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CASSELL'S ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF ENGLAND




    CASSELL'S

    HISTORY OF ENGLAND

    FROM THE FALL OF MARLBOROUGH
    TO THE PENINSULAR WAR

    WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS,
    INCLUDING COLOURED
    AND REMBRANDT PLATES

    VOL IV

    _THE KING'S EDITION_

    CASSELL AND COMPANY, LIMITED
    LONDON, NEW YORK, TORONTO AND MELBOURNE
    MCMIX




ALL RIGHTS RESERVED




CONTENTS


CHAPTER I.

THE REIGN OF QUEEN ANNE (_concluded_). PAGE

    Meeting of Parliament--Eugene's Visit to England--Ministerial
    Attacks on the Dutch--Meeting of the Negotiators at Utrecht--The
    Question of the Spanish Throne--Sham Fighting against the
    French--Debates on the Peace in Parliament--Withdrawal of the
    English Troops--Consequent Triumph of the French--Bolingbroke's
    Visit to Paris--Break-up of the Grand Alliance--More Negotiations
    with the Pretender--Death of Godolphin--Marlborough retires
    to the Continent--Signature of the Peace--The Treaty of
    Commerce--Its Rejection by the Commons--The Whereabouts
    of the Pretender--Dissolution of Parliament--The General
    Election--Intrigues with St. Germains--Bolingbroke's Activity--His
    Friends in Office--The Empire and Spain make Peace--The Pretender
    declines Overtures to Change his Religion--Illness of the
    Queen--Tax on Newspapers--Attack upon the "Public Spirit of the
    Whigs"--Steele expelled the House--Proposals against the Pretender
    and for bringing over the Electoral Prince--Counter-scheme for
    bringing over the Pretender--Obstacles to the Scheme--The Queen's
    Letter to the Elector--Death of the Electress Sophia--The Schism
    Bill--Its Progress through the Houses--Reward for the Apprehension
    of the Pretender--Fall of Oxford--Bolingbroke's Jacobite
    Cabinet--Illness of the Queen--The Whig _Coup d'État_--Ruin and
    Desperation of the Jacobites--Death of Anne--Proclamation of George
    I.                                                                1


CHAPTER II.

THE REIGN OF GEORGE I.

    Peaceful Accession of George I.--His Arrival--Triumph of the
    Whigs--Dissolution and General Election--The Address--Determination
    to impeach the late Ministers--Flight of Bolingbroke and
    Ormonde--Impeachment of Oxford--The Riot Act--The Rebellion
    of 1715--Policy of the Regent Orleans--Surrender of the
    Pretender's Ships--The Adventures of Ormonde and Mar--The
    Highlands declare for the Pretender--Mar and Argyll--Advance
    of Mackintosh's Detachment--Its Surrender at Preston--Battle
    of Sheriffmuir--Arrival of the Pretender--Mutual
    Disappointment--Advance of Argyll--Flight of the Pretender to
    France--Punishment of the Rebels--Impeachment of the Rebel
    Lords--The Septennial Act--The King goes to Hanover--Impossibility
    of Reconstructing the Grand Alliance--Negotiations with
    France--Danger of Hanover from Charles XII.--And from Russia--Alarm
    from Townshend--Termination of the Dispute--Fresh Differences
    between Stanhope and Townshend--Dismissal of the Latter--The
    Triple Alliance--Project for the Invasion of Scotland--Detection
    of the Plot--Dismissal of Townshend and Walpole--They go into
    Opposition--Walpole's Financial Scheme--Attack on Cadogan--Trial of
    Oxford--Cardinal Alberoni--Outbreak of Hostilities between Austria
    and Spain--Occupation of Sardinia--Alberoni's Diplomacy--The
    Quadruple Alliance--Byng in the Mediterranean--Alberoni deserted by
    Savoy--Death of Charles XII.--Declaration of War with Spain--Repeal
    of the Schism Act--Rejection of the Peerage Bill--Attempted
    Invasion of Britain--Dismissal of Alberoni--Spain makes
    Peace--Pacification of Northern Europe--Final Rejection of the
    Peerage Bill--The South Sea Company--The South Sea Bill--Opposition
    of Walpole--Rise of South Sea Stock--Rival Companies--Death
    of Stanhope--Punishment of Ministry and Directors--Supremacy
    of Walpole--Atterbury's Plot--His Banishment and the Return
    of Bolingbroke--Rejection of Bolingbroke's Services--A Palace
    Intrigue--Fall of Carteret--Wood's Halfpence--Disturbances in
    Scotland--Punishment of the Lord Chancellor Macclesfield--The
    Patriot Party--Complications Abroad--Treaty of Vienna--Treaty
    of Hanover--Activity of the Jacobites--Falls of Ripperda and of
    Bourbon--English Preparations--Folly of the Emperor--Attack on
    Gibraltar--Preliminaries of Peace--Intrigues against Walpole--Death
    of George I.                                                     24


CHAPTER III.

THE REIGN OF GEORGE II.

    Accession of George II.--Characters of the King and Queen--Adroit
    Tactics of Walpole--Rise and Fall of Compton--Attitude of
    the Opposition--Congress of Soissons--Causes of Dispute
    with Spain--Stanhope's successful Negotiations with King
    Philip--Retirement of Townshend--Walpole Supreme--Peace
    Abroad and at Home--Walpole's System of Wholesale Bribery
    and Corruption--The Public Prisons--Duel between Pulteney
    and Lord Hervey--The Excise Scheme--Great Outcry--Withdrawal
    of the Bill--Walpole's Vengeance--Attack on the Septennial
    Act--Wyndham's Speech--Depression of the Opposition--Definitive
    Peace of Vienna--Gin Act--The Porteous Riots--The Prince of
    Wales and the Opposition--Application for an Increase of his
    Allowance--Birth of George III.--Death of Queen Caroline--Attempt
    to Reduce the Army--Disputes with Spain--"Jenkins' Ear"--Walpole's
    Negotiations--Secession of the Opposition--Further
    Difficulties with Spain--Declaration of War--Privateers and
    Reprisals--Vernon's Victory--Frederick invades Silesia--Assistance
    of England--Parliament meets--Sandys' Motion--Walpole's
    Defence--Disasters of Maria Theresa--She throws herself on the
    Magyars--Misfortunes of the English Fleets--Vernon repulsed from
    Carthagena--Power slips from the Hands of Walpole--His last
    Battles--The Chippenham Election Petition--His Fall              57


CHAPTER IV.

REIGN OF GEORGE II. (_continued_).

    Effects of Walpole's Administration--Formation of the new
    Ministry--Attitude of the Malcontents--Committee of Inquiry into
    Walpole's Administration--Walpole's Protectors--Ministerial
    Measures--Prorogation of Parliament--Disasters of the
    French--British Diversion in the Netherlands--Opening of
    Parliament--The German Mercenaries--Amendment of the Gin
    Act--George goes to Germany--Stair and De Noailles in
    Franconia--Stair in a Trap--Bold Resolution of King George--The
    Battle of Dettingen--Resignation of Stair--Retreat of the
    French--Negotiations for Peace--Treaty of Worms--Pelham becomes
    Prime Minister--The Attacks of Pitt on Carteret--Attempted
    Invasion of England--Its Failure--Progress of the French
    Arms--Frederick II. invades Bohemia--His Retirement--Resignation
    of Carteret--Pelham strengthens his Ministry--Death of the
    Emperor--Campaign in Flanders--Battle of Fontenoy--Campaign of
    Frederick II.--The Young Pretender's Preparations--Loss of the
    _Elizabeth_--Landing in the Hebrides--The Highland Clans join
    him--The first Brush--Raising of the Standard--Cope's Mistake--He
    turns aside at Dalwhinnie--Charles makes a Dash for Edinburgh--The
    March to Stirling--Flight of the Dragoons--The "Canter of
    Coltbridge"--Edinburgh surprised by the Highlanders--Charles
    marching against Cope--Battle of Prestonpans--Delay in marching
    South--Discontent of the Highland Chiefs--The Start--Preparations
    in England--Apathy of the Aristocracy--Arrival of the Duke of
    Cumberland--Charles crosses the Border--Capture of Carlisle--The
    March to Derby--Resolution to retreat--"Black Friday"--The
    Retreat--Recapture of Carlisle--Siege of Stirling--Battle of
    Falkirk--Retreat to the Highlands--Cumberland's Pursuit--Gradual
    Collapse of the Highlanders--Battle of Culloden--Termination of the
    Rebellion--Cruelty of the Duke of Cumberland--Adventures of the
    Young Pretender--Trials and Executions--Ministerial Crisis       79


CHAPTER V.

REIGN OF GEORGE II. (_concluded_).

    Progress of the War on the Continent--Lethargic Condition of
    Politics--Battle of Laufeldt--Capture of Bergen-op-Zoom--Disasters
    of the French on the Sea and in Italy--Negotiations for
    Peace--Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle--Conditions of Peace--Peace
    at Home--Commercial Treaty with Spain--Death of the Prince
    of Wales--Popular feeling against the Bill for Naturalising
    the Jews--Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act--Foundation
    of the British Museum--Death of Pelham--Newcastle's
    Difficulties--Failure of Robinson--Approaching Danger from
    America--A State of Undeclared War--The Battles of Boscawen
    and Braddock--George's Anxiety for Hanover--Subsidiary
    Treaties against Prussia--Pitt's Opposition--Debate in the
    House of Commons--Danger of England--French Expedition against
    Minorca--The Failure of Byng--Newcastle resigns--Attempts
    to form a Ministry--Devonshire succeeds--Weakness of
    the Ministry--Coalition against Prussia--Alliance with
    England--Commencement of the Seven Years' War--Frederick
    conquers Saxony--Gloominess of Affairs--Court-Martial on Byng,
    and his Death--Dismissal of Pitt--The Pitt and Newcastle
    Coalition--Failure of the Attack on Rochefort and of that on
    Louisburg--Convention of Closter-Seven--Frederick's Campaign;
    Kolin, Rossbach, and Lissa--Successes elsewhere--Wolfe and
    Clive--Battle of Plassey--Capture of Louisburg--Ticonderoga
    and Fort Duquesne--Attacks on St. Malo and Cherbourg--Victory
    of Crefeld--Frederick's Campaign--Commencement of 1759;
    Blockade of the French Coast--Pitt's Plans for the Conquest
    of Canada--Amherst's and Prideaux's Columns--Wolfe before
    Quebec--Position of the City--Wolfe fails to draw Montcalm from his
    Position--Apparent Hopelessness of the Expedition--Wolfe scales
    the Heights of Abraham--The Battle--Successes in India--Battle
    of Quibéron--Frederick's Fortunes--Campaign of Ferdinand of
    Brunswick--Battle of Minden--Glorious Termination of the
    Year--French Descent on Carrickfergus--Attempt of the French to
    Recover Quebec--Their Expulsion from North America--Frederick's
    Fourth Campaign--Successes of Ferdinand of Brunswick--Death of
    George II.                                                      111


CHAPTER VI.

PROGRESS OF THE NATION FROM THE REVOLUTION TO 1760.

    The Church after the Revolution--The Non-Jurors--The Act of
    Toleration--Comprehension Bill--Laxity of Religion--The Wesleys
    and Whitefield--Foundation of Methodism--Extension of the
    Movement--Literature--Survivors of the Stuart Period--Prose
    Writers: Bishop Burnet--Philosophers: Locke--Bishop
    Berkeley, etc.--Novelists: Fielding, Richardson, Smollett,
    and Sterne--Dr. Davenant--Bentley--Swift--Addison--Addison
    and Steele--Bolingbroke--Daniel Defoe--Lady Mary
    Wortley Montagu--Poets: Pope--His Prose Writings--Gay,
    Prior, Young, etc.--James Thomson, Allan Ramsay,
    Gray, and Minor Lights--Dramatists--Physical Science:
    Astronomers--Mathematicians--Electricians--Chemists--Medical
    Discoverers--Music: Purcell--Italian Music--Handel--Church
    Music--The Academy of Ancient Music and other
    Societies--Architecture--Wren and his Buildings--St. Paul's--His
    Churches and Palaces--Vanbrugh--Gibbs--Hawksmoor--Minor
    Architects--Painting and Sculpture: Lely and Kneller--Other Foreign
    Painters and Decorators--Thornhill--Other English Artists--Hogarth
    and his Works--Exhibition of British Artists--Sculptors--Shipping,
    Colonies, Commerce, and Manufactures--Increase of Canals--Woollen
    and Silk Trades--Irish Linens--Lace--Iron, Copper, and other
    Industries--Increase of the large Towns                         141


CHAPTER VII.

REIGN OF GEORGE III.

    Accession of George III.--His Conduct--Ascendency of Bute--Meeting
    of Parliament--Enthusiastic Reception of the King's Speech--Bute's
    Cabals--Hostility to Pitt--Ministerial Changes--Marriage of the
    King--Queen Charlotte--Misfortunes of Frederick--Ferdinand of
    Brunswick's Campaign--Defeat of the French in the East and West
    Indies--Negotiations for Peace--Pitt's large Demands--Obstinacy of
    Choiseul--The Family Compact suspected--Resignation of Pitt--Bute's
    Ministry--War with Spain--Abandonment of Frederick--Policy of
    the new Czar--Resignation of Newcastle--Bute at the Head of the
    Treasury--Successes in the West Indies--Capture of Manila--Bute's
    Eagerness for Peace--The Terms--Bute's Unpopularity--Close of
    the Seven Years' War--Successes of Clive--Defeat of the Dutch in
    India--Final Overthrow of the French in India--Fate of the Count
    de Lally--Bute and the Princess of Wales--The Cider Tax--Bute's
    Vengeance--His Resignation--George Grenville in Office--No. 45 of
    the _North Briton_--Arrest of Wilkes--His Acquittal--Vengeance
    against him--The King negotiates with Pitt--Wilkes's Affairs in
    Parliament--The Wilkes Riots--The Question of Privilege--The
    Illegality of General Warrants declared--Wilkes expelled the
    House--Debates on General Warrants--Rejoicing in the City of London
                                                                    168


CHAPTER VIII.

REIGN OF GEORGE III. (_continued_).

    The American Colonies and their Trade--Growing Irritation in
    America--The Stamp Act--The American Protest--The Stamp Act
    passed--Its Reception in America--The King's Illness--The
    Regency Bill--The Princess Dowager omitted--Her Name inserted
    in the Commons--Negotiations for a Change of Ministry--The
    old Ministry returns--Fresh Negotiations with Pitt--The first
    Rockingham Ministry--Riots in America--The Stamped Paper
    destroyed--Pitt's Speech--The Stamp Act repealed--Weakness
    of the Government--Pitt and Temple disagree--Pitt forms
    a Ministry--And becomes Lord Chatham--His Comprehensive
    Policy--The Embargo on Wheat--Illness of Chatham--Townshend's
    Financial Schemes--Corruption of Parliament--Wilkes elected for
    Middlesex--Arrest of Wilkes--Dangerous Riots--Dissolution of
    the Boston Assembly--Seizure of the _Liberty_ Sloop--Debates in
    Parliament--Continued Persecution of Wilkes--His Letter to Lord
    Weymouth--Again expelled the House--His Re-election--The Letters
    of Junius--Luttrell declared elected for Middlesex--Incapacity of
    the Ministry--Partial Concessions to the Americans--Bernard leaves
    Boston--He is made a Baronet--"The Horned Cattle Session"--Lord
    Chatham attacks the Ministry--Resignations of Granby and
    Camden--Yorke's Suicide--Dissolution of the Ministry            183


CHAPTER IX.

REIGN OF GEORGE III. (_continued_).

    Lord North--He forms a Ministry--Chatham declaims against
    Secret Influence--Grenville's Election Committee--Lord North's
    Conciliatory Measures--Determination of the Bostonians--The
    Boston Massacre--Trial of the Soldiers--Apparent Success of
    North's Measures--Affair of the Falkland Islands--Promptitude
    of the Ministry--The Quarrel composed--Trials of Woodfall and
    Almon--The Right of Parliamentary Reporting--Strengthening of the
    Ministry--Quarrels in the City--The Royal Marriage Act--Fate of
    the Queen of Denmark--Anarchical Condition of Poland--Interference
    of Russia--Deposition of Poniatowski--Frederick's Scheme of
    Partition--It is ratified--Inquiry into Indian Affairs--Lord
    North's Tea Bill--Lord Dartmouth and Hutchinson--The Hutchinson
    Letters--Dishonourable Conduct of Franklin--Establishment of
    Corresponding Committees--Burning of the _Gaspee_--Destruction
    of the Tea--Franklin avows the Publication of the
    Letters--Wedderburn's Speech--The Boston Port Bill--The
    Massachusetts Government Bill--The Coils of Coercion--Virginia
    joins Massachusetts--Gage dissolves the Boston Assembly--He
    fortifies Boston Neck--The General Congress--A Declaration of
    Rights--The Assembly at Concord--They enrol Militia--Seizure of
    Ammunition and Arms--Meeting of Parliament--Chatham's conciliatory
    Speech--His Bill for the Pacification of the Colonies--Its
    Fate--Lord North's Proposal--Burke's Resolutions--Prorogation of
    Parliament--Beginning of the War                                199


CHAPTER X.

REIGN OF GEORGE III. (_continued_).

    Gage attempts to seize American Arms--Skirmish at
    Lexington--Blockade of Boston--The Second Congress at
    Philadelphia--Washington chosen Commander-in-Chief--Fall of
    Ticonderoga and Crown Point--Washington at Boston--Battle
    of Bunker's Hill--The Olive Branch Petition--Condition
    of the American Army--Expedition against Canada--Capture
    of Montreal--Arnold's Expedition--His Junction with
    Montgomery--Failure of the Attack on Quebec--The Employment
    of German Mercenaries--Washington seizes Dorchester
    Heights--Evacuation of Boston--Howe retires to Halifax--The War
    in Canada--Thomas's Retreat--Sullivan evacuates Canada--The War
    in the South--Attack on Charleston--Paine's Pamphlet, "Common
    Sense"--New York and Virginia decide for Independence--Debate in
    Congress--Report of the Committee--Arbitrary Proceedings--The
    Declaration--Overtures to France--Arrival of Lord Howe--Position
    of Washington--Howe's Overtures--Battle of Brooklyn--Washington's
    Retreat--His Desperate Position--Howe receives a Deputation
    from Congress--Washington retires Step by Step--Cornwallis's
    Pursuit--Close of the Campaign--The Articles of Confederation
    published by Congress--Fresh Overtures to France--Parliament
    votes large Sums of Money--John the Painter--Chatham
    demands a Cessation of Hostilities--Washington's Change
    of Tactics--Surprise of Trenton--Washington outmanœuvres
    Cornwallis--He recovers New Jersey--Difficulties of Congress--Howe
    advances against Washington--Alteration of Howe's Plans--Battle
    of the Brandywine--Howe crosses the Schuylkill--Cornwallis
    enters Philadelphia--Battle of Germantown--Washington at
    Valley Forge--Burgoyne's Plan of Campaign--His Advance--St.
    Clair's Defeat--Burgoyne on the Hudson--The Beginning of his
    Misfortunes--Battle of Bemus's Heights--Burgoyne's Message to
    Clinton--He is surrounded--He attempts to cut his Way through--The
    Surrender of Saratoga--Clinton's Failure to relieve Burgoyne--Close
    of the Campaign                                                 217


CHAPTER XI.

REIGN OF GEORGE III. (_continued_).

    Meeting of Parliament--Lord Chatham's Amendment to the Address--The
    News of Saratoga--Treaty between France and America--Washington
    in Valley Forge--Intrigues against him--Violation of Burgoyne's
    Convention--Debates in Parliament--Attempt to bring Chatham
    into the Ministry--Lord North's Conciliation Bills--The French
    Note--Patriotism of the Nation--The King refuses to send for
    Chatham--His last Speech and Death--Honours to his Memory--Burke's
    Measure of Irish Relief--Repeal of Laws against Roman
    Catholics--Explosion of Scottish Bigotry--Turgot's Warnings--Naval
    Engagement off Ushant--Failure of Lafayette's Canadian
    Expedition--Clinton compelled to evacuate Philadelphia--Failure
    of Lord North's Commissioners--D'Estaing and Sullivan attempt to
    take Rhode Island--Subsequent Proceedings of D'Estaing--Courts
    martial of Keppel and Palliser--The Irish Volunteers--Spain
    declares War--Military Preparations--Junction of the French
    and Spanish Fleets--They retire from the Channel--D'Estaing
    in the West Indies--His Attempt on Savannah--Weakness of Lord
    North's Ministry--Meeting of Parliament--Lord North's Irish
    Bill--Richmond, Shelburne, and Burke attempt Economic Reforms--The
    Meeting at York petitions for Reform of Parliament--Burke's
    Economic Scheme--North's Manœuvre--Further Attempts at Reform--The
    Westminster Meeting--Dunning's Motion--Defeat of his later
    Resolutions--"No Popery" in Scotland--Lord George Gordon's
    Agitation--The Riots and their Progress--Their Suppression--Trial
    of the Prisoners--Rodney relieves Gibraltar--Destruction of English
    Merchantmen--Disputes with Holland--The Armed Neutrality of the
    North--Capture of Charleston--Declaration of South Carolina--Battle
    of Camden--Expedition into North Carolina--Arrival of the French
    Squadron--Rodney in the West Indies--Arnold's Treachery--Trial
    and Death of André--Breach with Holland--Attacks on Jersey and
    Gibraltar--Mutiny in the Army of Washington--Arnold's Raids
    in Virginia--Cornwallis in North Canada--His Engagements with
    Greene--His March into Virginia--Rawdon and Greene--Battle of
    Eutaw Springs--Siege of York Town--The American Armies close round
    him--Cornwallis compelled to Surrender                          246


CHAPTER XII.

REIGN OF GEORGE III. (_continued_).

    Rodney takes St. Eustatia--Destruction of Dutch Commerce--Loss
    of Minorca--Naval Actions--Meeting of Parliament--Vehemence
    of the Opposition--Losses in the West Indies--Breaking up of
    the Ministry--Their Defeat on Conway's Motion--Lord North's
    Resignation--Shelburne refuses the Premiership--New Whig
    Government--Agitation in Ireland--Grattan's Motion for Legislative
    Independence--The Volunteer Meeting at Dungannon--Grattan's Motion
    carried--Demands of the Irish Parliament conceded--Flood's
    Agitation--Economic Reforms--Pitt's Motion for Parliamentary
    Reform--Unsuccessful Negotiations for Peace--Rodney's Victory
    over De Grasse--Lord Howe's Exploits--The Siege and Relief of
    Gibraltar--Negotiations for Peace--Folly of Oswald and Duplicity
    of Shelburne--The Negotiations continued--Franklin throws over
    Vergennes--Conclusion of a Secret Treaty between England and
    America--Fate of the American Royalists--Announcement of the
    Peace in Parliament--Terms of Peace with France, Spain, and
    Holland--Opposition to the Peace--Coalition of Fox and North--Fall
    of Shelburne--Pitt's Attempt to form a Ministry--The Coalition
    in Office--Reform and the Prince of Wales--Fox's India Bill--Its
    Introduction--Progress of the Measure--The King's Letter to
    Temple--Reception of the News in the Commons--Dismissal of the
    Ministry--Pitt forms a Cabinet--Factious Opposition of Fox--Pitt's
    India Bill--He refuses to divulge his Intentions--The Tide
    begins to Turn--Attempt at a Coalition--Increasing Popularity of
    Pitt--Fox's Resolution--The Dissolution--"Fox's Martyrs"        284


CHAPTER XIII.

REIGN OF GEORGE III. (_continued_).

    Victory of Pitt--The King's delight--Pitt's Finance--The India
    Bill--Pitt's Budget--The Westminster Election--The Scrutiny--Fox
    is returned--The Volunteers in Ireland--Flood's Reform Bill--Riots
    in Ireland--Pitt's Commercial Policy for Ireland--Opposition
    of the English Merchants--Abandonment of the Measure--Pitt's
    Reform Bill--His Administrative Reforms--Bill for fortifying
    Portsmouth and Plymouth--Pitt's Sinking Fund--Favourable
    Reception of the Bill--Pitt's Excise Bill--Commercial Treaty
    with France--Impeachment of Warren Hastings--Retrospect of
    Indian Affairs: Deposition of Meer Jaffier--Resistance of Meer
    Cossim--Massacre of Patna--Battle of Buxar and Capture of
    Allahabad--Clive's Return to India--Settlement of Bengal and
    Oude--Domestic Reforms--Rise of Hyder Ali--His Treaty with the
    English--He is defeated by the Mahrattas--Deposition of the
    Rajah of Tanjore--Failure of Lord Pigot to reinstate him--Lord
    North's Regulating Bill--Death of Clive--Warren Hastings becomes
    Governor-General--His dealings with the Famine--Treatment of
    Reza Khan and the Nabob of Bengal--Resumption of Allahabad and
    Corah--Massacre of the Rohillas--Arrival of the New Members of
    Council--Struggle for Supremacy--Robbery of Cheyte Sing--Nuncomar's
    Charges--His Trial and Execution--Hastings' Constitutional
    Resignation--His Final Victory--Wars against the Mahrattas--Hyder
    Ali's Advance--Defeat of Baillie--Energy of Hastings--Victories of
    Sir Eyre Coote--Capture of Dutch Settlements--Naval Engagements
    between the British and French--Death of Hyder Ali--Tippoo
    continues the War--He invokes Peace--Hastings' Extortions
    from Cheyte Sing--Hastings' visit to Benares--Rising of the
    People--Rescue of Hastings and Deposition of Cheyte Sing--Extortion
    from the Begums of Oude--Parliamentary Inquiries--Hastings'
    Reception in England--Burke's Motion of Impeachment--Pitt's
    Change of Front--The Prince of Wales and the Whigs--Inquiry into
    his Debts--Alderman Newnham's Motion--Denial of the Marriage
    with Mrs. Fitzherbert--Sheridan's Begum Speech--Impeachment of
    Hastings--Growth of the Opposition to the Slave Trade--The Question
    brought before Parliament--Evidence produced--Sir W. Dolben's
    Bill--Trial of Warren Hastings--Speeches of Burke, Fox, and
    Sheridan--Illness of the King--Debates on the Regency Bill--The
    King's Recovery--Address of the Irish Parliament to the Prince of
    Wales                                                           307


CHAPTER XIV.

REIGN OF GEORGE III. (_continued_).

    Unsettled Condition of Europe--Machinations of Russia and
    Austria against Turkey--Disasters of the Austrians--Capture
    of Oczakoff--Further Designs of Catherine--Intervention
    of Pitt--Gustavus of Sweden invades Russia--His temporary
    Check--He remodels the Diet and pursues the War--Joseph renews
    the War--Disaffection in Hungary--Revolution in the Austrian
    Netherlands--Abolition of the _Joyeuse Entrée_--The Emperor
    declared to have forfeited the Crown--The Austrian Troops
    retired to Luxembourg--Death of Joseph--Outbreak of the French
    Revolution--Efforts of Turgot and his Successors to introduce
    Reforms--Loménie de Brienne--Recall of Necker--Assembly of the
    States General--The Third Estate becomes the National Assembly--The
    Meeting in the Tennis Court--Contemplated _Coup d'État_--Project
    of a City Guard--Dismissal of Necker--Insurrection in Paris--The
    City Guard--Capture of the Bastille--The Noblesse renounce their
    Privileges--Bankruptcy and Famine--"_O Richard, O Mon Roi!_"--The
    Women and the National Guard march on Versailles--The King brought
    to Paris--Effect of the Revolution in England--Different Views
    of Burke and Fox--Rejection of Flood's Reform Bill--The Nootka
    Sound Affair--Satisfaction obtained from Spain--Motions of Reform
    in the Irish Parliament--Convention of Reichenbach--Continuance
    of the War between Sweden and Russia--Renewal of the War with
    Tippoo Sahib--Debates in Parliament--Discussions on the Eastern
    Question--The Canada Bill--It is made the occasion of Speeches
    on the French Revolution--Breach between Fox and Burke--Abuse
    of Burke by the Whigs--Wilberforce's Notice for immediate
    Emancipation--Colonisation of Sierra Leone--Bill for the Relief
    of Roman Catholics--Fox's Libel Bill--Burke's "Reflections on the
    French Revolution"--Replies of Mackintosh and Paine--Dr. Price--Dr.
    Priestley--The Anniversary of the taking of the Bastille--The
    Birmingham Riots--Destruction of Priestley's Library--Suppression
    of the Riots--Mildness of the Sentences                         349


CHAPTER XV.

REIGN OF GEORGE III. (_continued_).

    Progress of the French Revolution--Death of Mirabeau--Attempted
    Flight of the King from Paris--Attitude of the Sovereigns
    of Europe--The Parties of the Right and of the Left--The
    Girondists--Decrees against the Emigrants--Negotiations
    between Marie Antoinette and Pitt--Condition of the French
    Army--Session of 1792; Debates on Foreign Affairs--Marriage
    of the Duke of York--The Prince of Wales's Allowance--The
    Budget--The Anti-Slavery Movement--Magistracy Bill--Attempts at
    Reform--The Society of the Friends of the People--Proclamation
    against Seditious Writings--Fox's Nonconformist Relief
    Bill--Prorogation of Parliament--Associations and
    Counter-Associations--Lord Cornwallis's War against Tippoo
    Sahib--Capture of Seringapatam--Peace with Tippoo--Embassy to
    China--Designs of the Powers against Poland--Catherine resolves
    to strike--Invasion of Poland--Neutrality of England--Conquest
    of Poland--Imminence of War between France and Austria--It is
    declared--Failure of the French Troops--The Duke of Brunswick's
    Proclamation--Insurrection of the 10th of August--Massacre of the
    Swiss--Suspension of the King--Ascendency of Jacobinism--Dumouriez
    in the Passes of the Argonne--Battle of Valmy--Retreat of
    the Prussians--Occupation of the Netherlands by the French
    Troops--Custine in Germany--Occupation of Nice and Savoy--Edict
    of Fraternity--Abolition of Royalty--Trial and Death of the
    King--Effect of the Deed on the Continent--The Militia called
    out in England--Debates in Parliament on War with France--The
    Alien Bill--Rupture of Diplomatic Relations with France--War
    declared against Britain--Efforts to preserve the Peace--They are
    Ineffectual                                                     386


CHAPTER XVI.

THE REIGN OF GEORGE III. (_continued_).

    Invasion of Holland by Dumouriez--He is defeated at Neerwinden
    and goes over to the Enemy--Second Partition of Poland--The
    Campaign in the Netherlands--And on the Rhine--The English
    Fleets in the Channel and West Indies--Siege of Toulon--First
    appearance of Napoleon Buonaparte--Fall of Lyons--The Reign of
    Terror--Insurrection in La Vendée--Its brutal Suppression--Worship
    of the Goddess of Reason--Opposition to the War in
    England--Prosecutions for Sedition--Trials in Scotland--Discussions
    on the subject in Parliament--Arrests of Horne Tooke, Thelwall,
    Hardy, and others--Battle of the First of June--The War in the
    West Indies--Annexation of Corsica--The Campaign of 1794--The
    Prussian Subsidy--Successes of Pichegru against the Austrians--The
    Struggle for the Sambre--Loss of Belgium--Danger of Holland--The
    War in the South--The Reign of Terror continues--The Festival of
    the Supreme Being--Death of Robespierre and his Associates--The
    Thermidorians--Final extinction of Poland--The Portland Whigs
    join the Ministry--Trials of Hardy, Horne Tooke, and their
    Associates--Opening of Parliament--The Budget--Attempts at
    Reform--Marriage of the Prince of Wales--His Allowance--The
    French occupy Holland--It becomes a Republic--Prussia and Spain
    leave the Coalition, but the War continues--Campaigns on the
    Rhine and in Italy--The War in La Vendée and in Brittany--The
    Expedition from England planned--Destruction of the Expedition
    at Quibéron--Extinction of the War in La Vendée--Establishment
    of the Directory--Attack on George the Third--The Budget--Pitt's
    first Negotiations for Peace--Failure of Lord Malmesbury's
    Mission--Successes in the West Indies and Africa--Expedition to
    Bantry Bay--The Campaign of 1796--Retreat of the French--Napoleon's
    Italian Campaign--The Battles of Arcole--A new British
    Loan--Suspension of Cash Payments--Grievances of the Seamen--Mutiny
    at Portsmouth--Its Pacification--Mutiny at the Nore--Descent on the
    Welsh Coast--Campaign of 1797--Preliminaries of Leoben--Treaty of
    Campo Formio--Lord Malmesbury's Mission to Lille                418


CHAPTER XVII.

REIGN OF GEORGE III. (_continued_).

    Sympathy in Ireland for the French Revolution--Intrigues with the
    French--Attitude of the Roman Catholics--Failure of Fitzwilliam's
    Efforts at Reform--Open Rebellion begins--The Mission of Fitzgerald
    and O'Connor to France--Disclosure of the Conspiracy--Arrest of
    Fitzgerald and his Confederates--Outbreak of the Rebellion--Battle
    of Vinegar Hill--Arrival of Humbert's Expedition--Its brief Success
    and Surrender--Suicide of Wolfe Tone--Desire of France to invade
    England--Napoleon advises the Expedition to Egypt--He gives Nelson
    the slip--His gigantic Projects--Surrender of Malta--Nelson's
    Pursuit--Napoleon's Campaign--Battle of the Pyramids--Surrender
    of Cairo--Battle of the Nile (or Aboukir Bay)--Pitt's second
    Coalition--The Income Tax--Projected Union of Great Britain and
    Ireland--Proclamation of the Parthenopean Republic--Italy regained
    by the Coalition--Suppression of the Revolution in Naples--The
    Allies in Holland--Napoleon's March into Syria--His Defeat at
    Acre--Battle of Aboukir--Napoleon returns to France--_Coup
    d'État_ of the 18th Brumaire--Death of Tippoo Sahib--Napoleon's
    Letter to the King--The Union with Ireland--Means by which it
    was carried--Its Reception in England--Napoleon crosses the
    Alps--Battle of Marengo--The French recover Lombardy--Battle
    of Hohenlinden--Treaty of Lunéville--Corn Riots--Breach
    with Russia--Pitt's Resignation--The King's Illness--The
    Addington Ministry--Revival of the Armed Neutrality--Battle of
    Copenhagen--Peace between Britain and the Northern Powers--The
    Expedition to Egypt--Battle of Alexandria--Evacuation of Egypt by
    the French--Negotiations for Peace--Treaty of Amiens            460


CHAPTER XVIII.

REIGN OF GEORGE III. (_continued_).

    Napoleon's Plans of Conquest--Sebastiani's Report--Napoleon's
    Complaints against the British Press--Espionage and
    Confiscation--He continues his Continental Aggressions--Napoleon's
    Interview with Lord Whitworth--Imminence of War--Negotiations for
    Pitt's Return to Office--War Declared--Napoleon arrests British
    Subjects in France--Seizure of Hanover--Emmett's Rebellion--Naval
    Attacks on the French Coast--The Mahratta War--Battle of
    Assaye--Successes of General Lake--Battle of Laswaree--Battle
    of Argaum--Conclusion of the War--Renewed Illness of George
    III.--Increasing Opposition of Pitt--He offers to undertake the
    Government--He forms a Tory Ministry--Wilberforce's Abolition
    Motion--The Additional Force Bill--Scheme for blowing up the
    French Fleet--War with Spain--The Georges Conspiracy--Murder
    of the Duke D'Enghien--Napoleon becomes Emperor--His
    Letter to the British King--The Condition of Europe--Lord
    Mulgrave's Reply to the Letter--Ministerial Changes--Weakness
    of the Ministry--Attack on Lord Melville--Whitbread's
    Motion--Melville's Defence--His Impeachment voted--Secession of
    Lord Sidmouth--The European Coalition--Hastened by Napoleon's
    Aggressions--Rashness of Austria--Invasion of Bavaria--Napoleon
    marches on the Rhine--Capitulation of the Austrian Army at
    Ulm--Occupation of Vienna--Battle of Austerlitz--Treaties of
    Schönbrunn and Pressburg--The Baltic Expedition--Expedition to
    Naples--Naval Affairs--Nelson's Pursuit of Villeneuve--Calder's
    Engagement--Battle of Trafalgar--Death of Nelson--Continuation
    of the Mahratta War--Lord Lake's Engagements with Holkar--Siege
    of Bhurtpore--Defeat of Meer Khan--The Rajah of Bhurtpore makes
    Peace--Treaties with Scindiah and Holkar--Death of Pitt--Payment of
    his Debts by the Nation                                         485


CHAPTER XIX.

REIGN OF GEORGE III. (_continued_).

    The Ministry of "All the Talents"--Fox informs Napoleon of a
    supposed Scheme for his Assassination--Futile Negotiations for
    Peace--Windham's Army Bills--Resolutions against the Slave Trade
    passed--Inquiry into the Conduct of the Princess of Wales--British
    Expeditions: Stuart in Calabria--Battle of Maida--Continued
    Resistance of the Neapolitans--Recapture of the Cape of Good
    Hope--Expedition to Buenos Ayres--Naval Successes: Victories of
    Duckworth, Warren, and Hood--Cochrane's Daredevilry--Napoleon's
    subject Kingdoms--Prussia makes Complaints--Napoleon prepares
    for War--Murder of Palm--Isolation of Prussia--Imbecility of
    their Plan of Campaign--Battle of Jena--Napoleon in Berlin--He
    seizes Brunswick--Complete Subjugation of Germany--Settlement of
    Germany--The Berlin Decrees--Napoleon rouses the Poles--Campaign
    against Benningsen--Death of Fox--Ministerial Changes--Votes
    in Supply--An Administrative Scandal--Abolition of the Slave
    Trade--Measures of Roman Catholic Relief--Dismissal of the
    Grenville Ministry--The Duke of Portland's Cabinet--Hostile Motions
    in Parliament--The General Election--Irish Coercion Bills--Failure
    of the Expeditions planned by the late Ministry: Buenos Ayres--The
    Expedition to the Dardanelles--Expedition to Alexandria--Attack
    on Rosetta--Withdrawal of the Expedition--War between Russia
    and Turkey--Secret Articles of the Treaty of Tilsit--Bombardment
    of Copenhagen and Capture of the Danish Fleet--Seizure of
    Heligoland--The Campaign in Europe--Battle of Eylau--Benningsen's
    Retreat--Napoleon on the Vistula--Fall of Dantzic--Battle of
    Friedland--Alexander resolves to make Peace--The Meeting on the
    Niemen--Treaty of Tilsit.                                       516


CHAPTER XX.

REIGN OF GEORGE III. (_continued_).

    Napoleon's Designs on Spain--The Continental System--Treaty
    of Fontainebleau--Junot marches on Portugal--Flight of the
    Royal Family--The Milan Decree--The Pope imprisoned in the
    Quirinal--Imbecility of the Spanish Government--Quarrels of the
    Spanish Royal Family--Occupation of the Spanish Fortresses--The
    King's Preparations for Flight--Rests at Madrid--Abdication of
    Charles IV.--Murat occupies Madrid--The Meeting at Bayonne--Joseph
    becomes King of Spain--Insurrection in Spain--The Junta
    communicates with England--Ferocity of the War--Operations
    of Bessières, Duchesne, and Moncey--Dupont surrenders to
    Castanos--Joseph evacuates Madrid--Siege of Saragossa--Napoleon's
    Designs on Portugal--Insurrection throughout the Country--Sir
    A. Wellesley touches at Corunna--He lands at Figueras--Battle
    of Roliça--Wellesley is superseded by Burrard--Battle of
    Vimiera--Arrival of Dalrymple--Convention of Cintra--Inquiry into
    the Convention--Occupation of Lisbon--Napoleon's preparations
    against Spain--Wellington is passed over in Favour of
    Moore--Moore's Advance--Difficulties of the March--Incompetency
    of Hookham Frere--Napoleon's Position in Europe--The Meeting
    at Erfurth--Napoleon at Vittoria--Destruction of the Spanish
    Armies--Napoleon enters Madrid--Moore is at last undeceived--The
    Retreat--Napoleon leaves Spain--Moore retires before Soult--Arrival
    at Corunna--The Battle--Death of Sir John Moore--The Ministry
    determine to continue the War--Scandal of the Duke of York--His
    Resignation--Charges against Lord Castlereagh--Wellesley arrives in
    Portugal--He drives Soult from Portugal into Spain--His Junction
    with Cuesta--Position of the French Armies--Folly of Cuesta--Battle
    of Talavera--State of the Commissariat--Wellesley's Retreat--French
    Victories--The Lines of Torres Vedras--The Walcheren
    Expedition--Flushing taken--The Troops die from Malaria--Disastrous
    Termination of the Expedition--Sir John Stuart in Italy and the
    Ionian Islands--War between Russia and Turkey--Collingwood's last
    Exploits--Attempt of Gambier and Cochrane on La Rochelle.       546


CHAPTER XXI.

REIGN OF GEORGE III. (_continued_).

    Austria gets ready for War--Napoleon's Preparations--Invasion
    of Bavaria by Austria--The Archduke Charles driven from
    Bavaria--Occupation of Vienna--Battle of Aspern--The Spirit
    of Revolt in Germany: Schill and Brunswick--Battle of
    Wagram--Peace of Vienna--Victories of the Tyrolese--Death
    of Hofer--The Betrayal of Poland and Italy--Deposition of
    the Pope--Ministerial Dissensions--Death of Portland, and
    Reconstruction of the Ministry--Inquiry into the Walcheren
    Expedition--Imprisonment of Gale Jones--Burdett committed to the
    Tower--The Piccadilly Riots--Arrest of Burdett--Debates in the
    House of Commons--Agitation for Parliamentary Reform--Liberation
    of Burdett--Remaining Events of the Session--Condition of
    Spain--Soult's victorious Progress--He fails at Cadiz--The
    Guerilla War--Massena sent against Wellington--Capture of
    Ciudad Rodrigo--Capitulation of Almeida--Battle of Busaco--The
    Lines of Torres Vedras--Massena baffled--Condition of the rival
    Armies--Victories in the East and West Indies--The War in Sicily.
                                                                    586




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.


                                     PAGE

    St. James's Palace, in the Time of Anne                           1

    Dean Swift                                                        5

    The English Plenipotentiaries insulted in the Streets of Utrecht  9

    Sir Richard Steele                                               13

    Welfen Castle, Hanover                                           17

    Anne making the Duke of Shrewsbury Lord Treasurer                21

    Great Seal of George I.                                          25

    The Earl of Mar raising the Pretender's Standard                 29

    Retreat of the Highlanders from Perth                            33

    James Edward Stuart, the "Old Pretender"                         37

    Sea Fight off Cape Passaro                                       41

    The South Sea Bubble                                             45

    George I.                                                        49

    Bartholomew Fair, London, in 1721                                53

    Five-Shilling Piece of the South Sea Company                     56

    Five-Guinea Piece of George II.                                  56

    Walpole's Quarrel with Townshend                                 61

    Sir Robert Walpole                                               65

    The Porteous Mob                                                 69

    Great Seal of George II.                                         73

    Maria Theresa and the Hungarian Parliament                       77

    George II.                                                       85

    Interior of the House of Commons in 1742                         89

    The Landing of Prince Charlie                                    93

    Prince Charles Edward Stuart (the "Young Pretender")             97

    Prince Charlie's Vanguard at Manchester                         101

    Culloden House                                                  105

    The Standard of Prince Charlie's Bodyguard, taken at Culloden   108

    The End of the '45                                              109

    Flora Macdonald                                                 113

    Wedding in the Fleet                                            117

    Defeat of General Braddock in the Indian Ambush                 121

    London Bridge in 1760                                           125

    Lord Clive                                                      129

    Surprise of Frederick at Hochkirch                              132

    Admiral Rodney bombarding Le Hâvre                              133

    Death of Wolfe                                                  137

    Martello Tower on the Plains of Abraham, Quebec                 140

    George Whitefield preaching                                     141

    John Wesley                                                     144

    Interior of the Jerusalem Chamber, Westminster Abbey            145

    Henry Fielding                                                  149

    Costumes of the Period of George II.                            153

    Mrs. Arabella Hunt singing to Queen Mary                        156

    Handel                                                          157

    St. Paul's Cathedral, London, and Ludgate Hill, as it was       161

    William Hogarth                                                 165

    Great Seal of George III.                                       169

    George III.                                                     173

    Temple Bar in 1800                                              176

    Lord Bute and the Londoners                                     177

    John Wilkes                                                     181

    Revenue Cutters capturing an American Smuggling Vessel          185

    Troops escorting the Stamped Paper to the City Hall, New York   189

    The Mob releasing Mr. Wilkes on his Way to Prison               193

    William Pitt, Earl of Chatham                                   197

    Affray at Boston between the Soldiers and Rope-Makers           201

    Spade Guinea of George III.                                     204

    Five-Shilling Piece of George III.                              204

    Twopenny Piece of George III.                                   204

    Press-Gang at Work                                              205

    Boston "Boys" disguised as Indians throwing the Tea Chests
      into the Harbour                                              209

    Benjamin Franklin                                               213

    American Twenty Dollars Bill (1775)                             216

    Montgomery's Assault on the Lower Town, Quebec                  221

    Signatures to the Declaration of Independence                   225

    Washington crossing the Delaware                                229

    American Bill of Credit (1775)                                  233

    Washington and his Men at Valley Forge                          237

    George Washington                                               241

    Surrender of Burgoyne at Saratoga                               245

    Washington at Valley Forge: By the Camp Fire                    249

    Death of the Earl of Chatham                                    253

    The Saucy "Arethusa" and the "Belle Poule"                      257

    Lord North                                                      261

    "No Popery" Rioters assaulting Lord Mansfield                   265

    Dr. Johnson viewing the Scene of some of the "No Popery" Riots  269

    Old Newgate                                                     273

    Arrest of Major André                                           277

    Surrender of Lord Cornwallis, York Town                         281

    Edmund Burke                                                    285

    Henry Grattan                                                   289

    The Attack on the "Ville de Paris"                              293

    Map of the United States at the Time when they gained
      their Independence                                            297

    The Mansion House, London, in 1760                              301

    Charles James Fox                                               305

    General Election of 1784: Master Billy's Procession to
      Grocer's Hall--Pitt presented with the Freedom of
      the City of London                                            308

    General Election of 1784: The Hustings, Covent Garden;
      The Westminster Deserter drummed out of the
      Regiment--Defeat of Sir Cecil Wray                            309

    View of London from the Tower to London Bridge in the
      latter Part of the 18th Century                               313

    Deposition of Meer Jaffier                                      317

    The Great Mogul entering the English Camp                       320

    Warren Hastings                                                 321

    Benares                                                         325

    Surrender of Baillie to Hyder Ali                               329

    Arrest of the Rajah of Benares                                  333

    Richard Brinsley Sheridan                                       337

    The Trial of Warren Hastings                                    341

    Carlton House, London (1780)                                    345

    William Pitt                                                    348

    Expulsion of the Professors from the University of Antwerp      353

    Notre Dame, Paris                                               357

    The French Revolution: Costume of Lady of the Period            360

    The French Revolution: Costume of 1790                          360

    The French Revolution: Costume "à la Robespierre"               361

    Tricoteuse, or knitting Woman, of the National Convention       361

    The Conquerors of the Bastille                                  365

    The Bastille                                                    369

    Captain Cook                                                    373

    Scene in the House of Commons: Breach between Burke and Fox     377

    William Wilberforce                                             381

    The Priestley Riots at Birmingham                               385

    The Count de Mirabeau                                           389

    Government House, Calcutta                                      393

    View in Old Paris: Rue de Pirouette, North Side of Les Halles   397

    The Royal Family of France on their Way to the Assembly         401

    Marie Antoinette (1783)                                         405

    View in Old Paris: The Porte au Blé, from the End of
      the Old Cattle Market to the Pont Notre Dame                  409

    Trial of Louis XVI.                                             413

    Robespierre                                                     417

    View in the Old Town, Warsaw                                    420

    Retreat of the Royalists from Toulon                            421

    Napoleon Buonaparte, Lieutenant of Artillery                    425

    The Tolbooth, Edinburgh                                         429

    Calvi, Corsica                                                  432

    St. Just                                                        433

    Paris under the Reign of Terror: a Vain Appeal                  437

    The Palace of the Tuileries, Paris                              441

    La Roche-Jaquelein and the Republican Soldiers                  445

    Attack on the Royal Carriage                                    449

    The Cathedral of Milan                                          453

    The Mutiny at Spithead: Hauling down the Red Flag on
      the "Royal George"                                            457

    The Doge's Palace, Venice                                       459

    Dublin Castle                                                   461

    Capture of Wolfe Tone                                           465

    Lord Nelson                                                     469

    Napoleon's Coup de Main: Scene in the Hall of the Ancients      473

    Genoa                                                           477

    Nelson at the Battle of Copenhagen                              480

    Copenhagen                                                      481

    Sir Ralph Abercromby                                            484

    Napoleon and his Suite at Boulogne                              489

    The Jumma Musjid, Delhi                                         492

    The Chase at Argaum                                             493

    Kidnapping of the Duke d'Enghien                                497

    The Coronation of Napoleon in Notre Dame                        501

    Herrenhausen Castle, Hanover                                    505

    Lord Collingwood                                                509

    Sailing into Action at Trafalgar                                512

    The "Victory" at Portsmouth                                     513

    Talleyrand                                                      517

    The Queen of Prussia reviewing the Army                         525

    Napoleon at Rossbach                                            528

    Murat (King of Naples)                                          529

    Charing Cross, London, in 1795                                  533

    The British Fleet passing through the Dardanelles               537

    Departure of the British Troops from Alexandria                 540

    Heligoland                                                      541

    The Treaty of Tilsit                                            545

    Flight of the Royal Family of Portugal                          548

    Capture of Godoy                                                552

    Heroism of the Maid of Saragossa                                557

    Sir John Moore                                                  561

    The Royal Palace, Madrid                                        564

    Burial of Sir John Moore                                        569

    Sir David Baird                                                 573

    Map of Spain and Portugal to illustrate the Peninsular War      576

    The Bayonet Charge at Talavera                                  577

    The Duke of Wellington                                          581

    The "Mediator" breaking the Boom at La Rochelle                 585

    Marshal Lannes at Ratisbon                                      588

    The Duke of Brunswick and his Hussars (the Black Brunswickers)  592

    Andrew Hofer appointed Governor of the Tyrol                    593

    George Canning                                                  597

    Cadiz                                                           600

    Arrest of Sir Francis Burdett                                   601

    Wellington's Retreat from Coimbra                               605




LIST OF PLATES.


    PRINCE CHARLIE'S FAREWELL TO FLORA MACDONALD, 1746. (_By
      George W. Joy_)                                     _Frontispiece_

    GREENWICH HOSPITAL. (_By T. B. Hardy_)              _To face p._ 65

    GEORGE II. AT DETTINGEN, 1743. (_By Robert Hillingford_)  "      82

    "GOD SAVE KING JAMES." (_By Andrew C. Gow, R.A._)         "      94

    MAP OF ENGLAND DURING THE CIVIL WAR, 1642-1649            "     100

    AFTER CULLODEN: REBEL HUNTING. (_By Seymour Lucas, R.A._) "     107

    DR. JOHNSON IN THE ANTE-ROOM OF LORD CHESTERFIELD, WAITING
      FOR AN AUDIENCE, 1748. (_By E. M. Ward, R.A._)          "     145

    MAP OF THE AMERICAN PROVINCES IN 1763                     "     184

    "THE POLLING." (_By W. Hogarth_)                          "     192

    THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE OF THE UNITED STATES OF
    AMERICA, JULY 4TH, 1776. (_By J. Trumbull_)               "     226

    GIBRALTAR. (_By Birket Foster, R.W.S._)                   "     257

    THE GORDON RIOTS. (_By Seymour Lucas, R.A._)              "     266

    THE DEFENCE OF GIBRALTAR BY LORD HEATHFIELD, 1782.
      (_By J. S. Copley, R.A._)                               "     294

    LOUIS XVI. AND MARIE ANTOINETTE IN THE PRISON OF THE
      TEMPLE. (_By E. M. Ward, R.A._)                         "     404

    LADY HAMILTON WELCOMING THE VICTORS OF THE NILE. (_By R.
      Hillingford_)                                           "     468

    NELSON'S CHASE AFTER THE FRENCH FLEET, 1805. (_By Thomas
      Davidson_)                                              "     497

    THE BATTLE OF TRAFALGAR AND THE VICTORY OF LORD NELSON
      OVER THE COMBINED FRENCH AND SPANISH FLEETS, OCTOBER
      21ST, 1805. (_By Clarkson Stanfield, R.A._)             "     505

    THE "VICTORY" TOWED INTO GIBRALTAR AFTER TRAFALGAR. (_By
      Clarkson Stanfield, R.A._)                              "     510

    THE DEATH OF NELSON. (_By Daniel Maclise, R.A._)          "     521

    "CRIPPLED BUT UNCONQUERED." (_By W. L. Wyllie, R.A._)     "     529

    NAPLES, FROM THE MERGELLINA. (_By Birket Foster, R.W.S._) "     550

[Illustration: PRINCE CHARLIE'S FAREWELL TO FLORA MACDONALD, 1746

FROM THE PAINTING BY GEORGE W. JOY.]




[Illustration: ST. JAMES'S PALACE, IN THE TIME OF ANNE.]




CASSELL'S

ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF ENGLAND




CHAPTER I.

THE REIGN OF ANNE (_concluded_).

    Meeting of Parliament--Eugene's Visit to England--Ministerial
    Attacks on the Dutch--Meeting of the Negotiators at Utrecht--The
    Question of the Spanish Throne--Sham Fighting against the
    French--Debates on the Peace in Parliament--Withdrawal of the
    English Troops--Consequent Triumph of the French--Bolingbroke's
    Visit to Paris--Break-up of the Grand Alliance--More Negotiations
    with the Pretender--Death of Godolphin--Marlborough retires
    to the Continent--Signature of the Peace--The Treaty of
    Commerce--Its Rejection by the Commons--The Whereabouts
    of the Pretender--Dissolution of Parliament--The General
    Election--Intrigues with St. Germains--Bolingbroke's Activity--His
    Friends in Office--The Empire and Spain make Peace--The Pretender
    declines Overtures to Change his Religion--Illness of the
    Queen--Tax on Newspapers--Attack upon the "Public Spirit of the
    Whigs"--Steele expelled the House--Proposals against the Pretender
    and for bringing over the Electoral Prince--Counter-scheme for
    bringing over the Pretender--Obstacles to the Scheme--The Queen's
    Letter to the Elector--Death of the Electress Sophia--The Schism
    Bill--Its Progress through the Houses--Reward for the Apprehension
    of the Pretender--Fall of Oxford--Bolingbroke's Jacobite
    Cabinet--Illness of the Queen--The Whig _Coup d'État_--Ruin and
    Desperation of the Jacobites--Death of Anne--Proclamation of George
    I.


The Houses of Parliament reassembled on the 17th of January, 1712, and
Anne sent word that she was not able to attend in person, not having
recovered sufficiently from her attack of the gout. She announced that
the plenipotentiaries were now assembled at Utrecht, and were already
engaged in endeavouring to procure just satisfaction to all the Allies
according to their several treaties, and especially with relation to
Spain and the Indies. This was a delusion, for, by our treaty with the
Emperor, we had engaged to secure Spain and the Indies for his son;
and it was now, notwithstanding the assurance in her message regarding
them, fully determined to give them up to Philip. There was a strong
protest in the message against the evil declarations that there had
been an intention to make a separate peace, though nothing was more
notorious than that the Ministers were resolved, if the Allies did
not come to their terms, to go on without them. The message ended by
recommending a measure for the restriction of the liberty of the press.
Much alarm was expressed at the great licence in the publishing of
false and scandalous libels, though the Ministers themselves did not
scruple to employ the terrible pen of Swift.

On the 6th of January there landed at Greenwich an illustrious visitor
to the Court on an unwelcome errand--namely, Prince Eugene. The Allies,
justly alarmed at the Ministerial revolution which had taken place in
England, and at the obvious design of the Tories to render abortive
all the efforts of the Whigs and the Allies through the war, from mere
party envy and malice, sent over Eugene to convince the queen and
the Government of the fatal consequences of such policy. Harley paid
obsequious court to the prince as long as he hoped to win him over. He
gave a magnificent dinner in his honour, and declared that he looked on
that day as the happiest of his life, since he had the honour to see in
his house the greatest captain of the age. The prince, who felt that
this was a mean blow at Marlborough, replied with a polite but cutting
sarcasm, which must have sunk deep in the bosom of the Lord Treasurer,
"My lord, if I am the greatest captain of the age, I owe it to your
lordship." That was to say, because he had deprived the really greatest
captain of his command. The queen, though she was compelled to treat
Eugene graciously, and to order the preparation of costly gifts to him
as the representative of the Allies, regarded him as a most unwelcome
guest, and in her private circle took no pains to conceal it. The whole
Tory party soon found that he was not a man to be seduced from his
integrity, or brought to acquiesce in a course of policy which he felt
and knew to be most disgraceful and disastrous to the peace of Europe;
and being fully convinced of this, they let loose on the illustrious
stranger all the virulence of the press. Eugene returned to the
Continent, his mission being unaccomplished, on the 13th of March.

Whilst Prince Eugene had been labouring in vain to recall the English
Government from its fatal determination to make a disgraceful peace,
the Dutch envoy Van Buys had been equally active, and with as little
success. The Ministers incited the House of Commons to pass some severe
censures on the Dutch. They alleged that the States General had not
furnished their stipulated number of troops both for the campaigns
in the Netherlands and in Spain; that the queen had paid above three
millions of crowns more than her contingent. They attacked the Barrier
Treaty, concluded by Lord Townshend with them in 1709, and declared
that it contained several Articles destructive to the trade and
interests of Great Britain; that Lord Townshend was not authorised to
make that treaty; and that both he and all those who advised it were
enemies to the queen and kingdom. They addressed a memorial to the
queen, averring that England, during the war, had been overcharged
nineteen millions sterling--which was an awful charge of mismanagement
or fraud on the part of the Whig Ministers. They further asserted that
the Dutch had made great acquisitions; had extended their trade as well
as their dominion, whilst England had only suffered loss. Anne gave
her sanction to this address by telling the House that she regarded
their address as an additional proof of their affection for her person
and their attention to the interests of the nation; and she ordered
her ambassador at the Hague, the new Earl of Strafford, to inform the
States of these complaints of her Parliament, and to assure them that
they must increase their forces in Flanders, or she must decrease hers.

This naturally roused the States, who made a very different statement;
contending that, by the treaties, every ally was bound to do all in
its power to bring the common enemy to terms; that England, being more
powerful than Holland, ought to bear a larger share of the burden of
the war; yet that the forces of Holland had been in the Netherlands
often upwards of a hundred thousand, whilst those of England had not
amounted to seventy thousand; that this had prevented the Dutch from
sending more soldiers to Spain; and that, whilst England had been at
peace in her own territory, they (the Dutch) had suffered severely in
the struggle. To this a sharp answer was drawn up by St. John, and
despatched on the 8th of March, of which the real gist was that,
according to the Dutch, England could never give too much, or the
United Provinces too little. Nothing could exceed the bitterness of
tone which existed between England and the Allies, with whom it had
so long manfully contended against encroaching France; for the whole
world felt how unworthily the English generally were acting under the
Tory Ministry, and this did not tend to forward the negotiations,
which had been going on at Utrecht since the 29th of January. To this
conference had been appointed as the British plenipotentiaries, the new
Earl of Strafford--whom Swift, a great partisan of the Tory Ministry,
pronounced a poor creature--and Robinson, Bishop of Bristol, Lord Privy
Seal. On the part of France appeared the Marshal d'Uxelles, the Abbé
de Polignac, and Mesnager, who had lately been in England settling the
preliminaries. On the part of the Dutch were Buys and Vanderdussen;
and, besides these, the Emperor, the Duke of Savoy, and the lesser
German princes had their representatives.

France and England being already agreed, independently of the consent
of the rest of the Allies, the conference began on a basis which
was sure to lead to immediate confusion and contention. The Dutch
plenipotentiaries were astonished to see the different tone displayed
by the French ambassadors. They were no longer the humble personages
that they had been at Gertruydenberg. The Abbé Polignac, who was the
chief speaker, assumed a high and confident manner. The French envoys,
therefore, when the Dutch deputies demanded that the treaty should
be carried out on the basis of the terms offered at Gertruydenberg,
told them plainly that matters were now quite altered, and that the
conditions offered at Gertruydenberg could not be entertained by France
at all, but those to which the Queen of England had agreed in London;
that unless the Dutch were willing to treat on these conditions,
they would find their allies concluding peace without them, and that
on the spot. The chief article to which the Allies objected was the
concession of Spain to Philip; and they were the more resolute because
it had become imminently necessary from changes that had now taken
place in France. The Dauphin had died of the smallpox during the last
year. The title had been conferred on his son, the Duke of Burgundy;
but the Duke of Burgundy had just expired, too, in the sixth year of
his age; and of the Dauphin's children there only now remained the
Duke of Anjou, a sickly child of two years old. This child was the
only remaining obstacle to Philip, the King of Spain, mounting the
throne of France. The danger was so obvious of the union of France and
Spain in a very few years--to prevent which had been the object of the
war--that the English Government was compelled to demand from Philip
a distinct renunciation of all claims on the French Crown, and from
France as distinct a one in the treaty that any such claim should be
resisted. St. John entered into a correspondence with De Torcy, the
French minister, on this point; and the answers of De Torcy must have
shown the English Government how useless it was to attempt to bind
Frenchmen on such matters. He replied that any renunciation on the part
of Philip or any French prince would be utterly null and void according
to the laws; that on the king's death the next heir male of the royal
blood succeeded, independently of any disposition or restriction of
the late king, or any will of the people, or of himself, even; that
he was, by the laws of France, sovereign by right of succession, and
must be so, in spite of any circumstances to the contrary; that neither
himself, the throne, nor the people had anything to do with it, but
to obey the constitution. Therefore, even if Philip did bind himself
to renounce the Crown of France, should the present Dauphin die, he
would be king, independently of any circumstances whatever. Another
expedient, however, was proposed by the English ministry, who must have
seen clearly enough the folly of their treating on such hollow ground.
That was, if Philip did not like to renounce the Crown of France, he
should at once quit the throne of Spain, and agree that the Duke of
Savoy should take it and the Indies, surrendering his own territories
to Philip, to which should be added Naples, Sicily, Montserrat, and
Mantua, all of which, whenever Philip succeeded to the French Crown,
should be annexed to France, with the exception of Sicily, which should
be made over to Austria. Louis XIV. professed to be delighted with this
arrangement, but Philip would not listen to it, showing plainly that he
meant, notwithstanding any renunciation, to retain his claim to both
France and Spain.

On such utterly unsubstantial ground did the English ministers continue
this negotiation. They assured De Torcy that the Queen of England
insisted on Philip's renunciation of one throne or the other, and he
at length renounced that of France, everybody seeing that the sense in
which he renounced it was no renunciation at all, but a pretence to
get the peace effected; and thus the English ministers, with their
eyes open to the fraud, went on urging the Allies to come into these
most delusive and unsatisfactory terms. But as the renunciation of
Philip did not arrive till after midsummer, the negotiators at Utrecht
continued to talk without advancing, and the armies in the field
continued to look at each other without fighting.

Marshal Villars, like the French plenipotentiaries, had made a great
display of forces, pretty certain, from private information, that
there was little fear of being attacked. The Allies had a fine army of
one hundred and twenty thousand men opposed to him; but so far as the
English were concerned, their commander had his hands tied. The Duke
of Ormonde was sent to take the place of the Duke of Marlborough--a
certain indication that he was meant only for a mere show general. He
was a staunch Jacobite, but no general of talents or experience fit to
succeed a man like Marlborough. On arriving at the Hague he assured the
States General that his instructions were to act zealously with the
Allies, and especially the Dutch, and from his letters it would appear
that such were his orders. But before his arrival, Mr. Thomas Harley, a
relative of Oxford's, and the Abbé Gualtier, had reached the Hague, and
had assured the plenipotentiaries that the Government had determined on
peace, and would not allow the army to fight. They also brought over
with them the scheme of the Treaty, which was not yet to be made known
to the Dutch. But the States General were too well aware of the hollow
proceedings of the English Court, and, disgusted at the withdrawal of
Marlborough and the substitution of Ormonde, they would not entrust
their troops to him, but appointed Eugene as their own general. Thus,
instead of one generalissimo of consummate genius, the army was divided
under two chiefs, the abler chief, the Prince Eugene, having the
utmost contempt for the martial talents of his colleague. All on the
part of England, both in the conference and in the army, was hollow,
treacherous, and disgraceful. Yet, though there was to be no fighting,
the pretence of it was kept up. The Earl of Albemarle marched with a
detachment of the army to Arras, where he burnt and destroyed some
magazines of the French. Ormonde, too, joined Prince Eugene on the 26th
of May, and the united army passed the Scheldt, and encamped between
Haspres and Solennes. Eugene proposed to attack Villars in his lines,
and Ormonde consented to it, but he immediately received a peremptory
order from Mr. Secretary St. John against engaging in any siege or
battle, and he was directed to keep this order profoundly secret from
the Allies. Ormonde was also instructed that if Villars should intimate
that he was aware of these secret proceedings, he was to take no notice
of them; nor was Villars long in letting him know that they might now
consider each other as friends. The situation of Ormonde thus became
one of extreme embarrassment. On the one hand, Eugene urged him to
prepare for an engagement; on the other, the Dutch were impatient to
see some stroke which should humble the French and make negotiation
more easy; but Ormonde was as unable to move, notwithstanding previous
assurances, as if he had been a mere image of wood. He wrote to St.
John, expressing in strong terms the embarrassing nature of his
situation, assuring him that the Dutch were exclaiming that they were
betrayed; but St. John encouraged him to hold out as well as he could,
and Ormonde condescended to play this false and degrading part, equally
disgraceful to him as a general and a man of any pretences to honour.
The prince urged forward the necessity of laying siege to Quesnoy,
and Ormonde was allowed, for the sake of keeping up appearances, to
furnish a considerable detachment for the purpose. But there was so
evident a backwardness in the duke's movements, that the Dutch deputies
complained vehemently to the English plenipotentiaries at Utrecht of
his refusal to act in earnest against the enemy. Thereupon Robinson,
the bishop, took high ground, and retorted that the States General had
met the queen's proposals for peace so strangely, that her Majesty
now felt herself released from any further obligation to maintain the
treaties and engagements between herself and them. This roused the
States to great and indignant activity. They entered into communication
with the Electors of Hanover, of Hesse-Cassel, and other princes of
the Empire, regarding the effective service of their troops in the
pay of Great Britain. They sent off warm remonstrances to the Queen
of England, and Anne was obliged to summon a council, in which it was
agreed that Ormonde should appear as much as possible to concur with
Eugene in the siege.

Accordingly, on the 5th of June, the queen proceeded to the House
of Lords, and stated in a long speech the terms on which it was
proposed to make the peace with France--namely, that Louis XIV. should
acknowledge the Protestant succession and remove the Pretender out of
France; that Philip should renounce the Crown of Spain, should that
of France devolve on him; and that the kings of both France and Spain
should make solemn engagements for themselves and their heirs that the
two kingdoms should never be united under one crown; that Newfoundland,
with Placentia, Hudson's Bay, Nova Scotia, or Acadia, as it was then
termed by the French, as well as Gibraltar, Port Mahon, and the whole
island of Minorca, should be ceded to England; that the Spanish
Netherlands, Naples, Sardinia, the Duchy of Milan, and the places on
the Tuscan coast, formerly belonging to Spain, should be yielded to
Austria, the appropriation of Sicily being not so far determined;
that France would make the Rhine the barrier of the Empire, yielding
up all places beyond it, and razing the fortresses on the German side
as well as in the river; that the barriers of Savoy, the Netherlands,
and Prussia, should be made satisfactory to the Allies. The Electoral
dignity was to be acknowledged in the House of Hanover.

[Illustration: DEAN SWIFT.]

The House of Commons received the speech with enthusiasm, and carried
up an address of thanks in a body. Very different, however, was the
reception of the speech in the House of Lords. Lord Wharton proposed
that in the address they should declare themselves against a separate
peace, and the Duke of Marlborough supported that view. He said that
for a year past the measures pursued were directly opposed to her
Majesty's engagement with the Allies, had sullied the glories of her
reign, and would render our name odious to all nations. Lord Strafford,
who had come over from the Hague purposely to defend the Government
policy, and his own share in it at Utrecht, asserted that the
opposition of the Allies would not have been so obstinate had they not
been encouraged by a certain member of that House who corresponded with
them, and stimulated them by assurances that they would be supported
by a large party in England. This blow aimed at Marlborough called up
Lord Cowper, who directed his sarcasm against Strafford on the ground
of his well-known illiterate character, observing that the noble lord
had been so long abroad that he had forgotten not only the language but
the constitution of his country; that according to our laws it could
never be a crime in an individual to correspond with its allies, but
that it was a crime to correspond, as certain persons did, with the
common enemy, unknown to the allies, and to their manifest prejudice.
The amendment of Lord Wharton, however, was rejected, and the protest,
entered against its rejection by twenty peers and bishops, was voted
violent and indecorous, and erased from the journal.

Notwithstanding these addresses and the confident tone of the Queen's
Speech, the Funds fell, and there was general dissatisfaction at the
conditions of the proposed pacification. In order to stimulate the
proceedings and excite a jealousy of the Dutch, St. John professed to
discover that they were themselves secretly negotiating with France,
and urged that, if we did not take care, they would have the management
of the negotiations and not her Majesty. Lord Strafford hastened back
to the Hague, and from thence to Utrecht, where he proposed a cessation
of arms, which was rejected by the Allies. He then went on to the army,
where the Duke of Ormonde was in a situation of the utmost difficulty.
He had received orders from Government, in consequence of the clamour
in Parliament, to support Prince Eugene at the siege of Quesnoy, which
he had invested on the 8th of June, and accordingly he had appeared
before the place with such forces as threatened speedily to reduce it.
At the same time he had received from the Marquis de Torcy a copy of
the articles of peace signed by him, and from the Marquis of Villars
the most bitter remonstrances on his conduct, which he did not hesitate
to declare most perfidious and disgraceful. On the other hand, Prince
Eugene, who did not find the English forces, notwithstanding their
presence, rendering any active service, was equally irritated by his
proceedings. Ormonde could but reply to each party that such were
his orders, and leave the Government to bear the ignominy of it. To
extricate themselves from the just censures on this dishonourable
policy, St. John instructed Ormonde to demand from Villars the
surrender of Dunkirk, which, it was asserted, must be put into the
hands of the queen's troops, as a pledge that France would perform all
that she had promised, before there could be a cessation of hostilities.

The French hastened to comply with this condition, on the understanding
that Ormonde would immediately draw off his troops from Quesnoy; and
the duke was obliged to announce to Prince Eugene that he was under
this necessity, in consequence of the terms agreed upon between France
and England; in fact, that he must cease all opposition to the French.
Ormonde, therefore, not only gave the command for the retirement of
the English troops, but also of all those belonging to the German
princes which were in British pay. Eugene and the Dutch field deputies
protested most indignantly against this proceeding, and the mercenary
troops themselves refused to follow Ormonde. In vain did he endeavour
to move the officers of those troops; they despised the conduct of
England in abandoning the advantageous position at which they had
arrived for terminating the war gloriously, and releasing the common
enemy of Europe from his just punishment to gratify party spirit in
England.

When the French saw that Ormonde could not induce the mercenary
troops to move, they refused to surrender Dunkirk, and an English
detachment which arrived there to take possession found the gates
shut in their faces. At this insult the British troops burst out into
a fury of indignation. The officers as well as the men were beside
themselves with shame, and shed tears of mortification, remembering
the glorious times under Marlborough. Ormonde himself, thus disgraced,
thus helpless--for he had not the satisfaction, even, of being able to
avenge himself on the French,--thus deserted by the auxiliaries, and
made a laughing-stock to all Europe by the crooked and base policy of
his Government, retired from before the walls of Dunkirk, and directed
his course towards Douay. The Dutch shut their gates against him, and
he finally retired in ignominy to England.

Eugene, during these affairs, had been actively prosecuting the
fortunes of the Allies with his remnant of an army. He pushed on the
siege of Quesnoy, and took it. He sent a flying detachment of one
thousand five hundred cavalry, under Major-General Grovestein, to make
an incursion into France. This force made a rapid raid in Champagne,
passed the Noire, the Meuse, the Moselle, and the Saar, ravaged the
country, reduced a great number of villages and towns to ashes, rode
up to the very gate of Metz, and then retired to Traerbach with a
load of rich booty. This was a proof of what might have been done in
France at this period with the whole army united under a commander like
Marlborough, in place of miserably giving up everything to that country
in the moment of power. As it was, it created the utmost consternation
in Paris, the people of which already saw the English at their gate;
whilst Louis did not think himself safe at Versailles, but gathered
all the troops in the neighbourhood of the capital around his palace,
leaving the city to take care of itself.

But Harley and St. John had deprived the nation of its triumph, and
left the way open to fresh insults and humiliations. No sooner did
Villars see the English forces withdrawn from the Allies, than he
seized the opportunity to snatch fresh advantages for France, and thus
make all their demands on the Allies certain. He crossed the Scheldt on
the 24th of July, and, with an overwhelming force, attacked the Earl
of Albemarle, who commanded a division of the Allied army at Denain.
Eugene, who, from the reduction of Quesnoy, had proceeded to lay siege
to Landrey, instantly hastened to the support of Albemarle; but, to his
grief, found himself, when in sight of him, cut off from rendering him
any assistance by the breaking down of the bridge over the Scheldt; and
he had the pain to see Albemarle beaten under his very eyes. Seventeen
battalions of Albemarle's force were killed or taken. He himself and
all the surviving officers were made prisoners. Five hundred wagons
loaded with bread, twelve pieces of brass cannon, a large quantity of
ammunition and provisions, horses and baggage, fell into the hands of
the French. Villars then marched on to Marchiennes, where the stores
of the Allies were deposited, and took it on the 31st of July, the
garrison of five thousand being sent to Valenciennes prisoners. He next
advanced to Douay, where Eugene would have given him battle, but was
forbidden to do so by the States, and thus Douay fell into Villars'
hands. Then came the fall of Quesnoy and Bouchain, which had cost
Marlborough and Eugene so much to win.

It was now the turn of the French to triumph, and of the Allies to
suffer consternation. Louis, once more elate, ordered _Te Deum_ to be
sung in Notre Dame, and all Paris was full of rejoicing. He declared
that God had given a direct and striking proof of the justice of his
cause and of the guilty obstinacy of the Allies. His plenipotentiaries
assumed at Utrecht such arrogance that their very lacqueys imitated
them; and those of Mesnager insulted one of the plenipotentiaries,
Count von Richteren, and Louis justified them against all complaints.
In such circumstances, all rational hope of obtaining peace except on
the disgraceful terms accepted by England vanished.

In fact, though the Allies still held out, it was useless.
Bolingbroke--for St. John had been called in this year to the Upper
House as Viscount Bolingbroke--accompanied by Matthew Prior, had been
in Paris since the beginning of August, where they were assisted also
by the Abbé Gualtier, determined to close the negotiations for England,
whether the Allies objected or not. To make this result obvious to the
whole world, the troops which Ormonde had brought home were disbanded
with all practicable speed. The ostensible cause of Bolingbroke's and
Prior's visit to Paris was to settle the interests of the Duke of
Savoy and the Elector of Bavaria; but the real one was to remove any
remaining impediment to the conclusion of the Treaty of Peace. France
and England were quite agreed; Bolingbroke returned to London, and
Prior remained as resident at the Court of France, as if the Articles
of Peace were, in fact, already signed. A truce, indeed, for four
months longer by land and sea was proclaimed in Paris. It was agreed
that the Pretender should return to Lorraine; that all hostilities
should cease in Italy in consequence of the arrangement of the affairs
of the Duke of Savoy; and that the Austrian troops should be allowed to
quit Spain and return to Naples.

The secession of the Duke of Savoy only the more roused the indignation
of the Allies. The Dutch breathed a hotter spirit of war just as their
power of carrying it on failed; and even the experienced Heinsius
made an energetic oration in the States General, declaring that
all the fruits of the war would be lost if they consented to the
peace proposed. But to avoid it was no longer possible. The English
plenipotentiaries pressed the Allies more and more zealously to come
in, so much so that they were scarcely safe from the fury of the Dutch
populace, who insulted the Earl of Strafford and the Marquis del
Borgo, the Minister of the Duke of Savoy, when the news came that the
duke had consented to the peace. Every endeavour was made to detach
the different Allies one by one. Mr. Thomas Harley was sent to the
Elector of Hanover to persuade him to co-operate with her Majesty; but,
notwithstanding all risk of injuring his succession to the English
Crown, he declined. Similar attempts were made on the King of Prussia
and other princes, and with similar results. The English Ministers
now began to see the obstacles they had created to the conclusion of
a general peace by their base desertion of the Allies. The French,
rendered more than ever haughty in their demands by the successes of
Villars, raised their terms as fast as any of the Allies appeared
disposed to close with those already offered. The Dutch, convinced at
length that England would make peace without them, and was bending
every energy to draw away their confederates, in October expressed
themselves ready to treat, and to yield all pretensions to Douay,
Valenciennes, and Mauberg, on condition that Condé and Tournay were
included in their barrier; that the commercial tariffs with France
should be restored to what they were in 1664; that Sicily should be
yielded to Austria, and Strasburg to the Empire. But the French treated
these concessions with contempt, and Bolingbroke was forced to admit
to Prior that they treated like pedlars, or, what was worse, like
attorneys. He conjured Prior "to hide the nakedness of his country" in
his intercourse with the French Ministers, and to make the best of the
blunders of his countrymen, admitting that they were not much better
politicians than the French were poets. But the fault of Bolingbroke
and his colleagues was not want of talent, it was want of honesty; and,
by their selfish desire to damage their political rivals, they had
brought their country into this deplorable dilemma of sacrificing all
faith with their allies, of encouraging the unprincipled disposition of
the French, who were certain to profit by the division of the Allies,
and of abandoning the glory and position of England, or confessing that
the Whigs, however much they had erred in entering on such enormous
wars, had in truth brought them to the near prospect of a far more
satisfactory conclusion than what they were taking up with.

Whilst matters were in this discouraging condition, Lord Lexington
was sent to Spain to receive the solemn renunciation of the Crown of
France for Philip and his successors, in the presence of the Cortes,
which accordingly took place on the 5th of November. Portugal, also,
on the 7th of November, signed, at Utrecht, the suspension of arms, at
the same time admitting to the Allies that she did it only as a matter
of absolute necessity. The Portuguese had held out firmly till the
English refused to give them any assistance, when the Marquis de Bay
invaded the kingdom at the head of twenty thousand men, and laid siege
to Campo-Major. The English troops in Spain were ordered to separate
from those of the Allies under Count Stahremberg, and were marched into
Catalonia to embark at Barcelona. The people of that province beheld
the English depart with sentiments of indignant contempt. England had
first incited them to take up arms and declare for King Charles under
the most solemn engagements never to make peace without them. But now
they had broken their faith in the most shameless manner, and left them
to the vengeance of the French triumphant in Spain. Such on all sides
were the facts which forced on the world the conviction of the perfidy
of England, which had hitherto borne so fair a reputation.

Another dishonourable characteristic of the Ministers of Queen Anne
at this period was that they were in secret zealous partisans of the
Pretender, and whilst openly professing a sacred maintenance of the
Protestant succession, were doing all in their power to undermine
it. They had given mortal offence to the Elector George of Hanover,
the heir to the Throne, by their treachery to the Allies; and, as
the health of the queen was most precarious from her excessive
corpulence and gout, which was continually menacing a retreat to her
stomach, this was equally a cause for their hastening the peace,
however disgracefully, and for paving the way, if possible, for the
return of the Pretender at the queen's death. Bolingbroke was the
great correspondent with St. Germains, as his letters in the Stuart
Papers abundantly show. But Oxford, although always more cunning and
mysterious, was equally concerned in it; nor was the queen, if we
may believe these remarkable papers, by any means averse from the
succession of the Pretender, in spite of his stubborn adhesion to
Popery. The Jacobite party was numerous, powerful, and indefatigable.
They were in the Ministry and in both Houses of Parliament. At this
moment a public appointment was made which filled the Whigs with
consternation and rage. This was no other than that of the Duke of
Hamilton--a supposed partisan of the Pretender--to be Ambassador to the
Court of Versailles. Prior was still there, and had all the requisites
of a clever and painstaking Envoy; but, being only a commoner and a
poet, it did not suit the aristocratic notions of England that he
should be accredited Ambassador. Hamilton was appointed, and would
thus have had the amplest opportunity of concerting the return of the
Stuarts with the base ministers at home. But he was not destined to see
Versailles, for, as readers of Thackeray's "Esmond" will remember, he
was killed in a duel by Lord Mohun.

[Illustration: THE ENGLISH PLENIPOTENTIARIES INSULTED IN THE STREETS OF
UTRECHT. (_See p._ 7.)]

Instead of Hamilton, the Duke of Shrewsbury was sent to Versailles,
where Matthew Prior remained to lend his superior knowledge of French
affairs and superior address to the negotiations. The weight of Tory
vengeance now fell on the Duke of Marlborough, whom the ministers
justly regarded as the most dangerous man amongst the Whigs by his
abilities and the splendour of his renown. The Earl of Godolphin died
in September of this year. He had always been a staunch friend of the
Marlboroughs. His son, Lord Rialton, was married to Marlborough's
eldest daughter, and during Godolphin's later years he was nearly
a constant resident with the Marlboroughs, and died at their lodge
in Windsor Park. Godolphin was one of the best of the Whigs; of a
clear, strong judgment, and calm temper. He had rendered the most
essential services during the conflict against France, by ably and
faithfully conducting affairs at home, whilst Marlborough was winning
his victories abroad; and that great general knew that he should be
supported against all his enemies and detractors so long as Godolphin
remained in power. The highest eulogium on Godolphin's honesty lies in
the fact that he died poor. But at Godolphin's death Marlborough stood
a more exposed object to the malice of his foes. They did not hesitate
to assert that he had had a deep concern in the plot for Hamilton's
death. He was also harassed by debt. He therefore resolved to retire
to the Continent, where he continued to keep up a correspondence with
the Elector of Hanover and the Pretender to the last, so that whichever
came in he might stand well with him. He wrote to St. Germains, showing
that though he had appeared to fight against the King of England, as he
styled the Pretender, it was not so. He had fought to reduce the power
of France, which would be as much to the advantage of the king when he
came to the throne as it was to the present queen. He gave his advice
to the Pretender for his security and success. "The French king and his
ministers," he says, "will sacrifice everything to their own views of
peace. The Earl of Oxford and his associates in office will probably
insist upon the king's retiring to Italy; but he must never consent.
He must neither yield to the French king, nor to the fallacious
insinuations of the British Ministry, on a point which must inevitably
ruin his cause. To retire to Italy, by the living God! is the same
thing as to stab himself to the heart. Let him take refuge in Germany,
or in some country on this side of the Alps. He wants no security for
his person; no one will touch a hair of his head. I perceive such
a change in his favour, that I think it is impossible but that he
must succeed. But when he shall succeed, let there be no retrospect
towards the past. All that has been done since the Revolution must be
confirmed." He added that Queen Anne had no real aversion from her
brother's interests, but that she must not be alarmed, as she was very
timid.

At length it was announced that peace was signed with France at
Utrecht, and it was laid before the Council (March 31, 1713).
Bolingbroke had made another journey to the Continent to hasten the
event, but it did not receive the adhesion of the Emperor at last.
Holland, Prussia, Portugal, and Savoy had signed, but the Emperor, both
as king of Austria and head of the Empire, stood out, and he was to be
allowed till the 1st of June to accept or finally reject participation
in it. This conclusion had not been come to except after two years'
negotiation, and the most obstinate resistance on the part of all the
others except England. Even in the English Cabinet it did not receive
its ratification without some dissent. The Lord Cholmondeley refused
to sign it, and was dismissed from his office of Treasurer of the
Household. On the 9th of April the queen opened Parliament, though she
was obliged to be carried thither and back in a chair in consequence of
her corpulence and gout. She congratulated the country on this great
treaty, declared her firm adherence to the Protestant succession,
advised them to take measures to reduce the scandalous licentiousness
of the Press, and to prevent duelling, in allusion to the tragic
issue of that between Hamilton and Mohun. She finally exhorted them
to cultivate peace amongst themselves, to endeavour to allay party
rage; and as to what forces should be necessary by land and the sea,
she added, "Make yourselves safe; I shall be satisfied. Next to the
protection of Divine Providence, I depend on the loyalty and affection
of my people; I want no other guarantee." On the 4th of May the
proclamation of peace took place. It was exactly eleven years since the
commencement of the war. The conditions finally arrived at were those
that have been stated, except that it was concluded to confer Sicily
on the Duke of Savoy for his services in the war; on the Elector of
Bavaria, as some equivalent for the loss of Bavaria itself, Sardinia,
with the title of king; and that, should Philip of Spain leave no
issue, the Crown of Spain should also pass to him.

The Treaty of Peace received the sanction of the Parliament; not so the
Treaty of Commerce. By this treaty it was provided that a free trade
should be established according to the tariff of 1664, except as it
related to certain commodities which were subjected to new regulations
in 1669. This went to abolish all the restrictions on the importation
of goods from France since that period, and within two months a law
was also to be passed that no higher duties should be levied on goods
brought from France than on the like goods from any other country in
Europe. Commissioners were appointed to meet in London to carry these
propositions into effect; but there immediately appeared a violent
opposition to these regulations, which were contained in the eighth and
ninth articles of the Treaty of Commerce. It was declared that these
articles violated the Treaty of Methuen, according to which the duties
on Portuguese wines were always to be lower by one-third than the
duties on the French wines.

On the 9th of June, when the House of Commons went into committee on
the Bill, a large number of merchants desired to be heard against
it. For several days their statements were heard, and the Portuguese
Ambassador also presented a memorial declaring that should the duties
on French wines be lowered to those of Portugal, his master would
renew the woollen and other duties on the products of Great Britain.
This seemed to enforce the mercantile opinions; the sense of the
whole country was against the treaty, and the speech of Sir Thomas
Hanmer, a Tory, made a deep impression. There was, however, a growing
rumour, during the latter days of the debate, that Oxford had given
the treaty up--a rumour probably not without foundation, for Oxford
and Bolingbroke were no longer in unity. The latter, ambitious and
unprincipled, was intriguing to oust his more slow and dilatory
colleague; and, as the Bill was ostensibly the work of Bolingbroke,
probably Oxford was by no means unwilling that it should be thrown
out to damage him. When the question, therefore, was put on the 18th
of June, that the Bill be engrossed, it was negatived by a majority
of one hundred and ninety-four to one hundred and eighty-five. Thus
the commercial treaty was lost, much to the joy of the nation, and
certainly to its immediate benefit.

The defeated party, however, did not give up the idea of the Treaty of
Commerce. Another Bill was introduced to modify, or, as it was called,
to render the commercial treaty more effectual; but such a host of
petitions was presented against it, that it was abandoned. Sir Thomas
Hanmer, however, proposed and carried an address to the queen, which
was intended to cover, in some degree, the defeat of the Ministers;
and, as he had got rid of the Bill itself, he did not hesitate to
move for what appeared inconsistent with his proceedings, namely,
thanks to her Majesty for the care she had taken of the security and
honour of the kingdom by the Treaty of Peace, and also by her anxiety
for a Treaty of Commerce; and, further, recommending her to appoint
Commissioners to meet those of France, and endeavour to arrange such
terms of commerce as should be for the good and welfare of her people.
This was laid hold of, as was no doubt intended, in the queen's reply,
which assumed this to be a declaration of a full approbation of the
Treaty of Commerce, as well as that of Peace; and she thanked them in
the warmest terms for their address.

Encouraged by their success against the commercial treaty, the Whigs
demanded that the Pretender, according to the Treaty of Peace, should
be requested to quit France. It had been proposed by the French Court,
and privately acceded to by Anne, that he should take up his residence
at Bar-le-duc or Lorraine. The Duke of Lorraine had taken care to
inquire whether this would be agreeable to the queen, and was assured
by her Minister that it would be quite so. As his territory--though
really a portion of France--was nominally an independent territory, it
seemed to comply with the terms of the Treaty; but the Whigs knew that
this was a weak point, and on the 29th of June Lord Wharton, without
any previous notice, moved in the Peers that the Pretender should
remove from the Duke of Lorraine's dominions. The Court party was
completely taken by surprise, and there was an awkward pause. At length
Lord North ventured to suggest that such a request would show distrust
of her Majesty; and he asked where was the Pretender to retire to,
seeing that most, if not all, the Powers of Europe were on as friendly
terms with the king as the Duke of Lorraine. Lord Peterborough
sarcastically remarked that as the Pretender had begun his studies at
Paris, he might very fitly go and finish them at Rome. No one, however,
dared to oppose the motion, which was accordingly carried unanimously.
On the 1st of July, only two days afterwards, General Stanhope made a
similar motion in the House of Commons, which was equally afraid to
oppose it, seeing that the House was still under the Triennial Act, and
this was its last session. The slightest expression in favour of the
Pretender would have to be answered on the hustings, and there was a
long silence. Sir William Whitelock, however, was bold enough to throw
out a significant remark, that he remembered the like address being
formerly made to the Protector to have King Charles Stuart removed out
of France, "leaving to every member's mind to suggest how soon after
he returned to the throne of England notwithstanding." The addresses
carried up from both Houses were received by the queen with an air of
acquiescence, and with promises to do her best to have the Pretender
removed. Prior, in Paris, was directed to make the wishes of the public
known to the French Government. But this was merely _pro formâ_; it
was understood that there was no real earnestness on the part of the
English queen or ministry. Prior, writing to Bolingbroke, said that De
Torcy asked him questions, which for the best reason in the world he
did not answer; as, for instance, "How can we oblige a man to go from
one place when we forbid all others to receive him?" In fact, the Abbé
Gualtier, in his private correspondence, assures us that Bolingbroke
himself suggested to the Duke of Lorraine the pretexts for eluding the
very commands that he publicly sent him.

Anne prorogued Parliament on the 16th of July in a speech, in which she
felicitated herself on having closed a long and bloody war, which she
had inherited, and not occasioned. She trusted also that before the
meeting of the next Parliament the commercial interests of France and
England would be better understood, so that there would be no longer
any obstacle to a good commercial treaty. She said not a word regarding
the Pretender, so that it was felt by the Whigs that she had followed
the dictates of nature rather than of party in regard to him. On the
8th of August she dissolved Parliament by proclamation, its triennial
term having expired. Burnet says it had acquired the name of the
Pacific Parliament; and he winds up his own history with the remark
that "no assembly but one composed as this was could have sat quiet
under such a peace." There was every effort made, however, to impress
on the constituencies the high merit of the Parliament in making an
advantageous and glorious peace, medals being cast for that purpose
bearing the effigy of the queen and a Latin motto laudatory of peace.

The elections were now carried on with all the fire and zeal of the
two parties. The Tories boasted of their successful efforts to stem
the tide of expenditure for the war, to staunch the flow of blood, and
restore all the blessings of peace. The Whigs, on the contrary, made
the most of their opposition to the Treaty of Commerce, which they
represented as designed to sacrifice our trade to the insane regard now
shown to the French. To show their interest in trade, they wore locks
of wool in their hats; and the Tories, to show their attachment to the
Restoration and the Crown, wore green twigs of oak. Never was shown
more completely the want of logical reason in the populace, for whilst
they were declaring their zeal for the Protestant succession, and
whilst burning in effigy on the 18th of November--Queen Bess's day--the
Pope, the Devil, and the Pretender, they sent up a powerful majority
of the men who were secretly growing more and more favourable to the
Pretender's return. Never, indeed, had the chances of his restoration
appeared so great. General Stanhope, on the close of the elections,
told the Hanoverian minister that the majority was against them, and
that if things continued ever so short a time on the present footing,
the Elector would not come to the Crown unless he came with an army.

In the Macpherson and Lockhart Papers we have now the fullest evidence
of what was going on to this end. The agents of both Hanover and St.
Germains were active; but those of Hanover were depressed, those of St.
Germains never in such hope. The Jesuit Plunkett wrote: "The changes go
on by degrees to the king's advantage; none but his friends advanced or
employed in order to serve the great project. Bolingbroke and Oxford do
not set their horses together, because Oxford is so dilatory, and dozes
over things, which is the occasion there are so many Whigs chosen this
Parliament. Though there are four Tories to one, they think it little.
The ministry must now swim or sink with France." In fact, Oxford's
over-caution, and his laziness, at the same time that he was impatient
to allow any power out of his own hands, and yet did not exert it when
he had it, had disgusted the Tories, and favoured the ambitious views
which Bolingbroke was cherishing. The latter had now managed to win
the confidence of Lady Masham from the Lord Treasurer to himself; and,
aware that he had made a mortal enemy of the Elector of Hanover by his
conduct in compelling a peace and deserting the Allies, he determined
to make a bold effort to bring in the Pretender on the queen's decease,
which every one, from the nature of her complaint, felt could not be
far off. To such a pitch of openness did the queen carry her dislike,
that she seemed to take a pleasure in speaking in the most derogatory
terms of both the old Electress Sophia and her son. Oxford's close and
mysterious conduct disgusted the agents of Hanover, without assuring
those of the Pretender, and threw the advantage with the latter
party more and more into the hands of Bolingbroke. Baron Schutz, the
Hanoverian agent, wrote home that he could make nothing of Oxford, but
that there was a design against his master; and when Lord Newcastle
observed to the agent of the Pretender that, the queen's life being so
precarious, it would be good policy in Harley to strike up with the
king and make a fair bargain, the agent replied, "If the king were
master of his three kingdoms to-morrow, he would not be able to do for
Mr. Harley what the Elector of Hanover had done for him already." Thus
Oxford's closeness made him suspected of being secured by the Elector
at the very moment that the Elector deemed that he was leaning towards
the Pretender.

Meanwhile the changes made in the Government offices betrayed the
rising influence of Bolingbroke. The Duke of Shrewsbury was made Lord
Lieutenant of Ireland; the Duke of Ormonde, a noted Jacobite, was
appointed Warden of the Cinque Ports and Governor of Dover Castle, as
if for the avowed purpose of facilitating the landing of the Pretender;
Lord Lansdowne was made Treasurer of the Household; Lord Dartmouth,
Privy Seal; Mr. Bromley, the Tory leader of the Commons, joint
secretary with Bolingbroke; Benson, Chancellor of the Exchequer, was
created Lord Bingley, and sent as ambassador to Spain; and Sir William
Wyndham, till now a friend of Bolingbroke's, succeeded Benson as
Chancellor. Thus Bolingbroke was surrounded by his friends in office,
and became more daring in his rivalry with Oxford, and in his schemes
to supplant the House of Hanover and introduce the Pretender to the
British throne.

[Illustration: SIR RICHARD STEELE.]

Whilst the English Court was distracted by these dissensions, the
Emperor was endeavouring to carry on the war against France by himself.
He trusted that the death of Queen Anne would throw out the Tories, and
that the Whigs coming in would again support his claims, or that the
death of Louis himself might produce a change as favourable to him in
France; he trusted to the genius of Eugene to at least enable him to
maintain the war till some such change took place. But he was deceived.
The French, having him alone to deal with, made very light of it.
They knew that he could neither bring into the field soldiers enough
to cope with their arms, nor find means to maintain them. They soon
overpowered Eugene on the Rhine, and the Emperor being glad to make
peace, Eugene and Villars met at Rastadt to concert terms. They did not
succeed, and separated till February; but met again at the latter end
of the month, and, on the 3rd of March, 1714, the treaty was signed.
By it the Emperor retained Freiburg, Old Briesach, Kehl, and the forts
in the Breisgau and Black Forest; but the King of France kept Landau,
Strasburg, and all Alsace. The Electors of Bavaria and Cologne were
readmitted to their territories and dignities as princes of the Empire.
The Emperor was put in possession of the Spanish Netherlands, and the
King of Prussia was permitted to retain the high quarters of Guelders.

The peace with Spain was also ratified in London on the 1st of March.
By this, Spain, so far as diplomatic contracts could effect it, was
for ever separated from France. Philip acknowledged the Protestant
succession, and renounced the Pretender. He confirmed the Assiento, or
exclusive privilege of the English supplying the Spanish West Indies
and South American colonies with slaves, one-fourth of the profit of
which the queen reserved to herself--a strange proof of the small
idea of the infamy of this traffic which prevailed then in England,
whilst so truly benevolent a woman could calmly appropriate money
so earned to her own use. Gibraltar and Minorca were also confirmed
to England, on condition that the Spanish inhabitants should enjoy
their own property and their religion. There was a guarantee given by
Philip for the pardon and security of the Catalans. They were to be
left in possession of their lives, estates, and honours, with certain
exceptions, and even these were at liberty to quit the country and
remove to Italy with their effects. But the Catalans, who had taken up
arms for Charles of Austria at our suggestion, were greatly incensed
at the dishonourable manner in which we had abandoned them and the
cause, and, putting no faith in the word of Philip, they still remained
in arms, and soon found themselves overrun with French troops, which
deluged their country with blood, and compelled them to submit. Amid
all the disgraceful circumstances which attended the peace of Utrecht,
none reflected more infamy on England than its treatment of the people
of Catalonia.

During these transactions the activity of the Pretender and his agents
was encouraged by the growing influence of Bolingbroke in the English
Court. Bolingbroke proposed to Oxford that they should pay the dowry
of the Pretender's mother, the widow of James II.; but to this Oxford
objected, saying that the widow of James had not contented herself
with the title of queen-dowager of England, but had assumed that of
queen mother, which, he observed, could not be lawfully admitted after
the attainder of her son. This strengthened the hands of Bolingbroke
with Lady Masham, who was violently in favour of the Pretender. Lady
Masham's disgust with Oxford was wonderfully increased. In writing to
Mesnager, she did not hesitate to say that if the Court of St. Germains
trusted to Oxford, they would be deceived; that he was "famous for
loving a secret, and making intricacies where there needed none, and
no less renowned for causing everything of such a nature to miscarry."
The Pretender, having every day increased encouragement from Lady
Masham and Bolingbroke, demanded of the Emperor of Germany one of
his nieces in marriage; and it was reported that the Emperor was
agreeable to it, and ready to espouse his cause. It was well known
that distinct propositions had been made to the Pretender through the
Duke of Berwick, at the instance of Lady Masham, before her breach
with Oxford, by which his restoration on the demise of Anne was agreed
to on condition that he should guarantee the security of the Church
and Constitution of England, and that not even his mother should
be admitted to the knowledge of this agreement. At the last point,
however, Oxford failed to conclude this secret treaty. The Duke of
Berwick, in his Memoirs, says that, in consequence of this conduct of
Oxford's, the friends of the Pretender turned their attention to other
parties about the Court--to Lord Ormonde, the Duke of Buckingham,
and many other persons. Buckingham--who was married to the Lady
Catherine Darnley, a daughter of James II. by Catherine Sedley, and
was, therefore, brother-in-law to the Pretender--wrote to the Earl of
Middleton, the Pretender's Minister, how earnestly he desired to see
the king back on the English throne; that nothing but his religion
stood in the way; that this was the only thing which prevented the
queen from acknowledging him; and he urged him to follow the example of
Henry IV. of France, who gave up the Protestant religion when he saw
that he could not securely hold the Crown without doing so. But the
Pretender was, much to his credit--being firmly persuaded of the truth
of his religion--much too honest to renounce it, even for the Crown of
such a kingdom as Great Britain; and he argued that the English people
ought to see in his sincerity a guarantee for his faithful dealing
with them in all other matters. But, unfortunately, the example of his
father had barred the way to any such plea. No man was more positive
in the adherence to his religion, or in his sacrifices on its account;
but no man had at the same time so thoroughly demonstrated that he had
no such honourable feeling as to breaking his word where any political
matter was concerned.

In the midst of these secret correspondences the queen was seized at
Windsor with a serious illness, and, considering the general state
of her health, it was most threatening. The hopes of the Jacobites
rose wonderfully; the Funds went rapidly down; there was a great run
upon the Bank, and the Directors were filled with consternation by
a report of an armament being ready in the ports of France to bring
over the Pretender at the first news of Anne's decease. They sent
to the Lord Treasurer to inform him of the danger which menaced the
public credit. The whole of London was in excitement, from a report
that the queen was actually dead. The Whigs did not conceal their joy,
but were hurrying to and fro, and meeting in large numbers at the
Earl of Wharton's. The Lord Treasurer, to keep down the public alarm,
remained in town, and contented himself with sending expresses to
obtain constant news of the queen's state, for his hurrying to Windsor
would have had an inconceivable effect. He, therefore, let himself be
seen publicly where he could be questioned regarding the condition
of the queen, and gave assurances that she was better. To allay the
panic, Anne was induced to sign a letter prepared for her, announcing
to Sir Samuel Stancer, the Lord Mayor, that she was now recovering,
and would be in town and open Parliament on the 16th of February. This
news being confirmed, those who had been too hasty in pulling off their
masks found some awkwardness in fitting them on again. The Press was
active. Steele published a pamphlet called "The Crisis," in advocacy
of the Revolution, and on the danger of a Popish succession; whilst
on the other hand came out a reply, supposed to be written by Swift,
not without a few touches from Bolingbroke; it was styled "The Public
Spirit of the Whigs," and was distinguished by all the sarcasm of the
authors. The queen's recovery, and the fact that the French armament
was a fiction, quieted the storm and again restored the Funds.

The Parliament was punctually opened on the 16th of February, 1714, by
the queen, as she had promised at Windsor, though she was obliged to
be carried there; for during last autumn she had been obliged, by her
gout and obesity, to be raised into her chamber by pulleys, and so let
down again, like Henry VIII. After congratulating the two Houses on
the peace with Spain, she turned to the subject of the Press, and the
rumours spread by it regarding the danger of the Protestant succession.
Bolingbroke had been active enough in prosecuting the Press because it
was dangerous to the designs which he was cherishing, notwithstanding
the affected warmth which he and Oxford had put into the queen's
mouth. They had taxed the penny sheets and pamphlets which agitated
these questions; but this, according to Swift, had only done their own
side mischief. Bolingbroke had, further, arrested eleven printers and
publishers in one day. But now the war was opened in Parliament, Lord
Wharton, in the House of Peers, called for the prosecution of "The
Public Spirit of the Whigs," and the printer and publisher were brought
to the bar. These were John Morphew, the publisher, and one John Bache,
the printer. But Lord Wharton, who was aiming at higher quarry, said,
"We have nothing to do with the printer and publisher, but it highly
concerns the honour of this august assembly to find out the villain who
is the author of that false and scandalous libel." Oxford denied all
knowledge of the author, yet, on retiring from the debate, he sent one
hundred pounds to Swift, and promised to do more. Lord Wharton then
turned upon the printer, whom he had first affected to disregard, and
demanded that he should be closely examined; but the next day the Earl
of Mar, one of the secretaries of State, declared that her Majesty had
ordered his prosecution. This was to shield him from the Parliamentary
inquiry. Here the matter dropped, for Swift was too well screened by
his patrons, who had lately rewarded him by Church preferment, and
shortly afterwards made him Dean of St. Patrick's, in Dublin.

The attempt of the Whigs in the Lords to unearth the vituperative
dean, though it had failed, stimulated the Tories in the Commons to
retaliation. Richard Steele, author of "The Tatler," an eloquent and
able writer, had not sought to screen himself from the responsibility
of the honest truths in "The Crisis," as Swift had screened himself
from the consequences of his untruths, and a whole host of Tories
assailed him in the Commons, of which he was a member. Amongst these
were Thomas Harley, the brother of Oxford, Foley, the auditor, a
relative of Oxford's, and Sir William Wyndham, the Chancellor of the
Exchequer. They flattered themselves with an easy triumph over him, for
Steele, though popular as a writer, was new to the House of Commons,
and had broken down in his first essay at speaking there; but he now
astonished them by the vigour, wit, and sarcasm of his defence. He was
ably supported, too, by Robert Walpole, who had obtained a seat in
this new Parliament. Nothing, however, could shield Steele, as Swift's
being anonymous had shielded him. Steele was pronounced by the votes of
a majority of two hundred and forty-five to one hundred and fifty-two
to be guilty of a scandalous libel, and was expelled the House. During
the debate Addison had sat by the side of Steele, and, though he was
no orator to champion him in person, had suggested continual telling
arguments.

The war of faction still went on furiously. In the Lords there was a
violent debate on an address, recommended by Wharton, Cowper, Halifax,
and others, on the old subject of removing the Pretender from Lorraine;
and they went so far as to recommend that a reward should be offered
to any person who should bring the Pretender, dead or alive, to her
Majesty. This was so atrocious, considering the relation of the
Pretender to the queen, that it was negatived, and another clause,
substituting a reward for bringing him to justice should he attempt
to land in Great Britain or Ireland. Though in the Commons, as well
as in the Lords, it was decided that the Protestant succession was in
no danger, an address insisting on the removal of the Pretender from
Lorraine was carried. Anne received these addresses in anything but
a gratified humour. She observed, in reply, that "it really would be
a strengthening to the succession of the House of Hanover, if an end
were put to these groundless fears and jealousies which had been so
industriously promoted. I do not," she said, "at this time see any
necessity for such a proclamation. Whenever I judge it necessary, I
shall give my orders to have it issued."

The Whigs were as active to bring over the Electoral Prince of Hanover
as they were to drive the Pretender farther off. With the Prince in
England, a great party would be gathered about him; and all those who
did not pay court to him and promote the interests of his House would
be marked men in the next reign. Nothing could be more hateful than
such a movement to both the queen and her ministers. Anne had a perfect
horror of the House of Hanover; and of the Ministers, Bolingbroke, at
least, was staking his whole future on paving the way of the Pretender
to the throne. When the Whigs, therefore, instigated Baron Schutz, the
Hanoverian envoy, to apply to the Lord Chancellor Harcourt for a writ
of summons for the Electoral Prince, who had been created a British
peer by the title of the Duke of Cambridge, Harcourt was thrown into
the utmost embarrassment. He pleaded that he must first consult the
queen, who, on her part, was seized with similar consternation. The
Court was equally afraid of granting the writ and of refusing it. If it
granted it, the prince would soon be in England, and the queen would
see her courtiers running to salute the rising sun; the Jacobites, with
Bolingbroke at their head, would commit suicide on their own plans now
in active agitation for bringing in the Pretender. If they refused it,
it would rouse the whole Whig party, and the cry that the Protestant
succession was betrayed would spread like lightning through the nation.
Schutz was counselled by the leading Whigs--Devonshire, Somerset,
Nottingham, Somers, Argyll, Cowper, Halifax, Wharton, and Townshend--to
press the Lord Chancellor for the writ. He did so, and was answered
that the writ was ready sealed, and was lying for him whenever he chose
to call for it; but at the same time he was informed that her Majesty
was greatly incensed at the manner in which the writ had been asked
for; that she conceived that it should have first been mentioned to
her, and that she would have given the necessary orders. But every one
knew that it was not the manner, but the fact of desiring the delivery
of the writ which was the offence.

Every engine of the English Court was put in motion to prevent the
Electoral Prince from coming. Oxford had an interview with Schutz, in
which he repeated that it was his applying for the writ to the Lord
Chancellor instead of to the queen that had done all the mischief;
that her Majesty, had it not been for this untoward incident,
would have invited the Prince to come over and spend the summer in
England--forgetting, as Schutz observed, that the minute before he had
assured him that the queen was too much afraid of seeing any of that
family here. He advised Schutz--who could not be convinced that he had
done anything irregular in his application, quoting numerous proofs to
show that it was the accustomed mode of applying for writs--to avoid
appearing again at Court; but Schutz, not seeming disposed to follow
that advice, immediately received a positive order to the same effect
from the queen through another channel. Schutz, therefore, lost no
time in returning to Hanover to justify himself. At the same time,
Lord Strafford was instructed to write from the Hague, blaming the
conduct of Schutz in applying for the writ in the manner he did, as
disrespectful to the queen; for, though strictly legal for an absent
peer to make such application, the etiquette was that he should defer
it till he could do it personally. Strafford ridiculed the idea of any
movement being afoot in favour of the Pretender, and observed that,
as to sending him out of the Duke of Lorraine's territory, it was not
practicable, because the French king maintained that he had fulfilled
the treaty, Lorraine not being any part of France. On the other hand,
there were striking signs that the cause of Hanover was in the
ascendant. Men who watched the course of events decided accordingly.
Marlborough, who so lately had been making court to the Pretender, now
wrote from Antwerp, urging the House of Hanover to send over the prince
without delay to England; that the state of the queen's health made
prompt action necessary; and that the presence of the prince in London
would secure the succession without risk, without expense, and without
war, and was the likeliest measure of inducing France to abandon its
design of assisting the Pretender.

[Illustration: WELFEN CASTLE, HANOVER.]

The real fact was, that exertions equally strenuous were all this time
being made on the part of the Pretender. As the state of Anne's health
became more and more precarious, both parties increased their efforts
to secure their ground, and there was a most active and incessant
struggle going on round the throne to enable the head of either
party to step into it the moment it became vacant. It was considered
essential for the claimant to be on the spot, and, therefore, every
means was used to induce the queen to admit the Pretender as well as
a member of the Electoral House to Court. It was a scheme of the Duke
of Berwick, which he communicated to Oxford through the Abbé Gualtier,
that the queen should be induced to consent to do her brother justice;
that he should go to St. James's, and that on the understanding that he
consented to allow liberty of the subject and of religion, the queen
should pass such Acts as were necessary for the public security on
these heads, and that then she should suddenly introduce him in full
Parliament.

But there was a circumstance taken for granted in such a scheme which
would never have been realised--the consent of the queen. Anne, like
most other sovereigns, abhorred the idea of a successor. She never
liked the contemplation of the occupation of her throne after death,
much less did she relish the presence of a competitor during her
lifetime. Besides in her days of disease and weakness she had enough to
do to manage her Ministry, without adding to her anxieties by a rival
authority either from Hanover or St. Germains. There was still another
obstacle--the unsatisfactory conduct of Oxford, who had professed
great zeal for the Pretender till he got the Peace of Utrecht signed,
because this secured him the vote of the Jacobites, but who since then
had trifled with them, and never could be brought to any positive
decision. Berwick had sent over the Abbé Gualtier to endeavour to bring
Oxford to a point. Gualtier soon informed his employer that Oxford was
actively corresponding with the House of Hanover and therefore Berwick
and De Torcy wrote a joint letter to him, putting the plain question,
what measures he had taken to secure the interests of the Pretender in
case of the death of the queen, which no one could now suppose to be
far off. Oxford, with unwonted candour this time, replied that, if the
queen died soon, the affairs of the Prince and of the Cabinet too were
ruined without resource. This satisfied them that he had never really
been in earnest in the Pretender's cause, or he would long ago have
taken measures for his advantage, or would have told them that he found
it impossible. They determined, therefore, to throw the interests of
the Jacobites into the party of Bolingbroke; and this was another step
in Oxford's fall. They managed to set Lady Masham warmly against him,
and this undermined him more than ever with the queen.

The scene grew every day more busy as the queen became more obviously
failing. Harley, at Hanover, was plying the Elector and his family
with reasons why the prince ought not to go to England. The Elector
himself appeared quite of the same opinion; but not so the Electress
or her son. The Electress, who was now nearly eighty-four, and who
was undoubtedly a woman of a very superior character, still had that
trace of earthly ambition in her, that she used frequently to say
she should die contented if she could only once for a little while
feel the crown of England on her head. She was the youngest daughter
of Elizabeth of Bohemia, who had ruined her husband by a similar
longing after a far less resplendent diadem. When pressed by Harley,
the Electress and her son presented him with a memorial, which he was
desired to forward to the queen. Anne, in indignation, addressed a
letter to the Electress, but without effect; and on the 30th of May
she indited a more determined epistle to the Elector himself:--"As the
rumour increases that my cousin, the Electoral Prince, has resolved to
come over to settle in my lifetime in my dominions, I do not choose to
delay a moment to write to you about this, and to communicate to you
my sentiments upon a subject of this importance. I then freely own to
you that I cannot imagine that a prince who possesses the knowledge
and penetration of your Electoral Highness can ever contribute to such
an attempt, and that I believe you are too just to allow that any
infringement shall be made on my sovereignty which you would not choose
should be made on your own. I am firmly persuaded that you would not
suffer the smallest diminution of your authority. I am no less delicate
in that respect; and I am determined to oppose a project so contrary to
my royal authority, however fatal the consequences may be."

This put matters beyond all chance of mistake. The menace had such an
effect on the aged Electress that she was taken ill and died suddenly
in the arms of the Electoral Princess, afterwards Queen Caroline (May
28, 1714). Sophia was a very accomplished as well as amiable woman. She
was perfect mistress of the German, Dutch, French, English, and Italian
languages; and, notwithstanding the endeavours of the Jacobite party in
England to render her ridiculous, had always maintained an elevated and
honourable character. She was more of an Englishwoman than a German,
and, had she lived a few weeks longer, would have had--according to her
often avowed wish--"Here lies Sophia, Queen of England," engraven on
her coffin. The journey of the prince was wholly abandoned; not that
the inclination of the prince for the journey was abated, nor that the
Whigs ceased to urge it. Townshend, Sunderland, Halifax, and others
pressed it as of the utmost importance; and both the Elector and his
son wrote to the queen, assuring her that, had the prince been allowed
to come, he would soon have convinced her Majesty of his desire to
increase the peace and strength of her reign rather than to diminish
them.

The two rival Ministers of England became every day more embittered
against each other; and Bolingbroke grew more daring in his advances
towards the Pretender, and towards measures only befitting a Stuart's
reign. In order to please the High Church, whilst he was taking the
surest measures to ruin it by introducing a popish prince, he consulted
with Atterbury, and they agreed to bring in a Bill which should prevent
Dissenters from educating their own children. This measure was sure to
please the Hanoverian Tories, who were as averse from the Dissenters as
the Whigs. Thus it would conciliate them and obtain their support at
the very moment that the chief authors of it were planning the ruin of
their party. This Bill was called the Schism Bill, and enjoined that
no person in Great Britain should keep any school, or act as tutor,
who had not first subscribed the declaration to conform to the Church
of England, and obtained a licence of the diocesan. Upon failure of
so doing, the party might be committed to prison without bail; and no
such licence was to be granted before the party produced a certificate
of his having received the Sacrament according to the communion of the
English Church within the last year, and of his having also subscribed
the oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy.

This Act, as disgraceful as any which ever dishonoured the statute-book
in the reigns of the Tudors or Stuarts, was introduced into the
Commons, on the 12th of May, by Sir William Wyndham, and was resolutely
opposed by the Whigs, amongst whom Sir Peter King, Sir Joseph Jekyll,
Mr. Hampden, Robert Walpole, and General Stanhope distinguished
themselves. They did not convince the majority, which amounted to no
less than two hundred and thirty-seven to one hundred and twenty-six.
In the Lords, Bolingbroke himself moved the second reading, and it
was ably opposed by the Lords Cowper, Wharton, Halifax, Townshend,
Nottingham, and others. The greatest curiosity was displayed regarding
the part which Oxford would take, as it was known that in the Council
he had endeavoured to soften the rigorous clauses; but in the House
he followed his usual shuffling habit, declaring that he had not yet
considered the question; and, having induced the Opposition to let the
second reading pass without a division, he absented himself from the
final voting, and thus disgusted both parties and hastened his own fall.

In committee the Opposition endeavoured to introduce some modifying
clause. They proposed that the Dissenters should have schools for their
own persuasion; and, had the object of the Bill been to prevent them
from endangering the Church by educating the children of Churchmen,
this would have served the purpose. But this was not the real object;
the motive of the Bill was the old tyrannic spirit of the Church, and
this most reasonable clause was rejected. They allowed, however, dames
or schoolmistresses to teach the children to read; and they removed
the conviction of offenders from the justices of peace to the courts
of law, and granted a right of appeal to a higher court. Finally,
they exempted tutors in noblemen's families, noblemen being supposed
incapable of countenancing any other than teachers of Court principles.
Stanhope seized on this to extend the privilege to the members of the
House of Commons, arguing that, as many members of the Commons were
connected with noble families, they must have an equal claim for the
education of their children in sound principles. This was an exquisite
bit of satire, but it was unavailing. The Hanoverian Tories, headed
by Lord Anglesey, moved that the Act should extend to Ireland, where,
as the native population was almost wholly Catholic, and therefore
schismatic in the eye of the Established Church, the Bill would have
almost entirely extinguished education. The Bill was carried on the
10th of June by a majority only of seventy-seven against seventy-two,
and would not have been carried at all except for the late creation of
Tory peers.

The Hanoverian Tories now again joined the Whigs, and their demands
compelled the Government to issue a proclamation offering a reward of
five thousand pounds for the apprehension of the Pretender should he
attempt to land anywhere in Great Britain. Wharton proposed that the
words "Alive or Dead" should be inserted in the proclamation, but the
queen rejected them with horror. The House of Lords passed a resolution
increasing the reward to one hundred thousand pounds. It was made high
treason, too, to enlist or be enlisted for the Pretender. Bolingbroke,
however, assured Iberville, a French agent, that "it would make no
difference;" and that the queen regarded the whole as a mere sop to
the public was evinced by her immediately afterwards receiving the
Earl of Mar, a most determined Jacobite, at Court on his marriage with
Lady Francis Pierrepoint, sister of the celebrated Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu, and soon after making this man one of her Ministers of State,
who, in the very next year, headed the Jacobite rebellion.

The queen closed the session on the 9th of July, assuring the
Parliament that her chief concern was for the preservation of our holy
religion and the liberty of the subject--this liberty having been most
grievously invaded by her through the Schism Bill. But the dissolution
of her Ministry was also fast approaching. The hostility of Oxford and
Bolingbroke was becoming intolerable, and paralysed all the proceedings
of Government. As for Oxford, he felt himself going, and had not the
boldness and resolution to do what would ruin his rival. He coquetted
with the Whigs--Cowper, Halifax, and others; he wrote to Marlborough,
and did all but throw himself into the arms of the Opposition. Had he
had the spirit to do that he might have been saved; but it was not in
his nature. He might then have uncovered to the day the whole monstrous
treason of Bolingbroke; but he had himself so far and so often, though
never heartily or boldly, tampered with treason, that he dreaded
Bolingbroke's retaliation. Bothmar, the Hanoverian envoy, saw clearly
that Oxford was lost. He wrote home that there were numbers who would
have assisted him to bring down his rival, but that he could not be
assisted, because, according to the English maxim, he did not choose to
assist himself. Swift endeavoured, but in vain, to reconcile his two
jarring friends; and Oxford finally utterly lost himself by offending
the great favourite, Lady Masham. He had been imprudent enough to
oppose her wishes, and refuse her some matter of interest. He now was
treated by her with such marked indignity, that Dr. Arbuthnot declared
that he would no more have suffered what he had done than he would have
sold himself to the galleys. Still, with his singular insensibility to
insult, he used to dine at the same table with her frequently, and also
in company with Bolingbroke, too.

Anne demanded Oxford's resignation. The "dragon," as Arbuthnot styled
him, held the White Staff with a deadly grip; but, on the 27th of July,
he was compelled to relinquish it, and that afternoon her Majesty
stated to the Council her reasons for dismissing him. His confidant and
creature, Erasmus Lewis, himself thus records them:--"The queen has
told all the Lords the reasons of her parting with him, namely, that
he neglected all business; that he was seldom to be understood; that
when he did explain himself she could not depend upon the truth of what
he said; that he never came to her at the time she appointed; that he
often came drunk; lastly, to crown all, that he behaved himself towards
her with bad manners, indecency, and disrespect."

Bolingbroke was now Prime Minister, and he hastened to arrange his
Cabinet entirely on Jacobite principles. So far as he was concerned,
the country was to be handed over to the Pretender and popery on the
queen's death. He would not run the risk of a new antagonist in the
shape of a Lord Treasurer, but put the Treasury in commission, with Sir
William Wyndham at its head. The Privy Seal was given to Atterbury;
Bromley was continued as the other Secretary of State; and the Earl
of Mar, the rankest of Jacobites, was made Secretary of State for
Scotland. Ormonde, long engaged in the Pretender's plot, was made
Commander-in-Chief--a most significant appointment; Buckingham was
made Lord President, and Harcourt Lord Chancellor. As for the inferior
posts, he found great difficulty in filling them up. "The sterility
of good men," wrote Erasmus Lewis to Swift, "is incredible." Good
men, according to the unprincipled Bolingbroke's notions, were not to
be found in a hurry. There were plenty of candidates ready, but it
may give an impressive notion of the state of that party, that there
was scarcely a man beyond those already appointed whom Bolingbroke
could trust. The Cabinet never was completed. What his own notions of
moral or political honesty were, may be imagined from the fact that
he did not hesitate to attempt a coalition with the Whigs. He gave
a dinner-party at his house in Golden Square to Stanhope, Walpole,
Craggs, General Cadogan, and other leaders; but though Walpole, when
Minister himself, boasted that every man had his price, Bolingbroke had
not yet discovered Walpole's price nor that of his colleagues. They
to a man demanded, as a _sine quâ non_, that the Pretender should be
compelled to remove to Rome, or to some place much farther off than
Lorraine, and Bolingbroke assured them that the queen would never
consent to such a banishment of her brother. Nothing but the lowest
opinion of men's principles could have led Bolingbroke to expect any
other result from these Whig leaders. Perhaps he only meant to sound
their real views; perhaps only to divert public attention from his
real designs, which the very names of his coadjutors in the Ministry
must have made patent enough to all men of any penetration. The very
same day that he thus gave this Whig dinner he assured Gualtier that
his sentiments towards "the king" were just the same as ever, provided
his Majesty took such measures as would suit the people of England.
Time only was wanting for this traitor-Minister to betray the country
to its old despotisms and troubles; but such time was not in the
plans of Providence. The end of Anne was approaching faster than was
visible to human eyes; but the shrewd and selfish Marlborough had a
pretty strong instinct of it, and was drawing nearer and nearer to the
scene of action, ready to secure himself whichever way the balance
inclined. He was at Ostend, prepared to pass over at an hour's notice,
and to the last moment keeping up his correspondence with the two
Courts of Hanover and Bar-le-duc. Both despised and suspected him, but
feared him at the same time. Such was still his influence, especially
with the army, that whichever party he adopted was considered pretty
sure to succeed. That it was likely to succeed was equally certain
before Marlborough did adopt it. Lockhart of Carnwath, one of the most
active and sagacious Jacobites, and likely to be in the secrets of
the Jacobite party, says that the Pretender, to test the sincerity of
Marlborough, asked the loan of one hundred thousand pounds from him, as
a proof of his fidelity. He did not abide the test, but soon afterwards
offered twenty thousand pounds to the Electoral Prince, to enable him
to come over to England. The moment that Marlborough was prepared,
with his deep-rooted love of money, to do that, it might be certainly
pronounced that he was confident of the success of the Hanoverians.

[Illustration: ANNE MAKING THE DUKE OF SHREWSBURY LORD TREASURER. (_See
p._ 22)]

The agitation which the queen underwent on the night of the 27th, when
she dismissed Oxford after a long and fierce altercation, produced a
marked change in her health. The Council was only terminated, having
sat to consider who should be admitted into the new Ministry, by the
queen falling into a swoon. Being got to bed, she passed the night,
not in sleep, but in weeping. The next day another Council was held,
but was again broken up by the illness of the queen, and was prorogued
to the 29th of July. To Dr. Arbuthnot, her physician, Anne declared
that the disputes of her Ministers had killed her; that she should
never survive it. Lady Masham, struck by the queen's heavy and silent
manner, apprehended the worst. Bolingbroke and his Jacobite colleagues
were thunderstruck by this sudden crisis. They assembled in council at
Kensington, in a room not far from that of the dying queen, but they
were so stupefied by the blow that they could do nothing. On the other
hand, the Whigs had been quite alert. Stanhope had made preparations
to seize the Tower; to secure the persons of the Ministers and the
leading Jacobites, if necessary, on the demise of the queen; to obtain
possession of the outports, and proclaim the king. A proof of this
concert was immediately given by the Dukes of Argyll and Somerset, who
belonged to the Privy Council, but, of course, had not been summoned,
suddenly entering the Council chamber, stating that, hearing of the
queen's critical position, they had hastened, though not summoned, to
offer their assistance. No sooner had they said this, than the Duke of
Shrewsbury rose and thanked them for their courtesy. The Whig dukes
immediately demanded that the queen's physicians should be called and
examined as to her probable continuance. The physicians in general
were of opinion that her Majesty might linger some time; but Dr. Mead
declared that she could not live many days, perhaps not many hours;
from the apoplectic symptoms she might be gone in one. Argyll and
Somerset thereupon declared it absolutely necessary that the post of
Lord Treasurer should be filled up, as it was requisite that, at such a
moment, there should be a recognised Prime Minister, and proposed that
the Duke of Shrewsbury should be nominated to that office. Bolingbroke
felt that his power and his plans were at an end, and sat like one
in a dream. The members of the Council then proceeded to the queen's
apartment, and Bolingbroke followed them, as it were, mechanically.
The queen was sensible enough to be made aware of their errand, and
expressed her approval of it. Shrewsbury, however, with that singular
hesitation which always characterised him, refused to take the White
Staff, except from her Majesty's own hand. It was, therefore, handed to
her, and she extended it towards Shrewsbury, saying, "For God's sake,
use it for the good of my people!" Shrewsbury was already Chamberlain,
and he presented the staff of that office in resignation of it; but the
queen bade him retain both; and thus he was at once Lord Treasurer,
Lord Chamberlain, and Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland.

Oxford had sent round a circular to every Whig lord in or near London
who had ever belonged to the Privy Council, warning them to come and
make a struggle for the Protestant succession. This was one of the
most decided actions of that vibratory statesman, and was, no doubt,
prompted by his desire to avenge his recent defeat by Bolingbroke,
and to stand well at the last moment with the House of Hanover. In
consequence of this, the Jacobite Ministers found themselves completely
prostrate and helpless in the midst of the strong muster of Whigs. Even
the aged and infirm Somers made his appearance, and threw the weight
of his great name into the scale. Prompt measures were taken to secure
the advent of the new king. Four regiments were ordered to London;
seven battalions were sent for from Ostend, where Marlborough was said
to have secured their zealous fidelity to the Elector; a fleet was
ordered to put to sea to prevent any interruption of his transit, and
to receive him in Holland. An embargo was laid on all ports, and Anne
the next morning having sunk again into lethargy, the Council ordered
the Heralds-at-Arms and a troop of the Life Guards to be in readiness
to proclaim her successor. Mr. Craggs was sent express to Hanover to
desire the Elector to hasten to Holland, where the fleet would be
ready to receive him. The Council also sent a dispatch to the States
General, to remind them of the fact--which for a long time and to this
moment the English Government appeared itself to have forgotten--that
there was such a thing as a treaty, and that by it they were bound to
guarantee the Protestant succession. Lord Berkeley was appointed to the
command of the fleet, and a reinforcement was ordered for Portsmouth.
A general officer was hastened to Scotland, where much apprehension
of a movement in favour of the Pretender existed; and, in short,
every conceivable arrangement was made for the safe accession of the
Protestant king.

Still, during all this time, though the Tory Ministers in the Council
appeared paralysed, the Jacobite lords assembled in secret junto in the
very palace where the Council was sitting and the queen dying. Lady
Masham's apartments were the scene of the last convulsive agitation of
Jacobitism. From her the distracted leaders of that faction received
the accounts of the progress of the queen's illness. Amongst these
were Buckingham, Ormonde, Atterbury, and, when he was not at Anne's
bedside, Robinson, Bishop of London. This prelate, when he attended
to administer the Sacrament to the dying woman, received a message
from her, which he was bound by the Duchess of Ormonde to promise
to deliver, though it cost him his head. Probably it was some last
remembrance to her brother, the Pretender; though it was supposed by
some to be an order to the Duke of Ormonde, the Commander-in-Chief,
to hold the army for the Stuart. Nothing, however, of the nature of
this message ever transpired; but the Duke of Buckingham, on the
separation of the Council, which had just obtained the affixing of the
Great Seal to a patent providing for the government of the country by
four-and-twenty regents till the arrival of the successor, clapped his
hand on Ormonde's shoulder, saying, "My lord, you have four-and-twenty
hours to do our business in, and make yourself master of the country."
It was a forlorn hope. That evening Lady Masham entered her apartments
in great agitation, saying, "Oh, my lords, we are all undone--entirely
ruined! The queen is a dead woman; all the world cannot save her!"
Upon which one of the lords asked if the queen had her senses, and if
Lady Masham thought she could speak to them. She replied, "Impossible;
her pain deprives her of all sense, and in the interval she dozes and
speaks to nobody." "That is hard indeed," said one of the lords. "If
she could but speak to us, and give us orders, and sign them, we might
do the business for all that." "Alas!" replied another lord, "who would
act on such orders? We are all undone!" "Then we cannot be worse,"
said a third. "I assure you," remarked another of these conspirators,
probably Ormonde, "that if her Majesty would give orders to proclaim
her successor in her lifetime, I would do it at the head of the
army. I'll answer for the soldiers." "Do it, then!" swore the Bishop
Atterbury, for he did not stick at an oath. "Let us go out and proclaim
the Chevalier at Charing Cross. Do you not see that we have no time to
lose?" Lady Masham told them they might waive debate; there was nothing
to be done; her Majesty was no longer capable of directing anything. On
which the Duke of Ormonde exclaimed, "Lord, what an unhappy thing this
is! What a cause is here lost at one blow!"

