LUXEMBOURG, FrançoisHenri de Montmorency-Boutteville, Dug de (1628-1695), marshal of France, the comrade and successor of the great Condé, was born at Paris on January 8, 1628. His father, the Comte de Montmorency-Boutteville, had been executed six months before his birth for killing the Marquis de Beuvron in a duel, but his aunt, the Princesse de Condé, recognizing in him the last male heir of her great family De Montmorency, took charge of him, and educated him with her son, the Due d’Enghien. The young Montmorency attached himself enthusiastically to his cousin, and shared his successes and reverses throughout the troubles of the Fronde. He returned to France in 1659 and was pardoned, and Condé, who was then much attached to the Duchesse de Châtillon, Montmorency’s sister, contrived the marriage of his adherent and cousin to the greatest heiress in France, the Princesse de Tingry, after which he was created Due de Luxembourg and peer of France. At the opening· of the war of the devolution, 1667-68, Condé, and consequently Luxembourg, had no command, but in the second campaign he served as one of Condé’s lieutenants in the conquest of Franche Comté. During the four years of peace which followed the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, Luxembourg diligently cultivated the favour of Louvois, and in 1672 received orders to commence hostilities with the Dutch. He defeated the prince of Orange, whom he was to beat again and again, at Woerden, and ravaged Holland, and in 1673 made his famous retreat from Utrecht with only 20,000 men in face of 70,000, an exploit which placed him in the first rank of generals. In 1674 he was made captain of the gardes du corps, and in 1675 was made marshal of France. In 1676 he was placed at the head of the army of the Rhine, but failed ...to keep the duke of Lorraine out of Philipsburg; in 1677 he stormed Valenciennes; and in 1678 he defeated the prince of Orange, who attacked him at St Denis after the signature of the peace of Nimeguen. His reputation was now at a great height, and it is commonly reputed that he quarrelled with Louvois, who managed to mix him up in the confessions of the poisoners, and get him sent to the Bastille. Rousset in his Histoire de Louvois has, however, shown that this quarrel is probably apocryphal. There is no doubt that Luxembourg spent some months of 1680 in the Bastille, but on his release took up his post at court as capitaine des gardes, and was in no way disgraced. When the war of 1690 broke out, the king and Louvois also recognized that Luxembourg was the only general they had fit to cope with the prince of Orange, and accordingly he was put in command of the army of Flanders. On July 1, 1690, he defeated the prince of Waldeck at Fleurus with the loss of 14,000 men and 49 pieces of cannon. In the following year he commanded the army which covered the king, who was besieging Mons, and defeated William III. of England at Leuze on September 18, 1691. Again in the next campaign he covered the king’s siege of Namur, and utterly defeated William at Steenkerk on June 5, 1692; and on July 29, 1693, he won his greatest victory over his old adversary at Neerwinden, in which he took 76 pieces of cannon and 80 flags. No wonder he was received with enthusiasm at Paris by all but the king, who looked coldly on a relative and adherent of the Condés. He conceived himself strong enough to undertake an enterprise which St Simon describes at length in the first , volume of his Memoirs : instead of ranking as eighteenth peer of France according to his patent of 1661, he claimed through his wife to be Due de Piney of an old creation of 1571, which would place him second on the roll. The whole affair is described with St Simon’s usual keen interest in all that concerned the peerage, and was chiefly checked through his assiduity. In the campaign of 1694, possibly owing to this check, Luxembourg did but little in Flanders, except his well-known march from Vignamont to Tournay in face of the enemy. On his return to Versailles for the winter he fell ill, and died on January 4, 1695. In his last moments he was attended by the famous Jesuit priest Bourdaloue, who said on his death, “I have not lived his life, but I would wish to die his death.” The holy father certainly had not lived like Luxembourg, whose morals were conspicuously bad even in those times, and whose life had shown very slight signs of religious conviction. But as a general he was Condé’s grandest pupil. Utterly slothful, like Condé, in the management of a campaign, and therein differing from Turenne, at the moment of battle he seemed seized with happy inspirations, against which no ardour of William’s and no steadiness of Dutch or English soldiers could stand. His death and Catinat’s disgrace close the second period of the military history of the reign of Louis XIV., and Catinat and Luxembourg, though inferior to Condé and Turenne, were very far superior to Tailard and Villeroi. He was distinguished for a pungent wit. One of his best retorts referred to his deformity. “I never can beat that'cursed humpback,” William· was reputed to have said of him. “How does he know I have a hump 1” retorted Luxembourg, “he has never seen my back.” He left four sons, the youngest of whom was a marshal of France as Maréchal de Montmorency.
See the various memoirs and histories of the time. There are some interesting facts in Desormeaux’s Histoire de la Maison de Montmorency. Camille Rousset’s Lou,υois should also be studied.
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