When the war of the Spanish succession broke out in 1701, Prince Eugene was appointed to the command of the Austrian army in Italy, which consisted of thirty thousand veteran troops. His cousin, the Duke of Sa voy, was now in alliance with the French, and frequently commanded against him in person. The army with which he had to contend, was uniformly superior in num ber; and was successively conducted by Catinat, Ville roy, and Vendome. Against the first and the last, all his activity was unavailing ; but he gained several tem porary successes when Villeroy had the command, and even made him his prisoner, in a bold though unsuccessful attempt to surprise Cremona. After two years absence, be returned to Vienna in 1703, to secure for his army more regular supplies of men and money ; and being there appointed to the presidency of the military council, he rendered great services to the Austrian empire in that office, by effecting an accommodation with the Hunga rian insurgents, and detaching the Duke of Savoy from his connection with France. He was chiefly instrumen tal, also, in concerting- with the Duke of Marlborough the plan of the campaign of 1704, in which he bore so distinguished a part, and which so completely relieved the hereditary dominions of Austria from the formidable danger which threatened them on the Danube : (See BLENHEim.) In 1705, he was sent into Italy with an army of 28,000 Austrians, in aid of his cousin the Duke of Savoy, who was now heartily exerting himself in oppo sition to France. During the first campaign, while Vendome commanded the French, he made very little progress in freeing Savoy from the enemy ; but, in the following year, when Marsin and La Feuillade were placed at the head of the hostile army, he gained with an inferior force, and after an obstinate contest, the fa mous battle of Turin, which was followed by the delive ranee of Italy, and the invasion of France. Returning to Vienna, he was dispatched in 1708, as a negotiator to consolidate the coalition ; and then hastened with his army to form a junction with Marlborough, who was en camped at Asch in the vicinity of Brussels. Here he had an interview with his mother, after an absence of twenty-five years ; and though his troops were not come up, he concurred with the English general in advising an attack of the French army, and in gaining the decisive battle of Oudenardc. Having ravaged Artois and Picar dy, they undertook the siege of Lisle, which, after being obstinately defended by Marshal Boufflers nearly six months, surrendered to the allied arms. While Prince Eugene was actively employed in superintending the. siege of the town, his enemies, either at Vienna or at Pa ris, are reported to have made an attempt upon his life by poison. A letter was put into his hands, which con tained only a piece of greased paper, which he threw away; but, being picked up and given to a dog, or ra ther, as it was said, being tied about the animal's neck, he expired in twenty-four hours, with all the symptoms of having been poisoned. The prince himself remarks upon this occurrence, that there must have been some mistake in the supposed cause of the animal's death ; and that the paper probably contained some piece of in formation, which might have been rendered legible by the fire, or some of the usual applications in secret wri ting. In 1709, he found himself, together with Marlbo rough, at the head of 100,000 men in the Low Countries, opposed to an army of equal force under Villars, who acted prudently on the defensive, and made the confede rates pay dear for their successes, particularly in the bloody battle of Malplaquet. It was chiefly by the ad vice of Eugene, that the allied forces ventured upon that daring assault ; and he seems to have been fully aware how much depended upon the result. Ile had received a wound behind the ear, when forcing an entrenchment ; and, when urged by his friends to have it dressed, he in stantly replied, " If I am beaten, it will not be worth while ; and if the French are, I shall have time enough." " What better," he adds, " could I have done than to have perished, after the serious responsibility which I had taken upon myself ?" In 1711, the Emperor Joseph I. died of the small-pox ; and Eugene, by his skilful ma nceuvres, had considerable influence in securing the elec tion of his brother Charles, competitor for Spain. This circumstance, by increasing the power of Austria, ren dered the other allied powers less zealous in the coali tion against France ; and the prince was dispatched to London, in order to retard the progress of a peace. Here he was received in a manner suitable to his merits and reputation, but was unable to accomplish the object of his mission. Though Marlborough was now in dis grace, and it might have been politic to have shunned his intercourse, Eugene met his old companion in arms with undisguised emotion, and passed the greater part of his time in his company.. For this, he says, the populace applauded him the more, and the more honest individu als of the opposite party did not esteem him the less. The allies, though deprived of the assistance of Britain, had so much confidence in the talents of Eugene, that they still continued the war in 1713 ; and, though now obliged to act solely on the defensive, he greatly sig nalized himself by his active vigilance, and at one time, by a bold advance into Champagne, he occasioned no small alarm to the court of Versailles. At length, all parties being worn out with perpetual war, Eugene was ap pointed to negotiate with Villars at Rastadt ; and, in the course of the year 1714, concluded a general peace between the empire and France. Upon his return to Vienna, he was received, both by the court and the city, with the most enthusiastic testimonies of approbation, and immediately applied himself to improve the state of the public finances. But his respite from the fatigues of war was very short. In 1716, hostilities commenced against the Turks, and lie was appointed to the com mand of the army in Hungary. Attacked in his camp by the grand vizier, he repulsed the enemy with great slaughter, and took the important fortress of Temeswar, which the Turks had held 164 years. He opened the campaign of 1717 with the siege of Belgrade, where lie eras attended by a number of princes and young men of rank, who were eager to exalt their reputation, and to improve their military skill by serving under him as ol Mee rs. A large army arrived on the 1st of August