The queen expired at seven o'clock on Sunday morning, the 1st of
August, 1714, not having recovered sufficient consciousness to receive
the Sacrament, or to sign her will. During her intervals of sense she
is reported to have repeatedly exclaimed, "Oh, my brother, my dear
brother, what will become of you!" She was still only in her fiftieth
year, and the thirteenth of her reign. Bolingbroke wrote to Swift--"The
Earl of Oxford was removed on Tuesday, and the queen died on Sunday.
What a world is this, and how does fortune banter us!"

Bolingbroke had assured Iberville, the French agent, that, had the
queen only lived six weeks longer, his measures were so well taken that
he should have brought in the Pretender in spite of everything. On the
very day of the queen's death Marlborough landed at Dover, so exactly
had he timed his return. He found George I. proclaimed in London, in
York, and in other large towns, not only without disorder, but with an
acclamation of joy from the populace which plainly showed where the
heart lay.




CHAPTER II.

THE REIGN OF GEORGE I.

    Peaceful Accession of George I.--His Arrival--Triumph of the
    Whigs--Dissolution and General Election--The Address--Determination
    to Impeach the late Ministers--Flight of Bolingbroke and
    Ormonde--Impeachment of Oxford--The Riot Act--The Rebellion
    of 1715--Policy of the Regent Orleans--Surrender of the
    Pretender's Ships--The Adventures of Ormonde and Mar--The
    Highlands declare for the Pretender--Mar and Argyll--Advance
    of Mackintosh's Detachment--Its Surrender at Preston--Battle
    of Sheriffmuir--Arrival of the Pretender--Mutual
    Disappointment--Advance of Argyll--Flight of the Pretender to
    France--Punishment of the Rebels--Impeachment of the Rebel
    Lords--The Septennial Act--The King goes to Hanover--Impossibility
    of Reconstructing the Grand Alliance--Negotiations with
    France--Danger of Hanover from Charles XII.--And from Russia--Alarm
    from Townshend--Termination of the Dispute--Fresh Differences
    between Stanhope and Townshend--Dismissal of the Latter--The
    Triple Alliance--Project for the Invasion of Scotland--Detection
    of the Plot--Dismissal of Townshend and Walpole--They go into
    Opposition--Walpole's Financial Scheme--Attack on Cadogan--Trial of
    Oxford--Cardinal Alberoni--Outbreak of Hostilities between Austria
    and Spain--Occupation of Sardinia--Alberoni's Diplomacy--The
    Quadruple Alliance--Byng in the Mediterranean--Alberoni deserted by
    Savoy--Death of Charles XII.--Declaration of War with Spain--Repeal
    of the Schism Act--Rejection of the Peerage Bill--Attempted
    Invasion of Britain--Dismissal of Alberoni--Spain makes
    Peace--Pacification of Northern Europe--Final Rejection of the
    Peerage Bill--The South Sea Company--The South Sea Bill--Opposition
    of Walpole--Rise of South Sea Stock--Rival Companies--Death
    of Stanhope--Punishment of Ministry and Directors--Supremacy
    of Walpole--Atterbury's Plot--His Banishment and the Return
    of Bolingbroke--Rejection of Bolingbroke's Services--A Palace
    Intrigue--Fall of Carteret--Wood's Halfpence--Disturbances in
    Scotland--Punishment of the Lord Chancellor Macclesfield--The
    Patriot Party--Complications Abroad--Treaty of Vienna--Treaty
    of Hanover--Activity of the Jacobites--Falls of Ripperda and of
    Bourbon--English Preparations--Folly of the Emperor--Attack on
    Gibraltar--Preliminaries of Peace--Intrigues against Walpole--Death
    of George I.


The calculations of no political party had ever been more completely
falsified than those of the Jacobites and their congeners the Tories
on the death of the queen. They had relied on the fact that the House
of Hanover was regarded with dislike as successors to the throne of
England by all the Catholic Powers of Europe, on account of their
Protestantism, and many of the Protestant Powers from jealousy; and
reckoned that, whilst France would be disposed to support the claims of
the Pretender, there were no Continental countries which would support
those of Hanover, except Holland and the new kingdom of Prussia,
neither of which gave them much alarm. Prussia was but a minor Power,
not capable of furnishing much aid to a contest in England. Holland
had been too much exhausted by a long war to be willing to engage
in another, except for a cause which vitally concerned itself. In
England, the Tories being in power, and Bolingbroke earnest in the
interest of the Pretender, the Duke of Ormonde at the head of the
army, there appeared to the minds of the Jacobites nothing to fear but
the too early demise of the queen, which might find their plans yet
unmatured. To this they, in fact, attributed their failure; but we
may very confidently assert that, even had Anne lived as long as they
desired her, there was one element omitted in their calculations which
would have overthrown all their attempts--the invincible antipathy
to Popery in the heart of the nation, which the steadfast temper of
the Pretender showed must inevitably come back with him to renew all
the old struggles. The event of the queen's death discovered, too, the
comparative weakness of the Tory faction, the strength and activity of
the Whigs. The king showing no haste to arrive, gave ample opportunity
to the Jacobites--had they been in any degree prepared, as they ought
to have been, after so many years, for this great crisis--to introduce
the Pretender and rally round his standard. But whilst George I.
lingered, no Stuart appeared; and the Whigs had taken such careful and
energetic precautions, that without him every attempt must only have
brought destruction on the movers. The measures of Shrewsbury were
complete. The way by sea was secured for the Protestant king, and the
Regency Act provided for the security of every department of Government
at home.

Before the proclamation of the new king the Council had met, and,
according to the Regency Act, and an instrument signed by the king and
produced by Herr Kreyenberg, the Hanoverian resident, nominated the
persons who were to act till the king's arrival. They consisted of the
seven great officers of State and a number of the peers. The whole was
found to include eighteen of the principal noblemen, nearly all of the
Whig party, as the Dukes of Shrewsbury, Somerset, and Argyll; the Lords
Cowper, Halifax, and Townshend. It was noticed, however, that neither
Marlborough, Sunderland, nor Somers was of the number; nor ought this
to have excited any surprise, when it was recollected that the list was
drawn out in 1705, though only signed just before the queen's death.
These noblemen belonged to that junto under whose thraldom Anne had so
long groaned. The omission, however, greatly incensed Marlborough and
Sunderland.

[Illustration: GREAT SEAL OF GEORGE I.]

Marlborough landed at Dover on the day of the queen's death, where he
was received with the warmest acclamations and tokens of the highest
popularity. He was met on his approach to London by a procession of two
hundred gentlemen, headed by Sir Charles Coxe, member for Southwark. As
he drew nearer this procession was joined by a long train of carriages.
It was like a triumph; and Bothmar, the Hanoverian Minister, wrote home
that it was as if he had gained another battle at Höchstädt (Blenheim)
that he would be of great service in case the Pretender should make any
attempt, but that he was displeased that he was not in the regency, or
that any man except the king should be higher in the country than he.
He went straight to the House of Lords to take the oaths to the king;
but at Temple Bar his carriage broke down, to the great delight of the
people, because it compelled him to come out and enter another, by
which they got a good view of him. Having taken the oaths, he retired
into the country till the arrival of the king, disgusted at his not
being in the regency.

The Lords Justices having met, appointed Joseph Addison, afterwards so
celebrated as a writer, and even now very popular, as their secretary,
and ordered all despatches addressed to Bolingbroke to be brought to
him. This was an intimation that Bolingbroke would be dismissed; and
that proud Minister, instead of giving orders, was obliged to receive
them, and to wait at the door of the Council-chamber with his bags and
papers. As the Lords Justices were apprehending that there might be
some disturbances in Ireland, they were about to send over Sunderland
as Lord-Lieutenant, and General Stanhope as Commander-in-Chief; but
they were speedily relieved of their fears by the intelligence that
all had passed off quietly there; that the Lords Justices of Ireland,
the Archbishop of Armagh, and Sir Constantine Phipps, who had been
more than suspected of Jacobitism, had proclaimed the king on the
6th of August, and, to give evidence of their new zeal, had issued
a proclamation for disarming Papists and seizing their horses. The
proclamation of George passed with the same quietness in Scotland, and
no king, had he been born a native, in the quietest times, could have
succeeded to the throne more smoothly. Eighteen lords, chiefly Whigs,
were nominated by the new king to act as a Council of Regency, pending
his arrival, and the Civil List was voted by Parliament.

During these transactions there was naturally an earnestly-inquiring
eye kept open towards Hanover, whence the king appeared in no hurry
to issue forth and assume the throne of these three fair kingdoms.
The coolness with which George of Hanover appeared to contemplate the
splendid prize which had fallen to him, seemed to the English little
less than unnatural. Thrones and crowns are generally seized upon
with avidity; but the new king seemed to feel more regret in quitting
his petty Electorate than eagerness to enter on his splendid kingdom.
But George was a man of phlegmatic disposition, and of the most exact
habits, and went through his duties like an automaton or a piece of
machinery. He took, therefore, much time in settling his affairs in
Hanover before he turned his face towards England, and it was not till
the 18th of September, or nearly seven weeks after the decease of the
late queen, that he landed at Greenwich with his son George. "His views
and affections were," as Lord Chesterfield properly observed, "singly
confined to the narrow compass of his Electorate. England was too big
for him."

The triumph of the Whigs was complete. Whilst Oxford, who had been
making great efforts at the last to retrieve himself with his party
by assisting them to seize the reins of power on the queen's illness,
was admitted in absolute silence to kiss the king's hand, and that not
without many difficulties, Marlborough, Somers, Halifax, and the rest
were received with the most cordial welcome. Yet, on appointing the
new cabinet, the king showed that he did not forget the double-dealing
of Marlborough. He smiled on him, but did not place him where he hoped
to be, at the head of affairs. He made Lord Townshend Secretary of
State and Prime Minister; Stanhope, the second Secretary; the Earl of
Mar was removed from the Secretaryship of Scotland to make way for
the Duke of Montrose; Lord Halifax was made First Lord Commissioner
of the Treasury, and was raised to an earldom, and was allowed to
confer on his nephew the sinecure of Auditor of the Exchequer; Lord
Cowper became Lord Chancellor; Lord Wharton was made Privy Seal,
and created a marquis; the Earl of Nottingham became President
of the Council; Mr. Pulteney was appointed Secretary-at-War; the
Duke of Argyll, Commander-in-Chief for Scotland; Shrewsbury, Lord
Chamberlain and Groom of the Stole; the Duke of Devonshire became Lord
Steward of the Household; the Duke of Somerset, Master of the Horse;
Sunderland, Lord-lieutenant of Ireland; Walpole was at first made
simply Paymaster of the Forces, without a place in the cabinet, but
his ability in debate and as a financier soon raised him to higher
employment; Lord Orford was made First Lord of the Admiralty; and
Marlborough, Commander-in-Chief and Master of the Ordnance. His power,
however, was gone. In the whole new cabinet Nottingham was the only
member who belonged to the Tory party, and of late he had been acting
more in common with the Whigs. The Tories complained vehemently of
their exclusion, as if their dealings with the Pretender had been a
recommendation to the House of Hanover. They contended that the king
should have shown himself the king of the whole people, and aimed at a
junction of the two parties.

The Ministerial arrangements being completed, the coronation took place
on the 31st of October, and was fully attended by the chief nobles and
statesmen, even by Oxford and Bolingbroke, and was celebrated in most
parts of the kingdom with many demonstrations of joy. Parliament was
then dissolved, and the elections went vastly in favour of the Whigs,
though there were serious riots at Manchester, and throughout the
Midlands. The hopes of advantage from a new monarch made their usual
conversions. In the House of Commons of 1710 there was a very large
majority of Whigs; in that of 1713 as great a one of Tories; and now
again there was as large a one of Whigs. In the Lords the spectacle was
the same. Bolingbroke says, "I saw several Lords concur to condemn, in
one general vote, all that they had approved of in a former Parliament
by many particular resolutions."

In the Commons, Mr. Spencer Compton, the Ministerial nominee, was
elected Speaker. The king opened his first Parliament in person, but,
being unable to speak English, he handed his speech to Lord Chancellor
Cowper to read. In the Commons the Address condemned in strong language
the shameful peace which had been made after a war carried on at such
vast expense, and attended with such unparalleled successes; but
expressed a hope that, as this dishonour could not with justice be
imputed to the nation, through his Majesty's wisdom and the faithful
endeavours of the Commons the reputation of the kingdom might in due
time be vindicated and restored. This was the first announcement
of the Ministers' intention to call their predecessors to account,
and Secretary Stanhope, in the course of the debate, confirmed it,
observing that it had been industriously circulated that the present
Ministers never designed to bring the late Ministers to trial, but
only to pass a general censure on them; but he assured the House that,
though active efforts had been used to prevent a discovery of the late
treasonable proceedings, by conveying away papers from the Secretaries'
offices, yet Government had sufficient evidence to enable them to bring
to justice the most corrupt Ministry that ever sat at the helm. Before
three weeks were over a secret committee was appointed to consider the
Treaty of Utrecht.

Bolingbroke promptly fled and took service with the Pretender; Ormonde,
after putting himself ostentatiously forward as leader of the Jacobite
Opposition, followed his example. Both were proceeded against by Act of
Attainder.

The impeachment of Oxford followed. On the 9th of July, 1715, Lord
Coningsby, attended by many of the Commons, carried up to the Lords
the articles against him, sixteen in number, to which afterwards six
more were added. The first fifteen related to the Peace of Utrecht;
the sixteenth to the sudden creation of twelve peers in 1711, in order
to create a Tory majority, by which it charged him with highly abusing
the constitution of Parliament and the laws of the kingdom. When the
Articles had been read, it was doubted whether any of the charges
amounted to high treason. To decide this as a legal point, it was moved
that the judges should be consulted; but this motion was rejected, and
another was made to commit Oxford to the Tower; and, though reprieved a
few days on account of an indisposition, he was committed accordingly,
having made a very solemn plea of his innocence, and of having only
obeyed the orders of the queen, without at all convincing the House.
He continued to lie in the Tower for two years before he was brought
to trial, matters of higher public interest intervening. Eventually
the impeachment was dropped, the documentary evidence being considered
insufficient.

Whilst these proceedings were in agitation, the Tory and Jacobite
party, which had at the king's accession appeared stunned, now
recovering spirit, began to foment discontent and sedition in the
public mind. They got the pulpits to work, and the High Church clergy
lent themselves heartily to it. The mobs were soon set to pull down the
meeting-houses of the Dissenters. Many buildings were destroyed, and
many Dissenters insulted. They did not pause there, but they blackened
the character of the king, and denied his right to the Crown, whilst
the most fascinating pictures were drawn of the youth, and grace, and
graciousness of the rightful English prince, who was wandering in
exile to make way for the usurper. To such a length did matters go,
that the Riot Act, which had been passed in the reign of Mary, and
limited to her own reign, which was again revived by Elizabeth, and
had never since been called into action, was now made perpetual, and
armed with increased power. It provided that if twelve persons should
unlawfully assemble to disturb the peace, and any one Justice should
think proper to command them by proclamation to disperse, and should
they, in contempt of his orders, continue together for one hour, their
assembling should be felony without benefit of clergy. A subsequent
clause was added, by which pulling down chapels or houses, even before
proclamation, was made subject to the same penalties. Such is the Act
in force at this day.

We come now to the rebellion of 1715. The succession of the House of
Hanover had raised the Pretender and his Jacobite faction in England
to a pitch of excitement which made them ready to rush upon the most
desperate measures. In England the destruction of the Tory Ministry,
the welcome given to the new Protestant king, and the vigour with which
the Whigs and all the supporters of the principles of the Revolution
had shown the majority which they were able to return to the new
Parliament, were all indications that the spirit of the nation was more
firmly than ever rooted in Protestantism and the love of constitutional
liberty, and that any endeavours to overturn the new dynasty must be
supported by an overwhelming power from without. Without such force
the event was certain failure; yet, under existing auspices, it was
determined to try the venture. Bolingbroke, on his arrival in France,
saw that all was rashness, impatience, and want of preparation in the
party on both sides of the Channel. The Highlanders were all eagerness
for the Chevalier's arrival, lest he should land in England, and the
English should snatch the glory of the restoration from them. From
England came the letters of Ormonde, who was down in the West, and sent
most glowing representations of the spirit of the people there; that
out of every ten persons nine were against King George, and that he
had distributed money amongst the disbanded officers, to engage them
in the cause of King James. But all these fine words terminated with
the damping intelligence that nobody would stir until they saw the
Chevalier with a good army at his back. Such an army there was not the
smallest hope of obtaining from France. All that Louis would or could
do, without engaging in a new war with England, was to prevail on his
grandson, Philip of Spain, to advance four hundred thousand crowns for
the expedition, and besides this, the Pretender had been able privately
to borrow another hundred thousand, and purchase ten thousand stand of
arms. At this juncture came two fatal events--the flight of Ormonde and
the death of Louis XIV. on September 1st.

Louis was succeeded for the time by the Duke of Orleans as Regent, who
had other views, and was surrounded by other influences than the old
king. He had secured the Regency in opposition to Madame Maintenon and
the royal bastards. He changed all the ministers, and was not inclined
to risk his government by making enemies of the English abroad, having
sufficient of these at home. He had been for some time cultivating the
good offices of the present English Government, which had offered to
assist him with troops and money, if necessary, to secure the Regency.
He had seen a good deal of the new Secretary of State, Stanhope, in
Spain, and still maintained a correspondence with him. Lord Stair,
the British Ambassador, therefore, was placed in a more influential
position with the Regent, and the Pretender and his ministers were but
coldly looked on.

Vigilant Stair had discovered the ships that had been prepared at
Havre, by the connivance and aid of the late king, and he insisted that
they should be stopped. Admiral Byng also appeared off Havre with a
squadron, and Lord Stair demanded that the ships should be given up to
him. With this the Regent declined to comply, but he ordered them to be
unloaded, and the arms to be deposited in the royal arsenal. One ship,
however, escaped the search, containing, according to Bolingbroke, one
thousand three hundred arms, and four thousand pounds of powder, which
he proposed to send to Lord Mar, in Scotland.

This succession of adverse circumstances induced Bolingbroke to
dispatch a messenger to London to inform the Earl of Mar of them,
and to state that, as the English Jacobites would not stir without
assistance from abroad, and as no such help could be had, he would see
that nothing as yet could be attempted. But when the messenger arrived
in London, he learnt from Erasmus Lewis, Oxford's late secretary, and
a very active partisan of the Jacobites, that Mar was already gone to
raise the Highlands, if we are to believe the Duke of Berwick, at the
especial suggestion of the Pretender himself, though he had, on the
23rd of September, in writing to Bolingbroke, expressed the necessity
of the Scots waiting till they heard further from him. If that was so,
it was at once traitorous towards his supporters and very ill-advised,
and was another proof to Bolingbroke of the unsafe parties with whom he
was embarked in this hopeless enterprise.

As soon as this news reached France the Pretender hastened to St.
Malo in order to embark for Scotland, and Ormonde hastened over from
Normandy to Devonshire to join the insurgents, whom he now expected
to meet in arms. He took with him only twenty officers and as many
troopers from Nugent's regiment. This was the force with which Ormonde
landed in England to conquer it for the Pretender. There was, however,
no need of even these forty men. The English Government had been
beforehand with him; they had arrested all his chief coadjutors, and
when he reached the appointed rendezvous there was not a man to meet
him. On reaching St. Malo, Ormonde there found the Pretender not yet
embarked. After some conference together, Ormonde once more went on
board ship to reach the English coast and make one more attempt in
the hopeless expedition, but he was soon driven back by a tempest. By
this time the port of St. Malo was blockaded by the English, and the
Pretender was compelled to travel on land to Dunkirk, where, in the
middle of December, he sailed with only a single ship for the conquest
of Scotland, and attended only by half a dozen gentlemen, disguised,
like himself, as French naval officers.

Mar had left London on the 2nd of August to raise the Highlands. In
order to blind the agents of Government he ordered a royal levée on
the 1st, and on the following night got on board a collier bound for
Newcastle, attended by Major-General Hamilton and Colonel Hay. From
Newcastle they got to the coast of Fife in another vessel. On the 6th
of September he raised the standard of the Chevalier at Kirkmichael,
a village of Braemar. He was then attended by only sixty men, and the
Highland chiefs, extremely alive to omens, were startled by the gilt
ball falling from the summit of the pole as it was planted in the
ground. The standard was consecrated by prayers, and he was in a few
days joined by about five hundred of his own vassals. The gentlemen
who came on horseback, only about twenty at first, soon became several
hundreds, and were named the Royal Squadron. The white cockade was
assumed as the badge of the insurgent army, and clan after clan came
in; first the Mackintoshes, five hundred in number, who seized on
Inverness. James was proclaimed by Panmure at Brechin, by the Earl
Marshal at Aberdeen, by Lord Huntly at Gordon, and by Graham, the
brother of Claverhouse, at Dundee. Colonel Hay, brother of the Earl of
Kinnaird, seized Perth, and in a very short time the country north of
the Tay was in the hands of the insurgents.

[Illustration: THE EARL OF MAR RAISING THE PRETENDER'S STANDARD.] (_See
p._ 28.)

By the 28th of September Mar had mustered at Perth about five thousand
men. He was cheered by the arrival of one or two ships from France
with stores, arms, and ammunition. He had also managed to surprise a
Government ship driven to take shelter at Burntisland, on its way to
carry arms to the Earl of Sutherland, who was raising his clan for King
George in the north. The arms were seized by Mar's party, and carried
off to the army. Argyll, commander of the king's forces, arrived about
the same time in Scotland, and marched to Stirling, where he encamped
with only about one thousand foot and five hundred cavalry. This was
the time for Mar to advance and surround him, or drive him before him;
but Mar was a most incompetent general, and remained inactive at Perth,
awaiting the movement of the Jacobites in England. Thanks, however, to
the energy of the Government, that movement never took place.

At length Mar, who was kept back by the absence of the Pretender,
determined to outwit Argyll by sending a detachment under Brigadier
Mackintosh across the Firth of Forth below Stirling, whilst another
body, under General Gordon, was despatched to seize on Inverary, and
keep the clan Campbell in check. Mackintosh had about two thousand
men under his command, chiefly from his own clans, but supported by
the regiments of the Lords Nairn, Strathmore, and Charles Murray. To
prevent these forces from crossing, three English ships of war ascended
the Forth to near Burntisland; but whilst a detachment of five hundred
men held the attention of the ships at that point, the main body were
embarking on the right in small boats lower down, and the greater part
of them got across the Firth, and landed at Aberlady and North Berwick.
The city of Edinburgh was in consternation at this daring manœuvre,
and at the proximity of such a force; and Mackintosh, hearing of this
panic, and of the miserable state of defence there, determined to
attempt to surprise it. He stayed one night at Haddington to rest
his men, and on the 14th appeared at Jock's Lodge, within a mile of
Edinburgh. But on the very first appearance of Mackintosh's troops, Sir
George Warrender, the Provost of Edinburgh, had despatched a messenger
to summon the Duke of Argyll from Stirling to the aid of the capital.
The duke was already approaching Edinburgh, and therefore Mackintosh,
perceiving that he had no chance of surprising the town, turned aside
to Leith.

Continuing southwards, Mackintosh joined the English insurgents at
Kelso on the 22nd. This united force now amounted altogether to
about two thousand men--one thousand four hundred foot commanded by
Mackintosh, and six hundred horse under Lord Kenmure and Mr. Forster.
This force might, in the paucity of troops in the service of the king,
have produced a great effect had they marched unitedly southward and
engaged General Carpenter, who was advancing from Newcastle, with
only about nine hundred cavalry, to attack them; or had they gone at
once north, taken Argyll in the rear, and then combined with Mar. But
after marching to Jedburgh and then to Hawick, the Scots and English
formed two different opinions. The Scots would not enter England, being
persuaded by the Earl of Wintoun that, if they went into England, they
would be all cut to pieces, or be sold for slaves. Mackintosh was
willing to enter England, but they would listen to no one but Wintoun.
Several hundred Highlanders deserted, and the remainder of the army,
under the inefficient command of Forster, marched into England and
reached Preston without molestation.

But here their career was doomed to end. Preston had witnessed the
rout of the Royalists by Cromwell, and it was now to witness the
rout of the rebels by the Royalists. Carpenter, on finding that the
insurgents had taken the way through Cumberland, also hastened back
to Newcastle and Durham, where he was joined by General Wills. Wills
was in advance with six regiments of cavalry, mostly newly-raised
troops, but full of spirit, and well-officered. He came near Preston
on the 12th of November, whilst Carpenter was approaching in another
direction, so as to take the enemy in the flank. Forster quickly showed
that he was an incompetent commander. He was at first greatly elated
by the junction of the Lancashire men, but, on hearing that the royal
troops were upon them, he was instantly panic-stricken, and, instead
of issuing orders, or summoning a council, he betook himself to bed.
Lord Kenmure roused him from his ignominious repose, but it was too
late; no means were taken to secure the natural advantages of the
place. The bridge over the Ribble, which might have kept the enemy
at bay, was left undefended; so that when Wills rode up to it on the
morning of the 13th, he imagined that the rebels had evacuated the
place. Besides the bridge over the river, there was a deep and hollow
way of half a mile from the bridge to the town, with high and steep
banks, from which an army might have been annihilated; but all was
left undefended. It was only when Wills advanced into the town that
he became aware that the rebels were still there, and found his path
obstructed by barricades raised in the streets. His soldiers gallantly
attacked these barricades, but were met by a murderous fire both from
behind them and from the houses on each side. But luckily for the
royal forces the least ability was wanting in the rebel commander.
With all the advantages on his side, Forster secretly sent Colonel
Oxburgh to propose a capitulation. Wills at first refused to listen
to it, declaring that he could not treat with rebels who had murdered
many of the king's subjects; but at length he said, if they would lay
down their arms, he would defend them from being cut to pieces by the
soldiers till he received further orders from Government. One thousand
five hundred men surrendered, including eight noblemen, but a good many
escaped.

This branch of the rebel force was thus completely removed from the
field, and on the same day a far more sanguinary conflict had taken
place between the chief commanders on the two sides, Argyll and Mar, at
Sheriffmuir.

It was the 10th of November when Mar, aware that Argyll was advancing
against him, at length marched out of Perth with all his baggage and
provisions for twelve days. On the 12th, when they arrived at Ardoch,
Argyll was posted at Dunblane, and he advanced to give them battle.
The wild, uneven ground of Sheriffmuir lay between them, and it was on
this spot that Argyll on quitting Stirling had hoped to meet them. He
therefore drew up his men on this moorland in battle array, and did
not wait long for the coming of the Highland army. It was on a Sunday
morning, the 13th of November, that the battle of Sheriffmuir was
fought. Argyll commanded the right wing of his army, General Whitham
the left, and General Wightman the centre. He calculated much on this
open ground for the operations of his cavalry. On the other hand, Mar
took the right wing of his army, and was thus opposed, not to Argyll,
but to Whitham. The Highlanders, though called on to form in a moment,
as it were, did so with a rapidity which astonished the enemy. They
opened fire on Argyll so instantly and well, that it took the duke's
forces by surprise. The left army retired on Stirling pursued by Mar.
Argyll was compelled to be on the alert. He observed that Mar had drawn
out his forces so as to outflank him; but, casting his eye on a morass
on his right, he discovered that the frost had made it passable, and
he ordered Major Cathcart to lead a squadron of horse across it, while
with the rest of his cavalry he galloped round, and thus attacked
the left wing of Mar both in front and flank. The Highlanders, thus
taken by surprise, were thrown into confusion, but still fought with
their wonted bravery. They were driven, however, by the momentum of
the English horse, backwards; and between the spot whence the attack
commenced and the river Allan, three miles distant, they rallied ten
times, and fairly contested the field. Argyll, however, bore down upon
them with all the force of his right wing, offering quarter to all who
would surrender, and even parrying blows from his own dragoons which
went to exterminate those already wounded. After an obstinate fight of
three hours, he drove the Highlanders over the Allan, a great number of
them being drowned in it. Mar at this crisis returned to learn the fate
of the rest of his army. He found that he had been taking the office
of a General of Division instead of that of the Commander-in-Chief,
whose duty is to watch the movements of the whole field, and send aid
to quarters which are giving way. Like Prince Rupert, in his ardour for
victory over his enemies in front of him, he had totally forgotten the
centre and left wing, and discovered now that the left wing was totally
defeated. He was contented to draw off, and yet boast of victory.

At this juncture, while daily desertions thinned Mar's army at Perth,
arrived the Pretender. He landed at Peterhead on the 22nd of December.
On the 6th of January, 1716, he made his public entry into Dundee, at
the head of his cavalcade, the Earl of Mar riding on his right hand,
and the Earl Marshal on his left, and about three hundred gentlemen
following. His reception was enthusiastic. The people flocked round him
to kiss his hands; and to gratify this loyal desire he remained an
hour in the market-place. On the 8th he arrived at Scone, and took up
his residence in the ancient palace of his ancestors. There he was only
two miles from the army, and having established a council, and issued
six proclamations, ordering a public thanksgiving for the "miraculous
providence" of his safe arrival, for prayers in the church, for the
currency of foreign coin, for a meeting of the Convention of Estates,
for all fencible men from sixteen to sixty to repair to his standard,
and for his coronation on the 23rd of January, he presented himself
before the army. But here the scene was changed. Instead of enthusiasm
there was disappointment--disappointment on both sides. The soldiers,
who expected to see a royal-looking, active-looking man, likely to
encourage them and lead them on their career, beheld a tall, thin,
pale, and dejected sort of person, who evidently took no great interest
in them. That the Pretender should not exhibit much vivacity was no
wonder. He had been assured by Mar that his army had swelled to sixteen
thousand men; that the whole North was in his favour; and that he had
only to appear to carry everything before him. On inquiring into the
force, it turned out to be so miserably small, that the only desire was
to keep it out of sight. The spirits of the Pretender fell, and though
not destitute of ability, as is manifest by his letters, he had by no
means that strength of resolution demanded by such an enterprise.

At length Argyll, whose movements had been hastened by the arrival
of General Cadogan, prepared to march northwards through deep snow
and villages burnt by the Pretender's order. On the 30th of January
the rebel army retreated from Perth, the Highland soldiers, some
in sullen silence, others in loud curses, expressing their anger
and mortification at this proceeding. The inhabitants looked on in
terror, and bade adieu to the troops in tears, expecting only a heavy
visitation for having so long harboured them. Early the next morning
they crossed the deep and rapid Tay, now, however, a sheet of solid
ice, and directed their march along the Carse of Gowrie towards Dundee.

Argyll, who received the news of the retreat about four in the
afternoon of that day, occupied Perth with Dutch and English troops by
ten o'clock the next morning. They had quitted Stirling on the 29th,
and that night they encamped on the snow amid the burnt remains of
the village of Auchterarder. Argyll and Cadogan followed the advanced
guard and entered Perth on the evening of the 1st of February; but the
remainder of the troops did not arrive till late at night, owing to the
state of the roads and the weather. Some few of the rebels, who had
got drunk and were left behind, were secured. The next day Argyll and
Cadogan, with eight hundred light foot and six squadrons of dragoons,
followed along the Carse of Gowrie to Dundee. Cadogan, in a letter to
Marlborough, complained of the evident reluctance of Argyll to press on
the rebels. When he arrived at Dundee on the 3rd, the rebel army was
already gone. He and Cadogan then separated, taking different routes
towards Montrose. Cadogan, whose heart was in the business, pushed on
ahead, and on the 5th, at noon, reached Arbroath, where he received the
news that the Pretender had embarked at Montrose and gone to France. In
this manner did the descendant of a race of kings and the claimant of
the Crown of Great Britain steal away and leave his unhappy followers
to a sense of his perfidious and cruel desertion. His flight, no doubt,
was necessary, but the manner of it was at once most humiliating and
unfeeling. The consternation and wrath of the army on the discovery
were indescribable. They were wholly broken up when Argyll reached
Aberdeen on the 8th of February.

Gloomy as was the Pretender's fortune, it was, nevertheless, infinitely
better than that of thousands who had ventured their lives and fortunes
in his cause. There were not many prisoners in Scotland, but the clans
which had sided with the English Government were hounded on to hunt
down those who had been out with the Pretender amongst their hills,
and they were hunted about by the English troops under the guidance of
these hostile clans; and where they themselves were not to be found,
their estates suffered by troops being quartered in their houses and
on their lands. In England the prisons of Chester, Liverpool, and
other northern towns were crowded by the inferior class of prisoners
from the surrender of Preston. Some half-pay officers were singled out
as deserters, and shot by order of a court-martial; but the common
soldiers were eventually acquitted or let off with light sentences.

On the 9th of January, a month after their arrival, Lord Derwentwater
was impeached of high treason by Mr. Lechmere in a bitter speech in the
Commons. Other members, with equal acrimony, followed with impeachments
against the Lords Widdrington, Nithsdale, Wintoun, Carnwath, Kenmure,
and Nairn. The impeachments were carried up to the House of Lords on
the same day, and on the 19th the accused noblemen were brought before
the Peers, where they knelt at the bar until they were desired to rise
by the Lord Chancellor, when, with the exception of Lord Wintoun, they
confessed their guilt, and threw themselves on the mercy of the king.
Sentence of death was immediately pronounced on those who had pleaded
guilty; and Lord Wintoun was condemned after trial, but several months
later he effected his escape from the Tower. Every effort was made to
save the prisoners, and they were all reprieved, with the exception
of Derwentwater, Kenmure, and Nithsdale. The first two were executed;
but the Countess of Nithsdale, being about to take her leave of her
husband, contrived, by introducing some friends, to secure his escape
in female attire.

In April the inferior prisoners were tried in the Common Pleas.
Forster, brigadier Mackintosh, and twenty of their accomplices were
condemned; but Forster, Mackintosh, and some of the others, managed,
like Wintoun, to escape; so that, of all the crowds of prisoners, only
twenty-two in Lancashire and four in London were hanged. Bills of
attainder were passed against the Lords Tullibardine, Mar, and many
others who were at large. Above a thousand submitted to the king's
mercy, and petitioned to be transported to America.

Meanwhile the Whigs were anxious to add fresh security to their own
lease of office. At the last election they had procured the return
of a powerful majority; but two years out of the triennial term had
expired, and they looked with apprehension to the end of the next year,
when a dissolution must take place. They were aware that there were
still strong plottings and secret agitations for the restoration of the
banished dynasty. By both the king and his Ministers all Tories were
regarded as Jacobites, and it was resolved to keep them out of office,
and, as much as possible, out of Parliament. They had the power in
their own hands in this Parliament, and, in order to keep it, they did
not hesitate to destroy that Triennial Act for which their own party
had claimed so much credit in 1694, and substitute a Septennial Act in
its place. They would thereby give to their own party in Parliament
more than a double term of the present legal possession of their seats.
Instead of one year, they would be able to look forward four years
without any fear of Tory increase of power through a new election. On
the 10th of April, Devonshire, Lord Steward of the Household, moved
the repeal of the Triennial Act, long lauded as one of the bulwarks
of our liberties, under the now convenient plea that it had been
"found very grievous and burthensome, by occasioning much greater and
more continued expenses in order to elections of members to serve in
Parliament, and more lasting heats and animosities amongst the subjects
of this realm than ever were known before the said clause was enacted."

In the preamble to the new Bill the object of that extended Bill was
candidly avowed, namely, that when "a restless and popish faction are
designing and endeavouring to renew the rebellion in this kingdom and
an invasion from abroad, it might be destructive to the peace and
security of the Government." The Septennial Bill was, in fact, intended
as a purely temporary measure, and, though originated by party spirit,
it was really of great advantage in days when every general election
meant a fresh exercise of the influence of the Crown and the Lords.

[Illustration: RETREAT OF THE HIGHLANDERS FROM PERTH. (_See p._ 31.)]

Whilst Parliament was busy with the Septennial Bill, George I. was
very impatient to get away to Hanover. Like William III., he was but a
foreigner in England; a dull, well-meaning man, whose heart was in his
native country, and who had been transplanted too late ever to take
to the alien earth. The Act of Settlement provided that, after the
Hanoverian accession, no reigning sovereign should quit the kingdom
without permission of Parliament. George was not content to ask this
permission, but insisted that the restraining clause itself should be
repealed, and it was accordingly repealed without any opposition. There
was one difficulty connected with George's absence from his kingdom
which Council or Parliament could not so easily deal with: this was his
excessive jealousy of his son. The king could not take his departure
in peace if the Prince of Wales was to be made regent, according to
custom, in his absence. He proposed, therefore, through his favourite,
Bothmar, that the powers of the prince should be limited by rigorous
provisions, and that some other persons should be joined with him in
commission. Lord Townshend did not hesitate to express his sense of the
impolicy of the king's leaving his dominions at all at such a crisis;
but he also added that to put any other persons in commission with
the Prince of Wales was contrary to the whole practice and spirit of
England. Driven from this, the king insisted that, instead of regent,
the prince should be named "Guardian and Lieutenant of the Realm"--an
office which had never existed since the time of the Black Prince.

The retreat of George to Hanover was not merely to enjoy his native
scenes and old associations; he felt himself insecure even on the
throne of England, and the rebellion for the present quelled; he was
anxious to form or renew alliances on the Continent to give strength to
his position. The part which England had taken at the end of the war
seemed to have alienated all her confederates of the Grand Alliance,
and transferred their resentment to himself with his accession to the
British Crown. Holland was, perhaps, the least sensible of the past
discords; she had kept the treaty, and lent her aid on the landing of
the Pretender; but she was at daggers drawn with Austria, who was much
irritated by the Barrier Treaty, by which the Dutch secured a line of
fortresses on the Austrian Netherlands. As for the Emperor, he was
more feeble and sluggish than he had shown himself as the aspirant to
the throne of Spain. He was a bigoted Catholic, little disposed to
trouble himself for securing a Protestant succession, although it had
expended much money and blood in defence of his own. On the contrary,
he felt a strong jealousy of George, the Elector of Hanover, as King of
England, and therefore capable of introducing, through his augmented
resources, aggressive disturbances in Germany. The King of Prussia, his
son-in-law, was rather a troublesome and wrangling ally than one to be
depended upon.

Taking this view of his Continental neighbours, George was driven to
the conclusion that his only safety lay in firmly engaging France to
relinquish the Pretender. The means of the attainment of this desirable
object lay in the peculiar position of the Regent, who was intent on
his personal aims. So long as the chances of the Pretender appeared
tolerable, the Regent had avoided the overtures on this subject; but
the failure of the expedition to the Highlands had inclined him to give
up the Pretender, and he now sent the Abbé Dubois to Hanover to treat
upon the subject. He was willing also to destroy the works at Mardyk
as the price of peace with England. The preliminaries were concluded,
and the Dutch included in them; but the Treaty was not ratified till
January, 1717.

But though this difficulty was tided over, there remained a still
greater one with Sweden. Charles XII., overthrown by the Czar Peter at
the battle of Pultowa, had fled into Turkey, and obstinately remained
at Bender, though the Czar and his allies were all the time overrunning
and taking possession of the Swedish territories on the eastern side
of the Baltic. Russians, Norwegians, Danes, Saxons, and Prussians were
all busy gorging the spoil. The King of Denmark, amongst the invasions
of Swedish territory, had seized on the rich bishoprics of Bremen and
Verden, which had been ceded to Sweden at the Peace of Westphalia.
These bishoprics, which lay contiguous to Hanover, had always been an
object of desire to that State. And now Charles of Sweden, suddenly
ruined by the proceedings of his neighbours, who thus rent his kingdom
limb from limb, galloped away from Bender, and in November, 1714,
startled all his enemies by appearing at Stralsund. The Danish king,
seeing a tempest about to burst over his head, immediately tempted
the English king to enter into alliance with him, by offering him the
stolen bishoprics of Bremen and Verden on condition that he should
pay a hundred and fifty thousand pounds and join the alliance against
Sweden. Without waiting for any consent of Parliament, Sir John Norris
was sent with a fleet to the Baltic, under the pretence of protecting
our trade there, but with the real object of compelling Sweden to cede
the bishoprics, and to accept a compensation in money for them.

At the same time that we were thus dragged into hostilities with
Sweden, we were brought into hostilities with the Czar too in defence
of Hanover. Peter had married his niece to the Duke of Mecklenburg,
who was on bad terms with his subjects, and the Czar was only too glad
to get a footing in Germany by sending a large body of troops into
the Duchy. Denmark became immediately alarmed at such a dangerous and
unscrupulous neighbour, and remonstrated; whereupon the Czar informed
the Danish king that if he murmured he would enter Denmark with his
army too. Of course the King of Denmark called on his ally, George
of Hanover, for the stipulated aid; and George, who hated the Czar
mortally, and was hated by the Czar as intensely in return, at once
sent his favourite, Bernsdorff, to Stanhope, who had accompanied him to
Hanover, with a demand that "the Czar should be instantly crushed, his
ships secured, his person seized, and kept till he should have caused
his troops to evacuate both Denmark and Germany."

The receipt of such proposals in England produced the utmost
consternation in the Cabinet. Townshend, in an "absolutely secret"
answer to Stanhope, expressed the concern both of himself and the
Prince of Wales at the prospect of a rupture with the Czar, who would
seize the British ships and subjects in Russia, and prohibit the supply
of naval stores from his kingdom, and that especially at a crisis when
England was threatened with an invasion from Sweden and a rising of the
Jacobites. He did not deny that there was a great risk of both these
kingdoms and the German empire being exposed to imminent danger by the
designs of the Czar on the whole coast of the Baltic, a danger which
he might, had he dared, truly have attributed to George's own deeds
by offending Sweden, instead of uniting with it to counterbalance the
Czar's plan of aggrandisement. Fortunately, the Czar was induced, by
the combined remonstrances of Austria, Denmark, and Sir John Norris,
to abandon his projects for the moment, at least in Germany, and to
withdraw his troops from Mecklenburg.

The fear of the Russians being removed, the king was impatient to get
the Treaty with France ratified both by England and Holland. As there
was some delay on the part of Holland, Stanhope proposed to comply with
the king's desire, that the Treaty should be signed, without further
waiting for the Dutch, but with the agreement on both sides that they
should be admitted to sign as soon as they were ready. Dubois was
to proceed to the Hague, and there sign the Treaty in form with our
plenipotentiaries at that place, Lord Cadogan and Horace Walpole. But
these ministers had repeatedly assured the States that England would
never sign without them, and Horace Walpole now refused to consent to
any such breach of faith. He declared he would rather starve, die, do
anything than thus wound his honour and conscience; that he should
regard it as declaring himself villain under his own hand. He said he
would rather lay his patent of reversion in the West Indies, or even
his life, at his Majesty's feet, than be guilty of such an action,
and he begged leave to be allowed to return home. Townshend, for a
moment, gave in to the proposition for not waiting for the Dutch,
but immediately recalled that opinion; and he drew the powers of the
plenipotentiaries for signing so loosely, that Dubois declined signing
upon them. As we have said, the ratification did not take place till
January, 1717, and after great causes of difference had arisen between
Townshend and Stanhope. So greatly did Stanhope resent the difference
of opinion in Townshend, that he offered his resignation to the king,
who refused to accept it, being himself by this time much out of humour
with both Townshend and Robert Walpole, the Paymaster of the Forces.

Various causes, in fact, were operating to produce a great schism
in the Ministry of George I. Townshend, as we have seen, had very
unguardedly expressed his disgust with the measures of the king at and
concerning Hanover. George's dislike was, of course, fomented by his
courtiers and mistresses, and they found a powerful ally in Sunderland,
who, tired of his subordinate position in the Ministry, had joined
the king in Hanover. A letter from Townshend, in which, in order to
allow the longer absence of the king, he recommended that additional
powers should be conferred on the Prince of Wales, brought George's
indignation to a head. This letter, which arrived about the middle of
December, seemed to cause his anger to burst all bounds, and he vowed
that he would dismiss Townshend at once from his service.

Stanhope appears to have done his best to break Townshend's fall. He
represented to the king the high character of that minister, his real
services, and the injustice and impolicy of disgracing him; that he
might remove him to another office, and thus answer every purpose.
He could take the chief direction of affairs out of his hands, even
while appearing to promote him. He therefore advised that Townshend
should, without a word of dismissal or disapprobation, be offered the
Lord-Lieutenancy of Ireland, instead of the Secretaryship of State,
and to this the king consented. Accordingly Stanhope was directed to
write to Townshend, and also to Secretary Methuen, and he did so on
the 14th of December, conveying in most courteous terms the king's
desire that he should accept the Lord-Lieutenancy, and this without
a syllable of discontent on the part of his Majesty. Townshend at
first refused, but on the arrival of George in London he received
Townshend very cordially, and so softened him as to induce him to
accept the Lord-Lieutenancy, and to do the very thing he had declared
it was not common honesty to do--accept the post and still remain in
London, acting with the rest of the Cabinet. His political adherents,
including Methuen, Pulteney, the Walpoles, Lord Orford, and the Duke
of Devonshire, were contented to remain in office. The only change was
that Methuen was made one of the two Secretaries along with Stanhope.
It was thus imagined that the great schism in the Whig party was
closed; but this was far from being the case: the healing was only on
the surface. It was during this brief reconciliation that the great
Triple Alliance between England, France, and Holland, was concluded.

Thus entered the year 1717. It had been intended to open Parliament
immediately on the king's return, but the discovery of a new and
singular phase of the Jacobite conspiracy compelled its postponement.
We have seen that the trafficking of George with Denmark for the
bishoprics of Bremen and Verden, reft in the king of Sweden's absence
from his possession, had incensed that monarch, and made him vow that
he would support the Pretender and march into Scotland with twelve
thousand men. Such a menace on the part of a general like Charles XII.
was not likely to pass unnoticed by the Jacobites. The Duke of Berwick
had taken up the idea very eagerly. He had held several conferences
upon it with Baron Spaar, the Swedish Minister at Paris, and he had
sent a trusty minister to Charles at Stralsund, with the proposal
that a body of seven or eight thousand Swedes, then encamped near
Gothenburg, should embark at that port, whence, with a favourable wind,
they could land in Scotland in eight-and-forty hours. The Pretender
agreed to furnish one hundred and fifty thousand livres for their
expenses. At that time, however, Charles was closely besieged by the
Danes, Prussians, and their new ally, George of Hanover, purchased by
the bribe of Bremen and Verden. Charles was compelled by this coalition
to retire from Stralsund, but only in a mood of deeper indignation
against the King of England, and therefore more favourable to his
enemies.

The invasion of Scotland was again brought under his notice, and
strongly recommended by his chief confidant and minister, Baron Gortz.
Charles now listened with all his native spirit of resentment, and
Gortz immediately set out on a tour of instigation and arrangement of
the invasion. He hastened to Holland, where he corresponded with Count
Gyllenborg, the Swedish Ambassador at London, and Baron Spaar, the
Swedish Minister at Paris. He put himself also into communication with
the Pretender and the Duke of Ormonde. The scheme of Gortz was able
and comprehensive. A peace was to be established between Charles and
his great enemy and rival, Peter of Russia. They both hated George
of Hanover and England, and by this union might inflict the severest
injuries on him. Next a conspiracy was to be excited against the
Regent of France, so as to prevent him aiding England according to the
recent Treaty, and all being thus prepared, Charles XII. was himself
to conduct the army of twelve thousand veterans destined to invade
Scotland, and, if supported by the Jacobites, England.

The Jacobites were in ecstasies at this new phase of their old
enterprise. By Charles's adhesion, their scheme was stripped of all
those prejudices which had insured its ruin with the English. It had
no longer the unpopular aspect of a French invasion; it was no longer
headed by a Popish but a Protestant leader; it was no longer consigned
to an untried or doubtful general, but to one of the most victorious
monarchs living, who came as a Protestant to call on a Protestant
nation to receive their rightful king. Money was not wanting. Spain
remitted to Baron Spaar a million of livres for the expedition, and the
Court of the Pretender offered sixty thousand pounds.

But unfortunately for the Pretender, at the moment that the Swedish
hero should prepare his armament for the earliest spring, the
conspiracy exploded. Whilst the leaders of it had been flattering
themselves that it was conducted with the profoundest secrecy, the
English Ministry were in possession of its clue. As early as October
they had found reason to induce them to intercept the correspondence
of Gyllenborg, and had come at once on the letters of Gortz. The
matter was kept close, and as nothing was apprehended in winter,
Ministers used the time to improve their knowledge of the scheme from
the inspected letters passing between Gortz and Gyllenborg. On the
king's return it was resolved to act, and accordingly Stanhope laid the
information regarding this formidable conspiracy before the Council,
and proposed that the Swedish Minister, who had clearly, by conspiring
against the Government to which he was accredited, violated the law of
nations, and deprived himself of its protection, should be arrested.
The Cabinet at once assented to the proposal, and General Wade, a man
of firm and resolute military habits, was ordered to make the arrest of
the Ambassador. The general found Count Gyllenborg busy making up his
despatches, which, after announcing laconically his errand, Wade took
possession of, and then demanded the contents of his escritoire. The
Dutch Government acted in the same manner to Gortz, and the evidence
thus obtained was most conclusive.

[Illustration: JAMES EDWARD STUART, THE "OLD PRETENDER."]

When Parliament met on the 20th of February, this conspiracy was laid
before it and excited great indignation. The two Houses voted cordial
addresses to his Majesty, and for a while there was an air of harmony.
But the fires of discontent were smouldering beneath the surface, and,
on a motion being made in April, in consequence of a royal message, to
grant the king an extraordinary Supply in order to enable his Majesty
to contract alliances with foreign powers, that he might be prepared
to meet any attempts at invasion which the Swedes might, after all,
be disposed to make, the heat broke forth. The Supply moved for was
fixed at two hundred and fifty thousand pounds. It was expected that
Walpole, having had his name suspiciously mentioned in Gyllenborg's
correspondence, would take this opportunity to wipe off all doubt
by his zeal and co-operation. On the contrary, he never appeared so
lukewarm. Both he and his brother Horace, indeed, spoke in favour of
the Supply, but coldly; and Townshend and all their common friends
openly joined the Tories and Jacobites in voting against it; so that
it was carried only by a majority of four. This could not pass; and
the same evening Stanhope, by the king's order, wrote to Townshend,
acknowledging his past services, but informing him that he was no
longer Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland.

Walpole did not wait for a like humiliation. The next morning he
waited on the king, and tendered his resignation of his places as
First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer. The king,
if he could be judged by his conduct, had formed no resolution of
parting with Walpole. He handed again to him the seals, cordially
entreating him to take them back, speaking to him in the kindest
manner, and appearing as though he would take no refusal. But Walpole
remained steady to his purpose, and, accordingly, his friends Methuen,
Pulteney, Lord Orford, and the Duke of Devonshire, resigned a few days
afterwards. Stanhope was then appointed First Lord of the Treasury and
Chancellor of the Exchequer; Sunderland and Joseph Addison were made
Secretaries of State; Craggs, Secretary at War; Lord Berkeley, First
Lord of the Admiralty; the Duke of Newcastle, Lord Chamberlain; the
Duke of Bolton, Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland; Lord Cowper and the Duke of
Kingston retaining their old places.

The retired Ministers showed for the most part a very hostile attitude,
and Pulteney denounced the new Ministry as a "German Ministry."
Walpole, for a little time, affected a liberal conduct, declaring,
when the Supply of two hundred and fifty thousand pounds was voted,
that, as he had before spoken in its favour, he should now vote in its
favour, and would show by his proceedings that he had never intended
to make the king uneasy, or to embarrass his affairs. But it was not
in Walpole's nature to maintain this air of temperance long. He was as
violent in opposition as he was able and zealous in office. Whether in
or out of office, he was, in fact, equally unscrupulous. He very soon
joined himself to Shippen, Wyndham, Bromley, and the other violent
opponents of the reigning family; so that Shippen himself ere long said
exultingly that he was glad to see that Walpole was no longer afraid of
being styled a Jacobite.

Before Walpole thus threw off the mask of moderation--indeed, on the
very day of his resignation--he introduced a well-matured scheme for
the reduction of the National Debt, which was, in fact, the earliest
germ of the National Sinking Fund. Though the ordinary rate of interest
had been reduced, by the statute of the 12th of Queen Anne, to five per
cent., the interest on the funded debt remained upwards of seven. The
Long and Short Annuities were unredeemable, and could not be touched
without the consent of the proprietors; but Walpole proposed to borrow
six hundred thousand pounds at only four per cent., and to apply all
savings to the discharge of the debts contracted before December, 1716.
He proposed, also, to make some arrangement with the Bank and the South
Sea Company, by which the Bank should lend two millions and a half, and
the Company two millions, at five per cent., to pay off such holders of
redeemable debts as should refuse to accept an equal reduction.

The new Administration took measures to render themselves popular.
They advised the king to go down to the House on the 6th of May, and
propose a reduction of the army to the extent of ten thousand men, as
well as an Act of Grace to include many persons concerned in the late
rebellion. Walpole and his friends, on the contrary, did all in their
power to embarrass the Government. Lord Oxford was not included in
the Act of Indemnity, and it was resolved now by his friends to have
his trial brought on. Before this was effected, however, a violent
attack was made on Lord Cadogan. As Ambassador at the Hague, he had
superintended the embarkation of the Dutch troops sent to aid in
putting down the rebellion. He was now charged with having committed
gross peculations on that occasion. Shippen led the way in this
attack, but Walpole and Pulteney pursued their former colleague with
the greatest rancour, and Walpole declaimed against him so furiously
that, after a speech of nearly two hours in length, he was compelled
to stop by a sudden bleeding at the nose. Stanhope, Craggs, Lechmere,
and others defended him; but such was the combination of enemies
against him, or rather, against the Ministers, that the motion was only
negatived by a majority of ten.

Lord Oxford's case was brought at length to a termination also in his
favour. His friends having complained of the hardship of keeping him
without a hearing for nearly two years, the 24th of June was appointed
for the trial to take place in Westminster Hall. The Commons again met
in committee to complete the evidence against him; but it was now found
that Walpole, who was the chairman, and who had formerly pursued the
inquiry with all eagerness, had suddenly cooled, and seldom came near
the Committee; and they therefore appointed a new one. In fact, he and
Townshend, out of opposition, were doing that secretly which they could
not do openly without loss of character--they were exerting themselves
in favour of their old antagonist, and they soon hit on a scheme for
bringing him off without any trial at all. The Lords were persuaded
to listen to any evidence in support of the charge of misdemeanour
before they heard that on the grave charge of treason, and the result
foreseen by the Opposition took place when the resolution was reported
to the Commons. They immediately determined that it was an infringement
of their privileges, and declined compliance with it. This was what
Walpole and the then partisans, secret or open, of Lord Oxford, had
foreseen. The Commons refusing to attend in Westminster Hall on the day
fixed, the Lords returned to their own House, and passed a resolution
declaring the Earl of Oxford acquitted, an announcement received by
the people with acclamation. The Commons then demanded that Oxford
should be excepted from the Act of Grace; but, notwithstanding, he was
released from the Tower, and the Commons never renewed the impeachment.

It might have been supposed that Europe, or at least the southern
portion of it, was likely to enjoy a considerable term of peace.
France, under a minor and a Regent, appeared to require rest to recruit
its population and finances more than any part of the Continent. The
King of Spain was too imbecile to have any martial ambition; and though
his wife was anxious to secure the succession to the French throne in
case of the death of the infant Louis XV., yet Alberoni, the Prime
Minister, was desirous to remain at peace. This able Churchman, who had
risen from the lowest position, being the son of a working gardener,
and had made his way to his present eminence partly by his abilities
and partly by his readiness to forget the gravity of the clerical
character for the pleasure of his patrons, was now zealously exerting
himself to restore the condition of Spain. He was thus brought into
collision with Austria and France, and eventually with this country
to which at first he was well disposed. England was under engagement
both to France and the Empire, which must, on the first rupture with
either of those Powers and Spain, precipitate her into war. The treaty
with the Emperor--as it guaranteed the retention of the Italian
provinces, which Spain beheld with unappeasable jealousy, in Austrian
hands--was the first thing to change the policy of Alberoni towards
Britain. This change was still further accelerated by the news of the
Triple Alliance, which equally guaranteed the _status quo_ of France.
The Spanish Minister displayed his anger by suspending the Treaty of
Commerce, and by conniving at the petty vexations practised by the
Spaniards on the English merchants in Spain, and by decidedly rejecting
a proposal of the King of England to bring about an accommodation
between the Emperor and the Court of Spain.

In this uneasy state of things Austria very unnecessarily put the match
to the political train, and threw the whole of the south of Europe
again into war. Don Joseph Molina, the Spanish Ambassador at Rome,
being appointed Inquisitor-General at Spain, commenced his journey
homewards, furnished with a passport from the Pope, and an assurance of
safety from the Imperial Minister. Yet, notwithstanding this, he was
perfidiously arrested by the Austrian authorities and secured in the
citadel of Milan. The gross insult to Spain, and equally gross breach
of faith, so exasperated the King and Queen of Spain that they would
listen to nothing but war. The earnest expostulations of Alberoni,
delivered in the form of a powerful memorial, were rejected, and he was
compelled to abandon the cherished hopes of peaceful improvement and
make the most active preparations for war.

Alberoni despatched Don Joseph Patiño to Barcelona to hasten the
military preparations. Twelve ships of war and eight thousand six
hundred men were speedily assembled there, and an instant alarm was
excited throughout Europe as to the destination of this not very
formidable force. The Emperor, whose treacherous conduct justly
rendered him suspicious, imagined the blow destined for his Italian
territories; the English anticipated a fresh movement in favour of
the Pretender; but Alberoni, an astute Italian, who was on the point
of receiving the cardinal's hat from the Pope led Charles (VI.) to
believe that the armament was directed against the Infidels in the
Levant. The Pope, therefore, hastened the favour of the Roman purple,
and then Alberoni no longer concealed the real destination of his
troops. The Marquis de Lede was ordered to set out with the squadron
for the Italian shores; but when Naples was trembling in apprehension
of a visit, the fleet drew up, on the 20th of August, in the bay of
Cagliari, the capital of the island of Sardinia. That a force which
might have taken Naples should content itself with an attack on the
barren, rocky, and swampy Sardinia, surprised many; but Alberoni knew
very well that, though he could take, he had not yet an army sufficient
to hold Naples, and he was satisfied to strike a blow which should
alarm Europe, whilst it gratified the impatience of the Spanish monarch
for revenge. There was, moreover, an ulterior object. It had lately
been proposed by England and Holland to the Emperor, in order to induce
him to come into the Triple Alliance and convert it into a quadruple
one, to obtain an exchange of this island for Sicily with the Duke of
Savoy. It was, therefore, an object to prevent this arrangement by
first seizing Sardinia. The Spanish general summoned the governor of
Cagliari to surrender; but he stood out, and the Spaniards had to wait
for the complete arrival of their ships before they could land and
invest the place. The governor was ere long compelled to capitulate;
but the Aragonese and the Catalans, who had followed the Austrians
from the embittered contest in their own country, defended the island
with furious tenacity, and it was not till November, and after
severe losses through fighting and malaria, that the Spaniards made
themselves masters of the island. The Powers of the Triple Alliance
then intervened with the proposal that Austria should renounce all
claim on the Spanish monarchy, and Spain all claim on Italy. Enraged at
this proposal, Alberoni embarked on extensive military preparations,
and put in practice the most extensive diplomatic schemes to paralyse
his enemies abroad. He won the goodwill of Victor Amadeus by holding
out the promise of the Milanese in exchange for Sicily; he encouraged
the Turks to continue the war against the Emperor, and entered into
negotiations with Ragotsky to renew the insurrection in Hungary; he
adopted the views of Gortz for uniting the Czar and Charles of Sweden
in peace, so that he might be able to turn their united power against
the Emperor, and still more against the Electorate of Hanover, thus
diverting the attention and the energies of George of England. Still
further to occupy England, which he dreaded more than all the rest, he
opened a direct correspondence with the Pretender, who was now driven
across the Alps by the Triple Alliance, and promised him aid in a new
expedition against Britain under the direction of the Duke of Ormonde,
or of James himself. In France the same skilful pressure was directed
against all the tender places of the body politic. He endeavoured to
rouse anew the insurrection of the Cevennes and the discontents of
Brittany. The Jesuits, the Protestants, the Duke and Duchess of Maine,
were all called into action, and the demands for the assembling of the
States-General, for the instant reformation of abuses, for reduction of
the national debts, and for other reforms, were the cries by which the
Government was attempted to be embarrassed.

These preparations on the part of Spain were in one particular
favourable to the King of England--they rendered the Emperor much
more conceding. The English envoy at that Court--rather singularly a
Swiss of the canton of Bern--the General de St. Saphorin, had found
Stahremberg, the Emperor's Minister, very high, and disinclined to
listen to the proposals of the King of England regarding Bremen and
Verden; but the news of the Spanish armament, and still more of its
having sailed from Cadiz to Barcelona, produced a wonderful change.
The Imperial Court not only consented to the demands of England, but
accepted its mediation with the Turks, by which a considerable force
was liberated for the service in Italy. The Emperor acceded to the
alliance proposed between England, France, and Germany in order to
drive Spain to terms, and which afterwards, when joined by the Dutch,
was called the Quadruple Alliance. In France, however, all obstacles to
this Treaty were not yet overcome. There was a strong party, headed by
the Marshal d'Huxelles, chief of the Council for Foreign Affairs, which
strongly opposed this plan of coercing the grandson of Louis XIV. To
overcome these obstacles Stanhope went over to Paris, and had several
conferences with King Philip; and, supported by Lord Stair and Nancré,
all difficulties were removed, and the Alliance was signed in the
succeeding August.

By this treaty Parma and Tuscany were ceded in reversion to the
infant Don Carlos; Sicily was to be made over to the Emperor, and, in
exchange for it, Sardinia was to be given to Victor Amadeus of Savoy.
As Sardinia was an island of so much less extent and value than Sicily,
the succession to the Crown of Spain was guaranteed to the House of
Savoy should Philip of Spain leave no issue. Three months were allowed
for the King of Spain and the Duke of Savoy to come in, and after that,
in case of their non-compliance, force was to be used to effect it.
It was to avert such a result that Stanhope (now Secretary for the
Southern Department, which included Foreign Affairs) made a journey to
Spain, where he failed to make the slightest impression on Alberoni.
Before setting out, however, Admiral Byng had been despatched to the
Mediterranean with twenty-one ships of the line, and peremptory orders
to attack the Spanish fleet whenever he should find it engaged in any
hostile attempt against Sicily, Naples, or any other of the Emperor's
possessions in the Mediterranean.

Byng went in pursuit of the Spanish fleet, which was assisting in the
conquest of Sicily, and came in sight of twenty-seven sail of the
line, with fire-ships, ketches, bombs, and seven galleys, drawn up in
line of battle between him and Cape Passaro. So soon as they were clear
of the straits, a council was held to determine whether they should
fight or retreat. They came to no resolution, but continued to linger
about in indecision till Byng was down upon them. Whereupon he utterly
destroyed them (August 11, 1718).

Alberoni, though defeated at sea, was more successful in Sicily, and he
continued his cabals against England in nearly every Court of Europe
with only the more assiduity. He was zealously at work in France,
England itself, Holland, Piedmont, and Sweden. By his ambassador at the
Hague he endeavoured to keep the Dutch out of the Quadruple Alliance
by exciting their commercial jealousy; but he was ably opposed by our
minister there, the Earl of Cadogan. In Piedmont he endeavoured to
deter Victor Amadeus from entering into this alliance by assuring him
that he was only endeavouring to secure Sicily to keep it out of the
hands of the Austrians, and reserve it for him; while, on the other
hand, he threatened him with thirty thousand bayonets if he dared to
accede to the Quadruple Treaty. The Allies, however, threatened still
greater dangers, and the Duke at last consented to accept Sardinia in
lieu of Sicily, and that island remains attached to the kingdom of
Italy to the present time.

[Illustration: SEA FIGHT OFF CAPE PASSARO. (_See p._ 41.)]

Foiled in these quarters, Alberoni appeared more successful in the
North. A negotiation had been opened between the two potentates, so
long at bitter variance, the Czar and Charles XII. of Sweden. They were
induced to meet in the island of Åland, and to agree that the Czar
should retain Livonia, and other Swedish territories south of Finland
which he had torn from Sweden, but, in compensation, Charles was to
be allowed to reconquer Bremen and Verden from George of Hanover and
England, and Norway from Denmark; and the two monarchs were to unite
their arms for the restoration of Stanislaus to the throne of Poland,
and of the Pretender to that of Great Britain. The success of these
arrangements appeared to Alberoni so certain that he boasted that the
Northern tempest would burst ere long over England with annihilating
fury; but even here he was doomed to disappointment. Charles XII.
delighted in nothing so much as in wild and romantic enterprise. Such
was that of the conquest of Norway; and he was led by his imagination
to commence it without delay. With his characteristic madness, he
divided his army into two parts, with one of which he took the way by
the coast of Norway, and the other he sent over the mountains at the
very beginning of winter. There that division perished in the snow amid
the most incredible horrors; and he himself, whilst carrying on the
siege of Frederickshall, was killed on the 11th of December, as appears
probable, by the treacherous shot of a French engineer in his service.
Almost simultaneously the Duke of Maine's conspiracy against the French
Government was detected, and he and his wife, together with the Spanish
Ambassador, were apprehended. There was nothing for it on the part of
the Regent but to proclaim war against Spain--a measure which England
had long been urging on him. The English declaration appeared on the
28th of December, 1718, and the French on the 9th of January, 1719.

In the session of 1719 Stanhope and his colleagues tried to undo the
arbitrary measures of 1711 and 1714--the Occasional Conformity Bill
and the Schism Bill. Stanhope would have made a strenuous effort to
abolish not only these laws, but the Test Act itself; but Sunderland,
though equally liberal, was more prudent, and showed that, to attempt
too much was to ruin all; and when they came to introduce their greatly
modified measure--that of annulling only some of the less prominent
clauses of the Test Act under the name of a Bill for strengthening the
Protestant interest--they found so much opposition that Sunderland's
discernment was fully justified. Not only the two archbishops and some
of the bishops opposed the measure, but the great Whigs, the Duke
of Devonshire and Earl Cowper. Cowper, though he expressed himself
willing to abolish the Schism Bill, stood stoutly for the Test and
Corporation Acts as the very bulwarks of our constitution in Church
and State; whilst the Earl of Islay declared even this moderate
measure a violation of the union with Scotland. On the other hand,
the Bishops Hoadley, Willis, Gibson, and Kennett supported the Bill,
which, however, was not carried without considerable mutilation; and
had Stanhope introduced such a measure as he proposed, including even
considerable relief to Catholics, the whole would have been lost.

Parliament was prorogued on the 18th of April, and the king soon after
set out for his German dominions, taking Stanhope along with him,
and his mistress, the Duchess of Kendal. In appointing the Regency
to administer affairs in the king's absence, the Prince of Wales was
entirely passed over, to his great indignation; nor were he and the
Princess allowed to hold levees, that duty being assigned to the young
princesses, to the great scandal of the public, and further exposure
of the discord raging in the Royal family. Even during the session
the ministers had brought in a Bill to "settle and limit the Peerage
in such a manner that the number of English peers should not be
enlarged beyond six of the present number (178), which, upon failure
of male issue, might be supplied by new creations; that, instead of
the sixteen elective peers of Scotland, twenty-five should be made
hereditary on the part of that kingdom; and that this number, upon
failure of heirs male, should be supplied from the other members of the
Scottish Peerage." Both the king and ministers flattered themselves
that they should carry this Bill, and thus fetter the Prince of
Wales when he came to the throne. The king was desirous to do this
out of sheer jealousy and hatred of his own son, and the ministers,
Sunderland in particular, out of dread of his vengeance in that case;
for, if he created a dozen peers at a time, as Anne had done, he
could easily swamp the Whigs and put the present ministers in peril
of impeachment. But though the Whigs had been clamorous against the
act of Anne, some of them now, Cowper and Townshend at their head, as
vehemently denounced this measure as a gross infringement of the royal
prerogative. The debate became very bitter, and many friendships were
broken up by it, amongst others that of Addison and Steele, who took
different sides; but the Bill was finally dropped, through the vigorous
opposition offered to it by Walpole.

Scarcely had Parliament ceased to sit, and the king was gone to spend
the summer months in Germany, when the vigilance of the Ministry was
demanded to ward off a fresh invasion. Alberoni, defeated in his
schemes on France, and his hopes of the invasion of England by Charles
XII. crushed by that monarch's death, determined now to make a grand
effort to support the Pretender himself. For this purpose, he invited
him to Spain, and at the same time began the equipment of a formidable
fleet to carry over a Spanish force, under the command of the Duke
of Ormonde, to the shores of Britain. The Pretender was not intended
to accompany the expedition, but to be in readiness to follow on the
first news of its successful landing. But it was no more destined to
reach these shores than the Grand Armada. It has always been the fate
of invading squadrons to encounter providential tempests in coming
hitherward, and the usual hurricane was ready to burst. Scarcely,
indeed, had the fleet lost sight of Cape Finisterre before the storm
swooped down upon it. For twelve days the terrible Bay of Biscay was
swept by a frightful wind, which drove the vessels in all directions,
and rendered it impossible to manage them. Fortunate would it have
been if every vessel had failed to reach the shores at which they
aimed; but two vessels, on board of which were the Earls Marshal and
Seaforth, and the Marquis of Tullibardine, accompanied by about three
hundred Spanish soldiers, reached Scotland, and landed, on the 16th of
April, at Kintail, in Ross-shire. In the hope that Ormonde would still
reach England, this small force lay quiet for some time, and so little
did they excite notice, that the Government imagined that they had
re-embarked. Their presence there, however, had the mischievous effect
of exciting some few of the Highlanders to join them. They seized Donan
Castle, and thus attracted the attention of the English. Some vessels
of war arrived upon the coast. The castle was speedily retaken, and
Lord Carpenter, the commander of the forces in Scotland, sent some
troops from Inverness against them. General Wightman, the officer
thus despatched, was attended by about a thousand men, and found the
enemy, now swollen to about two thousand, strongly posted at Glenshiel.
He immediately attacked them, and the miscellaneous force speedily
dispersed. The Highlanders, who knew the country, rapidly disappeared
amongst the hills, and the Spaniards had no other resource than to lay
down their arms.

Alberoni now found himself in turn attacked by France. Whilst busying
himself to repair a few of the shattered ships which had escaped from
the tempest, in order to harass the coast of Brittany in conjunction
with the malcontents there, he beheld an army of thirty thousand French
menacing the Pyrenean frontier. War having begun, the Spaniards were
utterly defeated by the French in Spain and by the Austrians in Sicily,
thanks to the zealous co-operation of the British fleet under Admiral
Byng. At length Philip was compelled to dismiss Alberoni.

The King of Spain hoped, by the dismissal of Alberoni, to obtain more
advantageous terms of peace from France and England; but they still
stood firmly to the conditions of the Quadruple Alliance. On the 19th
of January, 1720, the plenipotentiaries of England, France, and Holland
signed an engagement at Paris not to admit of any conditions of peace
from Spain contrary to those of the alliance. Stanhope despatched his
secretary, Schaub, to Madrid, to endeavour to bring over the queen to
this agreement, and Dubois sent instructions to the Marquis Scotti,
Father d'Aubenton, and others in the French interest to press the same
point. She stood out firmly for some time, but eventually gave way,
and the mind of the king was soon influenced by her. Some difficulties
which could not be overcome were referred to a congress to be held
at Cambray. On the 26th of January Philip announced his accession
to the Quadruple Alliance, declaring that he gave up his rights and
possessions to secure the peace of Europe. He renewed his renunciation
of the French Crown, and promised to evacuate Sicily and Sardinia
within six months, which he faithfully performed.

By the firmness of the Allies a peace which continued twelve years was
given to Europe, and the storm which Alberoni had so fondly expected
out of the North was as completely dissipated. The new Queen of Sweden
had consented to yield absolutely to George I., as King of Hanover,
the disputed possession of Bremen and Verden. Poland was induced to
acknowledge Augustus of Saxony as king, and Prussia to be satisfied
with the acquisition of Stettin and some other Swedish territory.
But the Czar and the King of Denmark, seeing Sweden deprived of its
military monarch, and exhausted by his wild campaigns, contemplated the
actual dismemberment of Sweden. The Queen of Sweden threw herself for
protection on the good offices of the King of England, and both England
and France agreed to compel the Czar and the King of Denmark to desist
from their attacks on Sweden if they would not listen to friendly
mediation. Lord Carteret, a promising young statesman, was sent as
ambassador to Stockholm, and Sir John Norris, with eleven sail of the
line, was ordered to the Baltic. Russia and Denmark, however, continued
to disregard the pacific overtures of England, trusting to there being
no war with that Power. They ravaged the whole coast of Sweden, burning
above a thousand villages, and the town of Nyköping, the third place in
the kingdom. Seeing this, Lord Stanhope, who was still at Hanover with
the king, sent orders to Admiral Norris to pay no regard to the fact of
there being no declaration of war, but to treat the Russian and Danish
fleet as Byng had treated the Spanish one. Norris accordingly joined
his squadron to the Swedish fleet at Carlscrona, and went in pursuit
of the fleet of the Czar. Peter, seeing that the English were now in
earnest, recalled his fleet with precipitation, and thereby, no doubt,
saved it from complete destruction; but he still continued to refuse to
make peace, and determined on the first opportunity to have a further
slice of Swedish territory. Denmark, which was extremely poor, agreed
to accept a sum of money in lieu of Marstrand, which it had seized; and
thus all Europe, except the Czar, was brought to a condition of peace.

George had arrived in England from his German States on the 11th of
November of the preceding year, 1719, and opened Parliament on the
23rd. In his speech he laid stress on the success of his Government
in promoting the evacuation of Sicily and Sardinia by Spain, in
protecting Sweden, and laying the foundation of a union amongst the
great Protestant Powers of Europe. He then recurred to the subject
of the Bill for limiting the peerage, which had been rejected in the
previous Session. George was animated by the vehement desire to curtail
the prerogative of his son, and said that the Bill was necessary to
secure that part of the Constitution which was most liable to abuse.
Lord Cowper declared, on the other hand, that besides the reasons which
had induced him to oppose the measure before, another was now added
in the earnestness with which it was recommended. But Cowper was not
supported with any zeal by the rest of the House, and the Bill passed
on the 30th of November, and was sent down to the House of Commons
on the 1st of December. There it was destined to meet with a very
different reception. During the recess Walpole had endeavoured to rouse
a resistance to it in both Houses. He had convened a meeting of the
Opposition Whigs at Devonshire House, and called upon them to oppose
the measure; but he found that some of the Whig peers were favourable
to it, from the perception that it would increase the importance of
their order; others declared that it would be inconsistent in them to
oppose a principle which they had so strenuously maintained against a
Tory Ministry--that of discountenancing the sudden creation of peers
for party purposes; and others, though hostile to the Bill, declared
that they should only expose themselves to defeat by resisting it. But
Walpole persisted in his opposition, and declared that, if his party
deserted him, he would contend against the Bill single-handed. He
asserted that it would meet with strong resistance from the country
gentlemen who hoped some time or other to reach the peerage--a hope
which the Bill, if carried, would extinguish for ever.

By these endeavours Walpole managed to array a considerable body of the
Commons against it. It was introduced on the 8th of December, and Sir
John Pakington, Sir Richard Steele, Smith, Methuen, and others joined
him in attacking it. Steele made a very powerful speech against it, but
the grand assault was that of Walpole. He put out all his strength,
and delivered a harangue such as he had never achieved till that day.
He did not spare the motives of the king, though handling them with
much tact, and was unsparingly severe on the Scottish clauses, and
on the notorious subserviency of the Scottish representative peers.
He declared that the sixteen elective Scottish peers were already a
dead weight on the country; and he asked what they would be when made
twenty-five, and hereditary? He declared that such a Bill would make
the lords masters of the king, and shut up the door of honour to the
rest of the nation. Amongst the Romans, he said, the way to the Temple
of Fame was through the Temple of Virtue; but if this Bill passed, such
would never be the case in this country. There would be no arriving at
honours but through the winding-sheet of an old, decrepit lord, or the
tomb of an extinct noble family. Craggs, Lechmere, Aislabie, Hampton,
and other Ministerial Whigs supported the Bill; but, in the words of
Speaker Onslow, the declamation of Walpole had borne down everything
before it, and the measure was defeated by a majority of two hundred
and sixty-nine to one hundred and seventy-seven.

In our time this defeat would, as a matter of course, have turned out
the Ministry, but in that day it had no such effect. They continued to
hold office, and to command undiminished majorities on other questions.
Still more singular was its effect, for it induced them to offer
office to their triumphant opponent Walpole, who not only accepted
a subordinate post amongst them--the Paymaster of the Forces--but
consented to support the very clauses regarding the Scottish peers
which he had so firmly denounced, should they be inclined to bring
forward the Bill a third time.

[Illustration: THE SOUTH SEA BUBBLE. (_After the Picture by E. M. Ward,
R.A., in the National Gallery, London._)]

The spring of 1720 was a period of remarkable national prosperity.
But "the grand money schemes projected of late," which appeared to
the Jacobite Atterbury and others calculated to cement the royal
peace and strengthen the foundation of the Government and nation, were
destined to produce a very different effect. For the South Sea Bubble
was about to burst. In 1711, Harley, being at his wits' end to maintain
the public credit, established a fund to provide for the National Debt,
which amounted to ten millions of pounds. To defray the interest he
made permanent the duties on wine, vinegar, and tobacco, etc. To induce
the purchase of the Government stock, he gave to the shareholders
the exclusive privilege of trading to the Spanish settlements in
South America, and procured them an Act of Parliament and a royal
charter, under the name of the South Sea Company. The idea, hollow and
groundless as it was, seized on the imagination of the most staid and
experienced traders. All the dreams of boundless gold which haunted the
heads of the followers of Drake and Raleigh were revived. The mania
spread through the nation, and was industriously encouraged by the
partisans of Harley. But this stupendous dream of wealth was based on
the promises of Ministers, who at the Peace of Utrecht were to secure
from the Government of Spain this right to trade to its colonies. The
right was never granted by that haughty and jealous Power, further than
for the settlement of some few factories, and the sending of one small
ship annually of less than five hundred tons. This, and the Assiento,
or privilege of supplying those colonies with African slaves, were the
sole advantages obtained, and these were soon disturbed by the war with
Spain, which broke out under Alberoni. The South Sea Company, however,
from its general resources, remained a flourishing corporation, and was
deemed the rival of the Bank of England.

It was at the close of 1719, when George I. returned from Hanover, that
this Company proposed to Ministers to consolidate all the funds into
one. It was strange that both Ministers and merchants could be deluded
by the hope of enriching themselves by a share of the trade with the
Spanish South American provinces, when Spain herself, in full enjoyment
of them, was sunk into indigence and weakness, and presented the most
determined resistance to the unfettered intercourse of any other nation
with them. Yet Sir John Blunt, a leading director of the South Sea
Company, persuaded the Ministers that by granting the Company power to
deal with the public funds, and especially to buy up the unredeemable
annuities which had been granted in the two preceding reigns, chiefly
on terms of ninety-nine years, and which now amounted to about eight
hundred thousand pounds a year, they could, in twenty-six years, pay
off the entire National Debt. But, to enable them to do this, they
must be empowered to reduce all the different public securities to
one aggregate fund in their hands, to convert both redeemable and
unredeemable debts into stock by such arrangements as they could make
with the holders, and to have certain commercial privileges vested in
them. Ministers accepted the proposals with great alacrity. Aislabie
introduced the scheme to Parliament in the month of February, 1720,
declaring that, if it was accepted by the House, the prosperity of
the nation would be amazingly enhanced, and all its debts liquidated
in a very few years. Craggs seconded the proposal in most sanguine
terms, expressing his conviction that every member of the House must be
ready to adopt so advantageous an offer. Ministers had already closed
with the proposals of the Company, and they were themselves greatly
disconcerted by the suggestion of Mr. Thomas Brodrick, the member for
Stockbridge, who expressed his entire accordance with Ministers, but
thought that the nation should endeavour to obtain the best terms for
itself by opening the competition to every other company or association
of men as well as that in question. Ministers were confounded by this
proposal, and Aislabie endeavoured to get out of it by declaring
that to do this would be like putting the nation up to auction, and
that such things should be done with spirit. But Jekyll interposed,
saying it was this spirit which had ruined the nation, and it was
now requisite to consider seriously what was best for the public. A
violent debate ensued, in which Walpole eloquently recommended open
competition, and was sharply replied to by Lechmere. The question
was carried in favour of competition; and then the Bank of England,
which before had coolly declined to enter into the proposals, suddenly
appeared in a new temper, and made liberal offers for the privilege of
thus farming the public debts. But the South Sea Company was not to be
outdone; it offered seven millions and a half, and the Bank gave way in
despair.

Walpole, however, continued to oppose the South Sea Bill in the
Commons, declaring that the terms were too extravagant ever to be
fulfilled; that the experiment could result in nothing but a fearful
increase of the costs of stockjobbing, and final confusion and ruin.
He insisted that, before the proposals of the Company were accepted,
the rise of their stock should be limited, and every means taken to
prevent the fever of infatuation that would ensue from the promise of
dividends out of funds which could never be realised. He proposed for
this purpose the introduction of a clause fixing the number of years'
purchase to be granted to the annuitants of the South Sea Company; but
to this it was objected that it was the interest of the Company to take
up the annuities; and, as the annuitants had the power of coming in or
not, as they pleased, the Company would, of course, offer advantageous
terms, and, therefore, the whole affair might be safely left to private
adjustment. Aislabie added that the South Sea Company would not submit
to be controlled in an undertaking they were to pay so dear for. The
Bill passed both Houses.

The South Sea Company had immediately on the passing of the Bill
proposed a subscription of one million, and this was so eagerly seized
on that, instead of one, two millions were subscribed. To stimulate
this already too feverish spirit in the public, the Company adopted
the most false and unjustifiable means. They had eight millions and a
half to pay over to Government as a _douceur_ for granting them the
management of the Funds; and, therefore, to bring this in rapidly, they
propagated the most lying rumours. It was industriously circulated that
Lord Stanhope had received overtures at Paris to exchange Gibraltar and
Port Mahon for invaluable gold lands in Peru! The South Sea trade was
vaunted as a source of boundless wealth in itself. In August the stock
had risen from the one hundred and thirty of the last winter to one
thousand! Men sold houses and land to become shareholders; merchants of
eminence neglected their affairs and crippled their resources to reap
imaginary profits. The Company flattered the delusion to the utmost.
They opened a third, and even a fourth subscription, larger than the
former, and passed a resolution that from next Christmas their yearly
dividend should not be less than fifty per cent.! In labouring to
increase the public delusion they seem to have caught the contagion
themselves, for they began to act, not like men who were blowing a
bubble which they knew must speedily burst, but like persons who had
mounted permanently into the very highest seat of prosperous power.
They assumed the most arrogant and overbearing manner, even towards men
of the highest station and influence. "We have made them kings," said a
member of Parliament, "and they deal with everybody as such."

The spirit of gambling thus set going by Government itself soon
surpassed all bounds, and burst forth in a thousand shapes. It was
well known that the king, his mistresses, his courtiers, his son and
heir apparent, were all dabbling busily in the muddy waters of this
huge pool of trickery and corruption. A thousand other schemes were
invented and made public to draw in fresh gudgeons, and the Prince
of Wales allowed his name to stand as governor of a Welsh Copper
Company. All ranks and classes rushed to Change Alley--dukes, lords,
country squires, bishops, clergy (both Established and Dissenting),
were mixed up with stockjobbers and brokers in eager traffic. Ladies
of all ranks mingled in the throng, struggling through the press and
straining their voices to be heard amid the hubbub. There and all over
the kingdom were advertised and hawked about the following and other
schemes:--Wrecks to be fished for on the Irish coast; plans for making
of oil from sunflower seeds; for extracting of silver from lead; for
the transmuting of quicksilver into a malleable and fine metal; for
importing a number of large jackasses from Spain; for a wheel for
perpetual motion; and, finally, for an undertaking which shall in due
time be revealed!

The South Sea Company, with a folly of which extreme greed only is
capable, endeavoured to put down these rival schemes and obtained an
order from the Lords Justices and writs of _scire facias_ against
several of these new bubbles. It was like raising a wind to blow away
the bubbles, forgetting that their own was a bubble too, and would
go with them. The moment that the people began to distrust one they
distrusted all. The panic became as great as the mania had been. The
South Sea stock dropped in less than a month from one thousand to
below six hundred. There was a simultaneous rush to sell out, and
the shares must have sunk instantly to _nil_ but for the gigantic
exertions of the Company to raise money and buy in. The relief,
however, was but temporary. The bankers and pawnbrokers who had
advanced money on scrip broke and fled; merchants, goldsmiths, and
speculators rushed away after them. Walpole was summoned in haste from
Haughton to devise some means of staying the panic. He endeavoured
to get the Bank of England to circulate three millions of South Sea
bonds for a year; but the Bank, seeing that the case was desperate,
declined it. This was decisive. The rage and despair of the swarming
dupes were indescribable. They heaped execrations not only on the
South Sea Company, but on Ministers, the king, his mistresses, and
the Royal Family, who had all been deep in the affair, and who had
taken good care of themselves. George landed at Margate on the 9th of
November, soon after which the South Sea stock fell to one hundred and
thirty-five. On the 8th of December Parliament met, and promptly began
to investigate the scandal.

In the House of Lords on the 24th of January, 1721, five directors who
had been called before them were arrested and their papers seized. By
what had been drawn from them, it appeared that large sums had been
given to people in high places to procure the passing of the South
Sea Bill. Lord Stanhope rose and expressed his indignation at such
practices, and moved that any transfer of stock for the use of any
person in the Administration without a proper consideration was a
notorious and dangerous corruption. The motion was seconded by Lord
Townshend, and carried unanimously. The examination being continued on
the 4th of February, Sir John Blunt refused to answer their lordships,
on the plea that he had already given his evidence before the Secret
Committee. A vehement debate arose out of this difficulty, during which
the Duke of Wharton, a most profligate young nobleman, and president of
the Hell-fire Club, made a fierce attack on Stanhope, accused him of
fomenting the dissensions between the king and his son, and compared
him to Sejanus, who had sown animosities in the family of Tiberius,
and rendered his reign hateful to the Romans. Stanhope, in replying to
this philippic, was so transported by his rage, that the blood gushed
from his nostrils. He was carried from the House, and soon afterwards
expired.

Lord Townshend succeeded Stanhope as Secretary of State. Aislabie, who
had been deep in the iniquities of the South Sea affair, was compelled
to resign his post as Chancellor of the Exchequer, to which Walpole
succeeded. Meanwhile the Secret Committee appointed by the Commons
continued its labours indefatigably. They sat nearly every day from
nine in the morning till eleven at night, and on the 16th of February,
1721, they presented their first report to the House. This revealed a
vast amount of Ministerial corruption.

On the very day that this report was being read in the House died
one of the accused, James Craggs, Secretary of State. His complaint
was smallpox; but the state of mind induced by this exposure is
supposed to have rendered the malady fatal. His father, who was
Postmaster-General, was so shamefully involved in the same dishonest
proceedings, that he took poison.

Charles Stanhope, though clearly guilty, escaped, after examination
in the House, by a majority of three, out of respect for the memory
of his deceased relative, the upright Lord Stanhope. Aislabie's case
came next, and was so palpably bad that he was committed to the Tower
and expelled the House, amid the ringing of bells, bonfires, and other
signs of rejoicing in the City of London. The bulk of his property,
moreover, was seized. This was some compensation to the public,
which had murmured loudly at the acquittal of Stanhope. Sunderland's
case was the next, and he escaped by the evidence against him being
chiefly second-hand. He was acquitted by a majority of two hundred and
thirty-three against one hundred and seventy-two. As to the king's
mistresses, their sins were passed over out of a too conceding loyalty;
but no favour was shown to the directors, though some of them were
found to be much poorer when the scheme broke up than they were when it
began. Amongst them was Mr. Gibbon, the grandfather of the historian,
who afterwards exposed the injustice of many of these proceedings,
though at the time they were considered as only too merited. The
directors were disabled from ever again holding any place, or sitting
in Parliament; and their estates, amounting to upwards of two millions,
were confiscated for the relief of the sufferers by the scheme.

On the death of Stanhope, Sir Robert Walpole was left without a rival,
and he received his commission of First Lord of the Treasury on the 2nd
of April, and from this period down to 1742 he continued to direct the
government of Great Britain. His chief anxiety now was to restore the
public credit. He drew up, as Chairman of the Committee of the Commons,
a report of all that had been lost in the late excitements, and of the
measures that had been adopted to remedy the costs incurred. Amongst
these were the resolutions of the House respecting the seven and a half
millions the directors of the South Sea Company had agreed to pay to
Government; more than five had been remitted, and we may add that on
the clamorous complaints of the Company the remainder was afterwards
remitted too. The forfeited estates had been made to clear off a large
amount of encumbrance, the credit of the Company's bonds had been
maintained, and thirty-three per cent. of the capital paid to the
proprietors. Such were the measures adopted by the Commons, and these
being stated in the report to the king, a Bill was brought in embodying
them all. Many of the proprietors, however, were not satisfied. They
were very willing to forget their own folly and greediness, and charge
the blame on the Government. On the second reading of Walpole's Bill
they thronged the lobby of the House of Commons. The next day the Bill
was carried, and gradually produced quiet; but Walpole himself did not
escape without severe animadversions. He was accused of having framed
his measures in collusion with the Bank, and with a clear eye to his
own interest; but he had been strenuously vindicated from the charge,
and on the whole the vigour and boldness with which he encountered the
storm and quelled it deserve the highest praise, and may well cover a
certain amount of self-interest, from which few Ministers are free.

[Illustration: GEORGE I.]

The discontents occasioned by the South Sea scheme and its issue
had caused the Jacobites to conceive fresh hopes of success, and
their spirits were still more elevated by the birth of a son to the
Pretender. The business of this faction was conducted in England
by a junto or council, amongst the chief members of which were the
Earls of Arran and Orrery, Lords North and Gower, and the Bishop of
Rochester. Lord Oxford had been invited to put himself at the head
of this council of five, but everything of a decided nature was out
of his character. He continued to correspond with the leaders of the
faction, but he declined putting himself too forward. In fact, his
habitual irresolution was now doubled by advancing infirmities, and
he died three years afterwards. Though several of the junto were men
of parliamentary, and North of military experience, Atterbury was the
undoubted head of it. The period of confusion created by the South Sea
agitation was first pitched on for a new attempt, then that of the
general election, which had taken place in March, and, finally, it was
deferred till the king should have gone to Hanover, according to his
custom, in the summer.

In preparation for this movement James the Pretender was to sail
secretly to Spain, in readiness to cross to England; and he had already
quitted his house in Rome and removed to a villa, the more unobserved
to steal away at the appointed moment. Ormonde also had left Madrid
and gone to a country seat half way to Bilbao, when the secret of the
impending expedition was suddenly revealed by the French Government to
that of England. The conspirators had been mad enough to apply to the
Regent for five thousand troops, trusting that, notwithstanding his
peaceful relations with Britain, he would secretly enjoy creating it
some embarrassment. But in this, as in all other views, they proved
more sanguine than profound. Sir Luke Schaub, the British Ambassador,
was immediately informed of it on condition, it was said, that no one
should die for it.

Walpole was instantly on the alert on this startling discovery. He
prevailed on the king to put off his journey to Germany. Troops were
drawn round London and a camp was formed in Hyde Park. The king took
up his residence at Kensington, in the midst of the soldiers, and the
Prince of Wales retired to Richmond. General Macartney was dispatched
for still more troops from Ireland; some suspected persons were
arrested in Scotland; the States of Holland were solicited to have
ships and soldiers in readiness; an order was obtained from the Court
of Madrid to forbid the embarkation of Ormonde; and General Churchill
was dispatched to Paris to make all secure with the Regent. Atterbury
was arrested on the 24th of August.

Parliament opened its first sitting on the 9th of October. The rumour
of invasion, of course, gave the tone to the king's speech. He recited
the leading facts of the conspiracy, and observed that he should the
less wonder at them had he in any one instance, since his accession to
the throne of his ancestors, invaded the liberty or property of his
subjects.

The very first act was to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act for a year.
To punish the Catholics and Non-jurors, who were all regarded as
implicated in this conspiracy, Walpole proposed to raise one hundred
thousand pounds by a tax on their estates. A Bill of Pains and
Penalties was passed against Atterbury, and he was compelled to go
into banishment. On the 18th of June Atterbury was put on board a
man-of-war and conducted to Calais. As he landed there, he was told
that Bolingbroke had received the king's pardon, and was just quitting
Calais for England; and the Bishop said, with a smile, "Then I am
exchanged."

This Act, however, merely gave Bolingbroke the right to come back and
live in security in England. His ambition could only be satisfied by
the restoration of his estates and honours. Unfortunately for him, when
he arrived in England, the king had sailed for Hanover, attended by
Townshend and Carteret, and his great patroness, the Duchess of Kendal.
He waited, therefore, on Walpole, who promptly rejected his offers.
Mortified at this repulse, Bolingbroke returned to Paris, where a field
of action had opened in which he was well calculated to figure.

The restless Englishman, much more like a Frenchman in temperament and
character than a native of England, had married Madame de Villette,
a niece of Louis XIV.'s last mistress, Madame de Maintenon, a lady
rich and well-trained in all the Court life of Paris. By this means
Bolingbroke was brought into close connection with that Court. The
notorious Cardinal Dubois had died in August, 1723, and in less than
four months died also the Duke of Orleans, the Regent. Louis XV. being
nominally of age, no other Regent was appointed; but the Duke of
Bourbon, a man of better character but of less ability than the Regent,
Orleans, was Prime Minister. He was greatly under the influence of his
bold and ambitious mistress Madame de Prie; and Bolingbroke, who was
high in the favour of both Minister and mistress, flattered himself
that, with the aid of his courtier wife, he could govern both them and
France.

Bolingbroke was well aware that a violent strife for power was going on
in the British Cabinet. Lord Carteret, the new Secretary of State, and
afterwards Earl Granville, was labouring hard to undermine both Walpole
and Townshend. He was a very accomplished man and a great linguist,
familiar with nearly all the Continental languages, including German,
which, strangely enough, the English courtiers neglected, though they
had a German monarch on the throne who could not speak English. German
then was regarded as a language rude and even vulgar--a tongue, as
Voltaire afterwards said, "only fit for horses." But Carteret, by being
master of it, could converse freely with the king, whilst Walpole,
ignorant, too, of French, could hold communication with him only in
Latin, which, from the wide difference between the English and foreign
pronunciation of it, could not have been a very favourable medium.
Carteret had ingratiated himself so much with the king by conversing
in German, and flattering George's German tastes and politics, that he
had succeeded to the influence which Stanhope had formerly possessed.
He had also secured the same influence in the Court of Paris. He had
by that means confirmed the appointment of Sir Luke Schaub at that
Court, and thus kept open the most favourable communication with the
Abbé Dubois. The Courts of England and France continued during Dubois'
life in close connection, and through the influence of George and his
Ministers, Dubois obtained first the Archbishop's mitre, and then the
Cardinal's hat.

The struggle for ascendency proceeding, Walpole and his party secured
the interest of the Duchess of Kendal, who always took care to side
with that which she thought the stronger. Carteret and his party,
on the other hand, secured the interest of the other mistress, the
Countess of Darlington, and her sister, Madame de Platen. Whilst
affairs were in this position, the two Secretaries of State, Townshend
and Carteret, accompanied the king to Hanover. There came upon the
_tapis_ the question of a marriage between the Count St. Florentin,
the son of La Vrillière, the Secretary of State for France, and a
daughter of Madame de Platen. Madame de Platen, however, demanded
that La Vrillière should be made a duke, so that in due course of
time her daughter would be a duchess. George I. warmly seconded this
demand; and, had Bolingbroke used his influence, there was little
doubt that it would have been accomplished. But the French nobility
raised a huge outcry against this honour being conferred on the family
of La Vrillière, which they deemed too obscure for such a dignity.
Bolingbroke, however, was seeking his own objects through the other
mistress, the Duchess of Kendal; and, notwithstanding the repulse
which he had received from Walpole, he still calculated that his power
would prevail, and he therefore smothered his personal vexation, and
remained on the side of the Duchess of Kendal and Walpole, leaving
Carteret and his allies, the Platens, to fight their own battle.

In the midst of these cabals died the Regent, and Townshend, acting
with Walpole, sent over Walpole's brother Horace to watch their
interests at Paris. Carteret, on the other hand, ordered Sir Luke
Schaub to make every exertion for the grant of the dukedom. On the
arrival of Horace Walpole, Bolingbroke, obeying the impulses of the
courtier and not of the man, immediately waited on him, and placed all
his influence at the French Court at his service; but Walpole, who had
an invincible repugnance to Bolingbroke, whilst he availed himself of
the advantages offered by Bolingbroke, still kept him at a great and
stately distance. Undeterred by this conduct, however, Bolingbroke
swallowed his mortification, and continued to keep his eye and his hope
on the Walpole Ministry. Unassisted by Bolingbroke, the dukedom could
not be obtained; but George reconciled Madame Platen to the match by
giving her daughter a portion of ten thousand pounds. Horace Walpole,
at the same time, succeeded in getting Schaub recalled, and himself
installed in his office of Ambassador at Paris--a decided victory
over Carteret; indeed, so decided, that Carteret was removed from the
Secretaryship to the Lord-Lieutenancy of Ireland.

The domestic serenity of the realm was, however, greatly disturbed
at this moment by Dean Swift, who seized on the occasion to avenge
himself on the Whig Ministry for the defeat and punishment of his
party, and especially of his particular friends and patrons, Oxford
and Bolingbroke. There had long been a great deficiency of copper coin
in Ireland. The Government undertook to remove this pressing want of
so useful a medium, and they set about it in an honest and honourable
manner as regarded the quality of the coin. Tenders were issued, and
various offers received for the coining of farthings and halfpence
to the value of a hundred and eight thousand pounds. The proposal of
Mr. William Wood, an iron and copper founder, of Wolverhampton, was
accepted; but the quality of the coin, both as to weight and fineness,
was determined by the advice of Sir Isaac Newton, then Master of the
Mint, and Wood was bound under heavy penalties to furnish it according
to this stipulation. Every care was used by the Ministers and the
Solicitor- and Attorney-General to insure the supply of a much better
copper coinage than Ireland had ever possessed before.

There were some circumstances, however, which came out that created
considerable suspicion and displeasure in Ireland. Wood had given a
bribe to the king's mistress, the Duchess of Kendal, to procure him
the contract, and the Government had ordered the coinage without
paying the Irish Privy Council and Lord-Lieutenant the compliment of
consulting them on this occasion. Swift saw these errors, and seized
on them for his own purposes. He did not stop to inquire whether,
after all, the proposed coinage would not, in any circumstances, be
much better than the present distressing scarcity of copper money, and
whether the farthings and halfpence might not turn out as good, though
they were contracted for. It was enough for him that there was a cause
of discontent which he could fan into a flame against the British
Government. He threw all his spiteful soul into it, and his "Drapier's
Letters" inflamed the public mind to such a degree that Walpole was
compelled to cancel the patent.

The tumult in Ireland was succeeded by one in Scotland. The people
of that country, though they were, by the provisions of the Act of
Union, to bear their proportion of the malt tax, had always refused
compliance, and in 1713 had issued a violent resolution against it.
They had never yet complied with the law, and Walpole, seeing the
sturdy nature of the opposition, was willing to give up the point
quietly. But during the Parliamentary Session of this year, Mr.
Brodrick proposed that a duty of sixpence on every barrel of ale should
be paid in lieu of it. Walpole was reluctant to go into the question,
but the House was bent on it, and he therefore complied so far as to
consent to a duty of threepence per barrel, or half the amount. There
were promptly riots in Glasgow, and at Edinburgh the brewers refused
to brew. Walpole sent down the Earl of Islay, the brother of the Duke
of Argyll, and a zealous adherent of his own, to pacify the country.
Islay behaved with equal prudence and firmness. He found the powerful
combination of brewers essaying to make a stand against and then
attempting to make terms with him. But he let them know that nothing
but unconditional surrender to the laws would be accepted, and they at
length held a meeting, where the chairman put the question, "To brew,
or not to brew?" The members were to vote _seriatim_; but neither the
man on his right nor the one on his left would venture to begin. In
the long pause that ensued, one Gray declared that he thought there
was nothing for them to do but to return to their trades; that he
would not be bound by the majority, but would vote independently, and
he voted to brew. The meeting broke up, and that night a number of
breweries were set to work, and the next day, at noon, about forty
brew-houses were in full action in Edinburgh, and ten in Leith.

One of the first acts of the Parliament, which met on November 12th,
was to punish the peculations and abuses of the Lord Chancellor,
Parker, Earl of Macclesfield. The Court of Chancery, in former ages
a sink of corruption, was at this time in its worst condition. The
offices of Masters were regularly sold, and the Masters as regularly
took care to recoup themselves by all manner of peculation. The estates
of widows and orphans and the money of suitors were unscrupulously
plundered. There was a loud outcry against these robberies, and
especially against the Lord Chancellor, for his not only tolerating
but partaking in them. He endeavoured to escape the storm of public
indignation by resigning in January, but this did not avail him. He
was impeached by Sir George Oxenden in the Commons, and tried in the
Lords, and fined thirty thousand pounds. A motion for disabling him
from ever again sitting in Parliament or holding any office was lost
only by a very few votes. The king struck his name out of the list of
Privy Councillors, and in 1725 Sir Peter King was made Chancellor in
his stead, with the title of baron.

Bolingbroke, now restored to his estates, though the attainder still
deprived him of his seat in the House of Lords, endeavoured to create
a new species of opposition in Parliament. He retained his influence
with the Duchess of Kendal, and cultivated that of the ultra-Tories.
Still more, he soon discovered that William Pulteney, the most eloquent
man in the House, had grown disgusted with Walpole, who could never
bear any man of pre-eminent ability near the throne except himself.
Pulteney had been one of the steadiest friends of the late queen's
Government, and of the Protestant succession. Under George he had been
made Secretary at War. He had adhered to Walpole when he was sent to
the Tower for corruption, and in the great schism of 1717. Yet Walpole
had carefully excluded him from any high post in the Cabinet, and had
endeavoured to veil his jealousy of him by offering to procure him a
peerage, by which he would have removed him from the active sphere
of the House of Commons. Pulteney saw the object, and rejected the
specious favour. Instead of conferring on Pulteney some office worthy
of his talents, Walpole then put him into that of Cofferer of the
Household. In the state of indignation which this paltry appointment
raised in him Bolingbroke soon induced Pulteney to put himself at the
head of a large body of Oppositionists, under the title of "Patriots."
In this character he made some smart attacks on Walpole and his heavy
drafts on the Civil List for his friends, for which he was dismissed,
and joined Bolingbroke in a bold attempt to write down the Minister.
Between them the celebrated paper _The Craftsman_ was planned and
established, and they became the bitterest and most persevering
assailants of Walpole.

[Illustration: BARTHOLOMEW FAIR, LONDON, IN 1721. (_From a Painting on
a Fan._)]

Soon after the close of the Session in June, the king proceeded to
Hanover, accompanied, as usual, by Townshend and the Duchess of Kendal.
The state of his foreign relations demanded the utmost attention,
and very soon underwent the most extraordinary changes. These were
precipitated by the Duke of Bourbon, and were caused by the state of
the French succession. The young king might have children, and the
only reason why he might not have legitimate issue soon was that he
was affianced to the Infanta, Mary Ann, Philip's daughter, then a mere
child. Should he not have children, the young Duke of Orleans, the son
of the late Regent, would succeed him. To prevent this contingency,
the Duke of Bourbon, who had a violent hatred of Orleans, prevailed
on Louis to dismiss the Infanta, and choose as queen some princess of
mature age. He turned his eye for this purpose on the Princess Anne of
England, but George declined the alliance, because the Queen of France
was bound to become Catholic. The Princess Mary Leczinska was next
fixed upon, daughter of the exiled Stanislaus of Poland, and the Duke
of Bourbon then sent the Infanta back to Spain.

This insult roused the fiery blood of Spain. The king and queen were
excited to paroxysms of rage. They told Mr. William Stanhope that,
in future, they would put confidence in no prince except his master,
nor admit any one else to mediate for them in their negotiations. But
George refused to break with France on their account, and ventured to
remind Philip that he himself stood greatly in need of the alliance
with France. Blinded, however, by their wounded pride, the King and
Queen of Spain now turned their anger against England. They recalled
their plenipotentiaries from the Congress of Cambray, which was sitting
to settle the affairs of Europe, and professed their readiness to
abandon all their hostility to the Emperor of Germany, and to concede
all that they had so long demanded from him, on condition that he
entered into a close alliance with them against France and England.
They sent back to France the widow of the late Don Louis, and also
Mademoiselle Beaujolais, another daughter of the late Regent Orleans,
who had been contracted to Don Carlos.

The Emperor of Germany was delighted at the Spanish offer. He had
always felt himself aggrieved by the conditions of the Quadruple
Alliance. He was afraid of France, and hated George of England for his
German policy. He had, moreover, embroiled himself with both England
and Holland, by establishing at Ostend an East India Company, which
was declared to be in violation of the Treaty of Westphalia, and was,
at all events, regarded with particular jealousy by both England and
Holland. This being the case, Ripperda, the envoy of Spain, a Dutch
adventurer, who had been the tool of Alberoni, completed with ease a
treaty with the Emperor at Vienna, which was signed on the 30th of
April, 1725.

By this treaty almost everything was given up which had kept Spain
and Austria in war and conflict for many years, and by themselves
and their allies had steeped Europe in blood. The King of Spain
agreed to sanction the Ostend Company, to yield the long-contested
point regarding the exclusive mastership of the Golden Fleece. He
surrendered the right to garrison with Spanish troops the fortresses
of Tuscany. He acknowledged the Emperor's right to Naples, Sicily, the
Milanese, and Netherlands, and guaranteed what was termed the Pragmatic
Sanction; that is, the succession of the hereditary states of Austria
in the female line. This was a concession of immense importance to
the Emperor, who had only daughters, and whose claim to the Flemish
and Italian dominions might thus have been contested by Philip on the
Emperor's death. Thus, before the emotions of a family quarrel, fell
at once all the mighty questions which had rent and desolated Europe
for a quarter of a century! Both the sovereigns engaged to afford
mutual support should either be attacked. Charles agreed to bring into
the field twenty thousand foot and ten thousand horse, Philip twenty
thousand troops and fifteen ships of war.

The world looked on in astonishment--diplomatists in dread of more
secret and momentous compacts, and that not without cause. In the
heat of this hastily-formed alliance, it was proposed to marry the
young Archduchess, the heiress of the Austrian States, to one of the
Infants of Spain--a contract, if carried out, which would probably have
overthrown all that had been done at such cost of life and wealth for
the establishment of the balance of power. This dangerous project was
frustrated by other events, but serious engagements were entered into
for compelling England to surrender Gibraltar and Minorca to Spain, and
for placing the Pretender on the throne of Great Britain.

But during these transactions France and England had not been idle.
A new alliance had been signed at Hanover between England, France,
and Prussia, to which soon after were added Denmark and Holland. The
real objects of this treaty were to counterbalance that between Spain,
Austria, and Russia, to compel the dissolution of the Ostend Company,
and to prevent the menaced assistance to the Pretender. This was the
celebrated Treaty of Hanover.

The confederacy of Spain, Austria, and Sweden against England greatly
encouraged the Pretender and his party. His agents were active on
almost every coast in Europe, under the able direction of Atterbury.
But there were two new allies whom James acquired at this time who did
him little service; these were Lord North and the Duke of Wharton.
They went over to the Continent, and not only openly avowed themselves
as friends of the Pretender, but renounced Protestantism and embraced
Popery. Lord North, however, found himself so little trusted at the
Pretender's Court, notwithstanding his apostasy, that he went to Spain,
entered its service, and there continued till his death, in 1734.
Wharton also arrived at Madrid, where he fell in with a congenial
spirit. This was Ripperda, the renegade Dutchman, now created a Duke
and made Prime Minister of Spain. He had lately returned from a mission
to Vienna, and was as full of foolish boastings as Wharton himself.
He told the officers of the garrison at Barcelona on landing, that
the Emperor would bring one hundred and fifty thousand men into the
field; that Prince Eugene had engaged for as many more within six
months of the commencement of a war; that in that case France would
be pillaged on all sides, the King of Prussia, whom he was pleased to
call the Grand Grenadier, would be chased from his country in a single
campaign, and King George out of both Hanover by the Emperor, and Great
Britain by the Pretender; that so long as he was in authority there
should never be peace between France and Spain. Yet to Mr. Stanhope he
declared that though he had talked both in Vienna and Spain in favour
of the Pretender, he was, nevertheless, as sincerely attached to the
interests of his Britannic Majesty as one of his own subjects; that
he would prove this on the first opportunity, and that he only talked
as he did to please their Catholic majesties, and to avoid being
suspected as a traitor, and falling into the hands of the Inquisition,
which he knew kept a sharp eye on him as a recent convert.

The folly of Ripperda, however, had ruined his credit with his own
sovereigns and the nation even more than with foreign Powers. His
swaggering and inflated language, in which he imagined that he was
enacting Alberoni, had destroyed all faith in him. But his final
blow came from his own false representations to each other of the
preparations for war made by Austria and Spain. Count Königseck was
most indignant when he discovered the miserable resources of the
Spanish monarchy in comparison with the pompous descriptions made
of them by Ripperda at Vienna; and the Spanish Court was equally
disappointed by a discovery of the real military status of Austria.
Ripperda was suddenly and ignominiously dismissed on the 14th of May.

A revolution of a similar character took place in France within a month
of the fall of Ripperda in Spain. The Duke of Bourbon had exhibited
a gross incapacity for governing France under the young king. He was
replaced by Cardinal Fleury, whose pacific designs harmonised with
those of Walpole. Thus Fleury's accession to power only strengthened
the English alliance with France. As for Spain, notwithstanding the
fall of Ripperda, Philip continued the same course of policy--clinging
firmly to the Emperor, and employing Palm, the envoy of the Emperor
in London, through bribery to the Duchess of Kendal and the king's
Hanoverian Ministers, Bothmar and the rest, who were averse from the
Treaty of Hanover, as in their estimation too exclusively calculated
for British interests. They even produced a strong feeling of this
kind in the mind of George, and they managed to detach the King of
Prussia from the British alliance. On the other hand, Sweden was won
over, by British gold and diplomacy, from Russian interests. The Dutch
also, with their usual slowness, came into the Hanover Treaty. Several
British fleets were at sea during the summer, watching the different
points of possible attack. One under Admiral Wager sailed to the Baltic
to overawe the Russians, which it did effectually. Admiral Jennings,
with another squadron, having on board some land troops, scoured the
coasts of Spain, kept the Spaniards in constant alarm, and returned
home safe before winter. A third fleet, under Admiral Hosier, was not
so fortunate. He was ordered to sail to the West Indies, and the
shores of the Spanish Main, to obstruct or capture the galleons; but
he was attacked off Porto Bello by the yellow fever, and lost a great
number of his men.

Parliament met on the 17th of January, 1727. The Royal Speech breathed
a decidedly warlike tone. The king informed Parliament that he had
received information, on which he could rely, that a secret article of
the treaty between Spain and the Emperor bound those parties to place
the Pretender on the throne of Great Britain, and that the surrender
of Gibraltar and Port Mahon was the price to be paid for this service.
He asked whether the public would not regard with indignation the
imposition of a Popish Pretender on the nation at such a cost. He added
that the King of Spain had ordered his Ambassador to quit the kingdom,
leaving behind him a formal demand for the surrender of the above-named
places. There was a great ferment in the House. Palm, the Emperor's
envoy, wrote to his Imperial master, advising him to disavow any such
secret agreement in the treaty at Vienna, and thus allay the excitement
in England. But Charles, who owed his throne to the victories of
Marlborough, and whose claims on Spain had been prosecuted by Britain
at serious cost of men and money, performed this disavowal with as much
arrogance as stupidity. He was not contented to say that the King of
England was mistaken, but he declared that his speech was false. This
gross insult to the head of the nation roused the indignation of all
parties, even of the Opposition; and Wyndham, Pulteney, and Shippen
denounced it as loudly as any, and supported a motion of Walpole,
declaring it an insolent affront. Palm was ordered to quit the kingdom
immediately.

With Spain the prospect of war became every day more imminent. Stanhope
quitted that country, and the Spanish Government ordered the seizure
of the _Prince Frederick_, a ship belonging to the South Sea Company.
Twenty thousand men were assembled and sent against Gibraltar. All
attempts on the great fortress were as useless as former ones had been.
The English regarded the attack with even an air of indifference,
whilst their guns, sickness, and desertion, were fast cutting off the
besiegers. In four months the investing army, being reduced to half its
number, drew off with this empty but destructive result.

This and other events at length convinced the stupid and ungrateful
Emperor that the war was hopeless. Russia had as good as deserted him;
Prussia, so lately won over, was again wavering; Sweden and Holland
had joined the allies; and Spain, so far from helping him, could not
drive the enemy from a corner of its own territory. He therefore
listened to terms of peace which were offered by the allies through the
pacific medium of Fleury, and the preliminaries were signed at Paris
by the Austrian Ambassador on the 31st of May with England, France,
and Holland. The Emperor agreed to suspend for seven years the charter
of the Ostend Company; to confirm all treaties previous to 1725; and
to refer any other objects of dispute to a general congress. Several
articles were introduced regarding Spain. The English consented to
withdraw the fleet of Admiral Hosier from blockading Porto Bello, so
that the galleons could return home; the siege of Gibraltar was to be
discontinued, and the _Prince Frederick_ to be restored. These articles
were signed by the Spanish Ambassador at Paris, but Philip himself
never ratified them, and England and Spain continued in a dubious state
of neither peace nor war.

[Illustration: FIVE-SHILLING PIECE OF THE SOUTH SEA COMPANY.]

[Illustration: FIVE-GUINEA PIECE OF GEORGE I.]

Whilst Walpole was thus labouring to secure the peace of Europe,
Bolingbroke was as industriously at work to undermine him. He had
cultivated his intimacy with the Duchess of Kendal still more
diligently, and by liberal bribes, and more liberal promises if he
succeeded in once more regaining power, he had brought her to exert her
influence with the king in his favour. This most sordid and rapacious
of mistresses, who looked on England only as a country to be managed
for her benefit, ventured at length to put into the king's hand a
memorial drawn up for her by Bolingbroke, demonstrating that the
country must be absolutely ruined if Walpole continued in office. The
stratagem was too palpable. Whilst she talked only, her suggestions
might pass for her own, but the style of the document must have at once
caused the king's suspicion of its true source. He put the paper into
Walpole's hand. Walpole, after interrogating the two Turks, who were
always in attendance on the king, and on their denying all knowledge of
the means by which the missive reached the royal person, went directly
to the Duchess and charged her with the fact. She did not deny it.
Walpole advised the king to admit Bolingbroke to the audience which
he solicited in the memorial, trusting that the king's dislike of him
would prevail in the interview. The result appeared to be of that kind;
nevertheless, Walpole was far from being secure in his own mind. He
knew that the mistress would be continually returning to the charge
in favour of her friend and paymaster, though she enjoyed a pension
from Government of seven thousand five hundred pounds; and he even
contemplated retiring with a peerage, but was dissuaded from this by
the Princess of Wales and the Duke of Devonshire. On the other hand,
Bolingbroke was in the highest expectation of his speedy restoration
not only to rank but to office.

The deaths of monarchs, however, were peculiarly fatal to this
ambitious man; that of Queen Anne had precipitated him from power,
and rescued his country from the ruin he prepared for it; that of
George now came as opportunely to prevent the national calamity of his
ministry. George set out for Hanover on the 3rd of June, accompanied,
as usual, by Townshend and the Duchess of Kendal. Just before his
departure the youthful Horace Walpole saw him for the first and last
time. When the king was come down to supper, Lady Walsingham took
Walpole into the Duchess's ante-room, where George and his favourite
were alone. Walpole knelt and kissed the king's hand. George appeared
in his usual health.

In his impatience to reach his beloved Hanover, the king had
out-travelled his Minister and the mistress, and reached Delden on
the 8th late at night. The next morning he proceeded again so early
as four o'clock, and was pressing onward, when in the forenoon he
was seized with a fit of apoplexy in his coach, and on arriving at
Ippenburen he was observed to be quite comatose--his eyes fixed, his
hands motionless, and his tongue hanging from his mouth. His attendants
wished to remain at Ippenburen to procure medical assistance; but
this seemed to rouse him, and he managed to articulate, "Osnabrück!
Osnabrück!" The only chance for his life, if there was any, depended
on instant surgical aid; they went in obedience to his command, and on
arriving at Osnabrück he was found quite dead on the 9th of June, 1727.




CHAPTER III.

THE REIGN OF GEORGE II.

    Accession of George II.--Characters of the King and Queen--Adroit
    Tactics of Walpole--Rise and Fall of Compton--Attitude of
    the Opposition--Congress of Soissons--Causes of Dispute
    with Spain--Stanhope's successful Negotiations with King
    Philip--Retirement of Townshend--Walpole Supreme--Peace
    Abroad and at Home--Walpole's System of Wholesale Bribery
    and Corruption--The Public Prisons--Duel between Pulteney
    and Lord Hervey--The Excise Scheme--Great Outcry--Withdrawal
    of the Bill--Walpole's Vengeance--Attack on the Septennial
    Act--Wyndham's Speech--Depression of the Opposition--Definitive
    Peace of Vienna--Gin Act--The Porteous Riots--The Prince of
    Wales and the Opposition--Application for an Increase of his
    Allowance--Birth of George III.--Death of Queen Caroline--Attempt
    to Reduce the Army--Disputes with Spain--"Jenkins' Ear"--Walpole's
    Negotiations--Secession of the Opposition--Further
    Difficulties with Spain--Declaration of War--Privateers and
    Reprisals--Vernon's Victory--Frederick invades Silesia--Assistance
    of England--Parliament Meets--Sandys' Motion--Walpole's
    Defence--Disasters of Maria Theresa--She throws herself on the
    Magyars--Misfortunes of the English Fleets--Vernon Repulsed from
    Carthagena--Power slips from the Hands of Walpole--His Last
    Battles--The Chippenham Election Petition--His Fall.


George II. was born in 1683, and was, consequently, in his forty-fourth
year when he ascended the throne. In 1705 he married the Princess
Caroline Wilhelmina of Anspach, who was born in the year before
himself, by whom he had now four children--Frederick Prince of Wales,
born in 1707, William Duke of Cumberland, born in 1721, and two
daughters.

George had, if anything, a narrower intellect than his father, but
spoke English fluently, though with a foreign accent--a great advantage
over his predecessor. He was small of stature, and subject to fits of
violent passion, neither of which qualities was conducive to royal
dignity. Nor did the attributes of his mind supply any gain calculated
to remedy these defects. He was possessed of courage, which he had
proved at the battle of Oudenarde, and displayed again at Dettingen,
and he was praised for justice. Perhaps it was a love of order and
etiquette rather than justice which distinguished him. For his sort of
military precision and love of soldiers he was nicknamed the "Little
Captain" by the Jacobites. But the worst trait of his disposition was
his avarice. He admitted, says Lord Chesterfield, that he was much
more affected by little things than great ones--the certain mark of a
little mind; he therefore troubled himself very little about religion,
but took it as he found it, without doubt, objection, or inquiry. He
hated and despised all literature and intellectual pursuit, arts and
sciences, and the professors of them.

As for the queen, she was a far superior person. She had been well
brought up on the second marriage of her mother after the death of
her father, by the Queen of Prussia, Sophia Charlotte, the sister of
George I. She had been handsome till she grew corpulent and suffered
from the smallpox, and still she was much admired for her impressive
countenance, her fine voice, penetrating eye, and the grace and
sweetness of her manner. She was still more admired for the striking
contrast which she presented to her husband in her love of literature
and literary men, extending her interest and inquiries into philosophy,
theology, and metaphysics. Those who are disposed to ridicule her
pretence to such knowledge admit that she was equally distinguished by
prudence and good sense. She combined in her manners royal dignity
and unassuming grace, and was more popular with the nation than any
one of the Hanover family had ever yet been. She delighted to engage
theologians in discussing knotty points of doctrine, and in perplexing
them with questions on the various articles of faith in different
churches, and corresponded with them on these subjects through her
bedchamber woman, Mrs. Clayton, afterwards Lady Sundon. But the best
proofs of Queen Caroline's superiority were shown in her pure moral
character, which was free from the slightest stain, and in her quick
discernment and substantial promotion of the most able men in the
Church.

For a moment Walpole appeared about to fall from his altitude, and
the Jacobite faction was in ecstasies. The dispatch of Townshend,
announcing the king's death in Germany, arrived in London on the 14th
of June, and was soon followed by himself. Walpole instantly hastened
to the palace of Richmond, where the Prince of Wales resided, and
was told that the prince was taking his usual afternoon _siesta_.
He desired that he might be awoke, in consequence of important
intelligence. George, suddenly aroused, rushed forth half dressed to
learn the urgent business, when Walpole knelt down and kissed his hand,
informing him of his father's decease, and that he was king. George
was at first incredulous, but Walpole produced Townshend's dispatch,
and inquired whom his majesty would be pleased to appoint to draw up
the necessary declaration to the Privy Council, trusting that it would
be himself. To his consternation and chagrin the king said abruptly,
"Compton;" and Walpole withdrew in deep vexation, imagining his own
reign was at an end.

He waited on Sir Spencer Compton with the royal command. This gentleman
was confounded at the proposal to draw up the declaration to the
Privy Council, and begged Walpole to do it for him. Walpole instantly
recovered his spirits. He saw that such a man could never be his
rival, and he advised his colleagues, if they went out of office, not
to engage in any violent opposition, as they would soon be wanted
again. He knew, too, that he had the queen in his favour, who was too
clear-headed not to see that Walpole was alone the man for the time.
To complete his favour with her he offered to procure her a jointure
from Parliament of one hundred thousand pounds a year, whilst the
impolitic Compton had proposed only sixty thousand pounds. The queen
did not oppose the king's attempt to change the Ministry, but she
impressed him with the danger of disturbing an already powerful and
prosperous Cabinet, and she made him aware of the fact that Compton had
been compelled to get Walpole to draw up the Declaration. Besides the
liberal jointure which he promised she added that he intended to add
one hundred thousand pounds to the Civil List. Horace Walpole, arriving
from Paris, threw his whole weight into the scale, representing
difficulties which must beset foreign negotiations in new hands.
These combined circumstances told strongly on George; but the finish
was put to Compton's government by his feeling overwhelmed by his
own incompetence, and resigning the charge. The king had, therefore,
nothing for it but to reappoint the old Ministry again. Some slight
modifications took place. Lord Berkeley, who had joined the opposition
of Carteret and Roxburgh, was replaced by Lord Torrington, and Compton
received the title of Lord Wilmington, the Order of the Garter, and the
Presidency of the Council. The coronation took place on the 11th of
October, 1727.

The Hanoverian dynasty and the Walpole Ministry made rapid strides in
popularity, and carried all before them. The new Parliament met in
January, 1728, and Walpole's party had in the House four hundred and
twenty-seven members, all staunch in his support. So strong was the
party in power, that several measures were carried which at other times
would have raised discontent. It was proposed by Horace Walpole that
two hundred and thirty thousand pounds should be voted for maintaining
twelve thousand Hessians in the king's service. The Duke of Brunswick
was, by treaty, to be paid twenty-five thousand pounds a year for four
years for the maintenance of five thousand more troops.

These things did not pass without remark by the Opposition. Pulteney
and Bolingbroke discussed them with much vigour and acrimony in The
Craftsman. It was asserted in the House that the public burthens had
increased instead of diminished since 1716; but Walpole contended that
there had been a reduction of debt to the amount of two million five
hundred thousand pounds; and his statement was supported by a large
majority, and it was laid before the king. The Opposition then demanded
an explanation of the expenditure of two hundred and fifty thousand
pounds for secret service money. It was well understood that Walpole
had used the greater part of it in buying up that triumphant majority
which enabled him to carry the most obnoxious measures. The demands
of the Opposition were so vehement, and the abuse was so glaring, that
even Walpole was embarrassed how to get rid of the question. He could
only recur to the old plea, that the money had been spent on services
highly advantageous to the State, but which could not properly be made
public. Suddenly events lifted him out of his difficulty. News arrived
that the King of Spain, who declined to ratify the preliminaries of
peace entered into at Vienna, on hearing of the death of George I.,
hoping for a revolution, had now given way, and had issued what was
called the Act of Pardo, ratifying the preliminaries, and referring
all remaining difficulties to be settled at a congress to be held at
Soissons.

At the Congress, which began in June, William Stanhope, Horace Walpole,
and Poyntz represented England. At Paris Lord Waldegrave supplied the
place of Horace Walpole; and at the Hague the Earl of Chesterfield ably
managed the national interests. At the Congress there was a frequent
exchange of memorials and counter-memorials, but no real business was
done. The only things which grew apparent were that France and Spain
were becoming more reconciled, and that the league between Spain and
the Emperor was fast dissolving.

The great difficulties of the Government at this time were the
settlement of the questions with Spain of the right to cut logwood in
the bay of Campeachy, and the retention of Gibraltar. The Spaniards
had frequently resisted the cutting of logwood in the Bay of Campeachy
by the English; and in 1717 the Marquis of Monteleone had presented a
memorial against it; but the Board of Trade contended that the practice
was of old standing, and amounted to a right. This representation
was now laid before the House of Commons, and was backed by many
petitions from the merchants of London and other places, complaining
of the interruptions to their trade to the South American and West
Indian colonies, which had been carried on by connivance rather than
by actual permission of Spain. There was a great fermentation in the
public mind on these subjects, and the Minister was accused of tamely
submitting to national injuries. The nation seemed ready to rush into
a war with Spain, and perhaps all the more so that the king, in his
opening speech, had observed that "an actual war was preferable to such
a doubtful peace, but that the exchange was very easy to be made at any
time."

The point, however, which excited the most indignation was that
regarding Gibraltar. There was a strong feeling in the public mind
that the Government was willing to give up this fortress to Spain.
The Spanish Government was extremely urgent on the subject, declaring
that there could be no peace, no truce with England, until it was
surrendered. It was recollected by the English public that Stanhope
had actually offered to give it up, and it was not known whether any
equivalent except the signing of the Quadruple Alliance had been
demanded. The Opposition in the House of Lords moved, "That effectual
care be taken in any treaty that the King of Spain do renounce all
claims to Gibraltar and Minorca in plain and strong terms." The
Ministers, however, carried a more moderate resolution--"That the House
relies on his Majesty for preserving his undoubted right to Gibraltar
and Minorca." A similar discussion with a similar result took place in
the Commons. The Government saw plainly that nothing would induce the
British people to relinquish this important station.

No sooner, therefore, had the Parliament closed and the king set out to
Hanover, than Ministers sent off William Stanhope to Madrid to procure
a treaty of peace without any mention of Gibraltar. On arriving at
Madrid he found that the Court had removed to Seville, in Andalusia.
This had been done by the influence of the queen, in order to draw
Philip from the Council of Castile, which was doing all it could to
prevail on him again to abdicate. Stanhope followed the Court to
Seville, and laboured with such effect that he obtained the signing of
a treaty of defensive alliance between England, Spain, and France, to
which Holland afterwards acceded (November 9, 1729). By this treaty
Spain revoked all the privileges granted to Austria by the treaties of
Vienna, and re-established the British trade with her American colonies
on its former footing, restored all captures, and made compensation
for losses. The Assiento was confirmed to the South Sea Company.
Commissioners were appointed to adjust all claims of Spaniards for
ships taken in 1718, and to settle the limits of the American trade.
The succession of Don Carlos to Parma and Tuscany was recognised, with
the right to garrison the ports of Leghorn, Porto Ferrajo, Parma,
and Placentia with six thousand Spanish troops. Not a word was said
of Gibraltar--a silence amounting to a renunciation of its demand
by Spain; and that Philip regarded it as such was evidenced by his
beginning to construct the strong lines of San Roque, and thus to cut
off all communication with the obnoxious fortress by land.

