Memoirs of the Lacys
Ireland has given to the armies of Europe five brave soldiers, all kinsmen of the name of Lacy—viz., Marshal Lacy, who overran the Crimea in the service of Russia, and was the fellow-soldier of the great Count Munich; Marshal Count Lacy, his son, the friend of Leopold Daun, and, like him, a distinguished general in the Septennial War; Francis Anthony Count de Lacy, who died Captain-General of Catalonia: his brother Patrick Lacy, Major of the Ulster Regiment in the Spanish service; and his son, Louis Lacy, who fought with such bravery in the wars of the Peninsula, and was Chef-du-Battailon of the Irish in 1807.
All those Lacys were of the old Irish family of Bruree, and their native place originally was Athlacca, a parish in the county of Limerick, on the Maig. Many of this gallant race are buried there, in the ancient churchyard, where an old tomb is yet extant, inscribed—
“John, Thomas, and Edward Lacy, 1632.”
The family followed to foreign wars the fortunes of the exiled James Fitz-James, Duke of Berwick, Commander of the first troop of Irish Horse Guards, and natural son of James II. of England and VII. of Scotland. He was married first to a daughter of the Earl of Clanricarde, by whom he had a son, the successor of his titles and estates in Spain, and who also became the friend of the Lacys.
The first of the family who rose to eminence was Marshal Peter Lacy, who entered the service of Russia, and commanded with such distinction and success against the Turks.
He served as a subaltern and regimental officer in the armies of Peter the Great, and first learned the art of war in those sanguinary and desperate conflicts between the forces of the Czar and those of Charles XII. of Sweden, against whom Peter made an alliance with the Kings of Poland and Denmark in 1699, and with whom his general, the brave Prince Menschikoff, fought so many battles in the early part of the last century.
In the year 1736 Lacy had attained the rank of general in the Russian army, under Anne Ivanowna (niece of Peter I.), who at that time governed the vast and barbarous empire of the Muscovites. Count Munich, who, for her service, had left the army of the Elector of Saxony, was at the head of her troops. “He was the Prince Eugene of Muscovy,” says Frederick the Great; “but he had the vices with the virtues of all great generals. Lascy (the younger), Keith, Lowendhal, and other able generals, were formed in his school.” Sir Patrick Gordon, a Scottish soldier of fortune, had already disciplined the Russian army, and brought it from barbarism to an equality with others in Europe; and in the time of Lacy and Munich it consisted of 10,000 guards, 60,000 infantry of the line, 20,000 dragoons, 2000 cuirassiers, 30,000 militia, with Cossacks, Tartars, Calmucs, and other barbarians, in unnumbered hordes.
In the year 1736 the differences between the Czarina Anne and her hereditary enemy the Grand Seignior, came to a crisis; and she declared war, in consequence of the provoking outrages of the Tartars of the Crimea, and the neglect of the Sultan to her repeated remonstrances on that subject; and the Emperor of Austria concerted with her the plan of the new campaign against Turkey. It was agreed that a Russian army, under General Lacy (or Lasci, as it is often spelt), should march against the city of Azoph; that another Russian army, commanded by the Count de Munich, should penetrate to the Ukraine; while the Austrians, under Count Seckendorf, should prepare to assault Widin, in Servia; and all these armies marched accordingly.
The Khan of the Crimea was, in those days, a powerful prince, who paid tribute to the Sultan, though he was styled Emperor by his Tartar subjects, and, being descended of the Ottoman blood, had a claim to the Turkish throne, on the extinction of the race of Achmet III. The sultans had the power of deposing them, and, being jealous of their rank and authority, allowed few of them to die at liberty. Thus most of the Khans of the Crimea have ended their lives in chains in the dungeons of Rhodez. Among his own people the khan could then, at any time, command an army of eighty or a hundred thousand men; but darts, arrows, and spears, with a few muskets, were their weapons, with wooden saddles and stirrups. His revenues were, the tenth of all captives, a black mail paid by the Poles and Muscovites, and twenty cart-loads of honey from the Moldavians. He had vast flocks, coined copper money, and maintained a guard of Janissaries, who bore his green and purple standard. The Crimea then contained several great cities, and, besides many noble monuments of the Genoese, was covered by the ruins of the Grecian age and power.
Lacy came in sight of Azoph in March, 1736. It stands on the left bank of the most southern branch of the Don, in a district full of dangerous swamps, and on an eminence, the only spot capable of bearing buildings in that bleak and barren district. The city was then of a square form, situated at the foot of an acclivity, and having a castle of great strength. Lacy attacked both town and castle with great vigour; and though assailed by incessant showers of bullets, arrows, darts, stones, and other missiles, shot by its strong garrison of Tartars and Turks, he took it by storm, after a twelve days’ siege, and completely reduced it.
Field-Marshal Count Munich, with 100,000 men, was equally successful elsewhere.
Lacy next forced the far-famed lines of Perekop, which, till then, had been considered impregnable. They extended across the Isthmus, from the Euxine to the Palus Mæotis, and had been the labour of 5000 men for many years. The great ditch (from whence we have the name of Perecopz) was seventy-two feet broad by forty-two feet deep, and the rampart was seventy feet in height, from its base to the cope of the parapet. The town was defended by a castle, the residence of the Aga of the Guards upon the Don and Dnieper, and by six great towers mounted with cannon; but the whole of these ample fortifications were manned by an army which made the most pitiful resistance; for this Irish soldier of fortune forced them, sword in hand, at the head of his troops, cut to pieces all who resisted, and hewed a passage into the peninsula.
