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Text originally published in 1961 under the same title.
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THE PRODIGIOUS MARSHAL
BEING THE LIFE AND EXTRAORDINARY ADVENTURES OF MAURICE DE SAXE, MARSHAL OF FRANCE, SON OF THE KING OF POLAND, CONQUEROR OF THE ENGLISH, PRETENDER TO THE DUKEDOM OF KURLAND, AND UNIVERSAL LOVER
BY
EDMUND B. DAUVERGNE
AUTHOR OF
NAPOLEON THE THIRD, LOLA MONTEZ, A QUEEN AT BAY, ETC.
Illustrated
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE
A MAN who had the singular distinction of beating a British Army in three pitched battles and of hanging his castle at Chambord with blood-stained British flags, should be remembered at least by English people. Yet to nine persons out of ten (if this work attains so large a circulation) who open this book, the very name of Marshal Saxe will probably be unfamiliar. The eldest of the three hundred and fifty-four illegitimate sons of a king, he soon achieved a striking pre-eminence in love and war. Ill content with the secondary rank to which his baton sinister assigned him, he restlessly aspired to kingship. Possessing himself of the duchy of Kurland, he held it for a time in the teeth of the opposition of two mighty nations. Two princesses who became in turn empresses of Russia would have married him, and despite a profound repugnance to the married state, he might have sat upon the throne of the Czars but for his inability to resist a pretty face. Women adored him and grovelled at his feet. Adrienne Lecouvreur, the greatest tragic actress of her day, with her dying breath proclaimed him to be her universe, her hope, and her God. Strong as Hercules, valiant as Achilles, lustful as a satyr, he captivated women, was loved by his soldiers, and hated by his peers. For France, at Fontenoy, he won the first great victory over the English she had secured since Joan of Arcs day. But for the unfriendly winds, he might have marched into London town and placed the Stuart pretender upon the throne of Britain.
His was a versatile genius. Absolutely unlettered and the despair in childhood of his tutors, he thought clearly and anticipated modern developments. Living as the world lived and making the best of life as he found it, he saw through the shams and superstitions on which existing society is founded. Personally heartless in his treatment of women, he denounced their enslavement by men. A prince himself, he saw in European civilization merely a system of oppressors and oppressed. He advocated universal compulsory military service and, more humane than modern commanders, would not suffer spies to be hanged. Attention is particularly directed to the chapter attached to his curious Rveries , wherein he proposes Term Marriages and the compulsory dissolution of barren unions as the only means of keeping up the population and throws the responsibility for its decline upon the Roman Catholic Church.
A hero he appeared to his contemporaries; in his infamous pursuit of an actress who rejected his suit, he appears in later life as the typical villain of melodrama. My life, he said on his death-bed, has been a beautiful dream. It makes a good stirring story, calculated, let it be admitted, rather to entertain than to edify.
The author believes this to be the most comprehensive life of Marshal Saxe so far published in any language. His campaigns have been described and criticized by officers who took part in them and by later French military men. He left a mass of papers, mostly of a semi-official nature, which were freely drawn upon by St. Ren Taillandier for the preparation of the biography (the best in French), published about seventy years ago. We owe much to a slightly earlier work, embodying the researches of Dr. Weber in the Saxon archives. For the life of Aurora von Knigsmark, the leading authority is Cramers Denkwrdigkeiten , used by Paul Burg in his masterly monograph. By an examination of unpublished State papers in our own Record Office, the present writer has been able to throw light on his heros fantastic proposals to cede to Great Britain a port on the Baltic; and he is the first to trace the origin of his no less fantastic attempt to secure the sovereignty of the remote isle of Tobago. As last in the field, the author has also been able to avail himself of the letters of Adrienne Lecouvreur, recently brought to light by the Marquis dArgenson, and of M. Waliszewskis valuable studies in Russian history, which elucidate many of the queer diplomatic imbroglios of the period. Thanks are due to Miss Vega dAuvergne for her assistance in comparing and translating from German authorities.
EDMUND B. DAUVERGNE
ILLUSTRATIONS
Maurice de Saxe
The Countess Aurora von Knigsmark
Augustus II, King of Poland, Elector of Saxony
Adrienne Lecouvreur
Elizabeth, Empress of Russia
Maurice de Saxe, Marshal of France
Marshal Lwenthal
Madame Favart
BOOK I
CHAPTER I
Maurices birth and parentageThe KnigsmarksThe nymph Aurora and the lusty KingPrim princesses are scandalized by the morals of a canoness.
WITH something of a flourish, not at all after the apologetic manner usual in the case of those born out of wedlock, was Maurice de Saxe introduced to the world. In the register of the ancient town of Goslar, in the Harz, then one of the Free Imperial Cities of Germany, against the date October 28 th , 1696, we read: On this day was born to the Illustrious Lady, residing in the house of Heinrich Christoph Winkel, a Little Son, who received in baptism the name of Maurice. {1} At once polite and discreet was the notice, congratulatory almost. In very different terms would such an event have been recorded in the England of that dateBaptized this day, Maurice, the bastard of a strange woman delivered in this parish; or in most European countries at the present dayBorn, Maurice, masculine sex, parents unknown.
One is half tempted to credit the clerk (if on such an occasion his duties were not discharged by the burgomaster himself) with prophetic visiona sense that the child would turn out to be the most illustrious native of Goslar and that his Christian name would be remembered when the styles and titles of his natural parents were forgotten. But it is more likely that the scribe who wrote Illustrious Lady denied himself, only out of deference to some last-minute scruple of hers, the satisfaction of recording her gracious name; for two pins, I hazard, he would have added the rank and name of the father. True, there were hundreds of infants in Saxony who had an equal claim to that paternity; but how noble it would have looked, standing out against the long roll of births in vulgar wedlock, the entry, Maurice, son of the High and Mighty prince, Frederick Augustus, the most serene Elector of Saxony, and of the High and Well-born Lady, Maria Aurora, Countess of Knigsmark, of the Abbey of Quedlinburg, spinster.