William Stanhope was rewarded for his accomplishment of this treaty
with the title of Lord Harrington, and was soon after made Secretary
of State. But whilst the English were delighted by the completion of
the treaty, the Emperor was enraged by it, and his mortification was
doubled by the fact that, when he sought to raise four hundred thousand
pounds by a loan in London to supply the want of his Spanish subsidies,
the Ministry brought in and rapidly passed a Bill prohibiting loans to
foreign Powers, except by a licence from the king under the Privy Seal.
The Opposition raised a loud outcry, calling it "a Bill of Terrors," an
"eternal yoke on our fellow-subjects," and a "magnificent boon to the
Dutch." But Walpole very justly answered, "Shall British merchants be
permitted to lend their money against the British nation? Shall they
arm an enemy with strength and assist him with supplies?"

In the midst of this prosperous career the two brothers-in-law, the
Ministers, began to differ in their views, and Lord Townshend was
soon driven by the overbearing conduct of Walpole to resign. Lady
Townshend, the sister of Walpole, and even Queen Caroline, exerted
their influence for some time to put an end to these feuds; but Lady
Townshend soon died, and the queen, finding the breach inevitable, took
the side of Walpole as the more indispensable servant of the Crown.
There were serious topics on which Townshend and Walpole differed,
both domestic and foreign. Townshend did not approve of the length
to which matters were carried against the Emperor, and he was weary
of the timid temper of the Duke of Newcastle, and strongly urged his
dismissal, and the employment of Lord Chesterfield in his place; but a
Pension Bill brought the quarrel to a crisis. The object of the Bill,
which was warmly supported by the Opposition, was to prevent any man
holding a pension, or who had any office held in trust for him, from
sitting in Parliament. The king privately styled it "a villainous Bill,
which ought to be torn to pieces in every particular." Both Walpole
and Townshend were of the same opinion; but Townshend was for openly
opposing it, Walpole for letting it pass the Commons, and be thrown
out in the Lords. Townshend, to whom the odium of rejecting it was
thus carried in the Lords, protested against this disingenuous conduct
on the part of Walpole, and assured him that the trick would soon be
fully observed, and bring more unpopularity on him in the end than a
manly, open opposition--which it did.

The temper of Townshend was warm, though his nature was upright; and in
this mood, a discussion taking place on foreign affairs at the house of
Colonel Selwyn, the dispute became so heated that Walpole declared that
he did not believe what Townshend was saying. The indignant Townshend
seized Walpole by the collar, and they both grasped their swords. Mrs.
Selwyn shrieked for assistance, and the incensed relatives were parted;
but they never could be reconciled, and, after making another effort
to obtain the dismissal of Newcastle, and to maintain his own position
against the overbearing Walpole, Townshend resigned on the 16th of
May. He retired to Reynham, and passed the remainder of his life in
rural pursuits. One of the greatest benefits which he conferred on this
country he conferred after his retirement--that of introducing the
turnip from Germany.

On the retirement of Townshend, Walpole reigned supreme and without a
rival in the Cabinet. Henry Pelham was made Secretary at War; Compton
Earl of Wilmington Privy Seal. He left foreign affairs chiefly to
Stanhope, now Lord Harrington, and to the Duke of Newcastle, impressing
on them by all means to avoid quarrels with foreign Powers, and
maintain the blessings of peace. With all the faults of Walpole, this
was the praise of his political system, which system, on the meeting
of Parliament in the spring of 1731, was violently attacked by Wyndham
and Pulteney, on the plea that we were making ruinous treaties, and
sacrificing British interests, in order to benefit Hanover, the eternal
millstone round the neck of England. Pulteney and Bolingbroke carried
the same attack into the pages of _The Craftsman_, but they failed to
move Walpole, or to shake his power.

The cause of the Pretender sank in proportion to the peace throughout
Europe and the prosperity at home. From 1728 to 1740 it was at a very
low ebb, and lost the few marked men who had moved in it. Three of the
chief leaders died about this time--Mar, Wharton, and Atterbury. So
low was the Jacobite interest now fallen, that Sir Robert Walpole said
that, if ever the Stuarts came again, it must be through the lowest
people, for the chiefs were all dead or discouraged.

[Illustration: WALPOLE'S QUARREL WITH TOWNSHEND. (_See p._ 60.)]

Such was the peace abroad and the prosperity of the country at this
time, that there occur few events worthy of record. Of those which
took place in 1731, the most remarkable was an Act abolishing the use
of Latin in all proceedings of the Courts of Justice, and the next the
renewal of the charter of the East India Company. If the country was
peaceful and prosperous, however, it was neither free from corruption
nor from the need of extensive reform. The very system of Walpole which
produced such a show of prosperity that an old Scottish Secretary of
State asked the Minister what he had done to make the Almighty so much
his friend, was built on the most wholesale bribery and corruption. It
was, in fact, a purchased domestic peace. In social life the example
of the Government produced the like dishonesty. There was a fearful
revelation of the proceedings of a charitable corporation for lending
small sums of money to the industrious poor at legal interest; and
Sir Robert Sutton, the late Ambassador at Paris, was found so deeply
implicated in the frauds and extortions practised on those they were
employed to benefit, that he was expelled from the House. There was
also an inquiry into the state of the public prisons of London, which
opened up a most amazing scene of horrors. It was found to be a common
practice of the warders to connive at the escape of rich prisoners for
a sufficient bribe, and to inflict the most oppressive cruelties on
those who were too poor to pay heavy fees.

The year 1732 was distinguished by little of importance. The
Opposition, led on by Pulteney, attacked the Treaty of Vienna,
concluded on March 16th, 1731, by which the Pragmatic Sanction had
been approved of, and which, they contended, might lead us into a
Continental war some day, or into a breach of the public faith, of
which, they asserted, this Ministry had perpetrated too many already.
They assailed the standing army, but were answered that there was yet a
Pretender, and many men capable of plotting and caballing against the
Crown. The King was so incensed at Pulteney for his strictures on the
army, that he struck his name out of the list of Privy Councillors, and
ordered that all commissions of the peace which he held in different
counties should be revoked. Amongst the staunchest supporters of the
Government was Lord Hervey, a young man of ability who is now best
remembered because, having offended Pope, he was, according to custom,
pilloried by the contentious poet, as Sporus in the Epistle to Dr.
Arbuthnot. Pope nicknamed him Lord Fanny, in derision of his dainty and
effeminate manners. Hervey contended that the writers who attacked
Government ought to be put down by force, and in his own person he
attempted to put this in practice; for Pulteney being suspected by him
of having written a scarifying article on him in _The Craftsman_, he
challenged him, and both combatants were wounded. Plumer very justly
contended that scribblers ought to be left to other scribblers.

In the Parliamentary session of 1733 Walpole produced another scheme
for increasing the revenue and lessening the burdens upon land, which
was an extension of the Excise. The Excise duties were first levied
under the Commonwealth; they had now reached three millions two hundred
thousand pounds annually. It was whilst the public were feeling the
gradual increase of this item of taxation very sensibly, that they
were alarmed by the news, which the Opposition sounded abroad with
all diligence, that Ministers were about immediately to bring fresh
articles under the operation of this tax, which was levied on articles
of popular consumption. "A general crisis is coming!" was the cry. "A
tax on all articles of consumption! a burthen to grind the country to
powder! a plot to overthrow the Constitution and establish in its place
a baleful tyranny!" The Opposition had now got a most popular subject
of attack on the Ministry, and it prosecuted it vigorously.

Sir Robert Walpole was not a man, with his huge standing majority, to
be readily frightened from his purpose. On the 14th of March, 1733, he
brought forward his project in a speech in which he put forth all his
ability, and that under a well-maintained air of moderation. He took
advantage of the alarm that the tax was to be general, by representing
the falsity of that declaration, and the very slight and limited nature
of his real proposal. Adverting to what he called the common slander of
his having intended to propose a general excise, he said: "I do most
unequivocally assert that no such scheme ever entered my head, or, for
what I know, the head of any man I am acquainted with. My thoughts have
been confined solely to the duties on wine and tobacco; and it was
the frequent advices I had of the shameful frauds committed in these
two branches that turned my attention to a remedy for this growing
evil. I shall for the present confine myself to the tobacco trade."
He then detailed the various frauds on the revenue in tobacco, which
he stated were of such extent and frequency, that the gross average
produce of the tax was seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds, but
the nett average only a hundred and sixty thousand pounds. The remedy
which he proposed was to transfer this revenue from the Customs to the
Excise. That the same might afterwards be applied to wine, a system of
warehousing for re-exportation or placing in bond was proposed, which,
he said, "would tend to make London a free port, and, by consequence,
the market of the world." He held out the expectation that the success
of this plan would render the land tax unnecessary, and thus enable the
Government to dispense with it entirely.

Walpole ridiculed the notion which had gone abroad that the revenue
officers would be increased into quite a standing army, and would
endanger the common liberty by their being empowered to enter private
dwellings to search for concealed excisable articles. He said the
increase would be only a hundred and twenty-six persons and that the
Customs now possessed more searching power than he proposed to give to
the Excise.

Whilst the debate was proceeding, great crowds gathered round the
House, and became even more numerous and more agitated. Walpole,
irritated by the persuasion that these throngs were collected by
the arts of the Opposition, threw out a remark which he afterwards
deeply repented. He said gentlemen might call themselves what they
liked, but he knew whom the law called "Sturdy Beggars." This phrase,
carried out of doors, highly incensed the crowd, who considered that
it was meant to cast contempt on the people at large. At two o'clock
in the morning, and after thirteen hours' debate, on division there
appeared two hundred and sixty-six for the measure, and two hundred and
five against. The great increase of the minority struck Walpole with
surprise and alarm.

When the resolutions of the Committee were reported two days
afterwards, the debate was renewed with all its vehemence, and
Pulteney unveiled another view of the case, which had much real truth
and warning in it. "It is well known," he said, "that every one of
the public officers have already so many boroughs or corporations
which they look on as their properties. There are some boroughs which
are called Treasury boroughs; there are others which may be called
Admiralty boroughs; in short, it may be said that nearly all the towns
upon the sea-coast are already seized upon, and in a manner taken
prisoners by the officers of the Crown. In most of them they have
so great an influence that none can be chosen members of Parliament
but such as they are pleased to recommend. But, as the Customs are
confined to our seaports, as they cannot travel far from the coast,
therefore this scheme seems to be contrived in order to extend the laws
of Excise, and thereby to extend the influence of the Crown over all
the inland towns and corporations of England."

Despite these representations, however, the resolutions were confirmed
by the same majority as before. Other debates succeeded on the second
reading of the Bill, but the majority on these gradually sank from
sixty to sixteen. As the storm grew instead of abated, the queen
demanded of Lord Scarborough what he thought of it, and he replied,
"The Bill must be relinquished. I will answer for my regiment against
the Pretender, but not against the opposers of the Excise." "Then,"
said the queen, "we must drop it." Sir Robert summoned his majority,
and requested their opinion, and they proposed to go on, observing that
all taxes were obnoxious, and that it would not do to be daunted by a
mob. But Walpole felt that he must yield. He declared that he was not
disposed to enforce it at the point of the bayonet, and on the 11th of
April, on the order of the day for the second reading, he moved that
the measure should be postponed for two months. Thus the whole affair
dropped. The usually triumphant Minister found himself defeated by
popular opinion. The Opposition were hardly satisfied to allow this
obnoxious Bill thus to slip quietly away; but out-of-doors there was
rejoicing enough to satisfy them.

The depth of Walpole's mortification, however, was shown by the
vengeance he took on those who had opposed him. This fell with peculiar
weight on Lord Chesterfield. Chesterfield had acquired a great
reputation by his able management of affairs at the Hague. Since his
return he had become Lord Steward of the Household, and a frequent and
much admired debater in the House. But Chesterfield was too ambitious
himself to stoop patiently to the domineering temper of Walpole. He was
said to have thrown out some keen sarcasms at Walpole's Excise Bill,
and his three brothers in the Commons voted against it. Only two days
after the abandonment of the Bill, as Chesterfield was ascending the
staircase at St. James's, he was stopped by an attendant, and summoned
home to surrender the White Staff. The same punishment was dealt out
to a number of noblemen who acted in concert with him. Lord Clinton,
a Lord of the Bedchamber, the Earl of Burlington, Captain of the Band
of Pensioners, were dismissed, as well as the Duke of Montrose, and
the Earls of Marchmont and Stair from offices held in Scotland. The
Duke of Bolton and Lord Cobham were, by a most unjustifiable stretch of
authority, deprived of their regiments.

In 1734 England was the witness of war raging in different parts of
Europe without having any concern in it, generally known as the War
of the Polish Succession. A sharp Parliamentary campaign had been
conducted at home. The Opposition talked loudly of the lamentable and
calamitous situation of England, because she was wise enough to keep
out of the war. Their motions were all guided by the secret hand of
Bolingbroke, whose restless and rancorous mind could not brook that
partial obscurity to which he was doomed by the immovable spirit of
Walpole. But the grand attack was on the Septennial Act. This was a
delicate subject for the Whigs in Opposition, for they, and Pulteney
especially, had, in 1716, supported this Act with many specious
arguments. But Wyndham led the way again with amazing eloquence, and
discharged a philippic against Walpole of such ruthless and scathing
vigour, as must have annihilated a less adamantine man.

"Let us suppose," said Wyndham, "a man abandoned to all notions of
virtue and honour; of no great family, and but of a mean fortune,
raised to be chief Minister of State by the concurrence of many
whimsical events; afraid or unwilling to trust any but creatures of
his own making, lost to all sense of shame and reputation, ignorant of
his country's true interest, pursuing no aim but that of aggrandising
himself and his favourites; in foreign affairs trusting none but
those who, from the nature of their education, cannot possibly be
qualified for the service of their country, or give weight and credit
to their negotiations; let us suppose the true interest of the nation
by such means neglected, or misunderstood, her honour tarnished, her
importance lost, her trade insulted, her merchants plundered, and
her sailors murdered; and all these circumstances overlooked, lest
his administration should be endangered. Suppose him next possessed
of immense wealth, the plunder of the nation, with a Parliament
chiefly composed of members whose seats are purchased, and whose votes
are bought at the expense of public treasure. In such a Parliament
suppose attempts made to inquire into his conduct, or to relieve
the nation from the distress which has been entailed upon it by his
administration. Suppose him screened by a corrupt majority of his
creatures, whom he retains in daily pay, or engages in his particular
interest by distributing among them those posts and places which
ought never to be bestowed upon any but for the good of the public.
Let him plume himself upon his scandalous victory because he has
obtained a Parliament like a packed jury, ready to acquit him at all
adventures. Let us suppose him domineering with insolence over all
the men of ancient families, over all the men of sense, figure, or
fortune in the nation; as he has no virtue of his own, ridiculing it
in others, and endeavouring to destroy or corrupt it in all. With such
a Minister and such a Parliament, let us suppose a case which I hope
will never happen--a prince upon the throne, uninformed, ignorant, and
unacquainted with the inclinations and true interests of his people;
weak, capricious, transported with unbounded ambition, and possessed
with insatiable avarice. I hope such a case will never occur; but,
as it possibly may, could any greater curse happen to a nation than
such a prince on the throne, advised, and solely advised, by such a
Minister, and that Minister supported by such a Parliament?" By those
who have considered the extent to which Walpole carried the system of
corrupting the representatives of the people, and thus ruling at his
own will, and not by the sanction of the public opinion and feeling,
this severe portrait of him can scarcely be considered as exaggerated.
Walpole, no doubt, felt it deeply, but feeling, too, whence the attack
really came--namely, from the armoury of Bolingbroke--he passed Wyndham
lightly over, and emptied the burning vial of his indignation on the
concealed foe, in a not less vigorous and graphic strain.

On the 16th of April Parliament was dissolved and the elections were
conducted with immense party heat. Each side did all in its power, by
fair means and foul, to increase its adherents. Sir Robert used the
persuasives for which he became so famous, that he boasted "every man
had his price," and if we are to believe the journals of the day, the
Opposition were not at all behind him, as far as their ability went.
They made ample use, too, of the Septennial Act, the Riot Act, the
Excise scheme, and the unrecompensed commercial claims on Spain. They
declared the neutrality preserved under such circumstances disgraceful
to the country, though they would have been the first to have denounced
Ministers had they gone to war. They gained several seats, but when
the Parliament met in January, 1735, it was soon discovered that,
though less, the majority was as steady as ever, and the Opposition
having tried their strength against it for a few times, became greatly
depressed for a while. Bolingbroke quitted the country, and settled
himself at Chanteloup, in Lorraine.

[Illustration: _By permission of Messrs. S. Hildesheimer & Co., Ltd._

GREENWICH HOSPITAL

FROM THE PICTURE BY T. R. HARDY.]

[Illustration: SIR ROBERT WALPOLE.]

Whilst these affairs had been taking place in England, the Emperor had
been finding himself less and less able to contend against France and
Spain. He had in vain exerted himself to engage the Dutch and English
in his quarrel. He called upon them as bound by the faith of treaties;
he represented the balance of power for which both Holland and England
had made such sacrifices, as more in danger than ever; but none of
these pleas moving Walpole or the Dutch, he threatened to withdraw his
troops from the Netherlands, and make over that country to France. The
threat of the Emperor did not move Walpole; he knew too well that it
was but a threat. The Emperor, therefore, was now compelled to come
to terms. A treaty was to be entered into under the mediation of the
maritime Powers. As Fleury and Walpole, too, were bent on peace, they
submitted to all the delays and punctilios of the diplomatists, and
finally were rewarded by a peace being concluded between the different
parties on these terms:--Don Carlos was to retain Naples and Sicily,
but he was to resign the possession of Parma and the reversion of
Tuscany; of the claimants to the Polish Crown, Augustus was to remain
King of Poland, and Stanislaus was to receive, as an equivalent, the
Duchy of Lorraine, which, after his decease, was to devolve to the
Crown of France. This was an aim which France had had in view for
ages, but which neither the genius of Richelieu nor of Mazarin could
accomplish. It was rendered comparatively easy now, as the young Duke
of Lorraine was about to marry the Empress's only child, the Princess
Maria Theresa, and thus to succeed through her to the Empire. Yet
the Duke ceded his patrimonial territory with extreme regret, and
not till he had received in return the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and a
pension from France. The regnant Grand Duke of Tuscany, the last of
the Medicis, was on the verge of death, and his decease took place in
less than two years, when the Duke of Lorraine was put in possession.
France and Sardinia gave their guarantee to the Pragmatic Sanction, and
Sardinia obtained, in consequence, Novara, Tortona, and some adjoining
districts. England appears to have looked on with strange apathy at
this aggrandisement of France by the acquisition of Lorraine, but
it was impossible to prevent it, except by a great war, and Walpole
was not disposed for even a little one. This treaty is known as the
Definitive Peace of Vienna (Nov. 8, 1738).

As harmony was restored on the Continent, so harmony characterised, to
a wonderful degree, the opening of the British Parliament in January,
1736. The king felicitated the country on the happy turn which affairs
had taken on the Continent, and said "that he trusted the same peace
and goodwill would manifest themselves in the domestic affairs of the
realm." All appeared likely to realise this wish. A congratulatory
address was carried without a division, and without a syllable of
dissent. But the peace was hollow--the calm only preceded a storm.

The first debate arose on the subject of drunkenness and gin.
Drunkenness had of late years appeared to grow rapidly, and to assume
more horrible features from the increasing use of gin. Sir Joseph
Jekyll proposed in committee that a heavy tax should be laid on this
pernicious liquor, which should put it out of the reach of the working
classes--namely, a duty of twenty shillings per gallon on all sold
retail, and fifty pounds yearly for the licence to every retailer.
This benevolent man had not arrived at the truth, that to tax a crime
is only to stop up one vent of it, and to occasion its bursting out in
half a dozen other places. Sir Robert Walpole saw this clearly, and
though he would not oppose the Bill for this purpose, he predicted
that Parliament would soon be called upon to modify its provisions.
The small duties heretofore levied on this article had brought in
about seventy thousand pounds annually, and, as the Excise had been
made over to the Crown, this sum went to the Civil List. Walpole
demanded, therefore, that whatever deficiency of this sum should be
produced by the new regulations should be made up to the Civil List.
The whole measure excited great clamour out of doors. It was regarded
as an invidious attempt to abridge the comforts of the people, whilst
those of the wealthy remained untouched. The clause proposed by Walpole
to protect the revenue was assailed with much fury both in and out of
the House. It was said that the Minister was quite indifferent to the
morals of the people on the one hand, or to their enjoyment on the
other, so that the revenue did not suffer.

The session of Parliament closing on the 26th of May, George took
his annual trip to Hanover, leaving, as usual, the queen to act as
Regent. She found her duties this year by no means light. Everyone
is acquainted with the Porteous Riots, as they are described by the
inimitable pen of Sir Walter Scott in "The Heart of Midlothian." The
simple historic facts are these:--Two noted smugglers from Fife, Wilson
and Robertson, were condemned to death for a robbery, and were confined
in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh. They made a determined effort to effect
their escape before the day of execution. Wilson, who would go first,
being a man of a corpulent though very powerful build, wedged himself
fast in the window, and could neither get out nor draw back again.
He was found thus in the morning, and the two prisoners were again
secured. Wilson lamented that by his own eagerness he had prevented
Robertson from going first, who, from his slenderer person, could
easily have escaped. Before execution it was the custom at that period
in Scotland to conduct the prisoners about to suffer, under a strong
guard, to church. This being done in the case of these two men, just as
the service was concluded, Wilson suddenly laid hold of two of the four
soldiers who guarded them, called out to Robertson to run for his life,
and detained the third soldier by seizing him by the collar with his
teeth. He escaped, and was never seen in Edinburgh again. This daring
scheme, so cleverly executed, raised the admiration of the bravery
and magnanimity of Wilson to the highest pitch. At his execution
the soldiers were attacked with stones. Porteous, who commanded the
guard, fired upon the mob. For this he was condemned to death, but was
reprieved by Queen Caroline after full inquiry. The people in fury
attacked the Tolbooth, the magistrates and the commander of the troops
were afraid to act, the prison was broken open, and Porteous hanged
on a barber's pole. All attempts to discover the perpetrators of the
outrage failed.

But the more the mystery, the greater was the rage of the English
Government. On the opening of the Session of Parliament for 1737,
a Bill was brought in of a most frantic and unwise character:--"To
abolish the charter of the City of Edinburgh, to rase the city
gates, disband the City Guard, and declare Mr. Wilson, the Provost,
incapable of again holding any public office." Nothing so furious
and unstatesmanlike could ever have been imagined possible in the
eighteenth century. Witnesses were called to the bar of both Houses,
and amongst them three Scottish judges, in their robes, were subjected
to a sharp cross-examination. Nothing, however, could be elicited
except some degree of carelessness on the part of the city magistrates.
The Scottish nation, with its usual spirit, highly resented the menaces
of this impolitic Bill. The Duke of Argyll in the Lords, and various
members of the Commons, denounced it as equally insulting and unjust.
They were zealously supported by many English members, especially by
Wyndham and Sir John Barnard, and the Bill gradually shrank into an
Act disabling Mr. Provost Wilson from holding any office in future,
and fining the city two thousand pounds for the benefit of the widow
of Captain Porteous; and, alluding to her original station, it was
jocosely said, therefore, that all this terrible menace ended in making
the fortune of an old cookmaid.

The attention of the public was now again drawn to those unnatural
feuds which disturbed the Royal Family. The exhibition of domestic
discord and hatred in the House of Hanover had, from its first
ascension of the throne, been most odious and revolting. The quarrels
of the king and his son, like those of the first two Georges, had
begun in Hanover, and had been imported along with them only to assume
greater malignancy in foreign and richer soil. The Prince of Wales,
whilst still in Germany, had formed a strong attachment to the Princess
Royal of Prussia. George forbade the connection. The prince was
instantly summoned to England, where he duly arrived in 1728.

The prince found in the Opposition in England the most unfortunate
fosterers of his unfilial temper. Pulteney, Wyndham, Chesterfield,
Carteret, Cobham, and, worst of all, Bolingbroke, became his
associates, and the frequenters of his house. Fast ripening into a
pattern of unfilial popularity under such influences, possessing some
accomplishments, and a desire to stand well with the people, he married
in April, 1736, Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, a princess of so much beauty
and good sense, as might have reclaimed many a nature; who seems to
have at least won the heart of her husband from his former romantic
passion. It was an ominous circumstance, however, that the address
of congratulation on this occasion was moved, not by the king's own
Ministers, but by the king's own Opposition. Pulteney was the mover,
and it was supported by two young men who that evening made their first
speeches, and in them burst suddenly forth with that splendour which
was destined to grow transcendent through many years. They were Pitt,
afterwards Lord Chatham, and Lord Lyttelton.

Scarcely was the Prince married, when he began to complain of his
limited income. His father, as Prince of Wales, had been allowed one
hundred thousand pounds from the Civil List, which then was only seven
hundred thousand pounds, but he now received only fifty thousand pounds
from a Civil List of eight hundred thousand pounds. Bolingbroke, two
years before, on leaving England, told the prince, as his parting
advice, to apply to Parliament, without any regard to the king, for a
permanent income of one hundred thousand pounds a year. Under these
circumstances, Walpole persuaded the king to send a message to the
prince, offering to settle a large jointure on the princess, and to
make the prince's own income independent of his father. Here the prince
ought to have yielded; if he had been either politic or well-disposed,
he would have done so. The king was at this time very ill, and his
physicians declared that if he did not alter soon, he could not live
a twelvemonth. This circumstance of itself would have touched any
young man of the least natural feeling, to say nothing of policy; for,
if the king died, there was an end of the question--the prince would
be king himself. But he was now in such a temper that he would not
listen to the royal proposal; and the next day, the 22nd of February,
1737, Pulteney made his motion in the House of Commons for an address
beseeching the king to settle upon the prince a hundred thousand pounds
a year, and promising that the House would enable him effectually to
do so. What was still stranger, it was seconded by Sir John Barnard.
The Commons were not willing to run counter to a prince apparently on
the point of ascending the throne, and Walpole would have found himself
in a minority had Wyndham, as he hoped, brought the Tories to vote for
the prince. But forty-five Jacobites, who could not bring themselves
to vote for an heir of the House of Hanover, though they would by
that have done a serious mischief to the Hanoverian usurper, as they
styled him, rose in a body and quitted the House. On the division,
the Ministerial party amounted to two hundred and thirty-four, the
Opposition to only two hundred and four--being a majority for Ministers
of exactly thirty. The next day the same motion was made in the Lords
by Carteret, but was rejected by a large majority--one hundred and
three to forty.

This decided repulse ought to have shown the prince the violence that
he was doing to the public sense of decency, and the mischief to his
own character; but the disappointment only the more embittered him and
increased his miserable obstinacy. Time had no effect in abating his
unnatural resentment. Though this parliamentary decision took place
in February, he continued so much in the same temper, that the very
last day of the following May, his wife being seized with symptoms of
labour, he suddenly determined to remove her from Hampton Court, where
all the Royal Family then were, and hurry her off to London.

Fortunately, the princess was safely delivered at St. James's (June
4), though the house was unprepared for such an emergency--the rooms
and beds being unaired, and there being no adequate suite of servants.
The moment that the king heard of this extraordinary conduct of the
prince, he despatched Walpole and Lord Harrington to attend the birth,
but they were too late. After that the king repulsed all the prince's
advances towards a reconciliation. Frederick betook himself to Norfolk
House, St. James's Square, and there all the opponents of his father's
Government collected around him. The prince was now the head and centre
of the Opposition himself.

This open breach of the Royal Family was quickly followed by the death
of the queen. Besides the misery of seeing her son and husband so
awfully at variance, she had long been struggling with a complaint
which, out of false delicacy, she had carefully concealed. "The queen's
great secret," says Horace Walpole, "was her own rupture, which, till
her last illness, nobody knew but the king, her German nurse, Mrs.
Mailborne, and one other person, Lady Sundon."

She continued till nearly the last to hide from the surgeons the real
cause of her sufferings, and was treated by the medical men for gout in
the stomach. When the secret was at length disclosed, it was too late;
though one of the surgeons declared that, if they had been informed two
days earlier, they could have saved her.

Admirable as was the character of Caroline, she has been accused
of retaining her resentment against her son to the last. Pope and
Chesterfield affirm that she died refusing to see or forgive her
son; but Ford, though he says she would not see him, states that she
"heartily forgave him"; and Horace Walpole says she not only forgave
him, but would have seen him, but that she feared to irritate her
husband. To Sir Robert Walpole she expressed her earnest hope that he
would continue to serve the king as faithfully as he had done, and,
curiously enough, recommended the king to him, not him to the king. She
died on the 20th of November, perhaps more lamented by Walpole than by
her own husband (though, as Lord Hervey tells us, George was bitterly
affected), for Walpole well knew how much her strong sense and superior
feeling had tended to keep the king right, which he could not hope for
when she was gone. The king appeared to lament her loss considerably
for a time, that is, till consoled by his mistress, the Countess of
Walmoden, whom he had kept for a long time at Hanover, and now soon
brought over to England. He sent for her picture when she was dead,
shut himself up with it some hours, and declared, on reappearing, that
he never knew the woman worthy to buckle her shoe.

On the opening of Parliament, in January, 1738, a desperate effort
was made by the Opposition at once to reduce the army and to kindle
a war with Spain. Walpole proposed to place the army on a footing of
seventeen thousand men. The "Patriots," as they were called, voted to
reduce the number to twelve thousand. Walpole, exasperated at their
factious conduct, launched an indignant sarcasm at them, which produced
so much effect that they did not venture to divide on the motion. "No
man of common sense," said Walpole, "will now profess himself openly a
Jacobite; by so doing he not only may injure his private fortune, but
must render himself less able to do any effectual service to the cause
he has embraced; therefore there are but few such men in the kingdom.
Your right Jacobite, sir, disguises his true sentiments. He roars
out for revolutionary principles; he pretends to be a great friend to
liberty and a great admirer of our ancient Constitution; and under this
pretence there are numbers who every day endeavour to sow discontent
among the people."

[Illustration: THE PORTEOUS MOB. (_See p._ 67.) [_After the Painting by
James Drummond, R.S.A._]]

Defeated in this object, the Patriots united all their force to embroil
us with Spain. There were many causes in our commercial relations with
Spain which led to violent discontent amongst our merchants. They
found the trade with the Spanish settlements in America exceedingly
profitable, but they had no right, beyond a very limited extent, to
trade there. The Spaniards, though they winked at many encroachments,
repressed others which exceeded these with considerable vigour. Their
Coastguard insisted on boarding and searching our vessels which
intruded into their waters, to discover whether they were bringing
merchandise or were prepared to carry away colonial produce. By the
treaty of 1670 Spain had recognised the British colonies in North
America, and England had agreed that her ships should not enter the
ports of the Spanish colonies except from stress of weather, or with an
especial licence from the Spanish Government to trade. By the treaty
of 1729 we had agreed to the old regulations regarding trading to
the Spanish Main, namely, that we should have the Assiento, or right
of supplying these colonies with slaves, and that, besides this, we
should only send one ship annually to the Spanish West Indies and South
America. As fast as that authorised ship discharged its cargo in a
Spanish port, she received fresh supplies of goods over her larboard
side from other vessels which had followed in her wake, and thus poured
unlimited quantities of English goods into the place. Other English
traders did not approach too near the Spanish coasts, but were met in
certain latitudes by South American smugglers, who there received their
goods and carried them into port. In short, such a system of contraband
trade was carried on in these waters by our merchants, that English
goods in abundance found their way all over the Spanish American
regions, and the great annual fair for goods imported from or by Spain
dwindled into insignificance.

It was no wonder that Spain, feeling the serious effects of this
state of things, should resist it; and when she did so, and exerted
an unusual degree of vigilance, then the most terrible outcries were
raised, and wonderful stories were circulated of Spanish cruelties to
our people beyond the Atlantic. At this time the Opposition got hold
of one of these, and made the House of Commons and the nation resound
with it. It was, that one Captain Robert Jenkins, who had been master
of a sloop trading from Jamaica, had been boarded and searched by a
Coastguard, and treated in a most barbarous manner, though they could
detect no proof of smuggling in his vessel. He said that the Spanish
captain had cut off one of his ears, bidding him carry it to his king,
and tell his Majesty that if he were present he would treat him in the
same manner. This story was now seven years old, but it was not the
less warmly received on that account. It excited the utmost horror, and
Jenkins was ordered to appear at the bar of the House of Commons on the
16th of March, to give an account of the outrage himself; and it would
appear that both he and other witnesses were examined the same day.
Jenkins carried his ear about with him wrapped in cotton, to show to
those to whom he related the fact, and the indignation was intense. He
was asked by a member how he felt when he found himself in the hands
of such barbarians, and he replied, "I recommended my soul to God, and
my cause to my country." The worthy skipper had probably been crammed
with this dramatic sentiment by some of his clever Parliamentary
introducers; but its effect was all the same as if it had been a
genuine and involuntary expression of his own mind. Researches made at
the Admiralty in 1889 proved that he really had lost an ear.

And, in truth, everything now seemed to run counter to Walpole, and to
tend towards war. His colleague, the Duke of Newcastle, who had been
one of the most obsequious of subordinates both under Stanhope and
Walpole, now thought he should serve himself decidedly by advocating
war. The king was naturally of a martial turn; he had won some military
repute in his youth, and he was no longer under the exceedingly
sensible guidance of the queen. Newcastle, therefore, probably in the
hope of supplanting Walpole, fostered this spirit in the king, and took
advantage of it to recommend warlike measures in the Cabinet, and to
send despatches to the British ambassadors in Spain, which but for the
energy and wisdom of Walpole might have done irreparable mischief, and
which rendered the negotiations extremely difficult. Lord Chancellor
Hardwicke and Lord Harrington arrayed themselves on the same side, and
blew the war-note in the House of Lords with unrestrained zeal. There
was a time when Walpole would have had these antagonistic colleagues
dismissed; but both he and they saw too well that there was such a
strong war spirit in both king and people, that no such thing was
possible. He therefore pursued his efforts with the Court of Spain for
peaceable conclusions, at the same time that he fell in so far with
the belligerent spirit as to make active preparations as if for an
encounter. This, however, was his last and most powerful argument for
peace--an argument meant to tell on the fears, as he could not reach a
spirit of conciliation in the Spaniards.

He despatched a squadron of ten ships of the line to the Mediterranean,
under Admiral Haddock; another strong squadron sailed for the West
Indies; letters of marque and reprisal were issued to the merchants;
and troops and stores were forwarded to Georgia, which the Spaniards
had threatened to invade. He gave directions to all merchants in
Spanish ports to register their goods with a public notary in case of a
rupture. These measures produced a rapid change of tone at the Spanish
Court. On comparing the demands on both sides for damages sustained in
commerce, there appeared a balance in favour of England of two hundred
thousand pounds. Against this, the Spaniards demanded sixty thousand
pounds in compensation for the ships taken by Admiral Byng in 1718--a
claim which Stanhope would never allow, but which had been recognised
in the Treaty of Seville, and was now, therefore, acknowledged. This
reduced the sum to a hundred and forty thousand pounds, which the
Spanish Court proposed should be paid by assignments on the American
revenues. This, the Ministers were well aware, might involve the most
endless delays and uncertainties, and they certainly showed a most
conceding spirit by allowing a deduction of forty-five thousand pounds
for prompt payment at Madrid. The sum was now reduced to ninety-five
thousand pounds; and this being agreed to, a convention was signed on
the 14th of January, 1739.

In this Convention no mention was made of the right of search, and
various other matters were reserved for the consideration of the
plenipotentiaries. When the Convention was announced to Parliament by
the king in his opening speech, there arose a general denunciation of
it both in and out of Parliament. The right of search was declared
to be purposely sacrificed; the limits of Georgia were undefined;
and the Spanish captains in the West Indies were unpunished for all
their cruelties. That sixty thousand pounds should be allowed for
compensation for ships taken by Admiral Byng in 1718 was very justly
declared taxing us for our victories. In fact, Walpole, in this treaty,
seemed ready to give up everything to Spain, knowing, probably, how
hopeless it was to extract money from that country, and glad of an
excuse of any set-off against our claims as to the easiest way of
settling them. But all did not avail him. The more conceding he was to
the Spaniards the more immovable they became, whilst the public at home
were enraged at the tameness displayed by Ministers. Ministers found
their majority continually on the wane. On the division in the Commons
it had dwindled to twenty-eight, namely, two hundred and sixty votes
against two hundred and thirty-two.

But that there should be a majority at all on such a question brought
the Opposition to try an experiment which they had been for some
time planning. This was the absurd scheme of seceding in a body from
the House of Commons, on the plea that a paid and standing majority
rendered all reason and argument nugatory. In the course of his
farewell speech, Wyndham made use of such violent language, that Mr.
Pelham jumped up to move the commitment of the honourable member to
the Tower; but Walpole was too well aware that such a proceeding would
only have served the ends of the Opposition, rendering them martyrs to
their country's cause, and raising a vivid interest in their behalf. He
therefore stopped him, and said that the measures which that gentleman
and his friends might pursue gave him no uneasiness; on the contrary,
the House was much obliged to them for pulling off the mask. Relieved
of their presence, he now carried his measures in unopposed quiet.

Parliament, having so smoothly transacted its business, was prorogued
on the 14th of June, and Walpole then addressed himself to the
settlement of the Spanish difference. But here he found a spirit of
resistance which had undoubtedly grown from the invectives of the
Opposition. The outcries against the Spanish captains, the right of
search, and the payment of compensation for the ships taken by Byng,
had given great offence to the proud Spaniards. They were encouraged,
also, by the earnest manner in which Walpole had argued for peace.
They now assumed a high tone. They complained of the continuance of
the British fleet in the Mediterranean. They demanded the payment of
the sixty-eight thousand pounds which they said was due from the South
Sea Company, though it had been stipulated in the Convention that it
should not come into consideration.

Here all further progress became impossible. The Spaniards having
reduced their debt to less than one half the original sum, were
fighting stoutly to reduce it to nothing. There appeared no chance
but for arms to decide it. Cardinal Fleury, with his usual pacific
disposition, made an effort to avert the war by guaranteeing to
undertake the payment of the ninety-five thousand pounds by Spain,
provided that the British fleet was withdrawn from the Mediterranean.
But English spirit, even in Walpole, had now reached its limit of
patience. The king and the nation were equally in a mood for war.
Walpole, therefore, ceased to listen any longer to the Spanish
objections, but took his stand on the true British ground of resistance
to the right of search, and on that of an acknowledgment of all
British rights and claims in North America. Instead of withdrawing the
Mediterranean fleet, he ordered its reinforcement, sent Sir Chaloner
Ogle with fresh ships to the West Indies, and Sir John Norris was
ordered to put to sea with a third squadron. The above demands being
peremptorily made from the Court of Madrid, and being rejected, war
was proclaimed in London on the 19th of October. Walpole, who had
reluctantly resorted to this master evil, as he heard the rejoicings,
exclaimed, "They may ring the bells now, but they will soon be wringing
their hands!" The first symptoms of the consequences which the war was
likely to produce were seen in the new hopes which it awoke in the
ranks of the Jacobites. Large numbers of them met at Edinburgh, and
drew up a bond of association, pledging one another to take arms and
venture life and fortune for the restoration of the Stuart. On the
other hand, those nations on which England calculated for aid hung back
and remained neutral. The Dutch were bound to furnish certain troops
in case of war, and, before the declaration of it, Horace Walpole was
despatched by his brother to demand their production; but they pleaded
the menaces of France, which threatened them with invasion by fifty
thousand men if they assisted the English, and which held out to them
the prospect of their obtaining that trade to the Spanish colonies
which England had enjoyed. As for France herself, she assumed an air
rather ominous of war than of peace, and thus Britain was left alone in
the contest.

The war was scarcely begun when it was discovered that we had
proclaimed hostilities much before we were prepared to carry them out.
Our ships were badly manned, and therefore slow to put to sea, and the
more alert Spaniards were busy picking up our merchant vessels. Not
they only, but the French, Dutch, and other nations who had hoisted
Spanish colours, were making wide devastation amongst our trading
vessels. Walpole was compelled to issue letters of marque and licences
to swarms of privateers, which issued forth to make reprisals. The
Lords of the Admiralty, on the 1st of February, 1740, had ordered an
embargo on all shipping except coasters, so as at once to keep them
out of reach of the enemy, and to induce seamen to enter the navy; but
on the 28th of March a petition from merchants and owners of shipping
was presented, complaining of the hardships and the destruction of
trade by it. The Lords of the Admiralty contended that such had been
the complaints of injuries done at sea to our traders, that they had
been compelled to impose the embargo in the absence of sufficient hands
for men-of-war. They now took the embargo off foreign ships, and gave
notice to English owners that they would take it off altogether, on
condition that the owners and masters of vessels would enter into an
engagement to furnish a certain number of men to the navy in proportion
to the number of hands in each trader. This also was denounced as a
most oppressive measure, and the Opposition represented it as intended
to make the mercantile community sick of the war. Driven, however, to
extremities, Ministers would not listen to these arguments; a motion
was carried sanctioning this plan, and then the merchants came into it.

Such were the difficulties which Ministers had to contend with for
commencing the war at sea. In one particular, however, there was more
liberality; money was ungrudgingly voted; the land-tax was raised
from two to four shillings in the pound, and the Sinking Fund was so
freely resorted to, that the supplies altogether amounted to upwards
of four millions. During these discussions, news came on the 13th of
March, that on the 21st of November, 1739, Admiral Vernon had taken
Porto Bello from the Spaniards. This was good news for the Opposition,
for Vernon was one of their party, and a personal enemy of Walpole.
There were great rejoicings and the Lords sent down an address of
congratulation to the king, for the concurrence of the Commons. Yet
in this they could not avoid making a party matter of it, the address
stating that this glorious action had been performed with only six
ships, and thus to mark the contrast with the doings of Admiral Hosier
in those seas, and so to blacken his memory. The address was carried in
a thin House, but only by thirty-six against thirty-one, so that along
with the news went the comment to Vernon, that the Ministry begrudged
him his glory. Parliament was prorogued on the 29th of April, 1740, and
the king set off on his summer visit to Hanover.

[Illustration: GREAT SEAL OF GEORGE II.]

The turn of affairs on the Continent justified Walpole's gravest
apprehensions. France was discovered to have made a compact with
Spain, and once having taken this step, she displayed her usual
activity in every Court of Europe, to induce the allies to break
with England and prevent her from making new leagues. Walpole did
his best to counteract these French influences. He managed to secure
the Russian Court, before in connection with France, and subsidised
Sweden, Denmark, Hesse-Cassel, and some other of the German States.
But at this crisis (1740) died the savage old Frederick William of
Prussia, and his son Frederick now commenced that extraordinary
military career which obtained him the name of the Great. Temptingly
adjoining his own territory, the young king beheld that of an equally
young female sovereign, Maria Theresa of Austria, and he determined
to extend his kingdom at her expense. The mystery of Frederick's
movements was dissipated by his crossing, on the 23rd of December, the
Austrian frontiers into Silesia. It was seen that it was the favourable
opportunity of overpowering a weak neighbour which had tempted the
Prussian to break his engagement, and to endeavour to make himself
master of the domains of a defenceless young princess. But Frederick
brought out some antiquated claims on the province Of Silesia, and on
these he justified his breach of treaties. Maria Theresa applied, in
her alarm, to the Powers who had concurred in the Pragmatic Sanction,
but all except George II. fell away instantly from her. They believed
her incapable of defending her territories, and hoped to come in for a
share of the spoil. The Elector of Bavaria joined Prussia; Saxony did
the same; France was eager for the promised half of the winnings; and
Spain and Sardinia assured Frederick of their secret support. George
II., confounded by this universal defection, advised Maria Theresa to
compromise the affair with Prussia by giving up half Silesia, or the
whole, if necessary; but the high-spirited queen rejected the proposal
with scorn, and called on George to furnish the troops guaranteed by
England under the Pragmatic Sanction. George could, however, only
assemble some few soldiers on the Hanoverian frontier, but this obliged
Frederick to appropriate a considerable section of his army to guard
against any attack from Hanover.

The king, in his speech on opening Parliament, mentioned the fleets
which we had dispatched to the West Indies and South America, and his
determination to continue those armaments so as to bring Spain to
reason. He professed to rely with confidence on our allies, although
we had scarcely one left, whilst in the same breath he admitted the
no longer doubtful hostility of France at the very moment that our
only ally--namely, Austria--was calling on us for assistance, instead
of being able to yield us any, should we need it. On the proposal of
the address, the Opposition proceeded to condemn the whole management
of the war. The Duke of Argyll led the way, and was followed by
Chesterfield, Carteret, Bathurst, and others, in a strain of extreme
virulence against Walpole, calling him a Minister who for almost twenty
years had been demonstrating that he had neither wisdom nor conduct.
In the Commons Wyndham was no longer living to carry on the Opposition
warfare, but Pitt and Lyttelton more than supplied his place.

The storm grew every day more violent, and on the 11th of February,
1741, Sandys, who had acquired the name of "the Motion Maker,"
announced that he intended to make a motion for a direct condemnation
of the Minister, and for his removal from office. On the following
Friday Sandys made his threatened motion of condemnation. The
surprise of the debate occurred when Shippen--"the thorough Shippen,"
as he was called--said that he would not join in the ruin of the
assailed Minister. He declared that he never followed any dictates of
self-interest, and cared little who was in or out, unless he could see
a prospect of different measures; but that he regarded this movement
only as the attempt to turn out one Administration in order to bring
another in. He would therefore have no concern in it, and with that he
withdrew, followed by thirty-four of his party. All Prince Frederick's
servants and party also, except Lyttelton, Pitt, and Granville, left
the House; so that, though there were more than five hundred members
present at the commencement of the debate, when the question came to be
put there were not above four hundred.

It is said that Sir Robert had, some time before, addressed a letter
to the Pretender with the object of softening the asperity of his
partisans in England, and that this had so raised the hopes of James,
that Walpole was actually intending to come round, that he had
ordered his followers to avoid anything which should shake his power.
Whatever the cause, the fact was striking, and the Opposition having
concluded its onslaught upon him, he rose to make his reply. It was an
occasion which demanded the utmost exertion of his powers, and he put
them forth. Walpole's speech on this day has justly been deemed his
masterpiece. It was four o'clock in the morning when he concluded his
masterly defence, and the motion was instantly rejected by two hundred
and ninety votes against one hundred and six. The immediate effect
of the attack appeared to be to strengthen the Minister, and that
considerably; his _levée_ the next morning was more crowded than had
ever been known, and he seemed to sway the Cabinet with uncontrolled
power. But thinking men predicted that the blow would tell in the end,
when the momentary enthusiasm had gone off; and Walpole himself seemed
to be of the same opinion. The attack, in truth, was but the first
outbreak of the storm which, kept up by the implacable spirit of a
powerful Opposition, was sure to bear him down at last.

Whilst this powerful confederacy was putting forth all its strength
to drive from the seat of supremacy the man who had so long guided
the fortunes of England, another confederacy was knitting together
its selfish members to rend in pieces and share amongst them the
empire of the young Queen of Austria. Frederick was willing enough to
make a league with France, but he was cautious enough not to make it
too soon. He wanted to know whether he could keep England out of the
campaign, in which case he could deal easily with Austria himself.
Walpole's attempts to prevent the war from becoming European, however,
failed, and the treaty being signed with the Prussian king, Marshal
Maillebois marched an army across the Rhine, and Belleisle and Broglie
went with another. Maillebois pursued his course direct for Hanover,
where George was drilling and preparing a number of troops, but in
no degree capable of making head against the French. Panic-stricken
at their approach, he made haste to come to terms, and agreed to a
year's neutrality for Hanover, leaving Maria Theresa to her fate, and,
moreover, engaging not to vote for the election of her husband, the
Duke of Lorraine, to be Emperor. The news of this conduct of the King
of England in the person of the Elector of Hanover, was received in
Great Britain with the utmost indignation. Belleisle and De Broglie
had, during this time, joined their forces to those of the old Elector
of Bavaria, the constant enemy of Austria and the friend of France, and
had marched into Austria. He took Linz, on the Danube, and commenced
his march on Vienna. As this allied army approached Vienna, Maria
Theresa fled with her infant son, afterwards Joseph II., into Hungary,
her husband and his brother, Prince Charles of Lorraine, remaining to
defend the city. The Hungarians received their menaced queen with
enthusiasm. She had done much since the recent commencement of her
reign to win their affections. She had been crowned in the preceding
month of June in their ancient capital, and had sworn to maintain their
ancient constitution in all its force, and the people were fervent
in their loyalty. When, therefore, she appeared before the Hungarian
Parliament in Presburg with her son in her arms, and called upon that
high-spirited nation to defend her against her perfidious and selfish
enemies, the sensation was indescribable. All rose to their feet, and,
drawing their swords half-way from the scabbard, they exclaimed, "Our
lives and our blood for your majesty! We will die for our _king_, Maria
Theresa!"

Whilst these transactions had been taking place on the Continent, our
fleets, which should have kept the French and Spaniards in check, had
done worse than nothing. France had subtly delayed to declare war
against us, so that, although she joined her fleets and armies to the
enemy, we could not attack her without being the first to declare war,
or to commence it by direct breach of the peace. Admiral Haddock, who
was on the watch in the Mediterranean to harass the Spaniards, was thus
baffled. The Spanish fleet was joined by twelve French men-of-war from
Toulon, the admiral of which declared that he had orders to defend
the Spaniards if they were attacked. As the combined fleet, moreover,
doubled his own, Haddock was compelled to fall off and leave them.

Still more inglorious were the proceedings of our fleet on the coasts
of the Spanish-American colonies. Sir Chaloner Ogle joined Vernon in
Jamaica on the 9th of January, 1741, and no time was to be lost, for
the wet season set in at the end of April, which, besides the deluges
of rain, is attended by a most unhealthy state of the climate. Vernon,
however, did not move till towards the end of the month, and then,
instead of directing his course towards the Havannah, which lay to the
leeward, and could have been reached in three days, he beat up against
the wind to Hispaniola, in order to watch the motions of the French
fleet under D'Antin. It was the 15th of February before he learned
distinctly that the French had sailed for Europe in great distress
for men and provisions. Now was the time to make his way to Cuba;
but, instead of that, he called a council of war--the resource of a
weak commander,--which was followed by its almost invariable result,
a contrariety of advice. It was at length concluded that, as Admiral
Torres had now sailed for the Havannah, and thus closed the opportunity
for its attack, the fleet should take in wood and water at Hispaniola,
and make for the continent of New Spain. On the 4th of March the fleet
came to anchor in Playa Grande, to the windward of Carthagena.

Carthagena was strongly fortified, and the garrison was reinforced
by the crews of a squadron lying there under Don Blas de Leon. If
the place was to be assaulted, it should have been done at once; but
Vernon lay perfectly inactive for five days, as if to allow the enemy
to make all his preparations for defence. Notwithstanding this, the
brave English erected a battery on shore, and played so effectually
on the principal fort, that they soon made a breach in it, whilst the
fleet fired into the harbour, thus dividing the attention of the enemy.
In spite of their advantages, the Spaniards abandoned their forts and
batteries, the English entered the breach, the vessels in the harbour
were destroyed, and the passage cleared so that the fleet could sail
in and support the army. There appeared nothing capable of preventing
the conquest of the town but the cabals of the two commanders. Lord
Cathcart had caught the endemic fever and died, and was succeeded by
General Wentworth in command of the land forces. Wentworth had a great
contempt of Vernon, and Vernon was by no means well disposed towards
Wentworth. The fleet having entered the harbour, the land forces were
all disembarked, and posted within a mile of Carthagena; but there the
success stopped. Vernon had written home his dispatches to the Duke of
Newcastle saying, "The wonderful success of this evening and night is
so astounding, that we cannot but cry out, 'It is the Lord's doing, and
it seems marvellous in our eyes!'"

The news, when it reached England, produced a transport of exultation.
Bells were rung, cannon fired, and great rejoicings made, anticipatory
of fresh tidings of wonderful success. But very different was the
reality. Wentworth called on Vernon to bombard Carthagena from the
harbour, whilst he assailed it on land; but Vernon replied that
he could not get near enough to attack the town effectually, and
that Wentworth must attempt the reduction of the Fort San Lazaro,
which commanded the town, and might be taken by escalade. This was
attempted, and while our men were thus standing under a murderous fire,
they discovered, to their consternation, that their scaling ladders
were too short. But the escalade was persisted in: they remained
splicing their ladders, and a detachment of Grenadiers, under Colonel
Grant, reached the top of a rampart; but Grant was instantly killed,
and the Grenadiers hurled back over the wall. Still, the bull-dog
spirit of the English made them persist in this desperate attempt, till
six hundred--that is, half of them, lay dead, when they drew off.

All this time "the great Admiral Vernon," as the Opposition delighted
to call him, in disparagement of all the commanders favourable to the
Government, lay still with his ships and afforded no assistance to the
land troops. When Wentworth bitterly complained of this, to show that
it was impossible to operate on the town from the harbour, Vernon sent
into the inner harbour the _Galicia_, a Spanish ship which had been
taken. This ship kept up a cannonade on the town for several hours,
producing little effect, and was fired on from the town with as little.
The men were then brought off in boats, the _Galicia's_ cable was cut,
and she was suffered to run upon a shoal, where she soon filled. The
troops were now hastily re-embarked; the unhealthy season was at its
height, and the men were swept away by fever more rapidly than they had
been mowed down on land. The heavy rains had set in, and the troops
in a few days were reduced to one half their number. Admiral Vernon
instead of undertaking any enterprise which might have retrieved the
honour of the British arms, set sail from Jamaica with the forces in
July, and anchored in the south part of Cuba in a bay, on which he
bestowed the appellation of Cumberland Harbour. Here the remains of
that fine fleet and army, capable of achieving the most brilliant
conquests under able commanders, were suffered to corrode away under
the influence of inactivity, the season, bad salted provisions, and
excess of rum.

The conduct of Vernon, though he had been the Idol of the Opposition,
and not of the Ministry, as it became known, increased enormously the
unpopularity of Walpole. Though he had literally been forced into the
war by the Opposition, the whole of its disasters were charged, not on
them, but on him; and they did not hesitate to throw from themselves
upon him the odium of all its failures. The general election which now
came on was seized upon to load Walpole with all the weight of the
unsuccessful war. The Duchess of Marlborough, Pulteney, and the Prince
of Wales raised funds to outbribe the master of corruption himself.
They incurred heavy debts to complete his ruin, and as the news of
the miserable issue of the expedition to the Spanish settlements came
in, numbers of those who had been returned to Parliament as friends
of the Ministry turned round and joined the Opposition in violent
denunciations of the mismanagement of the war. Lord Chesterfield,
whilst these transactions had been progressing, had hastened on to
Avignon, and, taking up his quarters with the Duke of Ormonde, obtained
from the Pretender letters to nearly a hundred Jacobites in England
and Scotland, engaging them to put out all their power and influence
against Walpole.

Whilst these combined efforts were being made to unseat him, Walpole
saw his Cabinet every day becoming more untrustworthy, more divided
against him. The Duke of Newcastle was eagerly pressing forward to
supplant him. He had entered into secret engagements with the Duke of
Argyll, and Lord Chancellor Hardwicke threw himself into that clique.
To these were added the Earl of Wilmington, formerly Sir Spencer
Compton, who, forgetting his alarm at the idea of succeeding Walpole
as Prime Minister, now was anxious for that honour. To add to these
depressing circumstances, the king arrived from Hanover in a humour
ready to lay his disgrace and failure at anybody's door. On the 4th
of December he opened the new Parliament, and, conscious of his own
contemptible figure after the submission to French dictation in
Hanover, he took care to remind it that he had commenced the war only
at the urgent desire and advice of both Houses, and that he had been
particularly counselled to direct our naval efforts towards Spanish
America.

[Illustration: MARIA THERESA AND THE HUNGARIAN PARLIAMENT.

(_After the Picture by Laslett J. Pott, by permission of Ephraim
Hallam, Esq._)]

The Opposition made no objection to the re-election of Onslow as
Speaker of the Commons, but they made a determined attack on the
Address. Lord Noel Somerset moved that in the Address his Majesty
should be desired not to engage this kingdom in a war for the defence
of his Hanoverian dominions. This was seconded by Shippen, who declared
that he had grown old in the House of Commons only to see all the
predictions of his life realised in the management of the nation.
Pulteney seemed to be animated by a double portion of patriotic
indignation. He reviewed Walpole's whole administration, and accused
him, not merely of individual acts of erroneous policy, but of
deliberate treachery. The Whigs, elated by this fiery denunciation of
the Minister, called for a division; but Pulteney, aware that they had
not yet a majority, observed that dividing was not the way to multiply.
Walpole, on his part, offered to leave out the paragraph thanking his
Majesty for his royal care in prosecuting the war with Spain; but
this was only regarded as a proof of conscious weakness, and Pulteney
proceeded to charge Walpole with purposely ruining the nation to serve
the Pretender. This called Walpole up, and he defended himself with
all his accustomed self-command and ability. He retorted the charges
of serving the Pretender on his enemies, and these with real grounds.
He referred to Chesterfield's recent visit to the Pretender's Court at
Avignon. He asked, as he had done before more than once, whether he,
as Minister, had raised the war in Germany, or advised the war with
Spain? Whether he was amenable for the deaths of the late Emperor and
the King of Prussia, which opened up all these complications? Whether
the lawless ambition of Frederick, and the war between Sweden and
Russia, were chargeable on him? He offered to meet the Opposition on
the question of the state of the nation, if they would name a day. This
challenge was accepted, and the 21st of January, 1742, was fixed upon.
The clause respecting the Spanish war, as Walpole had suggested, was
also struck out, and the Address then was carried unanimously.

But though the 21st of January was to be the day of the grand attack
on the Ministry, the battle was not deferred till then. Every day was
a field-day, and the sinking Minister was dogged step by step, his
influence weakened by repeated divisions, and his strength worn out by
the display of the inevitable approach of the catastrophe. The first
decided defeat that he suffered was in the election of the Chairman of
Committees. The Ministerial candidate, Giles Earle, was thrown out by a
majority of two hundred and forty-two to two hundred and thirty-eight,
and the Opposition candidate, Dr. Lee, was hailed by a shout that rent
the House. Other close divisions followed. The fall of Walpole was
now certain, and he would have consulted both his dignity and comfort
in resigning at once. This was the earnest advice of his friends, but
he had been too long accustomed to power to yield willingly. He was
oppressed with a sense of his defeats, and the insolence of enemies
whom he had so long calmly looked down upon without fear. He was
growing old and wanted repose, but he still clung convulsively to his
authority, though he had ceased to enjoy it.

In these circumstances opened the year 1742. Fearing the consequences
of the debate on the state of the nation that was to take place on
the 21st of January, Walpole made a last grand effort to divide the
party in array against him: this was, to buy off the Prince of Wales
and his adherents. For this purpose he prevailed on the king to grant
an additional fifty thousand pounds a year and the payment of all his
debts, on condition that he should abandon the Opposition. Secker,
Bishop of Oxford, was selected as the bearer of this offer; but the
prince declined the proposal, declaring that he would listen to no
overtures so long as Walpole continued in office. This was a stunning
blow, but the tenacious Minister did not yet give in. He continued to
avail himself of the interval before the 21st to bribe and bring over
less distinguished men. The Opposition, however, were now every hour
receiving fresh accessions of strength, and men who had stood the brunt
of many years now went over to them. Lord Hervey joined Pulteney and
Chesterfield; and Bubb Doddington, now perceiving that one side really
preponderated, stepped out of his equivocal demeanour, and openly wrote
to Lord Wilmington to entreat him to persuade the king to dismiss the
obnoxious Minister.

The 21st of January arrived, and Pulteney entered on his great
question. There was nothing new to bring forward, but the old charges
were dressed up with new force. Walpole defended himself with an
ability worthy of his best days. He boldly reminded the Opposition of
the long twenty years of defeats in their endeavours to turn him out;
he declared their accusations were just as false and groundless as
ever; and he proceeded to anatomise the characters of Bubb Doddington
and Pulteney in a manner which must have made men of any feeling wince.
He was ably supported by Sir William Yonge, by Pelham, and Winnington,
but the division showed a majority for the Minister of only three.

The result of this division shook the last resistance of Walpole. When
the motion which had been rejected on the 18th of December--for copies
of the correspondence with the King of Prussia--was again put, he made
no opposition, and it passed without a division. He made, however,
one more attempt to carry his measures. In the disputed election of
Chippenham he stood his ground against the petition, and was defeated
by a majority of one. It was now clear to himself that he must give
way. His relatives and friends assured him that to defer longer was
only to court more decided discomfiture. On the 31st of January, he,
therefore, prepared to depart for his seat at Houghton, and the next
morning he demanded of the king, in a private audience, leave to
retire. George, on this occasion, evinced a degree of feeling that did
him honour. When the old Minister who had served him through so long a
course of years knelt to kiss hands, the king embraced him, shed tears,
and begged that he would often come to see him. On the 9th of February
Sir Robert was created Earl of Orford, and on the 11th he made a formal
resignation of all his places.




CHAPTER IV.

Reign of George II. (_continued_).

    Effects of Walpole's Administration--Formation of the new
    Ministry--Attitude of the Malcontents--Committee of Inquiry into
    Walpole's Administration--Walpole's Protectors--Ministerial
    Measures--Prorogation of Parliament--Disasters of the
    French--British Division in the Netherlands--Opening of
    Parliament--The German Mercenaries--Amendment of the Gin
    Act--George goes to Germany--Stair and De Noailles in
    Franconia--Stair in a Trap--Bold Resolution of King George--The
    Battle of Dettingen--Resignation of Stair--Retreat of the
    French--Negotiations for Peace--Treaty of Worms--Pelham becomes
    Prime Minister--The Attacks of Pitt on Carteret--Attempted
    Invasion of England--Its Failure--Progress of the French
    Arms--Frederick II. invades Bohemia--His Retirement--Resignation
    of Carteret--Pelham strengthens his Ministry--Death of the
    Emperor--Campaign in Flanders--Battle of Fontenoy--Campaign of
    Frederick II.--The Young Pretender's Preparations--Loss of the
    _Elizabeth_--Landing in the Hebrides--The Highland Clans join
    him--The First Brush--Raising of the Standard--Cope's Mistake--He
    turns aside at Dalwhinnie--Charles makes a Dash for Edinburgh--The
    March to Stirling--Right of the Dragoons--The "Canter of
    Coltbridge"--Edinburgh surprised by the Highlanders--Charles
    marching against Cope--Battle of Prestonpans--Delay in marching
    South--Discontent of the Highland Chiefs--The Start--Preparations
    in England--Apathy of the Aristocracy--Arrival of the Duke of
    Cumberland--Charles crosses the Border--Capture of Carlisle--The
    March to Derby--Resolution to retreat--"Black Friday"--The
    Retreat--Recapture of Carlisle--Siege of Stirling--Battle of
    Falkirk--Retreat to the Highlands--Cumberland's Pursuit--Gradual
    Collapse of the Highlanders--Battle of Culloden--Termination of the
    Rebellion--Cruelty of the Duke of Cumberland--Adventures of the
    Young Pretender--Trials and Executions--Ministerial Crisis.


So passed from a long possession of power a Minister who inaugurated
a system of corruption, which was not so much abused by himself, as
made a ready instrument of immeasurable mischief in the hands of his
successors. Had Walpole used the power which he purchased with the
country's money more arbitrarily and perniciously, the system must have
come much sooner to an end. As it was, the evils which he introduced
fell rather on posterity than on his own time.

Before he withdrew, the king, who retained his high opinion of his
political wisdom, consulted him on the constitution of the new Cabinet.
Walpole recommended that the post of First Lord of the Treasury,
including the Premiership, should be offered to Pulteney, as the man
of the most undoubted talent. If he should refuse it, then that it
should be given to Lord Wilmington, who, though by no means capable
of directing affairs by his own energy, was of a disposition which
might allow them to be conducted by the joint counsel of his abler
colleagues. The king consented that the Premiership should be offered
to Pulteney, though he hated the man, but only on this condition,
that he pledged himself to resist any prosecution of the ex-Minister.
Pulteney declined the overture on such a condition, for though he said
he had no desire to punish Walpole, he might not be able to defend him
from the attacks of his colleagues, for, he observed, "the heads of
parties, like those of snakes, are carried on by their tails." The king
then sent Newcastle to Pulteney, and it was agreed to allow Wilmington
to take the post of First Lord of the Treasury. Carteret thought
that this office was more due to him, but Pulteney declared that if
Wilmington were not permitted to take the Premiership he would occupy
it himself, and Carteret gave way, accepting the place of Secretary of
State, with the promise that he should manage in reality the foreign
affairs. In all these arrangements the king still took the advice
of Walpole, and Newcastle was instructed to again endeavour to draw
from Pulteney a promise that he would at least keep himself clear of
any prosecution of the late Minister. Pulteney evaded the question by
saying that he was not a bloody or revengeful man; that he had always
aimed at the destruction of the power of Walpole, and not of his
person, but that he still thought he ought not to escape without some
censure, and could not engage himself without his party.

Newcastle, who wanted to retain his place in the new Cabinet, was
more successful on his own behalf. Pulteney said he had no objection
to himself or the Lord Chancellor, but that many changes must be made
in order to satisfy the late Opposition, and to give the Cabinet a
necessary majority. Pulteney then declared that, for himself, he
desired a peerage and a place in the Cabinet, and thus the new Ministry
was organised:--Wilmington, First Lord of the Treasury; Carteret,
Secretary of State; the Marquis of Tweeddale, Secretary for Scotland;
Sandys, the motion-maker, Chancellor of the Exchequer; the Prince of
Wales was to receive the additional fifty thousand pounds a year; and
his two friends, Lord Baltimore and Lord Archibald Hamilton, to have
seats at the new Board of Admiralty.

When these arrangements became known, the Tory party grew dreadfully
exasperated. But not the Tories only--there were throngs of Whigs who
had battled zealously for the same object, and with the same hope
of personal benefit, and yet they were passed over, and Pulteney,
Carteret, and their immediate coterie had quietly taken care of
themselves, and thrown their coadjutors overboard. A meeting was
appointed between Pulteney and the rest already in office, and the Duke
of Argyll, Chesterfield, Cobham, Bathurst, and some others. The Prince
of Wales was present, and the different claims were discussed. Argyll
was satisfied by being made Master-General of the Ordnance, Colonel
of His Majesty's Royal Regiment of Horse Guards, Field-Marshal and
Commander-in-Chief of all the forces in South Britain. Chesterfield
got nothing, professing to wait to see a more thorough change of men
before he went amongst them; but Cobham was made a Field-Marshal,
and restored to the command of the Grenadier Guards, but he could
get nothing for his nephew, the fiery Oppositionist, Lyttelton. Lord
Harrington was made an Earl and President of the Council. But what
surprised the country most was that Pulteney, hitherto the head and
soul of the party, should have been content to sacrifice himself for
the sake of a title. He was made Earl of Bath and received a place in
the Cabinet; but by this change, although he seemed to have a brilliant
career before him, he forfeited the confidence of the country, which
had always looked up to him as the most determined and disinterested of
patriots. From this moment he sank into insignificance and contempt.
Some others of the old officials remained in as well as Newcastle. Sir
William Yonge and Pelham, brother of Newcastle, retained their posts,
Yonge as Secretary of War, and Pelham as Paymaster of the Forces.

The new Ministry were now to find that it was very difficult to
perpetuate principles and measures which they had for a quarter of
a century been condemning simply because they furnished weapons of
annoyance to the party then in power. The public, still smarting under
the ruinous mismanagement of the war, returned to the charge, by
demanding an inquiry into the conduct of Walpole, whom they accused of
their sufferings. These petitions were introduced and recommended by
what were called the Boy Patriots--Pitt, Lyttelton, and the rest.

As a means of popularity, they insisted on the standing army being
abolished in time of peace, on the strict limitation of placemen in
Parliament, and on the return to triennial Parliaments. These were hard
topics for the patriots now in power to digest. But the depression
of trade continued, and no one could suggest a remedy but that of
reducing taxation at the very time that all parties were zealous
for the prosecution of the war. Finding no other solution to their
difficulties, the public turned again to the demand of an inquiry into
the administration of Walpole, hoping to lay bare in that the causes of
their sufferings. Accordingly Lord Limerick, on the 23rd of March, rose
and proposed a committee to inquire into the administration of Walpole,
not for twenty, but for the last ten years. Pulteney not only voted,
but spoke in favour of this motion, and it was carried by a majority
of seven. Lord Limerick was chosen chairman, and such was the partial
and vindictive spirit in which they went to work in examining papers
and witnesses, that the honourable-minded Sir John Barnard, though so
staunch an opponent of Walpole when in power, declared that he would
no longer take part in the labours of a committee which displayed
so little regard to the general inquiry, but concentrated all their
efforts on the ruin of one individual.

But the Committee found itself opposed in these objects in the highest
quarter. The king displayed the most firm disposition to protect
his late Minister, and was in constant communication with Walpole
and his friends for the purpose. Every means were used to protect
from the scrutiny of the Committee those who were possessed of the
most important information, and to induce them to remain obstinately
silent. Mr. Edgecumbe, who had managed the Cornish boroughs for
Walpole, and could have revealed things which would have filled the
Committee with exultation, was raised to the Upper House, and thus
removed from the power of the Commons. Paxton, the Solicitor to the
Treasury, a most important witness, remained unshakably silent, and
was committed to Newgate; nor was the Committee more successful with
Scrope, the Secretary to the Treasury. This officer, who, no doubt,
held most desirable knowledge in his bosom, firmly refused to make any
disclosures, though he was now a very feeble old man. Other officials
declined to make statements whose disclosure might incriminate
themselves, and which they were excused from doing by the great
principles of our judicature. To remove this obstacle Lord Limerick,
the Chairman of the Committee, then moved that a Bill of Indemnity
should be passed, to exempt witnesses from all penalties in consequence
of their disclosures. This passed the Commons by a majority of twelve,
but was rejected in the House of Lords by a large majority.

After contending with such difficulties--for the Committee was, in
truth, combating with all the powers of the Crown--it was not likely
that it would produce a very effective report. In fact, desirable as it
was that a deep and searching inquiry should have been made, and the
mysteries of that long reign of corruption thrown open, the fact that
the Monarch and the Minister had gone hand in hand through the whole of
it was, on the very surface, fatal to any hope of a successful issue,
and what rendered this fatality greater was, that the Committee too
obviously went into the question hotly to crush an old antagonist who
had defeated and humiliated them for a long course of years, rather
than to serve the nation. When, therefore, on the 30th of June, they
presented their report, the feeling, on its perusal, was one of intense
disappointment. It alleged that, during an election at Weymouth, a
place had been promised to the Mayor if he would use his influence
in obtaining the nomination of a retiring officer, and that a church
living had been promised to the Mayor's brother-in-law for the same
purpose; that some revenue officers, who refused to vote for the
ministerial nominees, were dismissed; that a fraudulent contract had
been given to Peter Burrell and John Bristow, two members of the House
of Commons, for furnishing money in Jamaica for the payment of the
troops, by which they had pocketed upwards of fourteen per cent. But
what were these few trifling and isolated cases to that great system
of corruption which the public were satisfied had spread through all
Walpole's administration, and which abounded with far more wonderful
instances than these? The very mention of them, and them alone, was a
proclamation of defeat.

The Committee of Inquiry, stimulated by the disappointment of the
public, began preparations for a fresh report; but their labours were
cut short by the termination of the Session. In order to conciliate in
some degree public opinion, Ministers hastened to allow the passing
of a Bill to exclude certain officers from the House of Commons; they
passed another to encourage the linen manufacture; a third, to regulate
the trade of the Colonies; and a fourth, to prevent the marriage of
lunatics. They voted forty thousand seamen and sixty-two thousand
landsmen for the service of the current year. The whole expenditure of
the year amounted to nearly six million pounds, which was raised by a
land-tax of four shillings in the pound; by a malt-tax; by a million
from the sinking fund; and by other resources. They provided for the
subsidies to Denmark and Hesse-Cassel, and voted another five hundred
thousand pounds to the Queen of Hungary. On the 15th of July the king
prorogued Parliament; at the same time assuring the two Houses that
a peace was concluded between the Queen of Hungary and the King of
Prussia, through his mediation; and that the late successes of the
Austrian arms were in a great measure owing to the generous assistance
of the British nation.

Deserted by the Prussians, the French retired with precipitation to
Prague, where they were followed by the Austrian army under Prince
Charles of Lorraine and Prince Lobkowitz. Soon after the Grand Duke
of Tuscany took the principal command, and the French offered to
capitulate on condition that they might march away with their arms and
baggage. This was refused; but Marshal Belleisle stole out of Prague
in December, and, giving Lobkowitz the slip, made for the mountains
with fourteen thousand men and thirty pieces of artillery. Belleisle
displayed unwearied activity in protecting his men and baggage from
the harassing pursuit of Lobkowitz. Notwithstanding this his men
perished in great numbers from famine and the severity of the season.
They had been reduced to eat horseflesh before leaving Prague, and now
they fell exhausted in the deep snows, and were mercilessly butchered
by the Austrian irregulars and peasantry. On the 29th of December he
reached Eger, and from that point marched into Alsace without further
molestation; but he then found that of the thirty-five thousand troops
which he took into Germany, only eight thousand remained. Though this
retreat was celebrated as one of the most remarkable in history, the
Marshal, on reaching Versailles, was received with great coldness.

Whilst these events had been passing in Austria and Bavaria, the
King of England had endeavoured to make a powerful diversion in the
Netherlands. Under the plea of this movement sixteen thousand British
troops were embarked in April for the Netherlands; but they were first
employed to overawe Prussia, which was in contention with Hanover
regarding the Duchy of Mecklenburg. There were other causes of dispute
between Prussia and the Elector of Hanover. George having now this
strong British force, besides sixteen thousand Hanoverian troops and
six thousand auxiliary Hessians, Frederick thought proper to come
to terms with him, and, in consequence of mutual arrangements, the
Hanoverian troops quitted Mecklenburg, and George, feeling Hanover
safe, marched this united force to the Netherlands to join the British
ones. He expected the Dutch to co-operate with him and the Austrians,
and strike a decided blow at France. But the Earl of Stair, who was
to command these forces, and who was at the same time ambassador to
the States, found it impossible to induce the Dutch to act. They had
increased their forces both by sea and land, but they were afraid of
the vicinity of the French, and were, with their usual jealousy, by no
means pleased to see the English assuming power in the Netherlands.
Therefore, after making a great demonstration of an attempt on the
French frontier with the united army, the project was suddenly
abandoned, and the troops retired into winter quarters. But little was
accomplished during this year by the British fleet.

Parliament met on the 16th of November, when the king told them that
he had augmented the British forces in the Low Countries with sixteen
thousand Hanoverians and six thousand Hessians. In fact, it had been
his design, accompanied by his son, the Duke of Cumberland, to go over
and take the command of the combined army of English, Hanoverians,
Austrians, and Dutch; but the arrival of the Earl of Stair, who had
been the nominal commander of these troops, and the return of Lord
Carteret from the Hague, with the news that the Dutch could not be
moved, had caused him to give up the idea and order his baggage on
shore again. He assured Parliament, however, that the spirit and
magnanimity of the Queen of Hungary, and the resolute conduct of the
King of Sardinia in Italy, had produced the most beneficial effect.
The usual address, proposed by the Marquis of Tweeddale, met with
considerable opposition, especially in the Upper House, from the Earl
of Chesterfield. Lyttelton again introduced the Place Bill, but it
was rejected by the very men who had formerly advocated it. There was
another motion made for inquiry into the administration of Walpole,
on the plea that inquiry had been shamefully stifled on the former
occasion; but it met with the same fate. But on the 10th of December
the Opposition mustered all its strength on the motion of Sir William
Yonge, the new Secretary at War, that we should pay for the sixteen
thousand Hanoverians and the six thousand Hessians, and that a grant
of six hundred and fifty-seven thousand pounds should be made for
their maintenance from August, 1742, to December, 1743. It was the
hard task of Sandys, as the new Chancellor of the Exchequer, to defend
this monstrous grant and the interests of Hanover, after so many
years of attack on these topics in opposition. Pitt answered Sandys
in the most caustic style of his eloquence, and Sir John Aubyn and
others followed as indignantly; but the Ministers carried the motion
by two hundred and sixty votes against one hundred and ninety-three.
Their ablest supporter on this occasion was Murray, afterwards Lord
Mansfield, who made his first parliamentary speech on the occasion, and
showed the delighted Cabinet that the man whom they had just made their
Solicitor-General was capable of contending with that "terrible comet
of horse," Pitt.

[Illustration: GEORGE II. AT DETTINGEN, 1743.

FROM THE PAINTING BY ROBERT HILLINGFORD]

The year 1743 opened with a mighty struggle on the subject of gin. In
1736, as we have seen, the awful increase of drunkenness, which was
attributed to the cheapness of gin, induced a majority of the House
of Commons to pass an Act levying twenty shillings a gallon duty upon
the liquor, and charging every vendor of it fifty pounds per annum for
a licence. Walpole at the time declared that such an attempt to place
gin beyond the reach of the poor consumers would fail; that it would
fail equally as a source of revenue, for it would lead to wholesale
smuggling and every possible evasion of the law. The event had proved
Walpole only too correct in his prognostications. So far from checking
the use of gin, the Act had stimulated it enormously. The licences, so
preposterously high, were wholly neglected; no duty was paid, yet the
destructive liquid was sold at every street corner. Ministers now saw
that, by attempting too much, every thing in this case had been lost.
They were sacrificing the revenues only to sacrifice the well-being of
the people. They determined, therefore, to reduce the licences from
fifty pounds to one pound per annum, and at the same time to retain a
moderate duty on the liquor. By this means the fatal compound would
remain much at the same price, but the vendors would be induced to take
out licences, and the revenues would be greatly improved, whilst the
whole sale of the article would be more under the restraints of law
and police. A Bill was framed on these principles, and passed rapidly
through the Commons; but in the Lords it encountered a determined
opposition. It was, however, carried entire, and, says Smollett, "we
cannot help averring that it has not been attended with those dismal
consequences which the Lords in the Opposition foretold."

The business of the session now hastened to its close. Votes were given
for forty thousand seamen and eleven thousand marines; for sixteen
thousand British troops in Flanders, and twenty-three thousand for
guards and garrisons at home. For the year's supplies six millions of
pounds were voted, and then Parliament was prorogued on the 21st of
April. In doing this, George told the Houses that he had ordered his
army to pass the Rhine to support the Queen of Hungary. No sooner had
Parliament closed, than George, accompanied by his son, the Duke of
Cumberland, and Lord Carteret, hastened off to Germany. The British
army, which the king had ordered to march from Flanders to aid the
Austrians, had set out at the end of February. They were commanded
by Lord Stair, and on their route were joined by several Austrian
regiments under the Duke of Aremberg, and the sixteen thousand
Hanoverians in British pay, who had wintered at Liége. They marched
so slowly that they only crossed the Rhine in the middle of May. They
halted at Höchst, between Mayence and Frankfort, awaiting the six
thousand Hanoverians in Electoral pay, and an equal number of Hessians,
who had been garrisoning the fortresses of Flanders, but who were now
relieved by Dutch troops. Stair had now forty thousand men, and might
easily have seized the Emperor at Frankfort. All parties had respected,
however, the neutrality of Frankfort, and Stair did the same, probably
because the Emperor, having no subjects to ransom him, might have
proved rather a burden on his hands. De Noailles, on his part, had
sixty thousand men, independently of the twelve thousand furnished to
Broglie. He kept an active eye on the motions of the allied army, and
as Stair encamped on the northern bank of the Main, he also passed the
Rhine and encamped on the southern bank of the Main. The two camps lay
only four leagues from each other, presenting a most anomalous aspect.

The genius of Lord Stair was anything but military, and soon led him
into a dilemma. Instead of waiting, as he had first determined, for the
reinforcements of Hessians and Hanoverians, he advanced up the river,
with the intention of drawing supplies from Franconia. He advanced to
Aschaffenberg, which he reached on the 16th of June; but Noailles had
rapidly followed him, and adroitly seized on the fords of both the
Upper and Lower Main, thus cutting off Stair both from his own stores
at Hanau, and from the expected supplies of Franconia. At this critical
moment King George arrived at the camp, and found Noailles lying in a
strong position, and Stair cooped up with his army in a narrow valley
between the wild and hilly forest of Spessart, which extends from
Aschaffenberg to Dettingen and the river Main. To render his case the
more desperate, he had quarrelled with Aremberg, who had let him pursue
his march alone; and Stair now lay, with only thirty-seven thousand
men, in the very grasp, as it were, of Noailles and his sixty thousand
men.

In this awkward dilemma the king resolved to cut his way through the
French, superior as they were, and regain communication with their
magazines and their auxiliaries at Hanau. But Noailles was closely
watching their movements; and, being aware of what was intended, took
instant measures to prevent the retreat. He immediately advanced
from their front to their rear, threw two bridges over the Main at
Selingenstadt, and despatched his nephew, the Duke de Gramont, to
secure the defile of Dettingen, through which the English must pass in
their retreat. He also raised strong batteries on the opposite bank of
the Main, so as to play on the English as they marched along the river.
These preparations being unknown to the English, and still supposing
Noailles' principal force lay between them and Aschaffenberg, instead
of between them and Dettingen, on the 27th of June, at daybreak, the
king struck his tents, and the march on Dettingen began. George showed
a stout heart in the midst of these startling circumstances, and the
soldiers, having the presence of their king, were full of spirits.
George took up his position in the rear of his army, expecting the
grand attack to come from that quarter; but presently he beheld his
advanced posts repulsed from Dettingen, and the French troops pouring
over the bridge of the Main. He then perceived that Noailles had
anticipated their movements, and, galloping to the head of his column,
he reversed the order of his march, placing the infantry in front and
the cavalry in the rear. His right extended to the bosky hills of the
Spessart, and his left to the river. He saw at once the difficulty of
their situation. Gramont occupied a strong position in the village of
Dettingen, which was covered by a swamp and a ravine. There was no
escape but by cutting right through De Gramont's force--no easy matter;
and whilst they were preparing for the charge, the batteries of the
French on the opposite bank of the Main, of which they were previously
unaware, began to play murderously on their flank. With this unpleasant
discovery came at the same instant the intelligence that Noailles had
secured Aschaffenberg in their rear with twelve thousand men, and was
sending fresh reinforcements to De Gramont in front. Thus they were
completely hemmed in by the enemy, who were confidently calculating on
the complete surrender of the British army and the capture of the king.

George and his soldiers, however, lost no atom of heart; they
determined to cut a way through the enemy or die on the ground; and
luckily at this moment the enemy committed almost as great an error
as Stair had done. Noailles quitted his post in front of the king's
army, and crossed the Main bridge to give some further orders on that
side; and no sooner did he depart than his nephew, De Gramont, eager
to seize the glory of defeating the English, and not aware that the
whole British army was at that moment about to bear down upon him,
ordered his troops to cross the ravine in their front, and assault the
English on their own side. The order was executed, and had instantly
the unforeseen effect of silencing their own batteries on the other
side of the river, for, by this movement, the French came directly
between their fire and the English, which it had been till that moment
mercilessly mowing down.

At this moment the horse which George II. was riding, taking fright at
the noise made by the French in their advance, became unmanageable,
and plunged forward furiously, nearly carrying the king into the
midst of the French lines. Being, however, stopped just in time, the
king dismounted, and placing himself at the head of the British and
Hanoverian infantry on the right, he flourished his sword and said,
"Now, boys! now for the honour of England! Fire, and behave bravely,
and the French will soon run!"

The first charge, however, was not so encouraging. The French made
an impetuous onset, and threw the advanced guard of the English into
confusion; but the king and his son, the Duke of Cumberland, who
commanded on the left, and, like his father, took his stand in the
front line, displayed the highest pluck, and inspired their troops
with wonderful courage. The tide of battle was quickly turned, and
Noailles, from the other side, saw with astonishment and alarm his
troops in action contrary to his plans. He returned in all haste to
give fresh support to his soldiers, but it was too late. Gallantly as
the French fought, the presence of the king and prince on the other
side made the English and Hanoverians irresistible. King, and prince,
and army all showed an enthusiastic courage and steadiness which bore
down everything before them. The dense column of infantry, led on by
the king, broke the French ranks, and cut through them with terrible
slaughter. Noailles, seeing the havoc, gave a command which completed
the disaster. To shield his men, he ordered them to repass the Main;
but a word of retreat, in all such cases, is a word of defeat. The
retrograde movement produced dismay and disorder; the whole became a
precipitate rout. The French were driven in confused masses against the
bridges, the bridges were choked up with the struggling throng, and
numbers were forced into the river, or jumped in for escape, and were
drowned.

Such was the battle of Dettingen, equally remarkable for the blunders
of the generals and the valour of the men; still more so, as the last
battle in which a King of England has commanded in person. At Hanau,
the army not only refreshed itself, but was joined by reinforcements,
which rendered the Allies nearly equal in numbers to the French. Lord
Stair, therefore, proposed to pass the Main, and make a second attack
on the enemy. The king, however, would not consent. Stair, with all his
bravery, had shown that he was very incautious. He was, moreover, of a
most haughty temper, and had quarrelled violently with the Hanoverian
officers, and displayed much contempt for the petty German princes.
They were, therefore, by no means inclined to second his counsels,
though they had fought gallantly at Dettingen. Stair complained loudly
of the neglect to follow up the French, and resigned.

[Illustration: GEORGE II.]

The best excuse for George II.'s apparent sluggishness was, that the
French were now so closely pressed by concentrating armies. Prince
Charles of Lorraine and the Austrians were pressing De Broglie so
hotly that he was glad to escape over the Rhine near Mannheim; and
Noailles, thus finding himself between two hostile armies, followed his
example, crossed over the Rhine to Worms, where, uniting with Broglie,
they retreated to their own frontier at Lauter, and thus the Empire
was cleared of them. The Emperor Charles now suffered the fate which
he may be said to have richly deserved. He was immediately compelled
to solicit for peace from Austria through the mediation of George of
England and Prince William of Hesse. But Maria Theresa, now helped out
of all her difficulties by English money and English soldiers, was
not inclined to listen to any moderate terms, even when proposed by
her benefactor, the King of England. The Emperor was down, and she
proposed nothing less than that he should permanently cede Bavaria to
her, or give up the Imperial crown to her husband. Such terms were
not to be listened to; but the fallen Emperor finally did conclude a
treaty of neutrality with the Queen of Hungary, by which he consented
that Bavaria should remain in her hands till the conclusion of a peace.
This peace the King of England and William of Hesse did their best to
accomplish; and Carteret, who was agent for King George, had consented
that on this peace England should grant a subsidy of three hundred
thousand crowns to the Emperor. No sooner, however, did the English
Ministers receive the preliminaries of this contract, than they very
properly struck out this subsidy, and the whole treaty fell to the
ground.

Before quitting Germany, however, George had signed a treaty between
himself, Austria, and Sardinia, in which Italian affairs were
determined. The Spaniards, under Count Gages and the Infant Don
Philip, had made some attempts against the Austrians in Italy, but
with little effect. By the present treaty, signed at Worms on the
13th of September, the King of Sardinia engaged to assist the Allies
with forty-five thousand men, and to renounce his pretensions to the
Milanese, on condition that he should command the Allied army in Italy
in person, should receive the cession of Vigevenasco and the other
districts from Austria, and a yearly subsidy of two hundred thousand
pounds from England. This was also negotiated by Lord Carteret on the
part of King George, and without much reference to the Ministers in
England, who, on receiving the treaty, expressed much dissatisfaction;
but, as it was signed, they let it pass. But there was another and
separate convention, by which George agreed to grant the Queen of
Hungary a subsidy of three hundred thousand pounds per annum, not only
during the war, but as long as the necessity of her affairs required
it. This not being signed, the British Ministers refused to assent to
it, and it remained unratified.

In all these transactions Carteret showed the most facile disposition
to gratify all the Hanoverian tendencies of the king, in order to
ingratiate himself and secure the Premiership at home. But in this he
did not succeed; he was much trusted by George in foreign affairs, and
in them he remained. Lord Wilmington, Prime Minister, had died two
months before the signing of the treaty at Worms, and the competitors
for his office were Pelham, brother of the Duke of Newcastle, and
Pulteney. Pelham was supported by Newcastle, Lord Chancellor Hardwicke,
and still more powerfully by the old Minister under whom he had been
trained--Lord Orford, who, though out of office, was consulted in
everything relating to it. Pulteney and Pelham had both, according
to their friends, neglected the necessary steps for succeeding
Wilmington. Pulteney had declined any office, vainly hoping that his
great popularity would enable him to guide public affairs. His friends
reminded him that had he taken the Treasury on Walpole's resignation,
he would now have been still at the helm. Pelham's great adviser,
Lord Orford, said to him, "If you had taken my advice, and held the
Exchequer under Wilmington, the whole had dropped into your mouth."
Pelham, however, received the appointment from the king, and this was
communicated in a letter from Carteret, who candidly told him that, as
the old friend and colleague of Pulteney, Lord Bath, he had done all in
his power to secure the office for him, but now he would support Pelham
cordially, notwithstanding. Pelham was at this period forty-seven years
of age, of far inferior talent to Orford, but pursued his cautious
principles and acted under his advice.

On the return of the king and Carteret, Parliament was opened on the
1st of December. The first trial of the Opposition was on the Address,
on which occasion its real strength was not called forth, and this was
carried by two hundred and seventy-eight votes against one hundred
and forty-nine. But the subject of Hanoverian troops and Hanoverian
measures soon displayed its extent and virulence. There was a vehement
feeling against everything relating to Hanover, and Pitt lost no time
in denouncing Carteret and his measures in the most bitter terms.
Pitt's thunder was echoed by others, and the scene in the Commons
was described by a spectator as like nothing but a tumultuous Polish
Diet. Such was the ferment amid which opened the year 1744, and it
soon became evident that the existence of the country was at stake.
Preparations had been making for the invasion of England for some time.
Cardinal Tencin, the new French Minister, sent Murray of Broughton to
James in Rome, to desire him to send his eldest son, Prince Charles,
to France to be in readiness for the campaign in England, and in due
course the Young Pretender arrived at Gravelines.

The expedition against England was at this moment actually in motion.
The squadrons of Brest and Rochefort were already united under the
command of Admiral Roquefeuille, and sailing up the Channel to clear
the way for the transports containing the soldiers. Sir John Norris had
been appointed Admiral of our Channel fleet, consisting of twenty-one
ships of the line. He had lain at Spithead, but had quitted that
station and sailed into the Downs, where he was joined by other ships
from Chatham; and thus was not only superior in number to the French,
but had the advantage of being well acquainted with the coasts, he
having long been Captain of Deal Castle. Roquefeuille sailed right
up to the Isle of Wight, and, observing no vessels off Spithead, he,
in his French egotism, concluded that the fleet had sought shelter
in Portsmouth harbour. He therefore lost no time in despatching a
small vessel to Dunkirk to hasten on his armament. Seven thousand men
were instantly sent on board transports, and the prince and Marshal
Saxe, who was to take command of the land force, accompanied them.
Roquefeuille, meanwhile, proceeding on his voyage, came to anchor off
Dungeness, which he had no sooner done than he beheld the British fleet
bearing down upon him in much greater force than his own, for he had
only fifteen ships of the line and five frigates. The destruction of
the French fleet appeared inevitable, but Sir John Norris this time
justly incurred the censure of lingering. He thought, from the state of
the tide and the approach of night, it was better to defer the attack
till morning; and, when morning came, no Frenchmen were to be seen. The
French admiral, much more active than poor old Sir John, had slipped
his cables and made the best of his way homewards.

The next day tempest scattered the approaching transports. Sir John
thought the storm sufficient excuse for not pursuing; but the winds
followed the invaders, and blowing directly from London towards
Dunkirk, dispersed the French transports, sank some of the largest
of them with all their men, wrecked others on the coast, and made
the rest glad to recover their port. Charles waited impatiently for
the cessation of the tempest to put to sea again, but the French
ministers were discouraged by the disaster, and by the discovery of so
powerful a British fleet in the Channel. The army was withdrawn from
Dunkirk, Marshal Saxe was appointed to the command in Flanders, and the
expedition for the present was relinquished.

After these transactions there could no longer remain even the name of
peace between France and England. Mr. Thompson, the British Resident at
Paris, made the most indignant complaints of the hostile proceedings
of the French fleets and of the encouragement of the Young Pretender.
The reply to this was a formal declaration of war, couched in the most
offensive terms, in the month of March, to which George replied in a
counter-declaration equally strong.

The French having now formally declared war with England, entered on
the campaign with Flanders in the middle of May with eighty thousand
men, the king taking the nominal command, in imitation of Louis XIV.
Marshal Saxe was the real commander, and with this able general Louis
went on for some time reaping fictitious laurels. The King of England
expected to see the Allies muster seventy-five thousand men--a force
nearly equal to that of the French; but the Dutch and Austrians had
grievously failed in their stipulated quotas, and the whole army did
not exceed fifty thousand. General Wade, the English commander, was
a general of considerable experience, but no Marlborough, either
in military genius or that self-command which enabled him to bear
up against tardy movements and antagonistic tempers of the foreign
officers. Consequently, whilst he had to contend with a very superior
force, he was hampered by his coadjutors, lost his temper, and, what
was worse, lost battles too. The French went on taking town after town
and fortress after fortress. But this career of victory was destined
to receive a check. Prince Charles of Lorraine, at the head of sixty
thousand men, burst into Alsace, and marched without any serious
obstacle to the very walls of Strasburg; while the French king was
stricken with fever at Metz.

Whilst Louis lay ill at Metz, France received an unexpected relief.
Prince Charles was hastily recalled to cope with Frederick of Prussia,
who had now joined France in the counter-league of Frankfort, and burst
into the territories of Maria Theresa. He found in Prague a garrison of
fifteen thousand men, yet by the 15th of September he had reduced the
place, after a ten days' siege. At the same time Marshal Seckendorf,
the Imperial general, entered Bavaria, which was defended only by a
small force, and quickly reinstated Charles on the throne of Munich.
Vienna itself was in the greatest alarm, lest the enemies uniting
should pay it a visit. But this danger was averted by the rapid return
of Prince Charles of Lorraine from before Strasburg. He had to pass the
very front of the French army; nevertheless, he conducted his forces
safely and expeditiously to the frontiers of Bohemia, himself hastening
to Vienna to consult on the best plan of operations. Maria Theresa
again betook herself to her heroic Hungarians, who, at her appeal, once
more rushed to her standard; and Frederick, in his turn alarmed, called
loudly on the French for their promises of assistance, but called in
vain. The French had no desire for another campaign in the heart of
Austria. The Prussian invader, therefore, soon found himself menaced on
all sides by Austrians, Croatians, and Hungarian troops, who harassed
him day and night, cut off his supplies and his forages, and made him
glad to retrace his steps in haste.

Carteret--or Granville, as we must now style him, for he succeeded to
the earldom in 1744--still retained the favour of the king precisely
in the same degree as he had forfeited that of the people and the
Parliament, by his unscrupulous support of George's Hanoverian
predilections. Elated with the favour of the king, Granville insisted
on exercising the same supreme power in the Cabinet which Walpole had
done. This drove Pelham and his brother, Newcastle, to inform the king
that they or Granville must resign. George, unwilling to part with
Granville, yet afraid of offending the Pelham party, and risking their
support of the large subsidies which he required for Germany, was in a
great strait. He sent for Lord Orford up from Houghton, who attended,
though in the extreme agonies of the stone, which, in a few months
later, brought him to his end. Walpole, notwithstanding the strong
desire of the king to retain Granville, and that also of the Prince
of Wales--who on this and all points connected with Hanover agreed
with the king, though no one else did--decided that it was absolutely
necessary that he should resign; and accordingly, on the 24th of
November, Granville sullenly resigned the seals, and they were returned
to his predecessor, the Earl of Harrington.

The fall of Granville became the revolution of all parties. The
Pelhams, in order to prevent his return to the Ministry through the
partiality of the king, determined to construct a Cabinet on what was
called a broad bottom--that is, including some of both sections of the
Whigs, and even some of the Tories. They opened a communication with
Chesterfield, Gower, and Pitt, and these violent oppositionists were
ready enough to obtain place on condition of uniting against Granville
and Bath. The difficulty was to reconcile the king to them. George
was not well affected towards Chesterfield, and would not consent to
admit him to any post near his person, but permitted him, after much
reluctance, to be named Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. As for Pitt, he
was even more repugnant to the king than Chesterfield, and Pitt, on
his part, would accept nothing less than the post of Secretary at
War. The Pelhams advised him to have patience and they would overcome
the king's reluctance; but when they proposed that the Tory Sir John
Hynde Cotton should have a place, George, in his anger, exclaimed,
"Ministers are kings in this country!"--and so they are for the time.
After much negotiation and accommodating of interests and parties, the
Ministry was ultimately arranged as follows:--Lord Hardwicke remained
Lord Chancellor; Pelham was First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor
of the Exchequer; the Duke of Newcastle became one Secretary of State,
Lord Harrington the other; the Duke of Devonshire remained Steward of
the Household; the Duke of Bedford was appointed First Lord of the
Admiralty, with Lord Sandwich as Second Lord; Lord Gower was made
Privy Seal; Lord Lyttelton became a member of the Treasury Board; Mr.
Grenville was made a Junior Lord of the Admiralty; Sir John Hynde
Cotton received the office of Treasurer of the Chamber in the Royal
Household; and Bubb Doddington contrived to be included as Treasurer of
the Navy. Lords Cobham and Hobart had also appointments; and the Duke
of Dorset was made President of the Council.

Granville being got rid of, and the Opposition bought up with place,
the only difference in the policy which had been pursued, and which
had been so bitterly denounced by the noblemen and gentlemen now in
office, was that it became more unequivocally Hanoverian and more
extravagant. "Those abominably Courtly measures" of Granville were
now the adopted measures of his denouncers. The king had expressed,
just before his fall, a desire to grant a subsidy to Saxony; but Lord
Chancellor Hardwicke had most seriously reminded his Majesty of the
increased subsidy to the Queen of Hungary, which made it impracticable:
now, both the increased subsidy to Maria Theresa and the subsidy to
Saxony were passed without an objection. A quadruple alliance was
entered into between Britain, Austria, Holland, and Saxony, by which
Saxony was to furnish thirty thousand men for the defence of Bohemia,
and to receive a hundred and fifty thousand pounds, two-thirds of which
were to be paid by England, and one-third by Holland. The Elector of
Cologne received twenty-four thousand pounds, the Elector of Mayence
eight thousand pounds. Nay, soon discovering that, as there was no
opposition, there was no clamour on the subject, Ministers the very
next year took the Hanoverians into their direct pay again, and in 1747
increased the number of them from eighteen thousand to twenty thousand.

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS IN 1742.

(_From a Drawing by Gravelot engraved by W. J. White._)]

In January of 1745 died Charles VII., King of Bavaria and Emperor of
Germany. His life had been rendered miserable, and his kingdom made the
prey of war, by his unpatriotic mania of supporting the French in their
attacks on Germany. His son and successor showed himself a wiser and a
better man. He at once renounced all claims to the Austrian succession,
and to the Imperial crown. He agreed to vote for the Prince of Tuscany,
Maria Theresa's husband, at the next Diet, and never to support the
French or the Prussian arms. On these terms a treaty was concluded
between Austria and Bavaria at Füssen, and Austria therefore restored
to him his rightful inheritance of Bavaria.

The campaign in Flanders opened in April. The British faithfully
furnished their stipulated number of men (twenty-eight thousand), but
both Austria and Holland had most disgracefully failed. Holland was to
send fifty thousand into the field, and keep the other ten thousand in
her garrisons; but she had sent less than half that number, and Austria
only eight squadrons. The French had a fine army of seventy-five
thousand men under the able general, Marshal Saxe; and the King of
France and the Dauphin had come to witness the conflict, which gave a
wonderful degree of spirit to their troops. On the part of the Allies,
the Duke of Cumberland was chief in command, but, from his youth, he
was not able to set himself free from the assumptions of the Austrian
general, old Marshal Königsegg, and the Dutch general, the Prince of
Waldeck. As it was, to march against the French before Tournay was
to rush into a certain contest with the whole French army of nearly
eighty thousand men, whilst the Allies could have only about fifty
thousand. Saxe made the ablest arrangements for the coming fight. He
left fifteen thousand infantry to blockade Tournay, drew up his army in
a very strong position a few miles in advance, and strengthened it by
various works.

The Allies, on coming near, found Saxe encamped on some gentle heights,
with the river Scheldt and the village of Antoine on his right, and a
wood named Barré on his left. In front lay a narrow valley, and, as
at Dettingen, he had secured the passage of the river by the bridge
of Calonne in his rear, defended by a tête-de-pont, and a reserve
of the Household Troops. He had constructed abatis in the wood of
Barré, thrown up redoubts between Antoine and Fontenoy, and strongly
fortified those villages themselves. The narrow valley between Barré
and Fontenoy was formidably defended by cross batteries, and by the
natural ruggedness of the ground; and altogether the French officers
confidently regarded their position as unassailable. Yet, inferior
as they were in numbers, the Allies at once marched and attacked the
French pickets and outposts, drove them in, and stood under arms, as it
was growing dark, ready to renew the onset at daybreak.

At four o'clock in the morning (the 11th of May) the cannonade began.
Prince Waldeck undertook to carry Fontenoy and Antoine with the Dutch,
and the Duke of Cumberland, at the head of the English and Hanoverians,
to bear down on the enemy's left. At the same time, the Duke sent
General Ingoldsby with a division to clear the wood of Barré, and
storm the redoubt beyond. When Ingoldsby reached the wood, he found
it occupied by a body of sharpshooters, and instead of attacking them
vigorously he paused and returned to the duke for fresh orders--a great
neglect of duty by which much time was lost, and the enemy enabled
to direct their undivided attention on that side to the main body of
English and Hanoverians advancing under the duke. On the other hand,
the Dutch, finding Fontenoy surrounded by a fosse, and the French
mounted with their batteries on the rubbish of houses, which they had
demolished for the purpose, were panic-struck, and instead of making a
resolute rush to storm the place, having suffered considerably from the
French batteries, fell back, and stood aloof, thus leaving the English
and Hanoverians exposed to the whole fire of the hostile army.

Thus shamefully deserted on both hands, Cumberland still led forward
his British and Hanoverians against the main body of the French army.
The ruggedness of the ground in the narrow valley between the wood of
Barré and Fontenoy compelled them to leave the cavalry behind; but the
infantry pushed on, dragging with them several pieces of artillery.
Cumberland had the advantage of the advice and spirit of his military
tutor, General Ligonier, and, in face of a most murderous fire, the
young commander hastened on. The batteries right and left mowed them
down, and before this comparative handful of men stood massed the
vast French army, in a position pronounced by the French impregnable.
The dense column of the English, compressed between the wood of Barré
and Fontenoy, soon drove the French from their positions, and, still
pushing on towards the rear of Fontenoy, threatened to cut off the
bridge of Calonne, and with it the enemy's retreat across the river.
Both French and English conceived that the battle was decided for the
Allies. Marshal Königsegg congratulated Cumberland on their victory,
and, on the other hand, Saxe warned Louis XV. that it was necessary
to retreat. Louis, however, is said to have protested against giving
way, and both French and English soon became aware that the Dutch
had deserted their post, and that the right wing of the French army
remained wholly unengaged. The British and Hanoverian conquerors on
their right, when they mounted the French positions, looked out for
their left wing, the Dutch, and, to their dismay, beheld them hanging
with cowardly inactivity in the distance. The brave Marshal Saxe, at
the same moment making the same discovery, called forward the Household
Troops, which had been posted to receive the Dutch, and precipitated
them on the flank of the British. Foremost in this charge was the Irish
Brigade, in the pay of France, who fought like furies against their
countrymen. Overwhelmed by numbers, and numbers perfectly fresh, and
mowed down by additional artillery which the default of the Dutch had
set at liberty, and unsupported by their own cavalry from the confined
and rugged nature of the ground, the brave British and Hanoverians were
compelled to give way. But they did it in such order and steadiness,
disputing every inch of the ground, as excited the admiration of their
opponents. The Duke of Cumberland was the last in the retreat, still
regardless of his own danger, calling on his men to remember Blenheim
and Ramillies; and seeing one of his officers turning to flee, he
threatened to shoot him. Thus they gave way slowly, and still fighting,
till they reached their horse, which then made a front to cover them,
till they were out of the _mêlée_; their dastardly allies, the Dutch,
then joined them, and they marched away in a body to Ath. Tournay, for
which the battle was fought, might have detained the French a long
time; but here, again, Dutch treachery did its work. Hertsall, the
chief engineer in the Dutch service, betrayed the place to the French,
fled to their camp, and then assisted them by his advice. Tournay
surrendered in a fortnight, and the citadel the week after. Ghent,
Bruges, Oudenarde, and Dendermond fell in rapid succession. Whilst the
Allies were covering Antwerp and Brussels, the French attacked and took
Ostend, again by the treachery of the governor, who refused to inundate
the country.

The affairs of England, menaced by invasion, were during this time
compelling George to draw part of his forces homeward; it was,
consequently, only the approach of winter which saved the towns of
Flanders from the French. At the same time, the wily Prussian was in
arms again, trusting to seize yet more of the Austrian territories,
whilst the powerful ally of Maria Theresa was at once pressed by
the fault of the Dutch and Austrians in Flanders, and at home by
the Pretender. George, who, in spite of all remonstrances, had
persisted, notwithstanding the domestic danger, in paying his annual
visit to Hanover, was earnestly engaged, through Lord Harrington,
in endeavouring to accomplish a peace between Prussia and Austria.
Neither Frederick nor Maria Theresa, however, was in any haste to
conclude peace. Frederick hoped to profit by the engagement of England
with the French, and Maria Theresa held out, with some vague hopes of
regaining Silesia through the money of England. But Frederick, on the
3rd of June, gained a decided victory over Prince Charles of Lorraine,
throwing himself between the Austrians and the Saxons, whom the English
subsidy had brought to their aid. In this battle of Hohen Friedberg
the Austrians lost nine thousand men in killed and wounded, and had as
many made prisoners. Prince Charles retreated into Bohemia, and was
soon followed by Frederick, who fixed his camp at Chlum. Whilst another
battle was impending, Maria Theresa, still undaunted, accompanied her
husband to the Diet at Frankfort, where she had the satisfaction of
seeing him elected Emperor of Germany on the 13th of September. The
same month, however, her troops were again defeated by Frederick at
Sohr, near the sources of the Elbe. The King of Prussia now offered
to make peace, and Maria Theresa rejected his overtures; but another
victory over her combined army of Austrians and Saxons, which put
Frederick in possession of Dresden, brought her to reason. A peace was
concluded at Dresden on Christmas Day, by which Silesia was confirmed
to Prussia, and Frederick, on his part, acknowledged the recent
election of the Emperor Francis. King George had also entered into a
secret treaty with Prussia; and Frederick, sending his army into winter
quarters in Silesia, returned to Berlin, thence to ponder fresh schemes
of aggrandisement.

The time for the last grand conflict for the recovery of their
forfeited throne in Great Britain by the Stuarts was come. The
Pretender had grown old and cautious, but the young prince, Charles
Edward, who had been permitted by his father, and encouraged by France,
to attempt this great object in 1744, had not at all abated his
enthusiasm for it, though Providence had appeared to fight against him,
and France, after the failure of Dunkirk, had seemed to abandon the
design altogether. When he received the news of the battle of Fontenoy
he was at the Chateau de Navarre, near Evreux, the seat of his attached
friend, the young Duke de Bouillon. He wrote to Murray of Broughton to
announce his determination to attempt the enterprise at all hazards.
He had been assured by Murray himself that his friends in Scotland
discountenanced any rising unless six thousand men and ten thousand
stand of arms could be brought over; and that, without these, they
would not even engage to join him. The announcement, therefore, that
he was coming threw the friends of the old dynasty in Scotland into
the greatest alarm. All but the Duke of Perth condemned the enterprise
in the strongest terms, and wrote letters to induce him to postpone
his voyage. But these remonstrances arrived too late; if, indeed, they
would have had any effect had they reached him earlier. Charles Edward
had lost no time in making his preparations.

He had been able to borrow a hundred and eighty thousand livres from
two of his adherents, had made serious exertions to raise arms, and
though he had kept his project profoundly secret from the French King
and Ministry, lest they might forcibly detain him, he had managed to
engage a French man-of-war called the _Elizabeth_, carrying sixty-seven
guns, and a brig of eighteen guns called the _Doutelle_, an excellent
sailer. On the 2nd of July the _Doutelle_ left St. Nazaire, at the
mouth of the Loire, and waited at Belleisle for the _Elizabeth_, when
they put forward to sea in good earnest. Unfortunately, only four days
after leaving Belleisle, they fell in with the British man-of-war the
_Lion_, of fifty-eight guns, commanded by the brave Captain Butt,
who in Anson's expedition had stormed Paita. There was no avoiding
an engagement, which continued warmly for five or six hours, when
both vessels were so disabled that they were compelled to put back
respectively to England and France.

With the _Elizabeth_ the Young Pretender lost the greater part of
his arms and ammunition. Yet he would not return, but set out in
the _Doutelle_ towards Scotland. In two days more the little vessel
was pursued by another large English ship, but by dint of superior
sailing they escaped, and made the Western Isles. It was only after a
fortnight's voyage, however, that they came to anchor off the little
islet of Erisca, between Barra and South Uist.

Charles landed in Lochnanuagh on the 25th of July, and was conducted
to a farm-house belonging to Clanranald. He then despatched letters to
the Highland chiefs who were in his interest. Principal amongst these
were Cameron of Lochiel, Sir Alexander Macdonald, and Macleod. Lochiel
was as much confounded at the proposal to commence a rebellion without
foreign support as the Macdonalds. For a long time Lochiel stood out,
and gave the strongest reasons for his decision; but Charles exclaimed,
"I am resolved to put all to the hazard. I will erect the Royal
Standard, and tell the people of Britain that Charles Stuart is come
over to claim the crown of his ancestors, or to perish in the attempt.
Lochiel, who, my father has always told me, was our firmest friend, may
stay at home, and learn from the newspapers the fate of his prince."
"Not so!" instantly replied the impulsive Highlander. "I will share
the fate of my prince, whatever it may be, and so shall every man over
whom nature or fortune has given me any power." The decision of Lochiel
determined the whole Highlands. The Macdonalds of Skye held back when
sent for, but numbers of others were immediately influenced by the
example of Lochiel. Macdonald of Keppoch, Macdonald of Glengarry, and
numbers of others, sent in their adhesion. Charles then removed to
Kinloch Moidart, the residence of the chief of that name, where he was
joined by Murray of Broughton, who brought with him from the south
the manifestoes of Charles ready printed. Charles appointed him his
secretary, which post he continued to hold during the expedition.

On the 16th of August a party of English soldiers, sent by the Governor
of Fort Augustus to reinforce the garrison at Fort William, were
assailed by a number of Keppoch's Highlanders in the narrow pass of
High Bridge. They attempted to retreat when they found they could not
reach their antagonists in their ambush, but they were stopped by a
fresh detachment of the followers of Lochiel, and compelled to lay
down their arms. Five or six of them were killed, and their leader,
Captain Scott, was wounded. They received the kindest treatment from
the conquerors, and as the Governor of Fort Augustus refused to trust
a surgeon amongst them to dress the wounds of Captain Scott, Lochiel
immediately allowed Scott to return to the fort on his parole, and
received the rest of the wounded into his house at Auchnacarrie.

[Illustration: THE LANDING OF PRINCE CHARLIE. (_See p._ 92.)]

In the valley of Glen Tronian, on the 19th of August, they proceeded to
erect the standard. The Marquis of Tullibardine, as highest in rank,
though feeble and tottering with age, was appointed to unfurl the
banner, supported on each hand by a stout Highlander. The colours were
of blue and red silk, with a white centre, on which, some weeks later,
the words TANDEM TRIUMPHANS were embroidered. Tullibardine held the
staff till the manifesto of James, dated Rome, 1743, appointing his son
Regent, was read; and as the banner floated in the breeze the multitude
shouted lustily, and the hurrahs were boisterously renewed when Charles
made them a short address in English, which few of the common class
understood.

The slowness with which the Government became aware of these
proceedings is something astonishing in these days of telegraphs and
railroads. Though Charles sailed on the 2nd of July, it was not till
the 30th of the same month that Lord Tweeddale, the Scottish Secretary
of State in London, was informed even that he had left Nantes. Sir John
Cope was the commander of the forces in Scotland, and he immediately
gave orders for drawing together such troops as he had to Stirling.
These were extraordinarily few. There were two regiments of dragoons,
Gardiner's and Hamilton's, but both recent in the service; and the
whole force at his disposal, exclusive of garrisons, did not amount to
three thousand men. Cope was eager enough to march into the Highlands,
even with such forces as he had, and crush the insurrection at once.
He proposed this apparently active and judicious scheme to the Lords
Justices in England, George II. himself being at Hanover, and they
warmly approved of it, and issued their positive orders for its
execution. It was, in truth, however, the most fatal scheme which could
be conceived. The spirit of rebellion was fermenting in every glen and
on every hill, and to march regular troops into these rugged fastnesses
was only to have them shot down by invisible marksmen on all hands,
and reduced to the extremity of the two companies already captured.
The plan was to have secured all the passes into the Lowlands, to have
drawn his forces to the foot of the mountains wherever a descent could
be made, and blockade the rebels in their own hills till they should be
reduced by gradual approaches and overwhelming numbers. Famine, indeed,
would soon have tamed any large body of men in those sterile regions.

Sir John marched out of Edinburgh for the north on the very day that
the standard of the Stuarts was erected in Glenfinnan, the 19th of
August. On the following day he continued his route from Stirling,
accompanied by one thousand five hundred foot, leaving, very properly,
the dragoons behind him, as of no service in the mountains, nor capable
of finding forage there. He then continued his march towards Fort
Augustus, which he hoped to make the centre of his operations, and then
to strike a sudden and annihilating blow on the handful of rebels. At
Dalwhinnie he heard that the rebels now mustered six thousand, and
that they meant to dispute the pass of Corriarrick, lying directly
in the line of his march towards Fort Augustus. This Corriarrick had
been made passable by one of General Wade's roads, constructed after
the rebellion of 1715, to lay open the Highlands. The road wound up
the mountain by seventeen zig-zags or traverses, and down the other
side by others, called by the Highlanders the Devil's Staircase. Three
hundred men were capable, much more three thousand, of stopping an army
in such a situation, and Cope called a council of war. At length it
was agreed that they should take a side route, and endeavour to reach
Inverness and Fort George. The resolve was a fatal one, for it gave the
appearance of a flight to the army, and left the road open to Stirling
and the Lowlands.

Charles, on his part, had determined to occupy Corriarrick. For that
purpose he had made a forced march, disencumbered himself of all
possible encumbrances by burning his own baggage, and encouraging his
followers to do the same. On the morning of the 27th he stood on the
north side of Corriarrick, and, as he put on his brogues, he is said to
have exclaimed, with exultation, "Before these are unloosed, I shall be
up with Mr. Cope." To his great astonishment, however, when he reached
the summit all was one wild solitude--not a man was visible. At length
they discerned some soldiers ascending, whom they set down for part of
Lord Loudon's regiment, forming the English vanguard. They turned out
to be only some deserters, who informed them of the change in Cope's
route.

At this news the Highlanders were filled with exuberant joy. They
demanded permission to pursue and attack Cope's soldiers; but the
chiefs saw too clearly the grand advantage offered them of descending
suddenly into the Lowlands by the road thus left open. Whilst Sir John
was making a forced march to Inverness, which he reached on the 29th of
August, the Highlanders were descending like one of their own torrents
southwards. In two days they traversed the mountains of Badenoch; on
the third they reached the Vale of Athol.

On the 30th of August they reached Blair Castle. The Duke of Athol, the
proprietor, fled at their approach, and old Tullibardine resumed his
ancestral mansion, and gave a splendid banquet there to Charles and his
officers. On the third day they resumed their march, and reached Perth
on the 4th of September, which the prince entered on horseback, amid
loud acclamations. Whilst at Perth he received two valuable accessions
to his party--the titular Duke of Perth, who brought with him two
hundred men, and Lord George Murray, the brother of the Duke of Athol,
and a man of considerable military experience.

[Illustration: "GOD SAVE KING JAMES."

FROM THE PAINTING BY ANDREW C. GOW, R.A.]

Hearing that General Cope--who had seen his blunder in leaving open the
highway to the Scottish capital--after having reached Inverness, had
begun a rapid march on Aberdeen, trusting to embark his army there,
and reach Edinburgh in time to defend it from the rebel army, Charles
marched out of Perth on the 11th of September. He reached Dunblane
that evening, and on the 13th he passed the fords of Frew, about eight
miles above Stirling, knowing that several king's ships were lying
at the head of the Firth. On their approach, Gardiner retired with
his dragoons from the opposite bank. Stirling, being deserted by the
troops, was ready to open its gates; but Charles was in too much haste
to reach Edinburgh. Hearing that Gardiner, with his dragoons, intended
to dispute the passage of Linlithgow Bridge, Charles sent on one
thousand Highlanders, before break of day, under Lord George Murray,
in the hope of surprising them; but they found that they had decamped
the evening before, and they took peaceable possession of Falkirk and
the old palace. The prince himself came up on the evening of that
day, Sunday, the 15th, where the whole army passed the night, except
the vanguard, which pushed on to Kirkliston, only eight miles from
Edinburgh.

The consternation of the city may be imagined. The inhabitants, who
had, at first, treated the rumour of the Young Pretender's landing
with ridicule, now passed to the extreme of terror. On Sunday night
the Highlanders lay between Linlithgow and the city, and on Monday
morning Charles sent forward a detachment, which, on coming in sight
of the pickets, discharged their pistols. The dragoon pickets did not
wait to return the fire, but rode off towards Coltbridge, nearer to
Edinburgh, where Gardiner lay with the main body of horse. No sooner,
however, did this commander perceive the advancing Highlanders, than
he also gave the order to retreat, and the order was so well obeyed,
that from a foot's-pace the march quickened into a trot and presently
into a gallop, and the inhabitants of Edinburgh saw the whole force
going helter-skelter towards Leith, where they drew bit. The valiant
troops mounted again, and galloped to Preston, six miles farther, some
of them, it was said, not stopping till they reached Dunbar. This
"Canter of Coltbridge," as it was called in derision, left the city at
the mercy of the Highlanders, except for about six or seven hundred
men mustered from the City Guard, the volunteer corps, and some armed
gentlemen from Dalkeith and Musselburgh, who took post at the gates.

The magistrates, now summoned by the Lord Provost to a meeting in
the Goldsmiths' Hall, resolved to send a deputation to the prince,
desiring that he would cease hostilities till they had had time to
decide what they should do. Scarcely had the deputies set out, when
news came that the transports, with Cope's army on board, were seen
off Dunbar, the wind being unfavourable for making Leith, and that
his troops would soon be landed, and in full march for the city. It
was now determined to recall the deputation, but that was found to
be too late, and General Guest was applied to to return the muskets,
bayonets, and cartridge boxes which had been given up to him. Guest
very properly regarded men who had thrown up their arms in a panic as
unfit to be trusted with them again, and advised that the dragoons
should be ordered to unite with Cope's infantry, and advance on the
city with all possible speed. About ten o'clock at night the deputation
returned, having met the prince at Gray's Mill, only two miles from
the city, who gave them a letter to the authorities, declaring that
they had a sufficient security in his father's declarations and his own
manifesto; and he only gave them till two o'clock in the morning to
consider his terms. The deputation returned in the utmost dejection,
little deeming that the prince had taken such measures as should render
them the means of surrendering the city. But Charles had despatched
Lochiel and Murray of Broughton, with eight hundred Camerons, to watch
every opportunity of surprising the town, carrying with them a barrel
of gunpowder to blow up one of the gates. This detachment had arrived,
and hidden themselves in ambush near the Netherbow Port. The deputation
passed in with their coach by another gate, and the ambush lay still
till the coachman came out at the Netherbow Port to take his carriage
and horses to the stables in the suburbs. The ambush rushed upon the
gate before it could be closed, secured the sentinels, ran forward to
the other gate, and secured its keepers also. When the inhabitants rose
in the morning they were astonished to find the city in possession of
the Highlanders. On the 17th of September Charles occupied Holyrood.
Amidst wild enthusiasm, the Old Pretender was proclaimed as King James
VIII. at the Cross, Murray of Broughton's beautiful wife sitting on
horseback, with a drawn sword in her right hand, while with her left
she distributed white favours to the crowd.

But there was no time for festivities. The English army was
approaching, and it was necessary for Charles to assert his right
by hard blows as well as by proclamations. The citizens stood aloof
from his standard; but Lord Nairn arrived most opportunely from the
Highlands with five hundred of the clan Maclachlan, headed by their
chief, and accompanied by a number of men from Athol. These swelled
his little army to upwards of two thousand five hundred, and Charles
declared that he would immediately lead them against Cope. The chiefs
applauded this resolution, and on the morning of the 19th he marched
out to Duddingston, where the troops lay upon their arms, and then he
summoned a council of war. He proposed to continue the march the next
morning, and meet Cope upon the way. In the highest spirits the clans
marched on through Musselburgh and over the heights at Carberry, where
Mary Queen of Scots made her last unfortunate fight, nor did they stop
till they came in sight of the English army.

Cope had landed his force at Dunbar on the very day that the prince
entered Edinburgh. His disembarkation was not completed till the 18th.
Lord Loudon had joined him at Inverness with two hundred men, and now
he met the runaway dragoons, six hundred in number, so that his whole
force amounted to two thousand two hundred men--some few hundreds less
than the Highlanders. Sir John took the level road towards Edinburgh,
marching out of Dunbar on the 19th of September. Next day Lord Loudon,
who acted as adjutant-general, rode forward with a reconnoitring party,
and soon came back at a smart trot to announce that the rebels were not
approaching by the road and the open country to the west, but along
the heights to the south. Sir John, therefore, altered his route, and
pushed on to Prestonpans, where he formed his army in battle array. He
placed his foot in the centre, with a regiment of dragoons and three
pieces of artillery on each wing. His right was covered by Colonel
Gardiner's park wall and the village of Preston; his left extended
towards Seaton House, and in his rear lay the sea, with the villages of
Prestonpans and Cockenzie. Between him and the Highlanders was a deep
morass.

The night was cold, and the two armies lay on the ground. In the middle
of the night Anderson of Whitburgh, a gentleman whose father had been
out in the 'Fifteen and who knew the country well, suddenly recollected
a way across the bog to the right. He communicated this to Hepburn
of Keith and Lord George Murray, who went to waken the prince, who,
sitting up in his heap of pea-straw, received the news with exultation.
He started up, a council was called, and as it drew towards morning
it was resolved to follow Anderson as their guide immediately. An
aide-de-camp was despatched to recall Lord Nairn and his five hundred,
and the army marched after Anderson in profound silence. It was not
without some difficulty that they crossed it, after all; some of the
soldiers sank knee-deep, and the prince himself stumbled and fell.
When they reached the firm ground the mounted pickets heard the sound
of their march, though they could not see them for the thick fog. The
dragoon sentinels demanded who went there, fired their pistols, and
galloped off to give the alarm.

Cope maintained the order of battle arranged the day previous, except
that he turned the men's faces towards the east instead of the west,
to meet the new position of the enemy. His infantry was posted in the
centre; Hamilton's dragoons were on the left, and Gardiner's with
the artillery in front, on the right, leaning on the morass. The
Highlanders no sooner saw the enemy than, taking off their caps, they
uttered a short prayer, and pulling their bonnets over their brows,
they rushed forward in their separate clans with a yell that was
frightful.

Colonel Gardiner endeavoured to charge the advancing enemy with his
dragoons; but it was in vain that he attempted to animate their craven
souls by word and example--at the first volley of the Highlanders they
wheeled and fled. The same disgraceful scene took place on the left,
at nearly the same moment. Hamilton's regiment of horse dispersed at
the first charge of the Macdonalds, leaving the centre exposed on
both its flanks. The infantry made a better stand than the cavalry;
it discharged a steady and well-directed volley on the advancing
Highlanders, and killed some of their best men, amongst others, a son
of the famous Rob Roy. But the Highlanders did not give them time for
a second volley; they were up with them, dashed aside their bayonets
with their targets, burst through their ranks in numerous places, so
that the whole, not being able to give way on account of the park wall
of Preston, were thrown into confusion, and at the mercy of the foe.
Never was a battle so instantly decided--it is said not to have lasted
more than five or six minutes; never was a defeat more absolute. Sir
John Cope, or Johnnie Cope, as he will be styled in Scotland to the end
of time, by the assistance of the Earls of Loudon and Home, collected
about four hundred and fifty of the recreant dragoons, and fled to
Coldstream that night. There not feeling secure, they continued their
flight till they reached Berwick, where Sir Mark Kerr received Cope
with the sarcastic but cruelly true remark that he believed that he
was the first general on record who had carried the news of his own
defeat.

[Illustration: PRINCE CHARLES EDWARD STUART (THE "YOUNG PRETENDER").
(_After the Portrait by Tocque_, 1748.)]

Charles was anxious to follow up his victory by marching directly into
England, trusting to the effect of this signal triumph to bring all
inclined to the Stuart dynasty to his standard. He was confident that
if he met with anything like success on the way, a rapid march would
put London in his possession. And, in truth, such was the miserably
misgoverned condition of the country at the time, that, had he come
with a tolerable French army, nothing could have prevented him from
becoming master of the kingdom. Never was England so thoroughly exposed
to foreign danger, so utterly unarmed and unprotected, whilst it had
been sending such armaments to the Continent. Fortunately, the French
had not supported the Pretender on this occasion, as they had promised,
and fortunately, too, when Charles came to review the army with which
he proposed to enter England, there remained of it only one thousand
four hundred men. The rest had gone home with their booty; nay, some
had gone and were returning, not to fight, but to carry off more which
they had concealed.

Accordingly, Charles could do nothing but maintain his position for the
present in Scotland, and send off a messenger to France to announce his
wonderful success, and to urge that now was the moment to hasten over
troops and supplies, and secure the Crown and friendship of England for
ever. He sent over Mr. Kelly to the French Court and to his father, and
for a moment there was a lively disposition at Versailles to strike
the blow. The king immediately despatched some supplies of money and
arms, some of which were seized by English cruisers, and some of
which arrived safely. There was also a talk of sending over Charles's
brother, Henry, Duke of York, at the head of the Irish regiments
and of others, and active preparations were made for the purpose at
Dunkirk. But again this flash of enthusiasm died out, and Charles,
three weeks after Kelly, sent over Sir James Stewart to aid him in his
solicitations. But all was in vain. The French again seemed to weigh
the peril of the expedition, and on their part complained that the
Jacobites showed no zeal in England, without which the invasion would
be madness. Thus the time went by, till the Dutch and English troops
landed in England, and the opportunity was lost.

Meanwhile, Charles, compelled to wait the course of events in
Edinburgh, endeavoured to render himself popular by his moderation
and magnanimity. Volunteers began to flock to his standard, the chief
cause, however, being, no doubt, the _prestige_ of his victory. Fresh
reinforcements poured down from the Highlands. Altogether, Charles's
army now amounted to nearly six thousand men. It would have amounted
to ten thousand had the Macdonalds and Macleods of Skye and Lord
Lovat joined him. But though Charles sent a Macleod of Skye over to
the island chiefs, urging them now to join his standard as certain of
victory, they refused to move. He then went over from Skye to Castle
Dounie to stimulate Lord Lovat, but that deceitful old miscreant was
playing the double game, and waiting to see which side would be the
stronger. At length his army had received the last reinforcements that
he expected, by the arrival of Menzies of Sheen with a considerable
body of men, and he was impatient to march southwards. He was the more
ready to quit Scotland because Lord Lovat had now sent him word that
though he could not, from the state of his health, join the march into
England, both he and the Macdonalds and the Macleods of the Isles
were prepared to defend his interests in the Highlands. The greater
part of this intelligence was false, entirely so as regarded the
Islesmen, and it was now well known that the English Government had got
together twelve thousand veteran troops, besides thirteen regiments
of infantry and two of cavalry newly raised. The Highland chiefs,
therefore, strenuously opposed the march till they should receive the
reinforcements which he had promised them from France, as well as more
money. Others contended that he ought not to invade England at all, but
to remain in Scotland, make himself master of it, and reign there as
his ancestors had done. But it was not merely to secure the Crown of
Scotland that he had come; it was to recover the whole grand heritage
of his race, and he determined to march into England without further
delay. The Highland chiefs, however, resolutely resisted the proposal,
and at three successive councils he strove with them in vain to induce
them to cross the Border and fight the army of Marshal Wade, which
lay at Newcastle, consisting of Dutch and English troops. At length
Charles said indignantly, "Gentlemen, I see you are determined to stay
in Scotland; I am resolved to try my fate in England, and I go, if I go
alone."

Lord George Murray then said that, as they needs must go, he proposed
that they should enter England on the Cumberland side, so as to harass
Wade's troops, if he marched across to meet them. The idea was adopted
as a great improvement; it was kept a profound secret. Still further
to mislead the English, Lord George proposed another plan, which was
also adopted--to divide the army into two columns, to march by two
different routes, but to unite at Carlisle. One of these was to be
led by the prince himself by Kelso, as if intending to march straight
into Northumberland; the other to take the direct road through Moffat.
It was resolved to leave Lord Strathallan to command in Scotland, to
take up his headquarters at Perth, receive the expected succours from
France, and all such reinforcements from the Highlands as should come
in.

