Word: eugene
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Poison Plot. Astonishingly enough, Eugen has been little studied, and this thorough biography by Nicholas Henderson, a high-ranking member of Britain's Foreign Office, is the first full-scale account in English of this extraordinary man. His career is only comprehensible in terms of a day when Europe was fragmented into provinces rather than nations, when men were loyal to patrons rather than nations, and when aristocrats felt more kinship to other aristocrats than to their own peasants. Eugen was the product of just such confused loyalties, unimaginable in these tidier times. For all his years serving...
...Eugen's father was technically a prince of Savoy (and therefore as much Italian as French), but he earned his keep by serving as an officer in Louis' army. His mother was the niece of Cardinal Mazarin, who was Italian but lived at Versailles as the Sun King's chief minister. She was also Louis' first love and first lady of his court until he exiled her on suspicion of trying to poison him (people changed sides very fast in love as well as war in those days). Eugen stayed on in Paris for three years...
...that defection, Eugen changed not only his life and loyalties but also the history of Europe. Just after he arrived in Vienna, the Janissaries of the aggressive Ottoman Empire swept out of the East and laid siege to Vienna. His effort in the 60-day defense that was to save the city and end the Ottomans' long westward advance won him a colonelcy and his own regiment. He was a major general at 22, a field marshal before he was 30. In his 54 years of service, the Emperor's new recruit was to liberate Central Europe after...
...process, Eugen was to revolutionize the set-piece siege warfare of the day. Among his trademarks: deploying cavalry the way Rommel was later to use panzers, pressing a campaign year-round instead of just in the summer season, and an inspiring (if reckless) bravado that was to get him wounded in action 13 times...
...brand of earth. At 71, senile and just two years short of death, he was dispatched to the War of Polish Succession. Outnumbered 5 to 1 by the forces of France, he failed miserably. Years later, Frederick the Great, remembering his days of apprenticeship, mourned the fate of both Eugen and Marlborough. "What a humbling reflection for our vanity," he wrote. "The greatest geniuses end up as imbeciles. Poor humanity, boast of your glory if you dare...