The Austrians, under the Prince of Wirtemberg, were posted between the Crostolo and the Po, near some strong redoubts at the head of one of their bridges; and there, on the 19th of September, they were attacked by the French, when after a hard conflict of eight hours, during which Brown, then in his twenty-ninth year, charged repeatedly at the head of his regiment, the Austrians were driven back, with the loss of four standards, while the gallant Prince of Wirtemberg, old General Colmenaro, the Prince of Saxe Gotha, and many other brave men, were slain.
Count Brown made incredible exertions to preserve discipline, and with his own regiment to cover the rear of the discomfited Imperialists, who were thus enabled to fall back in good order to a new and stronger position on the northward of the Po, where they kept the field until January in the ensuing year, when the wearied French and Spaniards retired into winter quarters. One of the most brilliant feats of the campaign was the destruction of the bridge which the Marshal Duke de Noailles had thrown over the Adige. At the head of his regiment the brave Irish soldier of fortune achieved this arduous task in sight of the whole French army, under a heavy discharge of cannon and musketry. Thus terminated the Lombardo campaign, in which Austria, if she did not lose her honour, won but little glory, though in the two battles of Parma and Guastalla she lost ten thousand soldiers.
The French strengthened their forces, and a cruel edict was issued at Paris, ordaining all British subjects in France between the ages of fifteen and fifty to enlist in the Irish Brigade, or go to the galleys—an edict which was enforced with such rigour, that in fifteen days all the Parisian prisons were crowded with British residents, chiefly poor Scottish Jacobites; but France soon found other and more worthy means of reinforcing her armies in Italy and on the Rhine, than by resorting to such inhospitable tyranny.
For his services in the Italian war, Count Brown received a general's commission in 1736 from the Emperor Charles VI., who, discouraged by his reverses, signified a desire for peace; but it was scarcely negotiated, before he became involved in a new war that broke out on the confines of Europe and Asia. The rapid progress of the Russians against the Turks, and their capture of the Crimea, excited the ambition of Charles, who, by the treaty of 1726, was bound to assist Russia against the Porte; and now that prophecy, so often propagated, was in every one's mouth, that the period fatal to the Crescent was arrived!
Again the Osmanli turned their arms against Hungary; and to protect that ancient kingdom rather than to assist the Czarina (who demanded of Austria 10,000 horse and 20,000 foot), Charles sent 8000 Saxon infantry, under Field-Marshal Seckendorf and General Count Brown, with whom the Duke of Lorraine went as a volunteer. By the peculation of the commissaries and contractors, these forces suffered incredible hardships, and their leaders found Gradisca, Bioc, even Belgrade, and all the Hungarian frontier fortresses dilapidated, and incapable of being defended. More troops and 600,000 florins were promised to them from Vienna, but neither came. Thus Seckendorf and Brown found themselves before the Turks with a small army of recruits, destitute of horses, caissons, and all the munitions of war. On receiving 10,000 florins, they raised 26,000 infantry, 15,000 horse, and 4000 irregulars; but the indecision of the Emperor, who interfered with all their arrangements, the nature of their forces, clamours among their soldiers, cabals among their officers, the severities they encountered, and the pressing ardour of the Osmanli, gave to the Imperial arms but a succession of humiliating defeats; and though Brown's fiery energy captured many small fortresses, others of greater importance were lost by Seckendorf, and at last Belgrade, the scene of our hero's earlier service, was besieged.
Banjaluca, a strongly fortified town, which has two castles to defend it, and which stands on the frontier of Bosnia, at the confluence of the Verbas with the Save, was skilfully invested by the Austrians under the Prince of Hildburghausen, but he was compelled to raise the siege, and after a bloody conflict, was driven towards the Save by the Turks.
Charles, alarmed for the safety of Austria, ordered Seckendorf and Brown to march through Servia, and form a junction with the prince, which they immediately did, after dispatching a reinforcement to Marshal Kevenhüller. With only 20,000 men they fought a way through Servia, and made themselves masters of Utzitza, after a short siege, and would have taken Zwornick, but for an inundation of the Drina. On the 16th of October they encamped on the southern bank of the Save. Thus, they arrived in time to share some of the fighting near Banjaluca, and on the retreat from thence the Austrian baggage, sick, and wounded, were only saved from the barbarous Mussulmans by the personal exertions of Count Brown, who secured that movement by his valour and example.
Discouraged by the misfortunes of his army, Charles VI. resolved to end a strife in which his troops gathered nothing but disgrace; and, leaving the quarrel to the mediation of France, he bequeathed to the Czarina the whole brunt of the war. The ill-success of the Austrians was attributed to the unfortunate Seckendorf, the victim of circumstances and the cabals of the Jesuits; thus he was committed, for an unlimited time, to the gloomy Castle of Glatz, an old fortress on the mountains of Silesia. On the peace of Belgrade being signed, Marshal Wallace was also sent prisoner to Zigieth, and Count Neuperg was placed in the Castle of Holitz; and as these three generals were ordered to remain captive during the lifetime of the Emperor, no part of the stigma of their ill-success fell on their Irish compatriot, Brown, who, on his return to Vienna, in 1735, was created Field Marshal-lieutenant, and a member of the Aulic Council of War.
In the following year, his friend and master, Charles VI. (having unfortunately surfeited himself with mushrooms), died. He was the last prince of the ancient House of Hapsburg, sixteenth Emperor of Germany, and eleventh King of Bohemia; and the grave had scarcely closed over him, ere the disputed succession to his hereditary dominions kindled another war in Europe.
By the Pragmatic Sanction his ancient possessions were guaranteed to his daughter, the Archduchess Maria Theresa (Queen of Hungary and Bohemia, and wife of Francis Stephen, Duke of Tuscany), by Britain, Russia, Holland, France, Spain, and Prussia; but the three last-named powers fell—as an old writer says—"upon the poor distressed orphan queen, like three wolves, without mercy or equity;" and in defiance of their solemn league, the Bavarian Elector laid claim to Bohemia; the sovereigns of France, Poland, and Saxony demanded all the vast inheritance of Austria each for themselves; and all prepared for open war, while Maria Theresa quietly took possession of her father's throne.