during the invasion of that country by monarchical France in 1823, the
O'Donnels bore a prominent part, and adhered to Ferdinand VII. The
Conde de Abispal was appointed a field-marshal, with the office of
governor and political chief at Madrid, and on the 25th March he issued
a proclamation announcing that the amnesty granted by the Cortes to
those in arms against the king was about to expire, and concluded by
a brief warning to the factious and the Constitutionalists to lay
down their arms. On the 17th April he published his able orders and
propositions to the militia of the capital, together with the following
declaration of his political principles:--
"_Don Henry O'Donnel, Knight Grand Cross, &c., General
of the 3rd Corps, &c._
"Having learned that some ill-disposed persons have confounded my
_private opinion_ with those sacred obligations _which my oath and
duty impose upon me_, and have given out that I am unwilling to
support the Constitution of 1812 even to the last extremity, and until
the national representation, lawfully constituted, should have made
certain changes therein; I do declare that _I am resolved to defend
it_, according to my oath, until it shall be altered by those means
which the Constitution itself prescribes, and that I deem as traitors
all Spaniards who, deviating from the path of duty traced out by law,
shall cease to obey the same. Such were my sentiments when, in answer
to an address from M. Montijo, I wrote a letter which they charge me
with having published, and such will ever be my sentiments. But my
_opinion_ as an individual shall never prevent me from fulfilling my
_duty_ as a general and a citizen of Spain.
"Madrid, 17th May, 1823."
But ere long he found the difficulty of reconciling his private
sentiments and conviction with his duty to a king who had become the
tool of France. Abispal proved the Talleyrand of Spain, and lost all
favour by his indecision and vacillation; for, after receiving the
Grand Cordon of the Order of Carlos III. from the hands of Ferdinand
VII., he passed over to the Constitutionalists. From that day his power
declined, and he was glad to seek shelter from the fury and clamour of
the people at Montpelier in France, where he lived in retirement and
much reduced in circumstances.
His son, LEOPOLD COUNT O'DONNEL, remained in Spain, and had attained
the rank of colonel when the civil war broke out between the Carlists
and Christinos, a step in which the children of the four elder
O'Donnels were strangely divided, brother against brother, and cousin
against cousin.
Thus, on the 2nd May, 1835, when Quesada was attacked by Don Tomas
Zumalacarregui (the Claverhouse of Spanish loyalty), his division
would have been annihilated but for the timely succour he received
from Colonel Leopold O'Donnel de Abispal, who unfortunately was
taken prisoner by the Navarrese while vainly struggling to rally the
Loyal Guards. All who were captured were barbarously shot by the
Carlists, and of all who perished none was more regretted than the
young, handsome, and chivalric O'Donnel. Though a colonel in the
service, he was merely accompanying Quesada to profit by his escort
so far as Pampeluna, where he was about to celebrate his nuptials
with a beautiful Spanish girl of high rank, and the heiress of an old
and wealthy family. A noble ransom was offered, but Don Tomas was
inexorable.
His father, Henry O'Donnel, then in his old age, died of a broken heart
at Montpelier, on hearing of his son's disastrous fate.
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 baroniæ 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. Kevenhüller 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
Pæsing. 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 bâton of a
field-marshal."
Madame Loudon laughed, for her husband was then eight-and-thirty, and
the bâton 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 levée 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.