I was in several skirmishes and petty encounters before this, by which I gained the reputation of a good officer; but I happened to be in some particular posts too, by which I got somewhat that I liked much better, and that was a good deal of money.
Our regiment was sent from France to Italy by sea. We embarked at Toulon, and landed at Savona, in the territory of Genoa, and marched from thence to the duchy of Milan. At the first town we were sent to take possession of, which was Alexandria, the citizens rose upon our men in a most furious manner, and drove the whole garrison, which consisted of eight hundred men—that is, French and soldiers in the French service—quite out of the town.
I was quartered in a burgher’s house, just by one of the ports, with eight of my men and a servant, where, calling a short council with my men, we were resolved to maintain the house we were in, whatever it cost, till we received orders to quit it from the commanding officer. Upon this, when I saw our men could not stand their ground in the street, being pressed hard by the citizens, I turned out of doors all the family, and kept the house as a castle, which I was governor in; and as the house joined to the city gate, I resolved to maintain it, so as to be the last that should quit the place, my own retreat being secured by being so near the port.
Having thus emptied the house of the inhabitants, we made no scruple of filling our pockets with whatever we could find there. In a word, we left nothing we could carry away, among which it came to my lot to dip into the burgher’s cabinet whose house it was where we were, and there I took about the quantity of two hundred pistoles in money and plate, and other things of value. There was great complaint made to Prince Vaudemont, who was then governor of the Milanese, of this violence. But as the repulse the citizens gave us was contrary to his order, and to the general design of the prince, who was then wholly in the interest of King Philip, the citizens could obtain nothing; and I found that if we had plundered the whole city it would have been the same thing; for the governor had orders to take our regiment in, and it was an act of open rebellion to resist us as they did. However, we had orders not to fire upon the burghers, unless constrained to it by evident necessity, and we rather chose to quit the place as we did than dispute it with a desperate body of fellows, who wanted no advantage of us, except only that of having possession of two bastions and one port of our retreat. First, they were treble our number; for the burghers, being joined by seven companies of the regular troops, made up above sixteen hundred men, besides rabble, which was many more, whereas we were about eight hundred in all; they also had the citadel and several pieces of cannon, so that we could have made nothing of it if we had attacked them. But they submitted three or four days after to other forces, the soldiers within turning upon them and taking the citadel from them.
After this we lay still in quarters eight months. For the prince, having secured the whole Milanese for King Philip, and no enemy appearing for some time, had nothing to do but to receive the auxiliary troops of France, and as they came, extend himself every way as he could, in order to keep the imperialists (who were preparing to fall into Italy with a great army) as much at a distance as possible, which he did by taking possession of the city of Mantua, and of most of the towns on that side, as far as the Lake De la Guarda and the river Adige.
We lay in Mantua some time, but were afterwards drawn out by order of the Count de Tesse (afterwards Marshal of France), to form the French army, till the arrival of the Duke de Vendôme, who was to command in chief. Here we had a severe campaign, anno 1701, having Prince Eugene of Savoy and an army of forty thousand Germans, all old soldiers, to deal with; and though the French army was more numerous than the enemy by twenty-five thousand men, yet, being on the defensive, and having so many posts to cover, not knowing exactly where the Prince of Savoy, who commanded the imperial army, would attack us, it obliged the French to keep their troops so divided and so remote from one another that the Germans pushed on their design with great success, as the histories of those times more fully relate.
I was at the action of Carpi, July 1701, where we were worsted by the Germans; indeed, were forced to quit our encampment and give up to the prince the whole river Adige, and where our regiment sustained some loss. But the enemies got little by us, and Monsieur Catinat, who commanded at that time, drew up in order of battle the next day in sight of the German army, and gave them a defiance; but they would not stir, though we offered them battle two days together; for, having gained the passage over the Adige by our quitting Rivoli, which was then useless to us, their business was done.
Finding they declined a decisive action, our generals pressed them in their quarters, and made them fight for every inch of ground they gained; and at length, in the September following, we attacked them in their intrenched posts of Chiar. Here we broke into the very heart of their camp, where we made a very terrible slaughter. But I know not by what mistake among our generals, or defect in the execution of their orders, the brigade of Normandy and our Irish Brigade, who had so bravely entered the German intrenchments, were not supported as we should have been, so that we were obliged to sustain the shock of the whole German army, and at last to quit the advantage we had gained, and that not without loss; but, being timely reinforced by a great body of horse, the enemy were in their turn beaten off too, and driven back into their very camp. The Germans boasted of having a great victory here, and indeed, in repulsing us after we had gained their camp, they had the advantage. But had Monsieur de Tesse succoured us in time, as old Catinat said he ought to have done, with twelve thousand foot which he had with him, that day’s action had put an end to the war, and Prince Eugene must have been glad to have gone back to Germany in more haste than he came, if, perhaps, we had not cut him short by the way.
But the fate of things went another way, and the Germans continued all that campaign to push forward and advance one post after another, till they beat us quite out of the Milanese.
The latter part of this campaign we made only a party war, the French, according to their volatile temper, being every day abroad, either foraging or surprising the enemy’s foragers, plundering or circumventing the plunders of the other side. But they very often came short home, for the Germans had the better of them on several occasions; and indeed so many lost their lives upon these petty encounters that I think, including those who died of distempers gotten by hard service and bad quarters, lying in the field even till the middle of December among rivers and bogs, in a country so full of canals and rivers as that part of Italy is known to be; I say, we lost more men, and so did the enemy also, than would have been lost in a general decisive battle.