Finding his health failing, he visited the Spa at Baden, and on his return to Vienna died, full of years and honours, on the 28th November, 1801.
He bequeathed to the Archduke Charles an extensive park in the environs, with a request that the people should have free use of it.
He had enjoyed the trust and confidence of Maria Theresa, of Francis I., and of Joseph II., to the full; and until he became enfeebled by time and wounds, he had more State patronage than any other subject in the empire. Frederick the Great had the highest esteem for his character as a soldier, and pronounced him the first tactician of the age, and assuredly the King of Prussia was no mean authority. They had often met in the field. With his characteristic acuteness, Frederick thus spoke of the two greatest generals against whom he led the Prussian armies.
"I _admire_ the dispositions of Lacy, but I _tremble_ at the onset of Loudon!"
Loudon, his companion and rival--of whom elsewhere--ended his career victoriously, after defeating the Turks and capturing Belgrade with the same soldiers whom Lacy had led to many a battle-field.
FRANCIS ANTHONY COUNT DE LACY, the celebrated Spanish general and diplomatist, was the next member of this Irish family who attained an eminent position in the history of Europe.
He was born in Spain, whither his father had followed the Duke of Berwick, in 1731, and after receiving the usual rudiments of education, commenced his military career at the early age of sixteen, in the brave old Irish regiment of Ulster infantry, then in the service of his Most Catholic Majesty Ferdinand VI., who had succeeded his father, Philip Duke of Anjou, on the Spanish throne, in the preceding year, 1746.
Francis Anthony Lacy served with this regiment in the Italian campaign of 1747, which was undertaken to advance the claims of the Spanish Bourbons to the crowns of Naples and Sicily, and to the Duchy of Milan, which had been claimed by Philip V., as successor to the House of Austria; while he also demanded Parma, Placentia, and Tuscany, in right of his queen, though he had been obliged to relinquish them _all_ by the solemn treaty of Utrecht; but such is the faith kept by princes.
The Irish regiment of the young Count Lacy was with the army of the Count de Gages, the Spanish commander-in-chief, who had then under his orders the combined armies of Spain and Naples. Genoa had revolted against the Austrians; Marshal Boufflers had entered it at the head of 4500 Frenchmen, and thus encouraged, the Genoese resolved to die, rather than submit to the tyranny of the House of Hapsburg, whose armies made incredible exertions to recover it. Then ensued the passage of the Var by the Marshal Duke de Belleisle; the storming of Montalbano and other places; the investment of Genoa by the Austrians and Piedmontese, and other operations of that extensive campaign, in which _le Régiment Irlandais d'Ultonie Infanterie_ bore a most prominent part, more so, perhaps, than their enemies relished, till the naval victories of the British Admirals Anson and Warren in the East Indian Ocean, and those of Fox and Hawke elsewhere, forced Louis XV. and his allies to listen to those proposals by which peace was secured to Europe by the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, on the 7th October, 1748.