Lally should think it
too hazardous to keep a place, or could not do so without dividing or
weakening his army, then his Majesty leaves him to act as he may deem
proper for the good of the service.
"The Sieur de Lally is to allow of no English settlement being
ransomed, as we may well remember that, after the taking of Madras
last war, the English Company in their Council of the 14th of July,
1747, determined that all ransoms made in India should be annulled. In
regard to the English troops, both officers and writers belonging to
the Company, and to the inhabitants of that nation, the Sieur de Lally
is to permit none of them to remain on the coast of Coromandel; he may,
if he pleases, permit the inhabitants to go to England, and order them
to be conducted in armed vessels to St. Helena. But as to the officers,
soldiers, writers, and sailors belonging to the East India Company, he
is to conduct them as soon as possible to the Isle de Bourbon, where
the soldiers and sailors will be permitted to work for the inhabitants
of that place, according to mutual agreement. It is by no means his
Majesty's intention that the English officers, soldiers, and sailors
should be ransomed, as none are to be delivered up but by exchange, man
for man, according to their different ranks and stations.
"If the exchange of prisoners should by chance be settled at home
between the two nations, of which proper notice will be given to the
Sieur de Lally, and that the islands of France and Bourbon should have
more prisoners than it would be convenient to provide for, in that case
it will be permitted to send a certain number to England, in a vessel
armed for the purpose. No English officers, soldiers, &c., are to be
permitted to remain in a place after it is taken; neither are they to
retire to any other of their settlements.
"The Sieur de Lally is not in the least to deviate from the above
instructions and regulations, unless there shall be a stipulation
to the contrary; in which case the Sieur de Lally is faithfully and
honestly to adhere to the capitulation.
"The whole of what has been said before concerns only natives of
England; but as they have in their settlements merchants from all
nations, such as Moors, Armenians, Jews, Pattaners, &c., the Sieur de
Lally is ordered to treat them with humanity, and endeavour by fair
means to engage them to retire to Pondicherry, or any other of the
Company's acquisitions, assuring them at the same time that they will
be protected, and that the same liberty and privileges which they
before possessed among the English will be granted them.
"Among the recruits furnished to complete the regiments of Lorrain and
Berry, there are three hundred men from Fisher's corps, lately raised,
and as it is feared there will be considerable desertions among these
new recruits, the Sieur de Lally may, if he pleases, leave them on the
Isle de France, and replace them from the troops of that island."[1]
Before leaving France, Lally had placed his son, Trophine Gerard,
who had been born at Paris on the 5th March, 1751, at the College of
Harcourt, intending that he should ultimately follow the profession of
arms.
Though impetuous and at times apt to be somewhat overbearing, Lally
was eminently fitted for command. He possessed secrecy, with a ready
facility for quick and judicious decision. His talent was evinced by
the manner in which he established magazines, extended his posts and
defences, and made himself acquainted with the character and features
of the country which was to be the scene of his future operations. His
lofty demeanour, talent, tact, and bravery inspired his troops with
confidence and an assurance of conquest. If Lally was fond of glory,
he was also fond of flattery; and though a strict disciplinarian, he
was somewhat too partial, perhaps, to levying contribution on the
conquered provinces; but while his enemies in after years averred that
he was grasping, they never denied that he was lavish and liberal when
the king's service required him by spies to obtain intelligence of the
strength and designs of the enemy.
The Count d'Aché, Chef d'Escadre, encountered such adverse winds that
he was nearly twelve months on his voyage; thus the Chevalier des
Soupirs, having wearied of waiting at the Mauritius, sailed towards
the coast of Hindostan, and reaching Pondicherry (or _Puducheri_),
disembarked his troops.
This town was the capital of the French settlements in India, being
restored to them by the Dutch after the Treaty of Ryswick. It occupied
a good position in the rich, fertile, and populous Carnatic, a
country studded by an incredible number of forts and strongholds.
Their erection was an indispensable necessity in a level district
full of open towns, subject to the sudden attacks of hordes of native
cavalry. The sovereigns of the Carnatic must have possessed at one
period immense wealth and power, for the number and magnitude of their
pagodas, and the indications that remain of ancient riches, grandeur,
population, industry and art, impress the mind with wonder.
At this crisis the funds and forces of the British in that part of
India were so small, that they could scarcely bring one hundred
soldiers into the field. Madras, one of their principal places,
sixty-three miles distant, was an open town; Fort St. David was in
ruins, with a garrison of only sixty invalids. A fortnight would have
enabled the Chevalier, with his 2000 men, to reduce the whole coast
of Coromandel; but M. des Soupirs was quite unskilled in the art of
carrying on war in a country so new to him, and remained inactive,
though the French had many losses to repair, having been recently
driven from all their wealthy settlements in Bengal by the victorious
English.
Eight months after his arrival, on the 25th April, 1758, the Chef
d'Escadre anchored in the roadstead before the sandy plain occupied by
Pondicherry, and Lally disembarking his troops and treasure, marched
into the town, the governor of which, M. de Leyrit, received him with
a salute of cannon. At the peace of Amiens, the French population of
Pondicherry amounted to 25,000, exclusive of the blacks, who were
treble that number. Its revenue was then 40,000 pagodas; but it was
a place destitute of natural advantages, its vicinity producing only
palm-trees, millet, and a few herbs.
Weary of his long voyage, and anxious to fulfil his orders, which
comprehended the total destruction of every British fortification that
fell into his power, the ardent and gallant Lally lost not an hour in
preparing for active operations. Next day, the 26th, he returned on
board to sail for Cudalore, and in one hour after a powerful British
fleet assailed the ships of Count d'Aché in the roadstead, where a
French 74-gun ship was taken; but the rest fought a passage to the
seaward, and favoured by the wind, and by superior sailing, anchored
off Cudalore, a town situated fifteen miles from Pondicherry, on the
western shore of the Bay of Bengal.
This little town, which occupies the banks of the Pennar, had been
obtained by the English East India Company from the Rajah of Gingee,
so early as 1681, for the site of a factory, and had been fortified.
Its garrison consisted only of ten invalids; but being assisted by the
inhabitants, these brave fellows made so stout a resistance, that Lally
was occupied three days in taking it. From thence he marched to Fort
St. David, a settlement on the Carnatic coast, obtained by the English
from a Mahratta rajah in 1691, and besieging it, after being seventeen
days in open trenches, exposed to the broiling sun by noon and the
baleful dews by night, gained it by capitulation on the 2nd of June,
and levelled all its fortifications to the ground.
On the 10th he marched back to Pondicherry, and having resolved to
assail Madras, despatched an officer in a small vessel to his naval
Chef d'Escadre, with instructions to return and co-operate with him.
But Admiral Pocock, who commanded the British squadron in those seas,
had defeated M. d'Aché in two engagements, and by driving him sixty
miles to the windward, had nearly cut off all communication between him
and the army. And now the governor of Pondicherry announced that the
town and its vicinity could not subsist Lally's 4000 Frenchmen for more
than fifteen days. On this he was compelled to march into the little
kingdom of Tanjore (or Tanjowar), which lay one hundred and fifty miles
southward, and there quarter his troops during the stormy and rainy
season, while the naval squadron took refuge in port. The advance into
Tanjowar was not made without a due pretence of wrong to adjust, for
the rajah had refused to pay a government debt, which M. de Leyrit
assured Count Lally to be more than due.
The discharge of five pieces of cannon against his little capital
compelled the rajah to pay down treasure to the amount of 440,000
livres, and afford free-quarters to the French troops for two
months, until tidings arrived that 800 British were marching against
Pondicherry; upon which Lally immediately abandoned Tanjowar, and
advanced to the relief of the Chevalier des Soupirs, who with a slender
force was timidly preparing to evacuate the capital of French India.
On Lally approaching, on the 31st of August, the British detachment
fell back on Madras, and now our indefatigable Irishman, full of the
most sanguine hopes of expelling them from the vast peninsula of
Hindostan, at once made new preparations for investing Fort St. George,
their principal settlement on the coast of Coromandel; but scarcity of
money, and the improper conduct of the naval Chef d'Escadre, retarded
the operations, frustrated the bold intentions of Lally, and ultimately
betrayed them to the enemy.
While sparing no exertions to officer and equip a body of sepoy
infantry, he seized a Dutch ship, in which he found a sufficient
quantity of specie to enable him to attack Madras; he then sent a
message to the Count d'Aché not to leave the coast; but the count
replied, that he required a recruit of seamen, and must return to
France. Alarmed by such a threat, Lally offered him half of his
soldiers for the marine service; but deaf alike to threats and
entreaties, the count sailed for the Straits of Madagascar on the 1st
of September, and left Lally to cope single handed with the British
forces.
On summoning to his presence M. de Bussy, who commanded the French
troops in that extensive region named the Deccan (or Country of the
South), and M. Moracin, who commanded at the seaport of Masulipatnam,
he found these officers were somewhat influenced by the same pride and
disobedience which characterized the conduct of Count d'Aché; and thus,
before they would obey, and march against Madras, they required that
Lally should embody an additional thousand men. He immediately ordered
M. Moracin to return to his post, which the British were approaching.
M. Moracin dared to refuse or delay, and taken by surprise during his
absence, Masulipatnam was lost to France for ever.
In the month of October, Lally, with his slender force, the flower of
which was the valiant Regiment de Lorraine, marched without opposition
into the extensive district of Arcot (which seven years before had been
overrun by Colonel Clive), and after remaining there at free-quarters
for five days, marched back to Pondicherry.
The army was now totally destitute of pay, and the commissariat had no
supply but plunder, while the departure of the Count d'Aché cut off
all succour or retreat by the seaward. Though numerous, the troubles
of Lally were just commencing. Discouraged and disunited by the naval
disasters of d'Aché, the French officers were alternately fired with
ardour and depressed by despair. M. de Bussy offered to raise 400,000
livres in three hours, if he was permitted to re-enter the Deccan
with a body of troops; but being loth to divide his little force, and
believing the result to be incredible, Lally wisely declined. De Bussy
then informed him that he had 240,000 livres belonging to the East
India Company, which were at his service if _he_ would be responsible
for them; but Lally still more wisely declined to compromise his
honour by appropriating the money of the merchants to the service of
the nation. He resumed his preparations for the siege of Madras while
the British fleet was absent from its shore; but this measure was
vehemently opposed by the Governor of Pondicherry, M. Duval de Leyrit,
who urged the wretched state of the commissariat and the empty military
chest. Lally's Irish spirit could ill brook such disputations, and,
"pay or no pay," he was for marching at once.
However, he was compelled to take the opinion of the General Council
of Pondicherry, some of whom adhered to De Leyrit; but five, headed by
M. le Comte d'Estaigne, offered their plate, to the value of 80,000
livres, towards the expense of the expedition. The true and generous
Lally gave, from his private purse, 140,000 livres; and having thus in
some measure collected the sinews of war, with his small head-quarter
force, 2700 French, and a body of sepoys, he advanced towards Madras
early in December.
A march of sixty-three miles brought Lally, on the 12th day of the
month, in sight of the town, which, by its strength, wealth, and annual
revenue in calicos and muslins, was of such great consequence, even
then, to the growing English East India Company. The diamond mines
were only a week's journey distant, and the rumour of their priceless
wealth, and splendid wonders, animated the French soldiers, as in three
divisions they marched across the sunny plains of Choultry.
Madras, or Fort St George, was divided into two parts; one called
_the Black_, and the other _the White_ town. The former, Madraspatam,
had been totally destroyed by the French in 1744, when they levelled
to the ground every building that stood within three hundred yards
of the fort. The walls of the latter, which rose above the centre
of the English town were--as dispatches relate--all built of hard,
iron-coloured stone, and defended by four gigantic bastions. The inner
fort, or citadel, had a front of one hundred and eight yards; the outer
fort consisted of half-moons, curtain-walls, and flankers, which, like
the rusty-coloured ramparts of the town were studded by an incredible
number of cannon. In short, the aspect of Madras, with its mansions
covered by snow-white _chunam_, is delightful from the ocean, and
magnificent from the land. On the latter, its walls are moated by a
river, which falls into the sea on that flat and sandy shore, where a
white and furious surf is ever rolling in mountains of foam.
As he crossed the plains, Lally was briskly cannonaded by the
field-pieces of the enemy, and lost many officers and men; but,
advancing steadily, took possession of Ogmore and Meliapore (or San
Thomé), an old town of the Portuguese, who had built there a large
church above a grave reputed to be that of St. Thomas, who had been
murdered by a tribe that dwelt in the vicinity, and whose _right legs_,
after that sacrilegious act, were, according to Dr. Fryar, swollen to
the size of those of elephants.
Colonel Lawrence, a gallant and resolute officer, who commanded the
garrison of Madras, was ably seconded by Pigot the governor, by Colonel
Draper, Major Caillaud, and other gentlemen. Thus Lally encountered
the most determined resistance. The garrison consisted of 5000 men; of
these, 1600 were regular troops of the British line, 300 were sepoys,
and 400 were servants of the East India Company. Lawrence retired to
the island in order to prevent the French from obtaining possession
of the island bridge, and ordered all the posts to be occupied in
the Black Town, which was triangularly shaped, and surrounded by a
fortified wall.
At daybreak, on the morning of the 14th December, Lally sent forward
M. de Rillon at the head of his regiment, which assailed the Black
Town with great spirit, and after giving and receiving several severe
discharges of musketry, during a contest of some hours, gained the
place, driving back the British, who retired by detachments into the
fort or citadel of Madras. This successful movement was followed by
an advance of the Regiment de Lorraine, to keep the ground De Rillon
had won; but within an hour, a grand _sortie_ was made upon them by a
body of British infantry, led by Colonel Draper, who behaved with great
personal bravery.
Shrouded in smoke, he led a charge of bayonets against the Regiment
de Lorraine; a furious _mêlée_ ensued, and the French must have been
driven back, or cut off, had not Lally sent forward another detachment,
with some sepoys, to sustain the troops of M. de Rillon. A great
number of officers and men were shot or bayoneted on both sides; but
Colonel Draper was compelled to retreat, for his grenadiers gave way
in a somewhat discreditable manner. After this, the garrison of Madras
contented themselves by defending their works, being too weak to engage
in _sorties_ beyond them.
Colonel, afterwards Sir William Draper, was that _preux chevalier_
who afterwards conquered Manilla, and became a paramount judge in all
matters of military etiquette, and who, in his celebrated letter to
Junius, expressed a hope that he would never see officers pushed into
the British army who had nothing to lose but their _swords_.
Thus encouraged, by hemming in the enemy, Lally continued to push his
approaches, and build batteries. Meanwhile M. de Lequille, another
Chef d'Escadre, had arrived at the Isle de France, with four ships
of war and three millions of livres, destined for the service of the
French India Company. When about to leave the isle for the roads of
Pondicherry, he unfortunately met the discomfited fleet of the Count
d'Aché, who, being his superior officer, prevented him from proceeding,
and removed the treasure on board his own ship, taking upon himself to
send only _one_ million of livres to the Count de Lally, in a small
frigate, which reached Pondicherry on the 21st December, 1758.
This supply enabled Lally to press the siege with greater vigour,
and to pay his French soldiers and Indian levies a portion of their
arrears; but the blacks were of little service to him during the
operations. M. Lally erected several batteries against the Black Town
and Fort St. George; one of these, called the Grand Battery, was 450
yards distance from the glacis. They opened on the 6th January, 1759;
after which they maintained a continued discharge of shot and shells
for twenty days, the pioneers pushing on the trenches until their sap
had reached the base of the glacis, within pistol-shot of the parapets.
Then Lally formed another and loftier battery, on which he placed four
pieces of heavy cannon. It opened on the 31st of January; but for five
consecutive days the artillerists were compelled to close up their
embrasures with fascines and earth, for the superior fire of the fort
was not to be withstood, and it soon compelled them to abandon their
redoubt. The Grand Battery, however, still continued a fire, which
was so well directed, that it dismounted or broke twenty-six pieces
of cannon and three mortars, beating down the wall and effecting a
considerable breach.
During these operations, Lally had somewhat needlessly bombarded the
town, to terrify the inhabitants, and demolished a number of their
houses; but the precautions of Governor Pigot, the vigilance, valour,
and experience of Colonels Draper, Lawrence, and Major Brereton
repelled every attack; and thus, after the 5th of February, the fire
of Lally's batteries gradually diminished from twenty-three to six
pieces of cannon. Money, powder, and shot became scarce together; he
had lost many of his bravest men; two months had elapsed, and still the
British standard waved above the fort of Madras. During this period
the remonstrances which Lally sent frequently to France for succour,
describe the deep anxiety he felt for the success of a cause in which
his honour was implicated; and so keen and bitter did this feeling
become, that at times, when aggravated by an illness incident to the
climate, his reports and dispatches are remarkable for containing
occasional sentences expressive of horror and distraction.
His general chagrin at the conduct of Count d'Aché and others is
strongly portrayed in the following letter, which he addressed from the
trenches at Madras to the Governor of Pondicherry, and which had been
intercepted:--
"M. DUVAL DE LEYRIT,--A good blow might be struck here; there is in
the roads a 20-gun ship laden with all the riches of Madras; she
will remain there till the 20th. The _Expedition_ is just arrived,
but M. Gerlin is not a man to attack her, for she made him run away
once before. The _Bristol_, on the other hand, did but just make her
appearance before San Thomé, and on the vague report of thirteen
ships coming from Porto Nova, she took fright, and, after landing the
provisions with which she was laden, she would not stay even long
enough to take on board twelve of her own guns, which she had lent us
for the siege (of Madras).
"If I was to judge of the point of honour of the Company's officers, I
would break him like glass, as well as some others of them.
"The _Fidele_, or the _Haerlem_, or even the aforesaid _Bristol_,
with her twelve guns restored to her, would be sufficient to make
themselves masters of the British ship, if they could get to windward
of her in the night. Maugendre and Tremillier are said to be good men,
and were they employed to transport 200 wounded we have here, their
service would be of importance. We remain in the same position; the
breach made these fifteen days; all the time within fifteen toises of
the place, and never holding up our heads to look at it. I believe we
must, on our return to Pondicherry, learn some _other trade_, for this
of war requires too much patience.
"Of the 1500 sepoys who attended our army, I believe nearly 800 are
employed upon the road to Pondicherry, laden with pepper, sugar, and
other goods; and as for the coolies, they have been employed for
the same purpose since the first days we came here. I am taking my
measures from this day to set fire to the Black Town and to blow up
the powder-mills.
"You will never imagine that fifty French deserters and 100 Swiss
are actually stopping the progress of 2000 men of the king's and
Company's troops, which are still here existing, notwithstanding the
exaggerated accounts that every one makes, according to his own fancy,
of the slaughter that has been made among them; and you will be still
more surprised if I tell you that, were it not for the combats and
four battles we sustained, and for the batteries which failed, or
(to speak more properly) which were unskilfully made, we should not
have lost fifty men from the commencement of the siege to this day.
I have written to M. de Larche, that if he persists in not coming
here, let who will raise money upon the Poleagers for me, I will
not do it! And I renounce--as I informed you a month ago--meddling
directly or indirectly with anything whatever that may relate to your
administration, civil or military. For I would rather go and command
the Caffres of Madagascar than remain in this Sodom, which the fire of
the English must sooner or later destroy, if that from heaven should
not. I have the honour to be, &c.,
"Lally.
"P.S.--I think it necessary to apprise you that, as M. des Soupirs
has refused to take upon him the command of this army, which I have
offered him, and which he is empowered to accept, by having received
from the Court a duplicate of my commission, you must necessarily,
with the council, take it upon you. For my part, I undertake only
to bring it back either to Arcot or Sadraste. Send, therefore, your
orders, or come yourselves to command it, for I shall quit it upon my
arrival there.--L."
Though his cannonade had been diminished to only six pieces, Lally had
advanced his sap along the seashore by cutting a trench about ten feet
broad, with traverses to cover the soldiers, until he embraced the
whole north-east angle of the covered way, from whence the Regiment
de Lorraine, by a well directed mousquetade, drove the besieged in
disorder. An attempt to open a passage into the ditch by mining failed,
for the mine was sprung without effect.
Meanwhile Major Caillaud and Captain Preston, a Scottish officer, with
a body of sepoys, another of Indian cavalry, and some European soldiers
drawn from the British garrisons at Trinchinopoli and Chingalaput
(which Clive when a captain had taken from the French in 1752), hovered
on the roads a few miles from Madras, blocking up the avenues, cutting
off succour and provisions from Pondicherry, thus compelling Lally
four times (as his better states) to drive them back by detachments.
These measures successfully retarded the siege until the 16th February,
when, at the very time he was preparing for a grand assault at point
of the bayonet, his Britannic Majesty's ship _Queensberry_, commanded
by Captain Kempenfeldt, the Company's ship _Revenge_, and four other
vessels, having on board 600 men of the 79th, or Colonel Draper's
regiment, with a great supply of provision of every kind, came to
anchor in the roadstead, and the troops were immediately disembarked
and marched into Madras. The rage and mortification of Lally were now
complete!
He had encountered innumerable difficulties occasioned by the scarcity
of money and munition, by the wretched supplies of the Government
commissaries and contractors, by the conduct of Count d'Aché and
others, by the sinking of his soldiers' courage before the obstinate
defence of the besieged; and now, with Kempenfeldt's arrival all hope
of success vanished. After maintaining a smart cannonade until the
night of the 16th closed over Madras, Lally abandoned his trenches, and
was compelled by scarcity of horses to leave forty pieces of cannon
behind him: he blew up the powder-mills of Ogmore and retreated into
Arcot.
Soon after this siege had been abandoned, the British received from
home another reinforcement of 600 infantry, and on the 16th April the
main body of their troops, which had been centred at Madras for its
protection, took the field in three divisions against Lally, under the
command of Major Brereton. The Chevalier des Soupirs felt the first
brunt of this movement, being driven by the Major from Conjeveram, a
large and handsome town, principally inhabited by Brahmins, which lies
forty-four miles from Madras, and had the chief manufacture of turbans
and red handkerchiefs. Major Forde, with another division, took by
assault the town of Masulipatnam, the governor of which, M. Moracin,
was still absent, as before related. The garrison, which was commanded
by the Marquis de Conflans, had been weakened by the withdrawal of its
soldiers to the siege of Madras. Thus the commerce of Britain secured
a sea-coast of at least eight hundred miles in length along a country
teeming with wealth and commerce, while that of France was almost
confined to the narrow limits of Pondicherry. The third division of
British under Colonel Clive was meanwhile advancing from the province
of Bengal to assist the Rajah of Visanapore, who had driven the French
out of Vizagapatam, and hoisted thereon the British flag.
The first severe shock sustained by the arms of Britain in the East
was given by the gallant Lally in person. Sensible of the importance
of such a place as Conjeveram, which with the fort of Chingelpel,
commanded all the adjacent country and secured the British conquests to
the northward, he marched towards Major Brereton, and took up a strong
position at Vandivash. There he cantoned his troops until the month
of September, when Brereton, on receiving 300 men under Major Gordon,
from Colonel Coote's Bengalese force, resolved on beating up the French
in their quarters. Accordingly, on the 14th March he advanced from
Conjeveram, at the head of 400 European infantry, 7000 sepoys, seventy
European and 300 native horsemen, with fourteen pieces of artillery.
After capturing the fort of Trivitar, he advanced against the village
of Vandivash, where Lally, although still struggling with a severe
illness, had formed a strong intrenched camp, the lines of which were
protected by a redoubt commanded by a rajah, and mounted with twenty
pieces of cannon worked by Indians, under the directions of a single
French cannonier.
At two on the morning of the 30th September the British attacked the
village on three points, and on all with equal fury and determination.
The French infantry, 1000 strong, made a spirited resistance; and
the moment daylight broke, the guns of the rajah poured a storm of
grape-shot upon the ranks of the enemy.
Lally did all that ability and gallantry could inspire to animate his
troops; but being deserted by his black pioneers, who (like those of
Brereton) fled at the moment of attack, the French were discouraged,
and retired beyond a deep dry ditch, from whence the regiments of Lally
and Lorraine made a succession of desperate sallies on the British,
until, seeing that the column of Anglo-Indian horse were watching for
an opportunity to fall upon his flanks, Lally, to preserve his little
force from utter ruin, brought up his reserve to cover the retreat, and
fell back, after the loss of many gallant chevaliers and 400 soldiers.
Brereton and Gordon remained encamped in sight of the fort for some
days; but the approach of the rainy season compelled them to retire
into Conjeveram.
The Fort of Vandivash was afterwards garrisoned by French and sepoys,
while another column of King Louis's troops assembled in Arcot, under
Brigadier-General the Marquis de Bussy, who endeavoured to levy as
many sepoys as possible. These native troops, whose now familiar name
is derived from _Sepahe_, the Indian word for a feudatory chief or
military tenant, have ever made excellent soldiers, having an inborn
predilection for arms. The success at Vandivash, for giving the British
even a _check_ was now deemed almost equal to a victory, made Lally
conceive the idea of besieging Trinchinopoli; but again the folly or
the treachery of the naval Chef d'Escadre baffled his intentions.
After having a third engagement with the British fleet on the 4th
September, when with eleven ships of the line he was as usual defeated
by Admiral Pocock with nine, the Count d'Aché, on the 17th, reached
the roads of Pondicherry, from whence he wrote to the Count de Lally,
then in position before Vandivash, offering to place at his disposal,
for the king's service, 800,000 livres in piastres and diamonds, being
the plunder of a British ship which he had taken at sea, and which
he begged the lieutenant-general to receive as part payment of the
two millions so improperly detained in the preceding year at the Isle
of France. He concluded his dispatch by a notification that on the
following day, the 18th September, he would sail towards Madagascar.
At this time, when British valour was bearing all before it; when
the powerful fortress of Karical (which the King of Tanjowar had
ceded to France in 1739) was about to fall, and he lost, with all the
fertile district around it; when the united fleets of Admirals Pocock,
K.B., and Sir Samuel Cornish were sweeping along the shores of the
Carnatic, reducing many places of minor importance, and by their cannon
everywhere beating down the _Fleur-de-lys_ of France; when Colonel
Eyre Coote was pressing the French and their allies along the frontier
of Bengal, and when the Prince of Vizanapore and other native rajahs
were in open revolt against King Louis,--the announcement of the Chef
d'Escadre filled the colonists with fear and confusion. Indignant and
exasperated, Lally would have left the camp and sought Count d'Aché in
person; but at that crisis, being so reduced by sickness that he could
not quit his bed, he sent a deputation of field officers to represent
the necessity of his remaining in the immediate vicinity of the
Carnatic coast; of his co-operating with the land forces, and conjuring
him by all means to suspend the execution of a design so pregnant
with disaster to the Indian interests of his Most Christian Majesty.
But nothing that these officers could urge, or their united eloquence
suggest, would avert the fatal purpose of the Count d'Aché, who put
to sea, and once more left the disheartened soldiers of King Louis to
their fate.
Immediately upon this Lally assembled the Council and drew up a
solemn PROTEST against the unaccountable conduct and sudden departure
of the Chef d'Escadre and his fleet, proclaiming that he--and _he
alone_--would be responsible if Pondicherry, the capital of French
India, with all its territory fell into the hands of the British army
and revolted rajahs. The "protest" was dated on the 17th of September,
1759, and was unanimously signed in the Hall of Fort Lewis, at
Pondicherry, by Lally himself and the following gentlemen:--
"Duval de Leyrit, Renaut, Barthelmy, Chevalier des Soupirs, Michael
Lally, Bussy, Du Bois, Carrière, Verdières, Duré, Gaddeville, Du
Passage, Beausset, Renaut, De la Salle, Guillart, Porcher, Père
Dominique, _Capucin Prêtre de la Paroisse de Notre Dame des Anges,
F.S. Lavacier, Supérieur Général des Jesuites Français dans les Indes,
L. Rathon, Supérieur Général des Missions Etrangères_, Poitier de
Lorme, Duchatel, Audouart, Aimar, Combaut d'Authenil, Goupil, Keisses,
J.C. Bon, De Wilst, Banal, Rauly, Termelin, Sainte Paul, J.B. Launay,
Deshayes, Fischer, Du Laurent, Audager du Petit Val, D'Arcy, Medin,
Dioré, Bertrand, Legris, Miran, Bourville, F. Nicolas, Du Plan, De
Laval, Borée, D. l'Arché, Bayelleon de Guillette."
The count had already sailed; but strong currents and adverse winds,
however, met his fleet, which was driven far to the north; thus the
protest of Lally overtook him at sea. Influenced by its tenor, he
returned to Pondicherry, and after remaining one week in the roadstead,
again departed for his favourite island of Madagascar, and for _sixteen
months_ Lally and his soldiers heard no more of him.
The Governor and Council of the British India Company at Madras having
heard that Lally had sent a detachment of his forces southward and
threatened Trinchinopoli, determined that Colonel Eyre Coote, who had
recently arrived in the East, should take the field and drive it back.
The French officers had been fortunate in acquiring the favour of many
of the Indian chiefs. Thus in 1755 the King of Travancore employed M.
de Launay to discipline 10,000 Naires of Malabar in the mode of the
European infantry; and thus M. de Lally, who had won the alliance of
Salubetzingue, sovereign of the whole country, expected the arrival
of his brother Bassuletzingue with a column of 12,000 Indians. When
more than a hundred miles distant from the French army, the prince
sent a Rissaldar to request that an officer of rank with a body of
French should be sent to facilitate their junction. Lally immediately
despatched the Marquis de Bussy on this service, with a detachment
which joined the prince beneath the walls of Arcot. In twelve days all
that was necessary might have been done; but the loitering marquis spun
out the time to no less than two-and-forty. While Lally was totally
unable to account for his absence, a dangerous ferment arose in the
camp of Prince Bassuletzingue, there being no pay for his soldiers, as
M. d'Aché's diamonds were yet unsold; and during the delay the British
troops under Colonel Coote (aware that Lally could not begin a campaign
without cavalry) suddenly made themselves masters of Vandivash on the
30th November, after having breached the walls. Thus, by the indolence
of M. de Bussy one of the most important fortresses on the coast was
lost, and its garrison of 900 men taken, with forty-nine pieces of
cannon and a vast quantity of ammunition.
On the 10th December they took Cosangoli, which was bravely defended by
a mixed garrison of French and sepoys under Colonel O'Kennely, an Irish
officer; who, after his guns were dismounted, capitulated and marched
out with all the honours of war. With 100 Frenchmen he joined Lally,
but 500 of his sepoys were disarmed and dismissed by Coote.
The double and dangerous success of this vigilant and enterprising
officer compelled Lally to attempt a decisive demonstration for the
recapture of Vandivash; but Coote, who had completely superseded
Brereton in the command, was an officer who ably defended the conquests
his bravery had made.
Having now somewhat recovered his health and strength, on the 10th
January, 1760, the Lieutenant-General du Roi marched towards the
captured fortress at the head of 2200 Frenchmen, and about 10,000
native troops. Among the latter were 1800 blacks called the Regiment de
Bussy, 300 Caffres, and 2000 cavalry obtained from a Mahratta chief,
with whom Lally had concluded a treaty, as soon as he found himself
disappointed by Prince Bassuletzingue. They were all clothed and armed
after the picturesque fashion of their native country (which extends
across the whole peninsula of Hindostan) and were led by a Rissaldar,
or commander of independent horse. He had twenty-five pieces of cannon
with him.
He came in sight of the British on the banks of the Poliar, a broad
and sandy river, the bed of which was quite dry; though in the middle
of October, when the winter usually commences, and the rain descends
in torrents, the river is sometimes half-a-mile broad, and flows
towards the ocean with the greatest fury. There the adverse hosts
hovered in sight of each other, until after succeeding in destroying
some magazines which were in Colonel Coote's rear (the loss of which
prevented his troops from acting in the field for some days after),
Lally with his 12,000 men suddenly invested Vandivash, against which
his batteries opened with such effect, that a broad and practicable
breach was soon made in the outer bastion, and now it was hoped that by
one bold assault the captured fortress would be re-won, and with it the
entire disputed territory.
But at the very time when Lally was about to lead on the assault, Coote
with 1700 European and 3000 black troops, fourteen pieces of cannon,
and one howitzer, came suddenly upon his rear to relieve the garrison.
Exposed to the cannon of the fort on one side, and to the troops of
Coote on the other, Lally found himself critically situated; but,
turning like a lion at bay, he drew off from his trenches, and rapidly
formed in order of battle to face this new enemy, on the 21st of
January.
Both armies were in high spirits and eager to engage.
About nine in the morning they were two miles apart. Coote having
advanced with his cavalry and five companies of sepoys, Lally sent
forward his Mahratta horse to meet them; but these, on being galled
by two pieces of cannon, retired with precipitation. During this the
colonel had succeeded in completely reconnoitring the position of Count
Lally, whose forces were ably and judiciously placed, till the British
made a movement to the right, which obliged him to alter and extend his
left flank.
While the lines were three-quarters of a mile apart the cannonading
began on both sides, and was continued with deadly precision and effect
until noon, when Lally sent forward a small party of his European
cavalry to charge the British left. A few companies of sepoys and two
guns sent forward by Coote soon drove these in rear of their own army,
and as the forces still continued approaching, by one o'clock the roar
of musketry became general along both lines from flank to flank, and
that broad plain on which a cloudless sun was shining became shrouded
in snow-white smoke.
Undaunted by the cowardice of his cavalry, the hot-blooded Lally now
threw himself into the line of his infantry, and at the head of the
Regiment of Lorraine fell impetuously upon the British. Colonel Coote
was on foot and at the head of his own regiment to receive them.
After giving and receiving two discharges of musketry, the Regiment de
Lorraine rushed on with a fury that threatened to sweep all before it.
Lally was in front, sword in hand; the bayonets crossed--the _British
line was broken_; but though a momentary confusion followed, it was not
driven back. A series of bloody single combats ensued, with the charged
bayonet and clubbed musket; but these were of brief duration; for in
three minutes the Regiment of Lorraine was broken in turn, routed, and
driven back in headlong confusion, over a field strewed with their own
killed and wounded. The explosion of a tumbril in rear of the French
line created an additional confusion, of which Coote lost not a moment
in taking advantage.
He ordered Major Brereton to advance with the regiment of Colonel
Draper (who had returned to Europe for the benefit of his health),
and by wheeling to the right to fall on the French left, and seize a
fortified post which they were on the point of abandoning.
This service was performed with the utmost bravery; the French left was
routed and driven pell-mell upon their centre. Draper's regiment was
the 79th, not the present _Cameron Highlanders_, but a corps which was
disbanded in 1763. All had now become confusion among the enemy, but
the gallant and accomplished Brereton fell mortally wounded.
"Follow--follow!" he exclaimed to some soldiers who loitered near
him; "follow and leave me to my fate!" He soon expired; led by Major
Monsoon, the regiment advanced impetuously on, and after a vain and
desperate attempt, made by the Chevalier de Bussy, with Lally's
regiment, to repel it, the French and their allies were completely
routed in every direction by two o'clock in the afternoon. The Regiment
de Lally was almost cut to pieces; the horse of Brigadier-General M. de
Bussy was shot under him, and he was taken prisoner by Major Monsoon,
to whom he surrendered his sword.
Lally having brought up his fugitive cavalry, formed them in rear of
his infantry, and enabled these to make a secure though precipitate
retreat, leaving on the field a thousand men killed and wounded, with
fifty prisoners, including the Marquis de Bussy, Quartermaster-General
le Chevalier de Gadville, Lieutenant-Colonel Murphy, three captains,
five lieutenants, many other officers, and twenty-two pieces of cannon.
Coote lost 260 killed and wounded. Among the former was the gallant
Brereton. Maréchal Charles Grant, Vicomte de Vaux, affirms that the
losses were equal on both sides.
Covering the foot by the cavalry, Lally conducted his routed forces
with considerable skill and good order to Pondicherry, while Coote
lost not a moment in pursuing the advantage he had gained. Dispatching
the Baron Vasserot towards that place with 1000 horse and 300 sepoys,
and with orders to ravage and lay waste all the French territory in
and around it, he advanced in person against Chittipett, a small town
and fort in the Carnatic, which, after a defence of two days, was
surrendered on the 29th January, 1760, by the Chevalier de Tillie, who
with his garrison remained prisoners of war.
On the 2nd February he reduced the fort of Timmary on the Coromandel
coast, and pushing on to Arcot, the capital, opened his batteries and
dug his approaches within sixty yards of the glacis. The garrison,
which consisted of 250 French with 300 sepoys, defended the place until
the 10th, when they surrendered as prisoners of war, delivering up
twenty-two pieces of cannon and a large store of warlike munition.
Thus the campaign ended gloriously for Britain by the conquest of
Arcot, and by hemming up the indefatigable but most unfortunate Lally
in the fortifications of Pondicherry, the capital of French India,
which was soon fated to become the last scene of his valour and
achievement.
Surat, a place of great consequence on the coast of Malabar, was taken
by a Bombay detachment, which destroyed the French factory. The English
had obtained a settlement there from King Jehan Jeer in the year 1020
of the Hijerah. By sea the operations had been carried on with equal
vigour. On the 4th September, 1759, an engagement had taken place
between the fleets of Count d'Aché and Admiral Pocock, who obliged the
former to sheer off with great loss. In April, the fortress of Karical
had fallen, and by that time Admirals Pocock and Cornish had united
their fleets in the roads of Pondicherry, within the gates of which
nearly all that remained of the French forces in India were shut up, or
encamped four leagues in front of it, under the command of the Count de
Lally, barring the way by which he knew the British would march to an
attack.
In Karical 174 pieces of cannon were taken, and to add to the disasters
of the French, one of their 64-gun ships (the _Haerlem_) was burned in
the roads of Pondicherry by the British cruisers.
Encouraged by his long career of success, and by the pecuniary and
political embarrassments of his enemy, Colonel Coote resolved on
investing Pondicherry. The approach of the rainy season, together with
the well-known reputation for skill, bravery, and resolution enjoyed
by the general of the now almost ruined French India Company, caused
a regular siege to be considered impracticable; "it was therefore
determined," says the Sieur Charles Grant, "to block up the place by
sea and land."
Lally had only 1500 Frenchmen with him; these were the remnants of
nine different corps of the King's and India Company's Service; the
cavalry, artillery, and invalids of the latter; the Creole volunteers
of the Isle de Bourbon; the king's artillery; the Regiments of Lally,
Lorraine, Mazinis, and the battalion of India.
The British armaments on the coast were now much more considerable. On
the land were four battalions of the line, and by sea were seventeen
sail of the line, carrying 1038 pieces of cannon, the smallest being
three 50-gun ships.
As the fortress of Pondicherry was as impregnable as nature and art
could make it, Coote was perfectly aware that it could only be reduced
by the most severe famine. It was also his opinion that with such an
antagonist as Arthur Lally, a formal siege with regular approaches
would prove perfectly futile with any force he could assemble; for,
in addition to his French comrades, Lally had a strong force of armed
sepoys, and a vast store of warlike munition, including nearly 700
pieces of cannon, and many millions of ball cartridges, all made up
for service. The ramparts bore 508 pieces (independent of mortars),
the walls were five miles in circumference, and had a deep broad moat
before them. There were six gates and thirteen bastions. The cavalry
of the French India Company openly deserted in great numbers, and were
received with rewards by Colonel Coote. This exasperated Lally so much,
that he erected gibbets all round Pondicherry in order to deter others
from leaving the town or the lines before it.
To victual the place completely for the inhabitants and his garrison
was the first care of Lally; for the town was large, and possessed an
overplus of population, which gave him infinite cause for trouble and
anxiety.
Pondicherry was surrounded by a number of forts, the defence of which,
in all former sieges, had occasioned the inhabitants the utmost
difficulty; but these were rapidly reduced, as all the adjacent country
was in the hands of the British. The fleet of Sir Samuel Cornish came
to anchor on the 17th March, and while Coote approached nearer by land,
Lally, in order to retard him, retired from position to position,
bravely disputing every inch of ground, until, in front of Pondicherry,
he formed his famous lines, which he defended for three months with
admirable skill and valour, thereby gaining sufficient time to have
victualled the town for the half of a year. While thus holding the foe
in check, he concluded a treaty with the Rajah of Mysore, who pledged
himself to supply Pondicherry with provisions; but failed to perform
his promise, and departed with his people. A short time afterwards,
Lally resolved to attempt a _sortie_, and on the night of the 2nd
September, 1760, he made a furious attack on Coote's advanced posts,
but was repulsed with great loss, and had seventeen pieces of cannon
taken. Coote lost but a few privates.
The last of the fortified boundary, or chain of redoubts, was carried
by storm on the 10th September; the French were driven in, and Coote
had forty killed and seventy wounded; Major Monsoon had one of his legs
torn off by a cannon-shot.
A body of Scottish Highlanders, who had just been landed from the
_Sandwich_ East Indiaman, behaved with their accustomed valour in
this affair. Passing Draper's grenadiers in their eagerness to get at
the enemy, they threw down their muskets, and with their bonnets in
one hand, and their claymores in the other, hewed a passage through a
jungle hedge, fell with a wild cheer upon the soldiers of Lally, and
cut a whole company to pieces. Only five Highlanders and two grenadiers
were shot. The Highlanders were fifty in number, and were commanded by
a Captain Morrison. They belonged to the 89th Highland Regiment, which
had been raised among the Gordon clan in the preceding year.
After that night, the operations of Lally were confined to the walls of
Pondicherry.
Of the guns taken by the Highlanders, seven were found to be
18-pounders, loaded to the muzzle with square bars of iron six inches
long, jagged pieces of metal, stones and bottles. They were on Lally's
strongest battery, which was formed before a thick wood, one mile in
front of Pondicherry, which could no longer have any succour from the
seaward, as the Chef d'Escadre had sailed for Brest, where he arrived
in April, 1761. Thus a 54-gun ship, a 36-gun frigate, and four Indiamen
were left behind, and hopelessly shut up in the roadstead.
In the month of October, Admiral Stevens, who had relieved Admiral
Cornish, sailed with his portion of the fleet for Trincomalee to refit,
leaving five sail of the line, under Captain Haldane, to blockade
Pondicherry, while Colonel Coote pressed on the investment by land.
By their dispositions and vigilance, the dense population became
distressed for provisions even before a siege was formally begun, and
while the incessant rains rendered a closer conflict impracticable. The
blockade was supported by a number of batteries judiciously posted;
by these the garrison was harassed on one hand, while their supplies
were cut off on the other; and these posts were gradually pushed nearer
and nearer to the town, notwithstanding the deluge of rain, which had
swollen the broad currents of the Chonenbar and the Gingi, two rivers
that unite near it, and roll their tides together to the sea.
On the 26th November, the rains abated, and Colonel Coote directed his
engineers to erect batteries in other places; from whence, without
being exposed, they could enfilade the works of the garrison, which was
strictly closed in, and by the failure of the Mysorean rajah to fulfil
his promise, was now enduring the utmost privations from scarcity of
food. Lally was compelled to turn out of the town a vast multitude of
native women and children; but Coote drove them back again, and, as
the batteries were firing at the time, a great number of these poor
wretches were slain or severely wounded.
During these operations, Captain Sir Charles Chalmers of Cults, a
gallant Scottish baronet who served in Coote's artillery, died of
fatigue. He possessed only the honours of his family, their estates
having been forfeited for adherence to the house of Stuart about
fifteen years before.
On the night of the 7th October, the armed boats of the British fleet
were pulled with muffled oars into the harbour, and two ships were
cut out, under the very muzzles of Lally's cannon; but not before he
had killed and wounded thirty officers and men. The prizes were the
_Balcine_ and _Hermione_, a frigate and a valuable Indiaman. In this
affair Lieutenant Owen, of H.B.M. ship _Sunderland_, lost an arm.
To encourage the British, the Nabob of Arcot promised to divide among
them fifty lacs of rupees on the day Pondicherry should surrender, and,
as each lac was valued at 12,600_l._ sterling, the greatest enthusiasm
prevailed among the officers, soldiers, and seamen: moreover, as all
the French colonists who fled from other places had stored up their
effects in Pondicherry, the treasure there was reputed to be enormous.
On the 26th September, Coote's forces had been mustered at 3500 English
and Scottish Highlanders, with 7000 sepoys, all of whom were strongly
intrenched, having taken Arcupong, Villa Nova, and every French
outpost, while fifteen sail of the line and three frigates swept the
ocean to the seaward, cutting of all succour; indeed, none was ever
afforded to the unfortunate Lally save by the Dutch settlers, who sent
two unpretending boats; but even these were observed, and on being
seized were found to contain 20,000_l._ in cash and many valuable
stores. Every day provisions were becoming more and more scarce, and
notwithstanding the weakness of his garrison, Lally was compelled to
select 200 French and 300 black soldiers, whom he contrived to despatch
towards Gingi for succour; but they were all cut off, and thus he found
himself worse than before.
The scarcity increased, and now gaunt starvation and death met the eye
on every hand; a thousand scenes of horror and distress occurred daily
within the walls of Pondicherry. The soldiers of Lally and the citizens
were compelled to eat the flesh of elephants, camels, and troop-horses;
after which dogs, cats, and even rats were devoured. The count was
frequently implored to surrender, but having now become sullen,
revengeful, and determined, his lofty pride made him resolve to perish
among the ruins of the French Indian capital, but never _capitulate_.
Twenty-four rupees were given for a small dog, and in some instances as
many half-crowns.
On the 5th November, Lally dispatched a 54-gun ship, _La Compagnie des
Indes_, to Trincomalee, a Danish settlement, for provisions; but after
eluding the watchful blockading fleet, she was taken at sea by H.M.
ships _Medway_ and _Newcastle_, and with her loss all hopes of succour
died away.
On the 9th November, Colonel Coote erected a _ricochet_ battery
for four pieces of cannon, at 1400 yards from the glacis (for the
information of unmilitary readers, we may mention that _ricochet
firing_ means when cannon or mortars are loaded with small charges,
elevated from five to twelve degrees, so that when discharged from the
parapet, the shot may _roll_ along the opposite rampart); this was more
with a view to harass the French than damage their works; but meanwhile
four other batteries were erecting in different places to rake and
batter them.
One for four guns, called _the Prince of Wales Battery_, was formed
near the sea-beach, on the north, to enfilade the great street which
intersects the White Town.
A second, for four guns and two mortars, was formed to enfilade the
counter-guard, before the north-west bastion, at a thousand yards'
distance, and in honour of the "Butcher of Culloden," was called the
_Duke of Cumberland's Battery_.
A third, called _Prince Edward's_, for two guns, faced the southern
works at 1200 yards' distance, to enfilade the streets from south to
north, and cross the fire of the northern battery.
A fourth, on the south-west, at 1100 yards' distance, and called
_Prince William's Battery_, was mounted with two guns and one mortar,
to destroy the cannon on the redoubt of San Thomé.
Lally beheld all these preparations with calmness, and by inspiring his
soldiers with something of his own fierce ardour, laboured to retard
the work of the besiegers, whose batteries commenced a simultaneous
fire at midnight on the 8th December. Lally's cannoniers replied with
the utmost vigour; they slew a master gunner, a subahdar of sepoys, and
wounded a great many more.
On the 1st of January, a violent tempest of wind, accompanied by
torrents of rain, had almost ruined the works of Coote, and blown
the fleet off the coast. The French became elated by the delay this
occasioned, and the consequent prospect of relief; but the sudden
reappearance of Admiral Stevens with his vessels caused their hopes
to fade away; and once more this little band of starving and desperate
men betook them to their muskets and lintstocks; for, still pressing
on, Coote, on the 29th, formed a fifth battery, called _the Hanover_,
at only 450 yards' distance, for ten cannon and three mortars, which
opened a fire of shot and shell against the counter-guard and curtain.
At last, being driven frantic by their sufferings, the soldiers and
citizens demanded that the place should be surrendered. Lally was
immovable, but yet feeling keenly for what they endured, dissatisfied
with the state of the French Indian affairs, and greatly exasperated
by the disorderly conduct of his troops, and the baseness of their
commissaries, he frequently burst into passionate exclamations which
showed the keenness of his agitation.
"Hell has spewed me into this country of wickedness," he said on one
occasion, "and like Jonas I wait until the whale shall receive me into
its belly!"
"I will go among the Caffres, rather than remain longer in this Sodom,"
he exclaimed on another occasion.
But, nevertheless, he still defended the town like a good soldier, and
on the disappearance of the British fleet during the storm, wrote the
following letter to M. de Raymond, the Resident at Pullicot:--
"M. Raymond, the English squadron is no more! Out of twelve ships
they had in our roads seven are lost, crews and all; four others are
dismasted, and it appears that only one frigate has escaped, therefore
lose not an instant to send us chelingoes upon chelingoes loaded with
rice. The Dutch have nothing to fear now; besides--according to the
law of nations--they are only to send us no provisions _themselves_,
and we are no longer blocked up by sea.
"The saving of Pondicherry has once already been in your power. If you
miss the present, it will be entirely your own fault. Don't forget
some small chelingoes--offer great rewards. I expect 17,000 Mahrattas
in four days; in short, risk all! attempt! force all! but send us
some rice, should it be but a half garse at a time.
"Lally.
"Pondicherry, 2nd January, 1761."
The British fleet suffered considerably; many vessels which had to
cut their cables, were totally dismasted, and the _Queensberry_,
_Newcastle_, and _Protector_ were driven on shore; while _Le Duc
d'Acquitaine_ of sixty-four guns (French prize), commanded by Sir
William Hewitt, Bart., and the _Sunderland_ of sixty guns, commanded
by the Hon. James Colville, both foundered, and all on board perished.
Captain Colville was the son of Lord Colville, of Culross, a Scottish
peer, who died on the Carthagena expedition in 1740, and brother of
Alexander Lord Colville, who in 1764 was Commodore in North America.
On the reappearance of Admiral Cornish with more of the fleet, the hope
of the French sank again, and Lally, enraged at what he considered
the mutinous repining of his soldiers, met their remonstrances with
turbulence and contempt, and by an unwise, and perhaps over-strained
exercise of authority, at this fatal and desperate crisis, most
unfortunately contrived to render himself unpopular with the Governor,
the Council, and the proud chevaliers of old France, who officered his
little band of troops.
Still, however, the siege was pressed, and still the defence went on.
On the 5th January, Coote attacked the redoubt of San Thomé, sword
in hand, at the head of a body of Scottish Highlanders and English
grenadiers, and won it, thus silencing four 28-pounders; but two days
afterwards, Lally retook it by 300 grenadiers, from the sepoys who were
left in charge of it.
On the 13th Coote sent 700 Europeans, 400 Lascars, and a company
of pioneers under a major, to erect another battery of eleven guns
and three mortars. Under the clear splendour of an Oriental moon,
these works were carried on within 500 yards of the walls; and this
_Batterie Royale_ was permitted to be erected without molestation,
for in their sullen despair the garrison never fired a shot at it. On
the 14th the _Hanover Battery_ ruined the north-west bastion, and on
the following day the _Batterie Royale_ beat down the ravelin at the
Madras gate; thus by the 15th of January a great and practicable breach
was effected, and the cannon of the gallant Lally were silenced or
dismounted.
In the evening a parley was beat, and four envoys came from the ruined
walls towards the British trenches. These were Colonel Duré (Durie?) of
the French Royal Artillery, Father Lavacer, Superior of the Jesuits,
and two civilians. These were unprovided by "any authority from the
Governor," says Vicomte de Vaux; but Colonel Coote, in his dispatch to
Mr. Pitt, affirms that they came direct from Lally with proposals for
delivering up the garrison. In the town, at that moment, there were
only three days provisions of the wretched kind described; thus the
extremity of famine would admit of no hesitation. Rendered ungovernable
by what they had endured, Lally's officers declared the defence to be
frantic obstinacy, and murmuring aloud, also averred that illness,
pride, and the climate had disordered his imagination; and that it was
criminal rather than valiant to defend an untenable fortress.
The following were the proposals of Lally, presented by Colonel Duré to
Colonel Coote:--
"The troops of the king and Company, by want of provisions, will
surrender themselves prisoners of war to his Britannic Majesty, on
terms of the cartel, which I claim equally for all the inhabitants of
Pondicherry, as well as for the exercise of the Roman religion, the
religious houses, hospitals, chaplains, surgeons, serjeants, reserving
and referring myself to the decision of our two Courts, in proportion
to the violation of a treaty so solemn. (He refers to the treacherous
capture of Chandernagore.)
"Accordingly M. Coote may take possession of the Villenour Gate at
eight o'clock to-morrow morning; and after to-morrow, at the same
hour, that of Fort St. Lewis.
"I demand, merely from a principle of justice and humanity, that the
mother and sisters of Raza Sahib may be permitted to seek an asylum
where they please, or that they remain prisoners among the English,
and not be delivered into the hands of Mohammed Ali Khan, which are
still red with the blood of the husband and father, which he has
spilt, to the shame of those who gave them up to him; but not less to
the shame of the commander of the English army, who should not have
allowed such a piece of barbarity to be committed in his camp.
"As I am tied up by the cartel, in the declaration which I make to
M. Coote, I consent that the Council of Pondicherry may make their
own representations to him with regard to what may concern their own
private interests as well as the interests of the inhabitants of the
colony.
"Done at Fort Lewis, Pondicherry, 15th day of January, 1761.
"Lally."
To these the Colonel replied briefly by stating that the capture
of Chandernagore was beyond his cognizance, and had no relation to
Pondicherry; that he merely required the soldiers of its garrison to
yield as prisoners of war, promising that they should be treated with
every honour and humanity; that he would send the grenadiers of his
own regiment to receive possession of the Villenour Gate, and that of
Fort St. Lewis; and that according to the kind and humane request of
M. Lally, the mother and sisters of Raza Sahib should be escorted to
Madras, and on no account be permitted to fall into the hands of their
enemy, the Nabob Mohammed Ali Khan.
To eight articles proposed by Father Lavacer, Superior of the Jesuits,
requiring that the inhabitants should be treated in every respect
like subjects of his Britannic Majesty; that they should have full
liberty to exercise the Catholic religion; that the churches should be
rejected; that all public papers should be sent to France; and that
forty-one soldiers of the Volunteers of Bourbon should be permitted to
return to their homes--Colonel Coote declined to make any reply.
At eight o'clock on the morning of the 16th July, Lally with a bitter
heart ordered the standard of France to be hauled down on Fort St.
Lewis, and at that hour Coote's grenadiers received the Villenour
Gate from the Regiment de Lally, while those of the 79th Regiment
took possession of the citadel.[2] Thus fell Pondicherry after a
blockade and siege which Lally's skill and valour had protracted under
a thousand difficulties for the long period of eight months, against
forces treble in number to those he commanded.
Notwithstanding his fallen condition and the severe effects of a long
illness, aggravated by the sultry climate, by bodily sufferings and
anxiety, Lally marched out of the citadel with the air of a conqueror.
"He is now as proud and haughty as ever," says an officer (who beheld
him) in a letter to a periodical of the time; "but his great share of
wit, sense, and martial ability are obscured by a savage ferocity, and
an undisguised contempt for every person below the rank of general."
This writer was ignorant of the high qualities of Lally, and the
difficulties with which he had contended, or he would never have
written thus.
According to the "_exact state of the troops of his most Christian
Majesty, under the command of Lieutenant-General Arthur Count de Lally,
when he surrendered at discretion on the 16th of January, 1761,_"
he marched out with the following--a miserable and famished band,
hollow-eyed and gaunt--the few survivors of the Indian war:--
Artillery of Louis XV., officers and men 83
The Regiment de Lorraine, ditto 327
The Regiment de Lally, ditto (of the Irish Brigade) 230
The Regiment of the Marine, ditto 295
Artillery of the French India Company 94
Cavalry of ditto 15
Volunteers of Bourbon 40
The Battalion d'India 192
Invalides 124
In all there were only 1400. One of their first acts was to cut their
commissary to pieces. Among the officers of the king's artillery was
Jean Baptiste Louis Romée de l'Isle, the celebrated crystallographer,
who was then secretary to a corps of engineers. The quantity of
military stores delivered over by Lally to Coote is almost incredible.
There were 671 brass and iron cannon and mortars; 438 mortar-beds and
carriages; 84,041 shot and shell, round, double-headed, and grape;
230,580 lbs. of powder; 538,137 rounds of cartridge for arquebuses,
muskets, carbines, pistols, and gingals; 910 pairs of pistols; 12,580
other firearms; 4895 swords, bayonets and sabres; 1200 poleaxes, and
every other warlike munition in proportion. Tidings of the fall of
Pondicherry occasioned the utmost joy in Britain; and on Sunday, the
2nd August, there were prayers and thanksgiving in all the English
churches.
On that day Lally arrived at Fort St. George a prisoner of parole. He
had begged to be sent to Cudalore that he might have the attendance of
French as well as British surgeons; but the Governor of Madras insisted
upon his removal to that place, whither he conveyed him in his own
palanquin.
A regiment of Highlanders garrisoned Pondicherry, and as Lally had
destroyed many of the British fortifications, Colonel--afterwards
Sir Eyre--Coote retaliated by blowing up the works and hurling the
glacis into the ditch. The plunder acquired amounted to 2,000,000_l._
sterling. The quantity of lead discovered in the stores was immense.
Lally found means to convey his own cash and Valuables (200,000 pagodas
of eight shillings each) out of the garrison, but he was deprived of it
by Coote's orders.
The plunder of the magnificent palace was a subject for regret to the
officers who beheld it. It had been built by M. Dupleix, a former
resident, at the cost of one million. On the same day that Lally
surrendered, his Scottish compatriot, M. Law, on whose assistance he
had for a time mainly relied, was defeated by Major Carnac.
M. Law was a nephew of the famous financial projector, John Law, of
Lauriston, near Edinburgh, who, in 1720, was Premier of France, and
Comptroller-General of Finance--the same whose desperate schemes
brought the kingdom to the verge of bankruptcy. M. Law had made himself
useful to the Schah Zaddah, son of the late Mogul, in supporting the
young prince's hereditary claims, and enforcing his authority on the
provinces of the empire. With 200 Frenchmen (principally fugitives
from Lally's outposts) he persuaded the schah to turn his arms against
Bengal; and accordingly the young and rash prince entered that rich and
fertile province at the head of 80,000 Indians, whose operations were
directed by Law, and certain chevaliers his friends. In the eye of the
British (who had then become the arbiters of Oriental thrones), the
presence of the Scottish refugee and his followers was more prejudicial
to the title of Zaddah than any other objection, and they joined the
Subah of Bengal to oppose his progress. A battle ensued at Guya, when
Major Carnac, with 500 British, 2500 sepoys, and 20,000 blacks, cut the
vast force of the young prince to pieces, and took prisoner M. Law,
with sixty French officers.
Soon after the fall of Pondicherry, the French settlement of Mahé,
on the coast of Malabar, was reduced by Major Hector Munro, of the
89th Highlanders, who captured there 200 pieces of cannon, and thus
the whole commerce of the mighty peninsula of India, from the point
of the Carnatic to the banks of the Ganges, fell under the dominion
of Britain, together with the extensive trade of the vast and wealthy
provinces of Bengal, Behar, and Orixa.
On the 3rd February, the nabob made his triumphal entry into
Pondicherry, seated in a wooden castle on the back of a gigantic
elephant, accompanied by twelve of his wives, escorted by British
troops and by his own guards armed with lances, bows, and matchlocks.
Ultimately Lally received back his property, to the amount of
100,000_l._ in cash, and being brought to Britain a prisoner of war
in H.M.S. _Onslow_, landed in September, 1761. He was confined for a
time to a certain limit in Nottinghamshire; and on obtaining leave of
George III. to depart, most unfortunately for himself, turned his steps
towards France, the land of his father's adoption.
Having given his parole of honour to return whenever the British
Government should require his presence, the count, on the 14th October,
"after having discharged all his debts to tradesmen and servants" (as
the London papers of the time state), sailed for France.
Notwithstanding the long and gallant defence he had maintained at
Pondicherry, thus affording the highest proofs of firmness and
fidelity, bravery and activity, he was arrested soon after his return,
and committed to that prison of so many terrible memories--the
Bastille--accused of many grievous things by the Government, which
now instituted a severe inquiry into the conduct of the civil and
military officials who had commanded in Canada, the Carnatic, and other
possessions taken by Britain.
Among the charges brought against Lally were, betraying the interests
of King Louis and of the French East India Company; abusing the high
authority with which he had been invested; unwarrantable exactions
from the subjects of his most Christian Majesty, and from foreigners
resident in Pondicherry; for _permitting_ that place to fall into the
hands of the British; and generally for mismanaging the public affairs
committed to his care.
In vain did this brave and unfortunate officer urge his many services,
his many wounds, his grey hairs, his health broken by toil, by anxiety,
and by a torrid clime, in the cause of France. In vain did he urge
the numerous remonstrances he had sent to Paris, and Count d'Aché's
detention of M. de Lequille's military chest; that at Madras he had
resigned a desperate command, which the Chevalier des Soupirs declined
to accept; in vain was the _protest_ signed in the hall of Fort St.
Lewis adduced to show how his efforts had been baffled, and rendered
more than futile, by the insubordination of Count d'Aché; in vain did
he explain how the Marquis de Bussy had loitered in Arcot; that he had
long and frequently been without pay and without provision for his
troops; how the Rajah of Mysore had failed in his promises; how his
soldiers had deserted, and how famine in the streets of Pondicherry
was a source of deadlier fear than the British cannon-shot; how his
detachment sent to Gingi had been cut off to a man; how Chandernagore
had been taken by treachery, contrary to the faith of treaties and
that neutrality which had subsisted between the French and British
in India, and immediately after the former had rendered the latter a
signal service in not taking part with the Nabob of Bengal. The weak
Government of Louis XV. required a victim to satisfy the people; thus
his defence was useless. Brigadier-General the Marquis de Bussy and
Admiral Count d'Aché, whose honour and safety were chiefly interested
in his condemnation, were the principal witnesses examined against
him. He was detained for four years in a close prison, and, according
to the cruel and barbarous laws then existing in France, "the bequest
of ages of violence and anarchy," was _repeatedly tortured_. Though
his infamous judges were convinced of his perfect innocence, yet it
was stated that, in consequence of the severe conclusions of the
Procureur-General against the Count de Lally, on the night of Sunday,
the 4th May, 1763, he was removed from the Bastille to the prison of
the Conciergerie, which adjoined the Court of Parliament.
"Though it was but one o'clock in the morning when he arrived at the
Conciergerie (to quote the report of his condemnation), he refused to
go to bed; and about seven he appeared before his judges. They ordered
him to be divested of his red riband and cross, to which he submitted
with the most perfect indifference; and he was then placed on the stool
to undergo a new course of interrogation."
At that crisis a pang of bitterness shot through his heart; clasping
his hands, and raising his eyes--
"My God!" he exclaimed; "oh, my God! is _this the reward_ of forty
years faithful service as a soldier?"
The interrogatory lasted six hours, and D'Aché and De Bussy were
successively examined against him. By nine in the evening the
examination was over, and the count was re-conducted to the Bastille,
surrounded by guards and several companies of the watch of Paris.
At six o'clock next morning the judges delivered their opinions, which
were so various, that the clock of the Conciergerie struck four in the
afternoon before they came to a conclusion and pronounced their _arrêt_
or decree, which contained a brief recital of the charges against De
Lally, without specifying the facts on which they were respectively
founded; but for the reparation of which it was declared that he should
be stripped of all his civil titles, his military rank, and dignities;
that all his property should be confiscated to the king; and that his
head should be struck from his body on the public scaffold.
Without emotion the count had heard their sentence, and with the utmost
resolution prepared to die; yet he was detained, hovering as it were
between life and death, until the morning of the 9th May, 1766, when
he was drawn on a hurdle to the _Place de Grève_, and hastily, almost
privately, beheaded, with his mouth filled by a wooden gag, to prevent
him addressing the people--thus adding another to the many barbarous
judicial murders which disgrace the annals of France.
His son, Trophine Gerard, who had been kept at the College of Harcourt
in entire ignorance of his birth and of the proceedings against his
father, only learned all these secrets when the public interest and
commiseration became too great to conceal them longer. On the 9th the
poor boy learned that the great General Lally, who was to die, _was
his father_. He rushed, as he tells us, to the place of execution to
bid this father, so recently found, "an eternal adieu--to let him hear
the voice of a son amid the voices of his executioners, and embrace
him on the scaffold when he was about to perish;" but he arrived only
in time to see the axe descending and his father's blood pouring from
a dismembered trunk upon a sanded scaffold. Overcome with horror,
Trophine--afterwards the great Count Lally Tollendal--swooned in the
street, and was borne away insensible to the College of Harcourt.
Thus in his sixty-fourth year terminated the eventful career of Count
Lally, the victim surrendered by a weak and tyrannical ministry to
popular clamour, affording by his fate a memorable instance of the
injustice, ingratitude, and barbarity of the Court of Versailles.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: The MS. original of these interesting instructions was
presented to Charles Grant, Viscount de Vaux, by the directors of the
English East India Company.]
[Footnote 2: The 79th, or Draper's Regiment, lost in this siege, and
encounters before it, thirty-four officers, whose names were inscribed
on a beautiful cenotaph, erected on Clifton Downs by Colonel Sir W.
Drapes and which he dedicated as,
"Sacred to the Memory of those departed Warriors,
Of the Seventy-ninth Regiment,
By whose Valour, Discipline, and Perseverance
The French land Forces in Asia were first withstood and repulsed."]
JOHN CAMERON, OF FASSIFERN,
K.T.S.,
COLONEL OF THE GORDON HIGHLANDERS; SLAIN AT QUATRE-BRAS, 1815.
From among the many distinguished Scottish officers who served under
Wellington, if we could select one for the delineation of his career,
it would be John Cameron of the House of Fassifern and Locheil.
This brave soldier was the eldest of the seven children of Ewen
Cameron, Laird of Fassifern (_i.e._ the Point of Alders), and his wife,
Lucy Campbell, of Barcaldine, whose father succeeded to the estate of
Glenure on the death of her uncle, Colin Campbell, who was shot at the
Ferry of Ballachulish, in Appin, by Allan Breac Stewart, otherwise
known as _Vic Ian_, _Vic Alaster_,--a crime for which the Laird of
Ardsheil was judicially murdered by the Duke of Argyle at the Castle of
Inverary.
Ewen Cameron was the son of John _the Tanister_, a younger brother of
the great Locheil, who commenced the insurrection of 1745; and it is
said that this powerful chief, on being summoned by Prince Charles
to attend his memorable lauding in Moidart on the 25th July, was
predisposed to warn him against the projected rising of the clans.
"If such be your intention, Donald," said John of Fassifern, "_write_
your opinion to the Prince, but do not trust yourself within the
fascination of his presence. I know you better than you know yourself,
and foresee that you will be unable to refuse compliance."
But Locheil preferred an interview with the Prince, and the event
proved the truth of Fassifern's prophecy. He joined him immediately
with all the clan Cameron, and the gallant revolt of the clans
immediately followed. Fassifern was taken prisoner after Culloden,
and was long detained in the Castle of Edinburgh; there he was kept
so close that the year 1752 arrived, yet he heard nothing of the
barbarous execution of his brother, the amiable and unfortunate Dr.
Archibald Cameron, until one evening a soldier brought him a kettle
with hot water. He took off a paper which was twisted round the handle,
and found it to be the "last speech and dying confession, &c., of
the traitor Archibald Cameron." He immediately ordered a suit of the
deepest mourning, and on appearing in it before the authorities was
brutally upbraided by the Lord Justice Clerk for putting on mourning
for a traitor.
"Alas!" said Cameron, "that traitor was my dear brother!"
"A rebel!" retorted the judge, scornfully. He was exiled, but
afterwards returned to die at Fassifern.
Colonel John Cameron, the grand-nephew of the Jacobite chief, was born
in Argyleshire, at the farm of Inverscaddle (a house which belonged to
his family before the acquisition of Fassifern), on the 16th of August,
1771, only twenty-five years after the battle of Culloden, and while
those inhuman butcheries, for which the name of Cumberland is still
abhorred in Scotland, were fresh in the memory of the people. According
to the old custom, common to Scotland and Ireland, he was assigned to
the care of a foster-mother named M'Millan, who dwelt in Glendescherie,
on the shore of Locharkaig. Thus, born and bred among the Gael, while
the clans were unchanged and uncorrupted, and when the glens were
full of that gallant race, with all their old traditions and historic
memories, their military pride, and peculiar prejudices, Cameron was
reared as thorough a chieftain as if had lived in the days of James IV.
Educated among his native mountains, sharing in the athletic sports of
the people, and those in which his foster-brother, Ewan M'Millan, who
was a fox-hunter in Croydart, and a year his elder, excelled, young
Cameron grew up a handsome and hardy Highlander, and early became
distinguished by that proud, fiery, and courageous temperament for
which he was so well known among the troops of Lord Hill's division,
and which sometimes caused him to set the rules of discipline, and
the aristocratic coldness of Wellington, alike at defiance, if they
interfered with his native ideas of rank and self-esteem.
In the "Romance of War," a work which has made his name familiar to the
reading public, a faithful description of him will be found. He was
above the middle height, had a pleasing, open countenance, curly brown
hair, and bright blue eyes, which, when he was excited, filled with a
dusky fire.
Arms were then the only occupation for a Highland gentleman; and thus
in his twenty-second year, on the 8th of February, 1793, he obtained an
ensigncy in the 26th, or Cameronian Regiment, commanded by Sir William
Erskine. He never joined that corps; but on raising a sufficient number
of men in Locheil, procured a lieutenantcy in an independent Highland
company then being formed by Capt. A. Campbell, of Ardchattan. He was
gazetted on the 3rd of April; but this company was either disbanded
or incorporated with the old 93rd Regiment, to which he was appointed
lieutenant on the 30th of October in the same year. He did not join
this regiment either, but busied himself in raising a company to
procure the rank of captain in a corps of Highlanders, which, in
obedience to a _letter of service_, dated 10th February, 1794, the Duke
of Gordon was raising for his son, the young Marquis of Huntly, then
a captain in the Scottish Regiment of Guards. This battalion was to
consist of 46 officers, 64 staff, and 1000 rank and file, to be raised
among the clan of Gordon.
From the lands of Fassifern and Locheil Cameron drew a company,
principally of his own name and kindred, all hardy and handsome young
Highlanders, among whom were his foster-brother, Ewen M'Millan, who
never left him; three Camerons, Ewen, Alaster, and Angus, whom he made
sergeants; Ewen Kennedy, for whom he procured an ensigncy, and another,
who died a lieutenant. With these, all clad in their native tartans, he
marched from the Braes of Lochaber to Castle Gordon, in Strathspey,
where he was introduced to Alexander, Duke of Gordon, the _Cock o' the
North_, by his uncle, the Rev. Dr. Ross, of Kilmanivaig, the worthy
author of the statistical account of that parish. He at once received
a company in the duke's own regiment, to which he was appointed on the
13th of February, 1794, and with which he attended the grand muster of
the whole at Aberdeen on the 24th of June, when the corps was named the
_Gordon Highlanders_, or 100th Regiment, afterwards and now the 92nd.
The uniform coats and vests were scarlet, faced with yellow, and laced
with silver to suit the epaulettes. The kilts and plaids were in one
piece, each containing twelve yards of Gordon tartan; the claymores,
dirks, buckles, and sporrans were mounted with silver; the bonnets
were plumed with black ostrich feathers, and encircled by the old fess
checque of the House of Stuart. The men were all Highlanders; scarcely
one of them, and but very few of the officers, could speak English; the
enthusiasm was so great in Badenoch that, in some instances, fathers
and sons joined its ranks together.
At that time, when the French Revolution menaced Europe with anarchy,
and the Convention declared war against Britain and Holland, the number
of Highlanders in our service is almost incredible. During a period of
fifty years the clans furnished _eighty-six_ battalions of infantry,
some of which were twelve hundred strong.[3]
How many could the Highlands raise now? Centralization, corruption,
and local tyranny of the most infamous description have turned their
beautiful glens into a silent wilderness, and the very place where
Cameron raised his company of soldiers is now desolate and bare. "I
can point," says the author of a letter to the Marquis of Breadalbane,
on his late ruthless _clearings_, "to a place where thirty recruits
that manned the 92nd in Egypt came from--men before whom Napoleon's
Invincibles bit the dust--and now only _two_ families reside there
together. I was lately informed by a grazier that on his form a hundred
swordsmen could be gathered at their country's call, and now there are
only himself and _two_ shepherds." The brave Gael, who crowded in tens
of thousands to the British ranks, saw not the reward that was coming;
evictions and wholesale clearings of the Scottish poor were then
unknown. God gave the land to the people--they believed it was theirs
but the feudal charters have decided otherwise, and the clans have
been swept from Lochness to Locheil, and from Locheil to the shores of
Lochlomond. The hills and the valleys are there, but the tribes have
departed, and who can restore them?
