their actions. As much as grandeur of conception distinguishes Homer, tenderness of feeling Virgil, and sublimity of thought Milton, does impetuous daring characterize Eugene, consummate generalship Marlborough, indomitable firmness Frederic, lofty genius Napoleon, unerring wisdom Wellington. Greatness in the military, as in every other art, is to be attained only by strong natural talents, perseveringly directed to one object, undistracted by other pursuits, undivided by inferior ambition. The men who have risen to the highest eminence in war, have done so by the exercise of faculties as great, and the force of genius as transcendent, as those which produced a Homer, a Bacon, or a Newton. Success, doubtless, commands the admiration of the multitude; military glory captivates the unthinking throng; but to those who know the military art, and can appreciate real merit, the chief ground for admiration of its great masters is a sense of the difficulties, to most unknown, which they have overcome.

25.

Early life of

PRINCE EUGENE, though belonging to the same age, often acting in the same army, and sometimes commanding alternately with Marlborough, was a general of Eugene. an essentially different character. A descendant of the house of Savoy, born at Paris in 1663, and originally destined for the Church, he early evinced a repugnance to theological studies, and instead of his breviary, was devouring in secret Plutarch's lives of ancient heroes. His figure was slender, and his constitution at first weak; but these disadvantages, which caused Louis XIV. to refuse him a regiment, from an opinion that he was not equal to its duties, were soon overcome by the ardor of his mind. Immediately upon this refusal, setting out for Vienna, he entered the Imperial service; but he was still pursued by the enmity of Louvois, who procured from Louis a decree which pronounced sentence of banishment on all Frenchmen in the armies of foreign powers who should fail to return to their country. "I will re-enter France in spite of him," said Eugene; and he was more than once as good as his word.

26.

Character of

his first great

victory over the Turks.

His genius for war was not methodical or scientific, like that of Turenne and Marlborough, nor essentially his warfare, and chivalrous, like that of the Black Prince or the Great Condé. It was more akin to the terrible sweep of the Tartar chiefs; it savored more of Oriental daring. He was as prodigal of the blood of his soldiers as Napoleon; but, unlike him, he never failed to expose his own person with equal readiness in the fight. He did not reserve his attack in person for the close of the affray, like the French emperor, but was generally to be seen in the fire from the very outset. It was with difficulty he could be restrained from heading the first assault of grenadiers, or leading on the first charge of horse. His earliest distinguished command was in Italy, in 1691, and his abilities soon gave his kinsman, the Duke of Savoy, an ascendant there over the French. But it was at the great battle of Zenta, on the Teife, where he surprised and totally defeated Cara Mustapha, at the head of one hundred and twenty thousand Turks, that his wonderful genius for war first shone forth in its full luster. He there killed or wounded twenty thousand of the enemy, drove ten thousand into the river, took their whole artillery and standards, and entirely dispersed their mighty array. Like Nelson at Copenhagen, Eugene had gained this glorious victory by acting in opposition to his orders, which were positively to avoid a general engagement. This circumstance, joined to the envy excited by his unparalleled triumph, raised a storm at court against the illustrious general, and led to his being deprived of his command, and even threatened with a courtmartial. The public voice, however, at Vienna, loudly condemned such base ingratitude toward so great a benefactor to the Imperial dominions; and the want of his directing eye being speedily felt in the campaign with the Turks, the emperor was obliged to restore him to the command, which he, however, only agreed to accept on receiving a carte blanche for the conduct of the war.

The peace of Carlowetz, in 1699, between the Imperialists

27.

and the Ottomans, soon after restored him to a pacific life, and the study of history, in which, in Italy and His campaigns above any other, he delighted. But on the break- Germany. ing out of the War of the Succession in 1701, he was restored to his military duties, and during two campaigns measured his strength, always with success, in the plains of Lombardy, with the scientific abilities of Marshal Catinat, and the learned experience of Marshal Villeroi, the latter of whom he made prisoner during a nocturnal attack on Cremona in 1703. In 1704 he was transferred to the north of the Alps, to unite with Marlborough in making head against the great army of Marshal Tallard, which was advancing, in so threatening a manner, through Bavaria; and he shared with the illustrious Englishman the glorious victory of Blenheim, which at once delivered Germany, and hurled the French armies, with disgrace, behind the Rhine. Then commenced that steady friendship, and sincere and mutual regard, between these illustrious men, which continued unbroken till the time of their death, and is not the least honorable trait in the character of each. But the want of his protecting arm was long felt in Italy. The great abilities of the Duke de Vendôme had wellnigh counterbalanced there all the advantages of the allies in Germany; and the issue of the war in the plains of Piedmont continued doubtful till the glorious victory of Eugene, on the 7th of September, 1706, when he stormed the French intrenchments around Turin, defended by eighty thousand men, at the head of thirty thousand only, and totally defeated Marshal Marsin and the Duke of Orleans, with such loss, that the French armies were speedily driven across the Alps.