He took Bakhtchissari, which lies within twenty-two miles of Sebastopol. It then contained about 4000 houses, a mosque with a fine palace, and many stately tombs where the khans were buried. Around it were baths, gardens, and orchards; and near it, in the narrow valley, there still stands the now deserted mausoleum of a famous Georgian beauty, who was the chief wife of the Khan Khareem Gheraee.
While Munich was marching towards Bessarabia, Lacy overran the whole Crimea, and ravaged the country with fire and sword, up to the northern slopes of the Tauric mountains; but being foiled before Kaffa (on the sea shore), which was defended by strong walls, two castles, and a garrison under a bashaw, he was compelled, by the approach of winter, to retreat, after subjugating the whole country, and defeating more than 20,000 Tartars in one pitched battle.
“General Lacy,” says Smollett, “routed the Tartars of the Crimea; but they returned in greater numbers, and harassed his Muscovites in such a manner, by intercepting their provisions and destroying the country, that he was obliged to abandon the lines of Perekop.” The great Field-Marshal, Baron Loudon (descended from an Ayrshire family), served in this war, under Lacy, as a subaltern officer. Among the Scottish volunteers who also served there, were Colonel Johnstone; the gallant General Leslie, who, with all his soldiers, was destroyed on the Steppe by the Tartars; and General Balmaine, who stormed Kaffa.
After these triumphant operations, Lacy entered the Ukraine, joined Marshal Munich, and together, in 1737, they laid siege to Oczakow, at the mouth of the Borysthenes.
Oczakow, or Dziar Cremenda, had then about 5000 houses, a mosque, a palace, with a number of tombs of the Crimean khans, which stood among their gardens and orchards. It had a castle, built by Vitolaus, Duke of Lithuania, and therein a Turkish garrison had been established since 1644. Munich and Lacy assailed the town and castle on the landward side; but towards the sea they were attacked by the cannon of eighteen galleys. The Muscovites carried all their approaches with such impetuosity and perseverance, that, in a few days, the Turks and Tartars became filled with terror.
Among those who distinguished themselves particularly in this service were, General the Honourable James Keith (brother of the exiled Earl Marischal of Scotland), who was dangerously wounded in the thigh, and another Jacobite exile, Colonel Count Brown, a brave Irishman—“A Catholic,” says Tooke, “who was compelled to seek his fortune in foreign countries, by the exertion of those talents which he would willingly have dedicated to the service of his own.”
The garrison, which consisted of 3000 Janissaries and 7000 Bosniacs, stoutly defended themselves; but Oczakow was carried by assault. A bomb set fire to the town, and blew up its magazine; Lacy and Munich seized this opportunity to lead on their stormers, and, pressed by the foe before them and the flames behind, the Mussulmans were nearly all cut to pieces; but not before they had slain 11,000 regular troops and 5000 Cossacks by bayonet and scimitar.
The rapid success of these two generals against the Crim Tartars awakened the restless ambition of Austria; and the Emperor believing that, if he assailed the Porte by the Hungarian frontier while the Czarina pressed her victorious arms along the shores of the Black Sea, the Empire of the Osmanlies would be finally subverted, declared war, and to co-operate with his troops, the Count Brown11 left Lacy and Munich, and marched into Hungary at the head of a Russian column. But the hopes of the Emperor were frustrated! The Turks turned all their vengeance against him, defeated his generals, and besieged Belgrade. The Austrian Field-Marshal Wallace was defeated at Crotska, and the gallant Earl of Crawford who served under him as a volunteer, received a wound from which he never recovered. The troops of Brown were also routed, and he was taken prisoner. The barbarous Osmanlies stripped him quite naked, and bound him back to back with another prisoner for forty-eight hours. He was four times exposed for sale as a slave in the common market-place, and four times was bought by different masters, who treated him with the greatest cruelty.
He gave out that he was a captain to lessen the price of his ransom, and in this deplorable condition was discovered by an Irish gentleman, who communicated his story to M. de Villeneuve, the French ambassador at Constantinople, by whom he was generously ransomed for three hundred ducats, and sent back to Russia, where he died a general and governor of Riga, in 1789, in his eighty-eighth year.
The reverses on the side of Hungary overbalanced the success of Lacy against the Crim Tartars; the Emperor lost heart, and the Czarina, though victorious again at Choczim in Bessarabia, where, on the 31st August, 1739, the forces of Munich defeated the Turks and swept the right bank of the Dneister, fearing that she was about to lose her ally, concluded a treaty of peace, by which Austria ceded to the Porte, Belgrade, Sabatz, the island and fortress of Orsova, with Servia and Wallachia, while the Danube and the Saave were to be the boundaries of their empires; but the Czarina retained Azoph, the important conquest of Marshal Lacy, who, in obedience to her orders, demolished the walls and fortifications of the city. To commemorate the exploits of him and Munich, she ordered a medal to be struck, having direct reference to the war in the Crimea, which was thenceforward to be an independent state. On one side of this medal was the legend—
“ANNÆ IVANOWNA, D.G., RUSSLE IMPECUTRIX.”
On the other was an eagle, with the words—
“PACE EUROPÆ PROMOTA, TARTARIS, VICTIS, TANAI
LIBERATO, ANNO 1736.”
