Note 7 — Chapter X · NORTH TIROL—OBERINNTHAL. INNSBRUCK TO ZIRL AND SCHARNITZ—INNSBRUCK TO THE LISENS-FERNER.
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To the Editor of the ‘Monthly Packet.’
Sir,—I think it possible that R. H. B. (to whom we owe the very interesting Traditions of Tirol), and perhaps others of your readers, may care to hear some of the particulars, as they are treasured by his family, of the defence of Scharnitz by Baron Swinburne. R. H. B. speaks of it in your number of last month. That defence was so gallant as to call forth the respect and admiration even of his enemies, and Baron Swinburne was given permission to name his own terms of surrender.
He requested for himself, and those under him, that they might be allowed to retain their swords. This was granted, and the prisoners were sent to Aix-la-Chapelle, where everyone was asking in astonishment who were ‘les prisonniers avec l’épée a côté.’
The Eagles of Austria, that had been so nobly defended by the Englishman and his little band, never fell into the hands of the French. One of the Tirolese escaped, with the colours wrapped round his body under his clothes, and though he was hunted among the mountains for months, he was never taken; and some years after he came to his commander in Vienna and gave him the colours he had so bravely defended. They are now in possession of Baron Edward Swinburne, the son of the defender of Scharnitz, who himself won, before he was eighteen, the Order of ‘the Iron Crown,’ by an act that well deserves to be called ‘a golden deed;’ and ere he was twenty he had led his first and last forlorn hope, when he received so severe a wound as to cost him his leg, which has incapacitated him for further service.
His father received the highest military decoration of Austria, that of ‘Maria Teresa;’ he fought at Austerlitz and Wagram; on the latter occasion he was severely wounded. Later in life, he was for many years Governor of Milan.
Hoping that a short record of true and faithful services performed by Englishmen for their adopted country, may prove of some interest to your readers, and with many thanks to R. H. B. for what has been of so much interest to us,
I am, Sir, yours faithfully,
September, 1870. A. Swinburne.