[Illustration: Marshal Turenne.]
September 16.--This is the anniversary of the birth of Marshal Turenne,
one of the most renowned generals of modern times. Henri de la Tour
d’Auvergne, Viscount Turenne, was the second son of the Duke de
Bouillon, Prince of Sedan, in Champaigne, where he was born in 1611. His
mother was Elizabeth of Nassau, daughter of William, Prince of Orange,
commonly called William the First, the illustrious founder of the Dutch
republic. His father having died, Turenne was sent by his mother, at the
early age of thirteen, to the Netherlands, to be trained to the art of
war under his uncle, Prince Maurice, who, since the assassination of
William in 1584, had presided over the affairs of that country. The
young recruit was placed at first in the ranks, and served for a year as
a common soldier, taking his share in all the labours and hardships of
his comrades, before he was raised to a post of command. In 1630 he
returned to France, and was immediately invested with the command of a
regiment. In 1634, having made a brilliant display of his skill and
courage at the siege of the fortress of La Motte in Lorraine, he was
raised to the rank of Marechal de Camp. The next year he was sent to
Germany to take part in the war against the Emperor. From this date till
his death, he was almost constantly engaged in active service; and for
the next forty years no military name in France, or in Europe, was more
renowned than that of Turenne, but we cannot here follow him through his
successive campaigns. He was made a Marshal of France in 1642, at the
early age of twenty-seven, and Marshal-General of the French armies on
the marriage of Louis IV. in 1660. The chief scenes of his exploits were
Holland and Flanders, Italy, and different parts of Germany. He also
took a leading part in the civil dissensions which distracted his native
country during the minority of Louis XIV., espousing in the first
instance the cause of the Fronde, or combination of malcontented
nobility, but afterwards taking the side of the court, and fighting as
valiantly against his late associates. The career of Turenne was closed
by one of the accidents of war which may befall the highest or the
humblest soldier. As he was reconnoitring the position of the Austrian
General Montecuculi, near Saltzbach, he was struck by a cannon ball, and
fell dead from his horse, on the 27th of July, 1675. Turenne had married
in 1653 the daughter of the Duke de la Force, who died however in 1666,
without leaving children. This lady was a person of great piety, and
strongly attached to the Protestant faith, of which her ancestors had
been among the first and most strenuous defenders. While she lived,
Turenne, a Protestant also by education and by descent, both on his
father’s and mother’s side, resisted all the solicitations of the court
to change his religion. Not long after the death of his wife, however,
after professing to have studied the points in dispute between the two
churches, he publicly declared himself a Catholic. In sagacity, steady
perseverance, self-reliance, and many of the other qualities which go to
form an able commander of an army, Marshal Turenne has scarcely been
surpassed; and he was also brave as his sword, and so wholly devoted in
heart to his profession, that he thought as little of its toils as of
its dangers, and was at all times ready to share both with the meanest
in the camp. Hence he was the idol of his men as well as their pride;
they not only admired, and followed with alacrity to the field, the
consummate captain and hero of a hundred victories, but they loved the
man. This military spirit was the soul of Turenne’s character and the
source both of its bright and of its darker points. Indeed, bred as he
was to the trade of arms almost from his childhood, and living in an age
of such incessant warfare, it was hardly possible that he should have
been anything more than a mere soldier. His name will be eternally
disgraced by the ravages which he caused to be committed in the campaign
of 1674, in the Palatinate, or the dominions of the Elector of Palatine.
At the same time it should be borne in mind that war was the spirit of
his age; and it would be unjust to pronounce upon the character of an
individual, who certainly possessed many high qualities, by subjecting
him to the standard by which we have learnt to estimate the pretensions
of mere warriors.
[Illustration: French Cavalier.]
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