105 



TURENNE, VICOMTE DE. 



TURGENEV, ALEXANDER IVANOVICII. 



193 



elector of Trfcvcs in the possession of his territories. In 1647 ho put 

 an end to the mischievous custom of separate and independent action 

 on the part of the allied armies of Frauce and Sweden, and com- 

 menced the system of combined operations which led in the course 

 of that and the succeeding campaign to the occupation of the Bavarian 

 territory and the emperor's consent to the treaty of Miinster. 



The peace of Westphalia, which released France from foreign wars, 

 was the signal for the commencement of civil broils. In the com- 

 mencement of 1649 the regent and cardinal left Paris with the king, 

 and the Prince of Condd commenced a blockade of the city. The 

 due do Bouillon embraced the party of the Fronde. Tureune was at 

 this time stationed with his army on the frontiers of Germany. 

 "Wholly engrossed with his military duties, he had hitherto taken no 

 part in politics. The Huguenots, among whose party he had been 

 bred and educated, were opposed to the court. He was not a subject 

 of France; his allegiance to that crown could be dissolved at any 

 time by resigning his commission. Thus situated he rejected the 

 overtures of Mazarin, telling him that the blockade of Paris during a 

 minority appeared to be au unwarrantable stretch of power, and he 

 endeavoured to persuade his officers to take part against the cardinal. 

 The court however had gained so many regiments that he soon saw 

 the attempt was vain, and retired to Holland with some of his personal 

 friends. A hollow truce was soon after arranged between the con- 

 tending factions, and Turenne returned to France. A quarrel between 

 Condc and Mazarin led, after numerous petty intrigues, to the arrest 

 of the former. Condd had not long before reconciled himself with 

 the Due de Bouillon and his brother : Turenne was faithful to the 

 prince in adversity. He threw himself into Stenai, and prevented its 

 being taken by the royal troops. He alon^ rallied the dispirited 

 friends of Condd, and, by calling the Spaniards across the frontiers, 

 procured the release of thje prince, the exile of Mazarin, and the con- 

 clusion of a peace with Spain. 



Turenne returned to Paris, in May 1651. The court offered him 

 favours and advancement; the Prince of Condd sought to enlist him 

 in his party. He intimated to the former that he desired no prefer- 

 ment ; to the latter, that having accomplished his release from prison, 

 his duty towards him was fully discharged. A less penetrating mind 

 than Turenne's could have discovered that a Huguenot party existed 

 only in name ; that the Fronde was an incongruous association of 

 unprincipled intriguers, each of whom sought only his personal aggran- 

 disement ; that the ai-e of petty independent sovereignties such as ex- 

 isted in his house had passed ; and that the only career of honourable 

 ambition open to him must be sought by becoming a French subject, 

 attaching himself to the only minister capable of organising a strong 

 government in France. With characteristic absence of display or 

 precipitation he declared for the regent and Mazarin, and accepted in 

 1652 the command of the royal army. It was soon evident that the 

 same mind which alone upheld the Prince of Condd's cause when he 

 was imprisoned, now struggled to uphold the royal authority, against 

 apparently as fearful odds. The Cardinal Mazarin, the object of 

 popular execration, was again wifh the court, and all France seemed to 

 unite against the prince. The king had to oppose one army to the 

 Spaniards in Catalonia and another in Flanders; and only 9000 or 

 10,000 men could be mustered to oppose the rebel nobles. The 

 favouritism of the court, even at so anxious a moment, offered to 

 Turenne the insult of proposing to divide the command between him 

 and Hacquecourt, an officer ten years his junior. Knowing that time 

 must do him justice, he complied with the unreasonable request. But 

 his genius maintained its ascendant, and the plan and execution of the 

 campaign were really his. By the close of the year Condd was obliged 

 to quit France : the king was crowned at Rheitns, entered Paris, and 

 consigned the Cardinal de lletz, the only remnant of the Fronde, to a 

 dungeon. 



From 1653 till the conclusion of 1659, Turenne's genius for war 

 found ample scope in the wars of the French and Austrian Nether- 

 lands. During the whole of this protracted struggle he had to 

 contend against the Prince of Condd, the most brilliant military genius 

 of his age. It was on the part of Turenne intense but regulated 

 energy, sound judgment and sleepless observation, opposed to an almost 

 miraculous quickness of perception on the part of his adversary, and 

 an impetuosity of execution, to which an ardent imagination would 

 have lent irresistible force could the effort have been made con- 

 tinuous. The treaty of the Pyrenees put an end to a struggle more 

 persevering and destructive than any that Europe had previously 

 witnessed, and yet indicative of that growing equality of European 

 states, the full sense of which can alone guarantee permanent peace. 



The death of Mazarin in 1661, and the resolution of Louis XIV. to 

 bo thenceforth his own prime minister, though it did not rasie Turenne 

 to office, gave him a powerful influence in state affairs. He had from 

 the time he embraced the cause of the Prince of Condd necessarily had 

 a political character, but so Ion? as Mazarin lived he was contented to 

 leave it to contribute indirectly to its promotion. Almost the only 

 occasion in which he appears to have laid aside this passive character 

 was in the negociations he commenced with Monk after the death of 

 Cromwell. But his advice was sought and valued by the monarch 

 who boasted that he was his own prime minister. The first sensible 

 effect of the influence of Turenne was the resolution of Louis to 

 protect the independence of Portugal, which Mazarin had made up 



his mind to sacrifice to the Spaniards. Turenne's credit with De 

 Witt was mainly intrumental in opening the negociations with Holland 

 which led to the treaty of commerce concluded with that power. The 

 instructions of the Count d Ebtrades, who negotiated the treaty, were 

 drawn up by Turenne. When, in 1665, England and Holland each 

 endeavoured to induce Louis XIV. to assist in the war against the 

 other, it was by the advice of Turenne that the king endeavoured to 

 reconcile the belligerents. 



