Henri de la Tour d’Auvergne, Vicomte de Turenne, born September 16th,
1611, was the second son of the Duc de Bouillon, prince of Sedan, and of
Elizabeth of Nassau, daughter of the celebrated William of Orange, to
whose courage and talents the Netherlands mainly owed their deliverance
from Spain. Both parents being zealous Calvinists, Turenne was of course
brought up in the same faith. Soon after his father’s death, the Duchess
sent him, when he was not yet thirteen years old, into the Low
Countries, to learn the art of war under his uncle, Maurice of Nassau,
who commanded the troops of Holland in the protracted struggle between
that country and Spain. Maurice held that there was no royal road to
military skill, and placed his young relation in the ranks, as a
volunteer, where for some time he served, enduring all hardships to
which the common soldiers were exposed. In his second campaign he was
promoted to the command of a company, which he retained for four years,
distinguished by the admirable discipline of his men, by unceasing
attention to the due performance of his own duty, and by his eagerness
to witness, and become thoroughly acquainted with, every branch of
service. In the year 1630, family circumstances rendered it expedient
that he should return to France, where the court received him with
distinction, and invested him with the command of a regiment.
Four years elapsed before Turenne had an opportunity of distinguishing
himself in the service of his native country. His first laurels were
reaped in 1634, at the siege of the strong fortress of La Motte, in
Lorraine, where he headed the assault, and, by his skill and bravery,
mainly contributed to its success. For this exploit he was raised at the
early age of twenty-three to the rank of Marechal de Camp, the second
grade of military rank in France. In the following year, the breaking
out of war between France and Austria opened a wider field of action.
Turenne held a subordinate command in the army, which, under the
Cardinal de la Valette, marched into Germany to support the Swedes,
commanded by the Duke of Weimar. At first fortune smiled on the allies;
but, ere long, scarcity of provisions compelled them to a disastrous
retreat over a ruined country, in the face of the enemy. On this
occasion the young soldier’s ability and disinterestedness were equally
conspicuous. He sold his plate and equipage for the use of the army;
threw away his baggage to load the waggons with those stragglers who
must otherwise have been abandoned; and marched on foot, while he gave
up his own horse to the relief of one who had fallen, exhausted by
hunger and fatigue. These are the acts which win the attachment of
soldiers, and Turenne was idolized by his.
Our limits will not allow of the relation of those campaigns in which
the subject of this memoir filled a subordinate part. In 1637–8 he again
served under La Valette, in Flanders and Germany, after which he was
made Lieutenant-General, a rank not previously existing in France. The
three following years he was employed in Italy and Savoy, and in 1642
made a campaign in Roussillon, under the eye of Louis XIII. In the
spring of 1643, the King died; and in the autumn of the same year,
Turenne received from the Queen Mother and Regent, Anne of Austria, a
Marshal’s baton, the appropriate reward of his long and brilliant
services. Four years a captain, four a colonel, three Marechal de Camp,
five lieutenant-general, he had served in all stations from the ranks
upwards, and distinguished himself in them not only by military talent,
but by strict honour and trustworthiness, rare virtues in those
turbulent times when men were familiar with civil war, and the great
nobility were too powerful to be peaceful subjects.
Soon after his promotion, he was sent to Germany, to collect and
reorganise the French army, which had been roughly handled at
Duttlingen. It wanted rest, men, and money, and he settled it in good
quarters, raised recruits, and pledged his own credit for the necessary
sums. The effects of his exertions were soon seen. He arrived in Alsace,
December, 1643, and in the following May was at the head of 10,000 men,
well armed and equipped, with whom he felt strong enough to attack the
Imperial army, and raise the siege of Fribourg. At that moment the glory
which he hoped and was entitled to obtain, as the reward of five months’
labour, was snatched from him by the arrival of the celebrated Prince de
Condè, at that time Duc d’Enghien, to assume the command. The vexation
which Turenne must have felt was increased by the difference of age, for
the Prince was ten years his junior, and of personal character. Condè
was ardent and impetuous, and flushed by his brilliant victory at Rocroi
the year before; Turenne cool, calculating, and cautious, unwearied in
preparing a certainty of success beforehand, yet prompt in striking when
the decisive moment was come. The difference of their characters was
exemplified upon this occasion. Merci, the Austrian commander, had taken
up a strong position, which Turenne said could not be forced; but at the
same time pointed out the means of turning it. Condè differed from him,
and the second in command was obliged to submit. On two successive days
two bloody and unsuccessful assaults were made: on the third Turenne’s
advice was taken, and on the first demonstration of this change of plan
Merci retreated. In the following year, ill supplied with every thing,
and forced to separate his troops widely to obtain subsistence, he was
attacked at Mariendal, and worsted by his old antagonist Merci. This,
his first defeat, he felt severely: still he retained his position, and
was again ready to meet the enemy, when he received positive orders from
Mazarin to undertake nothing before the arrival of Condè. Zealous for
his country and careless of personal slights, he marched without
complaint under the command of his rival: and his magnanimity was
rewarded at the battle of Nordlingen, in 1645, where the centre and
right wing having failed in their attack, Turenne with the left wing
broke the enemy’s right, and falling on his centre in flank, threw it
into utter confusion. For this service he received the most cordial and
ample acknowledgments from Condè, both on the field, and in his
despatches to the Queen Regent. Soon after, Condè, who was wounded in
the battle, resigned his command into the hands of Turenne. The
following campaigns of 1646–7–8 exhibited a series of successes, by
means of which he drove the Duke of Bavaria from his dominions, and
reduced the Emperor to seek for peace. This was concluded at Munster in
1648, and to Turenne’s exertions the termination of the thirty years’
war is mainly to be ascribed.
