Count O’Reilly
Chamberlain of the Empire
Were we to choose a hero for a military romance, he would be Andrew O’Reilly, who bore the high reputation of being the first cavalry officer in the Austrian service.
This distinguished Irish soldier of fortune, the last of the éleves of the Lacys and others whose achievements in the third Silesian war and the Turkish campaign have already been recorded, obtained the rank of General in the Austrian army, Chamberlain, and Commander of the Imperial and Military Order of Maria Theresa, with the rank of Colonel Proprietaire of the 3rd Regiment of Light Horse.
He was born in 1740, and was the second son of James O’Reilly, of Ballincough, in the county of Westmeath, and of Barbara, daughter of Thomas Nugent, Esquire, of Dysart (grand-daughter of Thomas, fourth Earl of Westmeath). His brother Hugh was created a Baronet by George III., and subsequently assumed the name of Nugent. His only sister married Lord Talbot de Malahide.
Entering the Imperial service early in life, O’Reilly filled in succession all the military grades save that of Field-Marshal; but of those events in his stirring life which led to his elevation to a coronet, we barely afford a summary. One of the most important incidents in his early career is connected with his marriage; and while it illustrates the manners of the last century, is worthy of notice, for the remnant of old romance and chivalry it displays. He and a brother officer, Count Klebelsberg, uncle of Francis Count de Klebelsberg, who, in 1831, was President of the Government of Lower Austria, were rivals for the hand of the Countess Wuyrlena, a rich and beautiful Bohemian heiress; and aware that both could not succeed, they determined to solve the difficulty of selection by a combat à l’outrance. The intended duel was, however, reported to the authorities, and both O’Reilly and Klebelsberg were placed under close arrest by the Director General of the High Police; but, resolved to achieve their purpose, they secretly left Vienna, and travelled post together to Poland, and meeting in the neutral territory of Cracow, fought their remarkable combat. The duel lasted long, for both were perfect swordsmen, active, skilful, and wary; but at length O’Reilly ran Klebelsberg through the body, after receiving many dangerous wounds in his own person.
The affections of the countess, with her hand and fortune, were the immediate reward of the soldier of fortune.
Rejoining the army, he served with great brilliance in the war between France and Austria. The forces of the latter were commanded by the Archduke Charles.
On the 14th June, 1800, he fought under General Melas, at the battle of Marengo. “Melas,” says M. Thiers, in his History of the Consulate and Empire, “placed General O’Reilly on the left, and Generals Kaim and Haddick on the right, to gain the road to Piacenza, the object of so many efforts and the salvation of the Austrian army.”
On the 2nd December, 1805, that great day when “the sun of Austerlitz arose,” and eighty thousand Frenchmen, flushed by rapid conquests, by the capitulation of Ulm, and the recent capture of Vienna, met the Austro-Russian army in one of the bloodiest battles on record—a battle, which, as General Rapp has it, “was a veritable butchery, where we fought man to man, and so mingled together, that the infantry on either side dared not fire lest they should kill their own men”—the star of Napoleon bore all before it; and the French, though losing thirteen thousand men, totally routed their allied enemies, with the loss of thrice that number, taking all their colours, baggage, ammunition, and one hundred and twenty pieces of cannon. On that terrible day, the political result of which was an almost immediate cessation of hostilities between France and Austria, it was universally admitted that a succession of daring and brilliant charges made by the Light Dragoons of O’Reilly, “alone saved the Austrian army from total annihilation.”
The Emperor Alexander declined the overtures of Bonaparte, and renewed the war next year. The field of Eylau gave his Russians a partial revenge; and ere long they reaped the fulness of it amid the flames of Moscow and the slaughter of Smolensko.
On the 12th of May, 1809, O’Reilly, for his services at Austerlitz and elsewhere, was appointed Governor of Vienna, with a powerful garrison; and in a few days after, the Eagles of Napoleon were at its gates. Shut up in the city with the troops, the Archduke Ferdinand resolved to defend it, though the French had already stormed and carried all the suburbs. In vain were flags of truce sent in; the bearers were not only refused admittance, but, despite the orders of O’Reilly, were even maltreated, and in some instances massacred by the people. The bombardment followed, and soon Vienna was wrapped in flames; but the Emperor Napoleon, being informed by O’Reilly that one of the archduchesses had remained in Vienna detained by illness, gave orders to cease firing.
“Strange destiny of Napoleon!” exclaims old General Bourrienne; “this archduchess was Maria Louisa!”—the future Empress of France.
On O’Reilly devolved the difficult and trying task of obtaining honourable terms for the capital of the Empire, from an enemy flushed by victory and the pride of a hundred hard-fought fields. He accordingly deputed the Prince of Dietrechstien, the Burgomaster, and the chief citizens to Napoleon, who inveighed bitterly against the obstinacy of the gallant Archduke Ferdinand, but lauded the coolness, bravery, and great presence of mind of the governor, whom he emphatically terms “le respectable General O’Reilly,” and accepted all the terms proposed by him; but in the fourteenth clause stipulated that O’Reilly should be the bearer of the treaty to his master, to the end that he should honestly and faithfully lay before him the true position of the now half-conquered Austrian Empire—and this duty O’Reilly ably performed.