28. And with Marlborough

Eugene was now received in the most flattering manner at Vienna; the luster of his exploits had put to silence, if not to shame, the malignity of his enemies. "I have but one fault to find with you," said the in Flanders. emperor, when he was first presented to him after his victory, "and that is, that you expose yourself too much." He was next placed at the head of the Imperial armies in Flanders,

and shared with Marlborough in the conduct, as he did in the glories, of Oudenarde and Malplaquet. Intrusted with the command of the corps which besieged Lille, he was penetrated with the utmost admiration for Marshal Boufflers, and evinced the native generosity of his disposition by the readiness with which he granted the most favorable terms to the illustrious besieged chief, who had, with equal skill and valor, conducted the defense. When the articles of capitulation proposed by Boufflers were placed before him, he said immediately, without looking at them, "I will subscribe them at once, knowing well you would propose nothing unworthy of you and me.” The delicacy of his subsequent attentions to his noble prisoner evinced the sincerity of his admiration. When Marlborough's influence at the English court was sensibly declining, in 1711, he repaired to London, and exerted all his talents and address to bring the English council back to the common cause, and estore his great rival to his former ascendency with Queen Anne. When it was all in vain, and the English armies withdrew from the coalition, Eugene did all that skill and genius could achieve to make up for the great deficiency arising from the withdrawal of Marlborough and his gallant followers; and when it had become apparent that he was overmatched by the French armies, he was the first to counsel his Imperial master to conclude peace, which was done at Rastadt on the 6th of March, 1714.

successes over

Great as had been the services then performed by Eugene 29. for the Imperialists, they were outdone by those His astonishing which he subsequently rendered in the wars with the Turks. the Turks. In truth, it was he who first effectually broke their power, and forever delivered Europe from the sabers of the Osmanlis, by which it had been incessantly threatened for three hundred years. Intrusted with the command of the Austrian army in Hungary, sixty thousand strong, he gained at Peterwardin, in 1716, a complete victory over a hundred and fifty thousand Turks. This glorious success led him to resume the offensive, and in the following year he laid

siege, with forty thousand men, to Belgrade, the great frontier fortress of Turkey, in presence of the whole strength of the Ottoman empire. The obstinate resistance of the Turks, as famous then as they have ever since been in the defense of fortified places, joined to the dysenteries and fevers usual on the marshy banks of the Danube in the autumnal months, soon reduced his effective force to twenty-five thousand men, while that of the enemy, by prodigious efforts, had been swelled to a hundred and fifty thousand around the besiegers' lines, besides thirty thousand within the walls.

Narrow

escape

from ruin, and tory at Bel

wonderful vic

Every thing presaged that Eugene was about to undergo the fate of Marshal Marsin twelve years before 30. at Turin, and even his most experienced officers deemed a capitulation the only way of extricating them from their perilous situation. Eugene him- grade. self was attacked and seriously weakened by the prevailing dysentery, and all seemed lost in the Austrian camp. It was in these circumstances, with this weakened and dispirited force, that he achieved one of the most glorious victories ever gained by the Cross over the Crescent. With admirable skill he collected his little army together, divided it into columns of attack, and, though scarcely able to sit on horseback him self, led them to the assault of the Turkish intrenchments. The result was equal to the success of Cæsar over the Gauls at the blockade of Alesia, seventeen centuries before. innumerable host of the Turks was totally defeated; all their artillery and baggage was taken, and their troops were entirely dispersed. Belgrade, immediately after, opened its gates, and has since remained, with some mutations of fortune, the great frontier bulwark of Europe against the Turks. The successes which he gained in the following campaign of 1718 were so decisive, that they entirely broke the Ottoman power; and he was preparing to march to Constantinople, when the treaty of Passarowitz put a period to his conquests, and gave a breathing time to the exhausted Ottoman empire.*

* Biog. Univ., xiii., 482-491 (Eugene).

The