The repose of France was soon broken by civil war. Mazarin’s
administration, oppressive in all respects, but especially in fiscal
matters, had produced no small discontent throughout the country, and
especially in Paris; where the parliament openly espoused the cause of
the people against the minister, and were joined by several of the
highest nobility, urged by various motives of private interest or
personal pique. Among these were the Prince of Conti, the Duc de
Longueville, and the Duc de Bouillon. Mazarin, in alarm, endeavoured to
enlist the ambition of Turenne in his favour, by offering the government
of Alsace, and the hand of his own niece, as the price of his adherence
to the court. The Viscount, pressed by both parties, avoided to declare
his adhesion to either: but he unequivocally expressed his
disapprobation of the Cardinal’s proceedings, and, being superseded in
his command, retired peaceably to Holland. There he remained till the
convention of Ruel effected a hollow and insincere reconciliation
between the court and one of the jarring parties of which the Fronde was
composed. That reconciliation was soon broken by the sudden arrest of
Condè, Conti, and the Duc de Longueville. Turenne then threw himself
into the arms of the Fronde; urged partly by indignation at this act of
violence, partly by a sympathy with the interests of his brother, the
Duc de Bouillon; but more, it is said, by a devoted attachment to the
Duchesse de Longueville, who turned the great soldier to her purposes,
and laughed at his passion. He sold his plate; the Duchess sold her
jewels: they concluded an alliance with Spain, and the Viscount was soon
at the head of an army. But the heterogeneous mass of Frenchmen,
Spaniards, and Germans, melted away during the first campaign; and
Turenne, at the head of eight thousand men, found himself obliged to
encounter the royal army, twenty thousand strong. In the battle which
ensued, he distinguished his personal bravery in several desperate
charges: but the disparity was too great; and this defeat of Rhetel was
of serious consequence to the Fronde party. Convinced at last that his
true interest lay rather on the side of the court, then managed by a
woman and a priest, where he might be supreme in military matters, than
in supporting the cause of an impetuous and self-willed leader, such as
Condè, Turenne gladly listened to overtures of accommodation, and passed
over to the support of the regency. His conduct in this war appears to
be the most objectionable part of a long and, for that age, singularly
honest life. The fault, however, seems to have been rather in espousing,
than in abandoning, the cause of the Fronde. Many of that party were
doubtless actuated by sincerely patriotic motives. Such, however, were
not the motives of Turenne, nor of the nobility to whom he attached
himself: and if, in returning to his allegiance, he followed the call of
interest as decidedly as he had followed the call of passion in
revolting, it was at least a recurrence to his former principle of
loyalty, from which, in after-life, he never swerved.
The value of his services was soon made evident. Twice, at the head of
very inferior troops, he checked Condè in the career of victory: and
again compelled him to fight under the walls of Paris; where, in the
celebrated battle of the Faubourg St. Antoine, the Prince and his army
narrowly escaped destruction. Finally, he re-established the court at
Paris, and compelled Condè to quit the realm. These important events
took place in one campaign of six months, in 1652.
In 1654 he again took the field against his former friend and commander,
Condè, who had taken refuge in Spain, and now led a foreign army against
his country. The most remarkable operation of the campaign was the
raising the siege of Arras; which the Spaniards had invested, according
to the most approved fashion of the day, with a strong double line of
circumvallation, within which the besieging army was supposed to be
securely sheltered against the sallies of the garrison cooped up within,
and the efforts of their friends from without. Turenne marched to the
relief of the place. This could only be effected by forcing the enemy’s
entrenchments; which were accordingly attacked, contrary to the opinion
of his own officers, and carried at all points, despite the personal
exertions of Condè. The Spaniards were forced to retreat. It is
remarkable that Turenne, not long after, was himself defeated in
precisely similar circumstances, under the walls of Valenciennes, round
which he had drawn lines of circumvallation. Once more he found himself
in the same position at Dunkirk. On this occasion he marched out of his
lines to meet the enemy, rather than wait, and suffer them to choose
their point of attack: and the celebrated battle of the Dunes or
Sandhills ensued, in which he gained a brilliant victory over the best
Spanish troops, with Condè at their head. This took place in 1657.
