The delight which Winston experienced, (having already surveyed them for and by himself,) in retracing his steps through the marvels of Rome with such a companion, is indescribable. The pictures in the Borghese, and other palaces, broke upon him with a second novelty, and often with a deeper sentiment. But was there no danger in wandering through galleries with one by his side to whose living beauty the beauty on the canvass served only to draw renewed attention and heightened admiration? If he fled at Genoa, why does he tarry at Rome? There are some dangers, alas! that are seen the less the greater they become. He was standing with her before that exquisite picture in the Borghese palace representing the Three Ages; a youth is reclining in the centre, and a nymph is playing to him upon two flutes. He had seen it before, but he seemed now to understand it for the first time. “How plainly,” he murmured to himself, “is youth the all of life! How plainly is love the all of youth!”
As he was now somewhat familiar with Rome, he could be serviceable to the Bloomfield party in the capacity of cicerone. They were pleased with his services, and he found every day some incontrovertible reason why he should bestow them. The embarrassments of Louisa Jackson and her mamma were quite forgotten; nor could their difficulties excite a moment’s compassion or attention. In vain did Louisa sigh; no inquiry was made into the cause of her distress. In vain did she even, with plaintive voice, ask whether, “being a Protestant, she could take the veil, and be a nun?” the question was unheeded, and its deep significance unperceived.
EUGENE, MARLBOROUGH, FREDERICK, NAPOLEON, AND WELLINGTON.
Five generals, by the common consent of men, stand forth pre-eminent in modern times for the magnitude of the achievements they have effected, and the splendour of the talents they have displayed—Eugene, Marlborough, Frederick, Napoleon, and Wellington. It is hard to say which appears the greatest, whether we regard the services they have rendered to their respective countries, or the durable impress their deeds have left on human affairs. All had difficulties the most serious to contend with, obstacles apparently insurmountable to overcome, and all proved in the end victorious over them. All have immortalized their names by exploits far exceeding those recorded of other men. All have left their effects durably imprinted in the subsequent fate of nations. The relative position of the European states, the preservation of public rights, the maintenance of the balance of power, the salvation of the weak from the grasp of the strong, has been mainly owing to their exertions. To their biography is attached not merely the fortune of the countries to which they belonged, but the general destinies of Europe, and through it of the human race.
To give a faithful picture, in a few pages, of such men, may seem a hopeless, and to their merits an invidious task. A brief summary of the chief actions of those of them to ordinary readers least known, is, however, indispensable to lay a foundation for their comparison with those whose deeds are as household words. It is not impossible to convey to those who are familiar with their exploits, a pleasing resumè of their leading features, and salient points of difference; to those who are not, to give some idea of the pleasure which their study is calculated to afford. Generals, like poets or painters, have certain leading characteristics which may be traced through all their achievements; a peculiar impress has been communicated by nature to their minds, which appears, not less than on the painter’s canvass or in the poet’s lines, in all their actions. As much as grandeur of conception distinguishes Homer, tenderness of feeling Virgil, and sublimity of thought Milton, does impetuous daring characterize Eugene, consummate generalship Marlborough, indomitable firmness Frederick, lofty genius Napoleon, unerring wisdom Wellington. Greatness in the military, as in every other art, is to be attained only by strong natural talents, perseveringly directed to one object, undistracted by other pursuits, undivided by inferior ambition. The men who have risen to the highest eminence in war, have done so by the exercise of faculties as great, and the force of genius as transcendent, as that which formed a Homer, a Bacon, or a Newton. Success doubtless commands the admiration of the multitude; military glory captivates the unthinking throng; but to those who know the military art, and can appreciate real merit, the chief ground for admiration of its great masters, is a sense of the difficulties, to most unknown, which they have overcome.