Turenne had married, in 1653, Charlotte, only daughter and heiress 

 of the Due de la Force, a zealous Protestant Regard for his wife's 

 feelings appears to have kept him longer in the Protestant communion 

 than his own inclinations. The French Protestants had allowed them- 

 selves to be made the instruments of political factions ; and this cir- 

 cumstance, which had made Sully withdraw from their councils, kept 

 Tureune from entering them. He had been educated by a moderate 

 Calvinist, and, like most active men who seek not a religion of abstract 

 opinions, but of practical influence, he cared little for doctrinal points. 

 The fierce controversies of the Calviuists and Arminians disgusted 

 him ; and the numberless sects which sprung up in Holland and 

 France confused him. Perusing the controversies of the Jauseuists 

 and Jesuits, he found the very same controversy that shook the 

 Reformed Church agitating the Roman Catholic, and thus learned to 

 look upon the difference between the two churches as merely formal. 

 The conversation of prelates like the bishop of Meaux, and the silent 

 influence of the conventional tone of the circles in which he moved, 

 all contributed to eap his Protestantism. And although Turenne's 

 miud would have revolted (had revolted in earlier life) from, the idea 

 of changing his religion to advance his fortune, the feeling that it kept 

 him in some sort an alien in the court of which he was one of the 

 brightest ornaments could not fail insensibly to influence his mind 

 wlien he had brought himself to view the difference between the 

 sects as not essential. The death of the viscountess in 166G removed 

 the last tie that bound him to the Protestants ; and he was received 

 into the bosom of the Roman Catholic Church by the archbishop of 

 Paris. This transaction was privately conducted ; the change of his 

 creed could not raise Turenne higher in the state than he already 

 stood ; his confidential letters for years previous show that his mind 

 was in a state to be easily determined to such a step : his whole 

 subsequent conduct indicates sincerity in his adopted faith. 



Although circumstances had obliged France to join the side of the 

 Dutch in their war against England, France took scarcely any active 

 part in the contest, and promoted the peace concluded between the 

 belligerents in 1667. Louis availed himself of the peace to form a 

 combination against Spain, \\ith a view to make himself master of the 

 Spanish Netherlands. The campaign in Flanders, in which Louis told 

 Turenne he wished to learn the art of war under him, was the conse- 

 quence. The fears entertained by England, and the partisans of the 

 House of Orange in Holland, of the consequences of French aggrandise- 

 ment on this side led to the last war of Turenne. The narrative of this 

 war, which commenced in 1672, belongs to history rather than to bio- 

 graphy, which confines itself to the illustration of individual character, 

 at least in a sketch like the present, in which the subject is presented 

 merely in outline.. The victories gained by Turenue from the year 

 1672 to the year 1675 serve only, so far as he is concerned, to place in 

 a more brilliant light the qualities which he had amply displayed on 

 former occasions. These victories served to impress Louis XIV., who 

 gained by them, with the vain idea that he was invincible ; but they 

 taught William of Orange, who suffered by them, to act in future 

 years as became one who really was the scholar of Turenne. In 

 Montecuculi Turenne found an opponent worthy of him, one who, like 

 himself, had passed through every grade of service. The premature 

 death of the vicomte prevented either from claiming a personal advan- 

 tage over the other. Henri, Vicomte de Turenne, fell near Sassbach, 

 on the 26th of July 1675, while preparing to lead his troops into 

 action. The French soldiers cried, "Our father is dead;" the hostile 

 general declared that a man had fallen who did honour to human 

 nature ; and the surviving French leaders, although their troops were 

 marshalled for battle, retired without hazarding an action. The 

 letters of Madame de Sevignd present a lively picture of the effect pro- 

 duced on the public mind at Paris by the intelligence of Tureuue's 

 death. 



Turenne's victories, his state papers (published by Ramsay at the 

 end of his Memoirs), and his private letters, all bear the impress of a 

 truly great mind. In him clear and comprehensive views were com- 

 bined with energy in action : both in politics and religion he was 

 superior to the harsh and narrow feelings of the partisan; and his 

 domestic life was eminently pure. 



TURGENEV, ALEXANDER IVANOVICH, a Russian historical 

 inquirer, was born in 1784, entered the Russian civil service, held a 

 post in the Ministry of Public Worship under Prince Galitzin, was a 

 prominent supporter of the Russian Bible Society, of which he was 

 president, and when that socic f y was suppressed by imperial ukase in 

 1826, retired from public employment. This step was also probably 

 occasioned in some degree by the position of his brother, who had 

 become compromised in the conspiracy of 1825. Alexander Turgenev 

 afterwards travelled abroad in search of historical documents relating 

 to the history of Russia, the fruits of which appeared in a work in two 

 volumes quarto, ' Historica Russiae Monimenta ' (Historical Monuments 