Cameron of Fassifern embarked with his regiment at Fort George, in
Ardersier, for Southampton, where, as kilted corps were unusual then
in England, its arrival created a great sensation. From thence the
battalion sailed for Gibraltar, under the command of Huntly, its
colonel commandant, and disembarked at the Rock on the 27th of October.
It was on this occasion that Mrs. Grant, of Laggan, composed her now
popular song, "The Blue Bells of Scotland."
At Gibraltar a coolness ensued between Cameron and the marquis, and
from that hour they never were friends. The former having had a
dispute at the mess with a Captain M'Pherson on some point of Highland
etiquette, high words and a duel followed. Captain, afterwards Colonel
Mitchel, C.B., and Knight of St. Anne of Russia, was Cameron's second.
Happily nothing serious resulted; and next day at the mess Lord Huntly
drank wine with them all, begging that in future no more such quarrels
might occur, and concluded by saying--
"I may be pardoned in requiring this, as, I believe, all the gentlemen
here are the tenants of my father."
"No, marquis," said Fassifern, loftily; "by Heaven, here is one who is
no tenant of the house of Gordon."
The young marquis frowned; he did not reply, but never forgot the
haughty retort.
In sentiments and character, even in manner, Fassifern belonged to
a past age--to a period of time beyond our own; for the stern pride,
the Spartan spirit of clanship, with all the wild associations of the
Gael, deeply imbued his mind, and gave a decision to his manner and a
freshness to his enthusiasm. Proud and fiery, like all his race, he
had the defect of being quick and hasty in his speech; but he never
called aloud the name of an officer on parade, though more than one
was reprehended by him in terms of severity, which, when the gust of
passion was past, his generous spirit told him had been too great. He
was a rigid disciplinarian, strict even to a fault, and yet withal he
possessed a charm which won him the affection and respect of all his
regiment. To English officers who did not understand him, to Wellington
in particular, his pride seemed perhaps mere petulance, and his
Highland chivalry (the result of his education) eccentricity: but of
these more anon.
After receiving its colours on Windmill Hill, the regiment embarked for
Corsica, and on the 11th of July, 1795, landed at Bastia, where, under
the influence of Paoli, the allies had landed in the preceding year,
and united the birthplace of Bonaparte to the British dominions. After
suppressing a rebellion in Corte, a town in the centre of the isle, and
forming the secret expedition under their major, Alexander Napier, of
Blackstone, to reduce Porto Ferrajo in Elba, the Highlanders returned
to Gibraltar, where General de Burgh publicly testified his approbation
of their conduct.
Cameron who was now, by the death of Major Donald M'Donald, of
Boisdale, senior captain, accompanied the regiment to Portsmouth, where
it landed in May, and from whence it went to Dublin in June, 1798.
Here he became attached to a young lady possessed of great personal
attractions, and announced to his father his intention of marrying. But
old Ewen Cameron had imbibed some curious prejudices against the Irish,
for a false rumour had gained credence in the Highlands that Prince
Charles had been betrayed at Culloden by his two Irish followers,
Sullivan and Sheridan. There was great consternation in Fassifern and
the Braes of Lochaber when it was announced that the young laird was
about to wed a stranger; and however absurd this prejudice may appear,
old Fassifern set all his wits to work, and contrived to have the
engagement broken off completely. A quarrel ensued between the lovers;
rumour speaks of another duel with some one; but from that time to the
hour of his death, Cameron was never known to form another serious
attachment.
At this time the Irish were in arms; Vinegar Hill was valiantly fought
and lost by them; the Highlanders were kept incessantly on the march,
and their belts were never off. During these operations, when encamped
near Moat, they were re-numbered as the 92nd Regiment of the line.
After being quartered in Athlone, on the 15th June, 1799, Cameron
embarked with the regiment for the camp at Barham Downs, where the
troops destined for the expedition to Holland were assembling under
Lieutenant-General Sir Ralph Abercrombie. The Gordon Highlanders were
brigaded with the 1st Royal Scots, 25th, or Scots Borderers; the 49th
and Cameron Highlanders, under Brigadier Sir John Moore. The troops
sailed from Ramsgate, landed near the Helder, and on that evening the
Gordon Highlanders, after having fifteen men drowned, fought bravely
at the battle of the Sandhills. Here they and Cameron first saw the
French, for whom he felt an hereditary abhorrence, having been reared
to believe, like every Highlander, that they had trifled, forty years
before, with the best interests of Scotland, and betrayed Prince
Charles and the clans to England.
He served at the head of his company in all the operations under
the gallant Moore--during the advance to Oude Sluys, the action
at Crabhenden, where Captain Ramsay of Dalhousie was wounded; the
engagement with General Brune; the attack on Alkmaar; the retreat to
Zuype; and the battle of Egmont-op-Zee, where it is probable that his
French antipathy received an additional incentive, by the infliction
of a severe wound. In that decisive charge, by which twenty pieces of
cannon were retaken from the enemy, a ball struck one of his knees;
and as he was falling, the arm of the faithful M'Millan was the first
to support him. Here the Marquis of Huntly was wounded in the shoulder;
and neither he nor Cameron ever fully recovered the effect of these
bullets. In this affair the Highlanders had 288 officers and men killed
and wounded.
Among the latter was the henchman Ewen, who lost an ear. Rendered
furious by the wound, regardless of Cameron's orders, he rushed among
the French, and drove his bayonet, with a ball at the same moment,
through the body of the soldier who had wounded him. Returning to his
company, he said in Gaelic, to Cameron--
"You see what yonder son of the devil has done to me," and pointed to
his ear, which was dripping with blood.
"He served you rightly," said Cameron, in the same language; "why did
you skirmish so far in front?"
"_Dioul!_" muttered Ewen; "he won't take my other ear."
Here Sir John Moore was severely wounded, and Cameron desired two
Highlanders to carry him to the rear. Moore afterwards offered 20_l._
to the soldiers who carried him off. The reward was proffered to the
regiment on parade, and it is a noble trait of it, that _no man_
ever stepped forward to claim the fee. On being created a K.B., and
requiring supporters for his arms, Moore addressed the following
interesting letter to Lieutenant-Colonel Napier, then commanding the
regiment:--
"Richmond, 17th Nov. 1804.
"MY DEAR NAPIER,--I have been for some days on leave in London,
and received your letters there. I am here with my mother for a
day, and return this night to Sandgate. My reason for troubling you
for a drawing is, that, as a Knight of the Bath, I am entitled to
supporters. I have chosen a light-infantry soldier for one, being
colonel of the 1st Light Infantry regiment; and a Highland soldier
for the other, in gratitude to, and in commemoration of, two soldiers
of the 92nd, who, in the action of the 2nd October, raised me from
the ground, when I was lying on my face, wounded and stunned (they
must have thought me _dead_), and helped me out of the field. As my
senses were returning, I heard one of them say, '_Here is the general;
let us take him away_,' upon which they stooped and raised me by the
arm. I never could discover who they were, and therefore concluded
they must have been _killed_. I hope the 92nd will not have any
objection (as I have commanded them, and as they rendered me such a
service) to my taking one of the corps as a supporter. I do not care
for the drawing being elegant; all I want is the correct uniform and
appointments. Any person who can draw a figure tolerably, but will
dress him correctly, with arms, accoutrements, and in parade order,
will answer every purpose, as I want it for a model only, from which
a painter may draw another. If you are at a loss for a person to do
this, I dare say Lieutenant-Colonel Birch would do it, or get one of
the officers of the department to do so, if you sent a man properly
dressed to Colchester; but I think your own quarters will produce some
one sufficiently expert. I received your letter by Captain (Peter)
Grant, before I left Sandgate: he seems a very gentlemanly young man.
I do not think I can recommend a proper adjutant to you at present.
Remember me kindly to my friends of the 92nd, and believe me, my dear
Napier, sincerely, &c.,
"John Moore.[4]
"Lieut.-Col. Napier, of Blackstone."
After the convention at Alkmaar, and the cessation of hostilities, the
regiment embarked near the Helder, and landed at Yarmouth on the 29th
October. Though still suffering from his wound, Cameron obtained the
temporary command of a light infantry corps under Lord Hopeton. This
provisional battalion was exercised on Barham Downs, where he won the
reputation of a zealous and able officer. He came home on leave to his
native glen, kindly bringing with him Ewen M'Millan, who had a craving
to visit his old mother by the shore of Locharkaig.
They rejoined the Highlanders soon after, and the next scene of
Cameron's service was in Egypt. Before embarking, his regiment was
supplied with _yellow_ knapsacks, having a red thistle painted on the
backs of them.
Fassifern accompanied his regiment on General Maitland's futile
expedition to the Isle de Houat, from whence, with other regiments
destined for the Mediterranean, they embarked under Lord Dalhousie's
orders; and after touching at Port-Mahon in Minorca, passed on to the
attack of Cadiz, which was abandoned, in consequence of a pestilence
that infected the coast. The expedition then sailed for Malta; and from
thence to the Bay of Marmora, on the coast of Asiatic Turkey, where
Abercrombie had concentrated 15,000 men to expel the French from Egypt.
He had six regiments of dragoons, and forty battalions of infantry,
seven of which were foreign.
Fassifern served with distinction in all the operations of the Egyptian
campaign, including the landing effected under a desperate cannonade on
the shore of Aboukir; the bloody contest round the Tower of Mandora,
where his company occupied a conspicuous position in front of the
line, as skirmishers, and where his colonel, Erskine of Cardross,
received a mortal wound, and of his comrades there were 109 officers
and men killed and wounded. The intrepid conduct of his regiment was
particularly mentioned in the dispatches of Abercrombie, whose guard of
honour was daily furnished from its ranks. Cameron was at the battle of
Alexandria, where, on the 21st March, 1801, he received a wound under
the left eye, and saw the brave Abercrombie receive his death shot.
The troops then advanced to Rosetta; and by the time when the Gordon
Highlanders entered Grand Cairo--"the Queen of Cities"--the capital of
Moaz El Kehira, their shoes were completely worn away. Quarter-master
Wallace was ordered to procure an immediate supply; but there was one
gigantic grenadier from Speyside, for whom a suitable pair of brogues
could not be found in all Grand Cairo.
For his services in Egypt, Cameron received a gold medal from
the Grand Seignior; and on the promotion of Major Napier to the
lieutenant-colonelcy, he obtained the majority on the 5th April, 1801;
and seven months afterwards, on the conclusion of that convention, by
which Grand Cairo was surrendered, the Highlanders were ordered home to
Scotland, and were quartered in Glasgow.
About this time a dispute occurred among the officers. Some of them,
who were Lowlanders, insisted that the Gaelic, which was generally
spoken at the mess, should be abolished there. It was put to the vote,
and by an overwhelming majority, the Celts secured its retention; but
in those days, there were in the regiment twelve gentlemen of the clan
Donald, all kinsmen, who invariably voted together in everything, and
could carry any point they pleased. These factions were known as the
national and anti-national parties.
After the short peace of Amiens, war was declared again; and when the
army was increased, the Gordon Highlanders were strengthened by the
addition of a second battalion, and Major Cameron marched with it to
Weely in England, to join the force mustered to oppose the expected
invasion by Napoleon. The invasion ended in smoke; but the battalion
remained cantoned in England until 1807, and in the preceding year
lined the streets of London during the funeral of Nelson. Fassifern
embarked with them at Harwich on the Danish expedition, under Lord
Cathcart; and, for the first time, served under Wellington--then Sir
Arthur Wellesley--at the attack on Kioge, where Lieutenant-Colonel
Napier, at the head of the Highlanders, charged the Danes, who were
routed with the loss of their artillery.
After the bombardment of Copenhagen, and the return of the troops to
Britain, Major Cameron, in consideration, of his services, received
a brevet lieutenant-colonelcy on the 25th April, 1808; a full
lieutenant-colonelcy on the 23rd June following; and was shortly
afterwards ordered on the Swedish expedition under Sir John Moore, who
led 10,000 men to assist Gustavus Adolphus IV., a gallant but fiery
and intractable prince, against whom Russia and France had united
their arms. The violent temper of the Swedish monarch rendered this
undertaking completely futile, and, without achieving anything, the
expedition returned to Britain.
As junior lieutenant-colonel, Cameron now remained with the second
battalion at home; while the first, under Lieutenant-Colonel Napier,
accompanied Sir John Moore a third time on that fatal service, from
which he never returned. In 1809, the gallant Napier fell with his
leader at Corunna, and then Fassifern obtained the command of the
first battalion, committing the second, in February, to the care
of Lieutenant-Colonel Lamond, of Lamond. Thus, at the early age of
thirty-seven, and after only fifteen years' service, he found himself
at the head of one of the finest Scottish regiments in the service of
his country.
In July, with the right wing of the first battalion, he embarked
on board H.M.S. _Superb_, 74, at Harwich, on the great expedition
under the Earl of Chatham, in Sir William Erskine's brigade. He was
at the landing on Breesand in Walcheren, and the occupation of Ter
Goes on South Beveland. He landed with 998 Highlanders; but so fatal
was the Dutch pestilence, that in October only 250 of them were on
parade; and the grenadier company, which was entirely recruited from
Aberdeenshire, was reduced to _two_ sergeants and _three_ privates.
Cameron deeply regretted the loss of his men. The first who died was a
fine young clansman, whom he had brought with him from Lochaber, and
he attended his funeral in the churchyard of a neighbouring village.
After addressing the soldiers on the merits of the deceased, "Cover him
up with the greenest sods," said he, "for he was a brave lad, a good
soldier, and true Highlander!"
On its return from this disastrous service, his battalion occupied
Woodbridge Barracks in England. At this time an Englishman obtained
an ensigncy in the corps, which Cameron considered an innovation; for
while, on one hand, he disliked the French, from old associations, on
the other, he was not, for the same reason, over partial to Englishmen,
and was wont to affirm, "that a Southern in the kilt reminded him of
a hog in armour." Unfortunately for himself, Ensign Mudge (for such
was the name of the new acquisition) had no particular love for the
kilt, at which he railed on all occasions, in very coarse terms, and
once particularly at an Artillery hall in Woolwich, which so roused
Cameron's Highland ire, that he vowed, "if such remarks were ever made
again by Ensign Mudge, he would bring him to a general court-martial!"
At this time, the officers of the 42nd wore the kilt constantly by
their own desire.
Undeterred by Cameron's threat, Mudge wrote to the Commander-in-Chief,
stating that his health would not permit him to wear a dress so
unchristian and uncivilized. Sir David Dundas addressed an answer, not
to him, but to Fassifern, stating that his Majesty had no further use
for the services of poor Mr. Mudge, on whom this result, which Cameron
and his Highlanders hailed with satisfaction, fell like a thunderclap.
While at Woodbridge, he invited to the mess Dr. Moore (the venerable
father of the hero of Corunna), who afterwards addressed to him a
letter, expressing his high sense "of the kind and social reception"
he had met with from him and his officers. After this, in July, 1810,
the battalion marched to Canterbury, previous to embarkation for Spain;
Cameron obtained a short leave of absence, and so much had he become
attached to the corps, that he wept when he left it even temporarily.
On revisiting his native glen, his aged father, then in his seventieth
year (the old laird was born in 1740), expressed great reluctance to
part with him again, for, like a true Highlander, he had some dark
forebodings of the future.
His three sisters were married: Mary, to M'Donald of Glencoe; Jean,
to Roderick M'Neill of Barra; and Catherine, to Cluny M'Pherson; his
eldest brother Duncan was practising as a writer to the signet, in the
capital; and Peter, the second, was away to India in command of the
Balcarras. The old laird was almost alone at Fassifern; he represented
to the colonel, that, though he was only thirty-nine years of age, he
had received two wounds, from one of which he still suffered; that he
had been many times engaged with the enemy, and had seen enough of
war. He urged him to settle at home and to marry; offering him his
second estate of Arthurstone, in Angus; but the love of his profession
was too strong in the heroic heart of Cameron, and he rejoined his
battalion, then under the command of Major Archibald M'Donell (of the
family of Keppoch), at the far-famed _Lines_ of Torres Vedras.
To make his regiment as efficient as possible, he ordered that no
officer who had been less than ten years in the service should ride on
the march; this diminished the number of useless horses which every
regiment then possessed; while to increase the number of bayonets,
he turned the whole of the band into the ranks; thus, throughout the
whole Peninsular War, he retained only the bagpipes, drums, and fifes.
His regiment belonged to the 1st Brigade, or General Howard's, in the
2nd Division of Infantry, or Lord Hill's, with the 50th, under Colonel
Stuart, and the 71st Highlanders, under Colonel Cadogan, with both of
whom his fiery temper and jealousy on points of etiquette soon involved
him in a coolness that lasted till they were both removed by death. The
Highlanders entered Spain by the way of Albergaria, and their peculiar
garb soon changed the constant cry of "_Live the English_," to "_Viva
los Escotos! Viva Don Juan Cameron, y sus valiante Escotos! Viva!_"
This was when following up the retreating Massena. Notwithstanding all
efforts of that general to restore the barbarities of ancient warfare,
much good feeling prevailed between the French and British when out of
the field. Of this, one anecdote will suffice.
A French picket in front of Cameron's regiment, were about to slay
a bullock for their dinner, when the animal broke loose, and dashed
across the neutral ground, where a Highlander killed it by a single
ball, and his comrades proceeded immediately to cut up their prize in
view of the hungry and disappointed foe, who sent over two soldiers,
waving white handkerchiefs. Under these extempore flags of truce, they
brought a message from their officer, saying that he was "sure Scottish
soldiers were too generous to deprive his men of the only provisions
they had seen for some days." The Highlanders sent them back with half
the beef, several loaves of bread, and a bottle of rum. After this,
they became so familiar that some of our pickets went over and drank
with those of the enemy, until Wellington's order forbade it as unsafe
and improper.
Cameron distinguished himself by his activity, at the head of his
gallant Highlanders, in all the arduous operations of that sanguinary
war. He led his regiment at Fuentes d'Onor, where it was on the
right, covering a brigade of nine pounders, when it endured a severe
cannonade, and had thirty-seven officers and men killed and wounded.
Major Peter Grant had his arm torn off by a cannon-shot, but he
survived to die lately, at a good old age, amongst his kindred in
Strathspey.
The regiment was then 897 strong. Cameron was at the second siege of
Badajoz, and at the surprise of Gerard's division, on the 28th of
October, 1811, when, on a dark, rainy morning, and under cover of a
dense mist, Sir Rowland Hill's troops attacked the village of Arroya
del Molinos, or the Mills-of-the-King. In this brilliant affair,
Fassifern attacked the two retreating squares of the French with his
Highlanders, and breaking through one, sword in hand, formed on the
_other_ side of the _Puebla_, and completed the overthrow of Marshal
Gerard, who had all his artillery, baggage, money, officers, horses,
and 1,400 men taken. In the charge through the village, Cameron
received a wound in the sword hand, and Captain M'Pherson, with whom he
fought the duel at Gibraltar, was shot by his side. On this occasion
the Highlanders had a parody made on the old song of "Johnny Cope," for
Gerard, until he heard the pipers of the 92nd playing that popular air,
believed the attack to be a mere exchange of shots between his videttes
and the guerillas. Cameron's wound was a narrow escape, and is thus
mentioned by an eye-witness:[5]
"The captain of the grenadier company having been wounded early in the
action, the senior lieutenant, on assuming the command of it, made a
false movement; on perceiving which, the colonel, greatly irritated,
repeated his former orders in a voice of thunder, and, as was his
usual custom when displeased, struck his left breast with his right
hand, which then grasped the hilt of his sword. The last syllable
of his orders had just been delivered, when a bullet, despatched by
one of the enemy's riflemen, struck the first joint of his middle
finger, shattered the bone, passed through the handle of the sword,
and struck his breast so violently, that he relinquished the command
of the battalion to Major Mitchell, in the full conviction that the
ball had passed into his body. On being undeceived, the gallant colonel
instantly rejoined his battalion, and, with his middle finger dangling
by a small piece of skin only, remained at the head of his Highlanders
to the close of the engagement."
When the French were completely driven out, and when Hill's division
was on the march for San Pedro, Cameron, who had lost much blood, was
conducted by Ewen M'Millan to a house in Arroya, to have the wound
dressed, and the finger, which yet dangled by a sinew, cut off. On
entering, they found it occupied by a noisy and tipsy party of Spanish
dragoons, who, notwithstanding the rank and wound of Fassifern,
endeavoured to eject him. High words ensued, and a dragoon dared to
aim a blow at his head with a sabre. Cameron instinctively raised his
wounded hand for protection, and had his right arm cut to the bone.
Rendered furious by the sight of his master's blood, M'Millan levelled
his musket at the head of the insolent Spaniard, and would have shot
him dead; but Cameron, who was aware that the Conde de Penne Villamur's
dragoons occupied the whole village, exclaimed--
"Desist, Ewen, for God's sake do not fire!" and struck up his
foster-brother's musket, the bullet from which pierced the ceiling. He
never could discover the perpetrator of this severe wound, from the
effects of which he suffered long.
During the harassing marches of Hill's division in the desolate
Estramadura, his native hardihood never flinched, though the miseries
endured by the troops were excessive in that naked district, where
they were constantly in arrears of pay, bivouacking without tents or
fires, or cantoned in roofless and ruined towns, marching day and night
in the wet and chill of winter, or the heat of the summer solano,
when the white dust blew down the mountain passes, and the air became
thick with flies; when the soil of the vast plains cracked and rent;
when the perspiration rose in hazy steam above the marching columns;
when comrades fought like tigers around the wayside wells and casual
pools, to fill their canteens at the puddle through which, perhaps,
the advanced guard had passed an hour before; when years of hardship,
danger, starvation, and rags were to be endured, Fassifern never had
a day's illness or absence from parade; nor did his hardy Gordon
Highlanders ever lose a man by fatigue, save upon two occasions.
These exceptions were Lieutenants Marshall and Hill, two fine young
officers; the first of whom died in a wretched bullock car--died of
sheer starvation, as he was being conveyed into Badajoz; and the
second, unable to keep up with his men, perished of the same awful
death among the mountains, between Talavera and Toledo. It is said
that, on many occasions, Fassifern would have starved also, but for the
vigorous efforts of his foster-brother and henchman, Ewen M'Millan,
who, despite Lord Wellington's orders, plundered the Dons without
mercy, when the comfort of his chieftain and master required him to do
so.
After incessant skirmishes and daily marches along the banks of the
Tagus, and after a desperate affair of outposts at La Nava, on the 18th
May, 1812, Hill marched to destroy the forts erected by the French at
the bridge of Almarez. The 50th, and a wing of the 71st Highlanders,
formed one column, which was destined to attack Fort Napoleon; Cameron
with his regiment, and the remainder of the 71st, had orders to support
the attack, and storm the _tête-du-pont_. Both columns were amply
provided with scaling-ladders. As the troops descended a _rut_ of
the sierra, in Indian file, about midnight, Mr. Irvine, a gentleman
volunteer, left his ranks to obtain a draught of water. This was
contrary to express orders; and such was Cameron's strictness, that he
dismissed him from the regiment on the instant, and the poor fellow was
left alone among the mountains of Romangordo.
Being proud of his own regiment, Cameron had a great jealousy of the
71st Highlanders; and when the attack commenced, on some of their
bullets, in the twilight and confusion, whistling over his own ranks,
he called aloud--
"Seventy-first! what the devil are you about? Do you wish the
ninety-second to return your fire?"
Fort Napoleon was stormed in gallant style. Captain Candler, of the
50th, was shot through the head; but the French were driven towards
the _tête-du-pont_. Then Cameron entered it with them pell-mell, with
bayonets charged, muskets clubbed, swords and sledge-hammers. But
the commandant of Fort Ragusa, on the opposite side, cut the pontoon
bridge, and thus the whole garrison of Fort Napoleon found the deep
Tagus before them, and the foe behind.
Eager to capture Ragusa, many of Cameron's men flung themselves into
the river, and daringly swam across. Privates Gall and Somerville
were the first men who brought over the pontoon bridge. On gaining
possession of the platforms, which were literally ankle-deep in brains
and blood, the 1st brigade slued round the cannon upon the French, and
blew their heads off in scores, as they crowded into the square of the
little fortress, where the 71st Highlanders captured a standard of the
_Corps Etranger_.
The dead, 436 in number, were thrown into the ditch; the ramparts,
with eighteen cannon, were hurled over them; the stone towers were
blown up; the barracks and storehouses burned down; and the whole
place laid bare. In the general pillage which ensued, a Highlander
became mutinous to Cameron, who raised his claymore to cut him down;
but the descending blow was turned aside by a sergeant, named Taylor,
who kindly interposed his pike between them. Even when the gust of
passion passed away, Cameron could not forgive the affront of Taylor's
interference before his men, and was headstrong enough to resent it
in the following manner: When the sergeants drew lots for the command
of a firing party to shoot a deserter at Coria, Taylor escaped this
hateful ballot, but nevertheless Cameron ordered him to take charge of
the execution. Taylor gave him a glance full of reproach, and burst
into tears, yet he obeyed, and shot the culprit dead. Then Cameron
repented the casual malevolence which is sometimes to be found even yet
among the Celts, when an affront has been given them. At Merida, he
was pall-bearer during the grand military funeral generously bestowed
on the commandant of Almarez, who had been slain there by an officer
of the 71st Highlanders, and who was buried with the honours due to a
British officer of the same rank.
Cameron's native dislike to receive orders from seniors, his jealousy
of the 71st, and _Old Half-hundred_, involved him in many quarrels
with Colonels Cadogan and Stuart, and even in an angry correspondence
with Wellington. It was then currently rumoured in the Highland
regiments, that the great Duke had some dislike to their nation. The
Gordon Highlanders added, that he viewed coldly old Sir William Stuart,
Fassifern, and Major Mitchell, from whom they averred that he withheld
many honours to which they were entitled. What amount of truth these
rumours contained, it is _now_ impossible to learn. High words ensued
on one occasion between the colonel and his great leader, to whom he
said:--
"My Lord Marquis, thank God! I am beholden to no man for my bread--not
even to the service, for I have a comfortable home to retire to
whenever I please."
The real source of this bitterness of feeling is unknown; but it
continued during the whole war.
On one occasion his pride revolted at General Howard for keeping the
regiment too long under arms before inspection! and he sent Lieutenant
Grant to the Brigadier's billet with a brief message, "that the
regiment awaited him."
On another occasion, it chanced that by mistake he and a Spanish
colonel were billeted on the same mansion, and as it was thought too
small to accommodate both, he resolved to turn out the Don who was
already in possession of the premises. On Cameron arriving with the
colours, which were borne by his cousin, Ewen Ross, and another ensign,
and were escorted by four sergeants with their pikes, the Spanish
colonel appeared in the doorway with his Toledo drawn and pistols
cocked. Fassifern drew his claymore. "Forward, gentlemen," said he; "at
all risks I command you to lodge the colours!"
The sergeants charged with their pikes, and we know not how the affair
might have ended, had not Villamur's corps of Spanish horse turned the
corner of the street; this forced the rash chieftain to parley with the
cavalier, and share his quarters in peace.
After the night of blood at Almarez, Cameron and his Highlanders
marched by Fuente del Maistre, Los Santos, the hill of Albuera, and
many other places, bivouacking with their brigade wherever night found
them, preparatory to the attack on the forts at Salamanca, and the
battle there, which was fought, while Hill's division covered Lord
Wellington's rear. After joining the grand army on these contested
plains, the Highlanders were reviewed by their great general. Rations
had been served out that morning; the sheep-heads had been assigned to
the 92nd, and when they marched past by open column of companies, every
sixth man carried a sheep's head in his left hand.
When Wellington entered Madrid, the Highlanders of Cameron for one
night occupied the Escuriel, in the chapel of which the remains of a
king and queen of Scotland (Malcolm III. and St. Margaret) are said to
lie, having been conveyed to Spain in 1560. After Cameron marched to
Aranjuez, his cousin, Ewen Ross, had a narrow escape from a terrible
death. Having been ordered to the rear with sick and wounded from the
brigade, and having no less than twelve waggons-full of officers,
he reached Badajoz, after encountering many difficulties, and there
found that various outrages committed by the detachment of Lieutenant
H----, of the 28th, were laid to the charge of his party, such as
shooting and plundering the paisanos, robbing them of _burros_, wine,
and provisions. Lack of Spanish prevented the gallant Highlander
from explaining that he was not the guilty person; and the Marquis
del Palacio, governor of Badajoz, illegally tried him by a Spanish
court-martial, and unscrupulously sentenced him to death! Then fearing
to carry this sentence into execution, he sent him, under an escort of
Portuguese horse, to Elvas, where an English officer saved him from a
rabble who were bent on his destruction, and he was enabled to rejoin
Cameron in safety. On this march he saved from starvation Mr. Irvine,
the poor volunteer, whom he found in a state of destitution near
Truxillo.
Cameron and his Highlanders endured great misery on the disastrous
retreat from Burgos. Deprivation of food reduced the poor men almost to
skeletons; their uniform was worn to rags; many were barefooted, and
shirtless. Undeterred by the cruel exhibition of a soldier hung _daily_
at the head of the column (for of twenty men under sentence of death
for plundering, one was thus sacrificed every day), the 92nd shot some
wild pigs in a wood through which they passed. _Big_ Dugald Campbell,
one of their favourite officers, drove his long claymore through the
body of a boar which he pursued through the thicket, and claimed from
some cazadores. This prize he shared with Cameron and other officers;
but the affair drew forth a most severe reprimand from head-quarters,
and this was at a time when a _duro_ was given for a handful of
oats or nuts, and when some of the officers had no other food for
six-and-thirty hours than a few mushrooms or acorns.
Fassifern's regiment formed part of the small force which was left with
General Howard to secure Wellington's retreat, by defending the old
ruined town of Alba at the passage of the rapid Tormes. There the 50th,
71st, and 92nd made a gallant stand on the 8th of November, 1812. After
a long and fatiguing march, and just when about to receive a little
ration of dry bread--the first food after three days of starvation--the
appearance of the whole pursuing French army under Joseph Bonaparte,
summoned the brigade to man the old and shattered walls of Alba--a
relic of the Moorish wars--while the sappers undermined the bridge of
the Tormes. Two green hills overlooked the town and river. Between
these and the wall, within pistol-shot of the 92nd Highlanders, a
French staff-officer, mounted on a white charger, had the temerity
to ride leisurely reconnoitring, and followed by an orderly on foot.
Twenty Highlanders levelled their muskets to shoot this daring fellow,
but the chivalric Cameron cried aloud:
"Recover your arms there! I will by no means permit an individual to be
fired on!"
This officer who acted so boldly, and thus escaped so narrowly, proved
to be no other than _Marshal Soult_, who, in ten minutes after, ordered
eighteen pieces of cannon up to the heights, from whence they poured
1300 rounds of shot and shell on the brave brigade of Howard. This
was endured until the 13th, by which time Cameron lost forty-two men
killed and wounded. At daybreak, on the morning of the 14th, a despatch
arrived from Wellington, directing Howard to abandon Alba, as the
French cavalry, 3000 strong, had forded the river above the town and
turned his flank. A Spanish garrison was left in the old castle of the
_Castigador de Flamencos_--the walls were abandoned, and the bridge
blown up. Lieutenant John Grant of the 92nd was the last officer who
quitted the town, being left to bring off the sentinels, as the French
entered, and he was struck by the stones as the mine under the bridge
exploded, at the very heels of his party.
Wellington's admirable foresight saved Howard's brigade, which retired
to winter quarters at Coria, in Leon, when, with many other officers
and soldiers, Colonel Stewart of the 50th, as brave a Scot as ever
drew a sword, expired of exhaustion and fatigue. A soldier of the 50th
carved a rude stone to mark where this old officer was laid.
Refreshed by six months' rest in winter quarters at Banos, in a
beautiful valley of Leon, overshadowed by high mountains, Cameron,
after commanding the 1st brigade during General Foy's attack on Bejar,
marched with his Highlanders, when the whole army advanced to turn
the famous positions of Jourdan on the Ebro and Douro, and to meet him
on the green plains of Vittoria, where, on the 21st of June, 1813,
he again commanded the 1st brigade of Hill's division, and carried
the heights of La Peubla, when the gallant Cadogan fell amid heaps,
literally heaps, of his brave Highlanders.
Sir William Stuart having ordered Cameron to secure the heights, added,
"yield them to none without a written order from Sir Rowland Hill
or myself, and defend them while you have a man remaining." On this
Fassifern ordered the pipers to strike up the "Camerons' Gathering,"
and the regiment advanced with great spirit and alacrity up the
mountain side.
After this victory, the most decisive of the Spanish war, Cameron
pushed on with his brigade towards the Pyrenees, beyond which the
conqueror drove the French like a herd of sheep, and then garrisoned
the heights by a chain of outposts, previous to besieging San
Sebastian, and blockading Pampeluna. On this occasion the care of the
important pass of Maya was entirely assigned to Cameron, with the 1st
brigade, after it had crossed the Bidassoa, and skirmished with the
routed French until darkness set in, on the 7th July.
Cameron commanded this great outpost until the 25th of that month, when
the French advanced to storm the heights under the Duke of Dalmatia,
who had assumed the command of Jourdan's discomfited host, and was
directed to retrieve all its disasters by driving the British beyond
the Ebro. Full of confidence and of hope, at least to relieve the two
beleaguered fortresses, this brave marshal sent his legions against the
various passes in the mountains which Wellington, who was then urging
the siege of San Sebastian in person, had occupied by battalions and
brigades.
Cameron's force was encamped in the centre of a lonely gorge, and his
outposts were far down the hillside in advance; and these, on Sunday
the 25th, descried the division of General Drouet, 15,000 strong,
advancing on the road that led from Urdax. Coming on with great
spirit, they drove in the three light companies of the brigade (which
Cameron had dispatched as skirmishers in front), and gained the high
rock of Maya before the 2nd brigade of infantry could come to his
support. His little band were thus left to defend that steep and narrow
pass against _five_ times their number. On this fatal morning the
strength of the Gordon Highlanders was only fifty-five staff, and 762
rank and file.
To deceive the foe as to his real strength, Cameron skilfully divided
his Highlanders into two wings, in open columns of companies, thus
giving the slender battalion the aspect of _two_ regiments; but this
_ruse_ was useless, as the traitor-muleteers, who, for the few weeks
preceding, had been passing between the mountains and French outposts,
had made Soult fully aware of the actual force left to defend the
Pyrenees at every point. The moment the action commenced, Fassifern
detached the 50th to the right, where, after a desperate conflict, it
was driven back and forced to leave the ridge.
Under Major M'Pherson, Cameron then sent forward first the right
wing, and then the left, of his brave Highlanders. Then ensued one
of the most appalling scenes of carnage recorded in the annals of
that protracted war. The Highlanders stood like a rampart, in which,
however, frightful gaps were made by the bullets of the French, who
came on, in one vast mob, shouting and brandishing their eagles.
Separating the 1st and 2nd brigades, they descended upon the pass of
Maya from one flank, while a fresh division poured upon its front
from the Urdax road. Cameron, who had repeatedly ordered a _charge_,
which was unheard amid the roar of the musketry, then made the whole
fall back gradually upon the rock of Maya; a movement which was slowly
and desperately covered by the left wings of the 71st Highland Light
Infantry and of the Gordon Highlanders, which, by relieving each
other, drenched in blood every inch of the ground; and there these
gallant men defended the rock for ten successive hours, until--just
when ammunition was falling short--the brigade of General Barnes
arrived to their succour, and Lieutenant-General the Hon. Sir William
Stuart, a fine old soldier whom all the troops loved well, ordered
Cameron's brigade _not_ to charge; but, exasperated by the slaughter
they had endured, they rushed upon the French with the bayonet, and
the Gordon Highlanders, "_for the first time disregarded orders, and
not only charged, but led the charge_," and recovered every foot of
ground as far as the pass from which they had been driven. In this
headlong advance the pipers played the "Haughs of Cromdale," and the
line was led by Captain Seton of Pitmedden, bonnet and claymore in
hand. But the slaughter in their ranks was terrible, for 19 officers
and 324 rank and file were killed, wounded, and missing. Among the
wounded were--Cameron, who was shot through the thigh, and forced to
leave the field; Major Mitchel, who succeeded him; Captains Holmes, and
Bevan, who died when his arm was taken out of the socket, and Ronald
M'Donald of Coul; Lieutenants Winchester, who commanded the light
company; Donald M'Donald, Chisholm, Durie, M'Pherson, and Fife, who,
after having one ball turned by a button, and another by his watch, was
struck down at last; Gordon, Kerr Ross, and John Grant, who was shot
through the side. Among the ensigns were Thomas and George Mitchell,
Ewen Kennedy (one of Cameron's Lochaber men), who bled to death on the
field, and Alaster M'Donald of Dalchosnie, a youth of eighteen, who
afterwards expired of a wound in the head, and was buried by four of
his brother officers in a hole outside the town-gate of Vittoria, where
Holmes said a short prayer over his grave.
Sir William Napier, in his history, thus alludes to Fassifern and the
two regiments of Highlanders: "And that officer (Lieutenant-Colonel
Cameron), still holding the pass of Maya with the left wings of the
71st and 92nd Regiments, brought their right wings and the Portuguese
guns into action, and thus maintained the fight; but so dreadful was
the slaughter, that it is said the advancing enemy was actually stopped
by the heaped-up mass of dead and dying.... The stern valour of the
92nd would have graced _Thermopylæ_."
Strange to say, Lieutenant Gordon died at Edinburgh sixteen years
after, under the hands of a surgeon who was extracting the ball
received at Maya, and he lies now in the Calton burying-ground. Two
balls grazed Cameron, but the third pierced the fleshy part of his
right thigh. In great agony he called to M'Millan, who slung his
musket, rushed to his side, and led his horse by the bridle out of
the field. "The gallant Cameron, who has so frequently bled for his
country," says the _Pilot_ of 12th October, 1813, "received _three_
shots in his person, his horse received three, and three more were
found in his cloak, which was strapped before his saddle in the usual
manner." He lost so much blood, that, being unable to reach Vittoria,
which was a hundred miles distant, and to which all the wounded were
ordered to repair, he remained at an intermediate village until the
scar healed and he could rejoin the regiment at Roncesvalles, after it
had been engaged between Lizasso and Eguaros, and on the heights of
Donna Maria, having in both affairs 120 officers and men killed and
wounded. Captain Seton brought the regiment out of the field: thus the
Speaker of the House of Commons, on the 24th of June, might well say
that the Spaniards of future times would point with pride to the places
"where a Stuart made his stand, and where the best blood of Scotland
was shed in their defence." For his bravery at the Pyrenees, his
Majesty was pleased to permit Cameron to bear upon his shield the word
_Maya_.
From this period he was incessantly engaged in all the operations along
the French Pyrenees, in daily skirmishes, and the capture of entrenched
camps. The country was now covered by snow, and the troops endured
many privations, which Sir William Stuart (brother of Lord Galloway)
did all in his power to alleviate, by issuing extra allowances of rum,
which won him the cognomen of _Auld Grog Willie_; and his popularity
was so great among all the troops, that his appearance was always
hailed by a noisy cheer, and shouts of "God bless you, Sir William!"
Lord Wellington disliked this, and compelled the general to refund to
Government all those _extra_ allowances of rum served out to the poor
soldiers amid the snows of that severe winter on the Pyrenees.
Cameron, who had long remarked that those officers of his 1st Battalion
who became by promotion members of the 2nd, and should consequently
be at home, were always unfortunate if the corps were engaged, before
the passage of the Nive ordered four of them to leave immediately for
Britain, when the troops were about to cross the river.
"God bless you, gentlemen," said he, as they bade him adieu; "I am now
tired of war, and may well wish I were going with you."
But, mounted on his charger, he was the first to cross the Nivelle,
below Ainhoe, when his daring Highlanders were ordered to storm the
strong redoubt in rear of the village, where they drove out the French
and took possession of their huts. Here his favourite piper was killed
by his side; and with his own hand he strove to raise him, exclaiming,
"I would rather lose twenty men than have lost you!" He led them
through the Nive at Cambo; and in the attack upon those heavy columns
which occupied the ground between the entrenched camp at Bayonne and
the road to St. Jean Pied-de-Port, he fought valiantly at the battle
of St. Pierre. There (Napier relates), at one period of the day, the
overwhelming cannonade and musketry drove the 92nd in rear of the
hamlet; however, on being succoured by their old comrades, the 50th,
and Ashworth's Caçadores, they re-formed behind St. Pierre, and "then
their gallant colonel, Cameron, once more led them down the road,
with colours flying and pipes playing, resolved to give the shock to
whatever stood in their way. The 92nd was but a small clump compared to
the heavy mass in front;" but Fassifern led them on as of old, and the
_heavy mass_ rolled before their bayonets like mist before the wind.
Four times that day he led them to brilliant charges, and four times
the foe was driven back. Cameron had 13 officers and 173 rank and file
killed and wounded; but he obtained an honorary badge, inscribed with
the word _Nive_.
After the attack on the enemy at Hellette, in the lower Pyrenees,
where General Harispe was driven out, and forced to retire to Meharin;
and after that gallant conflict on the heights of Garris, where Cameron
lost Seton of Pitmedden, and twelve other brave fellows, the scene of
his next achievement was the pretty village of Arriverette, on the
right bank of Gave de Mauleon, where the French endeavoured to destroy
a wooden bridge, to prevent Wellington from following them; but a
ford being discovered above it, Cameron boldly threw himself into
the stream, at the head of his Highlanders, crossed under a fire of
artillery, stormed the village, drove back the enemy, and, by securing
the bridge, enabled the whole troops to pass. For this eminent service
his Majesty granted to him, as an additional crest of honourable
augmentation, a Highlander of the 92nd foot, "armed and accoutred,
up to the middle in water, his dexter hand grasping a broadsword, in
his sinister a banner, inscribed, '92nd,' within a wreath of laurel,
all proper, and on an escroll above, the word _Arriverette_."[6] But
Cameron had now a fresh cause of displeasure at his great leader; for,
on applying to him, through Lieutenant-General Lord Niddry, for leave
to inscribe _Arriverette_ upon the regimental colours, Wellington
declined, without affording any satisfactory reason. He acknowledged,
in his reply, that "the 92nd forded the river, and took the village
against a superior force of the enemy, in most gallant style;" but
added that it was beneath their reputation to explain _why_ they should
not have Arriverette on their colours. This ambiguous reply Cameron
considered another affront, and never forgot or forgave it.
He received an honorary badge for his conduct at the battle of Orthez;
and on the 2nd March, 1814, distinguished himself at the capture of
Aire so prominently, that George III. desired him to bear embattled in
chief above the old cognizance of Lochiel (as the heraldic record above
quoted has it), "a representation of the town of Aire, in allusion to
his glorious services on the 2nd March last, when, after an arduous
and sanguinary conflict, he succeeded in forcing a superior body of
the enemy to abandon the said town, and subsequently had the honour to
receive an address from the inhabitants, expressive of their gratitude
for the maintenance of discipline, by which he had saved them from
plunder and destruction." The address, which was so complimentary to
his distinguished regiment, was signed by M. Codroy, the mayor, in the
name of the people.
From thence he accompanied the troops in that hot and brilliant
pursuit, which did not cease until the French evacuated Toulouse, and
the white banner of Bourbon was displayed upon its walls. The seizure
of Paris by the allies, the abdication of Bonaparte and proclamation
of peace, the restoration of Louis XVIII., rapidly followed, and the
Peninsular army was ordered home.
In the last skirmish near Toulouse, Cameron had his favourite horse
shot under him; and, though there was a hot fire of musketry sweeping
the place where it lay, M'Millan deliberately unbuckled the girths of
the saddle, and brought it away with the cloak and holsters, saying,
that "though the French were welcome to the dead carcase, they should
not get the good accoutrements."
When encamped at Blanchefort, two miles from Bordeaux, Cameron obtained
his brevet colonelcy on the 4th June, 1814;[7] and when cantoned at
Pouillac, his Highlanders joyfully received the route for Scotland, and
on the 17th July embarked on board H.M.S. _Norge_, which, however, by a
change of destination, landed them at the Cove of Cork.
While his regiment, now reduced to one battalion, was in Ireland,
Cameron returned, on leave, to his native glen at Fassifern.
Wellington had then won all the honours a subject could attain: patents
of nobility, baronetcy, and knighthood were issued for generals of
division and brigade; Orders of the Garter, the Bath, and the Crescent
were unsparingly lavished among the heroes of the war; but the brave
Cameron, notwithstanding all his services--though he had been almost
riddled by musket-shot, and had served in Sweden, Denmark, Holland,
Spain, Portugal, Egypt, and France, at home and abroad, for twenty-one
years--found that the Duke of Wellington had _omitted_ his name in the
list of officers recommended for honorary distinctions. He visited
London, and complained to the Duke of York, who offered to have him
gazetted as an additional Cross of the Bath.
"I beg your highness will excuse me," said he, "for as my name has been
omitted, I will not accept of it now."
"Sir," replied the duke, "do you know to whom you are speaking?"
"A prince of that royal blood for which I have too often shed my own;
but am yet willing to do so again. And I have the honour to wish your
Highness good morning."
In this haughty fashion he quitted the Horse Guards, but was afterwards
prevailed upon to write to Wellington.
Justly indignant, he wrote a fiery remonstrance to the duke, who was
then at Vienna, and who, in one of his letters to Earl Bathurst, dated
5th February, mentions it as a _somewhat imprudent production_; but his
Grace replied to the following effect:--
"Vienna, 5th February, 1815.
"SIR,--I received your letter of the 8th January, this morning, and I
have transmitted it to the Secretary of State, with my recommendation
of you.
"The Government fixed the occasions on which medals should be granted
to the army, and framed the rules, according to which I was bound
to make the lists of those to whom they were to be granted; and not
having received their orders to recommend for medals, for the service
at Arroya del Molinos, Alba de Tormes, Bejar, Aire, or at Arriverette,
it was impossible for me to recommend you for a medal at Fuentes
d'Onoro, or in the Pyrenees, according to the rules by which I was
bound to make out the lists of those I recommended. I have not an
accurate recollection of the lists for Bayonne, the Nivelle, Orthez,
and Toulouse; but of this I am very certain, _that I have never failed
to do your services justice_, as it was my earnest desire to render it
to every officer and soldier I had the honour of commanding.
"I have nothing to say about the selection of the officers recently
appointed Knights Commanders of the Order of the Bath. I did not know
their names till I saw the list of them in the _Gazette_. If you had
known these facts, I hope that the same spirit of justice by which I
have always been animated, would have induced you to spare me the pain
of reading the _reproaches and charges of injustice_ contained in your
letter; and that you would have defended me in the 92nd Regiment; and
would have shown them that the regulation, and not I, deprived you of
those marks of honour which they wished to see you obtain. As these
facts are in the knowledge of everybody, it is scarcely possible to
believe that you were not aware of them, and I attribute the harshness
of your letter solely to the irritation which you naturally feel in
considering your own case. However, the expression of this irritation,
however unjust towards me, and unpleasant to my feelings, has not
made me forget the services which you and your brave corps rendered
upon every occasion on which you were called upon; and, although I am
afraid it is _too late_, I have recommended you in the strongest terms
to the Secretary of State; and have the honour to be, &c.,
"Wellington.
"To Lieut.-Colonel Cameron, 92nd Regiment."
Cameron saw there was something at least generous in the tone of this
letter, and he sent a memorial for the Order of the Bath; for the medal
which had been given to officers engaged at Fuentes d'Onoro, and also
for the Order of the Tower and Sword. Wellington replied as follows:--
"Vienna, February, 1815.
"SIR,--I have received your letter of the 13th January, and the copy
of your memorial; in answer to which I can only inform you, that I
had no concern whatever in the selection of the officers of the army
lately under my command to be Knights Commanders of the Order of
the Bath; and as I see that the number limited is filled, I am quite
certain that no application I can make will answer any purpose. I
will inquire about your claim to a medal for Fuentes d'Onoro. I have
recommended you for the Portuguese Order of the Tower and Sword; and
have the honour, &c.,
"Wellington.
"To Lieut.-Colonel Cameron, 92nd Regiment."
Fassifern received the Portuguese order, but he was too much of a
Highlander to forget the first unmerited affront, of being omitted or
forgotten; and now we can but hope that this omission of the great duke
was, at least, an unwitting one.
Like every Highlander of the old school, and like many of the present
day, Cameron believed in the Taisch, or Second Sight; he had one other
fancy, a dread of being on the water, or at sea; thus he who would face
without flinching a shower of grape or hedge of bayonets, has been
known to grow pale at the rocking of a small boat.
When at home, on leave, in 1815, he visited Mor'ar, in Lochaber, the
seat of Colonel Simon M'Donald, a retired officer who had joined the
92nd at their first muster in 1793. One day when passing along a
corridor together, and about to enter the dining-room, M'Donald started
back, with his eyes fixed in their sockets, his face pale as death, and
his limbs trembling.
"In God's name, what is the matter Mor'ar?" asked Cameron.
"Nothing," replied M'Donald, after a pause, and greatly agitated;
"nothing."
"You _have_ seen something, Simon," continued Cameron, impressively,
for he knew, or believed, that the gift of the Taisch was hereditary in
the family of Mor'ar.
"Well, then, I have seen something, Fassifern," said M'Donald, passing
a hand over his eyes with a troubled expression; "but do not ask me
what it was."
Mor'ar was thoughtful and sad for a long time after, and it was
currently believed that he had seen some vision of his old friend's
approaching end; for the day-dreams of the Highland seers are always
fraught with death and sorrow. Immediately after this, war broke out
again; Bonaparte quitted Elba, returned to Paris, and resumed the reins
of government, while Louis XVIII. withdrew to Ghent.
Wellington once more took the field, and the 92nd Highlanders were
ordered to Flanders, with the other forces under his command. Cameron
hastened to rejoin, in Ireland, where the regiment was still stationed.
Its second battalion, under Lamond of that ilk, had been disbanded at
Edinburgh, all save twelve sergeants and 174 soldiers, who, with five
officers, marched to Portpatrick to join the head-quarters; and on this
route an interesting episode occurred.
As the Highlanders, with pipes playing, marched past a little wayside
cottage, an old and white-haired man came out to see them, and was
immediately recognised as their brave and favourite general in Spain,
Sir William Stuart, who, neglected by the Government, had retired there
to brood over his unrequited services. A hearty cheer welcomed "_Auld
Grog Willie_." Then the brave Stuart burst into tears, and wept like
a child. The detachment was formed into line, and inspected by him;
perhaps the last military duty he ever performed, for rumour says that
he died soon after of a broken heart.
Cameron embarked with his Highlanders at Cork, for Ostend, from whence,
with eight battalions under his command, viz., the third battalion of
the Royal Scots; the 28th, 32nd, 42nd, 44th, 79th, 92nd, and third
battalion of the 95th Rifle corps, he marched, _viâ_ Ghent and Bruges,
to Brussels, where, on the 3rd June, 1815, his Highlanders, with the
brigade to which they belonged--the 5th or Sir Denis Pack's--were
reviewed by Wellington, then a field-marshal. In the 5th corps were
also the 1st Royal Scots, the 42nd Highlanders, and 44th Regiment.
When Pack's brigade was under arms in the Park of Brussels, the Duchess
of Richmond, who had been Lady Charlotte Gordon, passed in an open
carriage along the line. Colonel MacQuarrie, of the 42nd, gallantly
made his Highlanders _present arms_ to her, as the Duke of Gordon's
daughter, while the pipes played a salute; but on her approaching the
92nd, Cameron, still true to his old feud with her brother the marquis,
gave the order--"Gordon Highlanders, order arms--stand at ease!" and
thus coldly was the fair duchess received by the clan regiment of her
father.
On the 12th June, Napoleon left Paris at the head of his brave
army, and the British poured from Brussels. "The 42nd and 92nd
Highlanders marched through the Place Royale and the Parc," says
the "Circumstantial Detail;" "one could not but admire their fine
appearance, their steady, military demeanour, with their pipes playing
before them, and the beams of the rising sun shining upon their
glittering arms. On many a highland hill and in many a lowland valley
will the deeds of these brave men be remembered. It was impossible to
witness such a scene unmoved."
It was at four o'clock, on a bright midsummer morning, when the
Highlanders of Pack's brigade marched through the Namur gate, and,
mounted on a black Spanish horse, Fassifern was at the head of the
92nd. Gallant MacQuarrie led the Royal Highlanders. They were in the
division of Sir Thomas Picton, and, about two o'clock in the day,
came within range of the French artillery in front of Gemappe, near a
farm-house, now immortalised as _Les Quatre Bras_, where the main road
from Charleroi to Brussels is crossed by that which leads from Nivelle
to Namur. This was doomed to be, as his friend Mor'ar had, perhaps, too
surely foreseen, the scene of Cameron's last achievement.
The 92nd were ordered to line a ditch in front of the Namur road, on
the left flank of the farm-house; Wellington took his station near, and
a hot cannonade swept over them. The proud and fiery Cameron, still
pursuing his feud with the duke, never deigned to take the slightest
notice of him, but allowed him to pass and repass his post without
according either salute or recognising. At four in the afternoon the
Black Brunswick which failed in a charge in front of this position,
and their brave prince fell by a mortal wound. Inspired with new
ardour, a body of French cavalry, which had taken the colours of the
69th, or South Lincolnshire Regiment, swept forward, and then the
92nd, the moment the Brunswickers were past, poured an oblique but
deadly volley upon the foe, piling men and horses breast high before
the roadway. Attended by one soldier, his servant, M. Bourgoyne, an
officer of these horse chasseurs, clad in light green uniform, tried
to escape round the flank of the 92nd. His brass helmet had fallen
off, and displayed his curly black hair; he was a handsome young man,
and waved his sabre, repeatedly shouting "_Vive l'Empereur_." Cameron
evinced no disposition to molest this gallant Frenchman, but Wellington
exclaimed, "92nd, d----n it, do not let that fellow escape." Fifty or
sixty men then fired at him; but, such was the speed of his horse, the
smoke, confusion, and inutility of firing with fixed bayonets, that he
escaped all their shots, and caracoled his horse along the whole line
of the 92nd. Then private Harold Chisholm, and a corporal of the 42nd
Highlanders (who had lost his regiment and joined Cameron), unfixed
their bayonets, knelt down, fired, and the chasseur fell to the earth,
while his charger limped away on three legs. M. Bourgoyne had been
shot through both ankles. Several Hanoverians now rushed forward to
bayonet him, but he was rescued by Lieutenants Chisholm and Ewen Ross,
who had him borne to the rear. Lieutenant Hector Innes encountered his
servant, who was run through from behind by a Belgian lancer and slain.
M. Bourgoyne was afterwards sent to Brussels; and his family in Paris
expressed to Lieutenant Winchester, and other Highland officers, their
deep gratitude for his preservation.
Again the chasseurs charged, and again they were repulsed; while a
fire of cannon and musket-shot was thinning fast the ranks of Cameron.
Forming under cover of these attacks, the French infantry, flanked by
artillery, possessed themselves of a two-storied house, and in heavy
column advanced beyond it with great spirit. At that moment,
"92nd!" exclaimed the Duke of Wellington, waving his cocked hat,
"prepare to charge."
Fassifern raised his bonnet, set spurs to his horse, the whole regiment
sprang over the ditch which bounded the road, and with bayonets
charged, dashed through the smoke upon the enemy, and routed them.
Officers and men fell fast on every side; but on went the 92nd until
the gable of the two-storied house at the corner of the Charleroi road
broke the centre of their line. Then they formed up in two wings, rank
entire, with the house in the centre; and Cameron sent forward his
cousin Ewen Ross, with the light company, into a wood of olives to
skirmish, where he received a severe wound in the groin. At that time
the grape-shot of the French artillery was sweeping the corn-field
between the wood and the farm-house, and shredding away the ripe ears
like flakes of snow in the wind. A body of French, who occupied the
upper story, were firing briskly from the windows; and others who lined
a thick thorn hedge, defended the avenues to the building.
Here it was that the brave Cameron, of Fassifern, fell; but the
accounts of his death, as related by Siborne and others, are not
strictly correct in detail. He had led his Highlanders close to the
hedge, when a shot from the house passed through his belly, entering on
the left side, and passing out on the right, tearing the intestines,
and inflicting a mortal wound. At the same moment his horse sank under
him, pierced by four musket balls.
The regiment gave a wild cheer, burst in the gates of the garden, and
fearfully was he avenged by the charged bayonet and clubbed musket;
but ere this Captain William Grant, Lieutenants Chisholm, Becher, and
M'Pherson were killed, and soon after were barbarously stripped by the
French. Nineteen officers of the 92nd were wounded, and 280 rank and
file killed and wounded. The aged mother of Chisholm received a widow's
pension from the Government, and Campbell, the adjutant, brought his
claymore and watch home to her in Strathglass, as mementos of that dark
day at Les Quatre Bras.
"The warlike and lamented Colonel Cameron," says his cousin Lieutenant
Ewen Ross (92nd), who was wounded on that day by his side, and whose
letter is now before me, "Cameron, than whom there was not a braver
or better officer in the best or bravest of armies, was left to the
chance care of his orderly sergeant, William Grant, who with a private
of the 4th company led him carefully and slowly to a square of office
houses at Quatre Bras. His horse being perforated by four musket balls,
could carry him no further, and was then shot. The colonel was then
carried in a blanket to Gemappe by Sergeant Grant, Colin Mackenzie the
drum-major, two drummers named MacLean, and three MacRaes belonging to
the band."
Ewen M'Millan and another Highlander carried Cameron into what the
soldiers not inaptly named the _bloody hospital_ at Gemappe, where
his wound was at once pronounced to be mortal. On the position being
abandoned, in his hereditary hatred and horror of the French, he
expressed great dread of being left to die in their hands; and by nine
in the evening his faithful and sorrowing foster-brother procured a
common cart, the only vehicle to be had, and placed him in it with
Ensign Angus M'Donald, who was also severely wounded, and conveyed
them towards Brussels. On the way Cameron asked if the enemy had been
defeated? M'Millan answered "yes," though such was not the case, but
the poor fellow's heart was ready to burst.
"Defeated--then I die happy!" said Cameron; "but, oh! I hope my dear
native country will believe that I have served her faithfully."
After this the power of language failed him; but Angus M'Donald (who
afterwards died from the effect of his own wound) related that he
heard him praying fervently in Gaelic, and in whispers. He was sinking
fast. As the cart passed near where his cousin Ross lay wounded, the
latter sent his servant, Angus Sutherland, to inquire how he was; but
Cameron's speech was gone--he could only shake his head mournfully,
without replying; and just as the cart entered the village of Waterloo,
he laid his head on the breast of the brave and good M'Millan, on
whose arm he had reclined, and expired without a sigh.
His faithful follower conveyed the body in by the Namur gate, through
which Cameron had that morning ridden forth at the head of his
Highlanders, and took it straight to the billet they had occupied in
Brussels. As he was obliged to rejoin the regiment without delay for
the coming conflict at Waterloo, he made a rough deal coffin, and in
this placed the body of his master, brother, and friend--for Cameron
had been all these three to the poor Highland private; and thus he
interred him, still in his full uniform, by the side of the King's
Avenue, on the Ghent road, the Allée Verte. This was on the evening of
Saturday, the 17th of June. The body was conveyed to its hastily-made
tomb, in a common cart, for poor Ewen could afford nothing better; and
the only persons who accompanied him were the landlord of the billet,
an honest Belgian, and three wounded Highlanders, who, with their open
scars, had tottered out of Brussels to pay the last tribute to him they
loved so well, and had followed so long.
"Your lordships will see in the enclosed lists," says Wellington, in
a dispatch to the Treasury, dated Orville, 25th June, "the names of
some most valuable officers lost to His Majesty's service. Among them,
I cannot avoid to mention Colonel Cameron, of the 92nd Regiment, and
Colonel Sir H. Ellis of the 23rd, to whose conduct I have frequently
called your lordships' attention, and who at last fell, distinguishing
themselves at the head of the brave troops which they commanded.
Notwithstanding the glory of the occasion, it is impossible not to
lament such men, both on account of the public and as friends."
Such was the eulogium of Wellington!
When Cameron was lying dead in the hospital of Gemappe, there was
found in the pocket of his Highland regimentals a touching memento,
illustrative of his character, and more honourable even than the
trophies of battle which he bore on his breast; viz., a pocket-book,
containing the names of all the Highland soldiers who had come with
him from his father's lands and from Lochaber; marking those whom he
had promoted, and those who were dead; for he counted many of them as
his clansmen and kindred, and had ever looked after the interests and
welfare of them all as if they had been the children of his own hearth,
and he had carried this list with him in all his battles, for it was
dated at Alexandria, in Egypt, 24th September, 1801.
A captain of an English regiment was buried near him; and there in
that lonely place the graves lay undisturbed until the month of April,
1816. In that year the colonel's brother, Captain Peter Cameron, of the
Balcarris, came to Brussels, accompanied by Ewen M'Millan, who led him
to the well-remembered place, where the graves lay, near three trees at
a corner of the Allée Verte. The colonel's remains were exhumed, placed
within another coffin, and brought to Leith; from whence a king's ship
conveyed them to his native Lochaber, where a grand Highland funeral
was prepared.
From Fassifern the remains of the colonel were borne for five miles,
on the shoulders of his friends and clansmen, to the old kirkyard of
Kilmalie, where, in presence of 3000 Highlanders, his aged father, then
verging on his eightieth year, laid his head in the grave a second
time, while the pipes played a lament; and now he sleeps in his native
earth by the tomb of the MacLauchlans, the _Leine Chrios_ of Locheil.
Donald Cameron, his chief, was in attendance, with Barra, Barcaldine,
and Glencoe, and seventy gentlemen of the clans dined in honour of the
occasion, at the Inn of Maryburgh.
Old Highlanders yet tell how sadly and how solemnly on that day the
march of _Gille Chriosd_ rang in the great glen of Caledonia, and yet
remember the dirge composed on that occasion by _Ailean Dall_, or
"Blind Allan," the bard of the chieftain of Glengarry--perhaps the last
of the family bards in the Scottish Highlands.
In consideration of his son's brilliant services, the venerable Ewen
of Fassifern received a baronetcy, and in Kilmalie a monument has been
raised above the grave of the hero of Arriverette. Its epitaph is from
the pen of Sir Walter Scott, and is remarkable for the elegance of its
expression:--
"Sacred to the memory of Colonel John Cameron, eldest son of Ewen
Cameron of Fassifern, Bart., whose mortal remains, transported from the
field of glory where he died, rest here with those of his forefathers.
During twenty years of active military service, with a spirit which
knew no fear, and shunned no danger, he accompanied or led, in marches,
sieges, and battles, the 92nd Regiment of Scottish Highlanders, always
to honour and always to victory; and at length, in the 42nd year of his
age, upon the memorable 16th June, 1815, was slain in command of that
corps, while actively contributing to achieve the decisive victory of
Waterloo, which gave peace to Europe. Thus closing his military career
with the long and eventful struggle, in which his services had been so
often distinguished; he _died_, lamented by that unrivalled general,
to whose long train of success he had so often contributed; by his
country, from which he had repeatedly received marks of the highest
consideration, and by his sovereign, who graced his surviving family
with those marks of honour which could not follow, to this place, him
whom they were designed to commemorate. _Reader, call not his fate
untimely, who, thus honoured and lamented, closed a life of fame by a
death of glory!_"
Few of Camerons old comrades now survive. I know of only three officers
and four privates living of the regiment which, between the 27th
August, 1799, and the 18th June, 1815, had lost, in killed and wounded,
117 officers and 1634 men. After being discharged, Ewen M'Millan (who
could never learn one word of English) died, in 1840, at Callart, the
seat of Cameron's brother, and he now sleeps by his old master's side
at Kilmalie. He it is whose memory Scott has embalmed in his "_Dance of
Death_," and--
"Who for many a day
Had followed stout and stern,
Where through battles, rout, and reel,
Storm of shot and hedge of steel,
Led the grandson of Lochiel,
Valiant Fassifern!
Though steel and shot he leads no more,
Low laid 'mid friends' and foemen's gore
But long his native lake's wild shore,
And Suinart rough, and high Ardgower,
And Morven long and tell;
And proud Bennevis hear with awe,
How, upon Bloody Quatre Bras,
Brave Cameron heard the wild hurrah
Of conquest, as he fell!"
Riddled with wounds, Colonel Donald M'Donald of Inch, Knight of St.
Vladimir, died in 1830, and is interred at Edinburgh; Lieutenant
Winchester died there in 1846. Captain Campbell died, by leaping
over a window, with a pistol in each hand, to chastise a person who
had insulted him; some have died as emigrants among the wilds of the
far West; many more are lying near Uppark, in Jamaica, where the
close-ranked headstones show where 1300 of the Gordon Highlanders are
sleeping far from their native hills; and now Paymaster Gordon, and
Lieutenants Ewen Ross, John Grant, and Alexander Gordon alone survive
to wear the _war decoration_.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 3: As an example of the number of _officers_ belonging to
the clans, who served during the war and escaped its slaughter, we
may state that there were on full and half-pay commissions, in 1816,
22 Buchanans; 67 Camerons; 22 Drummonds; 26 Fergusons; 41 Forbeses;
49 Grahames; 90 Frazers; 96 Grants; 144 M'Leans and M'Kenzies; 248
Campbells; and other names in the same proportion.]
[Footnote 4: MS. Records, 92nd Highlanders.]
[Footnote 5: Lieutenant Hope, 92nd.]
[Footnote 6: "Record:" Lyon Court, Edinburgh.]
[Footnote 7: Note of his services furnished to author from Horse
Guards.]
SIR SAMUEL GREIG.
Sir Samuel Greig, Governor of Cronstadt, Admiral of all the Russias,
and commonly called _the Father of the Russian Navy_, was a Scotsman of
humble but respectable parentage, and was born at the ancient seaport
town of Inverkeithing, in Fifeshire, on the 30th of November, 1735.[8]
He was educated by the parochial schoolmaster, who lived long to boast
of his pupil, for the Domini would seem to have been still alive when
the old statistical account of Scotland was published in 1794.
When very young, Samuel Greig entered the British navy, and at an
early age obtained the rank of lieutenant. In 1759 he served with
the fleet of Admiral Sir Edward Hawke, C.B. (afterwards Lord Hawke),
when blockading the harbour of Brest, where a fine French fleet lay,
under the pennant of the Marquis de Conflans. At that time a double
invasion of Britain (one by the way of Scotland, the other on the coast
of England) was threatened; but Commodore Boys blocked up Dunkirk,
and Rodney bombarded Havre-de-Grace, while the French transports and
flat-bottomed boats lay inactive in Brest, with the fleet of M. de
Conflans; till a violent storm in autumn, having driven the ships of
Sir Edward Hawke into Torbay, the marquis put to sea with twenty-one
sail of the line and four frigates, and threw all England into
consternation.
With twenty sail of the line, Hawke left Torbay, and came up with the
French fleet between Belleisle and Cape Quiberon, close in on the
coast of France, and in the desperate conflict which ensued, "young
Greig," though a subaltern, is said to "have eminently distinguished
himself." The battle began at two o'clock, P.M., on the 20th of
November.
Sir Edward, in the _Royal George_, 110, lay alongside De Conflans in
the _Soleil Royale_, 80, which was soon driven on shore and burned.
He then lay alongside the _Thesée_, and sent her to the bottom by one
broadside. _La Superbe_ shared the same fate; the _Juste_ was sunk
off the mouth of the Loire; the _Hero_ was burned; and thus M. de
Conflans was totally defeated. Nothing saved the rest of his fleet from
irretrievable ruin but the shadow of a tempestuous night, in which
two British ships of the line were lost. Lieutenant Greig served with
the fleet in all its operations, during the long cruise off the coast
of Bretagne, and the blockade of the river Vilaine, to prevent seven
French ships which lay there from joining Conflans, whose battered
squadron had reached Rochefort; but so dangerous were the storms, and
so incessantly tempestuous the weather, that the fear of invasion
passed away. Sir Edward Hawke was at length recalled, and the thanks
of Parliament and a pension were awarded to him. In this war the
British destroyed, or took twenty-seven French ships of the line and
thirty-one frigates. Six of their vessels perished. Thus, in all they
lost sixty-four sail, while Britain, by every casualty, lost only seven
line-of-battle ships and five frigates.
The next scene of Greig's service was at the capture of several of the
West India Islands.
War having been declared against the Spaniards, an attack on their
settlements in the West Indies was arranged, and Martinico, St. Lucia,
St. Vincent, and Grenada were taken. Then Cuba was assailed. Greig
was with the fleet, consisting of nineteen sail of the line, eighteen
frigates, and 150 transports, which had 10,000 soldiers on board, and
sailed for Cuba under Admiral Sir George Pocoke, K.B., whose commodore
was the Hon. Augustus Keppel, raised to the peerage in 1782.
The energy and exertions of Lieutenant Greig, during that tremendous
cannonading which preceded the siege and capture of the Moro Castle,
elicited the praise of his commander; but no promotion followed, for
the time was unfavourable for either Scotsmen or Irishmen rising in the
British service. After incredible exertions, difficulties, danger, and
slaughter, Havannah was captured, with 180 miles of coast; the Puntal
Castle, the ships in the harbour, three millions sterling of booty, and
an immense quantity of arms, artillery, and stores were surrendered to
the British. Greig's share of this enormous prize-money was very small,
being somewhere about 80_l._
Lieutenant Greig served in many other engagements during that
successful war; and his bravery, activity, and skill as a seaman had
so frequently elicited particular attention, that after the treaty of
peace which was signed at Paris in February, 1763, under Lord Bute's
administration, when the Court of St. Petersburg requested that a few
British officers of distinguished ability might be sent to improve the
Russian fleet, Greig was one of the _five_ who were first selected,
and his rank as lieutenant in the navy of Russia was confirmed by the
Empress Catherine II., in 1764. The only stipulation he and the others
made was, that they were to have the power of returning to the British
service whenever they chose.
Russia, since the beginning of the seventeenth century, has ever been
an excellent field for Scottish talent and valour. Thus Greig, by
his superior skill in naval affairs, his intelligence and diligent
discharge of the duties entrusted to him, soon attracted the special
notice of the Imperial Government, and the Empress appointed him a
captain in her fleet. He drew many other Scotsmen around him, and,
with these, he was at incredible pains to teach the half-barbarous
and wholly unlettered Russians the science of seamanship and the art
of gunnery, in all of which they were very deficient, "and he rapidly
raised the Russian naval service to a degree of respectability and
importance which it never before had attained."
In 1769, when he was in his thirty-fourth year, a war broke out between
Russia and Turkey, consequent on the civil strife which religious
intolerance had kindled in Poland. The Czarina marched in her troops;
and while pretending that her sole object was to rescue one body of
Polish citizens from the tyranny of the other, she secretly sought to
enslave them all, and render their country a province of the Russian
empire.
The growing greatness of the latter had alarmed its old hereditary
enemy, the Grand Seignior, who required Catherine immediately to
withdraw her troops from the Polish republic. Evasions were given,
and conflicts began between the Russian and Turkish outposts, on the
borders of the Ottoman empire, until the sack of Balta, in Lesser
Tartary, and a general massacre of its inhabitants, by the soldiers of
the Czarina, procured the committal of her ambassador to the Castle of
the Seven Towers, in October, 1769; and hostilities, which were only
suspended by the rigour of the season, began early in the spring of the
ensuing year.
Captain Greig was appointed commodore of the fleet which was to sail
for the Mediterranean, under Alexis Count Orloff; and in that ample
arena of service he had an opportunity of displaying his zeal and
intrepidity in such a manner as led to his immediate promotion to the
rank of flag-officer.