Prince Eugene, though belonging to the same age, often acting in the same army, and sometimes commanding alternately with Marlborough, was a general of an essentially different character. A descendant of the House of Savoy, born at Paris, in 1663, and originally destined for the church, he early evinced a repugnance for theological studies, and, instead of his breviary, was devouring in secret Plutarch’s lives of ancient heroes. His figure was slender, and his constitution at first weak; but these disadvantages, which caused Louis XIV. to refuse him a regiment, from an opinion that he was not equal to its duties, were soon overcome by the ardour of his mind. Immediately setting out for Vienna, he entered the imperial service; but he was still pursued by the enmity of Louvois, who procured from Louis a decree which pronounced sentence of banishment on all Frenchmen in the armies of foreign powers who should fail to return to their country. “I will re-enter France in spite of him,” said Eugene; and he was more than once as good as his word. His genius for war was not methodical or scientific like that of Turenne or Marlborough, nor essentially chivalrous like that of the Black Prince or the Great Condé. It was more akin to the terrible sweep of the Tartar chiefs; it savoured more of oriental daring. He was as prodigal of the blood of his soldiers as Napoleon; but, unlike him, he never failed to expose his own with equal readiness in the fight. He did not reserve his attack in person for the close of the affray, like the French Emperor, but was generally to be seen in the fire from the very outset. It was with difficulty he could be restrained from heading the first assault of grenadiers, or leading on the first charge of horse. His first distinguished command was in Italy, in 1691, and his abilities soon gave his kinsman, the Duke of Savoy, an ascendant there over the French. But it was at the great battle of Zenta, on the Teife, where he surprised and totally defeated Cara-Mustapha, at the head of 120,000 Turks, that his wonderful genius for war first shone forth in its full lustre. He there killed 20,000 of the enemy, drove 10,000 into the river, took their whole artillery and standards, and entirely dispersed their mighty array.
Like Nelson at Copenhagen, Eugene had gained this glorious victory by acting in opposition to his orders, which were positively to avoid a general engagement. This circumstance, joined to the envy excited by his unparalleled triumph, raised a storm at Court against the illustrious general, and led to his being deprived of his command, and even threatened with a court-martial. The public voice, however, at Vienna, loudly condemned such base ingratitude towards so great a benefactor to the imperial dominions: the want of his directing eye was speedily felt in the campaign with the Turks, and the Emperor was obliged to restore him to his command, which he, however, only agreed to accept on being given carte blanche for the conduct of the war. The peace of Carlowetz, in 1699, between the Imperialists and the Ottomans, soon after restored him to a pacific life, and the study of history, in which, above any other, he delighted. But on the breaking out of the war of the Succession, in 1701, he was restored to his military duties, and during two campaigns measured his strength, always with success, in the plains of Lombardy, with the scientific abilities of Marshal Catinat, and the learned experience of Marshal Villeroi, the latter of whom he made prisoner during a nocturnal attack on Cremona, in 1703. In 1704, he was transferred to the north of the Alps to unite with Marlborough in making head against the great army of Marshal Tallard, which was advancing, in so threatening a manner, through Bavaria; and he shared with the illustrious Englishman the glories of Blenheim, which at once delivered Germany, and hurled the French armies with disgrace behind the Rhine. Then commenced that steady friendship, and sincere and mutual regard, between these illustrious men, which continued unbroken till the time of their death, and is not the least honourable trait in the character of each. But the want of his protecting arm was long felt in Italy: the great abilities of the Duke de Vendôme had well-nigh counterbalanced there all the advantages of the allies in Germany; and the issue of the war in the plains of Piedmont continued doubtful till the glorious victory of Eugene, on the 7th Sept. 1706, when he stormed the French intrenchments around Turin, defended by eighty thousand men, at the head of thirty thousand only, and totally defeated Marshal Marsin and the Duke of Orleans, with such loss, that the French armies were speedily driven across the Alps.
Eugene was now received in the most flattering manner at Vienna: the lustre of his exploits had put to silence, if not to shame, the malignity of his enemies. “I have but one fault to find with you,” said the Emperor when he was first presented to him after his victory, “and that is that you expose yourself too much.” He was next placed at the head of the Imperial armies in Flanders; and shared with Marlborough in the conduct, as he did in the glories, of Oudenarde and Malplaquet. Intrusted with the command of the corps which besieged Lille, he was penetrated with the utmost admiration for Marshal Boufflers, and evinced the native generosity of his disposition, by the readiness with which he granted the most favourable terms to the illustrious besieged chief, who had with equal skill and valour conducted the defence. When the articles of capitulation proposed by Boufflers were placed before him, he said at once, without looking at them, “I will subscribe them at once: knowing well you would propose nothing unworthy of you and me.” The delicacy of his subsequent attentions to his noble prisoner evinced the sincerity of his admiration. When Marlborough’s influence at the English Court was sensibly declining, in 1711, he repaired to London, and exerted all his talents and address to bring the English council back to the common cause, and restore his great rival to his former ascendency with Queen Anne. When it was all in vain, and the English armies withdrew from the coalition, Eugene did all that skill and genius could achieve to make up for the great deficiency arising from the withdrawal of Marlborough and his gallant followers; and when it had become apparent that he was over-matched by the French armies, he was the first to counsel his Imperial master to conclude peace, which was done at Rastadt on the 6th March, 1714.