These arrangements being complete, Charles lay at Pinkie House on the
31st of October, and the next day, the 1st of November, he commenced
his march. Each of the two columns was preceded by a number of horsemen
to act as scouts. In the day of battle each company of a regiment
furnished two of its best men to form the bodyguard of the chief, who
usually took his post in the centre, and was surrounded by his brothers
and cousins, with whom it was a point of honour to defend the chief to
the death. So set forward the Highland army for England, and it is now
necessary to see what preparations England had made for the invasion.

The news of the invasion brought George from Hanover. He arrived in
London on the last day of August, by which time the Young Pretender
had already been entertained by Lord Tullibardine at Blair Castle;
but he seemed to feel no great alarm. He thought the forces of Cope
were sufficient to compete with the insurgents, and Lord Granville and
his party did their best to confirm him in this opinion. On the 20th
of September three battalions of the expected Dutch forces landed,
and received orders to march north. But what contributed more than
anything to the security of the kingdom was the activity of the fleet.
The seamen all round the coasts showed as much spirit and life as the
soldiers had shown cowardice. Privateers as well as men-of-war vied
with one another in performing feats of bravery. A small ship off
Bristol took a large Spanish ship, bound for Scotland, with arms and
money. Another small ship took the _Soleil_, from Dunkirk, carrying
twenty French officers and sixty men, to Montrose; and a small squadron
of privateers, which volunteered to serve under a brave naval captain,
took a vast number of French vessels, and drove still more upon their
own shores. Charles's younger brother, Henry, was waiting to bring
over the Irish regiments to his aid, but Louis would not hazard their
appearance at sea in the face of such a dangerous fleet. Charles made
an attempt to corrupt Captain Beavor, of the _Fox_ man-of-war, by
offering him splendid rewards in case of his success, but the gallant
officer sent him word that he only treated with principals, and that,
if he would come on board, he would talk with him.

In London, notwithstanding, there was considerable alarm, but rather
from fear of the Papists and Jacobites at home than of any danger
from abroad. Every endeavour had been used, in fact, to revive the
old Popery scare. There were rumours circulated that the Papists
meant to rise, cut everybody's throats, and burn the City. There
was fear of a run on the Bank of England, but the merchants met at
Garraway's Coffee-house, and entered into engagements to support the
Bank. They also opened a subscription to raise two hundred and fifty
thousand pounds to enlist troops, and many of them gave as much as two
thousand pounds apiece. A camp was formed in Hyde Park of the Household
Troops, horse and foot, a regiment of horse grenadiers, and some of
the battalions that came over from Flanders. In the provinces many of
the great nobility proposed to raise regiments at their own expense,
and this act of patriotism was loudly applauded. In some instances
the patriotism was real. But the main body of the Whig nobility and
some others cut a very different figure. No sooner did Parliament
meet on the 18th of October, and whilst the Jacobites were in the
highest spirits, and opposing both the Address and the suspension of
the Habeas Corpus, than the Dukes of Devonshire, Bedford, Rutland,
Montague, the Lords Herbert, Halifax, Cholmondeley, Falmouth, Malton,
Derby, and others, moved, contrary to their splendid promises, that
their regiments should be paid by the king, and should be put upon
the regular establishment. The king was as much disgusted as the most
independent of his subjects, but he found himself unable to prevent the
measure.

At length the Duke of Cumberland arrived from Flanders, and foreign and
English troops were assembled in the Midland counties; Marshal Wade
had also ten thousand men collected at Newcastle-on-Tyne. The Duke of
Cumberland was appointed Commander-in-Chief, and the brave soldiers
who had fought under him at Fontenoy were ready to follow him, in the
highest confidence of making short work with the Highlanders.

Those Highlanders commenced their march into England with no
predilection for the adventure. The warfare of Scotland was familiar
to them; in all ages they had been accustomed to descend from their
mountains and make raids in the Lowlands. But England was to them
an unknown region; they knew little of the dangers or the perils
before them; they knew that in the Whiggish clans of the West they
left powerful enemies behind them. No sooner did they lose sight of
Edinburgh than they began to desert. Charles led his division of the
army across the Tweed at Kelso, and sent on orders to Wooler to
prepare for his reception, thus keeping up the feint of marching
eastward; instead of which, he took his way down Liddesdale, and on the
8th of November crossed the Esk, and encamped that night at a place
called Reddings, on the Cumberland side.

The next day, the other column, which had marched through Moffat,
came up, and the united army advanced towards Carlisle. They were
perceived as they were crossing a moor on the 9th, about two miles
from Carlisle, by the garrison, which began to fire their cannon upon
them, and kept it up actively for some time. On the 10th Charles
sent a letter summoning the garrison to surrender, but the garrison
returned no answer, except by its cannon. They expected that Marshal
Wade would soon march to their relief, whence their courage; and,
indeed, the prince heard that Wade was on the way by Hexham, and,
instead of waiting for him, he went to meet him at Brampton, in the
forest of Inglewood, seven miles from the town; but, finding he had
been deceived, he sent back part of the troops to commence the siege of
Carlisle in form. As the batteries began to rise, the courage of the
commanders in the town began to fail, and they offered to capitulate;
but the prince declined any terms but surrender of both town and
castle, the troops being allowed to retire without their arms on
engaging not to serve against Charles for twelve months. These terms
were accepted on the 15th, and the prince made a triumphant entry on
the 17th.

The town, the castle, the arms, horses, and military stores being
surrendered to the prince, and the militia and invalids having marched
out, a council of war was called to determine future proceedings. Some
proposed to march against Wade and bring him to action, others to
return to Scotland, but Charles still insisted on marching forward.
Lord George Murray was the only one who at all seconded him, and he
did not recommend marching far into England without more encouragement
than there yet appeared; but as the prince was anxious to ascertain
that point, he said he was sure his army, small as it was, would follow
him. Charles expressed his conviction that his friends in Lancashire
waited only for their arrival; and the Marquis D'Eguilles declaring his
expectation of a speedy landing of a French army, under this assurance
the council consented to the advance.

On the 20th of November this memorable march commenced. For the
convenience of quarters, the two divisions of the army were still
maintained, the first led by Lord George Murray, the second by the
prince himself. They left a garrison of two hundred men at Carlisle,
though, on a muster, it was discovered that above a thousand men had
deserted since they left Edinburgh, and that they had now only four
thousand five hundred to attempt the conquest of England with. At
Penrith the whole army halted for a day, hearing that Wade was coming
against them; but finding, on the contrary, that he was gone back,
they pursued their route by Shap, Kendal, and Lancaster, to Preston,
where they arrived on the 27th. On the way, so far from meeting with
any signs of adhesion, the farmers from whom they had taken horses
congregated and pursued them on other horses, dismounted some of their
cavalry, and carried their horses away again. Preston was a place
of ill omen to the Highlanders ever since the defeat of the Duke of
Hamilton in the Civil War there, and the surrender of Mackintosh in
1715. They had a fixed idea that no Scottish army could ever advance
farther. To break this spell, Lord George led his vanguard at once over
the bridge, and quartered them beyond it. The army halted there a day,
and then proceeded to Wigan, which they entered the next day. Till
he reached Preston, however, Charles received no tokens of sympathy.
At Preston, for the first time, he received three hearty cheers, and
a few men joined his standard. On the road from Wigan to Manchester
the expressions of goodwill increased; throngs of people collected
to see him pass, but none would consent to join them. At Manchester
the approach of the army had been heralded by a Scottish sergeant, a
drummer, and a woman, the men in plaids and bonnets exciting great
astonishment, and bringing together thousands of spectators. They
announced the prince for the morrow, and began recruiting for his
service. They offered a bounty of five guineas, to be paid when the
prince came. A considerable number enlisted, receiving a shilling in
token of engagement.

On the 1st of December the army resumed its march. They immediately
found the effect of Cumberland's presence at Lichfield: they had to
ford the Mersey near Stockport, and to carry the baggage and artillery
over a rude wooden bridge, consisting of the trunks of trees thrown
across, at Chorlton. That evening they reached Macclesfield. Lord
George pushed on with his division to Congleton, whence he sent on
Colonel Kerr, who routed a small body of the Duke of Kingston's horse,
and drove them towards Newcastle-under-Lyme. Kerr seized Captain
Weir, well known as one of Cumberland's principal spies, and, by
threatening him with the gallows, drew from him the particulars of the
duke's numbers and position. It appeared that the duke was under the
impression that the prince was directing his march towards Wales to
join his partisans there, and having encouraged this notion by this
advance, and led the duke to proceed as far as Stone, Lord George
suddenly altered his route, and got to Ashbourne, and thence to Derby,
thus throwing the road to London quite open, and being two or three
days' march in advance of the duke. Charles entered Derby the same day,
the 4th of December, and took up his quarters at a house belonging to
the Earl of Exeter, at the bottom of Full Street.

[Illustration: PRINCE CHARLIE'S VANGUARD AT MANCHESTER. (_See p. 100._)]

They were now only one hundred and twenty-seven miles from the capital,
both Wade and Cumberland behind them, and Charles, notwithstanding
the conditions on which they had come on from Macclesfield, still
confidently and enthusiastically dwelt on the onward march to London,
and his certain success. In the morning a council was held, when Lord
George Murray appealed to the prince whether they had received the
least accession of strength, or the smallest sign of encouragement?
Such being the case, what hope was there for them in proceeding? They
had barely five thousand men to contend against three armies, amounting
at least altogether to thirty thousand. If they got to London before
Cumberland, and if they managed to elude the army at Finchley, they
had scarcely numbers to take quiet possession of London. But were
they forced to fight the king and his army under the walls of the
metropolis, they could not do it without loss; and then, supposing Wade
and Cumberland to unite behind them, as they certainly would do, how
could they hope to contend against them? Assistance from France, as
they had pointed out, was hopeless whilst the English had such a force
in the Channel. Charles listened to these arguments with undisguised
impatience, and the probability is that, had his officers been willing
to follow him, and live or die in the enterprise, he would have seized
London, and accomplished one of the most brilliant exploits in history.

It is true that George II. was also a brave and staunch commander,
prepared to die on the spot rather than yield, as he had shown at
Dettingen. But the greater part of his forces at Finchley were raw
levies, and might not have stood better than the troops had done in
Scotland. There was a terror of the Highlanders, even in the army; and
as for London itself, the panic, when it was heard that they had got
between the duke's army and the capital, was, according to Fielding,
who was then in London, incredible. There was a frantic rush upon the
Bank of England, and it is said that it must have closed had it not
gained time by paying in sixpences. The shops were shut, business was
at a stand, the Ministers were in the utmost terror, and the Duke of
Newcastle was said to have shut himself up for a day, pondering whether
he should declare for the Pretender or not. The king himself was by
no means confident of the result. He is said to have sent most of his
precious effects on board a yacht at the Tower quay, ready to put off
at a minute's warning. The day on which the news of the rebels being at
Derby reached London was long renowned as Black Friday. In such a state
of terror, and the army at Finchley inferior in numbers, and infinitely
inferior in bravery, who can doubt that Charles would for a time have
made himself master of the metropolis?

Charles, wrought up to the highest pitch of agony at the prospect of
being compelled to abandon the splendid design of entering London
in triumph, continued to expostulate and entreat the whole day. The
Duke of Perth and some of the Irish officers, moved by his distress,
gave way, and called on the other chiefs to yield; but they remained
immovable, and the prince, seeing the case hopeless, at length gave up
the contest, and, in deep dejection, assented to the retreat. But, as
if he deemed the relinquishment of the march on the metropolis the ruin
of the whole enterprise, he declared that henceforth he would summon no
more councils--being accountable only to God and his father, he would
not again either seek or accept their advice.

The next morning, the 6th of December, the retreat commenced; but
the soldiers and the inferior officers little dreamed that it was a
retreat. They imagined that they were going to fight the Duke of
Cumberland, and marched out in high spirits. The morning was foggy,
and for some time the delusion was kept up; but when the fog cleared
away, and they perceived that they were retracing their former route,
their disappointment and rage became excessive. The retreat was rapidly
continued through Preston, and on to Lancaster, which they reached
on the 13th. On the 18th Oglethorpe and Cumberland, accompanied by
a mob of country squires and mounted farmers, attacked Lord George
Murray's rear near Penrith; but the countrymen were speedily put to
flight by a charge of the Glengarry clan, and Oglethorpe fell back to
the main body. They came up again, however, in the evening near the
village of Clifton, and Lord George perceived, by the fitful light of
the moon, the enemy forming behind the stone walls, and lining every
hedge, orchard, and outhouse. Just as the royal troops commenced their
charge they were stopped by a cross-fire of the concealed Highlanders,
and, whilst affected by this surprise, Lord George cried, "Claymore!
claymore!" and rushing down upon them with the Macphersons of Cluny,
attacked them sword in hand. Being supported by the Stuarts of Appin,
they compelled the English to retreat.

Nevertheless, the whole army was dead beat and in the most deplorable
condition when they entered Carlisle on the morning of the 19th. As the
enemy did not appear, they rested that day and the following night,
when they set forward again, leaving a fresh garrison. Cumberland was
soon up before the walls, and they fired vigorously at him; but he sent
off to Whitehaven and brought up six eighteen-pounders, with which, to
their dismay, he began to play on their crumbling walls on the 29th.
Next morning they hung out a white flag, and offered to capitulate;
but Cumberland would hear of no terms except their surrendering on
condition that they should not be put to the sword. At three o'clock in
the afternoon both town and castle were surrendered, the garrison being
shut up in the cathedral, and a guard set upon them. On the 3rd of
January the Duke of Cumberland left the command to General Hawley, and
hastened back to London, being summoned to defend the southern coast
from a menaced landing of the French.

Meanwhile, the Highland army was continuing its retreat. On the 20th
of December they left Carlisle, and crossed into Scotland by fording
the Esk. On the 26th Lord George entered Glasgow, and Charles, with
the other division, on the 27th. At Glasgow the prince and the army
lay for seven days to rest, and to levy contributions of all kinds of
articles of apparel for the soldiers. On the 3rd of January, 1746, the
same day that Cumberland left Carlisle for London, Charles marched his
army out of Glasgow, new clad and new shod, for Stirling. The next day
he took up his quarters at the house of Bannockburn, and distributed
his men through the neighbouring villages, Lord George Murray occupying
Falkirk. Lords Strathallan and Drummond soon arrived from Perth with
their united force, attended by both battering-guns and engines from
France.

With this force, tempted by the battering train, Charles committed the
error of wasting his strength on a siege of Stirling Castle, instead of
preparing to annihilate the English troops, which were in rapid advance
upon him.

The Duke of Cumberland, being called southward, had got General Hawley
appointed to the command of the army sent after the Young Pretender.
Wade was become too old and dilatory, but Hawley was much fitter for
a hangman than a general. Horace Walpole says he was called "the
Lord Chief Justice," because, like Jeffreys, he had a passion for
executions; that when the surgeons solicited the body of a deserter,
which was dangling before Hawley's windows, for dissection, he would
only consent on condition that he had the skeleton to ornament the
guard room. Hearing of his approach, Charles drew in his forces from
Falkirk under Lord George, left a few hundred men to blockade Stirling,
and concentrated his army on the renowned field of Bannockburn. On
the 16th of January Charles, expecting Hawley, drew up his forces,
but no enemy appeared. The next day, still perceiving no Hawley, he
advanced to Pleanmuir, two miles east of Bannockburn, and on the way
to Torwood. No enemy yet appearing, the prince determined to advance
and find him out. Hawley was so confident of dispersing the Highland
rabble at any moment that he chose, that he had neglected every
military precaution, had fixed no outposts, and was away at Callander
House, at some distance from the field, comfortably taking luncheon
with Lady Kilmarnock, whose husband was in the rebel army, and who
was exerting all her powers of pleasing to detain the foolish general
as long as possible. At length, when the rebels had come up so near
that there was only Falkirk Moor between the armies, Hawley, roused
by fresh messengers, came galloping up without his hat, and in the
utmost confusion. In the middle of this rugged and uneven moor, covered
with heath, rose a considerable ridge, and it appeared to be a race
between the two enemies which should gain the advantage of the summit.
On the one side galloped the English cavalry, on the other sped the
Highlanders, straining for this important height; but the fleet-footed
Gael won the ground from the English horse, and Hawley's horse halted
a little below them. Neither of the armies had any artillery, for
the Highlanders had left theirs behind in their rapid advance, and
Hawley's had stuck fast in the bog. So far they were equal; but the
prince, by taking a side route, had thrown the wind in the teeth of
the English, and a storm of rain began with confounding violence to
beat in their faces. The English cavalry remained, as it had galloped
up, in front, commanded, since the death of Gardiner, by Colonel
Ligonier, and the infantry formed, like the Highlanders, in two lines,
the right commanded by General Huske, and the left by Hawley. Behind,
as a reserve, stood the Glasgow regiment and the Argyll militia. The
order being given, the cavalry under Ligonier charged the Macdonalds,
who coolly waited till the English horse was within ten yards of
them, when they poured such a murderous volley into them as dropped
a frightful number from their saddles, and threw the whole line into
confusion. The Frasers immediately poured an equally galling cross-fire
into the startled line, and the two dragoon regiments which had fled
at Coltbridge and Prestonpans waited no longer, but wheeling round,
galloped from the field at their best speed. The Macdonalds, seeing
the effect of their fire, in spite of Lord George Murray's endeavours
to keep them in order, rushed forward, loading their pieces as they
ran, and fell upon Hawley's two columns of infantry. Having discharged
their pieces, they ran in upon the English with their targets and
broadswords. The left soon gave way, and Hawley, who had got involved
in the crowd of flying horse, had been swept with them down the
hill, and thus had no means of keeping them to their colours. On the
right of the royal army, however, the infantry stood firm, and as
the Highlanders could not cross the ravine to come to close quarters
with sword and target, they inflicted severe slaughter upon them; and
Cobham's cavalry rallying, soon came to their aid and protected their
flank, and increased the effect on the Highlanders, many of whom began
to run, imagining that the day was lost. Charles, from his elevated
position observing this extraordinary state of things, advanced at the
head of his second line, and checked the advance of the English right,
and, after some sharp fighting, compelled them to a retreat. But in
this case it was only a retreat, not a flight. These regiments retired,
with drums beating and colours flying, in perfect order. A pursuit of
cavalry might still have been made, but the retreat of the English was
so prompt, that the Highlanders suspected a stratagem; and it was only
when their scouts brought them word that they had evacuated Falkirk
that they understood their full success (January 18, 1746).

The battle of Falkirk, which in itself appeared so brilliant an affair
for Prince Charles, was really one of his most serious disasters.
The Highlanders, according to their regular custom when loaded with
plunder, went off in great numbers to their homes with their booty.
His chief officers became furious against each other in discussing
their respective merits in the battle. Lord George Murray, who had
himself behaved most bravely in the field, complained that Lord John
Drummond had not exerted himself, or pursuit might have been made and
the royal army been utterly annihilated. This spirit of discontent
was greatly aggravated by the siege of the castle of Stirling. Old
General Blakeney, who commanded the garrison, declared he would hold
out to the last man, in spite of the terrible threats of Lord George
Murray if he did not surrender. The Highlanders grew disgusted with
work so contrary to their habits; and, indeed, the French engineer,
the so-called Marquis de Mirabelle, was so utterly ignorant of his
profession, that the batteries which he constructed were commanded by
the castle, and the men were so much exposed that they were in danger
of being destroyed before they took the fortress. Accordingly, on the
24th of January they struck to a man, and refused to go any more into
the trenches.

This was followed by a memorial, signed by most of the chief officers,
including Lord George Murray, Lochiel, Keppoch, Clanranald, and Simon
Fraser, Master of Lovat. This was sent by Lord George to Charles, and
represented that so many men were gone home, and more still going,
in spite of all the endeavours of their chiefs, that if the siege
were continued they saw nothing but absolute destruction to the whole
army. The prince sent Sir Thomas Sheridan to remonstrate with the
chiefs, but they would not give way, and Charles, it is said, sullenly
acquiesced in the retreat.

It was time, if they were to avoid a battle. Cumberland was already on
the march from Edinburgh. He quitted Holyrood on the 31st of January,
and the insurgents only commenced their retreat the next morning, the
1st of February, after spiking their guns. With this force the prince
continued his march towards Inverness, a fleet accompanying him along
the coast with supplies and ammunition. On nearing Inverness, he found
it rudely fortified by a ditch and palisade, and held by Lord Loudon
with two thousand men. Charles took up his residence at Moray Castle,
the seat of the chief of the Macintoshes. The chief was in the king's
army with Lord Loudon, but Lady Macintosh espoused the cause of the
prince zealously, raised the clan, and led them out as their commander,
riding at their head with a man's bonnet on her head, and pistols at
her saddle-bow. Charles, the next morning, the 17th of February, called
together his men, and on the 18th marched on Inverness. Lord Loudon
did not wait for his arrival, but got across the Moray Firth with his
soldiers, and accompanied by the Lord-President Forbes, into Cromarty.
He was hotly pursued by the Earl of Cromarty and several Highland
regiments, and was compelled to retreat into Sutherland. Charles
entered Inverness, and began to attack the British forts. Fort George
surrendered in a few days, and in it they obtained sixteen pieces of
cannon and a considerable stock of ammunition and provisions.

But, notwithstanding these partial advantages, and though the duke and
his army were enduring all the severities of a Highland winter, exposed
to the cutting east winds on that inclement coast, and compelled to
keep quarters for some time, Cumberland was steadily seizing every
opportunity to enclose the Highlanders in his toils. His ships cut
off all supplies coming by sea. They captured two vessels sent from
France to their aid, on board of one of which they took the brother of
the Duke of Berwick. The _Hazard_, a sloop which the Highlanders had
seized and sent several times to France, was now pursued by an English
cruiser, and driven ashore on the coast of Sutherland: on board her
were a hundred and fifty men and officers, and ten thousand pounds in
gold, which the clan Mackay, headed by Lord Reay, got possession of.
This last blow, in addition to other vessels sent out to succour him
being compelled to return to France, reduced Charles to the utmost
extremities. He had only five hundred louis-d'ors left in his chest,
and he was obliged to pay his troops in meal, to their great suffering
and discontent. Cumberland was, in fact, already conquering them
by reducing them to mere feeble skeletons of men. The dry winds of
March rendered the rivers fordable, and, as soon as it grew milder,
he availed himself of this to coop the unhappy Highlanders up still
more narrowly in their barren wilds, and stop all the passes into
the Lowlands, by which they might obtain provisions. He himself lay
at Aberdeen with strong outposts in all directions; Mordaunt at Old
Meldrum, and Bland at Strathbogie. As soon as he received an abundance
of provisions by a fleet of transports, along with Bligh's regiment,
hearing that the Spey was fordable, on the 7th of April he issued
orders to march, and the next day set forward himself from Aberdeen
with Lord Kerr's dragoons and six regiments of foot, having the fleet
still following along the shore with a gentle and fair wind. On
reaching the Spey Lord John Drummond disputed their passage, having
raised a battery to sweep the ford, and ranged his best marksmen along
the shore. But the heavier artillery of the duke soon drove Lord John
from the ground; he set fire to his barracks and huts, and left the
ford open to the enemy, who soon got across. On Sunday, the 13th of
April, the English advanced to Alves, and on the 14th reached Nairn.
As the van, consisting of the Argyllshire men, some companies of
Grenadiers, and Kingston's Light Horse, entered Nairn, the rear of Lord
John Drummond had not quitted it, and there was skirmishing at the
bridge. The Highlanders still retreated to a place called the Lochs of
the Clans, about five miles beyond Nairn, where the prince came up with
reinforcements, and, turning the flight, pursued the English back again
to the main body of their army, which was encamped on the plain to the
west of Nairn.

[Illustration: CULLODEN HOUSE. (_From a Photograph by G. W. Wilson and
Co., Aberdeen._)]

That night Charles and his chief officers lay at Culloden House, the
seat of the able and patriotic Lord-President, Duncan Forbes; but the
troops were obliged to lie on the moor amid the heather, which served
them both for beds and fuel, the cold being very severe. They were up
early in the morning, and formed in order of battle on Drummossie
Muir, the part of the heath of Culloden near to Culloden House. No
enemy, however, appeared, and there the poor hungry men lay for most
of the day with no other food than a biscuit per man. A council of war
being called, Lochiel stated this fact as a plea for delay; Lord John
Drummond, the Duke of Perth, and others, were of the same opinion; but
Lord George Murray declared for making a night march, and surprising
the duke's army whilst it would lie, as they supposed, asleep in a
drunken debauch. Charles, who had the same idea, but had not yet
broached it, embraced Lord George with ardour, declaring it of all
things his own wish. The idea was adopted, yet the slightest military
wisdom would have shown them the futility of the scheme. The men were
in a general state, not only of famine, but of discontent, from the
non-payment of their arrears. The night was dark, and the men soon
began to stumble through bog and mire, making their march heavy, and
causing them to curse and swear. It was soon found that they were so
feeble and incapable of walking, even, to say nothing of fighting after
a fourteen or fifteen miles' march, on empty stomachs, that it was
impossible to make the rear keep up with the van. They had calculated
on being at Nairn at two o'clock, but it was that hour before they had
all passed Kilravock House, only four miles from the English camp. It
was clear that it would be daylight long before they reached Nairn, and
they could only get there to be slaughtered in helplessness, for they
would be too tired either to fight or run away. It was therefore agreed
to return.

The retreat was made, and the men found themselves again in the morning
on the bleak, black heath of Drummossie, hungry and worn out, yet
in expectation of a battle. There was yet time to do the only wise
thing--retreat into the mountains, and depend upon a guerilla warfare,
in which they would have the decided advantage. Lord George Murray now
earnestly proposed this, but in vain. Sir Thomas Sheridan and other
officers from France grew outrageous at that proposal, contending that
they could easily beat the English, as they had done at Prestonpans and
Falkirk--forgetting that the Highlanders then were full of vigour and
spirit. Unfortunately, Charles listened to this foolish reasoning, and
the fatal die was cast.

The English army was now in full march against them. About eight
o'clock in the morning of April 16 a man who had been left asleep in
the wood of Kilravock hastened to Culloden House, where Charles and
his chief officers were resting, to announce that Cumberland's troops
were coming. There was then a hurried running and riding to get the
army drawn up to receive them. Cumberland came on with his army,
divided into three columns of five battalions each. The artillery and
baggage followed the second column along the sea-coast on the right;
the cavalry covered the left wing, which stretched towards the hills.
The men were all in the highest spirits, and even the regiments of
horse, which had hitherto behaved so ill, seemed as though they meant
to retrieve their characters to-day. The Highlanders were drawn up
about half a mile from the part of the moor where they stood the day
before, forming a sad contrast to Cumberland's troops, looking thin,
and dreadfully fatigued. In placing them, also, a fatal mistake was
made. They were drawn up in two lines, with a body of reserve; but the
Clan Macdonald, which had always been accustomed to take their stand
on the right since Robert Bruce placed them there in the battle of
Bannockburn, were disgusted to find themselves now occupying the left.
Instead of the Macdonalds now stood the Athol Brigade. As the battle
began, a snow-storm began to blow in the faces of the Highlanders,
which greatly confounded them.

Their cannon was both inferior and worse served than that of the
English; and when, at one o'clock, the duke began to play on their
ranks with his artillery, he made dreadful havoc amongst them. Several
times the Highlanders endeavoured to make one of their impetuous
rushes, running forward with loud cries, brandishing their swords
and firing their pistols; but the steady fire of the English cannon
mowed them down and beat them off. Seeing, however, a more determined
appearance of a rush, Colonel Belford began to charge with grape
shot. This repelled them for a time; but at length, after an hour's
cannonade, the Macintoshes succeeded in reaching the first line of
the English. Firing their muskets, and then flinging them down, they
burst, sword in hand, on Burrel's regiment, and cut their way through
it. The second line, however, consisting of Sempill's regiment,
received them with a murderous fire. Cumberland had ordered the first
rank to kneel down, the second to lean forward, and the third to fire
over their heads. By this means, such a terrible triple volley was
given them as destroyed them almost _en masse_. Those left alive,
however, with all their ancient fury, continued to hew at Sempill's
regiment; but Cumberland had ordered his men not to charge with their
bayonets straight before them, but each to thrust at the man fronting
his right-hand man. By this means his adversary's target covered him
where he was open to the left, and his adversary's right was open to
him. This new manœuvre greatly surprised the Highlanders, and made
fearful havoc of them. From four to five hundred of them fell between
the two lines of the English army. Whilst the Macintoshes were thus
immolating themselves on the English bayonets, the Macdonalds on their
left stood in sullen inaction, thus abandoning their duty and their
unfortunate countrymen from resentment at their post of honour on the
right having been denied them. At length, ashamed of their own conduct,
they discharged their muskets, and drew their broadswords for a rush;
but the Macintoshes were now flying, and the grape-shot and musket-shot
came so thickly in their faces, that they, too, turned and gave way.
Whilst Charles stood, watching the rout of his army to the right, he
called frantically to those who fled wildly by to stand and renew the
fight. At this moment Lord Elcho spurred up to him, and urged him to
put himself at the head of the yet unbroken left, and make a desperate
charge to retrieve the fortune of the day; but the officers around
him declared that such a charge was hopeless, and could only lead the
men to certain slaughter, and prevent the chance of collecting the
scattered troops for a future effort. Though he did not attempt to
resist the victorious enemy, which was now hopeless, he seems to have
lingered, as if confounded, on the spot, till O'Sullivan and Sheridan,
each seizing a rein of his bridle, forced him from the field.

[Illustration: AFTER CULLODEN: REBEL HUNTING.

AFTER THE PAINTING BY SEYMOUR LUCAS, R.A., IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF
BRITISH ART]

Charles, accompanied by O'Sullivan, Sheridan, and other gentlemen, rode
away to a seat of Lord Lovat's. The wild gallop of horsemen startled
that wily old fox in his lair; and when he heard the news the Master
began to tremble for his own safety. There are different accounts of
his reception of the fugitive prince. One says that he was so occupied
with thinking of making his own escape, that he hardly showed common
courtesy to the prince and his companions, and that they parted in
mutual displeasure. Another states that Lovat urged the same advice
as Lord George Murray had done, still to get up into the mountains,
and make a bold face, by which time might be gained for fresh
reinforcements, or at least for making some terms for the unhappy
people. But it is clear that Charles had now lost all spirit, if he
had ever retained much after he had been forced to retreat from Derby.
He and his party rode away again at ten o'clock at night, and reached
Invergarry, the castle of Glengarry, about two hours before daybreak.
Lord George still entertained the idea of keeping together a large
body of Highlanders. He had already with him one thousand two hundred.
Charles had stolen away from Invergarry to Arkaig, in Lochaber, and
thence to Glenboisdale, where the messengers of Lord George found him,
accompanied only by O'Sullivan, O'Neil, and Burke, his servant, who
knew the country and acted as guide. All the rest of his train had
shifted for themselves. Lord George entreated the prince not to quit
the country, but to continue to gather a force in the mountains, and
thus resist and harass their enemies till they received reinforcements;
but Charles sent him word that the only chance was for himself to
hasten over to France, and use all his interest to bring over an
efficient force. He therefore sent Lord George a written plan of his
intentions, which was not, however, to be opened till he had sailed;
and he desired Lord George to request the different chiefs and their
men to seek their own safety as best they might. That act terminated
the Rebellion.

Cumberland was now hunting down the fugitives on all sides. He posted
himself at Fort Augustus, which the insurgents had blown up before
leaving it, and from that centre he sent out his myrmidons in every
direction to hunt out the Highlanders, and shoot them down on the spot
or bring them in for execution. Everywhere the unhappy clans were
pursued by their hereditary enemies, the Whig clans, especially by the
men of Argyllshire, and massacred with the most atrocious cruelty. They
stripped their houses and then burned them down, drove away the cattle,
and tracking the miserable families into dens and caves, smothered
them with burning heather, or thus forced them to rush out upon their
bayonets. In all these diabolical proceedings, the Duke of Cumberland
and the brutal General Hawley were foremost. "After all," Cumberland
(whose wicked work earned him the name of "The Butcher") wrote to the
Duke of Newcastle from Fort Augustus, "I am sorry to leave this country
in the condition it is in, for all the good that we have done has been
_a little blood-letting, which has only weakened the madness, but not
at all cured it_; and I tremble for fear that this vile spot may still
be the ruin of this island and our family."

[Illustration: THE STANDARD OF PRINCE CHARLIE'S BODYGUARD, TAKEN AT
CULLODEN. (_In the possession of Sir Archibald Lamb at Beauport,
Sussex._)]

The Young Pretender, during this time, had been making a hard run for
his life, beset and hunted on all sides for the thirty thousand pounds
set upon his head. During the whole five months of his adventurous
wanderings and hidings, nothing could induce a single Highlander to
betray him, notwithstanding the temptation of the thirty thousand
pounds. The most familiar story is his escape from South Uist, where he
had been tracked and surrounded. At this moment Miss Flora Macdonald, a
near relative of Macdonald of Clanranald, with whom she was on a visit,
stepped forward to rescue him. She procured a pass from Hugh Macdonald,
her stepfather, who commanded part of the troops now searching the
island, for herself, her maid, Betty Burke, and her servant, Neil Mac
Eachan. She, moreover, induced Captain Macdonald to recommend the
maid, Betty Burke--which Betty Burke was to be Charles in disguise--to
his wife in Skye as very clever at spinning. At the moment that all
was ready, General Campbell, as if suspecting something, came with a
company of soldiers, and examined Clanranald's house. The prince, in
his female attire, however, was concealed in a farm-house, and the next
morning he and his deliverer embarked in a boat with six rowers and the
servant Neil. In passing the point of Vaternish, in Skye, they ran a
near chance of being all killed, for the militia rushed out and fired
upon them. Luckily the tide was out, so that they were at a tolerable
distance, were neither hurt, nor could be very quickly pursued. The
boatmen pulled stoutly, and landed them safely at Mougstot, the seat
of Sir Alexander Macdonald. Sir Alexander was on the mainland in
Cumberland's army; but the young heroine had the address to induce his
wife, Lady Margaret Macdonald, to receive him; and as the house was
full of soldiers, she sent him to her factor and kinsman, Macdonald of
Kingsburgh, in the interior of the island, who brought him to a place
of safety. At last, on the 20th of September, he got on board the
French vessel. Lochiel and Cluny, and about a hundred other refugees,
sailed with him, and they landed at the little port of Roscoff, near
Morlaix, in Finistère, on the 29th of September, whence Charles
hastened to Paris, was received in a very friendly manner by Louis XV.,
and by the Parisians, when he appeared at the opera, with rapturous
acclamations.

Charles was, both in Scotland--on which his wild adventure had
inflicted such miseries--and in France, a hero of romance; but his
captured adherents had far other scenes to face than the lights and
luxurious music of the opera. The prisons were crammed to such a degree
with the unfortunate Gaels, that Government was compelled to stow
numbers away on board of men-of-war and transports, till fever broke
out and swept them off by hundreds, sparing the labours of judges,
juries, and hangmen. In Carlisle prison alone four hundred Scots were
jammed in a space not properly sufficient for forty! The poor prisoners
had been brought out of Scotland in open defiance of the Act of Union
and of the recognised rights of the Scottish courts; and now they were
called on to cast lots for one in twenty to take their trials, with a
certainty of being hanged, and the rest shipped off to the Plantations
in America without any trial at all.

[Illustration: THE END OF THE '45. (_After the Painting by John Pettie,
R.A., by permission of the late Captain Hill._)]

Amongst the most distinguished persons captured were Lords Kilmarnock,
Cromarty, Balmerino, Mordington, and Lovat. Cromarty, Balmerino, and
Kilmarnock were brought to trial before the peers in Westminster Hall
on the 28th of July. "Cromarty," says Horace Walpole, "was a timid man,
and shed tears; and Kilmarnock, though behaving with more dignity,
pleaded guilty, both expressing remorse for their past conduct, and
their fervent good wishes for the person and government of the king."
But old Balmerino, the hero of the party, pleaded not guilty, and
took exceptions to the indictment. "He is," writes Walpole, "the most
natural, brave old fellow I ever saw; the highest intrepidity, even
to indifference." All these noblemen were pronounced guilty. Cromarty
pleaded piteously the condition of his wife and family: that he left
his wife _enceinte_, and eight innocent children to suffer for his
fault. His wife's entreaties and the interest of the Prince of Wales
saved him; Kilmarnock and Balmerino were beheaded.

Lord Lovat was the last who was brought to the block for this
rebellion, and we will conclude our account of it with his trial and
execution, though they did not take place till March, 1747. Lovat had
not appeared in arms, nor committed any overt act, and therefore it was
difficult to convict him. The cunning old sycophant hoped to elude
the law, as he had done so often before, but Murray of Broughton, the
brother of Murray, afterwards Lord Mansfield, to save his own life,
turned king's evidence, and won eternal infamy by sacrificing his
own friends. He not only produced letters and other documents which
amply proved the guilt of Lovat, but threw broad daylight on the whole
plan and progress of the insurrection from 1740 onwards. The conduct
of Lovat on his trial was as extraordinary as his life had been. He
alternately endeavoured to excite compassion, especially that of
Cumberland--who attended this, though he avoided the trials of the
other insurgents--by representing how he had carried his Royal Highness
in his arms about Kensington and Hampton Court Parks as a child, and
then by the most amusing jests, laughter, execrations, and tricks, to
puzzle or confuse the witnesses.

As he left the hall he turned and said, "Farewell, my lords; we shall
never meet again in the same place." And with this tragi-comedy
closed the strange, romantic, and melancholy rebellion of 1745 and
1746, for in a few weeks an act of indemnity was passed, disfigured,
however, with eighty omissions. It was followed by other measures for
subduing the spirit of the vanquished Highlanders--the disarming act,
the abolition of heritable jurisdiction, and the prohibition of the
Highland costume.

Whilst the rebellion was raging in Scotland there had been an attempt
to change the ministry, and to place at the helm Lord Granville. That
nobleman had so engrossed the favour of the king, that Pelham and
his brother, Newcastle, found their measures greatly obstructed by
Granville's influence, and suspected that they would soon be called
on to give place to him. They determined, therefore, to bring matters
to a crisis, confident that Granville would never be able to secure a
majority in either House against them. To furnish a reason for their
tendering their resignation, they demanded the place which they had
promised to Pitt.

Under the influence of Granville and of Lord Bath, the king refused
to admit Pitt, and they determined to resign, but got Lord Harrington
to take the first step. He tendered the resignation of the Seals on
the 10th of February, 1746, and the king accepted them, but never
forgave Harrington. The same day Newcastle and Pelham tendered theirs,
and their example was followed by others of their colleagues. The
king immediately sent the Seals to Granville, desiring him and Bath
to construct a new administration. They found the thing, however,
by no means so easy. It was in vain that they made overtures to men
of distinction to join them. Sir John Barnard declined the post
of Chancellor of the Exchequer; Chief Justice Willes that of Lord
Chancellor. After forty-eight hours of abortive endeavours, Lord Bath
announced to the king that they were unable to form a Cabinet. It
was with extreme chagrin that George was compelled to reinstate the
Pelhams. He expressed the most profound mortification that he should
have a man like Newcastle thus forced upon him--a man, he said, not
fit to be a petty chamberlain to a petty prince of Germany. What
made it the more galling, the Pelhams would not take back the Seals
without authority to name their own terms, and one of them was, that
such of the adherents of Bath and Granville as had been retained
in the Ministry should be dismissed. The Marquis of Tweeddale was,
accordingly, one of these, and his office of Secretary of State for
Scotland was abolished. Pitt was introduced to the Cabinet, not as
Secretary at War, as he had demanded, but as Vice-Treasurer of Ireland,
and subsequently, on the death of Winnington, as Paymaster of the
Forces. By this event the Opposition was still further weakened, and
the Pelhams for some time seemed to carry everything as they wished,
almost without a single ruffle of opposition.




CHAPTER V.

REIGN OF GEORGE II.--(_concluded_).

    Progress of the War on the Continent--Lethargic Condition of
    Politics--Battle of Laufeldt--Capture of Bergen-op-Zoom--Disasters
    of the French on the Sea and in Italy--Negotiations for
    Peace--Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle--Conditions of Peace--Peace
    at Home--Commercial Treaty with Spain--Death of the Prince
    of Wales--Popular feeling against the Bill for Naturalising
    the Jews--Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act--Foundation
    of the British Museum--Death of Pelham--Newcastle's
    Difficulties--Failure of Robinson--Approaching Danger from
    America--A State of Undeclared War--The Battles of Boscawen
    and Braddock--George's Anxiety for Hanover--Subsidiary
    Treaties against Prussia--Pitt's Opposition--Debate in the
    House of Commons--Danger of England--French Expedition against
    Minorca--The Failure of Byng--Newcastle resigns--Attempts
    to Form a Ministry--Devonshire Succeeds--Weakness of
    the Ministry--Coalition against Prussia--Alliance with
    England--Commencement of the Seven Years' War--Frederick
    Conquers Saxony--Gloominess of Affairs--Court-Martial on Byng,
    and his Death--Dismissal of Pitt--The Pitt and Newcastle
    Coalition--Failure of the attack on Rochefort and of that on
    Louisburg--Convention of Closter-Seven--Frederick's Campaign;
    Kolin, Rosbach, and Lissa--Successes elsewhere--Wolfe and
    Clive--Battle of Plassey--Capture of Louisburg--Ticonderoga
    and Fort Duquesne--Attacks on St. Malo and Cherbourg--Victory
    of Crefeld--Frederick's Campaign--Commencement of 1759;
    Blockade of the French Coast--Pitt's Plans for the Conquest
    of Canada--Amherst's and Prideaux's Columns--Wolfe before
    Quebec--Position of the City--Wolfe fails to draw Montcalm from his
    Position--Apparent Hopelessness of the Expedition--Wolfe Scales
    the Heights of Abraham--The Battle--Successes in India--Battle
    of Quiberon--Frederick's Fortunes--Campaign of Ferdinand of
    Brunswick--Battle of Minden--Glorious Termination of the
    Year--French Descent on Carrickfergus--Attempt of the French to
    Recover Quebec--Their Expulsion from North America--Frederick's
    Fourth Campaign--Successes of Ferdinand of Brunswick--Death of
    George II.


The Scottish rebellion had been an auspicious circumstance for the arms
of France. Marshal Saxe had taken the field, to the surprise of the
Allies, in the very middle of winter, invested Brussels, and compelled
it to surrender on the 20th of February, 1746. One town fell after
another; Mons, Antwerp, Charleroi, and finally, Namur capitulated
on the 19th of September, after a siege of only six days. As soon
as Cumberland could leave Scotland after the battle of Culloden, he
returned to London, in the hope that he should be appointed, covered,
as he was, with his bloody laurels, to the supreme command of the
Allied forces in Flanders, where he flattered himself he could arrest
the progress of the French. But that command had been conferred on
Prince Charles of Lorraine, the Emperor's brother, much to the disgust
of both Cumberland and the king. On the 11th of October the Prince of
Lorraine engaged the French at Raucoux, on the Jaar, and was signally
defeated; the English cavalry, under General Ligonier, managing to
save his army from total destruction, but not being able to stem the
overthrow. At the close of the campaign the French remained almost
entire masters of the Austrian Netherlands.

In Italy, on the contrary, France sustained severe losses. The
Austrians, liberated from their Prussian foe by the peace of Dresden,
threw strong forces into Italy, and soon made themselves masters of
Milan, Guastalla, Parma, and Piacenza. On the 17th of June they gave
the united French and Spaniards a heavy defeat near the last-named
city, entered Genoa in September, and made preparations to pursue them
into Provence.

Philip V. of Spain died on the 9th of July, and his son and successor,
Ferdinand VI., showed himself far less anxious for the establishment
of Don Philip in Italy--a circumstance unfavourable to France. On
the contrary, he entered into separate negotiations with England.
A Congress was opened at Breda, but the backwardness of Prussia to
support the views of England, and the successes of the French in the
Netherlands, caused the Congress to prove abortive.

The year 1747 was opened by measures of restriction. The House of
Lords, offended at the publication of the proceedings of the trial
of Lord Lovat, summoned the parties to their bar, committed them to
prison, and refused to liberate them till they had pledged themselves
not to repeat the offence, and had paid very heavy fees. The
consequence of this was that the transactions of the Peers were almost
entirely suppressed for nearly thirty years from this time, and we draw
our knowledge of them chiefly from notes taken by Horace Walpole and
Lord Chancellor Hardwicke. What is still more remarkable, the reports
of the House of Commons, being taken by stealth, and on the merest
sufferance, are of the most meagre kind, sometimes altogether wanting,
and the speeches are given uniformly under fictitious names; for to
have attributed to Pitt or Pelham their speeches by name would have
brought down on the printers the summary vengeance of the House. Many
of the members complained bitterly of this breach of the privileges of
Parliament, and of "being put into print by low fellows"; but Pelham
had the sense to tolerate them, saying, "Let them alone; they make
better speeches for us than we can make for ourselves." Altogether,
the House of Commons exhibited the most deplorable aspect that can
be conceived. The Ministry had pursued Walpole's system of buying up
opponents by place, or pension, or secret service money, till there
was no life left in the House. Ministers passed their measures without
troubling themselves to say much in their behalf; and the opposition
dwindled to Sir John Hinde Cotton, now dismissed from office, and
a feeble remnant of Jacobites raised but miserable resistance. In
vain the Prince of Wales and the secret instigations of Bolingbroke
and Doddington stimulated the spirit of discontent; both Houses
had degenerated into most silent and insignificant arenas of very
commonplace business.

The campaign in Flanders commenced with the highest expectation on the
part of England. Cumberland had now obtained the great object of his
ambition--the command of the Allied army; and the conqueror of Culloden
was confidently expected to show himself the conqueror of Marshal Saxe
and of France. But Cumberland, who was no match for Marshal Saxe, found
the Dutch and Austrians, as usual, vastly deficient in their stipulated
quotas. The French, hoping to intimidate the sluggish and wavering
Dutch, threatened to send twenty thousand men into Dutch Flanders,
if the States did not choose to negotiate for a separate peace. The
menace, however, had the effect of rousing Holland to some degree
of action. When the vanguard of Saxe's army, under Count Löwendahl,
burst into Dutch Flanders, and reduced the frontier forts of Sluys,
Sas-van-Ghent, and Hulst, the Dutch rose against their dastardly
governors, and once more placed a prince of the House of Nassau in the
Stadtholdership. William of Nassau, who had married Anne, daughter
of George II. of England, was, unfortunately, not only nominated
Stadtholder, but Captain-General and Lord High Admiral; and, being
equally desirous of martial glory with his brother-in-law, the Duke of
Cumberland, he headed the Dutch army, and immediately began to contend
with Cumberland for dictation as to the movements of the army. In these
disastrous circumstances, the Allies came to blows with the French at
the village of Laufeldt, before Maestricht. The Dutch in the centre
gave way and fled; the Austrians on the right, under Marshal Batthyani,
would not advance out of their fortified position; the brunt of the
whole onset, therefore, fell upon the English. Cumberland found himself
engaged with the whole French army, directed by the masterly mind of
Saxe, and animated by the presence of Louis himself. The dispositions
of Cumberland were bad, but the bravery of the British troops was never
more remarkable. Though it was impossible for them to prevail against
such overwhelming numbers, they did not retreat before they had,
according to Saxe's own acknowledgment, killed or wounded nine thousand
of the French.

Saxe followed up his advantage by despatching Löwendahl against
Bergen-op-Zoom, the key of Holland, and the masterpiece of the
celebrated engineer, Cohorn. This was not only amazingly strong in its
fortifications, but had a powerful garrison, and was covered by an
entrenched camp of twelve thousand men. The trenches were opened in the
middle of July, and might have defied all the efforts of the French,
had not Baron Cronstrom, the commander, a man of eighty, suffered them
to take it by surprise on the 15th of September. The French had led
a vast number of men before this place, and its surrender ended the
campaign.

Most unexpectedly, however, the French were as desirous of peace as
the Allies ought to have been. At sea and in Italy they had not been
so successful as in Flanders. Admiral Anson had defeated them off Cape
Finisterre, and taken six ships of the line, several frigates, and a
great part of a numerous convoy; Admiral Hawke, off Belleisle, had
taken six other ships of the line; and Commodore Fox took forty French
merchantmen, richly laden, on their way from the West Indies. In fact,
in all quarters of the world our fleet had the advantage, and had made
such havoc with the French commerce as reduced the mercantile community
to great distress.

In Italy the French had been as unfortunate as they had been fortunate
in Flanders. In November of 1746 the Austrians and Sardinians, assisted
by a British fleet, had entered Provence and bombarded Antibes. They
were recalled, however, by the news that the Genoese had revolted, and
thrown off the Austrian yoke. In their retreat they were harassed by
Marshal de Belleisle, laid siege to Genoa in vain, and began to quarrel
amongst themselves. The French, to complete their own discomfiture,
marched another army into Italy under the brother of Belleisle; but
they were stopped in the Pass of Exilles, and defeated, with the loss
of four thousand men and of their commander, the Chevalier de Belleisle.

[Illustration: FLORA MACDONALD. (_After the Portrait by J. Markluin_,
1747.)]

There was grave discontent and suffering in France, and Marshal Saxe,
through General Ligonier, made proposals for peace. The news of these
overtures gave great delight in England, but the king and Cumberland
were bent on continuing the war. Pelham and Chesterfield advocated
acceptance of the terms, but Newcastle sided with the king, to gain
favour with him. As the terms, however, could not with decency be
bluntly rejected, Cumberland solicited and obtained the post of
negotiator in the matter for England; but the Ministers, desirous of
peace, foreseeing that the wishes or the hasty temper of Cumberland
would soon ruin every chance of accomplishing a treaty, the Earl of
Sandwich was sent over to act as assistant to the duke; this meant
that he was to overrule, if possible, the mischief Cumberland would be
sure to make. Sandwich accordingly hastened over to Holland, and had a
secret interview with the Marquis de Puisieulx, the French Minister for
Foreign Affairs, and, after much dodging on the part of the marquis, he
managed to have the discussion removed from military negotiators to a
congress at Aix-la-Chapelle.

The congress had opened at Aix-la-Chapelle early in the spring, but it
did not begin its sittings till the 11th of March, 1748, Sandwich being
sent thither as our Plenipotentiary. The campaign, however, opened
simultaneously, and, could Cumberland and the king have managed it,
war would soon have overturned the hopes of peace; but circumstances
were too much for them. The Prince of Nassau, ambitious as he was of
military renown, failed to bring into the field his Dutch levies; the
thirty thousand Prussians, as Pelham had expected, did not appear.
The Dutch, so far from furnishing the sums they had engaged for,
sent to London to raise the loan of a million sterling; but London
itself had ceased to be a money-lending place. The war had drained
the resources even of the British capital. To complete the deadlock,
Marshal Saxe advanced into the field, and showed to the world that,
though Cumberland might beat an army of famine-exhausted Highlanders,
he was no match for him. He completely out-generalled him, made false
demonstrations against Breda, where the Allied army lay, and then
suddenly concentrated his forces before Maestricht, which, it was
evident, must soon fall into his hands. Maestricht secured, the highway
into Holland was open.

The king and his war cabinet were now compelled to sue to France for
the peace which was so freely offered the year before. Newcastle
wrote to Sandwich in April, that the impossibility of arresting the
progress of the French army, the discordant pretensions of the Allies,
and their gross neglect of their engagements, rendered it absolutely
necessary to make peace. Sandwich was to communicate this necessity to
the Plenipotentiaries of the Allies, and if they declined to assent
to it, to sign the preliminaries without them. The Ministers of the
Allies still refused to join; it suited them very well to receive vast
subsidies to fight their own battles, and yet to leave England to fight
them. On the other hand, Count St. Severin, the Plenipotentiary of
France, now felt his vantage-ground, and offered far worse terms than
before, and, to force their acceptance, threatened that if they were
not agreed to without delay, the French would leave the fortifications
of Ypres, Namur, and Bergen-op-Zoom, and march directly into Holland.
The treaty was signed by England, France, and Holland on the 18th of
April. The general conditions were a mutual restoration of conquests.
All the nations were placed very much _in statu quo_, except that
Prussia had got Silesia, and Sardinia had lost Placentia and Finale. As
for England, she firmly established her maritime supremacy, which from
that date has remained unchallenged. The Young Pretender was compelled
to leave France, and thenceforward ceased to be of any political
importance.

From the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle for several years little of striking
interest occurred in the affairs of Britain. The public at first was
rejoiced at the return of peace; but the more it looked into the
results of so costly a war the more dissatisfied it grew, and the
complaints were loud and general that Ministers had sacrificed the
honour and interests of the nation. The Opposition, however, was at
so low an ebb, that little was heard of the public discontent in
Parliament; and Pitt, formerly so vociferous to denounce the war, now
as boldly vindicated both it and the peace, and silenced all criticisms
by his overmastering eloquence. The Government still went on granting
subsidies to the German princes, though the war was at an end.

During the year 1750 the French evinced a hostile disposition. They
laid claim to part of Nova Scotia, and refused to surrender the
islands of St. Lucia and St. Vincent, as they were bound to do by
the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. They continued to stir up bad feeling
towards us both in Spain and Germany. The Empress listened with
eagerness to the suggestions of France, and co-operated with that
country in endeavouring to influence Spain against us. Fortunately,
the good disposition of the Queen of Spain, and the able management
of Mr. Keene, our Ambassador, foiled all these efforts, and completed
a commercial treaty with that country. This treaty was signed on
the 5th of October, 1750, and placed us at once on the same footing
in commercial relations with Spain as the most favoured nations.
We abandoned the remaining term of the Assiento, and obtained one
hundred thousand pounds as compensation for the claims of the South
Sea Company. The right of search, however, was passed over in silence,
and we continued to cut logwood in Campeachy Bay and to smuggle on
the Spanish Main, winked at by the Spanish authorities, but liable to
interruption whenever jealousy or ill-will might be in the ascendant.
In various directions our commerce flourished at this time, and many
injurious restrictions were removed, such as those that hampered the
whale fishery of Spitzbergen, the white herring and coast fisheries,
the trade to the coast of Guinea, the import of iron from the American
plantations and of raw silk from China. Our manufactures also grew
apace, in spite of the internal jarrings of the Ministry and the
deadness of Parliament.

While affairs were in this state, the Prince of Wales died (March
20, 1751). He had been in indifferent health for some time, and had
injured his constitution by dissipated habits. He was forty-four
years of age, of a weak character, which had led him into excesses,
and the consequences of these were made worse by great neglect of his
health. The same weakness of character had made him very much the tool
of political faction, and placed him in an unnatural opposition to
his father. An attempt was made by Lord Egmont to keep together the
prince's party. He assembled a meeting of the Opposition at his house
on the morning of the prince's death, and hinted at taking the princess
and her family under their protection; and he recommended harmony among
themselves; but some one said, "Very likely, indeed, that there should
be harmony, when the prince could never bring it about;" and so every
one hastened away to look after themselves. It was no sooner seen that
there was an understanding between the Princess of Wales and the king
than numbers of the late prince's friends offered their adhesion to the
Pelhams, equally out of dread of the Duke of Cumberland and dislike
of the Duke of Bedford, who was opposed to the Pelhams, and, it was
feared, likely to support Cumberland, and thus place him at the head of
affairs.

The Session of 1753 was distinguished by two remarkable Acts of
Parliament. The one was for the naturalisation of the Jews, the
other for the prevention of clandestine marriages. The Jew Bill was
introduced into the Lords, and passed it with singular ease, scarcely
exciting an objection from the whole bench of bishops; Lord Lyttelton
declaring that "he who hated another man for not being a Christian was
not a Christian himself." But in the Commons it raised a fierce debate.
On the 7th of May, on the second reading, it was assailed by loud
assertions that to admit the Jews to such privileges was to dishonour
the Christian faith; that it would deluge the kingdom with usurers,
brokers, and beggars; that the Jews would buy up the advowsons, and
thus destroy the Church; that it was flying directly in the face of
God and of Prophecy, which had declared the Jews should be scattered
over the face of the earth, without any country or fixed abode. Pelham
ridiculed the fears about the Church, showing that, by their own rigid
tenets, the Jews could neither enter our Church nor marry our women,
and could therefore never touch our religion, nor amalgamate with us
as a people; that as to civil offices, unless they took the Sacrament,
they could not be even excisemen or custom-house officers. The Bill
passed by a majority of ninety-five to sixteen; but the storm was only
wafted from the Parliament to the public. Out-of-doors the members of
Parliament, and especially the bishops, were pursued with the fiercest
rancour and insult. Members of the Commons were threatened by their
constituents with the loss of their seats for voting in favour of
this Bill; and one of them, Mr. Sydenham, of Exeter, defended himself
by declaring that he was no Jew, but travelled on the Sabbath like a
Christian. The populace pursued the members and the bishops in the
streets, crying, "No Jews! No Jews! No wooden shoes!" In short, such
was the popular fury, that the Duke of Newcastle was glad to bring in a
Bill for the repeal of his Act of Naturalisation on the very first day
of the next Session, which passed rapidly through both Houses.

It was high time that some measures were taken for preventing
clandestine marriages. Nothing could be so loose as the marriage laws,
or so scandalous as the practice regarding marriages at this date. No
previous public notice or publication of banns was hitherto required,
nor was any license requisite. Any clergyman, though of the most
infamous character, could perform the ceremony at any time or place,
without consent of parents or guardians. The consequence was, that the
strangest and most scandalous unions took place, for which there was no
remedy, and the results of which were lives of misery and disgrace. The
merest children were inveigled into such connections, and the heirs of
noble estates were thus entrapped into the most repulsive alliances,
and made the victims of the most rapacious and unprincipled of mankind.
The Fleet Prison, where were many ruined parsons--ruined by their
crimes and low habits--was a grand mart for such marriages. A fellow
of the name of Keith had acquired great pre-eminence in this line. He
used to marry, on an average, six thousand couples every year; and on
the news of this Bill, which would stop his trade, he vowed vengeance
on the bishops, declaring that he would buy a piece of ground and
out-bury them all!

The Bill was prepared by the judges, and afterwards remodelled and
conducted through the Lords by Lord Chancellor Hardwicke. It provided
that banns should be published for every marriage in the parish
church for three successive Sundays; that no license to waive these
banns should be granted to any minor without consent of the parent
or guardian; and that special licenses, empowering the marriage to
be celebrated at any time or place, should only be granted by the
archbishop, and for a heavy sum. The Bill was opposed in the Lords
by the Duke of Bedford, and in the Commons by Henry Fox, Mr. Nugent,
Mr. Charles Townshend, and others. It was declared to be a scheme
for keeping together the wealth of the country in the hands of a few
grasping and ambitious families. Townshend denounced it as intended to
shut younger sons out of all chance of raising themselves by marriage.
Henry Fox had benefited especially by the looseness of the old marriage
law, for he had run away with Lady Caroline Lennox, the eldest daughter
of the Duke of Richmond. He was especially severe on Lord Hardwicke,
accusing him of seeking by the Bill to throw more power into the hands
of the Lord Chancellor, and Hardwicke retorted with still greater
acrimony. The Bill passed, and there was a strong inclination to extend
its operation to Scotland, but the Scottish lawyers and representative
peers defeated this attempt.

Another measure in this Session marks an epoch in the history of
literature and science in Great Britain. Parliament empowered the
Crown to raise money by lottery for the purchase of the fine library,
consisting of fifty thousand volumes, and the collection of articles
of vertu and antiquity, amounting to sixty-nine thousand three hundred
and fifty-two in number, bequeathed by Sir Hans Sloane to the nation
on the condition that twenty thousand pounds should be paid to his
daughters for what had cost himself fifty thousand pounds. The same
Bill also empowered Government to purchase of the Duchess of Portland,
for ten thousand pounds, the collection of MSS. and books, etc., made
by her grandfather, Harley, the Lord Treasurer Oxford, and also for the
purchase of Montagu House, which was offered for sale in consequence of
the death of the Duke of Montagu without heirs, in which to deposit
these valuable collections. The antiquarian and literary collections
of Sir Robert Cotton, purchased in the reign of Queen Anne, were also
removed to Montagu House; and thus was founded the now magnificent
institution, the British Museum. It is remarkable that whilst Horace
Walpole, professing himself a patron of letters, has recorded all the
gossip of his times, he has not deemed this great literary, scientific,
and artistic event worthy of the slightest mention.

The course of business was suddenly interrupted by the unexpected
death of Pelham, the Prime Minister, in 1754. Pelham was but sixty
years of age, of a florid and apparently healthy appearance, but at
once indolent and too fond of the table. He had been compelled to seek
sea-bathing at Scarborough, and on the 7th of January wrote to his
brother, the Duke of Newcastle, saying that he never was better; but
on the 3rd of March he was taken ill, and on the 6th was a corpse. The
king was startled at his death, for his moderation and quiet management
had long held together very jarring elements in the Ministry. "Now I
shall have no more peace!" exclaimed George, on hearing the news of
his decease, and he was only too correct in his prognostic. Pelham
was a respectable rather than a great minister. His abilities were by
no means shining, but experience had made him a good man of business.
Waldegrave gave him credit for being "a frugal steward of the public,
averse to Continental extravagances and useless subsidies;" and yet
never were more of each perpetrated than during his administration.
He had the merit, which he had acquired in the school of Walpole, of
preferring peace to war; and Horace Walpole admits that "he lived
without abusing his power, and died poor."

Newcastle, a man older than his brother Pelham, and of inferior
abilities, instead of strengthening himself by the promotion of Pitt
and Henry Fox, was only anxious to grasp all the power of the Cabinet,
and retain these far abler men as his obedient subordinates. He at
once got himself placed at the head of the Treasury, and selected
as Chancellor of the Exchequer Henry Legge, a son of the Earl of
Dartmouth, a quiet but ordinary man of business, by no means fitted to
take the leadership of the House of Commons. The three men calculated
for that post were Pitt, Fox, and Murray; but Pitt was still extremely
disliked by the king, who did not forget his many years' thunderings
against Hanoverian measures, and both George and Newcastle were no
little afraid of his towering ambition. Henry Fox was a man of amiable
character in private life, but in politics an adventurer.

[Illustration: WEDDING IN THE FLEET. (_From a Print of the Eighteenth
Century._)]

Murray, afterwards Lord Mansfield, as we have said, of a decided
Jacobite house, was a rising young lawyer, who had won great fame
for his speech in a case of appeal before the House of Lords, was
now Solicitor-General--accomplished and learned in the law, a man
of pleasing person, and a fine orator, bold, persevering in his
profession, yet, with all the caution of a Scotsman, plodding his way
towards the bench--the real and almost the only object of his ambition.
Murray, indeed, let Newcastle know that such was his ambition;
and therefore, as Pitt was passed over from the royal dislike and
Newcastle's own jealousy, and Murray, too, for this reason, Henry Fox
alone was the man for the leadership of the Commons. Newcastle told
him that he proposed him for that post; but when they met, Fox soon
found that he was expected to play the rôle without the essential
power. Fox, of course, demanded to be informed of the disposal of the
secret-service money, but Newcastle replied that his brother never
disclosed that to any one, nor would he. Fox reminded him that Pelham
was at once First Lord of the Treasury and leader of the Commons, and
asked how he was to "talk to members when he did not know who was in
pay and who was not?" And next he wished to know who was to have the
nomination to places? Newcastle replied, Himself. Who was to recommend
the proper objects?--Still himself. Who to fill up the ministerial
boroughs at the coming elections?--Still Newcastle himself. Fox
withdrew in disgust, and Newcastle gave the seals of the Secretaryship
to a mere tool--Sir Thomas Robinson, a dull, uncouth man, who had been
some years ambassador at Vienna, and had won the favour of the king by
his compliance with all his German desires. Robinson, according to Lord
Waldegrave, was ignorant even of the language of the House of Commons,
and when he attempted to play the orator, threw the members into fits
of merriment. Newcastle, says Lord Stanhope, had succeeded in a very
difficult attempt--he "had found a Secretary of State with abilities
inferior to his own."

As to the other changes in the Ministry, Sir Dudley Ryder being
advanced to the bench, Murray succeeded him as Attorney-General. Lord
Chancellor Hardwicke was made an earl; Sir George Lyttelton and George
Grenville, friends of Pitt, had places--one as Treasurer of the Navy,
the other as cofferer. Pitt himself, who was suffering from his great
enemy, the gout, at Bath, was passed over. No sooner did he meet with
Fox in the House of Commons, than he said aloud, "Sir Thomas Robinson
lead us! Newcastle might as well send his jack-boot to lead us!" No
sooner did the unfortunate Sir Thomas open his mouth, than Pitt fell
with crushing sarcasm upon him; and Fox completed his confusion by
pretending to excuse him on account of his twenty years' absence
abroad, and his consequent utter ignorance of all matters before
the House. Soon after, Pitt made a most overwhelming speech, on the
occasion of a petition against the return of a Government candidate by
bribery, and called on Whigs of all sections to come forward and defend
the liberties of the country, unless, he said, "you will degenerate
into a little assembly, serving no other purpose than to register the
arbitrary edicts of one too powerful subject!" This was a blow at
Newcastle, which, coming from a colleague in office, made both him and
his puppets in the Commons, Legge and Robinson, tremble. Newcastle
saw clearly that he must soon dismount Robinson from his dangerous
altitude, and give the place to Fox.

The new Parliament reassembled on the 14th of November, and the king in
his speech, whilst pretending the differences which had arisen between
us, France, and Spain were by no means serious, yet called for enlarged
supplies to defend our American territories against the designs of
these Powers. In fact, matters were becoming very serious in our
American colonies; but the Government withheld the real facts from the
knowledge of the public, and it was not till the opening of Parliament,
in March, 1755, that they candidly avowed that war was inevitable. The
French and English were actually engaged in war both in the East Indies
and in America. In the East Indies there was just now an apparent pause
in hostilities, through an agreement between the two Companies; but in
North America matters daily grew worse. There were, and had been ever
since the Peace, violent disputes as to the boundary-lines both of Nova
Scotia--produce of the tax was seven hundred Acadia--and between Canada and
our colony of New England. The French, becoming more and more daring,
commenced the erection of forts in the valley of the Ohio, to connect
the settlements on the St. Lawrence with those on the Mississippi. They
had already erected one called Duquesne, greatly to the indignation of
the inhabitants of Pennsylvania and Virginia. In Nova Scotia, Major
Lawrence, with one thousand men, defeated the French and their Indian
allies; but, on the other hand, the French surprised and sacked Block's
Town, on the Ohio, belonging to the Virginians, who sent forward Major
George Washington to attack Fort Duquesne. Washington, destined to
acquire the greatest name in the New World, marched with four hundred
men, but was surprised at a place called Great Meadows, and was glad to
capitulate on condition of retiring with military honours (1754).

At this crisis, when an able diplomatist at Paris might have avoided
a great war, the Earl of Albemarle, who never had been an able or
attentive ambassador, but a mere man of pleasure, died; and though
George II. was so well aware of the gathering storm that he sent a
message to the House of Commons announcing the necessity for increased
forces, and, consequently, increased supplies, nothing could induce
him to forego his usual summer journey to Hanover. The Commons readily
voted a million and a half, but made an energetic protest against the
king quitting the country in the circumstances. Besides the state of
affairs in France and Spain, those of Ireland were very disturbed. The
Duke of Dorset, the Lord-Lieutenant, was recalled, and Lord Harrington
sent in his place to endeavour to restore order. Lord Poulett,
therefore, moved a resolution against George's journey; but it was
overruled, and the infatuated king set out in April, attended by Lord
Holderness.

The day before George embarked, Admiral Boscawen set sail, with
eleven ships of the line and two regiments of soldiers, to intercept
the French fleet, which had sailed from Rochefort and Brest to carry
reinforcements to the Canadians. Boscawen was to attack and destroy
the French, if possible. Boscawen came up with the French fleet on
the banks of Newfoundland, but a thick fog hid them from each other.
Captain Howe, afterwards Lord Howe, and Captain Andrews, however,
descried and captured two of the French men-of-war, containing eight
thousand pounds in money, and many officers and engineers; but the rest
of the fleet, under Admiral Bois de la Motte, warned by the firing,
got safe into the harbour of Louisburg.

On the arrival of this news the French Court complained bitterly of the
violation of the peace, to which the Court of St. James's replied that
the French had too prominently set the example, and the ambassadors
on both sides were recalled--an equivalent to a declaration of war,
though none on either side yet followed. We had soon a severe reverse
instead of a victory to record. General Braddock had been despatched
against Fort Duquesne, and had reached Great Meadows, the scene of
Washington's defeat in the preceding summer. Braddock was a general of
the Hawley school--brave enough, but, like him, brutal and careless.
His soldiers hated him for his severity. The Indians resented so much
the haughtiness with which he treated them, that they had most of
them deserted him; and, as was the fatal habit of English commanders
then and long afterwards, he had the utmost contempt for what were
called "Provincials" (that is, Colonists), supposing that all sense
and knowledge existed in England, and that the English, just arrived,
knew more about America than natives who had spent their lives in
it. He therefore marched on into the woods, utterly despising all
warnings against the Indians in alliance with the French. At Great
Meadows he found it necessary, from the nature of the woods and the
want of roads, to leave behind him all his heavy baggage, and part of
his troops to guard it, and he proceeded with only one thousand two
hundred men and ten pieces of artillery. On the 9th of July, 1755,
having arrived within ten miles of Fort Duqnesne, he still neglected
to send out scouts, and thus rashly entering the mouth of a deep woody
defile, he found himself assaulted by a murderous fire in front and
on both flanks. His enemies were Indians assisted by a few French,
who, accustomed to that mode of fighting, aimed from the thickets and
behind trees, and picked off his officers, whom they recognised by
their dress, without themselves being visible. Without attempting to
draw out of the ambush, and advance with proper precautions, Braddock
rushed deeper into it, and displayed a desperate but useless courage.
Now was the time for his Indians to have encountered his enemies in
their own mode of battle, had his pride not driven them away. After
having three horses killed under him, in the vain endeavour to come at
his foes, he was shot, and his troops retreated in all haste, leaving
behind them their artillery and seven hundred of their comrades on
the ground. Their retreat was protected by the "provincial" George
Washington--whose advice had been unheeded--or the slaughter would have
been greater.

The news of Braddock's defeat, reaching London whilst the king was
still absent, caused a great panic and want of decision. Sir Edward
Hawke had been despatched with a fleet of eighteen sail in July to
intercept the return of the French fleet from Canada, but, hampered by
contradictory orders, he only took prizes; and now Admiral Byng, in
October, was sent out with twenty-six more, but both failed in their
object. Our privateer cruisers had done more execution in the West
Indies. They had nearly annihilated the trade of the French in those
islands, and, according to Smollett, captured, before the end of the
year, three hundred French vessels, and brought into the English ports
eight thousand French seamen.

As the French now made vigorous preparations for war, George II. began
to tremble for Hanover, and put out all his energies to accomplish
fresh alliances--of course, at the cost of fresh subsidies to be paid
by England. Hesse-Cassel, the Empress of Russia, and even his old
enemy, Frederick of Prussia, were applied to, and engaged, by promises
of English money, in defence of Hanover. George was especially afraid
of Frederick, who was bound by no ties where his interest was at stake,
and who, if not retained at a high rate, might fall on Hanover as he
had done on Silesia. In gaining Frederick, however, George lost his old
ally, Austria, which, forgetting all past obligations, immediately made
alliance with France.

When the subsidy to Hesse-Cassel was sent home to receive the
signatures of the Cabinet, it was found to amount to an annual
payment by England of one hundred and fifty thousand crowns, besides
eighty crowns to every horseman, and thirty crowns to every foot
soldier, when they were really called out to service. That to Russia
was immensely greater; then came in prospective that to Saxony, to
Bavaria, etc. These latter States had been fed all through the last
few years for doing nothing, and now demanded vastly higher terms.
Yet when the Hessian Treaty was laid on the Council table by the
compliant Newcastle, Ministers signed it without reading it. Pitt and
Fox, however, protested against it; and when the Treasury warrants
for carrying the treaty into execution were sent down to Legge, the
Chancellor of the Exchequer, he refused to sign them.

This was a thunderstroke to Newcastle--Legge, who had been so pliant,
thus to rebel. Newcastle, in his consternation, hastened to Pitt,
imploring him to use his influence with Legge, and promising him the
Seals as Secretary, engaging to remove all prejudice from the king's
mind. But not only Pitt, but the public, had been long asking whether,
in these critical times, everything was to be sacrificed for the
sake of this old grasping jobber at the Treasury? whether Newcastle
was to endanger the whole nation by keeping out of office all men of
talent? Pitt stood firm: no offers, no temptations, could move him.
Newcastle, finding Pitt unmanageable, flew to Fox, who accepted the
Seals on condition of having proper powers conceded to him, and agreed
to support the treaties, against which he had been equally as violent
as Pitt, having just before said to Dodington, "I am surprised you are
not against all subsidies." Robinson was consoled with a pension of two
thousand pounds a year and the post of Master of the Wardrobe. The king
had returned from Hanover, and Fox was not to receive the Seals till
two days after the meeting of Parliament, so that he might keep his
place and support the Address. By his accession to office he changed
the violence of the opposition of the Duke of Bedford, and brought the
support of the Russells to the Ministry. This strength, however, did
not prevent the certainty of a breakup of the Cabinet. Pitt was now
arrayed against his former colleagues.

Whilst things were in this position, Parliament met on the 13th of
November. The great question on which the fate of the Ministry depended
was that of the subsidies to Hesse and Russia. It was something new
to see not merely an ordinary opposition, but the Chancellor of the
Exchequer and the Paymaster of the Forces--Legge and Pitt--ranging
themselves against the king and their colleagues on this question. In
the House of Lords the Address in reply to the royal speech, which
implied approbation of these subsidies, was supported by Newcastle,
Hardwicke, and the Duke of Bedford, who hitherto, since quitting
office, had opposed everything, and was opposed by Lords Temple and
Halifax. But the great struggle was in the Commons. The debate began
at two in the afternoon, and continued till five the next morning--the
longest hitherto recorded, except the one on the Westminster election
in 1741. On this occasion William Gerard Hamilton made his first and
almost last speech, which acquired him promotion in the Government of
Ireland, and the cognomen of "Single-speech Hamilton." Murray spoke
splendidly in defence of the subsidies; but Pitt, rising at one o'clock
in the morning, after sitting eleven hours in that heated atmosphere,
burst out upon the whole system of German subsidies with a tempest of
eloquence which held the House in astonished awe. He denounced the
whole practice of feeing the little German potentates as monstrous,
useless, absurd, and desperate: an eternal drain on England for no
single atom of benefit. He compared the union of Newcastle and Fox to
the union of the Rhône and Saône--a boisterous and impetuous torrent,
with a shallow, languid, and muddy stream. But though Pitt's eloquence
dismayed and confounded Ministers, it could not prevent their majority.
The Address was carried by three hundred and eleven votes against
one hundred and five; and it was now clear that Pitt must quit the
Cabinet. In fact, in a very few days, not only he, but Legge and George
Grenville, were summarily dismissed, and James Grenville, the other
brother, resigned his seat at the Board of Trade.

The year 1756 opened with menaces to England of the most serious
nature. The imbecility of the Ministry was beginning to tell in the
neglect of its colonies and its defences. France threatened to invade
us, and a navy of fifty thousand men was suddenly voted, and an army
of thirty-four thousand two hundred and sixty-three of native troops;
but as these were not ready, it was agreed to bring over eight thousand
Hessians and Hanoverians. To pay for all this it was necessary to grant
excessive supplies, and lay on new duties and taxes. In presenting
the money bills in the month of May, Speaker Onslow could not avoid
remarking that there were two circumstances which tended to create
alarm--foreign subsidies and foreign troops introduced, and nothing
but their confidence in his Majesty could allay their fears, or give
them confidence that their burdens would be soon reduced. There was,
in fact, no chance for any such reduction, for wars, troubles, and
disgraces were gathering around from various quarters. The first
reverse came from the Mediterranean.

[Illustration: DEFEAT OF GENERAL BRADDOCK IN THE INDIAN AMBUSH. (_See
p._ 119.)]

The French had always beheld with jealousy our possession of the island
of Minorca, which had been won by General Stanhope in 1708, and secured
to us by the Peace of Utrecht. That England should possess the finest
port in the Mediterranean, and that so near their own shores, was a
subject of unceasing chagrin. The miserable administration of British
affairs, the constant attention to the interests of Hanover instead of
our own, now inspired France with the resolve to snatch the prize from
us. Great preparations were made for this object, and the report of
these as duly conveyed to the English Ministers by the consuls in both
Spain and Italy, but in vain. At length the certainty that the French
were about to sail for Minorca burst on the miserable Ministers; but
it was too late--they had nothing in readiness. The port of Mahon was
almost destitute of a garrison; the governor, Lord Tyrawley, was in
England; and the deputy-governor, General Blakeney, though brave, as he
had shown himself at the siege of Stirling, was old, nearly disabled
by his infirmities, and deficient in troops. What was still worse, all
the colonels were absent from the regiments stationed there, and other
officers also--altogether thirty-five!

The alarmed Ministers now mustered what ships they could, and
despatched Admiral Byng with them from Spithead on the 7th of April.
The whole of these ships amounted only to ten, in a half rotten
condition and badly manned; and they commenced their voyage only three
days before the French armament issued from Toulon, the English having
to cross the Bay of Biscay, and traverse two hundred leagues of the
Mediterranean, whilst the French had only seventy leagues to travel
altogether. The French armament consisted of twelve ships of the line,
and numerous transports, under Admiral La Galissonière, consisting
of sixteen thousand men, under the command of the Duke de Richelieu.
General Blakeney received news of the approach of this fleet by means
of a fast-sailing sloop, and began in all activity to prepare for
his defence. He collected his forces into the castle of St. Philip,
commanding the town and harbour of Mahon, calling in five companies
from Ciudadela. All his troops, however, amounted only to two thousand
eight hundred. He had large quantities of cattle driven into the fort,
flour and bakers were got in, the ports blocked up, and he sank a sloop
in the channel to obstruct the entrance to the harbour. The French
fleet appeared off port Ciudadela on the 18th of April, but Byng did
not come in sight till the 19th of May--a month after--and then he came
disappointed and dispirited. There was a mutual attempt made by Byng
and by Blakeney to effect communication, but it does not appear to have
been of a determined character, and it failed. La Galissonière was now
bearing down on Byng, and the next day, the 20th of May, the two fleets
confronted each other. Byng, about two o'clock, gave the signal to
Rear-Admiral West to engage, which West did with such impetuosity, that
he drove several of the French ships out of line. But Byng himself did
not follow the example of West; he hung back, and thereby prevented
West from following up his advantage. It was in vain that Byng's own
captain urged him to advance; he pretended that it could not be done
without throwing his ships out of regular line; and he kept at such a
distance that his vessel, a noble ship carrying ninety guns, never was
fairly in action at all, and had not a single man killed or wounded.
Thus deserted, West was compelled to fall back; and La Galissonière,
who showed no disposition to continue the fight, sailed away. Byng
retired to Gibraltar.

At the sight of Byng sailing away, the French fired a _feu de joie_
from all their lines, and Blakeney knew that he was left to his fate.
He determined still to defend the place, but Richelieu sent in haste to
Toulon for fresh reinforcements. The fort was soon surrounded by twenty
thousand men, with eighty-five pieces of artillery. In about a week
Richelieu carried one of the breaches by storm, though with great loss,
and Blakeney capitulated on condition that the English should march out
with all the honours of war, and should be conveyed in the French ships
to Gibraltar. Thus was Minorca lost to England through the shameful
neglect of a miserably incompetent Ministry and a faint-hearted admiral.

The tidings of this disaster roused the people of England to a pitch
of desperation. The Ministers were condemned for their gross neglect
and imbecile procrastination, and Byng was execrated as a coward and
a traitor. Meanwhile, the most culpable man of all, Newcastle, was
trembling with terror, and endeavouring to find a scapegoat somewhere.
Fox was equally trembling, lest Newcastle should make that scapegoat
of him. He declared to Dodington that he had urged Newcastle to send
succour to Minorca as early as Christmas, and that Cumberland had
joined him in urging this, to no purpose. He asserted that Newcastle
ought to answer for it. "Yes," replied Dodington, "unless he can find
some one to make a scapegoat of." This was the very fear that was
haunting Fox, and he hastened, in October, to the king, and resigned
the seals. This was a severe blow to Newcastle, and he immediately
thought of Murray to succeed him; but, unfortunately, Sir Dudley Ryder,
the Lord Chief Justice, just then having died, Murray had fixed his
ambition on occupying his seat on the bench. They were obliged to
give it to him, with the title of Mansfield, or make a mortal enemy
of him. Newcastle then thought of conciliating Pitt. Pitt refused to
belong to any Ministry at all in which Newcastle remained. Newcastle,
in his perplexity, next tried Lord Egmont, and even old Granville, but
both declined the honour; and not a man being to be found who would
serve under him, he was compelled most reluctantly to resign. He had
certainly presided over the destinies of the nation far too long.

The king now thought of placing Fox at the head of a new
administration; but when Fox asked Pitt to join, he refused, and the
king was obliged to send for Pitt, much as he hated him. Pitt replied
that he was laid up with the gout--a complaint which troubled him,
but which he frequently found it convenient to assume. George then
prevailed upon the Duke of Devonshire, a man of no commanding ability,
and averse from office, but of the highest integrity of character, to
accept the post of First Lord of the Treasury, and to form a Cabinet.
Though the friend of Fox, he felt that statesman to be too unpopular
for a colleague, and offered Pitt the seals of Secretary of State,
which he accepted; Legge was re-appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer;
Pitt's brother-in-law, Lord Temple, First Lord of the Admiralty;
Temple's brother, George Grenville, Treasurer of the Navy; another
brother, James Grenville, again was seated at the Treasury Board; Lord
Holderness was the second Secretary of State, to oblige the king;
Willes, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas; the Duke of Bedford was made
Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, it was said by Fox's suggestion, as a thorn
in the flesh to Pitt, and, as Horace Walpole sarcastically remarked,
Pitt had not Grenville cousins enough to fill the whole Administration;
Charles Townshend was made Treasurer of the Chamber, though his talents
and eloquence, in which he excited Pitt's jealousy, deserved a much
higher office.

The Ministry being complete, Parliament met on the 2nd of December.
It was found that the new Administration had not that influence in
the boroughs that Newcastle, who had cultivated it, had; and several
members of the Cabinet, Pitt amongst them, had difficulty in getting
returned, as was the case with Charles Townshend. In the king's
speech, his Majesty was made to speak of the militia, which he was
known by everybody to hold in sovereign contempt, as the best and most
constitutional means of national defence. He announced also that he
had ordered the return of the Hanoverian troops to their own country;
and the Duke of Devonshire inserted in the Address from the Lords an
expression of thanks for having brought these troops over. Pitt had
declared that he would quit the Cabinet if such a vote was passed, and
Temple came hurrying down to the House--Pitt being absent from the
Commons with the gout--and declared that he had quitted a sick bed
to protest against it. This was an unlucky beginning. It was clear
that there was want of unity in the Cabinet at its very birth, and
out-of-doors the people were loudly complaining of the scarcity of
food, and bread riots were frequent. The king himself could not help
ridiculing the speech his new Ministers had composed for him; and a
poor printer being arrested for putting another speech into his mouth,
George said he hoped the man might receive very lenient punishment,
for, as far as he could understand either of the speeches, he thought
the printer's the best. To abate the ferment out-of-doors, the Commons
passed two Bills: one prohibiting the export of grain, flour, or
biscuit; the other prohibiting, for several months, distillation from
wheat or barley.

But though Pitt protested against thanking the king for bringing over
Hanoverian troops, he found it necessary to support the king's German
treaties and alliances, which were avowedly for the defence of Hanover.
Fox reminded him of his favourite phrase, that Hanover was a millstone
round the neck of England; but it was not the first time that Pitt had
had to stand the taunt of eating his own words, and he braved it out,
especially voting two hundred thousand pounds to Frederick of Prussia.
A wonderful revolution in Continental politics had now converted this
long-hostile nephew of George II. into an ally, if not a friend.

The Empress Maria Theresa, never reconciling herself to the seizure of
Silesia by Frederick, and not finding England disposed to renew a war
for the object of recovering it, applied to her old enemy, France. It
required some ability to accomplish this object of detaching France
from its ancient policy of hostility to Austria, pursued ever since
the days of Henry IV., and in severing the alliance with Prussia; but
her Minister, Kaunitz, who had been her ambassador in Paris, contrived
to effect it. The temptation was thrown out of the surrender of Belgic
provinces to augment France, in return for assistance in recovering
German possessions from Prussia. To add fresh stimulus to this
change, the vengeance of offended woman was brought into play. Madame
Pompadour, Louis XV.'s all-powerful mistress, had sent flattering
compliments to Frederick by Voltaire; but the Prussian king only repaid
them with sneers. On the other hand, the virtuous Maria Theresa did
not blush to write, with her own hand, the most flattering epistles
to the Pompadour. By these means, the thirst of revenge raised in
the heart of the French mistress worked successfully the breach with
Prussia and the alliance with Austria. The same stimulus was tried,
and with equal effect, on the Czarina Elizabeth, on whose amorous
licence the cynical Prussian monarch had been equally jocose. Kaunitz
knew how to make the sting of these ungallant sallies felt at both
Paris and St. Petersburg, and the winter of 1755-6 saw the Russian
alliance with Prussia and England renounced, the English subsidy,
with far more than German probity, renounced too, and Russia pledged
to support Austria and France. The Elector of Saxony, Augustus, King
of Poland, who amused himself with low pot-house companions and tame
bears, and left his affairs to his minister, Count Brühl, was also
induced, by the promise of Prussian territory, to join the league; and
even Sweden, whose queen, Ulrica, was sister to Frederick, was drawn
over to take side against him, in the hope of recovering its ancient
province of Pomerania. This confederation of ninety millions of people,
leagued against five millions, was pronounced by Pitt "one of the most
powerful and malignant ones that ever yet threatened the independence
of mankind."

The confederates endeavoured to keep their plans profoundly secret till
they were ready to burst at once on the devoted King of Prussia; but
Frederick was the last man alive to be taken by surprise. The secret
was soon betrayed to him, and, at once waiving his dislike of the King
of England, he concluded a convention with him in January, 1756, and
bound himself, during the disturbances in America, not to allow any
foreign troops to pass through any part of Germany to those colonies,
where he could prevent it. Having his treasury well supplied, he put
his army in order, and in August of that year sent a peremptory demand
to Vienna as to the designs of Austria, stating, at the same time, that
he would not accept any evasive reply; but the reply being evasive, he
at once rushed into Saxony at the head of sixty thousand men, blockaded
the King of Saxony in Pirna, and secured the queen in Dresden. By this
decisive action Frederick commenced what the Germans style "The Seven
Years' War." In the palace of Dresden Frederick made himself master
of the secret correspondence and treaties with France, Russia, and
Austria, detailing all their designs, which he immediately published,
and thus fully justified his proceedings to the world.

The Austrians advanced under Marshal Braun, an officer of English
extraction, against Frederick, but after a hard-fought battle at
Lowositz, on the 1st of October, Frederick beat them, and soon after
compelled the Saxon army, seventeen thousand strong, to surrender at
Pirna. The King of Saxony, who had taken refuge in the lofty rock
fortress of Königstein, surrendered too, on condition of being allowed
to retire to Warsaw, and Frederick established his headquarters for the
winter at Dresden, levying heavy contributions throughout Saxony.

During this year little was done in America. General Bradstreet
defeated a body of the enemy on the River Onondaga, and, on the other
hand, the French took the two small forts of Ontario and Oswego.

The year 1757 opened amid very gloomy auspices. War, of a wide and
formidable character, was commencing in Europe, and the House of
Commons was called on to vote no less than eight million three hundred
thousand pounds for the supplies of the year, and to order fifty-five
thousand men for the sea service, and forty-five thousand for the
land. The National Debt had now reached seventy-two million pounds,
and was destined to a heavy and rapid increase. Pitt commenced the
admirable plan recommended years before by Duncan Forbes, of raising
Highland regiments from the lately disaffected clans. The militia
was remodelled, it was increased to thirty-four thousand, and it was
proposed to exercise the men on Sunday afternoons, to facilitate their
progress in discipline; but an outcry from the Dissenters put a stop
to this. Serious riots, moreover, were the consequences of forcing
such a number of men from their homes and occupations in the militia
ranks; and the public discontent was raised to a crisis by the voting
of two hundred thousand pounds, avowedly for the protection of Hanover.
A measure which the nation beheld with astonishment Pitt himself
introduced, notwithstanding his many thunderings against the Hanover
millstone.

Amid these angry feelings Admiral Byng was brought to trial. The
court-martial was held at Plymouth. It commenced in December, 1756, and
lasted the greater part of the month of January of the following year.
After a long and patient examination, the Court came to the decision
that Byng had not done his utmost to defeat the French fleet or relieve
the castle of St. Philip. The Court, however, sent to the Admiralty in
London to know whether they were at liberty to mitigate the twelfth
Article of War, which had been established by an Act of Parliament of
the twenty-second year of the present reign, making neglect of duty as
much deserving death as treason or cowardice. They were answered in
the negative, and therefore they passed sentence on Byng to be shot on
board such of his Majesty's ships of war and at such time as the Lords
of the Admiralty should decide.

[Illustration: LONDON BRIDGE IN 1760.]

No sooner was the sentence passed than his judges were seized with a
vehement desire to procure a pardon for the admiral. They made the
most urgent entreaties to the Admiralty for that purpose, and Captain
Augustus Keppel authorised Horace Walpole to say that he and four
others of the members of the Council had something of importance to
communicate, and desired to be relieved from their oath of secresy. The
House of Commons was quite ready to pass a Bill for the purpose, and
the king respited the admiral till all such inquiries had been made.
But when the Bill had been passed by one hundred and fifty-three to
twenty-three, it turned out that these five officers had nothing of
consequence to disclose. Still Lord Temple, who was at the head of the
Admiralty, was greatly averse from the carrying out of the sentence,
which, in fact, was much disproportioned to the crime. Pitt also
interceded with the king, and renewed applications were made to the
Admiralty; but, on the other hand, the people were smarting under the
loss of Minorca, and demanded the execution of the sentence. Hand-bills
were posted up, "_Hang Byng, or take care of the King._" The House of
Lords, when the Commons' Bill was carried up to them, however, settled
the matter. Murray and Lord Hardwicke demanded of every member of the
court-martial at the bar of the House whether they knew of any matter
which showed their sentence to be unjust, or to have been influenced by
any undue motive; and as all declared they did not, the Lords dismissed
the Bill. The sentence was therefore fixed for execution on the 14th
of March. Byng, both during the trial, and now when brought on board
the _Monarch_ in Portsmouth Harbour to be shot, showed no symptoms
of fear. When one of his friends, to prevent a man from coming in to
measure Byng for his coffin, said, standing up by him, "Which of us is
the taller?" Byng immediately replied, "Why this ceremony? I know what
it means; let the man measure me for a coffin." On the deck he wished
to have his eyes left unbound; but when told it might frighten the
soldiers and distract their aim, he said, "Let it be done, then; if it
would not frighten them, they would not frighten me." He fell dead at
the discharge (March 14, 1757).

Cumberland was now appointed to command the troops in Hanover
intended to co-operate with Prussia against France and Austria; but
he had an intuitive dread of Pitt, and was very unwilling to quit
the kingdom whilst that formidable man was Paymaster of the Forces.
He therefore never rested till the king dismissed him from office.
George himself required little urging. He had always hated Pitt for
his anti-Hanoverian spirit; nor had his conduct in office, however
respectful, done away with his dislike. George, therefore, was desirous
to get rid of the able Pitt and recall the imbecile Newcastle. He
complained that Pitt made harangues, even in the simplest matters
of business, which he could not comprehend; and as for Lord Temple,
his brother-in-law, he declared him to be pert and insolent. George
therefore sent Lord Waldegrave to Newcastle to invite him to return
to office, saying, "Tell him I do not look upon myself as king whilst
I am in the hands of these scoundrels, and am determined to be rid of
them at any rate." Newcastle longed to regain his favour, but he was
afraid of a notice made in the House of Commons for an inquiry into
the causes of the loss of Minorca. The king, nevertheless, dismissed
Temple and Pitt, and Legge and others resigned. Cumberland, in great
delight, then embarked for Hanover, thinking the main difficulty over;
but, in fact, it had only just begun. The inquiry into the Minorca
affair was, indeed, so managed that it did not absolutely condemn the
Ministry of Newcastle, neither did it fully acquit them; whilst, at the
same time, the public were highly incensed at the dismissal of Pitt,
whom they rightly deemed the only man in the two Houses with abilities
capable of conducting the affairs of the nation successfully. Addresses
and presentations of the freedom of their cities came pouring in on
Pitt from all the great towns of the kingdom. Horace Walpole said it
literally rained gold boxes. Legge, as the firm ally of Pitt, received
also his share of these honours.

But for Newcastle to form a Cabinet was no such easy matter. Pitt
refused to take office with him unless he had the whole management of
the war and foreign affairs. The king then agreed to send for Henry
Fox, who accepted the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer; but
Newcastle was so sensible of Fox's unpopularity that he was terrified
at undertaking an Administration with Fox and without Pitt, though he
was equally reluctant to let a Cabinet be formed without the former.
For three months the fruitless endeavours to accomplish a Ministry
went on, Parliament sitting all the time, and a great war commencing.
Finally, the king and Newcastle were compelled to submit to the terms
of "the Great Commoner," as they called Pitt, who became Secretary of
State, with the management of the war and foreign affairs. Newcastle
became again First Lord of the Treasury, but without one of his old
supporters, and Legge Chancellor of the Exchequer; Holderness, a mere
cipher, was the other Secretary of State; Anson was placed at the head
of the Admiralty; Lord Temple was made Lord Privy Seal; and Pratt, an
able lawyer and friend of Pitt, Attorney-General. Fox condescended to
take the office of Paymaster of the Forces; and thus, after a long and
severe struggle, the feeble aristocrats, who had so long managed and
disgraced the country, were compelled to admit fresh blood into the
Government in the person of Pitt. But they still entertained the idea
that they only were the men, and that wisdom would die with them. One
and all, even the otherwise sagacious Chesterfield, prognosticated only
dishonour and ruin for such a plebeian appointment. "We are no longer a
nation," said Chesterfield; "I never yet saw so dreadful a prospect."

And, for some time, events seemed to justify these apprehensions
by the old governing class. Not a plan of Pitt's but failed. His
first enterprise was one of that species that has almost universally
failed--a descent on the coast of France. Early in September a fleet
of sixteen ships of the line, attended by transports and frigates, was
despatched to Rochefort, carrying ten regiments of foot, under the
command of Sir John Mordaunt. Sir Edward Hawke commanded the fleet, and
the troops were landed on a small fortified island named Aix, at the
mouth of the Charente. There, in spite of strict orders, the English
soldiers and sailors became awfully drunk, and committed shocking
excesses and cruelties on the inhabitants. The rumour of this made the
forces in Rochefort furious for vengeance; and when the army was to
be landed within a few miles of the place in order to its attack, as
usual in such cases, the admiral and general came to an open quarrel.
Mordaunt betrayed great timidity, and demanded of Hawke how the troops,
in case of failure, were to be brought off again. Hawke replied, that
must depend on wind and tide--an answer which by no means reassured
Mordaunt. General Conway, next in command to Mordaunt, was eager for
advancing to the attack; and Colonel Wolfe--afterwards the conqueror
of Quebec--offered to make himself master of Rochefort with three
ships of war and five hundred men at his disposal. The brave offer
was rejected, but the report of it at once pointed out Wolfe to Pitt
as one of the men whom he was on the look-out to work with. Howe, the
next in command to Hawke, proposed to batter down the fort of Fouras
before advancing on Rochefort; but Mordaunt adopted the resort of all
timid commanders--a council of war--which wasted the time in which the
assault should have been made, and then it was declared useless to
attempt it; the fortifications of Aix were destroyed, and the fleet put
back. Mordaunt, like Byng, was brought before a court-martial, but with
very different results. He was honourably acquitted--perhaps, under the
atrocious 12th Article of War, the Court feared even to censure; and
it was said by the people that Byng was shot for not doing enough, and
Mordaunt acquitted for doing nothing at all.

In North America matters were still more unprosperous. Lord Loudon
had raised twelve thousand men for the purpose of taking Louisburg
and driving the French from our frontiers; but he did nothing, not
even preventing the attack of Marshal Montcalm, the Commander-in-Chief
in Canada, on Fort William Henry, which he destroyed, thus leaving
unprotected the position of New York. At the same time, Admiral
Holbourne, who was to have attacked the French squadron off Louisburg,
did not venture to do it, because he said they had eighteen ships to
his seventeen, and a greater weight of metal.

Such was the condition into which an army and navy, once illustrious
through the victories of Marlborough and Blake, were reduced by the
aristocratic imbecility of the Newcastles, Bedfords, and Cumberlands.
This last princely general had, in fact, put the climax to his career.
He had placed himself at the head of fifty thousand confederate
troops, in which there were no English, except the officers of his own
staff, to defend his father's Electorate of Hanover. But this ruthless
general, who never won a battle except the solitary one of Culloden,
against a handful of famished men, was found totally incompetent to
cope with the French general, d'Estrées. He allowed the French to cross
the deep and rapid Weser, and continued to fall back before them as
they entered the Electorate, until he was driven to the village of
Hastenbeck, near Hameln, where the enemy overtook and defeated him.
He then continued his retreat across the desolate Lüneburg Heath, to
cover Stade, near the mouth of the Elbe, where the archives and other
valuable effects of Hanover had been deposited for safety. At this time
Richelieu succeeded to the command of d'Estrées in this quarter, and
he continued to drive Cumberland before him, taking Hameln, Göttingen,
and Hanover itself, and soon after Bremen and Verden. Thus were Hanover
and Verden, which had cost England such millions to defend, seized by
France; nor did the disgrace end here. Cumberland was cooped up in
Stade, and compelled, on the 8th of December, to sign a convention at
Closter-Seven, by which he engaged to send home the Hesse and Brunswick
troops, and to disperse the Hanoverians into different quarters, not to
serve again during the war.

Meanwhile, Frederick of Prussia was waging a tremendous war with
France, Russia, and Austria. To disable Austria before her allies
could come up to her aid, he suddenly, in April, made an eruption
into Bohemia. His army threaded the defiles of the mountains of the
Bohemian frontier in different divisions, and united before Prague,
where Marshal Braun and Prince Charles of Lorraine met him with eighty
thousand men, his own forces amounting to about seventy thousand. A
most obstinate and sanguinary conflict took place, which continued from
nine in the morning till eight at night, in which twenty-four thousand
Austrians were killed, wounded, or taken prisoners, and eighteen
thousand Prussians. The Prussians were destitute of pontoons to cross
the Moldau, or their writers contend that not an Austrian would have
escaped. But Marshal Daun advancing out of Moravia with another strong
army, to which sixteen thousand of the fugitives from Prague had united
themselves, Frederick was compelled to abandon the siege of Prague, and
march to near Kolin, where he was thoroughly defeated by Daun, with a
loss of thirteen thousand of his bravest troops.

This was a blow which for a time completely prostrated the Prussian
monarch. Nothing but the most indomitable spirit and the highest
military talent could have saved any man under such circumstances. But
Frederick had disciplined both his generals and soldiers to despise
reverses, and he relied on their keeping at bay the host of enemies
with which he was surrounded till he had tried a last blow. On the
field of Rosbach, near the plain of Lützen, where Gustavus Adolphus
fell, after having relieved Marshal Keith at Leipsic, Frederick gave
battle to the united French and Austrians. The French numbered forty
thousand men, the Austrians twenty thousand; yet, with his twenty
thousand against sixty thousand, Frederick, on the 5th of November,
took the field. His inferior numbers favoured the stratagem which he
had planned. After fighting fiercely for awhile, his troops gave way,
and appeared to commence a hasty retreat. This, however, was continued
only till the French and Austrians were thrown off their guard, when
the Prussians suddenly turned, and received the headlong squadrons
with a murderous coolness and composure. The Austrians, confounded,
fled at once; and Soubise, a general of the princely House of Rohan,
who owed his appointment to Madame Pompadour, was totally incapable of
coping with the Prussian veterans. He saw his troops flying in wild
rout, and galloped off with them, leaving a vast number of slain, seven
thousand prisoners, and the greater part of his baggage, artillery, and
standards in the hands of the enemy.

The Battle of Rosbach raised the fame of Frederick wonderfully all
over Europe. He soon roused himself, however, for fresh efforts.
Whilst he had been thus engaged on the Saale, the Austrians had again
overrun Silesia, defeating the Prussians under the Duke of Bevern,
storming the great fortress of Schweidnitz, and making themselves
masters of Breslau, the capital. In spite of his reduced numbers and
the advancing winter, Frederick immediately directed his march towards
Silesia, gathering reinforcements as he went, so that by the 5th of
December, just one month from the Battle of Rosbach, he came up with
Prince Charles of Lorraine and Marshal Daun at Lissa, a small village
near Breslau, and with forty thousand men encountered and defeated
nearly seventy thousand Austrians, killing and wounding twenty-seven
thousand of them, taking above fifty standards, one hundred cannon,
four thousand waggons, and much other spoil. This battle at once freed
Silesia from the Austrians, who trooped over the mountains in all
haste, and left the victorious king to close this unexampled campaign.

To add to the fame of Frederick, news arrived that Marshal Lewald, with
twenty thousand Prussians, had beaten the great horde of Russians at
Jägerndorf, and driven them out of Prussia, with the single exception
of Memel; that Lewald and Manteuffel had swept the Swedes out of
Pomerania, taking three thousand prisoners; and that Prince Henry of
Prussia and Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, to whom Frederick, at the
urgent request of England, had entrusted the command of the Hanoverian
and Hessian troops which Cumberland had abandoned, had, with these
very troops, driven the French from Lüneburg, Zell, and Hanover. These
troops, it is true, were bound by the Convention of Closter-Seven
not to fight again during the war; but the generals pleaded that the
cruelties and rapacity of the French in Hanover were such as set aside
all compacts.

Pitt, though he remained determined against our continuing to send
soldiers to Germany, was so elated at the success of Frederick that,
on the meeting of Parliament, on the 1st of December, he supported
the vote of six hundred and seventy thousand pounds as a subsidy to
Prussia, George having entered into a new convention with Frederick
to defend his Electorate. Pitt, on the same occasion, pronounced a
glowing eulogium on Clive's proceedings in India. This great Minister
had, in fact, formed the most extensive designs for the colonial
aggrandisement of England, and the repulse of France in those quarters.
At his suggestion, Lord Loudon had been sent to North America, and
as he had failed to render any service, General Abercrombie had gone
out to supersede him. Pitt already, however, had his eye on a young
officer, Wolfe, whom he deemed the true hero for that service; whilst,
on the opposite side of the globe, he was watching the proceedings
of another young officer with immense pleasure--namely, Clive. These
two remarkable men, under the fostering genius of Pitt, were destined
to destroy the ascendency of France in those regions, and to lay
the foundations of British power on a scale of splendour beyond all
previous conception.

[Illustration: LORD CLIVE. (_After the Portrait by Gainsborough._)]

Clive, a young clerk of the Company's, at Madras, had deserted his
desk, taken a commission, and, as early as 1748, had distinguished
himself by baffling the French commanders Dupleix and Bussy, at
Pondicherry. In 1751 he had taken Arcot from Chunda Sahib, the Viceroy
of the Carnatic, and, aided by the Mahrattas, defeated Rajah Sahib,
the son of Chunda, in a splendid victory at Arnee. In 1752 he raised
the siege of Trichinopoly, where the Nabob of Arcot was besieged by
the French. In 1755, landing at Bombay from England, he, with Admiral
Watson, made an expedition to Gheriah, the stronghold of the celebrated
pirate Angria, demolished it, and seized the spoils, valued at one
hundred and twenty thousand pounds. In 1757 he took Calcutta from the
Nabob Surajah Dowlah, the ally of the French, who had captured it, and
shut up the English prisoners in the memorable Black Hole, where, in
one night (June 20, 1756), out of one hundred and forty-six persons,
one hundred and twenty-three perished. Clive also captured the city
of Hooghly, defeated Dowlah, and compelled him to cede the town and
vicinity. He then drove the French from their factory of Chandernagore;
marched forward on Moorshedabad, defeated Surajah Dowlah in a battle
extraordinary for the rout of an immense army by a mere handful of men,
at Plassey (1757); deposed him, and seated on his throne Meer Jaffier.
From this day dates British supremacy in India.

In America Lord Amherst took the chief command, with Wolfe as his
second; Abercrombie being despatched to reduce the French forts on
Lakes George and Champlain, and thus open the way into Canada. On
the 2nd of June the British fleet, commanded by Admiral Boscawen,
and carrying Lord Amherst and twelve thousand men, anchored before
Louisburg, the capital of Cape Breton. The French had six thousand
men, soldiers and marines, and five ships of the line were drawn up in
the harbour. The landing was therefore effected with difficulty; but
Wolfe, who led the way in person, showed such spirit and activity, and
the Admiral and General, unlike the usual conduct on such occasions,
acted together with such unanimity and zeal, that the French were
compelled, towards the end of July, to capitulate, and the soldiers of
the garrison were sent to England, prisoners of war. The whole island
of Cape Breton submitted to the conquerors, and the island of St. John
was also reduced by Colonel Lord Rollo. St. John's was afterwards named
Prince Edward's Island, in compliment to the royal family.

The events on land were very different. Abercrombie, like General
Braddock, advanced with all the careless presumption of a second-rate
general. The grand object was to reduce Fort Ticonderoga, built on
a neck of land between Lakes George and Champlain. At the landing,
Lord Howe, one of the best officers, was killed, but they drove back
the French, and advanced on the fort, which was of great strength,
defended by a garrison of four thousand men, commanded by the Marquis
de Montcalm, the Commander-in-Chief of the Canadians, himself. Montcalm
had raised a breastwork eight feet high, and made in front of it a
barricade of felled trees with their branches outwards. Abercrombie,
with a foolish confidence, advanced right upon this barricade, without
waiting for the coming up of his artillery, which was detained by the
badness of the roads. With a reckless disregard of the lives of his
men, he commanded them to attempt to storm these defences, and after
fighting with the usual courage of Englishmen for several hours, and
two thousand of them being slaughtered, it was found that their efforts
were useless, and they were ordered to retire. Brigadier Forbes, who
had been sent against Fort Dupuesne, an attempt so disastrous to both
Washington and Braddock, executed his task with the utmost promptitude
and success. Forbes took possession of it on the 25th of November, and,
in compliment to the great Minister under whose auspices they fought,
named it Fort Pitt, since grown from a solitary fort into Pittsburg.

In Europe, Pitt was still bent on those attacks on the coast of
France which long experience had shown were of little use as means of
successful war, but highly objectionable, as fraught with excessive
inhumanity to the innocent people of the seaboard. This, his second
expedition, was aimed at St. Malo. A fleet of eighteen ships of the
line, thirteen frigates, with sloops, fire-ships, and bomb-ketches,
was put under the command of Lord Howe; but as Sir Edward Hawke, his
senior, struck his flag, and refused to serve as second, Lord Anson,
to get rid of the difficulty, put himself nominally at the head of
the squadron. The command of the troops was given to the Duke of
Marlborough, a brave man, but destitute of the genius of his father,
and Lord George Sackville and Lord Granby were under him. There
were fourteen thousand troops of the line and six thousand marines.
With these went a number of aristocratic volunteers, amongst them
Lord Downe, Sir John Armitage, and Sir John Lowther, the possessor
of fourteen thousand pounds a-year. On the 5th of June, 1758, the
transports anchored in Cancale Bay, and next day the troops were landed
and led against St. Malo. This town, built on one of a cluster of
granite rocks which rise out of the sea on that iron-bound coast, they
found too strongly fortified to storm, but they burnt a hundred and
thirty privateers and a great quantity of small craft in the harbour,
and then returned to their ships. They then sailed for Le Hâvre, but
were prevented by the wind from doing the same damage, and so continued
their voyage to Granville and Cherbourg, whence they were driven by
storm; and thereupon coasting a considerable way farther, but to no
purpose, the fleet returned to Portsmouth, the main result being a
heavy expense. Fox and the Opposition in the Commons called it breaking
windows with guineas; and the old king, who had expressed his dislike
of this sort of warfare, said we should brag of having burnt the French
ships, and the French of having driven us away.

The next month Pitt despatched a smaller fleet and force to destroy
the port of Cherbourg, which the French had constructed under Cardinal
Fleury, and, as they stated by an inscription, "for all eternity." This
time the command was given to General Bligh. Howe was admiral, and on
board with him went Prince Edward, afterwards Duke of York. On the 8th
of August the troops were landed at Cherbourg, which was deserted by
the garrison, and they destroyed the forts and harbour, demolished a
hundred and seventy pieces of iron cannon, and carried off twenty-two
fine brass ones. After re-embarking and returning to Portsmouth, Bligh
was ordered to pay another visit to St. Malo, but still found it too
strong for him; yet he landed his men in the bay of St. Lunaire,
about two leagues westward of St. Malo; and the weather immediately
driving Howe to sea, the army was marched overland to St. Cast, some
leagues off. The soldiers were allowed to rove about and plunder, till
Bligh heard that the Duke of Aiguillon was advancing against them at
the head of a strong force. Bligh then, but in no hurry, marched for
the port of St. Cast, followed by Aiguillon, who waited till he had
embarked all but one thousand five hundred men, when he fell upon them,
and slaughtered a thousand of them in a hollow way amongst the rocks
leading down to the shore.

In Germany, Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, after driving the French
out of Hanover, had followed them across the Rhine this spring, and
on the 23rd of June defeated them at Crefeld, with a slaughter of six
thousand men. He then took Düsseldorf; but the French court recalling
the incapable Clermont, and sending Marshal De Contades with fresh
forces against him, and Prince Soubise defeating the Hessians, he was
obliged to fall back into Westphalia, where he was joined by the Duke
of Marlborough and Lord George Sackville with the English auxiliaries,
but too late to effect anything further. Shortly afterwards the Duke
of Marlborough died suddenly, under strong suspicions of having been
poisoned.

Frederick of Prussia, meanwhile, had been beset by Austrians, Russians,
and French, and had never been able to retire to winter quarters. He
had continued to blockade Schweidnitz amid frost and snow, and having
reduced it, at the very first symptoms of spring he suddenly burst into
Moravia, and invested Olmütz, its capital. There he had to contend
with the able and cautious Marshal Daun and General Laudohn, nearly as
efficient. Laudohn managed to seize three thousand waggons, bringing
from Silesia supplies for Frederick; and whilst the king was in this
state of destitution for food even for his army, a hundred thousand
Russians, under General Fermor, were marching steadily on Berlin. They
had taken Königsberg, laid waste the whole country beyond the Vistula,
and then pushed on for the Oder. They had arrived before Küstrin,
only a few marches from Berlin, when Frederick, leaving his brother,
Prince Henry, to keep Daun and Laudohn in check before Olmütz, marched
against them. A terrible battle took place on the plain of Zörndorf,
near Custrin, in which neither Prussians nor Russians gave quarter,
and which lasted from nine in the morning till seven at night. Twenty
thousand Russians were left killed or wounded on the field, and eleven
thousand Prussians. The Russians retired with reluctance, and did not
wholly evacuate the Prussian territory till the end of October. But
Frederick himself, long before that time, had been compelled to hurry
back to the support of his brother Henry, whom Daun had driven back
into Saxony. He fixed his camp at Hochkirch, near Bautzen, and close to
the Bohemian lines. But a few mornings after, before daybreak, Daun and
Laudohn burst into his camp by a combined movement, and threw the whole
into confusion before the troops could muster. When Frederick awoke at
the uproar and rushed from his tent, all around was one fearful scene
of slaughter and flight. The news of this defeat of the generally
victorious Prussians threw the court of Vienna into ecstacies, for
they thought that Frederick was ruined; and so he might have been
had Daun been as alert to follow him up as he had been successful in
surprising him. But Daun was naturally slow; a very few days sufficed
for Frederick to collect fresh forces around him, and he suddenly
darted away into Silesia. There he raised the siege of Neisse, which
was invested by another division of the Austrian army; then, falling
back on Dresden, threatened by Daun, he drove him back, and, marching
to Breslau, fixed there his winter quarters.

The year 1759 is one of the most glorious in our annals. Pitt, by his
own spirit, and by selecting brave and able men, had infused such
ardour into our service, that our officers no longer seemed the same
men. Still, France, stung by the reverses and insults which we had
heaped on her, but especially by our ravages of her coast, contemplated
a retaliatory descent on ours. Gunboats were accumulated at Le Hâvre
and other ports, and fleets were kept ready at Toulon and Brest, as
well as a squadron at Dunkirk, under Admiral Thurot, a brave seaman.
The king sent a message to the Commons, demanding the calling out of
the militia; and the twenty-four thousand French prisoners who had
been left in great destitution by their own Government on our hands,
were marched into the interior of the country. In July Admiral Rodney
anchored in the roads of Le Hâvre, bombarded the town, set it on fire
in several places, and destroyed many of the gunboats. In August the
Toulon fleet, commanded by Admiral De la Clue, on its way to operate
against our coast, was pursued by Boscawen, who had recently returned
from America, and overtaken off Lagos, in Algarve. De la Clue was
mortally wounded, and his ship--reckoned the finest in the French
navy--and three others were taken, whilst a fifth was run aground
and burnt. At the same time the blockades of Dunkirk and Brest were
vigorously kept up.

[Illustration: SURPRISE OF FREDERICK AT HOCHKIRCH. (_See p._ 131.)]

The enemy's fleets being thus destroyed or shut up, Pitt determined on
his great enterprise, the conquest of Canada. The idea was worthy of
his genius. His feeble predecessors had suffered the French from this
neighbouring colony to aspire to the conquest of our North American
territory. They had built strong forts on the lakes and down the valley
of the Ohio; they intended to connect them with the Mississippi, and
then to drive us out of the country. Had not Pitt come into office
they might probably have succeeded. But Pitt had already commenced the
driving in of the French outposts, and he now planned the complete
expulsion of that nation from their advanced posts and from Canada
itself. His scheme had three parts, which were all to concentrate
themselves into one grand effort--the taking of Quebec, the capital.
It was a daring enterprise, for Canada was ably governed and defended
by Marshal de Montcalm, a man of great military experience and talent,
and highly esteemed for his noble character by the colonists and the
Indians, vast tribes of whom he had won over to his interest by his
courtesy and conciliatory manner, whilst the English had as much
disgusted them by their haughty surliness. But Pitt had picked his men
for the occasion, and especially for the grand _coup-de-main_, the
taking of Quebec. He formed his whole plan himself, and though it was
not perfect, and was greatly criticised by military men, it succeeded
though not in effecting the combination which he contemplated, in all
its parts.

[Illustration: ADMIRAL RODNEY BOMBARDING LE HÂVRE. (_See p._ 132.)]

The left of his operations was entrusted to General Prideaux with
a body of colonial militia, and Sir William Johnson with another
of friendly Indians, over whom he had a wonderful ascendency. This
united force was to march against the fort of Niagara, reduce it,
and then, crossing Lake Ontario, advance on Montreal. The centre
of his operations was entrusted to General Amherst, who superseded
Abercrombie. With twelve thousand men he was again to attempt
Ticonderoga, open the navigation of Lake Champlain, and then, joining
Prideaux and Johnson at Montreal, descend the St. Lawrence to support
Wolfe, who was to be conveyed by sea to the St. Lawrence, and to
prepare for the storming of Quebec, it being hoped that, by the time of
his arrival, the two other divisions of the army would have come up.

In pursuance of this plan of the campaign, Prideaux and Johnson arrived
before the fort of Niagara in the middle of July, which they found very
strong, and garrisoned by six hundred men. Prideaux was soon killed by
the bursting of a shell, but Johnson continued the siege with great
ability, having to invest the fort on one hand, whilst he was menaced
on the other by a mixed body of French and Indians, one thousand seven
hundred in number, who came to relieve the fort. The attack upon him
commenced with a terrible war-whoop of the Indians, which, mingling
with the roar of the great cataract near, made the most horrible din
imaginable. But this did not disconcert the English and their savage
allies, who received them with such steady courage, that in less than
an hour they were put to the rout in sight of their own garrison, and
pursued for five miles with dreadful slaughter. The garrison thereupon
capitulated, remaining prisoners of war. There, however, Sir William
Johnson's career stopped. From various causes, not foreseen, he was not
able to advance beyond the Ontario to unite with Amherst. That general
had fully succeeded in taking Ticonderoga and Crown Point, but he found
the French so strongly posted on an island at the upper end of Lake
Champlain, that he was compelled to stop and build boats to enable his
army to reach and dislodge them; and it was not till October that he
was ready to proceed, when he was driven back repeatedly by tempests,
and compelled to go into winter quarters.

Wolfe, meanwhile, had reached the St. Lawrence in June, on board a
fleet commanded by Admiral Saunders. The navigation of that river was
considered very dangerous, but in ascending they captured two small
store-ships, and found on board some excellent charts of the river,
which enabled the admiral to ascend safely. On the 27th of June the
army was landed on the Isle of Orleans, in the middle of the St.
Lawrence, in front of Quebec.

The Canadas at that period contained only about sixty thousand souls,
Quebec about seven thousand. But the city occupies a most formidable
site. It stands on a steep and rocky promontory running into the left
bank of the St. Lawrence, about a hundred leagues from its mouth, and
where the river, from a breadth of from twelve to twenty miles, rapidly
narrows to about one mile. The city is built part on the rocky heights,
part on the slopes below. Up the river from the city rose still higher
and almost inaccessible steeps, called the Heights of Abraham, and, on
the other hand, the side of the city down the stream was bounded by the
river St. Charles, which there runs into the St. Lawrence. The stretch
of ground between the St. Charles and the stream of Montmorency, some
miles lower, called Beauport, was connected by a bridge with Quebec.
On this ground, as the most accessible side of the city, Montcalm
had encamped his army, consisting altogether of ten thousand French,
Canadians, and Indians.

Wolfe raised batteries at Point Levi and on the island, and bombarded
the town, but he could not draw the wary Montcalm from his strong
position. In his front lay the river and some unapproachable sandbanks,
behind and around him rocks and dense woods inaccessible. Once only
he made a rush across the river, and endeavoured, with a detachment
of one thousand six hundred men, to gain the batteries on Point Levi;
but his troops soon saw the attempt to be hopeless, and retired. No
measures were neglected by Wolfe, on his part, to draw Montcalm from
his position. He marched along the banks of the Montmorency opposite to
him, and made feints as if he would cross it somewhere above him, but
to no purpose--Montcalm knew his advantage. Wolfe wrote home, that if
Montcalm had but shut himself up in Quebec, he could have taken the
town very easily, but he could not readily force him from his admirable
position. Growing at length impatient, he determined to attack him
where he was, and he dispatched Admiral Holmes up the river with a
number of transports, as though he contemplated something in that
quarter. He then landed, on the 31st of July, a body of troops near the
mouth of the Montmorency, which there falls three hundred feet into the
St. Lawrence. He had discovered a ford at some distance up the river,
and dispatched Brigadier Townshend to cross there and attack Montcalm
in flank, whilst he himself, by means of the ships and their boats,
gained the beach and attacked in front. The _Centurion_ man-of-war was
placed to engage a battery which swept the place of landing, and then
the troops were conveyed in boats, which drew little water, towards
the shore. Some of these, however, got entangled amongst rocks, and
created a delay in getting them off. By this time the French were
hurrying down towards the landing-place with their artillery, and began
to fire murderously from the banks above upon them. Wolfe, seeing that
Townshend would cross the ford before they were ready to co-operate,
sent an officer to recall him. At this time, the Grenadiers having
reached the beach, rushed forward upon the entrenchments before the
rest of the troops could be got out of the boats to support them. They
were met by such a destructive fire that they were compelled to fall
back with much slaughter. By this time night was setting in, attended
by a storm, the roaring of which, mingling with the roar of the mighty
St. Lawrence as the tide fell, seemed to warn them to recover their
camp. The word was given to re-cross the river, and they made good
their retreat without the French attempting to pursue them, though the
Indians lurked in the rear to scalp such of the dead and such of the
wounded as could not be brought off.

Wolfe then held a council with his two next in command, the Brigadiers
Monckton and Townshend, and they resolved, as a desperate attempt,
to move up the river, and thus endeavour to draw Montcalm from his
unassailable position. Accordingly, leaving detachments to defend the
Isle of Orleans and Point Levi, the rest of the army ascended the St.
Lawrence for some miles, and pitched their camp on the right bank. To
attract still more attention, Admiral Holmes was ordered to put his
vessels in active motion for some days, as if seeking a landing-place
higher up the river. This stratagem, however, produced no other result
than that of Montcalm sending a detachment of one thousand five hundred
men to watch their proceedings. He himself maintained his old ground.

Completely disheartened by this result, Wolfe for a moment felt despair
of his object, and in that despairing mood, on the 9th of September, he
wrote to Pitt. He said that, "to the uncommon strength of the country,
the enemy had added, for the defence of the river, a great number
of floating batteries and boats; that the vigilance of the Indians
had prevented their effecting anything by surprise; that he had had
a choice of difficulties, and felt at a loss how to proceed; and he
concluded with the remark, that his constitution was entirely ruined,
without the consolation of having done any considerable service to the
State, or without any prospect of it."

But the despondency of Wolfe was but for a moment. Suddenly a new
idea--an inspiration, it seemed--burst upon him: he would scale the
Heights of Abraham--the point where no mortal ascent was dreamed of,
and which therefore was less defended, except by nature, than the rest
of the vicinity of the city. The ships were immediately ordered to make
a feint, under Admiral Saunders, opposite Montcalm's camp at Beauport,
and those under Holmes, at a point higher up the river. Attention being
thus drawn from himself, on the night of the 12th of September, when it
was pitch dark and the tide flowing, he put across the river to a small
inlet about two miles above Quebec, which ever since bears the name of
Wolfe's Cove.

They succeeded in landing unobserved by any of the sentinels posted
along the shore, where they had to wait for the boats fetching over the
second detachment, there not being boats enough. Before this arrived,
they began to climb the rocks by a narrow track, so steep and rugged
that they could only ascend by clinging to the bushes and projecting
crags. Directly above their heads was a watch-post of a captain and a
hundred and fifty men. There, as they drew near the summit, Colonel
Howe--a brother of Lord Howe, who fell at Ticonderoga--leading the van,
the watch became aware of a noise, and fired down the rocks, directed
by the sound. The English soldiers imprudently returned the volley
upwards, instead of reserving it until they had gained the ascent. They
continued their scramble up, however, with redoubled ardour, and the
French, on their sudden appearance, panic-struck, fled. The second
detachment soon followed them, and the whole little army stood on the
heights above the town before the break of day.

When Montcalm was informed of this wonderful feat, he thought it merely
some new feint to draw him from his lines; but when he had ascertained
with his own eyes the truth, he said, "I see them, indeed, where
they ought not to be; but, as we must fight, I shall crush them." He
immediately led his troops over the bridge of the St. Charles, and up
to the eminence above the town. There he found the English already
advanced in order of battle to within cannon-shot of Quebec. Wolfe
had drawn them up with much judgment. His left wing was formed in
what military men call _en potence_--that is, facing two ways, so as
to guard against being outflanked. In this wing, too, he had placed
a regiment of Highlanders, one of those which Pitt had formed, and
which had already shown its bravery. His right, extending towards the
St. Lawrence, had in the van the Grenadiers who had distinguished
themselves at the taking of Louisburg, supported by a regiment of the
line. Wolfe had taken his post on this wing. The sailors had managed
to drag up one cannon, and they had seized four other small guns at
the battery they had passed; that was all their artillery. But in
this respect Montcalm was no better off, for in his haste he had only
brought along with him two guns. He had ordered a cloud of Indians to
hover on the left of the English, and had lined the thickets and copses
with one thousand five hundred of his best marksmen. These concealed
skirmishers fired on the advancing pickets of the English with such
effect, that they fell back in confusion; but Wolfe hastened forward,
encouraged them to dash on, and ordered the first line to reserve their
fire till within forty yards of the enemy. The men well obeyed the
order, and marched briskly on without firing a shot, whilst the French
came hurrying forward, firing as they came. They killed many of the
English, but, as soon as these came within the forty yards' distance,
they poured a steady and well-directed a volley into the enemy that
did dreadful execution. Wolfe, with characteristic enthusiasm, was in
the front line, encouraging them by voice and action, and in less than
half an hour the French ranks broke, and many began to fly. Meanwhile
Wolfe, exposing himself to the very hottest fire, had been wounded in
the wrist by nearly the first discharge; and he had scarcely wrapped
his handkerchief around it, when another bullet hit him in the groin.
Still appearing to pay no attention to these serious wounds, he was
in the act of inciting his men to fresh efforts, when a ball pierced
his chest, and he fell. He was carried to the rear, and, whilst he
seemed to be in the very agony of death, one of those around him cried,
"See how they run!" "Who run?" exclaimed Wolfe, raising himself, with
sudden energy, on his elbow. "The enemy," replied the officer; "they
give way in all directions." "God be praised!" ejaculated Wolfe; "I
die happy!" and, falling back, he expired. Nearly at the same moment
Brigadier Monckton was severely wounded, and Brigadier Townshend took
the command, and completed the victory. Montcalm, also, had fallen. He
was struck by a musket-ball whilst endeavouring to rally his men, and
was carried into the city, where he died the next day. When told that
he could not live--"So much the better," replied this brave and able
man; "I shall not then live to see the surrender of Quebec." His second
in command was also mortally wounded, and being taken on board the
English ships, also died the next day. Of the French, one thousand five
hundred had fallen, and six hundred and forty of the English. On the
18th September, five days after the battle, the city capitulated, the
garrison marching out with the honours of war, and under engagement to
be conveyed to the nearest French port. Other fragments of the defeated
army retired to Montreal.

Whilst this glorious news came from the West, from the East arrived
tidings equally stirring. In India Colonel Coote, afterwards famous
as Sir Eyre Coote, defeated the French under Lally, and made himself
master of all Arcot. General Ford defeated the Marquis de Conflans, and
took Masulipatam, and afterwards defeated a detachment of Dutch, which
had landed from Java to aid our enemies in Bengal. Ford completely
routed them, and took the seven ships which had brought them over, and
which lay in the Hooghly.

At sea, Sir Edward Hawke attacked the French fleet under Admiral
Conflans at the mouth of the Vilaine in Quibéron Bay. The situation,
amid rocks and shoals, and with a sea running high, so late in the
year as the 20th of November, was most perilous, but Hawke scorned
all danger, attacked the French fleet close under their own shores,
took two men-of-war, sank four more, including the admiral's ship,
the _Soleil Royal_, and caused the rest, more or less damaged, to
take refuge up the river. Two of our own vessels were stranded in
the night, but their crews and stores were saved. For this brilliant
action, which crippled the French navy for the remainder of the war,
Hawke was thanked by Parliament, received from the king a pension of
one thousand five hundred pounds a-year for his own and his son's life,
and, in the next reign, was raised to the peerage. Thurot, meanwhile,
had escaped out of Dunkirk, but with only five ships, which kept out of
the way by seeking shelter in the ports of Sweden and Norway.

In Germany, Frederick of Prussia was hard put to it. A fresh army of
Russians, under General Soltikow, advanced to the Oder, and another
army of Austrians, under Laudohn, advanced to form a junction with
them. To prevent this, Frederick sent General Wedel to encounter the
Russians, but he was defeated by them on the 23rd of July, with heavy
loss. Frederick himself then hastened against them, but, before his
arrival, the Austrians had joined Soltikow, making a united force
of sixty thousand, which Frederick attacked, on the 12th of August,
with forty-eight thousand, at the village of Kunersdorf, close to
Frankfort-on-the-Oder. At first he was successful; but, attempting to
push his advantages, he was completely beaten, the whole of his army
being killed or scattered to three thousand men. So completely did his
ruin now seem accomplished, that, expecting the Russians, Austrians,
Poles, Swedes, and Saxons to come down on him on all sides, he once
more contemplated taking the poison that he still carried about him;
wrote a letter to that effect to his Prime Minister, and directed the
oath of allegiance to be taken to his nephew, and that his brother,
Prince Henry, should be regent; but finding that the Russians, who had
lost twenty thousand men, were actually drawing off, he again took
courage, was soon at the head of thirty thousand men, and with these
was hastening to the relief of Dresden, when he was paralysed by the
news that General Finck, with twelve thousand men, had suffered himself
to be surrounded at Maxen, and compelled to surrender. Despairing of
relieving Dresden during this campaign, Frederick eventually took up
his winter quarters at Freiberg, in Saxony, and employed himself in
raising and drilling fresh soldiers; compelled, however, to pay his
way by debasing both the Prussian coin, and the English gold which he
received in subsidy, by a very large alloy.

