Part 3
September 16.--This is the anniversary of the birth of Marshal Turenne, one of the most renowned generals of modern times. Henri de la Tour d’Auvergne, Viscount Turenne, was the second son of the Duke de Bouillon, Prince of Sedan, in Champaigne, where he was born in 1611. His mother was Elizabeth of Nassau, daughter of William, Prince of Orange, commonly called William the First, the illustrious founder of the Dutch republic. His father having died, Turenne was sent by his mother, at the early age of thirteen, to the Netherlands, to be trained to the art of war under his uncle, Prince Maurice, who, since the assassination of William in 1584, had presided over the affairs of that country. The young recruit was placed at first in the ranks, and served for a year as a common soldier, taking his share in all the labours and hardships of his comrades, before he was raised to a post of command. In 1630 he returned to France, and was immediately invested with the command of a regiment. In 1634, having made a brilliant display of his skill and courage at the siege of the fortress of La Motte in Lorraine, he was raised to the rank of Marechal de Camp. The next year he was sent to Germany to take part in the war against the Emperor. From this date till his death, he was almost constantly engaged in active service; and for the next forty years no military name in France, or in Europe, was more renowned than that of Turenne, but we cannot here follow him through his successive campaigns. He was made a Marshal of France in 1642, at the early age of twenty-seven, and Marshal-General of the French armies on the marriage of Louis IV. in 1660. The chief scenes of his exploits were Holland and Flanders, Italy, and different parts of Germany. He also took a leading part in the civil dissensions which distracted his native country during the minority of Louis XIV., espousing in the first instance the cause of the Fronde, or combination of malcontented nobility, but afterwards taking the side of the court, and fighting as valiantly against his late associates. The career of Turenne was closed by one of the accidents of war which may befall the highest or the humblest soldier. As he was reconnoitring the position of the Austrian General Montecuculi, near Saltzbach, he was struck by a cannon ball, and fell dead from his horse, on the 27th of July, 1675. Turenne had married in 1653 the daughter of the Duke de la Force, who died however in 1666, without leaving children. This lady was a person of great piety, and strongly attached to the Protestant faith, of which her ancestors had been among the first and most strenuous defenders. While she lived, Turenne, a Protestant also by education and by descent, both on his father’s and mother’s side, resisted all the solicitations of the court to change his religion. Not long after the death of his wife, however, after professing to have studied the points in dispute between the two churches, he publicly declared himself a Catholic. In sagacity, steady perseverance, self-reliance, and many of the other qualities which go to form an able commander of an army, Marshal Turenne has scarcely been surpassed; and he was also brave as his sword, and so wholly devoted in heart to his profession, that he thought as little of its toils as of its dangers, and was at all times ready to share both with the meanest in the camp. Hence he was the idol of his men as well as their pride; they not only admired, and followed with alacrity to the field, the consummate captain and hero of a hundred victories, but they loved the man. This military spirit was the soul of Turenne’s character and the source both of its bright and of its darker points. Indeed, bred as he was to the trade of arms almost from his childhood, and living in an age of such incessant warfare, it was hardly possible that he should have been anything more than a mere soldier. His name will be eternally disgraced by the ravages which he caused to be committed in the campaign of 1674, in the Palatinate, or the dominions of the Elector of Palatine. At the same time it should be borne in mind that war was the spirit of his age; and it would be unjust to pronounce upon the character of an individual, who certainly possessed many high qualities, by subjecting him to the standard by which we have learnt to estimate the pretensions of mere warriors.
[Illustration: French Cavalier.]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
⁂ The Office of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge is at 59, Lincoln’s Inn Fields.
LONDON:--CHARLES KNIGHT, PALL-MALL EAST.
_Shopkeepers and Hawkers may be supplied Wholesale by the following Booksellers, of whom, also, any of the previous Numbers may be had:--_
_London_, GROOMBRIDGE, Panyer Alley, Paternoster Row. _Bath_, SIMMS. _Birmingham_, DRAKE. _Bristol_, WESTLEY and Co. _Carlisle_, THURNAM; and SCOTT. _Derby_, WILKINS and SON. _Doncaster_, BROOKE and CO. _Falmouth_, PHILIP. _Hull_, STEPHENSON. _Leeds_, BAINES and NEWSOME. _Lincoln_, BROOKE and SONS. _Liverpool_, WILLMER and SMITH. _Manchester_, ROBINSON; and WEBB and SIMMS. _Newcastle-upon-Tyne_, CHARNLEY. _Norwich_, JARROLD and SON. _Nottingham_, WRIGHT. _Sheffield_, RIDGE. _Worcester_, DEIGHTON. _Dublin_, WAKEMAN. _Edinburgh_, OLIVER and BOYD. _Glasgow_, ATKINSON and CO.
Printed by WILLIAM CLOWES, Duke Street, Lambeth.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Transcriber’s Notes
This file uses _underscores_ to indicate italic text. New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain. Itemized changes from the original text:
• p. 234: Added opening quotation mark before phrase “Dinner was scarcely over when we set up our great ladder of ropes.” • p. 235: Added period after phrase “or mountain snake.” • p. 240: Replaced period with comma after phrase “no military name in France, or in Europe, was more renowned than that of Turenne.”