ugh he
sometimes experienced defeats, he has rendered invaluable services to the
chief of his House by his courage, by his activity, by his constancy, and
by that salutary firmness which, in calling the generals and superior
officers to their duty, has often reanimated the confidence and the
ardour of the soldier.

The Archduke Charles began, in 1793, his military career under the Prince
of Coburg, the commander-in-chief of the Austrian armies in Brabant,
where he commanded the advanced guard, and distinguished himself by a
valour sometimes bordering on temerity, but which, by degrees, acquired
him that esteem and popularity, among the troops often very advantageous
to him afterwards. He was, in 1794, appointed governor and
captain-general of the Low Countries, and a Field-marshal lieutenant of
the army of the German Empire. In April, 1796, he took the
command-in-chief of the armies of Austria and of the Empire, and, in the
following June, engaged in several combats with General Moreau, in which
he was repulsed, but in a manner that did equal honour to the victor and
to the vanquished.

The Austrian army on the Lower Rhine, under General Wartensleben, having,
about this time, been nearly dispersed by General Jourdan, the Archduke
left some divisions of his forces under General Latour, to impede the
progress of Moreau, and went with the remainder into Franconia, where he
defeated Jourdan near Amberg and Wurzburg, routed his army entirely, and
forced him to repass the Rhine in the greatest confusion, and with
immense loss. The retreat of Moreau was the consequence of the victories
of this Prince. After the capture of Kehl, in January, 1797, he assumed
the command of the army of Italy, where he in vain employed all his
efforts to put a stop to the victorious progress of Bonaparte, with whom,
at last, he signed the preliminaries of peace at Leoben. In the spring
of 1799, he again defeated Jourdan in Suabia, as he had done two years
before in Franconia; but in Switzerland he met with an abler adversary in
General Massena; still, I am inclined to think that he displayed there
more real talents than anywhere else; and that this part of his campaign
of 1799 was the most interesting, in a military point of view.

The most implacable enemies of the politics of the House of Austria
render justice to the plans, to the frankness, to the morality of
Archduke Charles; and, what is remarkable, of all the chiefs who have
command