A partial breaking up of the ice in the Baltic enabled some of the
fleet to sail; and so early as the 14th of January, 1770, one part of
the armament, under the Scottish admiral Elphinstone, consisting of
one 70-gun ship, two of sixty guns each, and five others, arrived at
Spithead, _en route_ for the Archipelago.
The other division, of twenty-two sail of the line, reached Port
Mahon, in Minorca, so early as the 4th of January; and by the 6th of
March appeared off Cephalonia, the largest of the Ionian Isles, and,
with a fair wind, bore away directly for the Morea. At Minorca they
left some vessels to wait for Elphinstone, who left Spithead on the
14th of April, passed Gibraltar on the 4th of May, and before the
end of July had twice defeated the Turkish fleet--on one occasion
encountering three times his force, and destroying eight ships; on the
second occasion, with nineteen ships, encountering Giafar Bey, with
twenty-three. Giafar's largest ships were destroyed, and his fleet
dispersed.
In the great battle of the 6th of July, Greig, Mackenzie, and other
officers in the Russian fleet, had an opportunity of eminently
rendering good and gallant service; and by their energy and skill
the world now saw a naval force, which, as Cormick says, had issued
from the foot of the Baltic, able "to shake the remotest parts of the
Mediterranean, to intercept the trade of the Levant, to excite and
support the insurrection of the Greek Christians, and to leave nothing
of the vast empire of their enemies free from alarm and confusion."
The united squadron of the Admirals Count Orloff, Elphinstone,
Spiritoff, and Commodore Greig, followed the Turkish fleet, which
consisted of fifteen sail of the line, twelve frigates, &c., into the
Channel of Scio, which divides the island from Anadoli, or the Lesser
Asia; there the Turks were at anchor in a most advantageous position,
at the foot of the Gulf of Liberno, where their rear and flanks were
protected by rocks.
Early in the morning of the 5th, Commodore Greig was sent to
reconnoitre the roads between Scio and the main; and in the afternoon
he signalled _the enemy in sight_, consisting of _thirty sail in all_.
Orloff, the admiral-general, held a council of war, at which Greig's
opinion was specially asked, and his advice followed.
On the 6th, at ten in the morning, Orloff signalled to form line, and
the Russian fleet approached the Turks. Orloff was in the centre, with
three _Birnates_; Commodore Greig led one division, and Elphinstone the
other--in all, ten sail of the line, and five frigates; and they each
bore down with ensigns flying, all their ports open, and decks cleared
for action. There were many French officers on board of the Turkish
fleet, which had been joined by about thirty lieutenants, who had
received the permission of King Louis to enter the Sultan's service. A
terrible scene of carnage ensued, and the whole conflict is admirably
detailed in a letter published in the _Scots' Magazine_ for that
year, by a Lieutenant Mackenzie, who served on board of her Imperial
Majesty's ship the _Switostoff_.
At eleven o'clock the battle began. Admiral Spiritoff ranged up
alongside of the Turkish admiral, who was in the _Sultana_, of ninety
brass guns, and thus they fought yard-arm and yard-arm together,
pouring in and receiving cannon-shot, chain-shot, hand-grenades and
musketry. Spiritoff's topmasts were shot away, his bulwarks battered
down, and blood ran from his scuppers into the sea. He led his sailors
in an attempt to board the _Sultana_, and tore the banner of the
Crescent from her stern; but the boarders were repulsed, and obliged
to sheer off, for the Turk took fire, and his burning mainmast fell
on board of Spiritoff's ship, which also became wrapped in flames;
and in ten minutes both ships blew up. "I leave you to judge," says
Mackenzie, "of the dreadful scene of seeing so many hundreds of poor
souls blown into the air, while the rest were hotly engaged." Spiritoff
and twenty-four officers saved themselves in the barge.
The remainder of the Turkish fleet, after being severely mauled by
Elphinstone and Greig (Orloff was little of a seaman), cut their
cables, and ran into the harbour of Chismeh, a small town in the Sanjak
of Siglah, at the bottom of a bay one mile broad, and two miles long.
Across the mouth of this bay the fleet, under Orloff, Elphinstone, and
the Commodore, lay for the whole night, firing round shot, and throwing
in bombs. The fire of Greig's ship was particularly destructive; but
on the Turks getting batteries established on the height between Scio
and the coast of Anadoli, he and the two admirals were obliged to haul
off. Two fireships were prepared an the 7th, under the direction of
Elphinstone and Greig; and a council of war was held by the principal
officers in the cabin of Count Orloff. It was there suggested by the
Commodore, and resolved upon, that at midnight four ships of the
line, two frigates, and the bomb-ketch, should enter the harbour,
and while attacking the enemy, send the fireships on their errand of
destruction; but volunteers were required to lead, and three officers,
all Scotsmen, at once stepped forward. These were, Commodore Greig,
Lieutenant Mackenzie, of the _Switostoff_, and Captain-Lieutenant
Drysdale (or Dugdale, for this officer is called alternately by both
names in many accounts of these wars), and they made every preparation
for the desperate duty before them. At half-past twelve at night the
signal was made to weigh anchor, and bear into the little bay; Drysdale
and Mackenzie had the fireships; Greig led the ships of the line and
the two frigates, which, at four hundred yards' distance, cannonaded
the Turks, while the bomb-ketch plied its mortars. Greig signalled
the fireships to bear down; Drysdale and Mackenzie answered it, and,
favoured by the wind, ran right into the teeth of the Turks, whose
centre ship was at that moment set on fire by a fortunate shot from the
Commodore.
Drysdale's crew unfortunately left his ship before the proper time.
Indeed, the Russians were so overcome with terror by the darkness of
the night, the boom of the Turkish shot, and by the fireships, of which
they were unable to comprehend the use, that it was only by dint of his
sword and pistols that Drysdale kept them to their duty; but when near
the enemy the helmsman abandoned the rudder, the whole crew sprang into
their boat, and abandoned the brave Scotsman on board of the fireship!
In this terrible situation his native courage never deserted him; he
lashed the helm, and (though a boat full of armed Turks was pulling
alongside) held the ship on her course till, with his own unaided
hands, he hooked the grapnel-irons to the anchor-cable of the nearest
ship, which proved to be a large caravella. He then fired the train
by discharging a pistol, and in doing so was severely scorched by the
explosion. At the moment the Turks boarded him on one side he sprang
into the sea from the other, and swam from the blazing ship. Many a
shot was fired after him, but he escaped, and was saved with difficulty
by the boats of Greig.
The fireships blew up with the most admirable effect, and the result
was, beyond Greig's utmost expectations, decisive and disastrous, for
in five hours the whole Turkish fleet was burned to the water-edge
and totally destroyed--all, save one ship, Giafar Bey's, of seventy
guns, four row-galleys, and some gilt barges of twenty-four oars. The
morning sun, as he shone upon the Isle of Scio and Anadolian shore, saw
a scene of unexampled devastation--every Turkish mast had vanished from
the bay, and pieces of charred and floating wreck alone remained! The
following were the ships destroyed by Greig:--
Capitan Alebi, 84 guns.
Bashaw, 90 guns.
Patrona Ayckrece, 80 guns.
Reala Mustapha, 96 guns.
Mulensi Achmet, 84 guns.
Emir Mustapha, 84 guns.
Achmet, 86 guns.
Hamisi, 60 guns.
Ali Randioto, 60 guns.
Melehin, 80 guns.
Rapislan Bashaw, 64 guns.
Zefirbe, 84 guns.
_La Barbarocine_, 64 guns, was towed out of the harbour by his boats.
Two other large ships (names unknown) were burned, with four frigates,
eight 40-gun ships, eight galleys, and several row-boats. He rescued
400 Christian slaves, hauled close in shore, bombarded the town, blew
up the castle, and reduced the whole place to a heap of rubbish before
nine o'clock in the morning, by which time more than 6000 Turks had
been shot, burned, or drowned.
For this brilliant service Greig was at once made a rear-admiral by
Count Orloff, while Lieutenants Drysdale and Mackenzie received the
rank of captain, all of which appointments the Empress was pleased
to confirm. Though the unfortunate Capitan Pacha, who commanded, was
severely wounded, the Sultan ordered his head to be struck off, and
appointed Giafar Bey admiral in his place. As rear-admiral Greig's pay
amounted to 2160 roubles per annum. Immediately after this victory
Admiral Elphinstone sailed with his squadron for the Isle of Tenedos,
to block up the Dardanelles, where he captured forty vessels destined
for Constantinople, forced most of the Isles of the Archipelago to
declare for Russia, and levied contributions everywhere, taxing
Mitylene in 150,000 piastres. Greig accompanied Count Orloff to the
liege of the Castle of Lemnos, which proceeded slowly, the only troops
they had being revolted Greeks, who were afterwards cut to pieces by
Hassan Bey, and then the Russians bent all their efforts to force the
passage of the Dardanelles; but so strongly was it fortified by the
Chevalier Tott, and other Frenchmen, that every attempt proved futile.
In the winter of 1770 Greig's commission was further confirmed by a
letter from the Empress, and in his ship, the _Three Primates_, he
brought the nominal commander-in-chief, Count Orloff, to Leghorn on the
7th of December, as the fleet was leaving the Archipelago for want of
men, and the batteries of the Dardanelles were daily becoming stronger
under the skilful eye of Tott, to whom the grateful Sultan paid 100
scudi daily, as the saviour of his capital.
At Leghorn the Sieur Rutherford, Commissary of the Russian Court, sold
all the prizes taken by the fleet. Having secret views of his own
concerning the unfortunate Princess Tarakanoff, the Count Orloff, who
is styled minister plenipotentiary, general of the Russian troops,
and admiral-general, proposed to spend the winter partly at Pisa, and
partly at Leghorn, "in order to take care of the Russian squadron," as
peace was expected. Greig is said to have demurred; Admiral Elphinstone
expressed dissatisfaction, and when ordered to sail on "a secret
expedition" he bluntly declined. An altercation ensued between him
and the count. He was put under arrest, and reported to the Empress,
who recalled him, and he retired from her service in disgust. On his
presentation to Catherine he appeared in the blue uniform of the
British navy, on which she turned coldly away, saying to one of her
favourites, "It is high time this Scot was out of my service, when he
has laid aside my uniform!"
Meanwhile the fleet was not inactive, for Mackenzie, Brodie, and other
officers, who served under Spiritoff, were very zealous. Thus, by the
20th January, 1771, they had destroyed nineteen Dulcignotte tartans,
and exacted from the Isles of the Archipelago the same tribute which
they yearly paid the Sultan. At the same time the Russian troops had
taken the city of Sinope, on the Black Sea, the fortress of Giurgievo,
and other places in the Turkish provinces. A squadron, commanded by
the Knights of Malta, joined Orloff's flag; Scio was again ravaged by
the Russians, a large dulcignotte destroyed, and the fighting among
the fertile and beautiful isles of Greece was incessant; Greig was
constantly employed, and daily added to his reputation as a brave and
skilful officer.
He had assisted in the destruction of all the magazines which had been
formed to supply the Turkish capital; at the bombardment of Negropont,
the capital of the ancient Euboea, where the troops were landed to
destroy the stores of corn and flour; he had cruised along the shore
of Macedonia; been at the bombardment of Cavalla in Romelia, and
the destruction of the storehouses at Salonica; and in the Gulf of
Kassanderah, while Count Theodore, the brother of Count Alexis Orloff,
scoured all the shores of Anadoli, and cannonaded Rhodez. The united
Russian fleet, under the three admirals, Orloff, Spiritoff, and Greig,
made sixty-six sail in all on the 1st of November.
While the Russian army by land was making daily successful attacks
on the Turks, and had crossed the Danube under General Romanzow, and
twice besieged Silistria, pushing the war round the shores of the
Black Sea, and into the Crimea, the naval squadrons had many desperate
encounters in the Archipelago, and one very sharp action off the Isle
of Scio, when seven Russian ships of the line and two frigates engaged
ten Turkish ships and six large galleys, on the 10th of October, 1773,
and after fighting from ten in the morning until long past mid-day,
entirely defeated them, taking five sail, sinking two, and putting the
rest to flight. In one of these encounters a ball struck Admiral Greig,
and bent one of the points of his cross of St. George, carrying away
a piece of the enamel. Every captain of the Russian navy then wore
the military order of St. George, the badge of which is a knight and
dragon, attached to a black ribbon.
A descent was made upon the Isle of Cyprus; another on Candia, and
elsewhere; but the Russians were repulsed, and four sacks filled with
their _scalps_ were sent from Stanchio as a proof of the reception
they had met with in that island.
In the end of 1773 Greig returned to St. Petersburg, and, with Admiral
Sir Charles Knowles, made every exertion to have a better and more
efficient squadron dispatched to the Dardanelles. With this under
his command he sailed again from Cronstadt, and after touching at
Portsmouth, bore on for the Mediterranean on the 17th of February,
1774. With his flag flying as vice-admiral, he reached Leghorn,
where, for purposes of his own, Alexis Orloff was again loitering.
On this expedition Greig was accompanied by his wife, for whom every
accommodation had been made in his ship, the _Issidorum_; but being of
course unwilling that she should risk the dangers of the Turkish war,
he landed her at Leghorn, where the house of the Russian consul was
assigned to her as a residence. The ships composing his fleet were--
The Issidorum, 74 guns Captain Surminoff.
The Mironfitz, 74 guns Captain Mouskin Pouskin.
St. Alexander Newski, 64 guns Captain Voronari.
Demetrius Douski, 64 guns Captain Pajaskoff.
St. Paulus, 30 guns Captain Palovski.
During Greig's brief sojourn at Leghorn there occurred one of those
atrocities which so frequently blackened the reign of Catherine II.
Alexis Count Orloff, a man of the most inhuman character and brutal
propensities, had conceived a passion for the young and beautiful
Princess Tarakanoff, daughter of the late Empress Elizabeth, by her
clandestine marriage with the Grand Veneur. This princess had been
conveyed to Rome by the artful Prince Radzivil, beyond the reach
of Catherine's intrigues and tyranny. But Orloff had been ordered
to _decoy her back_ to St. Petersburg on the first opportunity.
Accordingly, during one of his visits to Leghorn, he laid a snare for
her, by sending an Italian, named Signor Ribas, afterwards a Knight of
Malta, to visit her. This vile person, who found the poor princess in
a mean lodging, told her that he "had come to pay homage to her beauty
and misfortunes, and to deplore the destitution in which he found
her." He then offered her money, adding that he "was commissioned by
Alexis Orloff to promise her the throne her mother had filled, and
at the same time his sincere love, if she would honour him with her
hand." After some hesitation she was overcome by the apparent sincerity
and brilliance of the proposal, which seemed the more splendid by her
destitute condition, and accepted the offer of Orloff. He visited her
repeatedly; a feigned marriage was performed by two Russian officers,
disguised as Catholic priests; villainy completed the imposture: for
a time--two or three months--he placed her in a magnificent palace
at Pisa, and then brought her to Leghorn. It was at this crisis
that Admiral Greig entered the port, and his wife[9] is mentioned
as being among the first to visit the young princess, who was far
from suspecting the terrible snare laid for her--a snare of which
the _English_ consul is said to have been cognizant. Deluded by the
caresses and feigned love of Orloff, she begged to be "shown the large
and beautiful ships of the Russian fleet," which was ordered to prepare
for her reception.
On her arriving at the beach, she was placed by Orloff in a handsome
boat, screened by a silken awning; the second barge conveyed the
vice-admiral and other British officers, who for many years after were
all unconscious of the villainy of Orloff. Music, huzzas, and salutes
of artillery welcomed the unhappy daughter of the Empress Elizabeth on
board the nearest ship; and the moment she stood upon its deck, she
was _handcuffed_ with heavy irons, and thrust into one of the lowest
cabins. She threw herself at the feet of Orloff, and implored pity as
_his wife_; but was answered by laughter and mockery, while the anchor
was weighed, and the ship sailed for St. Petersburg, where she was shut
up in a fortress on the Neva, and was _never heard of again_!
Rumour adds a darker tinge to this tale of Russian cruelty, by
asserting that, two years afterwards, when the waters of the Neva rose
ten feet by an inundation, they filled the horrid vault in which she
was confined, and drowned her. Her body was then flung into the stream,
and swept by its current into the Gulf of Finland.
But to return. As the wind continued fair, Greig bore away for Paros,
a beautiful isle of the central Cyclades, which was the rendezvous of
the fleet under Spiritoff, and where a great many small vessels of an
entirely new construction, were prepared for the purpose of embarking
and landing troops.
Here the Russians had seized and sold a number of Venetian ships,
consequently the senate ordered all their vessels of war to be prepared
to resist the new armament of Greig, and in March rigged two ships of
84 guns each, and two more of 75: these ultimately came to blows with
the Turks, and defeated them off the Isle of Candia.
On the 10th of March, tidings having come to Paros that the Turkish
fleet were about to surprise the Russian garrison at Sciros, a 50-gun
ship and four frigates were despatched to oppose the attempt, but
signally failed--for they were all burned or taken but one. The general
head-quarters of the Czarina's forces were at the Isle of Paros; and
there, during the spring of 1774, the Admirals Spiritoff and Greig
anchored their armaments at Port Naussa, on the northern shore--one
of the finest harbours in the Archipelago, and in the channel between
Paros and the bold and lofty coast of Naxos. Their regular troops
occupied Marmora and Zimbido, while their Albanian allies were at
Bachia. Greig and Spiritoff made every effort to refit the old ships,
and prepare them for hostilities in summer, and when their cruisers
joined them from Patmos and Tasso; but before anything of importance
was achieved, the Empress concluded a peace with the Turks--a peace,
says Frederick the Great, "resplendent with glory, by the success which
her arms had met with against her enemies during the war;" and by this
peace, the treaty of Kutchuk-Kainardgi, Catherine stipulated that the
Crimea, which had hitherto been under the subjection of the Turks,
should be, in all time coming, an independent sovereignty under its
own khans, thus lessening the power of the Porte.
Admiral Greig now returned to Russia with the fleet, and for many years
devoted himself entirely to the improvement of the Russian marine, and
the development of the naval resources of the Empire--remodelling its
code of discipline, relaxing its barbarity, civilizing and educating
its officers and men, by training the marine cadets on board of two
frigates or floating academies, and thus justly earning for himself the
honourable and endearing sobriquet of the _Father of the Russian Navy_.
For these and other valuable services the grateful Empress bestowed
upon him the government of Cronstadt, and a commission as High Admiral
of all the Russias, at the same time decorating him with the Orders
of St. Andrew, St. George of the second class, St. Vladimir, which
she instituted on the 22nd September, 1782 (her twentieth coronation
day), and St. Anne of Holstein, which is always the gift of the Grand
Duke. His great assistant was Mr. Gordon, director-general of the
ship-building, who at one time had building, under his own immediate
care, two ships of 100 guns each, three of 90 guns each, six of 70
guns each, and ten of 40 guns each--all of which, for their skilful
construction, strength, swiftness, and beauty of mould, had never been
equalled by any previous effort of Russian naval architecture.
The admiral's pay was now 7000 roubles per annum.
In accordance with the custom of the Russian nobility, who add the
Christian name of their father to their own, with the termination
_owitch_, which signifies _the son of_, we find the Scottish admiral
signing and designating himself "Samuel Carlovitch Greig." He was ever
treated with the greatest consideration and honour by the Empress, who,
in the year 1776, paid him the compliment of a visit--then esteemed
an unparalleled act of condescension for the crowned head of Russia,
who, among many absurd and hyperbolical titles, had (and perhaps still
retains) the blasphemous one of "Chamberlain to Almighty God."
On the 18th of July the Empress, attended by all the great officers of
her state and household, went in a magnificent barge from Oranienbaum
to Admiral Greig's ship, the yards of which he had manned. As soon as
he had handed her on board, the Imperial standard was hoisted, and the
whole fleet fired a salute, which was responded to by _nine hundred_
pieces of cannon in Cronstadt. Dinner was set in Greig's cabin for the
Empress and a hundred guests, who were the principal officers of her
marine and other departments. The whole fleet then weighed anchor, and
Catherine, accompanied by the infamous Orloff, Field-Marshal Count
Galitzin, and Count Bruce, the adjutant on duty, was rowed in her barge
along the line amid another salute of cannon. Before returning to
Oranienbaum she placed on Greig's breast the golden and eight-pointed
star of St. Alexander Newski, with the red ribbon, which is worn over
the left shoulder.
During the peace, Greig was unremitting in his efforts to draw British
officers into the service, and the number who offered their swords
and valour to the Czarina soon conduced, by their skill and talent,
to render her navy for the first time respectable and formidable in
Europe.[10]
Thus it was that, in 1799, in Lord Duncan's line of battle, August
24th, at the Texel, we find among the Russian ships of war, the
_Ratisvan_, commanded by Captain Greig; and in September, under the
same gallant admiral, the Scottish captains Scott, Dunn, Boyle,
Maclagan, Ogilvie, and Rose, commanding the Russian ships _Alexander
Newski_, 74; _Neptune_, 54; _Rafaill_, 44; _Revel_, 44; _Minerva_,
38; and _St. Nicholas_, 38, embarking the Russian troops at Revel;
and thus it was, that when Russia, fifteen years before, projected a
new war against the Turks, in consequence of their interference with
the affairs of the independent Crimea, the Empress found her fleet to
consist of upwards of ninety sail at Cronstadt, Revel, and in the Sea
of Asoph.
By the 11th of October, 1783, Admiral Greig had ready a fleet for the
Mediterranean consisting of twelve sail of the line--viz., one of 76
guns, two of 74, three of 70, four of 64, two of 60, four frigates,
a sloop, three store-ships, two fireships, two bomb-ketches, and
two galleys. The vice-admiral of this fine armament was his old
brother-officer, who had shared with him the glory of that night's
desperate work in the Bay of Chismeh. All these ships were in the best
condition, and British officers were judiciously distributed among
them; but the poor Khan of the Crimea, Sahim Gueray--the last of the
lineal descendants of the far-famed Ghengiz Khan--abdicated his power,
which he transferred to the Czarina, and his valuable territory on the
Black Sea was quietly confirmed to her by a treaty with the Sultan in
1784. Since then it has formed a part of the Russian Empire, together
with part of the Kuban and all the land between the Boog, the Dneister,
and the Black Sea.
The next scene of Admiral Greig's active service was against the
Swedes, who became implicated in the dispute which ensued between
the Porte and the Czarina, against whom they rashly declared war.
Hostilities ensued; the Swedish troops advanced into Finland, and
recaptured several towns.
"Alexis Count Orloff, appointed to command the Mediterranean fleet,
has declined that honour, and left the court," says the _Gentleman's
Magazine_ for April, 1788; "and Admiral Greig, on whom it in course
devolved, has pleaded the necessity of a journey to his native country,
to be excused from that service." The armament offered Greig by the
Empress was on a magnificent scale; it consisted of twenty-eight ships
of the line, three of them carrying 100 guns and 800 officers and
seamen each; six of 90 guns, with 650 seamen each; four of 80 guns,
with 600 seamen each; eleven of 74 guns, with 500 men each; two of 64
guns, with 400 men each; two hundred and forty-eight sail of frigates,
sloops, and transports, containing eleven battalions of infantry; two
carracques, with 1000 horse, and seven of marines; twenty-five victual
and hospital ships, mounting in all 1194 pieces of cannon, and having
28,000 men on board.
But the admiral does not seem either to have visited Scotland or sailed
with this armament to the Mediterranean, as he assumed command of the
Imperial Baltic fleet, destined to oppose the Duke of Sudermania,
brother of the King of Sweden, who put to sea with twenty-one sail,
consisting of the _Gustavus_, 111, _Sophia_, _Magdalena_, and _Prins
Gustaf_, of 70 guns each; nine 60-gun ships, six 40-gun frigates, and
three smaller vessels.
Count Wachdmeister led the van, Captain Linderstedt the rear. Sweden
made incredible exertions in this war, the object of which was to
retake Finland and Carelia; four 40-gun frigates were fitting out at
Gottenberg, and nine ships of the line at Carlscrona. The news of these
and other armaments filled St. Petersburg with something very like
consternation; but Greig prepared for sea with all the vessels he could
collect, and the utmost activity prevailed at Riga, where Count Brown,
a veteran Irish general, was governor. Greig declared, however, to the
Empress, that if the United Kingdoms of Great Britain engaged in this
war antagonistic to Russia, he would feel himself under the painful
necessity of resigning his high rank, and returning to his former
position of lieutenant in the Royal Navy; "that he would always exert
himself to the utmost against any other power who might be in alliance
with the enemy, but that he would never fire a shot in the face of his
native country." He ordered the calibre of the ship guns to be altered,
directing that all from 24-pounders downwards should be of less weight
with a larger bore.
In May, 1788, while war and preparations were pending, a dispute ensued
between the Empress and upwards of sixty British officers of her fleet,
on occasion of a rumour being spread abroad, that she meant to receive
into her service Paul Jones, the celebrated Scottish renegade. These
gentlemen, nearly all of whom were Scotsmen, waited on the President
of the Admiralty, and resigned their commissions, delivering, at the
same time, a manifesto, "whereby they not only refused to serve under,
but even _with_ that officer." The French officers who were paid by the
Czarina displayed the same repugnance to have this famous privateersman
for a comrade; and by this dispute, which, however, was soon arranged,
ten sail of the line were for a time completely unofficered. To the
satisfaction of Admiral Greig and his compatriots, it was arranged,
that "Mr. Jones should never be appointed to command in that part of
the ocean where they were employed." In the meantime, a scandalous
adventure of the Chevalier Paul with a girl of loose character, ended
his hope of employment _even_ under Catherine II.
Greig now received from the Emperor of Germany a present of 10,000
roubles and a valuable estate in Livonia. This was just before
he sailed from Cronstadt with the fleet, which consisted of one
three-decker, eight 74-gun ships, eight 66-gun ships, and seven
frigates, to oppose the formidable force of the Duke of Sudermania,
whom he overtook between the island of Schten Seaker and the Bay of
Cabo de Grund.
The Duke of Sudermania states, that with thirty-one sail he was
cruising in the Narrows of Kalkboden and Elkhomen in a dense fog, with
an easterly wind, when, early on the morning of the 17th of July, the
report of alarm guns ahead summoned his crews hurriedly to quarters,
and almost before order of battle could be assumed, amid the dangers
of a lee shore, enveloped in the morning mist, the fleet of the
Scoto-Russian Admiral, consisting then of thirty-three sail, all in
close order, were within gunshot, his van being close to the prince's
centre. After considerable manoeuvring, in which the skill of Greig is
praised by the prince in his dispatch, they were within musket-shot by
five P.M., when the battle began in all its fury, and sixty-four ships,
twenty-nine of which were sail of the line, engaged in all the carnage
of a yard-arm conflict; and so thickly did the smoke of the Russian
fleet settle down upon the Swedes, "that it was impossible to make or
answer signals," says the Duke of Sudermania, "or even to distinguish
our own line."
The duke was in the _Charles Gustavus_, a three-decker; Greig fought
his own ship, the _Rotislaw_ of 100 guns; and the operations of the day
are thus detailed by him in his dispatch to the Empress:--
"I most humbly beg to inform your Imperial Majesty, that on the 17th
of July, about noon, we fell in with the Swedish fleet, consisting of
fifteen ships of the line, carrying from sixty to seventy guns; eight
large frigates (carrying 24-pounders), which were brought into the
line owing to their weight of metal; five smaller frigates, and three
tenders, commanded by the Prince of Sudermania, with an admiral's
flag, and having under his command one vice and two rear admirals. I
immediately signalled to make sail towards the enemy; they formed line
and awaited us--our fleet, as it came up, formed also. The weather was
clear, with a light breeze from the south-east. We bore right down on
the enemy's line, and my flagship, the _Rotislaw_, engaged the Swedish
admiral about five P.M.
"The engagement was very hot on both sides, and lasted without
intermission till six. Twice the Swedes attempted to retreat, but as
it fell quite calm during the contest, and the ships would not answer
their helms, the two fleets fell into some confusion, but the fire
was kept up on both sides till dark, and then the Swedes, assisted
by their boats, got to a distance from our ships. In this action
we have taken the _Prince Gustavus_, of 70 guns, which carried the
vice-admiral's flag.
"She was defended with great bravery for more than an hour against
the _Rotislaw_, and we had above 200 men killed and wounded on board
before she struck. On board of her was the Count Wachdmeister,
A.D.C. General to the King of Sweden, who commanded the van of the
Swedish fleet. He came on board of my ship with an officer whom I
sent to take possession, and delivered to me his flag and sword. In
consideration of his gallant defence, I restored to him the latter.
"I am sorry to inform your Majesty, that in the night, and _after_ the
battle had ceased, the _Wadislaw_ dropped astern of our line and fell
among the Swedish fleet, by whom she was taken, as the darkness of the
night and the thickness of the smoke concealed her from us. I received
notice of this disaster about midnight from a petty officer, who was
dispatched to me before the enemy took possession. In this engagement
several of your Majesty's ships have received considerable damage,
and the whole fleet so much in masts and rigging, that I was not in
a condition to pursue the enemy, who, favoured by the wind, crowded
all the sail they could to reach the coast of Finland, to the east of
Cabo de Grund, and we lost sight of them steering north-east. This
action began between the island of Schten Seaker and the Bay of Cabo
de Grund, the former bearing SSE. distant three German miles, and the
latter NWW. about the same distance, seven and a half miles east of
Hohlang. I subjoin a list of the killed and wounded. The whole fleet
are now repairing sails and rigging.
"I must say, on this occasion, that I never saw a battle maintained
with more spirit and courage on both sides; and we have nothing to
boast of but the capture of the commander of the vanguard, and that
the enemy left _us in possession_ of the field of battle. All the
flag officers, and the greater portion of the captains gave proofs
of the utmost courage and firmness; and the bravery of the subaltern
officers in general is entitled to every praise; BUT it is with grief,
that I am obliged to declare myself very much dissatisfied with the
conduct of certain captains, whom I shall be under the necessity of
superseding. This will be done after a more particular inquiry, the
account of which I shall transmit to your Majesty. If they had done
their duty like good officers and faithful subjects, this action would
have been more completely decisive, and have produced consequences
equally satisfactory to your Majesty and your glorious empire. I must
not fail, at the same time, to make a special report of those who, on
this occasion, personally distinguished themselves by their courage
and conduct. (Here follow the lists.)
"Sam. Carlovitch Greig.
"H.I.M. Ship _Rotislaw_, July 18th, 1788."
The duke says that his fleet was swept round by the current, and
every ship was thus raked fore and aft by those of Greig; that after
a lull in the conflict, it was renewed at 8 P.M., when, after another
desperate encounter, the Swedish fleet, with lights at the mast-heads,
bore away for Helsingfors with all sail set, leaving the _Prins
Gustaf_, of seventy guns, lying disabled and without a flag; that many
of the Russian ships were severely mauled, but the Swedes were riddled;
for masts, spars, and even the rudders of some were knocked to pieces,
while most of them had received perilous shots between wind and water.
The _Wadislaw_, which they took, was a copper-bottomed seventy-four,
carrying 32 and 42-pounders, with 738 men. It was ten at night before
the last shot was fired. The Russians remained masters of the channel,
with all their colours flying; but had the officers all done their
duty, the Swedes would not have escaped so easily, if at all. Greig had
6000 troops on board; their presence in close action greatly increased
his list of casualties, for he had 319 killed and 666 wounded, whereas
the Swedes had only eight officers struck, and the number of seamen is
not known.
Admiral Greig was soon after reinforced by four ships of the line; but
as the Duke of Sudermania received six more of seventy guns each, the
fleets remained of nearly equal strength.
Count Wachdmiester had yielded his sword to Greig, who returned it to
him, saying, "I will never be the man to deprive so brave and worthy an
officer of his sword--I beseech you to receive it."
After making a suitable reply, the count sheathed it, and said, "that
neither he nor any other person in Sweden believed that the Russian
fleet was in so admirable a condition as he found it."
The Russian seamen had fought with incredible ardour and bravery;
when the wadding ran short, many of them tore off their clothing
to clean and charge home the cannon; but _all_ the officers were
by no means partners in their glory; for Greig found himself under
the painful necessity of placing under arrest two captains, two
captain-lieutenants, and thirteen other officers, all Russians, and
sending them to St. Petersburg in the frigate _La Kergopolte_, of
twenty-four guns, charged with having "abandoned Rear-Admiral Bergen
when he was surrounded by four Swedish ships, and defending himself
against them for two hours with the greatest bravery, till he was
compelled to strike, when his ship, the _Wadislaw_, was completely
shattered."
Sir Samuel Greig added, that he had repeatedly signalled to those
officers "to advance and support the commander of their division, but
that either from not understanding the said signals, or from some other
reason, they remained where they were, and saw him taken." Concerning
their misconduct, and the battle of the 17th July, the Empress
immediately wrote, with her own hand, the following characteristic
letter to her gallant Admiral:--
"TO THE MOST WORTHY AND BRAVE, &C.
"We should be wanting in that gratitude and politeness which should
ever distinguish sovereigns, did we not with the utmost speed convey
to you our approbation of your exemplary conduct; and the obligations
which we owe you for your intrepid conduct in your engagement with
the fleet of our enemy, the Swedish king. To the constant exertion of
_your abilities_, and _your zeal_ for the glory of the common cause of
ourselves and the whole Russian Empire, may, under God, be attributed
the very signal victory you have gained; and we have not the smallest
doubt, but that every part of our dominions, to which this event shall
be transmitted, will behold it in its proper view. It is with grief we
read the record of these poltroons, who, unable to catch fire from
the spirited exertions of their brother-warriors, have so signalized
themselves in the annals of treasonable cowardice! and to that
cowardice the Swede has to boast that any ship of their fleet escaped
when so encountered.
"It is our pleasure that the delinquents mentioned in your despatch be
immediately brought to Cronstadt, to await our further displeasure. We
sincerely wish _you_, and all with you, health, and the most signal
assistance of the Almighty God, whose aid we have invoked, and of
whose assistance we cannot doubt in a cause so just.
"Your services will live perpetually in our remembrance; and the
annals of our Empire must convey your name to posterity with reverence
and with love!
"So saying, we recommend you to God's keeping ever. Done at St.
Petersburg, the 23rd of July, in the year of grace 1788.
"Catherine."
The punishment of the seventeen unfortunates was peculiarly Russian in
its barbarity; for they were placed in chains, with iron collars around
their necks, and doomed to perpetual slavery in the hulks at Cronstadt,
though many were cadets of the noblest Muscovite families.
In 1789, Professor Schloeger, of Gottingen, published in his political
magazine the orders issued by the Czarina to the admiral before leaving
Cronstadt; and by these it appears, that he "was to attack, and, if
possible, to carry away the Swedish admiral-general, even at the total
loss of the whole fleet of Russia."
For nearly a fortnight Greig busied himself in thoroughly refitting
his fleet; on the 6th of August he signalled to weigh anchor at dawn,
and on the 7th arrived off Sveaborg, where he found four Swedish ships
at anchor in the roads; but they cut their cables, and, under a press
of sail, retired into port in confusion. Greig followed them boldly,
and just as his leading ship came within musket-shot of the sternmost
Swede, the latter struck upon a sunken rock; her mainmast went by
the board, and after maintaining a short cannonade with Admiral
Roslainow, she struck her colours. The other three escaped into shallow
water. Greig's boats took possession of the bilged ship, which proved
to be the _Gustavus Adolphus_, of 64 guns, commanded by _Colonel_
Christierne, who was taken prisoner with thirteen officers and 530 men,
after which Greig ordered her to be blown up. He next seized a ship
laden with cables, sails, medicine, &c., for the Swedish fleet.
Meanwhile the Duke of Sudermania remained a quiet spectator in
Sveaborg, where he was completely blocked up by Greig, although he had
under his command sixteen ships of the line and eight frigates.
Till the 9th Greig remained off Sveaborg, which is strongly fortified
by nature and art, and then, in the hope that the duke would come out,
as the wind was favourable for his doing so, he sailed slowly across
the Gulf of Finland towards the opposite coast of Revel, and on his
approaching the isle of Margen, placed his cruisers towards the west,
so as completely to cut off the Swedish fleet from all succour by way
of Carlscrona, and to prevent them forming a junction with five ships
laden with stores, of which they were in the greatest need.
Here Greig was joined by two 64-gun ships; and on the 14th of August he
was off Revel in Esthonia. Meanwhile the Swedish and Russian troops had
many fierce encounters in Finland; but the former were unsuccessful,
and this expedition ended in defeat and disaster.
The indefatigable Greig continued to cruise in the gulf until the month
of October; and, though suffering from a severe illness, he completely
blocked up the Swedes in Sveaborg, cut them off from succour, and saved
St. Petersburg from alarm.
On the 2nd October, the weather became exceedingly stormy, and the
Russian fleet were all dispersed. Then the Duke of Sudermania thought
he might essay something against Greig; but, though sick and infirm,
the latter soon collected all his ships, and the blockade was resumed
more strictly than ever; but, unhappily, his illness terminated in
a violent fever, and, on the 26th of that month the brave admiral
expired, in the fifty-third year of his age, on board of his flagship
the _Rotislaw_, to the great sorrow of every officer and seaman in
the fleet, where, by his bravery, justice, generosity, and goodness
of heart, he had indeed won for himself the honourable title of the
_Father of the Russian Navy_.
The tidings of his death were the signal for a general mourning at
St. Petersburg; and, while Admiral Spiritoff assumed the command of
the fleet, the Empress ordered the interment of her favourite officer
to be conducted with a pomp, solemnity, and magnificence never before
witnessed in Russia.
The funeral took place on the 5th of December. Some days before it,
the body lay on a state bed in the hall of the Admiralty, which was
hung with black cloth, while the doors were festooned with white crape,
and the vast apartment was lighted by silver lustres. Under a canopy
of crape the body was placed on three small arches, dressed in full
uniform, the head being encircled by a wreath of laurel. At its foot
stood an urn, adorned with silver anchors and streamers, inscribed--
"S.G. nat. d. 30 Nov. 1735--obit d. 15 Oct. 1788."
The coffin stood on six feet of massy silver. It was covered with
black velvet, lined with white satin; the handles and fringes were
of pure silver, and the pillows of blonde lace. On three tabourettes
of crimson and gold lay his five orders of knighthood--one of them,
the St. George's Cross, mutilated by a shot in the Archipelago; and
around were twelve pedestals, covered with crape and flowers, bearing
twelve gigantic candles. At the head of the bed hung all his flags;
and two staff officers and six marine captains were constantly beside
it until the day of interment, when Lieutenant the Baron Vanden Pahlen
pronounced a high eulogy in honour of the brave deceased.
The cannon of the ramparts and fleet fired minute-guns during the
procession from the Admiralty to the Cathedral of St. Catherine,
through streets lined by the troops. The funeral pageant was very
magnificent and impressive.
Swartzenhoup's dragoons, with standards lowered; the grenadiers of the
Empress, with arms reversed; the public schools of the capital; the
clergy of the Greek Church; General Lehman, of the marine artillery,
and two marshals bearing Greig's admiral's staff and five orders of
knighthood; eighteen staff officers, and three bearing naval standards,
preceded the body, which was borne on a bier drawn by six horses, led
by six bombardiers, and attended by twelve captains of ships, followed
by their coxswains. Then came General Wrangel, governor of the city,
with the nobles, citizens, the marshals with their staves, and a
regiment of infantry with arms reversed, and its band playing one of
those grand dead-marches which are peculiar to Russia. So, with a band
of choristers preceding it, and amid the tolling of bells, the remains
of Admiral Greig were conveyed to the great cathedral, and there
lowered into their last resting-place, amid three discharges of cannon
and musketry from the ramparts, the troops, and the fleet, where he was
so well beloved and so much lamented.
Every officer who attended had a gold ring presented to him by
Catherine II., with the admiral's name and the day of his death
engraved upon it; and a magnificent monument has since been erected to
mark the place where he lies--a man "no less illustrious for courage
and naval skill, than for piety, benevolence, and every private virtue."
His estate in Livonia is still in possession of his descendants.
His son John died in China in 1793. Another son became Sir Alexis
Greig, Admiral of the Russian fleet, and Knight of all the Imperial
orders. In 1783 he studied at the High School of Edinburgh; he served
as a volunteer on board the _Culloden_ under Admiral Trowbridge,
and commanded the Russian fleets at the sieges of Varna and Anapa in
1828; though in 1801 he had been exiled to Siberia for remonstrating
with the Emperor Paul for his severity to certain British sailors.
His son Woronzow Greig (also educated, I believe, at the High School
of Edinburgh) was A.D.C. to Prince Menschicoff, and bore a flag of
truce from Sebastopol to Lord Raglan. He died of a mortal wound on the
desperate field of Inkermann.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 8: His father was a seafaring man. In the _Edinburgh
Courant_, 24th June, 1761, was the following notice: "The _Thistle_,
Capt. Charles Greig, of Inverkeithing, bound for St. Petersburg, passed
the Sound on the 6th instant." In Russia, the admiral bore the name of
Samuel _Carlovitch_ Greig (_i.e._ the son of Charles).]
[Footnote 9: Tooke states that Mrs. Greig was not at Leghorn; but the
French authorities affirm that she was, and place this event in 1774.]
[Footnote 10: In the battle with the Swedes in 1790, four Russian ships
were commanded by Scottish captains, viz., Denniston, whose head was
shot off; Marshal, who was drowned when leading his boarders; Miller
and Aikin, who each lost a leg. The latter died under the torture of
his wound. Six Russian admirals, all Scotchmen, Mackenzie, Ogilvie,
Mercer, Mason, and the two Greigs, have hoisted their flags in the
Black Sea. Mackenzie was the first naval chief at Sebastopol.--See
Slade's _Travels_, vol. ii.]
FIELD-MARSHAL COUNT BROWN.
Ulysses Maximilian Brown, Field-Marshal of the armies of the Empress
Maria Theresa, Governor of Prague, and Knight of the Golden Fleece, was
born on the 24th of October, 1705.
His father, Ulysses Baron de Brown and Camus, the representative
and descendant of one of the most ancient families in Ireland, was
then a Colonel of Cuirassiers in the service of Joseph I., Emperor
of Austria, and was one of the many brave Irish gentlemen who, after
the unfortunate battle of Aughrim, the surrender of Galway, and
capitulation of King James's army under St. Ruth, at Limerick, were
forced to feed themselves by the blades of their swords in the service
of foreign countries. When Marshal Catinat and the Duke of Savoy laid
siege to Valenza in 1696, they had no less than six battalions of Irish
exiles in their army. Baron Brown had served under the Emperor Leopold
I., who died in 1703; and by the Emperor Charles VI. had been created
Count of the Holy Roman Empire; while his brother George received the
same exalted rank, being at the same time a distinguished general of
infantry, colonel of a regiment of musketeers, and councillor of war.
In his childhood Ulysses Maximilian was sent to the city of Limerick
by his father, and there, for a few years, he pursued his studies at
a public school, until his uncle, Count George Brown, sent for him,
when only _ten_ years of age, to join his regiment of infantry, which
was then with the army marching into Hungary, under the famous and
gallant Prince Eugene of Savoy, against the Turks, who had invaded the
Imperial frontier. With this army the great Count Saxe was serving as
a subaltern officer.
The Turks had broken the peace of Carlovitz in 1715, conquered the
Morea, declared war against Venice, besieged Corfu, and spread a
general alarm among the courts of Europe. The Emperor's mediation was
rejected with disdain by Achmet III., the imperious Porte, whose army,
150,000 strong, hovered on the right bank of the Danube; but Prince
Eugene, with a small, well disciplined force, having passed the river
in sight of the inactive Osmanli, encamped at Peterwaradin, on the
confines of Sclavonia. Ulysses Maximilian Brown was with this army in
the regiment of his uncle.
A battle ensued on the 5th August, 1716, near Carlovitz, and the Turks
were totally routed, with the loss of their Grand Vizier Ali, and
30,000 slain; while fifty standards, 250 pieces of cannon, and all
their baggage, were taken. Other, but minor victories followed, and in
the month of June the brave Prince Eugene invested Belgrade, the key
of the Ottoman dominions on the Hungarian frontier. For two months it
was vigorously defended by 30,000 men, while the Turkish army, under
the new Grand Vizier, was intrenched close by, in a semi-circle which
stretched from the Danube to the Save, thus inclosing the troops of
Eugene in the marshes between those rapid rivers.
By war and disease the Imperialists suffered fearfully; fighting of
the most desperate kind ensued daily; and there, while yet a child,
the little Irish boy was taught to handle his espontoon, and became a
witness of, if not an actor in, those military barbarities which have
always blackened a war along the Ottoman frontier.
It was apparent to Eugene that the Turks, by destroying the bridge of
the Save, might obstruct his retreat, surprise a body of his Austrians
at Semlin, or cut off his artillery, which were bombarding the lower
town of Belgrade, while sickness and scarcity pressed severely upon
his slender force; thus it became evident that nothing but a decisive
victory would save him from gradual destruction. Already the Turks,
200,000 strong, were within musket-shot, and would soon storm his
lines, which were defended by only 40,000 men, exclusive of the 20,000
who were blocking up Belgrade.
On a dark midnight--the 16th of August--after uniting his forces
by firing three bombs, he attacked the mighty host of the Sultan
Achmet--the most complete that Turkey had ever equipped for battle.
Favoured by a thick fog, the Austrians broke through the slow and heavy
Osmanli, stormed all their intrenchments at the point of the bayonet,
turned their _own_ guns upon them, and grape-shotted the turbaned
fugitives, whose unwieldy army was totally routed, and fled, leaving
every cannon and baggage-waggon behind. The surrender of Belgrade,
two days after, was the immediate consequence of this brilliant
victory, and the Peace of Passarovitz, which, under the mediation of
Great Britain, was signed in July, 1718, succeeded in establishing a
twenty-five years' truce, and securing to Austria the western part of
Wallachia, Servia, Belgrade, and part of Bosnia.
After this battle, Ulysses Brown, then in his twelfth year, was sent to
Rome, where he continued his studies at the Clementine College, for the
period of four years.
In 1721 he went to Prague, and in two years completed himself in the
study of civil law.
He then entered the Austrian army, and in 1723 became a captain in
the regiment of infantry commanded by his uncle, Count George Brown;
and such was his ardour and such his knowledge in the art of war,
that only two years after, in 1725, we find him appointed to the
lieutenant-colonelcy of the same corps.
On the 15th of August in the following year he married Maria
Philippina, Countess of Martinitz, the beautiful Bohemian heiress, and
the last of an ancient and noble line.
In 1730 he served in the expedition to Corsica, and by his bravery
and example contributed greatly to secure the capture of Callansara,
where he was severely wounded in the thigh. This successful expedition
caused a rumour that the island was to be erected into a kingdom for
the Chevalier de St. George--James VIII. of the Scottish Jacobites;
and George II., on being bribed by the Genoese, prohibited his English
subjects from furnishing any assistance to the troops or inhabitants.
In 1732, Count Brown was made Chamberlain of the Austrian Empire: and
in 1734 was appointed full colonel of infantry, and Italy was the next
scene of his service.
France had resolved on humbling the overweening power of the House of
Hapsburg; the venerable Marshal Villars crossed the Alps, and with
a combined army of French and Spaniards, burst into Milan, overran
Austrian Lombardy, and carrying victory wherever he marched, in two
months' time left only Mantua under the flag of Charles VI. The latter
made strenuous efforts to protect himself--to secure the passage of
the Rhine against the Marshal Duke of Berwick on one hand, and to
recover his power in Italy from Villars on the other. The Diet voted
him 120,000 men; the Count de Merci marched 6000 of these to protect
the important fortress of Mantua; and with a force increased to 60,000
soldiers, drew towards the head of the Oglio and Po.
Leaving his young wife at the court of Vienna, Count Brown accompanied
this force with his regiment of German infantry; and it was among the
first of those brave battalions which effected the arduous passage
of the Po near Santo Benedetto, where the Count de Merci so boldly
and skilfully surprised the French troops, and drove them back at
the bayonet's point, with the loss of all their ammunition, baggage,
and the cities of Guastalla, Novella, and Mirandola, of which he
immediately took possession.
During this campaign Count Brown distinguished himself on every
occasion, but most particularly at the great battle of Parma, on the
29th of June, 1734. There a desperate hand-to-hand conflict ensued in
front of the city, on the high road which leads to Piacenza; and after
a struggle as deadly as Italy ever saw, the Austrians remained masters
of the field; but the Count de Merci, their general, was mortally
wounded by a musket-ball, and Count Brown and the Prince of Wirtemberg,
the lieutenant-general, had their horses shot under them. The French
made their most desperate stand at a farm-house, from the walls of
which "they mowed down whole companies of the Imperialists by grape
and musket-shot. This dreadful conflict lasted for ten hours without
intermission, when the enemy retired in good order towards the walls
of Parma." On the field lay ten thousand corpses; of the Imperialists
there fell the commander-in-chief, seven generals, and three hundred
and forty officers, were killed and wounded. Thus ended an attack which
the Count de Merci risked in direct opposition to the _advice_ of Count
Brown and other officers of experience. The Imperial army now fell back
upon Guastalla, where it was the good fortune of Count Brown to save it
and the cause of Charles VI. from total destruction.
The Austrians, under the Prince of Wirtemberg, were posted between the
Crostolo and the Po, near some strong redoubts at the head of one of
their bridges; and there, on the 19th of September, they were attacked
by the French, when after a hard conflict of eight hours, during which
Brown, then in his twenty-ninth year, charged repeatedly at the head
of his regiment, the Austrians were driven back, with the loss of
four standards, while the gallant Prince of Wirtemberg, old General
Colmenaro, the Prince of Saxe Gotha, and many other brave men, were
slain.
Count Brown made incredible exertions to preserve discipline, and with
his own regiment to cover the rear of the discomfited Imperialists,
who were thus enabled to fall back in good order to a new and stronger
position on the northward of the Po, where they kept the field until
January in the ensuing year, when the wearied French and Spaniards
retired into winter quarters. One of the most brilliant feats of the
campaign was the destruction of the bridge which the Marshal Duke de
Noailles had thrown over the Adige. At the head of his regiment the
brave Irish soldier of fortune achieved this arduous task in sight of
the whole French army, under a heavy discharge of cannon and musketry.
Thus terminated the Lombardo campaign, in which Austria, if she did not
lose her honour, won but little glory, though in the two battles of
Parma and Guastalla she lost ten thousand soldiers.
The French strengthened their forces, and a cruel edict was issued
at Paris, ordaining all British subjects in France between the ages
of fifteen and fifty to enlist in the Irish Brigade, or go to the
galleys--an edict which was enforced with such rigour, that in fifteen
days all the Parisian prisons were crowded with British residents,
chiefly poor Scottish Jacobites; but France soon found other and more
worthy means of reinforcing her armies in Italy and on the Rhine, than
by resorting to such inhospitable tyranny.
For his services in the Italian war, Count Brown received a general's
commission in 1736 from the Emperor Charles VI., who, discouraged
by his reverses, signified a desire for peace; but it was scarcely
negotiated, before he became involved in a new war that broke out on
the confines of Europe and Asia. The rapid progress of the Russians
against the Turks, and their capture of the Crimea, excited the
ambition of Charles, who, by the treaty of 1726, was bound to assist
Russia against the Porte; and now that prophecy, so often propagated,
was in every one's mouth, that the period fatal to the Crescent was
arrived!
Again the Osmanli turned their arms against Hungary; and to protect
that ancient kingdom rather than to assist the Czarina (who demanded
of Austria 10,000 horse and 20,000 foot), Charles sent 8000 Saxon
infantry, under Field-Marshal Seckendorf and General Count Brown, with
whom the Duke of Lorraine went as a volunteer. By the peculation of
the commissaries and contractors, these forces suffered incredible
hardships, and their leaders found Gradisca, Bioc, even Belgrade,
and all the Hungarian frontier fortresses dilapidated, and incapable
of being defended. More troops and 600,000 florins were promised to
them from Vienna, but neither came. Thus Seckendorf and Brown found
themselves before the Turks with a small army of recruits, destitute
of horses, caissons, and all the munitions of war. On receiving
10,000 florins, they raised 26,000 infantry, 15,000 horse, and 4000
irregulars; but the indecision of the Emperor, who interfered with all
their arrangements, the nature of their forces, clamours among their
soldiers, cabals among their officers, the severities they encountered,
and the pressing ardour of the Osmanli, gave to the Imperial arms but
a succession of humiliating defeats; and though Brown's fiery energy
captured many small fortresses, others of greater importance were lost
by Seckendorf, and at last Belgrade, the scene of our hero's earlier
service, was besieged.
Banjaluca, a strongly fortified town, which has two castles to defend
it, and which stands on the frontier of Bosnia, at the confluence of
the Verbas with the Save, was skilfully invested by the Austrians under
the Prince of Hildburghausen, but he was compelled to raise the siege,
and after a bloody conflict, was driven towards the Save by the Turks.
Charles, alarmed for the safety of Austria, ordered Seckendorf and
Brown to march through Servia, and form a junction with the prince,
which they immediately did, after dispatching a reinforcement to
Marshal Kevenhüller. With only 20,000 men they fought a way through
Servia, and made themselves masters of Utzitza, after a short siege,
and would have taken Zwornick, but for an inundation of the Drina.
On the 16th of October they encamped on the southern bank of the
Save. Thus, they arrived in time to share some of the fighting near
Banjaluca, and on the retreat from thence the Austrian baggage, sick,
and wounded, were only saved from the barbarous Mussulmans by the
personal exertions of Count Brown, who secured that movement by his
valour and example.
Discouraged by the misfortunes of his army, Charles VI. resolved
to end a strife in which his troops gathered nothing but disgrace;
and, leaving the quarrel to the mediation of France, he bequeathed
to the Czarina the whole brunt of the war. The ill-success of the
Austrians was attributed to the unfortunate Seckendorf, the victim of
circumstances and the cabals of the Jesuits; thus he was committed,
for an unlimited time, to the gloomy Castle of Glatz, an old fortress
on the mountains of Silesia. On the peace of Belgrade being signed,
Marshal Wallace was also sent prisoner to Zigieth, and Count Neuperg
was placed in the Castle of Holitz; and as these three generals were
ordered to remain captive during the lifetime of the Emperor, no part
of the stigma of their ill-success fell on their Irish compatriot,
Brown, who, on his return to Vienna, in 1735, was created Field
Marshal-lieutenant, and a member of the Aulic Council of War.
In the following year, his friend and master, Charles VI. (having
unfortunately surfeited himself with mushrooms), died. He was the
_last_ prince of the ancient House of Hapsburg, sixteenth Emperor of
Germany, and eleventh King of Bohemia; and the grave had scarcely
closed over him, ere the disputed succession to his hereditary
dominions kindled another war in Europe.
By the Pragmatic Sanction his ancient possessions were guaranteed to
his daughter, the Archduchess Maria Theresa (Queen of Hungary and
Bohemia, and wife of Francis Stephen, Duke of Tuscany), by Britain,
Russia, Holland, France, Spain, and Prussia; but the three last-named
powers fell--as an old writer says--"upon the poor distressed orphan
queen, like three wolves, without mercy or equity;" and in defiance
of their solemn league, the Bavarian Elector laid claim to Bohemia;
the sovereigns of France, Poland, and Saxony demanded all the vast
inheritance of Austria each for themselves; and all prepared for open
war, while Maria Theresa quietly took possession of her father's throne.
At this startling crisis Count Brown was in command at Breslau. The
first blow of this new and general contest was struck by Frederick
III. of Prussia, who, having at his disposal all the immense treasure
which had been accumulated by the rigid economy of his politic father,
together with 76,000 idle troops, for whom he had been left to find
employment, now revived an ancient claim to Silesia, based upon such
pretensions as the English kings of old advanced to the thrones of
Scotland and France; and suddenly marching twenty battalions of
infantry and thirty-six squadrons of horse into the duchy, he took
possession of Breslau, its capital, from which Count Brown was forced
to retire, having only 3000 men, with whom he retreated towards
Moravia, leaving small garrisons in Glogau and Breig, which Frederick
blockaded with six battalions. This was in the January of 1741.
Frederick now offered to supply the Queen of Hungary (as Maria Theresa
was styled) with money and troops to support her claims against _the
other_ violators of the Pragmatic Sanction, provided she would cede
to him the Silesian province. Aware of the danger of yielding to one
pretender, she sent Count Neuperg (who, since the Peace of Belgrade,
had been a captive) with an army to the assistance of the faithful
Brown, who, after disputing every inch of Frederick's progress, had
maintained the contest with him single-handed for two months.
The King of Prussia sent a detachment of infantry across the Oder to
attack Brown's garrison of 300 men in Namslau, where they surrendered
in a fortnight. Leaving one regiment in Breslau, he marched against
Brown's next garrison, consisting of 400 men, in Ohlau, under
Colonel Formentini, who finding the place ruinous, and the Prussians
overwhelming, capitulated. Then General Kleist invested Breig with five
battalions and four squadrons.
Count Neuperg, one of Austria's best generals, being a senior officer,
assumed the command of the whole force, which he had first assembled
in the environs of Olmutz, and sent General Lentulus to occupy the
narrow defiles of Glatz in Silesia, and thus protect Bohemia. Neuperg,
meanwhile, meditated operations on the Neiss, and his hussars cut off
the King of Prussia's convoys and outposts in every direction. The
skirmishes around Neiss were incessant, and in one cavalry encounter
Frederick was nearly taken prisoner--a stroke which would have ended
the war at once. After many manoeuvres and encounters, the armies of
Neuperg and Frederick drew near each other, on the 10th of April, 1741,
at Molowitz, a village in the neighbourhood of Neiss, where a desperate
battle was fought.
On this inauspicious day--inauspicious for the Austrian cause--General
Count Brown (or _Braün_, as the King of Prussia names him in his
works) commanded the infantry. The scene of the encounter was within
a league of the river Neiss, and the ground was mantled with snow to
the depth of two feet. The Prussian army consisted of twenty-seven
battalions of infantry, twenty-nine squadrons of cavalry, and three of
hussars.
The Prussian infantry were, at that time, says Frederick, who had
brought their discipline to perfection, "walking batteries! The
rapidity of loading tripled their fire, and made a Prussian equal
to three adversaries." They came on with such ardour, that Marshal
Neuperg had to form his troops in order of battle under a cannonade
from Frederick's artillery; but the right wing of his cavalry (thirty
squadrons), under Roemer, fell headlong on the Prussian left, and drove
back their blue-coated dragoons. On they continued to press, with
swords uplifted, until the steady fire of two grenadier battalions
routed them, and slew the brave Roemer as he led them to the charge for
the third time.
At this critical moment, the infantry under Brown rushed on, and,
though unsupported by cavalry, made incredible efforts to break through
Frederick's serried ranks; and in this struggle the first battalion of
his guards lost half its officers, and no less than 800 men. For five
hours the firing continued; and, as ammunition failed, the dead were
all turned on their faces, and their pouches emptied, to carry on the
strife, which was only ended by Marshal Schwerin making a motion with
his left, which threatened the Austrian flank. "This," says Frederick,
in the _History of his Own Times_, "was the signal of victory, and the
Austrian defeat--their rout was total." This was at six, P.M.
Count Brown was severely wounded, and Maria Theresa had 180 officers,
7000 horse and foot, killed, and three standards, seven cannon, and
1200 prisoners taken, with 3000 wounded. Brown, though faint with loss
of blood, never left his saddle; but, by his efforts at the head of the
infantry, covered the retreat of the whole army, which Neuperg, who
was also wounded, ordered to retire under the cannon of Neiss, leaving
Frederick victorious on the field, where he remained for three weeks.
Availing himself of this success, the victor, after a short siege, took
Breig, removed his head-quarters to Strehlen, and, on driving 4000
Austrian hussars from the important pass of Fryewalde, began to recruit
his army among the conquered Silesians. Re-establishing himself in
Breslau, on being joined by the Duke of Holstein, his army, consisting
of forty-three battalions and seventy squadrons, would soon have cut
off all communication between the troops of Neuperg and his supplies;
and moreover, would have formed a junction with the armies of France
and Bavaria, which had now taken the field in his favour--the former
under the famous marshal, Duke de Belleisle, and the latter under their
Elector. The outposts of their allied enemies were now within eight
German miles of Vienna, and the cause of the young and beautiful Maria
Theresa seemed almost desperate. She retired to Presburg, where her
appearance before the assembled Palatines, with an infant son in her
arms, kindled such an enthusiasm that, as one man, they drew their
sabres, exclaiming "We will die for our sovereign, Maria Theresa!"
She sent for Count Brown in 1743, to be present at her coronation, and,
as a reward for his past services, made him a privy councillor of the
kingdom of Bohemia.
The brave Hungarian nobles now rose in arms, and old Count Palfy
marched at the head of 30,000 men to relieve Vienna, the Governor of
which, Marshal Kevenhüller, had only 12,000 men to resist the three
armies of France, Prussia, and Bavaria, while the Marshals Neuperg and
Brown covered the roads to Bohemia with 20,000 men, as a protection
against the kingdom of Bavaria. In all the operations of the Austrians,
during the many encounters and severe campaigns of 1742-3, Count Brown
commanded the vanguard or first division, and always with honour.
Prince Charles of Lorraine having succeeded Marshal Neuperg in command
of the army, encountered the enemy near Braunau, and a desperate, but
drawn battle (in which his forces suffered most) was fought, while
Prince Lobcowitz, on marching from Bohemia, drove the French from all
their posts and garrisons in the Upper Palatinate. Then the combined
forces of the Prince, Brown, and Lobcowitz, forced those of Marshal
Broglio to abandon their strongly intrenched camp at Pladling, on the
Danube, and to fall back in confusion on the Rhine, while the irregular
horse, Croats, Pandours, and Foot Talpaches, harassed their rear-guard,
and exterminated the stragglers.
In this expedition Count Brown seized Deckendorf at the head of the
vanguard, captured a vast quantity of baggage, and obliged the French,
after immense slaughter, to abandon the banks of the Danube, which the
whole Austrian army, under the Prince of Lorraine, passed in security
on the 6th of June.
On this spot a pillar was afterwards erected, bearing, in the following
inscription, an honourable testimony to the valour of the Irish hero:--
"Theresiæ Austriacæ Augustæ Duce Exercitus,
Carlo Alexandro Lothairingico,
Septemdecim, superatis hostilibus villis,
Captoque Deckendorfio, renitendibus undis,
Resistentibus, Gallis,
Duce exercitus Ludovico Borbonio Contio
Transivit hic Danubium,
Ulysses Maximilianus Brown, Campi Marashalus,
Die 5o Junii," A.D. 1743.
When Marshal Broglio reached Donawert, in the Swabian circle, he
was joined by 12,000 men, under the warlike Maurice Count de Saxe,
afterwards Marshal General of France and Duke of Courland; but finding
his main body almost destroyed, instead of hazarding a battle, he
retreated before Prince Charles and Brown to Heilbron, and there
abandoning to them his artillery and baggage, retired with greater
precipitation to Prague.
Lorraine followed, and encamped in sight of them, along the hills of
Girisnitz. The French marshals offered to surrender Prague, Egra, and
all their captures in Bohemia, provided they were permitted to march
home with the honours of war. These offers were rejected with disdain;
Prague was invested on all sides, and though the Marshal de Maillebois
marched to its relief, he achieved nothing, for the Austrians possessed
all the passes of the mountains, and he was compelled to retreat as a
fugitive, harassed and galled by the troops of Prince Charles, who left
Prince Lobcowitz to watch the motions of the Dukes of Belleisle and
Broglio in the beleaguered city.
The latter of these marshals fled from his command in the disguise
of a courier; the former abandoned the city in a dark and cold
December night, and, with 14,000 men and 30 guns, made his way towards
Alsace, enduring unheard-of miseries; 900 men whom he left behind
him surrendered at discretion; and thus again the ancient capital of
Bohemia reverted to the House of Austria, which, however, lost the
Duchy of Silesia by the treaty of Breslau, which ceded it for ever to
the kingdom of Prussia.
In the year 1743 Count Brown was sent by his Imperial Mistress to Worms
as her plenipotentiary to George II. of Great Britain, with whose
ministers he spared no pains to arrange the important alliance between
the Courts of London, Vienna, and Turin. On this service he acquitted
himself with an ability no way inferior to the courage he had displayed
in so many fields.
The arena of his next service was again in Italy, where the Austrian
forces were still fighting against the Spaniards, and pursuing the old
war between the houses of Bourbon and Hapsburg.
The Count Gages, who commanded the Spaniards in Bologna, having
received instructions from his imperious queen to fight the enemy
within _three_ days, or resign, and to fight whether he was prepared or
not, passed the Parano in the beginning of February, and, on the 18th,
attacked the Austrians under Count Traun, at Campo Santo, a town of
Modena, where another _drawn_ battle was fought, and both sides claimed
the victory. Count Gages found himself obliged to repass the river,
and retire into Romagna, where he intrenched himself, and remained
undisturbed till October, when Prince Lobcowitz, having assumed command
of the Austrian army, boldly advanced, and drove him back on Fano. It
was at this crisis that Count Brown was sent by Maria Theresa to join
her Austrians, whose ultimate object was the conquest of the Bourbonic
kingdom of Naples, to punish its king for violating a _forced_
neutrality, and having joined Count Gages with 25,000 men.
At this time the Empress-Queen engaged to maintain 30,000 men in Italy,
provided the King of Sardinia would pay another force of 45,000, while
Britain was to send a naval squadron to co-operate by sea. Lobcowitz
and Count Brown had established their head-quarters at Monte Rotondo,
near Rome, when their final orders arrived to invade the kingdom of
Naples. Breaking up the camp, and marching towards Viletri, the prince
dispatched Count Brown, with a division of German infantry and another
of Hungarian hussars, to pursue the Spaniards (who began to retreat) as
far as the river Tronto, with the double purpose of harassing them and
endeavouring to excite an insurrection among the wild mountaineers of
the Abruzzo. In fulfilment of his orders, Brown distributed everywhere
manifestos in the name of Maria Theresa, urging them to throw off the
Spanish yoke, and place themselves under her protection, promising,
at the same time, to banish for ever the obnoxious Jews from Naples;
but these proclamations were unheeded by the Abruzzesi, who evinced no
inclination to revolt.
Meanwhile his commander, Prince Lobcowitz, had halted in the marquisate
of Ancona, being somewhat uncertain in which direction to march.
Pushing on, Count Brown crossed the Tronto, which separates the
kingdom of Naples from the Papal territory. Entering, he gave all to
fire and sword as he advanced. His route lay along the shore of the
Adriatic by the high road to Naples, which crosses the river Potenza
near its mouth, and lies on the confines of Ascoli. He laid most of
the small towns in the Abruzzo under contribution. Some were fined in
money--others in a certain quantity of barley bread; but his necessary
severity was greatly tempered by mercy. His advanced guard of hussars
had daily skirmishes with the Spanish cavalry.
The passes being deep with snow, so as to be almost impassable for
artillery and baggage, Lobcowitz gave up all thought of entering Naples
by the coast road, which was the only clear one, and very unwisely
recalled Count Brown with his forces; and as soon as they joined,
began his march by the way of Umbria and the Campagna di Roma, with
6000 horse and 20,000 foot. Among the former were 2000 hussars; among
the latter were some irregulars, or free companies of what Buonamici,
in his _Commentaries_, styles "Condemned persons and deserters, who,
despairing of pardon, and urged by the prospect of plunder, panted for
an opportunity of coming to blows with the enemy." This small army
advanced in three columns, two days' march apart, that the people might
not be oppressed. Brown commanded the first. Advancing by Spoleto,
Terni, and Narni, they reached Castellana, and held a council of war,
at which Brown, the Cardinal Alessandro Albani, and the Bishop of Gurck
assisted. A stormy debate ensued, and nothing was decided upon.
Meanwhile the alarmed King of Naples, with the combined armies of
Naples and Spain, was encamped on the hill of Anagni, in the Campagna
di Roma. The Spaniards under Count Gages consisted of eleven battalions
of infantry, three regiments of cavalry, under the Duke of Atri, five
hundred horse-archers, and three hundred of the Duke of Modena's
archer-guards (archers, of course, but by name); with the _Irish
Brigade_, and a regiment of hussar deserters. The Neapolitan army
consisted of eighteen battalions of foot and five regiments of horse.
The vanguard was composed of light-armed mountaineers. The artillery
was commanded by the veteran Conte di Gazola.
Lobcowitz and Brown now began their march towards Rome; crossed
the Tiber at Teverone, and halted at Marino, where of old stood
the villa of Caius Marius. After a great deal of severe marching,
counter-marching, and skirmishing, the prince resolved on assailing
the chiefs of the allies in their head-quarters, which they had
established in Viletri; and this daring enterprise he committed to
Brown, his most active and able general.
In Viletri, the King of Naples and the Duke of Modena, with most of
the nobles and officers of their troops, had quartered themselves,
and taken every measure to secure and fortify the town, which is
situated upon a high mountain, surrounded by deep valleys, all
difficult of access, but beautifully planted with vineyards and
groves of olive-trees. It had several gates, a Minorite convent, and
a town-house, which crowned the summit of the hill. Charles of Naples
occupied the noble palace of the Ginnetti family; adjacent to which
were spacious gardens, a lane, and a bridge, all guarded by soldiers,
and barricaded, and planted with brass cannon. The gardens communicated
with the Valmonte road, and thereon were posted two battalions of the
Walloon Guard. The custody of the Roman gate was committed to the
Royal Regiment of Horse, and the Duke of Modena's Life Guards, while
at the foot of the eminence, to sweep all approaches, the most of the
artillery were posted near the Capuchin convent. The right flank of
the town was occupied by Spanish and Italian infantry; the left by the
cavalry, the Irish Brigade, and four battalions of the Walloon Guard.
The Austrians had intrenched themselves on a hill, only a mile distant;
and there, by means of spies and deserters, Count Brown had accurately
informed himself of all the arrangements which had been made in
Viletri; but, brave as he was, on Prince Lobcowitz first proposing this
hazardous duty to him, he was struck by the too evident desperation of
the service.
"The Austrian forces," said he, "are insufficient for attempting
so daring an enterprise; it is impossible to reach the Neapolitan
cantonment undiscovered, and I do not think we could force it without
imminent danger, and a warm reception. In my opinion, the easier and
the safer way would be to make a general attack with all our strength
upon the enemy's works."
Brown afterwards adopted the general's opinion, that a night attack
was best; and the time and manner he proposed met with the consent of
all who were present at their conference.
Selecting 6000 men, he chose the 10th of August for this desperate
expedition; and Lobcowitz, to conceal all knowledge of the route
chosen by the count in attacking Viletri, threw a chain of picquets
and videttes over a vast extent of country. In silence, and without
the sound of drum or bugle, he marched from the camp; and none of
his troops, save the Marquis de Novati, his second in command, were
informed of the object until they reached a valley at the foot of the
mountain, near a church dedicated to St. Mary. The darkness of the
night (says Castruccio Buonamici) was rendered more dense by the shade
of the overhanging vines.
At this moment, during a temporary halt, it was reported to the count
that a soldier had deserted, and perhaps to the enemy. The Marquis
de Novati fearing they were betrayed, urged a retreat, but Brown
exclaimed:--
"No; I am determined to advance. The die of war has been thrown!"
And promising his soldiers ample rewards, he exhorted them to behave
like brave men. Pushing on with ardour, the attack was commenced just
as day began to break, by the cavalry outposts being cut to pieces,
and the left flank of Viletri being furiously assailed, the infantry
pushing on through walls and vineyards, and the Hungarian horsemen
with lance and sabre hewing a passage to the streets. A regiment of
Italian dragoons were put to flight. The brave Irish Brigade attacked
the advancing Austrians with such fury, as to hold them in check
for half-an-hour, but in the end were nearly cut to pieces at the
Neapolitan Gate. Marsiglia of Sienna, a Knight of Malta, defended
a cottage with fifty dismounted dragoons, and displayed incredible
bravery. The Walloon Guards were unable to assist the Irish until
they were nearly all slain. Colonel Macdonel, eleven captains, thirty
subalterns, and a heap of Irish dead, blocked up the gate they had
defended. The fury, the firing, and the slaughter on all sides of the
hill were frightful. The King of Naples put himself at the head of his
guards, crying, "Remember your king and your ancient valour." But his
efforts were vain; the gates were all forced, his troops driven out,
and nine of their standards taken. The street which led to the Ginnetti
palace was set in flames; the Duke of Atri was nearly burned alive, and
General Count Mariano was captured in bed. Brown's second in command,
the Marquis de Novati, was taken prisoner, and finding his troops, who
were busy plundering, about to be surrounded by those of Count Gages,
he ordered his drums to beat a retreat, and retired to the intrenched
camp of Lobcowitz. In this expedition he killed and captured 3000 men,
hamstrung 800 horses, and brought off 500 more laden with plunder; one
general, one hundred other officers, twelve standards, and three small
colours. His own loss was only 500.
