possession of some important places, he began by making himself master of Quesnoy. But the Dutch, having been surprised and beaten in the lines of Denain, where Prince Eugene had placed them at too great a distance to receive timely support in case of an attack, he was obliged to raise the siege of Landrecies, and to abandon the project which he had so long cherished. This was the last campaign in which Austria acted in conjunction with her allies. Abandoned first by England and then by Holland, the emperor, notwithstanding these desertions, still wished to maintain the war in Germany; but Eugene was unable to relieve either Landau or Freiburg, which were successively obliged to capitulate; and seeing the Empire thus laid open to the armies of France, and even the Austrian hereditary states themselves exposed to invasion, the prince counselled his master to make peace. Sensible of the prudence of this advice, the emperor immediately entrusted Eugene with full powers to negotiate a treaty of peace, which was concluded at Rastadt on the 6th of March 1714. On his return to Vienna, Prince Eugene was employed for a time in political matters, and at this time he exchanged the government of the Milanese for that of the Austrian Netherlands.
It was not long, however, before he was again called on to assume the command of the army in the field. In the spring of 1716 the emperor, having concluded an offensive alliance with Venice against Turkey, appointed Eugene to command the army of Hungary; and at Peterwardein he gained (5th of August 1716) a signal victory over a Turkish army of more than twice his own strength. In recognition of this service to Christendom the pope sent to the victorious general the consecrated hat and sword which the court of Rome was accustomed to bestow upon those who had triumphed over the infidels. Eugene won another victory in this campaign at Temesvár. But the ensuing campaign, that of 1717, was still more remarkable on account of the battle of Belgrade. After having besieged the city for a month Eugene found himself in a most critical, if not hopeless situation. He had to deal not only with the garrison of 30,000 men, but with a relieving army of 200,000, and his own force was only about 40,000 strong. In these circumstances the only possible deliverance was by a bold and decided stroke. Accordingly on the morning of the 16th of August 1717 Prince Eugene ordered a general attack, which resulted in the total defeat of the enemy with an enormous loss, and in the capitulation of the city six days afterwards. The prince was wounded in the heat of the action, this being the thirteenth time that he had been hit upon the field of battle. On his return to Vienna he received, among other testimonies of gratitude, a sword valued at 80,000 florins from the emperor. The popular song “Prinz Eugen, der edle Ritter,” commemorates the victory of Belgrade. In the following year, 1718, after some fruitless negotiations with a view to the conclusion of peace, he again took the field; but the treaty of Passarowitz (July 21, 1718) put an end to hostilities at the moment when the prince had well-founded hopes of obtaining still more important successes than those of the last campaign, and even of reaching Constantinople, and dictating a peace on the shores of the Bosporus.
As the government of the Netherlands, up to 1724 held by Eugene, had now for some reason been bestowed on a sister of the emperor, the prince was appointed vicar-general of Italy, with a pension of 300,000 florins. Though still retaining his official position and much of his influence at court, his personal relations with the emperor were not so cordial as before, and he suffered from the intrigues of the Spanish or anti-German party. The most remarkable of these political intrigues was the conspiracy of Tedeschi and Nimptsch against the prince in 1719. On discovering this the prince went to the emperor and threatened to lay down all his offices if the conspirators were not punished, and after some resistance he achieved his purpose. During the years of peace between the treaty of Passarowitz and the War of the Polish Succession, Eugene occupied himself with the arts and with literature, to which he had hitherto been able to devote little of his time. This new interest led him to correspond with many of the most eminent men in Europe. But the contest which arose out of the succession of Augustus II. to the throne of Poland having afforded Austria a pretext for attacking France, war was resolved on, contrary to the advice of Eugene (1734). In spite of this, however, he was appointed to command the army destined to act upon the Rhine, which from the commencement had very superior forces opposed to it; and if it could not prevent the capture of Philipsburg after a long siege, it at least prevented the enemy from entering Bavaria. Prince Eugene, having now attained his seventy-first year, no longer possessed the vigour and activity necessary for a general in the field, and he welcomed the peace which was concluded on the 3rd of October 1735. On his return to Vienna his health declined more and more, and he died in that capital on the 21st of April 1736, leaving an immense inheritance to his niece, the princess Victoria of Savoy.
Of a character cold and severe, Prince Eugene had almost no other passion than that of glory. He died unmarried, and seemed so little susceptible to female influence that he was styled a Mars without a Venus. That he was one of the great captains of history is universally admitted. He was strangely unlike the commanders of his time in many respects, though as a matter of course he was, when he saw fit to follow the accepted rules, equal to any in careful and methodical strategy. The special characteristics of his generalship were imagination, fiery energy, and a tactical resolution which was rare indeed in the 18th century. Despising the lives of his soldiers as much as he exposed his own, it was always by persevering efforts and great sacrifices that he obtained victory. His almost invariable success raised the reputation of the Austrian army to a point which it never reached either before or since his day. War was with him a passion. Always on the march, in camps, or on the field of battle during more than fifty years, and under the reigns of three emperors, he had scarcely passed two years together without fighting. Yet his political activity was not inconsiderable, and his advice was always sound and well-considered; while in his government of the Netherlands, which he exercised through the marquis de Prié, he set himself resolutely to oppose the many wild schemes, such as Law’s Mississippi project, in which the times were so fertile. His interest in literature and art has been alluded to above. His palace in Vienna, and the Belvedere near that city, his library, and his collection of paintings, were renowned. Prince Eugene was a man of the middle size, but, upon the whole, well made; the cast of his visage was somewhat long, his mouth moderate and almost always open; his eyes were black and animated, and his complexion such as became a warrior.
See A. v. Arneth, Prinz Eugen (3 vols., Vienna, 1858; 2nd ed., 1864); H. v. Sybel, Prinz Eugen von Savoyen (Munich, 1868); Austrian official history, Feldzuge des Prinzen Eugen von Savoyen (Vienna, 1876); Malleson, Prince Eugene (London, 1888); Heller, Militärische Korrespondenz des Prinzen Eugens (Vienna, 1848); Keym, Prinz Eugen (Freiburg, 1899); Österr. militärische Zeitschrift (“Streffleur”); Ridler’s Österr. Archiv für Geschichte (1831–1833); Archivio storico Italico, vol. 17; Mitteil. des Instituts für österr. Geschichtsforschung, vol. 13.
The political memoirs attributed to Prince Eugene (ed. Sartori, Tübingen, 1812) are spurious; see Böhm, Die Sammlung der hinterlassenen politischen Schriften des Prinzen Eugens (Freiburg, 1900).
EUGENE, a city and the county-seat of Lane county, Oregon, U.S.A., on the Willamette river, at the head of navigation, about 125 m. S. of Portland. Pop. (1900) 3236, of whom 237 were foreign-born; (1910 Federal census) 9009. Eugene is served by the Southern Pacific railroad and by interurban electric railway. It is situated on the edge of a broad and fertile prairie, at the foot of a ridge of low hills and within view of the peaks of the Coast Range; the streets are pleasantly shaded with Oregon maples. The city is most widely known as the seat of the University of Oregon. This institution, opened in 1876 and having 95 instructors and 734 students in 1907–1908, occupies eight buildings on a grassy slope along the river bank, and embraces a college of literature, science and the arts, a college of engineering, a graduate school, and (at Portland) a school of law and a school of medicine. In the city is the Eugene Divinity School of the Disciples of Christ, opened in 1895. Eugene is the commercial centre of an extensive agricultural district; does a large business
