in the Ukraine. In 1737 Lacy was appointed to command a fresh expedition into the Crimea. With forty thousand men he unexpectedly crossed an arm of the sea at Arabat, stormed and blew up the Tartar lines at Perecop, and by the end of September returned to the Ukraine, having, ‘without knowing why he was sent into the Crimea, conducted the campaign with great glory to himself and very little sickness to the army.’ When Münnich was acting against the Turks the year after, Lacy was again sent to the Crimea with a force, inclusive of Cossacks, not exceeding thirty-six thousand men. With this he captured Kaffa, the stronghold of the Crimea; but finding the interior of the country too impoverished to support his troops, and a naval armament on the Sea of Azov, which was to co-operate with him, having been destroyed by a great storm, he returned to Perecop, razed the lines there, and went into winter quarters early. In 1739 his troops were kept in reserve in the Ukraine, in consequence of war with Sweden. Complaints against Münnich's severities and mismanagement were now so loud that the czarina asked Lacy to undertake the investigation of his colleague's conduct. Lacy declined the invidious task; but Münnich appears to have accused him of detraction, and a violent scene ensued, in which the marshals drew on each other, but were separated by Lewenhaupt, who threatened them both with arrest by order of the empress. In 1741 Lacy was appointed to command against the Swedes in Finland, with James Francis Edward Keith [q. v.] as his second in command. The event of the year was the capture in September of the important Swedish post of Wilmanstränd. Administrative difficulties stopped the enterprise, and Lacy returned to St. Petersburg, where he entertained at his palace the Swedish commander, Von Wrangel, who had been wounded and taken prisoner.
Lacy is said to have taken no part in the intrigues which raised Elizabeth to the throne in December 1741, but was confirmed in his rank and offices. His promptitude in suppressing a dangerous mutiny in the Russian guards on Easter Sunday 1742, when the foreign officers were savagely ill-treated by the mutineers, was said ‘to have saved St. Petersburg, and perhaps the empire.’ Towards the end of May 1742 Lacy reviewed at Viborg an army of thirty-five thousand to thirty-six thousand men, to be employed against the Swedes in Finland. In June the troops entered Finland, traversing a country having ‘the worst roads in the universe,’ where in many places two hundred men posted behind an abattis might stop an army. On 10 July, the name-day of the Grand-duke Peter (afterwards Peter III), a solemn Te Deum was sung in the Russian camp, to celebrate the capture of Fredericsham, the only fortified place in Finland, without the loss of a man. Orders were then sent to conclude the campaign; but Lacy, after calling a council of war, pushed on to Helsingfors, where a Swedish army of seventeen thousand men capitulated. The operations of the following year were carried on by galleys, supported by a squadron of larger vessels under Admiral Golowin. On 14 May 1743 the army embarked. High mass according to the Greek ritual was celebrated with such pomp on board Lacy's galley, which was attended by the czarina in person, who presented Lacy with a ring of great value and a golden cross. After delays occasioned by the ice and head-winds, Lacy, who appears to have been desirous to win a victory by sea, sent orders to Admiral Golowin to attack the Swedish fleet at Hango. Lacy manœuvred his galleys very skilfully, and got the weather-gauge of the enemy, but a fog favoured the escape of the Swedes. On 23 July Keith, who was in command of a separate squadron, joined Lacy, and preparations were made for a descent in the neighbourhood of Stockholm, when the treaty of Abo put an end to the war. In September the czarina sent her own yacht to bring Lacy to St. Petersburg, and great rejoicings were held. Lacy, after more than fifty years' campaigning, now retired to his estates in Livonia, of which province he was governor, and there resided until his death on 11 May 1751 (30 April Russian style), at the age of seventy-three. He left a fortune equivalent to 60,000l., and large estates, acquired, his will states, ‘through long and hard service, and with much danger and uneasiness.’ Lacy was in person tall and well made. He was cool in judgment, ready in resource, prompt and decided in action. Frederick the Great called him the ‘Prince Eugene of Muscovy.’ He was much esteemed in the army for his soldierly example and his unremitting care of his troops. To him belongs in a very large degree the credit of having converted the Russians from the worst into some of the best troops in Europe. A division of the Russian army was in 1891 named after him.
Lacy married the Countess Martha Feuchen de Loeser, by whom he had five daughters, married respectively to Major-general Boye, the privy councillor Lieven, Generals Stuart, Browne, and Von Witter, and two sons, the elder of whom was at one time an officer of cuirassiers in the Polish-Saxon service, royal chamberlain, and a count of the holy Roman empire. The younger was the famous Austrian
