The Cavaliers of Fortune; Or, British Heroes in Foreign WarsGrant, James
History
The Cavaliers of Fortune; Or, British Heroes in Foreign Wars
Grant, James
British -- Foreign countries; Great Britain -- History, Military
He served valiantly at the great battle of Hochkirchen, when the
good old Marshal Keith, Knight of the Black Eagle, and Governor of
Berlin, a general second to none in the Seven Years' War, was slain
that day, when lighting on foot at the head of the Prussian infantry;
and here ensued an affecting incident. After the battle, his body
was shamefully abandoned by the routed Prussians, and stripped by
Austrian stragglers. Thus it lay long on the field, undistinguished
from the thousands of others which covered it. In this degrading
situation it was found by Lacy, who was riding over the ground, and
with whose father (old Marshal Lacy) the venerable Keith had served
in Prussia, and by whose side he had been wounded in the Crimea. The
count recognised the body, says Dr. Smollett, by the large scar of a
dangerous wound which General Keith had received _in his thigh_ at
the siege of Oczakow, and could not refrain from tears on seeing his
father's honoured friend lying thus at his feet, a naked, lifeless,
and deserted corpse; and it must have been an interesting scene to
witness these two exiles--the young Irish Jacobite weeping over the
old Scottish Cavalier--on that sanguinary field. Lacy had the body
immediately covered, and interred with the honours of war, in the
adjacent churchyard, from whence it was afterwards removed to Berlin.
Lacy, with Daun and Loudon, bore a conspicuous part in the campaign of
1760, particularly in those manoeuvres by which the King of Prussia,
notwithstanding all his skill and cunning, was frustrated in his
Silesian operations.
Proposing to invade the Duchy again, he crossed the Elbe, on the 15th
June, and was joined by the Prince of Holstein. On this, Lacy, who had
been watching them, drew in his outposts, and retired to Zehaila. On
his march Frederick passed very close to Lacy's camp, with his infantry
covered by only four regiments of Saxon horse. These drove in Lacy's
pickets; on which he shifted his ground to a position at the foot of
the hills of Bockerdorf and Reichenberg. Frederick made preparations
to assail them on the morrow, and only waited for reinforcements under
General Hulsen; but Daun, who had crossed the Elbe at Dresden, and was
hastening to the assistance of his friend, dispatched an officer to
him, with orders "to shift his ground;" and together they took up a
new position at Lausa, while Frederick occupied the place which Lacy
had left by three regiments of hussars, two of dragoons, and two free
corps, which were attacked, but unsuccessfully, by Lacy in the night.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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