[Illustration: DEATH OF WOLFE. (After the Painting by Benjamin West,
P.R.A.)]

Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick was more successful. He was at the
head of an army of fifty-five thousand men, including ten or twelve
thousand English, under Lord George Sackville. As the French had
taken Frankfort-on-the-Main, he left the British and Hanoverian
troops, amounting to twenty-eight thousand men, to watch the French,
under Marshal de Contades, upon the Lippe, and set out to drive back
the other divisions of the French, under De Broglie. He found these
amounted to thirty-five thousand strong, but he did not hesitate
to engage them at Bergen, on the Nidda, near Frankfort. After a
hard-fought battle, he was defeated with a loss of two thousand men
and five pieces of cannon. De Broglie pushed rapidly after him, formed
a junction with Contades, and speedily reduced Cassel, Münster, and
Minden. There appeared every prospect of the whole Electorate of
Hanover being again overrun by them. The archives were once more sent
off to Stade, ready for embarkation. But Ferdinand now displayed
the superiority of his generalship. He left five thousand of his
troops, with an air of carelessness, in the way of the French, who,
unsuspicious of any stratagem, hastened forward to surprise them, when,
to their astonishment, they found the whole of Ferdinand's army had
been brought up in the night, and were drawn up behind a ridge near
Minden.

To approach Ferdinand's forces, the French were obliged to pass
a narrow ground between a river and a marsh, and were so cramped
that they committed the very error which cost them the battle of
Blenheim. They placed the cavalry in the centre, and made wings of
their infantry. The cavalry made a succession of furious charges on
Ferdinand's centre, but this stood compact and immovable, till the
French horse, being discouraged, the Allies charged in their turn, and
the centre of the army, the cavalry, being thus driven back, the whole
line gave way. At this moment Ferdinand sent orders to Lord George
Sackville to charge with the cavalry, which had been kept in reserve,
and thus complete the destruction of the flying French. But Lord
George, who had been constantly quarrelling with Ferdinand, as well as
his own second in command, the Marquis of Granby, now did not appear to
comprehend a succession of orders, and sat still. But Ferdinand, having
lost patience, sent word to the Marquis of Granby to advance, and he
promptly obeyed, but it was now too late; the French had got half an
hour's start. Thus the English cavalry was deprived of all share in
the victory; but the English foot had borne the chief brunt of the
attack, being in the centre. Six British regiments, in fact, for a time
maintained the whole shock of the French. Sackville was tried by court
martial, and dismissed from all his military appointments. The battle
of Minden was fought on the 1st of August, 1759.

The Parliament of England met on the 13th of October. Pitt, not without
cause, assumed much merit from the successes of the year; and, in
truth, so far as military matters went, rarely had this country reaped
such fame. We had triumphed in every quarter of the world. In January
came the news of the capture of Goree; in June, of Guadeloupe; in
August, that of the victory of Minden; in September, of the victory off
Lagos; in October, of the conquest of Quebec; in November, of Hawke's
victory off Quiberon. Horace Walpole said, "victories came so thick,
that every morning we were obliged to ask what victory there was, for
fear of missing one." At the same time, the condition of our trade
warranted the inscription afterwards placed on Chatham's monument in
the Guildhall, that he caused commerce to flourish with war.

The earliest martial event of the year 1760 was the landing of Thurot,
the French admiral, at Carrickfergus, on the 28th of February. He had
been beating about between Scandinavia and Ireland till he had only
three ships left, and but six hundred soldiers. But Carrickfergus being
negligently garrisoned, Thurot made his way into the town and plundered
it, but was soon obliged to abandon it. He was overtaken by Captain
Elliot and three frigates before he had got out to sea, his ships were
taken, he himself was killed, and his men were carried prisoners to
Ramsey, in the Isle of Man.

In April the French made an attempt to recover Quebec.
Brigadier-General Murray had been left in command of the troops, six
thousand in number, and the fleet had returned to England. The Marquis
de Vaudreuil, now the French governor at Montreal, formed a plan of
dropping down the St. Lawrence the moment the ice broke up, and before
the mouth of the river was clear for ships to ascend from England. He
therefore held in readiness five thousand regular troops, and as many
militia, and the moment the ice broke in April, though the ground was
still covered with snow, he embarked them in ships and boats under the
command of Chevalier de Levis, an officer of reputation. On the 28th of
that month they were within sight of Quebec. They had landed higher
up than where Wolfe did, and were now at the village of Sillery, not
far from Wolfe's place of ascent. Murray, who had only about three
thousand men available for such a purpose, the rest having been reduced
by sickness, or being needed to man the fortifications, yet ventured
to march out against them. He was emulous of the fame of Wolfe, and
attacked this overwhelming force with great impetuosity, but was
soon compelled to retire into Quebec with the loss of one thousand
men killed and wounded. This was a serious matter with their scanty
garrison, considering the numbers of the enemy, and the uncertainty of
the arrival of succour.

Levis, who knew that his success depended on forestalling any English
arrivals, lost no time in throwing up trenches and preparing batteries.
Had the river continued closed, Quebec must soon have reverted to the
French; but, on the 11th of May, the English were rejoiced to see a
frigate approaching, and this, only four days after, was followed
by another frigate and a ship of the line. These, commanded by Lord
Colville, immediately attacked and destroyed or drove on shore the
French flotilla, and at that sight Levis struck his tents and decamped
as rapidly as he came, leaving behind him his baggage and artillery.
Nor was the Marquis de Vaudreuil left long undisturbed at Montreal.
The three expeditions, which had failed to meet the preceding summer,
were now ordered to converge on Montreal--Amherst from Lake Ontario,
Haviland from Crown Point, and Murray from Quebec. Amherst had been
detained at Oswego by an outbreak of the Cherokees against us. This
native tribe had been friendly to us, and we had built a fort in
their country, and called it Fort Loudon, after Lord Loudon; but in
the autumn of 1759 they had been bought over by the French, and made
a terrible raid on our back settlements, murdering and scalping the
defenceless inhabitants. Mr. Lyttelton, the Governor of South Carolina,
marched against them with a thousand men, and compelled them to
submission; but no sooner had he retired than they recommenced their
hostilities, and Amherst sent against them Colonel Montgomery, with one
thousand two hundred men, who made a merciless retaliation, plundering
and burning their villages, so as to impress a sufficient terror upon
them.

Amherst had now ten thousand men; and though he had to carry all his
baggage and artillery over the Ontario in open boats, and to pass the
rapids of the upper St. Lawrence, he made a most able and prosperous
march, reducing the fort of Île Royale on the way, and reached the
isle of Montreal on the very same day as Murray, and a day before
Haviland. Vaudreuil saw that resistance was hopeless, and capitulated
on the 8th of September. The French were, according to contract, sent
home, under engagement not to come against us during the remainder of
the war. Besides this, Lord Byron chased a squadron of three frigates,
convoying twenty store-ships to Quebec, into the Bay of Chaleur, and
there destroyed them. Thus all the French possessions in North America,
excepting the recent and feeble settlement of New Orleans, remained in
our hands.

The war in Germany grew more and more bloody. Russia and Austria came
down upon Frederick this year with great forces. Daun entered Saxony;
Laudohn and Soltikow, Silesia. Laudohn defeated Fouqué at Landshut,
and took the fortress of Glatz, and compelled Frederick, though hard
pressed by Daun, to march for Silesia. The month was July, the weather
so hot that upwards of a hundred of his soldiers fell dead on the
march. Daun followed him, watching his opportunity to fall upon him
when engaged with other troops, but on the way Frederick heard of the
defeat of Fouqué and the fall of Glatz, and suddenly turned back to
reach Dresden before Daun, and take the city by storm; but as Daun was
too expeditious for him, and Maguire, the governor, an Irishman, paid
no heed to his demands for surrender, Frederick, who had lately been so
beautifully philosophising on the inhumanities of men, commenced a most
ferocious bombardment, not of the fortress but of the town. He burnt
and laid waste the suburbs, fired red-hot balls into the city to burn
it all down, demolished the finest churches and houses, and crushed
the innocent inhabitants in their flaming and falling dwellings, till
crowds rushed from the place in desperation, rather facing his ruthless
soldiers than the horrors of his bombardment.

Prevented by the arrival of Daun from utterly destroying Dresden,
though he had done enough to require thirty years of peace to restore
it, Frederick marched for Silesia. Laudohn, who was besieging Breslau,
quitted it at his approach; but the Prussian king, who found himself
surrounded by three armies, cut his way, on the 15th of August, at
Liegnitz, through Laudohn's division, which he denominated merely
"a scratch." He was instantly, however, called away to defend his
own capital from a combined army of Russians under Todleben, and of
Austrians under Lacy, another Irishman; but before he could reach them
they had forced an entrance, on the 9th of October. The Russians,
departing from their usual custom of plunder, touched nothing, but
levied a contribution of one million seven hundred thousand dollars on
the city. At Frederick's approach they withdrew.

But there was no rest for Frederick. Daun was overrunning Saxony; had
reduced Leipsic, Wittenberg, and Torgau. Frederick marched against him,
retook Leipsic, and came up with Daun at Torgau on the 3rd of November.
There a most sanguinary battle took place, which lasted all day and
late into the night. Within half an hour five thousand of Frederick's
grenadiers, the pride of his army, were killed by Daun's batteries of
four hundred cannon. Frederick was himself disabled and carried into
the rear, and altogether fourteen thousand Prussians were killed or
wounded, and twenty thousand of the Austrians. This scene of savage
slaughter closed the campaign. The Austrians evacuated Saxony, with the
exception of Dresden; the Russians re-passed the Oder, and Frederick
took up his winter quarters at Leipsic.

Prince Ferdinand this summer had to contend with numerous armies of the
French. De Broglie marched from Frankfort into Hesse with a hundred
thousand men. On the 10th of July they met the hereditary Prince of
Brunswick at Corbach, and defeated him, though he gained a decided
advantage over them a few days after at Emsdorf, taking the commander
of the division and five battalions prisoners. This was followed by
Ferdinand himself, who was at Warburg, where he took ten pieces of
artillery, killed one thousand five hundred of the French, and drove
them into the Dimel, where many were drowned. The British cavalry had
the greatest share in this victory. In fact, the Marquis of Granby led
them on all occasions with such spirit and bravery, that Ferdinand
placed them continually in the post of danger, where of course they
suffered more severely than the other troops.

Notwithstanding these checks at Emsdorf and Warburg, the French
obtained possession of Göttingen and Cassel. Ferdinand attempted, but
in vain, to dislodge them from Göttingen, and the hereditary Prince,
attempting to surprise the Marquis de Castries at Wesel, was repulsed
with a loss of one thousand two hundred men at Closter-Campen, near
that town, and was compelled to retreat. This closed the campaign, and
the French took up their winter quarters at Göttingen and Cassel.

Whilst these things were happening, and but two days before the mail
arrived bringing the news of the defeat at Closter-Campen, George II.
died. He had, till within the last two years, enjoyed robust health.
He had then a severe attack of gout, and from that time his eyes and
hearing had failed. On the morning of the 25th of October he rose at
his usual hour of six, drank his chocolate, inquired how the wind was,
being anxious for the arrival of the mails, and then suddenly fell,
uttered a groan, and expired. He was seventy-seven years of age.

[Illustration: MARTELLO TOWER ON THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM, QUEBEC.]




[Illustration: GEORGE WHITEFIELD PREACHING. (_See p._ 143.)]




CHAPTER VI.

PROGRESS OF THE NATION FROM THE REVOLUTION TO 1760.

    The Church after the Revolution--The Non-Jurors--The Act of
    Toleration--Comprehension Bill--Laxity of Religion--The Wesleys
    and Whitefield--Foundation of Methodism--Extension of the
    Movement--Literature--Survivors of the Stuart Period--Prose
    Writers: Bishop Burnet--Philosophers: Locke--Bishop
    Berkeley, etc.--Novelists: Fielding, Richardson, Smollett,
    and Sterne--Dr. Davenant--Bentley--Swift--Addison--Addison
    and Steele--Bolingbroke--Daniel Defoe--Lady Mary
    Wortley Montagu--Poets: Pope--His Prose Writings--Gay,
    Prior, Young, etc.--James Thomson, Allan Ramsay,
    Gray, and Minor Lights--Dramatists--Physical Science:
    Astronomers--Mathematicians--Electricians--Chemists--Medical
    Discoverers--Music: Purcell--Italian Music--Handel--Church
    Music--The Academy of Ancient Music and other
    Societies--Architecture--Wren and his Buildings--St. Paul's--His
    Churches and Palaces--Vanbrugh--Gibbs--Hawksmoor--Minor
    Architects--Painting and Sculpture: Lely and Kneller--Other Foreign
    Painters and Decorators--Thornhill--Other English Artists--Hogarth
    and his Works--Exhibition of British Artists--Sculptors--Shipping,
    Colonies, Commerce, and Manufactures--Increase of Canals--Woollen
    and Silk Trades--Irish Linens--Lace--Iron, Copper, and other
    Industries--Increase of the large Towns.


The Revolution of 1688, which overthrew absolutism in the State,
overthrew it also in the Church. The political principles of William
of Orange, and the Whigs who brought him in, were not more opposed to
the absolutism of the Stuarts than the ecclesiastical principles of
the new king and queen, and the prelates whom they introduced into the
Church, were to the high-churchism of Laud, Sancroft, Atterbury, and
their section of the Establishment. When Parliament, on the accession
of William and Mary, presented the Oath of Allegiance to the Lords
and Commons, eight of the bishops, including Sancroft, Archbishop of
Canterbury, refused it; and of these, five were of the number of the
seven who had refused to sign James II.'s Declaration of Indulgence,
and thus gave the immediate occasion to the outbreak ending in the
Revolution. Thus a fresh faction was produced in the Establishment,
that of the Non-jurors, who were, after much delay and patience,
finally excluded from their livings. As the existing law could not
touch the non-juring bishops so long as they absented themselves from
Parliament, where the oath had to be put to them, a new Act was passed,
providing that all who did not take the new oaths before the 1st of
August, 1689, should be suspended six months, and at the end of that
time, in case of non-compliance, should be ejected from their sees.
Still the Act was not rigorously complied with; they were indulged
for a year longer, when, continuing obstinate, they were, on the 1st
of February, 1691, excluded from their sees. Two of the eight had
escaped this sentence by dying in the interim--namely, the Bishops of
Worcester and Chichester. The remaining six who were expelled were
Sancroft, the Primate, Ken of Bath and Wells, Turner of Ely, Frampton
of Gloucester, Lloyd of Norwich, and White of Peterborough. In the room
of these were appointed prelates of Whig principles, the celebrated
Dr. Tillotson being made Primate. Other vacancies had recently or did
soon fall out; so that, within three years of his accession, William
had put in sixteen new bishops, and the whole body was thus favourable
to his succession, and, more or less, to the new views of Church
administration.

Having obtained a favourable episcopal bench, King William now
endeavoured to introduce measures of the utmost wisdom and
importance--measures of the truest liberality and the profoundest
policy--namely, an Act of Toleration of dissent, and an Act of
Comprehension, by which it was intended to allow Presbyterian ministers
to occupy livings in the Church without denying the validity of their
ordination, and also to do away with various things in the ritual
of the Church which drove great numbers from its community. By the
Act of Toleration--under the name of "An Act for exempting their
Majesties' Protestant subjects dissenting from the Church of England
from the penalties of certain laws"--dissenters were exempt from all
penalties for not attending church and for attending their own chapels,
provided that they took the new oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy, and
subscribed to the declaration against Transubstantiation, and also that
their chapels were registered, and their services conducted without the
doors being locked or barred. As the Quakers would take no oaths, they
were allowed to subscribe a declaration of fidelity to the Government,
and a profession of their Christian belief.

But the Comprehension Bill was not so fortunate. Ten bishops, with
twenty dignified clergymen, were appointed as a commission to make
such alterations in the liturgy and canons, and such plans for the
reformation of the ecclesiastical courts as, in their opinion, best
suited the exigencies of the times, and were necessary to remove
the abuses, and render more efficient the services of the Church.
The list of these commissioners comprised such men as Tillotson,
Stillingfleet, Sharp, Kidder, Hall, Tenison, and Fowler. They met
in the Jerusalem Chamber, and began their labours preparatory to
this great comprehensive bill. In order to sanction these changes,
Convocation was summoned, and then the storm broke loose. The Jacobites
and the discontented cried out they were going to pull the Church down;
the High Churchmen declared it was a scheme to hand over the Church
to the Presbyterians; the Universities cried that all the men engaged
in the plan were traitors to the true faith, and the king himself was
not spared. The High Churchmen who were included in the commission
fled out of it amain, and Convocation threw out the whole reform as
an abomination. Convocation having given this blow to all hopes of
ecclesiastical reform, was prorogued to the 24th of January, 1690, and
on the 6th of February was dissolved with the Parliament, nor was it
suffered to meet again for business till the last year of the reign of
William.

Burnet describes the state of religion and intelligence in the nation
at the period of Anne's reign as most lamentable, the clergy as "dead
and lifeless: the most remiss in their labours in private, and the
least severe in their lives," of all that he had seen amongst all
religions at home or abroad; the gentry "the worst instructed and
the least knowing of any of their rank that he ever went amongst;"
and the common people beyond all conception "ignorant in matters of
religion." The words of Atterbury, a high Tory, were quite as strong.
A description of the state of religion in the country, drawn up by
him, was presented by Convocation to the queen, which stated that "the
manifest growth of immorality and profaneness," "the relaxation and
decay of the discipline of the Church," the "disregard to all religious
places, persons, and things," had scarcely had a parallel in any age.
Dr. Calamy, a great Nonconformist, equally complains that the "decay of
real religion, both in and out of the Church," was most visible. Under
the Georges much the same state of affairs prevailed. The episcopal
bench was Whig, though very apathetic; while the clergy were Tory, and
disinclined to listen to their superiors.

It was at this era of religious apathy that John Wesley (_b._ 1703;
_d._ 1791), and Charles, his brother (_b._ 1708; _d._ 1788), and
George Whitefield (_b._ 1714), came forward to preach a revival, and
laid the foundation of Methodism. These young men, students at Oxford,
all of them originally of clerical families but Whitefield--who was
the son of an innkeeper--with Hervey, afterwards the author of the
well-known "Meditations amongst the Tombs," and some others of their
fellow-collegians, struck by the dearth of religious life of the time,
met in their rooms for prayer and spiritual improvement. They were soon
assailed with the nicknames of "Sacramentarians," "Bible Moths," and
finally, "Methodists," a term current against the Puritans in those
days, and suggested by the appellative _Methodistæ_, given to a college
of physicians in ancient Rome, in consequence of the strict regimen
which they prescribed to their patients.

In 1734 the Wesleys commenced their career as preachers to the
people, and were soon followed by Whitefield. This may, therefore, be
considered the date of the foundation of Methodism. None of them had
any the remotest idea of separating from the Church, or founding new
sects. The Wesleys made a voyage to Georgia, in America, and, on their
return, found their little party not only flourishing in Oxford but
in London, where they had a meeting-house in Fetter Lane. Whitefield,
however, was the first to commence the practice of field-preaching,
amongst the colliers at Kingswood, near Bristol; but in this he was
soon imitated by Wesley. As they began to attract attention by the
ardour of their preaching and the wonderful effect on the people,
this became necessary, for speedily all church doors were closed
against them. John Wesley had a peculiar genius for the construction
of a new religious community, and he was ready to collect hints for
its organisation from any quarter. The most prolific source of his
ordinances for his new society was the system of the Moravians,
whose great settlement at Herrnhuth, in Germany, he visited, and had
much consultation with its head, Count Zinzendorf. From it he drew
his class-meetings, his love-feasts, and the like. In framing the
constitution of his society, Wesley displayed a profound knowledge of
human nature. He took care that every man and woman in his society
counted for something more than a mere unit. The machinery of
class-meetings and love-feasts brought members together in little
groups, where every one was recognised and had a personal interest.
Numbers of men, who had no higher ambition, could enjoy the distinction
of class-leaders. It did not require a man to go to college and take
orders to become a preacher. Thomas Maxwell with Wesley, and Howel
Harris with Whitefield, led the way from the plane of the laity into
the pulpits of Methodism, and have been followed by tens of thousands
who have become able if not learned, and eloquent if not Greek-imbued,
preachers. Wesley divided the whole country into districts, into
which he sent one or more well-endowed preachers, who were called
circuit preachers, or round preachers, from their going their rounds
in particular circuits. Under the ministry of these men sprang up
volunteer preachers, who first led prayer-meetings, and then ascended
to the pulpit in the absence of the circuit preachers, and most of
them soon discovered unexpected talents, and edifying their own local
and often remote or obscure little auditories, became styled local
preachers. Out of these local preachers ever and anon grew men of large
minds and fertilising eloquence, who became the burning and shining
lights of the whole firmament of Methodism. It was Wesley's object not
to separate from the Church, and it was only after his death that the
Wesleyans were reckoned as Nonconformists.

Whitefield and Wesley soon separated into distinct fields of labour,
as was inevitable, from Whitefield embracing Calvinism and Wesley
Arminianism. Whitefield grew popular amongst the aristocracy, from the
Countess of Huntingdon becoming one of his followers, and, at the same
time, his great patron. Whitefield, like the Wesleys, made repeated
tours in America, and visited all the British possessions there. When
in England, he generally made an annual tour in it, extending his
labours to Scotland and several times to Ireland. On one of his voyages
to America he made some stay at Lisbon. Everywhere he astonished
his hearers by his vivid eloquence; and Benjamin Franklin relates a
singular triumph of Whitefield over his prejudices and his pocket.
He died at Newbury Port, near Boston, United States, on the 30th of
September, 1770. If Whitefield did not found so numerous a body as
Wesley, he yet left a powerful impression on his age; and we still
trace his steps, in little bodies of Calvinistic Methodists in various
quarters of the United Kingdom, especially in Wales.

[Illustration: JOHN WESLEY.]

The literature of this period is more distinguished for learning and
cleverness than for genius. There are a few names that rise above the
smartness and mere accomplishment of the time into the regions of pure
genius; but, with very few exceptions, even they bear the stamp of the
period. We have here no Milton, no Shakespeare, no Herbert, no Herrick
even, to produce; but De Foe, Addison, Steele, Thomson, and Pope, if
they do not lift us to the highest creative plane, give us glimpses and
traits of what is found there. For the rest, however full of power,
there hangs a tone of "town," of a vicious and sordid era, about
them, of an artificial and by no means refined life, a flavour of the
grovelling of the politics which distinguished the period, and of the
low views and feelings which occupied and surrounded the throne during
the greater portion of this term.

Some of the writers of the last period were still existing in this.
Dryden was living, and wrote some of his most perfect works, as his
"Fables," and his "Alexander's Feast," as well as translated Virgil
after the Revolution. He was still hampered by his miserable but far
more successful dramatic rivals, Shadwell and Elkanah Settle. Nathaniel
Lee produced in William's time his tragedies, "The Princess of Cleves,"
and his "Massacre of Paris." Etherege was yet alive; Wycherley still
poured out his licentious poems; and Southern wrote the greater part
of his plays. His "Oronooko" and his "Fatal Marriage" were produced
now, and he received such prices as astonished Dryden. Whilst "Glorious
John" never obtained more than a hundred pounds for a play, Southern
obtained his six or seven hundred.

[Illustration: From the Picture in the National Gallery of British Art.

DOCTOR JOHNSON IN THE ANTE-ROOM OF LORD CHESTERFIELD, WAITING FOR AN
AUDIENCE, 1748.

BY E. M. WARD, R.A.]

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE JERUSALEM CHAMBER, WESTMINSTER ABBEY.]

We may satisfy ourselves as to William's appreciation of poetry by
the fact that Shadwell was his first poet-laureate and Nahum Tate the
next. Dr. Nicholas Brady and Nahum Tate made the version of the Psalms
which long disgraced the Church Service. Sir William Temple, Baxter,
Sir George Mackenzie, Stillingfleet, and Evelyn, as well as some others
flourishing at the end of the last period, still remained.

Amongst the earliest of the prose writers may be mentioned the
theological authors. Cumberland was the author of a Latin treatise,
"De Legibus Naturæ," in which he successfully combated the infidelity
of Hobbes. Bull, who, as well as Cumberland, became a bishop,
distinguished himself before the Revolution by his "Harmonia
Apostolica," an anti-Calvinistic work, and by his "Defensio Fidei
Nicenæ." In 1694 he published his "Judicium Ecclesiæ Catholicæ." John
Norris, of the school of Cudworth and Henry More, and nearly the last
of that school called the English Platonists, published, besides many
other works, his "Essay on the Ideal World" in 1701 and 1702. He also
wrote some religious poetry of no particular mark.

Tillotson and South were the great authors of sermons of this period.
Tillotson was one of the most popular preachers of the time, but may
be said to have done more good by his liberal and amiable influence
at the head of the Church than by his preaching. There is a solid and
genuinely pious character about the sermons of Tillotson which suited
the better-trained class of mind of his age, but which would now be
deemed rather heavy. South has more life and a more popular style;
he was therefore more attractive to the courtiers of his day than to
the sober citizens, and he has larded his text with what were then
deemed sprightly sallies and dashing phrases, but which are now felt as
vulgarisms. Both divines, however, furnished succeeding preachers with
much gleaning.

Dr. Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury (_b._ 1643) who figures so
prominently in the reign of William and Mary, and who rendered such
essential service to the establishment of religious liberty, is the
great historian of his time. Without his narratives of his own period,
we should have a very imperfect idea of it. With all his activity
at Court and in Parliament, he was a most voluminous writer. His
publications amount to no less than a hundred and forty-five, though
many of these are mere tracts, and some of them even only single
sermons. His earliest productions date from 1669, and they continued,
with little intermission, to the time of his death in 1715--a space of
forty-six years. His great works are "The Reformation of the Church,"
in three volumes, folio, 1679, 1681, and 1715; and his "History of
His Own Times," in two volumes, published after his death in 1724.
Burnet lays no claim to eloquence or to much genius, and he has
been accused of a fondness for gossip, and for his self-importance;
but the qualities which sink all these things into mere secondary
considerations are his honesty and heartiness in the support of sound
and liberal principles far beyond the majority of his fellow prelates
and churchmen. Whilst many of these were spending their energies in
opposing reform and toleration, Burnet was incessantly, by word and
pen, engaged in assisting to build up and establish those broad and
Christian principles under which we now live. Besides the great works
named, he wrote also "Memoirs of James and William, Dukes of Hamilton;"
"Passages in the Life and Death of Wilmot, Earl of Rochester;" a "Life
of Bishop Bedell;" "Travels on the Continent;" "An Exposition of the
Thirty-nine Articles," etc. etc.

Dr. Thomas Burnet is known for his eloquent and able History of
the Earth, "Telluris Sacra Theoria," first published in Latin, and
afterwards in English. This work, on which his fame rests, was greatly
read and admired at the time, but the discoveries of modern science
have reduced it to mere ingenious but unfounded theory. He was also
author of "Archæologica Philosophica," and some lesser treatises.

The great philosopher of this period was John Locke (_b._ 1632;
_d._ 1704). Locke had much to do with the governments of his time,
and especially with that extraordinary agitator and speculator,
Ashley, Lord Shaftesbury, whom he attended in his banishment, and
did not return till the Revolution. Yet, though so much connected
with government, office, and the political schemers, Locke remained
wonderfully unworldly in his nature. His philosophical bias, no doubt,
preserved him from the corrupt influences around him. He was a staunch
advocate of toleration, and wrote three letters on Toleration, and left
another unfinished at his death. In these he defended both religious
and civil liberty against Jonas Proast and Sir Robert Filmer, advocates
of the divine right of kings. His "Thoughts on Education" and his
"Treatises on Government" served as the foundations of Rousseau's
"Emile" and his "Contrat Social." Besides these he wrote numerous works
of a theological kind, as "The Vindication of the Reasonableness of
Christianity;" and in his last years, "A Discourse upon Miracles,"
"Paraphrases of St. Paul," and "An Essay for the Understanding of
St. Paul's Epistles;" a work "On the Conduct of the Understanding,"
and "An Examination of Father Malebranche's Opinion of Seeing all
Things in God." But his great work is his "Essay concerning the Human
Understanding." This may be considered the first pure and systematic
treatise on metaphysics in the English language; and though the pursuit
of the science since his time has led to the rejection of many of his
opinions, the work will always remain as an able and clearly-reasoned
attempt to follow the method of Bacon in tracing the nature and
operations of the understanding.

In the department of philosophy flourished also Bishop Berkeley (_b._
1684; _d._ 1753), author of "The Principles of Human Knowledge,"
whostartled the world with the theory that matter has no existence in
the universe, but is merely a fixed idea of the mind; Dr. Mandeville,
a Dutchman by birth, who settled in London, and published various
medical and metaphysical works of a freethinking character; Hutchinson,
an opponent of Dr. Woodward in natural history, and Newton in natural
philosophy; and David Hartley, author of "Observations on Man." Bishop
Butler, Warburton, Hoadley, Middleton, author of "A Free Inquiry
into the Miraculous Powers of the Church," and Secker, Archbishop of
Canterbury, were the leading theologians in the Church; but Dissent
could also boast of its men of light and leading in Dr. Isaac Watts,
author of a system of Logic and of the popular Hymns; Calamy, the
opponent of Hoadley; Doddridge, and others.

In the department of novel writing, no age had yet produced such a
constellation as Fielding, Richardson, Sterne, and Smollett. Their
works are still read with admiration by all who have a relish
for vivid and masterly delineations of life; their only drawback
being, that they are all more or less stained with the grossness and
licentiousness of the age. From these faults Samuel Richardson (_b._
1689; _d._ 1761) is most free, and in his "Sir Charles Grandison"
he hasshown himself ahead of his age in the wisdom and liberality
of his ideas. He discountenanced duelling, and taught the soundest
principles of honour and morality. The photographic minuteness of his
style prevents the general reading of his works in the present day
of abundant new literature. The principal novels of Henry Fielding
(_b._ 1707; _d._ 1754), "Joseph Andrews," "Tom Jones," and "Amelia,"
abound in wit, vigour, and knowledge of human nature. He wrote also
some plays, and edited several periodicals. His sister, Sarah, also
wrote "David Simple," a novel, and translated Xenophon's "Memoirs
of Socrates." Tobias Smollett (_b._ 1721; _d._ 1771) paints life in
strong, bold, but somewhat coarse lines, full of vigour, but with
even more grossness than Fielding uses. "Peregrine Pickle," "Count
Fathom," "Roderick Random," "Humphrey Clinker," and "Sir Launcelot
Greaves," if not now generally read, have been carefully studied and
made use of by some of our modern novelists. Smollett, besides, wrote
plays, satires, poems, and edited "The Briton," a weekly newspaper.
Laurence Sterne (_b._ 1713; _d._ 1768) struck out a style of writing
peculiar to himself, and which still defies all successful imitation.
Notwithstanding attempts to represent his pathos as grimace, and his
humour as tinsel, the felicity of touch in "Tristram Shandy," and the
flashes of wit and feeling in his "Sentimental Journey," will, in spite
of detractors, and of the occasional indecency of the author, always
send readers to Sterne.

One of the pioneers of the science of political economy at this time
was Dr. Davenant, the son of Sir William Davenant, the poet. He had
no genius for drawing principles and theories from accumulated facts,
but he was a diligent collector of them, and his porings amongst State
documents and accounts have served essentially the historians and
political economists of our day.

During this period Richard Bentley, Master of Trinity College,
Cambridge, and archdeacon of Ely, figures prominently as one of the
most profound classical scholars that Great Britain has produced,
and, at the same time, as one of the most quarrelsome, arrogant, and
grasping of men. The circumstance which made the most noise in his
career was his controversy with the Hon. Charles Boyle regarding the
authenticity of the Epistles of Phalaris and the Fables of Æsop. In
this dispute he had to contend with Drs. Atterbury, French, King,
and Smallridge, who made the reply to him in their "Examination of
Bentley's Dissertation on the Epistles," in the name of Boyle. Swift
also attacked him in "The Battle of the Books." The controversy made an
immense noise at the time, and Bentley completely proved his assertion,
that both the Epistles of Phalaris and the Fables of Æsop, in their
present form, are spurious. The services of Bentley in publishing
corrected editions of various classical works are of no ordinary kind.
Amongst the authors who have received the benefit of his critical
touches are Aristophanes, Cicero, Menander, Philemon, Horace, Nicander,
Phædrus, and Homer. In his editions of Horace and Homer, however,
he laid himself open to severe criticism by his rash and arbitrary
emendations of the text, and still more so by his edition of Milton's
"Paradise Lost," from the same cause. In this case he showed that he
was as deficient in the Italian and romantic learning, which Milton had
made himself master of, as he was great in his own classical field.
Bentley displayed himself as a theologian of great distinction by his
refutation of Collins's "Discourse of Freethinking," and his lectures
at Oxford in defence of the Christian religion.

With "The Battle of the Books" appeared "The Tale of a Tub;" and though
these were anonymous, it was soon well known that they were from the
hand of Jonathan Swift, a friend of Harley and Bolingbroke, who now
assumed a position in the public eye destined to be rendered yet more
remarkable. Swift was of English parentage, but born in Dublin in
1667. He was educated at Kilkenny and the University of Dublin. In
early life he became private secretary to Sir William Temple, and at
this time he wrote his "Tale of a Tub," which cut off all his hopes
of a bishopric. He edited a selection from the papers of Temple, and
then accompanied Lord Berkeley to Ireland as chaplain. Disappointed of
the preferment which he had hoped for, he went over from the Whigs to
the Tories in 1710, and thenceforward was an unscrupulous adherent of
Harley and Bolingbroke, defending all their measures in the "Examiner,"
and pouring out his vengeance on all opponents with unflinching
truculence. In his political character Swift has been styled the great
blackguard of the age, and certainly with too much truth. In spite of
rare intellectual power, wit, and sarcasm, no principle or tenderness
of feeling restrained him in his attacks on his enemies. If Harley and
Bolingbroke are guilty of inflicting the disgraceful peace of Utrecht
on the nation, simply to avenge themselves on the Whigs, no man so
thoroughly abetted them in that business as Swift. His "Conduct of the
Allies," his "Public Spirit of the Whigs," and other political tracts
and articles, bear testimony to his unscrupulous political rancour.
His "Drapier's Letters," and his treatment of Wood in the affair of
the Irish halfpence, show that no means, however base and false, came
amiss to him in serving the objects of his ambition. The great work of
Swift is his "Gulliver's Travels," a work characterised by a massive
intellect and a fertile invention, but defiled by the grossness that
was inseparable from his mind, and that equally pollutes his poems,
in which there is much wit and humour, but not a trace of pathos
or tenderness. There is none of that divine glow of love and human
sympathy, mingled with the worship of beauty and truth, which courts
our affections in the works of the greatest masters. When we are told
that Swift's grossness is merely the grossness of the time, we point
to "Robinson Crusoe," to "The Seasons" and "Castle of Indolence" of
Thomson, and to the works of Addison, for the most admirable contrast.
Swift--who died in the famous year of the '45--was one of the most
vigorous writers of the age, but he was one of the most unamiable. He
was the Mephistopheles of the eighteenth century.

What a contrast immediately presents itself in the generous nature
of Steele, in the genial and pure writings of Addison! Both Addison
and Steele were poets, Steele principally a dramatic poet, of
considerable success; Addison was the author of "Cato," a tragedy,
and the "Campaign," celebrating the victory of Blenheim, with other
poems. But the reputation of both Steele and Addison rests on their
prose. They were the introducers of essay and periodical writings,
and carried these to a perfection which has never been surpassed.
Richard Steele (_b._ 1671; _d._ 1729) has the honour of originating
this new department of literature--a departmentwhich has grown into
such importance, that the present age would scarcely know how to exist
without it. He started the "Tatler" in 1709, issuing it three times a
week, and was joined by Addison in about six weeks. The interest with
which this new literary paper was expected at the breakfast tables of
that day, can only be likened to that which the morning papers now
excite. In 1711, the "Tatler" having come to an end, the "Spectator"
was started on the same plan, jointly by Steele and Addison, and, this
ceasing in 1712, in the following year the "Guardian" took its place.
Steele was the largest contributor to the "Tatler" and "Guardian,"
Addison to the "Spectator." Various of their contemporaries furnished
papers, Swift amongst the rest, but there are none which can compare
with the vigorous, manly writing of Steele, and the elegant, and often
noble, compositions of Addison. The mixture of grave and gay was
admirable. In these papers we find abundant revelations of the spirit
and manners of the times. The characters of Sir Roger de Coverley,
Will Wimble, etc., have an imperishable English interest. The poetic
and generous nature of Joseph Addison (_b._ 1672) was demonstrated
by his zealous criticisms on Milton's "Paradise Lost," which mainly
contributed to rescue it from the neglect which it had experienced.
Addison, after Sir Philip Sidney, was the first to call attention to
our old popular ballads, "Chevy Chase" and "The Babes in the Wood," the
eulogies on which probably led Bishop Percy to the collection of the
precious "Reliques" of the ballad lore of former ages. The "Spectator"
and "Guardian" were published daily. Steele afterwards published the
"Englishman," with which Addison had no concern, and it only reached
to fifty-seven numbers. These two fellow-labourers, both in literature
and Parliament, after nearly fifty years' friendship, were sundered
by a mere political difference--the question of limiting the royal
prerogative of creating peers, in 1719, the last year of Addison's life.

Bolingbroke (_b._ 1678; _d._ 1751) must be named with the prose writers
of the age. Amongst his writings there is little that will now interest
the reader. He wrote in a brilliant and pretentious style, as he acted;
and his writings, like his policy, are more showy than sound. As a cold
sceptic in religion, and a Jacobite in politics, proud and essentially
selfish in his nature, we are not likely to find anything from his
pen which can strongly attract us, or is calculated to benefit us. In
the Tory party, to which he belonged, he was one of those brilliant
and self-complacent apparitions, which have all the qualities of
the meteor--dazzling, but speedily sinking into darkness, though his
"Patriot King" had some temporary influence, and even furnishes the
keynote to some of the earlier writings of Lord Beaconsfield.

[Illustration: HENRY FIELDING. (_The Portrait by Hogarth; the Border by
James Basire._)]

A very different man was patriotic Daniel Defoe (_b._ 1663; _d._ 1731).
Defoe, who was engaged in trade, and was the introducer of pantiles,
was a thorough Whig, or, as we should now call him, a Radical in
politics. He was one of those rare men who look only at the question
before them, and who are, therefore, found almost as often calling
to account the party to which they nominally belong, as rebuking the
faction to which they are opposed. His principle was essentially
"measures, not men," and thus he was one of the zealous supporters of
Godolphin and his ministry in accomplishing the union with Scotland;
and equally so of Harley and Bolingbroke, for establishing a commercial
treaty with France. He was much more useful to reform than liked by
so-called reformers, and was continually getting into trouble for his
honest speaking. From the age of twenty-three to that of fifty-eight,
his pen had scarcely a moment's rest from advocating important
political and social subjects, and there was a force of reason, a
feeling of reality, a keenness of wit and satire, in his compositions
that gave them interest and extensive attention.

But whilst his political efforts did their work in his lifetime, his
literary labours are the basis of his present fame. These were almost
all produced after his sixtieth year; "Robinson Crusoe," by far the
most popular of all his writings and one of the most popular in all
the world's literature, "The Dumb Philosopher," "Captain Singleton,"
"Duncan Campbell," "Moll Flanders," "Colonel Jacque," "The Journal of
the Plague," "The Memoirs of a Cavalier," "The Fortunate Mistress; or,
Roxana," "The New Voyage round the World," and "Captain Carleton." The
life and fidelity to human nature with which these are written have
continually led readers to believe them altogether real narratives.
The "Journal of the Plague" was quoted as a relation of facts by Dr.
Mead; Chatham used to recommend "The Memoirs of a Cavalier" as the
best account of the Civil War; Dr. Johnson read the life of "Captain
Carleton" as genuine, and we continually see the story of "Mrs. Veal's
Ghost," written by Defoe to puff Drelincourt's heavy "Essay on Death,"
included in collections as a matter-of-fact account of an apparition.
This quality of verisimilitude is one of the greatest charms of his
inimitable "Crusoe," which is the delight of the young from age to age.

Amongst the prose writers of this period a lady stands prominent,
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (_b._ 1690; _d._ 1762), the daughter of the
Duke of Kingston, and mother of Lady Bute, the wife of the Earl of
Bute, the celebrated Minister of George III. Lady Mary derives her
chief fame from her Letters, which were not published till after her
death. They are as remarkable for their wit, brilliancy, and clear,
thorough sense, as any of the writings of the age. In these we have a
most graphic picture of life in the East, as she had lived some years
at Constantinople with her husband. She thence conferred one of the
greatest boons on her country, by the introduction of inoculation for
the smallpox. Lady Mary translated the "Enchiridion of Epictetus," and
wrote many verses, including satirical ones, called "Town Eclogues;"
but her fame must always rest upon her clear and sparkling letters. She
was celebrated for her wit and beauty, and was a leading figure in the
fashionable as well as the literary world. Pope and she were long great
friends, but quarrelled irreconcilably.

At the head of the poets of this period stands Alexander Pope, who
became the founder of a school which has had followers down to our
own time. Pope was the poet of society, of art, and polish. His life
was spent in London and in the country, chiefly between Binfield, in
Windsor Forest, and Twickenham; and his poetry partakes very much of
the qualities of that scenery--rich, cultivated, and beautiful, but
having no claims to the wild or the sublime. He is opposed to poets
like Milton and Shakespeare as pastures and town gardens are opposed to
seas, forests, and mountains. In style he is polished to the highest
degree, piquant, and musical; but, instead of being profound and
creative, he is sensible, satiric, and didactic. He failed in "the
vision and the faculty divine," but he possessed fancy, a moderate
amount of passion, and a clear and penetrating intellect. He loved
nature, but it was such only as he knew--the home-scenes of Berkshire
and the southern counties, the trained and polished beauties in his
gardens, the winding walks and grottoes at Twickenham. Mountains he had
never seen, and there are none in his poetry. He was born in the year
of the Revolution, and died in 1744, aged fifty-six; and, considering
that he suffered from a feeble constitution and defective health, he
was a remarkably industrious man. His pastorals appeared in Tonson's
"Miscellany" when he was only twenty-one years old. Before this he
had translated the first book of the "Thebais," and Ovid's "Epistle
from Sappho to Phaon;" paraphrased Chaucer's "January and May," and
the prologue to "The Wife of Bath's Tale." In two years after his
"Pastorals" appeared his "Essay on Criticism" (1711). "The Messiah" and
"The Rape of the Lock" were published in 1712--the year in which the
"Spectator" died. "The Rape of the Lock" celebrated the mighty event
of the clipping of a lock of hair from the head of Miss Belle Fermor
by Lord Petre. This act, adorned with a great machinery of sylphs
and gnomes, a specimen of elegant trifling, enchanted the age, which
would have less appreciated grander things, and placed Pope on the
pinnacle of fame. In 1713 he published "Windsor Forest," a subject for
a pleasant but not a great poem, yet characteristic of Pope's genius,
which delighted in the level and ornate rather than the splendid and
the wild. In 1715 appeared the first four books of his translation
of Homer's "Iliad," which was not completed till 1720. This still
continues the most popular translation of the great heroic poet of
Greece; for although it is rather a paraphrase of this colossal yet
simple poem, and therefore not estimated highly by Greek scholars who
can go to the original, it has that beauty and harmony of style which
render it to the English reader an ever-fascinating work. In 1717
appeared his "Epistle from Eloisa to Abelard," a poem displaying more
passion than any other of Pope's writings, but too sensuous, and the
subject itself far from well chosen. Next succeeded his "Odyssey" of
Homer, in conjunction with Fenton and Broome, and in 1728 the first
three books of "The Dunciad," in which he took a sweeping vengeance on
the critics and poetasters of the time, who had assailed him fiercely
on all sides, with John Dennis at their head. The vigour with which
Pope wielded the satiric lash excited the wonder of the public, which
had seen no such trenchant production hitherto in the language, and
filled the whole host of flayed and scalded dunces with howls of wrath
and agony. Pope was not sparing of foul language in his branding of
others, and they were still more obscene and scurrilous in their
retorts. It is questionable whether they or Pope felt the most torture;
for, so far from silencing them, they continued to kick, sting, and
pelt him with dirt so long as he lived. So late as 1742 he published
a fourth book of the satire, to give yet one more murderous blow to
the blackguard crew. Besides this satire, he modernised an edition
of Donne's Satires, and produced his "Essay on Man," his "Epistle
on Taste," his "Moral Essays," and other poems, down to 1740. His
"Essay on Man," "Moral Essays," etc., display shrewd sense, and a keen
perception of the characteristics of human nature and of the world; yet
they do not let us into any before unknown depths of life or morals,
but, on the contrary, are, in many particulars, unsound. In fact, these
productions belong by no means to poetry, of which they exhibit no
quality, and might just as well have been given in prose. On the whole,
Pope is a poet whose character is that of cleverness, strong intellect,
carefully-elaborative art, much malice, and little warmth or breadth
of genuine imagination. He reflects the times in which he lived, which
were corrupt, critical, but not original, and he had no conception of
the heavens of poetry and soul into which Milton and Shakespeare soared
before him, and Keats, Shelley, Coleridge, Wordsworth and Tennyson in
our time have wandered at large.

The strong sense, lively fancy, and smart style of his satires,
distinguished also Pope's prose, as in his "Treatise of the Bathos; or,
the Art of Sinking in Poetry;" his "Memoirs of P. P., Clerk of this
Parish"--in ridicule of Burnet's "Own Times"--his Letters, etc. In some
of the last he describes the country and country seats, and the life
there of his friends; which shows that, in an age more percipient of
the charm of such things, he would have probably approached nearer to
the heart of Nature, and given us something more genial and delightful
than anything that he has left us.

Dr. Arbuthnot, a great friend of Pope and Swift, was also one of the
ablest prose writers, "The Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus," published
in Pope's and Swift's works, and the political satire of "John Bull," a
masterly performance, being attributed to him.

John Gay, a contemporary of Pope, Swift, and Arbuthnot, is now best
known by his "Fables" and his "Beggar's Opera." His "Fables" have been
extremely popular, and still make him a general name; but, in his own
time, his "Beggar's Opera" was his great success. Its wit, its charming
music, its popular characters, gave it a universal favour; and it is
the only English opera that even to this time has become permanent.
Gay's "Trivia; or, the Art of Walking the Streets of London," is still
amusing, and some of his ballads have a lightness and buoyancy about
them which justify the esteem in which he was held.

Matthew Prior had a high reputation in his day as a poet, but his
poetry has little to recommend it now. He was the more popular as a
poet, no doubt, because he was much employed as a diplomatist in Queen
Anne's reign by the Tory party. His "City and Country Mouse," written
in conjunction with Lord Halifax, in ridicule of Dryden's "Hind and
Panther," may be considered as one of his happiest efforts.

Sir Samuel Garth, author of "The Dispensary," a mock-heroic poem in six
cantos, and Sir Richard Blackmore, another physician, and author of
a whole heap of epics in ten or twelve books each--as "King Arthur,"
"King Alfred," "Eliza," "The Redeemer," etc.--may still be found in
our collections of verse, but are rarely read. Dr. Young's "Night
Thoughts" yet maintain their place, and are greatly admired by many,
notwithstanding his stilted style and violent antithesis, for amid
these there are many fine and striking ideas.

Still more have "The Seasons" and "The Castle of Indolence" of James
Thomson retained, and are likely to retain, the public favour. "The
Seasons" is a treasury of the life and imagery of the country, animated
by a true love of Nature and of God, and abounding in passages of
fire, healthy feeling, and strong sense, often of sublime conceptions,
in a somewhat stiff and vicious style. "The Castle of Indolence" is
a model of metrical harmony and luxurious fancy, in the Spenserian
stanza. Another poet of the same time and country--Scotland--is Allan
Ramsay, who, in his native dialect, has painted the manners and sung
the rural loves of Scotland in his "Gentle Shepherd" and his rustic
lyrics. Till Burns, no Scottish poet so completely embodied the
spirit, feelings, and popular life of his country. Amongst a host of
verse-makers, then deemed poets, but who were merely imitators of
imitators, we must except Gray, with his nervous lyrics, and, above
all, his ever-popular "Elegy in a Country Churchyard." Gray also has a
genuine vein of wit and merriment in his verse. Collins was a poet who
under happier conditions might have done the greatest things. Parnell's
"Hermit," Blair's "Grave," Shenstone's "School Mistress," Akenside's
"Imagination," can yet charm some readers, and there are others in
great numbers whose works yet figure in collections of the poets, or
whose individual poems are selected in anthologies, as Smith, King,
Sprat Bishop of Rochester, Duke, Montague Earl of Halifax, Nicholas
Rowe, Dyer--author of the "Fleece," "Grongar Hill," and "Ruins of
Rome,"--Sheffield, Duke of Buckinghamshire, Fenton, Somerville--author
of "The Chase," "Field Sports," etc.,--Hammond--author of "Love
Elegies,"--Lord Lyttelton, Mallet, Mickle--author of the ballads of
"Cumnor Hall," "There's Nae Luck about the House," and translator
of the "Lusiad" of Camoens,--Shaw, Harte, West, Cawthorne, Lloyd,
Gilbert Cooper, Grainger--author of "The Sugar Cane," and the once
popular ballad of "Bryan and Pereene,"--Dodsley, poet and bookseller,
Boyse--author of "The Deity," a poem, etc.,--Smollett--more remarkable
as a novelist and historian,--Michael Bruce, Walsh, Falconer--author
of "The Shipwreck,"--Yalden, Pattison, Aaron Hill, Broome, Pitt--the
translator of Virgil,--John Philips--author of "Cider," a poem, "The
Splendid Shilling," etc.,--West, and others. In fact, this age produced
poets enough to have constituted the rhythmical literature of a nation,
had they had as much genius as they had learning.

Besides the miscellaneous poets, the dramatic ones numbered
Congreve, Vanbrugh, Farquhar, Colley Cibber, Nicholas Rowe--already
mentioned--Savage, Lansdowne, Ambrose Philips, and others. In many of
the plays of these authors there is great talent, wit, and humour,
but mingled with equal grossness. Congreve's dramas are principally
"The Old Bachelor," "The Incognita," "The Double Dealer," "The Way of
the World," comedies, and "The Mourning Bride," a tragedy. Vanbrugh,
the celebrated architect, produced "The Relapse," "The Provoked
Wife," "The Confederacy," "The Journey to London," and several other
comedies. Farquhar's principal plays are "The Beaux's Stratagem,"
"Love and a Bottle," and "The Constant Couple." Savage was the author
of the tragedy of "Sir Thomas Overbury;" Nicholas Rowe, of five or
six tragedies and one comedy, the most popular of which are "The Fair
Penitent" and "Jane Shore." Rowe also translated Lucan's "Pharsalia."
As for Colley Cibber, he was a mere playwright, and turned out above
two dozen comedies, tragedies, and other dramatic pieces. Lord
Lansdowne was the author of "The She-gallants," a comedy, and "Heroic
Love," a tragedy of some merit; and John Hughes wrote "The Siege of
Damascus," a tragedy, which long remained on the stage.

James Bradley (_b._ 1692), who succeeded Halley as the third Astronomer
Royal, held that post till 1762, when he died. He had in 1728
distinguished himself by his discovery of an unanswerable proof of the
motion of the earth by his observations on the apparent alteration
in the place of a fixed star. His second great discovery was that
of the mutation of the earth's axis, showing that the pole of the
equator moves round the pole of the elliptic, not in a straight but
in a waving line. Bradley gave important assistance to the Ministry
in their alteration of the calendar in 1751, and the vast mass of
his observations was published after his death, by the University of
Oxford, in two volumes, in 1798.

[Illustration: COSTUMES OF THE PERIOD OF GEORGE II.]

Halley's quadrant was constructed and made known by him to the
Philosophical Society, in 1731, though Thomas Godfrey, a glazier, of
Philadelphia, is said to have made a similar instrument a year before.
As early, however, as 1727 Newton had described such an instrument to
Halley, that is, a very little time before his death. This invaluable
instrument has since been improved, first into a sextant, and
ultimately into a complete circle. In 1758 appeared John Dollond's
corrections of Newton's views of the dispersion of refracted light, and
in the following year his achromatic telescope, based on his accurate
discoveries.

In 1720 Colin Maclaurin, the successor of James Gregory in the
mathematical chair at Edinburgh, published his "Geometrical Organica,"
a treatise on curves; in 1742 his admirable treatise on Fluxions;
and in 1748 his treatise on Algebra. Dr. Robert Simson, professor
of mathematics at Glasgow, published a restoration of the "Loci" of
Apollonius, and an English translation of Euclid, which continued
down to a late period in use, both in Scotland and England. In 1717
James Stirling published a Latin treatise on lines of the third order,
and another on Fluxions, called "Methodus Differentialis," in 1730.
William Emerson, a mathematician and mechanist, wrote on fluxions,
trigonometry, mechanics, navigation, algebra, optics, astronomy,
geography, dialling, etc., but a considerable portion was only in part
published during this period. Thomas Simpson, a weaver, of Market
Bosworth, at the age of seven-and-twenty suddenly discovered himself as
an extraordinary mathematician, and went on till his death, in 1761,
publishing works on fluxions, the nature and laws of chance, on mixed
mathematics, on the doctrine of annuities and reversions, on algebra,
elementary geometry, trigonometry, etc. James Ferguson, also, the son
of a day-labourer, in Banffshire, studied mathematics whilst tending
sheep, and published a number of works on the phenomena of the harvest
moon, astronomy, mechanics, hydrostatics, pneumatics, and optics.
Ferguson had a remarkably lucid and demonstrative style, both in
writing and lecturing, and his example excited a keen spirit of inquiry
amongst the working classes, so that he is said to have diffused the
knowledge of physical science amongst the class from which he sprang
more than any other man.

In electricity great strides were made. Between the years 1705 and 1711
Francis Hawksbee published in the Transactions of the Royal Society
several experiments, in which he had, for the first time, discovered
the production of the electric spark by friction, and electrical
attraction and repulsion. In 1720 Stephen Gray, a pensioner of the
Charterhouse, published the result of his experiments on this subject,
with a list of the substances which showed electricity under friction;
and in 1732 he discovered the conducting property of non-electrical
bodies. Before 1739, Dufray, keeper of the King's Garden at Paris,
discovered the repellent power of two similarly-electrified bodies,
and the attraction of these positively and negatively electrified--or,
as he termed it, possessing the vitreous and the resinous electricity.
Cuneus and Lallemand discovered the mode of accumulating the electric
fluid in what was called the Leyden jar in 1745. This discovery gave a
new impetus to inquiry, and Nollet, in France, and Watson, in England,
conceived the hypothesis of the jar being overcharged on one side and
undercharged on the other. This growing perception of the positive
and negative conditions of the electric fluid received confirmation
from the experiments of Benjamin Franklin, in America. Franklin soon
improved the Leyden jar into an electrical battery; and, in 1752,
he proved the identity of electricity and lightning by his grand
experiment of the kite. On this he recommended lightning conductors,
which, however, were not used in England till ten years afterwards.

On the laws of heat and cold, and atmospheric changes under their
influence, many interesting facts were ascertained by the aid of the
thermometers of Fahrenheit and Réaumur. Dr. Martin, of St. Andrews,
distinguished himself in these inquiries, and published his discoveries
and deductions in 1739 and 1740. In 1750 Dr. Cullen drew attention
to some curious facts connected with the production of cold by
evaporation. Dr. Joseph Black discovered what he called latent heat,
and continued his researches on this subject beyond the present period.

Chemistry also received valuable extensions of its field. Dr. John
Mayow published new facts respecting nitre, and on the phenomena of
respiration and combustion, as revealed by experiments on this and
other substances. At the commencement of the eighteenth century Stahl,
a German chemist, propounded his theory of phlogiston as the principle
of combustion, which was only exploded by the further discoveries
of Dr. Black, Cavendish, and Priestley. Soon after, Dr. Hales threw
new light on aëriform bodies, or, as they are now termed, gases; and
finally, Dr. Black demonstrated the presence of a gas in magnesia,
lime, and the alkalies, which had long before been noticed by Van
Helmont, but had been forgotten. This was then termed fixed air, but
has now acquired the name of carbonic acid gas, or carbon dioxide.
At the end of this period chemistry was extensively studied, and was
rapidly revealing its secrets.

The kindred science of medicine was also in marked advance. Dr. Thomas
Sydenham, who died in 1689, at the very commencement of this period,
had prepared the way for a more profound knowledge of the science by
his careful and persevering observation of facts and symptoms; and
the improvements he introduced guided medical men in the treatment of
disease till the end of this period. Anatomical science was greatly
advanced at this era by Malpighi, Steno, Ruysch, Duverney, Morgagni,
Albinus, Haller, and other Continental physicians. In England Humphrey
Ridley published a work on the brain in 1695, and William Cowper,
in 1698, his anatomical tables, said to be borrowed from the Dutch
anatomist, Bidloo. In 1726 Alexander Munro published his "Osteology;"
he was also founder of the Medical School of Edinburgh. In 1733
William Cheselden, the most expert operator of his day, published his
"Osteography." In 1727 Stephen Hales published his "Vegetable Statics,"
and in 1733 his "Hæmastatics," which carried both vegetable and animal
physiology beyond all preceding knowledge either here or abroad.
Zoology and comparative anatomy also received some progress from the
labours of Nehemiah Grew, Tyson, Collins, and other members of the
Royal Society.

Music advanced at an equal rate with its sister arts, and during this
period added to its conquests the compositions of Purcell and Handel.
William was too much engaged in war to become a patron of music, or
of any of the fine arts, and his queen, Mary, does not appear to have
possessed much taste for it. She is related by Sir John Hawkins to
have sent for Purcell and Mrs. Arabella Hunt, a famous singer, to
entertain her. Mrs. Hunt sang some of Purcell's splendid compositions,
and Purcell accompanied them on the harpsichord; but Mary soon grew
weary of these, and called on Mrs. Hunt to sing the Scottish ballad,
"Cold and Raw!"

Henry Purcell (_b._ 1658; _d._ 1695) produced the bulk of his works in
William's reign. He composed the music to "The Tempest," "Dioclesian,"
"King Arthur," "Don Quixote," "Bonduca," and "Orpheus Britannicus."
Many parts of these, and his sonatas, anthems, catches, rounds,
glees, etc., are as much enjoyed now as in his own day. The music to
Davenant's "Circe," by Banister, of Shadwell's "Psyche," by Lock,
and of Dryden's "Albion and Albanius," by Grabut, had increased in
England the liking for the lyrical drama; but Purcell's compositions
wonderfully strengthened it, and from "King Arthur" may properly be
dated the introduction of the English opera. Gay's "Beggar's Opera,"
six-and-thirty years after, however, was the first complete and avowed
opera, and this did not establish that kind of entertainment in
England. The wonderful success of this production, which was performed
for sixty-two nights (not consecutive), was chiefly derived from the
wit and satire of the composition itself, the abundance of popular airs
introduced, and the party feeling which it gratified. The airs were
selected and adapted by Dr. Pepusch, a German, who settled in London,
and became celebrated there. He also furnished the overture, and wrote
accompaniments to the airs. Eleven years after, Milton's "Comus" was
adapted to the stage by the Rev. Dr. Dalton, with music by Dr. Arne,
who afterwards composed the music for "Artaxerxes," and thence derived
a high reputation.

The taste for Italian music was now every day increasing; singers of
that nation appeared with great applause at most concerts. In 1703
Italian music was introduced into the theatres as _intermezzi_, or
interludes, consisting of singing and dancing; then whole operas
appeared, the music Italian, the words English; and, in 1707, Urbani, a
male soprano, and two Italian women, sang their parts all in Italian,
the other performers using English. Finally, in 1710, a complete
Italian opera was performed at the Queen's Theatre, Haymarket, and
from that time the Italian opera was regularly established in London.
This led to the arrival of the greatest composer whom the world had
yet seen. George Frederick Handel was born at Halle, in Germany, in
1685. He had displayed wonderful genius for music as a mere child,
and having, at the age of seven years, astonished the Duke of Saxe
Weissenfels--at whose court his brother-in-law was a valet--who
found him playing the organ in the chapel, he was, by the Duke's
recommendation, regularly educated for the profession of music. At
the age of ten, Handel composed the church service for voices and
instruments; and after acquiring a great reputation in Hamburg--where,
in 1705, he brought out his "Almira"--he proceeded to Florence, where
he produced the opera of "Rodrigo," and thence to Venice, Rome, and
Naples. After remaining in Italy four years, he was induced to come
to England in 1710, at the pressing entreaties of many of the English
nobility, to superintend the opera. But, though he was enthusiastically
received, the party spirit which raged at that period soon made it
impossible to conduct the opera with any degree of self-respect and
independence. He therefore abandoned the attempt, having sunk nearly
all his fortune in it, and commenced the composition of his noble
oratorios. Racine's "Esther," abridged and altered by Humphreys, was
set by him, in 1720, for the chapel of the Duke of Chandos at Cannons.
It was, however, only by slow degrees that the wonderful genius of
Handel was appreciated, yet it won its way against all prejudices
and difficulties. In 1731 his "Esther" was performed by the children
of the chapel-royal at the house of Bernard Gates, their master,
and the following year, at the king's command, at the royal theatre
in the Haymarket. It was fortunate for Handel that the monarch was
German too, or he might have quitted the country in disgust before
his fame had triumphed over faction and ignorance. So far did these
operate, that in 1742, when he produced his glorious "Messiah," it
was so coldly received that it was treated as a failure. Handel, in
deep discouragement, however, gave it another trial in Dublin, where
the warm imaginations of the Irish caught all its sublimity, and gave
it an enthusiastic reception. On its next presentation in London his
audience reversed the former judgment, and the delighted composer
then presented the manuscript to the Foundling Hospital, where it was
performed annually for the benefit of that excellent institution, and
added to its funds ten thousand three hundred pounds. It became the
custom, from 1737, to perform oratorios on the Wednesdays and Fridays
in Lent. Handel, whose genius has never been surpassed for vigour,
spirit, invention, and sublimity, became blind in his latter years. He
continued to perform in public, and to compose, till within a week of
his death, which took place on April 13, 1759.

[Illustration: MRS. ARABELLA HUNT SINGING TO QUEEN MARY. (_See p._
155.)]

Whilst this progress in operatic and sacred music was being made, the
Church Service had received some admirable additions. Jeremiah Clarke,
the Rev. Henry Aldrich, D.D., dean of Christ Church, John Weldon,
organist to Queen Anne, and Georges I. and II., and the Rev. Dr. Robert
Creighton, canon of Salisbury, composed many admirable pieces. William
Croft, Mus. Doc., is the author of thirty-one splendid anthems, and
Maurice Greene, Mus. Doc., of forty, which are still heard with solemn
delight in old choirs. William Boyce, Mus. Doc., organist to Georges
II. and III., added to these numerous anthems and services the oratorio
of "Solomon," and many other compositions of a superb character--one
of them the grand anthem performed annually at the Feast of the Sons
of the Clergy. Boyce also composed a variety of secular pieces of rare
merit.

In 1710 was established the Academy of Ancient Music, the object of
which was to promote the study of vocal and instrumental harmony.
Drs. Pepusch, Greene, and other celebrated musicians were amongst its
founders. They collected a very valuable musical library, and gave
annual concerts till 1793, when more fashionable ones attracted the
public, and the society was dissolved. In 1741 was established the
Madrigal Society, the founder of which was John Immyns, an attorney.
It embraced men of the working classes, and held meetings on Wednesday
evenings for the singing of madrigals, glees, catches, etc. Immyns
sometimes read them a lecture on a musical subject, and the society
gradually grew rich. The composers of such pieces at this period were
such men as Purcell, Eccles, Playford, Leveridge, Carey, Haydn, Arne,
etc. Public gardens became very much the fashion, and in these, at
first, oratorios, choruses, and grand musical pieces were performed,
but, by degrees, gave way to songs and catches. Vauxhall, originally
called Spring Garden, established before the Revolution, became all
through this period the fashionable resort of the aristocracy, and to
this was added Ranelagh, near Chelsea College, a vast rotunda, to which
crowds used to flock from the upper classes on Monday, Wednesday, and
Friday evenings, to hear the music and singing. These performances
spread greatly the taste for music, and probably excited the alarm of
the puritanically religious, for there arose a loud outcry against
using music in churches, as something vain and unhallowed. Amongst
the best publications on the science of music during this period
were Dr. Holder's "Treatise on the Natural Grounds and Principles of
Harmony," 1694; Malcolm's "Treatise on Music, Speculative, Practical,
and Historical," 1721; Dr. Pepusch's "Treatise on Harmony," 1731; Dr.
Smith's "Harmonics; or, the Philosophy of Musical Sounds;" Avison's
"Essay on Musical Expression," 1752. Avison also published twenty-six
concertos for a band, which were much admired.

[Illustration: HANDEL.]

At this period, both the grand old styles of architecture, the Gothic
for ecclesiastical buildings, and the Tudor and Elizabethan for
palaces and mansions, had, for a time, run their course. A classical
or Italian fashion had come in, and the picturesque churches and halls
of our ancestors were deemed barbarous. Inigo Jones had introduced
the semi-classical style, and now Sir Christopher Wren and Vanbrugh
arose to render it predominant. Wren had the most extraordinary
opportunity for distinguishing himself. The fire of London had swept
away a capital, and to him was assigned the task of restoring it.
Wren (_b._ 1632; _d._ 1723) was descended from a clerical family. In
1651 he was appointed to the chair of astronomy at Gresham College;
three years afterwards to that of the Savilian professor at Oxford.
In 1661 he was appointed by Charles II. to assist Sir John Denham,
the surveyor-general, and in 1663 he was commissioned to examine the
old cathedral of St. Paul, with a view to its restoration in keeping
with the Corinthian colonnade which Inigo Jones had, with a strange
blindness to unity, tagged on to a Gothic church. The old church was
found to be so thoroughly dilapidated, that Wren recommended its entire
removal and the erection of another. This created a terrible outcry
amongst the clergy and citizens, who regarded the old fabric as a model
of beauty.

Whilst these contentions were going on, Wren had entered fairly on
his profession of architect. He built the Sheldonian Theatre at
Oxford, begun in 1663, and completed in 1669; and the fine library
of Trinity College, Cambridge, and the beautiful square, Neville's
Court, to the same college. He also built the chapels of Pembroke and
Emmanuel Colleges, in the same university. In the erection of these,
he suffered, from the conceit and conflicting opinions of parties
concerned, a foretaste of the squabbles and contradictions which
rendered the whole period of the building of St. Paul's miserable. In
1665 he found leisure to visit Paris, and study the magnificent palaces
and churches with which Louis XIV. was embellishing his capital.
There he got a glimpse of the design for the Louvre, which Bernini,
the architect, showed him, but only for a moment; and he was in
communication with Mansard, Le Vau, and Le Pautre.

On his return, the contentions regarding pulling down old St. Paul's
were rife as ever; but the following year the fire occurred, and
Wren was commissioned to make a plan for the rebuilding of the City.
He proposed to restore it on a regular plan, with wide streets and
piazzas, and for the banks of the river to be kept open on both sides
with spacious quays. But these designs were defeated by the ignorance
and selfishness of the inhabitants and traders, and the banks of the
Thames became once more blocked up with wharves and warehouses, narrow
and winding lanes; and Wren could only devote his architectural talent
to the churches, the Royal Exchange, and Custom House. These latter
buildings were completed in the three following years; they have since
both been burnt down and rebuilt. Temple Bar, a hideous erection, was
finished in the fourth year, 1670. All this time the commencement of
the new St. Paul's was impeded by the attempts of the commissioners
to restore the old tumbling fabric, and it was only by successive
fallings-in of the ruins that they were compelled to allow Wren to
remove the whole decayed mass, and clear the ground for the foundations
of his cathedral. These were laid in 1675, nine years after the fire,
and the building was only terminated in thirty-five years, the stone on
the summit of the lantern being laid by Wren's son, Christopher, 1710.
The choir, however, had been opened for divine service in 1697, in the
twenty-second year of the erection.

During this long period Sir Christopher had been busily employed in
raising many other buildings; amongst these, the Royal Observatory,
Greenwich; St. Bride's; St. Swithin's; the Gateway Tower, Christ
Church, Oxford; St. Antholin's, Watling Street; the palace at
Winchester, never completed; Ashmolean Museum, and Queen's College
Chapel, Oxford; St. James's, Westminster; St. Clement's, Eastcheap; St.
Martin's, Ludgate Hill; St. Andrew's, Holborn; Christ Church, Newgate
Street; Hampton Court Palace, an addition; Morden College, Blackheath;
Greenwich Hospital; St. Dunstan's-in-the-East, tower and spire;
Buckingham House, since pulled down; and Marlborough House.

His plan for his _chef-d'œuvre_, St. Paul's, like his grand plan for
the City, with its principal streets ninety feet wide, its second-rate
streets sixty, and its third-rate thirty, was rejected. This cathedral
was a composition compact and simple, consisting of a single general
octagonal mass, surmounted by a dome, and extended on its west side
by a portico, and a short nave or vestibule within. The great idea of
Wren was to adapt it to Protestant worship, and therefore he produced
a design for the interior, the parts of which were beautifully grouped
together so as to produce at once regularity and intricacy, yet
without those long side aisles and recesses, which the processions and
confessionals of Roman Catholic worship require. The whole long period
of Wren's erection of this noble pile was one continued battle with
the conceit, ignorance, and dogmatism of the commissioners, who made
his life a bitter martyrdom; and when we read the admired inscription
in St. Paul's, "_Si monumentum requiris, circumspice_," we behold, on
obeying its injunction, only what Wren did, not what he suffered in
doing it.

The style of St. Paul's, and, indeed, of all Wren's churches, is
neither Grecian nor Gothic, but Italian, influenced by the fashion
which Bernini, the Italian architect of Louis XIV., had introduced
into France. It is a class of architecture of which the Grecian is the
basis, but which is so freely innovated upon as to leave little general
resemblance. In its different parts we have columns and pilasters
of every Grecian and, indeed, Roman order, pediments, peristyles,
architraves, and friezes, mingled up with windows of all sorts, and all
kinds of recesses and projections, the façades and intercolumniations
ornamented with festoons, and wreaths, and human masks, and the whole
surmounted by a great Eastern dome, and by campaniles partaking of all
the compilations of the main buildings. St. Paul's itself is a noble
building, notwithstanding the manifest gleanings from the antique and
the mediæval, and their combination into a whole which has nothing
original but their combination into one superb design. Besides St.
Paul's, the rest of Wren's churches are disappointing, and we cannot
avoid lamenting that he had lost the sense of the beauty of Gothic
architecture, especially when we call to mind the exquisite churches
of that style which adorn so many of the Continental cities. Whilst
the exteriors of Wren's churches show heavily in their huddled-up
situations in London streets, their interiors, in which much more of
the Grecian and Roman styles is introduced, are equally heavy, and
wanting in that pliant grace which distinguishes the interiors of
Gothic cathedrals. Perhaps the noblest work of Wren next to St. Paul's
is Greenwich Hospital, which is more purely Grecian, and therefore
displays a more graceful and majestic aspect. The Palace of Hampton
Court, attached to the fine old Tudor pile of Cardinal Wolsey, is a
great square mass, in which the Dutch taste of William is said to have
set aside Wren's original design. But surely William did not compel him
to erect that (in such circumstances) ponderous barbarism of a Grecian
colonnade in the second quadrangle of Hampton Court, attaching it to a
Gothic building. In fact, neither Wren nor Inigo Jones appears to have
had the slightest sense of the incongruity of such conjunctions. Jones
actually erected a Grecian screen to the beautiful Gothic choir of
Winchester Cathedral, and placed a Grecian bishop's throne in it, amid
the glorious canopy-work of that choir. The return to a better taste
swept these monstrosities away.

The fame of Wren must rest on St. Paul's, for in palaces he was less
happy than in churches. His additions to Windsor Castle and St.
James's Palace, and his erection of Marlborough House are by no means
calculated to do him high honour, whilst all lovers of architecture
must deplore the removal of a great part of Wolsey's palace at Hampton
Court to make way for Wren's structure. A glorious view, if old
drawings are to be believed, must all that vast and picturesque variety
of towers, battlements, tall mullioned windows, cupolas, and pinnacles,
have made, as they stood under the clear heaven glittering in the sun.
The writers who saw it in its glory describe it in its entireness
as the most splendid palace in Europe. Of the campaniles of Wren,
that of St. Bride's, Fleet Street; of Bow Church, Cheapside; of St.
Dunstan's-in-the-East; and the tower of St. Michael's, Cornhill, are
the finest. The last is almost his only Gothic one, and would have been
a fine tower had the ornament been equally diffused over it, and not
all been crowded too near the top. Wren was thwarted in his design for
the London Monument. He drew a plan for one with gilt flames issuing
from the loop-holes, and surmounted by a phœnix, but as no such design
could be found in the five Orders, it was rejected, and the existing
commonplace affair erected. One of his last undertakings was the repair
of Westminster Abbey, to which he added the towers at the west end,
and proposed to erect a spire in the centre. Sir Christopher left a
large quantity of drawings, which are preserved in All Souls' College
library, Oxford.

The next great architect of this period is Sir John Vanbrugh, who,
when in the zenith of his fame as a dramatic writer, suddenly started
forth as an architect, and had the honour of erecting Castle Howard,
the seat of the Earl of Carlisle; Blenheim House, built for the Duke
of Marlborough, in reward of his victories; Duncomb Hall, Yorkshire;
King's Weston, in Gloucestershire; Oulton Hall, Cheshire; Grimsthorpe,
in Lincolnshire; Eastbury, in Dorsetshire, now destroyed; and Seaton
Delaval, in Northumberland, since partly destroyed by fire. Besides
these, he built the opera house, also destroyed by fire. In all these
there is a strong similarity, and as a general effect, a certain
magnificence; but, when examined in detail, they too frequently resolve
themselves into a row of individual designs merely arranged side by
side. This is very much the case with the long façade of Blenheim.
There is a barbaric splendour, but it has no pervading unity, and only
differs from the Italian manner of Wren by a much bolder and profuser
use of the Grecian columns and pilasters. In fact, the architecture of
the whole of this period is of a hybrid character, the classical more
or less modified and innovated to adapt it to modern purposes and the
austerity of a northern climate.

Amongst the most distinguished of this series of architects is James
Gibbs, who, after studying in Italy, returned to England in time
to secure the erection of some of the fifty churches ordered to be
built in the metropolis and its vicinity in the tenth year of Queen
Anne. The first which he built is his finest--St. Martin's, at the
north-east corner of Trafalgar Square. Besides St. Martin's, Gibbs was
the architect of St. Mary's, in the Strand; of Marylebone Chapel; of
the body of All Saints', Derby--an incongruous addition to a fine old
Gothic tower; of the Radcliffe Library, at Oxford; of the west side of
the quadrangle of King's College, and of the Senate House, Cambridge,
left incomplete. In these latter works Sir James Burrows, the designer
of the beautiful chapel of Clare Hall, in the same university, was also
concerned. Gibbs was, moreover, the architect of St. Bartholomew's
Hospital.

Nicholas Hawksmoor, a pupil of Wren's, and an assistant of Vanbrugh's
in building Castle Howard and Blenheim House, was the architect of St.
George's-in-the-East, Ratcliff Highway, begun in 1715; of St. Mary
Woolnoth, Lombard Street; of St. George's, Bloomsbury; St. Anne's,
Limehouse; of Easton Norton House, in Northamptonshire; and of some
other works, including a mausoleum at Castle Howard, and repairs of the
west front of Westminster Abbey. St. George's, Bloomsbury, is perhaps
his finest structure. It has a Corinthian portico, like St. Martin's,
and the steeple is surmounted by a statue of George II.

During this period, St. John the Evangelist, Westminster, was built
by Thomas Archer. The churches of Greenwich, of St. George's, Hanover
Square, and St. Luke's, Middlesex, were designed by John James. To this
time likewise belong St. Giles's-in-the-Fields; St. Olave's, Southwark,
and Woburn Abbey, by Flitcroft; Chatsworth House and Thoresby, by
Salmon; Montagu House, by the French architect, Pouget; All Saints'
Church, and the Peckwater Quadrangle of Christ Church, Oxford, by Dean
Aldrich; and the library of Christ Church, designed by Dr. George
Clarke, M.P. for Oxford, in the reign of Anne. After these the Earl of
Burlington, a worshipper of Palladio and Inigo Jones, became a very
fashionable architect, and built the dormitory at Westminster School;
Petersham House, and other noblemen's mansions. The fine colonnade in
the courtyard of Burlington House is also his work. Burlington was
essentially a copyist, as was his protégé Kent, who built Holkham,
in Norfolk, and the Horse Guards, but acquired as much reputation
by his landscape gardening as he gained little by his architecture.
Towards the end of this period several foreign artists were employed in
England. We have already named Pouget; Giacomo Leoni was much employed;
and Labelye, a Swiss, built Westminster Bridge, which was completed in
1747. Thomas Ripley, originally a carpenter, built the Admiralty.

Painting, like architecture, was at a very low ebb during this period,
with one or two brilliant exceptions. Foreign artists were in demand,
and there was no native talent, except that of Thornhill and Hogarth,
which could claim to be unjustly overlooked in that preference.
Sir Peter Lely was still living, but Sir Godfrey Kneller, another
foreigner, was already taking his place. Kneller was a German, born
at Lübeck, and educated under the best Flemish masters of the day. As
he had chosen portrait-painting as his department, he hastened over
to England after a visit to Rome and Venice, as the most profitable
field for his practice, and being introduced to Charles II. by the
Duke of Monmouth, he became at once the fashion. Kneller had talents
of the highest order, and, had not his passion for money-making been
still greater, he would have taken rank with the great masters; but,
having painted a few truly fine pictures, he relied on them to secure
his fame, and commenced an actual manufacture of portraits for the
accumulation of money. Like Rubens, he sketched out the main figure,
and painted the head and face, leaving his pupils to fill in all the
rest. He worked with wonderful rapidity, and had figures often prepared
beforehand, on which he fitted heads as they were commissioned. Sir
John Medina, a Fleming, was the chief manufacturer of ready-made
figures and postures for him, the rest filled in the draperies and
backgrounds. Kneller had a bold, free, and vigorous hand, painting with
wonderful rapidity, and much of the grace of Vandyck, but only a few
of his works show what he was capable of. The beauties of the Court
of William and Mary, which may be seen side by side with those of the
Court of Charles II. by Lely at Hampton Court, are far inferior to
Lely's.

During this time foreign painters of various degrees of merit
flourished in England. Amongst these were John Baptist Vanloo, brother
of the celebrated Carl Vanloo, a careful artist; Joseph Vanaken, a
native of Antwerp, who did for Hudson what his countrymen did for
Kneller--furnished draperies and attitudes. He worked for many others,
so that Hogarth painted his funeral as followed by all the painters
of the day in despair. The celebrated battle-painter, Peter Vander
Meulen, Hemskerk, Godfrey Schalcken, famous for his candle-light
effects, John Van Wyck, a famous painter of horses, James Bogdani, a
Hungarian flower, bird, and fruit painter, Balthazar Denner, famous for
his wonderfully finished heads, especially of old people, and Theodore
Netscher, the son of Gaspar Netscher, all painted in England in the
earlier part of the eighteenth century. Boit--a painter of French
parentage--Liotard, and Zincke, were noted enamel painters. Peter
Tillemans, who painted English landscapes, seats, busts, roses, etc.,
died in 1734; and the celebrated Canaletti came to England in 1746,
and stayed about two years, but was not very successful, the English
style of architecture, and, still more, the want of the transparent
atmosphere of Italy, being unfavourable to his peculiar talent.

[Illustration: ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL, LONDON, AND LUDGATE HILL, AS IT
WAS.]

There was also a vast deal of decorations of ceilings and staircases
still going on, and foreign artists flocked over to execute it.
Laguerre, a Frenchman, succeeded Verrio in this department, and his
works yet remain at Hampton Court, Burleigh, Blenheim, and other
places. Laguerre was appointed to paint the cupola of St. Paul's,
designs having been offered also by Antonio Pellegrini, who had thus
embellished Castle Howard; but their claims were overruled in favour
of Sir James Thornhill. Besides these, there were Lafosse, who had
decorated Montagu House, Amiconi, a Venetian, and others, who executed
many hundred square yards of such work in England. Such was the fashion
for these foreign decorators, that when a native artist appeared equal
to any one of them in skill and talent, and superior to most, he found
himself paid at a very inferior and invidious rate.

This was the case with Sir James Thornhill, of Thornhill, near
Weymouth. His father, however, had spent his fortune and sold the
estate, and Sir James, being fond of art, determined to make it his
profession to regain his property. His uncle, the celebrated Dr.
Sydenham, assisted him in the scheme. He studied in London, and then
travelled through Flanders, Holland, and France. On his return he was
appointed by Queen Anne to paint the history of St. Paul in the dome of
the new cathedral of St. Paul, in eight pictures in chiaroscuro, with
the lights hatched in gold. So much was the work approved, that he was
made historical painter to the queen. The chief works of the kind by
Sir James were the Princess's apartment at Hampton Court, the gallery
and several ceilings in Kensington Palace, a hall at Blenheim, a chapel
at Lord Oxford's, at Wimpole, a saloon of Mr. Styles's, at Moorpark,
and the ceilings of the great hall at Greenwich Hospital. On the
ceiling of the lower hall appear, amid much allegorical scenery, the
portraits of William and Mary, of Tycho Brahe, Copernicus, Newton, and
others; on that of the upper hall appear the portraits of Queen Anne
and her husband, the Prince of Denmark; and paintings of the landing of
William at Torbay, and the arrival of George I. There are, in addition,
portraits of George I., and two generations of his family. Sir James
also painted the altar-piece of All Souls', Oxford, and one presented
to his native town, Weymouth.

Other English artists of this period were John Riley, an excellent
and original painter, who died in 1691; Murray, a Scotsman; Charles
Jervas, the friend of Pope, a man much overrated by his acquaintance;
and Jonathan Richardson, a much superior artist to Jervas, and author
of the valuable "Essay on the Art of Criticism, as it relates to
Painting." Thomas Hudson, a pupil of Richardson, and his son-in-law,
was an admirable painter of heads, and had the honour of being the
instructor of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Henry Cook, like Thornhill, was a
decorator, and painted the choir of New College Chapel, at Oxford, and
the ceiling of a large room at the New River head. Among other artists
of repute there may be named Luke Cradock, a flower and fruit painter;
John Wootton, an animal painter; Francis Hayman, an historical painter
and designer for book-plates--those for "Don Quixote" being his best;
and George Lambert, one of the first English landscape painters of any
mark.

Far above all other English artists of this period, however, stood
William Hogarth (_b._ 1697). There is no artist of that or any former
age who is so thoroughly English. He is a John Bull from head to
foot--sturdy, somewhat headstrong, opinionated, and satirical. He is,
indeed, the great satirist of the brush; but his satire, keen as it
is, is employed as the instrument of the moralist; the things which he
denounces and derides are crimes, follies, and perverted tastes. In
his own conduct, as on his canvas, he displayed the same spirit, often
knocking down his own interests rather than not express his indignant
feeling of what was spurious in art, or unjust towards himself. Hogarth
was the first English painter who attracted much notice amongst
foreigners, and he still remains one of the most original in genius
of the British school. His subjects are not chosen from the loftier
regions of life and imagination, but from the very lowest or the most
corrupted ones of the life of his country and time. "The Harlot's
Progress," "The Rake's Progress," "Marriage _à la Mode_," "The March
to Finchley," "Gín Lane," "Beer Lane," etc., present a series of
subjects from which the delicate and sensitive will always revolt, and
which have necessarily an air of vulgarity about them, but the purpose
consecrates them; for they are not selected to pander to vice and
folly, but to expose, to brand, to extirpate them.

He first published an engraving of "The Small Masquerade Ticket, or
Burlington Gate," in ridicule of Lord Burlington's architecture, and
of Pope's eulogiums on Burlington and satire of the Duke of Chandos.
He illustrated "Hudibras," and produced a satirical plate, "The
Taste of the Times," in 1724; and, some years after, "The Midnight
Conversation" and "Southwark Fair." Not content with the fame which
this vein, so peculiarly his own, was bringing him, he had the ambition
to attempt the historical style, but this was a decided failure. In
1734, however, he came out in his full and peculiar strength in "The
Harlot's Progress." The melancholy truth of this startling drama,
mingled with touches of genuine humour, seized at once on the minds
of all classes. It became at once immensely popular; it was put
on the stage, and twelve hundred subscriptions for the engravings
produced a rich harvest of profit. In the following year he produced
"The Rake's Progress," which, though equally clever, had not the same
recommendation of novelty. In 1744 he offered for sale the original
paintings of these subjects, as well as "The Four Times of the Day,"
and "The Strolling Actresses Dressing in a Barn;" but here he felt the
effects of the sturdy English expression of his sentiments on art, and
his distributing of an engraving of "The Battle of the Pictures," as a
ticket of admission, gave great offence to painters and their patrons.
The whole sum received was only four hundred and twenty-seven pounds.
Undaunted by his self-injuring avowal of his opinions, he offered in
1750 the pictures of "Marriage _à la Mode_" for sale, but put forth
an advertisement in such caustic terms, as he reflected on the result
of his former auction, that he effectually kept away purchasers, and
obtained only a hundred and twenty pounds for what Mr. Angerstein
afterwards gave a thousand pounds for. His "March to Finchley" being
sent for the royal inspection, so impressed George II. with the idea
that it was a caricature of his Guards, that, though the engraving of
it was dedicated to him, he ordered the picture out of his sight, with
expressions of great indignation. Hogarth quietly substituted the name
of the King of Prussia in the dedication, as "an encourager of the
arts."

Soon after appeared his twelve plates of "Industry and Idleness," and
in 1753 he published a work called "The Analysis of Beauty," in which
he attempted to prove that the foundation of beauty and grace consists
in a flowing serpentine line. He gave numerous examples of it, and
supported his theory with much ingenious argument. The book brought
down upon him a perfect tempest of critical abuse from his envious and
enraged contemporaries. In 1757 he visited France, and being engaged in
sketching in Calais, he was seized and underwent very rough treatment
from "the politest nation in the world," under an impression that
he was employed by the English government to make drawings of the
fortifications. This adventure he has commemorated in his picture of
"Calais Gate." In the following year he painted his "Sigismunda."

Besides those enumerated, "The Four Election Scenes," "The Enraged
Musician," "The Distressed Poet," and "England and France"--all made
familiar to the public by engravings--are amongst his best works. In
1760 occurred the first exhibition of pictures by British artists, the
works of Hogarth being an actuating cause. He had presented to the
Foundling Hospital, besides his "March to Finchley," his "Marriage _à
la Mode_," and his "Moses brought before Pharaoh's Daughter," his most
successful picture of that kind; and Hayman and other artists having
followed his example, a company of artists conceived the idea that an
exhibition of the works of living artists might be made profitable.
Hogarth fell readily into the plan, till it was proposed to add to this
a royal academy of arts, which he opposed with all his might. He died
in 1764, and was buried in the churchyard at Chiswick, where also lies
by his side his wife, who survived him twenty-five years.

In sculpture at this period we stood much lower than in painting. Here
we had no Hogarth, nor even a Thornhill. All that was of any value in
this art proceeded from the chisels of foreigners, and even in that
what an immense distance from the grand simplicity of the ancients! The
sculpture of Italy and France was in the ascendant, but Bernini and
Roubiliac had little in common with Phidias and Praxiteles, and our
own sculptors presented a melancholy contrast to the work of artists
of the worst age of Greece or Rome; there is scarcely a name that is
worth mentioning. The best of the native sculptors was John Bushnell,
who was employed by Wren to execute the statues of the kings at Temple
Bar; and Francis Bird, who was also employed later by Wren to execute
"The Conversion of St. Paul," in the pediment of the new cathedral, the
bas-reliefs under the portico, and the group in front, all of a very
ordinary character. His best work is the monument of Dr. Busby in the
transept of Westminster Abbey. Besides this he executed the monument of
Sir Cloudesley Shovel, also at Westminster, and the bronze statue of
Henry VI., in the quadrangle of Eton College, both very indifferent.
Gibbs and Bird executed the ponderous and tasteless monument of
Holles, Duke of Newcastle, at Westminster, and the fine old minster is
disgraced by a crowd of still more contemptible productions of this
period. These can only be equalled in wretchedness by the works of a
trading school, who supplied copies in lead of ancient gods, goddesses,
shepherds, shepherdesses, etc., for the gardens of the nobility, which
soon swarmed in legions in all the gardens and areas in and around the
metropolis. Amongst the chief dealers in this traffic were Cheere and
Charpentier, who employed foreign artists, even, for such images, and
it was the fortune of Roubiliac to commence his English career with the
former of these traders. The three chief foreigners of this period were
Rysbraeck, Scheemakers, and Roubiliac, who were copyists of the French
sculptors Coysevox, Bouchardon, and Le Moyne, as these had been of
Bernini.

Notwithstanding the constant wars of this time, British shipping,
commerce, colonies, and manufactures made considerable progress. At
the commencement of this period the amount of shipping employed in
our commerce was altogether 244,788 tons, being 144,264 tons English,
and 100,524 foreign; in 1701 the amount of shipping employed was
337,328 tons, of which alone 293,703 were English. In 1702, the end of
William's reign, the number of English mercantile vessels was about
3,281, employing 27,196 seamen. The royal navy, at the end of William's
reign, amounted to about 159,000 tons, employing some 50,000 sailors,
so that the seamen of England must have amounted at that period to
nearly 80,000.

At the end of the reign of Anne the shipping employed in commerce
amounted to 448,000 tons, of which only 26,573 tons were foreign; so
that the English mercantile shipping had increased, in little more than
twelve years, 127,800 tons. At the end of the reign of George I. our
mercantile shipping was only 456,000 tons, the foreign being 23,651
tons; so that the increase for the time was but slight. The royal
navy had greatly decreased under George I. At the end of the reign of
George II., the total amount of our commercial shipping was 573,978
tons, including 112,737 foreign. Thus, whilst the total shipping at the
commencement of this period (in 1688) was only 244,788 tons, at the
end of it (in 1760) the total was 573,978 tons, or a nett increase,
in seventy-two years, of 329,190 tons: the increase being much larger
than the total amount of tonnage possessed at the commencement of
the period, the amount of foreign shipping remaining very nearly the
same--in fact, only 12,000 tons more. The royal navy, which, at the
commencement of the period, was reckoned at 101,892 tons, at the end
of it was 321,104 tons, showing an increase of 219,212 tons; and, at
the rate of men employed at the commencement, the number now employed
in both our commercial and our national navy could not be fewer than
160,000 men.

The growth of our commerce during these seventy-two years is shown
by the amount of our exports. In 1697--that is, nine years after the
Revolution--the amount of exports was only £3,525,907; but in the
three next years of peace they rose to £6,709,881. War reduced these
again to little more than £5,000,000, and at the end of the reign
of Anne, during peace, they rose to £8,000,000. At the end of the
reign of George I. the war had so much checked our commerce, that
the exports scarcely amounted to that sum, the average of the three
years--1726, 1727, and 1728--being only £7,891,739. By the end of the
reign of George II., however (1760), they had risen to £14,693,270.
Having by this period driven the fleets of France and Spain from the
ocean, we rather extended our commerce than injured it. Thus, during
these seventy-two years, our exports had increased from about three
millions and a half annually to more than fourteen millions and a half
annually, or a yearly difference of upwards of eleven millions--a most
substantial growth.

One great cause of this progress was the growth of our colonies. They
began now to demand a considerable quantity of our manufactures and
other articles of domestic comfort and convenience, and to supply us
with a number of items of raw material. Towards the end of the reign of
George I. our American colonies, besides the number of convicts that
we sent thither, especially to Virginia and Maryland, attracted a
considerable emigration of free persons, particularly to Pennsylvania,
in consequence of the freedom of its constitution as founded by Penn,
and the freedom for the exercise of religion.

[Illustration: WILLIAM HOGARTH. (_After the Portrait begun by Weltdon
and finished by himself._)]

New York, Jersey, and the New England States traded in the same
commodities: they also built a considerable number of ships, and
manufactured, especially in Massachusetts, coarse linens and woollens,
iron, hats, rum, besides drying great quantities of fish for Spain,
Portugal, and the Mediterranean markets. Massachusetts already employed
40,000 tons of shipping. New England furnished the finest masts in the
world for the navy; Virginia and Maryland furnished 50,000 hogsheads
of tobacco, annually valued at £370,000; employing 24,000 tons of
shipping. From these colonies we received also large quantities of
skins, wool, furs, flax, etc. Carolina had become a great rice-growing
country. By the year 1733 it had nearly superseded the supply of that
article from Italy in Spain and Portugal; in 1740 it exported nearly
100,000 barrels of rice; and seven years afterwards, besides its rice,
it sent to England 200,000 pounds of indigo, rendering us independent
of France for that article; and at the end of the present period its
export of indigo had doubled that quantity, besides a very considerable
exportation of pitch, sassafras, Brazil wood, skins, Indian corn, and
other articles.

In 1732 the new colony of Georgia was founded by General Oglethorpe,
and became a silk-growing country, exporting, by the end of this
period, 10,000 pounds of raw silk annually.

The rapid growth of the commerce of the American colonies excited an
intense jealousy in our West Indian Islands, which claimed a monopoly
of supply of sugar, rum, molasses, and other articles to all the
British possessions. The Americans trading with the French, Dutch,
Spaniards, etc., took these articles in return; but the West Indian
proprietors prevailed upon the British Government, in 1733, to impose
a duty on the import of any produce of foreign plantations into the
American colonies, besides granting a drawback on the re-exportation
of West Indian sugar from Great Britain. This was one of the first
pieces of legislation of which the American colonies had a just right
to complain. At this period our West Indies produced about 85,000
hogsheads of sugar, or 1,200,000 cwts. About three hundred sail were
employed in the trade with these islands, and some 4,500 sailors; the
value of British manufactures exported thither being nearly £240,000
annually, but our imports from Jamaica alone averaged at that time
£539,492. Besides rum, sugar, and molasses, we received from the West
Indies cotton, indigo, ginger, pimento, cocoa, coffee, etc.

During this period a vast empire was beginning to unfold itself in the
East Indies, destined to produce a vast trade, and pour a perfect mine
of wealth into Great Britain. The victories of Clive, Eyre Coote, and
others, were telling on our commerce. During the early part of this
period this effect was slow, and our exports to India and China up to
1741 did not average more than £148,000 per annum in value. Bullion,
however, was exported to pay expenses and to purchase tea to an annual
amount of upwards of half a million. Towards the end of this period,
however, our exports to India and China amounted annually to more than
half a million; and the necessity for the export of bullion had sunk
to an annual demand for less than £100,000. The amount of tea imported
from China during this period rose from about 140,000 pounds annually
to nearly 3,000,000 pounds annually--an enormous increase.

The progress of our manufactures was equally satisfactory. At the
commencement of this period that great innovator and benefactor,
the steam-engine, was produced. The idea thrown out by the Marquis
of Worcester, in his "Century of Inventions," in 1663, had been
neglected as mere wild theory till Savery, in 1698, constructed a
steam-engine for draining mines. This received successive improvements
from Newcomen and Crawley, and further ones from Brindley in 1756,
and Watt extended these at the end of this period, though this
mighty agent has received many improvements since. Navigable canals,
also, date their introduction by the Duke of Bridgewater, under the
management of Brindley, from the latter end of this period, 1758.
Other great men, Arkwright, Compton, Hargreaves, etc., were now busily
at work in developing machinery, and applying steam to it, which has
revolutionised the system of manufacture throughout the world. In 1754
the Society of Arts and Manufactures was established.

One great article of manufacture and export, however, down to this
period, continued to be that of our woollens. To guard this manufacture
many Acts had been passed at different times, prohibiting the
exportation of the raw material. Immediately after the Revolution a
fresh Act of this kind was passed, and such was the jealousy even of
the Irish and of our American colonies weaving woollen cloths, that,
in 1689, an Act was passed prohibiting the exportation of wool or
woollen goods from Ireland or our plantations to any country except
England. Having taken measures thus to confine as much as possible the
profit of the woollen manufacture to England, the next year, which saw
all protecting duties taken off corn, saw also leave given for the
exportation of woollen cloths duty-free from England to any part of the
world. Sir William Davenant estimates the value of the yearly growth
of wool in England at this time at about £2,000,000, and the value of
its woollen manufactures at £8,000,000. He calculates that one-fourth
of this amount was exported. In 1738 Mr. John Kay invented the mode of
casting the shuttle by what is called a "picking-peg," by which means
the weaver was enabled to weave cloths of any width, and throw off
twice the quantity in the same time. In 1758 the Leeds Cloth Hall was
erected, and, about twenty years afterwards, a hall for white cloths.

The silk trade received a great impulse by the erection of a silk-mill
at Derby, in 1719, by John Lombe and his brothers. Lombe had smuggled
himself into a silk-mill in Italy, as a destitute workman, and had
then copied all the machinery. To prevent the operation of this new
silk factory in England--which was worked by a water-wheel on the
river Derwent, had 97,746 wheels, movements, and individual parts,
and employed three hundred persons--the King of Sardinia prohibited
the exportation of the raw material, and thus, for a time, checked
the progress of the manufacture. Parliament voted Sir Thomas Lombe
£14,000 as a compensation for loss of profits thus occasioned, on
condition that the patent, which he had obtained for fourteen years,
should expire, and the right to use the machinery should be thrown
open to the public. By the middle of this period our silk manufactures
were declared superior to those of Italy, and the tradesmen of
Naples recommended their silk stockings as English ones. In 1755
great improvements were introduced by Mr. Jedediah Strutt in the
stocking-loom of Lee.

As the woollen manufactures of Ireland had received a check from the
selfishness of the English manufacturers, it was sought to compensate
the Protestants of Ulster by encouraging the linen manufacture there,
which the English did not value so much as their woollen. A Board was
established in Dublin in 1711, and one also in Scotland in 1727, for
the purpose of superintending the trade, and bounties and premiums on
exportation were offered. In these favourable circumstances the trade
rapidly grew, both in Ireland and Scotland. In 1750 seven and a half
million yards of linen were annually woven in Scotland alone.

The lace manufacture was still prosecuted merely by hand, and chiefly
in Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, and in the West of England. No lace
was produced from machinery before 1768.

In the manufacture of iron a most material discovery of smelting the
ore by the use of pit-coal was made. The forests of England were so
much reduced by the consumption of wood in the iron furnaces, that it
was contemplated removing the business to our American colonies. This
necessity was obviated by the discovery by Dud Dudley of a mode of
manufacturing bar-iron with coal instead of wood. This discovery had
been patented in 1619, yet, singularly, had been neglected; but in 1740
the principle was applied at Coalbrookdale, and iron thus made tough
or brittle, as was wished. Iron works, now not confined to one spot
by the necessity of wood, sprang up at various places in England and
Wales, and the great works at Rotherham were established in 1750, and
the famous Carron works in Scotland in 1760. The quantity of pig-iron
made in 1740 was calculated at 17,000 tons, and the number of people
employed in the iron trade at the end of this period is supposed to be
little short of 300,000.

The production of copper during this period was so plentiful, that,
though the great mines in Anglesea were not yet discovered, full
liberty was given to export it, except to France. From 1736 to 1745
the mines of Cornwall alone produced about 700 tons annually, and the
yearly amount was constantly increasing. A manufactory of brass--the
secret of which mixture was introduced from Germany, in 1649--was
established in Birmingham, in 1748; and, at the end of this period,
the number of persons employed in making articles of copper and
brass was, probably, not less than 50,000. The manufacture of tinned
iron commenced in Wales about 1730, and in 1740 further improvements
were made in this process. Similar improvements were making in the
refinement of metals, and in the manufacture of silver plate, called
Sheffield plate. English watches acquired great reputation, but
afterwards fell into considerable disrepute from the employment of
inferior foreign works. Printing types, which we had before imported
from Holland, were first made in England in the reign of Queen Anne,
by Caslon, an engraver of gun-locks and barrels. In 1725 William Ged,
a Scotsman, discovered the art of stereotyping, but did not introduce
it without strong opposition from the working printers. Great strides
were made in the paper manufacture. In 1690 we first made white paper,
and in 1713 it is calculated that 300,000 reams of all kinds of paper
were made in England. An excise duty was first laid on paper in 1711.
Our best china and earthenware were still imported, and, both in style
and quality, our own pottery was very inferior, for Wedgwood had not
yet introduced his wonderful improvements. Defoe introduced pantiles
at his manufactory at Tilbury, before which time we imported them from
Holland. The war with France compelled us to encourage the manufacture
of glass; in 1697 the excise duty, imposed three years before, was
repealed, but in 1746 duties were imposed on the articles used in its
manufacture, and additional duties on its exportation. The manufacture
of crown glass was not introduced till after this period.

The effects of the growth in our commerce and manufactures, and the
consequent increase of the national wealth, were seen in the extension
of London and other of our large towns. Eight new parishes were added
to the metropolis during this period; the Chelsea Waterworks were
established in 1721; and Westminster Bridge was completed in 1750.
Bristol, Hull, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield, Leeds,
Edinburgh, Glasgow, Frome, Dublin, and several other towns, grew
amazingly.




CHAPTER VII.

REIGN OF GEORGE III.

    Accession of George III.--His Conduct--Ascendency of Bute--Meeting
    of Parliament--Enthusiastic Reception of the King's Speech--Bute's
    Cabals--Hostility to Pitt--Ministerial Changes--Marriage of the
    King--Queen Charlotte--Misfortunes of Frederick--Ferdinand of
    Brunswick's Campaign--Defeat of the French in the East and West
    Indies--Negotiations for Peace--Pitt's large Demands--Obstinacy of
    Choiseul--The Family Compact suspected--Resignation of Pitt--Bute's
    Ministry--War with Spain--Abandonment of Frederick--Policy of
    the new Czar--Resignation of Newcastle--Bute at the head of the
    Treasury--Successes in the West Indies--Capture of Manila--Bute's
    Eagerness for Peace--The Terms--Bute's Unpopularity--Close of
    the Seven Years' War--Successes of Clive--Defeat of the Dutch in
    India--Final Overthrow of the French in India--Fate of the Count
    de Lally--Bute and the Princess of Wales--The Cider Tax--Bute's
    Vengeance--His Resignation--George Grenville in Office--No. 45
    of the North Briton--Arrest of Wilkes--His Acquittal--Vengeance
    against him--The King negotiates with Pitt--Wilkes's Affairs in
    Parliament--The Wilkes Riots--The Question of Privilege--The
    Illegality of General Warrants declared--Wilkes expelled the
    House--Debates on General Warrants--Rejoicing in the City of London.


George III., at the time of the sudden death of his grandfather, was
in his twenty-second year. The day of the late king's death and the
following night were spent in secret arrangements, and the next morning
George presented himself before his mother, the Princess-dowager,
at Carlton House, where he met his council, and was then formally
proclaimed. This was on the 26th of October, 1760.

The conduct of the young king, considering his shyness and the defects
of his education, was, during the first days of his sudden elevation,
calm, courteous, affable, and unembarrassed. "He behaved throughout,"
says Horace Walpole, "with the greatest propriety, dignity, and
decency." He dismissed his Guards to attend on the body of his
grandfather. But it was soon seen that there would be great changes in
his Government. Pitt waited on him with the sketch of an address to his
Council; but the king informed him that this had been thought of, and
an address already prepared. This was sufficient for Pitt; he had long
been satisfied that the favourite of mother and son, the Groom of the
Stole, and the inseparable companion, Bute, would, on the accession of
George, mount into the premiership.

On the morning of Monday, the 28th, the king's brother, Edward, Duke
of York, and Lord Bute were sworn members of the Privy Council. It
was obvious that Bute was to be quite in the ascendant, and the
observant courtiers paid instant homage to the man through whom all
good things were to flow. The king declared himself, however, highly
satisfied with his present Cabinet, and announced that he wished no
changes. A handbill soon appeared on the walls of the Royal Exchange
expressing the public apprehension: "No petticoat government--no Scotch
favourite--no Lord George Sackville!" Bute had always championed Lord
George, who was so bold in society and so backward in the field; and
the public now imagined that they would have a governing clique of the
king's mother, her favourite, Bute, and his favourite, Lord George.

Parliament, which had been prorogued for a few days on account of
the demise of the king, assembled on the 18th of November. The king
delivered a speech, composed by Lord Hardwicke, and revised by
Pitt, and containing a passage, said to be inserted by himself, as
follows:--"Born and educated in this country, I glory in the name of
Briton!" In the addresses these words produced the most enthusiastic
responses. "What a lustre," exclaimed the Lords, "doth it cast upon the
name of Briton, when you, sir, are pleased to esteem it amongst your
glories!" For the rest, the speech expressed the royal determination
to prosecute the war with all vigour; praised the magnanimity and
perseverance of his good brother, the King of Prussia; and recommended
unanimity of action and opinion in Parliament. Nothing could appear
more unanimous or more liberal than Parliament.

But the smoothness was only on the surface--beneath were working the
strongest political animosities and the most selfish desires. The
little knot of aristocratic families which had so long monopolised all
the sweets of office, now saw with indignation tribes of aspirants
crowding in for a share of the good things. The aspirants filled the
ante-chamber of Bute, the angry and disappointed resorted to Newcastle,
who was in a continual state of agitation by seeing appointments given
to new men without his knowledge; members rushing in to offer their
support to Government at the next election, who had hitherto stood
aloof, and were now received and encouraged.

[Illustration: GREAT SEAL OF GEORGE III.]

Meanwhile, Bute was sedulously at work to clear the way for his own
assumption, not merely of office, but of the whole power of the
Government. He acted as already the only medium of communication with
the king, and the depositary of his secrets. He opened his views
cautiously to Bubb Dodington, who was a confidant of the Lichfield
House party, and still hungering after a title. Dodington advised him
to induce Lord Holderness to resign and take his place, which, at
first, Bute affected to disapprove of, but eventually acted upon. The
first object was to get rid of Pitt, who, by his talents and haughty
independence of manner, was not more acceptable to the king and his
counsellor, Bute, than by his policy, which they desired to abandon.
Pamphlets were therefore assiduously circulated, endeavouring to
represent Pitt as insatiable for war, and war as having been already
too burdensome for the nation.

On the 21st of March Parliament was dissolved by proclamation, and the
same day the _Gazette_ announced several of the changes determined on
in the Ministry. The Duke of Bedford retired from the Lord-Lieutenancy
of Ireland, and his place was taken by the Earl of Halifax. Legge, who
was considered too much in the interest of Pitt, was dismissed, and
Lord Barrington now took his place of Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Charles Townshend took Barrington's former office, and Sir Francis
Dashwood became Treasurer of the Chambers in room of Townshend. Both
Townshend and Dashwood had gone over to the party of Bute. Lord
Holderness was now made to do what Dodington had before suggested; he
resigned his office of Secretary of State, and in due course Bute was
gazetted as appointed to that post. No notice of this change had been
communicated to Pitt, the other and Chief Secretary, till it took place.

On the 8th of July an extraordinary Privy Council was summoned. All
the members, of whatever party, were desired to attend, and many were
the speculations as to the object of their meeting. The general notion
was that it involved the continuing or the ending of the war. It
turned out to be for the announcement of the king's intended marriage.
The lady selected was Charlotte, the second sister of the Duke of
Mecklenburg-Strelitz. Apart from the narrowness of her education, the
young princess had a considerable amount of amiability, good sense, and
domestic taste. These she shared with her intended husband, and whilst
they made the royal couple always retiring, at the same time they
caused them to give, during their lives, a moral air to their court.
On the 8th of September Charlotte arrived at St. James's, and that
afternoon the marriage took place, the ceremony being performed by the
Archbishop of Canterbury. On the 22nd the coronation took place with
the greatest splendour.

We must now step back a little to observe the war on the Continent from
the opening of the present campaign. Frederick of Prussia lay encamped
during the winter in Silesia, surrounded by difficulties and enemies.
His resources both in money and men appeared well nigh exhausted.
The end of autumn, 1760, brought him the news of the death of George
II., and, from what he could learn of the disposition of his successor
and his chief advisers, it was certain that peace would be attempted
by England. This depressing intelligence was confirmed in December
by the British Parliament indeed voting again his usual subsidy, but
reluctantly, and he found it paid with still more reluctance and delay.
Whilst thus menaced with the total loss of the funds by which he
carried on the war, he saw, as the spring approached, the Russians and
Austrians advancing against him with more than double his own forces.
Disasters soon overtook him. The capture of Schweidnitz enabled the
Austrians to winter in Silesia, which they had never yet done during
the war; and the Russians also found, to their great satisfaction, on
arriving in Pomerania, that they could winter in Colberg. The Russian
division under Romanzow had besieged Colberg both by land and sea, and,
despite the attempts of the Prussians sent by Frederick to relieve it,
it had been compelled to surrender. In these discouraging circumstances
Frederick took up his winter quarters at Breslau. His affairs never
wore a darker aspect. He was out-generaled and more discomfited this
campaign than by a great battle. His enemies lay near in augmented
strength of position, and his resources had ominously decreased.

The campaign against the French was opened in February by Prince
Ferdinand of Brunswick attacking the Duke de Broglie, and driving him
out of Cassel. Prince Ferdinand followed up this advantage by attacking
them in Marburg and Göttingen, and applied himself particularly to the
siege of Cassel. But Broglie, now recovered from his surprise, first
defeated the hereditary Prince of Brunswick, Ferdinand's nephew, at
Stangerode, and then repulsed Ferdinand himself from Cassel.

The destruction of the French magazines delayed their operations till
midsummer, when Broglie advanced from Cassel, and the Prince Soubise
from the Rhine, to give Ferdinand battle. On the march they fell
in with Sporken, and this time defeated one of his posts, and took
nineteen pieces of cannon and eight hundred prisoners. The Allies
awaited them in front of the river Lippe, and between that river and
the Aest, near the village of Kirch-Denkern. The French were routed at
all points, having lost, according to the Allies, five thousand men,
whilst they themselves had only lost one thousand five hundred. The
effect of the victory, however, was small.

If the French had been by no means successful in Germany, they had been
much less so in other quarters of the globe. In the East Indies we had
taken Pondicherry, their chief settlement, from them, and thus remained
masters of the whole coast of Coromandel, and of the entire trade with
India. In the West Indies, the French had been fortifying Dominica,
contrary to treaty, and Lord Rollo and Sir James Douglas were sent
thither, and speedily reduced it. France, indeed, was now fast sinking
in exhaustion. Louis XV. was a man of no mark or ability, inclined to
peace, and leaving all affairs to his Ministers, and still more to his
mistress, Madame de Pompadour. Choiseul was a man of talent, but of
immense vanity, and little persistent firmness. He was now anxious for
peace, but, too proud to make the proposal directly, he induced the
Courts of Russia and Austria to do it. It was suggested that a congress
should be held at Augsburg for settling the peace of Europe. England
and Prussia readily consented. But the Duke of Choiseul, anxious to
have a clear understanding of the terms on which England and France
were likely to treat, proposed a previous exchange of views, and
dispatched M. Bussy to London, whilst Mr. Pitt sent to Paris Mr. Hans
Stanley.

Choiseul made, undoubtedly, a large offer for peace. It was that each
power should retain all such of its conquests as should be in its
hands, subject to exchanges and equivalents, in Europe, on the 1st of
May next; in America, the West Indies, and Africa, on the 1st of July;
and in the East Indies on the 1st of September. But Pitt had declared
that he would never make another peace of Utrecht. He considered that
we had France down, and he determined to retain everything of value.
He therefore replied that the proper period for the principle of the
treaty to take place was that on which the treaty was really signed,
that it might so happen that it would not be signed at the dates named,
and he did this in order to complete a scheme, which he had already
nearly accomplished, that of seizing on Belleisle, an island on the
coast of France. It surrendered in July, and the news of this loss was
speedily followed in Paris by that of the loss of Dominica in the West,
and of Pondicherry in the East Indies.

These reverses were calculated to make France more compliant; yet
Pitt was astonished to find, instead of compliance, a great spirit
of resistance. Choiseul would by no means admit that Belleisle was
an equivalent for Minorca. He demanded Guadeloupe and Belleisle too,
simply in lieu of the French conquests in Germany. He now demurred
to the surrender of Cape Breton, or in any case to forego the right
of fishing along its coasts. He was not content with Amaboo or
Acra; he demanded Senegal or Goree. He declined also to destroy the
fortifications of Dunkirk, raised in contempt of the treaty of Utrecht.
All captures made at sea previous to the declaration of war must be
restored; and in Germany, though he was willing to withdraw the French
troops, it was only on condition that the troops commanded by Prince
Ferdinand should not reinforce the Prussian army.

The secret of this wonderfully augmented boldness of tone on the part
of France soon transpired. Choiseul had been endeavouring to secure the
alliance of Spain, and saw himself about to succeed. Spain was smarting
under many losses and humiliations from the English during the late
war. Whilst General Wall, the Spanish minister at Madrid, urged these
complaints on the Earl of Bristol, our ambassador there, Choiseul was
dexterously inflaming the minds of the Spanish Court against Britain
on these grounds. He represented it as the universal tyrant of the
seas, and the sworn enemy of every other maritime state. He offered to
assist in the recovery of Gibraltar, and to make over Minorca to Spain.
By these means he induced Spain to go into what became the celebrated
Family Compact--that is, a compact by which France and Spain bound
themselves to mutually succour and support each other; and to admit the
King of Naples, the son of the Spanish king, to this compact, but no
prince or potentate whatever, except he were of the House of Bourbon.

Besides the general compact, there was a particular one, which
engaged that, should England and France remain at war on the 1st of
May, 1762, Spain should on that day declare war against England, and
should at the same time receive possession of Minorca. The existence
of these compacts was kept with all possible secrecy; but Mr. Stanley
penetrated to a knowledge of them in Paris, and his information was
fully confirmed from other sources. If these, however, had left any
doubt, it would have been expelled by the receipt of a French memorial
through M. Bussy, to which a second memorial on Spanish affairs was
appended. Pitt received the proposition with a tone of indignation
that made it manifest that he would suffer no such interference
of a third party--would not yield a step to any such alliance. He
declared, in broad and plain terms, that his majesty would not permit
the affairs of Spain to be introduced by France; that he would never
suffer France to presume to meddle in any affairs between himself and
Spain, and that he should consider any further mention of such matters
as a direct affront. A similar message was dispatched to the Earl of
Bristol in Spain, declaring that England was open to any proposals of
negotiation from Spain, but not through the medium of France. This was,
in fact, tantamount to a defiance to both France and Spain, and would
undoubtedly have put an end to all further negotiation had there not
been a purpose to serve. The Spanish treasure ships were yet out at sea
on their way home. Any symptoms of hostility would insure their capture
by the British, and cut off the very means of maintaining a war.
General Wall, therefore, concealed all appearance of chagrin; admitted
that the memorial had been presented by France with the full consent
of his Catholic majesty, but professed the most sincere desire for the
continuance of peaceful relations.

Pitt was not for a moment deceived, and in August the Family Compact
was signed. He broke off the negotiation, recalled Stanley from Paris,
dismissed Bussy from London, and advised an immediate declaration of
war against Spain, whilst it was yet in our power to seize the treasure
ships. But there was but one Pitt--one great mind capable of grasping
the affairs of a nation, and of seizing on the deciding circumstances
with the promptness essential to effect. The usually timid Newcastle
became suddenly courageous with alarm. Bute pronounced Pitt's proposal
as "rash and unadvisable;" the king, obstinate as was his tendency,
declared that, if his Ministers had yielded to such a policy, he would
not; and Pitt, having laboured in vain to move this stolid mass of
ministerial imbecility through three Cabinet Councils, at last, in the
beginning of October, declared that, as he was called to the Ministry
by the people, and held himself responsible to them, he would no longer
occupy a position the duties of which he was not able to discharge. On
the 5th he resigned, and his great Ministry came to an end.

The Bute Ministry was now in power, and determined on reversing
the policy of Pitt--policy which had added so magnificently to the
territory and glory of the country. Bute had now to seek powerful
connections to enable him to carry on. The commonplace man seeks to
make up for his feebleness by associating with him, not men of merit,
but men of aristocratic connection. For this reason he conferred the
Privy Seal on the Duke of Bedford, and the Seal of Secretary on the
Earl of Egremont. To break the force of popular indignation for the
loss of Pitt from the helm--for the people knew who was the great
man and successful minister well enough--the king was advised to
confer some distinguished mark of favour on Pitt. He was offered the
government of Canada as a sinecure, with five thousand pounds a year.
Pitt was not the man to undertake a highly responsible office without
discharging the duties, and he was next offered the Chancellorship of
the Duchy of Lancaster; but he preferred a simple pension of three
thousand pounds a-year, and that a title should be conferred on his
wife. By this arrangement he was left in the House of Commons, and
in a position to continue his exertions for the country. Both these
suggestions were complied with.

Ministers were soon compelled to pursue the policy which Pitt had so
successfully inaugurated. With all the determination of Lord Bute and
his colleagues to make a speedy peace, they found it impossible. The
Family Compact between France and Spain was already signed; and in
various quarters of the world Pitt's plans were so far in progress
that they must go on. In East and West, his plans for the conquest
of Havana, of the Philippine Isles, and for other objects, were not
to be abruptly abandoned; and Ministers were compelled to carry out
his objects, in many particulars, in spite of themselves. And now
the unpleasant truth was forced on the attention of Ministers, that
the war which Pitt declared to be inevitable was so, and that he had
recommended the only wise measure. The country was now destined to pay
the penalty of their folly and stupidity in rejecting Pitt's proposal
to declare war against Spain at once, and strip her of the means of
offence, her treasure ships. Lord Bristol, our ambassador at Madrid,
announced to Lord Bute, in a despatch of the 2nd of November, that
these ships had arrived, and that all the wealth which Spain expected
from her American colonies for the next year was safe at home. And
he had to add that with this, Wall, the Minister, had thrown off the
mask, and had assumed the most haughty and insolent language towards
Great Britain. This was a confession on the part of Lord Bristol
that he had suffered Wall to throw dust in his eyes till his object
was accomplished, and it made patent the fact that Pitt had been too
sagacious to be deceived; but that the new Ministers, whilst insulting
Pitt and forcing him to resign, had been themselves completely duped.
Spain now, in the most peremptory terms, demanded redress for all her
grievances; and, before the year had closed, the Bute Cabinet was
compelled to recall Lord Bristol from Madrid, and to order Fuentes,
the Spanish ambassador in London, to quit the kingdom. On the 4th of
January, 1762, declaration of war was issued against Spain. Neither
king nor Ministers, seeing the wisdom of Pitt's policy and the folly
of their own, were prevented from committing another such absurdity.
They abandoned Frederick of Prussia at his greatest need. They refused
to vote his usual subsidy. By this execrable proceeding--for we not
only abandoned Frederick, but made overtures to Austria, with which he
was engaged in a mortal struggle--we thus threw him into the arms and
close alliance of Russia, and were, by this, the indirect means of that
guilty confederation by which Poland was afterwards rent in pieces by
these powers. On the 5th of January, 1762, died the Czarina Elizabeth.
She was succeeded by her nephew, the Duke of Holstein, under the title
of Peter III. Peter was an enthusiastic admirer of the Prussian king;
he was extravagant and incessant in his praises of him. He accepted the
commission of a colonel in the Prussian service, wore its uniform, and
was bent on clothing his own troops in it. It was clear that he was
not quite sane, for he immediately recalled the Russian army which was
acting against Frederick, hastened to make peace with him, and offered
to restore all that had been won from him in the war, even to Prussia
proper, which the Russians had possession of. His example was eagerly
seized upon by Sweden, which was tired of the war. Both Russia and
Sweden signed treaties of peace with Frederick in May, and Peter went
farther: he dispatched an army into Silesia, where it had so lately
been fighting against him, to fight against Austria. Elated by this
extraordinary turn of affairs, the Prussian ambassador renewed his
applications for money, urging that, now Russia had joined Frederick,
it would be easy to subdue Austria and terminate the war. This was an
opportunity for Bute to retrace with credit his steps; but he argued,
on the contrary, that, having the aid of Russia, Frederick did not want
that of England; and he is even accused of endeavouring to persuade
Russia to continue its hostilities against Prussia; and thus he totally
alienated a power which might have hereafter rendered us essential
service, without gaining a single point. The Duke of Newcastle, man of
mediocre merit as he was, saw farther than Bute into the disgraceful
nature of thus abandoning a powerful ally at an extremity, as well as
the impolicy of converting such a man into a mortal enemy; and, finding
all remonstrances vain, resigned. Bute was glad to be rid of him; and
Newcastle, finding both his remonstrance and resignation taken very
coolly, had the meanness to seek to regain a situation in the Cabinet,
but without effect, and threw himself into the Opposition.

[Illustration: GEORGE III.]

On Newcastle's resignation Bute placed himself at the head of the
Treasury, and named Grenville Secretary of State--a fatal nomination,
for Grenville lost America. Lord Barrington, though an adherent of
Newcastle, became Treasurer of the Navy, and Sir Francis Dashwood
Chancellor of the Exchequer. Bute, who, like all weak favourites, had
not the sense to perceive that it was necessary to be moderate to
acquire permanent power, immediately obtained a vacant Garter, and thus
parading the royal favours, augmented the rapidly growing unpopularity
which his want of sagacity and honourable principle was fast creating.
He was beset by legions of libels, which fully exposed his incapacity,
and as freely dealt with the connection between himself and the mother
of the king.

But in spite of Bute's incapacity the expeditions planned by Pitt
were uniformly successful. The British fleets were everywhere busy
attacking the Spanish colonies, and cutting off the Spanish ships
at sea. A fleet had been dispatched, under Admiral Rodney, at the
latter end of the last year, against Martinique, carrying nearly
twelve thousand men, commanded by General Monckton. They landed on the
7th of January at Cas de Navires, besieged and took Port Royal, the
capital, St. Pierre, and, finally, the whole island. This was followed
by the surrender of St. Vincent, Grenada, and St. Lucia, so that the
English were now masters of the whole of the Caribbees. A portion of
this squadron, under Sir James Douglas, then proceeded to join an
expedition, which sailed from Portsmouth on the 5th of March; the fleet
commanded by Admiral Sir George Pococke, and the army by the Earl of
Albemarle. The squadron arrived before Havana on the 4th of June--King
George's birthday--and effected a landing without much difficulty.

It was not, however, till the 12th of August that they were ready
with their batteries. The effect of the bombardment was almost
instantaneous. Within six hours nearly all the enemy's guns were
silenced, and the next day the Spaniards capitulated, agreeing to yield
not only the place, and the vessels in the harbour, but the country for
a hundred and eighty miles to the westward; in fact, all the best part
of Cuba. The booty taken was valued at nearly three million pounds.

In the East Indies, immediately afterwards, another severe blow was
inflicted on Spain. An expedition sailed from Madras, and Admiral
Cornish conveyed in a small fleet a body of men amounting to two
thousand three hundred, and consisting of one regiment of the line, in
addition to marines and sepoys. Colonel William Draper, afterwards so
well known for his spirited contest with the still undiscovered author
of "Junius's Letters," was the commander. They landed near Manila,
the capital of the Philippine Islands, on the 24th of September,
the Spanish garrison there being taken completely by surprise. The
whole of the Philippines submitted without further resistance; and
Draper, besides being made a knight of the Bath, was, with the naval
commanders, thanked by Parliament, as well they might be.

The brilliant successes of this campaign had clearly been the result
of Pitt's plans before quitting office. Bute and his colleagues had
no capacity for such masterly policy, and as little perception of the
immense advantages which these conquests gave them in making peace.
Peace they were impatient for--less on the great grounds that peace
was the noblest of national blessings, than because the people grumbled
at the amount of taxation--and because, by peace, they diminished, or
hoped to diminish, the _prestige_ of the great Minister, who had won
such vast accessions to the national territory. Bute was eager to come
to terms with France and Spain, regardless of the advantages he gave
to prostrate enemies by showing that impatience. Had he made a peace
as honourable as the war had been, he would have deserved well of the
country; but to accomplish such a peace required another stamp of mind.

Bute made overtures to France through the neutral Court of Sardinia.
Louis XV. and his Ministers caught at the very first whisper of such
a thing with the eagerness of drowning men; a sufficient intimation
to an able and cautious minister, that he might safely name his own
terms. The ambassadors, however, soon found that the real business of
the treaty was transacted between Bute, on the part of Britain, and the
Duke de Choiseul, on that of France; and that not through ambassadors,
but through Sardinian envoys.

The conditions first agreed upon were, that both England and France
were to withdraw their support, either by men or money, to the war in
Germany. France was to evacuate the few towns that she held there, as
well as Cleve and Guelders. Minorca was to be restored in exchange for
Belleisle, which thus fully justified Pitt's capture of that little
and otherwise useless island. The fortifications of Dunkirk were to be
reduced to the state required by the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle.

France ceded Canada, Nova Scotia, and Cape Breton, stipulating for the
free exercise of their religion by the inhabitants of Canada, and for
their leaving the country if they preferred it, carrying away their
effects, if done within eighteen months. Nova Scotia and Cape Breton
were given up unconditionally. The boundaries of Louisiana were more
clearly defined. The French retained the right to fish on part of the
coast of Newfoundland and in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and to retain the
two little islets of St. Pierre and Miquelon, as places of shelter for
their fishermen, on condition that no batteries should be raised on
them, nor more than fifty soldiers keep guard there. Their fishermen
were not to approach within fifteen miles of Cape Breton.

In the West Indies it was decided that Great Britain should, of the
French islands that she had taken, retain Tobago, Dominica, St.
Vincent, and Grenada, but restore to France Guadeloupe, Martinique,
and St. Lucia.

In the East Indies France agreed to keep no troops, and raise no
fortifications in Bengal, and on these conditions their settlements
were restored, but merely as places of trade. Goree, on the coast of
Africa, was restored, but Senegal was surrendered.

As for Spain, she abandoned all designs on Portugal, and restored the
colony of Sacramento; and she surrendered every point on which her
declaration of war against England was based--namely, the right to fish
on the coast of Newfoundland; the refusal to allow us to cut logwood in
Honduras; and to admit the settlement of questions of capture by our
courts of law.

These certainly were large concessions, but it was to be remembered
that we had not received them for nothing; they had cost vast sums, and
the national debt had been doubled by this war, and now amounted to
one hundred and twenty-two million six hundred thousand pounds. These
territories had, in fact, cost us upwards of sixty million pounds; and
it is certain that Pitt would have exacted a more complete renunciation
from France of the conquered countries. There was a clause inserted
which Pitt would never have permitted--namely, that any conquests that
should be made after the signing of these articles, should be restored
by all parties. Now, Bute and the Ministry knew that we had expeditions
out against Cuba and the Philippines, and that the only conquests
likely to be made were in those quarters. To throw away without
equivalent the blood and money expended in these important enterprises
was a most unpatriotic act. Still, there was opportunity for more
rational terms, for Grimaldi, the Spanish ambassador at Paris, held
back from signing, in hope that we should be defeated at Havana, and
that then he could raise his terms. When the news of the loss of both
Havana and Manila arrived, Grimaldi was in great haste to sign, and
Mr. Grenville and Lord Egremont very properly insisted that we should
demand an equivalent for the conquest in Cuba. Pitt would have stood
firm for the retention of that conquest as by far the most important,
and as justly secured to us by the refusal of the Spanish ambassador
to sign at the proper time. But Bute would have signed without any
equivalent at all. Fortunately, there was too strong an opposition to
this in the Cabinet, and the Duke of Bedford was instructed to demand
Florida or Porto Rico in lieu of Havana. Florida was yielded--a fatal,
though at the moment it appeared a valuable concession, for it only
added to the compactness of the American colonies, hastening the day of
independence, whilst Cuba would have remained under the protection of
the fleet, one of the most valuable possessions of the British empire.

This point settled, the preliminaries of peace were signed at
Fontainebleau on the 3rd of November. To console Spain for her losses
by her unlucky alliance with France, Louis XV. ceded Louisiana to that
country by a private convention.

The violent discontent with the conduct of Bute and his Ministry
gave considerable strength to the Opposition, at the head of which
now stood Pitt, supported by Lord Temple and the Duke of Newcastle.
George Grenville, not satisfied with the terms of the peace, resigned
the post of Secretary to Halifax, and took his new one at the head
of the Admiralty; and Henry Fox, Paymaster of the Forces, became the
leader of the Commons. The Duke of Devonshire and the Marquis of
Rockingham also resigned their places in the royal household; and the
king, in his vexation, striking Devonshire's name out of the list of
Privy Councillors, the Duke's kinsmen, Lords George Cavendish and
Bessborough, also resigned.

