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Hector did not accompany Turenne to Italy, for early in April Turenne had said to him: "There seems no chance of employment here at present, Campbell, while there is likely to be some heavy fighting on the Rhine frontier.
Monsieur de Turenne esteemed him no less for his frankness than for the poignancy of his wit: he took it very kindly that he was the only courtier who came to see him in a time so critical as the present: the questions which he asked him about the court were not so much for information, as to divert himself with his manner of relating their different apprehensions and alarms.
Bishop Burnet's character of him appears not very far from the truth. "He was," says this writer, "very brave in his youth; and so much magnified by Monsieur Turenne, that till his marriage lessened him, he really clouded the king, and passed for the superior genius.
The Archduke Charles was a consummate tactician, but often his prudence degenerated into hesitation a dangerous fault in presence of the most overpowering military genius whom the world had yet beheld. Napoleon himself said of Marshal Turenne that he was the only general whom experience had made more daring.
He was detached by the Duke d'Anguien and Marshal Turenne to take Fridelshem and Neudstad, and was afterwards sent by them to the Landgravine of Hesse: he acquitted himself with honour of all the commissions that were given him.
The three following years he was employed in Italy and Savoy, and in 1642 made a campaign in Roussillon, under the eye of Louis XIII. In the spring of 1643 the king died; and in the autumn of the same year Turenne received from the queen-mother and regent, Anne of Austria, a marshal's baton, the appropriate reward of his long and brilliant services.
It was a stroke of genius. I may have taught you many lessons in war, but tonight you have given me one." Turenne remained with the regiment till the end of the fight, and marked with approval the way in which each line fought by turns, while the other remained behind them ready to receive the charges of the cavalry.
His ruin was inevitable, if the enemy should overtake him before his junction with Turenne; but the same consideration which had just saved the Emperor, now proved the salvation of the Swedes. Even amidst all the fury of the conquest, cold calculations of prudence guided the course of the war, and the vigilance of the different courts increased, as the prospect of peace approached.
On the most exposed part of the hill, an officer of the Emperor, Colonel the Count de Turenne, repulsed the Cossacks, and in defiance of their cries of rage and their fire, he distributed before their eyes the private treasure of Napoleon to the guards whom he found within his reach.
After the death of Louvois and of Turenne, after the retirement of Conde, when the central power fell into the hands of Chamillard or of Voysin, the pretence of directing war from the king's closet at Versailles produced the most fatal effects.
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