Disheartened by the partial failure of this affair--for the King of
Naples had escaped them--destitute of forage for their cavalry and
artillery, and encumbered with many sick and wounded men, Lobcowitz
and Brown finding themselves unable to hazard a general engagement,
and that autumn was at hand, became desirous of retreating; and after
pillaging Valmonte and cutting the Duke of Portocarrara's Italian corps
to pieces, transporting their baggage and sick by sea to Tuscany, they
threw a pontoon bridge across the Tiber beside the Ponte Molle, and
commenced a retreat in the night, demolishing all bridges as they left
them behind, to bar pursuit.
The count was named "the right hand" of Lobcowitz during the arduous
operations which ensued; and, by his usual activity and bravery,
he frequently repulsed the pursuing Spaniards on the retreat from
Viletri, during the fortification of the Austrian camp at Viterbo, the
retreat from thence through the forests of Orvietto, with a force now
diminished to 13,000 men; the assault upon Nocera, where Count Soro and
900 Italian deserters fell into the hands of Count Gages, who sent them
in chains to San Giovanni, where every fifth man was shot--and many
other similar affairs, until the Imperialists reached their winter
quarters at Rimini, Cesano, and Forli, on which the Spaniards and
Neapolitans retired to Pesero and Fano.
In the beginning of the following year, 1745, he was recalled from
Italy by Maria Theresa, and sent into Bavaria at the head of a body of
troops against the young Elector, who was in alliance with France. He
took the town of Vilshosen by assault, and captured 3600 prisoners:
2000 were slain on both sides, and 6000 Hessians were forced to lay
down their arms, and enter the British service for the campaign against
the unfortunate Prince Charles Stuart. The count would have performed
many other feats of equal brilliance, had the war against Bavaria not
been terminated suddenly by the terrified Elector, who, at the same
time that Vilshosen was taken, lost Pfarrkirchen, Landshut, and had
all his magazines destroyed, which compelled him to sign the treaty of
Fussen, and in April to conclude a peace with the Empress-Queen. In the
same year Count Brown was appointed General of the Austrian Ordnance.
Though peace had been made with the Bavarian Elector, there was no
rest for the soldier of fortune, who was immediately dispatched a
_third_ time to Italy, with 18,000 men, against the Spaniards, by Maria
Theresa, whose husband had now been elected Emperor of Germany. He
joined the Prince of Lichenstein, who was carrying on the war against
the still-allied French and Spaniards under the Marshal de Maillebois;
and one of his first essays in the new Italian campaign was to attempt
the recovery of the Milanese, out of which, solely by his activity, the
allies were ultimately driven.
He also formed a daring scheme to cut off the communication between
the main body of the Spanish army and their forces under the Marquis
de Castellar, by detaching General Nadasti along the left bank of the
Po, with orders to amuse the enemy by countermarches, and by pretending
to lay a pontoon bridge across the river at Casale-maggiore, a town
in Lombardy. While the deceived Spaniards were busy watching these
feigned motions, their guards, who occupied the right bank of the Po,
were surprised and utterly cut to pieces by the Austrian irregulars;
and then Count Brown crossed the river at Borgoforte, near the strong
Venetian castle, and pushing on from thence, captured Luzzara, a
Parmese town four miles north of the scene of his services twelve
years before--Guastalla, which he immediately invested, and took by
assault, when Marshal Count Corasin surrendered, with 2000 prisoners.
At this very time Castellar, with 7000 Spaniards, hovered on one flank
of the count's little force, and Gages was advancing on the other; two
movements by which his division must have been overwhelmed, had not the
Prince of Lichenstein advanced to his support; and on uniting they took
Parma.
At the battle of Piacenza Brown performed one of his most brilliant
deeds, by destroying the right wing of the allies under the Marshal de
Maillebois. This great encounter took place in front of the city, which
stands on an extensive plain near the right bank of the Po; earthen
ramparts surround, and a castle protects it. Count Gages' army abounded
in cavalry; and besides its natural strength, his position was defended
by the cannon of the city; so there was no hope of starving him out of
his trenches--but battle was given on the 16th of June. The French, who
had encamped without the Antonian gate, formed in three lines, and were
the right wing of the enemy, with sixteen battalions of Spaniards under
Lieutenant-General Arambure; the centre consisted of nine battalions,
the flower of the Spanish infantry; the left were the regiments of
Naples and Genoa.
The battle began at daybreak, and the Spaniards charged with such fury
that an Austrian battery, consisting of twenty-six pieces, was taken by
Arambure, who was dangerously wounded. Count Gages broke their left,
when 250 gallant men of Prince Eugene's dragoons bore them back, and
struck a panic into the French, amongst whom the Marshal de Maillebois
was fighting on foot. These dragoons were led by Count Brown, and by
their charge the Spanish and Walloon Guards were routed, trampled under
hoof, and destroyed. The allies made a precipitate retreat. Two days
after the battle they were reviewed, and found to have lost 3220 who
were killed, 4460 wounded, and 915 prisoners. The Count de Brostel,
General of the French artillery, the Chevalier de Tesse, two Spanish
lieutenant-generals, and the commander of the Swiss, were among the
slain. Ten pieces of cannon and thirty pairs of colours were left upon
that sanguinary field, where the Austrians buried 3500 of their own
dead. The King of Spain survived these tidings but a few days.
On the 9th of August the combined French, Spanish, and Neapolitan
armies attempted to cross the Po at the Lombra and Tydone. Count
Sabelloni, with 7000 Austrians, made a noble stand against them, from
nine in the evening till ten the next morning, when General Botta and
Count Brown hastened to his relief, and the conflict began again with
renewed fury; and after a terrific cross fire of cannon and musketry,
and a furious mêlée, in which Spaniard, Frenchman, Swiss, Italian, and
Austrian soldiers were all mingled, with musket, sword and bayonet--no
man valuing life or limb when compared with the glory of the day--the
three allies were driven back, leaving 8000 killed, wounded, and
prisoners, with nineteen guns and twenty standards, on the field.
The Austrians lost General Barenclau (whose courage was ever rash) with
4000 men. Counts Brown and Pallavicini were wounded. The Spaniards
lost the flower of their officers, and among them the young and noble
Colonel Don Julio Deodato of Lucca, an accomplished cavalier and
scholar.
Marshal Maillebois and Count Gages retreated to Genoa, from thence
to Nice, and from thence to Parma; abandoning Piacenza, of which the
Austrians took immediate possession, and wherein they placed 9000 men,
most of whom were suffering from wounds received in previous battles.
Despite his wound, Brown remained at the head of his division and with
the army which pursued the Bourbon allies towards Genoa, taking every
place by storm or capitulation on their route, except Tortona and the
mandamento or fortified town of Gavi.
On the Austrian vanguard under Count Brown (who commanded during
the absence of Count Botta, the new commander-in-chief) reaching
Santo Pietro d'Arena, a suburb of Genoa, the city became filled with
consternation, and the senators sent the Marshal di Campo Esceria
to learn from him on what conditions he would receive the city. But
for some private reason Brown declined to admit him to an audience.
Raynerio Grimaldi and Augustino Lomellino were next sent to the
Austrian camp and the count demanded the object of their visit.
"General," they replied, "the people of Genoa have made war on no
one, and least of all upon the Empress-Queen of Hungary, for whom
they have ever entertained a profound veneration. Had they been her
enemies, would their ambassador have been at this very time in her
city of Vienna? Hard necessity forced us to embrace an alliance with
the Bourbons, and it was with no other view than to defend ourselves,
for we would be the vilest of mankind to suffer our Fatherland to be
taken tamely from us. There can be no reason now, noble general, to
distress those who have only armed them in their own defence, or treat
as enemies the Genoese, who have committed no act of hostility."
"Seigneurs," replied Count Brown, "you have acted the part of our most
bitter enemies, for without your assistance what could the united
armies of the Bourbons have effected? You sent them auxiliaries! you
supplied them with provisions; and after six years' striving to cut a
passage into Italy, it was _you_ Genoese, alone, who opened up a path
to them, enabling them to essay the ruin of the Austrians in Venice and
in Lombardy. Begone! and without loss of time inform your senate to say
no more of friendship for the present, but submit to us on those terms
which my friend, General Gorani, will lay before you in writing."
Lest Brown should have the entire glory of reducing Genoa, General
Botta hastened from Novi to resume the command, and he also required
the immediate surrender of the city.
The allies having left 4000 men to defend the pass of La Bochetta,
in the northern Apennines, a gorge which has always been considered
as the key of Italy on the side of Genoa, and which is well defended
by several redoubts, Count Brown advanced against it, and stormed
the ravine, though it is so narrow that in some places only three
men could march abreast. He attacked and routed another party on his
way to Ponte Decimo; and after this, the Genoese, finding themselves
completely abandoned, gave up all their gates, posts, and arsenals, and
paid 50,000 genovines to the victorious Austrian troops. After this,
Count Brown was appointed the generalissimo in Italy; and all thought
of invading Naples having been completely laid aside for the time, it
was arranged by the British and Austrian ambassadors, in a conference
which they held in Santo Pietro d'Arena, that without loss of time he
should make an invasion of Provence, into which the allies had retired.
In obedience to this desire, after detaching General Gorani (who soon
after was unfortunately killed) to fall upon the enemy's rear, and
leaving the Marquis de Botta at Genoa with 18,000 men, he embarked
on board a squadron consisting of three ships and eight pinnaces,
commanded by the Scottish Captain Forbes, and sailing from Santo Pietro
d'Arena, had a quick passage to Villa Franca, from whence he walked
on foot to Nice, a two days' journey. He was disguised, for in such a
country, convulsed as it was by war, assassination, and disorder, every
precaution was necessary for personal safety.
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 of foot--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 to
_sixty_ battalions, 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 Count Brown 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 the _London 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 the _last_
time 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 endeavoured
to 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 at the 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 manoeuvre 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 third under 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 leave the 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 than _twenty 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.
Ireland has given to the armies of Europe five brave soldiers, all
kinsmen of the name of _Lacy_--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 was _Chef-du-Battailon_ of 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 the armies 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 (or _Lasci_, 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 was styled _Emperor_ by 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, a
_black mail_ paid 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 of
_Perecopz_) was seventy-two feet broad by forty-two feet deep, 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 the Ukraine, joined
Marshal Munich, and together, in 1737, they laid siege to Oczakow, at
the mouth of the Borysthenes.
Oczakow, or _Dziar 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 his _own_."
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 Count Brown[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 the city. 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, TANAI
LIBERATO, 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 four o'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 a feint
towards Egra (which drew off 20,000 Austrians in _that_ direction),
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 follow _me_!"
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 and other
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 manoeuvres 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, his body
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 received _in his thigh_ at
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 manoeuvres 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 of hussars, 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; and _en route_ Daun 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 to prevent 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 until half-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, and the 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 70,000_l._ 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, under _another_ Irish 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 soon after, 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 nearly NINE 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 manoeuvring 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 the age 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, and frankly 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 was _the 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 the
_only general_ capable 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.
"I _admire_ the dispositions of Lacy, but I _tremble_ at 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 them _all_ by
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 which
_le Régiment Irlandais d'Ultonie Infanterie_ bore 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 French _noblesse_
and Spanish hidalgos, who had all hastened there to behold the _fall_
of 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 were _red
hot_) between the time of firing the first cannon and the _last_, on
the 2nd February, 1783, when the French and Spaniards were completely
discomfited, 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 of _Las 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-for _émeute_ in 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 of disinterestedness, 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 friends _alone_. 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 LACY was 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.
As he grew older, Lacy showed so decided a vocation for the life of
a soldier, that on his return to Spain, in 1789, Charles IV. removed
him into the Ulster Regiment, among the gallant Irishmen of which his
family name was held in high veneration; and in that battalion of
exiles he obtained a company in 1794.
In that year, when the French Republican forces invaded Spain, and
commenced those operations which ended in the capture of Fontarabia and
San Sebastian, Lacy was, with the regiment of Ulster, attached to the
army of Catalonia, and fighting against them. The French were 40,000
strong, the Spaniards only 20,000.
In Catalonia their progress was small; but in Guipuzcoa many places
of importance fell into their hands; for the Court, languid and slow
in all its warlike operations, opposed to them forces of inferior
strength, and unhappily more accustomed to defeat than victory.
Bellegarde was besieged by the French, who defeated the Spaniards
before it; yet its commandant, the Marquis de Vallesantero, held out
bravely. On the shores of the Bay of Biscay the arms of the invaders
were successful; they made themselves masters of Passages, and the
strong old castle of San Sebastian; they penetrated as far as Tolosa,
assaulted Placentia, and besieged Pampeluna. Lacy is recorded as
having personally and particularly signalized himself in battle against
the French on the 5th of February, and the 5th, 16th, and 25th days of
June, 1794; and to these circumstances their own military historians
bear honourable testimony.
Driven to extremities, Bellegarde surrendered on the 17th of September;
and the brave Conde de la Union, after making a desperate and futile
attempt to save it, fell in battle for his country, on the heights of
Figueras, where 9000 Spaniards and 171 pieces of cannon were taken.
The fall of Rosas followed, and the Court of Madrid trembled for the
safety of the Catalonian coast. But the war was ended in the following
year by the peace of Basle; and up to that period Lacy served, with the
Regiment of Ulster, with honourable distinction, and attained great
experience in the art of war--that arduous profession to which all the
exiles of his family had so successfully and especially dedicated their
lives.
In December, 1795, he embarked with his regiment for the Canary
Islands. While there he unfortunately had a love intrigue with a
young Spanish lady, of great personal attractions; and in gaining her
favour, won, also, the enmity of the governor and captain-general of
the colony, who, by ill-luck, proved to be his rival. Enraged by the
success of the handsome Lacy, the proud and revengeful Spaniard was so
weak and unjust as to exile him from his regiment and the society of
his companions in arms, by banishing him to Ferro, one of the smallest
and most westerly of the Canary Islands. An arid and barren place, it
is a mere mountain pass, composed of dark grey land, dotted here and
there by sombre bushes.
Indignant at such arbitrary treatment, Louis Lacy wrote bitter and
fiery letters to the captain-general, who made him a prisoner, and
brought him before a _Consijo de Guerra_, or court-martial, by sentence
of which he was condemned to imprisonment as one labouring under mental
alienation, and, after all his gallant services, was deprived of his
commission.
After a time he was permitted to return to Spain, and was sent to Cadiz
_en retrait_.
At that time Spain, having made peace with France, was at war with
John VI. of Portugal. This contest was productive of no important
event, and was terminated in 1801. Lacy arrived in Europe just as
the last campaign was opened against the Portuguese; and hearing
of it, he vainly solicited from the government of Charles IV. the
honour of being permitted to serve in the Spanish army as a simple
grenadier; but the mal-influence of his enemy, the Governor of the
Canaries, still followed him, and this humble request was refused
him. Poor Lacy, in bitterness of spirit and almost without a coin in
his purse, resolved to push his fortunes elsewhere. He wandered on
foot through the Peninsula, crossed the Pyrenees, and, like an humble
wayfaring pedestrian, passed through France, and arrived at the town of
Boulogne-sur-mer in October, 1803, when Bonaparte was assembling his
great army for the invasion of Britain.
Finding himself destitute, and without resources, Lacy enlisted in
the 6th Regiment of light infantry of the French line, as a private
soldier; but his previous military knowledge, which was soon discovered
by his comrades and officers, obtained for him, in one month, the rank
of sergeant. About the same time General Clarke (who was afterwards,
in 1809, created Duc de Feltre) having heard of him, related the
history of Lacy, of his father and uncle, to the Emperor Napoleon.
Struck by a narrative so singular, Napoleon sent for the sergeant, and
being charmed by his manner and bearing, in virtue of the rank he had
previously held, generously gave him the commission of captain in the
Irish Legion, which was then being organized at Morlaix, under Arthur
O'Connor, for the service of France. General Clarke, Minister of War
under Napoleon, being of Irish descent, had the idea of gaining over
some of the old Irish aristocracy; and Nadgett, another Irishman in
the Foreign Office, had a scheme for enlisting Irish prisoners in the
French prisons; a scheme which proved, however, unsuccessful. Arthur
O'Connor had been M.P. for Philipstown, but rebelled in 1798, and after
being imprisoned at Dublin, and tried for high treason at Maidstone, he
was acquitted. In France he became a general, married the daughter of
the Marquis de Condorcet, and died at Bignon in 1852.
From Morlaix Lacy marched with his regiment to Quimper-Corentin, an old
manufacturing town in the departement of Finisterre; and while there
became acquainted with a pretty French girl, Mademoiselle Guermer, to
whom he became attached, and whom he married, in June, 1806, although
her parents--old royalists probably--were bitterly opposed to her
espousing a soldier of fortune in the Legion of Exiles.
Lacy was then in his thirty-first year.
Three days afterwards the Irish Legion marched for Antwerp, and he took
his wife with him. From Antwerp the Irish went to the pestilential
Isle of Walcheren; there also his young wife accompanied him, and he
obtained a majority.
In 1807, he was appointed _Chef-du-Battailon_ of the Irish attached
to the army which Murat, Grand Duke of Berg, was to command in Spain,
for the purpose of accomplishing Bonaparte's unjustifiable scheme of
usurpation and conquest.
Lacy's generous mind became deeply agitated at the prospect of being
obliged to serve against that nation among whom his exiled family had
found a home; and, notwithstanding the bitterness yet rankling in
his mind against those who had treated him so ill in Spain, and who
had dismissed him from the Regiment of Ulster, he determined not to
draw a sword against the country of his father's adoption, and with
sorrow sent his young wife, with their infant son, back to her family
at Quimper, there to await the settlement of the Peninsular affairs.
As _Chef-du-Battailon_, he still remained with the army which crossed
the Pyrenees, in virtue of the base conspiracy of the Escurial, and
which marched unmolested through the barrier-towns of San Sebastian,
Figueras, Pampeluna, and Barcelona, in the spring of 1808; and in the
summer of that year he found himself with the French army at Madrid.
The events of the 2nd of May--the decoying of the Royal Family to
Bayonne by Bonaparte--their compulsory renunciation of the Spanish
crown--and other dark transactions, decided the noble Lacy on the
course he should pursue. He relinquished his command of the Irish,
and quietly quitting the capital, surrendered himself a prisoner of
war to the venerable Spanish general, Don Gregorio de la Cuesta, who,
in his seventieth year, still held the command of the forces to which
Ferdinand VII. had appointed him, as Captain-General of Castile and
Leon.
Struck with the story and magnanimity of Lacy, and revering his
character, Cuesta, the last of the old Spanish cavaliers, appointed
him at once Lieutenant-Colonel-Commandant of the Battalion of Ledesma,
which had been raised in the small province of that name, near
Salamanca; and he gave all his energy and talent to discipline this
regiment. For now Spain had risen bravely against the invaders, and
the sturdy Asturians and Galicians, under Don Joachim Blake, a young
officer of Irish parentage, had commenced the War of Independence. In
all the operations of the Spaniards Lacy fought gallantly, at the head
of his new regiment; but more particularly at Logrono, in Old Castile,
and on the retreat to the Ebro, at Guadalaxara, thirty-two miles from
Madrid; after the betrayal of which, the Spanish vanguard, which,
under Venegas, had saved the army at Buvierca, by so bravely defending
the pass, entered the city on the night of the 4th of December, 1809.
The battalions (_tercios_) "of Ledesma and Salamanca, under Don Louis
Lacy and Don Alexandro de Hore," skirmished for three hours with the
French that night, on the banks of the Henares; but after a desperate
encounter, the flower of the Spanish troops had to retire before them.
He was now appointed Colonel of the Burgos Regiment of Infantry; and
in the same year defended several defiles of the Sierra Morena--that
long, steep chain of mountains which the novel of Cervantes (more even
than the valour of his countrymen) has made famous in Europe, and
which divides Andalusia from New Castile. At Toralva he surprised
and captured 3000 French cavalry, and afterwards took command of the
Spanish advanced guard, with the rank of Brigadier-General.
He distinguished himself again at Cuesta della Reyna, and at the
beautiful old town of Aranjuez. While Venegas occupied it, he
despatched Lacy with a division to drive the enemy, 2000 strong, out
of Toledo, which (as he did not wish to destroy the houses from whence
they fired upon him, as it was a Spanish town) did not succeed. He next
occupied Puente Larga on the Zarama, which was crossed by the foe; and
the Spanish general, fearing his retreat would be cut off, ordered
Lacy to destroy the Queen's Bridge, and rejoin him, which he skilfully
achieved; but not before the enemy's cavalry from Cuesta della Reyna
had attacked him, and driven his troops to some heights above the
river, the passage of which he left Don Luis Riguelmo to defend, with
three battalions and four field-pieces. He was present, also, at the
engagements at Almonacid de Zoreta, on the left bank of the Tagus,
where, for nine consecutive hours, he remained under fire at the head
of his brigade, and where 4000 Spaniards fell; and again he met the
French at the pass of Despina Perros, and in the unfortunate battle of
Ocana, where Venegas, in his chivalric attempt to save his friends,
the people of La Mancha, rushed, with his cavalry only, on a force
consisting of 5000 foot and 800 horse, and was defeated with great loss
on the 19th November, 1809.
The repeated reverses of the Spaniards after the battles of Ocana and
Medellin (which was lost solely by the indecision of Don Francisco
de Eguia), forced Brigadier Lacy to retire into Cadiz, where, as a
reward for his services, he was named successively, Sub-Inspector,
Major-General, _Mariscial de Campo_, and Commander of the Isle de Leon,
which is a triangular tract of ground separated from the mainland by
the river of San Pedro. The river side was strongly fortified, and
the channel flanked by batteries; the whole position, as it contained
50,000 inhabitants, was one of great trust and importance. Here he
directed the increase of the fortifications, and commanded in many of
those desperate and sanguinary sorties which were made against the
enemy, who boasted that the _Insurrection_ was confined to this small
corner of conquered Spain. And now ensued the long blockade, which was
not raised until the British won the battle of Salamanca, in 1812.
On the 5th of May, 1811, Lacy took an active part in the battle of
Chiclana, which was fought on the eastern bank of the channel of San
Pedro, and immediately opposite the Isle de Leon. The brave defence at
Cadiz greatly encouraged the Spaniards elsewhere.
In June he was appointed Commandant-General of Catalonia; but,
unfortunately, was unable to prevent the ancient seaport of Tarragona
from falling into the hands of the French. Indefatigable and
unwearying, he rallied the remains of the Spanish forces, and, with
the Guerillas, organized a new army, at the head of which, for a year
and eight months, he maintained a constant, an obstinate, and unequal
struggle with the troops of Napoleon. His glorious courage and undying
perseverance gained for him, in 1812, the chief command of the army in
Gallicia, about 10,000 strong. This force joined Lord Wellington; but,
after active operations ceased, marched back into the province from
which it was named, and went into winter-quarters. On the new campaign
being opened, he appeared at the head of the brave _Gallegos_, and
continued to display the highest military talent against the enemy,
until they were driven over the Pyrenees by the British; after which,
the battles of Orthes and Toulouse, and the capture of Paris by the
allies, by securing the peace of 1814, restored tranquillity to ravaged
Europe, and Ferdinand VII. to the throne of Spain.
Strange to say, this event, for which he had struggled so hard, was
unfortunate for Lacy, who, in consequence of his known attachment to
the constitution of the Cortes, was deprived of all his offices--a base
return for his many noble services--and he was coldly permitted to
retire in obscurity, with his family, to Vinaroz, in the province of
Valencia, where he spent two years in peace, though brooding over his
wrongs, and planning means of redress.
In 1816, fatally for himself, he returned to active life; for, since
the death of Parlier, and other brave men, who had fallen in attempting
to secure to Spain that independence for which they had struggled
against France, the eyes of all the Liberalists were turned on Louis
Lacy, and in him their hopes reposed.
Having gone to Calvetes, in Catalonia, to drink the mineral waters, it
chanced that he met there an old companion in arms, General Milano,
and his brother, Don Raphael Milano, with two other Spanish gentlemen,
whose political sentiments coincided with his own; and, after several
secret meetings, they boldly resolved on re-establishing the Cortes at
the point of the sword; for Lacy, relying on the sympathy of several
regiments, and the regard they paid to his name and achievements, hoped
to make them revolt in his favour, on the 5th April, 1817, and proclaim
the Constitution.
Denounced by two traitors, the whole enterprise fell to pieces, and the
four projectors failed to save themselves.
Abandoned nearly by all on whom he had relied, the unfortunate Lacy
was arrested, with a few faithful friends, and conveyed, under care
of a strong guard of soldiers, to a prison at Barcelona, where he was
hastily tried by a subservient military commission, and sentenced _to
death_--a doom which he heard with a calmness that staggered even the
stern and partial judge who pronounced it.
As a rising of the Catalonians in his favour was feared and expected,
the officials of the arbitrary Government at Barcelona secretly
embarked him on board of a small vessel, at midnight, on the 20th June;
and, resolving not to be cheated of their victim, sailed for the island
of Majorca; and there he was quite as secretly landed on a solitary
part of the coast, and conducted, on the night of the 4th July, to the
Castle of Belver, which was garrisoned by a regiment of Neapolitan
soldiers.
At four o'clock next morning he was suddenly brought out of the
fortress, just as day was breaking, and conducted to the deep fosse
before the gates; there he was barbarously shot by a platoon of
Italians, pursuant to the orders of those who had conveyed him from
Barcelona.
Louis Lacy had already faced death too often to receive it otherwise
than with the hereditary courage and coolness which had distinguished
him through his eventful life, and he fell with his face to his
destroyers.
His body was deposited in the old cathedral church of San Dominic, at
Palma, the capital of the island; but there it was exhumed, in 1820,
and conveyed, with much religious pomp and solemnity, to Barcelona,
and interred near the remains of his uncle, the Captain-General Count
Francis Anthony; while the newly-established Cortes, vainly to honour
the memory of one who had died for them, named his son _the first
grenadier of the Spanish army_.
Thus perished Louis Lacy, in his forty-second year, one who, more even
than Riego, had secured, by his patriotism, the Revolution of 1820.
"_Lacy_," says a French writer, "etait doué d'une forte constitution,
et d'une âme ardent, energique et généreuse. Habile général, intrepide
dans les dangers, _il s'était distingué par des faits d'armes, et par
un patriotisme dignes des Grecs et des Romains_!"
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 11: This is _not_ the same Irish officer of whom a memoir is
given elsewhere.]
[Footnote 12: _Edinburgh Courant_, 7th January, 1761.]
[Footnote 13: Count O'Rourke died at Lincoln's Inn, London, in 1785.]
COLONEL WALTER BUTLER,
OF THE IRISH MUSKETEERS.
In the army of Ferdinand II., Emperor of Austria (who succeeded his
brother Matthias in 1619), then commanded by Albrecht, Count of
Wallenstein and Duke of Friedland, were two brave Irish soldiers of
fortune--James Butler, who commanded a regiment of Irish dragoons; and
his younger brother, Walter, who was colonel of a regiment of Irish
musketeers.
These gentlemen were nearly related to James, then Earl of Ormond, and
were driven to seek service in foreign wars by the result of a quarrel
between their family and King James VI. of Scotland and I. of England,
who had unjustly wrested from the Butlers their valuable estates,
and bestowed them upon his Scottish favourite, Sir Richard Preston,
Laird of Craigmillar (near Edinburgh), and Knight of the Bath. This
gentleman, who was afterwards created Lord Dingwall in the peerage
of Scotland, and Earl of Desmond in that of Ireland, 6th June, 1614,
claimed Ormond in right of his wife, Lady Elizabeth Butler, who was
the only daughter of Thomas, Earl of Ormond, and widow of Theobald,
Viscount of Theophelim. Such was the undue partiality of James for
his countryman, the Viscount Dingwall, that in 1614, when Sir Walter,
eldest son of Sir John Butler, third brother of the old Earl of Ormond,
inherited that title, the Ormond estates (which in ancient times were
an Irish principality on the left bank of the middle Shannon, in the
northern part of Munster) were bestowed upon the stranger; and the
king, to enforce his claim, wrote a very peremptory letter to the Irish
Privy Council. Sir Arthur Chichester, Baron of Belfast, was at that
time Lord Deputy and Chief Governor of Ireland. Finding the Council
averse to this injustice, James, who was notorious for entertaining
the most absurd ideas of his prerogative, took the matter into his own
hands, and, charging the Earl of Ormond with "non-compliance," threw
him into the Fleet prison, where he remained for eight years, enduring
great want and misery, while all his old hereditary possessions were
seized and confiscated, by which his family were reduced and ruined.
Preston, Lord Dingwall, was drowned in June, 1621 when on his way from
Dublin to Scotland. He left an only daughter, Lady Elizabeth Preston,
through whom his titles and Irish estates went afterwards to the Earls
of Ossory.
The trouble in which the family became involved, and the wandering
spirit which possessed the Irish, like the Scots of those days, led the
earl's two cousins, James and Walter, into the Imperial service, where
they soon obtained the command of regiments, and served under John de
Tscerclai, the Count Tilly, and the great Wallenstein, in most of the
battles of the Thirty Years' War.
In 1631, Walter Butler, with his battalion of Irish musketeers,
formed part of the Imperial garrison which defended the town of
Frankfort-on-the-Oder against the victorious army of Gustavus Adolphus.
Frankfort was even then a large town, and being capital of the middle
mark of Brandenburg, was remarkable for its fairs and university. As it
stood only forty-eight miles from Berlin, the imperial generals were
anxious about its safety. Hannibal Count de Schomberg, the successor
of old Torquato Conti, commanded the garrison, which consisted of ten
thousand horse and foot. The town was surrounded by strong ramparts and
gates, but was divided in two by the Oder.
At the head of eighteen thousand men, with two hundred pieces of
cannon, and a pontoon bridge one hundred and eighty feet long, the
warlike King of Sweden marched along the banks of the river, and
appeared near the town on the 1st day of April. No troops ever
presented a finer aspect than the Swedish, as they marched in several
columns to the investment of Frankfort, the attack on which was
planned by Sir John Hepburn, of Athelstaneford (afterwards a maréchal
de camp in France), who then commanded the green brigade of Scots in
the service of Gustavus. In the army of the latter were no less than
fifteen thousand Scots at this time.
There is an old rhyme, which says--
"He who lyes before Frankfort a year and a daye,
Is lord of the empire for ever and aye."
But, knowing well that the fiery King of Sweden would not remain a week
if he could help it, Count Schomberg, the commander-in-chief; the Count
de Montecuculi, an Italian; Campmaster-General Teiffenbach, and Colonel
Herbertstein, made the most vigorous preparations to defend the place;
and to _Walter Butler_ and his Irish musketeers assigned a post of the
greatest danger.
"Take him in every respect," says the historian of Gustavus, "he
was one of the bravest officers in the Emperor's service; but as
the Imperialists envied this gallant foreigner, care was taken to
place him in _the weakest part_ of the fortification; or, to speak
more to the purpose, in a part that scarcely deserved to be called
a fortification." In no way either daunted or disheartened, Butler
resolved to make the best of it, and ordered his Irishmen to dig a
trench and form a breastwork in rear of it; and thus, after incredible
labour, they formed a solid rampart in one day; but that evening he
went to Count Schomberg, and represented "that the post assigned to
him was almost incapable of being defended, and that unless a sally
was made that very night, to prevent the Swedes and Scots from coming
nearer his indifferent parapet, the place would be taken."
But Schomberg heard him without interest or attention.
"Give me but five troops of cuirassiers, Count Hannibal," said he, "and
five of dragoons, and at the peril of life and reputation, I will
undertake to make the Swedes raise the siege."
Envious of the honour already won by the stranger, the Imperialist
declined alike the offer and advice, though secretly he dispatched, on
the very service coveted by Walter Butler, a certain German commander,
whose cuirassiers failed to perform the duty required, for they were
driven in by the Scottish Highlanders of Gustavus, and their leader was
shot, while Major Sinclair, of Sir John Hepburn's Scots musketeers,
followed them almost into the town.
Covered by the Rhinegrave's cuirassiers, under Colonel Hume, of
Carrolsidebrae, Hepburn's brigade of Scots intrenched themselves
before the great gate of the town; the yellow brigade occupied the
Custrin road; and the white brigade of Swedes was spread throughout the
suburbs. After a smart cannonade, on Palm Sunday, the 3rd of April, the
King of Sweden ordered a general assault.
"The Swedish soldiers wanting ladders for the scaling of the walls,
runne to certaines Boores' houses hard bye, whence they bring away the
racks in the stables, and those others without, upon which the Boores
used to lay their cowes' meat. With these and some store of hatchets
they had gotten, to a mightie strong palisadoe of the enemies' neere
the walls they goe, which they fell to hewing downe. The enemies
labouring to defend the stocket or palisadoe, to it on both sides they
fall; the bullets darkening the very aire with a showre of lead. The
Imperialists being at length, by main force, beaten off, retire through
a sally-port into the towne. Being entered within the outer port,
there stay they and shoote amaine. The King calling Sir John Hebron
and Colonel Lumsden unto him--'_Now, my brave Scotts_' (saies he),
'_remember your countrymen slain at New Brandenburg!_'"[14]
The Scottish infantry advanced with their pikes in the front rank and
their musketeers firing over their heads; thus a terrible slaughter
was soon made of the Imperialists. "One Scottish man," continues the
quaint record of the Swedish war, "killed eighteen men with his own
hand. Here did Lumsden take eighteen colours; yea, such testimony
showed he of his valour, that the king after the battle bade him aske
what he wolde, and he wolde give it to him." This brave officer was
Colonel Sir James Lumsden, of Invergellie, in Fifeshire, afterwards
made Governor of Newcastle by the Scottish Parliament, and a
major-general in the army which invaded England in 1640.
Meanwhile Gustavus was pressing with his own brigade upon the quarter
occupied by Butler and his Irish musketeers, who defended themselves
with incredible resolution; so much so, that when one of them was
dragged over the rampart, he was asked by the Swedish king, "what
soldiers these were who fought so valiantly?" "Colonel Butler's Irish
regiment," replied the prisoner. This was at half-past one in the day,
and Gustavus, on hearing it (according to Harte), drew off his brigade,
and in despair of forcing a passage through the Irish, assailed the
strong Gueben gate, and about four in the afternoon broke into the town
through the Germans.
The Governor, Schomberg, Campmaster-General Tieffenbach, the Count
de Montecuculi, Colonels Behem and Herbertstein, with most of the
Imperialists, fled out of the city with great baseness, leaving the
faithful Butler to fight single-handed against the tides of Swedes and
Scots who surrounded his almost indefensible post. Already three Irish
lieutenant-colonels, O'Neil, Patrick, and Macarthy were slain, with
Captain-Lieutenants Grace and Brown, and Ensign Butler, all Irish, and
many of their men. At last Walter Butler was pierced by a bullet, and
had his sword-arm broken by a musket-ball, and when he fell the remnant
of his gallant soldiers surrendered, and resistance was at an end.
Meanwhile the fugitive generals fled towards Silesia, and everywhere
gave out that Butler and the Irish had betrayed Frankfort, by
permitting the enemy to enter by _their_ quarter, as it was the
weakest; and had it not been for a providential accident, adds an
historian, Butler might have been beheaded and degraded, in spite
of all his gallant services; but next day, says one of the stormers,
the Scottish Colonel Munro, in his history, "It was to be seen where
_the best service was done_; and truly had all the rest (of the
Imperialists) stood to it as well as the _Irish did_, we had returned
with great loss, and without victory." He adds, there were taken fifty
standards, one colonel, five lieutenant-colonels, "and one Irish
cavalier, Butler, who behaved himself honourably and well." Hundreds
of Imperialists were drowned in the Oder, and a vast quantity of
plunder was taken. That night the King of Sweden gave a banquet to his
principal officers and colonels, Sir John Hepburn, Munro, Lumsden, Sir
John Banier, and others; and when they were assembling, "Cavaliers,"
said he, "I will not eat a morsel until I have seen this brave Irishman
of whom we hear so much; and yet," he added, to Colonel Hume, "I have
that to say to him which he may not be pleased to hear."
Butler's wounds rendered him incapable of exertion; but on a litter of
pikes being formed, he was conveyed into the presence of Gustavus, who
gazed at him sternly, and asked with anger--
"Sir, art thou the elder or the younger Butler?"
"May it please your Majesty," replied the wounded man, "I am but the
younger."
"God be praised!" said Gustavus Adolphus. "Thou art a brave fellow.
Hadst thou been the elder, I meant to have run my sword through thy
body; but now my own physicians shall attend thee, and nothing shall be
omitted that may procure thee happiness and ease."
The action by which James Butler had kindled so much indignation in
the breast of the usually placid Gustavus is now unknown; but it must
have been something very remarkable to excite such angry bitterness.
Had Walter Butler been a Protestant, the king would, no doubt, have
endeavoured to lure him into the Swedish service; but the wounded
Imperialist was as famous for his strict adherence to the duties of the
Roman Catholic church as for his gallantry in the field.
While lying thus helplessly at Frankfort, he was deeply stung and
mortified by the rumour so wickedly and so industriously spread by the
Imperial generals, that he had occasioned the loss of the town; and he
cast his honour under the protection of the generous Gustavus.
"Sir," said the latter, "it is in my power to do your character ample
justice, and in such a manner that it can never be controverted. I will
bear full testimony to your faith and valour under my own hand and
royal seal."
Assuming a pen, he drew up a certificate, which set forth the heroism
displayed by Butler in the strongest terms, and added, "that if the
Imperial generals, instead of acting like poltroons, had performed but
a fifth part of what this gallant Irishman had done, he (Gustavus)
should never have been master of Frankfort, but after an obstinate
siege alone."
"This, sir," said the king, "is no more than is due to a brave and
injured man; so every general in the room will take a pride in signing
this paper with me." This was accordingly done by Sir John Banier, the
Scottish colonels, and others.
James Butler, who was then at the court of Ferdinand II., at Vienna,
was stung to the soul by the tidings that his brother had betrayed a
post, and he wrote to Walter a letter full of the bitterest reproaches.
"You have tarnished the lustre of the Imperial arms, as well as the
name of Butler," he wrote; "and Cæsar's court-martial will make your
name a bye-word of reproach."
Walter Butler was grieved by this insolence and unkindness, and
hastened to show the letter to the King of Sweden.
"Heed it not, Colonel Butler," said he; "send our testimonial to the
Emperor, and trouble yourself no more about it."
Thirty thousand pounds' worth of plunder, and ten baggage waggons, with
all the plate of the fugitives, were taken, and all their munitions of
war; however, they had buried in the earth a great quantity of arms. In
1850, a labourer, when digging a trench in a field near the outworks of
old Frankfort, came upon a depôt of old weapons, decaying, and covered
with rust. Among them were 2000 matchlocks, being part of the munition
concealed by the garrison of Count Schomberg. As soon as his wounds
permitted him to travel, Walter Butler left Frankfort, for Gustavus
was too generous to detain as a prisoner one whose gallant spirit was
writhing under unmerited reproaches. He travelled towards Silesia, and
sought out a Colonel Behem, who had commanded a regiment of German
infantry at the defence of Frankfort, and to whom he was fortunate
enough in tracing the first of the slanderous reports, and challenged
him to single combat on horse or foot, with sword and pistol; but, awed
by the justice of Butler's cause, his known skill and courage, and
by the formidable testimonial of Gustavus Adolphus, he signed a full
retractation and apology.
Butler then went into Poland, and at his own expense raised a fine
regiment of cavalry, all clad in buff coats, with back and breast
pieces, and triple-barred helmets. While recruiting there he daily ran
the risk of being murdered by the Polish peasantry, who were averse
to the Imperial service; but he marched as soon as his new levy was
completed, and on his return to the Emperor's army took possession
of Prague, the capital of Bohemia. This made him more than ever a
favourite of the great Wallenstein.
Soon after this exploit he married the Countess of Fondowna.
He was at Prague when the ambitious Wallenstein became false to the
interests of the Empire, and fell into the deadly snare prepared for
him at Egra by Colonel James Butler and others, on whose unscrupulous
fidelity the Imperial court could rely. Had Walter not been a rigidly
honourable man, he might have realized a large fortune by the death of
his leader, who, being always fond of foreign troops, wished him to
return to Ireland for the purpose of raising a body of infantry to cope
with the Scottish brigades of Gustavus. For this purpose he offered
him money to the amount of 32,000_l._ sterling by bills of exchange
at Hamburg, and ready cash, which was lying useless at his palace of
Sagan, on the bank of the Bober, in Prussian Silesia. But he declined
the service with these remarkable words--"Poor old Ireland has been
drained too much of her men already." This anecdote, says Walter Harte
in his history, I learned at Vienna.
The wild schemes and daring ambition of Wallenstein now made him
indulge in the hope of dismembering the great conquests of the Empire,
and seating himself upon a new throne, to be erected by the sword in
northern Europe. This hope was crushed in 1634, when the great duke
was spending the holidays of Christmas in the old castle of Egra in
Bohemia. The garrison in this fortress was commanded by John Gordon, a
Presbyterian, a native of Aberdeenshire, who was colonel of Tzertzski's
regiment, and had once been a private soldier. Wallenstein's personal
escort consisted of 250 men of James Butler's Irish regiment, commanded
by that officer in person.
James Butler (without communicating the matter to his brother Walter),
John Gordon, and Major Walter Lesley, son of the Laird of Balquhan in
the Garioch, on receiving private instructions from Vienna, resolved,
without scruple or remorse, on removing the ambitious general from the
path of the emperor for ever. Butler prepared a grand banquet, to which
he invited the generalissimo's attendants. Previous to the latter,
Butler, who, felt some distrust of Lesley and Gordon, who were both
Scots and Presbyterians, while he was a Catholic, made some remarks
expressive of admiration for the duke.
"You may do as you please, gentlemen, in the matter at issue," said
Gordon; "but death itself shall never alienate me from the duty and
affection I bear his majesty the emperor."
Thus encouraged, Butler produced a letter from Mathias Count Galas
(who, after the siege of Mantua, obtained the supreme command of the
Imperial army), wherein Ferdinand II. authorized them and all his
officers to withdraw "their allegiance" from Wallenstein, for all the
troops had taken an oath of obedience to _him_ by the emperor's express
order. Fully empowered by this document to do what they pleased, the
three mercenaries resolved on his immediate destruction. One proposed
to poison him; another suggested that he should be sent a prisoner
to Vienna; a third, that he should be slain after _disposing_ of his
friends at the _banquet_. The last was at once adopted, and several
were invited, among whom were Wallenstein's brother-in-law, Colonel
Tzertzski; Colonels Illo, William Kinski, and the secretary, Colonel
Niemann. The castle was filled with soldiers on whom Gordon and Butler
could rely. As the fatal evening drew on, Captain Walter Devereaux,
Watchmaster Robert Geraldine, and fifteen other Irishmen, entered the
keep, and took possession of a postern; while to Captain Edmund Bourke,
with one hundred more, was assigned the duty of keeping the streets
quiet; for Tzertzski's dragoons occupied the town, which is the capital
of its circle, and was then surrounded by a triple rampart, washed on
one side by the Egra.
The banquet was protracted so long that at half-past ten the dessert
was still on the table, when Colonel Gordon filled up a goblet of wine,
and proposed the health of the shy and cunning John George, Elector of
Saxony, the enemy of the emperor.
Butler affected astonishment, and said "he would drink to no man's
prosperity who was the enemy of _Cæsar_."
Pretended high words ensued, and while the unsuspecting friends of
Wallenstein gazed about them in wonder and perplexity, the doors were
flung open, and Geraldine and Devereaux, with their soldiers armed with
drawn swords or partizans, rushed in.
"Long live Ferdinand the Second!" cried Devereaux.
"God prosper the house of Austria," added Geraldine; while Butler,
Gordon, and Lesley, snatched up the candles, held them aloft, and drew
their swords. Wallenstein's friends saw that they were betrayed; they
sprang to their weapons, all flushed with wine and with fury at this
treachery; the tables were dashed over, and a deadly combat began.
Colonel Illo was rushing to his sword, which was hanging on the wall,
when an Irishman ran him through the heart. Tzertzski placed himself in
a corner, and slew three; for the assailants, believing him to be proof
to mortal weapons, were afraid of him.
"Leave me, leave me for a moment," he continued to cry, while fighting
with all the energy of despair; "leave me to deal with Lesley and
Gordon--I will fight them both hand to hand--after that you may kill
me; but, O, Gordon, what a supper is this for your friends."
At that instant he pierced the young Duke de Lerida by a mortal wound,
but was almost immediately overpowered by ten strokes, and, with Kinski
and Tzertzski, nearly hewn to pieces. Unglutted yet with blood, Captain
Devereaux, finding his rapier broken, snatched up a partizan, and,
followed by thirty soldiers, rushed to the apartments of Wallenstein;
who, having heard the uproar in the hall, had double-bolted his door
within; and they assailed it with noise and great fury, while Butler
stood, with his sword drawn, on the staircase below. Even the bold
heart of Wallenstein was appalled by the unusual uproar--he leaped from
his bed, and threw on a dressing-gown. He raised the window of the
room; but the wall of the tower was too high for escape, and he cried
aloud--
"Will none here assist me? Alas! is no one here my friend?"
Upon this Devereaux knocked again, and commanded his soldiers to burst
open the door. Five times their united strength failed before it, till
he applied his own shoulder to it; and, being a man of great power, he
broke it to fragments, and then they beheld before them the formidable
Wallenstein, Duke of Friedland and Prince of the Vandal Isles, standing
near a table, in his shirt, pale and composed, but defenceless--for
he had neither sword nor pistols; for Schiller asserts that he was
disturbed in the study of astrology.
"Art thou not the betrayer of Ferdinand and the Empire?" cried Captain
Devereaux, as he charged his partizan; "if so, now thou must die."
Wallenstein made no reply, but opened his arms, as if still more to
expose his naked breast, into which the Irish captain thrust his
weapon, and he expired without a groan, while all the soldiers shrunk
back, as if appalled by the act; yet his naked body, and the bodies of
the Colonels Niemann, Tzertzski, Illo, and Kinski were carried in a
cart through the streets of Egra, and tossed into a ditch. So perished
the magnificent Wallenstein, the dictator of Germany!
James Butler and Devereaux hastened to Vienna, where the Emperor
Ferdinand II. fastened round the neck of the former a valuable chain,
giving, at the same time, his Imperial benison and a gold medal,
saying, "Wear this, Colonel Butler, in memory of an emperor you have
saved from ruin." He then created him a Count of the Holy Roman Empire,
and gave him the gold key of the bedchamber, with extensive estates
in the kingdom of Bohemia; and, to crown all, by an act of abominable
hypocrisy, he ordered three thousand masses to be said for repose of
the murdered general's soul. Devereaux also received a gold chain with
the gold key and a colonelcy; but he left the Imperial service, and
returned home to Ireland in 1638.
Colonel Gordon was created a marquis of the Empire, Colonel-General
of the Imperial army, and High Chamberlain of Austria. Major Walter
Lesley, who was then a captain of the Body Guard, was created Count
Lesley, and Lord of Newstadt, an estate worth two hundred thousand
florins. He died Field-Marshal, Governor of Sclavonia, and Knight of
the Golden Fleece.
James Butler enjoyed his countship only one year; for he died at
Wirtemberg in the early part of the year 1634, leaving a very ample
fortune, and money to found a college of Irish Franciscans, which
still exists in the Bohemian capital. To Laurmayne, confessor to the
emperor, he left a memorial worth twenty pounds by his will. To the
Scottish and Irish colleges at Prague he bequeathed 3300_l._; to the
Irish students at Prague, 500_l._ among them equally; to his sister,
1000_l._; to Walter Devereaux whose partizan slew Wallenstein, 150_l._
His widow, whom he left in easy circumstances, conveyed his body into
Bohemia, escorted by a troop of lancers and cuirassiers, and there she
interred him near his own estates, with great pomp and splendour. In
1638, Thomas Carve, an Irish priest, chaplain of Butler's regiment, and
author of a minute account of these affairs,[15] obtained a commission
as chaplain-general "to all the Scottish and Irish forces in the
Imperial service."
During the development and _denouement_ of this daring conspiracy
against the great Imperialist, his friend, Walter Butler, was in
command at Prague, about seventy miles distant from the castle of
Egra; and he was filled with horror and dismay at the part played
by his brother in the dark and terrible tragedy. It was, moreover,
an unfortunate event for _him_, as he never obtained any place at
court, any military order, or rose one rank higher in the army from
thenceforward--for, as a favourite of Wallenstein, he was an object of
distrust to the emperor.
In the same year his brother died. Walter served with distinguished
bravery at Nordlingen in Swabia, where, on the 26th of August, 1634,
a general engagement was the result of Field-Marshal Gustaf Horne's
attempt to relieve the town, then besieged by the Imperialists, who
obtained a complete victory; for the Swedish army was defeated with
great loss, and had 4000 baggage-waggons, 80 pieces of cannon, and 300
stand of colours taken. The Scottish brigades suffered severely. In
particular the Highland regiment of Colonel Robert Munro, which by the
slaughter of that fatal day was reduced to _one_ company.
By his valour and example Walter Butler, at the head of his
regiment, "decided the victory in favour of the Imperialists." To
quote Harte--"He stood firm, without losing one inch of ground, for
three-and-twenty hours, during a continual fire, and though 16,000
soldiers were killed in that engagement."
Soon after this great battle he died of a severe illness. The
descendants of his brother distinguished themselves repeatedly in the
future wars of the grasping House of Austria, particularly in those
waged against Frederick the Great, King of Prussia; and there is now
living in Bohemia an old nobleman named Baron Bütler, who boasts of
being the fourth in descent from James Butler of Ormond, one of the
slayers of the great Duke of Friedland.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 14: _Swedish Intelligencer, 1632._]
[Footnote 15: Thomas Carve (Tipperariensis), _Itinerarium_, 12mo.
1639-1641.]
MARSHAL CLARKE,
GOVERNOR OF VIENNA AND BERLIN.
Henry James William Clarke, Duc de Feltre, Minister of War under the
Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, and afterwards under the Bourbons, was born
on the 17th October, 1765, at Landrecies, a town of France, situate
on the Sambre, westward of Maubeuge, and about one hundred miles from
Paris.
His father belonged to one of the many exiled Irish families who
followed to France the abdicated James VII. of Scotland, and II. of
England; and after serving King Louis as a subaltern officer, died at
an early age on obtaining the rank of colonel, leaving his son, the
future general, an orphan, to the care of his uncle, Colonel Shee, who
was then "Sécretaire des Commandement du Duc d'Orléans," and afterwards
Prefect of Strasbourg, and a peer of France. It is strange how well
fortune favoured all these Irish exiles in the various lands of their
adoption.
By Colonel Shee, Henry Clarke was well and carefully reared, as he
intended him for the service of Louis XVI. Thus, on the 17th of
September, 1781, he entered the Military School at Paris as a cadet;
and after going through a brief curriculum, left it on the 11th of
November, 1782, to join the regiment of the Duc de Berwick as a
sub-lieutenant. Wishing to join the cavalry, on the 5th of September,
1784, he was appointed cornet of hussars, with the rank of captain in
the regiment of the colonel-general of this branch of the service.
On the 11th of July, 1790, he obtained a captaincy of dragoons, and in
the same year received leave of absence to visit Great Britain, as a
gentleman in the suite of the ambassador.
It was to the friendship and patronage of the Duke of Orleans that
Clarke owed these favours, and generally, his rapid advancement in
the army; and it was to this prince that the hussar regiment of the
colonel-general belonged, according to a custom of the old _régime_.
On his return to France, Clarke applied immediately for active service,
and on the 5th of February, 1792, was appointed a captain of the first
class, and soon after he attained the rank of lieutenant-colonel of
cavalry.
He remained in command of his regiment during all the horrors of
the Revolution; and, at its head, served in the two campaigns which
followed the attack on the Tuileries, the deposition of the king,
and the murders of 1792. In September he assisted very materially at
the capture of Spire, the _ci-devant_ capital of a bishopric in the
palatinate of the Rhine, along the upper circle of which Custine had
spread his brilliant conquests.
The French attacked the Austrians, who were in order of battle in front
of the city. They were outflanked, and driven back; the gates were cut
down by axes, or blown to pieces by cannon, and the republicans stormed
the place, taking 3000 prisoners, with a vast train of cannon and
mortars. Clarke bore a conspicuous part as an active cavalry officer in
all the subsequent operations of the French army, including the capture
of Worms, with all its stores, and of Mentz, before which the army
arrived on the 19th of October, after forced marches, performed amid
torrents of rain; and the taking of Frankfort, which was ransomed from
destruction and pillage on the payment of 500,000 florins.
On the 17th of March, after the rout of Bingen, he defended the passage
of the Nahe, a German stream, which falls into the Rhine near the
former place, and there he was of signal service to the retreating
troops. He was present at the affair of Horcheim, which was afterwards
annexed to France, and the capture of Landau, on the 17th of May. His
distinguished bravery on these occasions obtained him the rank of
General of Brigade, provisionally, the commission of which he received
on the field of battle. He then received the command of three regiments
of dragoons, which formed the advanced guard of the army of the Rhine.
Soon afterwards we find him exercising in this army the functions of
_Chef d'Etat-Major Général_; but on the 12th of October, 1793, the
Commissioners of the National Convention, in virtue of a most unjust
decree of that tyrannical assembly, deprived him of his rank, as he
happened to be at that time on their secret list of the _suspected_.
He received intelligence of this on the very evening before the
Austrians stormed the French lines at Weissembourg, on the Lower Rhine,
and he retired at once to Alsace, where he was confined on a species of
parole; nor did he recover his military rank and position until after
the downfall and death of the cruel and infamous Robespierre.
Under the protection of M. Carnot, who was then Minister of Public
Safety, Clarke was placed at the head of a committee of military
topography; and in this service he exhibited the greatest talent as
a director and instructor, and spared no pains to fulfil the duties
imposed upon him. The restless and suspicious Directory, in thus
maintaining M. Carnot at the head of their affairs as minister, caused
also the retention of Clarke, whose importance seemed to increase with
that of his patron.
He was confirmed a General of Brigade in March, 1795; and on his
appointment to the rank of General of Division, on the 17th of
September, in the same year, our Irish exile could scarcely believe
that fate had higher or more brilliant destinies in store for him; but
now his talents as a diplomatist were about to be put in requisition.
This was when the astonishing successes of Napoleon in Italy had
alarmed the Directory, who dispatched Clarke to Vienna, entrusting
to him the difficult mission of preparing the terms of the projected
peace between Republican France and the Imperial Court; but, as he was
adverse to the wishes of the Directory, and inimical to the task, his
arrangements proved unfortunately disadvantageous to the French.
After this he visited the army of Italy, the General-in-Chief of
which, being influenced by the Directory, placed him in a subordinate
position, alike repugnant to his love of freedom and authority. As
simple plenipotentiary, Clarke, after traversing Germany, showed
himself at Vienna to be the political confidant of the powerful
Directory, and, above all, of M. Carnot.
In the minute instructions given to General Clarke by the French
Government we are enabled to trace him in his route, which lay through
Piedmont, Milan, Medina, Bologna, and Venice; and by the Directory
he--more than all their other diplomatic agents--was specially
recommended to observe narrowly the secret purposes of the different
great personages who held important positions at the court of Vienna.
"Your journey, M. Clarke," said the minister De la Croix, in a letter
written on the 17th November, 1796, "will be sufficiently useful when
you have no longer anything to know or to discover for the profit
of the Republic or the cause of humanity." But it was generally
believed--nay, it was openly asserted in Paris--that the mission of
Clarke to Vienna was all a _ruse_, and was meant merely to conceal some
artful plot woven by the Directory against Napoleon Bonaparte, before
whose power and popularity they were beginning to tremble.
However, the Directory really wished a peace, and provisionally
demanded an armistice; but Bonaparte, who had no desire to see a
general peace in Europe, and, least of all, one formed by any person
save himself, by his formidable interference and potent influence,
caused the negotiations entirely to fail. We are enabled to perceive
how the Directory, in their overtures for peace, above everything else
counted on those territories which they could offer in exchange for
Luxembourg and other provinces which they had annexed to France. This
system of compensation admitted of alterations, which their envoy could
vary at his pleasure, on perceiving the effect produced by each offer
on the various members of the Austrian cabinet.
In the armistice extended to the two armies they wished the terms
to be similar to those given by their general, Napoleon Bonaparte,
when besieging Mantua, viz.:--That they should be supplied daily with
ammunition and provisions, according to their numerical strength. But
Bonaparte declared these terms absurd; and explained to them that
the suspension of arms alone gave to France the prospect of greater
advantages than could accrue from terms based on those framed at
Mantua. But the commands of the Directory were imperative; and the
cabinet of Vienna, on receiving their overtures, had already sent the
Baron Vincent to Vicenza, to confer with General Clarke, who repelled
with all his energy the advice and interference of Bonaparte; but the
latter, on being supported by Barras against him, as one trusted by
Carnot, said plainly to Clarke, "Si vous êtes venu ici pour faire ma
volonté, je vous verrai avec plaisir; si c'est le contraire vous pouvez
retourner d'où vous êtes venu."
By this language he made Clarke feel that his patron, Carnot, was
not secure in office, and that he must prepare other supporters for
himself. Indeed, some rumour of this nature had reached him before.
The result of these disagreements between Clarke and Napoleon caused
the former to omit all praise of the latter in public communications
to the government at Paris; but, in the first report of Clarke to the
minister De la Croix, dated 7th December, 1796, we find him exculpating
Bonaparte of all blame for the awful ravages and atrocities committed
by his troops in Italy.
Bonaparte succeeded in postponing the conferences at Vicenza until the
3rd January, 1797; and so many despatches passed to and fro between the
Directory, Carnot, and Clarke, that the Baron Vincent lost patience,
and declared, that if France had any further communications to make,
they must in future be addressed, not to him, but to Gherardini, the
Austrian minister at Turin. Bonaparte took care that this resolution
of the baron should be effectual. Clarke was several times at Turin
and Lombardy, negotiating; and after happily completing a friendly
arrangement with his general, was left without other duties to fulfil,
than to complete, with the Piedmontese court, those amicable treaties
which were terminated by an alliance with France on the 5th April, 1797.
After this, he brought before the Directory a series of complaints
against certain generals and commissaries of the French army in Italy.
With the substance of the charges against these officers he had been
furnished by Bonaparte; and the result was, that many of them were
displaced and recalled to France.
The complaints or charges furnished to Clarke were sometimes far from
correct; but Bonaparte, by means of the envoy, wished to rid his army
of those devastators and peculators, without drawing upon himself
their lasting and personal hostility. To the honour of Clarke, it
must be confessed that his dislike for those who had been guilty of
mal-demeanour in Italy was at least sincere; and in this he proved
himself worthy to be the friend of Carnot.
He found himself again at Turin during the discussion which ensued
concerning the preliminaries of Leoben. Bonaparte, who had neither
desire nor authority to conclude anything that resembled a peace,
affected to wish much for the presence of Clarke as a plenipotentiary,
while he secretly contrived such means to delay his journey, that it
was impossible he could arrive in time. Thus ten days passed, and on
the 17th of April Clarke had not appeared, so Bonaparte signed the
articles _alone_; and on the 6th of the following month, the Directory
invested them both with full power to sign the final treaty.
Two negotiators, the Marquis di Gallo and Meerfeldt, had been
appointed by Austria to meet them; but at the very commencement of
their proceedings the proud and haughty spirits of Bonaparte and Gallo
domineered over their colleagues so completely, that they became as
mere machines in their hands. Clarke had, nevertheless, occasionally
sole charge of the negotiations at Udina, a town in Friuli, where they
had many meetings concerning the entangled affairs of France and
Austria; but this was only when the tergiversations of the latter, who
wished to recommence the war, were embarrassing the conferences, which,
according to the caustic expression of Bonaparte, "were nothing more
than a series of pleasantries."
In the midst of these incertitudes and delays, a new revolution took
place at Paris, on the 4th September, 1797, when the legislative
was entirely absorbed by the executive power, and when the famous
pamphlet of Bailleul, which provoked such a violent debate in the
Council of Five Hundred, was the tocsin of alarm. On this day--the 18th
_Fructidor_--Clarke was declared a "creature of Carnot;" and, as such,
was deprived of all power. Thus Bonaparte was left sole plenipotentiary
of the Republic, and had the honour of signing alone the famous treaty
of Campo Formio, which secured a peace between France and the Emperor
Francis II., and which took its name from the place of meeting--a
castle of maritime Austria, situated on a hill in the province of
Friuli. It was signed on the 17th October, and was undoubtedly more
glorious for France than the treaty which General Clarke had prepared
for the same purpose in November, 1796. But Bonaparte behaved with
great generosity towards his fallen colleague: he defended him against
the virulence of the Parisian pamphleteers and journalists, protected
him while in Italy, and employed him about his staff and person in many
ways. "Could he do less to the star which he had so completely made his
satellite?" exclaims a French writer.
The brilliant reception which awaited Bonaparte on his triumphant
return to France, and still more, the high enthusiasm kindled by his
departure for Egypt, threw Clarke completely into the shade; and he was
almost forgotten by the volatile Parisians during two years that he
lived in retirement.
M. Xavier Audoin, son-in-law of Pache, succeeded Clarke as chief of
the Bureau Topographique et Militaire at the Directory. The Parisian
journals accused the general of having enjoyed the confidence of Carnot
too much, and to be too deeply attached to the House of Orleans, to
which he and his family were indebted for much of their good fortune in
France.
The _Dublin Journal_ of the 7th October, 1797, contains a paragraph to
the effect that it was known that Clarke had been "for forty hours,
during the last week," in that city, "that he had held conferences with
the leaders of the United Irishmen, and having obtained his information
and given his directions, had embarked in a fishing smack from
Killinbay, on Sunday morning last. That he could have no other purpose
than the arrangement of a French invasion we have no doubt," adds the
editor, "and when our readers have learned that there is strong ground
to believe that he has been for some time past in the north of Ireland,
they will naturally join in our opinion. Our readers will recollect
that this General Clarke was announced in the French papers to have
left the Italian army some time since on his way to Vienna to negotiate
with the emperor--there has been _no_ negotiation at Vienna--the treaty
is under discussion at Udina--so that this journey has obviously been
fabricated to _conceal_ his real destination."
But, notwithstanding all these details, there is no solid proof for
believing that General Clarke ever visited the land of his forefathers
on this secret duty.
He ought, perhaps, to have followed Napoleon, even as a volunteer, to
the banks of the Nile; but being of a proud and jealous spirit, he was
unfortunately without this feeling of devotion to his new protector.
Bonaparte appeared to feel this; for on his return from his distant and
dangerous expedition, and finding himself master of the government, by
the 18th _Brumaire_ (9th November, 1799), he seemed to look coldly on
the general at times.
Clarke now neglected nothing that might serve to reinstate him in the
good graces of the First Consul, who, in September, 1800, intrusted
him finally with the charge of the negotiations at Luneville, and soon
after with the military command of that large city, which lies in the
departement of the Meurthe. But Clarke felt that these two posts were
alike insignificant and unworthy one of his talent and enterprise; for
the recent victories in Germany and Italy had greatly simplified his
duties as a negotiator, and the little that remained Bonaparte directed
in Paris. When the arrangements were completed, to the infinite
annoyance of Clarke, he sent his brother Joseph to sign them.
Clarke had meanwhile been preparing for the departure of a body of
Russian officers who were prisoners of war at Lisle; and the kindness
with which he did so, caused the Emperor Paul I. to present him with a
magnificent sword, and other marks of his approbation.
Such is the weakness of the human heart, that these honours inflated
Clarke so much, that for a time he appeared to feel himself equal to
the First Consul, and indeed he was rash enough, and unwise enough, to
say so.
Coming early one evening to the opera, he entered the box usually
appropriated to Napoleon, and assumed that august person's place in the
front seat. When the First Consul came, Clarke had the bad taste to sit
still during the performance, and leave to his master the second place!
These mistakes of temper, united to his punctilious spirit, in affairs
of state, and love of diplomatic work, caused the French government to
give him the office of minister of France at Florence, that he might
be away from Paris and near the young Duke of Parma, who wished to
be named King of all Italy; but this post, say the _Memoirs of St.
Helena_, proved exceedingly distasteful to him.
Clarke's talent--a most useful, if not brilliant one--consisted in
an amazing facility for keeping on the best possible terms with all
the parties among whom he was cast. The secret of his influence with
Bonaparte appears to have been, a sentiment of profound gratitude
in the latter for the high praise bestowed by Clarke in his "Secret
Report" to the Directory on the conduct of the young general in Italy.
This document afterwards fell into the hands of the First Consul, who
never forgot its contents.
Clarke, tired of his residence in Florence, wrote letter after letter,
demanding his recal to Paris, terming his embassy a species of exile;
and Bonaparte, believing that his punishment was sufficiently severe,
at last gave him leave to return; but desired him to travel by the way
of Lisle (a fortified city in the departement of the north), to the
camp at Boulogne. In Belgium he gave him the title of Councillor of
State, and created for him two places in the cabinet--one as secretary
for the marine, and the other for the war.
Arrived at the camp of Boulogne, one of the earliest matters entrusted
to the general was the proposed establishment of Irish brigades, to
co-operate in the projected invasion of Britain; and these corps Clarke
believed might be recruited among the Irishmen who were prisoners of
war in France. While this project was on the _tapis_, he had many
interviews with the famous Theobald Wolfe Tone, who had been appointed
by the Directory chef-de-brigade, and afterwards adjutant-general;
and with Lazarus Hoche, a frank, resolute, and zealous republican,
who, from being a stable-boy and private of the French guards, raised
himself to one of the highest positions in the army of France. In 1792,
he was a corporal; in 1793, he was a _general_, commanding the army of
the Moselle; and in the two subsequent years he subdued La Vendée.
Tone was introduced to Hoche by Clarke, and in his _Memoirs_ he details
the questions they asked him concerning the state of Ireland; where
a landing might be effected; where provisions might be relied on,
particularly bread; whether French auxiliaries might count on being
able to form an Irish Provisional Government, either of the Catholic
Committee, or of the chiefs of the Irish patriots? On these subjects
Tone had many a long and anxious conference with his countryman Clarke,
and with Hoche.
After a long interview with Hoche, in the cabinet of Fleury one day,
Wolfe Tone was asked, what form of government the Irish would adopt, in
the event of their successfully encountering the British troops?
"I was going to answer him with great earnestness," says Tone, in his
interesting _Memoirs_, "when General Clarke entered, to request that
we would come to dinner with Citizen Carnot. We accordingly adjourned
the conversation to the apartment of the President, where we found
Carnot, and one or two more. Hoche, after some time, took me aside, and
repeated his question. I replied, '_Most decidedly a republic._' He
asked again, 'Are you sure?' I said, 'As sure as I can be of anything.
I know nobody in Ireland who thinks of any other system----.' Carnot
joined us here, with a pocket-map of Ireland, and the conversation
between Clarke, Hoche, and him became pretty general, every one else
having left the room. I said scarcely anything, as I wished to listen.
Hoche related to Carnot the substance of what passed between him and
me. When he mentioned his anxiety as to bread, Carnot laughed and said,
'There is plenty of beef in Ireland--if you cannot get bread, you
must eat beef.' I told him I hoped they would find both; adding, that
within twenty years Ireland had become a great corn country, so that at
present it made a considerable article in her exports."--Vol. ii. pp.
14-18.
The patience of Wolfe Tone was sorely tried by many and unnecessary
delays; and, after all, the hopes of the Irish exiles ended only in
mustering a regiment of their countrymen, which, instead of embarking
for Ireland, marched to the invasion of Spain, under the unfortunate
Colonel Lewis Lacy, the son of a race of hereditary Irish soldiers, as
related elsewhere.
In the year following his double appointment as minister for the war
and marine, Clarke made the German campaign on the staff of Bonaparte,
and was present at the capture of the free city of Ulm, in the Swabian
circle, on the 17th October, 1805, and at other operations, which
drove the army of the Archduke Ferdinand across the Danube; and, on
the capture of Vienna by the corps of the brave Murat and Lannes, he
was named governor of the city and also of Upper and Lower Austria,
Carinthia, Styria, Friuli, Trieste, &c. His moderation and justice in
this high command elevated him among the victors, and won him the love
and esteem of the vanquished. He also received the cordon of Grand
Officer of the Legion of Honour, and soon after was ordered to define
the line of demarcation between Brisgau, in the kingdom of Wirtemberg,
and the Grand Duchy of Baden.
Two months were spent by him in conferences and diplomacy. From
the 9th to the 20th of July, 1806, he was engaged with the Russian
plenipotentiary, and their interviews were terminated by the wonderful
treaty which opened and ceded to France, Cattaro, a Venetian
territory in Dalmatia, with its capital, harbour, and citadel; and
which maintained Gustavus IV. in possession of the ancient Duchy of
Pomerania, and left to be achieved, at an early period, the junction
of Sicily to the kingdom of Murat--the whole being arranged by them,
without condescending to ask the advice of Great Britain, which was
then the faithful ally of Prussia. This treaty was never ratified by
the Emperor Alexander. The other conferences took place between Clarke
and Lord Yarmouth, to whom Charles Fox added the Scottish Earl of
Lauderdale; while, to assist Clarke, the French government added Jean
Baptiste Champagny, the Duc de Cadore, who was only a spectator of the
negotiations, which were without result, and are of no consequence to
the reader; but Clarke, who had displayed his usual acuteness, tact,
and skill in all his meetings with the Lords Yarmouth and Lauderdale,
was not a little proud of having prevailed upon M. D'Oubril to sign
certain clauses he submitted to him.
Russia, however, was in no haste to evacuate Cattaro, and the Emperor
Alexander began to augment his army; so from September, 1806, it became
evident that if France declared war against Prussia, she would have to
encounter Russia also. In the first meeting concerning these affairs
Clarke said, "that the convention recently concluded with Russia
was for France equivalent to a victory; and that henceforward his
master, the Emperor Napoleon, had the right of proposing articles more
advantageous than those he had lately made." He qualified the terms of
the treaty which he wished them to adopt, and in particular _l'uti
possedetis_; of vague conversations on the politics of Rome, he said
that Bonaparte had never adopted this _uti possedetis_ for a basis,
without which Moravia, Styria, and Carniola would have remained still
in his hands.
Similar language, encumbered by diplomatic technicalities, was applied
to the two envoys of Fox, but failed to succeed with them, as they
were resolved not to depart in a single instance from the basis of the
position taken before by the envoy of Prince Talleyrand. The death of
Charles Fox put an end to all the hopes of peace, although Lauderdale
and Champagny did not despair of procuring it until the 6th of October;
but by this time Clarke had set out for Germany, having accompanied
Napoleon to the Prussian campaign. After the two battles of the 14th
October, he was named Governor of Erfurt, a fortified city on the Gera,
and capital of the Elector of Mentz. It was then crowded with Prussian
prisoners, and with sick and wounded Frenchmen.
For having been more in the palaces than in the camps of Bonaparte, and
being, moreover, of foreign blood, Clarke was reproached with being
more of a diplomatist than a soldier by those who were envious of the
favour shown him by the Emperor. While at Erfurt he caused the Saxon
grenadiers of Hündt to take arms, and supplied them with ammunition,
colours, and several pieces of cannon.
On the 27th Napoleon summoned him to Berlin, and appointed him
governor, saying:--
"I wish that in the _same year_ you should have under your orders the
capitals of two monarchies we have conquered--Prussia and Austria."
"Thus Clarke, the inevitable Clarke, was appointed Governor of
Berlin," says De Bourienne, "and under his administration the wretched
inhabitants, who could not flee, were overwhelmed by every species
of impost and oppression. As in the execution of every measure there
operated the most servile compliance with the orders of Napoleon, so
the name of Clarke is held in detestation throughout Prussia."