Marshal Lacy ended his days in honour, and a noble monument was erected to his memory; but his less fortunate compatriot, Marshal Munich, incurred the displeasure of their capricious mistress, and was banished for twenty years to the most northern confines of Siberia. Recalled in his old age by the Czar Peter III., he was made Governor of Esthonia and Livonia; but died at Riga almost immediately after receiving that appointment, in his eighty-fifth year.
Joseph Francis Maurice Count Lacy, one of the great captains of the Seven Years’ War, was the son of the preceding.
He was born at St. Petersburg, in the year 1718, and learned the art of soldiering under the eye of his father, and in the camp of Marshal Munich, in the service of the Czarina Anne, during her Crimean and Bessarabian campaigns.
At the age of twenty he was a captain, and to his knowledge and love of the art of war united a polished education, gained under the best masters in Germany.
In 1740, on the accession of Maria Theresa to the Austrian throne, he entered her service, with the permission of the Czarina, and there, by his talents, courage, and gentle bearing won the esteem of his soldiers; thus he soon attained a majority, and then the rank of colonel. He served in the Italian campaign as aide-de-camp to Count Brown, and at Viletri, had three horses shot under him. He distinguished himself still more at the siege of Maestricht, and obtained command of a regiment.
In the war of the Hungarian Succession, after the cowardice and extraordinary mismanagement of the Duke of Cumberland had covered the British army with disgrace in the Low Countries, by allowing it to be outflanked at Khloster Seven, by failing to defend the position at Maestricht, and forcing it shamefully to capitulate, on the 8th of September, 1757, and thus abandon our ally, Frederick the Great of Prussia, that warlike monarch only pushed on the war with greater vigour. In this disastrous contest the activity and vigilance of Count Lacy soon recommended him to the notice of Leopold Count Daun, a native of Bohemia, and son of Philip Lorenzo, Prince of Tiano, the pupil of Kevenhüller; and he improved the good opinion of that great soldier by his fascinating manner and courtier-like behaviour. The friendship of Daun soon won him the rank of major-general; and as such he commanded a brigade in his division, when, in 1757, conformable to the defensive system taken by Russia, Austria, and Sweden, the army of the Empress-Queen was broken into four great columns, to prosecute the war against the Prussians, French, and Bavarians, the violators of the famous Pragmatic Sanction.
One column, under the Duke d’Aremberg, was posted at Egra; a second, under Marshal Count Brown, was posted at Budyn; a third, under Count Konigsegg, held Reichenburg; a fourth, under Marshal Daun, occupied Moravia.
In his column were the brigades of Lacy and Lowenstein, whom Frederick of Prussia styles “two young officers who ardently sought to distinguish themselves.” Lacy was then in his thirty-eighth year.
In Lusatia, during the winter of 1756 and the spring of 1757, these officers had given infinite trouble to the troops of Frederick. They had frequently attacked, sword in hand, his post at Ostritz, a Saxon town on the Queiss; at other times, his intrenchments at Hirschfelde, a manufacturing town on the left bank of the Neisse, and also at Marienthiel. Hirschfelde, which was garrisoned by one battalion of Prussians, they assailed at four o’clock one morning, with 6000 men; two redoubts, which stood without the gates, each defended by two pieces of cannon, were repeatedly taken and retaken; but after losing 500 men, Lacy and his brother-brigadier retired, bringing off the Prussian guns as a trophy. These assaults were ineffectual, and many men were slain. Among others fell Major Blumenthal, of the Prince Henry’s regiment—a brave officer. The Prussian corps of Lestwitz at Zittace, and of the Prince of Bavern at Gorlitz were harassed by perpetual alarms; and such was the activity of young Lacy and Lowenstein, that they kept them continually under arms, if not in action, during the winter months.
As a brigadier, Lacy bore a distinguished part in the battles of Reichenberg and of Prague, and in all the operations consequent to the invasion of Bohemia by Frederick the Great, whose policy it was ever to keep the scene of his wars as far as possible from his own territory; thus his army entered the Bohemian frontier in four columns, from Saxony, Misnia, Lusatia, and Silesia, under himself and Marshal Keith; Prince Maurice, of Anhalt Dessau; Prince Ferdinand, of Brunswick-Bavern; and the aged Marshal Schwerin. The division of the latter entered in five brigades, at five different places, and won the dangerous defile of Gulder Oelse from the Pandours, at the point of the bayonet.
Everywhere the Austrians were driven back before this sudden torrent of Prussian soldiers, who advanced against the position of Count Konigsegg at Reichenberg, where 28,000 men were formed in order of battle, under cover of strong redoubts, and among steep mountains covered with dense forests. But the lines were stormed and the Austrians defeated, with the loss of 1000 killed, among whom were two counts, a prince, and a general, while twenty officers, four hundred soldiers, and three standards were taken as an augury of greater victories. On hearing of this defeat, Leopold Daun marched with all speed from Moravia to reinforce the main body of the Austrians, which, when joined by the regiments of Prague and Bavern, mustered 100,000 men. Making a feint towards Egra (which drew off 20,000 Austrians in that direction), the King of Prussia and Marshal Keith marched against the other troops of the Empress-Queen; and, crossing the Moldau on the 5th May, turned the flank of the Imperialists, under the famous Ulysses Count Brown, whose steady defence made the Prussians waver and fall back. On this the venerable Marshal Schwerin, then in his eighty-second year, stung by the unmerited reproaches of the king, who urged him to advance, dismounted in the marshy ground, and taking an infantry standard in his hand, cried, “Let all brave Prussians follow me!”
