Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"Then I may take it," Hector said with a smile, "that the chances are in favour of a pitched battle." "That is certainly so; l'Hopital's instructions are to force the Spaniards, who have advanced against Rocroi, to raise the siege, but to do so if possible by manoeuvering, and to avoid anything like a pitched battle.
Condé's victory at Rocroi was a most brilliant deed, he being then but twenty-two; but it does not so strikingly illustrate his genius as do those operations by which, at fifty-four, he baffled Montecuculi, and prevented him from profiting from the fall of Turenne.
"Well, young sir, the viscount rewarded you for the great service that you rendered him at Turin; the Duc d'Enghien has similarly rewarded you for your service to him at Rocroi; but it is ours to reward you for your services to France; and Cardinal Mazarin will, in my name, hand you tomorrow the estate of de la Villar, in Poitou, which carries with it the title of Baron de la Villar.
Hippolyte Adolphe Taine was born at Vouziers, among the grand forests of Ardennes, in 1828, and is therefore about forty years old. His family was simple in habits and tastes, and entertained a steadfast belief in culture, along with the possession of a fair amount of it. His grandfather was sub-prefect at Rocroi, in 1814 and 1815, under the first restoration of the Bourbons.
The war with Austria and Spain was continued, which was closed, on the Spanish side, by the victory of Rocroi, in 1643, obtained by the Prince of Condé, and in which battle twenty-three thousand Frenchmen completely routed twenty-six thousand Spaniards, killing eight thousand, and taking six thousand prisoners one of the bloodiest battles ever fought.
Robbed of the chief source of her wealth by the independence of Holland, weakened at home by the revolt of Portugal, her infantry annihilated by Condé in his victory of Rocroi, her fleet ruined by the Dutch, her best blood drained away to the Indies, the energies of her people destroyed by the suppression of all liberty, civil or religious, her intellectual life crushed by the Inquisition, her industry crippled by the expulsion of the Moors, by financial oppression, and by the folly of her colonial system, the kingdom which under Philip the Second had aimed at the empire of the world lay helpless and exhausted under Philip the Fourth.
The former's victory of Rocroi dated the commencement of the supremacy of France in war, a supremacy which was retained for a century. Finally, Turenne's masterly maneuvering against the Spaniards and his forcible detachment of Maximilian of Bavaria from the imperial alliance broke down effective opposition and ended the Thirty Years' War in the Germanies.
In command of the schooner, Good Hope, he was sailing from the Barbados with a cargo of rum and sugar for Boston, which furnishes a most excellent market for both, when he was overhauled by the French privateer, Rocroi." "What do you find to laugh at in the loss of a good ship and a fine cargo?" "Did I say they were lost? Nay, David, I said nothing of the kind.
His position on a plain, surrounded on all sides by woods and marshes with but one approach, and that through a narrow defile, was practically impregnable; and by occupying the defile he could have kept the French at bay without the slightest difficulty until Rocroi surrendered.
You see it is a good thing to be a prince's aide-de-camp. Turenne, wishing to give me every opportunity of seeing service, sent me to Enghien with a message asking him to employ me on his staff." "And you were at Rocroi?" the colonel exclaimed. "What is the real news of the battle?
Word Of The Day