The measures of Clarke, as Governor of Berlin, were doubtless
mortifying, ruinous, and often sanguinary; but then it must be
remembered that he was compelled to enforce the iron will, and obey the
stern orders, of his inflexible master; though it must be acknowledged
that it would have been more noble in him to have softened them to
the vanquished Prussians. The military contributions were rigorously
levied, and those were not the least of the severities exercised
upon the people of Berlin. Offences were uselessly created, and then
barbarously judged of by a military commission.
The punishment of the unfortunate Burgomaster of Ciritz is forgotten
amid the many barbarous executions of which Prussia became the theatre,
and against which her people dared not protest. When the king,
Frederick William, found himself seated with Clarke at the table of
Louis XVIII. in 1815, he could not refrain from bitterly reproaching
Clarke with what he termed "the useless murder of the father of a
family."
"Sire," responded Clarke, "it was an unfortunate error."
"An error, monsieur?" reiterated the king, striking his hand upon the
table; "an error--it was a crime!"
Withal, it must be acknowledged that Clarke, in the high place he
occupied, fulfilled, in every way, the trust reposed in him by
Napoleon; and that during his command at Berlin, which occupied a year,
he gave ample proof of his inflexible probity; and we may perhaps
believe, that many of the accusations made against him were the echoes
of those complaints which are naturally raised by the vanquished
against the troops of the victor. Doubtless he would have received
greater praise had he striven to please others more, and his master
less. By the official collections of Schoell, we are informed that
Vendomme one day wished to appropriate to himself the magnificent
furniture in the palace of Potsdam, where he resided; but that Clarke,
by his determined intervention, forced him to relinquish the idea.
Clarke was again named minister of war, _vice_ Marshal Berthier,
Duke of Neufchatel and Prince of Wagram. He acquitted himself with
great credit during his administration, which was prolonged without
interruption for several years; but it was marked by two remarkable
episodes--the descent upon Walcheren in 1809, and the conspiracy of
Mallet in 1812. But we ought previously to have mentioned that in 1808
Clarke had been ennobled by the title of Count Hunebourg, and in 1809
he was created Duc de Feltre, from a town in Venetian Lombardy.
The descent of the British upon Walcheren took Clarke by surprise;
but seconded by Bernadotte and Fouche he collected, in less than five
weeks, an army of 100,000 men, near the mouths of the Scheldt, to watch
their operations; but the swamps of South Beveland, and the Walcheren
fever, proved more deadly to the British troops than the bayonets of
France.
When Napoleon was absent on his disastrous Russian campaign, the
unfortunate disturbance, or rather wild enterprise of the republican
General Mallet, with his compatriots Guidal and Lahoire, placed Paris
for some hours in the hands of an armed mob. The coolness and presence
of mind exhibited by Clarke during this momentous crisis is above all
common praise. Mallet forged an account of Bonaparte's death; and on
obtaining twelve hundred men from the 10th cohort of the National
Guard, made prisoners M. Pasquer and Savary, the Duke of Rovigo, and
assailing General Hullin, Commandant of Paris, in his quarters, shot
him through the head by a pistol-ball. Mallet led his party to seize
Clarke as minister of war; but the plot was soon discovered, and Mallet
was captured and disarmed. This finished his proposed reassertion of
the Republic, and fourteen of his followers were put to death, while
Clarke ordered the arrest of many others upon very slight suspicions.
He then dispatched to Bonaparte a report, which displayed his own
vigilance and acuteness in escaping the snare into which General
Hullin, Colonel Soulier, Savary, and Pasquer had fallen so easily.
The excessive zeal of Clarke began to relax about the end of 1813,
although his language always continued the same; thus, when Napoleon,
acting under the pressure of his disasters in Russia, proposed to make
a peace, and yield up some of his conquests, the Duc de Feltre, knowing
how to touch one of the sensitive chords in his breast, said, "that he
would consider the Emperor dishonoured if he consented to abandon the
smallest village which had been united to the Empire by a senatorial
decree!"
"What a fine thing it is to talk!" added old Bourienne.
Clarke's opinion, however, prevailed with Napoleon, and the war, so
fatal to him, continued; though without doubt, in his secret soul,
he had begun to see the exact and perilous position of the Emperor.
Before the startling events of March, 1814, when the allies advanced
upon Paris, and before the communications of Joseph had forced the
determination of the Assembly, the acute Clarke had advised, very
decidedly, the departure of Maria Louisa, who set out at once for
Blois. The ostentatious language with which he accompanied this
advice failed to deceive any one; but in spite of his efforts it was
singularly cold and discouraging.
He commenced his oration by a vivid picture of the conflicting state of
parties, and of the state of Paris and its environs; and his enemies
accused him not only of exaggerating the dangers which menaced the
capital, but of concealing its actual resources; but one fact is
evident, Clarke was clearly and honestly of opinion that Paris was
indefensible, and that to resist would be to destroy it! It is said
that Bonaparte had a contrary opinion, though it was not then publicly
avowed.
When once Maria Louisa had left Paris, Clarke, foreseeing its certain
capitulation, did not take the necessary measures either to defend it
or to check the progress of the allies. For three days he did not open
the arsenals to the Parisians, nor would he allow them to transport the
cannon from the Hôtel des Invalides, and the Ecole Militaire to the
heights about the city; finally he clubbed all the troops of the line
about Montmartre. "Posterity," says a recent writer, "will decide if
these measures were correct."
Then followed the battle of Paris; Marshal Marmont's return within its
walls; the nights of the 30th and 31st of March; the capitulation;
the entry of the allies, and the strange enthusiasm with which the
vacillating population received them. Napoleon was dethroned by a
decree of the Senate, and a Provisional Government was formed; and
changing, like many others, in that time of change, to this new
government, Clarke sent in his formal adhesion on the 8th of April,
about one week after Paris was taken.
On the 4th of the following June he was created, by Louis XVIII., a
peer of France.
When Marshal Soult retired from office, King Louis appointed Clarke
Minister of War--the same post he had held under the Emperor, who was
then maturing plans of new operations in the little isle of Elba.
It was tauntingly said of Clarke that it was his destiny and misfortune
to see the affairs of both Bonaparte and the Bourbons go to wreck,
while entrusted to his care.
The _Memoirs of St. Helena_ assure us that Clarke, during the events
of the Hundred Days, wished to _retake_ service under the Emperor
Napoleon! If so, how different was his conduct from the faith that
characterized Ney, Cambronne, and Macdonald! A rumour of this, in 1815,
led to the immediate departure of Clarke for Ghent, where, at the
fugitive court of Louis XVIII., he exercised his functions as Minister
of War; and from thence, some time after, he travelled to London,
charged with a mission from the king to the Prince Regent, afterwards
George IV.
During the time the allied armies occupied Paris, Clarke had a
remarkable interview with the King of Prussia. On this occasion he was
accompanied by M. de Bourienne and Marshal Berthier. They remained for
some time in the saloon, before his Prussian Majesty appeared from his
closet, and when he did so, the embarrassment of his manner, and the
cloudy severity of his countenance, was apparent to the three visitors.
"Marshal," said he to Berthier, "I should have preferred receiving you
as a peaceful visitor at Berlin; but war has its successes, as well
as its reverses. Your troops are brave and ably led; but you cannot
oppose numbers, and Europe is armed against the Emperor; patience has
its limits. You have passed no little time, marshal, in making war on
Germany, and I have great pleasure in saying to you that I shall never
forget your conduct, your justice, and moderation in those seasons of
misfortune."
Marshal Berthier, who deserved this eulogium, made a suitable reply;
after which the King of Prussia turned sternly to the Duc de Feltre,
saying,--
"As for _you_, General Clarke, I cannot say the same of your conduct
as of the marshal's. The inhabitants of Berlin will long remember your
government. You abused victory strangely, and carried to an extreme
measures of rigour and vexation. If I have an advice to give you, it
is--_never show your face in Prussia_."
"Clarke was so overwhelmed by this reception from a crowned head," says
M. de Bourienne, "that Berthier and myself, each taking an arm, were
absolutely obliged to support him down the grand stair."
On returning to King Louis, at Ghent, he resumed his duties of Minister
for the War Department; and assuredly his task was both a severe and a
difficult one.
He had to arrange the disbanding of the Imperial and the
re-organization of a Royal army; he had to examine and decide upon the
various claims presented by hundreds of soldiers; he had to satisfy
the demands of two thousand officers who adhered to the king, and to
send them into the interior; he had to classify nine thousand officers
of the disbanded army; to arrange for the pay of six thousand others
who were _re-formed_--that is, continued on pay, but without being
regimented; he had to examine six thousand claims for arrears of pay
and pensions, claims that could admit of no delay, and which amounted
to forty-six millions of francs; he had to organize the Royal Garde du
Corp; to reconstitute the gendarmerie; to provide for the maintenance
of the allied armies of occupation; and all this he had to do, amid
obstacles, disorders, and complexities without example.
Such was the mighty mass of labour submitted to the care of Clarke; and
of this herculean task he nobly and ably acquitted himself in less than
two years.
All impartial writers unite in exculpating him from the angry and
unjust accusation of peculating with the enormous sums which were
required and absorbed by the re-organization of the French army. But he
was severely handled by military men for instituting those tribunals
styled _Les Cours Prévotales_.
In June, 1815, Clarke was with Louis XVIII. at Arnouville, and
while there saved his friend, François Marquis de Lagrange, a
lieutenant-general who in 1813 commanded the 3rd Regiment of Gardes
d'Honneur, from great danger, if not from death. The marquis had been
accused of offering his services to Napoleon, and hastily arrived at
Arnouville with his son, on the 30th June. As he was about to wait upon
Louis he was assailed by several soldiers, in whose hearts the love of
Napoleon was strong. They called him a _traitor_, and tore away his
sword, cross, and epaulettes. On becoming aware of these outrages,
Clarke sent two influential officers to repress the tumult, and himself
led the marquis to Louis XVIII., who appointed him captain of the Black
Musketeers.
The zeal which Clarke now employed in the cause of the house of Bourbon
was ultimately the means of his downfall. Louis XVIII., who each day
conceded more and more to the enemies of his dynasty, after bestowing
upon Clarke the bâton of a Marshal of France, displaced him from
office, and appointed Gouvin St. Cyr in his room.
We know that after his dismissal all was changed in the department of
the Minister of War.
The position in which Clarke found himself during the last years of his
stirring, active, and useful life was very painful and humiliating,
especially to one of so proud a spirit as his. Some of the more
favoured personages who crowded the court of Louis XVIII., could not
behold with a favourable eye this foreigner, who had been the War
Minister of the great Napoleon, a confidant of his, and his co-operator
in a thousand schemes of conquest; on the other hand, his old comrades
of the Imperial army affected to see in Clarke a deserter, a transferer
of his allegiance, and, indeed, all but a traitor. Those whose base
extortions he had repressed in other times now joined their clamours
against him, and the Royalists cared not to say a word in his defence.
Thus, at the end of his career, he was unjustly despised alike for his
talents and virtues, as for his mistakes and weaknesses--for the good
he had done as well as for evil. Clarke now found himself isolated and
abandoned, and the conviction of this, together with the coldness with
which he was treated, sank deeply into his proud and sensitive heart.
It aggravated an illness which preyed upon him, and he died on the 28th
of October, 1818, in his fifty-third year.
Such was the career of the Duc de Feltre, one of the most famous of the
Irish exiles.
Clarke was master of many languages. He wrote with ease, with elegance,
and with correctness; his style was often brilliant, and he knew
thoroughly all that appertained to the details of a war administration.
The state of complete disorganization in which he found the French
service after March, 1814, proves the admirable tact and skill with
which he could bring order out of disorder.
Many of the old Imperialists, his enemies, coarsely accused him of
treason and treachery, but Napoleon takes care partly to exculpate him
from charges so severe. On being asked at St. Helena if he believed
that Clarke had been true to him, the fallen Emperor said, with a sigh--
"True to me--yes, when I was in my strength;" and after a time he
added--"I cannot boast of him being more constant to me than Fortune."
This lessens the alleged crime of Clarke, while, at the same time, it
lessens his nobility of conduct; though it must be acknowledged that he
did not leave Napoleon until he could no longer be of service to him.
The Emperor was not easily deceived as to the fidelity of a follower.
From Bourienne we know that, in 1796 and 1797, after all that passed
between Napoleon and Clarke, the former still trusted in the latter,
and never attempted to interrupt his despatches to the Directory or
to the Chevalier de la Croix; and nothing was ever found in them
displeasing to the Commander-in-chief.
Two great traits in the character of Clarke were, first, his hatred
of all peculation and political knavery; the other was his mania for
office, and the despatches and details connected therewith. So poor was
he during the earlier years of his career, that Napoleon had to portion
one of his daughters; and no instance of profusion or luxury has been
cited against him.
Inflated by his patent of nobility, he wished to make his genealogy
great and lofty, and one day he believed that he had discovered his
descent, by the female side, from the Plantagenets--an idea which
exceedingly amused Napoleon, who once said to him in a numerous
company, about the time of his projected invasion of Britain,--
"Clarke, you have not yet spoken of your claims to the English
throne--you ought _now_ to make them good!"[16]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 16: _Biographie Universelle_, &c.]
GENERAL KILMAINE,
COMMANDANT OF LOMBARDY AND GENERAL OF THE ARMÉE D'ANGLETERRE.
Charles Jennings Kilmaine, a gallant and celebrated general in the
French army, was born in Dublin in the year 1750, and was descended
from an ancient Irish family which had always been strongly attached to
the Roman Catholic religion, and opposed to the interests of England.
So deep was the animosity of his father to the church and government
as established in Ireland, that in 1765 he took Charles to France, and
there recommended him, when only in his fifteenth year, to enlist as a
private hussar in the Regiment de Lauzun, a distinguished cavalry corps
of the old French service, raised originally in the departement of the
Garonne. He accompanied this corps to America, where he served in the
War of Independence under the celebrated Marquis de Lafayette, Grand
Provost of the kingdom of France, and was present in most of those
battles in which Washington and his generals so signally discomfited
the troops of Great Britain. Association with officers of the United
States army, added to those impressions made upon him during his youth
in Ireland and the teachings of his father, caused Kilmaine to imbibe
strongly the sentiments of a revolutionist.
He repeatedly distinguished himself in action; and his colonel, the
gallant Biron, after passing him through the more subordinate ranks,
appointed him sous-lieutenant of a troop.
On the conclusion of the war, the Irish hussar returned with his
regiment to France, full of those ideas of liberty and insurrection
which he had seen so signally triumphant in the New World; and nearly
all his brother officers had imbibed the same opinions. Thus it was
with ill-concealed joy that the young Kilmaine and his comrades, the
Hussars de Lauzun, in 1789, saw a Revolution which seemed destined to
achieve results like those they had witnessed in America, break forth
in old monarchical France.
In 1789 he was appointed captain of his troop, and continued to serve
with the hussars, who became so much attached to him, that during the
tumults of 1794 he contributed greatly, by his influence, presence
and example, to retain under their colours nearly the whole of the
regiment, which like the regiment of Royal Germans and the Hussars de
Saxe, seemed disposed to desert _en masse_. Thanks to the patriotic
zeal displayed by Kilmaine in the cause of his adopted country, the
officers of noble family who chose to become emigrants were alone lost
to the service; but this proved to him a new source of advancement, and
he was soon appointed a _chef d'escadre_, which in the French army is
equal to the rank of a general officer, being commander of a division;
and about this time he enjoyed the friendship of his countryman, the
Comte O'Kelly, who was ambassador of France at Mayence, with an income
of 30,000 livres per annum.
As a chef d'escadre Kilmaine served throughout the first campaigns of
the Revolution, and under Dumourier and Lafayette commanded a corps of
that army which burst into the Netherlands and annexed that territory
to republican France.
He fought with remarkable bravery at the great battle of Gemappes,
on the 6th November, 1792, and with his hussars repeatedly charged
the Austrians, driving them _sabre à la main_ along the road that
leads from Mons to Valenciennes; and so pleased was his general, the
unfortunate Dumourier, that in the moment of victory he named him
colonel; but this nomination was not confirmed by the minister of war.
However, he was soon after gratified by a brevet of maréchal de camp,
which made him, in rank, second only to a lieutenant-general.
He continued to serve with this army, and to be one of its most
active and able officers, during all the sufferings which succeeded
the victory at Gemappes. It consisted of forty-eight battalions of
infantry, and three thousand two hundred cavalry. In December, by the
neglect of the Revolutionary Government, these troops were shirtless,
shoeless, starving and in rags; fifteen hundred men deserted; the
cavalry of Kilmaine were soon destitute of boots, saddles, carbines,
pistols and even sabres; the military chest was empty, and six thousand
troop and baggage horses died at Lisle and Tongres, for want of forage.
"To such a state," says Dumourier, "was the victorious army of Gemappes
reduced after the conquest of Belgia!"
Honourable testimony has been given to the unceasing efforts of
Kilmaine to preserve order among his soldiers amid these horrors;
and with other staff-officers, he frequently endeavoured by private
contribution to make out a day's subsistence for their men, who roved
about in bands, robbing the villages around their cantonments at
Aix-la-Chapelle, and in revenge many were murdered by the peasants when
found straggling alone beyond their out--posts.
After the defection and flight of General Dumourier, Kilmaine adhered
to the National Convention, and by that body was appointed a general
of division; and now he redoubled his energies to restore order in
the army, which by the defection of its leader was almost disbanded;
thus, in one month after General Dampierre took command, so ably was he
seconded by Kilmaine, the discipline was completely established.
He commanded the advance-guard of Dampierre in the new campaign against
the allied powers, on the failure of the congress at Antwerp on the
8th of April, 1793; and his leader bears the highest testimony to the
gallantry and noble conduct of Kilmaine, in the "murderous affairs of
the 1st and 2nd May;" in which, according to the official report, he
had two chargers shot under him.
Six days of incessant skirmishing succeeded, during which Kilmaine
never had his boots off, nor returned his sabre once to the scabbard;
and he displayed the most reckless valour on the 8th of May, in that
battle fought by Dampierre to deliver Condé.
The French were routed with great loss; Dampierre was slain; and on
Kilmaine as an active cavalry officer devolved the task of covering the
retreat of the infuriated and disorderly army, which fell back from
Condé-sur-l'Escaut, which is a barrier town, and was then the nominal
lordship of the unfortunate Duke d'Enghien.
On General la Marche succeeding Dampierre, he sent Kilmaine with his
division to the great forest of Ardennes, which formed a part of
the theatre of war, on the invasion of France by the allies; but he
remained there only a short time, and rejoined the main army, which he
found in the most critical circumstances.
The fall of Dampierre and the arrestment of Custine acted fatally on
the army of the North, which was now reduced to about thirty thousand
rank and file, and these remained in a disorderly state, without a
proper chief, and without aim or object--its manoeuvres committed to
chance or directed by ignorance; for, with the exception of Kilmaine,
its leaders were destitute of skill, experience, and energy. Quitting
the camp of Cæsar, they returned to their fortified position at
Famars, three miles distant from Valenciennes, the approach to which
it covered. Here they were attacked on the 23rd of May, driven back,
and obliged to abandon the city to its own garrison under General
Ferrand; a success which enabled the allies under the Duke of York
to lay immediate siege to Condé and to Valenciennes, the two most
important barrier towns upon the northern frontier. While the army of
the North continued in full retreat towards the Scheldt, the British
commander-in-chief briskly attacked Valenciennes, which General Ferrand
first laid in ashes, and then delivered up; his garrison, as the reward
of their obstinate defence, being permitted to march out by the gate of
Cambray, on the 28th of July, with all _the honours of war_. Condé had
already fallen on the 10th of the same month.
General Custine, who in the two preceding campaigns had rendered such
essential services to the faithless Convention, was meanwhile brought
to trial on the charge of corresponding with the enemy, and fell a
sacrifice to the malice of his accusers.
It was on the banks of the Scheldt that Kilmaine rejoined the army
early in August, with his division from Ardennes; and now his position
became almost desperate. In presence of the scaffold erected by the
ferocious mutineers for all the vanquished generals, and in a camp
where no suspected person dared to assume the precarious office of
leader, when pressed upon him, he accepted the bâton provisionally, and
in the meantime said to the representatives who were sent from Paris to
manage affairs and act as spies upon the army, "that he wished another
more skilful than himself should take the great responsibility of
leading the troops of the Republic."
His presence for a time appeased the tumults in the army. Though upon
the banks of the Scheldt, and having before him both the Duke of York
and the Prince of Coburg, Kilmaine, with only twenty-four thousand
ill-appointed troops, dared not attempt to attack them; for if he
fought and lost the day, he could thereafter assume no position of
sufficient strength to prevent the allies from penetrating to Paris
and crushing the power of the Convention. After so many levies and
enrolments, that body had no longer a battalion to spare, and had
around it only the frothy orators of armed clubs, and the refuse of
prisons; thus it dared not abandon the capital or retire beyond the
Loire, for now the men of Poitou, Bretagne, and La Vendée were in arms
under the white banner, and elsewhere the tides of war and politics
were setting in against them. At this crisis Mayence had capitulated,
after a three months' bombardment. Toulon was under the cannon of the
British; the Spaniards had invaded Roussillon; the Austro-Sardinians
menaced Provence, the ancient patrimony of the House of Anjou; and on
the Alps their troops hung over Dauphine and Vienne; finally, after
the revolution of the 31st of May, which had assured the triumph of
Robespierre, Lyons, Marseilles, and all the departments of the south,
with those of the west, were roused against the pride, power, and
oppression of the Convention.
If it was really true that the allied monarchs wished to re-establish
the fallen throne of Louis XVI.,--if, as they had so proudly announced
in their manifestos, it was to restore order to bleeding and desolated
France, and to repress the Republic and its horrors,--they had
displayed their standards in the Netherlands, never were circumstances
more favourable to them than after the retreat of Kilmaine towards
the Scheldt: but the secret measures of wily diplomatists had more
influence then, on events, than the arms of the allied kings.
It appears that, in the second campaign, when the allies were masters
of Condé and Valenciennes, and saw that the road to Paris was almost
open to them, the Austrians wished to take their revenge locally for
the cruel deeds of which they had been spectators in the Camp de
la Lune; and were more intent upon gratifying this sentiment than
advancing into the heart of France.
The Prince of Coburg had shown himself from the first frank, loyal, and
gallant; he had promised to Dumourier to concur in his daring project
for re-establishing the monarchy, and for that purpose had engaged
to form an auxiliary force to aid him, while solemnly renouncing all
projects of aggrandizement for the crown of Austria. But for these
engagements he had not received from his cabinet either instructions or
authority. When Thugut was supreme director of the Austrian affairs,
it was to these rash promises of the prince his consent was required;
he disapproved of them so strongly, that they were cancelled by the
Emperor of Austria, and a congress met at Antwerp, where, in concert
with Britain, it was decided that in the result of the war the allies
ought to find indemnities for the past, and guarantees for the future
peace of Europe.
These were the expressions of the protocol which the members of the
congress comprehended without difficulty; but French diplomatists
loudly declared that a projected dismemberment of France was clearly
announced in its phraseology.
One thing is certain: not a reference was made therein to the House of
Bourbon, or to the throne of Louis--that throne of which Dumourier,
in concert with the Prince of Coburg, had so boldly promised the
restoration in his manifesto of the 5th April; and not a measure was
taken for the advantage or safety of the beautiful and unhappy Marie
Antoinette, then languishing in prison at Paris, and over whose devoted
head hung the blade of the guillotine, and whom a simple menace from
her nephew the Emperor, threatening the advance of his armies, might
perhaps have saved.
At all events, it seemed sufficiently evident to the jealous and
excitable French that the allies were no longer true to the interests
of the fallen Bourbons; and equally so that it was not to restore them
the Austrians at least made war. It was in _his own name_--not that of
Louis XVII., king of France and Navarre--their emperor took possession
of those fortified places and provinces which his armies overran; and
after he became master of Condé and Valenciennes, he no longer cared to
define or form a frontier for those districts of the Netherlands which
once he proposed to cede to the Prussians; but which Thugut now wished
to preserve to the descendants of Rudolph of Hapsburg.
At the same time the Duke of York, who from his own cabinet had
received orders and instructions similar to those given to the
Prince of Coburg, in the name of George III., resolved to seize upon
Dunkerque, which the English had coveted of old; but he did not wait
for the departure of a British fleet prepared for this object. The
naval squadron was delayed, and in the meantime the duke deliberated
with the Austrian general under the ramparts of Valenciennes, to
learn if, before engaging in new sieges, they might not give to the
French army a final blow which would deprive Kilmaine of all power of
interrupting their combined operations.
This was a very simple question, yet they were fourteen days in
coming to a conclusion. Though Valenciennes, as already stated, had
capitulated on the 28th of July, it was not until the 8th of August
that the Austro-British army was in motion, and its advance guard
beheld the camp of Cæsar; this on the very day after Kilmaine had
wisely evacuated the fortifications and retreated southwards.
It is said that he fully anticipated the march of the combined armies;
and this was sufficiently probable, for we know that the committees
of the National Convention had mysterious means of procuring secret
intelligence, not only from the cabinets of the allies, but from the
staff officers of the German troops!
Kilmaine in retiring only obeyed the dictates of wisdom and necessity,
and quitted a position which he could not defend, as his army was
reduced by defeat and desertion, mutinous, or as the French style it,
_demoralized_.
If the allies had wished to follow and engage him upon the Scarpe
or the Somme, a last effort could easily have been made to disperse
his troops completely, and then seize upon Paris, where they might
have torn the Revolution from its very basis. But such was not the
intention of the allied generals. "Their aim on this occasion," says
a French writer, "was to profit by our disorders and revolutions to
make themselves masters of our places and provinces after assuring
themselves of indemnities and guarantees, and to leave the volcano to
consume itself, as a Prussian prince said, not long ago: it must be
admitted, that never had this policy shown itself more evidently in its
shameful nudity!" But the reader must bear in mind that these are the
opinions of a Frenchman and a sympathizer with the Convention.
Such was the state of matters when Kilmaine, having abandoned the
untenable camp of Cæsar, and fallen back beyond the Scarpe, a navigable
river of French Flanders (but still a narrower barrier than the
Scheldt) prepared again for retreat, and marched towards the Somme,
another river which falls into the British Channel between Crotoy and
Sainte Valori. This was his last position--his last asylum; and now the
chiefs of the allies, instead of pushing on in pursuit of his retiring
bands to complete the triumphs so well begun, faced about, and wheeled
off to seize Dunkerque and Quesnay.
It was in autumn that the Royal Duke appeared before the former; and
there his troops received a check which proved but the commencement of
a long series of disasters; the latter was stormed by the Austrians,
and retaken by the French in the following year.
But what must astonish us, even at this epoch of deception and
duplicity, political insanity and revenge, is the startling fact that
the brave Kilmaine, who had rendered such gallant services to that new
and most faithless Republic--he who by a judicious retreat (executed
_against_ the advice of the meddling and presumptuous representatives
of the people, and in consequence thereof perilled his life) had
preserved to shattered France her most important army, was precisely
for that reason denounced to the Convention, arrested by its orders,
and flung into a loathsome prisons at Paris, where he passed a year;
being but too happy, in the obscurity of his dungeon, that he had not
perished on the scaffold like the gallant Custine, his predecessor
in the command; like his old colonel and protector Biron, and like
Houchard, who for the brief period of fifteen days had been his
successor, and who, after winning a signal and decided victory over the
Duke of York--a victory alike honourable to himself and to the arms of
France, expiated by a cruel death the grave fault of having forgotten
for a moment the powers of a bullying representative of the people!
Kilmaine only recovered his liberty after the fall of Robespierre; but
he still remained for some time in Paris, without military employment,
though he eagerly and anxiously sought it. He found himself there at
the epoch of the insurrection of the 22nd May, 1795, and with much zeal
and valour he seconded General Pichegru in the struggle made by that
officer to defend the National Convention against the excited mobs of
the Parisian fauxbourgs. Amid a thousand dangers Kilmaine continued
to fight for the Convention until the 13th Vendemaire of the year
following, actively co-operating with Bonaparte and the revolutionary
party.
Being appointed to the command of a division in the army of Italy, he
marched with Napoleon across the Alps to the invasion of that country,
and shared in the glory of his first victories, and in that brilliant
campaign in which the French destroyed two armies, took two hundred
and eighty pieces of cannon, and forty-nine stand of colours from the
Austrians, who were commanded by the veteran Wurmser, the bravest of
all brave men.
At the head of his division Kilmaine fought with remarkable courage at
Castiglione delle Stiviere, a fortified town in Lombardy, where, in
the beginning of August, 1796, several severe engagements took place
between the French and Austrians, which resulted in the discomfiture of
the latter. Mantua was the next scene of Kilmaine's achievements; and
in July that ancient city, after fifty years of peace, beheld the army
of Napoleon before its walls, while all the country on the right bank
of the Po was laid under contribution.
The whole direction and charge of the siege of Mantua was committed
to Kilmaine by Bonaparte in September, when Wurmser, after being
successful against General Massena, was overthrown by Augereau and our
Irish soldier, and after a six days' contest shut himself up in the
city on the 12th, after which the siege was pressed with great vigour.
Twice after this did an Austrian army under Alvinzi attempt its relief,
and twice were they baffled by the besiegers; on the last occasion an
advancing corps of seven thousand men were compelled to surrender to
Bonaparte and Kilmaine within gunshot of the walls, and the position of
the aged Wurmser, his garrison, and the Mantuans, became desperate in
the extreme.
In an action before Mantua in October, Kilmaine had his horse killed
under him, and a rumour was spread through France and Britain that he
was killed. Wurmser made several furious sallies, and on one occasion
was severely routed by Bonaparte. In the _Courier du Bas Rhin_, we
are told that the French repulsed him with the loss of eleven hundred
men and five pieces of cannon, and that "their dispositions were made
by General Kilmaine, commander of the siege of Mantua." Bonaparte, in
his dispatch to the Directory, dated the first day of October, writes
thus:--
"On the 20th of September, the enemy advanced towards Castellocio,
with a body of horse 12,000 strong. Pursuant to the orders they
had received, our advanced posts fell back, but the enemy did not
push forward any further. On the 23rd September, they proceeded to
Governolo, along the right bank of the Mincio, but were repulsed, after
a very brisk cannonade, with the loss of eleven hundred men and five
pieces of cannon.
"_Le Général Kilmaine_, who commands the two divisions which press the
siege of Mantua, remained on the 29th ultimo in his former position,
and was still in hopes that the enemy would attempt a sortie to carry
forage into the place; but instead they took up a position before the
gate of Pradello, near the Carthusian convent and the chapel of Cerese.
The brave General Kilmaine made his arrangements for an attack, and
advanced in two columns against these two points; but he had scarcely
begun to march when the enemy evacuated their camps, their rear having
fired only a few musket-shots at him. The advanced posts of General
Vaubois have come up with the Austrian division which defends the
Tyrol, and made one hundred and ten prisoners."
In November a series of sanguinary actions were fought between the
French and Austrians at Arcola, where the latter were completely
overthrown; and there fell Citizen Elliot, a Scotsman, who was one of
Bonaparte's principal aides-de-camp. During this time Kilmaine was at
Vicenza with three thousand men; all the French cavalry were sent there
to be under his orders; and though still commanding the operations
against Mantua, he shared in the disastrous battle fought near Vicenza
by the aged Alvinzi, who was advancing to raise the siege. Despairing
to reach Mantua, the latter fell back upon the Vicenza road, and was
routed after a bloody conflict of eight hours' duration.
Early in December, Wurmser led a sortie, sword in hand, against
Kilmaine. The Imperialists sallied out of Mantua at seven in the
morning, and almost in the dark, under a furious cannonade, which
lasted all day; "but General Kilmaine," says Bonaparte, "made him
return, as usual, faster than he came out, and took from him two
hundred men, one howitzer, and two pieces of cannon. This is his third
unsuccessful attempt." So energetic were the measures, and so able the
precautions of Kilmaine, that Wurmser, seeing all hope of succour at
an end, surrendered, after a long, desperate, and disastrous defence,
at ten o'clock on the morning of the 3rd February, 1797, giving up
his soldiers as prisoners of war. The following is a translation of
Kilmaine's brief letter on this important acquisition:--
"Kilmaine, Général de Division and Commandant of Lombardy, to the
Minister of War. Milan, 17 Pluviose (Feb. 5), 1797.
"Citizen Minister--I avail myself of a courier which General Bonaparte
sends from Romagna (in order to announce to the Directory the defeat
of the Papal troops), to acquaint you with the capture of Mantua, the
news of which I received yesterday evening by a courier from Mantua
itself. I thought it necessary to announce this circumstance, because
General Bonaparte, who is occupied in Romagna annihilating the troops
of his Holiness, may probably have been ignorant of this fact when
_his_ courier departed. The garrison are our prisoners of war, and
are to be sent into Germany in order to be exchanged. I have not yet
received the articles of capitulation; but the commander-in-chief will
not fail to send them by the first courier.
"Kilmaine."
The capture of Mantua was celebrated in Paris by the firing of cannon
and the erection of arches in honour of Bonaparte and the Irish
Commandant of Lombardy, and a general joy was diffused through every
heart in the city on the fall of what they styled the _Gibraltar_ of
Italy; while Bonaparte, loaded with the diamonds of the vanquished
Pope, and the spoils of our Lady of Loretto, pushed on to seek fresh
conquests and new laurels.
Kilmaine remained for some time in command at Mantua after its
capitulation.
During the siege and other events, a revolutionary spirit had pervaded
the Venetian States. Peschiera, a fortified town in the province of
Verona, and Brescia, a large city in the beautiful plain on the Garza,
had been both seized, garrisoned, and republicanized by the French.
The people rose in arms, fired by new and absurd ideas of liberty and
equality, and frightful scenes of bloodshed ensued when the more loyal
and sensible inhabitants resisted these new patriots; but the latter,
on being joined by fifteen hundred banditti from Bergamo, pressed the
Venetian troops, who were driven out with great slaughter.
On hearing of these things, the politic Kilmaine wrote from Mantua
to the French general commanding in Brescia, desiring him "_not_ to
interfere in behalf of these insurgents, lest by so doing he might
infringe that strict neutrality which the generals of the French
Republic were bound to observe."
In April, however, he was compelled, by the violent proceedings of the
Italians against the French garrison in Verona, to unite his forces
to those of Generals Victor and La Hotze, and march to the succour of
General Ballaud, who was there assailed by forty-five thousand men,
whose war-cry was _Viva San Marco!_ who had cut to pieces six hundred
Frenchmen, taken two thousand more after a four hours' contest, and
driven the rest into the castle. From its ramparts Ballaud threatened
to lay in ruins the unfortunate city, which had enjoyed profound peace
for ages, until Bonaparte arrived on the banks of the Adige, and added
it to the new kingdom of Italy.
On the 24th the insurgent Veronese capitulated, for on the approach of
Kilmaine the governor, the two proveditori, and the Venetian general
Stratico, fled with all their cavalry; on which he took as hostages
the bishop, four of the principal nobles of the city, and several
cavaliers of distinction, and peace was thus restored for a time. He
disarmed all the insurgents, and seized three thousand slaves, whom he
marched under an escort to Milan. In every way Kilmaine aided Napoleon
most efficiently in these operations which preceded the capture and
subjugation of Venice; and thus gave his great leader a thousand causes
to admire and appreciate him during those campaigns which were so
disastrous to Italy, but so glorious to the arms of France. During his
command in Lombardy he settled or compromised the contested question of
the free navigation of the Lake of Lugano, in the south of Switzerland,
which had occasioned many angry disputes between the jealous Switzers
and the aggressive generals of the French army in Italy. By his
intervention it was satisfactorily arranged that France should have
the open navigation of the lake by boats of any size: but the cantons
violated the treaty; on which Napoleon threatened to send a column of
his troops among them, if they did not behave more amicably towards
their faithful and ancient allies.
At this time General Sir John Acton, the favourite minister of Naples
at Milan, was a soldier of fortune, and the intimate friend of
Kilmaine. The story of Acton is rather a singular one.
He was the son of a Jacobite gentleman who had emigrated to France
and settled at Besançon. An unsuccessful love adventure forced him
to leave that city, at the college of which he was studying physic
with every prospect of distinction. Repairing to Toulon, he enlisted
in a battalion of French marines. From this corps he passed into the
Neapolitan service, and distinguished himself at sea against a Barbary
corsair; on which he received a commission in the marines of Naples,
and rose to the rank of general, Counsellor of State, and Knight of San
Gennaro and Saint Stephen. He possessed a high spirit, great courage,
good address, and a handsome figure; and he soon became at the Court of
Naples what the Prince of Peace was at Madrid--the favourite and lover
of the Queen. He died in 1811. Another of Kilmaine's friends was the
veteran general O'Cher, a _chef de brigade_, who had been upwards of
forty years in the service of Louis XVI. and of the Republic, and held
an important command in the army of Italy.
In the _Memoirs_ published by General Count Montholon, and which were
written by that faithful officer at St. Helena, we have the following
descriptive reference to the Commandant of Lombardy:--
"Kilmaine, being an excellent cavalry officer, had coolness and
foresight; he was well fitted to command a corps of observation,
detached upon those arduous or delicate commissions which require
spirit, discernment, and sound judgment. He rendered important
services to the army, of which he was one of the principal generals,
notwithstanding the delicacy of his health. He had a great knowledge of
the Austrian troops: familiar with their _tactiques_, he did not allow
himself to be imposed upon by those rumours which they were in the
habit of spreading in the rear of an army, nor to be dismayed by those
heads of columns which they were wont to display in every direction, to
deceive as to the real strength of their forces. His political opinions
were very moderate."
These are the words of a brother soldier, who must have known him well
in the land of his adoption.
In the spring of 1798, the French Government was seriously employed
in preparations for a descent upon the British Islands; and, in the
February of that year, marched to the coast of the Channel forty
demi-brigades of infantry, thirty-four regiments of cavalry, two
regiments of horse artillery, two regiments of foot artillery, six
companies of sappers and pioneers, six battalions of miners and
pontooniers. These forces were led by eighteen distinguished generals
of division, and forty-seven generals of brigade--the most brave and
able in France. Among the former were Charles Kilmaine, Berthier,
Marescat, Kleber, Massena, "the son of Rapine;" Macdonald, Ney, Victor,
and others whose names were to become famous in future wars as the
marshal dukes of the great military empire.
The brave but blustering Jean Baptist Kleber, who had originally been
an architect of Strasbourg, commanded the right wing of this _Armée
d'Angleterre_, which was to stretch from Calais to the mouth of the
Scheldt, while another corps assembled at Flushing.
Kilmaine commanded the centre.
These forces were partly composed of troops returned from Italy, and
were all experienced soldiers, the victors of Mantua, Lodi, and Arcola.
Headed by bands of music, the _étât-majors_ marched through Paris,
displaying black banners, indicative of a war of extermination, and
inscribed, "_Descent upon England_--Live the Republic! May Britain
perish," &c.
On St. Patrick's day, the 17th of the following month, Kilmaine,
O'Cher, Colonel Shee, and all the Irishmen in Paris celebrated their
ancient national and religious festival by a grand banquet, at which
the notorious Thomas Paine--then a political fugitive--assisted. All
the corresponding members of the Irish clubs and malcontent party at
home were also present. Many fierce and stirring political toasts
were drunk, amid vociferous enthusiasm; and among these--one in
particular--"Long live the Irish Republic!" and speeches were made
expressive of the rapid progress which republicanism had made in
their native country, and of the strong desire of the Catholics and
Dissenters to throw off the yoke of England--that yoke which Kilmaine
in his boyhood had been taught to abhor and to hate. Napper Tandy, a
_general de brigade_, was in the chair; on his left sat Tom Paine, and
on his right sat Kilmaine, who, immediately after the banquet, left
Paris to rejoin his column of the army on the coast.
Five hundred gunboats were ordered to be prepared, and three hundred
sail of transports were collecting at Dunkirk, to be protected from the
British fleet by a Dutch squadron then at the mouth of the Scheldt; and
all Britain was in arms on hearing of an armament so formidable.
The condition of France was then desperate; assignats were at 6500
livres the louis; she had to maintain a million of men in arms from
an empty treasury; the ruffian demagogues and savage soldiers of the
Republic, men steeped to the lips in the blood of women and priests,
nobles and aristocrats, hardened by the atrocities in La Vendée, and
trained to the war in the campaigns of Austria and Italy, occupied
every post and place under the unstable government; a rabble of
brutal ministers occupied the palaces of the fallen line of St. Louis,
armed with sabres and pistols, to which they resorted in every trivial
dispute and on every difference of opinion, and while warring against
all manner of title and form, appeared on the rostrum in cassocks and
stockings of rose-coloured silk, with knots of scarlet ribands in their
shoes; and, with that mixture of ferocity and tom-foolery which caused
Paris to be characterized as a city of monkeys and tigers, debated on
the cut of a coat and the massacre of a city.
In April, Kilmaine repaired to Paris, after having executed, by order
of the government, a survey of the coasts of France and Holland, then
reduced to a province of the former; and the chief command of this
famous Armée d'Angleterre on which the eyes of all Europe were fixed,
and the command of which had been given to the noble Dessaix, the hero
of Marengo, was now bestowed upon him.
A French writer asserts that this expedition was destined, not for
Britain, but for Egypt; and that Kilmaine received the command of it,
not so much for his great military skill, as to deceive our ministry;
supposing that the name of an Irishman would cause them to believe
that the armament was destined for Ireland; and so they named him
General in Chief of the Armée d'Angleterre, which never existed at all.
Unfortunately for this writer, history affords abundant proof to the
contrary. The number of transports was soon increased to a thousand,
and all the naval and military resources of Holland were pressed into
the French service.
Colonel Shee, Wolfe Tone, Generals Clarke and Kilmaine, were by this
time well acquainted with the extent of the military organization
of the United Irishmen, and knew that by the close of the preceding
year the people were well provided with arms, and knew the use of
them. In the beginning of 1797, great quantities were discovered and
seized by the British Government, who, in Leinster and Ulster alone,
captured 70,630 pikes, with 48,109 muskets. Had the Irish managed
their projected rising with the vigour which has ever characterized
the Scottish insurrections, we cannot for a moment doubt what would
have been the result, had this formidable expedition once landed in
Ireland, where no yeomanry were organized; where the militia were not
to be depended upon; and where the king's troops, on whom the ministry
mainly relied, were so little superior to the French in tact and skill,
that Humbert, with less than a thousand men, was able to defeat double
that number, and immediately after received into his ranks 250 of the
drilled and attested Irish militiamen.
On the 12th April, Kilmaine, with General Bonaparte, had a long
audience with the Directory at Paris, reporting on the state of their
armaments. The appointment of the former to the chief command relieved
Britain of the apprehension that the conqueror of Italy would cross the
Channel in person, and great was the disappointment of the malcontents
at home.
The duties of Kilmaine were alike harassing and arduous, as he had to
superintend the equipment and organization of this vast force, composed
of men of all arms and several nations; and he was repeatedly summoned
to Paris, even in the middle of the night, by couriers who overtook him
in his progresses; thus, though suffering under severe ill health, the
Directory once brought him on the spur from Bruges early in July, and
again from Brest about the end of the same month.
Citizen d'Arbois, an officer on the staff of Kilmaine, in a letter
published in the Parisian papers of the 7th August, 1798, states that
his general "is on his return," after having made a tour of the coast,
from Port St. Malo to L'Orient; that he was well satisfied with the
state of the French ports and armaments, and had enjoyed with delight
the magnificent aspect of Brest, in the harbour of which he saw thirty
sail of the line, with a fleet of frigates and transports. D'Arbois
states that Kilmaine had been surveying Brittany, where all was then
peaceful, by the "wise measures" of the constituted authorities. "The
eagerness with which our troops, both by sea and land, await the moment
when, under the brave Kilmaine, they will engage the English, is the
best pledge of our approaching success, and the ruin of our enemies."
It is evident that Citizen d'Arbois had then no thought of fighting in
Egypt.
But doubts hovered in the minds of the Directory, if there were none in
the hearts of their generals, and long delays ensued. General Hoche,
under whom the future Dukes of Rovigo and of Vicenza were serving as
private soldiers, and who was the main spring of the projected movement
in favour of Ireland, died in September, 1797; and Bonaparte, to whom
Kilmaine, Tone, Shee, and others of the Irish patriots turned, had no
sympathy with their cause, as all his views were now directed towards
a warfare in the East. By the beginning of autumn the Directory began
to break up their boasted Armée d'Angleterre, and withdrew their
troops to reinforce their columns on the Rhine. Upon this, Kilmaine
came anxiously and hastily to Paris to confer with the government and
the Minister of Marine concerning the embarkation of the troops and
departure of the fleet from Brest; but his questions were waived, or
left unanswered, although the division of Bompard, consisting of the
_Hoche_ of 74 guns and eighteen frigates, filled with troops under
General Hardy, destined for Ireland, remained with their cables hove
short, and all ready for sea at a moment's notice.
Of the forces that really sailed for Ireland, and their fate, we need
not inform the reader. For a time all Britain supposed they were led
by the commander-in-chief in person; and all the press of England
and Scotland teemed with blustering or scurrilous remarks on "Paddy
Kilmaine and his followers;" but the general never embarked, though he
certainly superintended the departure of a body of troops from Rochfort.
"We are assured," says a Brussels print, "that in case the French
republicans shall be able to make a successful descent upon Ireland,
the Belgic youth will be employed in that country under General
Kilmaine, who, being a native of it, will there have the command of
the united French and Irish forces." Citizen Macdonagh was to have
a high command in the corps of Irish Marines. He held the rank of
Lieutenant-Colonel in France.
By the end of 1798 the army of England and its expedition were alike
dissolved, and the Directory wished to give Kilmaine command of the
forces assembled for the war in Egypt; but for the present his career
finished with the military examination of the coasts of France and
Holland.
In 1799 the Directory appointed him generalissimo of the army of
Helvetia, as they chose to designate Switzerland; thus reviving the
ancient name of the people whom Julius Cæsar conquered. The French
troops already occupied Lombardy on one side, and the Rhenish provinces
on the other; thus they never doubted their ability to conquer the
Swiss and remodel the Helvetic constitution. Kilmaine accepted the
command with satisfaction, but his failing health compelled him to give
up his bâton to Massena; and with a sorrow which he could not conceal,
he saw that army march which penetrated into the heart of the Swiss
mountains, and imposed on their hardy inhabitants a constitution in
which Bonaparte, under the plausible title of Mediator, secured the
co-operation of the valiant descendants of the Helvetii in his further
schemes of conquest and ambition.
In a feeble condition Kilmaine returned to Paris, where his domestic
sorrows and chagrins added to the poignancy of his bodily sufferings,
for his constitution was now completely broken up.
Struck by a deadly malady, he died on the 15th of December, 1799, in
the forty-ninth year of his age, at the very moment when the triumphant
elevation of Bonaparte was opening up to his comrades a long and
brilliant career of military glory. He was interred with all the
honours due to his rank and bravery, and a noble monument was erected
to his memory.
COUNTS O'REILLY, O'DONNEL,
AND THE IRISH IN SPAIN.
Ireland, says a popular Scottish writer, can boast not only of having
transplanted more of her sons to the soil of Spain than either of the
sister kingdoms, but of having acquired by the deeds of her exiles a
degree of renown to which the others cannot aspire.
True it is, that in every land brave men find a home!
The deeds of the Irish regiments in the Spanish service, during the
War of the Succession, like those of the O'Donnels in the war of the
Peninsula, and the civil strife of more recent times, would fill
volumes. Of the Spanish Lacys I have already given a memoir; and of
many other brave Irish soldiers of fortune, who won distinction on the
soil or in the service of Spain, I can here give but the names alone.
Owen Roe O'Neil, of Ulster, rose to high rank in the Spanish Imperial
service and held an important post in Catalonia. He defended Arras
against Louis XIII. in 1640, and when forced to surrender, he did so,
says Carte, "upon honourable terms; yet his conduct in the defence
was such as gave him great reputation, and procured him extraordinary
respect even from the enemy;" and the brave O'Sullivan Bearra of
Dunbuy, who fled in the days of James I., became Governor of Corunna
under Philip IV.
Lieutenant-General Don Carlos Felix O'Neile (son of the celebrated Sir
Neil O'Neile of Ulster, slain at the battle of the Boyne), was Governor
of Havannah and favourite of Charles III. of Spain; he died at Madrid
in 1791, after attaining the great age of one hundred and ten years.
In 1780, Colonel O'Moore commanded the Royal Walloon Guards of Charles
III. In 1799, Field-Marshal Arthur O'Neil was Governor-General
of Yucatan under the same monarch, and commanded the flotilla of
thirty-one vessels which made an unsuccessful attack on the British
settlements in the Bay of Honduras. In the same year, Don Gonzalo
O'Farrel was the Spanish ambassador at the Court of Berlin, and in
1808 he was Minister of War for Spain. In 1797, O'Higgins was Viceroy
of Peru, under Charles IV., one of whose best generals was the famous
Alexander Count O'Reilly.
Don Pedro O'Daly was Governor of Rosas when it was besieged by Gouvion
St. Cyr in 1809; and General John O'Donoughue was chief of Cuesta's
staff, and one of the few able officers about the person of that
indolent and obstinate old hidalgo, whose incapacity nearly caused the
ruin of the Spanish affairs at the commencement of the Peninsula war.
He died Viceroy of Mexico in 1816.
O'Higgins was Viceroy of Peru under Ferdinand VI. and the third and
fourth Charles of Spain. He signalized himself with great bravery in
the wars with the Araucanos, a nation on the coast of Chili, who were
ultimately subdued by him and subjected to the Spanish rule. John
Campbell, a midshipman who escaped from the wreck of the _Wager_, one
of Commodore Anson's squadron which was lost on the large island of
Tierra del Fuego, and who arrived, after inconceivable sufferings, at
St. Jago de Chili, furnished O'Higgins with various notes and outlines
of the coast, and other memoranda concerning the natives, all of which
he had ingeniously written on the bark of trees. These observations,
which were afterwards printed in England, were of the greatest value to
O'Higgins, who was wont to affirm that by the knowledge they gave him
of the barbarians under his government, "he owed the foundation of his
good fortune to Campbell."
In 1765, he marched against the Araucanos with a battalion of Chilian
infantry, and fifteen hundred horse, named Maulinians. He was thrice
brought to the ground by having three horses killed under him; but the
Araucanos were routed, and the Spanish rule extended over all Peru, of
which he died viceroy in the beginning of the present century, after
fighting the battles of Rancagua and Talchuana, which secured the
independence of Chili.
Few names bear a more prominent place in Spanish history than those of
Blake, the Captain-General of the Coronilla, and O'Reilly, a soldier
of fortune, who saved the life of Charles III. during the revolt at
Madrid, and who re-formed and disciplined anew the once noble army of
Spain.
ALEXANDER COUNT O'REILLY was born in Ireland about 1735, of Roman
Catholic parents, and when young entered the Spanish service as a
sub-lieutenant in the Irish regiment with which he served in Italy
during the war of the Spanish Succession, and received a wound from
which he was rendered lame for the rest of his life. In 1751 he went
to serve in Austria, and made two campaigns against the Prussians,
under the orders of Marshal Count Lacy, his countryman. Then in 1759
he passed into the service of Louis XV., under whose colours was
still that celebrated Irish Brigade whose native bravery so mainly
contributed to win for France the glory of Fontenoy.
O'Reilly distinguished himself so much that the Marshal de Broglie
recommended him to the King of Spain, with great warmth of expression,
on his retiring to Madrid. The marshal's interest won him the rank of
Lieutenant-Colonel, and as such he served in that war which conduced
so little to the glory of Portugal, though favoured by the alliance
of Britain. Nevertheless, O'Reilly found many opportunities for
distinction at the head of the light troops which were confided to him,
and soon won the proud reputation of being one of Spain's most gallant
officers. He was now named Brigadier of the Armies of the King, with
the post of _aide major de l'exercise_. In these capacities he drilled
the Spanish infantry according to the best system of tactics and
exercise then practised in the British service.
At the peace he was appointed Mariscal de Campo, and named Commandant
en Seconde of Havannah, which was to be given up to Spain by the treaty
of Fontainbleau. On arriving there, he restored and strengthened the
fortifications of the colony, and soon after returned to Spain, where
the king named him Inspector-General of Infantry, and desired him to
assist in the manoeuvres of a great camp, of which he gave him command.
He then sent him to New Orleans, where the inhabitants had scarcely
become accustomed to the Spanish yoke, and where the rigorous means
employed by O'Reilly to subdue them gained him many enemies. The count
returned again to Madrid, and was treated with every mark of favour
by Charles III., who knew all his talents, capacity, and courage; and
could never forget that it was to the strong hand and stout heart of
O'Reilly he owed his life during the fiery sedition at Madrid in 1765,
when the people rose in arms. Every honour Charles could bestow upon
a foreigner was showered upon O'Reilly, who now gave the Spanish army
(which was many years behind every other in Europe in the march of
progression and improvement) a new spirit, vigour, and impulse. In this
task he was assisted by his brother-in-law, Francisco Xavier Castanos,
afterwards Duke of Baylen, Captain-General of Estremadura, Old Castile,
and Galicia, whom he took with him to Prussia when he visited that
country, like all the principal officers of Europe, to witness and
examine the manoeuvres practised by the troops of the Great Frederick.
In 1774, he obtained command of the expedition against Algiers. The
great means of attack were entirely confided to him, and he sailed from
the Spanish coast with a squadron of forty sail of the line and three
hundred and fifty transports, carrying an army of thirty thousand men;
but this immense armament failed to achieve its object, and O'Reilly
was compelled to bear away for Spain, humiliated and mortified, and
landed his discomfited troops at Barcelona, on the 24th of August in
the same year.[17] Though this unfortunate result was much against his
reputation as a general, it did not lessen his favour with the king,
who placed him at the head of a military school which was established
in Avila, at Puerto de Santa Maria, on the Adaga, in Old Castile.
Soon after this, O'Reilly was named Captain-General of Andaluzia and
Governor of Cadiz. In these important posts he displayed the talents
of a skilful soldier and able administrator; but he fell into complete
disgrace on the death of Charles III., in 1788, and lived afterwards
in a quiet retreat in Catalonia. Despite his many enemies at court,
who rose into power with Charles IV., O'Reilly maintained his high
military reputation in the Spanish army, and on the death of General
Ricardos in 1794, the government knew of none so able as he to direct
the war against the invasion of the French republican armies. He was
accordingly named General of the Army of the Eastern Pyrenees, and was
on his way to assume that high command when he was seized by a sudden
illness, and died in his sixtieth year.
O'Reilly was fortunate, perhaps, in escaping thus the misery caused to
Spain by the mistakes of the Conde de la Union, and the misfortunes
consequent to reverse and defeat. His age would not have permitted
him to sustain the fatigue of a war so active; and though he was the
instructor of Blake and others who were esteemed the best officers
of the Spanish army, as a foreigner he had many envious enemies, and
all his ability as a soldier, with the sweetness and insinuating
flexibility of his manner, was no guarantee to him among such a people
as the Spaniards, who are ever cool and averse to strangers.
His pupil, Joachim Blake, afterwards Captain-General of Aragon and
four other provinces, was the son of an eminent Irish merchant who had
settled at Velez, near Malaga, and was descended from an ancient family
in the county of Galway. His mother was the daughter of a wealthy
Spanish banker named Joyes.
At an early age young Blake manifested an ardent predilection for
the profession of arms--a predilection inherent in his race, which
had given Ireland many proofs of high valour during two centuries.
While yet a boy he applied himself to the science of mathematics with
great success, and was soon appointed Superintendent of Cadets in the
military school established by Count O'Reilly, at Puerto de Santa
Maria. In 1773, Blake commenced his military career as a volunteer in
the Regiment of America, for it has long been an established principle
in the Spanish armies that candidates for commissions must learn
the art of war in the ranks; and for some years subsequent to this
he served as lieutenant and adjutant to the battalion, so great was
the progress he had made in his profession, and so intimate was his
knowledge of regimental economy. At the beginning of the war waged
by France against Spain, he was appointed Major of the Volunteers
of Castile, without serving the intermediate rank of captain; a
favour never before granted to any officer, even to a Spaniard. In
this capacity he led his battalion with distinguished bravery during
the campaigns of 1793 and 1794, in Roussillon and Catalonia, and
was wounded when storming the heights of San Lorenzo de la Maga. He
was appointed colonel in 1802, without passing through the grade of
lieutenant-colonel, and obtained command of a newly-raised battalion,
styled _Los Volontarios de la Corona_--the Volunteers of the Crown;
and from thenceforward he bore a prominent part in all the warlike and
political broils of Spain.
After the peace in 1802, Blake was made brigadier or Mariscal de
Campo, by Charles IV., and on his volunteer regiment being numbered
with the Spanish line, he was further confirmed in command of it. This
position he occupied until the invasion of Spain by Bonaparte and the
imprisonment of the king; after which ensued the great contest known
as the Peninsula War, during which, by the unanimous voice of the
Galicians, he was summoned to the chief command of their valuable and
extensive province.
During the second operations of Marshal Bessières (Duke of Istria)
in Spain, the army of Blake--twenty thousand strong--united with the
ten thousand Castilian recruits of old Don Gregorio de la Cuesta, at
Benevente in July, 1808, for the purpose of opposing him; but they soon
disagreed; for, contrary to the wishes of Blake, whose fiery energy
consorted ill with the indolence of Cuesta, that officer left a strong
division to protect stores at Benevente, and led only twenty-five
thousand infantry, a few hundred horse, and thirty pieces of cannon,
towards Palencia, in the beautiful Tierra de Campos. _Contrary to his
judgment_, a battle was risked (14th July, 1808) at Medina del Rio
Seco, against the French under General Lasolles.
There, on that day, so fatal to Spain, notwithstanding all the energy
of Blake, General Lasolles, with fifteen thousand men and thirty
cannon, routed the soldiers of Castile and Galicia, with the loss of
seven thousand two hundred of their number, killed, wounded, or taken;
and the survivors fled with such absurd precipitation, that the French,
in crossing the bed of the Sequillo in pursuit, and finding it dry and
stony, exclaimed: "Diable! Why, Spanish rivers run away, too!"
The generals of the two Juntas separated in anger; but Blake had
discovered such talents in the lost battle, that he was appointed
Governor and Captain-General of the Kingdom of Galicia, and President
of the Royal Audience.
He retreated towards the mountains, and Bessières then entered the city
of Leon.
Meanwhile the Junta of that province and of Castile sided with Blake,
to whom Marshal Bessières sent twelve hundred of the prisoners taken
at Rio Seco; and believing it to be a favourable opportunity to tamper
with their leaders, he wrote urging them to obey the act of abdication,
and acknowledge Joseph Bonaparte, in whose name he offered Blake high
rank and honours if he would enter the French service, like Colonel
O'Meara of the Irish Brigade, Clarke the Duc de Feltre, General
Kilmaine, Marshal MacCarthy, and other Irishmen; while to Cuesta he
very _liberally_ offered the Viceroyalty of Mexico; but both the
Spanish cavalier and the Irish soldier of fortune repelled his offers
with disdain.
On the 17th September the latter advanced against the enemy with six
columns, each five thousand strong. Descending from La Montana towards
the Upper Ebro, he sent one division to menace the French in the Castle
of Burgos, and turn the flank of Marshal Bessières; he left another
at Villarcayo to preserve a communication with Reynosa and cover his
retreat. He received supplies from General Broderick, who in his
despatches complained bitterly that Blake treated him with hauteur, and
declined to afford any information as to the nature of his intended
operations. The French having abandoned Bilbao, it was regarrisoned by
Marshal Ney; and after various evolutions, it was attacked on the 12th
October by Blake, at the head of eighteen thousand men. Merlin, with
three thousand French, abandoned the fortress and retreated, fighting
every foot of the way until he reached Zornosa, where he was succoured
by General Verdier, who checked the fury of Blake's pursuit. The winter
was now approaching, and his troops began to be in want. Seldom have
soldiers endured greater privations than those suffered by the poor
Spaniards of Blake. They were destitute of caps, boots, and stockings,
and had been constantly in the open air for months, without tents or
proper food; yet not a murmur escaped them, nor a wish was uttered but
to conquer for their country.
While the well appointed forces of France were hourly increasing,
Blake, fearing neither difficulty nor danger, boldly ascended the
valley of El Darongo to assail two divisions of the Fourth corps
(Lefebre, Duke of Dantzig's), which occupied the neighbouring villages.
Full of hope, he advanced, and anticipating, if successful, to capture
Marshal Ney's corps of sixteen thousand men, fearlessly, with only
eighteen thousand Spaniards, and almost without artillery, he hastened
to engage twenty-five thousand Frenchmen of all arms!
Favoured by a dense mist, the Spaniards entered the valley, and for
a time nothing was heard but the shots of their skirmishers ringing
between the mountain peaks, till Vilatte's corps suddenly fell on
Blake's vanguard, and hurled it back upon the third division at the
bayonet's point. Then, on came the dark columns of Sebastiani and
Laval, each looming in succession through the mist, while a fire of
round and grape-shot from their artillery (to which Blake could not
reply) swept through the rocky vale, heaping his ranks against each
other, and strewing them on the grass.
Madly and bravely Blake, with his infantry and Guerillas, sought to
defend every rock and pass of the valley; but they were driven back
in full flight towards Bilbao, and crossing the Salcedon, took up a
position at Nava, watched by seven thousand French under Vilatte.
After the battle of Gamonal, Soult resolved to make an effort for
ever _to cut off Blake_, who, without cavalry, clothing, or food, had
reached Espinosa with six divisions and only six pieces of cannon,
which he posted in rear of the town at Aguilar del Campo. He had now
only twenty-five thousand bayonets, but strongly and skilfully posted.
His left wing, composed of Asturians, and his old favourite division
occupied the heights above the road to St. Andero; another covered the
road to Reynosa, and Romano's soldiers filled a wood two miles in his
front.
He was attacked at two o'clock on the 10th November by Marshal Victor,
whose soldiers carried the wood at the point of the bayonet, forced
his centre, turned his left flank, and he had the mortification to see
San Romano and Don Luiz de Riquelmé, his two best brigadiers, fall
mortally wounded. His Spaniards were hurled in masses upon each other,
and utterly routed. Romano's corps were all taken to a man; the rest
fled through Castile, Leon, Galicia, and Asturia, carrying everywhere
the tidings of their defeat and the terror of the French name; and poor
Blake, jaded, weary, exasperated, and disheartened, reached Reynosa
on the 12th, with only seven thousand men--his old division--without
artillery, without arms, without spirit, and without hope!
Such was the battle of Espinosa. Blake, in this terrible condition, was
attacked by the vanguard of Soult, and after losing two thousand men,
retired through the vale of Caburniego, and reached Arnedo in the heart
of the Asturian Sierras.
Spain was now nearly prostrate at the feet of France!
In 1809, Blake was appointed Captain-General of the _Coronilla_, or
Lesser Crown; a title given to the union of Valencia, Aragon, and
Catalonia. In the latter he succeeded General Romano. Gathering his
forces in April, restless and indefatigable, he advanced to Alcanitz,
from whence the French retired to Samper and Ixar. On this Marshal
Suchet advanced against him with the third corps, and on the 23rd of
May they fought the battle of Alcanitz.
Blake was skilfully posted in front of the town with twelve thousand
men. The bridge of Guadaloupe was in his rear; a pool of water covered
his left, but his right was without protection; his centre occupied
a hill. With only eight thousand foot and seven hundred horse Suchet
attacked him, but without success. Rendered desperate by reverses,
the Spaniards stood firm, and fought with their ancient rather than
their modern bravery. Suchet was wounded and compelled to retreat:
this retreat became a panic, and in great confusion the French reached
Samper in the night. This small success was a cause for rejoicing all
over Spain. "The victory at Alcanitz," was in every man's mouth, and
the Supreme Junta gave Blake an estate, and added the ancient kingdom
of Murcia to his command. He now hoped to recover the far-famed
Zaragossa, and turning all his thoughts to Aragon, neglected the
defence of Catalonia.
After the late victory his little army was augmented by more than
twenty thousand men, and full of new hope and enthusiasm he marched
with these to Ixar and Samper.
Suchet hovered near Zaragossa, but left a column under General Faber
at Villa Muel, near the Sierra of Daroca, to watch Blake, who, hoping
to cut that officer off, marched through Carinena, so famed for its
vineyards, and sent General Arisayo with a detachment to Bottorio,
with orders to capture a convoy of French provisions on the Huerba.
This movement was successful, and lack of food forced Faber to retreat
towards Plascencia.
The advanced guards exchanged shots on the 14th of June at Bottorio,
and Blake, full of confidence, made a vigorous attempt to surround
the French by pushing a column to Maria on the plains of Zaragossa;
on the 15th he formed his troops in order of battle, but slowly
and unskilfully, as they were raw soldiers, who had but recently
relinquished the vinedresser's knife for the musket and sword.
Occupying both banks of the Huerba, towards 2 p.m. he extended his left
flank to overlap the French right; but Suchet, who was unexpectedly
joined by Faber's brigade and another from Tudela, paralysed the
movement by a furious attack of cavalry and voltigeurs. Blake's left
fell back at the very moment that he was triumphantly leading on his
centre, and he became involved in a desperate sword-in-hand conflict,
in which the leading columns of Suchet were repulsed. He would have
achieved more but for a violent storm which arose at that moment, and
so darkened the air that the adverse lines could scarcely see each
other, and for a time the action ceased. Blake's position was ill
chosen (according to the memoirs of Suchet); he was surrounded by deep
ravines, and had only one line of retreat by the bridge of Maria, which
crossed the Huerba near his right wing.
Marshal Suchet observed this error, and on the storm lulling, selected
some cavalry and two regiments of infantry, and forming them, all
drenched as they were by rain, in solid column, by a vigorous effort he
broke through Blake's brigade of horse, seized the bridge, and cut off
his retreat!
Undaunted by this fatal event, Blake, at all times brave and decided,
formed his infantry of the left and centre into solid masses, and
fought desperately for victory; but was repulsed with great loss, and
defeated, leaving one general, twenty-five guns, and many colours on
that rough and rocky field, from which he was driven about dusk, when
the darkness was so dense that few prisoners were taken. Suchet had
Harispe wounded and a thousand men slain.
Favoured by the obscurity of the night, Blake's men fled by the ravines
to Bottorio, where he made incredible efforts to rally and remodel
them next day. Then he received tidings that a French brigade, under
Laval, was marching by the Ebro to cut off his retreat. To anticipate
this movement Blake fell back on the night of the 16th, and after
skirmishing with Suchet next day at Torrecilla, _again_ formed line of
battle on the 18th, to meet him at Belchite, a small town in Aragon.
Blake had on this day only fourteen thousand men, dispirited by
recent repulse and the loss of nearly all their artillery. Suchet had
twenty-two battalions and seven squadrons, with a fine artillery corps,
all flushed by recent success, and making fifteen thousand men; thus
the result may be anticipated--a defeat!
He had four thousand of his men taken, with the remainder of his
artillery, all his baggage and ammunition. He had many difficulties
to contend with as leader of an undisciplined army, and stung to the
soul by this second defeat, he reproached the Spaniards with great
bitterness as shameless cowards; and, after demanding an inquiry
into his own conduct, "with a strong and sincere emotion of honour,"
restored to the Junta the estate which had been conferred upon him
after the victorious battle of Alcanitz.
Following up the victory of Belchite, Marshal Suchet sent detachments
as far as Morella on the Valencian frontier; but no man in arms
appeared to meet them, for Blake's dispersion was signal and complete.
His march towards Zaragossa, and his attempt to wrest Aragon from the
foe, were fatal to the Spanish cause in Catalonia, where St. Cyr, with
more than forty thousand men, occupied the country between Figueras
and the city of Gerona, which was blockaded by eighteen thousand
Frenchmen, who pressed with vigour one of the most memorable sieges
suffered by this ancient ducal city, which was bravely defended by its
intrepid Catalans. Blake was ordered by the central Junta of Seville
to succour them, as the garrison were defending half-ruined walls with
a valour and obstinacy which filled the city with a thousand scenes of
horror and distress. He marched accordingly at the head of a weak and
irregular force, which was thoroughly dispirited by the result of the
two last battles; and thus he resolved to confine his operations simply
to supplying the town with men and provisions, rather than risk his
strength by attempting to raise a siege which, if essayed with success,
would save Gerona, and with it all Catalonia.
Collecting two thousand mules laden with flour, he sent them with four
thousand foot and five hundred horse, under Henry O'Donnel and Garcia
Condé, towards this strong and picturesque little city, which they
reached after a furious encounter with the enemy during a dark and
stormy night; but the provisions received did not amount to much more
than eight days' food for the starving Geronese and their garrison,
which was encumbered rather than aided by Garcia Condé's reinforcement.
St. Cyr now resolved to seek out Blake and destroy him for ever; but
rendered wary by misfortune, he retired into the mountains, and thus
ended his first attempt to relieve the city of Gerona.
Soon after, still hovering near the French, and threatening them, he
advanced to the position of St. Hilario; and on St. Cyr preparing to
storm the post called Calvary, Blake, from the 20th to the 25th of
September, 1809, made movements as if he meant to force the blockade;
but being incapable of doing so, his whole object was merely to
introduce another convoy; and, watching an opportunity, while drawing
the attention of St. Cyr towards the heights of San Sadurnia, on which
he had posted a column, he sent 10,000 men under Wimphen towards
Gerona. O'Donnel led the vanguard. A dreadful conflict took place on
Wimphen's attempting to force the French lines. He was defeated; and in
the twilight Blake failed to succour him; but Henry O'Donnel, another
gallant Irish soldier of fortune, succeeded in hewing a passage into
Gerona with 1000 men and 200 laden mules. Irritated by Blake's second
attempt to succour Gerona, St. Cyr marched a column to menace his
communication with the citadel of Hostalric, a depôt of magazines on
the Tordera. On this he was forced to retreat, leaving to its fate the
noble little city of Gerona, which, as its heroic captain, General
Alvarez, said, "if not succoured again by all Catalonia, will soon be
but a heap of carcases and ruins."
Again, on the 29th October, we find the unwearied Blake hovering on
the heights of Brunola, watching the siege of Gerona, and while he was
thus occupied, Hostalric was stormed by the French, and 2000 Spaniards,
with all his magazines, were taken therein. On the 10th November Gerona
capitulated, and Alvarez, its brave and veteran governor, died of a
broken heart at Figueras, when on the march towards France, a prisoner
of war. Blake now retired to Tarragona, leaving the remains of his
army under Henry O'Donnel, who drove Marshal Augereau into Gerona, and
received command of the troops at Vich, on Blake being called into
Andalusia.
In May the seaport of Tarragona was besieged, taken, and sacked by
Suchet, in a manner discreditable alike to his talents as a soldier
and his humanity as a man. During the horrors of that affair, which
covered the French with infamy, Blake was in Valencia, having sailed
for that province on the 16th of May, in search for succour; but
Tarragona was lost, and then he assumed command of the Murcian army,
which was 22,000 strong, and had remained inactive ever since General
O'Mahy's appointment. In June, 1811, the firmness and activity of
Wellington formed a strong contrast to the wavering and indolent
demeanour of the Spanish generals, until Blake marched to Condado de
Niebla, on concerting a movement down the right bank of the Guadiana
with the British general, who delivered to him the pontoons lately
used at Badajoz. He marched on the 18th, crossed the Guadiana on the
22nd, at the ancient town of Mertola, where the stream first becomes
navigable: but halted at Castillegos on the 30th, and sent his siege
train to Ayamonte by water. Then, instead of moving his whole force
directly on the great city of Seville, he sent only a small column of
cavalry, under the gallant Conde de Penne Villamur, in that direction;
and, unfortunately, consumed two entire days in besieging the castle
of Niebla--a small fortress, which gave the title of count to the
eldest son of the Duke of Medina, and was garrisoned by 300 Swiss,
who had deserted from the Spanish army at the commencement of the
war, and whom he was most anxious to capture and punish. The absence
of his siege train rendered the attack futile; and Soult, on hearing
of it, sent a detachment from Monasterio to relieve the Swiss, who
defended themselves with great valour, while General Conraux crossed
the mountains by the Aracena road, to cut off all communication between
Blake and his artillery at Ayamonte. Thus he was compelled to abandon
the siege, and by a precipitate march reach a pontoon bridge which was
thrown across the stream for him by Colonel Austin at San Lucar de
Guadiana, from whence he took shelter in Portugal.
