Part 14

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--

"ANNAE IVANOWNA, D.G., RUSSLE IMPECUTRIX."

On the other was an eagle, with the words--

"PACE EUROPAE 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 Kevenhueller; 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.