But at that moment an Austrian bullet pierced his breast; and falling thus, covered with years and glory, he closed a long career of faithful military service; but the Prussian foot pressed furiously on, and after three charges totally routed the Austrians, whose general, Count Brown, also received his mortal wound, as already related.
Finding the day irreparably lost, Count Lacy, Prince Charles of Lorraine, the Princes of Saxony and Modena, and the Duke d’Aremberg, with the remnant of their infantry, in all 50,000 men, took refuge in Prague, where the gallant Brown expired of his wound, on the 6th May. Meanwhile 16,000 cavalry fled to Marshal Daun, who had encamped at Bohmishbrodt the night before the battle.
The Prussians followed up their victory with ardour; Prague, with 100,000 souls within its walls, was invested closely; Frederick pushed the blockade on one side, and Marshal Keith on the other. In four days they had it completely surrounded, and cut off every means of supply, agreeably to the last words of Marshal Brown, who, when dying, said: “Tell Prince Charles of Lorraine instantly to march out and attack Marshal Keith, or all is lost.”
Lacy and others proposed to assail the Prussians in the night, with 12,000 Austrians, who were to be sustained by all the Pandours and Hungarian Grenadiers; and thus to hew a passage, sword in hand, through Frederick’s lines, and relieve Prague of the multitude of soldiers who were rapidly consuming the provisions of the people. An infamous deserter informed the Prussians of this gallant design, and thus they were all on the alert, when about two o’clock, in the darkness of a misty morning, a fiery tide of armed men rolled out of Prague, and assailing Marshal Keith at the bayonet’s point, pressed desperately on towards the Moldau; but, after a fierce and desultory conflict, in which Prince Henry (Frederick’s youngest son) had a horse shot under him, the Austrians were routed, and Lacy and other brave leaders were forced to fall back into Prague, with the loss of many killed and wounded.
After this the Prussian batteries opened, and in twenty-four hours threw 300 bombs, besides many fire-balls into the town; its streets were soon sheeted with fire, and men, women, and horses, with the sick and wounded, perished in vast numbers. The city burned for three days; flames and starvation drove the citizens to despair. Seeing their loved Bohemian capital on the verge of destruction, they besought Lacy, d’Aremberg, and other commanders, in the most moving terms, to surrender; but war had hardened their hearts, and instead of complying, they drove out 12,000 persons who were considered as a mere incumberance. These unfortunates were hurled back by the Prussians to the walls of Prague, and thus the Austrians were soon reduced to eat their troop and artillery horses, forty of which were shot daily, and cut up for rations, or sold at four pence per pound to the wretched people, who still perished hourly by fire, shot, and famine.
Two other sallies were made, and the Prussian camp was kept in a state of perpetual alarm. In this defence, so disastrous to the city, Lacy was of incalculable service in harassing the Prussian trenches, by his vigilance and restless bravery. Contrary to the advice of Keith, the king, on the 13th of June, left a small force before Prague, and, drawing off his main body, marched against Daun, who defeated him in battle at Kolin, and forced him to leave Bohemia—a movement by which the blockade of Prague was abandoned; and the imprisoned Austrians received their deliverer with inexpressible joy. Lacy and other generals issued out, with their breasts full of ardour and vengeance, and followed the retreating Prussians over the Saxon frontier, sabring all stragglers who fell into their power.
To narrate all the military operations in which Count Lacy bore a part, would be to rehearse the history of the Seven Years’ War. He owed his elevation and high consideration as much to his own bravery and skill as to the patronage and friendship of Daun, who consulted him on every occasion, and employed him in the execution of the most delicate measures.
Though by his vigour and decision he frequently urged Marshal Daun on many a bold enterprise, he was possessed of great coolness and presence of mind. “His ardour,” says the historian of the House of Hapsburg, “never exceeded the bounds of prudence, or hurried him into attempts which might incur the censure of his patron.” He was of great service in drilling and training the Austrian forces to perform those new and difficult manœuvres of which Daun was the inventor; he was a strict disciplinarian, a friend to order, and by his precept and example succeeded in introducing a degree of economy into every branch of the Austrian military service.
In 1758 the King of Prussia commenced the new campaign, and entering Moravia, invested Olmutz. General Lacy was then of great service in protecting the roads which led to Upper Silesia; and, when posted at Gibau with a large body of Austrians, he sent a detachment of grenadiers to Krenau, where they harassed the Prussian rear-guard, till they were driven back by Wied. When Frederick retired from Konigsgratz, Lacy and St. Ignan followed him with 15,000 men, and had many severe encounters with the Putkammer hussars, who formed the rear guard of the Prussians.
