Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Nugent, Lavall
NUGENT, LAVALL, Count Nugent (1777–1862), prince of the Holy Roman Empire and Austrian field-marshal, was born at Ballinacor, co. Wicklow, 3 (30) Nov. 1777. Burke (Peerage, 1862—‘Foreign Titles’) states that he was elder son of John Nugent of Bracklin, co. Westmeath, and afterwards of Ballinacor (d. 1781), and his wife Jane (d. 1820), daughter of Bryan McDonough, and that he went to Austria in 1789, having been adopted by an uncle, Oliver, Count Nugent, colonel in the Austrian army, who died in 1824. Austrian biographers describe Lavall Nugent as son (probably meaning adopted son) of Count Michael Antony Nugent, master of the ordnance and governor of Prague, who died in 1812 (he is not mentioned by Burke, but see Neue Deutsche Biogr. under ‘Nugent’). All that appears certain about his early years is that on 1 Nov. 1793 Nugent was appointed a cadet in the Austrian engineer corps, with which he served as lieutenant and captain to the end of February 1799. He obtained his captaincy during the fighting round Mainz in April 1795. He repeatedly signalised himself by his coolness under fire, and served with distinction on the quartermaster-general's staff, to which he was transferred on 1 March 1799, and with which he was present at the siege of Turin on 11–20 June, the investment of the castles of Serradella and Savona in August, and other operations in the Italian campaign of 1799, and in the Marengo campaign of 1800. He won the Maria Theresa cross, and was promoted to major at Monte Croce, where the Austrians defeated the French on 10 April 1800. He obtained his lieutenant-colonelcy at Caldiero, near Verona, where the French, under Massena, were defeated on 29–30 Oct. 1805. He was appointed commandant of the 61st infantry regiment in 1807, and was transferred to the general staff at the beginning of the campaign of 1809, through which he served. He was second plenipotentiary at the peace conference which preceded the marriage of Napoleon with the Archduchess Maria Louisa, but refused to sign the proposed conditions. While on the unemployed list of general officers he appears to have visited England. Writing to Lord Wellington on 12 Oct. 1812, Earl Bathurst, then secretary of state for war [see Bathurst, Henry, third Earl], states that Nugent was at the time in London, having been sent from Sicily by Lord William Bentinck [see Bentinck, Lord William Cavendish] to represent his views in respect of a descent on Italy. Nugent had been in England on the same errand in the summer of 1811, and had been thought very highly of by the Marquis Wellesley, then foreign secretary. Bathurst believed that Nugent had been promised the rank of major-general in the British service by the prince-regent and the Marquis Wellesley. The difficulties were explained to him, and he did not press the execution of the engagement. On his way back to Sicily early in 1813 Nugent went to Spain to pay his respects to Wellington, being provided with letters of introduction by government. He preferred to appear in British uniform, but this was a mere habit de goût without official significance. He did not wish to figure as an Austrian general (Wellington Suppl. Desp. vii. 455). Lord Liverpool wrote that Nugent was ‘a very intelligent man, but more attached to an Italian operation than I am’ (ib. p. 463). Wellington appears to have made Nugent, whose visit was most opportune, the bearer of his views to Vienna (ib. p. 546), and Liverpool wrote again that the British government ‘are much pleased with your having done so’ (ib.)