Dunkirk and the greater part of Flanders fell into the hands of the
French in consequence; and these successes led to the treaty of the
Pyrenees, which terminated the war in 1658.
Turenne’s signal services were appreciated and rewarded by the entire
confidence both of the regency, and of Louis himself, after he attained
his majority and took the reins of state into his own hands. At the
King’s marriage, in 1660, he was created Marshal-General of the French
armies, with the significant words, “Il ne tient qu’a vous que ce soit
davantage.” The monarch is supposed to have meditated the revival of the
high dignity of Constable of France, which could not be held by a
Protestant. If this were so, it was a tempting bribe; but it failed.
Covetousness was no part of Turenne’s character; and for ambition, his
calm and strong mind could not but see that a dignity won by such
unworthy means would not elevate him in men’s eyes. We would willingly
attribute his conduct to a higher principle; but there is reason to
believe that henceforth he rather sought to be converted from the strict
tenets of Calvinism in which he had been brought up. It is at least
certain, from his correspondence, that about this time he applied
himself to theological studies, with which an imperfect education, and a
life spent in camps, had little familiarized him; and that in the year
1668 he solemnly renounced the Protestant church. However, he asked and
received nothing for himself, and was refused one trifling favour which
he requested for his nephew: and perhaps the most fair and probable
explanation of his conversion is, that his profession of Calvinism had
been habitual and nominal, not founded upon inquiry and conviction; and
that in becoming a convert to Catholicism, he had little to give up,
while his mind was strongly biassed in favour of the fashionable and
established creed.
When war broke out afresh between France and Spain, in 1667, Louis XIV.
made his first campaign under Turenne’s guidance, and gained possession
of nearly the whole of Flanders. In 1672, when Louis resolved to
undertake in person the conquest of Holland, he again placed the
command, under himself, in Turenne’s hands, and disgraced several
marshals who refused to receive orders from the Viscount, considering
themselves his equals in military rank. How Le Grand Monarque forced the
passage of the Rhine when there was no army to oppose him, and conquered
city after city, till he was stopped by inundations, under the walls of
Amsterdam, has been said and sung by his flatterers; and need not be
repeated here. But after the King had left the army, when the Princes of
Germany came to the assistance of Holland, and her affairs took a more
favourable turn under the able guidance of the Prince of Orange, a wider
field was offered for the display of Turenne’s talents. In the campaign
of 1673 he drove the Elector of Brandenburg, who had come to the
assistance of the Dutch, back to Berlin, and compelled him to negotiate
for peace. In the same year he was opposed, for the first time, to the
Imperial General Montecuculi, celebrated for his military writings, as
well as for his exploits in the field. The meeting of these two great
generals produced no decisive results.
Turenne returned to Paris in the winter, and was received with the most
flattering marks of favour. On the approach of spring, he was sent back
to take command of the French army in Alsace, which, amounting to no
more than ten thousand men, was pressed by a powerful confederation of
the troops of the empire, and those of Brandenburg, once again in the
field. Turenne set himself to beat the allies in detail, before they
could form a junction. He passed the Rhine, marched forty French leagues
in four days, and came up with the Imperialists, under the Duke of
Lorraine, at Sintzheim. They occupied a strong position, their wings
resting on mountains; their centre protected by a river and a fortified
town. Turenne hesitated: it seemed rash to attack; but a victory was
needful before the combination of the two armies should render their
force irresistible, and he commanded the best troops of France. The
event justified his confidence. Every post was carried sword in hand.
The Marshal had his horse killed under him, and was slightly wounded. To
the officers, who crowded round him with congratulations, he replied,
with one of those short and happy speeches which tell upon an army more
than the most laboured harangues, “With troops like you, gentlemen, a
man ought to attack boldly, for he is sure to conquer.” The beaten army
fell back behind the Neckar, where they effected a junction with the
troops of Brandenburg: but they dared attempt nothing further, and left
the Palatinate in the quiet possession of Turenne. Under his eye, and,
as it appears from his own letters, at his express recommendation, as a
matter of policy, that wretched country was laid waste to a deplorable
extent. This transaction went far beyond the ordinary license of war,
and excited general indignation even in that unscrupulous age. It will
ever be remembered as a foul stain upon the character of the general who
executed, and of the king and minister who ordered or consented to it.