Still indefatigable, he projected an assault upon San Lucar de
Barameda; but the sudden appearance of Soult's advanced guard
disconcerted his troops, who retreated to Ayamonte, and from thence
to the Isle of Camelas, where a Spanish frigate and 300 transports
fortunately arrived in time to afford him the means of escape. Early in
July he embarked all his troops, and sailed to Cadiz, as the French had
reinforced San Lucar and taken possession of Ayamonte.
Landing at Almeria, Blake formed a junction with Freire, and proposed
to invest Granada; but deeming it necessary first to visit Valencia,
where the factious Marquis del Palacio was acting most unwisely, he
left his army, now 27,000 strong, under Freire, and before he could
return it had utterly dispersed!
After the rout of the Murcians at Baza in Granada, he rallied the
fugitives, and in virtue of his authority as regent assumed the chief
direction of the war in Valencia, where his noble efforts were nearly
rendered futile by the villainy of Palacio's faction, who opposed him
and endeavoured to detach the soldiers and people from his authority,
and proposed to inundate the plains that lie round the black marble
mountain of Murviedro; but on Suchet invading the province, Blake
concentrated his ill-armed and undisciplined but brave horde of
peasantry to meet him. Exclusive of 5000 infantry and 700 Murcian
horsemen, under O'Mahy, at Cuença, and 2000 men under Bassecour at
Riguena, in September, he had 20,000 foot and 2000 horse; but, as
a foreigner by name and race, he was unpopular both in Murcia and
Valencia, "and the regency of which he formed a part was tottering,"
adds General Napier, in the fourth volume of his history. "The Cortes
had quashed O'Mahy's command of the Murcian army, and even recalled
Blake himself; but the order, which did not reach him until he was
engaged with Suchet, was not obeyed. Meanwhile that part of the Murcian
army which should have formed a reserve after O'Mahy's division had
marched for Cuença, fell into the greatest disorder; above 8000 men
deserted in a few weeks, and those who remained were exceedingly
dispirited."
Suchet's army entered in three columns, passed Castellon de la Plana,
masked Pensicola, invested Oropesa, and skirmished at Almansora, where
a few French, by bravely routing a great body of Spaniards, made
Blake doubt seriously the firmness of his troops; and thus leaving
four thousand men under O'Donnel at Segorbe, he retired beyond the
Guadalquiver, leaving Valencia in confusion. Suchet then invested the
town of Saguntum, and again turning all his attention to destroy Blake,
after much manoeuvring, they fought their disastrous battle of the 25th
October, 1811.
On the level and fertile plain which lies between Murviedro and
Valencia, and is intersected by torrents and ravines, fringed by
olive-trees, Suchet drew out his lines of battle before the ramparts of
Saguntum, where Blake was defeated, with the loss of 5000 men; and on
the Emperor Napoleon reinforcing Suchet with 15,000 men, under General
Reille (a Reilly of Irish parentage), the position of Blake and his
Andalusians became more than ever desperate.
He had now fought _five pitched battles_ as a general, and had under
his command 22,000 foot and 3000 horse. In November, Suchet advanced
towards the Guadalquiver with a force diminished to 18,000 men by
garrisons and detachments. Though Blake had destroyed two of the
bridges, and manned the houses, and was in hourly expectation of a
general rising of the Valencians, the French fearlessly stormed his
defences, crossed the river, menaced his front, and harassed his rear,
until he was compelled to form an intrenched camp five miles in extent,
enclosing the city of Valencia and three of its suburbs. A twelve-feet
ditch surrounded this camp, the slope of which was so high as to
require ladders.
The battle of Valencia, fought in December, 1811, followed. O'Mahy
was defeated, and fled to Alcira, leaving Blake blocked up in the
fortified camp with eighteen thousand men in want of provisions, while
the French were well and freely supplied by the _Valencians_, who, as
Blake reports, "were a bad people." On the 2nd December he made a bold
effort to break through Suchet's lines, and sallied out at the head of
ten thousand men; but was repulsed, and Suchet pushed more vigorously
than ever the siege of the city, knowing well that it was impossible
for Blake to remain long in a camp which included a starving population
of fifty thousand souls. The fire of sixty great guns drove Blake into
the city, abandoning his camp on the 5th December to the foe, who
found in it eighty pieces of cannon. In the evening Suchet summoned
Valencia; but Blake declined to yield. Then skirmishes, assaults, and
bombarding continued till the 9th, when the citizens were on the point
of insurging against Blake, and insisted that he should surrender. He
complained bitterly of their cowardice, and required leave to march
with his soldiers to Alicant with their baggage, colours, and only four
pieces of cannon.
These terms were refused him.
The Valencians opened their gates, and the brave but unfortunate Blake
was compelled to surrender his sword, and march out at the head of
twenty-two generals, eight hundred and ninety-three other officers,
and eighteen thousand men, as prisoners of war; leaving in the hands
of the enemy eighty stand of colours, two thousand horses, three
hundred and ninety pieces of cannon, forty thousand stand of arms, one
hundred and eighty thousand pounds of powder, and three millions of
ball-cartridges, with a vast store of other warlike munition.
After the fall of Valencia he had no opportunity of achieving anything
of importance; and in May, 1812, the Regent Charles O'Donnel, Conde
de Abispal, bestowed the command of the Valencian forces upon his own
brother Joseph, who rallied at Alicant the remains of Blake's army,
four thousand of whom escaped from Suchet's guards.
For his last important capture, Suchet was created Duke of Albufera;
and poor Blake, as a prisoner of war too important to be exchanged, was
ordered into France with his two aides-de-camp.
The preceding has been but a brief outline of the career, services, and
struggles of Blake, whose popularity, by a combination of circumstances
over which he had no control, was almost destroyed for ever in Spain.
He was accompanied to the Spanish frontier by the Adjutant-General
Florestan Pipi, who was then sent to Naples. On entering France
he was sent to Paris, and from thence to the strong Château de
Vincennes, where he remained a close prisoner until the fall of the
Imperial Government; but this captivity did not prevent the Cortes
from appointing him a Counsellor of State when naming the regency.
The triumph of the allies having broken his fetters in 1814, after
receiving many marks of favour from the Emperor Alexander, he returned
into Spain under the ministry of Ballasteros, and was appointed
Director-General of the Corps of Engineers. He occupied this honourable
post until the revolution of 1820, when, in exchange, he received a
seat in the Council of State. When war was threatened between France
and Spain in 1823 he was appointed, on the 7th February, one of the
committee of five generals who were ordered to concert measures for
defending the kingdom. In the French army which entered Spain in
that year, under the Marquis of Lauriston (an officer of _Scottish_
parentage), we find two lieutenant-generals of _Irish_ descent--Count
Bourke and Viscount O'Donoughue; the Duke of Angoulême was
General-in-Chief, and to him, the Duke of Berwick and Alba, a Spanish
grandee of the Stuart blood, gave his adherence. The restoration
caused by the French intervention under the Marshal Lauriston was
fatal to Blake; for being suspected by the royalists of constitutional
principles, he was only able to avoid prosecution by great care and
solicitude: but his career was drawing to a close, as he died at
Valladolid in 1827, regretted by all the Spanish army, and eulogized by
the people in their songs and stories of "the War of Independence."
The military men who had borne arms under him, says a French writer,
recognised and admitted his positive talent, his great knowledge and
perspicacité of tactiques; but agreed that he failed in two essential
points--the prompt _coup d'oeil_ which decides at once the fortune of a
battle, and that art of manner by which it is necessary to excite the
enthusiasm of the soldier.
A distinguished branch of the old Celtic sept of O'Donnel has borne a
prominent part in the Spanish annals during the last fifty years; but
so early as the days of Philip of Anjou and Charles of Spain, we find
an O'Donnel fighting in the ranks of their armies.
Soon after the accession of James VI. to the English throne, he was
engaged in the last struggle of the Crown against the houses of
O'Donnel and O'Neil. An earldom was bestowed as a peace-offering upon
the chief of the former; but his plots against the king soon deprived
him of it: his estates were seized, an English colony planted in the
land of his tribe, and he fled to the Court of Spain, between which
and the Irish there had been a close connexion during the animosity of
Philip II. and Elizabeth. He was welcomed with all the honours of a
Castilian grandee, and attained a high rank under King Charles. Eighty
years after this we find his descendant, Baldearg O'Donnel, still
remembering the days when the chiefs, or petty princes of his race,
were solemnly inaugurated as the successors of St. Columba on the Rock
of Kilmacrenan. He resigned his commission in the service of Philip V.,
of whom he begged permission to join the Irish, then in arms against
William of Orange. Philip refused; but the O'Donnel fled by a route so
circuitous that he visited Turkey, and after enduring many privations,
landed at Kinsale in 1690, where seven thousand armed Ulster-men hailed
him with joy, as the _Red O'Donnel_ of an ancient Celtic prophecy.
From Baldearg O'Donnel is descended General Count O'Donnel, who
commanded the army of Maria Theresa on the fall of Count Lacy at
the great battle of Toorgau in 1761; and also General O'Donnel,
Vice-Governor of Lombardy, who was attacked by the Milanese during the
Austrian revolution of 1848, when his palace was stormed and himself
taken prisoner. There was also a Count O'Donnel in the Hungarian
service, who died at Brussels in 1767, after reaching the patriarchal
age of one hundred and two years.
Of this ancient Celtic family there are now, or were lately, four
general officers of the highest rank in the service of Great Britain,
Spain, Austria, and America; but of these the most distinguished is
Leopold O'Donnel, Conde de Lucena and Marshal in the service of Donna
Isabella II.
The four O'Donnels, Henry, Charles, Joseph, and Alexander, who attained
such distinction in Spain during the Peninsula War, were the sons of
Irish gentlemen who emigrated to that country during the latter end of
the last century; and of their services and honours our limits will
allow but a brief outline; while General Sarsfield, Colonel O'Ronan,
A.D.C. to the Marquis de Campo Verde, or such partisan soldiers as
MacDonel, the unfortunate Guerilla chief who fell in action, Captain
Flinter the Christino, or General O'Doyle and his brother, a captain,
who were taken prisoners at the last battle of Vittoria, and shot in
cold blood by Zumalacarregui, can only be indicated here by name.
CHARLES (afterwards) Count O'Donnel first became known to history in
1810, when commanding at Albuquerque, from whence, on the 14th March,
he made a vigorous attempt to surprise General Foy, but was driven into
Casceres. Marching towards the ancient city of Merida on the 2nd April,
he drove back General Regnier and made an attempt to surprise Truxillo
(the birthplace of Pizarro), which is situated on a mountain. Here he
was repulsed, and with difficulty effected a retreat to Albuquerque;
but three months after we find him at Truxillo again, co-operating with
Don Carlos de España, with whom he cut off the French at Rio Monte.
In May he had lent two thousand infantry and two hundred cannoneers
to Blake, to enable that officer to conduct the siege of Tarragona,
receiving in return from Captain Codrington two thousand British
muskets to equip a new levy. He allowed four thousand of his best
Valencians to embark with Miranda to fight at Tarragona, but not until
he received a pledge that the British would bring back all who survived
the siege.
Charles served long with Blake, and was in most of the battles just
recounted; thus, to rehearse his earlier services would be to enumerate
those of Blake a second time.
In September, 1811, when the latter was forced to retire beyond the
Guadalaviar, he left Charles O'Donnel with four thousand men on the
side of Segorbe; and on investing Saguntum in October, he sent him with
Villa Campo's division and San Juan's cavalry to Betera. There O'Donnel
was attacked by Harispe, though well posted in rear of a canal, and
having his centre protected by a chapel and some houses; but the French
advanced with such fury, that the Spaniards were swept away by the
first fire.
In the war of 1823, General O'Donnel commanded a corps of Royalists,
which were destroyed by the troops of Torrijos, the Constitutionalist;
and soon after, his wife, the Condesa de O'Donnel, had a narrow escape
from a party of the Empecinado, who were sent to Valladolid to take
her prisoner, but were repulsed by the troops of the Marshal Duke of
Reggio.
Charles O'Donnel was now Captain-General of Old Castile, and as such,
in the month of August, he summoned and took from its insurgent
garrison, under General Jalon, the citadel of Ciudad Rodrigo. By
the convention between them, it appears that the governor of the
fortress undertook to obey any orders he might receive direct from
the king; but displayed great distrust of the royalists and the Irish
commander. After this, the latter marched into Estremadura, everywhere
crushing the Constitutionalists, and enforcing the supremacy of the
king. In August his head-quarters were at Salamanca, and in October
at Algesiras. This war, in which the absolute power of Ferdinand was
fatally enforced by the bayonets of France under Marshal Lauriston,
the Duke of Reggio, and others, soon ended; but though smothered for a
time, the restless spirit of the Spaniards soon again broke forth into
a flame, and most fatally for the house of O'Donnel, as shall be shown
in the sequel.
JOSEPH O'DONNEL, who had been serving with his brothers against the
common enemy, was appointed by the regent, the Conde de Abispal, to
succeed Blake in command of the Murcians and Valencians in May, 1812.
He collected the remains of these two armies, remodelled them with
great energy, raised new levies, and during the illness of Marshal
Suchet mustered fourteen thousand men in the neighbourhood of Alicant.
These operations, with others in Catalonia, brought on the battle of
Castalla in July, when, with 6000 foot, 700 horse, and eight guns, he
fought General Harispe on the mountains; but on the rough pathway and
a narrow bridge near Biar, the Spanish infantry were borne down by
the weight and fury of the French cuirassiers, and forced to retreat,
leaving 3000 slain on the field. O'Donnel, who had made incredible
exertions to gain the day, and had fired two pieces of cannon at the
bridge with his own hands, attributed his defeat to the disobedience
and inability of San Estevan, who commanded his cavalry, and who, by
holding that force aloof, took no share in the battle. Pursued by the
French cuirassiers, Joseph fled by the Jumella road, and reached the
city of Murcia, where he was joined by General Maitland's armament from
Sicily, and thus saved from destruction; but he unwisely required that
officer to abstain from all requisitions for forage and rations from
the neighbouring country. Maitland assented, and immediately sank under
the unnecessary difficulties thus created. In August, when O'Donnel was
at Yecla with 6000 men, the Cortes passed a severe censure upon him
for his conduct at the battle of Castalla; so severe, indeed, that his
brother, the Conde de Abispal, a proud and haughty soldier, resigned
his high command during the campaign, which ended in Wellington's
retreat from Burgos; and then the weakness of the Spanish Government
became more than ever apparent.
On the 6th of December, when at Malaga, Joseph wrote a long letter
to General Donkin, concerning the _malheur_ at Castalla, in which
we find his knowledge of English so imperfect that he was obliged,
after a dozen of lines, to adopt and end it in French; and after this
unfortunate defeat we hear no more of him.
ALEXANDER O'DONNEL, the third brother, was colonel of a regiment of
Spanish infantry, and served with it in the Danish Isles under Romana.
Attacked there by overwhelming numbers, they effected their escape in
1808; but on being made captives at Espinosa, they entered the French
ranks to the number of 4500, and served in Napoleon's Continental war,
until they were all taken prisoners by the Russians on the retreat from
Moscow, when they were brought back to Spain in British ships, under
the care of Captain Hill of the Royal Navy. One of the Spanish corps
which returned after this strange career of military service was the
regiment of Don Alexander O'Donnel, which had been fully equipped by
the Emperor Alexander in 1812, and for which the daughter of General
Betancourt embroidered a pair of colours. It was styled the _Imperial
Alexander Regiment_, and under O'Donnel distinguished itself in the
national cause till after the disasters of 1823.
HENRY O'DONNEL, Conde de Abispal, who, like his brother, had been
serving with success and distinction in the battles of the Peninsula,
was a brave, reckless, and determined soldier, possessed of military
talents of a very high order, together with a heedlessness of his own
life and of the lives of others. Passing, with honour to himself,
through all the subaltern ranks, he was a colonel of Spanish infantry
in 1809, when Blake ordered him to command in the attack upon Sauham's
posts near Brunola, where, on the 31st August, he had the mortification
of seeing the place retaken, after he had carried it at the point of
the bayonet.
On the 26th September, as related in the memoir of Blake, he led the
advanced guard in the brilliant attempt to relieve Gerona. On the
13th October he broke out of the city, sword in hand, hewed a passage
through the French blockade, and, falling on Sauham's quarters sabre
_à la main_, forced that general to fly in his shirt, and successfully
achieved one of the most daring enterprises of that memorable siege.
In 1810, on succeeding Blake in command of the Catalonians--an
appointment bestowed by the provincial Junta, who heard of his high
reputation--he attacked Marshal Augereau with great fury, and drove
him into Gerona. He took up a position at Vich, but on the approach
of the French retired to the Col de Sespina, where he led a charge so
fierce and decisive, that Sauham's battalions were hurled from the
hills in confusion upon the plain. Marching to Manresa, he summoned the
Miguelets from Lerida to his colours. These were a species of banditti
who infested the mountains, and were armed with pistols, daggers, and
blunderbusses. With 12,000 men, Henry O'Donnel took up a position at
Maya in February, and harassed the French before Vich, where he fought
and lost a severe battle, and was forced to retreat to the Sierras,
and from thence to Tarragona, leaving a fourth of his men dead on the
field.
O'Donnel, "whose energy and military talents," says Napier, "were
superior to all his predecessors," now sent Caro with 6000 men against
the French at Villa Franca, where unfortunately they were all killed or
captured; and being wounded, he was compelled for a time to resign the
command to General Gasca.
On the 6th April, he harassed the French, then retreating from
Tarragona towards Barcelona; and after retiring from Vich with an army
discomfited by only 5000 Frenchmen, with the same discomfited men
he baffled Augereau, who led 20,000 bayonets; forced him to abandon
Lower Catalonia, and to retreat in disgrace to Gerona, where Marshal
Macdonald, a Scotsman, was sent by Napoleon to succeed him. During the
investment of Hostalric by the French, Henry O'Donnel collected many
convoys for its relief; he attacked the blockade at several points
with the Miguelets, and particularly distinguished himself in a noble
and dashing attempt to relieve the brave Julian Estrada, on the night
of the 12th May, when this strong citadel fell. During the siege of
Lerida by Suchet, O'Donnel collected two divisions of 4000 each; with
these and 600 cavalry he skilfully passed the defile of Momblanch, and
fought the contest of Margalef, where his troops were defeated; but he
rallied, and led them again upon the columns of the Duc d'Albufera.
The struggle was terrible; but he was forced to retreat through the
passes, leaving one general, eight colonels, 5000 men, and three guns
in the hands of the foe. His force was now 1400 strong, well supplied
by the active Miguelets; and by the bravery of his soldiers and his own
unwearying zeal he long prevented the siege of Tortoza, and found full
employment for the enemy during the remainder of the year.
"After the battle of Margalef, Henry O'Donnel re-united his forces,
and being of a stern, unyielding disposition, not only repressed the
discontents occasioned by that defeat, but forced the reluctant (and
lawless) Miguelets to supply his ranks and submit to discipline."
Thus, in July he had twenty-two thousand men when Marshals Macdonald
and Suchet combined to crush him, and when Napoleon's order to invest
Tortoza arrived. On this O'Donnel, after making a skilful feint towards
Trivisa, suddenly threw himself with ten thousand men into the fated
city, from whence, upon the noon of the 3rd July, he fell furiously
upon the French entrenchments, and made a fearful slaughter of the
troops of Laval. After this he retired to Tarragona. Having cut off
Macdonald's communication with the walled city of Ampurias, he now
conceived and executed the most skilful and vigorous plan which had yet
graced the Spanish arms.
Leaving Campo Verde in the valley of Aro, on the 14th, he marched
rapidly down from Casa de Silva upon Abispal, where the French, under
Swartz, were entrenched. He attacked them, slew two hundred, and,
taking the rest, embarked them for Tarragona, whither he retired soon
after, to take a little repose, being troubled by his last wound; yet
in January, 1811, we find him again in arms, directing the movements of
the army, and harassing Marshals Macdonald and Suchet, though unable to
ride or appear in the field; and on his being created Conde de Abispal,
he resigned the command of his Catalonians, three thousand in number,
to Campo Verde, being so disabled by wounds that he was quite unable to
conduct the siege of Tortoza.
In October, 1812, he was appointed to that situation, which several
Irish soldiers of fortune have held--Captain-General of Andalusia,--and
on Wellington reaching Cadiz in December of that year, after the
retreat from Burgos, on his making a complete re-organization of the
Spanish forces, the first reserve corps was given to the Conde de
Abispal, and the second reserve to Lacy. Thus they both served in the
new campaign which ended so gloriously on the field of Vittoria. After
this signal victory, the task of reducing the forts near the tremendous
pass of Pancorbo, which secured the approach to the Ebro, was given to
the Irish Conde and his Andalusians, to whom they fell partly by storm
and partly by capitulation.
On the 14th July, 1813, to O'Donnel and his reserve of five thousand
was permanently entrusted the important duty of blocking up the
French garrison in Pampeluna, now almost the last stronghold of
Napoleon in Spain. This task he conducted with great vigour, while
Wellington secured the passes of the Pyrenees and pushed the siege of
San Sebastian; but on Soult forcing the passes on the 25th July, such
an alarm reached Pampeluna, that the Conde de Abispal spiked some of
his cannon, blew up his magazines, abandoned the trenches, and but
for Picton's victorious stand at Huarte, was prepared to retreat. On
the fortunate arrival of a small Spanish division under Don Carlos
d'Espana, the blockade was resumed and the siege pressed with renewed
vigour.
O'Donnel was posted on the right of Marshal Murillo at the great and
decisive battle of Pampeluna, so absurdly and obstinately styled by the
British _the battle of the Pyrenees_, from which it is nearly thirty
miles distant. Soult was completely overthrown, and in August O'Donnel
reinforced the seventh division in occupying the important passes of
Exhallar and Zugaramurdi. After this, being again troubled by old
wounds, he fell ill and resigned his command for a time to Giron. In
November he resumed it again, and occupied the beautiful valley of the
Bastan, prior to the invasion of France under Wellington.
In February, 1814, he led six thousand men at the passage of the Gaves,
and was engaged in all the operations on the Lower Pyrenees with the
Spaniards under the Prince of Anglona. He served in that victorious
campaign which terminated at the blood-stained hill of Toulouse, where,
as General Napier so pithily remarks, "the war terminated, _and with it
all remembrance of the veterans' services_."
In the Constitutional war which ensued in Spain nine years after, and
during the invasion of that country by monarchical France in 1823, the
O'Donnels bore a prominent part, and adhered to Ferdinand VII. The
Conde de Abispal was appointed a field-marshal, with the office of
governor and political chief at Madrid, and on the 25th March he issued
a proclamation announcing that the amnesty granted by the Cortes to
those in arms against the king was about to expire, and concluded by
a brief warning to the factious and the Constitutionalists to lay
down their arms. On the 17th April he published his able orders and
propositions to the militia of the capital, together with the following
declaration of his political principles:--
"_Don Henry O'Donnel, Knight Grand Cross, &c., General
of the 3rd Corps, &c._
"Having learned that some ill-disposed persons have confounded my
_private opinion_ with those sacred obligations _which my oath and
duty impose upon me_, and have given out that I am unwilling to
support the Constitution of 1812 even to the last extremity, and until
the national representation, lawfully constituted, should have made
certain changes therein; I do declare that _I am resolved to defend
it_, according to my oath, until it shall be altered by those means
which the Constitution itself prescribes, and that I deem as traitors
all Spaniards who, deviating from the path of duty traced out by law,
shall cease to obey the same. Such were my sentiments when, in answer
to an address from M. Montijo, I wrote a letter which they charge me
with having published, and such will ever be my sentiments. But my
_opinion_ as an individual shall never prevent me from fulfilling my
_duty_ as a general and a citizen of Spain.
"Madrid, 17th May, 1823."
But ere long he found the difficulty of reconciling his private
sentiments and conviction with his duty to a king who had become the
tool of France. Abispal proved the Talleyrand of Spain, and lost all
favour by his indecision and vacillation; for, after receiving the
Grand Cordon of the Order of Carlos III. from the hands of Ferdinand
VII., he passed over to the Constitutionalists. From that day his power
declined, and he was glad to seek shelter from the fury and clamour of
the people at Montpelier in France, where he lived in retirement and
much reduced in circumstances.
His son, LEOPOLD COUNT O'DONNEL, remained in Spain, and had attained
the rank of colonel when the civil war broke out between the Carlists
and Christinos, a step in which the children of the four elder
O'Donnels were strangely divided, brother against brother, and cousin
against cousin.
Thus, on the 2nd May, 1835, when Quesada was attacked by Don Tomas
Zumalacarregui (the Claverhouse of Spanish loyalty), his division
would have been annihilated but for the timely succour he received
from Colonel Leopold O'Donnel de Abispal, who unfortunately was
taken prisoner by the Navarrese while vainly struggling to rally the
Loyal Guards. All who were captured were barbarously shot by the
Carlists, and of all who perished none was more regretted than the
young, handsome, and chivalric O'Donnel. Though a colonel in the
service, he was merely accompanying Quesada to profit by his escort
so far as Pampeluna, where he was about to celebrate his nuptials
with a beautiful Spanish girl of high rank, and the heiress of an old
and wealthy family. A noble ransom was offered, but Don Tomas was
inexorable.
His father, Henry O'Donnel, then in his old age, died of a broken heart
at Montpelier, on hearing of his son's disastrous fate.
COLONEL JOHN O'DONNEL (a cousin of Leopold's) commanded the 2nd
regiment of Castilian infantry, while his brother Charles led the
insurgent cavalry of Don Tomas, and at the head of his own corps,
the heavily-armed and ferocious lancers of Navarre, performed in his
twenty-fifth year the most brilliant feats of the Constitutional war.
For his romantic victory over Lopez, in fair battle on one of the
immense plains of Old Castile, he was made Knight of San Ferdinando.
Soon after, he was mortally wounded in action near Pampeluna, and as he
expired in agony, he exclaimed: "I wish some one would send a bullet
through me and end this misery!--I have but a short time to live.
Already four O'Donnels have perished in this war; and their blood has
been shed on the right side as well as on the wrong!"
He referred to Leopold, who was shot in cold blood at Alsassua; to
his second brother, who lost a leg at Arguijas, and died under the
amputation; to Charles, who lay on a bed of sickness from which he
never rose; and to John, who was wounded in battle at Mendigorra; and
being dragged from bed by a mob at Barcelona, was cruelly murdered in
the streets and literally cut _into ounce pieces_. He and Charles left
wives and children in France.
LEOPOLD, the Conde de Lucena, and his brother Colonel HENRY O'DONNEL,
who in the Spanish affairs of the present time have borne so prominent
a part, are of the same warlike stock; but their adventures are too
recent to require a record here.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 17: The reader will remember the mistake of Donna Julia,--
"Was it for this that General Count O'Reilly,
Who _took Algiers_, declares I used him vilely?"
_Don Juan_, Canto i.]
MARSHAL BARON LOUDON.
On the summit of a rising ground, by the side of a brook in the parish
of Loudon in Ayrshire, stand the ruins of the ancient Castle of Loudon,
which was destroyed about three hundred and fifty years ago by the
clan Kennedy, headed by their chief, the Earl of Cassilis. This old
Scottish stronghold was the seat of a family from which sprung Gideon
Ernest Baron Loudon, or _de Laudohn_, a distinguished general of the
Continental wars.
Loudon of that ilk was one of the oldest families in the kingdom of
Scotland.
Lambin was proprietor of the lands and barony of Loudon during the
reign of David I., who succeeded to the throne in 1124. James of
Loudon, _dominus de eodem_, or of that ilk, obtained a charter of the
same barony from Richard de Morville, Constable of the Kingdom; _Jacobo
filio Lambin_, &c., also obtained a charter from William de Morville,
as _Jacobo de Loudon, terrarum baroniæ de Loudon_. Both these documents
were granted during the reign of William the Lion, who succeeded to the
throne in 1165, and are, says Sir Robert Douglas, a proof that he took
his sirname from these lands, according to the custom of those early
times; and his armorial bearings were, argent, three escutcheons sable.
His daughter, Margaret of Loudon, was married to Sir Reginald Crawford,
High Sheriff of Ayr, and became the grandmother of Sir William Wallace,
the heroic defender of the liberties of his country.
In later times, a branch of this old family had left
"Loudon's bonnie woods and braes,"
so famed in Scottish song, and settled in Livonia, where their bravery
and services had won them several fiefs and baronies, of which,
however, they were dispossessed by Charles XI. of Sweden, after the
peace of Oliva, when the Polish Republic gave up its right to the old
Teutonic province.
During the reign of his successor, the famous Charles XII., the
Livonian nobles made a vigorous effort to regain their patrimonies
and privileges; but the Swedish king having put to death their
representative, the celebrated general, John Raynold Patkul, an officer
in the service of Augustus, King of Poland, by cruelly breaking him
alive upon the wheel, where he received sixteen blows, enduring the
longest and greatest tortures that can be conceived, all hope of
restoring Livonian liberty died; and with many other noble families,
the Loudons dedicated themselves to the profession of arms: one became
a captain in the Royal Swedish Guards, and was uncle of the subject of
this memoir.
GIDEON ERNEST LOUDON was born at Tootzen, in Livonia, in the year 1716.
In consequence of the war and troubles in which his native province
was involved, his education was much neglected; and though his great
military genius in after years enabled him in some degree to supply
the deficiency, he never ceased to regret the loss he had sustained,
by those circumstances over which he had no control, but which,
fortunately for himself, forced him to earn his bread by his sword as
a soldier of fortune. He had learned little more than to read and to
write, with a smattering of geography and geometry, when in 1731 he
entered the Russian service as a cadet.
He was then in his fifteenth year, and Anne, daughter of Ivan II.,
niece of Peter the Great, and consort of the Duke of Courland, was
Czarina of Russia. The corps to which young Loudon was attached was a
battalion of infantry; and after being two years in garrison with it,
an opportunity was afforded him of making an essay in arms, when the
war of the Double Election created disturbances in northern Europe.
In 1733 Stanislaus Leczinski, whom Charles XII. had invested with the
Sovereignty of Poland in 1704, and whom Peter the Great had dethroned,
was chosen king a second time on his daughter being married to Louis
XV., from whom he received a paltry succour, consisting of only four
battalions of infantry; but the Austrian Emperor, on being assisted by
the Russians, compelled the Poles to make _another_ selection, and the
Elector of Saxony was raised to their throne by the name of Augustus
III., while poor King Stanislaus was driven into Dantzig, where the
Russians followed and besieged him.
Loudon's regiment served with the blockading force, at the investment
of this populous city, which is the capital of Western Prussia, and
at that time had a population of two hundred thousand. Loudon was
present during the siege and capture of Dantzig, from which, however,
the ex-King of Poland made an escape, and renounced for ever the poor
distinction of being monarch of a republic plunged in anarchy.
In the year 1734, his regiment formed part of the army which was sent
by the Empress Anne towards the Low Countries, and spread a terror
along the frontier of Germany. In this campaign he marched from
the banks of the Wolga to those of the Rhine. A peace being signed
at Vienna, the forces marched to the Dnieper, the scene of so many
sanguinary encounters between the Russ and Turk. This movement was
to repel the Osmanlies and punish the Tartars of the Crimea, who had
made an irruption into the southern province of Russia, and committed
unparalleled outrages.
In the army under Marshal the Count de Munich, young Loudon served in
the long campaign from 1736 to 1739, and was present in that barbarous
warfare in the Crimea, which is already detailed in the memoirs
of the Counts Lacy and Brown, including the capture of Azoph; the
storming of the lines at Perecop; the assault and capture of Oczackow,
Staveoctochane and Choczim, with the general ravage and subjugation of
the Tartar peninsula down to the extreme verge of the Tauric range, and
to the Symbolorum Portus of Strabo--the harbour of Balaclava.
In his position, which was then so subordinate, the share borne by
Loudon in those brilliant operations was necessarily obscure; but, for
his ability and attention to duty, he was soon raised from the rank
of cadet to the commissions of a second, and then first lieutenant;
a proof that the germ of an able officer had been discerned by his
colonel in the foreign volunteer. The treaty which ceded Azoph to
Russia in 1739 secured a brief peace to Europe, and the Empress Anne
Ivanowna began to disband her unwieldly forces.
On this occurring, Lieutenant Loudon repaired to St. Petersburg in
1740, for the double purpose of complaining to the Empress that he
had been unjustly treated during the war, having served nine years
and being still a subaltern; and also to solicit from her further
employment and promotion. Disappointed in both these objects, he
resigned his commission in her service with disgust, and quitted the
Russian capital, resolving to make an offer of his sword to the Empress
Queen of Hungary, Maria Theresa, who had succeeded her father Charles
VI. on the Austrian throne, and found it assailed on all sides by
hostile armies.
As he passed through Berlin he fell in with several officers,
principally Scots and Irishmen, with whom he had served under Marshal
Munich in the late campaigns; and some of these recommended him to
join the Prussian service, in which they had all accepted commissions;
and one was kind enough to offer him an introduction to the warlike
Frederick II., with whom, after some weeks' delay, he had the honour
of an interview. Loudon modestly stated his nine years' service, his
junior rank and wishes, adding that, as he had held a lieutenantcy
under the Empress Anne, he ventured to hope that his Majesty would
bestow upon him the command of a company. Frederick keenly scrutinized
his face, which "was serious, cold, severe, reserved, pensive, and
reflecting" (for he was a man schooled in danger and adversity), and it
did not prepossess the royal martinet of Prussia in his favour, for he
had the rudeness to turn his back upon the military stranger, and say
to some officers near him,--
"_The physiognomy of this man does not please me._"
In anger and mortification young Loudon, then in his twenty-fourth
year, quitted his presence with a swelling heart; but he could not then
foresee the time when he would become the most formidable enemy that
ever met the Prussian monarch in the field.
In very poor circumstances he reached Vienna in 1742, and being
furnished with a strong recommendatory letter from the Austrian
ambassador, repaired to the Imperial palace in search of military
employment. While he was lingering unknown and unnoticed in the
ante-chamber, a gentleman accosted him, inquiring his name and
business. Loudon having mentioned both, and expressed great desire
to see the Empress, this person said, "I will do all in my power to
assist you, sir," and passed directly _into_ the cabinet. In a few
minutes "Lieutenant Loudon" was summoned by name, and on entering,
was astonished to discover in his unknown protector the husband of
the beautiful Maria Theresa, Francis Stephen, Grand Duke of Tuscany
and First Emperor of the House of Lorraine-Austria! Under auspices so
favourable, his request was at once granted, and he obtained a company
in the Free Corps of Pandours raised by Baron Trenck, who had known
Loudon in Russia, and was well pleased to have under him so gallant an
officer.
These Pandours were Sclavonians from the banks of the Drave, a river
of Germany which rises in the Tyrol and empties itself into the Danube
near Effeck in Hungary. This regiment, which was raised chiefly in
the village of Pandour or Szent Istevan, wore long coats girt by a
waist-belt, in which each man carried a sabre, four or five pistols,
and a poniard. On service they always acted as irregular cavalry. This
corps had originally been infantry, and were styled the Regiment of
Ruitza. Their chief occupation had been to clear the roads of brigands
and freebooters; and though the biographer of Baron Trenck endeavours
to conceal the fact, history proves that in their new organization the
Pandours were a mere military banditti, whose pay was plunder, and
whose duty was devastation.
Little as he must have liked the service, Captain Loudon commenced a
campaign in their ranks, in the war which ensued on Louis XV. and the
King of Prussia leaguing together for the partition of the Austrian
Empire. A French army under the Marshal Dukes de Belleisle and de
Broglie, entered Germany, where the Bavarian Elector formed a junction
with them; reduced Lintz, the capital of Upper Austria, and threatened
Vienna. Kevenhüller recovered Lintz; the battle of Czaslau, in which
the Pandours and Croats charged with such effect and fury was fought;
Prague was besieged, and all northern Europe found itself engaged in a
general strife.
At the head of his Pandours Baron Trenck acted the part of a bold
partisan. He stormed the Isle of Rheinmarck, put its garrison to
the sword, and with his own sabre slew the commandant, the Comte de
Creveceur. Mentzel with four thousand Croats and Pandours broke into
Lorraine and Luxembourg, where they committed terrible devastations.
In 1744, when Prince Charles of Lorraine forced his famous passage over
the Rhine, Gideon Loudon led his company in the _foremost_ boat, and
was the _first_ who landed on French ground; but in a skirmish with
the advanced picquets of the French near Zabern, a city built on the
summit of a rock, and defended by a strong castle of the Bishops of
Strasburg, he was struck by a musket-ball when fighting bravely at the
head of his men. It entered his right breast and came out behind near
the shoulder-blade, and thus incapacitated him for farther service for
some time. He fell--was taken prisoner, and conveyed to a neighbouring
cottage. A few days afterwards the Austrian army advanced; the
Pandours drove the enemy; Loudon was restored to liberty, and had the
satisfaction of saving from pillage the dwelling of the peasant with
whom he had found shelter and by whom he had been benevolently treated.
Meantime the King of Prussia, sick of his bloody victories, signed the
treaty of Breslau, which filled France with consternation, and forced
her marshals, Belleisle and Broglie, to retire towards Prague; but the
close of 1745 saw tranquillity restored to Germany for a time.
Disgusted with the reckless regiment of Trenck, Loudon quitted it and
returned to Vienna, where he resigned his commission and was preparing
to leave the Austrian dominions in search of fortune elsewhere, when
some of his military friends advised him to remain, and procured for
him a majority in the regiment of Liccaner, which at that time was
garrisoning a town on the Croatian frontier. His old corps the Pandours
were disbanded, but were afterwards re-organized in 1750 as regular
troops, and became of great service in the war of 1756, and in those of
the first French Revolution.
This new appointment and its emoluments enabled him to espouse Clara
de Hagen, the daughter of a brave Hungarian officer who resided at
Pæsing. He was sincerely attached to this lady, and they had one child,
a daughter, who died in infancy.
During ten years that he remained in the garrison towns of Croatia
he spent all his leisure hours in perfecting his military education,
and completing the study of fortification, geography, and geometry.
He procured a vast number of maps and plans of fortified places,
such as castles and barrier towns; and, as if he had some intuitive
presentiment of the part he was yet to perform in the great game of
war, he pored over them incessantly. Having once obtained a German map
of unusual size, he spread it over the floor of his barrack-room, and
_sat down_ upon it, to pursue his study of it with greater ease, and
was thus occupied when Madame Loudon entered.
"My dear major," said she, "still as ever, occupied by these horrid
plans and perpetual studies!"
"Never mind my present labours," said he, cheerfully; "they will be
of great service to me, my dear Clara, when I obtain the bâton of a
field-marshal."
Madame Loudon laughed, for her husband was then eight-and-thirty, and
the bâton of a marshal seemed yet to be a long way off.
In 1756 the Seven Years' War was threatened. A league was formed by
the Court of Vienna for stripping the King of Prussia of his dominions.
The French threatened the electorate of Hanover, and formed an alliance
with Sweden and Austria against Britain and Prussia, the king of which,
on receiving evasive answers from Vienna as to the object of the
Austrian armaments, prepared for immediate strife.
Anxious for employment, and remembering, perhaps, the manner in which
Frederick II. had insulted him at his levée in Berlin, the enterprising
spirit of Loudon induced him to visit Vienna and solicit a command
against Prussia; but having left his regiment without obtaining leave
of absence, he was on the point of being reprimanded and ordered
back to Croatia, when by good fortune he obtained the friendship
and patronage of Prince Kaunitz, the head of a noble family, whose
possessions lie on the Iglau in Moravia. By the prince's interest
he was appointed Lieutenant-Colonel of eight hundred Croats. These
wild and hardy troops were destined to be ordered on every desperate
service, and as their mode of fighting resembled in every respect
that of the Pandours, Loudon was well fitted to command them; more
especially as he had acquired their dialect while quartered in their
native province. They were all clad in short waistcoats with sleeves,
long white breeches, light boots, and rough huzzar caps. They had
each a long firelock with a rifle barrel and short bayonet, a crooked
sabre, and brace of pistols. This corps formed part of five thousand
Croats levied by the Empress-Queen for the new war against Prussia.
Like the Pandours of Baron Trenck, they had no pay or provisions, but
such as their swords and the terror of their presence won them; and as
irregular troops they were a scourge wherever they marched.
On the 29th of August, 1756, the King of Prussia entered Saxony at
the head of seventy battalions of foot and eighty squadrons of horse,
in three columns, which marched by three different routes, but formed
a junction at Dresden and captured it. The Elector, who was King of
Poland by the title of Augustus III., took refuge in a camp at Pirna,
while Frederick marched into Bohemia and found the Austrians encamped
at Lowositz under Marshal Count Brown, who was defeated there in
October; and after a long and bloody contest forced to retire in rear
of Egra.
It was at this time that Loudon with his Croats joined the Austrian
army; and in the disastrous retreat which ensued after Lowositz, he
narrowly escaped when a hundred of his grenadiers were slain by the
Prussian hussars. During Marshal Brown's retreat out of Saxony, Loudon
took by surprise the town of Estchen at the head of five hundred men,
and destroyed two squadrons of Prussian hussars. This was his first
exploit, and it was deemed the most brilliant of the Austrian campaign.
He distinguished himself again at Hirschfeld, on the Bohemian frontier;
and for his bravery on that occasion was appointed colonel in February,
1757.
On the 20th of that month his corps had formed part of the six thousand
Austrians who attacked the Prussian position at four in the morning.
Loudon fought with incredible bravery, and slew many of the enemy with
his own hand. In August he attacked the Schriekstein and captured
three hundred newly raised soldiers. He now obtained an increased
command--a small division, six thousand strong, consisting of Croats
and Pandours. With these he attacked and defeated a body of the enemy
at Erfurth, a garrison town of Saxony. He then joined the now allied
French and Imperialists, who marched to Weissenfels, a city in the
centre of Thuringia. By this time the Swedes were pushing on the war
in Pomerania and had besieged Stettin. Marshal Richelieu with eighty
battalions and one hundred squadrons of French had entered Halberstadt,
and was everywhere levying contributions with fire and sword, while the
Austrians had made themselves masters of Lignitz and most of Silesia;
and after laying siege to Schwiednitz, were preparing to pass the Oder.
Everywhere the tide of war had turned upon the King of Prussia.
Loudon was now with what was named the _Combined Army_. The Prince de
Soubise commanded the French; the Prince of Hildburghausen led the
Austrians, and their united and immediate object was to clear Saxony
of the Prussians. Frederick left a division to cover Silesia, and
approached this Combined Army, which passed the Sala and established
its head-quarters at Weissenfels; from whence the Comte de Mailly was
sent to summon Leipzig. On the 5th November, the King of Prussia gave
battle to this Combined Army, then fifty thousand strong, at Rosbach,
a village of Prussian Saxony, at eleven o'clock in the morning. The
allies were formed in line with their cavalry in front. The impetuosity
of the Prussian infantry, whose charge was admirably sustained by a
fire of artillery and advance of horse, broke the allied line, and,
notwithstanding all the efforts of the Prince de Soubise, Frederick
obtained a complete victory with the loss of three hundred men only;
while the Combined Army lost no less than eleven generals, three
hundred other officers, nine thousand killed, wounded, and prisoners,
sixty-three guns, twenty-nine colours, and one pair of kettle-drums.
With the battle of Rosbach terminated the campaign in Saxony.
Loudon was with the Combined Army during all these operations; and the
Prince of Hildburghausen, desirous of signalizing his own authority by
some grand stroke, proposed to the Prince de Soubise the project of
dislodging the Prussians from the petty principality of Gotha, where
Seidlitz commanded. They began their march accordingly with their
grenadiers and Austrian heavy cavalry, while Loudon led the Pandours
and French light dragoons. They dispatched one column of cavalry over
the heights which led to Thuringia; another on the left, preceded by
hussars, approached Gotha from the side of Langensaltza; while Loudon
with the Pandours, dragoons, and a body of grenadiers, formed the
column of the centre.
Seidlitz was ready to receive them. He was in order of battle, and
had all the defiles secured by horse and cannon. A desultory conflict
ensued among the woods and mountains; and though the Prince de Soubise
cut a passage to the castle wall of Gotha, he was obliged to retreat
and leave three officers and one hundred and sixty soldiers in the
hands of Seidlitz. The Prussian column under the Prince of Bavern
attempted to cover Breslau, which surrendered on the 22nd November to
the Austrian generals, by whom he was made prisoner; while the remnant
of his army joined Frederick, and on the 5th December the battle of
Lissa, where he gained a signal victory, was fought in Silesia. Such
was the severity of the season that many hundreds of soldiers were
found dead on their posts; and the German generals were reproached with
heartlessly exposing their men to the extremity of cold; for a campaign
in winter is alike opposed to the dictates of humanity and the common
rules of war, as the operations of our own troops in the Crimea have
given terrible proof.
In these arduous duties, though always at the head of his Croats and
Pandours, Loudon never received another wound, though exposed almost
daily to balls, bayonets, and sabres; and it is worthy of remark that
the musket-shot received at Zabern was the only scar of his long
military career.
In the campaign of 1758 he received the Imperial military Order of
Maria Theresa, which was instituted by the Empress Queen in the June
of the preceding year. In this Order it is an inviolable principle
that no officer whatsoever, "on account of his high birth, long
service, wounds, or former merits, much less from mere favour, or the
recommendation of others, be received; but that those only who have
signalized themselves by some particular act of valour, or have aided
the Imperial service by able and beneficial councils, and contributed
to their execution by distinguished bravery, shall be admitted."
In the operations of the new year the King of Prussia recovered
Schwiednitz from the Imperialists on the 16th April; entered Moravia
on the 27th May; invested Olmutz, which was stoutly defended by the
governor, General Marshall, a Scotsman; while Marshal Daun, under
whom Loudon held a command, took post on the adjacent mountains, to
intercept and cut off the Prussian convoys. The siege had now been
open for four weeks, and the trenches were rushed with great vigour
by the Scottish exile--the gallant Marshal Keith--notwithstanding
the great difficulties attending it; for Loudon, bravely, and at
incalculable hazard, in the defiles of Damstadt, in the principality of
Lichenstien, intercepted a convoy of four hundred waggons, and obliged
General Zeithen, who escorted them with twenty squadrons and three
battalions, after a five hours' encounter, to retire on Trappau. This
loss was irreparable, for General Putkammer, eight hundred men, and the
_military chest_ were taken.
The King of Prussia was compelled to raise the siege, and effected one
of the most able retreats ever seen in Germany; he then marched to
oppose the Russians, who had broken into Brandenburg under Generals
Brown and Farmer, two Scotsmen, whom he met in battle at Zorndorf,
defeated on the 25th August, and drove them into Poland.
Had Loudon (who was ably seconded by Daun) _not_ intercepted General
Zeithen, "the town of Olmutz must have been taken in a fortnight,"
says Frederick, who styles it the Battle of the Convoy; "for the third
parallel was finished, and the besiegers had begun to open the saps."
For this service Loudon received the rank of lieutenant-field-marshal.
He had now won the reputation of being the first cavalry officer in
the service of the Empress-Queen; and he was of great use to Daun in
galling and incommoding the King of Prussia during the retreat from
Olmutz.
With four thousand men he took post in the wood of Opotshno, a Bohemian
town, fifteen miles north-east of Koningengratz, where he intended to
attack the Baron de la Mothe Fouque, who with thirty-two battalions
and squadrons was conveying the heavy siege train. But there Loudon
was unexpectedly assailed by Frederick, who had heard of his projected
ambush, and marched to attack him in it, and he was forced to retire
through the forest with the loss of a hundred Croatian troopers. He
retreated towards Holitz, and thus the siege train passed unmolested to
Glatz.
Loudon and General St. Ignan followed Frederick closely; at
Koningengratz their Pandours slew General Saldern, Colonel Blankenzee,
and seventy men, but were checked by the sabres of Putkammer's hussars;
and to prevent this harassing of the rear-guard, Frederick prepared an
ambuscade on a narrow path which lies through a wood at Metau. In this
defile he concealed ten battalions and twenty squadrons, under whose
fire the Austrians were drawn by a few flying skirmishers. "Loudon, who
was very easily heated," to quote Frederick, "resolved on an assault;"
but the Prussian cavalry poured upon him like a torrent, a fire opened
upon his men from every point of the rocks and pass, three hundred were
shot dead, and he was forced to retire. Soon after this he was lured
again, by the Volunteers of Le Noble, into a ravine near Skalitz, where
he was suddenly assailed by six battalions in the night, and had to
give way, with the loss of six officers and seventy men.
He took possession of Peitz, a town in the Duchy of Brandenburg, on the
right bank of the Matx, and left no means untried to fulfil with signal
success his duty of covering Daun's left flank during the whole of the
Austrian advance and Prussian retreat. Daun posted himself at Stolpen,
to the eastward of the Elbe, on one hand to preserve a communication
with a column which he had detached to Koningstien, and on the other
to favour the active operations of Marshal Loudon, who had advanced
through Lower Lusatia to the frontier of Brandenburg.
At the battle of Hochkirchen, which was fought on the 13th October, the
defeat of the Prussians was solely attributed to Loudon's skill and
bravery. On the 12th he had attacked a great convoy, but was repulsed
by Marshal the Honourable James Keith, with the loss of eighty men,
among whom was the Prince de Lichenstien, lieutenant-colonel of the
regiment of Löwenstien. After this Loudon assembled his dispersed
troops and took ground in a woody mountain, which was a long quarter
of a league, German measure, beyond the Prussian right, facing the
village of Hochkirchen. A marsh separated the flank of Frederick from
this height. Daun secretly prepared a road for four columns to form a
junction with Loudon, who on the night of the 13th glided down with
his swift Pandours to the rear of the Prussian position, and set on
fire the village of Hochkirchen, driving out by the edge of the sabre
the battalions quartered there, and seizing on a battery which defended
an angle of the place; while the gallant Major Lang, with the regiment
of the Margrave Charles, threw himself into the churchyard, and in the
dark opened a blaze of musketry on the Pandours, whose light uniforms
were soon too fatally visible by the flames of the burning village.
Around this conflagration the whole tide of battle rolled at midnight.
The aged Marshal Keith and Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick were killed,
and the Prussians were defeated with the loss of seven thousand men and
most of their camp equipage.
Marshal Daun filled his despatch (which detailed this victory) with the
highest encomiums on Loudon, whom he sent immediately towards Silesia
in pursuit of Frederick, whose forces he was to exclude from Lusatia;
and so he followed and galled them with untiring zeal and vigour,
though he was then suffering from a severe and chronic disease in the
stomach; but on his march towards the Saxon capital, the Prussian
monarch made one vigorous stand and repulsed him; after which he
retired to Zittau.
Reinforced by 12,000 men, the marshal concealed himself in the forest
of Schonberg, where he again attacked the Prussians, whose whole line
of march became "one battle;" but Prince Henry, Frederick's brother,
commanded the rear-guard; and so excellent were his dispositions, that
only Lieutenant-General Bulow and 215 soldiers fell.
On the 1st November, Frederick began his march for Silesia. Loudon,
still pressing on, fell with such fury on the rear-guard, that he was
nearly taken prisoner by the Prussian hussars. He then brought up his
cannon; but these were dismounted by the heavier pieces of Frederick,
which at the same time threw the Austrian foot into disorder. Thrice
Loudon rallied them; and thrice, sword in hand, he led them to the
charge: but the approach of the noble Putkammer hussars compelled
him to fall back; and thus, amid skirmishes, night marches, toil,
starvation, plunder, and devastation, the campaign of the year was
closed by the Austrians raising the sieges of Neiss and Dresden, and
the King of Prussia retiring to winter quarters at Breslau.
The generals of the Imperial army usually spent the winter in the
Austrian capital; and now the Empress expressed a strong desire to
see Marshal Loudon, of whom Count Daun had written so favourably in
all his despatches and letters. Thus he prepared to return to Vienna,
but was compelled to remain for some time at Doeplitz in Bohemia, in
consequence of a return of his illness: and there Madame Loudon, who
had remained at Vienna during the whole war, arrived to attend him. As
soon as he was sufficiently restored, they travelled together to the
capital, where they arrived on the 24th of February, 1759. The streets
were crowded by dense masses of persons, all anxious to behold and to
welcome the hero of whom they had heard so much, and his reception
was most enthusiastic. Only two years had elapsed since he left
that city as a field-officer of Croats, and now he returned to it a
Lieutenant-Field-Marshal and Knight of Maria Theresa.
From the fair Empress he received the most flattering distinction; and
she commanded her own physician, the Baron Von Swieten, to attend him
until his health was completely re-established. She bestowed upon him
the Grand Cross of her Order, and created him a Baron of the Holy Roman
Empire.
The moment his physician permitted him, he resumed his command; and
no general of the Seven Years' War bore a more distinguished part in
the campaign of 1759 than Baron Loudon, though Frederick II., who had
imbibed an animosity to him, always mentions his name slightingly in
his works.
The Prussian monarch, in the beginning of the year, had great success;
but his chief embarrassment was the approach of the Russians, who
defeated him in Silesia on the 23rd July, and spread their outposts
along the banks of the Oder. On the frontiers of Bohemia nothing of
importance occurred, though Loudon, who occupied Trautenau, was
continually in motion, alarming the Prussian posts and cutting off
their supplies.
He made an attack on General Seidlitz near Frederick's strong camp at
Schmuckseiffen, and lost 150 men. Immediately after this, the Court of
Vienna gave him command of 20,000 men, 1200 of whom were dragoons, to
give vigour to their Russian allies, who were destitute of cavalry. By
the way of Greiffenberg he marched through Silesia, foiling, deceiving,
and skirmishing with the horse of Prince Henry, till he took up a
position on the heights of Laubau, where he had fought the Prussians in
the preceding year. He chose this ground with the intention of being in
advance of them now, when he should receive orders to join the Russians
under Count Soltikow.
With this general he achieved a junction, and together they took up
a position at Cunnersdorff, opposite Frankfort-on-the-Oder, and gave
battle to Frederick at eleven o'clock, A.M., on the 12th of August.
The Russians had their intrenchments stormed amid great slaughter; a
starfort erected by them on two sand hills, to cover their right flank,
was carried at the point of the bayonet, and a dreadful massacre of
them ensued in the churchyard of Cunnersdorff. Under the glare of a
burning sun, and sore with many a wound, the brave King of Prussia led
on his troops; and for two hours the infantry fought hand to hand.
The Jews' Cemetery, seven redoubts, and 180 pieces of cannon, were
already taken, when Loudon, perceiving that the Russians were unable to
maintain their ground, brought up his well-chosen reserves, and fired
his field-pieces loaded with case-shot, to sweep the Prussian line. He
then charged on both flanks with his fine Austrian cavalry, who bore
down all before them. The Prussians fell into confusion, and their rout
became total. Frederick had two horses shot under him, and his blue
uniform literally torn to rags by bullets and sword-cuts. The struggle
was awful, and night came down on a field where 30,000 men lay dead
or dying, and of these more than the half were Prussians. The brave
Putkammer was slain, and ten other generals lay killed or wounded near
him.
The movements of Frederick after this most signal defeat were of a
masterly description. He soon compelled Loudon and Soltikow to act
on the defensive, and recovered every place in the Saxon Electorate
except Dresden. Forcing the Russians to retire into Poland, he joined
his brother Prince Henry in Saxony, compelled Marshal Daun to retreat
as far as Plawen, and forced him to take shelter in the camp at Pirna;
after which he retired into winter quarters in November.
For his victory at Cunnersdorff Loudon was raised to the rank of
_General-velt-zeug-Meister_; but he drew off from Soltikow with all his
cavalry immediately after the battle.
In the campaign of 1760 he received command of the army destined for
service in Silesia. It consisted of 40,000 men, and in all operations
he was to be seconded by the Russians, who, according to an agreement
made by the two Empresses, were to fight their way along the banks of
the Oder, while Daun carried on the war in Saxony. This army was light,
and as unencumbered by baggage as a Pandour leader could desire. At
its head Loudon left the camp in which he had passed the winter, and
after attacking and repulsing General Goltze at the head of his horse,
he left Draskowitz with 6000 men at Neustadt, and took the road to
Bohemia, after menacing in succession Silesia, into which he penetrated
with two corps, the new Marche of Brandenburg, Breslau, even Berlin
and Schwiednitz. At last he fixed upon the latter, and General the
Baron de la Mothe Fouque (who had weakened his forces by detaching the
brigades of the Scottish General Grant and General Zeithen), deceived
by an artful feint, marched towards it with all his troops leaving the
garrison in Glatz quite unprotected.
The able Loudon at once perceived the success of his feint, or
stratagem, and immediately had recourse to another. He took possession
of Landshut, and left there a small body of troops, who were
immediately assailed and driven out by the Baron de la Mothe. While
the latter was thus occupied in recovering this trivial post, Loudon
made himself master of several important positions, and passed in
triumph through Johannesberg and Wisstengersdorff, and at Schwarzwalde
routed the hussars of Malachowski, and thus surrounded the baron's
little army of Prussians. The latter did everything requisite to secure
their position against the superior force of Loudon, who early in June
attacked them with irresistible fury.
On the night of the 23rd he seized two heights on the right, and formed
there two batteries, which swept the Prussian front and rear. He then
stormed their intrenchments at the head of 28,000 men, and drove out
the enemy, who formed solid squares to repel his cavalry, which pushed
them in disordered masses on the Balkenhayn-road. Their squares were
broken, and 4000 men were slain. Among them fell the gallant baron,
pierced by two mortal wounds. Seven thousand men surrendered, and
Glatz, the most important place between Silesia and Bohemia, as it
stands in a narrow vale between two lofty hills, was the immediate
consequence of the victory. The Gersdorff hussars and dragoons of
Platen cut a passage to Breslau with 1500 of the infantry.
Pushing on, the victorious Loudon prepared to besiege that place, where
he expected to be joined by the Russians, and thus enabled to complete
the conquest of Silesia, the great object of the war. Encouraged by
his success at Glatz, he assailed the Silesian capital, and bombarded
it with great success on the 30th July. He set forth in his summons to
surrender, "that his forces consisted of fifty battalions and eighty
squadrons, most of which were within three days' march; that it was
in vain for the governor to expect succour from the King of Prussia,
now on the other side of the Elbe, and still more vain to look for
relief from Prince Henry, who must sink beneath the Russian sword if
he attempted to obstruct its progress; and that the inhabitants must
resign all hope of terms or quarter if they ventured to defend the
town."
The reply of the governor was firm and noble. Loudon showered bombs
and red-hot balls on one side, while attempting an assault on the other.
Prince Henry, one of the most accomplished of the Prussian generals,
advanced to its relief by a forced march of one hundred and twenty
English miles in five days, resolving to give the Baron battle before
the Russians joined him; and on his approach Loudon prudently raised
the siege and retired, though he still kept Neiss and Schwiednitz
under blockade. The King of Prussia by this time was on his memorable
march to prevent the junction of the Russian and Imperial armies in
Silesia; and with this intention had encamped at Lignitz, where,
while encompassed by three hostile columns, he gave battle to Loudon.
Attacking him at three o'clock, A.M., on the 15th August, near Lignitz,
he repulsed him with loss before Daun could come to his assistance; and
further secured his own rear effectually by a strong _corps de reserve_
and park of artillery posted on the heights of Paffendorf.
Frederick obtained some information as to Loudon's disposition of force
from an Austrian officer, an Irishman, who had deserted. "He was so
intoxicated," says Frederick, in his own _History_, "that he could
only stammer out he had a secret to reveal. After making him swallow
some basins of warm water to relieve his stomach, he affirmed what
had been divined, that Daun meant to attack the king that very day."
Loudon made incredible efforts, on foot and on horseback, to maintain
his ground. After receiving five consecutive charges of five lines of
five battalions each, the confusion of the Austrians became general,
and they fled towards Binowitz. The battle of Paffendorf cost Loudon
ten thousand men; the field, which sloped like a glacis, was occupied
by the Prussians, who took two generals, eighty other officers, six
thousand soldiers, twenty-three pairs of colours, and eighty-two pieces
of cannon!
We next find the indefatigable Loudon in position at Hohenfriedberg,
a small Silesian town, which he had to abandon on the night of the
11th September, finding his flank turned by the Prussian vanguard on
their gaining the pass of Kauder. On the 18th he occupied the defiles
of Giersdorf, and that night, by a cannonade prevented the enemy from
advancing to Wahlenburg. He next laid siege to the strong and important
fortress of Kosel, seventy-three miles distant from Breslau, and
threatened the whole province with subjection.
The Russians and Austrians now effected their junction again, and
together made themselves masters of Berlin on the 4th October; after
which the affairs of the great Frederick seemed desperate; but he
resolved to retrieve them by some decided effort. Crossing the Elbe,
he hurried into Saxony, followed by Daun with eighty thousand men,
whom he routed at Toorgau on the 23rd November. By this he recovered
all that he had previously lost; the Russians retired into Poland, the
Austrians evacuated the desolated province of Silesia, and the Swedes
took refuge on the shores of the Baltic. By the defeat of Daun, Loudon
was compelled abruptly to raise the siege of Kosel and retire out of
the province.
In 1760, Bohemia, Silesia, and other parts of Germany presented a
lamentable aspect. Cities were empty, villages desolate, and castles
in ruins. The fields were ravaged and destroyed, till a famine was at
hand; wives and children had perished; husbands and fathers had been
driven into the ranks of adverse armies, to fight for bare subsistence
rather than their blackened hearths and rifled homes; trade was
neglected; the seats of learning abandoned; the land untilled: and all
this curse had fallen upon the people by the mad ambition of their
kings and princes.
During the winter Loudon's activity prevented Frederick from obtaining
recruits, provisions, or forage from the principalities or circles of
Neiss, Groskau, Frankestien, Strehlen, Neustadt, and Oppelen.
In January he repaired to Vienna, to assist at the councils of war and
arrange the plan of the new campaign.
In this year (1761) he was destined by the Court of Vienna to undertake
a war of sieges in Silesia, where he was to be supported by the
Russians; and on the 10th of March he resumed the command of his
division. In April he wrote to the Empress stating that since the 18th
instant he had revoked the truce made with General Goltze, and intended
to fix his head-quarters at Caretau, a league from Glatz. In May he
patrolled the country about Lignitz and Jauer to levy contributions,
and eighty-seven of his men were cut off by General Tatter at Rostock.
About the 12th May, on Frederick's approach, he retired into Bohemia,
by the way of Gattesberg, before eighty thousand men, and on the 6th of
June established his head-quarters at Hauptmonsdorf.
Frederick was resolved to act solely on the defensive, being tired of
the war.
On the 21st July he was encamped at Pulzen, when Loudon, who occupied
the opposite mountains, descended by the defile of Steinkunzerdorf,
feigning to attack the fortress of Neiss. This drew Frederick out; and
they engaged on the heights of Munsterberg, where a warm cannonade
ensued. On the 23rd Loudon encamped at Ober Pomsdorf; "and either from
native restlessness, or a habit of commanding detachments, in eight
days he changed his position six times; for which no satisfactory
reason could be given." On the 17th July the whole of the Prussian army
received the communion, and sixty rounds of ball per man.
Loudon's force, after he was joined by General Brettano from Saxony,
amounted to eighty thousand men. He was also joined by a column of
Russians under General Czernicheff. He received a letter from Maria
Theresa, wherein she somewhat needlessly "gave him full power to give
or decline battle as he chose; and this power was to extend to all
his military operations in general." In the first days of August he
transmitted to her a letter which he had received from Frederick of
Prussia, and written by his own hand, in which he offered him great
sums "if he would agree to act _faintly_ in this campaign." Loudon
at the same time sent the Empress a copy of his answer, importing,
"that being accountable to God and to his sovereign for his conduct,
all the treasures of the earth should not tempt him from his duty to
either; and that he begged his Prussian Majesty would make him no more
proposals so repugnant to his duty, and so injurious to his honour."
On the 15th August he detached forty-three squadrons of horse to join
a Russian column which had passed the Oder; but Frederick met them
on their march near Parchwitz, and defeated them, taking all their
colours and cannon. These troops were horse grenadiers--the flower of
the Austrian cavalry. The march of Loudon to form a junction "with the
Russians," say the London papers for 10th September, 1761, "is alone
sufficient to raise his reputation as a general as high as even a
victory could have done. He had marched seven hours before the enemy
had the least suspicion of his design, and had a conference with
Marshal Butterlin near this place (Lignitz); on his return from which
he narrowly escaped being taken prisoner by the fleetness of his horse,
his escort being attacked smartly by a strong detachment of Prussians."
The allies afterwards separated; and the Hamburg journals asserted that
it "was owing to a pique and jealously between Laudohn and Butterlin
about the command, and the open antipathy of their respective troops to
each other."
After a long series of marches, manoeuvres, and feigned attacks, in
which he had completely the better of the great Frederick, Loudon
suddenly appeared before Schwiednitz, the ancient and fortified capital
of a principality situated among the hills of Lower Silesia. Its walls
were manned by a brave Prussian garrison; but, to cut off all succour,
Loudon posted twenty battalions on the heights of Kunzendorf, which are
so steep that they cannot be taken from any troops who possess them.
Frederick's army, consisting of sixty-six battalions, one hundred and
forty-three squadrons, and four hundred and six pieces of cannon,
encamped at Bunzelwitz, in a place surrounded by chevaux-de-frize,
abattis, mines, and palisades. Loudon made a partial attack upon this
formidable post; but, pushing on, he resolved to take Schwiednitz by
surprise. Previous to the advance, says an officer of his army, in one
of his letters, "his Excellency our general having assembled upon
the Limelberg, the troops destined to scale the walls of Schwiednitz
harangued them there, and promised them a reward of one hundred
thousand florins if the place was taken without pillage.
"'No, no!' exclaimed the Walloon grenadiers; 'lead us on, and we will
follow to glory; but we will take no money from you, our father Loudon!'
"Then the Count de Wallace, colonel of the regiment of Loudon
Fusiliers, after being twice repulsed by two battalions of the brave
regiment of Treskow, said to his soldiers,--
"'I must carry this fort or die! I have promised it to Loudon;
_remember that our regiment bears his name--it must conquer or perish!_'
"This short speech produced a surprising effect. An entire battalion
sprung furiously into the ditch. The officers themselves fixed the
scaling-ladders, and were the first that mounted. M. de Wallace had
the glory of forcing the most difficult point of attack, and taking
prisoners two battalions, who made the most courageous defence."[18]
Twenty battalions had been distributed to the four points of attack.
One column advanced to the Breslau gate, a second on the Strigau gate,
a third to the fort of Bockendorf, and a fourth on the redoubt of Eau.
On the 1st October, at three in the morning, favoured by a dense fog,
Loudon and Wallace led their soldiers to the assault; and the escalade
was made with such rapidity, that the garrison had only time to fire
_twelve_ cannon shot. Lieutenant-General Zastrow, the governor, who had
been at a ball, hurried his troops to arms; but the contest was short;
a few volleys were exchanged, when a magazine blew up and killed eight
hundred Prussians in the fort of Bockendorf. Taking advantage of the
confusion, Wallace rushed on, burst open the gates of the town, and
with the loss of only six hundred men, Loudon was master of the place
before daybreak. Zastrow and three thousand men were taken, with a
great store of all the munition of war. This was a severe blow to the
pride of Frederick, who was weak enough to attribute the success of
Loudon to the treachery of Major Rocca, an Italian prisoner; but an
officer named De Beville made a noble defence in the redoubt of Eau.
Loudon garrisoned the town by ten battalions, under General Butler, an
Irishman; and after remaining long encamped at Freyburg, in December
he sent O'Donnel into Saxony after a body of Prussians, and cantoned
his own troops among the mountains, while the Russians wintered in
Pomerania.
During the winter of 1761 an epidemic malady made great ravages in the
army of Loudon. It was a kind of leprosy, the progress of which was so
rapid, that it soon thinned his ranks, and filled the hospitals and
cemeteries.
The year 1762 saw a fortunate change in the affairs of Prussia; Peter
III., a peaceful prince, succeeded to the Russian throne, and formed
an alliance _with_ Frederick, who did not fail to profit by it, and
retook Schwiednitz, though garrisoned by 9000 men, in spite of the
utmost efforts made by Daun and Loudon to prevent him. After this he
concluded with Maria Theresa a cessation of hostilities in Saxony and
Silesia; and soon after peace was secured to Germany by the treaty of
Hubertsbourg, on the 16th of February, 1763.
In the seven campaigns of the _Seven Years' War_ seventeen pitched
battles had been fought; three sieges had been undertaken and five
sustained by Prussia, with innumerable skirmishes. Austria took 40,000
Prussian prisoners, and Prussia took the same number of Austrians. The
hospitals were full of maimed and suffering soldiers. In each regiment,
on an average, only eight officers, and less than 100 men, were alive
who had witnessed the commencement of the war. Loudon was the only
officer, not born a prince or of an illustrious family, who had risen
to such high rank during that sanguinary struggle. He was, moreover,
a stranger, _a foreigner_, and a soldier of fortune. At the peace
the Empress presented him with the lordship of Klien Betchwar, not
far from Kolin. On this he built a strong and beautiful castle, with
the revenues which he derived from a barony in Bohemia; and there he
retired to enjoy a few years of repose and peace, and to overlook the
cultivation and improvement of his estate.
In 1766 the grateful Empress made him Aulic Councillor of War; in 1767
the highest nobles of the Empire received him as one of their members;
and in 1769 he was appointed Commandant-General in Moravia.
In 1770 he was present at the interview between the Emperor Joseph and
his old antagonist Frederick the Great of Prussia. Dissembling that
ungenerous animosity which he had imbibed against the fortunate Loudon,
Frederick always addressed him as "M. Velt-Maréschal," though he had
not attained that rank in full; and when Loudon, with his natural
reserve, was about to seat himself at the foot of the royal table,--
"Sit next to me, M. de Loudon," said his Prussian Majesty; "for, be
assured, I love better to see you by my side than _opposite_ to me."
At his departure he presented the baron with two horses, the finest of
his stud.
In 1778 Loudon was gazetted to the rank of Field-Marshal, and was
placed at the head of an army 50,000 strong, to defend the interests
of Austria in the new war which broke out between the great powers of
Germany, on the death of Maximilian Joseph, the Elector of Bavaria.
He posted the army of the Emperor behind the Elbe, in strongly
fortified positions; and distributed his own corps among the secure
posts of the Riechenberg (on the same ground where the Austrians were
defeated by the Duke of Brunswick in 1757); of Gabelona, a fortified
town which occupies an important pass; of Schlukenau, thirty miles
from Dresden, and towards Lusatia; but the main body of his troops
he skilfully distributed between Leutmeritz, a well-fortified town;
Lowositz, in the same circle, but four miles distant from it; Dux and
Töplitz. The King of Prussia took the field with all his force, to
prevent the Emperor from co-operating with Loudon, to whom he opposed
the column of Prince Henry: and now ensued a campaign full of interest
only to those who study brilliant manoeuvres and subtle tactics.
Loudon's posts at Schlukenau, Rumberg, and Gabelona were taken by
the prince, who forced him to abandon Aussig and Dux, with the
fortifications and magazine at Leutmeritz, and, indeed, all the left
bank of the Elbe; but falling back on the Iser, he skilfully secured
its passages by strong detachments. In short, so equal was the
distribution of strength, numbers, skill, and discipline, that the war
was a mere succession of able movements, but barren of striking events;
and after a year of marches and skirmishes, the Emperor relinquished
Lower Bavaria, on which he had seized unjustly, and a peace was
concluded on the 13th May, 1779, the birthday of the Empress-Queen.
After this Loudon returned to his sequestered castle; and once more,
for eight years, resumed the peace and pleasure of a country life.
In 1787, when in his seventy-first year, he was again summoned to the
field by the Emperor, to lead the Austrian armies against the Turks;
and a series of brilliant captures and encounters realized all that had
been hoped from his old valour and experience.