Such was the formidable opposition with which Parliament came to the
consideration of this peace. It met on the 25th of November, and the
tone of the public out of doors was then seen. The king, as he went
to the House of Lords, was very coolly received by the crowds in the
streets, and Bute was saluted with hisses, groans, and the flinging
of mud and stones. On the 19th of December he moved in the Lords an
address in approbation of the terms of the peace. Lord Hardwicke
opposed the motion with great warmth and ability, but there was no
division. Very different was the reception of a similar address in
the Commons the same day, moved by Fox. There Pitt, who was suffering
with the gout, denounced the whole treaty, as shamefully sacrificing
the honour and interests of the country. When he rose he was obliged
to be supported by two of his friends, and was at length compelled to
beg to be allowed to address the House sitting. He yet made a vehement
speech of three hours and a half against the conditions accepted. The
Ministry, however, had a large majority, three hundred and nineteen
voting for them against sixty-five. With this brief triumph of Bute's
unpopular party closed the year 1762.

The year 1763 opened with the signing of the definitive treaty
at Paris on the 19th of February, whence it was called the Peace
of Paris. Five days later, a peace was signed between Prussia and
Austria at Hubertsberg, in Saxony, to which Saxony, as the ally of
Austria, was a party. Indeed, when England and France, Russia and
Sweden, had withdrawn from the contest, there was little prospect of
the continuance of the war. Both parties were exhausted, and yet,
of the two, Frederick, in his dogged firmness, and in the almost
unparalleled endurance of his people, was more than a match for
Austria. If Maria Theresa could not cope with him when she had France,
Russia, Saxony, and Poland, all united with her to put him down, the
case was now hopeless. The English had stipulated that France should
evacuate all the places in Germany and Flanders that belonged to those
countries, and Frederick had easily induced the German states, in these
circumstances, to a maintenance of neutrality. Austria, therefore,
consented to this peace. She stood out the longest for the retention of
Glatz, the only place won from Frederick still in her hands, but she
was compelled to yield that, too. Both parties returned to the same
situations as before the commencement of this fatal Seven Years' War.

[Illustration: TEMPLE BAR IN 1800.]

Whilst this war was raging in Europe, and carrying its ramifications
to the most distant regions of the world, Clive and Eyre Coote were
extending the British Empire in India, and, in the case of Clive,
with as much ability as Frederick of Prussia showed in enlarging his
kingdom in Europe. Clive, in 1757, put down Surajah Dowlah, the Nabob
of Bengal, and in June of that year defeated him at Plassey with a mere
handful of men against his enormous host. He set up Surajah Dowlah's
General-in-chief, Meer Jaffier, and hailed him Nabob of Bengal, Orissa,
and Bahar. We claimed from Meer Jaffier two million seven hundred and
fifty thousand pounds as the share of the Company, the fleet, and
the army. Clive's own share was two hundred and fifty-four thousand
pounds, and the shares of the members of the committee ran from twenty
thousand to one hundred thousand pounds each. Besides this, it was
stipulated that the French factories and effects should be given up
to the English, and the French never again allowed to enter Bengal.
The territory surrounding Calcutta, within a given distance of the
town, was to be granted them on zemindary tenure, the company paying
the rent, like the other zemindars or landholders. Thus the British,
who were before merely the tenants of a factory, became in reality the
rulers of Bengal.

[Illustration: LORD BUTE AND THE LONDONERS. (_See p._ 175.)]

At this moment Meer Jaffier found it impossible to retain his seat
without the support of the English. Shah Allum, the eldest son of
the Great Mogul, was coming against him with a large army. Clive met
and defeated him, and for this service he received from his puppet a
jaghire, or domain worth twenty-seven thousand pounds a year.

Scarcely had Colonel Forde returned from this expedition, towards the
end of the year 1759, when the Dutch, envious of the English success,
sent an armament of seven men-of-war and one thousand four hundred
soldiers from Java. They landed on the Hooghly, and began committing
ravages; but Forde surprised and defeated them, taking every one of
their ships. They were glad to apologise, and pay the expenses of the
war. In February, 1760, a few weeks after these events, Clive, whose
health was failing, set sail for England, where he was received with
the highest éclat, and made an Irish peer, as Lord Clive, Baron of
Plassey. He soon after entered Parliament.

Our next great move was against the French in the Carnatic. After
various actions between the French and English in India during
the Seven Years' War, General Count de Lally, an officer of Irish
extraction, arrived at Pondicherry in April, 1758, with a force of
one thousand two hundred men. Lally attacked and took Fort St. David,
considered the strongest fort belonging to the East India Company, and
then, mustering all his forces, made his appearance, in December of
that year, before Madras. He had with him two thousand seven hundred
French and four thousand natives, whilst the English had in the town
four thousand troops only, of which more than half were sepoys. But
Captain Caillaud had marched with a small force from Trichinopoly,
which harassed the rear of the French. After making himself master of
the Black Town, and threatening to burn it down, he found it impossible
to compel Fort St. George to surrender, and, after a severe siege of
two months, on the appearance of Admiral Pococke's squadron, which had
sailed to Bombay for more troops, he decamped in the night of the 16th
of February, 1759, for Arcot, leaving behind him all his ammunition and
artillery, fifty-two pieces. Fresh combats took place between Pococke
and D'Aché at sea, and the forces on land. Colonel Brereton attempted
to take Wandewash, but failed; and it remained for Colonel Eyre Coote
to defeat Lally. Coote arrived at Madras on the 27th of October, and,
under his direction, Brereton succeeded in taking Wandewash on the
last of November. To recover this place, Lally marched with all his
force, supported by Bussy, but sustained a signal defeat on the 22nd
of January, 1760. Arcot, Trincomalee, and other places fell rapidly
into the hands of Colonel Coote. The French called in to their aid the
Nabob of Mysore, Hyder Ali, but to little purpose. Pondicherry was
invested on the 8th of December, and, on the 16th of January, 1761, it
surrendered, Lally and his troops, amounting to two thousand, remaining
prisoners. This was the termination of the real power of France in
India; for though Pondicherry was restored by the treaty of 1763, the
French never again recovered their ground there, and their East India
Company soon after was broken up. The unfortunate Lally on his return
to France was thrown into the Bastille, condemned for high treason, and
beheaded in the Place de Grève on the 9th of May, 1766.

The Earl of Bute became more and more unpopular. The conditions of the
peace were greatly disapproved, and the assurance that not only Bute,
but the king's mother and the Duke of Bedford, had received French
money for carrying the peace, was generally believed. The conduct of
Bute in surrounding the king with his creatures, in which he was joined
by the Princess of Wales, added much to the public odium. George was
always of a domestic and retiring character, and he was now rarely
seen, except when he went once or twice a-year to Parliament, or at
levees, which were cold, formal, and unfrequent. Though, probably,
the main cause of this was the natural disposition of himself and
queen, yet Bute and the princess got the credit of it. Then the manner
in which Bute paid his visits to the princess tended to confirm the
rumours of their guilty intimacy. He used always to go in an evening
in a sedan chair belonging to one of the ladies of the princess's
household, with the curtains drawn, and taking every other precaution
of not being seen. There were numbers of lampoons launched at the
favourite and the princess. They were compared to Queen Isabella and
Mortimer, and Wilkes actually wrote an ironical dedication of Ben
Jonson's play of "The Fall of Mortimer," to Bute.

All these causes of unpopularity were rendered more effective by the
powerful political party which now assailed him. Pitt led the way,
and the Dukes of Devonshire, Bolton, and Portland, the Marquis of
Rockingham, the Earls of Temple, Cornwallis, Albemarle, Ashburton,
Hardwicke, and Bessborough, Lords Spencer, Sondes, Grantham, and
Villiers, James Grenville, Sir George Savile, and other Whigs,
presented a formidable phalanx of opponents in both Houses. The
measures, too, which he was obliged to bring forward, were certain
to augment his discredit. The funded debt had grown to upwards of a
hundred millions, and there were three millions and a half besides
unfunded. It was necessary to raise a new loan, and, moreover, to
raise a new tax, for the income was unequal to the expenditure, even
in time of peace. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Dashwood, was not
a man likely to make these new burdens go down easily. He issued the
new loan to the public with so little advertisement, that the friends
of the Ministers secured the greater part of the shares, and they soon
rose to eleven per cent. premium, by which they were enabled, at the
public cost, to make heavy sums. The tax which Sir Francis proposed was
one on cider and perry, besides some additional duties on wines. There
was at once an outcry in the City against this tax, led on by the Lord
Mayor, Alderman Beckford, a great friend of Pitt. The cry was only too
sure to find a loud echo from the cider-growing districts. Bute and
his Chancellor were quickly compelled to reduce the proposed impost
from ten shillings a hogshead, to be paid by the buyer, that is, by the
merchant, to four shillings, to be paid by the grower. The tax thus cut
down was calculated to produce only seventy-five thousand pounds--a sum
for which it was scarcely worth while to incur so much odium.

The cider tax passed, opposed by thirty-nine Peers and a hundred and
twenty Commoners; but it left a very sore feeling in the western
counties, that cider, worth only five shillings a hogshead, the poor
man's meagre beverage, should have a tax levied on it nearly doubling
the price; whilst that at fifty shillings a hogshead, the rich man's
luxury, only paid the same. The growers even threatened to let the
apples fall and rot under the trees, rather than make them into
cider, subject to so partial a tax. No imposition had excited so
much indignation since Sir Robert Walpole's Excise Bill, in 1733. In
the cider counties bonfires were made in many places, and Bute was
burnt emblematically as a jack-boot--Jack Bute--and his supposed royal
mistress under that of a petticoat, which two articles, after being
carried about on poles, were hurled into the flames.

Instead of taking means to conciliate the public, Bute, stung by
these testimonies of dislike, and by the pamphlets and lampoons which
issued like swarms of wasps, revenged himself by others, which only
intensified the hatred against him. Still worse for him, he had caused
the Dukes of Newcastle and Grafton, and the Marquis of Rockingham, to
be dismissed from the Lord-Lieutenancies of their respective counties,
because they voted against the peace on Bute's terms. With a still more
petty rancour he had visited the sins of these noblemen on the persons
in small clerkships and other posts who had been recommended by them,
turning them all out. Sir Henry Fox joined him relentlessly in these
pitiful revenges, and would have carried them farther had he not been
checked by others.

For a time, Bute and his colleagues appeared to brave the load of
hatred and ignominy which was now piled everywhere upon them, but it
was telling; and suddenly, on the 7th of April, it was announced that
the obnoxious Minister had resigned. Many were the speculations on this
abrupt act, some attributing it to the influence of Wilkes, and his
remorseless attacks in the _North Briton_; others to the king and queen
having at length become sensitive on the assumed relations of Bute and
the king's mother; but Bute himself clearly stated the real and obvious
cause--want of support, either in or out of Parliament. "The ground,"
he wrote to a friend, "on which I tread is so hollow, that I am afraid
not only of falling myself, but of involving my royal master in my
ruin. It is time for me to retire."

George Grenville succeeded to both Bute and Dashwood, becoming first
Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the king
announced that he had intrusted the direction of affairs to him, and
the Lords Egremont and Halifax, the Secretaries of State, whence they
soon acquired the name of "The Triumvirate." The Duke of Bedford
quitted his post as ambassador at Paris, and was succeeded by the Earl
of Hertford. The Earl of Sandwich became head of the Admiralty, and
the Earl of Shelburne head of the Board of Trade. Old Marshal Ligonier
was removed from the post of Master of the Ordnance to make way for
the Marquis of Granby, but received a peerage. These changes being
completed, the king closed the Session of Parliament on the 19th of
April, with a speech, in which he declared the peace honourable to his
Crown, and beneficial to his people.

This avowal in the royal speech called forth John Wilkes in No. 45
of the _North Briton_, destined to become a famous number indeed.
Wilkes had ceased in the _North Briton_ to employ mere initials when
commenting on leading men in Parliament or Government; and he now
boldly declared that the speech put into the king's mouth by the
Ministers was false in its assertion, that the peace was neither
honourable to the Crown nor beneficial to the country. This was
regarded as a gross insult to his Majesty, though it was avowedly
declared to attack only the Ministry; and on the 30th of April Wilkes
was arrested upon a general warrant, that is, a warrant not mentioning
him or any one by name, but applying to the authors, printers, and
publishers of the paper in question. George Grenville, the new
Minister, had, of course, the credit of this proceeding; though it was
thought that Bute still secretly directed the movements of Government,
and that he or the king might be the real author of the order.

Wilkes entered the Tower in all the elation of spirits which the
occasion of acting the political hero inspired. He was soon visited by
the Dukes of Bolton and Grafton, and Lord Temple, who, as well as his
own friends, his solicitor, and counsel, were refused admittance. His
house was entered, and his papers were seized and examined by Wood,
the Under-Secretary of State, and Carteret Webb, the Solicitor to the
Treasury. On the 3rd of May Wilkes was conveyed to the Court of Common
Pleas, before Sir Charles Pratt, where his case was stated by Mr.
Serjeant Glynn, and then Wilkes himself made a speech of an hour long.
On the 6th of May he was brought up to hear the joint opinion of the
judges, which was that, though general warrants might not be strictly
illegal, the arrest of Wilkes could not be maintained, on account of
his privilege as a member of Parliament; that nothing short of treason
felony, and an actual breach of the peace, could interfere with that
privilege, and that a libel could not be termed a breach of the peace.
The judgment of the Bench, therefore, was that Mr. Wilkes be discharged
from his imprisonment.

The release of Wilkes by the Court of Common Pleas was a triumph over
Ministers, which, had they been wise, would have induced them to take
no further notice of him. They had only made a popular demigod of him.
The people, not only in London, but all over the country, celebrated
his exit from the Tower with the liveliest demonstrations, especially
in the cider districts, still smarting under the new tax, and where
they accordingly once more paraded the jack-boot and petticoat, adding
two effigies--one of Bute, dressed in a Scottish plaid and with a blue
ribbon, the other no less a person than the king, led by the nose by
Bute.

The English Government, instead of treating Wilkes with a dignified
indifference, was weak enough to show how deeply it was touched by him,
dismissed him from his commission of Colonel of the Buckinghamshire
Militia, and treated Lord Temple as an abettor of his, by depriving him
of the Lord-Lieutenancy of the same county, and striking his name from
the list of Privy Councillors, giving the Lord-Lieutenancy to Dashwood,
now Lord Le Despencer.

Meanwhile by the advice of Bute the king sent for Pitt. On the 27th
of August he had an audience of the king at Buckingham House. Pitt,
however, insisted on having in with him all, or nearly all, his old
colleagues, and this was too much for the king; whilst not to have
had them would have been too little for Pitt, who was too wise to
take office without efficient and congenial colleagues. The king,
nevertheless, did not openly object, but allowed Pitt to go away
with the impression that he would assent to his demands. This was
Saturday, and Pitt announced this belief to the Dukes of Devonshire
and Newcastle, and the Marquis of Rockingham. But on Sunday Grenville
had had an interview with the king, and finding that he considered
Pitt's terms too hard, had laboured successfully to confirm him in that
opinion. Accordingly, on Monday, at a second meeting, the king named
the Earl of Northumberland, Lord Halifax, and George Grenville, for
leading posts in the Cabinet, saying, "Poor George Grenville, he is
your near relation, and you once loved him." Pitt said that it would
not do, bowed and retired; the king saying, "My honour is concerned,
and I must support it."

Grenville, chagrined as he was, still clung to the Government, and
called in the Duke of Bedford as President of the Council, Lord
Sandwich as Secretary of State. Lord Hillsborough succeeded Lord
Shelburne at the Board of Trade. Such was the Government which was to
supersede the necessity of Pitt; Lord Chesterfield declaring that
they could not meet the Parliament, for that they had not a man in the
Commons who had either abilities or words enough to call a coach.

Parliament met on the 15th of November, and the very first object which
engaged the attention of both Houses was Wilkes. In such fiery haste
were Ministers, that Lord Sandwich, in the Peers, started up, before
the king's speech could be considered, and declared that he held in his
hand a most filthy and atrocious libel, written by Wilkes, called "An
Essay on Woman." Wilkes never had published the filth. He had written,
as it appeared, by the assistance of a profligate and now deceased son
of Archbishop Potter, this "Essay on Woman;" but he had never published
it. It had lain in his desk, and had only been read to two persons--one
of whom was Sandwich himself. When Wilkes, however, was driven to set
up a printing press in his own house, he had printed a dozen copies
of the "Essay on Woman," to give to his dissolute friends, whom he
used to meet at the Dilettanti Club, in Palace Yard. Sandwich, aware
of the existence of the essay, had bribed one of Wilkes's printers,
named Curry, to lend him a copy of it, and had paid him five guineas
as a guarantee for its safe return. The whole thing was a stupid
parody of Pope's "Essay on Man;" in which, instead of the inscription
to Bolingbroke, commencing "Awake, my St. John!" there appeared an
invocation beginning, "Awake, my Sandwich!" and there were also
ridiculous notes attributed to Warburton.

In the Commons, on the same day, Grenville delivered a message from the
Crown, announcing to the House the imprisonment of one of their members
during the recess. Wilkes immediately rose in his place, and complained
of the breach of that House's privilege in his person; of the entry
of his house, the breaking open of his desk, and the imprisonment of
his person--imprisonment pronounced by the highest legal authority to
be illegal, and therefore tyrannical. He moved that the House should
take the question of privilege into immediate consideration. On the
other hand, Lord North, who was a member of the Treasury board, and
Sir Fletcher Norton, Attorney-General, put in the depositions of the
printer and publisher, proving the authorship of No. 45 of the _North
Briton_ on Wilkes, and pressing for rigorous measures against him. A
warm debate ensued, in which Pitt opposed the proceedings to a certain
extent, declaring that he could never understand exactly what a libel
was. Notwithstanding, the Commons voted, by a large majority, that
No. 45 of the _North Briton_ was "a false, scandalous, and malicious
libel," tending to traitorous insurrection, and that it should be burnt
by the common hangman.

[Illustration: JOHN WILKES.]

The consequences were an intense excitement in favour of Wilkes, and
execration against the Commons. Wilkes was reported to be delirious,
and crowds collected in the streets before his house, calling for
vengeance on his murderers. Sandwich was especially denounced; in
return for his dragging forth the obscenity of Wilkes, his own
private life was ransacked for scandalous anecdotes, and they were
only too plentiful. Horace Walpole says that Sandwich's conduct to
Wilkes had brought forth such a catalogue of his own impurities
as was incredible. The "Beggar's Opera" being just then acted at
Covent Garden, when Macheath uttered the words, "That Jemmy Twitcher
should peach, I own surprises me!" the whole audience burst into most
tumultuous applause at the obvious application; and thenceforth Jemmy
Twitcher was the name by which Sandwich was more commonly known.

Still the affairs of Wilkes continued to occupy almost the sole thought
and interest of the Session. On the 23rd of November the question of
privilege came up; and though he was absent, having been wounded in a
duel, it was actively pushed by the Ministers. Mr. Wilbraham protested
against the discussion without the presence of Wilkes, and his being
heard at the bar in his defence. Pitt attended, though suffering
awfully from the gout, propped on crutches, and his very hands wrapped
in flannel. He maintained the question of privilege, but took care to
separate himself from Wilkes in it. The rest of the debate was violent
and personal, and ended in voting, by two hundred and fifty-eight
against one hundred and thirty-three, that the privilege of Parliament
did not extend to the publication of seditious libels; the resolution
ordering the _North Briton_ to be burnt by the hangman was confirmed.
These votes being sent up to the Lords, on the 25th they also debated
the question, and the Duke of Cumberland, Lord Shelburne, and the
Duke of Newcastle, defended the privilege of Parliament as violated
in the person of Wilkes. In the end, however, the Ministers obtained
a majority of a hundred and fourteen against thirty-eight. Seventeen
peers entered a strong protest against the decision. On the 1st of
December there was a conference of the two Houses, when they agreed to
a loyal address to the king, expressing their detestation of the libels
against him.

Simultaneously with these proceedings, the actions commenced by Wilkes,
and the printer, publishers, and others arrested under the general
warrant, were being tried in the Common Pleas. All the parties obtained
verdicts for damages, and that of Wilkes was for a thousand pounds.
Chief-Justice Pratt, strengthened by the verdicts, made a most decided
declaration of the illegality and unconstitutional nature of general
warrants.

As this excitement closed the old year, so it opened the new one. No
sooner did Parliament meet, after the Christmas recess, than, on the
17th of January, 1764, the order for Wilkes's attendance at the bar was
read. It was then found that he had thought it best to retire into
France. Still he did not hesitate to send over a medical certificate,
signed by one of the king's physicians and an army surgeon, affirming
that his wound was in such a condition that it was not safe for him to
leave Paris. The House of Commons paid no attention to the certificate,
but proceeded to examine evidence, and the famous No. 45 of the _North
Briton_; and after a violent debate, continuing till three o'clock in
the morning, passed a resolution that the paper in question contained
the grossest insults to his Majesty, to both Houses of Parliament, and
tended to traitorous insurrection against the Government. Accordingly,
the next day, he was formally expelled the House, and a new writ was
issued for Aylesbury.

On the 13th of February the Opposition in the Commons brought on the
question of the validity of general warrants. The debate continued
all that day and the next night till seven o'clock in the morning.
The motion was thrown out; but Sir William Meredith immediately made
another, that a general warrant for apprehending the authors, printers,
and publishers of a seditious libel is not warranted by law. The
combat was renewed, and Pitt made a tremendous speech, declaring that
if the House resisted Sir William Meredith's motion, they would be
the disgrace of the present age, and the reproach of posterity. He
upbraided Ministers with taking mean and petty vengeance on those who
did not agree with them, by dismissing them from office. This charge
Grenville had the effrontery to deny, though it was a notorious fact.
As the debate approached its close, the Ministers called in every
possible vote; "the sick, the lame were hurried into the House, so
that," says Horace Walpole, "you would have thought they had sent a
search warrant into every hospital for Members of Parliament." When
the division came, which was only for the adjournment of Meredith's
motion for a month, they only carried it by fourteen votes. In the City
there was a confident anticipation of the defeat of Ministers, and
materials had been got together for bonfires all over London, and for
illuminating the Monument. Temple was said to have faggots ready for
bonfires of his own.

Government, not content with expelling Wilkes from the House of
Commons, had commenced an action against him in the Court of King's
Bench, where they succeeded in obtaining a verdict against him for a
libel in the _North Briton_. Temple paid the costs, and the City of
London turned this defeat into a triumph, by presenting its freedom to
the Lord Chief Justice Pratt, for his bold and independent conduct in
declaring against the general warrants. They ordered his portrait to be
placed in Guildhall; and the example of London was followed by Dublin
and many other towns, who presented their freedom and gold snuff-boxes
to Pratt. The City of London also gave its thanks to its members for
their patriotic conduct.




CHAPTER VIII.

REIGN OF GEORGE III. (_continued_).

    The American Colonies and their Trade--Growing Irritation in
    America--The Stamp Act--The American Protest--The Stamp Act
    passed--Its Reception in America--The King's Illness--The
    Regency Bill--The Princess Dowager omitted--Her Name inserted
    in the Commons--Negotiations for a Change of Ministry--The
    old Ministry returns--Fresh Negotiations with Pitt--The first
    Rockingham Ministry--Riots in America--The Stamped Paper
    destroyed--Pitt's Speech--The Stamp Act repealed--Weakness
    of the Government--Pitt and Temple disagree--Pitt forms
    a Ministry--And becomes Lord Chatham--His Comprehensive
    Policy--The Embargo on Wheat--Illness of Chatham--Townshend's
    Financial Schemes--Corruption of Parliament--Wilkes elected for
    Middlesex--Arrest of Wilkes--Dangerous Riots--Dissolution of
    the Boston Assembly--Seizure of the _Liberty_ Sloop--Debates in
    Parliament--Continued Persecution of Wilkes--His Letter to Lord
    Weymouth--Again expelled the House--His Re-election--The Letters
    of Junius--Luttrell declared elected for Middlesex--Incapacity of
    the Ministry--Partial Concessions to the Americans--Bernard leaves
    Boston--He is made a Baronet--"The Horned Cattle Session"--Lord
    Chatham attacks the Ministry--Resignations of Granby and
    Camden--Yorke's Suicide--Dissolution of the Ministry.


If Grenville and his Cabinet, in their ignorance of human nature, had
made a gross mistake in their conduct towards Wilkes, they now made
a more fatal one in regard to our American colonies. These colonies
had now assumed an air of great importance, and were rapidly rising
in population and wealth. The expulsion of the French from Canada,
Nova Scotia, and Cape Breton, the settlement of Georgia by General
Oglethorpe, the acquisition of Florida from Spain, had given a
compactness and strength to these vast colonies, which promised a still
more accelerated and prosperous growth. At this period the inhabitants
are calculated to have amounted to two millions of Europeans, and
half a million of coloured people, Indians and negroes. The trade was
becoming more extensive and valuable to the mother country. The imports
from England, chiefly of her manufactures, amounted to three million
pounds annually in value. They carried on a large trade with our West
Indian islands and the Spanish American colonies, and French and Dutch
West Indies. They also built ships for the French and Spaniards, in
the West Indies. They had extensive iron and copper mines and works
in different states. They manufactured great quantities of hats in
New England. The fisheries of Massachusetts produced two hundred and
thirty thousand quintals of dried fish, which they exported to Spain
and Portugal, and other Catholic countries of Europe. Carolina exported
its rice to these countries as well as to England; and they exported
vast quantities of cured provisions, dye-woods, apples, wax, leather,
tobacco from Virginia and Maryland (fifty thousand hogsheads annually
to England alone) valued at three hundred and seventy-five thousand
pounds. The masts from New England, sent over for the British navy,
were the largest in the world.

Such was the busy scene which these colonies were now presenting.
Dutch, German, and Swedish emigrants were carrying their industry and
handicrafts thither. But, instead of our merchants seeing what a mighty
market was growing up for them there, their commercial jealousy was
aroused at the sight of the illicit trade which the colonists carried
on with the Spanish, French, and other colonies, and even with Europe.
The planters of the British West Indies complained of the American
colonists taking their rum, sugar, coffee, etc., from the Dutch,
French, and Spanish islands, in return for their raw produce, asserting
that they had a monopoly for all their productions throughout the whole
of the British dominions. Loud clamours were raised by these planters
in the British Parliament, demanding the prohibition of this trade;
and, after repeated endeavours in 1733 an Act was passed to crush it,
by granting a drawback on the re-exportation of West Indian sugar from
England, and imposing duties on the importation of the West Indian
produce of our European rivals direct into the American colonies.

These were measures which must have greatly irritated the American
colonists. They exhibited a disposition to curb and repress their
growing energies between the interests of British merchants and British
West Indian planters. The prospect was far from encouraging; whilst,
at the same time, the English Ministers, crushing these energies with
one hand, were contemplating drawing a revenue by taxation from them
on the other. Britain argued that she sacrificed large amounts in
building up colonies, and therefore had a right to expect a return
for this expenditure. Such a return, had they had the sagacity to
let them alone, was inevitable from the trade of the colonies in an
ever-increasing ratio.

Grenville, being on the look-out for new taxes, had paid particular
attention to the rapid growth of the American colonies, and was
inspired with the design of drawing a revenue from them. The scheme
had been suggested to Sir Robert Walpole, when his Excise Bill failed,
by Sir William Keith, who had been governor of Pennsylvania; but Sir
Robert had a far deeper insight into human nature than the shallow
and obstinate Grenville. He replied, "I have already Old England set
against me, and do you think I will have New England set against me
too?"

During the Session of 1764 Grenville imposed several duties on American
articles of export, if imported direct from the French, Dutch, and
Spanish West Indies. The Americans did not dispute the right of the
mother country to impose such duties on the trade of the empire in any
quarter; but these imposts, seeing the object of them, were not the
less galling. But Grenville did not stop there; he stated, at the time
of passing these duties, that it was probable that Government would
charge certain stamp duties in America. This was creating a sore place
and immediately striking it. The infatuated Minister was contemplating
an act of the nature of which neither he nor his colleagues had any
conception.

The news of these imposts, and of this intended stamp duty, flew across
the Atlantic, and produced the most bitter excitement. Never could
this unwelcome news have reached the colonies at a more unpropitious
moment. To restrictions on their legitimate trade, the British had been
adding others on their illegitimate trade. Nearly all the American
colonies lay on the seaboard, and were, therefore, naturally addicted
to a free sort of trade, which these new duties made contraband. The
British Government had sent out a number of revenue ships and officers
to cut off this trade, and capture and confiscate all vessels found
practising it. The colonists met in various places, and passed very
strong resolutions against these regulations. The people of New England
spread their views and resolves all over the colonies by means of
the press. They refused to listen to any overtures of the British
Government on the subject. They claimed the right to grant, of their
own free will, such contributions to the revenue of the empire as their
own assemblies should deem just, and to submit to no compulsion where
they had no voice. They called on all the colonists to refrain as much
as possible from purchasing any of the manufactures of England so
long as she showed a disposition to oppress them, and to obtain their
materials for clothing from other countries, or to begin to manufacture
them themselves; and to cease also to use all luxuries on which the
duties were laid. To make their case known in England, Pennsylvania,
Massachusetts, Maryland, and Georgia appointed the celebrated Benjamin
Franklin their agent in London.

Parliament met on the 10th of January, 1765. The resentment of the
Americans had reached the ears of the Ministry and the king, yet both
continued determined to proceed. In the interviews which Franklin and
the other agents had with the Ministers, Grenville begged them to point
to any other tax that would be more agreeable to the colonists than
the stamp-duty; but they without any real legal grounds drew the line
between levying custom and imposing an inland tax. Grenville paid no
attention to these representations. Fifty-five resolutions, prepared
by a committee of ways and means, were laid by him on the table of the
House of Commons at an early day of the Session, imposing on America
nearly the same stamp-duties as were already in practical operation
in England. These resolutions being adopted, were embodied in a bill;
and when it was introduced to the House, it was received with an
apathy which betrayed on all hands the profoundest ignorance of its
importance. Burke, who was a spectator of the debates in both Houses,
in a speech some years afterwards, stated that he never heard a more
languid debate than that in the Commons. Only two or three persons
spoke against the measure and that with great composure. There was
but one division in the whole progress of the Bill, and the minority
did not reach to more than thirty-nine or forty. In the Lords, he
said, there was, to the best of his recollection, neither division nor
debate!

[Illustration:

    AMERICAN PROVINCES
    in 1763
    AFTER THE CONTEMPORARY MAP
    by Peter Bell.
]

But a very different spirit displayed itself in America on the arrival
of the news of the passing of the Act. Franklin's friend, Thompson,
replied to him, that, instead of lighting candles, there would be
works of darkness. The rage of the American public burst forth in
unequivocal vigour. At New York, the odious Stamp Act was represented
surmounted with a death's head instead of the royal arms, and was
hawked through the streets with the title of "the folly of England
and the ruin of America." At Boston the colours of the shipping were
lowered half-mast high, and the bells of the city were muffled and
tolled funeral knells. Everywhere there was a frenzied excitement,
and the provincial Assemblies resounded with the clamour of indignant
patriotism. It was the fortune of that of Virginia to give the leading
idea of union and co-operative resistance, which led to the grand
conflict, and to eventual victory over the infatuated mother country.
There Patrick Henry, a very different man to Franklin, started up, and
kindled by his fiery breath the torch of confederate resistance. But
it was at once seen that, to acquire their full weight, the colonies
must unite. Speeches, pamphlets, articles in newspapers, all called
for co-operation. A print was published exhibiting a snake cut into a
number of pieces, each piece inscribed with the name of a colony, and
with the motto, "_Join or die_." In consequence, several of the states
sent representatives to a general congress, to be held at New York in
the month of October, to take measures for a general resistance to the
Stamp Act.

[Illustration: REVENUE CUTTERS CAPTURING AN AMERICAN SMUGGLING VESSEL.
(_See p._ 184.)]

Whilst the American colonies were thus stimulated, by unwise taxation,
into a temper which never again could be entirely allayed, the king
was suddenly attacked with an illness, that startled himself and the
kingdom from that security which his apparently robust constitution
had inspired. He was said to labour under cough and fever; but it
became pretty well understood, after a time, that it was something
more alarming--that it was, in fact, an attack of that insanity which
recurred again and again, and held him for years, during the latter
part of his reign, in its fearful power. This time it was of short
occurrence; and the moment it was past, George held a levee at St.
James's, and appeared at it with a cheerful air, as if to dissipate
all alarm. But the king himself immediately proposed a measure, which
showed that it had excited grave thoughts in him. He submitted to
Ministers the propriety of a provision for a regency, in case of any
recurring malady which should incapacitate him for business. The matter
was discussed in the Cabinet, and it was agreed that such a bill should
be prepared, empowering the king to name, if deemed necessary, "either
the queen, or any other person of the royal family usually residing in
Great Britain."

On the 24th of April, accordingly, the king proposed, in a speech from
the throne, the measure to the Houses in these words. Both Houses sent
addresses of affection, and the bill was introduced into the House of
Lords; and it was there contended that it was too vague, no person
being directly named, except the queen. To remedy this the king sent
a new message, naming the five princes of the royal house, with the
power of nominating others in the case of the deaths of any of them.
Still, on the second reading, Lord Lyttelton declared that this left it
perfectly uncertain who would become regent; and he moved an address to
the king to name which one of the persons specified he would nominate
as regent. But here the Duke of Richmond asked, whether the queen were
naturalised; and if not, whether she were capable of acting as regent.
He asked, also, who were, strictly speaking, the royal family? The Earl
of Denbigh replied, "All who were prayed for;" but the Duke of Bedford
contended that those only in the order of succession constituted the
royal family. This went at once to exclude the Princess Dowager of
Wales, the king's mother; and Halifax, Bedford's colleague, agreed with
him. Amidst all this confusion, Lord Halifax hastened away to the king,
and advised him to have the name of his mother omitted, lest the Lords
should strike it out, and thus make it appear a public insult. The poor
bewildered king, taken by surprise, said, "I will consent, if it will
satisfy my people."

Halifax, possessed of this authority, returned to the House of
Lords, and announced that, by the king's permission, he proposed the
re-commitment of the bill, with the names only of the queen and the
sons of the late king now living. Thus, the Princess Dowager was
publicly stigmatised, on the authority of her own son, as incapable
of reigning. The amendment, as the royal pleasure, was agreed to.
The country was struck with astonishment. The Duke of Bedford is
represented by Horace Walpole as almost dancing about for joy; the
consternation of Bute and his party was indescribable. To cover the
disgrace, they represented it as the wish of the Princess Dowager
herself. But when the king was left to his own reflections, it began
to dawn upon him that he had, by his weak compliance, openly insulted
his own parent in the grossest manner. He bitterly upbraided Halifax
with having thus stolen his consent by a surprise. But Grenville,
with his usual obstinacy, declined to replace the princess's name
unless it were strongly pressed upon him in the House. He trusted,
however, that the Opposition, who hated the princess, would relieve
him of this necessity by voting against the reinsertion of the name.
But he was mistaken. Mr Morton, the chief justice of Chester, one of
the Bute party, moved for the insertion of the princess's name in the
bill, and the Opposition made no objection; they only too much enjoyed
Grenville's embarrassment. He was therefore compelled to insert the
name, which--thus falsifying Halifax's assertion to the king, that,
if left in, it would be struck out by Parliament--was carried by an
overwhelming majority.

The circumstance sank deeply into the mind of the king, and, resenting
especially the conduct of Grenville--who had acted as though he held
a monopoly of office,--he determined to be rid of him. He therefore
consulted with his uncle, the Duke of Cumberland. That prince, to
whom age and infirmities seemed to have given a degree of wisdom,
declared the offer of the Ministry to Pitt to be the necessary step,
and willingly undertook to make it. But knowing that Pitt would not
even listen to the proposal without Temple, he dispatched a summons to
Stowe for that nobleman, and himself, infirm as he was, went to Hayes,
to learn the will of the great commoner personally. Pitt showed himself
disposed to accept the office, on condition that general warrants
should be declared illegal; that the officers dismissed on account of
their votes be restored; and that an alliance with Protestant powers,
and especially with Prussia, should be formed, to counterbalance the
compact between France and Spain. This was asking a great deal; but
Pitt demanded more in the particulars of appointments, namely, that
Pratt, who had opposed the Court so decidedly as regarded Wilkes and
general warrants, should be Lord Chancellor, and he opposed the Court
desire that the Duke of Northumberland should be at the head of the
Treasury. Pitt, moreover, designed the Treasury for Temple. But, when
Temple arrived, he refused to take office at all. The fact was that
just now he was making a reconciliation with his brother, Grenville,
and was averse from throwing him overboard. So far from joining Pitt,
he was on the verge of another breach with him. Pitt, disconcerted by
this repulse, with a weakness to be deplored in so great a man, refused
to accept the offer to form a ministry at all.

The unfortunate king was obliged to submit, and retain his present
incompetent Ministers. These incompetent Ministers, on their part,
now believing themselves indispensable, became at once proportionably
assuming, and even insolent, in their demands. Grenville and Bedford
put several direct demands to the king as the conditions even of their
condescending to serve him: that he would promise to have no further
communications with Lord Bute, nor to allow him the slightest share
in his councils; that he would dismiss Bute's brother, Mr. Mackenzie,
from the office of Privy Seal of Scotland, and from the management
of Scottish affairs; that he would dismiss Lord Holland from being
Paymaster of the Forces, and appoint Lord Granby Commander-in-Chief.
The king, after some demur, submitted to all these conditions, except
the appointment of Lord Granby, and escaped that only by Granby himself
declining the post. George submitted, because he could not help it,
to these imperious conditions; but he inly resented them, and did not
avoid showing it by his coldness towards both Bedford and Grenville. At
this, the haughty Bedford took fire, and read the king a severe lecture
before leaving town for Woburn. He complained of the king showing
kindness to the enemies of the administration; and demanded whether the
king had kept his promise not to consult Lord Bute.

George had much difficulty in restraining his indignation, but he
kept it down, and only bowed the duke silently out of his presence.
No sooner had he departed than he flew to Cumberland, and declared he
would bear this no longer. Again overtures were made to Pitt, again
Pitt expressed himself willing to take office, but again declined,
because Temple still refused. Foiled in these attempts to engage Pitt,
and equally foiled in an endeavour to engage some of the heads of the
leading Whig houses, who would enter no administration without Pitt, a
heterogeneous cabinet was at length cobbled up, through the management
of the old Duke of Newcastle, who was hankering after office. The
Marquis of Rockingham was put forward as First Lord of the Treasury
and Premier. Grafton and Conway were to be Secretaries of State; and
the latter, lately dismissed with ignominy from the army, was to lead
the Commons. The Earl of Northington was made Chancellor, the old
Duke of Newcastle Privy Seal; another old and almost superannuated
nobleman, Lord Winchelsea, President of the Council. Charles Townshend
retained his post of Paymaster of the Forces. Such materials, it was
clear, could never long hold together. "It is a mere lute-string
administration," said Townshend himself; "it is pretty summer wear, but
it will never stand the winter!"

Whilst these changes had been passing at home, the effervescence in
America had grown most riotous and alarming. Boston took the lead
in tumultuous fury. In August, the house of Mr. Oliver, the newly
appointed stamp-distributor, was attacked and ransacked; his effigy was
hanged on a tree, thenceforward honoured by the name of the Liberty
Tree. It was then taken down, paraded about the streets, and committed
to the flames. The colonel of the militia was applied to, but sent
an evasive answer, showing that there were others above the mob who
enjoyed what the mob were doing. With this encouragement they broke
out afresh, crying, "Liberty and Property!" which, said a colonial
authority, "was their cry when they meant to plunder and pull down a
house." This time they gutted and partly demolished the houses of the
registrar-deputy of the Admiralty, the comptroller of the customs,
and the lieutenant-governor, destroying a great quantity of important
papers. In New York, delegates assembled from nine different colonial
Assemblies. The governor forbade them to gather, declaring their
meetings unprecedented and unlawful, but he took no active measures to
prevent their deliberations. The Congress met in October, and sat for
three weeks. They appointed Mr. Timothy Ruggles, from Massachusetts,
their chairman, and passed fourteen resolutions denying the right of
the mother country to tax them without their own consent; and they drew
up petitions to the king and Parliament. Everywhere associations were
established to resist the importation of British manufactures after
the 1st of January next, and it was agreed that they should dissolve
themselves as soon as the stamp tax was abolished. But it is well
known, from letters addressed to Franklin, that the Republican element
was already widely spread through the colonies, and this very first
opportunity was seized on by its advocates to encourage the idea of
throwing off the allegiance to England without further delay.

As the 1st of November approached, the day on which the Stamp Act was
to take effect, the excitement became intense. Furious crowds assembled
in the ports to prevent the landing of the stamped paper from the
ships which brought it. The appointed distributors were compelled to
resign their posts. At New York the stamped paper was landed, but such
was the commotion that it had to be put into the custody of the city
magistrates, and be kept under guard in the city hall. It was utterly
impossible to put the paper into use, and, after some interruption,
business and the courts of law were allowed to proceed without it, on
the plea that the stamps could not be obtained.

On the 14th of January, 1766, the king opened Parliament with a
speech, rendered necessary by the change of Ministry and the affairs
of America. A great debate followed, in which Burke made his maiden
speech, and was followed by Pitt, who said in his loftiest tone of
eloquence: "This kingdom has no right to lay a tax upon the colonies.
On this point I could not be silent, nor repress the ardour of my
soul, smote as it is with indignation at the very thought of taxing
America internally without a requisite voice of consent. Taxation is
no part of the governing or legislative power. Taxes are the voluntary
gift and grant of the Commons alone. At the same time, on every real
point of legislation, I believe the authority to be fixed as the
pole-star--fixed for the reciprocal benefit of the mother country and
her infant colonies. They are the subjects of this kingdom, equally
entitled with yourselves to all the rights of mankind and the peculiar
privileges of Englishmen, and equally bound by its laws. The Americans
are the sons, not the bastards of England. The distinction between
legislation and taxation is essential to liberty. The Crown, the Peers,
are equally legislative powers with the Commons. If taxation be a part
of simple legislation, the Crown, the Peers, have rights in taxation as
well as yourselves--rights which they will claim whenever the principle
can be supported by might."

Grenville rose and defended the Stamp Act. He denied that the right
of taxation depended on representation. He complained justly, that
when he proposed to tax America, there was little opposition in that
House. He contended that protection and obedience were reciprocal, and
he exposed the fallacy of Pitt's distinction between taxes and duties.
There was much justice in these remarks. The words of Grenville, so
pointedly directed against him, immediately called up Pitt again. He
had spoken; it was contrary to all rule, but the lion of Parliament
broke recklessly through the meshes of its regulations, and when he
was called to order the members supported him by cries of "Go on! go
on!" He went on, severely castigating Grenville for complaining of the
liberty of speech in that House; and dropping in his indignation the
terms of courtesy towards the late Minister of "honourable" or "right
honourable," said simply--"Sir, the gentleman tells us that America is
obstinate--America is almost in open rebellion. Sir, I rejoice that
America has resisted. Three millions of people so dead to all the
feelings of liberty as voluntarily to submit to be slaves, would have
been fit instruments to make slaves of all the rest." He then exposed
the cases quoted by Grenville to show that taxation in this country
had been imposed without representation, showing that these very
instances led to immediate representation. "I would have cited them,"
he continued, "to show that even under arbitrary reigns Parliaments
were ashamed of taxing a people without their consent. The gentleman
asks when the Americans were emancipated? But I desire to know when
they were made slaves?" He then touched on the true sources of benefit
from our colonies, the profits of their trade. He estimated the profits
derived from the American commerce at two millions sterling, adding
triumphantly, "This is the fund that carried us victoriously through
the late war. This is the price America pays us for protection." He
then alluded to the comparative strength of the two countries. "I
know the valour," he said, "of your troops. I know the skill of your
officers. In a good cause, on a sound bottom, the force of this country
can crush America to atoms. But in such a cause as this your success
would be hazardous. America, if she fell, would fall like the strong
man. She would embrace the pillars of the state, and pull down the
constitution along with her."

The advice of Pitt prevailed. Ministers determined to bring in two Acts
in accordance with his counsels: an Act declaratory of the supreme
power of Parliament over the colonies, and another repealing the Stamp
Act, on the plea which he had suggested. The Declaratory Act passed
readily enough, for all parties agreed in it; but the repeal of the
Stamp Act met with stout opposition. Grenville, with the pertinacity of
a man who glories in his disgrace, resisted it at every stage. When he
was hissed by the people, he declared that "he rejoiced in the hiss. If
it were to do again, he would do it!" In the Lords there was a strong
resistance to the repeal. Lord Temple, who had now deserted Pitt,
supported his brother Grenville with all his might. Lords Mansfield,
Lyttelton, and Halifax, the whole Bedford faction, and the whole Bute
faction, opposed it. The king declared himself for repeal rather than
bloodshed.

[Illustration: TROOPS ESCORTING THE STAMPED PAPER TO THE CITY HALL, NEW
YORK. (_See p._ 188.)]

To acquire popularity, the Rockingham administration made a further
restriction on the import of foreign silks; they made a modification
of the Cider Bill, but this only extended to taking the duty off
cider belonging to private persons, and was regarded as a bribe to
the country gentlemen. They induced the House of Commons to pass a
resolution on the 25th of April, declaring general warrants illegal,
and, if for seizing any member of the House, a breach of privilege.
But when they passed this in the form of a bill, the Lords threw it
out; and a second bill for the same purpose failed in the Commons.
Still, these conciliatory measures did not procure them confidence.
Colonel Barré refused them his support; General Conway was sick of
his post, and longed to be out of it; and Henley, Lord Northington,
as Chancellor, was found actually intriguing against his colleagues.
With the Court they grew into no favour, because the king thought
them backward in procuring from Parliament suitable provision for his
younger brother. It was clear that this could not last. To cap the
climax of weakness, the Rockingham Cabinet came to open issue amongst
themselves on the plan of government for Canada. Northington informed
the king that they could not go on; and the king, on the 7th of July,
gave the Chancellor a letter to Pitt, inviting him to form a new
Ministry. The same day his Majesty also informed the existing Cabinet
of the change which he contemplated. Conway said frankly, it was the
best thing the king could do; but Lord Rockingham and the Duke of
Newcastle were deeply offended.

Pitt hastened up to town, and was graciously received by the king, who
told him that he left the choice of his colleagues entirely to himself.
Pitt, as twice before, immediately proposed that his brother-in-law,
Lord Temple, should be placed at the head of the Treasury. Temple was
summoned from Stowe, but was as haughty and unmanageable as ever. He
demanded that all the old Ministers should be dismissed, that Lord
Lyttelton should have the Privy Seal, Lord Gower be Secretary of
State, etc. Pitt could not accede to these terms. This time he did
not throw up the offer of the Premiership to oblige his wrong-headed
brother-in-law, who had the overweening idea that he was as great a man
as Pitt himself. He stood firm, and, after a long interview at North
End, Hampstead, where Pitt had taken a house for the time, Temple set
off to Stowe again in high dudgeon, declaring that Pitt had thrown
off the mask, and never meant to accept his co-operation at all. Lord
Camden advised Pitt to stand fast, throw off the Grenvilles, and save
the nation without them. He acted on the advice.

He found the Bedford clan ready, as usual, for office, but wanting to
come in a whole legion; the poor weak Duke of Newcastle was equally
prepared, shedding tears in his facile way, hugging and kissing
people in his trouble, and wondering why his "dear old friend" had
thus abandoned him. Pitt passed on, and chose Lord Camden as Lord
Chancellor; Northington as President of the Council; Lord Granby as
Commander-in-Chief; Shelburne and Conway as Secretaries of State;
the Duke of Grafton as First Lord of the Treasury; Charles Townshend
as Chancellor of the Exchequer; with Lord North, James Grenville,
brother of Temple, Colonel Barré, and others, in secondary posts.
Mr. Stewart Mackenzie, Bute's brother, was restored to his former
office, but without any control over Scottish affairs. It was clear
that Pitt had selected his colleagues without regard to party, but
with an eye to the ability of the respective persons. It was a mode of
acting particularly after the fancy of the king, who had always been,
according to his own words to Pitt on the occasion, "zealously ready to
give his aid towards destroying all party distinctions, and restoring
that subordination to government, which can alone preserve that
inestimable blessing, liberty, from degenerating into licentiousness."
"I venture," said Burke, "to say, it did so happen that persons had a
single office divided between them, who had never spoken to each other
in their lives, until they found themselves, they knew not how, pigging
together, heads and points, in the same truckle bed."

But where, all this time, was the Great Commoner? The whole world
was astonished when the fact came out that Pitt would accept no post
in his own Ministry but that of Privy Seal, which necessitated his
removal to the House of Peers. The king himself offered no opposition.
Pitt's colleagues were not only astonished, but confounded; for they
calculated on having his abilities and influence in the House of
Commons. "It is a _fall up stairs_," said the witty Chesterfield,
"which will do Pitt so much hurt that he will never be able to stand
upon his legs again." No doubt it was a great mistake, but the
infirmity of Pitt's health is an abundant excuse. This matter settled,
Chatham condescended to coax the haughty Duke of Bedford, whom he met
at Bath, to join him. He explained that the measures he meant to pursue
were such as he knew the Duke approved. Having heard him, Bedford
replied, proudly, "They are _my measures_, and I will support them, in
or out of office." It was understood that he would receive overtures
from Chatham, and, in these circumstances, Parliament met on the 11th
of November.

Previous to this, however, Chatham had thought over several decisive
measures, and sketched out a scheme of foreign and domestic policy,
which marked how far above the intellectual grasp of most of his
contemporaries was that of his mind. He determined, if possible, to
form an alliance of European states against the Family Compact of the
Bourbons in France and Spain; to reform the Government of Ireland,
which greatly needed it, and that of India.

His first measure was to establish the Great Northern Alliance. He had
obtained information of designs on the part of France and Spain to make
a descent on our southern coast, and burn the dockyards of Portsmouth
and Plymouth. Before quitting office, in 1761, he had planned this
alliance, and he now made endeavours, but in vain, to induce Frederick
of Prussia to come into such an alliance. Frederick was too sore at his
treatment by the Cabinet of Lord Bute to listen to any proposals from
England. Still, this would not have prevented Chatham from prosecuting
the object of the alliance with Sweden, Denmark, Russia, Germany, and
Holland, had he remained long enough in office. His name carried the
utmost weight all over the Continent. His indomitable vigour, and his
victorious arms, had been witnessed with wonder. In Paris, Horace
Walpole found the news of his return to office produced a panic not to
be described. The very mention of his name struck a silence into the
most boastful or insolent company.

His enemies of his own house were not so easily intimidated. The summer
had been an unprecedentedly rainy one. The crops had failed, and, in
consequence of the scarcity and dearness of corn, there had been riots,
especially in the western counties. The enraged people had burned down
the ricks and barns of the farmers who were hoarding their corn for
higher prices. Chatham instantly, that is, on the 10th of September,
issued a proclamation against "forestallers and regraters." As the
riots still increased, on the 24th he caused an Order in Council to
be issued, laying an embargo on corn, and prohibiting the sailing of
vessels already laden with wheat for foreign markets, the failure
of crops being as great on the Continent as in England. He had been
advised not to venture on so bold a measure without calling together
Parliament; but he would not hear of it, lest it should look like
timidity of counsel. It was a daring stretch of prerogative, and did
not pass without severe censure. Chatham defended the measure: he
quoted Locke in justification of such measures for the prevention of
internal calamity and tumult; and he defended it further by the fact,
that to have called together Parliament would have brought noblemen
and gentlemen from their own neighbourhood, just when they were most
needful there to maintain order. Lord Camden, the present Chancellor,
and Lord Northington, the late one, stoutly supported him, Camden
saying that it was a measure so moderate and beneficial, that a Junius
Brutus might have trusted it to a Nero. Unfortunately, he added that,
at worst, it was only "a forty days' tyranny"--a phrase which excited
the utmost clamour, and was long remembered against him.

In the Christmas recess Chatham hastened to Bath, to improve his health
for the campaign of the ensuing Session; but when Parliament met again,
in the middle of January, 1767, Ministers were in consternation at his
not reappearing. The Duke of Grafton and Beckford, who were his most
devoted adherents, were thunderstruck. They found it impossible to keep
in order the heterogeneous elements of the Cabinet. All the hostile
qualities, which would have lain still under the hand of the great
magician, bristled up, and came boldly out. The spirit of Bedford,
of Newcastle, and of Rockingham, was active in their partisans, and
gathered courage to do mischief. Lord Shelburne and the Duke of Grafton
became estranged; Charles Townshend, who had as much ambition and
eccentricity as talent, began to show airs, and aim at supremacy.
Grafton implored Chatham to come to town if possible, and when that was
declared impracticable, to allow him to go down, and consult with him
in his sick chamber. But he was informed that the Minister was equally
unable to move or to consult.

In these unfortunate circumstances, Charles Townshend, as Chancellor
of the Exchequer, proposed the annual rate for the land-tax. He called
for the amount of four shillings in the pound, the rate at which it had
stood during the war; but he promised next year to reduce it to three.
The country gentlemen grumbled, representing that in years of peace
it was commonly reduced to three and sometimes to two. Grenville saw
his advantage--his great opponent away and the landholders ready to
rebel--and he moved that, instead of next year, the reduction should
take place immediately. Dowdeswell supported him, and the amendment
was carried by two hundred and six votes against a hundred and
eighty-eight. The Opposition was astonished at its own success, and yet
it need not have been; they who had to vote were chiefly land-owners,
and men who did not like taxing themselves. As Lord Chesterfield
observed, "All the landed gentlemen had bribed themselves with this
shilling in the pound."

The Opposition was in ecstasies: it was the first defeat of Ministers
on a financial question since the days of Walpole, and in our time the
Chancellor would have resigned. The blow seemed to rouse Chatham. Three
days after this event, on the 2nd of March, he arrived in town, though
swathed in flannel, and scarcely able to move hand or foot. He declared
that the Chancellor of the Exchequer and himself could not hold office
together. A few days, and Townshend would have been dismissed from
office, and the country might have escaped one of its greatest shocks;
but, unfortunately, the malady of Chatham returned with redoubled
violence, and in a new and more terrible form. He was obliged to refuse
seeing any one on State affairs.

Such a calamity could not but be attended with the most mischievous
consequences. Chatham was obliged to leave town, and seek retirement
and a purer air at North End, near Hampstead. Townshend, who in a
few days would have ceased to be Chancellor of the Exchequer, still
retained office, and now showed more freely the wild and erratic
character of his genius. He had lost half a million from the revenue by
the reduction of the land-tax, and he pledged himself to the House to
recover it from the Americans. He declared that he fully agreed with
George Grenville, even in the principle of the Stamp Act, and ridiculed
the distinction set up by Chatham, and admitted by Franklin, of the
difference between internal and external taxation. This was language
calculated to fire the already heated minds of the colonists, who,
the more they reflected on Chatham's lofty language on the supreme
authority of the mother country in the declaratory Act, the more firmly
they repudiated it.

On the 11th of March, 1768, the Parliament, having nearly lived
its term of seven years, was dissolved, and the most unprecedented
corruption, bribery, and buying and selling of the people's right to
their own House, came into play. The system originated by Walpole was
now grown gigantic, and the sale and purchase of rotten boroughs was
carried on in the most unblushing manner by candidates for Parliament,
particularly aristocrats, who had managed to secure the old boroughs
as their property, or to control them by their property. The Mayor and
Aldermen of Oxford wrote to their members, long before the dissolution,
to offer them the renewal of their seats for the sum of seven thousand
five hundred pounds, which they meant to apply to the discharge of the
debts of the corporation. The House arrested the Mayor and Aldermen,
and clapped them in Newgate for five days; but on their humbly begging
pardon at the bar of the House, they released them again to continue
their base contract. Nay, whilst in prison, these corporation officials
had sold their borough to the Duke of Marlborough and the Earl of
Abingdon. Well might Chatham say this rotten part of the constitution
wanted amputating. Where the people of corporations had votes, they
were corrupted beyond all hope of resistance by the lavish bribes of
the wealthy. The Earl Spencer spent seventy thousand pounds to secure
the borough of Northampton for his nominee. There were attorneys acting
then as now for such boroughs and such corrupt constituents, and
they went about offering them to the highest bidders. One Hickey was
notorious amongst this tribe; and above all, the borough of Shoreham
distinguished itself by its venality, which assumed an aspect almost
of blasphemy. The burgesses united in a club to share the proceeds
of bribery equally amongst themselves, and styled themselves "the
Christian Club," in imitation of the first Christians, who had all
things in common! In the train of all this unprincipled corruption
followed riots and tumults amongst the people, who were at once
starving from the scarcity and dearness of bread, and infuriated with
the drink with which they had been plied to serve the views of these
base candidates. From the centre of this unholy chaos again rose the
figure of John Wilkes, as the reputed champion of liberty.

He was advised to try Westminster, where Mr. John Churchill, the
brother of his coadjutor, the satirist, and others, were in his
interest, but he boldly struck for the City of London. There were seven
candidates at the poll. Wilkes received one thousand two hundred and
forty-seven votes, but he was still lowest on the poll. His friends,
the mob, had no franchise.

Undaunted by his defeat, he immediately offered himself for Middlesex,
and there, though the mob could not vote, they could act for him.
They assembled in vast numbers, shouting, "Wilkes and Liberty!" They
accompanied him to the poll; they stopped all the roads that led to
the hustings at Brentford, suffering no one to pass who was not for
Wilkes and liberty. His zealous supporters wore blue cockades or paper
in their hats, inscribed "Wilkes and Liberty," or "No. 45." At night
they assembled in the streets, insisting on people illuminating their
houses in honour of Wilkes; abused all Scotsmen they met; scribbled
"No. 45" on the panels of carriages as they passed; made the parties in
them shout their favourite cry; broke the windows of Lord Bute at the
West End, and of Harley, the Lord Mayor, at the Mansion House--the same
Harley, a younger brother of the Earl of Oxford, who, as sheriff, had
had to burn No. 45 of the _North Briton_ in Cornhill. By such means the
mob managed to return Wilkes at the very head of the poll.

This was wormwood to the Government; and Wilkes did not leave them many
days in quiet. He had declared that, on returning to England, he would
surrender himself under his outlawry on the first day of the next term.
Accordingly, on the 20th of April, he presented himself to the Court of
King's Bench, attended by his counsel, Mr. Glynn, and avowed himself
ready to surrender to the laws. Lord Mansfield declared that he was not
there by any legal process, and that the court could not take notice
of him; but in a few days he was taken on another writ, and on the
8th of June he was again brought before Lord Mansfield, who declared
the outlawry void through a flaw in the indictment; but the original
verdict against him was confirmed, and he was sentenced to imprisonment
for twenty-two calender months, and two fines of five hundred pounds
each--one for the _North Briton_, and the other for the "Essay on
Woman."

[Illustration: "THE POLLING."

ONE OF THE SERIES OF FOUR PAINTINGS ENTITLED "THE ELECTION," BY W.
HOGARTH.]

[Illustration: THE MOB RELEASING MR. WILKES ON HIS WAY TO PRISON. (_See
p._ 193.)]

But these proceedings had not been effected without continual tumults.
On the day that Wilkes was arrested by order of the King's Bench
(the 27th of April), and, being refused bail, was sent to the King's
Bench prison, the mob stopped the hackney coach as it proceeded over
Westminster Bridge, took out the horses, and, with shouts of "Wilkes
and Liberty!" drew him, not to the prison, but into the City, and took
him into a tavern in Cornhill, where they kept him till midnight,
declaring that he should enjoy his freedom in spite of the law. But
Wilkes knew his position better than his champions, and, stealing away,
he went voluntarily to the King's Bench, and surrendered himself. The
next morning, when the mob knew that he was in prison, they assembled
in furious throngs, and demanded, under the most terrible menaces, his
liberation. They were at length dispersed by a detachment of Horse
Guards, but not until the mob had abused and pelted the soldiers. These
riots were kept up in different places from day to day; and on the
10th of May, twenty people were killed or wounded. When the soldiers
who had fired on the rioters were brought to trial, they were not
only acquitted, but the new Parliament voted loyal addresses on the
occasion; and the Government, through Lord Barrington, the Secretary
at War, and in the king's name, thanked publicly the officers and men
for their signal service in protecting the public peace. This only
added fresh fuel to the popular flame. To protect the public peace by
shooting the people, and to assure the perpetrators of this outrage,
as Lord Barrington did, that they should have every assistance from
Government in defending them from all legal consequences, was rightly
deemed most un-English conduct. The riots spread on all sides.

In October of this year Chatham at length resigned, and Parliament
assembled on the 8th of November. The two great objects which engrossed
the attention of Government in these days were North America and John
Wilkes. The news of the Act imposing import duties had reawakened all
the indignation of the people of Massachusetts. The Bostonians took
immediate steps to realise their doctrines. In October, 1767, the chief
men there met, and entered into a bond to purchase or wear no English
manufacture, but to encourage domestic manufacture till these obnoxious
import duties were withdrawn. The Massachusetts Assembly passed strong
resolutions to the same effect, and Mr. James Otis, who had been most
active in contending for them, exerted himself, through the press,
to circulate them all over America. Causes were not long wanting for
testing the resolution of the people of Massachusetts. The governor
of that colony, Francis Bernard, was precisely the man to bring the
matter to a crisis. He was able, determined, and of a hot temper. The
people hated him, because they knew that he was writing home despatches
full of the most unfavourable representations of their proceedings
and designs. He refused to confirm the nomination of such members of
the council as he knew were opposed to the new regulation; and Lord
Shelburne supported him in his act. In consequence, the Assembly
addressed a circular letter to all the other colonies, calling on them
to unite in defeating the new duties. Bernard in vain opposed the
resolution authorising this circular letter; and, on his report, Lord
Hillsborough instructed him to demand from the Assembly the rescinding
of the resolution. The Assembly refused, declaring that if a British
Minister could control the votes of provincial Assemblies, liberty was
but a mere show. Lord Hillsborough had instructed Bernard to dissolve
the Assembly in case it refused to rescind the resolution. In the
meantime, events took place which might have caused a more judicious
man to pause ere he fulfilled these instructions.

On the 10th of June, 1768, a sloop called the _Liberty_, the property
of Mr. John Hancock, of Boston, arrived in the harbour of that city
laden with a cargo of Madeira wine. Resistance having been offered to
the collection of the duties, the comptroller signalled the _Romney_
man-of-war, lying at anchor off Boston, to take the sloop in tow and
carry her under her guns. Crowds, meanwhile, had gathered on the quay,
and commenced measures for resistance. The captain of the _Romney_
sent out his boat's crew to haul in the sloop, and the mob attacked
them with stones. The man-of-war's men, notwithstanding, executed their
task, and carried the _Liberty_ under the guns of the _Romney_.

But the success of the capture only intensified the commotion on shore.
The tumult continued the next day; the mob broke the windows of the
houses of the commissioners and the custom-house officers; they dragged
the collector's boat on shore, and made a bonfire of it. These officers
fled for their lives--first on board the _Romney_, and then to Castle
William, a fortress at the mouth of the harbour. The third day was
Sunday, and the Bostonians kept the day with the decorum customary with
New Englanders; but on the Monday the riot was resumed with unabated
vigour. Placards were carried round the town, calling on the Sons of
Liberty to meet on Tuesday at ten o'clock. The Sons of Liberty were
members of the non-importation associations, which had been established
there, and in many parts of America. They had adopted that designation
from a phrase in a speech of Colonel Barré, delivered in Parliament
as early as 1765. Daughters of Liberty existed as well as Sons of
Liberty, who mutually bound themselves to drink no tea, as well as to
wear nothing imported after the passing of these duties. The Government
retaliated by pouring troops into the town and summoning ships of war
into the harbour.

Such, then, was the state of affairs at the meeting of Parliament in
November, 1768. These events in America claimed immediate attention.
The petition of the Convention of Massachusetts, on its arrival, was
rejected indignantly. The Opposition called for the production of the
correspondence with the civil and military authorities there on the
subject, but this demand was negatived. In January, 1769, the House
of Lords took up the subject in a lofty tone. They complained of the
seditious and treasonable proceedings of the people of Boston and of
Massachusetts generally; and the Duke of Bedford, affirming that it
was clear that no such acts could be punished by the magistrates or
tribunals of the colony, moved an address to the king recommending that
the criminals guilty of the late outrages should be brought to England
and tried there, according to an Act of the 35th of Henry VIII. On the
26th of January it was introduced to the Commons. There it excited a
very spirited opposition. Pownall, who had himself been governor of
Massachusetts, and knew the Americans well, accused the Lords of gross
ignorance of the charters, usages, and character of the Americans;
and Governor Johnstone as strongly condemned the motion, which was
carried by one hundred and fifty-five to eighty-nine. On the 14th of
March a petition from New York, denying their right to tax America in
any way, was rejected, on the motion of Lord North; and, still later
in the session, Governor Pownall moved that the revenue acts affecting
America should be repealed forthwith. By this time everybody seemed to
have become convinced of the folly of the attempt; but Ministers had
not the magnanimity to act at once on the certainty that stared them in
the face. Parliament was prorogued on the 9th of May, and did not meet
again till the following January, as if there were nothing of moment
demanding its attention.

With the same want of sagacity which was driving Ministers and
Parliament to the loss of America, they were still persecuting Wilkes
into popularity. On the 14th of November, 1768, Sir Joseph Mawby,
member for Southwark, presented a petition from Wilkes, reciting all
the proceedings of Government against him, and praying for his being
heard at the bar of the House. Wilkes appeared before the House on the
31st of January, where he took exception to the word "blasphemous" as
applied to the "Essay on Woman." Thurlow, afterwards Lord Chancellor,
a most swearing, blaspheming man, protested that if the House did not
declare it blasphemous, it would be a disgrace to it. However, the
words "impious" and "obscene" were substituted. On the 1st of February
the House determined that his petition was frivolous. The next day
the House went into another charge against Wilkes. In the preceding
April Lord Weymouth, previous to the riots in St. George's Fields, had
issued a letter, as Secretary of State, to the magistrates of Lambeth,
warning them of the danger of riots taking place in the endeavour to
free Wilkes from prison, and offering them the aid of the military.
Wilkes, while in the King's Bench, had obtained a copy of this letter,
and sent it to the _St. James's Chronicle_ with his own comments,
styling it a "hellish project," and as the direct cause of that "horrid
massacre." Weymouth complained to the House of Lords that this was a
breach of privilege. A conference was had with the Commons; Wilkes was
brought to the Bar, where Baldwin, the printer, had acknowledged the
letter to be his, and then, so far from denying it, claimed the thanks
of the country for having exposed that "bloody scroll." The Commons
decided that he was guilty of an insolent and seditious libel, and on
the following day, February 3rd, on the motion of Lord Barrington, he
was expelled the House, by a majority of two hundred and nineteen to
one hundred and thirty-seven. The king had directly asked for such a
verdict by a letter to Lord North, declaring that Wilkes's expulsion
was "highly expedient and must be effected."

The direct consequence was that he was immediately nominated again by
the freeholders of Middlesex. Mr. Dingley, a mercantile speculator of
London, offered himself as the Government candidate, but withdrew in
a fright, and Wilkes was returned, without opposition, on the 16th of
February, only thirteen days after his expulsion. The next day Lord
Strange moved in the Commons, that John Wilkes, after having been
expelled, was incapable of serving again in the present Parliament, and
the case of Sir Robert Walpole was quoted in justification. Wilkes was
a second time declared incapable of sitting, the election was declared
void, and the public indignation rose higher than ever. The freeholders
of Middlesex instantly met at the "London" Tavern, and subscribed
on the spot two thousand pounds towards defraying the expenses of
Wilkes's election. They then formed themselves into a "Society for
Supporting the Bill of Rights," and a third time proposed Wilkes as
their candidate. He was immediately returned for Middlesex, Dingley not
finding any one who dared to nominate him. The next day, the 17th of
March, the Commons again voted the election void.

With the beginning of this year, 1769, there commenced, under the
signature of "Junius," the most remarkable series of political letters
which ever appeared in our political literature. Time has not yet
disclosed who this public censor was, though the most weighty reasons
attach the belief to its having been Sir Philip Francis. Whoever
he was, his terrible dissections of the conduct and characters of
public men--the Duke of Grafton, the Duke of Bedford, Lord Mansfield,
and others, not excepting the king himself--caused the most awful
consternation amongst the ranks of the Ministry, and raised the highest
enthusiasm in the public by the keen and caustic edge of his satire and
his censure, by the clear tone of his reasonings, his obvious knowledge
of secret Government movements, and the brilliant lustre of his style.

At the same unfortunate juncture, the king insisted on Lord North
demanding from Parliament half a million for the liquidation of his
debts, though he possessed a civil list of eight hundred thousand
a-year. Simple as were the habits of George and his queen, the most
reckless disregard of economy was practised in his household. No means
were taken to check the rapacity of his tradesmen, and it was shown
that even for the one item of the royal coach, in 1762, there had been
charged seven thousand five hundred and sixty-two pounds! The Commons
voted the half million, the public grumbled, and the popularity of
Wilkes, the great champion of reform, rose higher than ever. A fourth
time the freeholders of Middlesex nominated him as their candidate; and
on this occasion a fresh Government nominee presented himself. This
was Colonel Henry Lawes Luttrell. Two other candidates, encouraged by
Luttrell's appearance, came forward; and on the 13th of April the list
of the poll, which had gone off quietly, showed Wilkes one thousand
one hundred and forty-three; Luttrell, two hundred and ninety-six;
Whitaker, five; and Roach, none.

On the 15th of April, notwithstanding Luttrell's signal defeat, the
House of Commons, on the motion of Onslow, son of the late Speaker,
voted, after a violent debate, by a majority of fifty-four, that "Henry
Lawes Luttrell, Esq., ought to have been returned for Middlesex."
The debate was very obstinate. The whole of the Grenville interest,
including Lord Temple, was employed against Government, and the
decision was not made till three o'clock on Sunday morning.

To such a pitch of folly and despotism had the Grafton Ministry
been driven by the events of the Session of 1769, by their conduct
towards the Americans and Wilkes. The Rockinghams and Grenvilles were
combined against the Grafton Cabinet, and thus acquiring popularity at
its expense. Lord Camden, though still retaining his place, utterly
disapproved of their proceedings. The people everywhere held meetings
to express their total loss of confidence in both the Ministers and
Parliament, and to pray the king to dissolve the latter. In the autumn,
the action of Wilkes against Lord Halifax, for the seizure of his
papers, was tried, and the jury gave him four thousand pounds damages.

But, gloomy as was the aspect of affairs at home, they were far more
so in America. There, the insane conduct of the Government had gone on
exasperating and alienating the colonists. True, the Cabinet, on the
close of Parliament, held a meeting to consider what should be done
regarding America. Grafton proposed to repeal the obnoxious duties
at the commencement of the next session, but he was overruled on the
motion of Lord North, and it was agreed to repeal all but the tea
duties. Within a few days after the close of the session, therefore,
Lord Hillsborough wrote this news in a circular to the governors of
the American colonies. As was certain, the partial concession produced
no effect, the principle being still retained in the continued tea
duty. Moreover, Hillsborough's circular was composed in such harsh
and uncourteous terms, that it rather augmented than assuaged the
excitement.

In Massachusetts the colonists were more exasperated against Governor
Bernard, on account of his letters reflecting on the Bostonians in
the matter of the late riots, these letters having been laid before
Parliament, and copies of them by some means procured and sent on
by their agents. They declared that it was beneath their dignity to
deliberate in the midst of an armed force, and requested Bernard to
withdraw the troops, but he refused; and they, on their part, declined
to vote supplies, on which he adjourned them to Cambridge. There,
however, as Cambridge was only separated from Boston by an arm of the
sea, they continued to protest against an armed force, as an invasion
of the national rights of the colonists, and highly dangerous. Bernard
soon announced to them his intention to sail for England, to lay the
state of the colony before the king, and the house immediately voted
a petition to his Majesty, praying him to keep him from coming back
again. Bernard then called upon them to refund the money expended
for the quartering of the troops; but that they pronounced quite as
unreasonable as the Stamp Act, and finding them utterly intractable,
Bernard prorogued the Assembly, and quitted the colony, leaving the
administration in the hands of Lieutenant-Governor Hutchinson.

Yet, in that blind and defiant spirit, which he continued to show till
he had lost the colonies, George created Bernard a baronet on his
reaching home, for having, in effect, brought Massachusetts to the
verge of rebellion; and, to show his emphatic sense of these services,
he himself paid all the expenses of the patent.

Parliament assembled on the 9th of January, 1770. People had been
surprised at the unusual delay in summoning it, considering the
critical state of America, but they were much more surprised when the
subject put foremost in the king's speech was a lamentation over the
murrain which had appeared amongst horned cattle during the recess,
and which Ministers had taken some measures to stop without calling
together Parliament. It was true that he afterwards alluded to the
state of affairs in America, and trusted some means would be devised by
Parliament to appease the irritation. But whilst war itself appeared
imminent there, whilst the whole country at home was in a state of high
discontent, and the Spitalfields weavers were at this moment in a state
of open riot, the idea of giving the chief place in the royal speech to
horned cattle caused a burst of universal ridicule. It was thenceforth
called the "Horned Cattle Session." Junius launched one of his fierce
missives at the Duke of Grafton, observing, "Whilst the whole kingdom
was agitated with anxious expectation on one great point, you meanly
evaded the question, and, instead of the explicit firmness and decision
of a king, gave us nothing but the misery of a ruined grazier."

[Illustration: WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM.]

Chatham had begun to ponder the proceedings of Ministers towards
America and towards Wilkes, or rather his constituents, as soon as
the returning activity of his mind permitted him. The conduct of the
Duke of Grafton, who had taken the lead during his retirement, did
not escape his censure. He had too easily fallen into the demand
of the Cabinet for severe measures in both those cases. No sooner,
therefore, did Chatham appear than he launched the whole thunder of
his indignation, and such was still his power that he shattered the
Cabinet to atoms. No sooner was the Address to the king moved and
seconded, than he rose and passed, with some expressions of contempt,
from the mention of the horned cattle to the more important topics. He
drew a dismal picture both of the domestic condition and the foreign
relations of the country. He glanced at the manner in which the Treaty
of Paris had been made, the abandonment of the King of Prussia, and the
consequent isolated condition of the kingdom, without a friend or an
ally. But bad as the external affairs of the nation were, he described
the internal as far worse. There everything was at discount. The people
were partly starving and wholly murmuring; the constituencies were
alarmed at the invasion of their rights in the case of John Wilkes; and
the colonies were on the very edge of rebellion. Such was the condition
to which the Government in a short time had reduced the commonweal.
More than all did he condemn the policy pursued towards America. He
protested against the term "unwarrantable," as applied to the conduct
of the colonists; proposed to substitute the word "dangerous." He owned
that he was partial towards the Americans, and strongly advocated a
system of mildness and indulgence in their case.

As for Wilkes, he counselled them earnestly to introduce a paragraph
into their Address to the king, stating their conviction that the chief
discontents of the nation arose from the violation of the rights of
representation in his expulsion from the Commons. "I am," said the
eloquent earl, "neither moved by his private vices nor by his public
merits. In his person, though he were the worst of men, I contend for
the safety and security of the best; and God forbid that there should
be a power in this country of measuring the civil rights of the subject
by his moral character, or by any other rule than the fixed laws of the
land."

This was going to the very heart of the question with that clear,
searching sense for which Chatham was so distinguished. Lord Chancellor
Camden, who had himself a strong and honest intellect, but not
the moral courage of Chatham, had retained the Great Seal, though
disapproving of the measures of his colleagues. Emboldened by the words
of his friend, he now rose and expressed his regret for having so long
suppressed his feelings. But, he added, "I will do so no longer; I will
openly and boldly speak my sentiments. I now proclaim to the world
that I entirely coincide in the opinions expressed by my noble friend,
whose presence again reanimates us, touching this unconstitutional and
illegal vote of the House of Commons.... By this violent and tyrannical
conduct Ministers have alienated the minds of the people from his
Majesty's Government--I had almost said from his Majesty's person!"
After these words Camden could no longer remain Lord Chancellor.

The Marquis of Granby resigned his posts as Paymaster-General of the
Ordnance and Commander-in-Chief of the Army, much to the annoyance and
against the entreaties of the king and the Duke of Grafton. Camden
would have done the same, but as the Ministers were anxious to be rid
of him, Chatham and his friends counselled him to remain, and put the
Ministry to the odium of dismissing him. This was done, and thus two of
the men most popular with the public--Granby and Camden--were lost to
the Administration. The Seals, as Lord Shelburne had predicted, went
a-begging. Charles Yorke, second son of the former Lord Chancellor,
Hardwicke, had all his life been hankering after this prize, but
as he was closely pledged to the party of Lord Rockingham, he most
reluctantly declined it. Three days subsequently, however, the king,
after the levee, suddenly called him into his closet, and so pressingly
entreated him to accept the Seals and rescue his sovereign from an
embarrassment, that he gave way. This was on the 18th of January. He
was to be raised to the peerage by the title of Lord Morden, but, on
encountering the keen reproaches of his party at Lord Rockingham's,
he went home and committed suicide. The Seals were then successively
offered to Mr. de Grey, the Attorney-General, to Sir Eardley Wilmot,
and Lord Mansfield, who refused them, and they were obliged to be put
in commission, Lord Mansfield consenting to occupy the woolsack, as
Speaker to the House of Lords, till that was done. After some time,
Sir Sidney Stafford Smythe, one of the barons of the Exchequer, the
Honourable Henry Bathurst, one of the justices of the Common Pleas, and
Sir Richard Aston, one of the justices of the King's Bench, were named
the commissioners.

In the House of Commons, too, the Speaker, Sir John Cust, was removed
by death at the same moment, and Sir Fletcher Norton was elected in his
place. On the 22nd of January, the same day that Sir Fletcher Norton
was made Speaker of the House of Commons, the Marquis of Rockingham
moved in the Lords for an inquiry into the state of the nation. The
crumbling down of the Cabinet continued. James Grenville resigned;
Dunning, the Solicitor-General, and General Conway, followed; and on
the very day of Lord Rockingham's motion, the Duke of Grafton himself
laid down the Seals. The whole of his administration had thus vanished,
like a mere fog ministry, at the first reappearance of the luminary,
Chatham.




CHAPTER IX.

REIGN OF GEORGE III. (_continued_).

    Lord North--He forms a Ministry--Chatham declaims against
    Secret Influence--Grenville's Election Committee--Lord North's
    Conciliatory Measures--Determination of the Bostonians--The
    Boston Massacre--Trial of the Soldiers--Apparent Success of
    North's Measures--Affair of the Falkland Islands--Promptitude
    of the Ministry--The Quarrel composed--Trials of Woodfall and
    Almon--The Right of Parliamentary Reporting--Strengthening of the
    Ministry--Quarrels in the City--The Royal Marriage Act--Fate of
    the Queen of Denmark--Anarchical Condition of Poland--Interference
    of Russia--Deposition of Poniatowski--Frederick's Scheme of
    Partition--It is ratified--Inquiry into Indian Affairs--Lord
    North's Tea Bill--Lord Dartmouth and Hutchinson--The Hutchinson
    Letters--Dishonourable Conduct of Franklin--Establishment of
    Corresponding Committees--Burning of the _Gaspee_--Destruction
    of the Tea--Franklin avows the Publication of the
    Letters--Wedderburn's Speech--The Boston Port Bill--The
    Massachusetts Government Bill--The Coils of Coercion--Virginia
    joins Massachusetts--Gage Dissolves the Boston Assembly--He
    fortifies Boston Neck--The General Congress--A Declaration of
    Rights--The Assembly at Concord--They enrol Militia--Seizure of
    Ammunition and Arms--Meeting of Parliament--Chatham's conciliatory
    Speech--His Bill for the Pacification of the Colonies--Its
    Fate--Lord North's Proposal--Burke's Resolutions--Prorogation of
    Parliament--Beginning of the War.


In this utter desertion, the king prevailed on Lord North, who was
already Chancellor of the Exchequer, to accept Grafton's post of First
Lord of the Treasury, with the Premiership. Lord North, eldest son of
the Earl of Guildford, was a man of a remarkably mild and pleasant
temper, of sound sense, and highly honourable character. He was
ungainly in his person and plain of countenance, but he was well versed
in the business of Parliament, and particularly dexterous in tagging to
motions of the Opposition some paragraph or other which neutralised the
whole, or turned it even against them. He was exceedingly near-sighted,
so much so, that he once carried off the wig of the old Secretary of
the Navy, who sat near him in the House. For the rest, he was of so
somnolent a nature that he was frequently seen nodding in the House
when Opposition members were pouring out all the vials of their wrath
on his head. He thought himself a Whig, but if we are to class him by
his principles and his acts of administration, we must pronounce him a
Tory.

The Ministry, as reconstructed, consisted of Lord North, First Lord of
the Treasury; the Great Seal was in commission; Granby's places, the
Ordnance and Commander of the Forces, were still unsupplied; so was
the Duke of Manchester's old post of Lord of the Bed-Chamber. The Earl
of Halifax became Lord Privy Seal; the Earl of Pembroke became a Lord
of the Bed-Chamber; the Earl of Waldegrave, Master of the Horse to the
queen; Sir Gilbert Elliot, Treasurer of the Navy; Charles James Fox
became a junior Lord of the Admiralty; Admiral Holborne another; Mr.
Welbore Ellis became one of the Vice-Treasurers of Ireland; and Thurlow
was appointed Solicitor-General, in place of Dunning.

Lord North soon found himself briskly assailed in both Lords and
Commons. In the former, Chatham was not so happy in amalgamating the
parties of Rockingham and Grenville as he hoped; but he had staunch
friends and oppositionists in Lords Camden, Shelburne, and Stanhope,
and in the Commons he was as warmly supported by Barré, Beckford,
Calcraft, and Dunning. On the 2nd of March a motion was also made
in the Lords for an Address to the king, praying him to increase
the number of seamen in the navy; and it was made to introduce
strong censures on the dismissal of able officers for their votes in
Parliament. On this occasion Chatham loudly reiterated the old charge
of the royal councils being influenced by favourites. "A long train of
these practices," he said, "has convinced me that there is something
behind the throne greater than the throne itself." He referred to
Mazarin, of France; and as Bute was just at this period gone to Turin,
he added, "Mazarin abroad is Mazarin still!" It is not to be supposed
that Bute had any secret influence whatever at this period; but the
people still believed that he had, and that two men especially were his
agents with the king--Bradshaw, commonly called "the cream-coloured
parasite," and Dyson, both placemen and members of the Commons.
Probably, Chatham had a secondary object--to punish these men, who with
Rigby, the parasite of the Duke of Bedford, were continually running
about endeavouring to depreciate the efforts of the more competent,
to whom they were pigmies, saying, "Only another mad motion by the
mad Earl of Chatham." Grafton, though now out of office, repelled
the insinuation of secret influence with indignation. This charge
of Chatham's was followed up, four days after, by a most outspoken
remonstrance from the Corporation of London. It was carried up to St.
James's on the 14th of March by Beckford, the Lord Mayor, and two
hundred and twenty Common Councilmen and other officers. Beckford read
the Address, which charged secret counsellors, and a corrupt majority
of the House of Commons, with depriving the people of their rights. It
declared that the House of Commons did not represent the people, and
called upon the king to dissolve it. His Majesty received the Address
with manifest signs of displeasure, and the courtiers, who stood round,
with actual murmurs and gesticulations of anger.

At this crisis George Grenville brought in and carried through a
measure, which showed how useful he might have been, had he never
been raised out of his proper element to rule and alienate colonies.
He was now fast sinking into the grave, though but fifty-eight years
of age. This measure was a bill to transfer the trial of controverted
elections from the whole House of Commons to a Select Committee of it.
Ever since the famous Aylesbury case, the whole House had taken the
charge of examining all petitions against the return of candidates and
deciding them. This was a great obstruction of business; and Grenville
now proposed to leave the inquiry and decision to the Select Committee,
which was to be composed of fifteen members of the House, thirteen of
whom were to be chosen by the contesting claimants for the seat, out
of a list of forty-five, elected by ballot from the whole House. The
other two were to be named, one each, by the contesting candidates. The
Committee was empowered to examine papers, call and swear witnesses,
and, in fact, to exercise all the authority previously wielded by the
whole House. It was opposed by Welbore Ellis, Rigby, Dyson, and Charles
James Fox, not yet broken from his office shell into a full-fledged
patriot. It was, however, carried, and being supported in the Lords by
Lord Mansfield, who on this occasion manifested an unusual disregard of
his party principles, it was passed there too.

Whilst Chatham was heading the Opposition in a determined onslaught
on the Government, the latter were also compelled to face the awkward
American question. Great hopes had been entertained that the people of
Boston would be much calmer after the departure of Governor Bernard.
Hutchinson, the Deputy-Governor, was not only an American, but a
man of a mild temper. But the temper of the Bostonians was now so
much excited, that the leaders of the non-importation Act were more
vehement than ever. The English merchants presented a petition to
Parliament showing that, in consequence of the import duties and the
combinations of the colonists to resist them, the exports from England
to these colonies had fallen off in 1769 by the amount of seven hundred
and forty thousand pounds; that the revenue received from duties paid
in America had fallen off from one hundred and ten thousand pounds per
annum to thirty thousand pounds.

It was in these grave circumstances that Lord North, on the 5th of
March, 1770, brought forward his bill, based on the terms of Lord
Hillsborough's letter to the American governors, to repeal all the
import duties except that on tea. This was one of those half-and-half
measures which never succeed; it abandoned the bulk of the duties,
but retained the really obnoxious thing--the principle. Grenville
very truly told them that they should retain the whole, or repeal the
whole. Lord Barrington and Welbore Ellis, in their dogged Toryism,
protested against repealing a single item of them; and the Opposition,
Barré, Conway, Meredith, Pownall, etc., as earnestly entreated them to
remove the duties altogether, and with them all cause of irritation.
The motion for leave to bring in the bill was carried by two hundred
and four votes to one hundred and forty-two. During the debates it was
shown that, during the financial year, the American tea duties had
produced--not the calculated ten or twelve thousand, but less than
three hundred pounds! For such a sum did our legislators risk a civil
war. As a last effort on this question at this time, the Opposition, on
the 1st of May, called for the correspondence with America; and, on the
9th, Burke moved nine resolutions on the general topic. They were not
only negatived, but a similar motion, introduced into the Peers by the
Duke of Richmond, met the same fate.

At the very time that these measures were occupying the British
Parliament, the Bostonians were driving affairs to a crisis. In nearly
all the seaports committees were in active operation for examining
all cargoes of ships, and reporting the result. These committees
also kept a keen observation on each other, and visited publicly
any that appeared lukewarm. Boston, as usual, distinguished itself
most prominently in this business. Regular meetings were held in
Faneuil Hall, and votes passed denouncing all who dared to import
the prohibited goods. Lieutenant-Governor Hutchinson exerted himself
to form an association amongst the traders in opposition to these
anti-importers, but he tried in vain. They insisted that the merchants
who had imported goods in their shops and warehouses should be
compelled to ship them back to those who had sent them. One merchant,
more stubborn than the rest, was immediately waited on by a deputation,
headed by an axeman and a carpenter, as if prepared to behead and bury
him; and he was told that a thousand men awaited his decision, and they
could not be answerable for his safety if he refused to comply.

[Illustration: AFFRAY AT BOSTON BETWEEN THE SOLDIERS AND ROPE-MAKERS.
(_See p._ 201.)]

The animosity against the soldiers at Boston was actively kept up. The
sentinel could not stand at his post without insult. Every day menaced
a conflict. A fictitious account of an affray between the soldiers and
the people of New York was circulated at Boston, in which the soldiers
were represented as beaten. This gave impetus to the aggressive temper
of the Bostonians. On the 2nd of March, a soldier, insulted by the men
at Gray's rope-walk, resented it; they came to blows, and the soldier
was overpowered. He fetched up some of his comrades, who, in their
turn, beat and chased the rope-makers through the town. The passions of
the mob were inflamed, and they began to arm themselves for an attack
on the soldiery. In a few days the crowd assembled and assaulted a
party of them in Dock Square. The officer prudently withdrew them to
the barracks. As the evening advanced, the mob increased. They cried,
"Turn out, and do for the soldiers!" They attacked and insulted a
sentinel at the Custom House. A party of soldiers was sent by Captain
Preston to the officers on duty to protect the man. The mob pelted
them with pieces of wood, lumps of ice, etc., and denounced them as
"cowards," "red-lobster rascals," and the like. The soldiers stood to
defend the Custom House till they were fiercely attacked, and at length
they fired in self-defence, killed three persons, and wounded several
others--one mortally.

To prevent further carnage, a committee of the townsmen waited on the
governor and council, and prevailed on them to remove the soldiers from
the town to Castle William. The successful rioters carried the bodies
of the killed in procession, denounced the soldiers as murderers,
and spread the most exaggerated accounts of the affray through the
newspapers, under the name of "the massacre." Captain Preston and his
men were arrested and put upon their trials before a jury of the irate
townsmen. Nobody, for a time, would act as counsel for the defence; but
at length John Adams, a young lawyer, undertook the office, and made
the case so plain, that not only Captain Preston, but all the soldiers
were acquitted, except two, who had fired without orders, and these
were convicted only of manslaughter.

The arrival of the news of Lord North's repeal of all the duties,
except tea, produced little effect on the minds of the people of
Boston. They declared that the unconstitutional principle was the
real offence, and that it was still retained. The people of New York,
however, had long inclined to gentler measures. They agreed to import
all other articles except tea. Pennsylvania and other colonies followed
their example; and they declared that they who wanted tea must smuggle
it. The more fiery patriots declared against this lukewarmness; but
the desire for the English goods was so great that, during the years
1770 and 1771, the importations were larger than they had ever been.
Nevertheless, though the colonies appeared returning to order and
obedience, the efforts of the Republican party never relaxed, and,
especially in Massachusetts, there was a tone of sullen discontent.
"Liberty poles" were still erected; exciting harangues were delivered
on the anniversary of "the massacre," and the Assembly continued to
manifest a stubborn resistance to the will of the Lieutenant-Governor.

During the recess of Parliament, a dispute occurred with Spain
regarding the Falkland Islands, which led to the very verge of war.
In 1764 the French, under Bougainville, made a settlement on Falkland
Sound; but Spain putting in a claim that these isles were part of her
South American territory, Choiseul, the French Minister, abandoned the
settlement, and the Spaniards changed its name from Port Louis to Port
Soledad. The very next year, 1765, Commodore Byron was sent to form
a settlement on another of the islands, which he named Port Egmont,
in honour of Lord Egmont, First Lord of the Admiralty. Such were the
distant islets to which, in 1769, Spain began to assert her claim.
The Governor of Port Soledad sent repeated messages to Captain Hunt,
of the _Tamar_, stationed at Port Egmont, requiring the abandonment
of the place. When the notices were succeeded by threats, Captain
Hunt sailed home to lay the matter before his Government. He landed
at Portsmouth in June, 1770, and made known the Spanish interference
to the Cabinet. Meanwhile, the Spaniards, taking advantage of Hunt's
absence, had, about the time that he arrived in England, dispatched
to the Falklands Buccarelli, the Governor of Buenos Ayres, with five
frigates and one thousand six hundred men. Having entered the port on
pretence of wanting water, and finding the _Tamar_ absent, and only two
armed sloops there, and a mere handful of soldiers, Buccarelli landed
his force, and, after the firing of a few shots for form's sake, the
English surrendered, and were permitted to depart with all the honours
of war.

The excitement, both at Court and in the country, was far beyond the
then apparent value of the islands; but there had been an insult to the
British flag, and both Government and Opposition demanded expiation.
Lord North displayed a bold and determined tone on the occasion.
Orders were sent over to the British ambassador, at Madrid, to demand
an immediate disavowal of Buccarelli's act, and instant measures
were taken for war, in case of refusal. Ships were refitted, their
commanders named, stores were put on board, and orders for pressing
men, according to the custom of the time, were issued. But in London
these preparations met with resistance from the opposition spirit of
the Corporation. Things, however, seemed tending strongly towards
war. Our _Chargé d'affaires_ at Madrid, in absence of the ambassador,
was Mr. Harris, the son of the author of "Hermes." He was but a youth
of four-and-twenty, but already displayed much of the talent which
raised him to the title of Malmesbury. He wrote home that the King of
Spain and some of his Ministers were averse from the idea of war, and
unprepared for it; but that others were influenced by Choiseul, the
French Premier, and demanded a vigorous attack on England.

But the King of France did not share in the feeling of Choiseul. He
wrote to the King of Spain about this time, "My Minister wishes for
war, but I do not!" In fact, changes had taken place in the Court of
France which were about to precipitate Choiseul from his long-enjoyed
favour. Madame de Pompadour was dead, and the king had become deeply
enamoured of Madame du Barry. Choiseul was impolitic enough to despise
her influence, and treated her with undisguised _hauteur_. He soon
felt the consequence in an order from the king to resign his office
and retire to his estate at Chanteloupe, in Touraine. The shock to
the insolent Minister, who had so long ruled absolutely in the French
Court, was the more unlooked for, because he thought himself now all
the more safe from having secured the marriage of the king's heir,
his eldest grandson, with the Austrian archduchess, Marie Antoinette.
Choiseul was succeeded by the triumvirate d'Aiguillon, as Foreign
Minister; Terray, as Minister of Finance; and Maupeou, as Minister of
Jurisprudence; but all subject to the supreme influence of Madame du
Barry. Louis XV. thenceforth became a cipher.

The spirit of Choiseul having departed from the French administration,
and the king having so unequivocally expressed his intention not to
go to war, the Spanish Court hastened to lower its tone and offer
conciliatory terms. In December they had proposed, through Prince de
Masserano, to disavow the expedition of Buccarelli, if the English
Court would disown the menaces of Captain Hunt. This was promptly
refused, and orders were sent to Mr. Harris to quit the capital of
Spain. He set out in January, 1771, but was speedily recalled; the
expedition of Buccarelli was disavowed; the settlement of Port Egmont
was conceded, whilst the main question as to the right of either party
to the Falklands at large was left to future discussion. So little
value, however, did Britain attach to the Falkland Isles, that it
abandoned them voluntarily two years afterwards. For many years they
were forsaken by both nations; but in 1826 the Republic of Buenos Ayres
adopted them as a penal colony, and in 1833 the British finally took
possession of them.

Whilst these events had been progressing, the Ministry had entered into
a combat with the great unknown political essayist, Junius. Junius
had advanced from Sir William Draper to the Duke of Grafton, and from
the Duke of Grafton to the king in his sweeping philippics. For these
daring censures, Woodfall, the printer of the _Public Advertiser_,
was tried, and also Almon, the publisher of the _London Museum_, a
monthly periodical, for reprinting the libel there. Almon was convicted
of publishing, and sentenced to pay a fine of ten marks, and give
security for his good behaviour for two years, himself in four hundred
pounds, and two sureties in two hundred pounds each. He moved in vain
for a new trial. Woodfall was convicted of "printing and publishing
only;" but he obtained an order for a new trial, on the ground of the
phrase "only" being ambiguous. But the circumstance which excited the
attention and turned the resentment of both Liberal statesmen and
the people was, that Lord Mansfield on these trials had instructed
the juries to confine themselves to the facts alone, and to leave
the question of legality to the judges. This was properly declared a
dangerous infringement of the rights of juries, and calculated to make
their verdicts merely the servile echoes of the dicta of the judges.
Lord Chatham, on the 28th of November, denounced in the Peers this
dictation of the judge to the juries. Serjeant Glynn, at the same time,
moved in the Commons for an inquiry into the administration of justice
in Westminster Hall, where such unconstitutional instructions could
be given. This occasioned a warm debate, in which Burke, Dunning, and
others, ably defended the public rights. The motion was negatived.

The year 1771 opened in circumstances which greatly diminished the
interest in Parliamentary proceedings. As all reporting was excluded
from the House of Lords, the chief speakers there felt that they were
no longer addressing the nation, but merely a little knot of persons
in a corner, and consequently the stimulus of both fame and real
usefulness was at an end. In the Commons, the desire of the Ministry
to reduce that popular arena to the same condition of insignificance
produced a contest with the City as foolish and mischievous in its
degree as the contests then going on with Wilkes and America. George
Onslow, nephew of the late Speaker, and member for Guildford, moved
that several printers, who had dared to report the debates of the House
of Commons, should be summoned to the bar to answer for their conduct.
Accordingly, these mediums of communication between the people and
their representatives were summoned and reprimanded on their knees.
One of their number, named Miller, however, declared that he was a
liveryman of London, and that any attempt to arrest him would be a
breach of the privileges of the City. The Serjeant-at-Arms dispatched
a messenger to apprehend this sturdy citizen, and bring him before the
House; but, instead of succeeding, the Parliamentary messenger was
taken by a City constable, and carried before Brass Crosby, the Lord
Mayor. With the Lord Mayor sat Alderman Wilkes and Alderman Oliver.
It was delightful work to Wilkes thus to set at defiance the House
of Commons, which had made such fierce war on him. The Lord Mayor,
accordingly, was fully confirmed in his view that the messenger of
the Commons had committed a flagrant violation of the City charter,
in endeavouring to lay hands on one of its liverymen within its own
precincts, and they held the messenger accordingly to bail. The House
of Commons was fired with indignation at this contemptuous disregard
of their dignity. They passed a resolution, by a large majority,
ordering the Lord Mayor and the two aldermen to appear at their bar.
Wilkes bluntly refused to attend the House in any shape but as a
recognised member of it. Crosby pleaded a severe fit of the gout; and
Oliver, though he appeared in his place, refused to make any submission
whatever, but told them he defied them. The House, in its blind anger,
resolved that Oliver should be committed to the Tower, and Crosby to
the custody of the Serjeant-at-Arms. But Crosby declared that he would
not accept this indulgence at the hands of the House, but would share
the incarceration of his honourable friend; and he was accordingly sent
also to the Tower. The people out of doors were in the highest state
of fury. They greeted the City members on their way to and from the
House, but they hooted and pelted the Ministerial supporters. Charles
James Fox, still a Government man, as all his family had been, was
very roughly handled; Lord North's carriage was dashed in, and himself
wounded; and had he not been rescued by a popular member, Sir William
Meredith, he would probably have lost his life. The Commons had engaged
in a strife with the City, in which they were signally beaten, and no
further notice being taken of the printers, from this time forward the
practice of reporting the debates of Parliament became recognised as
an established privilege of the people, though formally at the option
of the House; and so far now from members or Ministers fearing any
evil from it, the most conservative of them would be deeply mortified
by the omission of their speeches in the reports. The termination of
the Session also opened the doors of the Tower, and liberated the
Lord Mayor and Alderman Oliver. They were attended from the Tower to
the Mansion House by the Corporation in their robes, where a banquet
celebrated their restoration to freedom, and the populace displayed
their sympathy by bonfires and illuminations.

[Illustration: SPADE GUINEA OF GEORGE III.]

[Illustration: FIVE-SHILLING PIECE OF GEORGE III.]

[Illustration: TWOPENNY PIECE OF GEORGE III.]

During the recess considerable changes took place in the Cabinet. Lord
Halifax died on the 8th of June; the Earl of Suffolk succeeded him as
Secretary of State, and the remainder of the Grenville party thereupon
supported the Ministry. Suffolk introduced his friend, Lord Hyde,
afterwards Earl of Clarendon, to the post of Chancellor of the Duchy
of Lancaster, with an augmented salary. The administration of Lord
North was considerably strengthened, too, by the abilities of Thurlow,
as Attorney-General, and of Wedderburn, as Solicitor-General. But the
addition to the Cabinet of Lord North which occasioned the greatest
surprise, was that of the Duke of Grafton. He received the Privy Seal.

During the recess a violent quarrel had been going on in the City,
which showed the disorganisation of the Opposition. Wilkes had offered
himself as sheriff; but Alderman Oliver, who had lately been in prison
for his bold conduct in the affair of Miller, the printer, had refused
to support the claim of Wilkes. In fact, not only he, but the Lord
Mayor, Alderman Townshend, and Sawbridge, were beginning to see through
Wilkes. Oliver went further--he refused to serve as the other sheriff
with Wilkes. Government availed itself of these divisions to defeat
the election of Wilkes. Alderman Bull became the second candidate with
Wilkes, and Government induced their party in the City to nominate
Aldermen Plumbe and Kirkman in opposition to them. Wilkes would
probably have been defeated, especially as Oliver finally came forward,
supported by all the eloquence and exertions of John Horne. But,
fortunately for Wilkes and his fellow-candidate, Bull, a letter sent
by the Government agent to a Mr. Smith in the City was misdelivered
to another Mr. Smith, a supporter of Wilkes and Bull, announcing the
exertions that Government would make in support of their men, Plumbe
and Kirkman. This letter was immediately published, and, alarming all
the enemies of Government, made them rally round Wilkes and Bull, who
were accordingly elected.

[Illustration: PRESS-GANG AT WORK.]

On the 21st of January, 1772, the king opened Parliament, and the two
divisions of the Opposition under the leadership of Rockingham and
Chatham were found to be divided and dispirited. The chief proceeding
of this session was one of a very remarkable character. The boasted
morals of George III. and of his queen had not defended his family
from gross crimes and corruptions. Very notorious was the life of his
brother, the Duke of Cumberland. Amongst his licentious intrigues
was one with Henrietta Vernon, Lady Grosvenor, a young and beautiful
woman, whom he seduced, following her into Cheshire, when her husband
took her from town, and meeting her in various disguises. In 1770 Lord
Grosvenor brought an action against him and obtained a verdict of ten
thousand pounds. With a rapidity of fickleness almost unexampled, he
was immediately afterwards paying suit to Mrs. Horton. Cumberland
went over to Calais with Mrs. Horton, and there married her according
to the rites of the Church of England (October 2, 1771). The Duke
of Gloucester also now confessed to a secret marriage (September 6,
1766) with the Countess Dowager Waldegrave. A Bill was brought into
Parliament in 1772, since well known as the Royal Marriage Act, by
which every prince or princess, descendant of George II., except only
the issue of princes married abroad, was prohibited from marrying
until the age of twenty-five without the king's consent. After that
age they might apply to the Privy Council, and if within a year
of such announcement both Houses of Parliament should not express
disapprobation of the intended marriage, it might then be lawfully
solemnised. The Bill did not pass without violent opposition.

But these were by no means the total of the royal troubles at this
period. The youngest and most beloved of George III.'s sisters,
Caroline Matilda, had been married to Christian VII. of Denmark. This
young man was little better than an idiot, and the poor princess was
married to him at the age of sixteen. The marriage of this young
couple, and their ascent to the throne, were nearly simultaneous; and,
contrary to the usual custom of a monarch, it was deemed advisable that
he should travel. In his tour he fell in with the celebrated Struensee,
a young physician of Altona. Christian VII., like all weak monarchs,
must have favourites. Struensee speedily became the perfect master of
Christian's mind and actions, and on their return to Copenhagen he was
raised to the rank of count, and soon after was made Prime Minister.
His enemies were of course numerous, and scandal soon connected his
name with that of the queen. All this especially favoured the plans
of the base queen dowager, who, in league with the hostile nobles,
feigned a plot against the king; obtained from him, in his bed at
midnight, an order for the arrest of the queen, Struensee, and others.
The queen was seized half dressed. Struensee was executed with especial
barbarities; but the King of England interfered to save his sister, and
to procure the succession to her son. The unhappy young queen, however,
was separated for ever from her two children, and conveyed to Zell, in
Hanover--the same castle or prison where the unhappy wife of George I.
had pined away her life. There she died after a few years, protesting
her innocence, though Struensee had confessed his guilt.

From the affairs of the royal family, we turn to a more important
subject, the partition of Poland. Poland, lying contiguous to Russia,
had for ages been in a condition calculated to attract the cupidity of
ambitious neighbours. Its nobles usurped all authority. They kept the
whole mass of the people in hopeless serfdom; they usurped the whole
of the land; they elected their own king, and were too fond of power
themselves to leave him more than a puppet in their hands. To make the
condition of the country worse, it was violently divided on the subject
of religion. One part of the nobles consisted of Roman Catholics,
another of what were called Dissidents, made up of members of the Greek
Church, and Protestants, Lutherans, Calvinists, and Arians. Although by
what was called the Pacta Conventa the Dissidents had been admitted to
an equality of rights, this was totally disregarded by the overbearing
Roman Catholics; and in 1736 the Pacta Conventa was formally abolished.
Every Dissident was, by this measure, for ever excluded from
government, and from all interest in it.

Thus the whole country was torn by religious animosity; the nobles
were insolent to the Crown, and the people were nothing. Such was
the divided condition of Poland which led to its dismemberment.
All nobility of mind was destroyed; pride and oppression were the
inseparable consequences of such a system. There was no middle class,
no popular class; it was a country of lords and slaves--of one class
domineering over the other. The Greek Catholics were the Dissidents,
and the Dissidents sought aid from Russia--which was also Greek in
religion--and, to insure this aid, condescended to the lowest arts of
solicitation, to the practice of fawning, stooping, and cringing to
the great barbarous power of Russia on one side, and to the equally
barbarous power of Turkey on the other. The nobles could bring large
bodies of cavalry into the field, as many, at times, as a hundred
thousand; but as they had no free people, and dreaded to arm their
slaves, they had little or no infantry, except such as they hired, and
even this was in no condition to withstand the heavy masses of Russian
infantry, much less such armies as Prussia or Austria might be tempted
to bring against them.

From the moment that Russia was called in, under the pretext of
maintaining order, she became, or aimed to become, the dominant power
there. She pressed on the whole line of the Polish frontier with her
armies, inundated the kingdom with her troops, and levied contributions
for their support as if she had been in a conquered country. From that
hour, too, the kings were elected rather by foreign armies than by the
Poles themselves. Stanislaus Poniatowski, the present king, was the
nominee of Catherine of Russia, whose lover he had been till superseded
by Orloff. She had placed him on the throne by force of arms, and he
was incapable of doing anything except through her power.

Some faint endeavours were made to shake off the yoke. Encouraged by
France, they summoned the Turks to their aid and cut to pieces several
detachments of the Russians. They proclaimed Poniatowski deposed,
and called on the people to aid them to drive out the invaders. But
the people, long used to oppression from their own lords, did not
answer to the call. In France, Choiseul had been hurled from power,
and France left the Poles to their fate. It was now that Frederick
of Prussia proposed to Austria to combine with Russia and share
Poland between them. At this robber proposition, so in character with
Frederick, who had all his life been creating a kingdom by plundering
his neighbours, Maria Theresa at first exclaimed in horror. But she
was now old and failing, and she gave way, declaring that, long after
she was dead and gone, people would see what would happen from their
having broken through everything which had, till then, been deemed
just and holy. Frederick of Prussia took the surest way to compel the
Austrians to come in for a share of the spoils of Poland. He marched a
body of soldiers out of Silesia--the territory which he had rent from
Austria--into Posen, and Austria, not to be behind, had marched another
army into the Carpathian Mountains.

In vain did Poniatowski remonstrate; he had no means of resistance.
The Turks could no longer defend themselves from Russian invasion,
much less assist Poland. They applied to Frederick to intercede
with Catherine for peace for them. Nothing could so entirely suit
Frederick's plans. He sent Prince Henry of Prussia to negotiate with
Catherine, who took the opportunity to represent to her the advantages
to the three great powers, Russia, Prussia, and Austria, strengthening
themselves by appropriating portions of Poland. The Russians, relieved
from contention with the Poles, now pushed on their victories against
the Turks; drove them over the Danube, and seized some of their most
fertile provinces. To complete their ruin, they, aided by England,
attacked and destroyed their fleet in the Mediterranean.

The treaty between Russia, Prussia, and Austria for the first division
of Poland was signed at St. Petersburg on the 5th of August, 1772. The
three robber powers now promised to rest satisfied with their booty;
to respect the rights and remaining territories of Poland--words hollow
and worthless as they who used them. The invaders divided at this time
about one-third of Poland between them. Prussia appropriated the whole
of Pomerania, part of Great Poland, the bishopric of Warmia, and the
palatinates of Marienburg and Culm; with complete command of the lower
part of the Vistula. The whole of this territory did not exceed eight
hundred square miles, but it was a territory of vast importance to
Prussia, as it united Pomerania with the rest of that kingdom. Russia
and Austria acquired immensely more in extent. Russia took nearly the
whole of Lithuania, with the vast country between the rivers Dwina
and Dniester. Austria secured the country along the left bank of the
Vistula from Wieliczka to the confluence of the Vistula and the Viroz.
But Russia had Galicia, the palatinate of Belz, and a part of Volhynia.
Unsupported by France, England had no course but to acquiesce in the
arrangement.

The year 1773 opened with an inquiry in Parliament into the abuses of
the administration of affairs in India. There were great complaints
of the wholesale rapacity and oppression perpetrated on the natives
by the Company's servants. Before the close of the preceding year, a
secret committee had been appointed to inquire into these abuses, and
to take the matter out of the hands of Government, the Company proposed
to appoint a number of supervisors to go out to India and settle the
causes of complaint. The secret committee proposed a Bill to prevent
this, as a scheme for merely evading a thorough inquiry and continuing
the atrocities. Burke, who was a holder of India stock, defended the
Company, and declared that such a Bill would annihilate the Company,
and make the House of Commons the Company itself and the Speaker its
chairman. He reminded them that the Company paid to Government four
hundred thousand pounds a year, and that Government had connived at the
maladministration which had been carried on. This certainly was, so far
from a reason against the Bill, a reason why they should connive no
longer; and the Bill was carried by a large majority.

The Company was then compelled to reduce its dividends to six per cent.
and apply to Parliament for a loan of a million and a half to meet its
pecuniary difficulties. This, Ministers and Parliament complied with,
and proceeding to relieve the Company of its embarrassments, Lord
North proposed and carried a measure, by which the Company, which
had no less than seventeen million pounds of tea in its warehouses,
should, without limit of time, be authorised to export its teas to
the British colonies of America duty free. This was thought a great
and conciliatory boon to the Americans, but it proved otherwise. The
import duty of threepence in the pound was still stubbornly retained,
and the Americans, looking at the principle of taxation, and not at
a mere temptation of a cheapened article, saw through the snare, and
indignantly rejected it. The principal tea merchants declared that this
would be the case, and that the whole Government scheme was wild and
visionary.

Though there had appeared a lull in American affairs for some time,
any one who was observant might have seen that all the old enmities
were still working in the colonial mind, and that it would require
little irritation to call them forth in even an aggravated form. Lord
Hillsborough was no longer Governor, but William Legge, Lord Dartmouth.
He was a man of high reputation for uprightness and candour; Richardson
said that he would be the perfect ideal of his Sir Charles Grandison,
if he were not a Methodist; and the poet Cowper, not objecting to his
Methodism, described him as "one who wears a coronet and prays." But
Lord Dartmouth, with all his superiority of temper and his piety, could
not prevent the then stone-blind Cabinet and infatuated king from
accomplishing the independence of America.

Another favourable circumstance would have been found in the fact
that in Hutchinson, Massachusetts had a native Governor, a man of
courteous manners and moderate counsels. But even out of Hutchinson's
position arose offence. His brothers-in-law, Andrew and Peter Oliver,
were appointed Lieutenant-Governor and Chief Justice of the province.
Lord North thought that the payment of these officers should be in
the hands of Government, to render them independent of the colonists;
but this the colonists resented as an attempt to destroy the Charter
and establish arbitrary power. The Massachusetts House of Assembly
declared on this occasion, in their address to the Crown:--"We know of
no commissioners of his Majesty's Customs, nor of any revenue that his
Majesty has a right to establish in North America." They denounced the
Declaratory Act passed at the suggestion of Chatham, and the attempt
to make the governors and judges independent of the people, and the
arbitrary instruments of the Crown. In Virginia the same spirit was
conspicuous.

During the years 1767, 1768, and 1769, Mr. Thomas Whately--at one time
private secretary to Grenville, and several years Under-Secretary
of State to Lord Suffolk, but during these years out of office, and
simply member of Parliament--had maintained a private correspondence
with Governor Hutchinson and his brother-in-law, Andrew Oliver, the
Lieutenant-Governor. In these letters Hutchinson and Oliver had freely
expressed to their old friend their views of the state of affairs in
the colony; and, of course, said many things never intended to come
to the public eye, or to operate officially. On the death of Whately,
in 1772, some villain purloined these letters and conveyed them to
Franklin, who was acting as agent for Massachusetts. Who this dishonest
firebrand was, was never discovered. Franklin pledged himself to
secrecy, both as to the letters and as to the name of the person who
so basely obtained them. The name of this person he faithfully kept;
but the contents of the letters were too well calculated to create
irreconcilable rancour in the minds of the Americans, for him to resist
the pleasure of communicating them to the Massachusetts Assembly. He
accordingly forwarded them to Mr. Curling, the Speaker of the Assembly.

The whole mode of coming into possession of these papers has something
in it revolting to all honourable minds. Franklin, aware of this,
insisted that they should not be printed nor made public, but only
circulated amongst a select few. But the same motives which had induced
Franklin to break his pledged secrecy, operated on the Assembly. They
determined to make them public, and therefore pretended that other
copies of them had reached them from England, and that they were thus
absolved from all conditions of secrecy. This was totally false. The
story was invented for the occasion, and the letters, without the name
of Whately, to whom they had been addressed, were published by the
Assembly. It was left to be inferred by the public, that they had been
sent officially to England by the Governor and Lieutenant-Governor, and
the Assembly voted the writing of them ample evidence of a fixed design
on the part of the British Government to destroy the Constitution and
establish arbitrary power. A petition was dispatched to be presented
by Franklin to the king, calling for the removal of Hutchinson and
Oliver from their posts. When these letters were read under these false
impressions, sentiments were found in them which assumed a wholly
exaggerated character, and the flame produced was, as Franklin and the
Assembly intended, of the most furious kind.

[Illustration: BOSTON "BOYS" DISGUISED AS INDIANS THROWING THE TEA
CHESTS INTO THE HARBOUR. (_See p._ 210.)]

When these letters were published in America, their real character
was concealed, and every means taken to represent them as official
despatches to the officers of Government in England. The public
rage was uncontrollable. A committee was formed to wait on Governor
Hutchinson, and demand whether he owned the handwriting. Hutchinson
freely owned to that, but contended very justly that the letters
were of a thoroughly private character, and to an unofficial person.
Notwithstanding, the House of Assembly drew up a strong remonstrance to
the British Government, charging the Governor and Lieutenant-Governor
with giving false and malicious information respecting the colony, and
demanding their dismissal. This remonstrance, accompanied by copies of
the letters themselves, was immediately dispatched over the colonies,
and everywhere produced, as was intended, the most violent inflammation
of the public mind against us. The Bostonians had for some time
established what was called a Corresponding Committee, whose business
it was to prepare and circulate through the whole of the colonies
papers calculated to keep alive the indignation against the British
Government. This Committee quickly was responded to by other committees
in different places, and soon this plan became an organisation
extending to every part of the colonies, even the most remote, by which
intelligence and arguments were circulated through all America with
wonderful celerity.

That the spirit of the Bostonians had ripened into actual rebellion
was unequivocally shown in the course of the year 1773. The _Gaspee_
Government schooner, commanded by Lieutenant Dudingston, had been
singularly active in putting down smuggling about Rhode Island. The
Rhode Island packet coming in one evening from Newport to Providence,
instigated by the general anger against the _Gaspee_--for the Rhode
Islanders were great smugglers--refused to pay the usual compliment of
lowering the flag to the schooner. Dudingston fired a shot across her
bows, and, on her paying no regard to that, gave chase. The packet,
however, ran close in shore, and the _Gaspee_ following too eagerly,
ran aground. It was on a sandy bottom, and the return of the tide
would have lifted her off undamaged; but the smuggling population of
Providence put off to her in the night, whilst she lay in a position so
as to be incapable of using her guns, surprised, boarded, and set fire
to her, carrying the lieutenant and the crew triumphantly on shore.
Government offered a reward of five hundred pounds for the discovery of
the perpetrators of this daring outrage; but though it was well known
who the perpetrators were, no one would give any information. On the
contrary, the most violent threats were uttered against any one who
should do so.

When such acts as the burning of the _Gaspee_ had been done with
impunity, and whilst the American mind was rankling with the Franklin
poison of the purloined letters, three vessels arrived at Boston, laden
with tea, under the conditions of Lord North's Bill. On the arrival
of the ships the commotion was intense. The captains themselves would
gladly have sailed away with their obnoxious cargoes in safety, but the
governor very foolishly gave orders that they should not pass the ports
without a permit from himself, and he sent Admiral Montague to guard
the passages out of the harbour with two ships of war. As the evening
grew dark, those who had quitted the meeting held on the 16th of
December to demand that the ships should be sent home again, were met
by mobs of men arrayed as wild Indians, who hurried down to Griffin's
Wharf, where the tea ships lay. Rushing tumultuously on board, and
hoisting out the tea chests, they emptied them into the sea amid
much cheering and noise. Having thus destroyed teas to the amount of
eighteen thousand pounds, the triumphant mob retreated to their houses.

The news from Boston could not have arrived at a moment when the
public mind was more ill-disposed towards the Americans. The affair
of the abstraction of Mr. Whately's private letters from his house
or office, and their publication, contrary to custom and to its
own engagement, by the Massachusetts Assembly, had produced a deep
conviction in all classes in England of the utter disregard of honour
both in the American colonists and their agent, Franklin. This
disgraceful violation of the sacred security of private papers roused
the indignation of Mr. William Whately, banker, in Lombard Street, and
brother to the late Mr. Thomas Whately. He conceived strong suspicions
of John Temple, afterwards Sir John Temple, Lieutenant-Governor of New
Hampshire, and, though one of the Commissioners of Customs at Boston,
really hostile to the Commission, and a strong partisan of Franklin.
Whately challenged Temple, and was severely wounded in the rencontre.
At this, Franklin came forward with an avowal that neither the late Mr.
Whately nor Mr. Temple had anything to do with the carrying off of the
letters; that he alone was responsible for this act.

Owing to these circumstances, occasion was taken, on the presentation
to the Privy Council of the petition of the people of Boston for the
removal of the Governor and Lieutenant-Governor of Massachusetts,
to animadvert on Franklin's conduct. This took place on the 29th of
January, 1774, when Dunning and Lee were retained on the part of
the petition, and Wedderburn, the Solicitor-General, appeared for
the Crown. There were no less than thirty-five Privy Councillors
present, amongst them Lord North, and Lord Gower at their head, as
Lord President. Neither Dunning nor Lee spoke effectively, but as if
they by no means relished the cause in which they were engaged; while
Wedderburn seemed animated by extraordinary life and bitterness. He
was the friend of Whately, who was now lying in a dangerous state from
his wound. After speaking of the Charter and the insubordinate temper
of the people of Massachusetts, he fell with withering sarcasm on
Franklin, who was present. Hitherto, he said, private correspondence
had been held sacred, even in times of the most rancorous party fury.
But here was a gentleman who had a high rank amongst philosophers, and
should be the last to sanction such infamous breaches of honour, openly
avowing his concern in them. He asked where, henceforth, Dr. Franklin
could show his face; and said that henceforth he must deem it a libel
to be termed "a man of letters," he was "a man of three letters, _f
u r_, a thief." Wedderburn could compare him only to Zanga, in Dr.
Young's "Revenge:"--

                        "Know, then, 'twas I;
    I forged the letter--I disposed the picture--
    I hated--I despised--and I destroy!"

Priestley, in a letter, describes the effect of Wedderburn's address
as received with what must seem mad merriment by the Council. "Mr.
Wedderburn had a complete triumph. At the sallies of his sarcastic wit,
all the members of the Council, the President himself, Lord Gower, not
excepted, frequently laughed outright; and no person belonging to the
Council behaved himself with decent gravity, except Lord North, who
came in late."

The Privy Council decided that the petition from Massachusetts was
framed on false and exaggerated allegations, and was groundless,
vexatious, and scandalous. Two days afterwards, the king dismissed
Franklin from the office, which he had till now held, of
Deputy-Postmaster of America.

On the 14th of March Lord North moved to bring in a Bill to take away
from Boston the customs, the courts of justice, and government offices,
and give them to Salem. This Bill was carried through both Houses with
little opposition. Bollan, the agent of the Council of Massachusetts,
desired to be heard against the Bill, but was refused. It received the
royal assent on the 31st of March, and the trade of Boston was supposed
to be annihilated.

Whilst this Bill was passing the Lords, on the 28th of March Lord Gower
brought a fresh one into the Commons, which had no less object than
the repeal of the Charter of Massachusetts. It was entitled, "A Bill
for the Better Regulating Government in the Province of Massachusetts
Bay." It went to remove the nomination of the members of the Council,
of the judges and magistrates, etc., from the popular constituencies
to the Crown. Lord North observed that the Charter of William III.
had conferred these privileges on Massachusetts as exceptional to all
other colonies, and that the consequence was that the Governor had no
power whatever. Strong opposition was made to this proposed Bill by
Dowdeswell, Sir George Savile, Burke, Barré, Governor Pownall, General
Conway, and Charles Fox, who was now in opposition. The Bill passed
the Commons by a majority of two hundred and thirty-nine against
sixty-four; and it passed the Lords by a majority of ninety-two against
twenty. But even now another Bill passed the House of Commons--a
Bill for removing to another colony for trial any inhabitant of
Massachusetts Bay, who was indicted for any murder or other capital
offence which the Governor might deem to be perpetrated in the attempt
to put down tumults and riots. This measure was still more vehemently
opposed than the rest.

To commence a course of more rigour in Massachusetts, Governor
Hutchinson was recalled, and General Gage, a man who had seen service,
and had the reputation of firmness and promptitude, was appointed in
his stead. But the mischief of the new Acts became rapidly apparent.
Had the Boston Port Bill alone been passed, perhaps not much harm might
have been done. There were numbers of people throughout America who
were of opinion that Boston had gone too far in destroying the tea,
and might have remained passive if the Bostonians had been compelled
to make compensation. But the fatal Act was that which abolished
the Massachusetts Charter. That made the cause common; that excited
one universal alarm. If the British Government were thus permitted
to strike out the colonial Charters at pleasure, all security had
perished. All the colonies determined to support their own cause in
supporting that of Massachusetts.

The Virginians were the first to move to lead the agitation. Patrick
Henry and Thomas Jefferson took the initiative in a measure which would
have better suited the character of the religious New Englanders. A
fast was ordered on account of the Boston Port Act. The next day,
however, being the 25th of May, Lord Dunmore, the governor of the
province, dissolved the Assembly. The members, nothing daunted, retired
to the "Raleigh" Tavern, and passed a series of resolutions. The chief
of these were to purchase nothing of the East India Company, except
saltpetre and spices, until their injuries were redressed; to request
the members of all Corresponding Committees to take measures for the
appointment of members to a General Congress; to summon the new members
of the Assembly (the writs for which were already in course of issue)
to meet at Williamsburg to elect delegates from that colony to the
Congress.

In the meantime, General Gage landed at Boston on the 13th of May.
The Port Bill had preceded him a few days, and the tone of the other
colonies rendered the Bostonians firmer in their temper than ever. On
the 25th of May General Gage announced to the Assembly at Boston the
unpleasant fact, that he was bound to remove, on the 1st of June, the
Assembly, the courts of justice, and all the public offices, to Salem,
in conformity with the late Act. As they petitioned him to set apart
a day for fasting, he declined that, and, to prevent further trouble,
adjourned them to the 7th of June, to meet at Salem.

On the 1st of June according to the arrangements of General Gage,
as the clock struck twelve, all the public offices were closed, and
the whole official business was transferred to Salem. But the wide
discontent of the people met him there as much as at Boston. When the
Assembly met, which was in the following week, such was its spirit
that General Gage felt that he must dissolve it. General Gage, seeing
the lowering aspect of affairs, took the precaution to throw more
troops into the neighbourhood, so that he had some six regiments, with
a train of artillery, when he encamped on the common near Boston.
Active emissaries were immediately sent amongst these troops, who, by
presents of ardent spirits and fine promises, seduced a considerable
number from their duty. To prevent this, he stationed a strong guard
at Boston Neck, a narrow isthmus connecting the town with the common
and open country. On this a vehement cry was raised, that he was going
to cut off all communication with the country, blockade the town, and
reduce it to submission by famine. The inhabitants of the county of
Worcester sent a deputation to inquire Gage's intentions, and they did
not omit to hint that, if necessary, they would drive in the guard with
arms; for, in fact, besides the arms which most Americans then had,
others had been supplied to such as were too poor to purchase them.
Gordon, their historian, tells us that the people were preparing to
defend their rights by the sword; that they were supplying themselves
from Boston with guns, knapsacks, etc. According to the Militia
Law, most men were well furnished with muskets and powder, and were
now busily employed in exercising themselves; thus all was bustle,
casting of balls, and making ready for a struggle. Gage, seeing all
this, removed the gunpowder and the military stores from Charlestown,
Cambridge, and other localities, to his own quarters. This, again,
excited a deep rage in the people, who threatened to attack his troops.
To prevent this, he went on briskly with his defences on the Neck;
but what he did by day the mob endeavoured to undo by night. They set
fire to his supplies of straw; they sank the boats that were bringing
bricks, and overturned his waggons conveying timber. Nothing but the
greatest patience and forbearance prevented an instant collision.

The General Congress met at Philadelphia on the 4th of September, when
all the delegates, except those of North Carolina, who did not arrive
till the 14th, were found to represent twelve States, namely, the
four New England States, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York,
New Jersey, Delaware, and the two Carolinas. It was settled, however,
that, whatever the number of delegates, each colony should have one
vote. The next day they assembled in Carpenters' Hall for business,
and elected Peyton Randolph, late Speaker of the Virginian House of
Burgesses, president. It was soon found that so much diversity of
opinion prevailed, it was deemed prudent, in order to preserve the
air of unanimity, to deliberate with closed doors. It was clear that
Massachusetts and Virginia were ready for war; but it became equally
clear that other States yet clung with all the attachment of blood
and old connection to the fatherland. Strong and long-continued,
according to Mr. Joseph Galloway, one of their own members, were the
debates; and though they finally, and, from their system of secrecy,
with an air of unanimity, drew up strong resolutions, they were more
moderately expressed than the instructions of many of the delegates.
They agreed to a Declaration of Rights, in which they asserted that
they had neither lost the rights of nature, nor the privileges of
Englishmen, by emigration; consequently, that the late Acts of
Parliament had been gross violations of those rights, especially as
affecting Massachusetts. They therefore passed resolutions to suspend
all imports, or use of imported goods, until harmony was restored
between Great Britain and her colonies. An association was formed to
carry these resolutions out, to which every member subscribed. Having
adjourned till the 10th of May of the next year, the Congress dissolved
itself on the 26th of October, and the delegates then hastened home
to keep alive the flame of their revived zeal in every quarter of the
continent.

[Illustration: BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.]

But, whilst Congress was sitting, the spirit of revolution was every
day growing more rife in Massachusetts. Governor Gage had issued writs
for a new Assembly, which was to meet at Salem on the 5th of October;
but so many of the newly appointed members refused to act, that he
issued a proclamation to countermand the writs. The patriots, however,
set the proclamation at defiance; and confident, from the resignation
of the timid loyalists, that they were in a majority, met at Salem,
and formed themselves into a provincial congress, to be joined by such
other persons as should be chosen for the consideration of public
affairs. They then adjourned to Concord, a town about twenty miles from
Boston, and elected John Hancock, the owner of the _Liberty_ sloop, as
president. They then adjourned to Cambridge, and constituted Concord
the depôt of arms and ammunition for twelve thousand militia. They
enrolled the militia under the name of "Minute Men," or men who were to
turn out, at a minute's notice, with musket or rifle. They appointed
committees and sub-committees for different purposes, and, in fact, put
the province into a perfect attitude of war.

News arrived that the king, by proclamation, had prohibited the
export of arms and military stores to America. This news was received
with a burst of rage. The people of Rhode Island, who had burnt the
king's schooner, _The Gaspee_, seized forty pieces of cannon on the
batteries defending the harbour, and carried them into the country.
The people of New Hampshire surprised a small fort called William and
Mary, garrisoned only by one officer and five men, and carried off
the ordnance, arms, ammunition and military stores. Everywhere orders
were issued for the purchase of arms and ammunition; for training the
militia; for erecting powder mills, and manufactories of arms and
shot, as well as for making saltpetre. So far as it depended on the
people of Massachusetts, it was already rebellion. Still, however,
the other colonies, except, perhaps, Virginia, were far from this
bellicose temper. The colonies, in general, thought the measures of
the late Congress too strong; and the State of New York, in spite
of the impetuosity of such men as Jay, carried a vote rejecting the
resolutions of the Congress.

The Parliament of England had now nearly run its septennial course,
and was accordingly dissolved on the 30th of September. Such was the
feeling of resentment in Great Britain against the proceedings of the
Americans, that the Parliament that was now elected gave the Ministers
an increased majority.

It met on the 29th of November. The king, in his speech, alluded to
the determined resistance to the imperial authority of the American
colonists, and pre-eminently of those of Massachusetts Bay. He called
upon Parliament to support him in his endeavours to restore order.
There was strong opposition to the addresses in both Houses, demands
being made for a full production of all papers and correspondence on
this great subject, but the battle did not begin until January, 1775,
when Chatham moved the repeal of the legislation of the previous year,
and the withdrawal of the troops from Boston.

