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SAXE, MARSHAL. 



SAY, JEAN BAPTISTE. 



toristics of Maurice. He soon returned to France, and took the com- 

 mand of a regiment, which he manoeuvred according to a plan of his 

 own, and for which he received the praise of Folard. He continued 

 for a considerable time to study mathematics and the art of attacking 

 fortified places under that skilful tactician. 



In the year 1726 Maurice of Saxony set out for the north, in the 

 hope of being elected Duke of Courland through the interest of his 

 father. By the exertions of Anna Iwanowna, duchess of Courland 

 (wjdow of the Duke Frederic William, who died iu 1711), who had 

 conceived an attachment to him, his "election was carried, though 

 there were other candidates, and he was opposed by the Czarina 

 Catharina I., who sent Menzikoff to seize him in Mitau ; but he 

 defended himself in the palace, and the Russians retired. The 

 Russian influence was then used in the Polish diet, which, in virtue of 

 its right of suzereignty, summoned him to appear before them ; but 

 he refused to do so, and the diet in consequence signed his proscription. 

 He attempted to defend himself in his territory, but the Russians 

 forced him to flee, and he escaped to France with nothing but his 

 diploma of election. In 1728, after the death of Catharina I., the 

 Duchess 'of Courland, whose attachment to him continued, invited 

 him to return, which he did ; and there ia little doubt that she would 

 have made him her partner on the throne of the czars, to which she 

 was elected in 1730, if she had not previously discovered a glaring 

 instance of his inconstancy, whereupon he was immediately dismissed. 

 He then returned to Paris, and afterwards repaired to Dresden. His 

 father, Augustus II., died in 1733. 



War having been declared between France and Austria in 1733, 

 Maurice of Saxony repaired to the court of Versailles to solicit 

 employment, and he was sent to the army of the Rhine, commanded 

 by the Duke of Berwick. He distinguished himself at the siege of 

 Philipsburg, and was appointed lieutenant-general at the peace of 1736. 

 He now returned to Dresden for the purpose of prosecuting his claim 

 to the dukedom of Courland, but failing in this attempt, he went 

 again to Paris, and devoted himself to the study of the art of war 

 and to the completion of a work on which he had employed himself 

 for some time, and which he called ' Mes Reveries.' 



On the death of the Emperor Charles VI., in 1740, a general war 

 broke out. Louis XV. sent an army into Bohemia under the Marshal 

 of Belle-Isle, the lefb wing of which was confided to the Count of 

 Saxony, who was 1 charged with the investment of Prague (1741), 

 which he took by assault in a few days, and with equal rapidity the 

 fortress of Egra. He was afterwards appointed to the command of 

 the army of Bavaria, and displayed equal skill in defensive warfare as 

 in offensive. He was also employed in the defence of Alsace, when he 

 was suddenly summoned by Louis XV. to assist in placing Prince 

 Edward the Pretender on the throne of his ancestors, but he had 

 scarcely reached Dunkirk when a tempest destroyed a part of his 

 squadron, and the rest was blockaded by an English fleet. Maurice 

 returned to Versailles, and Louis bestowed on him the staff of a 

 Marshal of France (March 1743). 



In 1744 Louis XV. entered Flanders with an army of 80,000 men, 

 the left wing being under the command of Marshal Saxe, who was 

 appointed to cover the sieges which were to be undertaken by Marshal 

 Noailles under the immediate inspection of the king. Menai, Ypres, 

 and Furnes were quickly gained, when news was brought that Prince 

 Charles had entered Alsace. The king and Marshal Noailles hastened 

 to its defence with the greatest part of the troops, leaving Marshal 

 Saxe alone in Flanders to act on the defensive against an army three 

 times as numerous as his own ; he maintained his position however 

 with consummate skill, keeping the allies continually in check, and 

 retaining the conquests which had been made at the beginning of the 

 campaign. 



Iu 1745 Louis XV. returned to Flanders with a large additional 

 force, amounting, with that already in Flanders, to 100,000 men, of 

 which Marshal Saxe was uow appointed general-in-chief, Marshal 

 Noailles consenting to act under him. On the 22nd of April 1745 

 the campaign was opened by the siege of Tournay. The allies 

 advanced to its support with 45,000 men, English, Hanoverians, and 

 Dutch. Marshal Saxe was suffering under dropsy, and underwent the 

 operation of tapping on the l&th. Notwithstanding, he advanced to 

 oppose the allies with a force not exceeding theirs, he himself being 

 obliged to be borne in a litter. On the llth of May he was attacked 

 near the village of Fontenoy, where he had put himself in position. 

 Tho English and Hanoverians advanced to the attack of his redoubts 

 in a dense column, and for awhile bore everything before them, sustain- 

 ing repeated attacks of cavalry and the steady and uninterrupted fire 

 of the French infantry with a determination which seemed to make 

 victory certain. But the perseverance of Marshal Saxe at length 

 prevailed : the Dutch kept aloof, and four large pieces of artillery 

 being also brought to bear upon the English column, it was at length 

 compelled to give way, and defeat followed. The French victory at 

 Fontenoy, one of the most memorable of the 18th century, was soon 

 followed by the conquest of all Belgium. The conqueror of Fontenoy 

 was presented by Louis XV. with the chateau of Chambord, and 

 100,000 francs of annual revenue arising from the estate. Tournay, 

 Ghent, Bruges, Oudenarde, Ostend, Brussels, Mons, Charleroi, and 

 Namur were all taken between the 23rd of May 1745 and the 19th of 

 September 1746. 