He served valiantly at the great battle of Hochkirchen, when the good old Marshal Keith, Knight of the Black Eagle, and Governor of Berlin, a general second to none in the Seven Years’ War, was slain that day, when lighting on foot at the head of the Prussian infantry; and here ensued an affecting incident. After the battle, his body was shamefully abandoned by the routed Prussians, and stripped by Austrian stragglers. Thus it lay long on the field, undistinguished from the thousands of others which covered it. In this degrading situation it was found by Lacy, who was riding over the ground, and with whose father (old Marshal Lacy) the venerable Keith had served in Prussia, and by whose side he had been wounded in the Crimea. The count recognised the body, says Dr. Smollett, by the large scar of a dangerous wound which General Keith had received in his thigh at the siege of Oczakow, and could not refrain from tears on seeing his father’s honoured friend lying thus at his feet, a naked, lifeless, and deserted corpse; and it must have been an interesting scene to witness these two exiles—the young Irish Jacobite weeping over the old Scottish Cavalier—on that sanguinary field. Lacy had the body immediately covered, and interred with the honours of war, in the adjacent churchyard, from whence it was afterwards removed to Berlin.
Lacy, with Daun and Loudon, bore a conspicuous part in the campaign of 1760, particularly in those manœuvres by which the King of Prussia, notwithstanding all his skill and cunning, was frustrated in his Silesian operations.
Proposing to invade the Duchy again, he crossed the Elbe, on the 15th June, and was joined by the Prince of Holstein. On this, Lacy, who had been watching them, drew in his outposts, and retired to Zehaila. On his march Frederick passed very close to Lacy’s camp, with his infantry covered by only four regiments of Saxon horse. These drove in Lacy’s pickets; on which he shifted his ground to a position at the foot of the hills of Bockerdorf and Reichenberg. Frederick made preparations to assail them on the morrow, and only waited for reinforcements under General Hulsen; but Daun, who had crossed the Elbe at Dresden, and was hastening to the assistance of his friend, dispatched an officer to him, with orders “to shift his ground;” and together they took up a new position at Lausa, while Frederick occupied the place which Lacy had left by three regiments of hussars, two of dragoons, and two free corps, which were attacked, but unsuccessfully, by Lacy in the night.
Both armies, Prussian and Imperialist, began their march for Silesia on the same day, each eager to anticipate and shut the other out. The former marched by the way of Crackau; the latter marched through Bischofswerder; and en route Daun detached Lacy to Keulenburg, to cover his left flank; but Frederick attacked the young brigadier unexpectedly, and captured 200 of his rear-guard. The heat was so excessive at this time that eighty men dropped dead on the march. Lacy continued to harass the Prussian rear, till at Salzforstien Frederick turned and attacked his Uhlans with four regiments of horse, who in the first charge shot and sabred 400 men. At that time Lacy’s whole cavalry were encamped at Rothen Nauslitz; but he brought them up by successive troops—for here again he was taken by surprise—and a desultory and destructive skirmish ensued, after which both parties separated. Frederick now decided it was necessary either to follow Daun, who had already reached Silesia, or to rid himself at once of the resolute Lacy, who hung like a wolf upon his skirts, and encumbered every movement. Thus, on the evening of the 8th of July, after making a feigned movement towards Gorlitz, he suddenly broke into Lacy’s camp, and drove him beyond the defiles of Horta, where his Prussians passed the night, while the Austrians occupied the mountain of the White Stag. From this Lacy’s small force was driven next day, and had to recross the Elbe at Dresden, from whence he marched to a position at Gros Seidlitz, while lines of circumvallation were drawn round the city. A letter written by Daun to Lacy, containing all his plans of the campaign, was intercepted here, and brought to Frederick, to whom it proved of great service.
On the 10th of August, Lacy lost his tents and baggage when escaping an attack meditated by Frederick, who was baffled by the timely arrival of Daun at Hennersdorf. Marshal Loudon invested Breslau, but raised the siege on Prince Henry of Prussia marching to its relief. Frederick then made his memorable march to prevent the Russians from forming a junction with Daun and Lacy; he passed five rivers, the Elbe, the Spree, the Neiss, the Quiess, and the Bober, though trammelled by 2000 caissons and a ponderous train of artillery; but he was unable to bring Loudon to action before that general was joined by Lacy and Daun. The three leaders then encompassed his camp at Lignitz, and his affairs seemed desperate; for Daun, after a reconnoisance, announced to Lacy and Loudon his resolution of storming the Prussian position by a night attack; but the subtle Frederick eluded them all, by suddenly and secretly passing the Elbe, and hastening into Saxony, whither Daun and Lacy followed him, at the head of 80,000 men. Then Cunnersdorf, the bloodiest battle of the Seven Years’ War, was fought and lost by Frederick. In that field he had 20,000 of his soldiers slain, and all his generals killed or wounded. He made incredible exertions to retrieve the day, and his uniform was riddled by musket-balls.
The Russians passed the Oder, and pushed a strong column into Brandenburg, under Count Czernichew, who was joined by a large body of Austrians under Lacy, and together they made themselves masters of Berlin, the capital, about the end of October. They levied a severe contribution upon the citizens, destroyed all the magazines, arsenals, and foundries, pillaged the royal palaces, and ravaged all the adjacent country, burning a vast amount of property and military stores; but they retired by different routes on hearing that the mortified Frederick was advancing to the relief of his plundered capital. And soon after he had his revenge at the battle fought near Toorgau, on the 23rd of November. There Lacy commanded the reserve of 20,000 men, who covered the causeway and several ponds which lay at the extremity of Daun’s position, and on which his left flank rested; Lacy endured a severe cannonade at the beginning of the action. General Count O’Donnel commanded the cavalry. When Daun gave way, Lacy brought up his reserve, and twice with the bayonet he strove desperately and heroically to regain the day, but was twice driven back by the Prussians; nor did he abandon that disastrous field until half-past nine in the dark November evening. By that time Daun, after receiving a shot in the thigh, had been borne away wounded, and O’Donnel had assumed the command of the broken and discomfited army.
