Ireland has given to the armies of Europe five brave soldiers, all kinsmen of the name of Lacy—viz., Marshal Lacy, who overran the Crimea in the service of Russia, and was the fellow-soldier of the great Count Munich; Marshal Count Lacy, his son, the friend of Leopold Daun, and, like him, a distinguished general in the Septennial War; Francis Anthony Count de Lacy, who died Captain-General of Catalonia: his brother Patrick Lacy, Major of the Ulster Regiment in the Spanish service; and his son, Louis Lacy, who fought with such bravery in the wars of the Peninsula, and was Chef-du-Battailon of the Irish in 1807.
All those Lacys were of the old Irish family of Bruree, and their native place originally was Athlacca, a parish in the county of Limerick, on the Maig. Many of this gallant race are buried there, in the ancient churchyard, where an old tomb is yet extant, inscribed—
"John, Thomas, and Edward Lacy, 1632."
The family followed to foreign wars the fortunes of the exiled James Fitz-James, Duke of Berwick, Commander of the first troop of Irish Horse Guards, and natural son of James II. of England and VII. of Scotland. He was married first to a daughter of the Earl of Clanricarde, by whom he had a son, the successor of his titles and estates in Spain, and who also became the friend of the Lacys.
The first of the family who rose to eminence was Marshal Peter Lacy, who entered the service of Russia, and commanded with such distinction and success against the Turks.
He served as a subaltern and regimental officer in the armies of Peter the Great, and first learned the art of war in those sanguinary and desperate conflicts between the forces of the Czar and those of Charles XII. of Sweden, against whom Peter made an alliance with the Kings of Poland and Denmark in 1699, and with whom his general, the brave Prince Menschikoff, fought so many battles in the early part of the last century.
In the year 1736 Lacy had attained the rank of general in the Russian army, under Anne Ivanowna (niece of Peter I.), who at that time governed the vast and barbarous empire of the Muscovites. Count Munich, who, for her service, had left the army of the Elector of Saxony, was at the head of her troops. "He was the Prince Eugene of Muscovy," says Frederick the Great; "but he had the vices with the virtues of all great generals. Lascy (the younger), Keith, Lowendhal, and other able generals, were formed in his school." Sir Patrick Gordon, a Scottish soldier of fortune, had already disciplined the Russian army, and brought it from barbarism to an equality with others in Europe; and in the time of Lacy and Munich it consisted of 10,000 guards, 60,000 infantry of the line, 20,000 dragoons, 2000 cuirassiers, 30,000 militia, with Cossacks, Tartars, Calmucs, and other barbarians, in unnumbered hordes.