Chatham, on rising, severely blamed Ministers for the course which
they had pursued, and which had driven the colonies to the verge of
rebellion. "Resistance to your Acts," he said, "was necessary as it was
just; and your vain declarations of the omnipotence of Parliament, and
your imperious doctrines of the necessity of submission, will be found
equally incompetent to convince or to enslave your fellow-subjects in
America, who feel that tyranny, whether attempted by an individual
part of the Legislature, or the bodies who compose it, is equally
intolerable to British subjects." He eulogised the conduct of the
Congress, and remarked that it was obvious that all attempts to impose
servitude on such men, to establish despotism over such a mighty
continental nation, must be vain, must be fatal. "We shall be forced,"
he said, "ultimately, to retract; let us retract while we can--not when
we must. I say we must necessarily undo these violently oppressive
Acts; they must be repealed. You will repeal them; I pledge myself for
it that you will, in the end, repeal them. I stake my reputation on
it. I will consent to be taken for an idiot if they are not finally
repealed. Avoid, then, this humiliating, this disgraceful necessity."
He declared that the cause of America and England was one; that it
was the glorious spirit of Whiggism which animated the colonists. "It
is liberty to liberty engaged. In this great cause they are immovably
allied; it is the alliance of God and nature--immutable, eternal--fixed
as the firmament of heaven. You cannot force them, united as they
are, to your unworthy terms of submission. It is impossible." Lords
Shelburne, Camden, and Rockingham, and the Duke of Richmond, zealously
supported the views of Chatham, but the Ministerial party opposed the
motion as obstinately as ever; and it was rejected by sixty-eight votes
against eighteen.

Chatham, undeterred by the fate of his motion, determined to make one
more effort, and bring in a Bill for the pacification of the colonies,
and he called upon Franklin to assist in framing it. On the following
Tuesday, Franklin hurried down to Hayes with the draft of the Bill left
with him, and with his full approbation of it, having, he says, only
added one word, that of "constitutions" after "charters." The next
day (Wednesday), the 1st of February, Chatham appeared in the House
of Lords with his Bill. He declared that it was a Bill not merely of
concession, but of assertion, and he called on the Lords to entertain
it cordially, to correct its crudenesses, and pass it for the peace
of the whole empire. The Bill first explicitly asserted our supreme
power over the colonies; it declared that all that related to the
disposing of the army belonged to the prerogative of the Crown, but
that no armed force could be lawfully employed against the rights and
liberties of the inhabitants; that no tax, or tollage, or other charge
for the revenue, should be levied without the consent of the provincial
Assemblies. The Acts of Parliament relating to America passed since
1764 were wholly repealed; the judges were made permanent during their
good behaviour, and the Charters and constitutions of the several
provinces were not to be infringed or set aside, unless upon some valid
ground of forfeiture. All these concessions were, of course, made
conditional on the recognition by the colonies of the supreme authority
of Parliament.

Had this Bill been frankly accepted by Ministers, it would have gone
far to heal the rupture between the mother country and her colonies.
The Earl of Dartmouth, the Secretary of State for the Colonies,
proposed that the Bill should lie on the table for deliberation. The
Duke of Grafton complained of the manner in which the Bill had been
hurried into the House, and, as Chatham in his reply observed, showed
every disposition to hurry it as quickly out again. The friends of
the Duke of Bedford, who had joined the administration, exhibited the
most rancorous disposition towards America. The chief of these, Lord
Sandwich, declared that he never could believe this Bill was the work
of any British peer, but rather of an American, and he looked full at
Dr. Franklin, who was leaning on the bar. He declared the Americans
to be in actual rebellion; that they were not troubling themselves
about mere words and nice distinctions; that they were aiming at
independence, and nothing else. The Bedford party carried the day, and
the Bill was rejected by sixty-one votes against thirty-two.

Lord North, however, was still sufficiently impressed by the solemn
warnings of Chatham and others to attempt a conciliatory measure of his
own. Accordingly, on the 20th of February, only ten days after his Bill
restrictive of the American trade, and whilst it was progressing, he
moved in a committee of the whole House, "That if the Legislature of
any of the American provinces should propose to make some provision for
the common defence, and also for the civil government of that province,
and if such proposal shall be approved of by the king and Parliament,
it would be proper to forbear, whilst such provision lasted, from
levying or proposing any tax, duty, or assessment within the said
province."

This proposal, which, at an earlier stage of the dispute, might have
been listened to, was one at this stage which was sure to be rejected,
and was only one of those miserable half measures which commonplace
minds so frequently put forth only to demonstrate their inability to
grasp the amplitude of the occasion. It was supposed that the measure
had been intended to be larger, but that the Bedford party had fallen
on it in Council, and reduced it to these pitiable dimensions. Yet when
it was introduced into the Commons by Lord North, the Bedford party
looked at each other in consternation, and soon the tempest broke loose
on the Treasury benches.

The storm was appeased only by Lord North's condescending to explain
his measure in such a manner as deprived it of every particle of
generous feeling, and reduced it to the lowest Machiavellian level. He
said the real object of the resolution was to divide the Americans, to
satisfy the moderate part of them, and oppose them to the immoderate,
to separate the wheat from the chaff; that he never expected his
proposal to be generally acceptable. On this, Colonel Barré and Burke
assaulted him fiercely. Barré branded the whole scheme as founded on
that low, shameful, abominable maxim, "_Divide et impera_." Burke
declared that the proposition was at variance with every former
principle of Parliament, directly so with the restrictive measures
now in progress; that it was mean without being conciliatory. But
the resolution passed by two hundred and seventy-four votes against
eighteen.

Again, on the 22nd of March, Burke made another earnest effort to
induce the infatuated Ministers and their adherents in Parliament to
listen to reason. In one of the finest speeches that he ever made, he
introduced a series of thirteen resolutions, which went to abolish
the obnoxious Acts of Parliament, and admit the principle of the
colonial Assemblies exercising the power of taxation. In the course
of his speech he drew a striking picture of the rapid growth and the
inevitable future importance of these colonies. He reminded the House
that the people of New England and other colonies had quitted Great
Britain because they would not submit to arbitrary measures; that in
America they had cultivated this extreme independence of character,
both in their religion and their daily life; that almost every man
there studied law, and that nearly as many copies of Blackstone's
"Commentaries" had been sold there as in England; that they were the
Protestants of Protestants, the Dissenters of Dissenters; that the
Church of England there was a mere sect; that the foreigners who
had settled there, disgusted with tyranny at home, had adopted the
extremest principles of liberty flourishing there; that all men there
were accustomed to discuss the principles of law and government, and
that almost every man sent to the Congress was a lawyer; that the very
existence of slavery in the southern States made white inhabitants hate
slavery the more in their own persons. "You cannot," he said, "content
such men at such a distance--Nature fights against you. Who are you
that you should fret, rage, and bite the chains of Nature? Nothing
worse happens to you than does to all nations who have extensive
empires. In all such extended empires authority grows feeble at the
extremities. The Turk and the Spaniard find it so, and are compelled to
comply with this condition of Nature, and derive vigour in the centre
from the relaxation of authority on the borders." His resolutions were
negatived by large majorities.

In the meantime, petitions, memorials, and remonstrances were presented
from New York and other places, and from the British inhabitants of
Canada, but all were rejected. On the 26th of May George III. prorogued
Parliament, and expressed his perfect satisfaction in its proceedings;
so utterly unconscious was this king that he was alienating a great
empire, and which, indeed, was already virtually gone from him; for
during the very time that Parliament had been protesting against even
the contemptible crumbs of concession offered by Ministers, war had
broken out, blood had flowed, and the Americans had triumphed!

[Illustration: AMERICAN TWENTY DOLLARS BILL (1775)]




CHAPTER X.

REIGN OF GEORGE III. (_continued_).

    Gage attempts to seize American Arms--Skirmish at
    Lexington--Blockade of Boston--The Second Congress at
    Philadelphia--Washington chosen Commander-in-Chief--Fall of
    Ticonderoga and Crown Point--Washington at Boston--Battle
    of Bunker's Hill--The Olive Branch Petition--Condition
    of the American Army--Expedition against Canada--Capture
    of Montreal--Arnold's Expedition--His Junction with
    Montgomery--Failure of the Attack on Quebec--The Employment
    of German Mercenaries--Washington seizes Dorchester
    Heights--Evacuation of Boston--Howe retires to Halifax--The War
    in Canada--Thomas's Retreat--Sullivan evacuates Canada--The War
    in the South--Attack on Charleston--Paine's Pamphlet, "Common
    Sense"--New York and Virginia decide for Independence--Debate in
    Congress--Report of the Committee--Arbitrary Proceedings--The
    Declaration--Overtures to France--Arrival of Lord Howe--Position
    of Washington--Howe's Overtures--Battle of Brooklyn--Washington's
    Retreat--His Desperate Position--Howe receives a Deputation
    from Congress--Washington retires Step by Step--Cornwallis's
    Pursuit--Close of the Campaign--The Articles of Confederation
    published by Congress--Fresh Overtures to France--Parliament
    votes large Sums of Money--John the Painter--Chatham
    demands a Cessation of Hostilities--Washington's Change
    of Tactics--Surprise of Trenton--Washington outmanœuvres
    Cornwallis--He recovers New Jersey--Difficulties of Congress--Howe
    advances against Washington--Alteration of Howe's Plans--Battle
    of the Brandywine--Howe crosses the Schuylkill--Cornwallis
    enters Philadelphia--Battle of Germantown--Washington at
    Valley Forge--Burgoyne's Plan of Campaign--His Advance--St.
    Clair's Defeat--Burgoyne on the Hudson--The Beginning of his
    Misfortunes--Battle of Bemus's Heights--Burgoyne's Message to
    Clinton--He is Surrounded--He attempts to cut his Way through--The
    Surrender of Saratoga--Clinton's Failure to relieve Burgoyne--Close
    of the Campaign.


During the winter the Americans had been preparing for war, fabricating
and repairing arms, drilling militia, and calling on one another, by
proclamations, to be ready. On the 26th of February, 1775, Gage sent
a detachment to take possession of some brass cannon and field-pieces
collected at Salem. A hundred and fifty regulars landed at Salem for
this purpose, but, finding no cannon there, they proceeded to the
adjoining town of Danvers. They were stopped at a bridge by a party of
militia, under Colonel Pickering, who claimed the bridge as private
property, and refused a passage. There was likely to be bloodshed on
the bridge, but it was Sunday, and some ministers of Salem pleaded the
sacredness of the day, and prevailed on Colonel Pickering to let the
soldiers pass. They found nothing, and soon returned.

Again, on the night between the 18th and 19th of April, General Gage
sent a detachment of about eight hundred grenadiers and light infantry
to destroy a depôt of stores and arms at Concord. They were commanded
by Lieutenant-Colonel Smith and Major Pitcairn, of the Marines. The
alarm was given, fires were kindled, bells rung, guns discharged,
and the country was up. The British troops reached Lexington at five
o'clock in the morning, and pushed on their light infantry to secure
the bridges. They encountered a body of militia under cover of a gun
near the road, whom they ordered to retire, and they withdrew in haste.

Here the Americans assert that when the minute-men did not retire
on the first order, the English fired on them and killed eight of
them. The English, on the other hand, declare that the Americans, in
retiring, no sooner reached the shelter of a wall than they fired on
the British; that the firing came also from some adjoining houses,
and shot one man, and wounded Major Pitcairn's horse in two places;
that then the English were ordered to fire, that they killed several,
wounded others, and put the body, about a hundred in number, to flight.
By this time the alarm had spread, the minute-men came running from all
places, and as the English, having executed their commission, began to
retire, the Americans shouted, "The lobsters run!" The minute-men now
rushed over the bridge after them, and firing from behind trees and
walls, killed a considerable number of them. The Americans--excellent
shots with their rifles--could only be seen by the smoke of these
rifles, and the English, tired with their long night march, instead
of halting to hunt them out, kept on their way towards Lexington.
The whole march was of this description: the English, unable to get
a good shot at their enemies, the minute-men pressing on their rear,
still sheltered by trees and walls. The result would have been more
disastrous had not General Gage sent on to Lexington another detachment
of foot and marines, consisting of about sixteen companies, under
command of Lord Percy. In this first bloodshed between the colonists
and the mother country, the British found they had lost sixty killed,
forty-nine missing, and one hundred and thirty-six wounded. The
Americans admitted that they had a loss of sixty, of whom two-thirds
were killed.

The news spread on every side; the retreat of the English from Concord,
which always was intended, as soon as the object was accomplished, was
represented as an ignominious flight before the conquering Americans,
and the effect was marvellous. Men flocked from all quarters. There
were some twenty thousand men assembled round Boston, forming a
line nearly twenty miles in extent, with their left leaning on the
river Mystic, and their right on the town of Boston. Putnam and Ward
became the souls of the American army. Gage, who was awaiting fresh
reinforcements, lay quiet, contented to hold his post, when he might,
according to military authorities, have attacked the American lines,
at first loose, and without any proper order and consistency, with
great advantage. The inhabitants of Boston, not relishing the idea
of a blockade, applied to Gage for permission to retire. He replied
that they were at liberty to do so with their families and effects,
on surrendering their arms. The Bostonians at once interpreted this
to mean the whole of their merchandise, and Gage, in consequence,
countermanded his permission.

On the 10th of May the second Congress met at Philadelphia. The
delegates had everywhere been easily elected, and Franklin, having
arrived on the 5th of May in Philadelphia, was in time to be added to
the number already chosen there. The battle of Lexington had heated the
blood of the delegates, and they assembled in no very pacific mood.
They assumed the name of the Congress of the United Colonies, and
rejected with contempt the poor conciliatory Bill of Lord North, as it
had already been deservedly treated by the provincial Assemblies. They
immediately issued a proclamation prohibiting the export of provisions
to any British colony or fishery still continuing in obedience to
Great Britain; or any supply to the British army in Massachusetts
Bay, or the negotiation of any bill drawn by a British officer.
Congress ordered the military force of the colonies to be placed on an
efficient footing. They called into existence a body of men, besides
the provincial militia, to be maintained by the United Colonies, and
to be called continental troops, which distinction must be kept in
mind during the whole war. They then made a most admirable choice of a
commander-in-chief in the person of Colonel George Washington.

The spirits of the Americans had been raised by the success of attempts
against the forts of Ticonderoga and Crown Point, on Lake Champlain.
Early in the spring, some of the leading men of Connecticut, and chief
amongst them Wooster and Silas Deane, projected this expedition,
as securing the passes into Canada. The volunteers who offered for
this enterprise were to march across the frontiers of New York, and
come suddenly on these forts. The wretched condition of carelessness
existing in these important outposts, notwithstanding the alarming
state of the colonies, may be known by the result. Phelps, disguised as
a countryman, entered the fort on pretence of seeking a barber; and,
whilst roaming about in feigned search of him, noted well the ruinous
condition of the fort, and the utter negligence of the guard. The next
day, Ethan Allen went alone to the fortress, ostensibly on a visit to
his friend the commander, leaving his troops concealed in the wood.
He represented that he wanted to conduct some goods across the lake,
and borrowed twenty of his soldiers to help him. These men he made
dead-drunk; and then, rushing suddenly to the fort, where there were
only twenty-two soldiers more, he compelled them in their surprise to
lay down their arms, set a guard over them, and entered his friend's
bed-room and pronounced him a prisoner. He then advanced against the
fort of Crown Point, where he found only a garrison of twelve men, and
immediately afterwards secured Skenesborough, the fortified house of
Major Skene, and took his son and his negroes.

When Washington arrived at Boston, on the 15th of June, he found
the English army augmented to ten thousand by fresh forces, under
Generals Burgoyne, William Howe, the brother of Lord Howe, and Henry
Clinton. The American troops consisted of twenty thousand militia and
volunteers, still in a most confused condition, extended over a line of
twenty miles in length, that only required an attack of five thousand
men, led by a general of courage and ability, to be thoroughly beaten.
They were, moreover, greatly deficient in powder and other necessaries.
But the English generals lay as if there were no urgent need of action.
Had a sudden movement on the Neck been made from Boston, five hundred
men could have broken and dispersed the Americans nearest to that
position before the other ill-trained troops, some of them at great
distances, could have come up; and they might have been easily defeated
in detail by the simultaneous efforts of four spirited generals and
ten thousand efficient soldiers. But lethargy seemed to have seized on
Gage, and to have also infected his coadjutors.

To the north of Boston peninsula, separated from it only by an arm
of the sea, called the Charles River, about as broad as the Thames
at London Bridge, stands Charlestown, built also on a peninsula,
surrounded everywhere by navigable water, except a neck somewhat wider
than Boston Neck. On the peninsula of Charlestown were two eminences:
the lower one, nearest to Boston, being called Breed's Hill, the higher
and more remote, Bunker's Hill. These hills, which commanded Boston,
would have immediately attracted the eye of any general of the least
talent. But Gage had utterly neglected this most vital point; and, on
awaking on the morning of the 17th of June, he suddenly saw the height
of Breed's Hill covered with soldiers and military works, as by magic,
and the Americans shouting and beginning to fire upon the town and
shipping in the harbour.

The Americans had marched on the evening of the 16th with orders to
make themselves masters of Bunker's Hill. By some mistake, they had
planted themselves on Breed's Hill, and instantly began to throw up
a formidable redoubt and entrenchments, and to place their guns in
battery. Gage then ordered a detachment of troops, under the command
of General Howe and Brigadier Pigott, to drive the Americans, at all
costs, from that position. It was noon before Howe crossed the river
and landed on the Charlestown peninsula; but then Howe perceived the
strength of the Americans to be greater than had been supposed, and,
halting, he sent for reinforcements. They advanced up the hill, formed
in two lines, the right headed by General Howe, the left by Brigadier
Pigott. The left was immediately severely galled by the riflemen posted
in the houses and on the roofs of Charlestown, and Howe instantly
halted and ordered the left wing to advance and set fire to the town.
This was soon executed, and the wooden buildings of Charlestown were
speedily in a blaze, and the whole place burnt to the ground. The
Americans reserved their fire till the English were nearly at the
entrenchments, when they opened with such a deadly discharge of cannon
and musketry as astonished and perplexed the British. Most of the men
and the staff standing around General Howe were killed, and he stood
for a moment almost alone. Some of the newer troops never stopped till
they reached the bottom of the hill. The officers, however, speedily
rallied the broken lines, and led them a second time against the
murderous batteries. A second time they gave way. But General Clinton,
seeing the unequal strife, without waiting for orders, and attended
by a number of resolute officers, hastened across the water in boats,
and, rallying the fugitives, led them a third time up the hill. By this
time the fire of the Americans began to slacken, for their powder was
failing, and the English, wearied as they were, rushed up the hill, and
carried the entrenchments at the point of the bayonet. Had Gage had a
proper reserve ready to rush upon the flying rout on the Neck, few of
them would have remained to join their fellows. The battle was called
the Battle of Bunker's Hill, though really fought on the lower, or
Breed's Hill.

Notwithstanding the real outbreak of the war, Congress yet professed
to entertain hopes of ultimate reconciliation. When the reinforcements
had arrived from England, and it was supposed that part of them were
destined for New York, it issued orders that, so long as the forces
remained quiet in their barracks, they should not be molested; but if
they attempted to raise fortifications, or to cut off the town from the
country, they should be stoutly opposed. When the news of the surprise
of the forts on the Lake Champlain arrived, Congress endeavoured to
excuse so direct a breach of the peace by feigning a belief in a
design of an invasion of the colonies from Canada, of which there was
notoriously no intention, and they gave orders that an exact inventory
of the cannon and military stores there captured should be made, in
order to their restoration, "when the former harmony between Great
Britain and her colonies, so ardently wished for by the latter, should
render it consistent with the overruling law of self-preservation."
After the battle of Bunker's Hill, Congress still maintained this tone.
On the 8th of July they signed a petition to the king, drawn up by John
Dickinson, in the mildest terms, who, when to his own surprise the
petition was adopted by the Congress, rose, and said that there was
not a word in the whole petition that he did not approve of, except
the word "Congress." This, however, was far from the feeling of many
members; and Benjamin Harrison immediately rose and declared that there
was but one word in the whole petition that he did approve of, and that
was the word "Congress." The petition to the king expressed an earnest
desire for a speedy and permanent reconciliation, declaring that,
notwithstanding their sufferings, they retained in their hearts "too
tender a regard for the kingdom from which they derived their origin to
request such a reconciliation as might be inconsistent with her dignity
or welfare." At the same time, they resolved that this appeal, which
they called "The Olive Branch," should, if unsuccessful, be their last.
They could hardly have expected it to be successful.

When Washington arrived at the camp at Cambridge, instead of twenty
thousand men, which he expected on his side, he found only sixteen
thousand, and of these only fourteen thousand fit for duty. He
describes them as "a mixed multitude of people under very little order
or government." They had no uniforms; and Washington recommended
Congress to send them out ten thousand hunting-shirts, as giving them
something of a uniform appearance. There was not a single dollar in the
military chest; the supply of provisions was extremely deficient and
uncertain. There was a great want of engineering tools; and he soon
discovered that the battle of Bunker's Hill, which, at a distance, was
boasted of as a victory, had been a decided defeat. He immediately
set about to reduce this discouraging chaos into new order. Assisted
by General Lee, he commenced by having prayers read at the head of
the respective regiments every morning. He broke up the freedom which
confounded officers and men; he compelled subordination by the free
use of the lash, where commands would not serve. He kept them daily
at active drill. He laboured incessantly to complete the lines, so
that very soon it would be impossible for the enemy to get between
the ranks. But the great and--if the English generals had been only
properly awake--the fatal want was that of powder. Washington found
that they had but nine rounds of powder to a musket, and next to none
for the artillery. "The world," said Franklin, "wondered that we so
seldom fired a cannon; why, we could not afford it!" And all this was
disclosed to General Gage by a deserter, and he still lay in a profound
slumber! The Ministry at home, scarcely more awake to the real danger,
were yet astonished at his lethargy; and they recalled him under the
plea of consulting him on the affairs of the colony. He sailed from
Boston in October, leaving the chief command to General Howe.

Meanwhile an expedition against Canada had been projected by Colonel
Arnold and Ethan Allen at the taking of the forts of Ticonderoga and
Crown Point. The recommendations of Allen were taken up, and on the
27th of June, although they had on the first of that month declared
their determination not to invade or molest Canada, the Congress
passed other resolutions, instructing Philip Schuyler, one of their
newly-made generals, to proceed to Ticonderoga, and thence, if he
saw it practicable, to go on and secure St. John's and Montreal, and
adopt any other measures against Canada which might have a tendency to
promote the security of the colonies. It was autumn, however, before
the American force destined for this expedition, amounting to two
thousand men, assembled on Lake Champlain; and Schuyler being taken
ill, the command then devolved on General Montgomery. General Carleton,
the Governor of Canada, to whom the Americans, when it suited their
purpose, were always attributing designs of invasion of the colonies,
had not, in fact, forces sufficient to defend himself properly.

General Montgomery reached the St. Lawrence, and detached six hundred
men to invest Fort Chambly, situated on the river Sorel, about five
miles above Fort St. John. The menaced condition of Quebec compelled
General Carleton to abandon Montreal to its fate, and to hasten to the
capital, and Montgomery immediately took possession of it. So far all
succeeded with the American expedition. Carleton, to reach Quebec,
had to pass through the American forces on the St. Lawrence. He went
in disguise, and dropped down the river by night, with muffled oars,
threading the American craft on the river, and so reached Quebec alone,
but in safety. Montgomery was determined to fall down the St. Lawrence
too, to support Arnold; but his position was anything but enviable.
He had been obliged to garrison Forts Chambly and St. John's, and he
was now compelled to leave another garrison at Montreal. This done, he
had only four hundred and fifty men left, and they were in the most
discontented and insubordinate condition. As he proceeded, therefore,
he found them fast melting away by desertion; and, had he not soon
fallen in with Arnold and his band at Point aux Trembles, he would have
found himself alone.

Arnold had meanwhile arranged everything with Washington, at Cambridge,
for his expedition. He marched away from Cambridge with twelve hundred
men, and on reaching the Kennebec River, one hundred and thirty miles
north of Boston, embarked upon it, carrying with him one thousand
pounds in money, and a whole cargo of manifestoes for distribution
among the Canadians. Thence he had to traverse a terrible wilderness
of woods, swamps, streams, and rugged heights, where the men had to
carry their boats and provisions on their shoulders, and where, for
two-and-thirty days, they saw no house, wigwam, or sign of human life.
So extreme were their distresses, that for the last several days they
had to live on their own dogs. It was the 3rd of November before they
reached the first Canadian settlement on the river Chaudière, which
flows into the St. Lawrence opposite to Quebec. They emerged on the
river St. Lawrence, at Point Levi, immediately over against Quebec.
Could Arnold have crossed immediately, such was the suddenness of the
surprise, he probably would have taken the city. But a rough gale was
blowing at the time, and for five days he was detained on the right
bank of the river by that circumstance and the want of boats. Arnold,
nevertheless, managed to cross the river in the night, about a mile
and a half above the place where Wolfe had crossed. Finding the cliffs
there too high to scale, he followed the shore down to Wolfe's Cove,
and ascended the heights just where Wolfe had done so. Like Wolfe,
Arnold formed his band on the Heights of Abraham, and, trusting to the
belief that the Canadians were in favour of the Americans, proposed
to make a dash up to the gates of the city before day broke; but his
followers protested against this design. When day dawned, Arnold saw
so many men on the walls and batteries that he knew the assault was
hopeless, and retired to Point aux Trembles, where he was joined by
Montgomery, who took the chief command.

[Illustration: MONTGOMERY'S ASSAULT ON THE LOWER TOWN, QUEBEC. (_See
p._ 222.)]

Arnold had not been able to bring any artillery with him; Montgomery
had a little. They had about twelve hundred men altogether; and with
this force they now marched upon Quebec. On the 20th of December they
commenced firing on the town from a six-gun battery; but their cannon
were too light to make much impression--they had no guns heavier than
twelve-pounders, and these were soon dismounted by Colonel Maclean and
his sailors. The Americans withdrew their guns to a safer distance; and
their troops were desirous to abandon the enterprise as impracticable,
but the commanders engaged them to continue by holding out a prospect
of their plundering the lower town, where all the wealth lay. On the
last day of the year, soon after four in the morning, the attack was
commenced. Two divisions, under Majors Livingstone and Brown, were left
to make feigned attacks on the upper town, whilst the rest, in two
lines, under Montgomery and Arnold, set out amid a blinding snow-storm
to make two real attacks on the lower town. Montgomery, descending to
the bed of the St. Lawrence, wound along the beach to Cape Diamond,
where he was stopped by a blockhouse and picket. Haying passed these,
he again, at a place called Pot Ash, encountered a battery, which was
soon abandoned. Montgomery then led his troops across huge piles of
ice driven on shore; and no sooner had they surmounted these than they
were received by a severe fire from a battery manned by sailors and
Highlanders. Montgomery fell dead along with several other officers
and many men; and the rest, seeing the fate of their commander, turned
and fled back up the cliffs. Arnold, at the same time, was pushing his
way through the suburbs of the lower town, followed by Captain Lamb
with his artillerymen, and one field piece mounted on a sledge. After
these went Morgan with his riflemen; and as they advanced in the dark,
and muffled in the falling snow, they came upon a two-gun battery. As
Arnold was cheering on his men to attack this outpost, the bone of his
leg was shattered by a musket-ball. He was carried from the field; but
Morgan rushed on and made himself master of the battery and the guard.
Just as day dawned, he found himself in front of a second battery,
and, whilst attacking that, was assailed in the rear and compelled to
surrender, with a loss of four hundred men, three hundred of whom were
taken prisoners. Arnold retreated to a distance of three or four miles
from Quebec, and covered his camp behind the Heights of Abraham with
ramparts of frozen snow, and remained there for the winter, cutting
off the supplies of the garrison, and doing his best to alienate the
Canadians from the English.

The English Opposition now began to comment with great vigour on
the conduct of affairs. The spirit of that body rose higher, as the
imminence of war became greater. Charles James Fox made a motion for
a committee to inquire into the causes of the inefficiency of his
Majesty's arms in North America, and of the defection of the people
in the province of Quebec. He took a searching review of the whole
proceedings since 1774, and contended that there was a great lack
of ability and management somewhere, either in the Government which
planned, or the generals who had to execute the Ministerial orders. His
motion, however, was useless, for it was rejected by two hundred and
forty to one hundred and four votes.

But on the 29th of February, 1776, the treaties lately entered into
by the British Government with a number of German princes to furnish
troops to fight in America, were laid on the table of the Commons;
and intense indignation was raised against this most odious and
impolitic measure. There had been negotiations with Russia for the
purpose of procuring her savages to put down our kinsmen in America;
but this barbarous attempt had failed. It was more successful with
the petty princes of Germany. The Duke of Brunswick, the Landgrave of
Hesse-Cassel, and other little despots, now greedily seized on the
necessity of England, to drive the most extravagant terms with her.
Under the name of levy-money, they were to receive seven pounds ten
shillings for every man; and besides maintaining them, we were to pay
to the Duke of Brunswick, who supplied four thousand and eighty-four
men, a subsidy of fifteen thousand five hundred and nineteen pounds;
the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, who furnished twelve thousand men, did
not get such good terms as Brunswick--he had ten thousand pounds; the
hereditary Prince of Hesse received six thousand pounds a-year, for
only six hundred and eighty-eight men. Besides this, the men were to
begin to receive pay before they began to march. Brunswick was also
to get double his sum, or thirty-one thousand and thirty-eight pounds
a-year, for two years after they had ceased to serve; and the Landgrave
of Hesse was to receive twelve months' notice of the discontinuance of
the payment after his troops had returned to his dominions. The payment
for 1776 was to be four hundred and fifty thousand crowns, or nearly
one hundred thousand pounds. The Prince of Waldeck soon after engaged
to furnish six hundred and seventy men on equally good terms. Beyond
all these conditions, England was bound to defend the dominions of
those princes in the absence of their troops. The independent members
of both Houses nobly discharged their duty in condemnation of this
engagement of German mercenaries, but without effect, and the king
prorogued Parliament, under the pleasing delusion that his foreign
troops would soon bring his rebellious subjects to reason; and the
Ministers apparently as firmly shared in this fallacious idea.

In America, during this time, various encounters had taken place
between the English and American forces. Washington, in spite of the
severity of the winter weather, was pressing the blockade of Boston.
But the difficulties with which he had to contend were so enormous,
that, had General Howe had any real notion of them, as he ought to
have had, he might have beaten off the American troops over and over
again. His troops, it is true, only amounted to about seven thousand,
and Washington's to about fifteen thousand; but besides the deficiency
of powder in Washington's camp, the terms on which his troops served
were such as kept him in constant uncertainty. This was the condition
of things when, early in March, Washington commenced acting on the
offensive. He threw up entrenchments on Dorchester Heights, overlooking
and commanding both Boston town and harbour. Taking advantage of a dark
night, on the 4th of March he sent a strong detachment to the Heights,
who, before mining, threw up a redoubt, which made it necessary for
General Howe to dislodge them, or evacuate the place. It seems amazing,
after the affair of Bunker's Hill, that Howe had not seen the necessity
of occupying the post himself. He now, however, prepared to attack the
redoubt, and the soldiers were eager for the enterprise. The vanguard
fell down to Castle William, at which place the ascent was to be made;
and on the morrow, the 5th of March, the anniversary of what was termed
the Massacre of Boston, the fight was to take place. A violent storm,
however, arose, rendering the crossing of the water impracticable.
By the time that it ceased, the Americans had so strengthened their
works, that it was deemed a useless waste of life to attempt to carry
them. The only alternative was the evacuation of Boston. Howe had
long been persuaded that it would be much better to make the British
headquarters at New York, where there were few American troops, and
where the king's friends were numerous; and this certainly was true,
unless he had mustered resolution and sought to disperse his enemies
when they were in a state of disorder and deficiency of ammunition that
insured his certain success. As it was, he was now most ignominiously
cooped up, and in hourly jeopardy of being shelled out of the place.
He had obtained the permission of his Government for this movement,
and he now set about it in earnest. When, however, he came to embark,
another example was given of that shameful neglect which pervaded the
whole of the British civil department of the military service. When
the transports were examined, they were found totally destitute of
provisions and forage. No direct compact was made between Howe and
Washington regarding the evacuation; but an indirect communication
and understanding on the subject was entered into--through the "Select
Men" of Boston--that no injury should be done to the town during it,
provided the troops were unmolested in embarking. Before departing,
however, the English totally dismantled and partly demolished Castle
William. On the 17th, the last of the British troops were on board; and
that afternoon Boston was entered in triumph by General Putnam, at the
head of the vanguard.

Howe, who, with seven thousand soldiers and more than one thousand
sailors, did not feel himself safe at New York till the new
reinforcements should arrive, sailed away to Halifax--a circumstance
which gave the appearance of a retreat to his change of locality,
and had thus a bad effect in more ways than one. Washington, who was
informed of his final destination, immediately marched with the greater
part of his army to New York, and thence went himself to Philadelphia
to concert future measures with the Congress. This body, in
commemoration of the surrender of Boston, ordered a medal to be struck
in honour of it, and that it should bear the effigy of Washington, with
the title of the Asserter of the Liberties of his Country. The medal
was cast in France.

In Canada the management of the war was more successful. To maintain
the war in that quarter, Congress had ordered nine regiments to be
raised. One of these was to be raised in Canada itself, and for this
purpose a commission was given to Moses Hazen, who had formerly been a
captain of rangers, under Wolfe. He was not, however, very successful.
The Canadians were not to any extent disaffected to the British
Government, and by no means well affected to the New Englanders, who
were bitterly bigoted against Catholics, which the Canadians chiefly
were. When Hazen and Arnold saw that the Canadians would neither
enlist nor bring provisions to their camps, without cash payment, they
commenced plundering for all that they wanted, and thus confirmed that
people in their hatred of the Americans. They, moreover, insulted the
Canadians by ridiculing their rites of worship.

Miserably as Arnold had passed the winter in his camp, as spring
approached he again planted his batteries above Quebec, but produced
so little effect that Carleton lay still in expectation of his
reinforcements on the breaking up of the river. On the 1st of April
General Wooster arrived, and took the command, much to the disgust of
Arnold, who was sent to command a detachment at Montreal. On the 1st
of May, General Thomas, who was to be supreme in command, arrived, and
found the forces amounting to about two thousand men. The river was now
opening; and on the 6th of May three English ships had made their way
up to Quebec, full of troops. Two companies of the 29th Regiment and
one hundred marines were immediately landed amid the rejoicings of the
inhabitants; and General Carleton gave instant orders to issue forth
and attack the American lines. But General Thomas, conscious that, so
far from being able to take Quebec, he should be himself taken, unless
he decamped with all haste, was already on the move. General Carleton
pursued him vigorously, and the retreat of the Americans became a
regular rout. They threw themselves into boats at the Three Rivers,
leaving behind them all their artillery and stores, as well as the
sick, who were numerous, the smallpox having broken out amongst them.
Thomas managed to reach Fort Chambly and St. John's on the Sorel; but
there he died, having taken the smallpox.

Carleton being, by the beginning of June, reinforced by still more
troops from England, determined to follow the Americans. They had
reached the Three Rivers, about midway between Quebec and Montreal,
and about thirty miles from the American headquarters on the Sorel,
when General Sullivan, who had succeeded Thomas, sent two thousand
men under General Thompson. They got across the river and hoped to
surprise the English; but it was daylight before they drew near the
Three Rivers. Landing with confusion, they sought a place where they
could form and defend themselves; but they found themselves entangled
in a labyrinth of streams and morasses. Then they were attacked,
front and rear, by Generals Fraser and Nesbit. In the suddenness of
the surprise, no precaution had been taken to secure or destroy their
boats; the remainder of the Americans, therefore, getting into them,
pulled away and crossed. Sullivan, who had hastened to support them,
now, accompanied by St. Clair, made the best of his way back to Fort
Chambly. Carleton pursued, but coming to the Sorel, instead of sailing
up it, by which he might have reached Chambly nearly a day earlier
than Sullivan, with a strange neglect he continued lying at the mouth
of the river for a couple of days. Had he not done this, Arnold would
have been intercepted at Montreal, and Ticonderoga, now defenceless,
would have fallen into his hands. By this false step much damage to
the king's cause ensued. Carleton, however, determined to seek out
Arnold himself, and sent on General Burgoyne in pursuit of Sullivan.
Burgoyne made quick pursuit; but the Americans were too nimble for both
himself and Carleton. Arnold hastily evacuated Montreal, and, crossing
the river, joined Sullivan at St. John's, on the Sorel. There Sullivan
proposed to make a stand, but his troops would not support him, for the
whole army was in a state of insubordination. Burgoyne marched rapidly
after them; but, on reaching the head of the Sorel, he found they had
escaped him by embarking on the lake. Sullivan and Arnold had encamped
on the Isle aux Noix, a swampy place, where their men perished, many of
them, of fever, and Burgoyne was obliged to satisfy himself with the
thought that they were driven out of Canada.

In the south, affairs had been as ill conducted by the English
commanders as in the north they had been carried on well. Governor
Martin had made an effort to recover North Carolina. He had collected
a number of Highlanders, recently emigrated to America, and a number
of back-woodsmen, called Regulators, and sent them, under the
command of Colonels Macdonald and Macleod, to compel the inhabitants
to submission. They were to be supported by regular troops to be
landed at Wilmington, and General Clinton was daily expected with
the reinforcements from England. But Clinton did not appear, and the
impatient Highlanders and Regulators, in marching from Cross Creek to
Wilmington, were decoyed into a swamp, and there attacked and beaten.
Macleod and most of the Highlanders were taken prisoners, and the
Regulators, such as escaped, made again for the woods.

On the 3rd of May Lord Cornwallis arrived on the coast with a squadron
of transports, convoyed by Sir Peter Parker, with several ships of war.
General Clinton arrived soon after, and took the command of the troops;
and, in concert with Parker, he determined to attack Charleston,
the capital of South Carolina. On the 4th of June they appeared off
Charleston, and landed on Long Island. They found the mouth of the
harbour strongly defended by fortifications on Sullivan's Island, and
by others on Hadrell's Point on its north. On the point lay encamped
the American General Lee. Clinton threw up two batteries on Long Island
to command those on Sullivan island, whilst Parker, from the ships,
was to assist in covering the landing of the troops on that Island.
Clinton was informed that he could easily cross from one island to
the other by a ford; and consequently, on the morning of the 28th of
June, Sir Peter Parker drew up his men-of-war--three vessels of fifty
guns each, and six frigates of twenty-eight guns each, besides another
of twenty-four guns and the _Thunder_ bomb. But he had been deceived;
what was called a ford, he found impassable. He was compelled to
reimbark his troops, and meanwhile Parker's vessels, also unacquainted
with their ground, ran upon a shoal, where one of them struck. In
these unfortunate circumstances, the Americans, from the island and
from Hadrell's Point, poured a tremendous fire into the ships, doing
dreadful execution. Clinton sailed away, after this ignominious attempt
to join General Howe, but some of the vessels were compelled to remain
some time at Long Island to refit.

[Illustration: SIGNATURES TO THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.]

But whilst these conflicts were taking place, the Revolution was
marching on at full speed, and had reached its height--the Declaration
of Independence. The Continental Congress, on the 15th of May, passed
a resolution that it was necessary for such of the States as had not
framed for themselves such constitutions as were required by the
altered circumstances of the country, to forthwith frame such as should
be conducive to their safety and welfare. This was published in all the
newspapers, accompanied by a statement that, as the King of England,
in concurrence with his Parliament, had excluded the people of those
colonies from his protection, it became indispensable to abolish the
constitution established by that power, and frame one for themselves.
Here was a plain declaration; there was no longer any mistake.

There was no man in the colonies, nevertheless, who contributed so
much to bring the open Declaration of Independence to a crisis as
Thomas Paine, the celebrated author of "The Rights of Man" and of
"The Age of Reason." Paine was originally a Quaker and staymaker at
Thetford, in Norfolk. He renounced his Quakerism and his staymaking,
became an exciseman, and then an usher in a school, reverting again
to the gauging of ale firkins. In 1772 he wrote a pamphlet on the
mischiefs arising from the inadequate payment of the excise officers,
laying them open to bribes, etc. This pamphlet having been sent to
Franklin, induced him to recommend the poor author to emigrate to
America. Paine adopted the advice, and settled at Philadelphia in
1774. He there devoted himself to political literature, wrote for the
papers and journals, finally edited the _Philadelphia Magazine_, and,
imbibing all the ardour of revolution, wrote, in January of the year
1776, a pamphlet called "Common Sense." This pamphlet was the spark
that was needed to fire the train of independence. It at once seized
on the imagination of the public, cast other writers into the shade,
and flew, in thousands and tens of thousands of copies, throughout the
colonies. It ridiculed the idea of a small island, three thousand miles
off, ruling that immense continent, and threatening, by its insolent
assumption, the expanding energies of three millions of men, more
vigorous, virtuous, and free, than those who sought to enslave them.

Amongst the provinces employing themselves to carry out the
recommendation of the Congress, by framing new constitutions, that of
New York was emboldened by the presence of Washington and his army to
disregard the Royalists, and to frame a perfectly independent system.
Gouverneur Morris took the lead in the ultra party, and declared that
the time was now come for asserting entire independence. On the 27th
of May a resolution to that effect was passed. The delegates of the
Assembly were instructed to support these principles in Congress.

The Assembly of Virginia, meeting in convention at Williamsburg on
the 6th of May, drew up a Declaration of Rights, a document which
afterwards became the model for the celebrated "Rights of Man" with
the French Revolutionists. In this Declaration it was asserted that
the rights of the people cannot exist with hereditary monarchy; and
in the fourth article it was affirmed, that the idea of "a man being
born a magistrate, a legislator, or a judge, is unnatural and absurd."
Accordingly, Richard Henry Lee, as one of their delegates, on the
7th of June, moved in General Congress, that "these United Colonies
are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States; that they
are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all
political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is,
and ought to be, totally dissolved; that measures should immediately
be taken for procuring the assistance of foreign Powers, and a
confederation be formed to bind the colonies more closely together."

This all-important question was adjourned to the next day, the 8th of
June, when it was debated in a committee of the whole House. As the
discussion, however, took place with closed doors, as all great debates
of Congress did, to hide the real state of opinion, and to give to the
ultimate decision an air of unanimity, the reports of it are meagre and
unsatisfactory. We know, however, that Lee, the original mover, was
supported by his colleague Wythe, and most energetically by John Adams;
that it was as vigorously opposed by John Dickinson and his colleagues,
Wilson, of Pennsylvania, Robert Livingstone, of New York, and John
Rutledge, of South Carolina. Moreover, a considerable number of members
from different States opposed the motion, on the ground, not of its
being improper in itself, but, as yet, premature. Six colonies declared
for it, including Virginia. Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland
were at present against it. New York, Delaware, and South Carolina,
were not decided to move yet; and it was proposed to give them time to
make up their minds. Dr. Zubly, of Georgia, protested against it, and
quitted the Congress. To give time for greater unanimity, the subject
was postponed till the 1st of July; but, meanwhile, a committee was
appointed to draw up a Declaration of Independence. The members of this
committee were only five, namely, Thomas Jefferson, of Virginia; John
Adams, of Massachusetts; Roger Sherman, of Connecticut; Richard R.
Livingstone, of New York; and Benjamin Franklin, of Pennsylvania.

[Illustration: THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE OF THE UNITED STATES OF
AMERICA, JULY 4th, 1776.

FROM THE PAINTING BY J. TRUMBULL.]

On the 1st of July the report of the committee was read, together
with the form of declaration as drawn up by Jefferson, but afterwards
remodelled by Franklin and the committee. Nine states now voted for
independence. Pennsylvania and South Carolina voted against it.
Delaware and South Carolina requested an adjournment to the next day,
in order to make up their minds, when they voted for it, a new delegate
having arrived from Delaware with firmer instructions. New York held
out against independence, General Howe having now arrived at Sandy
Hook, and the Provincial Congress having retired from New York to White
Plains. Jay and Gouverneur Morris, from that State, were, however,
vehement for independence, asserting that the Congress of New York
ought to be dissolved, and delegates sent up to a new and more popular
Congress.

The revolutionary party in New York determined to carry them, and
the revolutionary party in Pennsylvania the same, right or wrong.
In Pennsylvania delegates insisted that those of their colleagues
who were averse from the Declaration should absent themselves, and
those favourable to it should attend and vote. From Delaware, one
single delegate, Cæsar Rodney, voted and decided the question in that
province. The New York Assembly only nominally reconstructed its
Provincial Congress. Instead of calling the electors together, as
recommended by the report of the 28th of May, some of the freeholders
and voters declared such of the old members as were willing to vote
for the Declaration re-elected; and this irregular and clearly
unconstitutional body attended and voted for the Declaration. Finally
the moderate party, headed by John Dickinson, withdrew, and the
Declaration was carried by one vote.

By these violent and arbitrary means was passed on the 4th July,
1776, the famous Declaration of Independence. The original motion for
such a Declaration, on the 8th of June, had been supported by a bare
majority of seven States to six; and now the whole thirteen States
were said to have assented, though it is perfectly well known that
several signatures were not supplied till months afterwards by newly
chosen delegates. The Declaration contained the following assertions
of freedom:--1. That all men are born equally free, possessing certain
natural rights, of which they cannot, by any compact, deprive their
posterity; 2. That all power is vested in the people, from whom it is
derived [but it was voted in Congress that the blacks made no part of
the people]; 3. That they have an inalienable, indefeasible right to
reform, alter, or abolish their form of government at pleasure; 4. That
the idea of an hereditary first magistrate is unnatural and absurd.

The Americans did not make their Declaration of Independence till they
had communicated with France. The British Government, as Lord North
publicly declared in Parliament, had long heard of American emissaries
at Paris seeking aid there. A secret committee, which had Thomas
Paine for its secretary, was appointed to correspond with the friends
of America in Great Britain, Ireland, and other parts of the world.
Encouraged by the assurances of France, the secret committee was soon
converted into a public one, and agents were sent off to almost every
court of Europe to invite aid of one kind or another against the mother
country, not omitting even Spain, Naples, Holland and Russia. Silas
Deane was dispatched to Paris in March of this year, to announce the
growing certainty of a total separation of the colonies from Great
Britain, and to solicit the promised co-operation.

Lord Howe arrived from England, and cast anchor off Sandy Hook, a few
hours after the Declaration of Independence had been read to the army
by Washington. He had been expected by his brother, General Howe, who
had arrived at the same point on the 29th of June, supposing he should
find the admiral there. General Howe found Washington already in New
York, and actively engaged in throwing up entrenchments, both there
and on Long Island, to close the Hudson against the British fleet.
Washington's headquarters were at New York; those of General Sullivan,
at the western extremity of Long Island, opposite to New York; and
Governor's Island, Paulus Hook, New Rochelle, and other points, were
strongly defended to protect the rear of the city. At the time of
Admiral Howe's arrival, the army of Washington did not amount to more
than seventeen thousand men, of whom three thousand were sick, and but
about ten thousand men fit for duty. From his letters to Congress, it
is clear that he entertained very little hope of maintaining his ground
in case of attack, for the fresh forces brought by Howe from England,
being joined by the shattered remains of Sir Peter Parker's squadron,
amounted to twenty thousand men. A few days afterwards, however, he was
joined by two regiments from Philadelphia, and by large bodies of New
York and New England Militia, raising his army to twenty-seven thousand
men, but of these a large number were sick. He now posted strong
reinforcements in Brooklyn. On this General Howe quitted Sandy Hook,
and advanced to Staten Island, where he could watch the operations of
the enemy. The Americans abandoned Staten Island, on his approach,
without firing a gun.

Things being in this position on the arrival of Admiral Lord Howe, he
determined still, notwithstanding the Proclamation of Independence,
to make every effort to procure a last chance of peace. He deeply
regretted the delays which had attended his fleet, and lost no time
in sending on shore an intimation that he brought conciliatory
overtures. His first act was to dispatch a letter to Franklin, who, in
England, had expressed so earnest a desire for accommodation of all
differences, informing him of his commission to seek reconciliation,
and of his powers for the purpose. But the Declaration being now made,
Franklin had no longer a motive to conceal his real sentiments, and he
replied in terms which greatly astonished Howe, filling his letters
only with complaints of "atrocious injuries," and of what America had
endured from "your proud and uninformed nation." Howe next turned to
Washington, to whom he dispatched a flag of truce, bearing a letter to
the Commander-in-Chief. But as Washington could only be regarded as an
insurgent leader, Lord Howe thought he could not officially recognise
a title conferred only by the American Congress, and therefore did
not address him as "General," but simply as "George Washington,
Esquire." Washington refused to treat in any other character than that
of Commander-in-Chief of the American forces. He instantly returned
Howe's letter, and forwarded the other papers to Congress. One of these
was a circular declaration to the late royal Governors, enclosing
a copy of Lord Howe's commission, and stating that all who should
submit would be pardoned; that any town or province which declared its
adhesion to the Crown should at once be exempt from the provisions of
all the late Acts of Parliament, especially as regarded their trade;
and that, moreover, all such persons as were active in promoting the
settlement of their districts should be duly rewarded. The moment
Congress received this document they ordered it to be published in
the newspapers, that "the people might see how the insidious Court of
Great Britain had endeavoured to disarm and amuse them," and that "the
few whom hopes of moderation and justice on the part of the British
Government had still kept in suspense, might now at length be convinced
that the valour alone of their country is to save its liberties." Lord
Howe, undeterred by this spirited proceeding of Congress, on the 20th
of July sent the Adjutant-General once more to Washington, with another
letter, still addressed to "George Washington, Esquire," but adding a
number of etceteras. Washington was not to be caught by so shallow an
artifice. The proposed interview, like the last, therefore, came to
nothing, except that Congress took advantage of these repeated efforts
to insinuate that the British were afraid of fighting.

Lord Howe now prepared to attack New York, where Washington had about
thirty thousand men. But the latter's troops were ill-equipped, and
deficient in discipline. Washington expected that Howe would attack
New York by the way of Long Island, and so he had posted nine thousand
men at Brooklyn, nearly opposite to it, behind entrenchments thrown
up by General Greene. Greene had been attacked by fever; and General
Putnam, who had taken his post, was but indifferently acquainted with
the position of the forces and the nature of the ground they would
have to defend with a rabble of most insubordinate troops. In these
circumstances General Howe, on the morning of the 22nd of August, threw
over from Staten Island into Long Island four thousand men, under the
command of General Clinton. They landed in Gravesend Bay, under cover
of the artillery of three frigates and two bombs. The rest of the army
followed with the artillery. Washington hastened over from New York
to strengthen General Sullivan, who was in command on the island. He
posted no less than fifteen thousand men along a peninsula at that end
of the island facing New York.

[Illustration: WASHINGTON CROSSING THE DELAWARE. (_See p._ 235.)]

Two British columns advancing by night--one by the shore road and the
other over the hills--managed to capture the patrols and approach the
outposts of the Americans. Washington having been all day engaged in
strengthening his lines, had returned to New York. Putnam was posted
on the left; and General Stirling was posted on the right on the
seashore, near the part called the Narrows. On the hills Sullivan
occupied one of the passes towards the left. The column on the British
right, consisting of Hessians, under General Von Heister, seized
on the village of Flat Bush, nearly opposite to Sullivan. At the
same time, Sir Henry Clinton and Sir William Erskine reconnoitred
Sullivan's position and the rest of the line of hills, and sent word
to General Howe that it would not be difficult to turn Sullivan's
position where the hills were low, near the village of Bedford. Howe
immediately ordered Lord Percy to support Clinton with his brigades,
in the direction of Bedford, and General Grant to endeavour to turn
the position of General Stirling, whilst the Hessians were ready to
attack Sullivan in front. At a signal, Howe himself marched along
with one of the divisions. In order to draw the enemy's attention
from the movements of General Clinton, Grant made a direct attack
upon Stirling's position, which brought to his aid a great part of
Sullivan's forces, thus deserting their own ground. Grant maintained
his attack till daylight, by which time Clinton had, by a slight
skirmish, crossed the line on his side. The attention from his march
was diverted by Von Heister attacking Putnam's position on the direct
way to Brooklyn, and Lord Howe, from his ships, opening a cannonade on
Governor's Island and Red Hook, in the rear of that town. About eight
o'clock came a fire from Clinton's column, which had now forced its way
into the rear of Putnam and between the Americans and Brooklyn. On this
discovery they endeavoured to make a way to their lines before that
town, but were driven back by Clinton only to find themselves assailed
in the rear by Von Heister. Thus hemmed in, they fled in confusion.
This action in their rear alarmed both Sullivan and Stirling, yet they
maintained their ground against Grant till they learned the total rout
of their comrades opposed to Clinton and Heister, when they laid down
their arms and ran for it. Knowing the ground better than the British,
many of them managed to escape to Brooklyn; but one thousand and
ninety-seven prisoners were taken, and from one thousand two hundred to
one thousand five hundred Americans were killed or wounded. The English
lost only about four hundred killed and wounded.

Washington, who had witnessed the battle, saw, to his infinite
mortification, the British pursuing his flying troops almost up to
their entrenchments. The ardour of the English soldiers was such that
they would speedily have stormed and carried the lines, and not a man
of the American army on Long Island would have escaped being taken
or killed. But General Howe, with that marvellous stupidity which
marked all our generals in this war, ordered them back, saying that
the lines could be taken with less loss of life by regular approach.
The next morning they began throwing up trenches near one of the
American redoubts, from which to cannonade it; but Washington was much
more aware of the untenable nature of his position than Howe, and,
under favour of darkness, and of a thick fog in the morning, he had
been for hours busily transporting his forces over the East River to
New York. All that day, and in the night of the 29th, he continued,
with all possible silence, conveying over his troops, artillery, and
stores, expecting every moment that General Howe would burst through
his lines at Brooklyn, and attack him in the rear, whilst Lord Howe,
with his ships, would advance, and blow all his fragile transports into
the water. Soon, however, Washington saw there was no maintaining his
position there. He found the British fast enclosing him on all sides,
too; and on the 12th of September he began to evacuate the place in
such haste as to leave behind him a great quantity of his artillery and
stores. The English landed on York Island without the loss of a man.
Three thousand men had placed themselves ready to attack the British as
they landed, and before they could form; but the sight of two companies
of grenadiers, already in position, had such an effect on them, that
they fled, leaving their blankets and jackets, which they had thrown
off in certainty of beating the English.

Washington saw almost with despair the condition of the American army;
any other man would have despaired of it altogether. He wrote to
Congress that nothing could make soldiers trustworthy but longer terms
of service; that, in fact, they ought to be engaged for the whole war,
and subjected to a rigid and constant discipline. He complained that
the soldiers were much bolder in plundering than fighting; and one of
his officers observed that the Pennsylvanian and New England troops
would as soon fight each other as the enemy. His Adjutant-General,
Reed, declared that discipline was almost impossible amid such a
levelling spirit as prevailed. These startling facts made Congress
begin in earnest to look out for foreign aid. In the meantime, it voted
that the army should be reorganised with eighty-eight battalions, to
be enlisted as soon as possible, and to serve during the war; each
State to furnish its respective quota, and to name the officers as high
as colonels. But Washington had soon to complain that they only voted,
and did not carry the plan strenuously into action; that there was a
mighty difference between voting battalions and raising men.

The condition of Washington was inconceivably depressing. The time
for the serving of the greater part of the troops was fast expiring;
and numbers of them, despite the circumstances of the country, went
off. Whilst Washington was, therefore, exerting himself to prevail
on them to continue, he was compelled to weaken his persuasions by
enforcing the strictest restraint on both soldiers and officers, who
would plunder the inhabitants around them on the plea that they were
Tories. Sickness was in his camp; and his suffering men, for want of
hospitals, were obliged to lie about in barns, stables, sheds, and even
under the fences and bushes. He wrote again to Congress in a condition
of despair. He called on them to place their army on a permanent
footing; to give the officers such pay as should enable them to live
as gentlemen, and not as mean plunderers. He recommended that not only
a good bounty should be given to every non-commissioned officer and
soldier, but also the reward of a hundred or a hundred and fifty acres
of land, a suit of clothes, and a blanket. Though Congress was loth to
comply with these terms, it soon found that it must do so, or soldiers
would go over to the royal army.

Before Lord Howe advanced farther, he received a deputation from
Congress. He had sent the captured American General, Sullivan, on his
parole to Philadelphia to endeavour to induce Congress to come to
terms, and save the further effusion of blood. He assured them that
he was not at liberty to treat with them as a Congress, but he would
willingly meet some of them as private gentlemen, having full powers,
with his brother, General Howe, to settle the dispute between them and
Great Britain, on advantageous terms; that, on finding them disposed to
agree to honourable conditions, he would seek for the acknowledgment
of their authority to treat with him, so as to make the compact valid.
The delegates appointed were sufficiently indicative of the little good
that was to be hoped from the interview. They were Dr. Franklin, John
Adams, and Edward Rutledge. Franklin had returned a most insulting
answer to a private letter sent to him by Lord Howe. It was in vain
that Lord Howe assured the deputies that England was disposed to
forget all, to pardon all, and to repeal all the obnoxious taxes, and
that inexpressible calamities would be avoided by the Colonies simply
returning to their allegiance. The deputies replied, that the only
terms on which America could make peace was as independent states. This
put the matter beyond accommodation.

On the 12th of October General Howe, who would have been better
employed in driving the enemy before him than in waiting for his
brother's useless negotiations, sent a considerable part of his forces,
with flat-bottomed boats, through Hell Gate into the Sound, and landed
them at Frog's Neck, about nine miles in the rear of Washington's
position, thus cutting off all his supplies from the country. The
ships ascended higher up the North River, cutting off the retreat into
the Jerseys. Had Howe, instead of landing at Frog's Neck, done so
at Pell's Point, he would have rendered Washington's retreat nearly
impossible. But this was neglected till the 18th of October, by which
time Washington, finding that he was getting gradually hemmed in, and
Lee, who had now joined him from Sullivan's Island and the Carolinas,
insisting that nothing but instant retreat could save them, they
therefore made a rapid retreat into the open country called the White
Plains. They had much difficulty in carrying away their artillery;
and the whole of it must have been taken, had Howe shown any ordinary
activity. Between this date and the 21st there was considerable
skirmishing, which compelled Washington to retire farther into the
White Plains, and from thence towards the Delaware.

On the 18th of November Lord Cornwallis crossed the North River with
six thousand men, and, landing on the Jersey side, began to attack
Fort Lee, standing nearly opposite Fort Washington. The garrison
fled, leaving behind all its tents standing, all its provisions and
artillery. Washington was compelled by this to fall back from his
position on the Croton, thence to Brunswick, Princeton, Trenton, and
finally to the Pennsylvanian side of the Delaware. Lord Cornwallis
followed at his heels. Cornwallis penetrated to the remotest parts
of east and west Jersey, and everywhere the inhabitants received him
as a friend and deliverer. On the 24th of November Lord Cornwallis
was approaching Brunswick, when he received orders to halt. By this
means, Washington was allowed to escape across the Delaware. It was
not till the evening of the 16th of December that Cornwallis received
orders to proceed, and, though he made all haste, he was too late. The
rear of the American army quitted Princeton as the van of the English
army entered it. Washington, in headlong haste, fled to Trenton, and
began ferrying his troops over the Delaware. When Cornwallis reached
Trenton, at nine o'clock the next morning, he beheld the last boats
of Washington crossing the river. Once over the water, the remains of
the American troops lost all appearance of an army. They were a mere
dirty, worn-out, ragged, and dispirited mob. Washington had taken the
advantage of the halt of Cornwallis to collect all the boats from
Delaware for the distance of seventy miles, so that the English could
not cross after them. Cornwallis, being thus brought to a stand, put
his army into winter quarters between the Delaware and the Hackensack.

Whilst Cornwallis was pursuing Washington through the Jerseys, Clinton
swept Rhode Island of the American troops, and drove Commodore Hopkins
with some ships up Providence River, where he remained. Rhode Island,
however, required a strong body of English soldiers constantly to
defend it. Meanwhile Sir Guy Carleton, having destroyed the American
flotilla on Lake Champlain, was daily expected to march from Crown
Point and invest Ticonderoga, which was only fifteen miles distant,
and where Schuyler lay prepared to abandon it on the approach of the
English. But Carleton, who had displayed so much activity and energy,
now, like the rest of our generals, seemed at once to abandon them at
the decisive point. He descended the Champlain to Isle-aux-Noix, put
his forces into winter quarters there, and proceeded himself to Quebec,
to prepare for the next campaign. Thus ended the campaign of 1776.

At the very time that Washington was flying before the British army,
Congress, putting a firm face on the matter, went on legislating as
boldly as ever. It established Articles of Confederation and perpetual
union between the several States. These Articles were a supplement to
and extension of the Declaration of Independence, and were sixteen in
number:--1st. That the thirteen States thus confederating should take
the title of the United States. 2nd. That each and all were engaged
in a reciprocal treaty of alliance and friendship for their common
defence, and for their general advantage; obliging themselves to assist
each other against all violence that might threaten all or any of them
on account of religion, sovereignty, commerce, or under any other
pretext whatever. 3rd. That each State reserved to itself alone the
exclusive right of regulating its internal government. 4th. That no
State in particular should either send or receive embassies, begin any
negotiations, contract any engagements, form any alliances, or conclude
any treaties with any king, prince, or power whatsoever, without the
consent of the United States assembled in Congress; that no person
invested with any post in the United States should be allowed to accept
any presents, emoluments, office, or title, from any king, prince, or
foreign Power; and that neither the General Congress, nor any State in
particular, should ever confer any title of nobility. 5th. That none of
the said States should have power to form alliances, or confederations,
even amongst themselves, without the consent of the General Congress.
6th. That no State should lay on any imposts, or establish any duties,
which might affect treaties to be hereafter concluded by Congress with
foreign Powers. 7th. That no State in particular should keep up ships
of war, or land troops beyond the amount regulated by Congress. 8th.
That when any of the States raised troops for the common defence, the
officers of the rank of colonel and under should be appointed by the
legislature of the State, and the superior officers by Congress. 9th.
That all the expenses of the war, etc., should be paid out of a common
treasury. Other clauses defined the functions and powers of Congress,
and the 14th offered to Canada admission to all the privileges of the
other States, should she desire it; but no other colony was to be
admitted without the formal consent of nine of the States composing the
Union.

After thus settling the form and powers of the constitution, Congress
voted eight million dollars to be raised as a loan, and ordered a fresh
issue of paper money. But, above all, it laboured to acquire aid from
abroad, without which it was clear they must yield to the superior
military force of the mother country, and return to their obedience on
humiliating terms. For this purpose, in addition to Silas Deane, who
was already in Paris, Franklin and Arthur Lee were dispatched to that
capital to obtain aid with all possible speed. These gentlemen set sail
in the beginning of November, though in much apprehension of being
intercepted by the British cruisers; but managed to reach Quibéron
Bay in safety, and Paris before the end of the year. So successful
was Franklin in Paris, that he obtained a gift of two millions of
livres from the French king in aid of America, and the assurance that
this should be annually augmented, as her finances allowed. The only
stipulation for the present was profound secrecy. Franklin had also
found the cause of America so popular, that many officers were anxious
to engage in her service; and the enthusiastic young Marquis Lafayette,
notwithstanding the ill news from the United States, engaged to embark
his life and fortune with Washington and his compatriots.

[Illustration: AMERICAN BILL OF CREDIT (1775).]

In England Parliament met on the 31st of October, and Lord North now
moved, in a Committee of Supply, for forty-five thousand seamen for
the service of the following year; and in a warm debate, in which Mr.
Luttrell made a severe charge of maladministration at the Admiralty,
and of the most shameful corruptions and peculations in that department
and in the Commissariat, he called for the production of the necessary
papers to enable him to substantiate these charges.

Yet the whole demand for sailors was carried, and the demand of inquiry
as absolutely rejected. Parliament went on and voted three million two
hundred and five thousand five hundred and five pounds for the expenses
of the navy; four thousand pounds for Greenwich Hospital; five hundred
thousand pounds for the discharge of the debts of the navy. For the
army, including some new contracts with the German princes for men to
serve in America, three million pounds. What was still more disgraceful
was that, amid all these charges on the public purse, the king came
again with a fresh demand for six hundred thousand pounds for debts on
the Civil List. It was pretended that extraordinary calls had been made
on the royal purse by the suffering Royalists in America; but it was
notorious that the Royal household continued in the same condition of
reckless waste and extravagance as it was when the former half million
was voted for the same purpose. Yet the Commons granted this sum; and,
by way of preventing the king from falling into fresh difficulties,
added one hundred thousand pounds a year to the Civil List. The matter,
however, did not pass without a plain reminder to his Majesty. The
rough-spoken Sir Fletcher Norton, the Speaker of the Commons, when
presenting this Bill for the increase of the Civil List to the king,
said:--"Sir,--In a time of public distress, full of difficulty and
danger, under burdens almost too heavy to be borne, your faithful
Commons postponed all other business, and granted your Majesty not only
a large present supply, but a very great additional revenue--great
beyond example--great beyond your Majesty's highest wants!" Having
passed these votes, Parliament was prorogued on the 13th of December
till the 21st of the following January.

But whilst England had been thus preparing for the augmentation of the
navy, America had been aiming a blow at the efficiency of that navy,
which must for years, if successful, have prostrated our whole maritime
forces, and exposed our shores to the easiest invasion. This intended
blow was nothing less than the destruction of our great naval dockyards
and arsenals, and military storehouses, at Portsmouth and Plymouth. The
chief agent in this infamous design, if the evidence of a miscreant can
be believed, was Silas Deane. On the 7th of December the rope-house of
the Royal Dockyard at Portsmouth was found to be on fire. By active
exertions it was got under, after it had destroyed that building, and
was imagined to be an accident. But on the 15th of January, 1777,
one of the officers of the dockyard found a machine and combustibles
concealed in the hemp in the hemp-house of the same dockyard. Suspicion
now fell on a moody, silent artisan, who, on the day of the fire, had
been looking about the dockyard, and who, by some chance, had got
locked up in the rope-house the night before. His name was not known,
but the fact only that he was a painter, and had been called John
the Painter. Government immediately offered a reward of fifty pounds
for his apprehension; the same sum, with a strange simplicity, being
offered to him if he would surrender himself for examination. Nothing,
however, could be learned of him in Portsmouth or the country round;
but fresh fires were now breaking out at Plymouth Dockyard and on the
quays of Bristol. At Plymouth the fire was instantly checked, and the
perpetrator was nearly seized. At Bristol the fire was laid near a
narrow, deep creek, crowded with shipping, which was nearly dry at
low water, so that it was impossible to get the shipping out. Six or
seven warehouses were destroyed, but the shipping escaped. In another
house at Bristol combustibles were discovered, and the alarm became
general that the American incendiaries, having failed to burn New
York, were come to England to burn our dockyards and maritime houses.
Fortunately, in the beginning of February, a man was apprehended for
the perpetration of a burglary at Odiham, in Hampshire; and, by the
activity of Sir John Fielding, the London magistrate, he was identified
as John the Painter. When brought before Sir John and other magistrates
in town, the man conducted himself with tact and address. Though
closely examined and cross-questioned by some of the members of the
Privy Council, by Lords of the Admiralty, and other officers of the
board, he maintained the scrutiny without betraying any embarrassment,
or letting anything escape him that could in any degree incriminate
him. A confession was, however, wormed out of him by another painter,
named Baldwin. Silas Deane, John the Painter declared, according to
Baldwin's evidence, had encouraged him to set fire to the dockyards of
Plymouth and Portsmouth, Woolwich and Chatham, as the most effectual
means of disabling Great Britain; that he gave him bills to the amount
of three hundred pounds on a merchant in London, and promised to reward
him according to the amount of service he should do to the American
cause. Before his execution he freely admitted the truth of the charges
against him. He confessed to having twice attempted to fire the
dockyard at Plymouth, and to burning the warehouses at Bristol, having
in vain endeavoured to deposit his combustibles on board the ships.
He, moreover, stated that he had a recommendation from Silas Deane to
Dr. Bancroft, in London, to whom he had declared that he would do all
the harm he could to England; that the doctor did not approve of his
conduct, but had, at his request, promised not to betray him.

On the 8th of May, 1777, Ministers moved for more money for the
insatiable Landgrave of Hesse, whose troops were at this very time
exhibiting the most scandalous state of defiance of discipline, of
consequent inefficiency, and of plunder of the inhabitants of America.
This grant, though violently opposed, was carried, but only by a
majority of eight. All parties now began to denounce the shameless
rapacity of these German princes. Nor did Chatham, ill as he was,
allow the Session to pass without making one more energetic protest
against the continuance of the war with America. On the 30th of May
he moved an address to his Majesty for the immediate cessation of
hostilities. Notwithstanding all that had been said on our successes
over the Americans, Chatham contended as positively as ever that we
could never conquer them. "You have," he said, "ransacked every corner
of Lower Saxony, but forty thousand German boors never can conquer
ten times the number of British freemen. You may ravage, you cannot
conquer--it is impossible--you cannot conquer America. You talk of your
numerous funds to annihilate the Congress, and your powerful forces
to disperse their army; I might as well talk of driving them before
me with my crutch! But what would you conquer? The map of America? I
am ready to meet any general officer on the subject" (looking at Lord
Amherst)--"What will you do out of the protection of your fleet? In the
winter, if together, they are starved; and if dispersed, they are taken
off in detail. I am experienced in spring hopes and vernal promises. I
know what Ministers throw out; but at last will come your equinoctial
disappointment. You have got nothing in America but stations. You have
been three years teaching them the art of war. They are apt scholars;
and I will venture to tell your lordships that the American gentry will
make officers enough fit to command the troops of all the European
Powers." Chatham's motion was rejected by ninety-nine votes against
twenty-eight. Parliament was prorogued by the king on the 6th of June,
in a speech in which he indulged the fallacious hope that the American
insurrection would be terminated in the present campaign. But Chatham's
prophecies were at the very time realising themselves. Had the Howes
had the necessary qualities of commanders in such an important
cause--had they pursued and dispersed the American army, as they ought
to have done on defeating it, and as they might readily have done;
and had the British Government instantly, whilst in this favourable
position, repealed all the obnoxious statutes, they would have thrown
Congress and Washington so completely into the wrong, that it would
have been impossible for them to have made head again. But neither
the Generals nor the Government of that day had the capacity for such
strategic and statesmanlike policy. The Generals went comfortably into
winter quarters, leaving the embers of war to rekindle and spread; and
Government, deaf to the warnings of Chatham, still stolidly refused
justice whilst rigorously enforcing their injustice. And, indeed, when
Chatham gave his last Cassandra-like remonstrance, it was already too
late. We had indeed taught the Americans the art of war. Washington
was no longer contented to stand on the defensive, happy if he could
preserve his soldiers from running off without fighting at all. His
circumstances were desperate, and the energy which springs from despair
now urged him to measures of daring and wakefulness just as the English
Generals, like northern bears, were entering on their winter's sleep.
Benedict Arnold had paid him a visit in his wretched camp beyond the
Delaware, and probably from their united counsels sprang a new style of
movement, which confounded his unsuspecting enemies.

The army of Lord Cornwallis, which had so triumphantly pursued
Washington through the Jerseys, supposing the Americans now put beyond
all possibility of action, if not wholly dispersed, lay carelessly
in their cantonments on the left bank of the Delaware. The two main
outposts, Trenton and Bordentown, were entrusted to bodies of Hessians.
At Trenton lay Colonel Rahl, and at Bordentown Count Donop. As the
Christmas of 1776 was approaching, they had abandoned all discipline.
The British officers, too, had mostly quitted their regiments, and
had gone to enjoy the Christmas at New York, where General Howe was
keeping up great hospitality, imagining the war to be fast drawing to
a close. But if the English paid no attention to Washington, he was
paying every attention to them. His plans arranged, he set out on the
evening of Christmas day, 1776, and crossed the river at Mackonkey's
Ferry, nine miles above Trenton, to attack that fort. The river was so
encumbered with ice that he found it a most arduous undertaking, but he
accomplished it with the division immediately under his command--two
thousand four hundred in number. He continued his march through the
night on Trenton, and reached it at about eight o'clock in the morning.
A trusted spy had informed him over night, that he had seen the
soldiers, both British and Hessians, asleep, steeped in drink. When he
arrived, the soldiers still lay sunk in their Christmas debauch; and it
was only by the first crash of the cannon that they were roused. When
they ran to arms Washington had already invested the town. The brave
Colonel Rahl, in his endeavour to form his drunken troops, and lead
them on, was mortally wounded by an American rifle, almost at the first
discharge. The light horse and a portion of the infantry, who fled on
the first alarm, escaped to Bordentown. The main body attempted to
retreat by the Princeton Road, but found it already occupied by Colonel
Hand and his regiment of Pennsylvanian riflemen. Thus cut off, ignorant
of the force opposed to them, and without enthusiasm for the cause,
they threw down their arms and surrendered. About a thousand prisoners
and six cannon were taken. The Americans had two killed, two frozen to
death, and a few wounded. As soon as Washington had refreshed his men,
he re-crossed the Delaware, carrying with him his prisoners, the stores
he had taken, and the six field-pieces that he brought with him.

This spirited and brilliant action had a wonderful effect on the
American mind. It revived the courage of the troops, which had
sunk very low after so many defeats. It inspired them and the
public at large with confidence in the talents and daring of their
Commander-in-Chief, who was now eulogised as another Fabius. Such was
the confidence inspired, even in himself, by this success, that, being
immediately joined by three thousand six hundred Pennsylvanian militia,
he determined to cross the Delaware, as it was now strongly frozen
over. But General Grant had already joined General Leslie at Princeton,
with a strong body of British and Hessian troops; and General Howe,
on hearing of the fresh spirit of the American army, had detained
Lord Cornwallis, who was about to leave for England. He hastened to
Princeton, and took the command of the whole force, concentrating all
the troops on the Delaware shore. On the 2nd of January, 1777, he
marched from Princeton for Trenton, drove in the enemy's outposts, and
reached Trenton by five o'clock the same afternoon. Washington retired
as he approached. The British, on arriving at the fort and bridge
of the Assumpinck, found both guarded by artillery, and Washington
posted on some high ground beyond. Cornwallis cannonaded the bridge
and forts, and his fire was briskly returned. He then encamped for
the night there, intending to force the creek the next morning; but
Washington did not wait for him. With his raw militia only a few days
in camp, he had no chance of resisting Cornwallis's army, and yet--a
thaw having taken place--it was impossible to cross the Delaware. He
called a council of war, and it was concluded that, from the great
force of Cornwallis in front, the rear could not be very strong. It was
therefore determined to make an attempt to gain the rear, beat up the
enemy's quarters at Princeton, now, as they supposed, nearly deserted,
and, if they could succeed, fall on the British stores and baggage at
New Brunswick. Their own baggage was, accordingly, sent quickly down
the river to Burlington, the camp-fires were replenished, and small
parties being left to deceive the enemy by throwing up entrenchments,
Washington, about midnight, silently decamped by a circuitous route
towards Princeton. At dawn they encountered two out of three English
regiments, which had been at Princeton, on the march. These were the
17th and 55th, hastening to join Cornwallis at Trenton. They imagined
the Americans, owing to a thick fog, to be a body of Hessians; but,
on discovering the mistake, a sharp fight took place, and for some
time the two British regiments withstood Washington's whole force.
Colonel Mawhood, the English commander, posted his force advantageously
on a rising ground between the Americans and Princeton, sent back
his baggage waggons, and dispatched messengers to bring up the 40th
regiment, still in Princeton, with all speed. The 40th not arriving,
Washington managed to force his way between the two British regiments.
The 17th continued its march for Trenton; the 55th fell back upon
Princeton, where the 40th, which had defended itself in the college,
after losing a considerable number of prisoners, joined the 55th, and
retreated upon New Brunswick.

Washington found no rest at Princeton. Cornwallis no sooner heard
the cannonading near Princeton than he immediately comprehended
Washington's _ruse_, and, alarmed for his magazines at New Brunswick,
he hastened in that direction. Washington, aware of his approach, found
it necessary to give up the attempt on New Brunswick. He therefore
hastened across Millstone river, broke down the bridge behind him to
stop pursuit, and posted himself on the high ground at Morristown,
where there were very strong positions. Here he received additional
troops, and entrenched himself. Cornwallis, not aware of the real
weakness of Washington's army despite all its additions, again sat down
quietly for the winter at New Brunswick. For six months the British
army now lay still. Washington, however, lost no time in scouring all
quarters of the Jerseys. He made himself master of the coast opposite
Staten Island, and seized on Newark, Elizabeth Town, and Woodbridge.
The inhabitants had been plundered by the Hessians and English, and
now they were plundered again by their own countrymen for having
received the English well. Washington exerted himself to suppress this
rancorous conduct of the New England and Virginian troops, and issued
a proclamation absolving the people of their oaths to the English, and
promising them protection on their taking a new oath to Congress. The
people of the Jerseys gladly accepted this offer.

Meanwhile, the American emissaries were both busy and successful at the
Court of France. Though the Government still professed most amicable
relations towards Great Britain, it winked at the constant sale of
the prizes taken by American privateers, or those who passed for
such, in their ports. The Government had, as we have seen, supplied
the insurgents with money and arms. It was now arranged between Silas
Deane and the French Minister, Vergennes, that the supplies of arms
and ammunition should be sent by way of the West Indies, and that
Congress should remit payment in tobacco and other produce. The French
Government supplied the American agents with money for their purchases
of arms and necessary articles for the troops, also to be repaid in
tobacco. Two of the ships sent off with such supplies were captured
by the British men-of-war; but a third, loaded with arms, arrived
safely. To procure the money which they could not draw from Europe,
Congress made fresh issues of paper money, though what was already out
was fearfully depreciated. They voted a loan also of five millions of
dollars, at four per cent. interest. They authorised a lottery to raise
a like sum, the prizes to be payable in loan-office certificates. These
measures only precipitated the depreciation of the Government paper;
people refused to take it; and Washington, to prevent the absolute
starvation of the army, was endowed with the extraordinary power of
compelling the acceptance of it, and of arresting and imprisoning
all maligners of the credit of Congress. Congress went further, and
passed a resolution that their bills ought to pass current in all
payments, trade, and dealings, and be deemed equal in value to the
same sum in Spanish dollars; and that all persons refusing to take
them should be considered enemies to the United States; and the local
authorities were called upon to inflict forfeitures and other penalties
on all such persons. Still further: the New York convention having
laid before Congress their scheme for regulating the price of labour,
produce, manufactured articles, and imported goods, it was adopted.
But these arbitrary and unscientific measures the traders set at
defiance, and the attempts to enforce them only aggravated the public
distress. Loans came in slowly, the treasury ran low, the loan offices
were overdrawn, and the issue of bills of credit was reluctantly
recommenced; ten additional millions were speedily authorised, and as
the issue increased, the depreciation naturally kept pace with it. The
Commissioners in France were instructed to borrow money there, but the
instructions were more easily given than executed.

[Illustration: WASHINGTON AND HIS MEN AT VALLEY FORGE. (_See p._ 239.)]

Such were the difficulties under which Congress and Washington had
been struggling through this winter to raise and keep together any
considerable force; whilst General, now Sir William Howe, had been
completely dozing at New York. The first movements of Howe were to
execute several detached evolutions, and a vast quantity of stores
were destroyed. As a retaliation, the Americans sent Colonel Meigs
over to Long Island, to a place called Sag Harbour, where the English
had a great quantity of provision stores, which they learned were very
remissly guarded. Meigs, who had been trained under Arnold, conducted
the enterprise very adroitly. He passed the Sound in whale-boats in
the night, landed without much difficulty before the break of day,
and began to fire the magazines. He met with a brave resistance from
the crews of the merchants' vessels; but, having two hundred men, and
there being no soldiers to oppose him, he destroyed twelve of the
trading vessels, took ninety prisoners, and returned triumphantly
without the loss of a single man. In the meantime, Washington had
quitted his encampment at Morristown, and taken up a strong position at
Middlebrook, about twelve miles from Princeton. On the 13th of June
Howe at last marched out of New Brunswick to attack him. On this,
Washington called to his assistance a great part of the troops in the
highlands, the whole force of the Jersey militia, whilst Arnold, who
had the command at Philadelphia, was actively engaged with Mifflin in
preparing defences for the Delaware. The object of Howe was to draw
Washington from his entrenchments, certain that, on fair ground, it
would require little exertion to totally dissipate his army; therefore,
after marching up almost to the American lines, he commenced a retreat,
evacuated even New Brunswick, and fell back to Amboy. Washington fell
into the snare; he sent a strong force in pursuit of Howe, who, keeping
up the _ruse_, threw a bridge over the narrow strait which divides
Staten Island from the mainland, and sent over part of his baggage
and a number of troops. Satisfied then that Howe was bent on resuming
his old quarters at New York, Washington quitted his camp, which had
cost him so much labour to create, and descended with his main body
to Quibbletown. On seeing this, Howe advanced again, and dispatched
several bodies of soldiers by different routes, to get, if possible,
between Washington and his old post on the hills, so as to bring him
to an engagement on the plain. Washington instantly became aware of
his design, and retreated with all speed. Lord Cornwallis, who led the
British van, notwithstanding, managed to come up with him, and fell
upon a division of three thousand strong, advantageously posted, and
defended with cannon. Cornwallis's charge, however, threw him into
confusion, the rout became general, and the British pursued them as far
as Westfield, when, coming to a woody country, and the heat of the day
being intense, they halted for the night. This halt was the salvation
of Washington: it enabled him to regain his old fortified post in the
hills, leaving behind him part of his cannon, and about two hundred men
killed.

Instead of waiting to watch Washington, or leaving any force for that
purpose, Howe now suddenly altered his plans, marched back in reality
to Staten Island, and left the enemy in full command of the Jerseys.
Embarking his army on the 5th of July, he left General Clinton at New
York with seventeen battalions, a body of loyal American militia, and
a regiment of light horse. He set sail on the 23rd of July, and stood
out to sea. Washington, now supposing that he meant to make an attempt
on Boston, moved slowly towards the Hudson; but he had soon information
that caused him to retreat again towards the Delaware; and, news
coming that Howe had been seen off Cape May, he advanced to Germantown.
Instead of entering the Delaware, however, the British fleet was
presently seen steering eastward, and all calculations were baffled.
Washington, now believing that he was intending to return to New York,
proceeded to Philadelphia, and had an interview with Congress.

Howe's real intention had been to enter the Delaware, and proceed
up it direct to Philadelphia; but, understanding that the Americans
had placed enormous impediments in the river, he stood away for the
mouth of the Elk, in Chesapeake Bay. He was tediously detained by the
contrary winds that always prevail on that course in that season, and
it was the 28th of August before he entered the Elk, and reached the
Elk head, where he landed his troops. On the 2nd of September (1777)
he began his march for Philadelphia. He soon came upon a body of
Washington's army at Iron Hill, which he charged and drove from the
hill. On the 11th he came in sight of Washington's main army, strongly
posted and fortified on the forks of the Brandywine river. Here Howe's
dispositions were excellent. He sent forward, under General Knyphausen,
the second division, which advanced to a ford called Chad's Ford,
and drove a detachment of Americans across it. Howe then advanced,
and, planting his cannon along the bank of the river, he engaged the
Americans in a brisk cannonade across the stream. Meanwhile, Lord
Cornwallis was silently marching in the rear of Howe's troops, round
to another ford at the forks of the Brandywine, which he crossed,
and took Washington's army in the rear. On firing his signal gun,
the Americans were thrown into consternation, and at the same moment
Knyphausen dashed across Chad's Ford, and drove the surprised Americans
from their batteries and entrenchments at the point of the bayonet.
The batteries were instantly turned against them, and Cornwallis, who
had been checked by a division under Sullivan, coming up, there was a
general rout. The Americans fled in utter confusion, having lost three
hundred killed, six hundred wounded, and four hundred taken prisoners.
The English had one hundred killed and four hundred wounded.

But, scarcely had Howe posted himself at Wilmington, when Washington
re-crossed the Schuylkill and marched on the British left, hoping
to imitate the movement of Cornwallis at the Brandywine which had
been so effectual. Howe, aware of the strategy, however, reversed
his front, and the Americans were taken by surprise. In this case,
Howe himself ought to have fallen on the Americans, but a storm is
said to have prevented it, and Washington immediately fell back to
Warwick Furnace, on the south bank of French creek. From that point he
dispatched General Wayne to cross a rough country and occupy a wood on
the British left. Here, having fifteen hundred men himself, he was to
form a junction with two thousand Maryland militia, and with this force
harass the British rear. But information of this movement was given to
Howe, who, on the 20th of September, sent Major-General Greig to expel
Wayne from his concealment. Greig gave orders that not a gun should be
fired, but that the bayonet alone should be used, and then, stealing
unperceived on Wayne, his men made a terrible rush with fixed bayonets,
threw the whole body into consternation, and made a dreadful slaughter.
Three hundred Americans were killed and wounded, about a hundred were
taken prisoners, and the rest fled, leaving their baggage behind them.
The British only lost seven men.

Whilst Washington manœuvred to prevent Howe from crossing the
Schuylkill above him, the English General crossed below on the 22nd
of September, and thus placed himself between Philadelphia and the
American army. It was now necessary for Washington to fight, or give
up that city; but the condition of his troops, deficient in clothes
and shoes, owing to the poverty of the commissariat department,
with wretched arms, and fatigued by their recent exertions, forbade
all hope of maintaining even the defensive. He therefore fell back,
and Cornwallis, on the 27th, advancing from Germantown, entered
Philadelphia amid the welcome of the loyal inhabitants. Cornwallis
occupied the city with four regiments, but the body of the British army
encamped at Germantown, ten miles distant. But, though the Americans
had evacuated the city, they still held the command of the Delaware
below it, and thus cut off the supplies of the British army by sea,
and all communication between the army and the fleet, except by the
circuitous course of Chester, liable to capture by the enemy.

Within a few days of taking Philadelphia, Lord Howe raised three
batteries on the side of the river. On the 3rd of October Washington
issued from his camp on the Schuylkill, about fourteen miles from
Germantown, having heard that two British detachments had been
withdrawn thence to attack the forts on the Delaware. He had been
reinforced by militia from Maryland and New Jersey, and determined to
surprise the British camp at Germantown. Two columns of Continental
troops, led by Greene and Sullivan, were to gain the front of the
British, and attack it; whilst two other columns of militia were to
attack the rear. This force marched all night, and entered Germantown
about sunrise, and all seemed likely to favour their enterprise. A fog
prevented the discovery of their approach. But, at the first surprise,
Colonel Musgrove threw himself into a storehouse, and kept up such a
fire from the windows as checked the assault of the Americans, and
gave time for the rest of the British force to get under arms. The
village of Germantown consisted of one long street. Across this street
the British army had encamped, and stoutly resisted the advance of the
Americans. Musgrove was summoned to surrender; but he continued his
fire from the house without taking any notice, and, before artillery
could be brought up to batter the house, General Greig and Brigadier
Agnew came up to his assistance. The Continental troops in front, led
on by Washington himself, made a brisk attack, but were repulsed at all
points, and were badly co-operated with by the militia in the rear.
Washington was compelled to fall back to his camp at Skippack Creek,
leaving behind him about eight hundred killed and wounded, and four
hundred prisoners. So far, however, was Sir William Howe from availing
himself of this opportunity to follow up the attack on Washington, and
disperse his army, that he, as usual, thought only of getting into snug
winter quarters.

Thus was another glorious chance for the utter dispersion of the
American army thrown away by this most incompetent commander; and, as
Washington saw that he had nothing to fear during the winter, except
from the elements, he determined to encamp himself, so as to keep the
British in constant anxiety about him. He selected a strong piece of
ground at a place called Valley Forge, covered with wood. He set his
soldiers to fell trees and make log-huts, the interstices of which they
stopped with moss, and daubed up with clay. As they had plenty of fuel,
they could thus pass the winter in some degree of comfort. A great
number of his men were on the verge of the expiration of their term,
and were impatient to return home; but he persuaded many to remain,
and he employed them in throwing up entrenchments on the right of his
camp, which was open towards the plain. His left was defended by the
Schuylkill, and his rear by a steep precipice descending to the Valley
Creek. He began two redoubts, but he soon saw that there was no fear of
Howe moving so long as the winter lasted, and he left them unfinished.
And thus the winter went over, Howe lying snugly at Philadelphia,
enjoying his wine and his cards, and apparently forgetful that there
was any such place as Valley Forge within five-and-twenty miles of him.

Whilst these movements had been progressing, very different ones had
been in development in the north. The British Government, with the
fatality which distinguished nearly all its counsels in this war, had
thought proper to take the command of the army destined to operate by
way of Canada on the northern colonies, from Sir Guy Carleton, and
to confer it on General Burgoyne. The campaign had been planned--not
by experienced military men on the spot, capable of estimating the
difficulties of the enterprise, but in the Cabinet at home, directed by
defective maps, and still more defective information.

This scheme was to take Ticonderoga, and then to advance upon Albany.
Whilst the army was marching to this point, the fleet, carrying another
strong force, was to ascend the Hudson, and there meet Burgoyne, by
which means the British could then command the Hudson through its whole
extent; and New England, the head of the rebellion, would be entirely
cut off from the middle and southern countries. The plan was excellent
in itself, but demanded for its successful accomplishment not only
commanders familiar with the country, but the most ardent spirit in
them, and the most careful co-operation.

Being conveyed to St. John's, Burgoyne there disembarked, and on the
16th of June he commenced his march for Crown Point, the shipping
following him by the lake. On the 1st of July he appeared before
Ticonderoga. The place required ten thousand troops effectually to
defend it; but St. Clair who commanded them had only three thousand,
very indifferently armed and equipped. St. Clair saw at once that he
must retire, as the Americans had already done, at Crown Point; but he
sought to do it unobserved. Accordingly, in the night of the 5th of
July the flight took place; but St. Clair's orders were immediately
disobeyed; the soldiers fired the house which had been occupied by
General de Fermoy, and the British were at once apprised of the
retreat. The sailors soon broke up the obstructions at the mouth of the
river, and a fleet of gunboats was in instant pursuit. They overtook
the Americans near the falls of Skenesborough, and quickly mastered
the protecting galleys, and destroyed the vessels. General Burgoyne
followed with other gunboats containing troops, and at the same time
dispatched Generals Fraser and Reisedel by land after St. Clair.

St. Clair had marched with such celerity that he reached, before the
next night, Castleton, thirty miles from Ticonderoga. But the rear
division under Colonel Warner halted at Hubberton, six miles short of
Castleton. Early next morning, General Fraser found them on a hill. No
sooner did they descry him, than one of the regiments turned and fled,
leaving most of their officers to be taken prisoners. But the other two
regiments, commanded by Warner and Francis, stood their ground stoutly.
Fraser had with him only about eight hundred men, and the Americans
were from one thousand two hundred to one thousand five hundred
strong. But Fraser advanced up the hill and attacked them briskly. The
Americans were protected by a sort of breastwork formed of logs and
trees, and they gave Fraser a smart reception. But, calculating on the
approach of Reisedel and the Germans, he fought on; and Reisedel soon
after marching up with a full band of music, the Americans imagined
that the whole body of the Germans was there, and fled on to Castleton
as fast as they could.

General Schuyler was hastening to support Ticonderoga, when, on
reaching Saratoga, he was met by the news of this succession of
defeats. He had, when joined by St. Clair and Long, who had been left
to defend St. John's in vain, about five thousand men, the whole now
of the northern army; but many of these were militia hastily called
together--many of them without arms--more, destitute of ammunition,
and still more, of discipline. But Schuyler depended much more on the
nature of the country which the British would have to traverse from
this point than on his men. The whole region between Skenesborough and
the Hudson was an almost unbroken wilderness. Wood Creek was navigable
as far as Fort Anne; from Fort Anne to the Hudson, over an exceedingly
rough country, covered with thick woods, and intersected by numerous
streams and morasses, extended a single military road. Whilst Burgoyne
halted a few days at Skenesborough to bring up the necessary supplies,
Schuyler seized the opportunity to destroy the navigation of Wood
Creek, by sinking impediments in its channel, and breaking up the
bridges and causeways, of which there were fifty or more on the road
from Fort Anne to Fort Edward. Had Burgoyne been well informed, he
would have fallen back on Ticonderoga, have embarked on Lake George,
and proceeded to Fort George, whence there was a waggon-road to Fort
Edward, the place he was aiming at. Instead of this, he determined on
separating himself from his baggage and artillery, sending these, under
General Philips, to Fort George, and proceeding with the main portion
of the army across the rugged country that lay between himself and Fort
Edward. On this route they had not only to contend with swamps swarming
with mosquitoes, deep gullies, ravines, and rivulets, but to make
temporary bridges to supply the place of those destroyed by Schuyler,
and remove the trees felled by him. The weather, to add to their
stupendous labour, was intensely hot; yet, surmounting everything,
on the 30th of July Burgoyne and his army hailed with enthusiasm the
sight of the Hudson, which they had thus reached through a series of
brilliant successes.

[Illustration: GEORGE WASHINGTON. (_After the Portrait by Smart._)]

There only needed now one thing to render the expedition triumphant,
and place the Hudson from Albany to New York in the absolute power
of the British army--that General Howe should have been prepared to
keep the appointment there with a proper fleet and armed force. But
Howe was engaged in the campaign of Philadelphia, and seems to have
been utterly incapable of conducting two such operations as watching
Washington and supporting Burgoyne. As soon as Burgoyne discovered
this fatal want of co-operation on the part of Howe, he ought to
have retreated to the lakes, but he still determined to advance; and
before doing so, he only awaited the coming up of the artillery and
baggage under General Philips, and of Colonel St. Leger, who had been
dispatched by the course of the Oswego, the Oneida Lake, and Wood
Creek, and thence by the Mohawk river, which falls into the Hudson
between Saratoga and Albany. St. Leger had two hundred regulars--Sir
John Johnson's Royal Queen's and Canadian Rangers--with him, and a
body of Indians under Brandt. St. Leger, on his way, had laid siege to
Fort Schuyler, late Fort Stanwix, near the head of the Mohawk. General
Herkimer raised the militia of Tryon county, and advanced to the relief
of the place.

On hearing this, Burgoyne dispatched Colonel Baum with two pieces of
artillery and eight hundred men--dismounted German dragoons and British
marksmen. They were to surprise Bennington, a place about twenty miles
to the east of the Hudson, where the Americans had collected their
stores from New England, and, having secured these, to return and carry
them to St. Leger. Baum, however, found himself surrounded by Generals
Starke and Warner at St. Corick's Mill, on Walloon Creek, six miles
from Bennington, before help came up. For two hours a fierce attack
was kept up on Baum's entrenchments on all sides by the Americans with
muskets and rifles. Baum made a most gallant defence, and three times
drove them from some high ground which they occupied above his camp.
At last he was picked off by a rifleman and fell mortally wounded.
His German troops retreated into the woods, in the direction of Fort
Edward, and were there met by Breyman, who was slowly advancing with
reinforcements. He reorganised the fugitives, and commenced his
retreat, hotly pursued by Starke and Warner; he made his way back to
Burgoyne, but not until he had fired nearly his last cartridge.

During this time St. Leger had been investing Fort Schuyler. The whole
of his miscellaneous force did not exceed six hundred, exclusive of
Indians; and on the 5th of August he learned that General Herkimer was
advancing to the relief. He instantly dispatched Sir John Johnson with
a party of regulars and a number of Indians to waylay him. Herkimer
fell into the ambush, and was himself mortally wounded. St. Leger,
finding that his light artillery made no impression on the walls of
Fort Schuyler, and hearing a false rumour that Burgoyne was defeated,
raised the siege, leaving behind him his artillery, tents, and stores.
His precipitation was occasioned by the more certain news of the
approach of Arnold with ten pieces of artillery and two thousand men,
who indeed, reached Fort Schuyler two days after his retreat.

Burgoyne was now in a condition which demanded all the talents of a
great general. His forces were heavily reduced, those of the enemy
much increased, and he was amongst bogs and wildernesses, which
Barrington and Barré had from the first declared would be fatal to any
army. He had sent express after express to Howe to urge a movement
in co-operation, but no news of it arrived, and every day he was
becoming more and more cut off from advance or retreat. Whilst these
circumstances were operating against him, Burgoyne collected his
artillery and provisions for about a month, and, forming a bridge of
boats, passed his army, on the 13th and 14th of September, over the
Hudson, and encamped on the heights and plains of Saratoga. Just at
this juncture Schuyler had been superseded by his successor Gates, yet
he himself remained to give his assistance in the campaign. The day
after Gates assumed the command, Morgan had marched in with his rifle
corps, five hundred strong, and Major Dearborn with two hundred and
fifty other picked men. Arnold, too, had returned from pursuit of St.
Leger, with two thousand men. The Americans numbered, with militia
continually flocking in, nearly eight thousand, whilst Burgoyne's
force did not exceed half that number. To approach the Americans it
was necessary to cross the low ground, seamed with watercourses and
rugged with scrub and stones, and to lay down bridges and causeways.
This being completed, on the 19th the British army took position at
Bemus's Heights in front of the American left. Gates, stimulated by
the presence of Arnold, began the attack by sending out a detachment
to turn Burgoyne's right flank, but they soon perceived the covering
division of Fraser, and retreated. Gates then put Arnold at the head of
a still stronger detachment to fall directly on Burgoyne's position,
and a severe fight commenced about three o'clock in the afternoon,
which lasted until sunset. Arnold made the most impetuous assaults
on the British line to break it, but everywhere in vain, although the
whole weight of the attack fell on three or four of our regiments,
the rest being posted on some hills, and the Germans on the left at a
greater distance. Whenever they advanced into the open field, the fire
of the American marksmen from their concealment drove them back in
disorder; but whenever the Americans ventured out, the British rushed
forward and committed havoc amongst them; so the contest continued till
night. The British remained in the field and claimed the victory; but
it was a victory severely won, and far from decisive. The losses on
both sides had been from five hundred to six hundred killed and wounded.

The English lay all night on their arms, and, as day dawned, began
to entrench their position. If ever a general needed to push on his
advantage it was now. Every day was consuming Burgoyne's stores; every
day was augmenting the forces of the enemy. The country was closed
to Burgoyne; it was open with all its resources to the Americans.
Yet he lay there, as if paralysed, from the 20th of September to the
7th of October. The reason of this fatal delay is said to have been
that Burgoyne had received a letter from General Sir Henry Clinton
at New York, informing him that he must expect no co-operation from
General Howe, but that he himself would take the responsibility of
making a diversion in his favour by attacking the Forts Montgomery and
Clinton, on the lower part of the Hudson. Burgoyne, on receiving this
intelligence, sent Clinton word that he would remain where he was till
the 12th of October--a fatal resolve, as a calculation of his stores
should have shown him, which the acts of the Americans were certain to
render calamitous. Elated at being able to stand their ground in some
degree, this novel and almost sole success in the war had raised the
spirits of the Colonials as by a miracle. They poured in on all sides,
and Arnold, ever ready in resource, suggested to Gates an enterprise
to be effected while Burgoyne was lying still and consuming his own
victuals.

This was to send a part of Lincoln's militia, under Colonel Brown, to
endeavour to surprise Fort Ticonderoga, Mount Independence, and Fort
George, to capture or destroy all the stores there, to hold them in
strong force, and thus completely to cut off Burgoyne's retreat by the
lakes to Canada. Brown, being joined by another body of militia under
Colonel Johnson, invested Ticonderoga. Being repulsed there, he sailed
through Lake George in the vessels he had taken; made a fresh attempt
upon Diamond Island, and, being also repulsed there, he set fire to
the captured vessels, and returned to the American camp in the rear
of Burgoyne. Partial as his success had been, he had, however, opened
the route, and whilst he and the rest of the militia were watching
Burgoyne, other bodies of Americans were mustering in his track, and
the retreat of Burgoyne became an impossibility. He could stay where he
was no longer. His provisions were exhausted; his horses were dying for
lack of forage, and his situation was most deplorable.

In this situation the English General determined to attempt--what
he should have attempted at first--to force the American lines.
Accordingly, on the 7th of October, he drew out one thousand five
hundred picked men, and formed them less than a mile from the American
camp. No sooner were they descried, than they were attacked furiously
by Poor's New Hampshire brigade. The attack extended rapidly to the
right, where Morgan and his rifle corps stole round through some woods,
and opened fire on the flank of the column. Other troops rushed out
of the American entrenchments, and endeavoured to force their way
between the British and their camp; but Major Ackland and his riflemen
withstood them bravely; yet Burgoyne and his one thousand five hundred
men were forced to fall back, leaving their cannon behind them. Morgan
and his riflemen were now arriving, under cover of the woods, near
the flank of the right wing; and Fraser, perceiving them, advanced
to dislodge them. In this he succeeded, but was picked off by the
American marksmen, as usual safe behind their trees, and fell mortally
wounded. Meanwhile Colonel Brooks, at the head of Jackson's regiment
of Massachusetts, was more successful. He turned the entrenchments of
the German brigade, maintained his ground within the lines, and, to the
wonderful relief of the Americans, seized the baggage of the Germans,
and an ample supply of ammunition.

Retreat was now inevitable, and Burgoyne determined to attempt to
reach Fort George, at the southern end of Lake George. He had but
three days' provisions left, and his force was now reduced to three
thousand five hundred men, and these had to make their way through a
wilderness swarming with active and elate enemies. Gates, aware of
the movement which Burgoyne was intending to make, sent troops up the
river to occupy the banks of the Hudson, and to guard all passages
of escape. The distance to Saratoga was only six miles, but the rain
fell in torrents, the roads were almost impassable, the bridges over
the Fishkill were all broken down by the Americans. Burgoyne sent
forward detachments of soldiers to repair the bridges and re-open the
roads; but they found the woods swarming with riflemen, and that it
was impossible to execute the task assigned them. On the 10th, when
he arrived at the fords of the Fishkill, he found them obstructed by
strong forces of Americans. He soon dispersed them with cannon, but
they only retired to the Hudson, where still stronger bodies of troops
were posted to oppose his crossing. He might, perhaps, have dispersed
these too, but other bodies were seen already in line on the left bank,
and to cross there appeared hopeless.

Driven to desperation, Burgoyne now contemplated crossing the river
in the very face of the enemy, and fighting his way through, and for
this purpose he sent a party up the river to reconnoitre a suitable
spot. Once over, he had little doubt of making his way to Fort Edward,
and thence to the Canadian lakes. At this moment Gates was informed
that Burgoyne had effected his passage, and that he had left only
the rear-guard in the camp. He was in full march upon the camp, in
the belief that he could seize it with ease, and part of his forces
had actually crossed the fords of Fishkill, near which Burgoyne was
strongly posted, when a spy or a deserter informed him of his mistake.
Had it not been for this circumstance he must have suffered a surprise
and a certain defeat, and the fortunes of Burgoyne would probably have
been different. He was now on the alert to receive the Americans, and
when, to his mortification, he saw them at a signal again retreating,
he poured a murderous fire into them, and pursued them in confusion
across the creek. This was his last chance. No news reached him from
Clinton; but he ascertained that the Americans had already, in strong
force, blocked up his way to Fort Edward. This was decisive. On the
13th he called together a council of war, at which every captain was
invited to attend, and the unanimous result of the deliberations was
that they must capitulate. Accordingly, an officer was sent with a note
to the American headquarters that evening, to propose an interview
between General Burgoyne and General Gates. The American General agreed
to the meeting at ten o'clock the next morning. There Burgoyne stated
that he was aware of the superiority of Gates's numbers, and, to spare
the useless effusion of blood, he proposed a cessation of arms, to
give time for a treaty to that effect.

Gates replied that he was well aware that General Burgoyne's army was
reduced to the last extremity; that it had lost the greater part of its
men by repeated defeats, sickness, etc., together with their artillery,
horses, and ammunition; that their retreat was cut off, and, therefore,
he could listen to nothing but an absolute surrender. Burgoyne said
he would never admit that his retreat was cut off whilst he had arms
in his hands; and Gates, who knew that Clinton was on his march, and
might soon alter the whole face of things, was only too anxious to have
Burgoyne's army out of the way. After some preliminaries, therefore,
to save appearances, on the 16th it was agreed that the British should
march out of their camp with all the honours of war; should deposit
their cannon on the banks of the Hudson, and there pile their arms at
the command of their own officers; that the troops, of whatever nation
they might be composed, should retire in all security and honour to
Boston, where they should be provided with all necessary comforts until
they embarked for England, under condition of not serving against the
United States again during that war; that the Canadians should be
allowed to return in all honour to their own country; and that in no
case should officers be separated from their own men. These were not
such terms as are usually granted to conquered armies; and the reason
was, that Clinton was every day drawing nearer. Scarcely were these
terms agreed on, when this fact became known to Burgoyne. For a moment
he hesitated whether he should sign the contract; but, on consultation
with his officers, he felt himself bound in honour to ratify it, and
accordingly, the next morning, the 17th of October, the deed was
signed, and the troops, marching out, grounded their arms.

Whilst Burgoyne had been looking in vain for aid from New York, Sir
Henry Clinton, at length daring the responsibility of a necessary deed,
had set out with three thousand men, in vessels of different kinds,
up the Hudson. On the 6th of October--eleven days before Burgoyne
signed the capitulation--Clinton set out. Leaving one thousand men
at Verplank's Point, he crossed to the other bank with his remaining
two thousand, and landed them at Stony Point, only twelve miles from
Fort Montgomery. He advanced with one-half of his force to storm Fort
Clinton, and dispatched Lieutenant-Colonel Campbell to attack Fort
Montgomery. Both forts were to be attacked, if possible, at the same
instant, to prevent the one from aiding the other. The simultaneous
assaults took place about sunset. Lieutenant-Colonel Campbell was
killed leading his column against Fort Montgomery, but his brave troops
entered and drove the garrison of eight hundred men from the place.
Clinton found the approach to the fort of his own name much more
arduous. But on went our brave fellows till they reached the foot of
the works, where, having no ladders, they hoisted one another on their
shoulders to the embrasures, through which they pushed past the cannon,
and drove the Americans from their guns, and across the rampart,
at the points of their bayonets. It was dark by the time the forts
were taken, but the Americans soon threw light enough on the scene
by setting fire to several vessels which were moored close under the
guns of the forts. Had the English been disposed to risk the attempt
to save them, they were prevented by several strong booms and chains
thrown across the river. These they afterwards broke through, and, on
the 13th of October, at the very moment that Burgoyne was making his
first overtures for surrender, the English troops under General Vaughan
ascended, in small frigates, as far as Esopus Creek, only thirty miles
overland to Saratoga. But Burgoyne having now surrendered, and Gates
being at liberty to send down strong reinforcements to co-operate with
Putnam, the English vessels and troops were recalled, and returned
to New York. Such was the campaign of 1777; equally remarkable for
the valour of the British troops, and for their misfortunes; for the
imbecility of their Government, and the incapacity or rashness of their
commanders.

[Illustration: SURRENDER OF BURGOYNE AT SARATOGA. (_See p._ 244.)]




CHAPTER XI.

REIGN OF GEORGE III. (_continued_).

    Meeting of Parliament--Lord Chatham's Amendment to the Address--The
    News of Saratoga--Treaty between France and America--Washington
    in Valley Forge--Intrigues against him--Violation of Burgoyne's
    Convention--Debates in Parliament--Attempt to bring Chatham
    into the Ministry--Lord North's Conciliation Bills--The French
    Note--Patriotism of the Nation--The King refuses to send for
    Chatham--His last Speech and Death--Honours to his Memory--Burke's
    Measure of Irish Relief--Repeal of Laws against Roman
    Catholics--Explosion of Scottish Bigotry--Turgot's Warnings--Naval
    Engagement off Ushant--Failure of Lafayette's Canadian
    Expedition--Clinton compelled to evacuate Philadelphia--Failure of
    Lord North's Commissioners--D'Estaing and Sullivan attempt to take
    Rhode Island--Subsequent Proceedings of D'Estaing--Courts-martial
    of Keppel and Palliser--The Irish Volunteers--Spain declares
    War--Military Preparations--Junction of the French and Spanish
    Fleets--They retire from the Channel--D'Estaing in the West
    Indies--His Attempt on Savannah--Weakness of Lord North's
    Ministry--Meeting of Parliament--Lord North's Irish Bill--Richmond,
    Shelburne, and Burke attempt Economic Reforms--The Meeting
    at York petitions for Reform of Parliament--Burke's Economic
    Scheme--North's Manœuvre--Further Attempts at Reform--The
    Westminster Meeting--Dunning's Motion--Defeat of his later
    Resolutions--"No Popery" in Scotland--Lord George Gordon's
    Agitation--The Riots and their Progress--Their Suppression--Trial
    of the Prisoners--Rodney relieves Gibraltar--Destruction of English
    Merchantmen--Disputes with Holland--The Armed Neutrality of the
    North--Capture of Charleston--Declaration of South Carolina--Battle
    of Camden--Expedition into North Carolina--Arrival of the French
    Squadron--Rodney in the West Indies--Arnold's Treachery--Trial
    and Death of André--Breach with Holland--Attacks on Jersey and
    Gibraltar--Mutiny in the Army of Washington--Arnold's Raids in
    Virginia--Cornwallis in North Carolina--His Engagements with
    Greene--His March into Virginia--Rawdon and Greene--Battle of
    Eutaw Springs--Siege of York Town--The American Armies close round
    him--Cornwallis compelled to Surrender.


The American disasters had now to be criticised in Parliament. On the
20th of November the two Houses met, and Lord Chatham rose instantly
to reply, and to move an amendment on the Address. He attacked the
Ministry with a still more personal and sweeping censure than he had
done once before. "Can Ministers," he asked, "presume to expect a
continuance of support in their career of ruinous infatuation? Can
Parliament be so dead to its dignity and its duty as to be deluded into
the loss of the one and the violation of the other? Will they continue
to give an unlimited credit and support to Government in measures
which are reducing this flourishing empire to ruin and contempt?
But yesterday, and England might have stood against the world; now,
none so poor to do her reverence! I use the words of a poet; but,
though it be poetry, it is no fiction. It is a shameful truth, that
not only the power and strength of this country are wasting away and
expiring, but her well-earned glories, her true honour and substantial
dignity, are sacrificed. France, my lords, has insulted you; she has
encouraged and sustained America; and, whether America be wrong or
right, the dignity of this country ought to spurn at the officious
insult of French interference!" It is certain that Chatham would not
have tolerated the presence of Franklin and Deane in Paris for a single
day; they must have quitted France, or France would have been instantly
compelled to throw off the mask. At this time, when the news neither
of Howe's success in the south nor of Burgoyne's fall in the north had
arrived, Chatham seemed to see in prophetic vision the disasters of
the latter general. "The desperate state of our army," he said, "is,
in part, known. No man thinks more highly of our troops than I do.
I love and honour the English troops. I know that they can achieve
anything but impossibilities; and I know that the conquest of English
America is an impossibility. You cannot--I venture to say it--you
cannot conquer America! You may swell every expense and every effort
still more extravagantly; pile and accumulate every assistance that
you can buy or borrow; traffic and barter with every little, pitiful
German prince that sells and sends his subjects to the shambles of a
foreign prince; your efforts are for ever vain and impotent--doubly
so from this mercenary aid on which you rely; for it irritates to
an incurable resentment the minds of your enemies, to overrun them
with the mercenary sons of rapine and plunder, devoting them and
their possessions to the rapacity of hireling cruelty! If I were an
American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in
my country, I would never lay down my arms--never--never--never!" On
the subject of employing Indians in the war against the Americans,
willing to forget that he had done the same thing in Canada, he burst
forth most indignantly: "But, my lords, who is the man that, in
addition to these disgraces and mischiefs of our army, has dared to
authorise and associate to our arms the scalping-knife and tomahawk
of the savage? to call into civilised alliance the wild and inhuman
savage of the woods? to delegate to the merciless Indian the defence
of disputed rights, and to wage the horrors of this barbarous war
against our brethren? My lord, these enormities cry aloud for redress
and punishment. Unless done away, it will be a stain on the national
character--it is a violation of the Constitution; I believe it is
against the law. It is not the least of our national misfortunes, that
the strength and character of our army are thus impaired; infected
with the mercenary spirit of robbery and rapine--familiarised to the
horrid scenes of savage cruelty, it can no longer boast of the noble
and generous principles which dignify a soldier!" He then proceeded to
give the Americans credit still for a natural leaning towards England;
believed that they might be drawn from their alliance with France; and
recommended, by his amendment, an immediate cessation of arms, and a
treaty between the countries, by which he hoped that America would yet
be retained in affectionate dependence.

Affairs had now assumed such an aspect that the different sections of
the Opposition saw the necessity of coalescing more, and attending
zealously; but still they were divided as to the means to be pursued.
A great meeting was held on the 27th of November at the Marquis of
Rockingham's, to decide on a plan of action. It was concluded to move
for a committee on the state of the nation, and Chatham being applied
to, advised that the very next day notice should be given that such a
motion should be made on Tuesday next, the 2nd of December. The motion
was made, the committee granted, and in it the Duke of Richmond moved
for the production of the returns of the army and navy in America and
Ireland. Whilst Lord North--who, if he had been his own master, would
have resigned--was refusing to produce the necessary papers, the Lords
consented to this measure; and at this very moment came news of the
surrender at Saratoga, which was speedily confirmed.

The news had the most instant effect across the Channel. All hesitation
on the part of the French Court to enter into the treaty with the
United States disappeared. The American Commissioners, Franklin,
Deane, and Lee, were informed that the King of France was ready to
make a treaty, claiming no advantage whatever, except that of trade
with the States. It was intimated that this proceeding would, in all
probability, involve France in a war with Great Britain, but that
she would claim no indemnity on that score. The only condition for
which she positively stipulated was, that America should, under no
temptations, give up its independence, or return under the dominion of
England. The two kingdoms were to make common cause, and assist each
other against the common enemy. The Americans were to endeavour to make
themselves masters of all the British territories that they could,
and retain them as their rightful acquisition; the French to obtain
whatever islands they could in the West Indies, and retain them. France
did not venture to seek back the Canadas or Nova Scotia, well knowing
that the Americans would not consent to have them there as neighbours.
Neither country was to make peace with England without the other. Lee
was to continue at Paris as the first American Ambassador there, and
the treaty was to continue some weeks a secret, in order to obtain, if
possible, the accession of Spain to it, which, however, they could not
do then.

In America, such was the state of things, that a British commander
there, of the slightest pretence to activity and observation, would
have concluded the war by suddenly issuing from his winter quarters,
and dispersing the shoeless, shirtless, blanketless, and often almost
foodless, army of Washington. His soldiers, amounting to about eleven
thousand, were living in huts at Valley Forge, arranged in streets like
a town, each hut containing fourteen men. Such was the destitution of
shoes, that all the late marches had been tracked in blood--an evil
which Washington had endeavoured to mitigate by offering a premium for
the best pattern of shoes made of untanned hides. For want of blankets,
many of the men were obliged to sit up all night before the camp fires.
More than a quarter of the troops were reported unfit for duty, because
they were barefoot and otherwise naked. Provisions failed, and on more
than one occasion there was an absolute famine in the camp. It was
in vain that Washington sent repeated and earnest remonstrances to
Congress; its credit was at the lowest ebb. The system of establishing
fixed prices for everything had totally failed, as it was certain to
do; and Washington, to prevent the total dispersion of his army, was
obliged to send out foraging parties, and seize provisions wherever
they could be found. He gave certificates for these seizures, but
their payment was long delayed, and, when it came, it was only in the
Continental bills, which were fearfully depreciated, and contrasted
most disadvantageously with the gold in which the British paid for
their supplies.

Nor was this the whole extent of that wretched condition of the United
States which would have attracted the vigilant attention of an able
English commander, and have roused him into successful action. The
greatest discontent prevailed in Congress against Washington. Gates
and the northern army had triumphed over the entire British army
there; but what had been the fate of Washington hitherto? Want of
success had evoked a party in Congress against Schuyler, Sullivan,
and himself: In this party Henry Lee and Samuel Adams were violent
against him. They accused him of want of vigour and promptitude, and
of a system of favouritism. Congress was wearied of his constant
importunities and remonstrances. Gates, since the capture of Burgoyne,
had assumed a particular _hauteur_ and distance, and, there could
be little doubt, was aspiring to the office of Commander-in-Chief.
A new Board of War was formed, in which the opponents of Washington
became the leading members. Gates and Mifflin were at its head, and
Conway was made Major-General over the heads of all the brigadiers,
and Inspector-General of the army. A system of anonymous letters was
in action depreciating the character and services of Washington. But,
whilst these elements of disunion and weakness were in full play, Howe
slumbered on in Philadelphia, unobservant and, probably, ignorant of it
all. The opportunity passed away. The intrigues against Washington were
defeated as soon as they became known to his own army and the people
at large, through the influence of the real esteem that he enjoyed in
the public heart, especially as news had just arrived that friends and
forces were on the way from France.

At this juncture, when the eyes of all Europe were turned on the new
Republic of America, Congress gave a proof of its utter contempt of
those principles of honour which are regarded as the distinguishing
characteristics of civilised nations. The convention on which General
Burgoyne's army had surrendered was deliberately violated. It had been
stipulated that his troops should be conveyed to Boston, and there
suffered to embark for England in British transports to be admitted
to the port for that purpose. But no sooner did Congress learn this
stipulation than it showed the utmost reluctance to comply with it.
It was contended that these five thousand men would liberate other
five thousand in England to proceed to America. It was therefore
determined to find some plea for evading the convention. An article of
the convention provided that the English officers should be quartered
according to their rank; but they complained that six or seven of
them were crowded into one small room, without regard either to rank
or comfort. But Burgoyne, finding remonstrance useless at Boston,
wrote to Gates reminding him of his engagements in the convention, and
declaring such treatment a breach of public faith. This was just one of
those expressions that Congress was watching for, and they seized upon
it with avidity. "Here," they said, "is a deep and crafty scheme--a
previous notice put in by the British General to justify his future
conduct; for, beyond all doubt, he will think himself absolved from
his obligation whenever released from his captivity, and go with all
his troops to reinforce the army of Howe." Burgoyne offered at once to
give Congress any security against such imagined perfidy. But this did
not suit Congress--its only object was to fasten some imputation on the
English as an excuse for detaining them contrary to the convention, and
they went on to raise fresh obstacles.

The shameful length to which Congress carried this dishonourable
shuffling astonished Europe. They insisted that Great Britain should
give a formal ratification of the convention before they gave up the
troops, though they allowed Burgoyne and a few of his officers to go
home. The British Commissioners, who had arrived with full powers to
settle any affair, offered immediately such ratification; but this
did not arrest the slippery chicane of Congress. It declared that it
would not be satisfied without ratification directly from the highest
authority at home. In short, Congress, in open violation of the
convention, detained the British troops for several years prisoners of
war.

When Parliament opened on the 20th of January, 1778, the Opposition
fell, as it were, in a mass upon the Ministry on this question.
There was much dissatisfaction expressed at the Government allowing
Liverpool, Manchester, and other places, to raise troops without
consulting Parliament. It was declared to be a practice contrary to the
Constitution and to the Coronation Oath. Sir Philip Jennings Clerke, on
the 22nd of January, moved for an account of the numbers of troops so
raised, with the names of the commanding officers. Lord North, whilst
observing that this mode of raising troops showed the popularity
of the war, and that the country was by no means in that helpless
condition which a jealous and impatient faction represented it to be,
readily granted the return. In the House of Lords the Earl of Abingdon
moved to consult the judges on the legality of raising troops without
authority of Parliament; but this motion was not pressed to a division.
But, on the 4th of February, Sir Philip Jennings Clerke returned to his
charge in the Commons. Lord North replied that this now hotly-decried
practice was one which had been not only adopted, but highly approved
of, in 1745, and again in 1759, when Lord Chatham was Minister, and
that he had then thanked publicly those who had raised the troops for
the honour and glory of their country. A motion was negatived by the
Lords on the same day, to declare this practice unconstitutional, and a
similar one later in the Session, introduced by Wilkes and supported by
Burke.

[Illustration: WASHINGTON AT VALLEY FORGE, BY THE CAMP FIRE. (_See p._
247.)]

The spirit of the country appeared to be running in a strong current
for the return of Lord Chatham to the helm, as the only man who could
save the sinking state, and bring the American difficulty to a happy
issue. But the great obstacle to this was the still continued assertion
of Lord Chatham--that the full independence of America could not be
for a moment listened to, whilst to almost every other man of the
Opposition that independence was already an accomplished fact. Lord
Rockingham, who was looked up to as a necessary part of any Cabinet
at the head of which Chatham should be placed, had, in the previous
Session, asserted his opinion that the time had now passed for hoping
to preserve the dependence of these colonies; and, now he saw France
coming into the field against us, he was the more confirmed in this
view. This was a fatal circumstance in the way of the establishment of
a strong co-operative Cabinet, formed out of the present Opposition.
But a still greater obstacle was the iron determination of the king.
In vain did Lord North express his desire to resign and declare
the necessity of conciliatory measures. George reproached him with
intending to desert him. On further pressure he gave him leave to apply
to Chatham and the Whigs, but only on the absurd condition that they
should join the present Ministry, serve under Lord North, and carry on
the policy of the existing Government. As usual, Lord North gave way,
and consented to stay in office, and to bring in a plan of conciliation
opposed to his former declarations.

On the 17th of February he introduced this plan in two Bills. He
declared that his policy had always been pacific; that he had never
proposed any tax on the Americans--when he came into office he had
found them taxed already; that he had tried conciliatory means before
the sword was drawn, and would still gladly try them. He had thought
the former propositions to the Americans very reasonable, and he
thought so still. Forgetful of the hopes that he had held out, of
assisting the revenues of Great Britain by the taxation of Americans,
he now surprised his auditors by asserting that he had never expected
to derive much revenue from America, and that, in reality, the taxes
imposed had not paid the expenses of the attempt to collect them.
The first of his Bills, therefore, he entitled one "For removing all
doubts and apprehensions concerning taxation by the Parliament of Great
Britain in any of the colonies." It repealed entirely the tea duty in
America, and declared "that from and after the passing of this Act, the
king and Parliament of Great Britain will not impose any duty, tax, or
assessment whatever, in any of his Majesty's colonies, except only such
duties as it may be expedient to impose for the regulation of commerce,
the nett produce of such duty to be always paid and applied to and for
the use of the colony in which the same shall be levied." The second
Bill removed some otherwise insuperable obstacles to a treaty. The
Commissioners--five in number--were to raise no difficulties as to the
legal ranks or titles of those with whom they would have to negotiate.
They were empowered to proclaim a cessation of hostilities on the part
of the king's forces by sea or land for any necessary term and on any
necessary conditions. They might suspend all the Acts of Parliament
respecting America passed since 1763, yet the Bill excepted the repeal
of the Massachusetts Charter, and introduced that into a separate
Act--another weak measure, for on such an occasion the only wisdom
was to wipe away all Acts, or repeal of Acts, which had arisen out of
these unhappy differences. The effect of this statement has been well
described in the _Annual Register_ of that year, in an article supposed
to be from the hand of Burke:--"A dull, melancholy silence for some
time succeeded this speech. It had been heard with profound attention,
but without a single mark of approbation of any part, from any
description of men, or any particular man in the House. Astonishment,
dejection, and fear overclouded the whole assembly. Although the
Minister had declared that the sentiments he had expressed that day
had been those which he always entertained, it is certain that few or
none had understood him in that manner, and he had been represented to
the nation at large as the person in it the most tenacious of those
Parliamentary rights which he now proposed to resign, and the most
adverse to the submissions which he now proposed to make."

These unfortunate affairs precipitated the resignation of Lord George
Germaine. His proud and impetuous temper had occasioned the resignation
already of Sir Guy Carleton and of the two Howes. All complained that
they could not obtain the necessary reinforcements and supplies from
him as the Colonial Minister; and his tart and insolent replies to
their complaints produced the retirement of these three commanders.
He was already charged with having been the luckless projector of
Burgoyne's disastrous expedition. Sir Henry Clinton was named the
successor to the command of the forces in America, in the place of Sir
William Howe. The punishment of North for the policy which had thus
virtually lost America, was every day falling more crushingly upon him.
On the 13th of March the Marquis de Noailles, the French Ambassador in
London, and the uncle of Lafayette's wife, handed to Lord Weymouth a
note formally announcing the treaty of friendship and commerce between
France and America. On the 17th it was the bitter duty of Lord North
to read this remarkable document to the House of Commons. The affected
right to make such a treaty with the colonies of another nation, and
the professions of goodwill, notwithstanding such an interference,
amounted to the keenest irony, if not downright insult.

The reading of this French note aroused at once the old feeling of
enmity between France and England. If there was a strong resentment
against the Americans before, it now grew tenfold. The war became
popular with all, except the extreme Opposition. Lord North moved an
appropriate address to the king; the Opposition moved as an amendment
to it that his Majesty should dismiss the Ministers. Loyal addresses
from both Houses were, however, carried by large majorities. In
consequence of the French note, the king ordered Lord Stormont to quit
Paris, and the Marquis de Noailles took his departure from London,
where, in spite of his official character, he was no longer safe from
popular insult. Orders were also sent to the Lord-Lieutenants of the
several counties to call out the militia.

Through all these arrangements Lord North continued to persist in his
resignation. If the king had had any glimmering of what was necessary
to save the colonies, he would himself have removed North long ago. But
the only man who could take the place with any probability of success,
or with any of the confidence of the public, was Lord Chatham, whom the
king regarded with increasing aversion. Chatham's pride, which would
not stoop an inch to mere outside royalty, feeling the higher royalty
of his own mind, so far from seeking office, must himself be sought,
and this deeply offended the monarch. Lord North could point to no
other efficient successor, and George angrily replied that, as regarded
"Lord Chatham and his crew," he would not condescend to send for "that
perfidious man" as Prime Minister; he would only do it to offer him and
his friends places in the Ministry of Lord North.

The days of Chatham were far nearer their close than was suspected.
One more sudden blaze of his high intellect, and he was gone. Whilst
the subject of America continued to be discussed in both Houses with
much acrimony and little result, the Duke of Richmond, seeing that
Chatham did not come forward, took a decided step. He gave notice,
on the 7th of April, of an address to the king, entreating him to
withdraw both his fleets and armies from the United States, and make
peace with them on such terms as should secure their goodwill. Chatham
was roused effectually by this notice. Wrapped in flannel, pale and
emaciated, he was supported into the House by his son William, and his
son-in-law, Lord Mahon. His large wig seemed to bury his worn, shrunken
face, except the still piercing eye and the aquiline nose. When the
Duke of Richmond had made his motion, and Lord Weymouth, one of the
Secretaries of State, had replied to it, Chatham arose. Lord Camden
says that in speaking "he was not like himself: his speech faltered,
his sentences were broken, and his mind not master of itself. His words
were shreds of unconnected eloquence; and flashes of the same fire,
which he, Prometheus-like, had stolen from heaven, were then returning
to the place whence they were taken." All was deep attention, and
even in bosoms antagonistic in principle were profound interest and
respect. His words, weak and halting at first, grew, as he warmed with
his subject, into much of the power and harmony of former days, and
battling with his feebleness of frame he put forth, in one last great
effort, the power of his spirit.

"My lords," he said, "I rejoice that the grave has not closed upon me;
that I am still alive to lift up my voice against the dismemberment
of this ancient and most noble monarchy. Pressed down as I am by the
hand of infirmity, I am little able to assist my country in this most
perilous conjuncture; but, my lords, whilst I have sense and memory,
I will never consent to deprive the royal offspring of the House of
Brunswick, the heirs of----" here he faltered for some moments, whilst
striving to recall the name--"of the Princess Sophia, of their fairest
inheritance. My lords, his Majesty succeeded to an empire as great in
extent as its reputation was unsullied. Shall we tarnish the lustre
of that empire by an ignominious surrender of its rights and fairest
possessions? Shall this great kingdom, which has survived whole and
entire the Danish depredations the Scotch inroads, and the Norman
conquest--that has stood the threatened invasion of the Spanish Armada,
now fall prostrate before the House of Bourbon? Surely, my lords, this
nation is no longer what it was! Shall a people that fifteen years
ago were the terror of the world now stoop so low as to tell this
ancient, inveterate enemy--'Take all we have, only give us peace'? It
is impossible! I wage war with no man or set of men; I wish for none
of their employments; nor would I co-operate with men who persist in
unretracted error--who, instead of acting on a firm, decisive line of
conduct, halt between two opinions where there is no middle path. In
God's name, if it is absolutely necessary to declare either for peace
or war, and the former cannot be preserved with honour, why is not the
latter commenced without hesitation? I am not, I confess, well informed
of the resources of this kingdom; but I trust it has still sufficient
to maintain its just rights, though I know them not. But, my lords, any
state is better than despair. Let us, at least, make one effort, and if
we must fall, let us fall like men!"

