the defences of Trieste and on the adjacent coast of Istria. In 1830–40 he was master of the ordnance, and commanding the troops in Lower Austria, the Tyrol, &c., and attained the rank of full general in 1838. In 1841–1842 he commanded in the Banat and adjoining districts, and in 1843–8 again in Lower Austria.
At the time of the revolt in Lombardy in 1848 he was appointed to command the reserve of the army in Italy, which he resigned on the ground of ill-health, but immediately afterwards organised a reserve corps, with which he moved on the right flank of the Austrians into Hungary, where the revolution broke out on 11 Sept. By his judicious arrangements he effected the capitulation of Essigg on 14 Feb. 1849, and afterwards held Peterwaraden in check, so as to secure the navigation of the Danube and the imperial magazines on it. He organised a second reserve corps in Styria, and marched with Prince Windischgratz's army against Comorn. With the raising of the siege of Comorn in July 1849, when the corps under his command was driven back towards Servia, Nugent's services in the field came to a close. He became a field-marshal in November 1849. His last service was at the age of eighty-two, when he was present as a volunteer on the field of Solferino on 24 June 1859.
Nugent, who held numberless foreign orders, died at Bosiljevo, near Karlstadt, Croatia, on 21 Aug. 1862, in the words of the kaiser, ‘den ältesten, victor-probten und unermüdlichen Soldaten der k. k. Armee.’
He married, in 1815, Jane, duchess of Riario Sforza, only child and heir of Raphael, duke of Riario Sforza, by his wife Beatrix, third daughter and co-heiress of Francis Xavier, prince of Poland and Saxony, second son of Augustus III, king of Poland, and Maria Josephine of Austria, eldest daughter of Joseph I, emperor of Germany. He had, with other children, Albert, eventually prince and count, who distinguished himself as an Austrian staff-officer at the capture of Acre in 1841.
[Burke's Peerage, 1862, under ‘Foreign Titles’—‘Nugent,’ and 1892, under ‘Westmeath;’ Neue Deutsche Biogr. under ‘Nugent,’ and authorities given at the end; Men of the Reign, pp. 680–1; Ann. Registers under dates.]
NUGENT, NICHOLAS (d. 1582), chief justice of the common bench in Ireland, was the fifth son of Sir Christopher Nugent, and uncle of Christopher Nugent, fourteenth Baron Delvin [q. v.] He was educated for the legal profession, and his name first occurs in a commission for determining the title to certain lands in Ireland on 19 Nov. 1564 (Cal. Fiants, Eliz. p. 684). He obtained a grant during pleasure of the office of principal or chief solicitor to the crown, vice Luke Dillon, on 5 Dec. 1566 (ib. 962), and on 30 June 1567 he was placed on a commission for inquiring into the causes of certain constantly recurring differences between Thomas Butler, tenth earl of Ormonde [q. v.] and Gerald Fitzgerald, fifteenth earl of Desmond [q. v.] He was appointed a commissioner for the government of Connaught on 24 July 1569; for shiring the Annaly on 4 Feb. 1570; and for rating certain lands in Westmeath into plow-lands on 3 March in the same year (ib. 1092, 1417, 1486, 1493). On 18 Oct. 1570 he was created second baron of the exchequer (ib. 1595); but he offended the government by taking part in the agitation against cess in 1577–8, was for some time imprisoned in Dublin Castle, and was deprived of his office by the lord-deputy, Sir Henry Sidney (Cal. Carew MSS. ii. 103, 133, 355). On Sidney's retirement he was successfully recommended by the lord chancellor, Sir William Gerard [q. v.], for the office of chief justice of the common pleas, as ‘sober, learned, and of good ability’ (Cal. State Papers, Ireland, Eliz. ii. 172). The appointment, highly gratifying to the gentry of the Pale, was not relished by the higher officials in Dublin. Wallop, who, it was said, never believed an Irishman was telling the truth unless charging another with treason, asserted that the appointment was a job for which Gerard had received 100l. (ib. ii. 279). The fact that he was a Roman catholic, and uncle of William Nugent [q. v.] and his scarcely less obnoxious brother Christopher, fourteenth lord Delvin, was sufficient to condemn him in the general opinion. He was arrested on the information of John Cusack of Alliston-read, co. Meath, a double-faced traitor, who had played a conspicuous part in William Nugent's rebellion; and on 28 Jan. 1582 he and Edward Cusack, son and heir of Sir Thomas Cusack [q. v.], were committed to the castle (ib. ii. 346). They were tried before a special commission at Trim on 4 April. The only witness against Nugent was the aforementioned John Cusack, who had already obtained a pardon for his share in the rebellion, by whom he was charged with being privy to William Nugent's rebellion, and with planning the assassination of Sir Robert and Sir Lucas Dillon. Nugent objected that the evidence of one witness—his personal enemy—was insufficient. But his objection being overruled, he denied the truth of Cusack's accusation, ‘shewing ye weeknes and unliklihood of euerie p'te by probable collections and circūstances wth
