Ligne, CHARLES JOSEPH, PRINCE DE,

Ligne, CHARLES JOSEPH, PRINCE DE, son of an imperial field-marshal whose seat was at Ligne, near Tournai, was born at Brussels, 23d May 1735, and as an Austrian soldier served at Kolin, Leuthen, Hochkirch, &c., in the war of the Bavarian succession, and under Loudon at the siege of Belgrade (1789). Meanwhile he had undertaken various diplomatic missions and received numerous distinctions. A Belgian by birth, an Austrian subject, the favourite of Maria Theresa and Catharine of Russia, the friend of Frederick the Great, Voltaire, Rousseau, he was always a most welcome guest at the court of Versailles and in the Paris salons. He died 13th December 1814. Of his literary remains there were published Mélanges (34 vols. 1795-1811), Œuvres Posthumes (6 vols. 1817), a life of Prince Eugene (1809), and a collection by Madame de Staël of his Lettres et Pensées (1809). A new edition of his works in 4 vols. was published at Brussels in 1860. See a monograph by Thürheim (Vienna, 1876), and the Edinburgh Review for July 1890.