“Although I have been in twenty-eight battles,” says a Swiss officer, whose letter appears in a Scottish newspaper of the time,12 “I never saw anything more dreadful than the field presented. It was near six o’clock, a most obscure night—to use the words of Harlequin, a night of ink—the only light we had was the infernal fire of the artillery and musketry, the horrid noise of the combatants rendered more dreadful by the night; the melancholy cries of the wounded, mixed with the sound of drums and trumpets, filled the soul with horror. Kill! Kill! was cried out everywhere. In a word, I never saw anything that better corresponded with the melancholy idea given us of hell itself!”
The Austrians, despite their 200 pieces of cannon, were routed and driven over the Elbe; 10,000 of them lay slain on the field, and four generals, 200 other officers, and 8000 men were taken, with twenty-seven stand of colours, and fifty guns, for of all Frederick’s victories this was the most successful and glorious. He recovered all Saxony except Dresden, in the neighbourhood of which an Austrian division, under General MacGuire, another Irish soldier of fortune, was hovering. The troops of the Empress-Queen evacuated Silesia, while the Russians abandoned Colberg and retired into Poland; and thus closed the year 1760.
Leaving Lacy to watch the Prussian general Zeithen, Leopold Daun, accompanied by his countess, repaired to Vienna, and so soon recovered, that in the spring of the following year he was able to assist at the councils of war. Fifty thousand men were now prisoners on both sides. In February, 1761, Lacy, now a field-marshal, meant to have visited Finland (where his father had received extensive estates), to settle certain family disputes which had arisen; but the preparations for another campaign, and the knowledge that his old friend Daun was about to resume the command, made him defer this journey for a time.
On the 21st of March, Marshal Daun departed from Vienna to join the army, and all the generals repaired to the head of their different brigades and divisions, for it was intended that the greatest efforts should now be made to crush the warlike King of Prussia. Daun took the command in Saxony; Marshal Count Loudon in Silesia, where he was to be supported by the Russians under Marshal Butterlin, whose train of artillery was tremendous. It consisted of no less than eight ninety-six-pounders, twenty-two forty-eight-pounders, seventy twenty-four-pounders, eighty-three twelve-pounders, eighty-six eight-pounders, and 106 lighter field pieces, drawn by 13,834 horses.
O’Donnel marched with 16,000 men to Zittau, from whence he was to assist the armies of Saxony or Silesia, as occasion might require, and he pushed one division as far as Dresden.
In June, Lacy’s corps took post on the right bank of the Elbe, to preserve a communication with the division of his countryman. Several other Irishmen had high rank in the Austrian service about this time, and we may particularly note Nicholas Count Taaffe, who died a colonel-commandant in 1770, aged ninety-two, and was succeeded in his title and regiment by his son, Count Francis; and Count O’Rourke,13 Knight of St. Louis, descended from an ancient family in the county of Leitrim, whose ancestors Cromwell is said to have stripped of an estate worth 70,000l. per annum.
On the Prussians, under Prince Henry, passing the Elbe in July, Daun reinforced Lacy with six battalions and some regiments of horse. In spite of their utmost efforts, Frederick, after fighting the Imperialists on the heights of Buckersdorf, where an Irish officer named O’Kelly ably defended their redoubts with only 4000 men, recovered the city of Schweidnitz on the 22nd July, though defended by 9000 men, under another Irish general named Butler. He then turned his eyes towards Saxony, and proposed to besiege Dresden.
After Loudon entered Silesia in August, some severe fighting ensued, especially at Munsterberg, and on the hills of Labedau. Lacy was then hovering with his troops near Grossenhayn, and encamping at Gros-dobritz, from whence he advanced his videttes as far as Strehlen along the Elbe—for Count O’Donnel still occupied Dresden or its neighbourhood.
In September, Lacy was sent with his brigade, 15,000 strong, by Daun, to join the Russians at Brandenburg, with orders to ravage all the electorate, which, while covered by the army of Soltikoff, he did so effectually as to compel Frederick either to shift his camp from Buntzelwitz, on which he had 466 guns with 182 mines, or to weaken his army by sending out detachments to protect the burning country. In doing the latter some of Prince Henry’s cavalry were severely cut up by Lacy’s dragoons in a forest near Reisa; and to avoid such unpleasant surprises in future, the Prussians cut down all the magnificent timber that surrounded the old castle of Hubertsbourg; but on Lacy’s nearer approach they retired to Potsdam and Spandau. In October, Prince Henry of Prussia and Marshal Daun were both encamped—one under the walls of Dresden, and the other under the ramparts of Meissen, while their hussars and light troops fought together hourly, and Lacy hovered in the neighbourhood of Lusace, watching some large detachments of Prussians.
In December he again terrified the inhabitants of the capital by appearing suddenly within seven miles of Berlin; but on an overwhelming force under General Bandemer being sent against him by Prince Henry, he recrossed the Elbe and retreated.
Fortunately in 1762 there was concluded with the Court of Vienna a cessation of hostilities for the provinces of Saxony and Silesia. This partial truce induced the Princes of the Empire to sign a treaty of neutrality to save their petty dominions from the ravages of Frederick; and as Sweden and Russia, on the accession of the Czar Peter III, had concluded a truce with him, the Septennial War was thus left to be finished by the two powers which began it—Prussia and Austria.
