Thus died, in the year 1790, Field-Marshal Baron Loudon, one of the greatest generals of the eighteenth century. "It was but seldom that a smile was seen to unwrinkle his lofty forehead," says a writer of his own time. "He was as little acquainted with the real laugh as Cato. As to his character, he knew how to diversify it wonderfully. Loudon on horseback and at the head of an army appeared to be quite another man, and was indeed a complete contrast to Loudon in the country or the town. His conduct agreed perfectly with what his cold and reserved physiognomy announced, for he spoke but little, and slowly. From his early youth he constantly avoided the society of women; he was uncommonly timid in their company, and was a very good husband. Accustomed to find himself punctually obeyed by thousands in the field, at the least sign indicated by him, he required the same docility of his vassals and servants, and he acted with severity to them—perhaps more than ought to have been used to men who were unaccustomed to military discipline."
As a souvenir of the many perils he had passed through, he carefully preserved at Hadersdorf a musket-ball which had been cut in two on the pommel of his saddle, and also his Croatian sabre, which had been struck from his hand by a bomb, and bent so that no armourer could ever straighten it.
His remains were enclosed in a double coffin, adorned by gorgeous mountings and handles, and were solemnly borne from Böhmisch Gratzen to his estate of Hadersdorf, a small town of Lower Austria, near the Klein-Kamp, and five miles west of Vienna.
In the park he had once selected a spot shaded by many fine trees, under which he had expressed a wish to be buried; but, on his return from the Turkish campaign, he selected another place, and planted it with shrubs and flowers in imitation of a Moslem sepulchre; and this he was wont to term his Turkish Garden, for therein he had reconstructed the marble sarcophagus which had been conveyed from Belgrade.
There he now lies in peace, shaded by some stately old trees and in the centre of a green meadow. His funeral monument, which is one of great magnificence, is securely walled round; and among the sculpture with which the Austrian Government adorned it, there may still be traced the shield argent, charged with three escutcheons sable; the old heraldic cognizance which the Loudons of that ilk carried on their pennons in the wars of the Scottish kings.
FOOTNOTES:
[18] Letter from an officer to a friend at Ratisbon, Oct. 25th, 1761.