a ball, passing over the quarters of my father’s horse, carried away his left arm and the horse’s neck, and struck M. de Turenne in the left side; he still went forward about twenty paces on his horse’s neck, and fell dead.  I ran to my father, who was down, and raised him up.  ‘No need to weep for me,’ he said; ’it is the death of that great man; you may, perhaps, lose your father, but neither your country nor you will ever have a general like that again.  O, poor army, what is to become of you?’ Tears fell from his eyes; then, suddenly recovering himself, ’Go, my son, and leave me,’ he said; ’with me it will be as God pleases; time presses; go and do your duty.’” [Memoires du Marquis de St. Hilaire, t. i. p. 205.] They threw a cloak over the corpse of the great general, and bore it away.  “The soldiers raised a cry that was heard two leagues off,” writes Madame de Sevigne; “no consideration could restrain them; they roared to be led to battle, they wanted to avenge the death of their father, with him they had feared nothing, but they would show how to avenge him, let it be left to them; they were frantic, let them be led to battle.”  Montecuculli had for a moment halted.  “Today a man has fallen who did honor to man,” said he, as he uncovered respectfully.  He threw himself, however, on the rearguard of the French army, which was falling back upon Elsass, and recrossed the Rhine at Altenheim.  The death of Turenne was equivalent to a defeat.

[Illustration:  Death of Turenne——­443]

The Emperor Napoleon said of Turenne, “He is the only general whom experience ever made more daring.”  He had been fighting for forty years, and his fame was still increasing, without effort or ostentation on his part.  “M. de Turenne, from his youth up, possessed all good qualities,” wrote Cardinal de Retz, who knew him well, “and the great he acquired full early.  He lacked none but those that he did not think about.  He possessed nearly all virtues as it were by nature; he never possessed the glitter of any.  He was believed to be more fitted for the head of an army than of a party, and so I think, because he was not naturally enterprising; but, however, who knows?  He always had in everything, just as in his speech, certain obscurities, which were never cleared up save by circumstances, but never save to his glory.”  He had said, when he set out, to this same Cardinal de Retz, then in retirement at Commercy, “Sir, I am no talker (diseur), but I beg you to believe that, if it were not for this business in which perhaps I may be required, I would go into retirement as you have gone, and I give you my word that, if I come back, I, like you, will put some space between life and death.”  God did not leave him time.  He summoned suddenly to Him this noble, grand, and simple soul.  “I see that cannon loaded with all eternity,” says Madame de Sevigne:  “I see all that leads M. de Turenne thither, and I see therein nothing gloomy