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.