ies under Bonaparte have never before penetrated into the heart of a
country where subversion was not prepared, and where subversion did not
follow.

How relatively insignificant, in the eyes of Providence, must be the
independence of States and the liberties of nations, when such a
relatively insignificant personage as General von Mack can shake them?
Have, then, the Austrian heroes--a Prince Eugene, a Laudon, a Lasci, a
Beaulieu, a Haddick, a Bender, a Clairfayt, and numerous other valiant
and great warriors--left no posterity behind them; or has the presumption
of General von Mack imposed upon the judgment of the Counsellors of his
Prince? This latter must have been the case; how otherwise could the
welfare of their Sovereign have been entrusted to a military quack, whose
want of energy and bad disposition had, in 1799, delivered up the capital
of another Sovereign to his enemies. How many reputations are gained by
an impudent assurance, and lost when the man of talents is called upon to
act and the fool presents himself.

Baron von Mack served as an aide-de-camp under Field-marshal Laudon,
during the last war between Austria and Turkey, and displayed some
intrepidity, particularly before Lissa. The Austrian army was encamped
eight leagues from that place, and the commander-in-chief hesitated to
attack it, believing it to be defended by thirty thousand men. To decide
him upon making this attack, Baron von Mack left him at nine o'clock at
night, crossed the Danube, accompanied only by a single Uhlan, and
penetrated into the suburb of Lissa, where he made prisoner a Turkish
officer, whom, on the next morning at seven o'clock, he presented to his
general, and from whom it was learnt that the garrison contained only six
thousand, men. This personal temerity, and the applause of Field-marshal
Laudon, procured him then a kind of reputation, which he has not since
been able to support. Some theoretical knowledge of the art of war, and
a great facility of conversing on military topics, made even the Emperor
Joseph conceive a high opinion of this officer; but it has long been
proved, and experience confirms it every day, that the difference is
immense between the speculator and the operator, and that the generals of
Cabinets are often indifferent captains when in the camp or in the field.

Preceded by a certain celebrity, Baron von Mack served, in 1793, under
the Prince of Coburg, as an adjutant-general, and was called