Part 24

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 baroniae 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. Kevenhueller 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 Paesing. 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 baton of a field-marshal."

Madame Loudon laughed, for her husband was then eight-and-thirty, and the baton 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 levee 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.