In that year the Khan of the Crimea proposed to join the former, and indeed marched 5000 men towards the frontier of Poland for that purpose; but the death of the Czarina Elizabeth, and the consequent revolution in Russia, had so bewildered the poor Tartar, that not knowing what side to take, he timidly retreated to Perekop. On this Frederick recalled the Prince of Bavern from Moravia, with his troops, that together they might make doubly sure of Schweidnitz.
They joined forces, and the prince encamped on the heights of Peilau. Scarcely had this junction been effected before the Austrians, under Daun, Lacy, and O’Donnel, entered among the mountains on the 16th of August, 1762, and after a skirmish at Langan Bielau, encamped with forty battalions and forty squadrons close by; while General Beck, another Imperialist, occupied the Kletchberg with twelve battalions and twenty squadrons. All night the Prussians were under arms; their cavalry bitted and saddled, their muskets loaded, and port-fires lit; every trooper slept beside his horse, and each gunner by his cannon. Daun assailed the Prince of Bavern in his position with great impetuosity. Lacy passed the village of Peilau with six battalions, which he skilfully kept concealed behind a hill whereon his artillery were posted. To cover his left flank, O’Donnel marched forty squadrons directly from Peilau, and three times his Imperial cuirassiers were repulsed from the valley, and by a volley of grape from fifteen six-pounders his confusion was completed. O’Donnel, with the loss of 1500 dragoons, fell back, and thus exposed the left flank of Lacy, who, after making great efforts to storm the heights occupied by the foe, was compelled to retreat; and next day Daun retired by Wartha and Glatz to Scharfneck, where he remained till the close of the campaign.
This was the last military service of importance performed by Marshal Count Lacy at that time; for soon after, the war came to a close, by the treaty of peace, signed in February, 1763, by which it was agreed that a mutual restitution of conquests and oblivion of injuries should take place; and that Prussia and Austria should be put in the same position as when the hostilities began; and thus happily ended this truly atrocious strife, in which nearly NINE HUNDRED THOUSAND SOLDIERS PERISHED. Prussia fought ten pitched battles, and lost 180,000 men; Russia, four great battles, and lost 120,000 men; Austria, ten battles, with the loss of 140,000 men; France lost 200,000; Britain, 165,000; Sweden, 25,000; and the Circles 28,000; while Austria found herself encumbered by one hundred millions of crowns of debt!
For fourteen years Lacy led a life of peace, devoting himself to the development of discipline in the Austrian army, till the death of the Bavarian Elector, on the 30th December, 1777, opened up a new prospect of aggrandizement to the Imperial Government, and again lighted the torch of war in Germany. The Elector Palatine, the Elector of Saxony and Duke of Mechlenburg-Schwerin laid claim to the vacant Electoral hat; but their voices were lost when the formidable and covetous House of Hapsburg also put forth a demand, and the Emperor Joseph and Marshal Lacy appeared with 100,000 men, and an immense train of artillery, at the celebrated position of Konigsgratz, above the confluence of the Adler and the Rhine.
The Prussians and Saxons broke into Bohemia, and compelled Loudon to retreat, and a year of the old manœuvring war and devastation followed, till the Congress of Teschen, by which Charles Theodore, Elector Palatine of the House of Neuberg, obtained the Bavarian hat, on the 13th May, 1779. The Emperor was compelled to relinquish his unjust claims, and tranquillity was restored to Germany, enabling Count Lacy, then in his sixty-first year, once more to sheath the sword; and this command which he held in the Bavarian dispute was the last act of importance performed by him in the service of Austria.
He had now the rank of Field-Marshal, which at the age of thirty-six he had declined, on the plea that his achievements were unworthy of it. He had the Grand Cross of Maria Theresa; he was a member of the Aulic Council, Chief of the Staff, and General of the Ordnance.
During his command-in-chief of the Austrian army, the following romantic incident occurred.
A young Neapolitan noble, who, by war or gambling, had been reduced to poverty, became anxious to obtain military employment in the service of Austria; and on being furnished with a letter of introduction to Lacy from another soldier of fortune who served in the army of Ferdinand IV., he travelled on foot towards Vienna. He reached the Austrian territories almost penniless, and one evening found himself at a poor wayside inn, not far from the capital. In the drinking room he met three officers who were also travelling towards Vienna; and they, with the frankness of German soldiers, invited the stranger to sup with them, and in the course of the evening he told them what were his views and wishes, and that all his hopes depended upon Lacy.
“I regret to say that your plan is a bad one,” said one of the Austrian officers who wore the cross of Maria Theresa; “we have had a long peace, and so many of our young nobility are crowding to Vienna in search of military employment, that I fear there is little likelihood of Marshal Lacy being able to befriend a stranger.”
Undeterred by this, the young Italian said that he was resolved to persevere; and he added an account of himself, of his family, their past importance and services in war, of his present necessity and circumstances; and all this was related with a candour and modesty which so pleased him who appeared the senior officer, that he said,—
“Well, sir, since you are resolved to try your fortune at Vienna, I will give you a letter to the Marshal Lacy; it may prove of use to you, for he knows me well.”
