Here, in 1734, the Prince first saw the light; and the soldiers of his father’s regiment ‘de Ligne,’ loved to carry the infant son of their prince-colonel in their arms. The lengthened life of this once celebrated dandy, author, diplomatist, and soldier, made him the contemporary of men of many generations. The man who once fraternally embraced our own Wellington, Prince of Waterloo, had sat on the knee of the famous Prince Eugene, and had looked upon the matured greatness of Marlborough. Thus he was contemporary with men who had been born under the son of James I., and with others now living under Queen Victoria, whom God preserve! After, as a boy, carrying the colours of his father’s regiment with honour, he entered the dragoons of Ligne, and won distinction at the point of his sword. He was practically a noble soldier, and he slaughtered as courteously as Bayard. His day was not the day of carpet-knights, for Europe was then given to settle all her quarrels in the field; and when cabinets cooled, warriors looked to their corslets. Theoretically, the Prince does not shine. Nobody reads his ‘Commentaries on the Art of War;’ and I have no doubt that the martial portion of his departed spirit is sorely vexed, at seeing his own highly-prized instructions for infantry manœuvres less cared for by posterity than the old Greek’s dissertation upon the forming of the phalanx. For more than half a century he lived in camps, and was daily familiar with every dread circumstance of war. He bore himself bravely at the bloody siege of fatal Ismael, and was among the most active at that taking of Belgrade, which Storace put so pleasantly to music for the delight of our fathers. In the fields of death, whereon, with varied fortune, the Great Frederick and the crafty Maria Theresa fought out their envenomed quarrels, there he was ever present, the finest, the foremost, and the fiercest in the fray. And most of all, on that famous day at Maxen, when the Austrian Daun caught Frederick’s general, Finck, in the defiles, and took bloody advantage of the opportunity,—on that day of untold horrors, courage and murder reigned supreme. Ere night came on, the Black Eagle of Brandenburg had yielded to his double-necked cousin from the Danube. Every Prussian who survived the fight, surrendered. The _matériel_ for a hundred such fields passed into the hands of the Austrians, and the museums of Vienna still hold the countless trophies of that day. It was a day on which compensation was taken for the adverse fields of Stringau, Reichemberg, and Johr; for the defeats at Pirna, Rosbach, and Lissa. The women of Berlin were rendered widows and childless, while the flaunting dames of Vienna shouted “_Hoch!_” and declared that their victorious lovers at Maxen had surpassed all the glories connected with old triumphs at Kolin, Gabel, and Zittau; at Liegnitz, Schweidnitz, and Hochkirchen.