to relieve the place, when his own was weakened by a fever, and himself labouring under the same disease. But recovering from his illness about the middle of the month, he resolved, as his only hope, to attack them during the night; and after a desperate conflict, drove them from the heights, gained a decisive victory, and received on the same day the capitulation of Belgrade. A peace was concluded in the following year, and he was appointed by the emperor his vicar-general in Italy, with a,salary of 150,000 florins. During a long repose of nearly fifteen years, he applied himself to the study of the arts—the arrangement of his books, maps, and plans—the embellishment of his palace and his gar dens—and particularly to the perusal of the best au thors. Nor was he idle in his public capacity, but ex erted himself to regulate the internal state of the em pire, and especially to the improvement of its commerce. In 1733, when it was proposed to resist, by force of arms, the intention of the French court to replace Stan islaus on the throne of Poland, he strongly dissuaded the emperor from a war in which he foresaw so little support, and so formidable an enemy ; but his counsel was overruled, and he accepted the command of the army at the age of seventy. lie was received by the soldiers at Philipsbourg with repeated cries of " Long live our father !" while thousands of hats waved in the air. " My old soldiers of Hungary, Italy, Flanders, and Bavaria, ran to take hold of the knees of my boots; they surrounded me, they fastened on my horse, and even pulled me down with the weight of their caresses ; This was assuredly the most delightful moment of my life." Though greatly inferior in numbers, he prevented the Duke of Berwick from penetrating into the heart of the country, and baffled the talents of D'Asfeld by skilful marches ; but in the following campaign he finished his military career by operations of a more active nature, taking Trarbach, and delivering the electorate of Treves. Having always advised a speedy termination of so un profitable a war, he was not dissatisfied at being recalled to Vienna, to assist at the negotiations for peace ; and though he took leave of his army with tears, he con tinued, during the remainder of his life, to be the advo cate of pacific counsels. Though naturally fond of military renown, and the most ardent of combatants in early life, his cooler judgment and long experience led him to form a more enlightened opinion of the evils of war. " The thirst of renown sometimes insinuates itself into our councils under the hypocritical garb of national honour. It dwells on imaginary insults—it suggests harsh and abusive language—and people go on from one thing to another, till they put an end to the lives of half a million of men. A military man becomes so sick of bloody scenes in war, that in peace lie is averse to recommence them. I wish, that the first minister, who is called to decide on peace and war, had only seen actual service. What pains would he not take to seek, in mediation and compromise, the means of avoiding the effusion of so much blood ?" He spent the remaining year of his life in complete retirement, in the conversation of his friends, in the society of young persons, whose company he preferred, and in a becoming attention to the offices of religion. " I have been happy in this life, and hope to be happy in the next. I have scarcely had time to commit trans gression ; but I have set a bad example, without think ing, by neglecting the exercises of religion, though a sincere believer in and well acquainted with its doc trines. I have led a soldier's life of indifference, and have acted the part of a philosopher ; but my death I wish to be that of a Christian. 1 never liked boasters either in war or religion ; and it is probably from having seen on one side the ridiculous impiety of the French, and on the other the bigotry of the Spaniards, that I have observed a medium between the two. In former days I had so often seen death before me, that I had be come familiar with it ; but this is not now the case. I then sought it ; now I wait for it ; but I await it with tranquillity, and look on the past as a pleasing dream. I am fond of the eloquence of the pulpit. When Bour daloue has made me fear every thing, Massillon makes me hope every thing ; Bossuet astonishes and •enelon affects me. I have forgotten the epigrams of Rousseau, and even his ode to me ; but I often read his Psalms and his Canticles." This illustrious commander, who had received thirteen wounds, and who, in almost every one of his numerous battles, had made many hair-breadth escapes, died at length tranquilly at Vienna, on the 10th of April 1736, in the 73d year of his age. He was found dead in his bed, after having retired in good health from entertaining company at supper ; and was supposed to have been suffocated by an immoderate defluxion of rheum, to which he was subject. Little remains to be remarked upon his character, in addition to what may be suggested by the sketch of his history, and the ex tracts from his private memoirs, which we have pre sented to our readers. In his military tactics he is con sidered as having frequently bordered upon rashness, and having been generally too lavish of human blood. He was distinguished for personal courage, and for his coolness in the midst of dangers; and lie mentions two circumstances, from which he derived the greatest ad vantages, viz. always reconnoitring if possible in person, and writing with a pencil in the memorandum-book of his aid-de-camp, every order which lie gave him to carry. Ile has been greatly commended for his gene rous disposition ; for the ease with which he descended to an equality with those who conversed with him ; for his unaffected modesty, which prevented him from as suming any thing over others, and which rendered him unable to bear, with any tolerable grace, the just ac knowledgments which were paid to his merits. See Biographical Dictionary ; Life of Eugene ; Modern Univ. Hist. vol. xxv. p. 151, and vol. xxx. p. 396 ; Memoirs of Prince Eugene of Savoy, written by himself. (g)