Maurice Lacy (general)

He was born in County Limerick, Ireland, during the great frost of 1739–40, one of two sons and four daughters of Patrick de Lacy (died 1790) of Rathcahill and Templeglentan, and his wife Lady Mary Herbert.

His kinsmen included notable immigrant soldiers in Russia, and taking advantage of these connections, he obtained a commission in the Russian army; he fought against the Turks, and attained general's rank, with which he revisited Ireland in 1792–3.

He went back to Russia, and held command under Marshal Alexander Suvorov in the campaigns against the French in Switzerland and Italy.

Sir Henry Bunbury, 7th Baronet was quartermaster-general of the small British force sent to Naples in that year under Sir James Henry Craig; speaking of an auxiliary force of fourteen thousand Russians and two thousand Montenegrins sent there from the Greek islands, under the Russian general D'Anrep, he observes in Narratives of Some Passages in the Great War with France that D'Anrep was subordinate to General Lacy, who was residing at Naples under the pretence of ill-health, but prepared by his sovereign's order to take the chief command when the time should come to put the troops in movement.

"[1] Bunbury adds: "He spoke English with the strongest brogue I ever heard, and with peculiarities that I have never met with, except in the Teagues of our old comedies."