He poured his hosts along the Croatian and the Bosnian frontiers; and
in August, 1788, after two fruitless assaults, in one of which 430
of his men were killed and wounded, he received by capitulation the
fortress of Dubitzar, on the right bank of the Unna. On the 20th the
Turks had attacked his camp, but were repulsed; after which he again
ordered an immediate assault; but, as it failed, he ordered the town to
be fired, and it burned till the morning of the 24th. He then opened
several mines, and by the 25th his sappers were within ten feet of the
walls. The Turks then "capitulated to Marshal Loudon, whose principal
terms were:--
"That the officers might march out with swords, but their troops were
to lay down all arms and surrender as prisoners of war.
"That the women and children might go to Roczaracz, attended by five
Turkish soldiers, for whose return the commandant should be answerable."
Novi-bazar, a Bosnian Sanjak, the capital of a province, with its
castle, next fell into his possession; then Gradiska, a strong Turkish
fortress which had been erected fifteen years before by French
engineers, at the junction of the Virbas with the Saave; then Belgrade,
the most important town and fortress on the Austrian frontier of the
Turkish empire. Its citadel occupies a commanding position on the
summit of a precipitous rock which rises in the centre of the streets
and is surrounded by a lofty wall, a triple fosse with flanking
towers, and an esplanade 400 paces broad. These works were principally
constructed by Benjamin Swinburne, a native of Staffordshire, who had
embraced Islamism, adopted the name of Mustapha, and risen to high rank
in the Turkish artillery. Led on by Loudon, the Austrians overcame
every obstacle, and captured this famous Belgrade.
In that town he found a fine funeral monument of white marble, covered
with Turkish inscriptions, arabesqued ornaments, and sculptured
garlands of flowers. He had this great sarcophagus carefully taken to
pieces and sent to his estate of Hadersdorf, to form a tomb for himself.
In this war of carnage, as it was justly named, for no quarter was
given on either side, the Imperialists numbered at first 218,000
bayonets and sabres; but they were soon reduced to half that number by
the resistance of the Turks.
Neu-Orchova, a small town and fortress of Wallachia situated on an
island on the Danube, was his last capture after he had defeated the
Bashaw of Travernick and was repulsed in turn from two practicable
breaches; but he reduced it by a regular siege; and with this ended the
Turkish war, which he had conducted with glory to Austria and ended
with honour to himself.
In 1790 he returned to the army in Moravia.
He was now seventy-four years of age, and his health was failing fast.
During the latter part of his life he had been much afflicted with
rheumatism, gout, and colic, the fruit of military toil and hardship.
All these attacked him regularly every spring and autumn.
On the 26th of June he dined with Prince Lichnowski, at Böhmisch
Gratzen, and was seized on that night by a fever, from which he
predicted he would never recover, and about the 6th of July he was in a
dying state. Observing around his bed many of his old brother officers
in tears, he endeavoured to console and reassure them by the calmness
of his own demeanour.
"I implore you," said he, "to unite true religion to that high courage
which I know you to possess, and to defend your minds from the
approaches of atheism. All the success I have had in this world I owe
to my confidence in God, as well as the glorious consolation which
I now experience, in this awful time, when I am so soon to appear
before Him." On the 10th, he requested the sacrament, and begged the
Marshals Colloredo and Botta to be present at the reading of his will,
and to bear his dying blessing and remembrances to the old officers
and soldiers who had served under him. Then perceiving his favourite
nephew, Alexander Loudon, weeping at his bedside, he said,--
"Arise--be a man and a Christian--love God and your fellow-creatures."
He lingered on until the 14th of July, when he expired in great agony.
Thus died, in the year 1790, Field-Marshal Baron Loudon, one of the
greatest generals of the eighteenth century. "It was but seldom that
a smile was seen to unwrinkle his lofty forehead," says a writer of
his own time. "He was as little acquainted with the real laugh as
Cato. As to his character, he knew how to diversify it wonderfully.
Loudon on horseback and at the head of an army appeared to be quite
another man, and was indeed a complete contrast to Loudon in the
country or the town. His conduct agreed perfectly with what his cold
and reserved physiognomy announced, for he spoke but little, and
slowly. From his early youth he constantly avoided the society of
women; he was uncommonly timid in their company, and was a very good
husband. Accustomed to find himself punctually obeyed by thousands
in the field, at the least sign indicated by him, he required the
same docility of his vassals and servants, and he acted with severity
to them--perhaps more than ought to have been used to men who were
unaccustomed to military discipline."
As a souvenir of the many perils he had passed through, he carefully
preserved at Hadersdorf a musket-ball which had been cut in two on
the pommel of his saddle, and also his Croatian sabre, which had been
struck from his hand by a bomb, and bent so that no armourer could ever
straighten it.
His remains were enclosed in a double coffin, adorned by gorgeous
mountings and handles, and were solemnly borne from Böhmisch Gratzen
to his estate of Hadersdorf, a small town of Lower Austria, near the
Klein-Kamp, and five miles west of Vienna.
In the park he had once selected a spot shaded by many fine trees,
under which he had expressed a wish to be buried; but, on his return
from the Turkish campaign, he selected another place, and planted it
with shrubs and flowers in imitation of a Moslem sepulchre; and this he
was wont to term his Turkish Garden, for therein he had reconstructed
the marble sarcophagus which had been conveyed from Belgrade.
There he now lies in peace, shaded by some stately old trees and in the
centre of a green meadow. His funeral monument, which is one of great
magnificence, is securely walled round; and among the sculpture with
which the Austrian Government adorned it, there may still be traced
the shield _argent_, charged with three escutcheons _sable_; the old
heraldic cognizance which the Loudons of that ilk carried on their
pennons in the wars of the Scottish kings.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 18: Letter from an officer to a friend at Ratisbon, Oct.
25th, 1761.]
COUNT O'REILLY,
CHAMBERLAIN OF THE EMPIRE.
Were we 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, the _last_ of the _éleves_
of 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 that _both_ could not
succeed, they determined to solve the difficulty of selection by a
combat _à 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 his _History 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 political result 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
the end 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 the _Regiment O'Reilly_ to 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 their
arms; 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 of
_ninety-two_. He had long survived his countess, and died childless.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 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.
The life 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 the _Irish_ and _Scottish_ Brigades; 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 Seven Years' 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
and _one_ colonel 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 friends of my heart! He was accompanied
by Thirty 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 the _House of Stuart_ by love and duty. If
the Assembly now reject their services, they implore your Majesty's
_recommendation_ to 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 never ONCE failed 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 commanding _them_
cannot 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, fled to
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 corps was 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 than
_fourteen_ armies, 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 named _the 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 the _fourth_ regiment
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 conferred upon 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:
[Footnote 20: _Biographie Universelle._]
[Footnote 21: _Scots' Magazine_, 1791.]
[Footnote 22: War-Office Records--communicated.]
[Footnote 23: War-Office Record.]
[Footnote 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 entitled
_Alexis_, 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; _not_ because 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 in
his 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
take _you_."
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 Directory
_depriving_ him 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 his _face_ nor his _name_ are 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 too late 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
he suppressed 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, uniting with 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, about thirty-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 for _the death of the whole
Neapolitan army_! The French Republican soldiers are not assassins;
but the Neapolitan generals, the officers and soldiers who were
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 but _thirty_ killed.
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 still rankled 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 violence of 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, the _Championnet_,
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 the country 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 the _cavalry_, 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 column on 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; _but_ he, 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 of Moreau; 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 had reached 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 which _he_ should 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.
Macdonald was in command at Versailles while these plans were maturing,
and when Napoleon arrived at the Palace of St. Cloud. Though not
actually in the conspiracy, he was in the secret, and knew that
opposition to Napoleon would neither be for the interests of France,
the army, or himself; thus he took the lead in the matter, and by
suddenly closing or dispersing the political club at Versailles, made
the inhabitants aware that he, at least, deemed the time had come,
"when a just administration should obliterate the horrors of the last
few years, and the fatal vacillation of the weak Directory."
On the 18th Brumaire, the attempt was to be made; and Napoleon,
accompanied by Macdonald, De Bournouville, and Moreau, inspected in the
gardens of the Tuileries ten thousand chosen soldiers on whose faith
they could depend, and there Augereau, the future Duke of Castiglione,
joined them.
"M. le Général," said he, embracing Napoleon, "you have not called for
_me_, but I have come to join you."
"You are welcome," replied Napoleon.
It was a perilous task they had undertaken, to overthrow the political
incubus that had pressed so long upon France; and while the startled
Directory, who had already discovered the designs of those without,
were debating about their own safety, and while Moulins urged that
a battalion should be sent to seize Napoleon, the latter suddenly
appeared, sword in hand, at the door of the hall, and entered with his
grenadiers, three deep, at a time when the projected Consulate was
being discussed by some of the Directory with very little chance of
success. He decided the matter at once, by ordering his drummers to
beat a _pas de charge_, and by dismissing the judges with a promptitude
worthy of Cromwell, and with a courage which evinced that, on his part,
nothing would be wanting to retain the power he had won.
When an army was formed for the re-conquest of Naples, in 1800,
Napoleon offered Macdonald the command of the _corps de reserve_. He
did this to testify his pleasure for his adherence to the revolution
of the 18th Brumaire; but the general, who felt piqued by the offer
of a command so subordinate, in a country where he had before led an
army, urged illness and wounds as a reason for remaining in France.
The penetration of Napoleon, was too keen for the true sentiments
of Macdonald to escape him; thus on the 24th of August, in the same
year, he was appointed to command the army of Switzerland, which was
destined to penetrate into the Tyrol, to second the operations of the
army of Italy and favour the columns of Moreau (who was then warring in
Germany) by compelling the Austrians to employ at least thirty thousand
of their best men among the Tyrolean mountains--the bulwark of the
German empire.
Macdonald marched from Bearn in September, with forty thousand men,[26]
towards Helvetia, accompanied by General Matthew Dumas, chief of the
staff, a soldier who used his pen better than his sword. His first
desire was that a corps of Helvetians should be formed to co-operate
with the French against the Austrians; but this request the Swiss
government declined; and he soon found his campaign to consist of a
series of arduous marches among the mountains, where, as the season
advanced and the winter drew on, his soldiers endured every misery
that, toil, hunger, and cold could inflict.
In the passage of the Alps, when one of his columns, composed of the
80th Regiment, with some cavalry, artillery, sappers, and guides,
under Laboissière, attempted to cross the Splugen, in the country
of the Grisons, a dreadful avalanche suddenly came thundering down
from the mountains to bar their march, and swept forty-two of the
10th Dragoons, with their horses, over a precipice. His other columns
met with equal difficulties. A letter in the Paris papers, dated
"Head-quarters, Chicavenna, 7th December, 1800," relates:--
"It was necessary to traverse the Splugen and Mount Carduiet. These
mountains, even in July, present all the horrors of winter; judge what
they are in December! Threatening and inaccessible rocks, seas of snow
on all sides, torrents of avalanches falling with a noise equally
terrible. Since our first march, two hundred men, with their horses,
have been swallowed up. After unheard-of labour, we succeeded in
disengaging all of them except three. There was not the least trace of
a road; but by labour and constancy we opened a narrow path, bordered
by precipices which the eye could not fathom nor the foot always avoid."
Two-thirds of the pass, which leads towards Como had been traversed,
the troops in front, with muskets slung, digging a path for their
comrades in the rear, till the column, exhausted by cold and fatigue,
began to retire without orders, though the dangers behind--snow,
hunger, and avalanches--were the same as those in front. Macdonald
galloped towards his sinking soldiers, and his presence had an
immediate effect on them. They halted; he entreated and threatened; but
they listened in sullen silence.
Then he dismounted, seized a shovel, and proceeded to dig the snow,
exclaiming--
"My comrades, I would rather perish in the abyss than stoop to turn my
steps on perils such as these!"
"Vive M. le Général!" cried the soldiers of the 80th. Confidence was
inspired anew; again the muskets were slung, the shovels resumed, and
after three days of labour, danger, and toil, the passage was achieved,
and the troops of Macdonald debouched from that terrible gorge, where
the frozen precipices seemed to hang from heaven, and where whirlwinds
of hail, tempests of snow, with death in its most frightful form, had
been encountered.
The resistance he experienced from the Austrian troops was trivial; and
on the 7th of January, 1801, he made himself master of the circle and
city of Trent; but the armistice concluded at Treviso on the 16th of
the same month put an end to the war. After this he remained for some
time at Isola, suffering from an illness caused by the fatigues he had
undergone at Splugen, and Delmas commanded in the interim.
At the close of the campaign he returned to Paris, where his opposition
to some of the arbitrary measures of the First Consul made that haughty
personage resolve on politely getting rid of a troublesome mentor,
by sending him on a distant mission. He was accordingly dispatched
to Denmark, as Minister Plenipotentiary from France to the Court
of Christian VII. There he resided for three years, and there he
encountered so many disagreeables, as his presence was unwelcome in
Copenhagen, that he frequently solicited his recall; but Napoleon was
jealous of Moreau, who was Macdonald's chief friend: thus he was only
recalled when the First Consul was about to exchange the consular staff
for an imperial sceptre.
It was about this time that the famous conspiracy of General Pichegreu
and Georges Cadoudal, and their correspondence with the Prince of
Condé, were discovered. In that correspondence Moreau was compromised
to a dangerous extent; thus his friend Macdonald was received with
greater coldness at the Tuileries.
The high indignation which he had the temerity to express after the
mock trial and banishment of his brother soldier Moreau, who fled to
America, completed the displeasure of the new Emperor, who withdrew all
countenance from Macdonald, and, notwithstanding his past services,
bravery, and endurance, his name was omitted from the list of marshals
of the Empire who were then created.
He retired to the country, inspired by a mortification which he could
not repress; and remained in seclusion, unnoticed, during the early
part of the new war against Spain and Austria, and until 1809 would
seem to have been forgotten; but he had perhaps the consolation of
remembering "that he must not fear who thirsts for glory; and although
we often find that true merit is eclipsed for a time, we have never
known it to be entirely lost; it bursts at last through the clouds
which environ it, and appears resplendent in its bright and genuine
colours."
These were the words of Fabius Maximus to Emilius when, with Varro, he
went to lead the Roman army; and thus the "true merit," the coolness
and intrepidity of Macdonald, were destined to shine again, for he was
remembered by Napoleon when that monarch became entangled with the
Italian and Peninsula wars--when the great armies of Austria pressed
him on one hand and the distant hordes of Russia were gathering on
the other; then, but not till then, did he seem to remember the brave
soldier whom petty quarrels and court intrigues had compelled him to
overlook. This was in that year when the perfidy of Napoleon to the
royal family of Spain and to the whole Spanish nation excited such
indignation, not only at the Court of Vienna, but throughout the whole
of Germany and Europe generally.
Macdonald was now offered the command of a division in that corps
of the army of Italy led by Prince Eugene Beauharnois, who was then
evincing his usual intrepidity, but was experiencing severe checks
from the Archduke John of Austria. This offer he at once accepted, for
he had grown weary alike of peace and of retirement. He joined Prince
Eugene; and from that period was deemed his mentor rather than his
second in command.
At the head of the right wing he crossed the Isola on the 14th and 15th
of April, 1809, and drove the Austrians from their strong positions at
Goritz, capturing eleven of their guns and much munition of war.
These successes led to those at Raab and at Laybach, both of which were
the result of Macdonald's combinations and manoeuvres; and pushing on
vigorously, without leisure or delay, with his division, he joined the
grand army of the Emperor before the gates of Vienna.
On the 5th and 6th of July he was at the famous battle of Wagram, where
he led two divisions of infantry, some of which were battalions of the
Garde Impériale. With these he advanced under a fire, when two hundred
pieces of cannon were engaged on both sides, and when the roar of
the conflict was the greatest ever heard even by the oldest veteran
of these warlike armies. Three-fourths of his column perished under
the storm of shot by which it was assailed as he advanced to break the
Austrian centre, the task assigned to him by the Emperor.
The fury with which his troops came on was irresistible. He drove back
the brigades of the archduke with immense loss, and a total rout of the
Austrians ensued, thus terminating a two days' conflict which will ever
be remembered in the annals of carnage--for few prisoners were taken on
either side, which proved the resolution of both--to conquer or die!
Thirty-six thousand, seven hundred and seventy-three officers and
soldiers of both armies lay killed or wounded on the field and round
the walls of Vienna; while, as related in the memoir of Count O'Reilly,
corpses in every variety of uniform, gashed and bloody, floated in
hundreds down the dark waters of the Danube, or were daily thrown upon
its shores to feed the wolves or to fester and decay. Such was the
field of Wagram, and it was the culminating point in the fortunes of
Stephen Macdonald.
Napoleon, though little disposed to view him with favour, when the
field was won, sprang from his horse, and embraced him with ardour,
exclaiming,--
"Now, Macdonald, we are together for life and death!"
He complimented him before his staff, extolled him in the bulletin, and
on the field of battle made him at last a Marshal of the Empire.
Of all the French marshals he was the only one who thus received a
bâton in the field, and soon after he was created Duke of Tarentum,
from a town of that name in Naples.
"Among all the marshals of France," says the editor of Bourienne's
_Memoirs_, "there is not one so pure from every stain on the soldier's
character--so daringly honest with Napoleon in his prosperity--so
lastingly true to him in his adversity, as this, his only Scottish
officer."
Napoleon thus bore honourable testimony to the value of his service at
Wagram, the glory of which another marshal sought to appropriate to
himself.
"As his majesty commands his army in person," says Napoleon, in a
private order, dated Camp of Schoenbrunn, 9th of July, 1809, "to him
belongs the exclusive right of assigning the degree of glory which each
merits. His majesty owes the success of his arms to the French troops,
and not to strangers. Prince Ponte Corvo's order of the day, tending
to give false pretensions to troops, at best not above mediocrity, is
contrary to truth, to discipline, and to national honour. The corps
of the Prince of Ponte Corvo did not remain immovable as iron. It was
the first to retreat. His majesty was obliged to cover it by the corps
of the Guard and the division commanded by Marshal Macdonald, by the
division of heavy cavalry commanded by General Nautsonby, and by a part
of the cavalry of the Guard. _To Marshal Macdonald belongs the praise
which the Prince of Ponte Corvo arrogates to himself._ His majesty
desires that this testimony of his displeasure may serve as an example
to every marshal not to attribute to himself the glory which belongs to
others."[27]
After Wagram he commanded in the duchy of Gratz, and maintained in his
army a discipline so severe in repressing plunder and outrage, that on
his departure at the peace with Austria, before his division began its
homeward march for France, the States prayed him to accept an offering
of two hundred thousand francs, but he resolutely declined them.
"Messieurs," said he, "I am a soldier--I have done but my duty."
Then the deputies offered him a jewel-box of great value, as a bridal
gift for one of his daughters; and to the bearers he made the following
reply:--
"Gentlemen, if you believe that you owe me anything, you shall have the
means of repaying me amply, by the care you will take of three hundred
poor invalid soldiers, whom I shall leave in your city."
Napoleon was now in the zenith of his power; his marriage with Maria
Louisa--an espousal more politic than honourable--had been celebrated
at the close of the year of Wagram; and in the year following, Holland,
the Valais, and the Hanse Towns were annexed to France; territories
which, with those of Rome, gave to the new empire an augmentation of
nearly 5,000,000 of subjects.
The war was now raging in the Peninsula, and there the feeble measures
of Augereau in Catalonia made Napoleon resolve to supersede him.
The Duke of Tarentum was named his successor, and, as such, he soon
restored order among the Catalans. In their mountainous province,
more than in any other part of Spain, military talent and energy were
required; as the entire population--a brave, resolute, and hardy
race--were in arms against the invaders. Augereau's losses in the
desultory warfare maintained by the Guerillas were so severe that they
more than counterbalanced his success in the sieges he undertook; and
these losses were so indicative of mismanagement that they ensured his
recal to France. He marched for the frontier laden with the plunder
of Barcelona, and of all the officers who formed its escort, General
Chabran was the only one--as the Catalan journals remarked--who did not
pillage the house in which he had been quartered; but returned to the
Patron de Caza the silver spoons he had used at table.
At this time rapine was the order of the day in the French army; a
hammer and a small saw invariably formed a portion of a soldier's
accoutrements, that he might have tools at hand to break open every
lock-fast place, when the work of pillage began.
In Catalonia, Macdonald found himself at the head of 17,000 men; in the
adjoining province of Aragon, Suchet led 16,000; and the Spanish corps
of O'Donnel were the only regular troops opposed to them both.
On Suchet laying siege to Tortosa, a fortified city on the left bank of
the Ebro, Macdonald marched with 12,000 men to secure the entrance of a
convoy of provisions into Barcelona; and this he achieved in triumph,
defeating a vigorous attempt of the Spaniards to intercept it.
O'Donnel, general of the Spaniards, now directed his main efforts to
relieve Tortosa, where the Conde de Alacha Miguel Lili, with 7800
brave fellows, who had survived or escaped from the battle of Tudela,
made a stout resistance. O'Donnel left nothing undone to impede the
operations of the besiegers and raise the blockade; till Macdonald, to
distract his attention and favour the operations of Suchet, marched
upon Tarragona, a seaport near the mouth of the Francoli. It is
picturesquely situated upon a hill, and is surrounded by old Moorish
walls, having turrets at intervals. As it is a place of importance,
the Spaniards were anxious to preserve it, and pressed Macdonald so
severely that he was forced to take up a position in sight of the
town, in a plain so near the sea that one of his flanks was exposed to
a cannonade from a British frigate. Finding this position untenable,
after a sharp encounter, and reaping no other advantage from his march
than the plunder of Reus, a wealthy little manufacturing town, he
retreated across the plains of Tarragona, harassed on both flanks by
the troops of Sarsfield and Ibarrola, who slew 300 of his soldiers,
captured 130, and retook most of the pillage found in Reus and
elsewhere.
As a central point, from whence he could cover Suchet's operations
against Tortosa, and command a space of country capable of supplying
the troops with food and forage, Macdonald chose a strong position
near Cervera, in sight of the Mediterranean. Finding him secure here,
O'Donnel, instead of attacking him, turned the attention of his own
troops against the French elsewhere, and cut off several of their small
garrisons, until he received a wound which disabled him.
On the 13th December, Macdonald received a welcome reinforcement of ten
thousand men; but, notwithstanding, Eroles, Sarsfield, and Campoverde,
at the head of the Spanish regiments of the line and Guerillas of
Catalonia, fought him successfully in almost every instance. Yet his
movements so completely covered the siege of Tortosa that, after five
months' delay, Suchet was able to break ground before it, and the
Conde Lili surrendered at discretion; for which sentence of death was
pronounced against him by the Spanish authorities; and with great
solemnity, in the market-place of Tarragona, the head was struck from
his _effigy_ by the public executioner.
In 1811, Macdonald possessed himself of Figueras, a small Catalonian
town situated in a fertile plain, not far from the frontier of France.
On an eminence it has a magnificent castle, with bomb-proof towers
and undermined approaches. This important strength had been taken by
the French three years before; but on the night of the 10th April,
1811, some Catalonians who had been forced into the ranks of a French
regiment, finding themselves, by a lucky coincidence, all on guard
together, resolved to have their revenge. They opened a sally-port
to their countrymen, who entering the castle sword in hand, made the
garrison, to the number of four thousand men, prisoners, without a shot
being exchanged. On the 19th of the following August, Macdonald, after
meeting with a determined resistance from these Catalonians, retook the
castle of Figueras, by capitulation, and garrisoned it again for Joseph
Bonaparte.
After this recapture, Catalonia seemed to be subjugated to the yoke of
France; yet, for some reason unknown, Macdonald was withdrawn from the
command of the army there, and it was bestowed upon General Decaen. It
is supposed that Napoleon, who disliked that any one should assume the
part of monitor or judge of his soldiers, was piqued at the tenor of an
obscure passage in Macdonald's report, in which he detailed to Marshal
Berthier the recapture of Figueras. It ran thus:--
"_I please myself in rendering justice_ to the army, in the hope that
the Emperor will view with an eye of favour these brave fellows,
entreating your excellency _to cause it to be remarked_ to his Majesty
that his army in Catalonia is a stranger to the event which has
re-united it in this place."
"How happens it," said General Sarrazen, "that Macdonald, who does not
want for good sense, should have permitted himself to use such awkward
observations?"
In the disastrous invasion of Russia he had command of the 10th Corps,
of which the Prussians formed a part. The details of that terrible
winter campaign are too well known to all the world to require
recapitulation in these memoirs.
The Emperor led his army to Smolensko, on the great road to Moscow, and
crossed the Niemann on the 27th of June.
Macdonald crossed the same river, on the same day, at Tilsit, by a
bridge of boats, and at the head of his French and Prussians (the Corps
d'Yorck) seized Dunabourg, while Kowno, in Lithuania, fell without
a struggle, and the great army of the Empire marched through it in
splendid order, with all its bands playing and colours flying. How
different was the aspect of the few surviving fugitives of that army
when they repassed Kowno in December following!
With orders to occupy the line of Riga, and if it was captured, to
threaten St. Petersburg, Macdonald marched towards the capital of
Livonia, which was occupied by a numerous garrison, whose defensive
measures were ably seconded by a British naval force. Napoleon
conceived that if the main body of the Russians fell back on St.
Petersburg, he would, when following them, be able to effect a junction
with the 10th Corps under Macdonald, after which they could push
on together; but though the latter burned the suburbs of Riga, his
operations against the place were long retarded by the bravery of the
besieged. Though not regularly fortified, the town has considerable
means of defence, being encircled by an earthen rampart, and having a
citadel, while a fortress guards the entrance of the Duna or Dwina.
The project of Napoleon became a failure, when the route pursued by
the retreating Russians proved different from the one he anticipated.
Thus he was obliged to advance after them to Moscow, while Macdonald
remained for a time before Riga, on which he could make no impression,
though he fought under its walls a series of bloody conflicts, in
futile assaults and repulsing desperate sorties. Suspicion of the faith
of his Prussian regiments was not his least source of anxiety. When
St. Cyr was alarmed that his flanks might be turned by the Russians
from Finland, he wrote an urgent letter to Macdonald requesting him
to oppose the march of those troops who were led by Wittgenstien and
Steinheil, and whose line of march lay in front of the position before
Riga; adding that if he (Macdonald) objected to detach any part of
his forces from the blockade, to come and assume command of St. Cyr's
division in person, and meet this army from Finland. "But Macdonald,"
adds Count Segur, "did not conceive himself justified in making so
important a movement without express orders. He distrusted Yorck, the
Prussian general, whom he suspected of intending to deliver up to the
Russians his park of siege artillery. He replied, that to defend it
was his first and most indispensable duty, and he declined to quit his
station."
Macdonald's suspicions soon proved correct; for on the 13th December,
1812, when in presence of the enemy, he was abandoned by the whole of
the Prussians under General Yorck; and was thus compelled to retire,
though resisting with indomitable energy the attack of the Russians,
who followed him closely, when sword in hand he sought to hew a passage
to the rear. By this time all was lost elsewhere.
He survived the perils of that frightful campaign, in which out of
300,000 soldiers, who, in June, passed the Niemann in all the pomp
of war and pride of former victories, scarcely 50,000 escaped out of
Russia; and of these the greater number had suffered so dreadfully from
wounds, hunger and frost, as to be quite unfit for future service.
With 1131 pieces of cannon, there were taken by the Russians 41
generals, 1298 officers. 167,410 sergeants and rank and file. The
_rest_ were accounted for by the frost and snow, the Cossack lances,
the bullet and the sabre, rendering the paths across the whitened
wastes of Russia impassable with the bodies of the dying and the dead.
Never in all the annals of war were greater sufferings detailed than
those endured by the miserable French on their retreat from flaming
Moscow.
In 1813, Macdonald commanded a corps in Saxony, where, on the 29th
April, he had the satisfaction of routing at Mercebourg the division of
General Yorck, composed of the _same_ Prussians who had abandoned him
at Riga during the previous year; and at Lutzen, where, on the 2nd May,
the combined forces of Russia and Prussia met the French in battle, led
by the Emperor in person, he attacked the Prussian reserve, and after a
long and severe engagement cut it to pieces.
"Now," said he, "I have fully avenged the desertion of General Yorck."
After this Napoleon retired and established his head-quarters at
Dresden, while Leipzig and Breslau were also occupied by his troops.
On being reinforced by the Saxons, whose king he held as a species
of hostage for his people, he resolved on attacking the northern
allies near Bautzen; and Macdonald hastened with his division across
the Spree, to share in the battle which ensued in June. The French
triumphed, and their foes had to retreat, but in fine order, into
Silesia. Macdonald was despatched by the Emperor in pursuit; but was
compelled to fall back, as the roads by which he must have marched were
almost inundated.
Nowhere did he attain more distinction than during the horrors of the
three days of Leipzig.
This Saxon city, which is situated in a fertile plain, has suffered
in many wars, but by none so much as the campaign of 1813. In that
year Napoleon made it the general hospital for the sick and wounded
of his army; thus its beautiful environs soon became the sad scene of
many important events. In several battles and skirmishes the allies
had defeated the French during the months of August and September; but
Napoleon, who, with his characteristic obstinacy, adhered to Dresden as
the centre of his position, found himself out-manoeuvred, when eighty
miles _in his rear_ he heard of Marshal Blucher passing the Black
Elster, and that Bernadotte, a prince of his own making, but now in
arms against him, had arrived, after a long and circuitous march, near
the suburbs of Leipzig, while Schwartzenbourg drew near that city from
the south-east.
This was in the month of October.
The French numbered 160,000 bayonets and sabres; the allies 240,000.
The outposts were soon engaged on the 16th; the following day was spent
in skirmishes and manoeuvres till the three allied armies formed a
junction, and the stern conflict of the 18th began with all its terrors
over an extent of line that covered seven miles. A little village on
the French right, where Napoleon had posted himself, was lost and
retaken again and again at the bayonet's point under a storm of round
and grape shot. Noon arrived, but the battle was still undecided,
when all breathless with speed, an officer, with his uniform torn and
bloody, rushed towards the Emperor.
"Sire," he exclaimed, "the left wing has given way; the Saxon cavalry
and artillery have gone over to the enemy!"
"Silence!" replied Napoleon, sternly; "silence!"
The intelligence was kept secret from the right and centre, and still
the strife went on.
By three p.m. came the still more alarming tidings that the Saxon
infantry had deserted _en masse_ to the allies. This also was kept a
secret from the French troops, though the Imperial Guard was ordered
to take their place; but the power thus attained by the allies was no
longer to be withstood, and a precipitate retreat towards the Rhine
became the first thought of the vanquished Emperor.
At nightfall he gave the order to fall back, leaving the environs
of Leipzig strewed with dead and dying; but his order was tardily
executed, as all the French fugitives with their baggage, cannon,
and wounded, on horseback, on foot, or in waggons, were compelled to
take _one_ road, every other being occupied by the cavalry and horse
artillery of the victors; consequently, the sufferings and slaughter of
the French, even after the field was lost, became dreadful. Napoleon,
before retiring, had ordered that the bridge of the White Elster should
be undermined, and directed Macdonald and Prince Joseph Poniatowski,
with their divisions, to defend a portion of the suburbs that lay
between the advancing enemy and the Borna road; and to leave nothing
undone to maintain their post to the last, that the retreat of the
army and baggage might be fully covered.
Poniatowski was brave as a lion. He was nephew of Stanislaus Augustus,
the last King of Poland, and was animated alike by the purest
patriotism and hatred of the Russians; hence he served France against
them as the oppressors of his house and native country. He had 2000
Polish infantry and a few horse with him; and seeing the desperation
of affairs, as the waggons of wounded, dripping with blood, the heavy
artillery with their tumbrils, and the masses of fugitive soldiery
exhausted by three days of fighting and excitement, pressed in close
ranks across the bridge of the Elster, he drew his sabre and turning to
his countrymen--
"Gentlemen," said he, "here we must win or lose our honour!--Forward!"
and at the head of a few Polish cuirassiers he made a rush towards the
enemy. At that moment the bridge of the Elster was _blown up_, and his
retreat cut off for ever!
Macdonald was similarly circumstanced, as his troops had manned and
enfiladed the suburbs, where they were firing briskly to keep the foe
in check from walls, houses, and hedgerows.
According to the _Moniteur_, it was the intention of Napoleon to have
the bridge blown up only at the last moment, and when all his troops
had passed the stream. General Dussaussoy had remitted this duty to
Colonel Montfort, who, in turn, had remitted it to a corporal and four
sappers. On the first appearance of the enemy upon the road, and when
the cuirassiers of Poniatowski charged, the startled corporal fired the
train, and a dark cloud of dust and stones ascending into the air with
a mighty roar, announced the destruction of the bridge; while Macdonald
and his whole corps, with eighty pieces of cannon, all their eagles,
and several hundred carriages laden with powder, baggage, and wounded
men, were on the _wrong_ side of the river. A shout of astonishment and
dismay arose from those who had crossed; and many an anxious eye was
turned back to Leipzig, where the roar of musketry was yet heard in the
rear.
The attention of Napoleon, who had left the city by the road which led
by the bridge to Lindenau (the direct route for France) was arrested by
the explosion, and one of his aides-de-camp exclaimed,
"Sire--sire--they have blown up the bridge of the Elster, and
Macdonald's corps is _yet in Leipzig_!"
"At that time," to quote Bourienne, "Napoleon was accused of having
given orders for the destruction of the bridge, immediately _after_
his own passage, to secure his retreat from the active pursuit of the
enemy. The English journals were unanimous on this point, and there
were few of the inhabitants of Leipzig who doubted the fact."
If this be true, it was a baseness only equalled by the strangulation
of Pichegreu, the torture of Captain Wright in the Temple, and the
lonely butchery of the hapless Duc d'Enghien.
Finding all lost, and that his retreat was cut off, Macdonald sheathed
his sword, and calling on his soldiers to escape as they best could,
threw himself into the river, the waters of which were darkening as the
night drew on. He swam across, and reached the other side in safety.
Poor Poniatowski, though bleeding and severely wounded, imitated his
example; but he was pierced by a bullet, from one of the enemy's
skirmishers, who had now lined the steep bank of the Elster, and opened
a murderous fire upon the mass of unfortunate fugitives, the wreck of
Macdonald's corps, who were struggling in the stream. In the dark, the
unfortunate prince was swept away with his charger and drowned. Five
days after, his corpse was found by a fisherman, and interred on the
bank of the stream. A granite sarcophagus, surrounded by acacias and
weeping-willows, marks the place where he lies.
Colonel Montfort, the corporal, and the four sappers, were delivered
over to a court-martial.
Such was the closing episode of that terrible day at Leipzig, the
anniversary of the more glorious events of Ulm and of Jena--a day that
cost France nearly forty thousand men.
Napoleon continued his retreat to Mayence, with an army exhausted by
toil, crushed by defeat, and savage in spirit, but lacking the stamina
to make one more vigorous stand for France, save at Hanau; for French
soldiers, more than any other, are the worst to retrieve a disaster.
"The _defensive_ system," to quote the _Memoirs_ of Marshal Ney,
"accords ill with the disposition of the French soldier, at least if
it is not to be maintained by successive diversions and excursions;
in a word, if you are not constantly occupied in that little warfare,
inactivity destroys the force of troops who rest continually on the
defensive. They are obliged to be constantly on the alert night and
day; while, on the other hand, offensive expeditions wisely combined
raise the spirit of the soldier, and prevent him from having time
to ponder on the real cause of his dangerous situation. It is in
the _offensive_ that you find the French soldier inexhaustible in
resources. His active disposition and valour in assaults double his
power. A general should never hesitate to march with the bayonet
against an enemy, if the ground is favourable for the use of that
weapon. It is in the _attack_, in fine, that you accustom the French
soldier to every species of warfare--alike to brave the enemy's fire,
and to leave the field open to the development of his intelligence and
courage."
But now the spirit of the French soldiers was almost dead for a time;
and so ill was this retreat conducted, that the rear-guard, with 20,000
sick and wounded, fell into the hands of the enemy.
Macdonald was at the battle of Hanau, the last stand made by this
discomfited host in Hesse Cassel. There the French were attacked by
the Austrians and Bavarians, whom they routed, and then continued
retreating, the whole of their cavalry hewing a passage, sword in hand,
through the lines of the enemy.
He was now despatched by the Emperor to Cologne, with orders to
organize a new army. These instructions he found the impossibility of
fulfilling, so he abandoned the Rhine, along the banks of which the
bayonets of the allies were glittering everywhere, and falling back
into the interior of ancient France, with the war-worn veterans of his
shattered column, he formed the left wing of the retreating army; and
at its head, during the campaign of 1814, he gave more than one severe
repulse to the Prussians, who were pressing towards Paris under Marshal
Blucher. These encounters were chiefly on the banks of the Marne, and
especially at Nangis, in the north of France, where he fought a severe
action with the allies on the 17th of February; but these struggles and
all the valour of the French Imperialists were vain, for ere long the
capital was taken; then Germany found itself freed from oppression;
Holland rang with acclamations on the downfall of Napoleon; and
Wellington had halted in his long career of victory, on the banks of
the Garonne, and by the hill of Toulouse.
Macdonald adhered to the fallen Emperor--the child of Destiny--and
was with him in the old palace of Fontainebleau at the time of his
abdication from the most splendid of European thrones. Hope had fled.
His army was dispersed and crumbling to pieces; its great officers
and leaders had abandoned him; and such is the instability of human
affairs, that the people of whose blood he had been so lavish--the
people to whom he had been a demi-god--were turning with ardour
to another monarch, and welcomed the foemen against whom they had
struggled for more than twenty years of war and carnage that were
without parallel.
"The wreck of the army assembled at Fontainebleau," says General
Bourienne, "the remains of a million of men levied in fifteen
months--comprising the corps of Marshals Oudinot, Ney, Macdonald, and
General Gerard--did not exceed twenty-five thousand."
Various interviews that took place between Napoleon and the Duke of
Tarentum about this time are carefully detailed by this gossiping old
soldier, in the supplement to the _Biographie Universelle_, and other
memoirs.
Macdonald with his corps had marched in with all speed from Montereau,
on receipt of an order from the Emperor, that he meant to march on
Paris--a resolution that filled his officers with consternation. On the
marshal's arrival at the palace, the generals waited on him in a body,
to request that he would place before the Emperor, the rashness and
desperation of attempting to recapture Paris from the allies.
"Messieurs," said he, "in the present juncture, such advice might
displease his Majesty--leave the matter to me."
As soon as he presented himself before Napoleon--
"Well, marshal," said he, "how do things go?"
"Very ill, sire."
"What! Very ill? How is your division disposed?"
"It is completely discouraged, sire; recent events at Paris have spread
consternation through its ranks."
"Think you," asked the Emperor, "it will join with me in a movement
upon Paris?"
"Trust not to that, sire," was the desponding answer; "should I give
such an order, I should hazard being disobeyed."
"But what are we to do?" said the Emperor, passionately. "I cannot
remain as I am! I shall march against Paris; I will punish these
inconstant Parisians, and the folly of the senate! Woe to the
government they have plastered up waiting the return of their Bourbons.
To-morrow I shall place myself at the head of my Old Guard, and
to-morrow we shall be in the Tuileries!"
"Sire," urged Macdonald, "are you ignorant that a provisional
government has been established?"
"I know it."
"Then, sire, read this--a letter from Marshal Bournonville, announcing
the sentence of forfeiture pronounced by the senate, and the resolution
of the allied generals not to treat with you."
The countenance of Napoleon became violently contracted. After a pause,
he exclaimed, furiously,
"I shall march upon Paris!"
"March upon Paris, sire," reiterated Macdonald; "that design must be
renounced, for not a sword will leave its scabbard to follow you."
Finding all indeed over, the bitter subject of his abdication came to
be gravely considered, and he handed to the marshal a document, on the
4th April, stating that he was ready to quit the throne of France.
The tender and honourable part acted by Macdonald at this humiliating
but memorable time was duly appreciated by the Emperor, who has done
him ample justice. With Marshal Ney and the Duke of Vicenza, he
was named one of the commissioners sent by Napoleon to the Emperor
Alexander.
"Well, Duke of Tarentum," said the former, before the marshal left
Fontainebleau, "do you think a regency is the only thing possible?"
"Yes, sire."
"Well," continued Napoleon, who had now recovered his composure; "I
charge you with my message to the Emperor Alexander; you will go with
Ney instead of Marmont. _I rely on you_, and I hope you have entirely
forgotten the circumstances which separated us so long?"
"Oh, sire, I have never once thought of them since 1809."
"I rejoice to hear it," replied Napoleon with emotion; "but marshal--I
must now make the acknowledgment--_I was wrong_."
"Sire!" exclaimed Macdonald; the Emperor pressed his hand and faltered
out but one word,
"Go."[28]
Macdonald vehemently urged that a regency should be established in
France, in the person of Maria Louisa, in favour of her son, the young
King of Rome, and violent altercations took place at the conference.
"Speak not to me, sir," said he to Bournonville, who opposed him; "your
conduct has made me forget the friendship of thirty years!" "As for
_you_, sir," he added, turning to Dupont, "your behaviour towards the
Emperor is not generous. I acknowledge that he may have been unjust to
you in the affair of Baylen; but how long has it been the fashion to
avenge a personal wrong at the expense of the country?"
"Gentlemen," exclaimed the Duke of Vicenza, "do not forget that you are
in the presence of the Emperor of Russia."
The energy with which Macdonald urged the cause of Napoleon
embarrassed the Emperor of Russia; but neither the eloquence with which
he spoke of the military glory of France, and the resolution of himself
and his comrades never to abandon the family of one who had led them so
often to victory, and with whom they had shared so many perils in war,
nor the arguments with which he sought to enforce the regency, were
successful; and at midnight on the 6th, he returned in dejection to
Fontainebleau, to render, with Ney and Caulaincourt, an account of his
mission. Napoleon again exhibited much emotion, and said, with a sigh,
"I know, marshal, all you have done for me--with what warmth you have
pleaded the cause of my son. They desire my simple and unconditional
abdication? Well--act on my behalf. Go, and again defend my interests
and those of my family."
Bourienne and others thus relate their last interview.
"Alas!" said Napoleon, "I am no longer rich enough to recompense your
last service, Macdonald; but I can perceive how unwisely I was formerly
prejudiced against you. I can also see the designs of those who
inspired me with that prejudice."
"Sire," replied the marshal, "I have already had the honour to assure
you, that since 1809 I have been yours in life and death!"
"Since I can no longer recompense you as I would wish, I pray you
to remember that I shall NEVER forget the faithful service you have
rendered me!"
Napoleon then turned to Caulaincourt, saying,
"Duke of Vicenza, bring my sabre."
Caulaincourt brought the weapon, which was one of exquisite
workmanship, and placed it in the hands of the Emperor.
"Behold," said he, "a recompence, Macdonald, which, I believe, will
give you pleasure. This sabre, which was given to me by Murad Bey, in
Egypt, after we had won the battle of Mount Tabor, accept, my friend--a
gift which, I believe, will gratify you."
"Sire," replied the marshal, whose voice trembled as he received the
sabre from the Emperor; "if ever I have a son, this weapon shall be
his noblest heritage; and as such I will guard it with my life."
"Give me your hand, and embrace me!" exclaimed Napoleon; and throwing
themselves into each others arms, they parted in tears--parted never to
meet again as friends.[29]
In obedience to the commands of the fallen Emperor, the marshal, on the
day succeeding this impressive farewell, sent in his adhesion to the
new government.
"Now," he wrote, "that I am freed from my allegiance to the Emperor
Napoleon, I have the honour to announce to you--the provisional
government--that I accord with the national wish which recalls the
dynasty of Bourbon to the throne of France."
On the 6th May, he was named member of the Council of War, and
Chevalier of St. Louis. This was an order instituted by Louis XIV. in
1693, and, until the revolution, it remained entirely in possession of
the French army. The badge was a gold cross of eight points, hung from
a broad crimson ribbon. On the 6th June, he was created a peer of the
realm by the surviving descendant of the Capet family, Louis XVIII.,
who seemed now firmly seated on the throne of France. But this monarch,
as soon as order was duly established, was sufficiently rash and unwise
to raise doubts about the validity of that law by which, during the
stormy days of the republic, the property of the emigrant noblesse had
been confiscated and sold. This was an unpleasant topic to broach at
a time when Napoleon, like a caged lion, in Elba was watching for the
moment to break forth; and Macdonald foresaw that misfortunes might
ensue from its discussion; thus, on the 3rd December, 1814, he made
an oration which succeeded in tranquillizing the fears of those who
had made fortunes amid the anarchy of the republic, or with the growth
of the late military empire. He had, moreover, the amiable intention
of succouring the aged nobles and chevaliers of St. Louis, who were
returning home after twenty-two years of exile, and the families of
those whose fidelity to the ancient monarchy had involved them in
penury, expatriation, and ruin.
His proposition was to raise twelve millions of annual rents, to be
divided in proportions according to the rank and necessities of the
claimants. His motion was received by all honourable men with favour,
and with lively gratitude by those whose cause he had undertaken. He
also advocated the hard case of his old comrades, the veteran soldiers
of the Empire, who had lost their pay and pensions by the success of
the restoration.
Macdonald won the hearts of all by these proposed measures; but they
were brought forward too late in the year to have any practical or
beneficial result; for now the eyes of all men were turned towards the
little isle of Elba, from whence the _Violet_, as his soldiers named
Napoleon, was confidently expected to come with the spring.
About this time, learning that Madame Moreau, the widow of his old
friend and brother soldier, had secretly applied in his favour to
an influential friend at Naples, to the effect that the revenues of
the dukedom of Tarentum, which had been long withheld, should be
continued to him, he wrote to the French plenipotentiary at the court
of Ferdinand, praying that, with all gratitude to Madame Moreau, there
might be no interference in the matter.
"Ferdinand of Naples," said he, with noble spirit, "owes me nothing,
for having routed his armies, revolutionized his kingdom, and forced
him to seek refuge in Sicily."
"Had I not laid it down as a principle," replied Ferdinand, "not to
maintain one of the French endowments, I would assuredly have made an
exception in favour of Marshal Macdonald."
On the 1st of March, 1815, the Emperor landed from Elba, and again
Europe vibrated with war. The followers of the Bourbons were struck
with consternation, and the soldiers to whom Louis XVIII. looked for
protection and defence, were naturally enough flocking to the standard
of their old leader; and he could turn to none, in his desertion and
dismay, save a few officers of high rank, whose spirit of honour made
them adhere to their oath of allegiance. The first to whom he addressed
himself was Marshal Macdonald. He sent that officer to Lyons, where he
arrived on the 8th of March, and found the Comte d'Artois in despair at
the sullen and mutinous spirit exhibited by the troops he commanded.
Macdonald, of course, could not be surprised at this conduct in the
soldiers, while his own heart led him towards the Emperor, and an
_oath_ tied him to the throne of the Bourbons; but he ordered a general
parade of all the troops, and reviewed them before the prince. Still
the same sullenness and the same silence, so unusual in French soldiers
during a time of excitement, were apparent in the officers and men.
So strong did this feeling become, that the Comte d'Artois (according
to the _Voice from St. Helena_) had to withdraw in haste from Lyons,
accompanied by _one_ solitary dragoon, while Macdonald marched with a
regiment of cavalry and two battalions of infantry of the line towards
the bridge of the Rhone, which Napoleon was approaching at the head of
a few soldiers of the Old Guard and a force increasing every hour by
the regiments which deserted as they were despatched against him.
The marshal seized and barricaded the bridge, his soldiers still
obeying in silence, till the brass drums of the Emperor were heard
ringing on the highway; again the old tri-colour was seen, and the
eagles that had spread their gilded wings over so many fatal fields
were glittering in the sun. The marshal ordered his troops to fix
bayonets and load with ball-cartridge.
Where was then the memory of that farewell at Fontainebleau? and where
the sword of Murad Bey--the souvenir of Mount Tabor? The marshal was
deeply moved at that moment, but he remembered the oath he had sworn to
Louis XVIII.
The 4th Hussars, who formed the imperial advanced guard, dashed boldly
up to the bridge at full speed, and, brandishing their sabres, shouted
their old battle-cry, "_Vive l'Empereur!_"
The effect was electric. The soldiers of Macdonald could no longer
restrain their long-smothered enthusiasm. They, at least, had sworn no
fealty to King Louis. With a shout they responded, and, waving their
caps and muskets in welcome, tore aside the barricade, and rushed to
meet the Emperor, leaving the marshal on horseback, and by the roadside
_alone_.
The 4th Hussars wished to seize and deliver him to the Emperor, but,
animated by a high sense of chivalry, his own dragoons, who had come
with him from Lyons, would by no means permit this, and drew their
ranks across the road until he escaped. He returned immediately to
Paris, and was desired by Louis XVIII. to command in the army formed
under the Duc de Berri. This army proved, however, but a phantom, as
the soldiers composing it almost to a man joined the banner of the
Emperor.
Left thus alone, Macdonald repaired to the unfortunate king, and on the
night of the 20th of March accompanied him on his retreat to Menin;
but he again returned to Paris, where pleading his oath of fidelity,
sworn by the Emperor's desire to the Bourbons, he declined to serve
the imperial cause or become one of the Chamber of Peers under it--a
refusal, doubtless, most painful to one who knew that he owed all his
rank and honours to Napoleon. Relinquishing all these, as it were, for
a time, the marshal duke enrolled himself as a simple grenadier in
the National Guard of Paris, and as such did military duty during the
usurpation, as it was named; and in the plain uniform of this corps,
divested of medals, crosses, and epaulettes, he appeared as a private
sentinel before Louis XVIII. on his return to the Tuileries.
On the capitulation of Paris to the allies the remains of Napoleon's
army, then encamped beyond the Loire, were placed under the command
of Macdonald, whose instructions were to remodel and re-organize the
regiments, a difficult and arduous mission, which he accomplished with
equal fidelity and address; but the soldiers, dispirited by the defeat
at Waterloo, awed into submission by the flight of their idol Napoleon,
and the presence of the overwhelming masses of the allies, obeyed him
in silence and dejection. All was over now with the Bonapartists. The
army of the Empire was broken and scattered, like the marshal dukes who
had led it to those glories and conquests of which there remained but
the memory now!
In the words of M. Fleury de Chabulon, "Marshal Ney was the first to
give the alarm and despair of the safety of his country. Marshal Soult
had abjured his command, Marshal Massena, exhausted by victory, had no
longer the strength required by circumstances; Marshal Macdonald, deaf
to the war-cry of his old companions, left his sword peacefully in its
scabbard; Marshal Jourdan was on the Rhine; Marshal Mortier had the
gout at Beaumont; Marshal Suchet evinced repugnance and irresolution;
and finally, the Marshals Davoust and Grouchy no longer enjoyed the
confidence of the army."
Thus the throne that had been so long propped by bayonets and by the
splendid chivalry of the Old Guard and of the whole imperial army, had
crumbled into dust at last!
For his talent in organizing the army of the Loire Macdonald received
the office of Grand Chancellor of the Legion of Honour, succeeding the
Abbé de Pradt on the 10th of January, 1816, and on the 3rd of May, in
that year, he was appointed Knight Commander of St. Louis.
It is related that, when dining one day at the Tuileries, Charles X.
said to him--
"How came it to pass, marshal, that when serving in our Irish regiment
of Dillon, which emigrated _with us_ entirely, you still remained in
France?"
"Sire," he replied, "because I was in love with Mademoiselle Jacob; and
I applaud myself for it, since to that girl's love I owe the honour of
being this day at table with your Majesty."
"How so?"
"Because, had I emigrated, I might have lived in penury and died of
despair; but now, sire, I am a duke and marshal of France."
This reply was so frank and politic, that the king questioned him no
more on that subject. He was one of the four marshals who had command
of the Royal Guard; and as one of a commission appointed to inquire
into the recruiting of the army, on the 24th of February, 1818, he made
an able report upon the oppressive law of conscription, urging upon the
French ministry the British system of voluntary enlistment.
Four years after this, by a royal ordinance, he procured the reversion
of his rank and titles to the Marquis de Rochedragon, his son-in-law;
but this ordinance was useless, as there was no prospect of that noble
having any family. Thus, the marshal being anxious to have a male
heir--all his children being daughters--he married, in his fifty-eighth
year, Mademoiselle de Bourgoing, and from that period led a quiet and
retired life. Soon after his marriage he came to Scotland, the land of
his forefathers.
Accompanied by his aide-de-camp, Colonel Count Couessin, a nobleman
who was descended from an ancient family in Brittany, and was the
husband of his niece, Macdonald arrived in Edinburgh about the middle
of June, 1825. He remained at an hotel, where he received the cards
of all persons of distinction in the vicinity, and was visited by
every gentleman in the city who bore his name. He attended mass in the
Catholic church of St. Mary, and viewed all the great "sights" of the
Scottish metropolis. A Mr. Macdonald Buchanan invited him to a dinner
at which Sir Walter Scott, Lord Jeffrey, and Henry Cockburn, were
present, with several gentlemen who claimed the marshal as a clansman
and relation. "From what I see of you, gentlemen," said he, when
returning thanks after his health had been proposed, "and from what I
have remarked of this country, I feel more pride than ever in having
Scottish blood in my veins."
With great interest he visited the battle-field of Prestonpans, and
viewed the ground from the Thorntree, where Colonel Gardiner was slain
by the Highlanders. After being _fêted_ at Hopeton House, he left
Edinburgh for the Highlands, with the intention of visiting every part
of the country in which his father had accompanied Prince Charles
Edward, during their flight and concealment after Culloden.
On his way north, he visited the field of Bannockburn, on the 24th of
June, the anniversary of the battle; and, after surveying the ground
with a soldier's eye, he praised the dispositions and the valour of
Robert Bruce. Everywhere he expressed himself "enraptured with the
beauty of the country; and above all, of the metropolis of Scotland."
He visited the "fair city" of Perth; and accompanied by Macdonald of
Staffa, reached Inverness early in July, and went immediately to the
field of Culloden, where his father's sword had been drawn for the
last of the Stuarts. There he gazed about him long and thoughtfully,
surveying the desert moor, which is yet dotted by the green graves of
the loyal and brave men who fell there.
He expressed astonishment that the prince, with his slender army of
swordsmen, destitute alike of horse and artillery, should have fought
twice the number of regular troops on such ground, instead of retiring
into the mountains, and harassing the army of Cumberland by a guerilla
warfare.
In the ill-fated _Comet_ (a steamer which was wrecked a short time
after, under distressing circumstances) he left the Highland capital
for the wild mountain-shore of Arisaig; and to a large dinner-party on
board he made an address expressive of his admiration for the Scottish
clans, "than whom," said he, "no people, I think, deserve to be more
esteemed for their national character and uniform good conduct."
Everywhere he was _fêted_ and welcomed with Highland ardour and
hospitality, and in many instances by old Highland soldiers and retired
officers, who had served against him in Holland, Germany, and Spain.
On his landing under the walls of Armidale Castle in Sleat, on the
southern shore of Skye, he was saluted by fifteen pieces of cannon, and
was received by a body of his clansmen in full Highland arms and array,
under Lord Macdonald.
At the beautiful ruins of Castle Tiorm, in "the country of Clanranald,"
there was presented to him an aged clansman, named Alaster Macdonald,
then in his hundredth year, who had known his father, and remembered
the melancholy embarkation of Prince Charles and his fugitive
followers, seventy-nine years before. With this old namesake the
marshal conversed long, and asked him many questions about the personal
appearance, &c., of Prince Charles Edward.
He left the Scottish isles in a government ship, and reached Dublin
on the 16th of July; and there he again met Sir Walter Scott, who had
arrived in the same city on the previous day.
"Respecting his visit (to Scotland) a singular tradition is preserved
in France," says Dr. Memes; "namely, that, on being introduced to Sir
Walter Scott, the marshal offered to place at the disposal of the
historian authentic and unpublished intelligence on certain important
and misrepresented events. Sir Walter declined the proffered aid, with
the remark, 'Thank you, marshal; but I prefer taking my materials from
popular and current reports.' We relegate this to the class of fables."
After his return to France, he led a life of quiet and retirement, and
for nearly twenty-five years his name was rarely heard. He grew rapidly
feeble; for his long career of war in almost every country in Europe,
and the numerous severe wounds he had received, brought age quickly
upon him.
He died in his seventy-fifth year, on the 24th of September, 1840, at
his country house near Courcelles. A noble and generous eulogy was
pronounced upon him by General Count Philip de Segur, author of a
history of Napoleon's Russian expedition, and who in former days had
been the aide-de-camp of Macdonald.
The latter was pure in spirit and generous in heart, faithful and
benevolent in peace, as he was brave and true in battle. Sarrazen thus
describes him:--
"The Duke of Tarentum is of a good size, of a slender make, but robust
and pale-faced, with eyes full of fire; his smile is sardonic, his
bearing military, and his manners polished. I believe him to be a
sincere friend; and although he showed a weakness of character in the
council of war which occasioned the loss of the battle of Trebia,
we cannot but allow him to have all the firmness necessary to a good
general."
It has been already shown that the misfortune on the banks of the
Trebia arose from circumstances over which the marshal had no control;
but it was a battle that he fought long and gallantly.
He was thrice married; first to Mademoiselle Jacob, one of the most
beautiful girls in France, by whom he had two daughters, one of whom
married Sylvester Rene, Duke of Massa, in Italy; and the youngest to
Alphonse Comte de Perregaux. He married secondly, Madame Joubert,
formerly Mademoiselle de Montholon, widow of his comrade the brave
General Joubert, who was slain in battle against Suwarrow at Novi, on
the 16th of August, 1799. By her the marshal had an only daughter,
afterwards the Marchioness de Rochedragon. He married thirdly, Madame
de Bourgoing, daughter of the superintendent of the Royal Hospital at
St. Denis, and widow of the Ambassador Baron de Bourgoing.[30]
They had two children: to the joy of the old marshal one of these was a
son, whom he named Alexander, and who in October, 1824, was held at the
baptismal font by his Majesty Charles X. and Madame the Dauphinesse,
and who now inherits the dukedom of Tarentum, and the sabre of Mont
Tabor.
Such was the career of Stephen Macdonald, the son of an obscure
Scottish fugitive from the field of Culloden, who thus became a Marshal
Duke of the Empire, and by his worth and bravery shed a glory on his
father's name and on the rank he won.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 25: "General Macdonald, who has come forward with so much
_éclat_ as commander of a French column, is the descendant of a Mr.
Macdonald of Argyleshire. His uncle is Mr. Macdonald of Kinlochmoidart.
He preserves his clannish affections, and in the campaign of Pichegreu
in Flanders and Holland, having command of a brigade which had to press
on a British brigade, where he discovered a _namesake_, he supplied his
countryman during the memorable retreat with every comfort which a camp
could afford."--_Edinburgh Herald_, 10th January, 1799.]
[Footnote 26: General Sarrazen says _fifteen_ thousand (?)]
[Footnote 27: Bourienne.]
[Footnote 28: _Bourienne._]
[Footnote 29: "The sabre I recognised at once; only since I
had last seen it, the following words had been engraved on the
blade:--_Sabre worn by the Emperor on the day of the battle of Mount
Tabor_."--_Bourienne_, vol. iv.]
[Footnote 30: _Biographie Universelle_, &c.]
THOMAS DALYELL,
OF BINNS, GENERAL OF THE SCOTTISH ARMY, AND FIRST COLONEL OF THE SCOTS
GREY DRAGOONS.
In my novel of _The Scottish Cavalier_ I have endeavoured to portray
the character of this celebrated cavalier officer, with all that
military sternness and ferocity of disposition which has generally been
attributed to him, but chiefly by his enemies, for the poor man seems
never to have found a single friend among the many historians of the
Covenant. Thus, notwithstanding his unwavering loyalty to the House
of Stuart in the days of its declension, by his extreme severity when
that House was in the zenith of its power, he became so unpopular in
Scotland, that his memory is still execrated there. He is stigmatized
as a "persecutor," as the _Bloody Dalyell_, whose spirit is yet averred
to haunt the fields where he routed or slew the children of the
Covenant--who had sold himself to the devil; one who was shot-proof, and
"Whose form no darkening shadow traced
Upon the sunny wall;"
one who, when he spat, burned a hole in the earth; one in whose
military boots water would boil, and whose spectre, habited in a buff
coat and morion, wearing that voluminous white beard for which he was
so remarkable, still haunts the house in which he was born and the tomb
in which he lies.
Descended from an old baronial family, which was afterwards ennobled
by the Earldom of Carnwath, and which acquired its estates about the
end of the sixteenth century he was the son of Thomas Dalyell, of the
Binns, in West Lothian, and of the Honourable Janet Bruce, a daughter
of the first Lord Bruce of Kinloss, the eminent minister of James
VI.--a peer whose skill in statecraft, in conjunction with the Earl of
Mar, was of great service in securing James's peaceful accession to the
English throne in 1603.
Thomas Dalyell, the younger, is said to have been born about the year
1599, during the reign of James VI. in Scotland, at his father's house
of Binns, in the parish of Abercorn, Linlithgowshire. The ancient name
is Dalyell; but the _z_ has since crept in, by the corruption of the
letter _y_ in old Scottish orthography, and hence the pronunciation of
it so puzzling to an English tongue.
Dalyell is first heard of as an officer of those auxiliary Scottish
troops sent to Ireland by their native Parliament, at the request of
Charles I., to protect the Ulster colonists, and assist in repressing
the rebellion under Sir Phelim O'Neil and Macguire, when the dreadful
massacre of the English took place.
For this service the Parliament of Scotland levied eight battalions
of infantry, of whom two thousand five hundred were Highlanders. Arms
for three thousand men were offered to the Irish Protestants, and the
castles of Craigmore and Carrickfergus, two small strongholds in the
north of Ireland, were supplied with all requisite munitions of war
from the magazines at Dumbarton.
The colonels of the eight Scottish regiments which mustered in
November, 1641, were as follow:--
Archibald, Earl of Argyle, afterwards executed for treason in 1660.
Sir Duncan Campbell, of Auchinbreck, who was afterwards slain at the
battle of Inverlochy.
Sir Mungo Campbell, of Lawers. These three had Highland battalions.
Alexander Lord Forbes, who had served the King of Sweden.
William, Earl of Lothian.
Alexander, Earl of Eglinton.
Lord Sinclair.
The Earl of Lindesay.
Major-General Sir David Leslie, of Pitcairly, was to command the whole.
Argyle deputed the leading of his regiment to its lieutenant-colonel,
James Wallace, of Auchans; Lord Sinclair's was led by his major, Sir
James Turner, the celebrated military memorialist, and that of the Lord
Lindesay was led by Major Borthwick.
Thomas Dalyell was an officer in these forces, but to which corps
he was attached is not clearly known. He was with the first column
of those auxiliaries which, under Major-General Munro--an officer
who had long served with distinction in Germany, at the head of Lord
Reay's Highlanders--embarked on the 2nd of April, 1642, for Ireland.
He had with him three thousand infantry, six hundred cavalry, and a
train of guns. Landing in the north of Ireland, he took possession
of Carrickfergus, and in it placed a garrison under young Dalyell's
command.
The second column sailed for Ireland on the 27th of July under Sir
David Leslie, the same general who afterwards commanded the Scottish
army at the battle of Dunbar, and for his services was raised to the
peerage as Lord Newark.
At Carrickfergus Munro shot thirty Irish prisoners who were accused of
committing outrages upon the Protestants. Local tradition has swelled
this number to _three thousand_, and adds that they were thrown over
certain rocks named the Gobbins.
On the 28th and 29th of April Munro was joined at Carrickfergus by Lord
Conway and Colonel Chichester, with eighteen hundred English infantry,
five troops of horse, and two of dragoons; and in May he succeeded in
effecting a junction with Sir Henry Tichbourne of Beaulieu, when their
united forces mustered only two thousand horse and twelve thousand
infantry. At this time the pay of an English colonel was 3_l._ a week;
of a captain, 2_l._; of a private, 3_s._ 6_d._ In 1645 more troops were
required in Scotland to oppose the Cavaliers on the one hand, and the
Irish on the other; thus, on the 27th of February, the Scottish shires
and boroughs mustered a great force, whose pay was 6_s._ Scots per day.
It is not improbable that Dalyell was at the battle of Benburb, a
village of Tyrone, where, in the spring of 1646, General Munro was
defeated by the Irish, and forced to retire, with the loss of three
thousand four hundred and twenty-three slain; Lord Montgomerie,
twenty-one other officers, a hundred and fifty privates, the Scottish
artillery, twenty stand of colours, and fifteen hundred baggage and
cavalry horses taken. "In vain did Lord Blaney take pike in hand, and
stand in the ranks. Though exposed to the play of Munro's guns and
musketry, the Irish infantry charged up hill without firing a shot.
They met a gallant resistance; but Blaney and his men held their ground
long, till the superior vivacity and freshness of the Irish clansmen
bore him down."
In 1648 we still find Dalyell, then a colonel, in command at
Carrickfergus, when that little fortress was surprised by General Monk,
who took possession of it in the name of the English Parliament, and
made both Munro and Dalyell prisoners of war. The former he sent to
London.
Henry Guthry, Bishop of Dunkeld, in his Memoirs, asserts that
the castle was surrendered to Monk treacherously, by the Earl of
Glencairn's regiment, which formed the garrison.
Dalyell was so deeply imbued by the Cavalier loyalty of the period,
that about this time, on the death of Charles I., to testify his grief,
he made a vow never to shave his beard until he had avenged him; and
he cultivated this appendage to his stern visage until it attained
great length and volume, for it covered his whole breast and descended
below his girdle, as we may still see by the portraits of him. At this
period _vow beards_, as they were named, were not unusual with the more
resolute and enthusiastic of the Cavaliers. The comb with which Dalyell
was wont to dress his hair is still preserved at Binns, "and it gives
a vast idea of the extent of beard and of the majestic character of
Dalyell in general, being no less than _twelve_ inches broad, while the
teeth are at least six inches deep."
Dalyell was too enterprising and restless a spirit to remain long
a prisoner; for he soon achieved his liberty, and, on returning to
Scotland, was appointed major-general, and held that rank in the army,
which consisted of eleven regiments of horse and twenty battalions of
infantry, with fourteen field pieces, and which was led by Charles II.
into England in 1651. At the head of his brigade he fought bravely at
the fatal field of Worcester, where, on the defeat of the Scots, he had
the misfortune to be again taken prisoner, and, with other officers
and captives of rank, was marched, under a sure guard, to London, and
committed to the Tower.
Sir Walter Scott, in his history of Scotland, mentions (but I know
not on what authority) that he had previously served in the wars of
Montrose.
For his loyalty and service in England his estates were declared, by
the dominant party in Scotland, to be forfeited, and his name was
specially excluded from the general Act of Indemnity. But Dalyell was
not to be withheld even by the guards or gates of the Tower of London,
for he soon after effected his escape again--_how_ is not recorded;
but after lurking somewhere on the Continent, he suddenly made his
appearance, in March, 1654, off the northern coast of Scotland, in a
small vessel, at a time when the Lowlands were overawed by eighteen of
Cromwell's garrisons and by ten thousand regular forces maintained by
him, by Argyle, and his adherents.
This was in anticipation of the Restoration, and at a time when the
cause of royalty in Britain seemed most desperate. Being joined by a
Colonel Blackadder and a slender band of loyalists, he took possession
of the castle of Skelko, and, wherever he went, boldly proclaimed
the king, and denounced Argyle and Cromwell as rebels and regicides.
To stimulate his exertions, he received the following characteristic
letter from the young king, Charles II.:--
"Tom Dalyell,
"Though I need say nothing to you by this honest bearer, Captain
Mewes, who can tell you all I would have said, yet I am willing
to give it to you under my own hand, that I am very much pleased
to hear how constant you are in your affection to me, and in your
endeavours to advance my service. We have all a hard work to do; yet
I doubt not God will carry us through it: and you can never fear that
I will forget the good part you have acted, which, trust me, shall
be rewarded, whenever it shall be in the power of your affectionate
friend,
"Charles R."[31]
"Colen, 30th Dec. 1654."
This attempt of Dalyell's had been made in unison with the Earl
of Glencairn's rash but gallant expedition to the Highlands, when
Glengarry, Lochiel, Struan, and other chiefs, whose swords were never
in the scabbard when Scotland or her king required them, met in the
wilds of Lochearn, and made an arrangement to rise in arms and attempt
a restoration; but all hope of success soon proved desperate, and they
dispersed. Dalyell abandoned the castle he had taken, and retired once
more to the Continent, where he obtained from the exiled king a letter
or certificate, in which his bravery, loyalty, and faith, were warmly
extolled and recommended.
Furnished with this, and having nothing else in the world now but his
sword and his stout heart, the penniless cavalier resolved to seek his
fortune in foreign wars. Proceeding to Russia, which has ever formed
so ample a field for Scottish enterprise and valour, he visited the
barbarous court of the czar, and applied for military service.
The sovereign then reigning was Alexis Michailowitch, grandson of the
patriarch Fedor Romanoff, who in his fifteenth year had succeeded in
1645 to the title of czar; and is chiefly remarkable as being the
father of Peter the Great, who raised the Muscovites from the depths of
barbarism to a state of comparative civilization.
The letter of Charles II. at once procured for Dalyell the rank of
lieutenant-general in the service of Muscovy; but great obscurity
involves his career in that country, for even the wars in which he was
engaged were little noted by the rest of Europe.
He was now in his fifty-fifth year.
Alexis invited several other Scots to join his army being anxious to
introduce a more regular system of discipline into his ranks; but the
most eminent of these were General Drummond, Governor of Smolensko, and
the two Gordons,[32] who, under Peter the Great, brought to perfection
the standing forces of Russia, which however were so few, that in 1687
they amounted to no more than ten thousand men. An old topographical
work, published at the Savoy in London, in 1711, mentions that "the
Russians endeavoured to bring their soldiers under better discipline;
for which end they made use of a great many Scots and German officers,
who instruct them in all the warlike exercises that are practised by
other European nations."
At that time--the beginning of the last century--their infantry were
armed with a musket, sword, and an axe, which were slung behind; their
cavalry were clad in steel morions and cuirasses, and were armed with
bows, arrows, iron mouls, sabres, targets, and spears; and in the epoch
of Dalyell, their army had a great battle-drum, which was fastened to
the backs of four horses abreast, and had eight drummers to beat upon
it.
His first active service was against the Poles, with whom Alexis
Michailowitch had gone to war in 1653, and from whom he captured
Smolensko, which he united to Russia, and Kiow, after committing
frightful devastations in Lithuania. The Russian armies then invaded
Livonia, stormed Dorpt, Kokenhausen, and other places, but were obliged
to retire from before Riga with severe loss.
Dalyell was now raised to the rank of full general, and commanded
against the Tartars, and the Turkish armies of Mohammed IV.--the son
of the debauched Sultan Ibrahim--against whom Alexis declared war
about this time (1654-5); and in these contests, waged at the head of
barbarous hordes against hordes equally barbarous, the wanderer must
have acquired much of that unyielding sternness, if not ferocity, which
characterized his future proceedings in his own country. In these
campaigns quarter was never asked nor given; prisoners were shot,
beheaded, impaled, or put to death by slow fires, and by every species
of torture that Muscovite brutality, or the most refined cruelty of
the Oriental mind could suggest; and in this terrible arena of foreign
service was schooled the future commander-in-chief of the Scottish
troops--the scourge of the Covenanters--he to whom was given full power
to crush and to destroy the men who struggled for freedom of religious
opinion, for liberty of conscience, and who, as they phrased it, "drew
the sword for an oppressed Kirk and broken Covenant."
After eleven years of service in these wild and snow-covered regions,
Dalyell requested permission, by desire of Charles II., to return to
Scotland. The king had now been restored; Cromwell was in his grave;
the Parliament and great officers of state had once more taken upon
them the _mis_government of Scotland, and a wicked war was maintained
there against the Presbyterian Church, which Lauderdale and his
ministry were leaving nothing undone to subvert and to suppress.
The Laird of Binns now requested from the czar a certificate of his
faithful service in Russia, and a missive to that effect was passed
under the great seal of the empire.
"Part of this document," says Chambers, "was conceived in the following
terms:--
"That he formerly came hither to serve our great Czarian Majesty:
whilst he was with us, he stood against our enemies and fought
valiantly. The military men that were under his command, he regulated
and disciplined, and himself led them to battle: and he did and
performed everything faithfully, as a noble commander. And for his
trusty services we were pleased to order the said lieutenant-general to
be a general. And now having petitioned us to give him leave to return
to his own country, _We_, the great Sovereign and Czarian Majesty,
were pleased to order, that the said noble General, Thomas, the son of
Thomas Dalyell, should have leave to go to his own country.