In the campaign of 1747 Marshal Saxe took Lafeldt after a hard- 

 fought battle (July 2), which he followed up by the conquest of 

 Bergen-op-Zoom, and in 1748 by that of Maastricht. The allies now 

 made overtures of peace, which was definitely settled at Aix-la- 

 Chapellc in the same year. Marshal Saxe survived about two years 

 to enjoy the honours which were lavishly showered upon him. He 

 died on the 30th of November 1750. 



Marshal Saxe's work, ' Mes Reveries,' was published in 1757, 6 vols. 

 4to. It is a work on military affairs, which is said to contain a good 

 deal of valuable matter mixed up with many assertions which cannot 

 be relied on. It was translated into English by Sir William Fawcetfc 

 'The Reveries; or, Memoirs upon the Art of War, by Field- 

 Marshal Count Saxo ; translated from the French,' 4to, 1757. 



Marshal Saxe was a soldier, and " a ripe and good one," but nothing 

 more. When at the height of bis reputation, the Acaddmie Franeaise 

 absurdly offered to make him a member, which he had the good sense 

 to decline ; for though he had great knowledge of his art and of all 

 matters connected with it, his literary acquirements would have done 

 no honour to that learned body, if we may judge from the following 

 specimen of his orthography given in the ' Biographie Univeraelle : ' 

 " Us veule me fere de la Cademie ; sela miret come une bage a un 

 chas." The marshal was a man of large size and extraordinary 

 personal strength. 



SAXE-WEIMAR, BERNHARD, DUKE OF, born at Weimar on 

 the 16th of August 1600, was the fourth of the seven sons cf John, 

 duke of Saxe- Weimar. As all the important circumstances of hia 

 life are connected vith the Thirty Years' War in Germany, we can 

 only give here a brief statement of the leading facts of his career. 



After the battle of Prague (November 3, 1620), Bernhard served in 

 the army raised by the Margrave of Baden-Durlach for the purpose of 

 assisting Frederic V., king of Bohemia and elector-palatine, to support 

 himself after the loss sustained in that disastrous affair. In 1623 he 

 commanded a regiment of infantry in the army of Duke Christian of 

 Brunswick; and in 1625, and again in 1627, he was placed at the head 

 of a regiment of cavalry in the Danish army raised by Christian IV. 

 in support of the Protestant Union. After the alliance between 

 Louis XIII. and Gustavus Adolphus (January 13, 1631) he joined the 

 latter, who promised him the bishoprics of Bamberg and Wiirzburg, 

 with the title of Duke of Franconia. Bernhard distinguished himself 

 at the siege of Wiirzburg, in forcing the passage of Oppenheim, and 

 in the Palatinate, where he took Mannheim by stratagem, and forced 

 the enemy from all his posts in that quarter. Gustavus afterwards 

 appointed him to the command of an army designed for the conquest 

 of Bavaria, with which he advanced as far as the mountains of the 

 Tyrol, obtained possession of the three fortresses of Ehrenburg, the 

 keys of that country, and put the emperor in fear for his Italian 

 states. Gustavus however recalled Bernhard to assist him against 

 Wallenstein, and shortly afterwards they fought together at the battle 

 of Liitzen, November 16, 1632. When Gustavus fell, the Duke of 

 Weimar, took the command, and forced the enemy to retreat, and 

 shortly afterwards drove the imperial army out of Saxony. 



The Swedish army was afterwards divided into two parts by the 

 chancellor Oxenstierna, and placed under the command of Marshal 

 Horn and Bernhard of Weimar. Bernhard besieged and took Ratisbon, 

 which however was afterwards retaken by the imperial army (July 29, 

 1634), and Bernhard and Horn were afterwards defeated at Nordlin- 

 gen (September 7, 1634), owing to the impatience of the Duke of 

 Weimar to give battle without waiting for the arrival of reinforce- 

 ments. On the 6th of October 1635, Bernhard concluded a treaty of 

 alliance and subsidy with the King of France. He was occupied for a 

 considerable time in a series of less important affairs, and in quelling 

 the mutinous spirit of the German avinies, by procuring, through the 

 agency of Oxenstierna, a portion at least of ihe arrears of pay. On 

 the 3rd of March 1638 he gained the great victory of Rheinfelden, 

 and obtained possession of the fortress on the 22nd of March. He 

 afterwards besieged Alt Breisach, then considered one of the strongest 

 places in Europe, which capitulated on the 19th of December 1638. 

 He died suddenly at Neuburg on the Rhine, of a pestilential fever, on 

 the 18th of July 1639. 



SAY, JEAN BAPTISTE, a writer on political economy, was born 

 at Lyon in 1767, and died at Paris, November 16th 1832. He came 

 to the capital at an early period of the revolution, and was one of the 

 projectors and conductors of a journal entitled ' La Decade Philoso- 

 phique,' one of the small number of literary and scientific works that 

 maintained an existence during the revolutionary storm. After the 

 18th Brumaire, Say was called to the tribunate, the only semblance 

 of a deliberative assembly which remained after the revolution. It 

 soon became the mere instrument of the First Consul's will, and Say 

 ceased to be a member of it at the time when Napoleon was named 

 emperor. He resigned an appointment, subsequently conferred upon 

 him, of receiver Oi taxes for the department of Allier. He afterwards 

 established a manufactory of some kind. On the whole he appears to 

 have passed a quiet and retired life, engaged in his various works on 

 political economy, and in lecturing on this and kindred subjects at the 

 Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers at Paris. 



The great merit of Say consists in having rendered the science of 

 political economy popular in France. He followed closely in the 

 steps of Adam Smith ; but besides having placed the doctrines of his 



