Page:Charles von Hügel (1903 memoir).djvu/98

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FULLERTON

concealed for safety, and they travelled through towns where a price was set on the Prince's head, and where both he and his deliverer would certainly have been torn to pieces had they been discovered. The whole heavy responsibility and fearful risk of this perilous escape, this long, terrible journey fraught with danger at every step, rested on the Baron von Hügel, and when at last, he conducted the Prince and Princess in safety to England, he merely said, "He considered it a matter of simple duty to risk every sacrifice of life and property rather than let a hair of that honoured head be injured."

Having reentered the Austrian army, he made the campaign of Italy with Marshal Radetzky in 1849, was sent at different times on important missions to the Pope and to the King of Naples, assisted at the siege of Leghorn, and entered it with the Austrian troops. After the return of the Grand Duke, he was named Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary at the Court of Florence, and remained there till the 27th of April, 1859, when he left with the exiled Sovereign for Vienna. During those ten years his firmness, gentleness, and unvarying courtesy obtained for him the respect and regard of all parties, even of those most opposed to him in politics. He had been named Privy Councillor in 1855, and left the military service with the rank of Major in 1860. In the course of the same year he was made Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary at the Court of Brussels, where he remained until 1867, when he retired on account of his health.

Diplomacy had been one of the traditions of his family, both his father, Baron Aloys von Hügel a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Stephen, and his brother, Baron Clemens von Hügel having rendered distinguished services