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.