"And by this patent of our Czarian Majesty, we do testify of him, that
he is a man of virtue and honour, and of great experience in military
affairs. And in case he should be willing _again_ to serve our Czarian
Majesty, he is to let us know of it beforehand, and he shall come into
the dominions of our Czarian Majesty, with proper passports. Given at
our Court, in the Metropolitan City of Moscow, in the year from the
Creation of the World 7173, January 6."[33]
From Russia he was accompanied by his countryman and old
fellow-soldier, who had served with him in Ireland, General Drummond,
who was also summoned by Charles II. and obeyed the royal behest.
In an Act passed by the Scottish Parliament in 1686, granting this
officer the lands of Torwoodie, it is stated "that upon a call from his
majesty's royal brother, after his restoration, he left a splendid and
honourable employment under the Emperor of Russia to give obedience to
his native prince, and since his return to this kingdom, he did good
and signal service as major-general, in the defeat of the rebels and
suppression of the rebellion raised in 1686."
From a passage in Burnet it would seem, that when the nonjuring exiles
at Rotterdam and other Covenanters, were preparing to rise in arms in
1665, and when Charles II. found the necessity of raising more troops,
he formally summoned Dalyell home.
"Two gallant officers," continues the Bishop, in the "History of his
own Times," "that had served him in the wars, and when these were over
had gone with his letters to serve in Muscovy, where one of them,
Dalyell, was raised to be a general, and the other was advanced to be
a lieutenant-general and Governor of Smolensko, were now, but _not
without great difficulty_, sent back by the czar."
There can be little doubt that Dalyell returned to Scotland, with a
heart boiling with rancour against those who had sold and destroyed the
king; and who had brought so many of his brother soldiers--the Scottish
Cavaliers of Montrose, of Hamilton and Munro--and so many of his own
kinsmen, to the scaffold. With this sentiment may have been a longing
for vengeance upon those who had been so long dominant in the land; who
had deprived him of his estate and driven him into exile; and all these
bitter sentiments were doubtless fostered by the inborn prejudice of
class, religion, education, and the foreign service of years. To all
these must be attributed many of the fierce and relentless acts which
are related of him by the historians of the Covenant. Many of these
dark deeds must, however, be doubted; and many accepted with caution.
After the Restoration, the Parliament of Scotland, which was presided
over by Lieutenant-General the Earl of Middleton as High Commissioner,
proved a very pliant and complying body. They granted to Charles
II. a revenue of 40,000_l._ for life, and rescinded all the acts
passed by their wiser predecessors for defining or _restricting_ the
royal prerogative. The Solemn League and Covenant was pronounced a
treasonable and seditious bond; and they passed other acts, by which
the Earl of Lauderdale, Secretary of State for Scotland, gradually
prepared a way for the abolition of Presbytery, and the restoration of
an Episcopal Hierarchy. Alarmed by these measures, the Scottish Kirk
sent James Sharpe, one of their most eminent divines, to expostulate
with Charles II.; but Sharpe abandoned his colours, and betrayed their
cause by accepting the Archbishopric of St. Andrews, while the Marquis
of Argyle, James Guthrie, and Johnstone of Warriston, who had conspired
with Cromwell, and directly, or indirectly, abetted the sale and
execution of Charles I., were consigned to the headsman. Such was the
new aspect of affairs, and it made religion and rancour grow side by
side in the land.
The rash king next enjoined the Scottish privy council openly to
establish Episcopacy, and bishops for the new dioceses were consecrated
in England; while Fairfowl, Archbishop of Glasgow, was insane enough to
solicit an act of council to eject all recusant ministers, and close
their churches until episcopally ordained incumbents could be procured:
and by this act, _three hundred and fifty_ parishes, about a third of
those in the kingdom, were declared to be vacant; and this tyranny was
attempted after all the wars, battles, and bloodshed in defence of the
Covenant--after all the armies levied and lives lost since 1638, and
after the king himself had perished in attempting to subvert the rights
of the people! Now, the Scots became justly more than ever inflamed
against the cruelty and injustice of their own government.
Finding their churches closed, they met in arms on the green
hill sides, and in lonely muirs, to hold what were termed field
conventicles, where the oppression they endured for conscience sake,
the recollection of their present danger, and the memory of their
struggles made in years gone by, together with the grandeur of the
solemn scenery by which they were surrounded, filled their hearts with
a splendid enthusiasm and with a purity of soul, as, with the sword by
their sides, they worshipped God in those wild places, which, since the
days of the Romans, had been the best stronghold of their forefathers.
As a ballad (which I quote from memory) has it:--
"Oh, sad and dreary was the lot of Scotland's true ones then,
A famine-stricken remnant with scarce the guise of men;
They burrowed few and lonely mid the chill dark mountain caves,
For those who once had sheltered them were in their martyr-graves.
"A sword had rested on the land! it did not pass away;
Long had they watched and waited; but there dawned no brighter day,
And many had gone back from them, who owned the truth of old,
Because of much iniquity their love was waxen cold."
To crush this growing enthusiasm (which was so great at times, that
an angel was more than once averred to have been seen in mid air,
overhanging a conventicle), to suppress these armed religious meetings,
and enforce Episcopacy on the people, was now the ungrateful task
assigned to Dalyell, to Drummond, and the Scottish standing forces, who
were all commanded by officers of high Cavalier principles, and were
usually men without much scruple in obeying the orders of the king and
council.
Alarmed at the spirit of resistance evinced by the people, and
remembering perhaps the fate of his father, Charles II. changed the
Scottish ministry. Lauderdale had begun to persuade him that more
lenient measures were necessary, and Sharpe, whom the Covenanters
received as a Judas, retired from the administration of ecclesiastical
affairs; but the change came _too late_, for again the banner which
had been displayed so victoriously of old, "for an oppressed Kirk and
broken Covenant," was unfurled, and a body of the Presbyterians rose in
arms.
Lieutenant-colonel Sir James Turner, author of a little treatise on the
art of war, and of his own Memoirs, from which we may learn that he
was a fierce and unscrupulous _sabreur_, was captured with his troops
at Ayr, by the Lairds of Corsack and Barscob at the head of a few
followers. Another party of soldiers were routed by them at Dalry, and
these insurgents began at once their march for Edinburgh, the seat of
government, in the autumn of 1666.
They first proposed to put Turner to death; but spared his life on
Corsack discovering that his conduct to the people had been much less
severe than the written _orders_, which were found on his person, had
inculcated.
Dalyell at this crisis commanded the king's troops in the capital. He
concentrated all the detachments which were dispersed throughout the
adjacent country, and marched westward, by the Glasgow road, to meet
these insurgents, whose strength was ever varying, and whose numbers
were greatly exaggerated.
"A great many came to the rebels who were called _Whiggs_," says
Bishop Burnet; "at Lanark, in Clydesdale, they held a solemn fast
day, in which, after much praying, they renewed the Covenant and set
out their manifesto, in which they denied that they rose against the
King, but complained of the oppressions under which they groaned; they
desired that Episcopacy might be put down, that the Covenant might
be set up, their ministers restored to them; and then they promised
that they would be, in all other things, _the king's most obedient
subjects_."
Such were the simple and just demands of these poor people. Dalyell
followed them closely from place to place with his cavalry, the flower
of which were the high-spirited Scottish Life Guards. He published
a proclamation, offering pardon to all who within twenty-four hours
returned to their own houses; but he threatened with death all who
were taken in arms after that brief period. He found the whole country
so completely in the interest of the revolters, that he could obtain
no intelligence of their number, intention, or movements, save the
rumours brought to head quarters by his own parties and horse-patrols;
and thus, while _he_ was hovering in the west, by a sudden march, they
appeared unexpectedly within four miles of Edinburgh.
Their number had considerably augmented during their march; but few men
of any influence or property joined them; as most of the Covenanting
gentry had been committed to various castles and prisons, on the
plausible pre-text that it was necessary to insure their neutrality in
case of a war with the Dutch.
On reaching the vicinity of the Pentland Hills, they numbered about
three thousand horse and foot, ill armed and totally undisciplined.
Colonel James Wallace, of Auchans, a descendant of the Wallaces of
Dundonald, a brave officer, who had served with distinction in former
wars, and been lieutenant-colonel of Argyle's Highland regiment in
Ireland--a veteran soldier, who had seen the battles of Benburb,
Kilsythe, and Dunbar, when he was lieutenant-colonel of the Scottish
Foot Guards[34]--took command of the whole, and, knowing how slender
was his force, how destitute of succour, and how desperate in purpose
and position, he left nothing undone to ensure a victory, or at least a
death that should avenge their defeat and fall.
On reaching the secluded village of Colinton, which lies in a deep and
wooded hollow, they learned that in Edinburgh, where they confidently
expected a great accession, the citizens, under their provost, Sir
Andrew Ramsay, were in arms against them, and had made vigorous
preparations for a defence. The barrier gates were shut and fortified
by cannon; the gentlemen of the neighbouring shires had been summoned
to defend the walls; the College of Justice had formed a corps of
cavalry, and all gentlemen in the city who possessed horses were
ordered to mount, and appear in arms in the Meal Market, under the
young Marquis of Montrose, to await the orders of General Dalyell.
The latter sent Alexander Seton, Viscount Kingston, with a body of
the Guards, to the old quarries in Bruntsfield Links, with orders to
lie there concealed, as across these links lay the direct road to
the quarters of the insurgents, who had many friends in the capital;
but, overawed by the active measures of the Cavalier government,
they--according to Kirkton--"could only fast and pray for them."
On learning all this, Colonel Wallace marched along the slope of the
Pentland Hills, in the hope of being able to effect a retreat towards
Biggar. The season was the dreary month of November. Dogged by Dalyell
and battered by a storm of wind and rain, the hapless Covenanters
had been losing heart, and as their spirit diminished, so did their
numbers, which, from three thousand, dwindled down to nine hundred
hungry, wet, and famished creatures, "who looked more like dying men
than soldiers going to conquer."
Wallace began to see the hopelessness of the cause he had undertaken;
but the spirit of the few who adhered to him never flinched.
"We are not unwilling to die for religion and liberty," said these
brave fellows; "yea, we would esteem a testimony for the Lord and our
country a sufficient reward for all our loss and labour."
They wrote to General Dalyell a long and pathetic letter, setting forth
their religious grievances; but no answer was returned to it, save the
sound of his trumpets and the clash of the kettle-drums, when, on the
afternoon of the 28th of November, his cavalry and infantry--upwards
of three thousand strong,--after a fortnight's constant marching, were
seen traversing the western slope of the beautiful Pentland range, and,
descending, with all their standards displayed, towards Rullion Green,
where these nine hundred devoted men, with their swords and Bibles,
awaited them. As Dalyell approached, they sang the seventy-fourth and
seventy-eighth Psalms.
Wallace drew up his little band in line, with a few of his toil-worn
horsemen covering the right flank, which was somewhat exposed.
Desperation and religious enthusiasm enhanced their natural bravery,
and twice they repulsed the attack of the royal troops; but it was
renewed by Dalyell's horse, the finest cavalry in Scotland, being
principally cavaliers of the Life Guards, nobly mounted and richly
accoutred. Dalyell led them on, and, by a single charge, they bore down
horse and foot alike, at sword's point. This was when the dusk was
closing on these lofty and heath-clad mountains. Fifty Covenanters were
slain, including two eminent Irish divines--Andrew MacCormick and John
Crookshanks--who had joined them, and who perished in the front rank.
In this conflict Dalyell and the famous Covenanter, Captain John Paton,
of Meadowhead, met hand to hand on horseback, and exchanged several
blows before they were separated by the pressure of their soldiers.
Paton then discharged his pistols at Dalyell, off whose person the
balls were seen _to recoil_. On perceiving this (and knowing him to be
shot-proof, according to a superstitious historian), the captain loaded
his pistol with a _silver coin_, a manoeuvre observed by Dalyell; he
stepped behind a soldier, who fell, pierced by the coin which was
supposed to be proof to any spell; but the same legend is related of
Claverhouse at Killycrankie. Paton was among the last who left the
field. Dalyell perceived him retiring, and sent three well-mounted
troopers in pursuit, and these came to blows with him when he was
urging his horse to leap a deep ditch. By a back-handed stroke he clove
in two the head and helmet of his first assailant; the other two fell
headlong into the ditch, where they lay struggling under their fallen
chargers.
"Take my compliments to Dalyell, your master," said Baton, tauntingly,
as he rode off; "tell him that I am not going home with him to-night."
John Nesbit, of Hardhill, a tall and powerful Covenanter, fell on the
field, covered with wounds, but was found to be alive next day, when
he was stripped and about to be interred with the dead. He was a brave
man, and had served in foreign wars, for which he was made a captain of
Musketeers at Bothwell some years after.
The gloom of the November night, and a sentiment of chivalry--of pity,
perhaps, for their poor and persecuted countrymen--inspired the Life
Guards to spare the fugitives, the mass of whom escaped and dispersed;
but eighty prisoners--among whom was Neilson, the unfortunate Laird
of Corsack--were taken, and these were next day marched in triumph
through the streets of Edinburgh, while cannon thundered a salute from
the castle, and the bells rang in every steeple; while the streets
resounded with the tramp of the cavalry, who, with standards advanced
and kettle-drums beating, escorted them to prison. "It is recorded
that Andrew Murray, an aged Presbyterian minister, when he beheld the
ferocious Dalyell in his rusted head-piece, buff coat, and long waving
beard, riding at the head of his cavalier squadrons, who, flushed with
victory, surrounded the manacled prisoners with drawn swords and cocked
carbines--and when he heard the shouts of acclamation from the people,
was so overpowered with grief for what he deemed the downfall for ever
of _God's Covenanted Kirk_, that he became ill, and expired."
The dead were buried on the field, and there may yet be seen, within
a small and rude enclosure, which is overshadowed by a few trees,
a monument bearing an inscription to the memory of Crookshanks,
MacCormick, and others who lie where they fell. At the back of the
Pentland Hills runs a rivulet named the Deadman's-grain, from the
circumstance of a wounded Covenanter falling there when pursued by a
cavalier trooper. Drawing a pistol from his holsters, he fired it at
his pursuer underneath his bridle arm, but, missing, shot his own horse
in the flank. The animal fell, and his rider was immediately slain,
where his green grave is yet shown by the side of the mountain burn.
At Easton, in Dunsyre, there was long visible a lonely grave, in which,
according to a tradition transmitted from father to son, there lay a
Covenanter who had expired of wounds received at Rullion Green. It was
opened in 1817, and found to contain the skeleton of a tall man, with
two silver coins dated 1620. On being touched, the bones crumbled to
dust.
Colonel Wallace, on seeing all lost, left the field, accompanied by
Mr. John Welsh, and, favoured by the darkness, took a north-westerly
direction among the hills, and escaped. After long concealment and
enduring many privations, he reached the Continent, and died in penury,
at Rotterdam, in 1678.
It is a strange circumstance that, after the rout of his followers,
many of them were slain by the Lothian peasantry.
Of the unfortunate prisoners, the servile and barbarous Scottish Privy
Council made a severe example. Twenty were executed at Edinburgh, ten
being hanged upon the same gibbet at once; seven were executed at Ayr,
and many were hanged before their own doors in other parts of the
country. The heads of those who perished at Edinburgh were fixed above
the city gates, and their right arms and the hands with which they
subscribed the Covenant were affixed to the Tolbooths of Lanark and
other towns.
When Gordon, of Knockbreck, and his brother were hanged on the same
gibbet, they clasped each other in their arms, that together, and at
once, they might endure the pangs of death.
Like all Covenanters, the whole of these men maintained, with their
dying breath, that they had taken up arms _not_ against the king, but
against the insupportable tyranny of the Episcopal prelates. And that
these men, and such as these, did not die in vain, the future history
of their country has shown, for their last words left an echo that
lingers yet in the hearts of the people.
Dalyell was highly complimented by the Council for this victory, and
Neilson of Corsack, the most important of his prisoners, was ordered
to be tortured in that dark, panelled room under the Parliament Hall,
wherein sat the Council, over which the Duke of Rothes presided.
Neilson of Corsack was a country laird, who had been long distinguished
for gentleness and amiability of disposition; but rage at the
ill-treatment he received from the new clergy alone drove him to
despair, and from despair to arms. On his refusal to become an
Episcopalian, by the information (or at the instance) of the curate
of his parish, he was dragged from his house, fined, and imprisoned,
while his delicate wife and little children had been driven as outcasts
into the mountains. Soldiers were then quartered on his lands, and his
cattle were carried off. This was scarcely such treatment as a Scottish
gentleman of the seventeenth century would endure with calmness.
Rendered desperate, Corsack took to his sword, and commanded the party
which surprised Sir James Turner, whose life he subsequently saved.
That officer was not ungrateful for the act, and did all in his power
to obtain mercy for him, but in vain. The Council were inexorable, and
"Corsack was so cruelly tortured by the iron boots, that his shrieks
were sufficient to move the heart of a stone."
The _thumbikins_ were the favourite instrument of torture most
generally resorted to by the Lords of Council. These were small steel
screws which compressed the thumb-joint, or whole hand if necessary,
and were an invention brought to Scotland by General Dalyell from the
Continent.
Charles II. distinctly, by letter, ordained the Privy Council to
substitute banishment for torture and death; but his _missive was
concealed_, and in his name the work of cruelty still went on, and
still unsated by the daily horrors furnished by the result of the
conflict at Rullion Green, Generals Dalyell and Drummond were ordered
into the Shires of Ayr, Dumfries, and Galloway, to complete the
destruction of any Covenanters or recusants who might remain in these
districts.
In this year, and most probably for that duty, he raised a regiment of
infantry; but it has long ceased to exist, and was probably one of the
many Scottish corps disbanded at the peace of Ryswick.
While on this new service the enemies of Dalyell record innumerable
instances of cruelty perpetrated by him; and though his temper was hot
and his character undoubtedly fierce and resolute, these stories must
be accepted under reservation.
"The forces were ordered to lie in the west," says Burnet, "where
Dalyell acted the Muscovite too grossly. He threatened to _spit_ men
and to _roast_ them, and he killed some in cold blood, or rather hot
blood, for he was then drunk, when he ordered one to be hanged because
he would not tell where his father was, for whom he was in search. When
he heard of any who did not go to church, he did not trouble himself
to set a fine upon him, but sent as many soldiers as might eat him up
in a night. And the clergy were so delighted with it, that they used
to speak of that time as the poets do of the golden age. They looked
upon the soldiery as their patrons. They were ever in their company,
and complying with them in their excesses, and, if they are not much
wronged, they rather led them into them, than checked them for them.
_Dalyell_ himself and his officers were so disgusted with them, that
they increased the complaints, that had now more credit from them than
from those of the country, who were looked on as their enemies. Things
of so strange a pitch in vice were told of them, that they seemed
scarce credible."
And this severe picture of the Episcopal Clergy is given by a Scottish
Bishop, which renders it the more worthy of credence.
It is recorded of Dalyell, that once, when inflamed by passion, he
struck a prisoner on the face with the hilt of his dagger so severely
that blood flowed from the wound but it must be remembered that this
person had boldly taunted the fierce old man, as "a Muscovite beast
who used to roast men alive!" He established his head-quarters at
Lanark for some weeks, and there he imprisoned many Covenanters in a
damp dungeon, which was so narrow that, owing to their number, they
could neither sit nor lie at length with comfort; and where they were
deprived of all accommodation for preserving cleanliness or decency.
While his troops were in this town, a peasant when passing through the
streets was seized by a patrol, and brought before him; and because
this man either could not, or would not, give such information as would
commit some of the prisoners, he was condemned to instant death. He
begged one night's reprieve, that he might prepare to die, and make his
peace with Heaven; but even this was denied him, and, according to the
historians of the Kirk, he was dragged into a neighbouring field, shot
dead by a platoon of carbines, stripped and left nude upon the ground.
On another occasion, we are told that he ordered a woman, who had aided
the escape of a fugitive, to be cast into a hole filled with toads and
reptiles, where she died in great misery.
Such stories seem exceedingly improbable, yet they pass current in
Scotland, and are still believed to the present day.
In Dumfries the soldiers were accused of "having tied a man neck and
heels to a pole, and turned him like a joint of meat before a great
fire." In Kilmarnock, the men of Dalyell's regiment placed an old
recusant in a dungeon, which was destitute of vent or chimney, and
there tortured him by the smoke of a coal fire. When almost suffocated
he was borne forth, amid laughter and derision, to the open air, and
permitted to revive. After this he was imprisoned again; and this
torture was continued for several nights and days.
At Dalry, Sir William Bannatyne, one of Dalyell's officers, ordered
a woman who had been accessory to the escape of her husband, to be
tortured by having lighted musket-matches tied between her clenched
fingers, a cruelty by which she lost one hand entirely, and some
days afterwards expired of torture. A farmer, whom this officer was
dragooning, and from whom he was extorting money, asked why he was thus
fined.
"Because," replied Sir William, with provoking candour, "you have great
gear, and I must have part of it."
And on service so barbarous as this, the year 1667 passed away; and the
estates of the forfeited Wallace of Auchans and others were bestowed by
Parliament upon Dalyell and Drummond, or were retained by the grasping
officers of State to enrich themselves. Thus for a time the unhappy
Covenanters seemed to be completely crushed. Upon Dalyell was conferred
the valuable estate of Mure of Caldwell, who had been accessory to that
revolt which terminated at the Pentland hills; but of this property
his family were deprived by the Revolution of 1688. Those who made
peace with the Government, by interest, bribery, or fines, received
protections, of which the following, in my own possession, granted the
year before Bothwell, may serve as an example:--
"At Glasgow, the twenty day of March, 1678.
"For saemeikelas Major Alexander Coult of Garturke, in the parish of
Monkland, hath signed the bond appoynted by the Lords of His Maties
Privy Councell ffor himself and all such who live under him, ffor
their peaceable and orderlie deportment; the Comitty of His Maties
Privy Councell do hereby take the said Major Alexander Coult under
their special protection and safeguard: and hereby discharge all
officers and souldiers to trouble or molest the said Major Alexander
Coult, his house, famillie, tenants, cottars or servants, or any
belonging to him, in their personal gudes or estate, as they will be
answerable at their highest perill, and allows him _to have and wear
his wearing sword and pistolls_.
"Glencairne,
"Strathmore, Wigtoune,
"Airlie, Caithness."
Captain John Creichton, the celebrated cavalier trooper, who served
long, both as a private and officer, under Dalyell in Scotland, and
whose interesting memoirs were published by Dean Swift, has left us
the following portrait of his stern leader, and it is so graphic that I
may be pardoned quoting it entire.
"He was bred up very hardy from his youth, both in diet and clothing.
He never wore boots, nor above one coat, which was close to his body,
with close sleeves like those we call jockey coats. He never wore a
peruke, nor did he shave his beard since the murder of King Charles
the First. In my time his head was bald, which he covered only with a
beaver hat, the brim of which was not above three inches broad. His
beard was white and bushy, and yet reached down almost to his girdle.
He usually went to London once or twice in a year to kiss the King's
hand, who had a great esteem for his valor and worth. His unusual dress
and figure, when he was in London, never failed to draw after him a
great crowd of boys and other young people, who constantly attended at
his lodgings, and followed him with huzzas, as he went to court and
returned from it. As he was a man of humour, he would always thank them
for their civilities when he left them at the door to go to the King,
and would let them know exactly at what hour he intended to come out
again and return to his lodgings.
"When the King walked in the park attended by some of his courtiers,
and Dalziel in his company, the same crowds would always be after him,
shewing their admiration at his beard and dress, so that the King could
hardly pass on for the crowd, upon which his Majesty bade '_the devil
take Dalziel for bringing such a rabble of boys together to have their
guts squeezed out_,' while they gaped at his long beard and antique
habit, requesting him at the same time--as Dalziel used to express
it--'_to shave and dress like other Christians, and keep the poor
bairns out of danger_.' All this could never prevail on him to part
with his beard; but yet, in compliance to his Majesty, he went once to
Court in the very height of the fashion; but as soon as the King and
those about him had laughed sufficiently at the strange figure he made,
he resumed his usual habit, to the great joy of the boys, who had not
discovered him in his fashionable dress."
From this it would appear that Dalyell had been much of a wag, that he
loved to humour children, and enjoyed their fun and amazement at the
sight of his huge beard, and by appearing once in the gaudy frippery of
a Cavalier, had striven to ridicule the foppery of the Court of Charles
II.--three points of character very different from those usually
attributed to him.
He was appointed a Privy Councillor, and soon after represented the
county of Linlithgow in Parliament, and in 1670 an act of ratification,
confirming all his estates and honours, was passed. In this document he
is designated "His Majesties right trustie and weel-beloved Generall
Thomas Dalyell, of Binns, late Lieutenant-Generall of His Majesties
late forces within this ancient kingdome." From this it would appear
that promotion, as well as profit, had resulted to him after the affair
at Rullion Green and dragooning the Westland Whigs. He represented his
native county in the Scottish Parliament from 1678 to 1685.
To assist in the security of Episcopacy in Scotland, and still further
to fortify the royal authority and the power of that tyrannical
Council, which committed so many atrocities in the king's name,
Lauderdale, who was created a duke when at the head of the Scottish
affairs, obtained the formation of a militia consisting of two thousand
cavalry and sixteen thousand infantry; and as the northern kingdom
swarmed with experienced and high-spirited officers all lacking
military employment, these troops were soon disciplined and equipped;
but the flower of the national troops were the standing forces of the
country.
These, at this time, were as follows:--
1. The Royal Life Guards, the regiment of the famous John Grahame of
Claverhouse, Viscount of Dundee, were raised after the Restoration,
in 1661. The privates were styled, _par excellence_, gentlemen, and
usually appear to have been cadets of good families. The Sieur de la
Roche, a French Protestant refugee, who was slain in a tavern brawl
at Leith by John Master of Tarbet and an Ensign Mowat, is styled in
their indictment, "a gentleman of his Majesty's troop of Guards." Under
Claverhouse, this Scottish patrician band served at Bothwell Bridge,
at Drumclog, and in all the unhappy contentions of the period. Mr.
Francis Stuart, afterwards a captain of the Guards, grandson of the
Earl of Bothwell, was, says Captain Creichton, "a private _gentleman_
in the Horse Guards, like myself." In this trooper the reader will no
doubt recognise the Serjeant Bothwell of _Old Mortality_.
"On the 2nd of April, 1661," according to Wodrow, "the King's Life
Guard was formed. By their constitution they were to consist of
noblemen and gentlemen's sons, and were to be one hundred and twenty in
number, under command of the Lord Newburgh. After taking an oath to be
loyal to his Majesty, they made a parade through the town of Edinburgh,
with carbines at their saddles and swords drawn."
The maimed and old veteran officers, adds Kirkton, in his secret
history, "the poor colonels, majors, and captains who expected great
promotion (at the Restoration) were preferred to be troopers in the
King's troop of Life Guards. This goodly employment obliged them to
spend with one another the small remnant of the stock their miseries
had left them, but more they could not have after all their hopes and
sufferings" (he means) during the days of Cromwell.
In 1674 these Life Guards consisted of four squadrons, and were
commanded by the Marquis of Athole.
After the Union, in 1707, this corps was removed to London, and is now
represented by the 2nd troop of the 1st Life Guards.[35]
2. The Scottish Foot Guards, raised in November, 1660, were commanded
by George, Earl of Linlithgow, and were, as they are still, named
Fusiliers, being armed with the _fusil_, a light French musket; and by
the Scottish Privy Council, in their orders to the army in 1667, it was
ordained that the field officers of this corps should command in chief,
and give orders in field and garrison, to all troops whatsoever. In
1707 these Guards were placed upon the united British establishment;
in February, 1712, they were marched to London; in the following year
they shared the duties for the _first_ time with the English Guards,
and have _never been in Scotland since_.[36]
3. The Royal Regiment, known of old as the Scottish Archers in France,
was at this time abroad at Tangiers, and did not return until 1682,
when it arrived in Rochester, reduced to sixteen companies, and after
the battle of Sedgemoor was sent into Holland.
4. The Earl of Mar's regiment, which served at Bothwell Bridge, was
remodelled in 1689, and now known as the 21st Fusiliers.
5. The infantry regiment of Dalyell is no longer in existence, but
Leven's Scottish regiment is now known as the 25th, or Royal Borderers;
Angus's Foot--the regiment of our old friend, Uncle Toby--is numbered
as the 26th, or Cameronians; and the regiment of Argyle, infamous as
the perpetrators of the Glencoe tragedy, is no longer in the service.
6. The Scottish train of artillery, commanded by the Laird of Lundin
in 1687, was disbanded at the Union, when Lord Leven was its general,
and the last survivor of it, then an old man, served as a volunteer,
with Sir John Cope's army, at Preston Pans. In this corps was a strange
rank, named "gentlemen of the cannon," as we may learn from a letter of
Viscount Teviot, dated 1699, and printed among Carstare's State Papers.
At the union with England, in 1707, it would seem to have been arranged
that Scotland should have the first regiment of infantry, theirs being
the oldest, and that England should have the first regiment of Dragoons.
The severity with which Dalyell and Drummond treated the Covenanters
with these regular troops drove them frantic.
In February, 1677, the former despatched John Creichton, one of his
most active, favourite, and relentless troopers, with an ensign and
fifty soldiers of the Foot Guards, to seize Adam Stobie, of Luscar,
near Culross, in Fife, "a fellow who," as the captain says, "had gone
through the west, endeavouring to stir up sedition in the people by his
great skill in canting and praying."
After surrounding his house in the night, the unfortunate Covenanter
was discovered in concealment under some straw in a lime-kiln, from
whence he was at once dragged forth. His daughter, in tears and terror,
besought mercy of Creichton, and offered to ransom her father for two
hundred dollars; but the trooper knew too well the inflexibility of his
general, and, though not always insensible either to the voice of a
woman or the offer of a handsome sum, he marched back to Edinburgh, and
presented Stobie to Dalyell, together with four other recusants, who
had been found in Culross by the Ensign of the Guards.
On the 22nd of February, the General brought his prisoners before
the Privy Council, who fined Stobie three thousand marks for keeping
conventicles and _conversing_ with intercommuned persons. After paying
this he was to be transported; but he saved their lordships further
trouble on his account by breaking from his prison and escaping in the
night. After this he joined in the next rising, and is believed to have
been slain at Bothwell Bridge, as he was never heard of afterwards.
About this time Francis Stuart, the Earl of Bothwell's grandson,
was recommended by Dalyell to Charles II. for a commission, and was
appointed Captain of Horse with John Creichton, who had hitherto been
with him in the Life Guards, as his lieutenant, and these officers
served under Colonel Graham, of Claverhouse, at the battle of Drumclog;
for after the murder of Archbishop Sharpe on Magus Muir, the armed
field conventicles had increased in every part of the country, and
discontent, with sullen desperation, were rapidly moulding the people
into a mass that was ready for revolt. Conflicts with the soldiers were
of daily occurrence, and many of them were barbarously murdered, in
lonely billets and solitary parts of the country, by the more savage
or fanatical of the hill men, as the recusants were named, from their
habit of usually lurking in the mountains.
Superstition was not wanting to lend a darker and more terrible hue to
the events of the time, as Scotland is peculiarly the land of omens.
Atmospheric visions were everywhere visible, if we are to believe such
old memorialists as Law and others.
At Kilbryde, near Glasgow, two armies were seen in the sky, firing
platoons of musketry at each other; "the fyre and smock were seen, but
without noise or crak." On the slope of a lonely hill near Eastwood
Muir, the tall apparition of a blood-red spectre was seen to tower
suddenly between the terrified beholders and the blue sky, while a
dreadful voice exclaimed--
"Woe! Woe unto the land!"
At a conventicle, suppressed in Fife by Adam Masterton of Grange,
an officer of the Life Guards, the fugitive women, who observed the
conflict from a distance, asserted that they could perceive, to their
awe and terror, "the form of a tall man of majestic stature," hovering
in mid air "above the people all the while of the soldiers shooting."
In August, 1678, the devil, who seemed always in those days to take
a deep interest in Scottish affairs, held a great meeting of witches
and warlocks in Lothian, "where," saith the veracious Law, "there
was a warlock who formerly had been admitted to the ministry in the
Presbyterian times, and who, when the bishops came in, conformed with
_them_; but being deposed, he now turns under the devil, a preacher of
hellish doctrine." In the March of the same year, he adds, a tremendous
voice was heard in the ancient and half-ruined Abbey of Paisley,
exclaiming--
"Woe, woe, woe! Pray, pray, pray!"
Showers of blood and of Highland bonnets, afforded the crones,
elsewhere, ample matter for discussion and wonder.
Amid all this absurdity, while the tyrant Lords of Council tortured and
hung peasants and preachers, of ruined honourable and long-descended
families, for worshipping God as their hearts desired, and for doing
so, in wild and sequestered places, or for refusing to say God save a
King, who was _uncovenanted_; while Dalyell had every satanic power
attributed to him, and the black charger of Claverhouse was believed
to be the veritable devil himself, the efforts of some to promote
godliness in the land were alike melancholy and amusing; thus people
were punished for taking snuff in time of sermon, for carrying water on
the Sabbath day, and for a thousand charges equally frivolous.
To repress the conventicles which began to assume a more formidable
aspect, from the number of armed men who attended them, additional
garrisons were established. Two peers and ten barons, who were
obnoxious to Lauderdale, were lawlessly dispossessed of their mansions,
which were converted into military stations. In each of these Dalyell
placed a company of infantry and ten troopers, who were supplied with
everything by provincial assessment or military contribution. Fathers
were made responsible for their children; husbands for their wives;
magistrates for their citizens; landlords for their tenants; and thus,
by a network of military tyranny, it was resolved that at the sword's
point, Scotland should become a highly episcopal country. Five hundred
marks were offered for the seizure of any one who held a religious
meeting; and four thousand pounds sterling was an ordinary price for
the head of a good preacher. Others were valued according to their
reputation among the people; and under such laws as these the troops of
his sacred Majesty King Charles made plenty of prize-money and plunder.
The barbarities to which the people were subjected at last attracted
the attention of the English House of Commons, who appointed a
committee to inquire into these affairs, and into the Act empowering
the Privy Council at Edinburgh to march the Scottish army wheresoever
they chose; but there the matter ended. The Government was then
_federal_, and any interference might have caused another national
rupture.
Roused at last to more open resistance, a body of these poor people
appealed again to that which of old was ever the Scotsman's best and
most ready argument--the sword--and the defeat of Claverhouse's cavalry
at Drumclog was deemed a sure omen of great events to come. They
established their camp at Hamilton, and unfurled a standard, which is
still preserved at Edinburgh. It is blue, crossed by the white saltire
of St. Andrew, and is inscribed--
"COVENANTS--RELIGION--KING AND KINGDOMES."
Robert Hamilton, of Preston, a brave but intolerant and injudicious
man, assumed the command. He was without experience as a leader, and
his followers were destitute of all discipline as soldiers; hence
dissensions were of hourly occurrence in the camp.
Alarmed by the tidings of this rising, the end of which no one could
then foresee, the King sent his son James, Duke of Monmouth and
Buccleugh, to assume command of the Scottish troops, and enforce the
restoration of order. The duke brought with him four troops of English
horse, commanded by a Major Main, a novelty which did not increase his
popularity in Scotland, where English troops had not been seen since
Cromwell's time. At the head of ten thousand men, with a fine park of
artillery, he marched westward at midsummer, against the insurgents.
"Upon the duke being made commander-in-chief, Dalyell refused to serve
under him," says Captain Creichton, "and remained at his lodgings
in Edinburgh, till his Grace was superseded, which happened about a
fortnight after."
The principal officers in the kingdom attended the duke on this
expedition. Among them were the Earl of Linlithgow, with his regiment
of Foot Guards; the Earl of Mar, with his regiment of Fusiliers; the
Marquis of Montrose, the Earls of Airley and Home, and Graham of
Claverhouse, all commanders of horse; while a host of cavalier nobles
and gentlemen attended him to serve as he might require.
On the 22nd of June, he found the Covenanters in position at the
bridge of Bothwell, where the Clyde is seventy-one yards wide. This
picturesque old bridge was twelve feet broad, and one hundred and
twenty feet long, with a rise of twenty in the centre, where there
was a barrier gate, which was removed in 1826. This gate Preston had
barricaded, while flanking the approaches with musketry. To three
hundred stout hearts led by Hackston of Rathillet, and the stern John
Balfour of Kinloch, otherwise styled of Burley, was confided the
keeping of the bridge, and well these brave men kept it too, under a
heavy fire of cannon and musketry, to which the flankers of the bridge
replied by firing briskly from behind the thickets of alder and hazel
trees which clothed the banks of the stream.
Under cover of a cannonade, Lord Livingstone led the assault, at
the head of his father's regiment, the Scottish Foot Guards, and
despite its barricade of stones and timber, and all the efforts of
its desperate defenders, the gate was stormed by the infantry, and
the bridge was carried by the clubbed musket and levelled pike,
after a fierce contest. Then a body of the Lennox Highlanders,
led, say some authorities, by General Dalyell; by their own chief,
Macfarlane, say others, raised the war-cry of _Loch sloy_ and flung
themselves, claymore in hand, on the main body of the Covenanters,
while Claverhouse with the Life Guards--all burning to avenge their
recent defeat at Drumclog--defiled across the bridge at full speed,
and forming in squadron on the opposite side, swept all before them,
as they might have driven a flock of sheep. Main's English dragoons
and the Highlanders are accused of behaving with great barbarity in
slaughtering the fugitives. The aged Laird of Earlstone prayed for
quarter from Major Main, who ran him through the body and slew him on
the spot.
When the charge was over, the gentlemen of the Scottish Life Guards
became so exasperated on seeing the Covenanters treated thus by
Englishmen, that they fell, sword in hand, upon Main's dragoons, and
cut many of them down, "being grieved," as the Rev. John Blackadder has
it, "to see Englishmen delighting so much to shed their countrymen's
blood."
In the streets of Hamilton the reckless Balfour of Burley made a bold
attempt to rally the fugitives; but a musket-ball broke his sword arm,
as his troopers reined up their horses in the thoroughfare.
"Withered be the hand that fired the shot--I can fight no longer now!"
he exclaimed in bitterness, as the weapon fell from his grasp, and once
more the flight was renewed.
Four hundred Covenanters were slain on the field, and twelve hundred
were made prisoners; these, on the evening after the battle, were
marched to Edinburgh, where they were thrust into the Greyfriars
churchyard, like sheep penned in a fold. Some were selected for the
scaffold, the rest were banished to the plantations, and of these many
perished miserably at sea.
The pursuit was scarcely over and the troops returned to their various
colours, when old General Dalyell, on horseback and in fiery haste,
lest the fighting should all be over, arrived from Edinburgh, with a
new commission appointing _him_ commander-in-chief. This document,
which he had received by express from London, was dated 22nd June,
1679, the very day of the encounter. It did not, however, entirely
supersede the authority of the Duke of Monmouth, who by the Privy
Council was styled "Lord General." Dalyell is said to have publicly
upbraided the gentle duke with his clemency to the prisoners, and
for the tenor of the orders he issued before the battle. These were,
to yield quarter to all who asked it, to make as many prisoners as
possible, and to spare life.
"Had _my_ commission come _before_ the battle," said Dalyell, grimly,
"these rogues should never more have troubled the king or country."
He marched the troops to Glasgow, and three days afterwards--the
insurrection being deemed at an end--they were dispersed in detachments
throughout the Lowlands, most of them being sent to where they were far
from welcome--their old quarters.
After the battle, Dalyell captured the Reverend John King, a preacher
who had once been chaplain to the exiled Lord Cardross. This gentleman
he sent in irons to Edinburgh, escorted by a guard of Main's dragoons,
and on their march from Glasgow there occurred a strange accident,
which the people believed to be a visitation of Heaven. One of these
troopers, at a wayside alehouse, drank, "Confusion to the Covenant!"
and being asked "where he was going,"
"I am carrying King to hell," said he, an answer likely enough to be
made by a reckless soldier.
"The judgment of Heaven did not linger on this wretch," records the
superstitious Wodrow; "he had not proceeded many paces on his journey,
when his horse stumbled, his carbine went off and shot him dead."
King perished on the gibbet soon after, and had his head and right hand
cut off.
In the winter after the battle, Dalyell quartered himself at
Kilmarnock, with one battalion of Linlithgow's Foot Guards, and the
horse troops of the Earl of Airlie and Captain Francis Stuart of
Bothwell.
"Here," says Captain Creichton, "the general, one day happening to look
on while I was exercising the troop of dragoons, asked me when I had
done, whether I knew any one of my men who was skilful in praying well
in the style and tone of the Covenanters? I immediately thought upon
one named James Gibb, who had been born in Ireland, and whom I had made
a dragoon. This man I brought to the general, assuring his Excellency
'that if I had raked hell, I could not find his match in mimicking the
Covenanters.' Whereupon the general gave him five pounds to buy him a
greatcoat and a bonnet, and commanded him to find out the rebels, but
be sure to take care of himself among them.
"The dragoon went eight miles off that very night, and got admittance
into the house of a notorious rebel, pretending he had come from
Ireland out of zeal for the cause, to assist at the fight of Bothwell
Bridge, and could not find an opportunity since of returning with
safety; and therefore, after bewitching the family with his gifts of
praying, he was conveyed in the dusk of the evening by a guide to the
house of the next adjoining rebel, and thus in the same manner from one
to another, till in a month's time he got through the principal of them
in the west, telling the general at his return, that he 'made the old
wives, in their devout fits, tear off their biggonets and mutches;' he
likewise gave the general a list of their names and places of abode,
and into the bargain brought back a good purse of money in his pocket."
"How used you to pray among them?" asked Dalyell.
"It was my custom in my prayers," replied the trooper, "to send the
king, the ministers of state, the officers of the army, with all their
soldiers and the episcopal clergy, all at one broadside to hell; but
particularly our general himself."
"What," exclaimed the general, "did you also send _me_ to hell, sir?"
"Yea," replied the unabashed dragoon, "you at the head of them as their
leader."
This discreditable abuse of hospitality and breach of faith in the
soldier is recorded as a piece of admirable tact and strategy by
Creichton, and doubtless Dalyell would make good use of the notes
supplied to him.
In the month of July, in the following year, 1680, Dalyell sent
Creichton with thirty of Airlie's horse, and fifty of Strachan's
dragoons, under Captain Bruce of Earlshall, to capture or kill a
hundred and fifty Covenanters, who, since the fight at Bothwell, had
been lurking in the wilds of Galloway. These unfortunates, after being
tracked from place to place by Bruce and Creichton, made a stand
against them at Airsmoss, near Muirkirk, on the 22nd July, and there
these desperate men fought as only the homeless and the outlawed,
the brave and the foredoomed, can fight; but they were routed, and
fourteen of them were taken prisoners. Among these was David Hackston,
of Rathillet, who had been present at the murder of the Archbishop of
St. Andrews. Sixty were slain, and one of these was Richard Cameron, a
preacher, and formerly a schoolmaster at Falkland, for whose capture
five thousand marks had long been offered by the government at
Edinburgh.
"Lord!" he exclaimed, before the cavalry charged; "Lord, spare the
green and take the ripe! Come on," he added, drawing his sword, "let us
fight it out to the last. This is the day I longed for! This is the
death I have prayed for; to die fighting against the avowed enemies of
the Lord."
He was shot and buried in the moss, where his grave is still shown;
but his head and hands were conveyed by Creichton to head-quarters. So
perished this enthusiast; but he bequeathed his name to a sect from
which the 26th Scottish Regiment of the Line still takes its title of
_the Cameronians_.
With a barbarity worthy of the Sepoy mutineers his head and hands were
exhibited to his aged father, then a prisoner in the gloomy Tolbooth
of Edinburgh, and tauntingly he was asked, if he knew to whom they had
belonged.
"Oh yes," said the old man, as he wept and kissed the bloody relics;
"they are my son's--my dear son's--but good is the will of the Lord!"
After this revolting incident, they were fixed to the Netherbow-porte,
the eastern gate of Edinburgh.
Captains Bruce and Creichton had also brought with them from Airsmoss
the Laird of Rathillet, who had received many wounds in the skirmish.
He was personally questioned by Dalyell, who is said to have threatened
to roast him, because his answers to certain queries were brief,
sullen, and unsatisfactory. Covenanting writers add, that the general
refused to permit Hackston's wounds to be dressed, and ordered him
to be chained to the floor of his dungeon till he was conveyed to
Edinburgh, where he was executed by prolonged tortures with a barbarity
that had never been equalled, even in those days.
Among others seized by Dalyell was John Spreul, an apothecary in
Glasgow, whom he brought before the Council, and accused of being
concerned in the fight at Bothwell. His leg was put in the iron boot,
and at each query the headsman gave the wedges five strokes with a
mallet. "Dalyell," says Wodrow, "complained that he did not strike
strongly enough; upon which, he (the torturer) offered himself the
mallet, saying he struck with all his might." Spreul was afterwards
imprisoned on the Bass Rock, where he remained for six years.
Amid the many instances of severity attributed to Dalyell, I must not
omit to record one of a different kind.
The most celebrated prisoner taken at Bothwell was Captain John Paton,
of Meadowhead, who served under Gustavus Adolphus, and had fought at
Kilsythe against Montrose, where he had displayed remarkable bravery
and skill in the use of his sword. Dalyell was present when this fine
old veteran was examined before the Privy Council. On this occasion a
soldier had the rudeness to taunt him with being "a rebel."
"Sir," retorted Paton, "I have done more for the King perhaps than you
have done--I fought for him at Worcester."
Some humane impression or soldierly emotion stirred the heart of
Dalyell at these words.
"Yes, John, you are right--that is true," said he: and striking the
soldier with his cane, added, "I will teach you, sirrah, other manners,
than to abuse a prisoner such as this." He then expressed sorrow for
Paton's situation, and said he would have set him at liberty had his
actions not been subject to the control of others; "but," he added, "I
will yet write to the King, and crave at least your life."
"I thank you," replied the unmoved Covenanter; "but you will not be
heard."
It is said that he obtained a reprieve for Paton, but was unable to
save his life; for though willing to take the test, the Captain was
hanged, by sentence of a quorum of the Council, in the Grassmarket, on
the 9th May. In August, 1853, a monument to his memory was erected in
the churchyard of Ayr.
Undaunted by all that had passed and was still passing around him, in
the September of that year, Donald Cargill, one of the most determined
preachers of the Covenant, and one who had long escaped the fangs of
the Council, held a conventicle in the Torwood, near Stirling, and
with all solemnity and bitterness excommunicated the King, the Dukes
of York, Monmouth, and Lauderdale, General Dalyell and others, an
act of daring which, at such a time, made a deep impression on the
Government; but in the following year he paid for his enthusiasm
by the forfeit of his life, being captured by General Dalyell, and
executed by the authorities.
Tyranny and local misgovernment had now rendered the condition of poor
Scotland sad beyond description.
Through the lonely mosses, the pathless moors, and pastoral mountain
districts of their native land, the unhappy Covenanters were hunted
like beasts of prey, without a refuge or a resting place but such
as Heaven accords to wild animals; and wherever found, captivity or
death was the penalty. During twenty-eight years of this military
persecution, it has been calculated that eighteen thousand persons
suffered death in the field, or by the utmost extremities of torture
that the Council could inflict; seventeen hundred were banished to the
plantations, and two hundred perished on the scaffold alone; seven
thousand are said to have fled to foreign countries, and four hundred
and ninety-eight were slain in cold blood, or in casual encounters; and
all this was done in the name of God, of Religion, and Law!
In September, 1679, there was a stormy debate in the Scottish Privy
Council. By an act of indemnity, his Majesty pardoned all who had been
at Bothwell Bridge, ministers and lesser barons excepted, provided they
appeared before such persons as the Council should appoint, and signed
a bond that never again would they rise in arms against the government.
It may readily be believed that very few gave this promise; and from
the minutes it would appear that Dalyell and Sir George Mackenzie of
Rosehaugh, urged that all who had _not_ done so should be proceeded
against as rebels. The President and others pled that to proceed to
further extremities would be cruel, as more than four thousand persons,
many of whom might be sick or ignorant of the King's letter, were
involved in the measure proposed, and ultimately Dalyell, and those who
adhered to him, agreed that the King should once more be addressed on
the subject.
The next entry connected with the General runs thus:--
November 6, 1679. "At Privy Council there is a letter read from his
Majesty, nominating Lieutenant-General Dalziel commander-in-chief of
all the forces of Scotland, with power to him _to act as he shall think
fit_, and only be liable and accountable and judgeable by his Majesty
himself; for Dalziel would not accept of it otherways; only he promised
and declared, that in difficult exigents he should take the advice of
his Majesty's Privy Council." (_Fountainhall_, vol. i.) On the 3rd
June, 1680, the Council received a letter from Charles on this subject.
It declared that when he gifted forfeitures, he always reserved for
his own use the houses standing on the forfeited lands. He also gave
Dalyell a Commission of Justiciary, with the advice of nine others, to
execute justice on all who were in arms at Bothwell, or failed to take
the bond within the period stated, since the 1st of January.
In 1680, the Duke of York and Albany arrived in Edinburgh, to supersede
Lauderdale, and took up his residence at Holyrood. Dalyell received
him at the head of the troops and a body of armed citizens, consisting
of sixty men chosen from the sixteen companies of the Trained Bands
which lined the streets. After his arrival, he and his Duchess, Marie
d'Este of Modena, so celebrated for her beauty, left nothing undone
to ingratiate themselves with the Scottish people, to the end that,
if excluded by the Act of Succession from the English throne, they
might for themselves secure the ancient crown of Scotland. Everything
was studied, done, and adopted to ensure popularity; and one fact
is certain, that after the Duke's arrival the persecution of the
Covenanters was much less severe than before. By ostentatious pageants,
he revived in the nation what it was even then beginning to forget, the
memory of its regal independence and the pride of better days; and thus
he sought to make his family less abhorred in the hearts of the people.
He projected many improvements at Edinburgh. Among others, the plan for
building a bridge across the North Loch, and having a new town built
upon the northern ridge; and the Holyrood parties, where _tea_ was seen
for the first time in Scotland, the balls and masques of the Ladies
Anne, afterwards of Denmark, and Mary, afterwards of Orange, were long
the theme of aged demoiselles and stately dowagers in Edinburgh, where
the beauty and charming suavity of the young princesses, with their
natural gaiety, brightened the gloomy towers and tapestried rooms of
the ancient palace: and the memory of these things was transmitted by
many a mother and grandmother to their little ones, when the last of
that old royal race was far away in hopeless exile and obscurity, and
the first grass of spring was sprouting on the graves of Culloden.
The Duke of York and his Duchess are said to have been warned of the
lofty spirit and haughty punctilio of the old Scottish aristocracy from
a speech of General Dalyell.
James had invited this stern and bearded cavalier to dine with them at
Holyrood soon after his arrival; but the Duchess Mary, as a daughter of
the ducal Prince of Modena, seemed to consider it somewhat derogatory
to her rank to sit with a subject at table, and declined to take her
place.
"Madam," said the old veteran, "I have dined at a table where _your_
father must have stood at _my_ back."
In this instance it is supposed that he alluded to the board of the
Emperor of Germany, whom the Duke of Modena, if summoned, must have
attended as an officer of the household. Abashed by the firm retort of
this grim old man, the haughty princess at once took her seat, and from
thenceforward she and her husband resolved, in their intercourse with
the Scottish noblesse, to exercise all the suavity and affability they
could command. By various acts of leniency the Duke also sought to win
favour.
"General Dalyell," says old Lord Fountainhall in his _Diary_, "having
caused to be condemned by court martial a sentinel who had been found
sleeping at one of the gates of the Abbey, the Duke caused him to be
remitted and forgiven all punishment."
In this year, soon after the Duke's arrival, the services of the
General were required to repress a dangerous demonstration among the
students of the Edinburgh University. Being deeply imbued with the
sentiments of the Covenanters, on Christmas Day, 1680, these young men
resolved to manifest publicly their horror of all prelacy, by burning
an effigy of the Pope, a ceremony eminently calculated to offend
the royal Duke, as a zealous Catholic; and the magistrates, having
resolved at all hazards to prevent this impolitic display, immediately
communicated with General Dalyell, that he might have the troops in
readiness to overawe the city. In furtherance of their daring scheme,
the students posted on all the gates and public places of Edinburgh the
following curious placard:--
"AN ADVERTISEMENT.
"These are to give notice to all noblemen, gentlemen, and citizens,
that we, the students in the Royal College of Edinburgh (to show our
detestation and abhorrence of the Romish religion, and our zeal and
fervency for the Protestant), do resolve to burn the effigies of
_Antichrist, the Pope of Rome_, at the Mercat-cross of Edinburgh, at
twelve o'clock in the forenoon--being the festival of our Saviour's
nativity. And since we hate tumults as we do superstition, we do
hereby, under pain of death, discharge all plunderers, robbers,
thieves, whores, and bawds to come within forty paces of our company,
and such as shall be found disobedient to these our commands, _sibi
caveant_.
"By our special command, Robert Brown, Secretary to all our Theatrical
and Extra-Literal Divertisements."
By an oath, the students bound themselves to stand by each other, under
a penalty, and employed a carver in wood to make them an effigy of
his Holiness, "with clothes, triple crown, keys, and other necessary
habiliments."
The Lord Provost, Sir James Dick, reported their intentions to the
Duke of York, and threatened that "he would make it a bloody Christmas
for them;" while Dalyell marched all the troops from Leith into the
Canongate. The Grassmarket, an old quaint street lying to the south of
the Castle rock, was filled with troops, whose patrols scoured all the
wynds and closes, as the narrow alleys of the ancient city are named.
The militia, or trained bands of Edinburgh, occupied the High-street;
guards were placed on the College, which stood without the walls, and
those at the palace were doubled for additional security to the royal
duke and his family.
Undismayed by all these warlike preparations, the students, many of
whom were armed with swords and pistols in their belts, mustered in
the High School yard, and with loud shouts bore, shoulder high, an
effigy of the Holy Father, clad in pontifical robes, with mitre and
keys, down the narrow wynd that led from the school to the wynd of the
Blackfriars, from whence they boldly issued by an archway into the
lower end of the High-street; and there, after reading an accusation
and sentence, amid a general cry of _Pareat Papa!_ they set fire to
the effigy, which was hollow and filled with gunpowder. To these
proceedings the city militia offered no opposition; but, according
to the history of this affair, published in Paternoster-row in 1681,
"on the first report of what was doing, General Dalyell galloped in
with his dragoons through the Netherbow-porte, and was followed by the
infantry under the Earl of Mar."
A scuffle ensued. The Earl of Linlithgow, a Catholic peer, with a few
of his Foot Guards, dispersed the students sword in hand, and in making
a pass at one of them, fell, amid loud laughter, prostrate before the
blazing figure, which was burned to the complete satisfaction of all
concerned therein. Many students were captured and threatened with
torture by the Council; but for his loyalty in this affair, the house
of the Lord Provost, an old manor at Priestfield, near Duddingstone,
was one night set on fire by ignited powder-balls, and burned to the
ground. A proclamation was issued, banishing all students fifteen miles
from the capital, and for closing the gates of the university; but
the circumstance of a gunpowder barrel, bearing the Edinburgh Castle
mark, being found near Priestfield, caused a general suspicion that
some officers of the garrison had a hand in the affair. A reward of two
hundred merks was offered for each of the leaders in these outrages;
but it was to the honour of the students that not one was betrayed by
his comrades.
The civil commotions were now of a nature so serious, that the local
government forced the magistrates of Edinburgh to _number_ the
inhabitants of the city and its suburbs, and to make accurate lists
of all men and women between the ages of sixteen and sixty, for the
information of the Lords of Council. The name, rank, or profession of
persons in lodgings or hostelries, and of all strangers in the city,
were to be delivered nightly by the bailies to the captain of the city
guard, who, under a penalty of 100_l._ Scots, was to send it to the
commander-in-chief, or officer next in command.
On the 15th of November, 1681, Dalyell raised that celebrated
dragoon regiment, so well known in military history as the Scots
Greys, from the peculiar colour of their horses. They were a corps
of horse-grenadiers, and were recruited almost exclusively among
the sons of the Cavalier gentry and their tenants.[37] The regiment
is now numbered as the 2nd Cavalry of the Line. They wore the old
heavy-skirted buff coat; and it is worthy of remark, that the _last
time_ such a garment was worn in the British service was by the colonel
who commanded them at Minden, seventy-four years after.
Captain Creichton mentions that, when he was lying in his lodgings
at Edinburgh, suffering from sword wounds received at Airsmoss,
Dalyell was wont to visit him daily, as he went to the Duke's Court at
Holyrood, and once "did me the honour," he continues, "to mention me
and my services to His Royal Highness, who was desirous to see me. I
was admitted to kiss his hand, and ordered to sit down in consequence
of my honourable wounds, which would not suffer me to stand without
great pain."
About this time the Reverend John Blackadder, a pious and good man, who
had long continued preaching in solitary places, revisited his native
country, after having been in Holland, and was captured by a party of
soldiers, and brought to Edinburgh, where Johnstone, the town major,
at once conveyed him, under escort, to the house of Dalyell, in the
Canongate. The account of their interview, and of the examination of
Blackadder before the inexorable Lords of Council, are graphically
detailed in the memoirs of that unfortunate Covenanter.
The Major conducted him down that long and ancient street to where
the General lived, near the old palace porch, which has now been
demolished. The prisoner was accompanied by his son Thomas, who in
after years died a merchant in New England. It chanced that the dreaded
Dalyell, whose white vow-beard and lofty bald head impressed with fear
and respect all on whom he bent his stern grey eye, opened the door as
they approached, being probably about to walk forth.
"I have brought you a prisoner," said Major Johnstone.
"Take him to the guard," replied Dalyell, briefly.
On this the poor minister, whose emotions on finding himself confronted
by the scourge of the Covenanters must have been far from enviable,
stepped up the stair, and said timidly--
"Sir, may I speak with you a little?"
"You, sir, have spoken too much already," replied Dalyell, in anger,
for he never controlled his wrath at the sight of a Covenanter. "I
should hang you with my own hands, over that outshot!"
At that moment Dalyell knew not who Blackadder really was; but finding
him in a mood so sullen, and aware that the old man's anger was not to
be trifled with, the Major took his prisoner away. Instead, however,
of consigning him to the common guard-house--for Blackadder was a man
alike venerable by his years and character--he gave him a room in the
house of Captain Murray, of Philiphaugh, where he remained until he was
brought to the dread Council chamber for examination before the Duke of
Rothes, then Lord High Chancellor of Scotland; Sir George Mackenzie,
of Rosehaugh, King's Advocate; General Dalyell, and Paterson, the last
Bishop of Edinburgh.
"Are you a minister?" asked Rothes.
"I am," replied Blackadder.
"Where?"
"At Troqueer, in Galloway."
"How long since?"
"Since 1653."
"Did you excommunicate the King at the Torwood, or were you there at
the time?" continued the Chancellor.
"I have not been at the Torwood for these four years."
"But what do you _think_ of it (the excommunication)? Do you _approve_
of it?"
He was asked the usual ensnaring questions (and, like other prisoners,
had the instruments of torture on the table before him) as to whether
he approved of the execution of Charles I.; if he had preached in the
fields and on the hill-sides, and so forth; but his answers proved
unsatisfactory, and, after a long examination, he was sent back to
Philiphaugh's apartments at Holyrood.
On the morning of the next day he sent his son Thomas to a kinsman
named Blackadder, who bore the rank of colonel, and had been Dalyell's
comrade in the expedition at Skelko Castle in 1654, and who now exerted
himself in his favour, and made such interest with the stern General,
that he received the recusant divine with great politeness in the
forenoon, when he was again brought before the Council.
"Mr. Blackadder," said he, "of what family are you--the House of
Tulliallan?"
"Yes, General, I am the nearest alive now, to represent that family,
although it is now ruined and brought so low."
Dalyell was also allied by blood to the family of Tulliallan.
"Are you the son of Sir John Blackadder?" asked Bishop Paterson; but
the inflexible Covenanter declined _his_ authority as a spiritual lord,
and would not reply even to this trivial question.
In the sequel, he was sent prisoner to the Bass, escorted by three Life
Guardsmen, and an officer named Rollock, who threatened to pistol him
at Fisher-row, when the people gathered to see him pass. On that dreary
rock, which was then the home of many a broken heart, the old man died
in his seventieth year, and he now lies in the churchyard of North
Berwick.[38]
The publication of a stern and high-toned manifesto against _Charles
Stuart_, and all supporters of his authority, together with the secret
murder of two gentlemen of the Life Guards, who had been particularly
active in discovering conventicles, and who were assassinated a few
nights after its appearance in November, 1684, excited great alarm in
the minds of the Scottish ministry. An oath, abjuring the principles
inculcated by this document, was ordained to be put to all persons
above sixteen years of age, and capital punishment was the penalty
of all who refused it. Dalyell took measures still more decisive
with the parish where the guardsmen were murdered; and he marched a
body of troops to Livingstone, where the officers had authority to
summon before them the inhabitants of that parish, and of five others
adjacent, that they might be interrogated upon the late seditious
manifesto.
Those who owned it were instantly to be shot; and those who refused to
answer were also to be shot. Officers and soldiers were sent through
Edinburgh--particularly to the Calton, where the poorest and most
humble class of citizens resided--to enforce the oath of abjuration
and ask ensnaring questions, as to whether the rising at Bothwell was
a _rebellion_, and the slaying of Archbishop Sharpe a _murder_? "Old
women were taken from their wheels, and journeymen and apprentices from
the forge, to answer these teazing and captious questions," and the
thumbikins were always at hand to freshen their memories.
A document preserved in the General Register House at Edinburgh,
signed by Charles II. at Windsor, 16th of June, 1684, and printed by a
literary club, affords us a list of the Scottish standing forces, then
commanded by Dalyell, and irrespective of the militia which formed the
main strength of the country.
Reduced since Bothwell, the Life Guards then consisted of a hundred
men; each officer was furnished with two horses; the pay, sterling, of
a captain was 1_l._ per diem; of the lieutenants 12_s._; of the cornets
7_s._; of the troopers 2_s._ 6_d._
His Majesty's regiment of Foot Guards, still commanded by
Lieut.-General George, Earl of Linlithgow, consisted of ten companies,
each consisting of three officers, two sergeants, two drummers, and
seventy-three rank and file, making a total strength, staff included,
of eight hundred and seven men.
The grenadiers of the Foot Guard were the same in number as the ten
preceding companies.
The Earl of Mar's regiment consisted of eleven companies of eighty
strong. The pay of a captain of infantry was 8_s._ sterling per diem;
the privates received 5_d._
A regiment of horse (armed with sword and pistol), consisting of five
troops of fifty men each, including officers and men.
A regiment of dragoons (armed with sword, pistol, and _musket_, for
service on horseback or on foot), the _Scots Greys_, consisting of "six
companies," also of fifty-nine each, including officers. All troopers
received 1_s._ per diem.
The garrison of Edinburgh Castle consisted of 5 officers and 121
soldiers; of Stirling Castle, 3 officers and 47 soldiers; of Dunbarton
Castle, 3 officers and 32 soldiers; of the Bass Rock, 1 officer and 28
soldiers.
The train of artillery was commanded by a Master of the Ordnance, whose
pay was 120_l._ per annum, with a conductor, engineer, fireworker, and
master gunners.--(_Miscellany of the Maitland Club._)
Dalyell's pay as a Scottish General was 400_l._ per annum.
Assisted by a militia, this small force proved sufficient, for a time,
to coerce all the Lowlands of Scotland.
In July, this year, Mr. William Spence, a follower of the recently
forfeited Marquis of Argyle, was tortured by the Privy Council, that
he might be forced to reveal all he knew of that noble's intrigues
with the English, and to read certain letters in cypher, which were
placed before him by Major Holmes; but on the torture failing to
produce the desired effect, "he was," according to Lord Fountainhall,
"_put in General Dalyell's hands_; and it was reported that by a hair
shirt and pricking (_i.e._, with a needle), as the witches are used,
he was five nights kept from sleep, till he was half distracted. He
ate very little that he might require less sleep; yet all this while
he discovered nothing; though had he done so, little credit was to be
given to what he should say at such a time."
After this is the following entry:--
"August 7th, 1684. At Privy Council, Spence (mentioned 26th July)
is again tortured, and has his thumbs crushed with thumbiekins. It
is a new invention used among the colliers when transgressors, and
discovered by General Dalziell and Drummond, they having seen them used
in Muscovy. After this, when they were about to put him in the boots,
he, being frightened, desired time, and he would declare what he knew;
whereon they gave him some time, and sequestrated him in the Castle of
Edinburgh, as a place where he would be free from any bad advice or
impression to be obstinate in not revealing."
There is something alike quaint and horrible in the quiet and
matter-of-fact way in which this old senator records such
extra-judicial barbarities; but instruments of torture were then as
necessary to the Privy Council as the pen and ink with which their
minutes were recorded.
To repress the reviving spirit of the Covenanters, four Commissions
of Lieutenancy were, in September, ordained to meet at Glasgow, Ayr,
Dumfries, and Dunse. The first, as Dalyell ordered, to be guarded by
Lord Ross's troop of Horse and Captain Inglis's Dragoons; the second
by the troop of Guards and his own Grey Dragoons; the third by the
Horse of Claverhouse, Drumlanrig, and Strachan; the fourth by the Horse
of Balcarris and Lord Charles Murray's Dragoons; but now the horrors
of this civil and military persecution received a check by the death
of Charles II. on the 6th February 1685, and on the accession of his
brother, who was immediately proclaimed at Edinburgh, James VII. of
Scotland, by the Lyon King and magistrates, and Dalyell received a
new commission as commander-in-chief of the kingdom; but the Catholic
tendencies of the new court--tendencies to which, with all his hatred
of Covenanters and Low Churchmen, "the old Muscovite" was rigidly
averse--would not have permitted him to retain his authority long.
Death now, however, solved the important problem of how he was to act
at this peculiarly dangerous juncture; he was thus, to use the words of
his comrade Creichton, "rescued from the difficulties he was likely to
be under, between the notions he had of duty to his prince on one side,
and true zeal for his religion on the other;" as he expired suddenly at
his house in the Canongate of Edinburgh, in the month of July, 1685.
On the 7th August, while the minute-guns boomed from the dark portholes
of the ancient half-moon battery of the castle, his body, in a
magnificent hearse, drawn by plumed horses, and having six pieces
of brass cannon, his led charger, his suit of armour, and his many
trophies, sword, spurs, helmet, and gauntlets, and his general's
bâton, all borne by officers of rank, and escorted by all the standing
forces in Edinburgh, with drums muffled, standards craped, and arms
reversed, was slowly conveyed through the western gate of the city to
Linlithgowshire, and interred in the family vault of the Dalyells at
Binns, in the parish of Abercorn.
There the persecuting Cavalier rests in peace, though the superstitious
peasantry still aver that his tall, thin, and venerable figure, in
buff coat and head-piece, with his vast white beard floating from his
grim visage to his military girdle, is seen "in glimpses of the moon,"
flitting, like an unquiet spirit, about the old manor house, or in the
avenues and parks which were formed by himself around it.
He died in his eighty-fifth year.
The hearts of the Covenanters gathered hope, and held jubilee at his
death; and if all be true that is recorded of him, it can scarcely be
a matter for wonder that his name and memory are still execrated in
Scotland, and that the reputation he has left behind him is not one to
be envied.
General Drummond, his old Russian comrade, succeeded him as
Commander-in-Chief of the Scottish army; Charles, Earl of Dunmore, was
appointed Colonel of the Scots Greys, and the Laird of Livingstone
filled the seat left vacant by him, as Commissioner in Parliament for
the shire of Linlithgow.
His son Thomas, who succeeded him, was created a baronet of Nova
Scotia, and left a daughter, Magdalene Dalyell, who, by her marriage
with James Menteith, of Auldcathie, transmitted the property to her
son, who thus represented the ancient line of the Earls of Menteith.
In reviewing the life of this singular officer, I cannot do better than
quote the words of one of the most temperate and popular of Scottish
writers:--
"There are _two_ ways of contemplating the character even of so
blood-stained a persecutor as Dalyell. He had, it must be remarked,
served royalty upon principle in its worst days, and seen a monarch
beheaded by a small party of his rebellious subjects, and a great part
of the community, including himself, deprived of their property, and
obliged to fly for their lives to foreign lands; and all this was on
account of _one particular way_ of viewing politics and religion. When
the usual authorities of the land regained their ascendancy, Dalyell
must naturally have been disposed to justify and support very severe
measures, in order to prevent the _recurrence_ of such a period as the
Civil War and the Usurpation. Thus all his cruelties are resolved into
an abstract principle, to the relief of his personal character, which
otherwise, we do not doubt, might be very good. How often do we see,
even in modern times, actions justified upon general views, which would
be shuddered at if they stood upon their naked merits, and were to be
performed upon the sole responsibility of the individual!"
Such was the chequered military career of the first colonel of the old
Scots Greys, certainly one of the most remarkable men of a time replete
with bloodshed and cruelty.
The persecuted and the persecutor--the fiery Cavalier and the stern
Covenanter--are alike in their quiet graves, and the grass of nearly
two hundred years has grown and withered over them. Their strife is
becoming, indeed, a tale of the times of old; yet few Scotsmen can look
back without emotions of sorrow and compassion to those dark days of
religious madness and political misrule when, with all their bravery,
their forefathers perpetrated such deeds as made "the angels weep."
But, happily for us, time and the grave mellow the memory of all things.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 31: Chambers' _Eminent Scotsmen_.]
[Footnote 32: Alexander Gordon, of Auchintoul, major-general in the
service of the czar, wrote a life of Peter I., which was published
at Aberdeen in 1755. "On the 30th November, this year," says this
work, "died also General Patrick Gordon, much regretted by the czar
and the whole nation. His majesty visited him five times during his
illness--was present at the moment he expired, and shut his eyes
with his own hands. He was buried also in great state. He was son to
John Gordon, Esq., of Achlenchries in the county of Aberdeen, whose
grandfather was a son of the family of Haddo, now Earls of Aberdeen."
This officer entered the Russian service in the reign of Alexis; and
Alexander Gordon joined it in 1693. Both served at the capture of Azof;
the younger was at the battle of Narva, and was long a prisoner in
the hands of the Swedes. In his old age, he returned to Scotland, and
closed his days in peace in his native place.]
[Footnote 33: This must be the Russian computation of time.]
[Footnote 34: Raised for Charles II. in 1650, and disbanded after
Worcester.]
[Footnote 35: War-office communicated.]
[Footnote 36: The Royal Horse Guards of Scotland were raised at
Edinburgh in 1702. The Duke of Argyle, who came over in 1688, was their
first colonel. Lord Polwarth's Horse (now the 7th Hussars) then the
only Scottish regiment of Light Dragoons, were embodied in 1689.]
[Footnote 37: In a muster-roll of Captain Murray's Scottish company, at
this time, I find "_Corporall_ Sir David Livingstone."]
[Footnote 38: See Crichton's _Memoirs of Blackadder_.]
* * * * * *
BY JAMES GRANT.
_Price 2s. each, Fancy Boards._
The Romance of War.
The Aide-de-Camp.
The Scottish Cavaliers.
Bothwell.
Jane Seton; or, The King's Advocate.
Philip Rollo.
The Black Watch.
Mary of Lorraine.
Oliver Ellis; or, The Fusiliers.
Lucy Arden; or, Hollywood Hall.
Frank Hilton; or, The Queen's Own.
The Yellow Frigate.
Harry Ogilvie; or, The Black Dragoons.
Arthur Blane.
Laura Everingham; or, The Highlanders of Glenora.
The Captain of the Guard.
Letty Hyde's Lovers.
The Cavaliers of Fortune.
Second to None.
The Constable of France.
The Phantom Regiment.
The Girl he Married.
First Love and Last Love.
Dick Rodney.
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Lady Wedderburn's Wish.
Only an Ensign.
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Under the Red Dragon.
Shall I Win Her?
Fairer than a Fairy.
The Secret Dispatch.
One of the Six Hundred.
Morley Ashton.
Did She Love Him?
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GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS,
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