He served in the great battle fought near Aspern on the Marchfeld, during the 21st and 22nd of May, between the French under Napoleon, and the Austrians under the Archduke Charles.
In the prince’s plan of the attack “to be made upon the hostile army, on its march between Essling and Aspern,” it was ordered “that the cavalry brigade under the command of Veesy will be attached to the second column, and the Regiment O’Reilly to the third.” This regiment consisted of eight squadrons of Light Dragoons, and the column to which it was attached comprised twenty-two battalions.
O’Reilly, with his cavalry, followed the column which marched from Seiring, by the road of Sussenbrunn and Breitenbe. Here O’Reilly, with several troops of Light Horse and Chasseurs formed the advanced guard, which met the enemy’s cavalry at three o’clock in the afternoon, near Hirschstettin, while the other columns of the Austrian army drew the French back upon their position between Esslingen and Aspern, and while Lieutenant-General Hohenzollern ordered up his batteries, and the battle became general on all sides.
In close column of battalions, the line of the third column was advancing with great bravery, when the French cavalry fell upon them, sabre in hand, with such fury, that they were repulsed, and nearly lost their cannon. At this moment the regiments of Zach, Colloredo, Zetwitz, and the second battalion of the legion of the Archduke Charles, led by Lieutenant-General Brady, an Irish officer, “demonstrated with unparalleled fortitude what the fixed determination to conquer or die is capable of effecting against the most impetuous attacks.”
The splendid cavalry of France turned both flanks of Brady’s column, and penetrating between them, repulsed the Light Horse of O’Reilly, who came up at full speed to succour the soldiers of his countryman. Surrounded, the Regiment O’Reilly were summoned to lay down their arms; but a destructive fire of carbines was the answer to this degrading proposition, and the French cavalry gave way.
The Regiment O’Reilly passed the night on the field of battle, which was lost by the Austrians. The market town of Aspern, on the north side of the Danube, was destroyed, and the loss of the Imperialists was frightful.
After a two days’ conflict, there lay on that field the flower of the Austrian army; 87 field-officers, 4199 subalterns and privates, 12 generals (including the Prince de Rohan), 663 officers, and 15,651 soldiers were wounded; of these, Field-Marshal Webber, with 8 officers, and 329 men were taken prisoners, with 3 pieces of cannon, 7 powder waggons, 17,000 muskets, and 3000 corslets. The loss of the French was terrible! 7000 men and an immense number of horses were buried on the field; 29,773 wounded men strewed the streets and suburbs of Vienna; hundreds of corpses, gashed and shattered, floated down the rapid Danube and were flung upon its shores, where they lay unburied and decaying, filling the air with pestilence and the place with horror.
In October peace was signed at the camp of Schoenbrunn, and, divorcing the woman who had loved him when he had only his sword and his epaulettes, Napoleon espoused Maria Louisa of Austria; and Prince Charles, who by his accumulated blunders at the battle of Aspern, had thrown away the fortunes of Continental Europe, received from his Imperial conqueror the Grand Riband of the Legion of Honour. O’Reilly came in for a full share of the honours and decorations which were showered upon the Austrian army.
At the general peace of 1814 the Empire, exhausted by a war of five-and-twenty years, reduced her vast military establishments to 58 regiments of the line, 12 battalions of chasseurs, and 5 garrison battalions—in all, 1044 companies of fusiliers, and 116 of grenadiers. The cavalry were reduced to 36 regiments of cuirassiers, light dragoons, uhlans and hussars. Of the third regiment of light horse O’Reilly was colonel and proprietor. He was also High Chamberlain of the Empire.
At this time Louis Count Taaffe, a noble of Irish parentage, was Second President of the Austrian High Court of Justice, and General Count O’Donnel was Military Governor of Austrian Lombardy. One of the Emperor’s most distinguished officers was General Count Nugent, who in the war of 1847-8 led 30,000 Austrian infantry to succour Marshal Radetzki, who was then opposed to the troops of Charles Albert.19 Count Taaffe was a member of the new ministry formed on the 21st of March, in the year of the Austrian revolution: but he retired from office shortly before the appearance of the chartered constitution on the 19th of April.
O’Reilly lived to see Austria affected by the commotions which pervaded Europe after the French Revolution of 1830, when the Duke of Modena and the Archduke of Parma were obliged to quit these states, and a formidable insurrection broke out in the Patrimony of St. Peter—an insurrection to quell which 18,000 Austrian troops were marched towards the frontier; but O’Reilly was too far advanced in years to draw his sword again in the service of the House of Hapsburg. He died in October, 1833, at Vienna, after attaining the patriarchal age of ninety-two. He had long survived his countess, and died childless.
Notes
19 Nugent, a field-marshal in 1858, commanded 25,000 Austrian troops at the funeral of Marshal Radetzki, and acted as chief mourner.