Furnished with this additional credential, the Italian reached Vienna. He waited on Lacy and presented his papers; all, at least, save the Austrian officer’s letter, which unfortunately he had mislaid. Lacy read them, and frankly told him that to grant what he wished was impossible. Crushed by this, the Italian retired in desperation, for the state of his funds could ill brook delay. Three days elapsed, until chancing to find the letter he had obtained so peculiarly at the inn, he again presented himself at the levée of Lacy and delivered it. The marshal opened it, and on reading the contents, his face expressed the utmost astonishment.
“How comes it, sir,” said he, with severity, “that you did not deliver this letter to me sooner?”
“Because it was mislaid; and from the casual manner in which it was received, I deemed it of little value.”
“Do you know from whom it comes?”
“No,” replied the Italian; “but the writer wore the gold cross of Maria Theresa.”
“That officer with the gold cross was the Emperor—Joseph II. You ask me for a subaltern’s commission, and he desires me to give you the rank of captain in a newly-raised regiment, and I have much pleasure in obeying his orders.”
This young volunteer died a colonel of Hussars, and fell in battle against Custine, on the Upper Rhine, in 1792.
Lacy’s plans of military reform won him a high renown in the Empire, to which he extended the mode of defence previously employed with such success upon the frontiers of Bohemia. He established the great fortress of Koningsgratz, and strengthened the defences of Theresienstadt and Josephstadt, which are still the admiration of all engineers. He regulated the war finance by a system of economy, still remembered with gratitude in Austria. True and faithful to the land he served, he was ever ready to sacrifice his personal interests and feelings for the good of the State. Of this he gave a prominent example in 1788, when Joseph II., having experienced only reverses in his contest with the Porte, was recommended by Lacy to entrust all to Baron Loudon (with whom he had ever been on terms of coldness), as being the only general capable of repairing the misfortunes of the war.
Finding his health failing, he visited the Spa at Baden, and on his return to Vienna died, full of years and honours, on the 28th November, 1801.
He bequeathed to the Archduke Charles an extensive park in the environs, with a request that the people should have free use of it.
He had enjoyed the trust and confidence of Maria Theresa, of Francis 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.
Strange to say, this event, for which he had struggled so hard, was unfortunate for Lacy, who, in consequence of his known attachment to the constitution of the Cortes, was deprived of all his offices—a base return for his many noble services—and he was coldly permitted to retire in obscurity, with his family, to Vinaroz, in the province of Valencia, where he spent two years in peace, though brooding over his wrongs, and planning means of redress.
In 1816, fatally for himself, he returned to active life; for, since the death of Parlier, and other brave men, who had fallen in attempting to secure to Spain that independence for which they had struggled against France, the eyes of all the Liberalists were turned on Louis Lacy, and in him their hopes reposed.
Having gone to Calvetes, in Catalonia, to drink the mineral waters, it chanced that he met there an old companion in arms, General Milano, and his brother, Don Raphael Milano, with two other Spanish gentlemen, whose political sentiments coincided with his own; and, after several secret meetings, they boldly resolved on re-establishing the Cortes at the point of the sword; for Lacy, relying on the sympathy of several regiments, and the regard they paid to his name and achievements, hoped to make them revolt in his favour, on the 5th April, 1817, and proclaim the Constitution.
Denounced by two traitors, the whole enterprise fell to pieces, and the four projectors failed to save themselves.
Abandoned nearly by all on whom he had relied, the unfortunate Lacy was arrested, with a few faithful friends, and conveyed, under care of a strong guard of soldiers, to a prison at Barcelona, where he was hastily tried by a subservient military commission, and sentenced to death—a doom which he heard with a calmness that staggered even the stern and partial judge who pronounced it.
As a rising of the Catalonians in his favour was feared and expected, the officials of the arbitrary Government at Barcelona secretly embarked him on board of a small vessel, at midnight, on the 20th June; and, resolving not to be cheated of their victim, sailed for the island of Majorca; and there he was quite as secretly landed on a solitary part of the coast, and conducted, on the night of the 4th July, to the Castle of Belver, which was garrisoned by a regiment of Neapolitan soldiers.
At four o’clock next morning he was suddenly brought out of the fortress, just as day was breaking, and conducted to the deep fosse before the gates; there he was barbarously shot by a platoon of Italians, pursuant to the orders of those who had conveyed him from Barcelona.
Louis Lacy had already faced death too often to receive it otherwise than with the hereditary courage and coolness which had distinguished him through his eventful life, and he fell with his face to his destroyers.
His body was deposited in the old cathedral church of San Dominic, at Palma, the capital of the island; but there it was exhumed, in 1820, and conveyed, with much religious pomp and solemnity, to Barcelona, and interred near the remains of his uncle, the Captain-General Count Francis Anthony; while the newly-established Cortes, vainly to honour the memory of one who had died for them, named his son the first grenadier of the Spanish army.
Thus perished Louis Lacy, in his forty-second year, one who, more even than Riego, had secured, by his patriotism, the Revolution of 1820.
“Lacy,” says a French writer, “etait doué d’une forte constitution, et d’une âme ardent, energique et généreuse. Habile général, intrepide dans les dangers, il s’était distingué par des faits d’armes, et par un patriotisme dignes des Grecs et des Romains!”
Notes
11 This is not the same Irish officer of whom a memoir is given elsewhere.
12 Edinburgh Courant, 7th January, 1761.
13 Count O’Rourke died at Lincoln’s Inn, London, in 1785.