On 1 July 1813 Nugent was again placed on the active list of the Austrian army. He appears to have originated the idea of bringing the Croats into the field, and opening up the Adriatic with the aid of the British cruisers. On 27 July Nugent wrote to Wellington from Prague, congratulating him on the victory at Vittoria, and stating that he was on the point of starting with five thousand light troops to raise the Croats (ib. viii. 132–3). On 11 Aug. 1813 Austria declared war against France once more. Nugent began operations at Karlstadt, where he won back the troops of five districts to the Austrian standard. In a series of successful engagements he drove the French behind the Isongo, and speedily effected a junction with Generals Staremberg and Folseis. He laid siege to Trieste, and blockaded the castle from 16 to 30 Oct. 1813, when it surrendered. Landing with the aid of the British naval squadron and marines in November 1813 at Volturno, south of the Po and in rear of the French army, he was joined by a small contingent of British troops from Lissa, consisting of two companies of the 35th foot, two guns, and some detachments of Corsicans and Calabrians in British pay. He fortified Comachio, fought actions at Ferrara, Forli, and Ravenna, and completed the blockade of Venice in December 1813. Early in 1814 Nugent, having been reinforced, took the offensive, defeated the French in sanguinary engagements at Reggio, Parma, and Piacenza, and ended the campaign at Marengo in Piedmont, on receiving intelligence of the general peace. The British contingent, the only British troops that had marched right across Italy, joined Lord William Bentinck at Genoa. Lord Castlereagh recommended that Murat's claims to the kingdom of Naples be submitted to Nugent (ib. ix. 485, 496). Nugent became lieutenant or lieutenant-general in the same year. In 1815 he was made an honorary K.C.B., but except in this capacity his name does not appear in any English army list as having held British military rank.
Nugent entered Florence at the head of a division of Marshal Bianchi's army on 15 April 1815; he invested Rome at the beginning of May, which led to the adhesion of the pontiff to the European alliance. He was afterwards ordered to Sicily to confer with Lord William Bentinck. He commanded an Austrian division in the south of France later in the year, when a British force held Marseilles (ib. x. 549, xii. 612). He commanded the Austrian troops in Naples in 1816, in which year he was made a prince of the Holy Roman empire, and became colonel-proprietor of the 30th infantry regiment. With the emperor's permission he commanded the Neapolitan army, with the rank of captain-general, from 1817 to 1820, but was dismissed when King Ferdinand accepted the new constitution at the time of General Pepe's insurrection. In 1826 he was created a magnate of Hungary, a dignity conferring an hereditary seat in the upper house of the Hungarian Diet. In 1828 he was appointed to command a division at Venice, and superintended the erection of the defences of Trieste and on the adjacent coast of Istria. In 1830–40 he was master of the ordnance, and commanding the troops in Lower Austria, the Tyrol, &c., and attained the rank of full general in 1838. In 1841–1842 he commanded in the Banat and adjoining districts, and in 1843–8 again in Lower Austria.
At the time of the revolt in Lombardy in 1848 he was appointed to command the reserve of the army in Italy, which he resigned on the ground of ill-health, but immediately afterwards organised a reserve corps, with which he moved on the right flank of the Austrians into Hungary, where the revolution broke out on 11 Sept. By his judicious arrangements he effected the capitulation of Essigg on 14 Feb. 1849, and afterwards held Peterwaraden in check, so as to secure the navigation of the Danube and the imperial magazines on it. He organised a second reserve corps in Styria, and marched with Prince Windischgratz's army against Comorn. With the raising of the siege of Comorn in July 1849, when the corps under his command was driven back towards Servia, Nugent's services in the field came to a close. He became a field-marshal in November 1849. His last service was at the age of eighty-two, when he was present as a volunteer on the field of Solferino on 24 June 1859.
Nugent, who held numberless foreign orders, died at Bosiljevo, near Karlstadt, Croatia, on 21 Aug. 1862, in the words of the kaiser, ‘den ältesten, victor-probten und unermüdlichen Soldaten der k. k. Armee.’
He married, in 1815, Jane, duchess of Riario Sforza, only child and heir of Raphael, duke of Riario Sforza, by his wife Beatrix, third daughter and co-heiress of Francis Xavier, prince of Poland and Saxony, second son of Augustus III, king of Poland, and Maria Josephine of Austria, eldest daughter of Joseph I, emperor of Germany. He had, with other children, Albert, eventually prince and count, who distinguished himself as an Austrian staff-officer at the capture of Acre in 1841.
[Burke's Peerage, 1862, under ‘Foreign Titles’—‘Nugent,’ and 1892, under ‘Westmeath;’ Neue Deutsche Biogr. under ‘Nugent,’ and authorities given at the end; Men of the Reign, pp. 680–1; Ann. Registers under dates.]