Great as had been the services then performed by Eugene for the Imperialists, they were outdone by those which he subsequently rendered in the wars with the Turks. In truth it was he who first effectually broke their power, and for ever delivered Europe from the sabres of the Osmanlis, by which it had been incessantly threatened for three hundred years. Intrusted with the command of the Austrian army in Hungary, sixty thousand strong, he gained at Peterwardin, in 1716, a complete victory over an hundred and fifty thousand Turks. This glorious success led him to resume the offensive, and in the following year he laid siege, with forty thousand men, to Belgrade, the great frontier fortress of Turkey, in presence of the whole strength of the Ottoman empire. The obstinate resistance of the Turks, as famous then, as they have ever since been, in the defence of fortified places, joined to the dysenteries and fevers usual on the marshy banks of the Danube in the autumnal months, soon reduced his effective force to twenty-five thousand men, while that of the enemy, by prodigious efforts, had been swelled to an hundred and fifty thousand around the besiegers’ lines, besides thirty thousand within the walls. Every thing presaged that Eugene was about to undergo the fate of Marshal Marsin twelve years before at Turin, and even his most experienced officers deemed a capitulation the only way of extricating them from their perilous situation. Eugene himself was attacked and seriously weakened by the prevailing dysentery: all seemed lost in the Austrian camp. It was in these circumstances, with this weakened and dispirited force, that he achieved one of the most glorious victories ever gained by the Cross over the Crescent. With admirable skill he collected his little army together, divided it into columns of attack, and though scarcely able to sit on horseback himself, led them to the assault of the Turkish intrenchments. The result was equal to the success of Cæsar over the Gauls at the blockade of Alesia, seventeen centuries before. The innumerable host of the Turks was totally defeated—all their artillery and baggage taken, and their troops entirely dispersed. Belgrade, immediately after, opened its gates, and has since remained, with some mutations of fortune, the great frontier bulwark of Europe against the Turks. The successes which he gained in the following campaign of 1718 were so decisive, that they entirely broke the Ottoman power; and he was preparing to march to Constantinople, when the treaty of Passarowitz put a period to his conquests, and gave a breathing time to the exhausted Ottoman empire.[3]
From this brief sketch of his exploits, it may readily be understood what was the character of Eugene as a general. He had none of the methodical prudence of Turenne, Marlborough, or Villars. His genius was entirely different: it was more akin to that of Napoleon, when he was reduced to counterbalance inferiority of numbers by superiority of skill. The immortal campaigns of 1796, in Italy, and of 1814, in Champagne, bear a strong resemblance to those of Eugene. Like the French Emperor, his strokes were rapid and forcible; his coup-d’œil was at once quick and just; his activity indefatigable; his courage undaunted; his resources equal to any undertaking. He did not lay much stress on previous arrangements, and seldom attempted the extensive combinations which enabled Marlborough to command success; but dashed fearlessly on, trusting to his own resources to extricate him out of any difficulty—to his genius, in any circumstances, to command victory. Yet was this daring disposition not without peril. His audacity often bordered on rashness, his rapidity on haste; and he repeatedly brought his armies into situations all but desperate, and which, to a general of lesser capacity, unquestionably would have proved so. Yet in these difficulties no one could exceed him in the energy and vigour with which he extricated himself from the toils: and many of his greatest victories, particularly those of Turin and Belgrade, were gained under circumstances where even the boldest officers in his army had given him over for lost. He was prodigal of the blood of his soldiers, and, like Napoleon, indifferent to the sacrifices at which he purchased his successes; but he was still more lavish of his own, and never failed to share the hardships and dangers of the meanest of his followers. He was engaged in thirteen pitched battles, in all of which he fought like a common soldier. He was in consequence repeatedly, sometimes dangerously, wounded; and it was extraordinary “that his life escaped his reiterated perils.” He raised the Austrian monarchy by his triumphs to the very highest pitch of glory, and finally broke the power of the Turks, the most persevering and not the least formidable of its enemies. But the enterprises which his genius prompted the cabinet of Vienna to undertake, were beyond the strength of the hereditary states; and for nearly a century after, it achieved nothing worthy, either of its growing resources, or the military renown which he had spread around its annals.