“Ah, Charles, when shall we meet again, at Stamboul or at Bel Œil? If only the Emperor and my Russian General would not stand on such ceremony about crossing the Save and the Bog as they would do to go through a door, we should soon upset the Sublime Porte, and should meet where I said. Then, my dear Cinéas, etc., etc. In the meanwhile let us love each other wherever we are.”
On the Russian side the situation remained the same till October, and during this time things went as badly as possible for Austria. This disastrous campaign cost her thirty thousand men, killed in various engagements, forty thousand carried off by the plague, the invasion of the Banate, and several defeats in Bosnia. Ill with fatigue, in despair at his want of success, alarmed at the complete rebellion in Flanders, Joseph returned to Vienna almost broken-hearted. He determined to call to his side the Prince de Ligne, and to give him, with Marshal Laudon, the command of his army during the ensuing campaign. He sent Prince Charles to carry the order to his father. We can imagine how welcome was the arrival of the conqueror of Sabacz, and with what transports of delight he was received. His father immediately prepared to depart, and they arrived in Vienna at the end of November. Potemkin took Oczakoff a fortnight later. It seemed as though he had waited Ligne’s departure before deciding on the attack, and his jealous character justifies the supposition. The winter was peacefully spent at Vienna, and Prince Charles, absorbed in his new passion, did not seem afflicted at his wife’s absence.
In the spring of 1789 the two Princes joined Marshal Laudon’s army. General de Ligne commanded the right wing, and played an important part at the siege of Belgrade, during which he displayed an indefatigable energy. “I was all on fire myself,” he writes, “urged on by that being,[76] who is more like a god than a man. Urged on by him, I urged on the others. Bolza watched, and danced attendance. Funk fired, Maillard[77] advanced. I thanked, begged, thundered, threatened, commanded; all was done, and well done, in the twinkling of an eye.”
Prince Charles, who was Colonel, was in command, and energetically seconded his father, who caught a violent fever during the siege, and was confined to his bed for some days, at which he was very furious. He writes to Marshal Lascy: “The Turkish Caïques have been venturing too near Krieg-Insel (my headquarters). ‘We must give them a lesson,’ I said to my son, who at times engaged with my own, at others with Marshal Laudon’s column of attack; Charles, with his usual liveliness, immediately threw himself into a boat with my aides-de-camp, and, followed by about forty other small boats, went off to attack the Turkish Caïques.
“I directed the battle from my window, in spite of a diabolical attack of fever, and almost killed myself screaming to an Italian, who commanded my frigate, the Marie-Thérèse: ‘Alla larga!’ and words which I dare not write. Out of patience I finally went myself to end this very peculiar naval engagement.”
Belgrade was taken on the 8th of October 1789; Prince Charles had again the honour of being first at the assault. Marshal Laudon, who was not lavish of praise or flattery, wrote to the Prince de Ligne the most complimentary letter, in which he said: “More than half the glory won by the taking of Belgrade by right belongs to your Highness.”
The Emperor sent the Prince the cross of Commander of the Order of Marie-Thérèse, accompanied by a dry and cold letter, whose purpose de Ligne could not unravel; but he was still so ill with fever that both cross and letter made but a slight impression. He solved the riddle later on: Joseph II. had unjustly suspected him of having encouraged the rebellion in Flanders.
FOOTNOTES:
[58] On 9th February 1788 Austria, in fulfilment of her alliance with Russia, declared war with Turkey.
[59] Potemkin (Grégoire Alexandrowitch), Russian Field-Marshal, and the most renowned favourite of Catherine II. He was born in September 1736, in the suburbs of Smolensk, and died on 16th October 1791.