Having carried fire and sword through that part of the Palatinate which
lay upon the right or German bank of the Rhine, he crossed that river.
But the Imperial troops, reinforced by the Saxons and Hessians to the
amount of sixty thousand men, pressed him hard: and it seemed impossible
to keep the field against so great a disparity of force; his own troops
not amounting to more than twenty thousand. He retreated into Lorraine,
abandoning the fertile plains of Alsace to the enemy, led his army
behind the Vosges mountains, and crossing them by unfrequented routes,
surprised the enemy at Colmar, beat him at Mulhausen and Turkheim, and
forced him to recross the Rhine. This is esteemed the most brilliant of
Turenne’s campaigns, and it was conceived and conducted with the greater
boldness, being in opposition to the orders of Louvois. “I know,” he
wrote to that minister, in remonstrating, and indeed refusing to follow
his directions, “I know the strength of the Imperialists, their
generals, and the country in which we are. I take all upon myself, and
charge myself with whatever may occur.”
Returning to Paris at the end of the campaign, his journey through
France resembled a triumphal progress; such was the popular enthusiasm
in his favour. Not less flattering was his reception by the King, whose
undeviating regard and confidence, undimmed by jealousy or envy, is
creditable alike to the monarch and to his faithful subject. At this
time Turenne, it is said, had serious thoughts of retiring to a convent,
and was induced only by the earnest remonstrances of the King, and his
representations of the critical state of France, to resume his command.
Returning to the Upper Rhine, he was again opposed to Montecuculi. For
two months the resources and well-matched skill of the rival captains
were displayed in a series of marches and counter-marches, in which
every movement was so well foreseen and guarded against, that no
opportunity occurred for coming to action with advantage to either side.
At last the art of Turenne appeared to prevail; when, not many minutes
after he had expressed the full belief that victory was in his grasp, a
cannon-ball struck him while engaged in reconnoitring the enemy’s
position, previous to giving battle, and he fell dead from his horse,
July 27th, 1675. The same shot carried off the arm of St. Hilaire,
commander-in-chief of the artillery. “Weep not for me,” said the brave
soldier to his son, “it is for that great man that we ought to weep.”
His subordinates possessed neither the talents requisite to follow up
his plans, nor the confidence of the troops, who perceived their
hesitation, and were eager to avenge the death of their beloved general.
“Loose the piebald,” so they named Turenne’s horse, was the cry; “he
will lead us on.” But those on whom the command devolved thought of
nothing less than of attacking the enemy; and after holding a hurried
council of war, retreated in all haste across the Rhine.
The Swabian peasants let the spot where he fell lie fallow for many
years, and carefully preserved a tree under which he had been sitting
just before. Strange that the people who had suffered so much at his
hands, should regard his memory with such respect.
The character of Turenne was more remarkable for solidity than for
brilliancy. Many generals may have been better qualified to complete a
campaign by one decisive blow; few probably have laid the scheme of a
campaign with more judgment, or shown more skill and patience in
carrying their plans into effect. And it is remarkable that, contrary to
general experience, he became much more enterprising in advanced years
than he had been in youth. Of that impetuous spirit, which sometimes
carries men to success where caution would have hesitated and failed, he
possessed little. In his earlier years he seldom ventured to give
battle, except where victory was nearly certain: but a course of victory
inspired confidence, and trained by long practice to distinguish the
difficult from the impossible, he adopted in his later campaigns a
bolder style of tactics than had seemed congenial to his original
temper. In this respect he offered a remarkable contrast to his rival in
fame, Condè, who, celebrated in early life for the headlong valour, even
to rashness, of his enterprises, became in old age prudent almost to
timidity. Equally calm in success or in defeat, Turenne was always ready
to prosecute the one, or to repair the other. And he carried the same
temper into private life, where he was distinguished for the dignity
with which he avoided quarrels, under circumstances in which lesser men
would have found it hard to do so, without incurring the reproach of
cowardice. Nor must we pass over his thorough honesty and
disinterestedness in pecuniary matters; a quality more rare in a great
man then than it is now.
In 1653 he married the daughter of the Duc de la Force. She died in
1666, without leaving children.
Turenne composed memoirs of his own life, which are published in the
Life of him by the Chevalier Ramsay. There is also a collection of his
Military Maxims, by Captain Williamson. In 1782 Grimoard published his
‘Collection des Memoirs du Marechal de Turenne.’ Deschamps, an officer
who served under him, wrote a full account of his two last campaigns;
and the history of his four last campaigns has been published under the
name of Beaurain. We may also refer the reader for the history of these
times to Voltaire, Siècle de Louis XIV.
[Illustration: French Cavalier of the seventeenth century.]
[Illustration]