The Duke of Richmond made a feeble reply, and then Chatham rose, in
the deepest indignation, to answer the Duke, but the violence of his
feelings overcame him; he staggered and fell in a swoon, and would have
been prostrated on the floor but for the assistance of some friendly
hands. He lay apparently in the agonies of death. The whole House was
agitated; the Peers crowded round him in the greatest commotion; all
except the Earl of Mansfield, who beheld the fall of his ancient rival
almost as unmoved, says Lord Camden, "as the senseless body itself."
His youngest son, John Charles Pitt, was there, and exerted himself to
render all possible assistance. The insensible orator was carried in
the arms of his friends to the house of Mr. Sargent, in Downing Street.
By the prompt aid of a physician, he was in some degree recalled to
consciousness, and within a few days was conveyed to his own dwelling
at Hayes. There he lingered till the morning of May 11th, when he died
in the seventieth year of his age.

On the day of Chatham's death, his friend and disciple, Colonel
Barré, announced the melancholy event in the House of Commons, and
moved that his funeral should be conducted at the public charge, and
his remains be deposited in Westminster Abbey. This was seconded by
Thomas Townshend, afterwards Secretary of State, and Lord Sydney.
All parties consented, with many praises, to this suggestion; and
two days afterwards, Lord John Cavendish introduced the subject of
a further testimony of public regard for the departed. It was well
known that Chatham, notwithstanding the ten thousand pounds left him
by the Duchess of Marlborough, notwithstanding the emoluments of his
places and pensions, and the noble estate bequeathed to him by Sir
William Pynsent, was still in debt. Lord John Cavendish put to the
score of disinterestedness what ought probably to have been placed to
the account of free living and little care of money, and called on
Parliament to reward the descendants of the Earl for the great addition
which he had made to the empire as well as to its glory. Lord North
cordially assented.

An address, founded on this resolution, was carried to the king, who
faithfully kept the word he had given nearly three years before.
Chatham had then, through Lord North, sought to get his own pension
continued to his second son, William Pitt, afterwards the celebrated
Minister. On that occasion, George III. had declared that the conduct
of Chatham of late had totally obliterated any sense of gratitude
for his former merits; but that, when decrepitude or death should
put an end to him as a trumpet of sedition, he would not punish the
children for the father's sins, but would place the second son's name
where Chatham's had been. He now consented to that; an annuity bill
settled four thousand pounds a-year on the heirs of Chatham to whom
the title should descend, which received the sanction of Parliament;
and the Commons, moreover, voted twenty thousand pounds to pay the
deceased Earl's debts. Both these motions passed the House of Commons
unanimously; but, in the Upper House, the Duke of Chandos attacked the
grants, and condemned severely the custom of loading the country with
annuities in perpetuity. The bill was, however, carried by forty-two
votes to eleven, though four noble Lords entered a protest against it,
namely, Lord Chancellor Bathurst, the Duke of Chandos, Lord Paget, and
Markham, Archbishop of York.

The funeral was but poorly attended. Few members of either House were
there, except those of the Opposition. Gibbon says that "the Government
ingeniously contrived to secure the double odium of suffering the thing
to be done, and of doing it with an ill grace." Burke and Savile,
Thomas Townshend, and Dunning, were pall-bearers; Colonel Barré carried
the banner of the barony of Chatham, supported by the Marquis of
Rockingham and the Dukes of Richmond, Northumberland, and Manchester;
William Pitt, in the place of his elder brother, who was gone to
Gibraltar, was the chief mourner, followed by eight Peers, as assistant
mourners, amongst whom were Lord Shelburne and Lord Camden. The tomb
of Chatham is in the north transept of the Abbey, distinguished by the
monument soon afterwards erected to his honour.

[Illustration: DEATH OF THE EARL OF CHATHAM. (_From the Painting by J.
S. Copley, R.A., in the National Gallery, London._)]

On the 6th of May Burke had brought forward a measure for the benefit
of his long-oppressed country, to the effect that Ireland should
enjoy the privilege of exporting its manufactures, woollen cloths and
woollens excepted, and of importing from the coast of Africa and other
foreign settlements all goods that it required, except indigo and
tobacco. The Irish were to have the additional privilege of sending to
England duty-free, cotton-yarns, sail-cloth, and cordage. Parliament,
for once, looked on these demands with favour. They recollected that
the Americans had endeavoured to excite disaffection amongst the Irish
by reference to the unjust restrictions on their commerce by the
selfishness of England, and they felt the loss of the American trade,
and were willing to encourage commerce in some other direction. Lord
Nugent co-operated with Burke in this endeavour. But the lynx-eyed
avarice of the English merchants was instantly up in arms. During the
Easter recess, a host of petitions was got up against this just
concession. The city of Bristol, which was represented by Burke,
threatened to dismiss him at the next election, if he persisted in
this attempt to extend commercial justice to Ireland; but Burke told
them that he must leave that to them; for himself, he must advocate
free trade, which, if they once tried it, they would find far more
advantageous than monopoly. They kept their word, and threw him out
for his independence. At the same time, the English merchants, as they
had always done before by Ireland, triumphed to a great extent. They
demanded to be heard in Committee by counsel, and the Bills were shorn
down to the least possible degree of benefit.

During the discussion of this question, Sir George Savile brought
forward another. This was a Bill for relieving Catholics, by repealing
the penalties and disabilities imposed by the 10th and 11th of King
William III. The hardships sought to be removed were these:--The
prohibition of Catholic priests or Jesuits teaching their own doctrines
in their own churches, such an act being high treason in natives and
felony in foreigners; the forfeitures by Popish heirs of their property
who received their education abroad, in such cases the estates going
to the nearest Protestant heir; the power given to a Protestant to
take the estate of his father, or next kinsman, who was a Catholic,
during his lifetime; and the debarring all Catholics from acquiring
legal property by any other means than descent. Dunning declared the
restrictions a disgrace to humanity, and perfectly useless, as they
were never enforced; but Sir George Savile said that was not really
the fact, for that he himself knew Catholics who lived in daily
terror of informers and of the infliction of the law. Thurlow, still
Attorney-General, but about to ascend the woolsack, promptly supported
the Bill; and Henry Dundas, the Lord Advocate of Scotland, lamented
that it would afford no relief to his own country. These Acts did not
affect Scotland, as they had been passed before the Union; but Scotland
had a similar Act passed by its own Parliament, and he promised to move
for the repeal of this Scottish Act in the next Session. In the Commons
there was an almost total unanimity on the subject; and in the Lords,
the Bishop of Peterborough was nearly the only person who strongly
opposed it. He asked that if, as it was argued, these Acts were a dead
letter, why disturb the dead?

But smoothly as this transaction had passed, there was a hurricane
behind. The threatened extension of the measure to Scotland roused
all the Presbyterian bigotry of the North. The synod of Glasgow and
other synods passed resolutions vowing to oppose any interference with
the Scottish Act for the suppression of Popery. Press and pulpit were
speedily inflamed; associations were formed in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and
most of the towns, for the defence of the Protestant interest. All the
old persecutions and insults of Catholics were renewed; they could not
safely appear in the streets, or remain safely in their houses. Not
even those liberal enough to advocate the just rights of Catholics were
secure, at least from rude treatment. Dr. Robertson, the historian,
was hooted, when he went abroad, as a favourer of the Papists. There
was as yet no more toleration in Scotland than if a William III. had
never appeared in England. From Scotland the intolerant leaven spread
southwards. It grew fiercer and fiercer, and in a while found a proper
champion in the hot-headed Lord George Gordon, whose exploits as the
ringleader of riot, and fire, and confusion, culminated two years later
in the scenes of destruction and terror for ever memorable as the
Gordon riots.

In Europe war was about to break forth, in consequence of war in
America. Yet the Court of France did not lack solemn warnings
of the fatal path on which they were entering. The honest and
far-sighted financier, Turgot, who had been employed by Louis XVI.,
as Comptroller-General, to endeavour to bring the terribly disordered
revenue of France into order, said, "I must remind you, sire, of these
three words--'No bankruptcy, no augmentation of imposts, no loans.' To
fulfil these three conditions there is but one means--to reduce the
expenditure below the receipt, and sufficiently below it to be able
to economise, every year, twenty millions, in order to clear off the
old debts. Without that, the first cannon fired will force the State
to bankruptcy." He assured the king that all colonies, on arriving at
a condition of maturity, would as naturally abandon the control of
the mother country as children, arriving at majority, do the control
of their parents; that the independence of America would, therefore,
come of itself, without France ruining herself to accelerate the
event; that, as to France wishing Spain to join in this attempt, Spain
must remember her own colonies, for, by assisting to free the British
colonies, she would assuredly assist to liberate her own.

Before there was any declaration of war, the King of France, on the
18th of March, issued an order to seize all British ships in the ports
of that kingdom; and, nine days afterwards, a similar order was issued
by the British Government as to all French ships in their harbours. The
first act of hostility was perpetrated by Admiral Keppel. He had been
appointed first Admiral on the earliest news of the treaty of France
with America; and, being now in the Channel with twenty ships of the
line, he discovered two French frigates, _La Licorne_ and _La Belle
Poule_, reconnoitring his fleet. Not troubling himself that there had
been no declaration of war, Keppel ordered some of his vessels to give
chase; and, on coming up with the _Licorne_, a gun was fired over her,
to call her to surrender; and the Frenchman struck his colours, but not
before he had poured a broadside into the _America_, commanded by Lord
Longford, and wounded four of his men. The "saucy" _Arethusa_, famed in
song and story, in the meantime, had come up with the _Belle Poule_,
and, after a desperate action, drove her in amongst the rocks, whilst
the _Arethusa_ herself was so disabled as to require towing back to the
fleet. A schooner and a French frigate were soon afterwards taken; and,
finding on board these vessels papers stating that the fleet in Brest
harbour consisted of thirty-two sail of the line and ten or twelve
frigates, Keppel returned to Portsmouth for reinforcements.

For this Keppel was much blamed, as it was considered that the papers
might have been made out in order to deceive him. The number of
the French fleet, however, soon proved to be correct, for, during
Keppel's absence, it sailed out of Brest, under the command of Admiral
D'Orvilliers. Keppel, returning with his squadron augmented to thirty
vessels of the line, found D'Orvilliers out at sea, and the _Lively_,
twenty-gun brig, which he had left to watch the motions of the French,
surprised by them in a fog, and captured. On the 27th of July Keppel
came up with D'Orvilliers off Ushant, and instantly gave battle. The
two fleets passed each other on different tacks, keeping up a furious
cannonade for two hours. Keppel then signalled his second in command,
Sir Hugh Palliser, to wear round and renew the attack; but Palliser had
received so much injury, that he could not or did not obey the signal.
Keppel, therefore, bore down to join Palliser's division, and formed
afresh for the fight. But by this time D'Orvilliers was making for
Brest as fast as he could, claiming a victory. Night came down, and the
next morning the French fleet was nearly out of sight. On this, Keppel
returned to England to refit, much out of humour with Palliser.

Meanwhile, in America military intrigues were on foot against
Washington. Amongst these endeavours was one for alienating from him
Lafayette. For this purpose an expedition was planned against Canada,
and Lafayette, as a Frenchman, was appointed to the command, hoping
thus to draw to him the Frenchmen of Canada. Not a word was to be
breathed of it to Washington; and Conway and Starke, two of the most
malicious members of the cabal, were to take command under Lafayette.
On the 24th of January, 1778, Washington received a letter from Gates,
the President of the Board of War, commanding him to send one of his
best regiments to Albany, on the Hudson, for a particular service, and
enclosing another to Lafayette, requiring his immediate attendance
on Gates. Gates found, however, that Lafayette was not to be seduced
from his attachment to Washington. He would not accept the command,
otherwise than as acting in subordination to his Commander-in-Chief;
and he should send all his despatches and bulletins to him, at the same
time that he furnished copies to Congress. The vain Frenchman verily
believed that he was going to restore Canada, not to America, but to
the French Crown--a fear which began to haunt Congress after he had set
out; but the fear was needless. When Lafayette reached his invading
army, instead of two thousand five hundred men, it amounted to about
one thousand two hundred, and the militia were nowhere to be heard of.
Clothes, provisions, sledges, were all wanting, and, instead of leading
his troops, as he was directed, to Lake Champlain, whence he was to
proceed to Île-aux-Noix to blow up the English flotilla, and thence,
crossing the Sorel, to descend the St. Lawrence to Montreal, he gave up
the expedition with a sigh, and returned to the camp of Washington.

In the month of April arrived the permission for Sir William Howe to
retire, and, although he was one of the five Commissioners named for
carrying into effect the proposals in Lord North's Bill, he determined
to leave at the earliest day for England. Lord Howe, the Admiral,
was equally impatient to return, but Lord Sandwich had informed him
that it would be considered a great misfortune for him to quit his
command in the present circumstances. This was, in fact, an order for
his remaining, which the breaking out of the war with France, and the
expected arrival of a French fleet, rendered doubly imperative. Sir
Henry Clinton was appointed to succeed Sir William Howe, and, the
former having arrived in Philadelphia, Howe departed. Scarcely had
Clinton assumed the command, when an order arrived from the Government
at home to abandon Philadelphia, and concentrate his forces at New
York. The French fleet under D'Estaing was on its way, and it was
considered that we had not a fleet of sufficient strength to beat them
back from the mouth of the Delaware.

On the 6th of June--only a fortnight after Howe's departure--the
three Commissioners, Lord Carlisle, Mr. Eden, and Governor Johnstone,
arrived. They learned with consternation and unspeakable chagrin this
order for the evacuation of Philadelphia, and, still more, that so
important a dispatch had been kept concealed from them. There was not
a single circumstance in favour of the Commissioners. At the same
moment that we were making this disastrous retreat from the hardly-won
Philadelphia, publishing our weakness to the world, Congress had just
received the mighty news of French alliance, French aid, and French
ships and troops steering towards their coasts. The Commissioners
came furnished with propositions the most honourable and favours the
most absolute. They were authorised to offer to the Americans that
no military forces should be maintained in the Colonies without the
consent of the General Congress or of the Assembly of a particular
State; that England would take measures to discharge the debts of
America, and to give full value to its paper money; would admit an
agent or agents from the States into the British Parliament, and
send, if they wished it, agents to sit with them in their Assemblies;
that each State should have the sole power of settling its revenue,
and perfect freedom of internal legislation and government--in fact,
everything except total severance from the parent country. Such terms,
conceded at the proper time, would have made war impossible; but the
proper time was long past, and they were now useless. The Commissioners
applied to Washington for a passport to Congress, in order to lay the
proposals brought by the Commissioners before them. But Washington
bluntly refused the passport; and only consented to forward the
letter through the common post. Congress took time to deliberate on
the contents of the letter, and then returned an answer through their
President, that the Act of Parliament and the forms of the Commission
all supposed the American States to be still subject to Great Britain,
which had long ceased to be fact; and that Congress could listen to
no overtures from the King of England until he had withdrawn his fleet
and armies, and was prepared to treat with them as independent States.
The Commissioners could only retire, leaving behind them a manifesto
threatening the utmost severities of war.

Clinton, having now united his forces at New York, directed his
attention to the approach of the fleet of D'Estaing. This had sailed
for the Delaware, expecting to find Lord Howe there; but, finding that
he had sailed for New York, it followed him, and arrived there six days
after him. The fleet of D'Estaing consisted of twelve sail-of-the-line
and six frigates. Howe had only ten sail-of-the-line, and some of them
of only forty or fifty guns, and a few frigates. Besides, D'Estaing
had heavier metal, and ships in much better condition, for those of
Howe were old and out of repair, and their crews were considerably
deficient. Altogether, D'Estaing had eight hundred and fifty-four guns;
Howe, only six hundred and fourteen. From D'Estaing's superiority of
force it was quite expected that he would attack Howe; but he was
dissuaded by the pilots from entering the harbour, and lay outside
eleven days, during which time he landed the Ambassador. Lord Howe
showed much spirit in preparing for an encounter, though he was daily
in expectation of Admiral Byron with some additional ships, the Admiral
coming to supersede him. He put his ships in the best order he could,
and the English seamen hurried in from all quarters to man his vessels.
A thousand volunteers came from the transports, and masters and mates
of merchantmen offered their services. Just, however, when it was
expected that D'Estaing would avail himself of the tide, on the 22nd of
July, to enter the harbour, he sailed away for Rhode Island, and up the
Newport river. In a few days Howe sailed in quest of D'Estaing. They
found D'Estaing joined by Lafayette with two thousand American troops,
and by General Sullivan with ten thousand more, and D'Estaing proposed
to land four thousand from his fleet. The English garrison in Newport
amounted to only five thousand men. But here a contest arose between
D'Estaing and Sullivan for the supreme command, and this was not abated
till Howe with his fleet hove in sight. Then D'Estaing stood out to
sea, in spite of the remonstrances of Sullivan, Greene, and the other
American officers. Lord Howe endeavoured to bring him to action, at
the same time manœuvring to obtain the weather-gauge of him. In these
mutual endeavours to obtain the advantage of the wind, the two fleets
stood away quite out of sight of Rhode Island, and Sullivan commenced
in their absence the siege of Newport. Howe, at length, seeing that he
could not obtain the weather-gauge, determined to attack the French
to leeward, but at this moment a terrible storm arose, and completely
parted the hostile fleets, doing both of them great damage. D'Estaing
returned into the harbour of Newport, but only to inform the Americans
that he was too much damaged to remain, but must make for Boston to
refit. Sullivan and the other officers remonstrated vehemently against
his departure; but in vain. Scarcely had D'Estaing disappeared, when
Sir Henry Clinton himself, leading four thousand men, arrived in Rhode
Island, and Sullivan crossed to the mainland in haste. He blamed the
French for the failure of the enterprise.

[Illustration: GIBRALTAR.

FROM A DRAWING BY BIRKET FOSTER, R.W.S.]

[Illustration: THE SAUCY "ARETHUSA" AND THE "BELLE POULE." (_See p._
255.)]

Lord Howe, when he had collected his ships after the storm which
separated him from D'Estaing, again made for Boston, in the hope of
being able to attack the French Admiral in the harbour; but he found
him too well protected by the batteries to be able to reach him. He
therefore returned to New York, and, as his leave of absence had
arrived, he surrendered the command to Admiral Byron, and took his
leave of America on the 26th of September, and reached Portsmouth on
the 25th of October. Byron now had a very good fleet, consisting of
ships of one size or other to the number of ninety-one sail. Such a
fleet assembled on the American coast at a proper time would have
intercepted and destroyed the fleet of D'Estaing, and have cleared all
those waters of French and American privateers. Byron no sooner came
into command than he also made a voyage to Boston, to see whether he
could not come at D'Estaing's fleet; but his usual weather attended
him, his ships were scattered by a tempest, and D'Estaing took the
opportunity of sailing to the West Indies, according to his orders.
Notwithstanding the agreement of the French to assist America, they
were thinking much more of recovering Canada or seizing on the British
West India islands for themselves.

The British, apprised of the views of France, determined to send a
fleet and troops to protect the West Indies; but, instead of sending
the requisite force from home, the Ministers ordered Clinton to send
five thousand men from New York. This was another example of the feeble
and penurious manner in which they carried on this war. Clinton had
recently sent three thousand five hundred men to Georgia, and now this
detachment of five thousand diminished his already insufficient army by
eight thousand five hundred men. It was, therefore, utterly impossible
that he could take another decisive step in America during this year,
and thus Congress was left to strengthen its army and to await fresh
reinforcements from France.

Commodore Hotham, with only five ships of the line, a bomb-vessel, and
some frigates, conveyed Major-General Grant and this force to the West
Indies, being nearly the whole way within a short sail of D'Estaing
and his much superior fleet, without knowing it. Grant's destination
was to protect Dominica; but, before his arrival, Marshal de Bouillé,
Governor-General of Martinique, had landed with two thousand men, and
had compelled Lieutenant-Governor Stewart, who had only about one
hundred regular troops and some indifferent militia for its defence, to
surrender. Grant being too late to save Dominica, turned his attention
to St. Lucia, being conveyed thither by the joint fleet of Hotham
and Barrington. They had scarcely made a good footing on the island
when D'Estaing's fleet hove in sight. He had twelve sail-of-the-line,
numerous frigates and transports, and ten thousand men on board, and
the English would have had little chance could he have landed. But
the British fleet resolutely attacked him, and, after several days'
struggle, prevented his landing more than half his troops. These were
so gallantly repulsed by Brigadier Medows, who was at the head of only
one thousand five hundred men, that, on the 28th December, D'Estaing
again embarked his troops, and quitted the island. The original French
force under Chevalier de Michaud then surrendered, and St. Lucia was
won, though Dominica was lost.

The first thing which occupied the Government on the opening of the
year 1779 were the trials of Keppel and Palliser. That of Keppel
commenced on the 7th of January, and lasted till the 11th of February.
The Court consisted of five admirals and eight captains; Sir Thomas
Pye, Admiral of the White, being president. Keppel was acquitted,
and pronounced to have behaved like a brave and experienced officer,
and to have rendered essential service to the State. This sentence
occasioned a wonderful rejoicing in the City, where Keppel's political
principles prevailed. The portico of the Mansion House was illuminated
two successive nights, and there were general illuminations throughout
London and Westminster. It had been well had the demonstration ended
there; but the mob took the opportunity of the guard which had been
stationed before the house of Palliser in Pall Mall being withdrawn
at midnight to smash in his windows, burst in the doors, and destroy
his furniture. The work of destruction once begun was soon extended.
The mob demolished the windows of Lord North and Lord George Germaine,
as well as of the Admiralty, Government being looked upon as the real
enemies of Keppel and accessories of Palliser. The next day, the
12th of February, Parliament and the City Corporation gave the most
unmistakable sanction to these proceedings. Both Houses of Parliament
voted thanks to Keppel: the Lords unanimously, the Commons with only
one dissenting voice. The Court of Common Council not only voted thanks
to Keppel, but presented him with the freedom of the City in a box of
heart of oak, richly ornamented, and the City was more brilliantly
illuminated than before, the Monument being decked out with coloured
lamps.

Palliser, incensed at these marked censures on himself, vacated his
seat in Parliament, and resigned his Governorship of Scarborough
Castle, his seat at the Board of Admiralty, his colonelcy of
marines, retaining only his post of Vice-Admiral, and demanding a
court-martial. This was held on board the _Sandwich_, in Portsmouth
harbour, and lasted twenty-one days, resulting finally in a verdict of
acquittal, though with some censure for his not having acquainted his
Commander-in-Chief instantly that the disabled state of his ship had
prevented him from obeying the signal to join for the renewal of the
fight. This sentence pleased neither party. Keppel thought Palliser
too easily let off--Palliser that he was sacrificed to party feeling
against Government.

In Ireland the effervescence assumed the shape of resistance to
commercial injustice. It was, indeed, impossible to condemn too
strongly the injustice which that country had endured for ages, and in
nothing more than in the flagrant restrictions heaped upon its commerce
and manufactures in favour of English interests. The Irish now seized
on the opportunity while America was waging war against the very same
treatment to imitate the American policy. They formed associations in
Dublin, Cork, Kilkenny, and other places, for the non-importation of
British goods which could be manufactured in Ireland, till England
and Ireland were placed on an equal footing in all that related to
manufactures and commerce. Ministers, who had turned a deaf ear for
years, and almost for ages, to such complaints, were now alarmed,
especially as there was a rumour of French invasion, which might be
so materially aided by disaffection in Ireland. They therefore made
a pecuniary grant to relieve the commercial distress in Ireland, and
passed two Acts for the encouragement of the growth of tobacco and
hemp, and the manufacture of linen in that island. These concessions,
however, were not deemed sufficient, and the people formed themselves
into Volunteer Associations, appointing their own officers, and
defraying the cost of their own equipments. This was done under the
plea of the danger of invasion; but Government knew very well that
American agents had been very busy sowing discontent in Ireland, and
they saw too much resemblance in these things to the proceedings on the
other side of the Atlantic not to view them with alarm. The Marquis
of Rockingham, who had been well instructed in the real grievances of
Ireland by Burke, moved in the House of Lords, on the 11th of May, for
the production of all papers necessary to enable the House to come
to a full understanding of the trade of Ireland and of mercantile
restrictions on it with a view to doing impartial justice to that
kingdom. Lord Gower promised that these should be ready for production
next Session.

On the 16th of June, just as the House was growing impatient for
prorogation, Lord North, who earlier in the Session had made some
unsuccessful negotiations with the Whigs, announced intelligence
which put such prorogation out of the question. He informed the
House that the Spanish Ambassador had delivered a hostile manifesto
and had thereupon quitted London. On the 17th a Royal Message was
delivered, asserting his Majesty's surprise at this act of Spain,
and declaring that nothing on his part had provoked it. But it by
no means took anybody else by surprise, and the Opposition strongly
reproached Government for not giving credit to their warnings on this
head. In the Commons, Lord John Cavendish, and, in the Lords, the
Earl of Abingdon and the Duke of Richmond, moved that the fleet and
army should be immediately withdrawn from America, that peace be made
with those States, and all our forces be concentrated in chastising
France and Spain, as they deserved, for their treachery and unprovoked
interference. They called for a total change of Ministers and measures.

These motions were defeated, and Lord North, on the 21st of June,
moved for the introduction of a Bill to double the militia and raise
volunteer corps. The proposal to double the militia was rejected, that
to raise volunteer corps accepted. To man the Navy a Bill was brought
in to suspend for six months all exemptions from impressment into the
Royal Navy. The measure was passed through two stages before rising,
and carried the next morning, and sent up to the Lords. There it met
with strong opposition, and did not receive the Royal Assent till the
last day of the Session. This was the 3rd of July, and was followed, on
the 9th, by a Royal Proclamation ordering all horses and provisions,
in case of invasion, to be driven into the interior. The batteries
of Plymouth were manned, and a boom was drawn across the harbour at
Portsmouth. A large camp of militia was established at Cox Heath, in
front of Maidstone, and, in truth, this demonstration of a patriotic
spirit was very popular.

Spain having now, most fatally for herself, been persuaded to join
France in the war with England, turned her first attention to Gibraltar
which she hoped France would enable her to conquer. But France showed
no disposition to assist her to regain Gibraltar. At the same time,
the great object was to accomplish the union of the French and Spanish
fleets, which they deemed must then be invincible, and not only drive
the English from the seas, but enable them to land in England itself.
The French managed to muster fifty thousand men, whom they marched to
the different ports on the Channel, from Hâvre to St. Malo. By this
means, keeping England in fear of an invasion, their fleet slipped
out of Brest on the 3rd of June, under the command of D'Orvilliers,
and effected the desired junction with the Spaniards at Cadiz. The
French fleet consisted of thirty sail of the line; the Spanish, of
thirty-eight; making the united fleet sixty-eight sail, besides
numerous frigates and smaller vessels. Never, since the days of the
Armada, had such a mighty squadron threatened the shores of Great
Britain.

To oppose this tremendous force, our Admiral, Sir Charles Hardy,
had only thirty-eight sail. In the confidence of their overwhelming
strength, the Franco-Spanish fleet sailed directly for the English
coast. Hardy, who was a brave seaman, but somewhat past his prime,
endeavoured to prevent their insulting our shores, and pursued them
first near the Scilly Isles, and then towards the straits of the
Channel. On shore the panic was intense, the French and Spaniards
being expected every hour to land. But on the 31st of August, the wind
veering enabled Hardy to get the weather-gauge of them; and being now
in the Channel, he was prepared to engage their fleet, though so much
superior in numbers; and on shore great quantities of military and
volunteers had collected. Hardy anchored off Spithead. At the sight
of this combination of circumstances, the courage of the Spaniards
and French evaporated. They began to quarrel amongst themselves. The
Spaniards were for landing on some part of the British coast; the
French admiral contended that they would have the equinoctial gales
immediately upon them, and that many of their vessels were in bad
condition. The Spanish commander declared that, this being the case,
he would relinquish the enterprise, and return to his own seaports.
D'Orvilliers was necessarily compelled to return too, and retired to
Brest, where a pestilential disease attacked the French, from having
been so long cooped up in foul ships. Well might Lord North, on the
meeting of Parliament, say, "Our enemies fitted out a formidable fleet;
they appeared upon our coasts; they talked big; threatened a great
deal; did nothing, and retired."

In America, the belligerents were early afoot this year; but the
attention and the forces of the English were drawn from the States
to the West Indies by the determined attempts of the French to make
themselves masters of our islands there. D'Estaing, who was joined
by another French squadron under the Marquis de Vaudreuil, was early
opposed by Admiral Byron, who arrived at St. Lucia from the American
coast on the 6th of January. This Admiral Vaudreuil, on his way, had
visited our settlements on the coast of Africa, and taken from us
Senegal; but Sir Edward Hughes soon arrived there, and took their
settlement of Goree, so that it was a mere exchange of territory.
In June Admiral Byron was obliged to escort our merchant fleet to a
certain distance, and D'Estaing seized that opportunity to make himself
master of St. Vincent and Grenada, where the garrisons were weak. On
the return of Byron, on the 5th of July, he came to an engagement with
D'Estaing off Grenada; but the French admiral, after an indecisive
action, took advantage of the night to sail away, boasting of a great
victory. He now made for Georgia and Carolina, to assist the Americans
in endeavouring to wrest from us our recent conquest of Savannah, in
Georgia.

In fact, the chief scene of the war during this year continued to be
south. In September, D'Estaing arrived off Savannah, to co-operate with
the American forces in recovering that important place. He brought
with him twenty-four ships of the line and fourteen frigates, and
was moreover attended by a numerous squadron of French and American
privateers, besides carrying a considerable body of troops. On learning
D'Estaing's approach, General Lincoln and Governor Rutledge began to
march their troops towards Savannah, and sent a number of small vessels
to enable the French to carry their troops up the river, and land them
near the town. General Prevost, commander of the English garrison, made
the most active preparations to receive them. D'Estaing had agreed
to wait for the arrival of General Lincoln, with the South Carolina
force, but, with the want of faith characteristic of the man, on the
12th of September he landed three thousand men, and summoned General
Prevost to surrender in the name of the French king. Prevost claimed
twenty-four hours to decide, and this time he employed in strengthening
his defences. Before the expiration of this time Colonel Maitland, who
was on the march for Beaufort with eight hundred veterans, came in,
and Prevost returned for answer that he would defend the place to the
utmost. On the 16th, General Lincoln arrived, and was greatly incensed
to find that D'Estaing had broken the agreement to wait for him, and
still worse, had summoned the place in the name of France instead of
the Congress.

D'Estaing, who expected to have taken the place with little trouble,
greatly alarmed lest the English should seize most of the French West
Indian islands in his absence, urged an assault contrary to the wishes
of Lincoln, and this was made on the 9th of October. The forces, five
thousand eight hundred in number, were led on in two columns, but they
were received by such a raking fire from walls and redoubts, and from
the brig flanking the right of the British lines, that they were thrown
back in confusion; and before D'Estaing and Lincoln could restore
order, Colonel Maitland made a general sortie with fixed bayonets,
and the whole attacking force fled in utter rout. D'Estaing would now
remain no longer, but re-embarked his forces, and sailed away, to the
unspeakable chagrin of the Americans, who retreated in all haste, the
greater part of the militia breaking up and returning home.

[Illustration: LORD NORTH.]

The effect of the American war, so extremely unsatisfactory to the
nation, had now perceptibly reduced the influence of Lord North and
his Ministry. Their majorities, which had formerly been four to one,
had now fallen to less than two to one; and this process was going
rapidly on. The changes in the Cabinet had been considerable, but they
had not contributed to reinvigorate it. The removal of Thurlow to the
House of Lords had left nobody equal to him in the Commons to contend
with such men as Fox, Burke, Barré, and the several others. Wedderburn
had taken Thurlow's place as Attorney-General, and Wallace had stepped
into Wedderburn's as Solicitor-General. Lord Weymouth, who had held the
posts of Secretary of State for the North and South Departments since
the death of the Earl of Suffolk, now resigned, and Lord Hillsborough
was appointed to the Southern Department, and Lord Stormont to the
Northern Department. Neither of these changes was popular. The Duke of
Bedford's party had become more and more cool towards Lord North, and
in every respect there was a declining power in the Cabinet. It was at
variance with itself, and was fast losing the confidence of the public.
Lord George Germaine was still retained by the king as Secretary of the
Colonies, notwithstanding the disgust he had excited by the unfortunate
planning of the expedition of Burgoyne.

On the 25th of November Parliament was opened, and the king, in his
speech, made a strong appeal to the country for support against
the unprovoked war on the part of France and Spain. The Marquis of
Rockingham, in proposing an amendment on the Address in the Lords,
was extremely severe. He concluded by moving that every part of the
Address, except the title, should be expunged, and that, instead of
what then stood, a prayer should be inserted that his Majesty would
reflect on the extent of territory which marked the opening of his
reign, the opulence and power, the reputation abroad, the concord
at home, to which he had succeeded, and now on the endangered,
impoverished, enfeebled, distracted, and even dismembered, state of the
whole, after the enormous grants of his successive Parliaments, and
calling on him, as the only remedy of impending ruin, to dismiss his
present evil councillors, and summon new and more auspicious ones. The
language was crushing, but it derived its force from its undeniable
truth. Lord John Cavendish moved a similar amendment in the Commons;
and the Opposition declared that it was well that his Majesty's speech
expressed trust in Divine Providence, for Providence was the only
friend that his Government had now left; and that our arms, both on
sea and land, were paralysed by the scandalous practice of putting at
the head of the army and navy mere Court favourites, and by the want
of all vigour and sagacity of planning and following up our campaigns.
Fox went further, and asserted that weakness and stupidity could not
effect the wholesale shame and ruin that surrounded us; that there must
be treachery somewhere; and that, if this were driven a little further,
the people would seize on arms, and chase the miserable Cabinet from
its abused seat. Lord North made the best reply that the circumstances
admitted; but there were no symptoms of the Ministers resigning, or
being removed by the infatuated monarch, and the amendments were
rejected in both Houses, as a matter of course.

During this debate, the state of Ireland had been repeatedly alluded
to, and, on the 13th of December, Lord North brought forward his
promised scheme of Irish relief, which consisted in extending the
exportation of woollen cloths to wool, and wool-flocks, to all
kinds of glass manufactures, and in free trade to the British
colonies--privileges that it seems wonderfully strange to us, at the
present day, could ever have been withheld from any portion of the same
empire. The critical state of America, no doubt, had much to do with
the grant of these privileges, for all of them were conceded.

The ruinous expenditure of the war, and the continual difficulties into
which the Civil List had fallen, now roused throughout the country a
strong demand for economical reform. The Duke of Richmond introduced
the subject into the Upper House by moving, on the 7th of December,
that an Address be conveyed to his Majesty representing the distress
of the country, the heavy demands upon it for the complicated war, and
recommending a reduction of all useless expenses; it also set out that
profusion, so far from being strength, was weakness; that it behoved
all classes of officials to consent to a curtailment of the lavish
salaries; and that it would be a noble example in the Crown to take
the lead, which could not fail of enhancing the love of the people,
and diffusing an excellent influence throughout every department of
the State. His grace represented that the vast military establishment
by sea and land could not include less than three hundred thousand
men; that, since the beginning of the American war the expenditure had
added sixty-three millions of pounds to the Debt, and its interest,
eight millions, to our annual payments. The interest of the Debt had
now become of itself equal to the whole of our expenditure in years
of peace before. He laid much stress on the belief that the example
of the king would induce all orders of men to make equal sacrifices
to the needs of their country. Richmond declared that he had no wish
to curtail the pensions of those who had wasted their fortunes in the
service of their country, as the Pelhams, for the Duke of Newcastle
was said to have sunk five hundred thousand pounds during the years
that he so fondly adhered to office. He gave the Ministers and the
aristocracy credit for a disinterestedness which they did not possess.
They admitted the vastness of the expenditure, and that there was
wastefulness, and that they were desirous of economy; but they could
not believe that any reduction of the Civil List would be sensibly
felt, whilst it would reflect dishonour on the country, as if it were
incapable of maintaining the Crown in due credit. Lord Chancellor
Thurlow affected not to believe in the distress, or that any case of
public extravagance had been made out. The Duke of Richmond's motion
was negatived by seventy-seven votes against thirty-six.

But on the 15th of December, only eight days later, Lord Shelburne
followed up the question by moving that the alarming additions annually
made to the Debt, under the name of extraordinaries incurred in
different services, demanded an immediate check; that the distresses of
landed and mercantile interests made the strictest economy requisite,
and that the expenditure of such large sums without grants from
Parliament was an alarming violation of the Constitution. He showed
that these expenses bore no proportion to those of any former wars as
to the services performed for them, and stated plainly that the cause
was notorious--that the greater part of the money went into the pockets
of the Ministers' contracting friends. Lord Shelburne's motion was also
rejected. He then gave notice for a further motion of a like nature on
the 8th of February.

The matter was not to be lightly or easily dismissed. On the very
same day that Lord Shelburne made his motion in the Lords, Edmund
Burke gave notice of a series of resolutions which he should introduce
after the Christmas recess. He stated the outline of his intended
measures for economical reform. Whilst he was delivering a very fine
speech on this occasion, Fox came in from the House of Lords, where
he had been listening to the debate on Lord Shelburne's motion, and
warmly supported him, lamenting that there was not virtue enough in
the House to carry through so necessary--so patriotic a measure. "I
am just come," he said, "from another place where the first men in
this kingdom--the first in abilities, the first in estimation--are now
libelling this House." The announcement excited, as Fox intended, much
surprise, and he continued--"Yes, I repeat it. Every instance they
give--and they give many and strong instances--of uncorrected abuses,
with regard to the public money, is a libel on this House. Everything
they state on the growth of corrupt influence--and it never was half so
flourishing--is a libel on this House."

The corruptionists in Parliament were deaf to eloquence or
remonstrance; the base contractors sitting there, and the other vile
absorbers of the money voted by the country for the most sacred
purposes, for the preservation of the integrity and existence of
the empire, sat still in impudent hardihood; but the sound of these
stirring words was already out of doors. The City of London voted
thanks to the Duke of Richmond and the Earl of Shelburne for their
motions, and for their promised resumption of the subject on the 8th
of February. A great meeting was called at York to induce that county
to prepare a petition for reform in Parliament. Many efforts were made
by persuasion and by menace to prevent these freeholders from meeting.
But the Marquis of Rockingham and Sir George Savile stood forward,
attended the meeting, and encouraged the freeholders. The meeting was
held on the 30th of December, and, besides these distinguished men,
was attended by peers, gentlemen, clergymen--the richest and noblest
in the county. A petition was adopted to the House of Commons in
the strongest terms. Before separating, this most important meeting
appointed a committee of correspondence, consisting of sixty-one
gentlemen, to carry out the objects of the petition, and still further
to prepare the plan of a national association for the promotion of the
great business of reform. The contagion spread rapidly; in numbers of
other counties, and in many of the leading cities, similar petitions
were got up, and committees of correspondence formed. The result was
that very soon, in the counties of Middlesex, Chester, Hants, Hertford,
Sussex, Huntingdon, Surrey, Cumberland, Bedford, Essex, Gloucester,
Somerset, Wilts, Dorset, Devon, Norfolk, Berks, Bucks, Nottingham,
Kent, Northumberland, Suffolk, Hereford, Cambridge, Derby, Northampton,
and the towns of York and Bristol, Cambridge, Nottingham, Newcastle,
Reading, and Bridgewater, petitions were prepared, and in most of them
corresponding committees organised.

When Parliament reassembled, after the Christmas recess, the
great question of economical reform took the first place in its
deliberations. The great Yorkshire petition was introduced on the 8th
of February by Sir George Savile, who, as the forms of the House then
allowed, made a speech on its presentation. He was a small, weakly man,
but of the most upright character, and was listened to with the highest
respect. On the 11th Burke rose to bring forward his extensive scheme
of retrenchment and reform. It was a scheme of reforms so vast and
multiform as to require five Bills to include them. It dealt with the
sale of the Crown lands; the abolition of the separate jurisdictions
of the Principality of Wales, the Duchies of Cornwall, Chester, and
Lancaster; of the Court offices of Treasurer, Comptroller, Cofferer,
Keeper of the Stag, Buck, and Fox Hounds, of the Wardrobe, Robes,
Jewels, etc.; of the recently-instituted office of Third Secretary of
State; the reduction and simplification of offices in the Ordnance and
Mint departments; the Patent Office of the Exchequer; the regulation
of the pay offices of the army, navy, and of pensioners; and, finally,
the Civil List. Such a host of corrupt interests was assailed by this
wholesale scheme, that it was certain to receive a very determined
opposition; and it might have been supposed that it would be
encountered by the most rabid rage. But not so. The great tribe whose
interests were affected were too adroit strategists for that; they
were too well assured that, being legion, and all knit up together
from the Crown downwards, embracing every branch of the aristocracy,
they were safe, and might, therefore, listen to the fervid eloquence
of the poetic Irishman, as they would to a tragedy that did not affect
them further than their amusement was concerned. Lord North very soon
managed to put the Principality and the Duchies out of the range of his
inquiries. He declared that nobody was more zealous for a permanent
system of economy than he was; but then, unfortunately, the king's
patrimonial revenue was concerned in these Duchies, and therefore he
must be first consulted; and, what was still more embarrassing was,
that these proposals affected the rights of the Prince of Wales, and
therefore could not be mooted till he was of age; so that branch of
the inquiry was lopped off, under the gentle phrase of postponement.
When the discussion reached the reform of the king's household, Burke
was compelled to admit that a former attempt to reform this lavish
yet penurious household by Lord Talbot, had been suddenly stopped,
because, forsooth, it would endanger the situation of an honourable
member who was turnspit in the kitchen! The end of it was, that though
all expressed themselves as delighted and as acquiescent, almost
every detail was thrown out in committee. The only point carried was
that which abolished the Board of Trade, by a majority, however, of
only eight. The Board of Trade was ere long restored again. The other
portions of Burke's great scheme occupied the House through March,
April, and May, and then was got rid of by a manœuvre in the committee,
Burke declaring that he would bring the measure forward again next
session.

But the subject was not so easily disposed of. Colonel Barré, in
the House of Commons, only three days after Burke introduced his
great motion, declared that Burke's measure did not go far enough;
that Burke did not mean to interfere with the enormous pensions and
overpaid places already in possession; and that he would himself
introduce a motion for a Committee of Accounts, to probe all these
depths of corruption, and to examine into the army extravagances,
which were excessive, and to him unaccountable. Lord North, so far
from opposing this motion, declared his surprise that no one had
thought of introducing it before, and that he was extremely anxious
himself for the reduction of all needless expenditure. The Opposition
expressed their particular satisfaction; but they were rather too
precipitate, for North made haste to get the business into his own
hands; and, on the 2nd of March, was ready with a Bill of his own
framing. The Opposition were lost in astonishment; and Barré denounced
this perfidious conduct in the Minister in terms of just indignation.
The whole Opposition, who found themselves outwitted, declared that the
scheme, so far from being intended to relieve the country, was meant to
shield existing abuses, and they accordingly resisted it to the utmost.
North, however, by his standing majority of myrmidons, carried the Bill
through the House; and Sir Guy Carleton, late Governor of Canada, and
five others, were appointed Commissioners. Thus the whole motion was in
reality shelved.

Two more attempts were made. Mr. Crewe reproduced the Bill to disable
revenue officers from voting at elections, which was at once rejected.
Sir Philip Jennings Clerke then reintroduced his Bill to exclude
contractors from the House of Commons, unless their contracts were
obtained at a public bidding. This was suffered, for appearance' sake,
to pass the House with little opposition; but it was arrested in the
Peers by the law lords, at the head of whom were Mansfield and Thurlow,
and thrown out.

On April 6th a great meeting was held in Westminster, avowedly to add
weight to the county petitions for economical reform, which were now
pouring into the House of Commons. Fox presided, and was supported by
the Dukes of Devonshire and Portland. Government, to throw discredit
on the meeting, affected alarm, and, at the request of the Middlesex
magistrates, who were believed to have been moved by Ministers to make
it, a body of troops was drawn up in the neighbourhood of Westminster
Hall. The indignation of the Opposition was so much excited that Burke,
in the House of Commons, commenting on this attempt to insinuate
evil designs against the friends of reform, denounced the Middlesex
magistrates as creeping vermin--the very "scum of the earth;" and Fox
declared that if soldiers were to be let loose on the constitutional
meetings of the people, then all who went to such meetings must go
armed!

Whilst these indignant sentiments were uttering, the petitions for
economical reform were pouring in from all parts of the country in such
numbers that the table of the House appeared buried under them. The
House went into committee upon the subject, and then Dunning rose and
introduced his famous motion for a resolution in these words:--"That
it is the opinion of this committee that the influence of the Crown
has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished." Dunning
declaimed in language bold and unsparing, and expatiated at great
length on the alarming influence of the Crown, purchased by the lavish
expenditure of the people's money, the people thus being made the
instruments of their own slavery. He censured in stinging terms the
treatment of the economical plans of Burke, the treacherous terms
of approbation with which Ministers had received them, and then had
trodden on them piecemeal till they had left of them the merest
shred. He trusted the nation would still resent this audacious mockery
of reform--this insult to the most distinguished patriots. This was
the way, he contended, that this Administration had again and again
acted--adding ridicule to oppression. Dunning's motion was carried, at
a late hour of the night, by two hundred and thirty-three votes against
two hundred and fifteen.

[Illustration: "NO POPERY" RIOTERS ASSAULTING LORD MANSFIELD. (_See p._
266.)]

Encouraged by this unwonted success (for the words of the speaker,
reminding them of the coming elections, had sunk deep into many
hearts). Dunning immediately moved a second proposition, namely,
that it was competent to that House to examine into and correct any
abuses of the Civil List, as well as of any other branch of the public
revenue. The resolution was carried without a division. Immediately on
the heels of this, Thomas Pitt moved that it was the duty of the House
to redress without delay the grievances enumerated in the petitions
of the people. Lord North implored that they would not proceed any
further that night; but this resolution was also put and carried,
likewise without division. Immediately, though it was past one o'clock
in the morning, Fox moved that all these motions should be reported.
Lord North, in the utmost consternation, declared this procedure was
"violent, arbitrary, and unusual;" but Fox pressed his motion, and it
was carried, like the rest, without a division, and the Report was
brought up.

When the committee on the petitions next met, on the 10th of April,
Dunning, elated with his success, was ready with fresh resolutions.
His first was that it was necessary for the purity and independence
of Parliament that the proper officer should, within ten days of the
meeting of Parliament in each Session, lay before the House an account
of moneys paid out of the Civil List, or out of any part of the public
revenue, to any member of Parliament. This, too, was triumphantly
carried, only to be followed by another from Dunning, that the persons
holding the offices of Treasurer of the Chamber, Treasurer of the
Household, or clerkships of the Green Cloth, with all their deputies,
should be incapable of sitting in the House of Commons. Here the
confounded Ministerial members began to recover their spirit under the
sweeping sentences passed against them, and Dunning only carried this
resolution by a majority of two. Either they thought they had done
enough by their late votes to satisfy their constituents, or Ministers
had found means to render them obedient by menacing losses from their
side, for when Dunning proposed a resolution that his Majesty should be
requested not to dissolve or prorogue Parliament until proper measures
had been taken to secure to the people the benefits prayed for in
their petitions, the motion was rejected by a majority of fifty-one
in a very full House. Fox and Dunning vented their indignation at
this result on the Ministerial phalanx, whom they declared to be the
worst of slaves--slaves sold by themselves into the most contemptible
thraldom. But their castigation was in vain; the troop was brought back
to its primitive compliance, and defeated every future motion from the
Opposition.

Whilst the Opposition was in the dejection of disappointed hopes,
suddenly there arose an explosion of popular opinion against the
Catholics, stimulated and led on by an insane fanatic, which threatened
the most direful consequences, and produced sufficiently frightful
ones--the so-called Gordon Riots.

We have already noted the excitement in Scotland at the Act which was
passed in 1778 for the repeal of some of the severest disabilities of
the Catholics; and this had been greatly increased by the proposal
to extend its operation by a second Act to Scotland. The fanatics of
Scotland were promptly on the alert, and there were dangerous riots in
Edinburgh and Glasgow. But the same unchristian spirit had now spread
to England, and Protestant Associations, as they were called, linked
together by corresponding committees, were established in various
towns, and had elected as their president and Parliamentary head Lord
George Gordon, a brother of the Duke of Gordon. During the spring
of 1780 he presented several petitions from the people of Kent, and
he then conceived his grand idea of a petition long enough to reach
from the Speaker's chair to the centre window at Whitehall, out of
which Charles walked to the scaffold. At a meeting of the Protestant
Association, held towards the end of May in Coachmakers' Hall, in
London, he announced that he would present this petition on the 2nd
of June. Resolutions were passed that the Association and all their
friends must go in procession on that day to present the petition. They
were to assemble in St. George's Fields; every one must have a blue
cockade in his hat, to distinguish him from the enemies of the cause;
and Lord George, to stimulate them, told them that unless the gathering
amounted to twenty thousand he would not present the petition. On the
26th of May he stated in the House of Commons that he should appear
there with the petition at the head of all those who had signed it.
Accordingly, on 2nd of June vast crowds assembled on the appointed
spot, amounting to sixty thousand, or, as many asserted, one hundred
thousand men. This formidable throng was arranged in four battalions,
one consisting entirely of Scotsmen, who received Lord George with
enthusiastic acclamations, and, after a vapouring speech from him,
marched by different ways to Westminster.

The Lords had been summoned to discuss a motion by the Duke of Richmond
on universal suffrage and annual Parliaments, and Lord Mansfield was
to preside in the absence of Lord Chancellor Thurlow. Mansfield had
excited the particular resentment of these zealots by having acquitted
a Catholic priest charged with the crime of celebrating Mass, and
no sooner did he make his appearance than he was assailed with the
fiercest yells and execrations. His carriage windows were dashed in,
his robe was torn, and he escaped finally into the House with his wig
in great disorder, and himself pale and trembling. The Archbishop of
York was an object of the particular fury of these Protestants. They
tore off his lawn sleeves and flung them in his face. The Bishop of
Lincoln, a brother of Lord Thurlow, had his carriage demolished, and
was compelled to seek refuge in a neighbouring house, where he is said
to have made his way in women's clothes over the roof into another
dwelling. The Secretaries of State, Lords Stormont, Townshend, and
Hillsborough, were rudely handled. It was found impossible to proceed
with the Orders of the Day. The peers retired as best they might, one
by one, making their way home on foot, or in hackney coaches, in the
dark, and no one was left in the House except Lord Mansfield and a few
servants.

[Illustration: THE GORDON RIOTS.

FROM THE PAINTING BY SEYMOUR LUCAS, R.A.]

The members of the House of Commons had to run the gauntlet of these
furies much like the Lords. They pulled many of them out of their
carriages, tore their clothes from their backs, and maltreated them,
crying continually, "Repeal the Bill! No Popery! Lord George Gordon!"
The frantic multitude forced their way into the lobby of the House, and
attempted to break into the House itself. They thundered at the doors,
and there was imminent danger of their forcing their way in. Meanwhile,
Lord George Gordon and Alderman Ball were presenting the petition,
and moved that the House should consider it at once in committee. An
amendment was moved, that it should be considered on Tuesday, the 6th;
but there were not means of putting either motion or amendment, for the
mob had possession of the lobby, and the Serjeant-at-Arms declared it
was impossible to clear it. Whilst this confusion lasted, Lord George
Gordon exerted himself to excite the mob to the highest possible pitch.
So long as members were speaking, he continued to go to the top of the
gallery stairs, ever and anon, to drop a word to the crowd below likely
to exasperate them against the particular member speaking. "Burke,
the member for Bristol, is up now," he cried; and then coming again,
"Do you know that Lord North calls you a mob?" This he repeated till
the crowd was worked up to a maddening frenzy, and made so desperate
a battering at the door, that it was momentarily expected they would
burst it open. Several of the members vowed to Lord George, that, if
his rabid friends did violate the sanctity of the House, they would run
him through as the first man stepped over the lintel. These determined
proceedings daunted Lord George. He retired to the eating-room,
and sank quietly into a chair. Meanwhile, Lord North had privately
despatched a messenger for a party of the Guards. Till these could
arrive, some of the more popular members went out, and used their
endeavours to appease the rage of the multitude. Lord Mahon harangued
them from the balcony of a coffee-house, and produced considerable
effect. About nine o'clock, Mr. Addington, a Middlesex magistrate, came
up with a party of Horse Guards. He spoke kindly to the people, and
advised them to disperse quietly, which, the exasperator being absent,
many of them did. Soon after came a party of foot soldiers, who were
drawn up in the Court of Requests, and they soon cleared the lobby. The
members then boldly proceeded with the debate, and, undeterred by the
cries still heard from without, carried the amendment for deferring
the consideration of the petition by a hundred and ninety-four votes,
including the tellers, against only eight. The House then adjourned
until the 6th of June.

Imagining that the crowd would now disperse, the soldiers were
dismissed, and the magistrates returned home. But this was premature.
There were shoals of hot-headed fanatics, who were not willing to
depart without some damage inflicted on the Catholics. One division of
these attacked the Bavarian chapel in Warwick Lane, Golden Square, and
another attacked the Sardinian chapel in Duke Street, Lincoln's Inn
Fields, destroyed their interiors, and set them on fire. The engines
arrived only in time to see a huge bonfire before the Sardinian chapel
made of its seats, and both chapels too far in flames to be stopped;
indeed, the mob would not allow the engines to play. The soldiers, too,
arrived when it was too late to do anything, but seized thirteen of the
rioters.

The next day all seemed quiet; but at evening, the men having got their
Saturday's wages and their usual beer, there were some disturbances in
Moorfields, and the mob abused some of the Catholics there. The next
day, Sunday, the 4th, fresh crowds assembled in the same quarter, and
attacked the houses and chapels of the Catholics, and this continued
for the next three days. Troops were sent to quell them; but, having
orders not to fire, the mob cared nothing for them. Some of the rioters
took their way to Wapping and East Smithfield to destroy the Catholic
chapels in that neighbourhood; and others burst into and plundered the
shops and houses of Messrs. Rainsforth and Maberly, tradesmen, who had
been bold enough to give evidence against the rioters taken on Friday.
Another detachment took their way to Leicester Fields to ransack the
house of Sir George Savile, the author of the Bill for the relaxation
of the penal code against the Catholics. This they stripped and set
fire to, and some of the pictures and furniture, as well as some of
the effects taken from the Catholic chapels and houses in Moor fields,
were paraded before the house of Lord George Gordon, in Welbeck Street,
in triumph. The mob had now acquired a more desperate character.
The fanatic members of the Protestant Association had retired in
consternation from the work of destruction, seeing fresh elements
introduced into it--elements not of simple religious frenzy, but of
plunder and revolutionary fury. They had begun the disturbance, and the
thieves, pickpockets, burglars, and all the vilest and most demoniacal
tribes of the metropolis had most heartily taken it up.

The Government was paralysed by the greatness of the evil. While
the House of Commons had been sitting, the mob had attacked Lord
North's house, in Downing Street, close by; but a party of soldiers
had succeeded in interposing themselves between the mansion and its
assailants. The house of the Minister was saved; but the gigantic
mass of rioters then rolled towards the City, vowing that they would
sack Newgate, and release their comrades, who had been sent there on
Friday. On the 6th they appeared in vast numbers before that prison,
and demanded of Mr. Akerman, the keeper, the delivery of their
associates. Their cry was still "No Popery!" though their object
was havoc: they were armed with heavy sledge-hammers, crowbars, and
pick-axes; and on the keeper refusing to liberate the prisoners, they
commenced a desperate attack on his doors and windows, and, collecting
combustibles, flung them into the dwelling. It was speedily in flames,
and, whilst it burned, the mob thundered on the iron-studded doors of
the prison with their tools. But, as they made no impression, they
formed heaps of the keeper's furniture, and made a fire against the
doors. The fires spread from the keeper's house to the prison chapel,
and thence to some of the doors and passages leading into the wards.
The mob raised terrible yells of rage and triumph, which were as wildly
echoed by the prisoners within, some of whom were exulting in the
expectation of rescue, and others shrieking, afraid of perishing in the
conflagration. The crowd, now more furious than ever, from greedily
drinking the wine and spirits in the keepers cellar, rushed through the
gaps made by the flames, and were masters of the prison. They were led
on by ferocious fellows, who were but too familiar with the interior
of the place. The different cells were forced open, and the now
half-maddened prisoners were either rudely dragged out, or they rushed
forth in maniacal delight. Three hundred of these criminals, some of
them stained with the foulest offences, and four of them under sentence
of execution on the following Thursday, were let out, to add to the
horrors of the lawless tumult. They came out into the surging, roaring
multitude to raise their shouts at the sight of the great prison, which
had lately been rebuilt at a cost of one hundred and forty thousand
pounds, in one vast conflagration. Nothing was left of it the next
morning but a huge skeleton of blackened and frowning walls.

The same evening the new prison of Clerkenwell was broken open, and all
the prisoners were let loose. These joined the drinking, rabid mass,
and, in their turn, attacked and gutted the houses of two of the most
active magistrates--Sir John Fielding and Mr. Cox. As they went along,
they compelled the inhabitants to illuminate their houses, under menace
of burning them down. Everywhere they seized on gin, brandy, and beer,
and thus, in the highest paroxysm of drunken fury, at midnight they
appeared before Lord Mansfield's house, in Bloomsbury Square. He was
quickly obliged to escape with Lady Mansfield by the back door, and
to take refuge in the house of a friend in Lincoln's Inn Fields. The
mob broke in, and, having demolished the doors and windows, proceeded
to destroy and fling out into the square the furniture, pictures, and
books, of which their fellows outside made several bonfires. Then
perished one of the finest libraries in England, not only of works of
law but of literature, which his lordship, through a long course of
years, had been collecting.

The next morning, Wednesday, the 7th of June, the consternation was
universal. The shops continued closed, and people barricaded their
houses as well as they could, many of them chalking "No Popery!" on
their doors, or hanging blue silk, the Protestant Association colour,
from their windows. Dr. Johnson, in a walk from Fleet Street to see
the ruins of the Old Bailey, describes the coolness and composure with
which "the Protestants," men and boys, were employed in plundering
and stripping houses, unmolested by soldiers, constables, or any one.
Great numbers of the mob were going about, armed with iron bars torn
from the railings in front of Lord Mansfield's, to levy contributions
on the householders. Some went singly; three mere boys were observed
thus engaged in company; and one man, mounted on horseback, refused to
receive anything less than gold.

A strong party, not satisfied with having destroyed Lord Mansfield's
town house, set off to burn that at Caen Wood, near Highgate. They
were met and turned back by a detachment of cavalry. They were equally
disappointed in their intended sack of the Bank of England. They found
this mine of wealth guarded by infantry, who had here orders to fire,
and did it without scruple, killing and wounding a great many. They
were more successful against the prisons. They broke open the King's
Bench, the Fleet, the Marshalsea, and all the other prisons except the
Poultry Compter, and set at liberty all the prisoners. Before the day
had dawned, the whole sky was glaring with the light of conflagrations.
The number of separate fires burning at the same time was counted up
to thirty-six. Had the weather been stormy, the whole of London must
have been laid in ashes; but, providentially, the weather was perfectly
calm. The scene of the greatest catastrophe was at the distillery of
a Mr. Langdale, on Holborn Bridge. This gentleman was a Catholic, and
his stores of spirits were a violent temptation. They broke open his
premises in the evening, and destroyed everything. They staved in
his hogsheads of spirits, and others collected them in pails and in
their hats, and drank voraciously. The kennel ran a mingled river of
gin, brandy, and pure alcohol, and men, women, and children were seen
on their knees sucking up the stream as it flowed! Fire was set to
the premises, and catching the spirits which flooded the floors, the
flames shot up to the sky like a volcano. The unhappy wretches, who
had stupefied themselves with the fiery fluid, perished like flies in
the raging element. No such scene of horror had been seen in all these
spectacles of violence and crime. The loss of Mr. Langdale alone was
estimated at one hundred thousand pounds.

[Illustration: DR. JOHNSON VIEWING THE SCENE OF SOME OF THE "NO POPERY"
RIOTS. (_See p._ 268.)]

Up to this point, the whole Government and magistracy seemed as
much stupefied as the poor wretches who had perished in the flames
of the distillery. The king was the first to awake from this fatal
lethargy. He summoned a Council on the morning of the 7th of June,
at which he presided, and demanded what they had to propose for the
suppression of these disorders. At the king's question the Cabinet
appeared dumb-foundered. It was the general opinion that no officer
could proceed to extremities against a mob, however it might be
breaking the law, until an hour after the Riot Act had been read by
a magistrate. This was a monstrous perversion of the meaning of that
Act; but, had even this been zealously followed out, the riots must
have been promptly suppressed. Luckily, at this moment Wedderburn, the
Attorney-General, answered the king's interrogation boldly, that the
Riot Act bore no such construction as was put upon it. In his opinion,
no single hour was required for the dispersion of a mob after the
reading of the Riot Act; and not even the reading of the Act at all was
necessary for the authorisation of military force where a mob was found
actually committing a felony by firing a dwelling-house, and could not
be restrained by other means. Encouraged by Wedderburn's contention,
the king declared that that had always been his own opinion, and that
now he would act upon it. There should be, at least, one magistrate in
the kingdom who would do his duty. The Council, gathering courage, then
concurred, and a proclamation was issued, warning all householders to
keep within doors with their families, the king's officers being now
ordered to put down the riots by military execution, without waiting
for any further reading of the Riot Act.

This proclamation was speedily followed by the steady march of
soldiers to various quarters. At one moment was heard the loud roar
of innumerable voices in the full commission of outrage, and at the
next the rattle of musketry and the shrieks of the wounded and dying,
followed by a strange silence. The first troops who commenced the
bloody duty of repression were the Northumberland militia, who had
come that day by a forced march of twenty-five miles, and who were led
by Colonel Holroyd against the rioters at Langdale's distillery in
Holborn. A detachment of the Guards at the same time drove the mob from
the possession of Blackfriars Bridge. Numbers were there killed, or
were forced by the soldiers or their own fears over the parapet of the
bridge, and perished in the Thames. Where the mob would not disperse,
the officers now firmly gave the word of command, and the soldiers
fired in platoons. Little resistance was offered; in many quarters the
inhabitants, recovering their presence of mind, armed themselves, and
came forth in bodies to assist the soldiers. The number of troops now
assembled in and around London amounted to twenty-five thousand, and
before night the whole city was as quiet--far quieter, indeed--than
on ordinary occasions, for a sorrowful silence seemed to pervade it;
and besides two hundred men shot in the streets, two hundred and fifty
were carried to the hospitals wounded, of whom nearly one hundred soon
expired. But these bore no proportion to the numbers who had fallen
victims to their own excesses, or who had been buried under the ruins
of falling buildings, or consumed in the flames in the stupor of
intoxication. The king's decision had saved London.

On Tuesday, the 20th of June, the Commons entered on the consideration
of the great Protestant petition, praying for the repeal of Sir George
Savile's Act for the relief of Catholics. On this occasion Burke and
Lord North went hand in hand. Burke drew up five resolutions, which
North corrected. These resolutions declared that all attempts to seduce
the youth of this kingdom from the Established Church to Popery were
criminal in the highest degree, but that all attempts to wrest the
Act of 1778 beyond its due meaning, and to the unnecessary injury
of Catholics, were equally reprehensible. In the course of July the
rioters were brought to trial. Those prisoners confined in the City
were tried at the regular Old Bailey Sessions; those on the Surrey
side of the river by a Special Commission. The Lord Chief Justice
De Grey, being in failing health, resigned, and Wedderburn took his
place as Lord Chief Justice, under the title of Lord Loughborough. His
appointment gave great satisfaction; but this was considerably abated
by his speech at the opening of the Commission, in which he indulged in
very severe strictures on the rioters, who had to appear before him as
judge. Of the one hundred and thirty-five tried, about one half were
convicted, of whom twenty-one were executed, and the rest transported
for life. Amongst the convicted was Edward Dennis, the common hangman;
but he received a reprieve. The trial of Lord George Gordon, who was
foolishly accused of high treason, was postponed through a technical
cause till the following January, when he was ably defended by Mr.
Kenyon and Mr. Erskine; and the public mind having cooled, he was
acquitted. Probably the conviction of his insanity tended largely to
this result, which became more and more apparent, his last strange
freak being that of turning Jew.

From this episode of fire and fanaticism we recur to the general theme
of the war with Spain, France, and America, in which England was every
day becoming more deeply engaged. From the moment that Spain had
joined France in the war against us, other Powers, trusting to our
embarrassments with our colonies and those great European Powers, had
found it a lucrative trade to supply, under neutral flags, warlike
materials and other articles to the hostile nations; thus, whilst under
a nominal alliance, they actually furnished the sinews of war against
us. In this particular, Holland, the next great commercial country to
Britain, took the lead. She furnished ammunition and stores to the
Spaniards, who all this while were engaged in besieging Gibraltar.
Spain had also made a treaty with the Barbary States, by which she
cut off our supplies from those countries. To relieve Gibraltar,
Admiral Sir George Rodney, who was now appointed to the command of
our navy in the West Indies, was ordered to touch there on his way
out. On the 8th of January 1780, when he had been a few days out at
sea, he came in sight of a Spanish fleet, consisting of five armed
vessels, convoying fifteen merchantmen, all of which he captured. These
vessels were chiefly laden with wheat, flour, and other provisions,
badly needed at Gibraltar, and which he carried in with him, sending
the men-of-war to England. On the 16th he fell in with another fleet
off Cape St. Vincent, of eleven ships of the line, under Don Juan de
Langara, who had come out to intercept the provisions which England
sent to Gibraltar. Rodney had a much superior fleet, and the Spanish
admiral immediately attempted to regain his port. The weather was very
tempestuous, and the coast near the shoal of St. Lucar very dangerous;
he therefore stood in as close as possible to the shore, but Rodney
boldly thrust his vessels between him and the perilous strand, and
commenced a running fight. The engagement began about four o'clock in
the evening, and it was, therefore, soon dark; but Rodney, despite
the imminent danger of darkness, tempest, and a treacherous shore,
continued the fight, and the Spaniards for a time defended themselves
bravely. The battle continued till two o'clock in the morning; one
ship, the _San Domingo_, of seventy guns, blew up with six hundred men
early in the action; four ships of the line, including the admiral's,
of eighty guns, struck, and were carried by Rodney safe into port;
two seventy-gun ships ran on the shoal and were lost; and of all the
Spanish fleet only four ships escaped to Cadiz.

Bearing his prizes with him, Rodney proceeded to Gibraltar, carrying
great exultation to the besieged rock by the news of such victory and
the timely supplies. He sent on some ships to carry similar relief to
our garrison at Port Mahon, and, after lying some weeks at Gibraltar,
he dispatched Admiral Digby home with a portion of the fleet, and then
with the rest made sail for the West Indies. Digby, on his homeward
route, also captured a French ship of the line, and two merchant
vessels laden with military stores. This blow to the Spanish maritime
power was never altogether recovered during the war.

Rodney, on reaching the West Indies, found, as we shall see, a combined
fleet of French under the Count de Guichen, and of Spanish under
Admiral Solano; but he could not bring them to an engagement, and,
after a brief brush, they eventually eluded him, Solano taking refuge
in Havana, and De Guichen convoying the home-bound merchant ships of
France. Disappointed in his hopes of a conflict with these foes,
Rodney sailed for the North American coasts. Scarcely had he quitted
the European waters, however, when the Spaniards took a severe revenge
for his victory over them at St. Vincent. Florida Blanca, the Minister
of Spain, learnt, through his spies in England, that the English East
and West Indian traders were going out under a very foolishly feeble
escort--in fact, of only two ships of the line. Elated at the news,
Florida Blanca collected every vessel that he could, and dispatched
them, under Admirals Cordova and Gaston, to intercept this precious
prize. The enterprise was most successful. The Spanish fleet lay in
wait at the point where the East and West India vessels separate, off
the Azores, captured sixty sail of merchantmen, and carried them safe
into Cadiz. The two vessels of war escaped, but in the East Indiamen
were eighteen hundred soldiers going out to reinforce the troops in the
East.

This, though it was a severe blow to our trade, was but a small part
of the damage which the active spirit of Florida Blanca did us. He
promoted with all his energies the system of armed neutrality which
had long been projected on the Continent to cripple our power.
England knew that if she permitted this process, there was little
chance of her bringing any of her antagonists to terms; she therefore
insisted rigidly on the right of search, and on the seizure of all
such contraband articles under whatever flag they were conveyed. Not
only did Holland supply France and Spain in Europe, but she allowed
the American privateers to carry their English prizes into their West
Indian ports for sale. All this time Holland was not only bound by the
most immense obligations to Great Britain for the millions of money and
the tens of thousands of men whom we had sacrificed for the security of
her independence against France, but she was also bound by treaty to
furnish us certain aids when we were attacked by France. From the year
1778 Sir Joseph Yorke, our Ambassador at the Hague, had made continual
remonstrances against this clandestine trade with our enemies; and
France, on the other hand, had, by alternate menaces and persuasions,
exerted herself to induce the Dutch to set England at defiance. In this
she succeeded to a great extent. Much correspondence ensued, the Dutch
maintaining a specious neutrality, but still continuing to carry timber
and naval stores to France. Sir Joseph Yorke was therefore instructed
to demand from the States the succours stipulated by treaties, and
which might have been demanded the moment that France declared war
against England. On the 26th of November, 1779, he received not only a
positive refusal, but a fresh complaint of the interruption of their
trade by English men-of-war.

Whilst affairs with Holland were in this position, Count Florida
Blanca, the Spanish Minister, had adopted the system of seizing all
neutral vessels, of whatever nation, that were found carrying British
goods, and conveying them into Spanish ports as lawful prizes. This, as
he calculated, raised the resentment of all the neutral Powers--Russia,
Sweden, Denmark, Prussia, Holland, and the trading States of Italy--who
denounced these outrages on their flag. But Florida Blanca replied,
that so long as England was suffered to pursue this system, Spain must
continue to make reprisals; that it was, however, in the power of
the neutral nations to combine and defend their flags, by compelling
England to desist. The result was as he had hoped. Catherine of Russia,
who had hitherto considered herself an ally of England--who had, at
one time, contemplated furnishing soldiers to assist in reducing the
American rebels, and who protested against the monstrosity of France
encouraging the colonies of England to throw off their allegiance--was
suddenly induced to change her tone. On the 26th of February she issued
her famous proclamation, "that free ships should make free goods."
This meant that all neutral nations should continue to carry all kinds
of articles to Powers at war with one another, without search or
question, except such goods as were expressly specified in treaties.
Sweden, Denmark, Prussia, France, and Spain, all readily entered into
this league, which assumed the name of the "Armed Neutrality," the
object of which, though ostensibly to control all belligerent Powers,
was really to suppress the naval power of England. Holland eulogised
this league, but did not yet venture to join it; but prohibited the
exportation of stores to our garrison in Gibraltar, whilst her ships
were busy carrying supplies to the Spanish besiegers. Sir Joseph Yorke,
therefore, on the 21st of March, 1780, informed the States that,
unless the stipulated help was furnished within three weeks, England
would suspend, _pro tempore_, the regulations in favour of the Dutch
commerce. The States still refused to furnish the succours, and at the
specified time the privileges in question were suspended, though Count
Welderen still continued in London, and Sir Joseph Yorke at the Hague.
It was evident that Holland could not long continue in this position,
and Frederick of Prussia was soliciting Catherine of Russia to enter
into an engagement to protect the Dutch commerce in every quarter of
the globe. If Frederick could have prevailed, he would have stirred up
a universal crusade against England; but Catherine was not rash enough
for this quixotism.

[Illustration: OLD NEWGATE.]

We return now to the American campaign. Sir Henry Clinton, at the close
of the year 1779, proceeded to carry into effect his plan of removing
the war to the Southern States. The climate there favoured the project
of a winter campaign, and, on the day after Christmas Day, Sir Henry
embarked five thousand men on board the fleet of Admiral Arbuthnot.
But the weather at sea at this season proved very tempestuous, and his
ships were driven about for seven weeks. Many of his transports were
lost, some of them were taken by the enemy; he lost nearly all the
horses of the cavalry and artillery, and one vessel carrying the heavy
ordnance foundered at sea. It was the 11th of February, 1780, when
he landed on St. John's Island, about thirty miles from Charleston.
He then planned the investment of Charleston with Admiral Arbuthnot;
but he was not on good terms with that officer, and this threw great
impediments in the way of prompt action. It was the 1st of April
before they could break ground before the city. Once begun, however,
the siege was prosecuted with vigour. Lord Cornwallis was sent to
scour the country, and so completely did he effect this, that Lincoln
was compelled to offer terms of surrender. These were considered too
favourable to the Americans, and the siege continued till the 11th
of May, when the English were doing such damage to the town, and the
inhabitants suffering so much, that they threatened to throw open the
gates if Lincoln did not surrender. In this dilemma, Lincoln offered to
accept the terms proposed by Clinton before, and the British general
assented to his proposal. On the 12th of May the Americans grounded
their arms. The news of this blow, which laid the whole south open to
the English, carried consternation throughout the States; and, arriving
in England at the close of the Gordon riots, seemed to restore the
spirits of the British.

The town of Charleston being now in his possession, Sir Henry
Clinton proceeded to reduce the whole province to obedience. He
issued proclamations, calling on the well-affected young men to form
themselves into military bodies, and to act in support of the king's
troops, pledging himself that they should never be called upon to march
beyond the frontiers of North Carolina on the one side, or those of
Georgia on the other; and he assured the inhabitants at large of the
utmost protection of person and property, so long as they continued
peaceable and loyal subjects of the Crown. In the meantime, Lord
Cornwallis continued to enforce these proposals by the movements of his
troops. Could Sir Henry Clinton have remained in this quarter, he would
without doubt have steadily carried his victorious arms northward till
he had everywhere restored the rule of England. But he was completely
crippled by the wretched management of the miserable Government at
home, who seemed to expect to reconquer America without an army. At
this crisis he received news that the Americans were mustering in
strong force on the Hudson, and that a French fleet was daily expected
on the coast of New England to co-operate with them. He was now
compelled to embark for New York, leaving Lord Cornwallis to maintain
the ground obtained in South Carolina as well as he could with a body
of four thousand men. His second in command was Lord Rawdon, a young
officer who had distinguished himself greatly at the battle of Bunker's
Hill, and who, like Cornwallis, his chief, was destined, in after
years, to occupy the distinguished post of Governor-General of India,
with the successive titles of Earl Moira and Marquis of Hastings. The
chief business of Cornwallis was to maintain the status gained in South
Carolina, but he was at liberty to make a move into North Carolina if
he thought it promising.

Congress, alarmed at the progress of the English in South Carolina, had
made extraordinary efforts to reinforce the Republican party in North
Carolina. On the fall of Charleston, General Gates, who had acquired
a high but spurious reputation upon the surrender of Burgoyne, was
sent to take the chief command. In marching towards South Carolina,
the American army suffered severely from the tropical heat of the
climate and the scarcity of food. Gates led them through a country
of alternating swamps and sandy deserts, called by the Americans
pine-barrens. The troops lived chiefly on the lean cattle which they
found scattered through the woods, on green Indian corn, and peaches,
which were plentiful, being indigenous to the State of Louisiana.
Lord Rawdon, who was lying at Camden, where he had halted his men to
protect them from the heat, was joined there by Lord Cornwallis early
in August. The entire force when united did not, however, exceed two
thousand men, whilst the troops of Gates amounted to six thousand.
The British general, notwithstanding, advanced briskly to meet the
Americans, and on the evening of the 16th of August the two armies met
rather unexpectedly, and some skirmishing took place, after which they
halted in position till near daybreak.

When day dawned, Cornwallis saw that the ground he occupied was so
favourable that it rendered his inferiority of numbers of little
consequence. He therefore drew out his forces for immediate action.
Swamps to the right and left narrowed the ground by which the Americans
could approach him, and forming his troops into two lines, commanded
by Lord Rawdon and General Webster, he attacked the Americans under
Gates and quickly put them to the rout. The Virginian militia ran most
nimbly, and sought refuge in the woods. Gates himself galloped away
believing all was lost, and never halted till he reached Charlotte,
about eighty miles off. The only men who fought well were two brigades
of regulars under the command of the German, Von Kalb, who kept his
ground against the troops of Lord Rawdon for three-quarters of an hour,
sustaining repeated charges of the bayonet unmoved; but Von Kalb fell
mortally wounded, and the last of the Americans then gave way and fled
for their lives in all directions.

The American Congress, which had imagined Gates a greater officer even
than Washington, because he had captured Burgoyne through the ability
of Arnold, though Washington--from envy, as they supposed--had always
held a more correct opinion, now saw their error. No sooner was this
victory at Camden achieved, than Cornwallis dispatched Tarleton after
General Sumter, who was marching on the other side of the Wateree on
his way into South Carolina. Tarleton started after him with a couple
of hundred of cavalry, and rode so sharply that he had left half his
little force behind him, when he came up with him near Catawba Ford,
and fell upon his far superior force without a moment's hesitation,
killing and wounding one hundred, and taking captive upwards of two
hundred, with all Sumter's baggage, artillery, and one thousand stand
of arms.

Cornwallis now announced to the Royalists of North Carolina that he
would soon send a force for their defence, and advanced to Charlotte.
He next took measures for punishing those who had pretended to
re-accept the allegiance of England only to relapse into a double
treachery. He declared that all such being captured should be treated
as traitors, and hanged. These severe measures were carried into
execution on some of the prisoners taken at Camden and Augusta, and
others were shipped off to St. Augustine. This system was as impolitic
as it was cruel, for the Americans were certain to adopt it in
retaliation, as they did, with a frightful ferocity, when the Royalists
were overthrown in South Carolina, and avowedly on this ground. Lord
Rawdon, adopting the example, wrote to his officers that he would
give ten guineas for the head of any deserter from the volunteers of
Ireland, and five only if brought in alive.

Scarcely had Lord Cornwallis commenced his march into the interior of
North Carolina, and scarcely had he dispatched Major Ferguson with a
corps of American Royalists, to advance through the country towards
the frontiers of Virginia, when this corps received another proof of
the wisdom of keeping out of the woods and hills. Major Ferguson was
attacked near the pass of King's Mountain by swarms of riflemen, many
of them mounted, from Virginia, Kentucky, and the Alleghanies who shot
down and exterminated his followers almost to a man, the major falling
amongst the rest. The victors gave a prompt proof of their apt adoption
of Lord Cornwallis's teaching, by hanging ten of the prisoners. Lord
Cornwallis was harassed by similar hordes of flying and creeping
skirmishers. Hearing the news of the slaughter of Ferguson's force, he
returned to Charlotte, retracing his march through most rainy weather,
terrible roads, and almost totally destitute of provisions. Cornwallis
fell ill on the road, and Lord Rawdon had to assume the command. It
was not till the 29th of October that the army resumed its original
position near Camden; and General Leslie, who had been also dispatched
to co-operate with Cornwallis in Virginia, was recalled, but was
obliged to return by sea.

The news of the approach of the French succours was brought by
Lafayette, who, much to the joy of Washington, and of America
generally, again reached the States, landing at Boston in April.
He announced that the fleet, commanded by the Chevalier de Ternay,
consisted of seven sail of the line, with numerous smaller vessels,
and brought over six thousand troops, under the Comte de Rochambeau.
The French squadron reached Rhode Island on the 13th of July.
Washington thereupon declared himself ready for an attack on New
York; but Rochambeau replied that it would be better to wait for
the expected and much larger fleet of De Guichen. Before De Guichen
appeared, the English admiral, Graves, arrived, with six ships of war,
thus increasing the English superiority at sea, and De Ternay found
himself blockaded in the harbour of Newport, and Rochambeau was glad to
entrench himself on Rhode Island, and abandon all idea of attacking New
York. Sir Henry Clinton, on his part, planned an attack on Rochambeau
with the army, while the French fleet blockaded in Newport harbour
should be attacked by Admiral Arbuthnot. But Clinton and Arbuthnot
were at variance, and the admiral did not promptly and cordially
second the views of Clinton. He went slowly round Long Island, to
place himself in conjunction with the general; whilst Clinton embarked
eight thousand troops, and approached the position of Rochambeau. But
Arbuthnot strongly contended against the attempt, declaring Rochambeau
too formidably fortified, and Washington, at the same time, advancing
from his position with a large force, suddenly passed the North River
and approached King's Bridge, as if meditating an attack on New York.
These circumstances induced Clinton reluctantly to return to New York.
Washington retreated to his old ground at Morristown, and Arbuthnot
remained blockading De Ternay before Newport. Neither party, therefore,
could do more than be still for the remainder of the season. Clinton
was completely crippled for any decisive action by the miserable
modicum of troops which the English Government had furnished him, and
the enemy now knew that the fleet of De Guichen was not likely to
arrive this season.

This fleet had enough to do to cope with Rodney in the West Indian
waters. Rodney, as we have hinted, with twenty sail of the line, came
up with De Guichen's fleet of twenty-three sail of the line, besides
smaller vessels, on the evening of the 16th of April, off St. Lucia.
He came into action with it on the 17th, and succeeded in breaking
its line, and might have obtained a most complete victory, but that
several of his captains behaved very badly, paying no attention to
his signals. The _Sandwich_, the Admiral's ship, was much damaged in
the action, and the French sailed away. Rodney wrote most indignantly
home concerning the conduct of the captains, and one of them was
tried and broken, and some of the others were censured; but they were
protected by the spirit of faction, and escaped their due punishment.
Rodney, finding he could not bring the French again to engage, put into
St. Lucia to refit, and land his wounded men, of whom he had three
hundred and fifty; besides one hundred and twenty killed. De Guichen
had suffered far more severely. Rodney again got sight of the French
fleet on the 10th of May, between St. Lucia and Martinique; but they
avoided him, and made their escape into the harbour of Fort Royal.
Hearing of the approach of a Spanish fleet of twelve sail of the line,
and a great number of lesser vessels and transports, bringing from ten
thousand to twelve thousand men, Rodney went in quest of it, to prevent
its junction with the French; but Solano, the Spanish admiral, took
care not to go near Rodney, but, reaching Guadeloupe, sent word of his
arrival there to De Guichen, who managed to sail thither and join him.
This now most overwhelming united fleet of France and Spain left Rodney
no alternative but to avoid an engagement on his part. He felt that not
only our West India Islands, but the coasts of North America, were at
its mercy; but it turned out otherwise.

The Spaniards had so crowded their ships with soldiers, and made such
wretched provision for their accommodation, that the most destructive
and contagious fever was raging amongst them. This was quickly
communicated to the French vessels; the mortality was more than that
of a great battle, and the combined fleet hastened to Martinique,
where they landed their soldiers and part of their seamen to recruit.
They remained at Fort Royal till the 5th of July, only to disagree and
quarrel more and more. Proceeding thence to St. Domingo, they parted,
De Guichen returning to Europe, as convoy of the French homebound
merchantmen; and Solano sailing to Havana, to co-operate with his
countrymen in their designs on Florida.

Thus this mighty armada--of which such high things were expected--was
dispersed; Rodney, sending part of his fleet to Jamaica, proceeded to
join Arbuthnot at New York, with eleven ships of the line and four
frigates. The news of his approach reached the French and Americans
there, at the same time as that of the return of De Guichen to Europe,
and spread the greatest consternation. To consider what was best to
do in the circumstances, a meeting was proposed at Hartford, in
Connecticut, between Washington and Rochambeau, which took place on the
21st of September. At this moment a discovery took place which had a
startling effect on the Americans, and was calculated to inspire the
most gloomy views of their condition. General Arnold, who had fought
his way up from the humble station of a horse-dealer to that which
he now held, had, on all occasions, shown himself an officer of the
most daring and enterprising character. Having been appointed military
governor of Philadelphia, after its evacuation by General Clinton in
1778, as a post where he might recover from the severe wounds which he
had received in the recent campaign, he began a style of living much
too magnificent for his finances, for, with all his abilities, Arnold
was a vain and extravagant man. He married a beautiful young lady of
that city of Royalist origin. Rumours to his disadvantage were soon
afloat, originating in this cause, for whatever he did was regarded by
the staunch Whigs with an unfavourable eye. Congress was the more ready
to listen to charges against him, because, involved himself in debts
incurred by his extravagance, he pressed them for large claims upon
them, which they had no means to satisfy. Commissioners were selected
by them to examine his claims, and these men, appointed for their
hard, mean natures, reduced his demands extremely. Arnold uttered his
indignation at such treatment in no measured terms, and the consequence
was that he was arrested, tried by a court-martial, on various charges
of peculation in his different commands, and for extortion on the
citizens of Philadelphia. Some of these were declared groundless,
but others were pronounced to be proved, and Arnold was condemned to
be reprimanded by the Commander-in-Chief. This put the climax to his
wrath. Washington, who had, in Arnold's opinion, been as unjustly
exalted and favoured for his defeats and delays, as he himself had been
envied and repressed for his brilliant exploits, was of all men the one
from whom he could not receive with patience a formal condemnation.
This sentence was carried into effect in January, 1779, and Arnold,
stung to the quick, was prepared to perpetrate some desperate design.
The opportunity came when he was placed in command of West Point, on
the Hudson, which was the key to all intercourse between the Northern
and Southern States.

[Illustration: ARREST OF MAJOR ANDRÉ. (_See p._ 278.)]

At the very time he received this appointment he was actually in
correspondence with Colonel Robinson, an officer of General Clinton's
staff, declaring that he was become convinced of the more righteous
cause of the mother country, and that he was prepared to testify this
by some signal service to his king. It was at the beginning of August
of the present year when Arnold assumed his command at West Point;
and Clinton lost no time in opening a direct correspondence with
him, through which such singular advantages were offered. Sir Henry
Clinton employed as his agent in this correspondence a young officer of
high promise in his profession and of considerable literary talents,
Major John André, Adjutant-General and aide-de-camp to Sir Henry. As
Clinton was naturally anxious to bring this hazardous correspondence
to a close, he pressed Arnold to come to a speedy decision, offering
him rank in the army and a high reward in return for the promised
services--namely, the surrender of West Point, with all its dependent
forts and stores, including, as a matter of course, the command of
the Hudson, and the terror and distrust which this act would spread
through the American army. The absence of Washington at the meeting
with Rochambeau at Hartford was seized on as a proper opportunity for a
personal and final conference on the subject. Major André was selected
by General Clinton to meet Arnold on neutral ground. The place selected
was on the western bank of the Hudson, and Clinton strongly enjoined
him to enter on no account within the American lines, to assume no
disguise, nor to be the bearer of any written documents. Day dawned
before the whole preliminaries were settled, though the chief point
was determined--namely, that West Point should be surrendered to the
English on the following Monday. André was prevailed on to remain
with Arnold the greater part of the day; and then, on going down to
the shore, he found that the boatman who had brought him out refused
to carry him back. When André returned to Arnold at Smith's house, he
gave him a pass, and advised him to travel by land to King's Ferry,
and there to cross. He insisted that for this purpose he must assume
a disguise, and travel under his assumed name of John Anderson. So
little was André apprehensive of danger, that he not only disobeyed the
injunction of his commander-in-chief in this particular, but in the
far more important one of carrying written papers, which he concealed
in his boot.

He was proceeding in all apparent safety when, approaching the village
of Tarrytown, three militiamen suddenly sprang forward, and, seizing
his bridle, demanded who he was. André, being on neutral ground,
exceeded his former incaution, and instead of ascertaining whether the
men were Americans, in which case Arnold's pass was his security, he
asked the men who they were, and being answered "From below," which was
the pass for New York, replied, "And so am I." By this, discovering
that he was a British officer, the men began to search him, and soon
made prize of his fatal papers. Warned in time, Arnold escaped on board
a British man-of-war. But very different was the fate of Major André.
General Clinton, the moment he was aware of his arrest, sent a letter
to Washington, stating that André had gone on shore under a flag of
truce, and, at the time of his arrest, was travelling under a pass from
Arnold, the commander of the district. Clinton therefore requested
Washington to liberate André immediately. To this letter Washington
did not reply till after a lapse of four days, and after the board of
officers appointed for the purpose had declared André a spy. He even
rejected the last prayer of the gallant soldier that he might be spared
the gibbet, and had him hanged.

During this year the Americans continued to hope for relief to
themselves from the progress of the Armed Neutrality, but derived
little good from it, though, through their exertions, they beheld
Holland added to the open enemies of England. The Dutch Government,
flattering themselves that, with nearly all the world against her,
England must succumb, had long been secretly in negotiation with the
insurgent subjects of England, and their treachery was now suddenly,
by a singular circumstance, brought to light. Captain Keppel, cruising
in the _Vestal_ frigate off the banks of Newfoundland, in the month of
September, captured one of the American packets. On the approach of
the British boats to the packet, it was observed that something was
hastily flung overboard. A sailor leaped from one of the boats into
the sea, and succeeded in securing this something before it had sunk
beyond reach. It turned out to be a box, which had been weighted with
lead, but not sufficiently to render it so rapid in its descent as to
prevent its seizure by the British tar. On being opened, it revealed
a mass of papers belonging to an American emissary to the Court of
Holland, and opened up a long course of negotiations, and an eventual
treaty of peace and commerce between Holland and our American colonies.
The bearer of these papers was discovered on board the packet, in the
person of Henry Laurens, late president of the American Congress.
These most important papers, together with their bearer, were sent
with all speed to England. Copies were forwarded to Sir Joseph Yorke,
our Ambassador at the Hague, who was instructed to demand from the
States General the disavowal of the negotiations. The States General,
confounded by the discovery of their clandestine negotiations, remained
silent for a week, and then only replied by advancing complaints of
violence committed by the British navy on their traders, and of its
having insulted the Dutch flag by seizing some American privateers in
the port of the island of St. Martin, under the very guns of the fort.
Sir Joseph did not allow himself to be diverted from his demand, but
again, on the 12th of December, a month after the presentation of his
memorial, demanded an answer. No answer was returned. England was thus
compelled to declare war against Holland on the 20th of December, Sir
Joseph Yorke being recalled by the king, and Count Welderen receiving
his passports in London.

The enemy, meanwhile, were on the alert, trying, by their fleets and
armies, to assail us in almost every quarter. In the very opening
days of the year--at the very commencement of January, 1781--the
French made an attack on the island of Jersey. They had sent across
the Channel a fleet carrying nearly two thousand men; but their ships
met the common fortune that has ever attended invaders of Britain:
they were scattered by tempests, many of them dashed on the rocks of
those iron-bound shores, and some driven back to port. They managed,
however, to land eight hundred men by night, and surprised the town of
St. Helier's, taking prisoner its Lieutenant-Governor, Major Corbet,
who thereupon thinking all lost, agreed to capitulate. But the next
officer in command, Major Pierson, a young man of only twenty-five,
refused to comply with so pusillanimous an order. He rallied the troops
and encouraged the inhabitants, who fired on the French from their
windows. The invaders, surrounded in the market-place, were compelled
to surrender, after their commander, the Baron de Rullecourt, and many
of his soldiers, were killed. The gallant young Pierson was himself
killed by nearly the last shot.

The garrison of Gibraltar was all this time hard pressed by the
Spaniards. Florida Blanca had made a convention with the Emperor of
Morocco to refuse the English any supplies; those thrown in by Rodney
the year before were nearly exhausted, and they were reduced to grave
straits. Admiral Darby was commissioned to convoy one hundred vessels
laden with provisions, and to force a way for them into the garrison.
Darby not only readily executed his commission, to the great joy of the
poor soldiers, but he blockaded the huge Spanish fleet under Admiral
Cordova, in the harbour of Cadiz, whilst the stores were landing.

In America, all at the opening of the campaign seemed to favour the
English cause. The army of Washington, still suffering the utmost
extremities of cold and starvation, began in earnest to mutiny. A
Pennsylvanian division of one thousand three hundred men marched out
of their camp at Morristown, and proceeded to Princeton, carrying with
them six field-pieces and their stores, and their demands were granted
by Congress. The success of this revolt encouraged others to repeat
the manœuvre. On the night of the 20th of January a part of the Jersey
brigade, stationed at Pompton, marched to Chatham, and made precisely
the same demands. But now seeing that, if this were suffered, the whole
army would quickly go to pieces, Washington sent General Howe after
them, with orders to surround them, and shoot them down, if they did
not surrender; and if they did surrender, immediately to seize the most
active ringleaders, and execute them. Howe readily accomplished his
mission; he reduced the mutinous, and shot their leaders.

In such very discouraging circumstances the American campaign began.
Whilst insurrection was in their camp, Sir Henry Clinton dispatched
General Arnold to make a descent upon the coast of Virginia. That
general had been dispatched into that quarter, at the close of the
year, with one thousand six hundred men, in ships so bad, that
they were obliged to fling overboard some of their horses. Arnold,
however, first sailed up the river James, and landed at Westover, only
twenty-five miles from Richmond, the capital of Virginia. Jefferson,
who was Governor of Virginia, was seized with great alarm; for, though
the militia of the State were nominally fifty thousand, he could muster
only a few hundreds. He therefore hastily collected what property
he could, and fled up the country, dreading to fall into the hands
of a man so embittered against the Americans as Arnold was, who was
himself well aware that they had determined to hang him without mercy
if they caught him. Arnold did not allow much time to elapse without
action. The next day he was in Richmond, and sent word to Jefferson
that, provided British vessels might come up the river to take away
the tobacco, he would spare the town. Jefferson rejected the proposal,
and Arnold burnt all the tobacco stores and the public buildings, both
there and at Westham. After committing other ravages, he returned to
Portsmouth, on Elizabeth River, where he entrenched himself. On the
26th of March, General Phillips, having assumed the command, in company
with Arnold ascended James River with two thousand five hundred men,
took and destroyed much property in Williamsburg and York Town, ravaged
the country around, and then sailed to the mouth of the Appomattox,
and burnt all the shipping and tobacco in Petersburg. After other
depredations, and forcing the Americans to destroy their own flotilla
between Warwick and Richmond, Phillips and Arnold descended the James
River to Manchester, and proposed to cross over to Richmond. But
Lafayette having just reached that place before them with upwards of
two thousand men, they re-embarked, and, after destroying much other
property, especially shipping and stores, at Warwick and other places,
they fell down to Hog Island, where they awaited further orders.

An active warfare had been going on at the same time in North Carolina.
Lord Cornwallis had, however, no longer to compete with the inefficient
Gates, but with General Greene, a much more vigorous man. On the 17th
of January, Colonel Tarleton, who had been dispatched with a thousand
men, horse and foot, to attack a body of Americans under General
Morgan, came up with them at a place called Cowpens. Tarleton's troops
were worn out by their long march, but that impetuous officer gave them
no time to rest themselves, but fell on the enemy with loud shouts.
The militia fled at once, and the advance of the English endangered
the flanks of the Continentals, and it became necessary to make a
retrograde movement. This Tarleton mistook for a retreat, so accustomed
was he to carry all before him, and his men were rushing on without
regard to order, when the Americans suddenly faced about, poured a
deadly fire into the British at thirty yards' distance, and then,
briskly charging, broke their already disorderly line. Being closely
pursued, they lost, in killed and wounded, upwards of five hundred men.

On hearing of the defeat of Tarleton, Cornwallis advanced rapidly, in
order, if possible, to intercept Morgan and his English prisoners at
the fords of Catawba. A rise of the water from the rains prevented his
crossing that river so soon as he expected, and Morgan joined Greene,
both generals, however, retreating behind the Yadkin. The swollen state
of the river and the want of boats also detained Lord Cornwallis at
the Yadkin, but he finally succeeded in crossing and throwing himself
between Greene and the frontiers of Virginia, from which Greene looked
for his supplies and reinforcements. Greene continued to retreat till
he had also placed the Dan between himself and Cornwallis; but his
militia had deserted so rapidly on his flight, that, on reaching the
Dan, he had not more than eighty of that body with him. Greene now had
the way open to him for retreat into Virginia, and, Cornwallis giving
up the chase, marched leisurely to Hillsborough, in North Carolina,
where he invited the Royalists to join his standard. Such was his
success--numbers of Royalists flocking in to serve with Tarleton's
legion--that Greene, alarmed at the consequences of this movement,
turned back for the purpose of cutting off all possible reinforcements
of this kind, yet avoiding a general engagement. Once more Cornwallis
advanced to chastise Greene, and once more Greene beat a retreat. This
manœuvring continued till the 15th of March, when Greene having been
joined by fresh troops, thought himself strong enough to encounter
the English general. He drew up his army on very strong ground near
Guildford Court House, where Cornwallis boldly attacked him, and, after
a stout battle, completely routed him.

But the British were in no condition to take advantage of American
exhaustion. At a time when the Ministry at home had obtained the most
magnificent grants from Parliament--grants for ninety thousand seamen,
thirty thousand soldiers, and twenty-five millions of pounds to pay for
them--there was scarcely a fleet on the American coasts, and nothing
which could be called an army. Had Cornwallis been in possession of
an adequate force, he would speedily have cleared all the Southern
States. Wherever he came, even with his handful of men, he drove the
Americans before him. He now took up his headquarters at Cross Creek,
where he sought to rest his troops and recover his sick and wounded.
He hoped there to establish a communication with Major Craig, who had
been successfully dispatched to take possession of Wilmington, at the
mouth of Cape Fear River, but this was not very practicable, and as
the country about Cross Creek was destitute of the necessary supplies,
Cornwallis himself descended to Wilmington, which he reached on the 7th
of April. Colonel Webster and others of his wounded officers died on
the march. Greene, with his fragment of an army, as badly provisioned
as that of Cornwallis, followed them at a safe distance.

At Wilmington Lord Cornwallis remained about three weeks, uncertain
as to his plan of operations. His forces amounted to only about one
thousand five hundred men; he therefore determined, at length, to march
into Virginia, and join the expedition there. He made his march without
encountering any opposition, reaching Presburg on the 20th of May.
Thereupon Lord Cornwallis found himself at the head of a united force
of seven thousand men. Sir Henry Clinton's effective troops at New York
amounted only to ten thousand nine hundred and thirty-one men, and the
little detachment under Lord Rawdon only to nine hundred.

The very day that Lord Cornwallis had marched from Wilmington, Lord
Rawdon was bravely fighting with Greene at Hobkirk's Hill, in South
Carolina. Greene had not ventured to attack Lord Cornwallis; but he
thought he might, by diverting his course into South Carolina, induce
him to follow, and thus leave exposed all North Carolina to Wayne
and Lafayette, as well as all his important posts in the upper part
of North Carolina. Greene failed to draw after him Cornwallis, but
he sat down at Hobkirk's Hill, about two miles from the outposts of
Lord Rawdon's camp at Camden. Lord Rawdon, hearing that Greene was
waiting to be reinforced by troops under Lieutenant-Colonel Lee, did
not give him time for that. He marched out of Camden, at nine o'clock
in the morning, on the 25th of April, and quietly making a circuit
through some woods, he came upon Greene's flank, and drove in his
pickets before he was perceived. Startled from his repose, Greene
sought to return the surprise by sending Colonel Washington, a nephew
of the American commander-in-chief, with a body of cavalry, to fall on
Rawdon's rear, as he was passing up the hill. But Rawdon was aware of
this manœuvre, and prevented it, still pressing up Hobkirk's Hill, in
the face of the artillery, charged with grape-shot. Greene's militia
fled with all speed, and Rawdon stood triumphant on the summit of
the hill, in the centre of Greene's camp. But the success was not
followed up, owing to the insufficiency of the English troops, and
Greene was able, without risking another engagement, to compel Rawdon
to retire to Charleston. The American general encamped on the Santee
Hills until September, when he descended on Colonel Stewart, who had
succeeded Rawdon. After a severe struggle at Eutaw Springs on the 8th
of September, Stewart retired to Charleston Neck, and all Georgia
and South Carolina were lost to the English, with the exception of
Charleston and Savannah. Meanwhile, Lord Cornwallis only allowed
himself three days' rest at Presburg; he marched thence, on the 24th
of May, in quest of Lafayette, who was encamped on the James River.
Cornwallis crossed that river at Westover, about thirty miles below
Lafayette's camp, and that nimble officer retreated in all haste to
join General Wayne, who was marching through Maryland with a small
force of eight hundred Pennsylvanians. Lafayette and Wayne retreated up
the James River, and Cornwallis pursued his march to Portsmouth. There
he received an order from Sir Henry Clinton, desiring him to look out
for a position where he could fortify himself, and at the same time
protect such shipping as might be sent to the Chesapeake to prevent the
entrance of the French. Cornwallis fixed on York Town, on York River,
and there, and at Gloucester, in its vicinity, he was settled with his
troops by the 22nd of August. Sir Henry Clinton wrote, intimating that
he should probably send more troops to the Chesapeake, as there was a
probability that Washington and Rochambeau, giving up the attack of New
York, would make a united descent on York Town. Wayne and Lafayette
were already continually increasing their forces above York Town; but
any such reinforcements by Sir Henry were prevented by the entrance of
the Comte de Grasse, with twenty-eight sail of the line and several
frigates, into the Chesapeake, having on board three thousand two
hundred troops, which he had brought from the West Indies. These troops
he landed, and sent, under the Marquis de St Simon, to join Lafayette,
much to his delight.

[Illustration: SURRENDER OF LORD CORNWALLIS, YORK TOWN. (_See p._ 283.)]

Rodney, who was still commanding in the West Indies, had been on the
look-out for De Grasse, but, missing him, he had dispatched Sir Samuel
Hood after him, supposing that he had made for New York. Hood had
with him fourteen ships of the line, and, arriving at Sandy Hook on
the 28th of August, he found that De Grasse had then sailed for the
Chesapeake. Admiral Arbuthnot had been replaced by Admiral Graves, but
Graves had only seven ships of the line, and of these only five fit for
action. Taking the chief command, with these twenty-one ships Graves
set sail for the Chesapeake, with Hood as second in command. There, on
the 5th of September, he discerned the fleet of De Grasse at anchor,
just within the Capes of Virginia, and blocking up York River with
his frigates. Graves had his nineteen ships, De Grasse twenty-eight,
and Nelson could have desired nothing better than such a sight in the
narrow waters of the Chesapeake: not a ship would have escaped him;
but Graves was no Nelson, and allowed De Grasse to cut his cables
and run out to sea. There, indeed, Graves attacked him, but under
infinitely greater disadvantages, at four o'clock in the afternoon. The
night parted them, and De Grasse returned to his old anchorage in the
Chesapeake, and Graves sailed away again for New York.

Meanwhile, Washington and Rochambeau were mustering for the march
to the Chesapeake. On the 14th of September Washington reached the
headquarters of Lafayette, and took the supreme command, Rochambeau
being second, and the especial head of the French. The next day
Washington and Rochambeau held a conference with the Comte de Grasse.
De Grasse told them that what they did they must do quickly, for that
he could not remain on that station longer than the 1st of November;
and it was resolved to act accordingly.

Sir Henry Clinton had for some time been aware of the real destination
of the united forces of Washington and Rochambeau. He must have seen
that there was a determined resolve to crush, by the most powerful
combination of American and French forces, the army in the south,
and every exertion should have been made by him, with fleet and
army, to release Cornwallis from his peril. But, instead of sending
direct reinforcements to Cornwallis, and ordering the fleet to engage
the enemy's attention, and, if possible, defeat De Grasse in the
Chesapeake, he concocted a diversion in Connecticut with Arnold,
which he fondly hoped would recall Washington. Sir Henry Clinton
contemplated further expeditions--first against the Rhode Island fleet,
and next against Philadelphia; but these never came off, and matters
were now every day assuming such an aspect as should have stimulated
him to some direct assistance to Cornwallis.

On the 28th of September the combined army of French and Americans
came in sight of York Town, and encamped about two miles from the
outworks. The next morning they extended themselves towards the left
of Cornwallis, but cautiously; and the English pickets slowly retired
within the outer lines at their approach. That evening Cornwallis
received a despatch from Sir Henry Clinton, dated September 24th,
which gave the cheering expectation that he was duly sensible of the
imminence of the danger, and of his responsibility. He said:--"At
a meeting of the general and flag officers held this day, it is
determined that above five thousand men, rank and file, shall be
embarked on board the king's ships, and the joint exertions of the
navy and army made in a few days to relieve you, and afterwards to
co-operate with you. The fleet consists of twenty-three sail of the
line, three of which are three-deckers. There is every reason to hope
that we start on the 5th of October." On this promising intimation of
speedy aid, Cornwallis immediately drew in his small force from the
extended outworks, and concentrated them within the entrenchments round
the town. Undoubtedly it was a measure calculated to save much life,
which must have been lost in defending outworks too widely extended
for the enclosed force; but it encouraged the Americans, who did not
expect to gain them thus easily. Two thousand men took up their ground
before Gloucester. Round York Town itself Washington, Rochambeau,
Lafayette, and St. Simon concentrated their forces. On the night of
the 1st of October, the French on the right and the Americans on the
left drew nearer, and commenced breaking ground. Six days were then
spent in bringing from the ships fifty pieces of cannon, some of them
very heavy, ammunition, and other military stores; in fact, as much
preparation was made for carrying this single post as if it had been
a regular and first-rate fortress. On the night of the 6th of October
the French and Americans began casting up their first parallel within
six hundred yards of Cornwallis's lines. By the 9th of October their
trenches and batteries were completed, and that afternoon they opened a
tremendous fire on the town. Cornwallis replied to them with vigour,
but he found many of his guns on the left silenced, and his works
greatly damaged. On the night of the 11th the enemy began their second
parallel within three hundred yards of the lines. In its progress, for
three days, Cornwallis committed much havoc amongst them by opening
fresh embrasures for guns, and pouring an incessant shower upon them of
balls and shells. Two redoubts on the left flank of the British more
particularly annoyed them, and Washington determined to carry these by
storm. Of course they were carried, and their guns then turned on York
Town.

The situation of Lord Cornwallis was now growing desperate. An attempt
to destroy the enemy's batteries failed on the 16th. "At this time," he
says, "we knew that there was no part of the whole front attacked in
which we could show a single gun, and our shells were nearly exhausted.
I had therefore only to choose between preparing to surrender the
next day, or endeavouring to get off with the greater part of the
troops; and I determined to attempt the latter." Having conceived this
desperate scheme of endeavouring to escape, Cornwallis that night wrote
to Sir Henry Clinton, in cypher, telling him not to risk fleet or army
in the attempt to rescue them. He was sure that something had prevented
the fleet from sailing at the time proposed, and he sought to steal
away with the bulk of his army, leaving a small number to capitulate
for the town. The idea, with such troops of well-mounted cavalry at
his heels, was a wild one, and there were other obstacles in the way.
He must first ferry his troops across the river to Gloucester, and, as
he had not vessels enough to carry all at once, he had sent over part
of them, when a violent storm arose, and prevented the return of the
boats. This was decisive. With his forces thus divided, Cornwallis had
scarcely soldiers enough left to man the guns in York Town, and there
was nothing for it but to surrender.

Accordingly, on the morning of the 17th, he sent a flag of truce to
Washington, proposing a cessation of hostilities for twenty-four
hours, in order that commissioners might meet and settle the terms of
surrender. They were soon arranged, and articles of surrender were
signed by the respective generals on the morning of the 19th of October.

At two o'clock the York Town troops marched out with their drums
beating, their muskets shouldered, and their colours cased, and piled
their arms. The number of those who remained effective now amounted
only to four thousand; the rest, making up the total number to about
six thousand, were lying sick or wounded. General Lincoln, who had
been so lately a prisoner of the English, was appointed to receive
them, and the British prisoners had to march through two lines of the
allied army, upwards of a mile in length, the Americans on the right,
and the French on the left. The different feelings with which the
English regarded the French and Americans was remarked. The English
officers, as they passed along the enemy's lines, courteously saluted
every French officer--a compliment which they withheld from every
American one, even the highest. The surrender of Cornwallis's army
was the determining point of the war. The news of this decisive event
reached London on the 25th of November. Lord North walked about the
room, exclaiming, "Oh, God! it is all over!" The king received the
communication with more firmness. In Paris great was the exultation.
Franklin, who was there, and who, only three days before, had written
to Governor Pownall that he never expected to see "this accursed war"
finished in his time, now wrote to John Adams, at the Hague:--"I
congratulate you on this glorious news. The infant Hercules, in his
cradle, has now strangled his second serpent;" and so delighted was he
with his conceit of the serpent, that he afterwards had a medal cast
embodying it.




CHAPTER XII.

REIGN OF GEORGE III. (_continued_).

    Rodney takes St. Eustatia--Destruction of Dutch Commerce--Loss
    of Minorca--Naval Actions--Meeting of Parliament--Vehemence
    of the Opposition--Losses in the West Indies--Breaking up of
    the Ministry--Their Defeat on Conway's Motion--Lord North's
    Resignation--Shelburne refuses the Premiership--New Whig
    Government--Agitation in Ireland--Grattan's Motion for Legislative
    Independence--The Volunteer Meeting at Dungannon--Grattan's
    Motion carried--Demands of the Irish Parliament conceded--Flood's
    Agitation--Economic Reforms--Pitt's Motion for Parliamentary
    Reform--Unsuccessful Negotiations for Peace--Rodney's Victory
    over De Grasse--Lord Howe's Exploits--The Siege and Relief of
    Gibraltar--Negotiations for Peace--Folly of Oswald and Duplicity
    of Shelburne--The Negotiations continued--Franklin throws over
    Vergennes--Conclusion of a Secret Treaty between England and
    America--Fate of the American Royalists--Announcement of the
    Peace in Parliament--Terms of Peace with France, Spain, and
    Holland--Opposition to the Peace--Coalition of Fox and North--Fall
    of Shelburne--Pitt's Attempt to form a Ministry--The Coalition
    in Office--Reform and the Prince of Wales--Fox's India Bill--Its
    Introduction--Progress of the Measure--The King's Letter to
    Temple--Reception of the News in the Commons--Dismissal of the
    Ministry--Pitt forms a Cabinet--Factious Opposition of Fox--Pitt's
    India Bill--He refuses to divulge his Intentions--The Tide
    begins to Turn--Attempt at a Coalition--Increasing Popularity of
    Pitt--Fox's Resolution--The Dissolution--"Fox's Martyrs."


There were other transactions besides those of the American campaign,
during the year, which demand notice. Rodney co-operated with a body
of troops under General Vaughan in an attempt to recover the island
of St. Vincent, which the French had taken in the previous year, but
they were not successful. They then turned their attack on the island
of St. Eustatia, belonging to the Dutch, and the governor not having
heard the news of the war, they met with no resistance. The capture
was a most valuable one; the whole island seemed one great store of
Dutch and American products and goods. There were one hundred and
fifty merchant vessels in the harbour all secured, besides six ships
of war and a fleet of thirty Dutch West Indiamen, which had just left,
but which were sent after and brought back. The value of the whole
prize was estimated at three millions eight hundred thousand pounds.
A large quantity of the merchandise belonged to Englishmen, who were
engaged thus in supplying the Americans through this channel. Rodney
confiscated the whole of it. In vain did the owners demand, through
the Assembly of St. Kitt's, the restoration of those goods; Rodney
would not listen to them. Besides St. Eustatia, the small neighbouring
islands of St. Martin and Saba, and the Dutch settlements on the rivers
of Demerara and Essequibo, in Guiana, were taken with their ships and
property. The Dutch trade in these parts received a mortal blow. On
the other hand, the French, under the Marquis de Bouillé, captured the
island of Tobago.

The English now began to contemplate taking the Cape of Good Hope
from the Dutch. General Johnstone was dispatched in April with five
ships of the line, some frigates, and smaller vessels, having on board
General Medows and three regiments for this purpose; but encountering
Admiral Suffren in the way, after an indecisive action, Johnstone fell
in with and took a Dutch East Indiaman of great value, and learned
through it that Suffren had managed to reach the Cape and give the
alarm, and that the Cape was put into strong defence. Johnstone,
therefore, made for Saldanha Bay, where he learned that a number of
other Dutch East Indiamen were lying. Four of these he secured; the
rest were run ashore by their commanders and burnt. During the autumn
both Dutch and French suffered much from the British on the coasts of
Coromandel and the island of Sumatra. They also took from the Dutch
Negapatam, Penang, and other places.

Meanwhile, Florida Blanca had planned the capture of Minorca. He
prevailed on France, though with difficulty, to assist. The Duke de
Crillon, a Frenchman, was made commander of the expedition, and on
the 22nd of July the united fleets of France and Spain sailed out of
Cadiz Bay, and stretched out into the ocean, as if intending to make a
descent on England. The main part of the fleet did, in fact, sail into
the English Channel. But they did not venture to attack Admiral Darby,
and contented themselves with picking up a number of merchant vessels;
and again dissensions and disease breaking out, this great fleet
separated, and each nation returned to its respective ports, without
effecting anything worthy of such an armament. But a lesser portion of
this fleet, on coming out of harbour, carrying eight thousand troops,
stores, and ordnance, had passed through the Straits of Gibraltar, and
appeared suddenly before Port Mahon. On the 19th of August the troops
were landed near Port Mahon, and, being favoured by the inhabitants,
once under the sway of Spain, and good Catholics, they soon invested
the fort, and compelled General Murray, who formerly so bravely
defended Quebec, to retire to Fort St. Philip, leaving the town of Port
Mahon in their possession. Despite the resolute defence of his men,
Murray was forced to surrender the island.

[Illustration: EDMUND BURKE. (_After the portrait by George Romney._)]

There were various actions at sea, in one quarter or other. Sir
Hyde Parker, convoying a merchant fleet from the Baltic, on the 5th
of August fell in with Admiral Zouttman near the Dogger Bank, also
convoying a fleet of Dutch traders. An engagement took place, Zouttman
having a few men-of-war more than Parker. The engagement was terrible.
The ships on both sides were severely damaged, and the _Hollandia_--a
sixty-four-gun ship of Zouttman's--went down with all its crew. Many
of the other ships were with difficulty kept afloat. On reaching the
Nore, the king and the Prince of Wales went on board, where they
highly complimented both Parker and the rest of the officers. On the
12th of December Admiral Kempenfeldt, with thirteen ships-of-the-line,
discovered, off Ushant, the French fleet, under De Guichen, convoying
a fleet of transports and merchantmen, bound, some for the East and
others for the West Indies, with troops and stores. The fleet of De
Guichen was far superior to that of Kempenfeldt, but, the convoy being
at a considerable distance from the transports and traders, Kempenfeldt
adroitly made himself master of twenty sail of these vessels, and
sailed off with them; and within a few days afterwards he captured
five more of these ships. There were also other fights of minor
importance.

On the 27th of November, only two days after the receipt of the news
of the surrender of Lord Cornwallis, Parliament met. The king adverted
to the unhappy event, but still declared that he should be betraying
his trust, as sovereign of a free people, if he did not refuse to give
up the contest; that he still trusted in Divine Providence, and he
called for fresh, animated, and united exertions. He turned with more
satisfaction to the successes in the East Indies, and the safe arrival
of our principal mercantile fleets. In the Lords, the Earl of Shelburne
attacked the Address, supported by the Duke of Richmond and the Lords
Camden and Rockingham; but the most tempestuous burst of indignant
eloquence from the Opposition took place in the Commons. Fox asserted
that he had listened to the Address with horror and amazement. He
declared himself confounded at the hardihood of Ministers, after such a
consummation of their imbecile management, who dared to look the House
of Commons in the face. He would not say that they were paid by France,
for it was not possible for him to prove the fact; but, if they were
not, he avowed that they deserved to be, for they had served the French
monarch more faithfully and successfully than ever Ministers served a
master. He especially singled out Lord Sandwich for reprobation, as the
author of the wretched condition of our fleets, which were inferior in
number of ships and their appointments to those of the enemy all over
the globe. He called on the House to insist on the total and immediate
change of Ministers, and urged the adoption of measures which should,
if possible, repair the incalculable injuries they had inflicted on
the nation. The Ministers, however, had strength enough to carry the
Address by two hundred and eighteen votes against one hundred and
twenty-nine; but the debate was resumed on the Address being reported,
and then William Pitt delivered a most scathing speech, declaring that
so far from our being warranted in pressing this ruinous war, he was
satisfied that, if he went from one end of the Treasury bench to the
other, such was the condition of the Ministry, he should find that
there was not one man who could trust his neighbour; and the truth
of this was becoming strikingly evident. Dundas, the Lord Advocate,
hitherto one of the staunchest supporters of Lord North, spoke now as
in astonishment at the language of the Ministers, declaring that some
of them in Council clearly did not give their honest opinions. There
were other like symptoms of defection; the sensitive placemen saw that
the end of the North Administration was at hand. Lord North, perceiving
the ground failing beneath him, lowered his tone, and, on Sir James
Lowther, seconded by Mr. Powys, proposing a resolution that the war
against America had been an utter failure, he explained that he did not
advocate, in future, a continental warfare there, a marching of troops
through the provinces, from north to south, but only the retention of
ports on the coast, for the protection of our fleets in those seas, and
the repulse of the French and Spaniards. Parliament was adjourned on
the 20th of December till the 21st of January, and thus closed the year
1781.

Ill news flowed in apace from all quarters during the recess. The
Marquis de Bouillé had surprised and retaken St. Eustatia. The new
conquests in Demerara and Essequibo had also been retaken. Bouillé
having secured St. Eustatia, next turned his arms against the old and
valuable island of St. Kitt's. He then landed eight thousand men at
Basseterre, the capital, whose movements were protected by the fleet
under De Grasse. General Fraser and Governor Shirley took post on the
rugged heights of Brimstone Hill, and made a stout defence, whilst Sir
Samuel Hood, who had followed De Grasse from the Chesapeake, boldly
interposed between the French admiral and the French troops on shore.
Hood twice beat off De Grasse; but the British fleet and army were much
too inconsiderable to maintain the conquest. The island was finally
taken, and after it the smaller ones of Nevis and Montserrat, so that
of all the Leeward Islands we had only Barbadoes and Antigua left.

These dispiriting losses, combined with the fall of Minorca, stimulated
the public and the mercantile bodies to petition earnestly for the
termination of the American war; and Parliament met at the appointed
time amid numbers of such demands. Petitions came from the cities of
London and Westminster, and many other towns and counties, bearing
rather the features of remonstrances. No sooner did the House meet than
Fox moved for an inquiry into the causes of the constant failure of our
fleets in these enterprises, on which so much had depended. The object
was to crush Lord Sandwich, the head of the Admiralty. Fox's motion
was rejected, but only by a majority of twenty-two. The strength of
Ministers was fast ebbing.

The first symptom of the breaking up was the necessity felt for the
dismissal of Lord George Germaine, who had contributed so essentially
to the defeats in America. But even then the king would not consent
that he should resign without conferring a peerage on him, observing,
"No one can then say he is disgraced." No quiet was now allowed to the
declining Ministers. Fox, on the 20th of February, strongly seconded
by William Pitt, made another attack on Lord Sandwich, this time
including the whole Board of Admiralty; and the motion was only lost
by nineteen. Another, and perhaps more formidable, enemy now stood
forward. This was General Conway, who enjoyed the highest esteem of
the House, and had been the first to propose the abolition of the
fatal Stamp Act. He moved, on the 22nd of February, that the House
should address his Majesty, entreating that he would "listen to the
advice of his Commons, that the war on the continent of North America
might no longer be pursued for the impracticable purpose of reducing
the inhabitants of that country to obedience by force." After a great
debate, the House divided two hours after midnight, and Ministers
were reduced to a majority of one, the votes being one hundred and
ninety-four against one hundred and ninety-three. Five days after,
General Conway again moved that any further attempts against America
would weaken the efforts of England against her European enemies, and,
by further irritating the colonies, render the desired peace more
difficult. The resolution was carried against Government by two hundred
and thirty-four against two hundred and fifteen. Finally, on the 15th
of March Sir John Rous moved a vote of want of confidence, which was
again lost by a minority of only nine. It was instantly determined to
renew this motion through Lord Surrey; and Lord North saw so clearly
that nothing could now avert his fall, that he implored the king most
earnestly to accept his resignation. George sent for Lord North on the
20th, and addressed him in these words:--"Considering the temper of the
House, I thought the Administration at an end." Lord North instantly
seized on the words, saying:--"Then, sire, had I not better state the
fact at once?" The king consented, and North hurried down to the House
of Commons in his court-dress, as he was.

It was five o'clock--the House densely crowded; for Lord Surrey was
going to make the great Opposition motion of want of confidence, and
only waited for the arrival of the Minister. As North hurried up the
House, there were loud cries of "Order! order! Places! places!" North
no sooner reached the Treasury bench than he rose to make his important
disclosure; but the Opposition called vociferously for Lord Surrey,
while the Ministerial members called for Lord North. Fox then moved
that "Lord Surrey do speak first," but North instantly exclaimed, "I
rise to speak to that motion." Being now obliged to hear him, for
he was perfectly in order, he observed, that, had they suffered him
at once to proceed, he might have saved them much useless noise and
confusion, for, without any disrespect to the noble lord, he was going
to show that his motion was quite unnecessary, as the Ministers had
resigned, and that that resignation was accepted by the king! He had
only wanted to announce that fact, and to move an adjournment of a
few days, in order to make the necessary arrangements for the new
Administration. Never was there a more profound surprise. The House
was adjourned for five days, and the members prepared to depart and
spread the news. But it proved a wild, snowy evening; the carriages had
not been ordered till midnight, and whilst the members were standing
about in crowds waiting for their equipages, rather than walk home
through the snow, Lord North, who had kept his carriage, put three or
four of his friends into it, and, bowing to the other members, said,
laughingly, "You see, gentlemen, the advantage of being in the secret.
Good night!"

The king, in the first instance, applied to Lord Shelburne to form
a Ministry; but he was bound by engagements to Wentworth House, and
honourably refused to take the lead. George then tried Lord Gower
as ineffectually, and so was compelled to send for Lord Rockingham,
who accepted office, on the condition that peace should be made
with America, including the acknowledgment of its independence, if
unavoidable; administrative reform, on the basis of Mr. Burke's three
Bills; and the expulsion of contractors from Parliament, and revenue
officers from the exercise of the elective franchise. The king stood
strongly on the retention of Lord Chancellor Thurlow and Lord Stormont
in their offices. Rockingham, with reluctance, conceded the retention
of Thurlow, but refused that of Stormont. The choice of Lord Rockingham
was such as could only have been made where family influence and party
cliques had more weight than the proper object of a Minister--the able
management of national affairs. Rockingham, though a very honourable
man, was never a man of any ability, and though now only fifty-two,
his health and faculties, such as they were, were fast failing. Besides
this, there was a violent jealousy between him and Lord Shelburne,
who became his colleague, and brought in half of the Cabinet. The
shape which the Ministry eventually assumed was this:--Lord Rockingham
became First Lord of the Treasury and Premier; the Earl of Shelburne
and Charles Fox, Secretaries of State; Thurlow, Lord Chancellor;
Camden, notwithstanding his age, President of the Council; Duke of
Grafton, Privy Seal; Lord John Cavendish, Chancellor of the Exchequer;
Keppel--made a viscount--First Lord of the Admiralty; General Conway,
Commander of the Forces; the Duke of Richmond, Master-General of
Ordnance; Dunning--as Lord Ashburton--Chancellor of the Duchy of
Lancaster. Burke was not admitted to the Cabinet, for the Whigs were
too great sticklers for birth and family; but his indispensable ability
insured him the Paymastership of the Forces--by far the most lucrative
office in the hands of Government, but the salary of which he was
pledged to reduce by his Bill. Pitt was offered a place as Lord of the
Treasury; but he had already declared, on the 8th of March, on the
debate on Lord John Cavendish's motion, that he would never accept a
subordinate situation. Dundas remained in office, as Lord Advocate, and
John Lee was made Solicitor-General. Such was the new Administration:
it embraced, as leaders, five Rockinghamites and five Shelburnites.
The eleventh member of the Cabinet, Thurlow, belonged to neither side,
but was the king's man. Fox saw himself in office with him with great
repugnance, and Burke felt the slight put upon him in excluding him
from the Cabinet.

On the 28th of March the Ministry, as completed, was announced in the
House, and the writs for the re-elections having been issued, the
House adjourned for the Easter holidays, and on the 8th of April met
for business. The first affairs which engaged the attention of the new
Administration were those of Ireland. We have already seen that, in
1778, the Irish, encouraged by the events in North America, and by Lord
North's conciliatory proposals to Congress, appealed to the British
Government for the removal of unjust restrictions from themselves,
and how free trade was granted them in 1780. These concessions
were received in Ireland with testimonies of loud approbation and
professions of loyalty; but they only encouraged the patriot party to
fresh demands. These were for the repeal of the two obnoxious Acts
which conferred the legislative supremacy regarding Irish affairs on
England. These Acts were--first, Poynings' Act, so called from Sir
Edward Poynings, and passed in the reign of Henry VII., which gave to
the English Privy Council the right to see, alter, or suppress any Bill
before the Irish Parliament, money Bills excepted; the second was an
Act of George I., which asserted in the strongest terms the right of
the king, Lords, and Commons of England to legislate for Ireland.

Grattan determined to call these Acts in question in the Irish
Parliament, and at least abolish them there. This alarmed even
Burke, who, writing to Ireland, said, "Will no one stop that madman,
Grattan?" But Grattan, on the 19th of April, 1780, submitted to the
Irish House of Commons a resolution asserting the perfect legislative
independence of Ireland. He did not carry his motion then, but his
speech--in his own opinion, the finest he ever made--had a wonderful
effect on the Irish public. Other matters connected with sugar duties,
and an Irish Mutiny Bill, in which Grattan took the lead, fanned the
popular flame, and the Volunteer body at the same time continued to
assume such rapidly growing activity that it was deemed necessary
by Government to send over the Earl of Carlisle to supersede the
Earl of Buckinghamshire, and to give him an able secretary in Mr.
Eden. But this did not prevent the Irish Volunteers from meeting at
Dungannon on the 15th of February, 1782. There were two hundred and
forty-two delegates, with their general-in-chief, Lord Charlemont,
at their head, and they unanimously passed a resolution prepared by
Grattan, "That a claim of any body of men other than the King, Lords,
and Commons of Ireland, to bind this kingdom, is unconstitutional,
illegal, and a grievance." On the 22nd, Grattan moved a similar
resolution in the Irish House of Commons, which was only got rid of
by the Attorney-General asking for some time to consider it. Two days
only before Grattan had made his motion on Irish rights, that is, on
the 20th of February, he seconded a Bill for further relief of Roman
Catholics in Ireland, introduced by Mr. Gardiner. The Bill was passed,
and wonderfully increased the influence of Grattan by adding the
grateful support of all the Catholics. Such was the tone of Ireland,
and such the transcendent influence of Grattan there, when the new Whig
Ministry assumed office.

Grattan had given notice that on the 16th of April he would move
for the utter repeal of the Acts destructive of the independent
legislative rights of Ireland. On the appointed day, the House of
Commons having been expressly summoned by the Speaker, Grattan rose,
and, assuming the question already as carried, began, "I am now to
address a free people. Ages have passed away, and this is the first
moment in which you could be distinguished by that appellation. I have
found Ireland on her knees; I have watched over her with an eternal
solicitude; I have traced her progress from injury to arms, from arms
to liberty. Spirit of Swift! spirit of Molyneux! your genius has
prevailed! Ireland is now a nation. In that new character I hail her,
and, bowing to her august presence, I say, ESTO PERPETUA!" The speech
was received with thunders of applause. It concluded with an Address to
the Crown, declaring in the plainest, boldest language, that no body
of men, except the Irish Parliament, had a right to make laws by which
that nation could be bound. The Address was carried by acclamation; it
was carried with nearly equal enthusiasm by the Lords, and then both
Houses adjourned to await the decision of the Parliament and Ministry
of Great Britain.

[Illustration: HENRY GRATTAN.]

This was a serious position of affairs for the consideration of the
new Whig Ministry. They were called on to declare, either that Ireland
was part of the empire, and subject to the same laws, as regarded the
empire, as Great Britain, or that it was distinctly a separate empire
under the same king, just as Hanover was. The Ministry of Rockingham
have been severely blamed by one political party, and highly lauded by
another, for conceding the claims of Ireland on that head so readily;
for they came to the conclusion to yield them fully. They were by
no means blind to the difficulties of the case, and to the evils
that might arise from a decision either way. But the case with the
present Ministry was one of simple necessity. England had committed
the great error of refusing all concession to demanded rights in the
case of America, and now lay apparently too exhausted by the fight to
compel submission, with all Europe in arms against her. Ireland, aware
of this, was in arms, and determined to profit by the crisis. Fox,
therefore, on the 17th of May, announced the intention of Ministers
at once to acknowledge the independence of Ireland by repealing the
Act of the 6th of George I. Fox, in his speech, declared that it was
far better to have the Irish willing subjects to the Crown than bitter
enemies. The Bill repealing the 6th of George I. accordingly passed
both Houses as a matter of course, and the effect upon Ireland was
such, that in the first ebullition of the national joy the Irish House
of Commons voted one hundred thousand pounds to raise twenty thousand
seamen. The Irish Commons, moreover, offered to grant Grattan, for his
patriotic and successful exertions in this cause, a similar sum, to
purchase him an estate. Grattan--though a poor man, his income at that
time scarcely exceeding five hundred pounds a year--disinterestedly
refused such a sum, and was only with difficulty induced ultimately to
accept half of it.

There were not wanting, however, those who strove to disturb the
joy of Ireland, and the peace of England thus acquired, by sowing
suspicions of the sincerity of England, and representing that the
independence granted was spurious rather than real. Amongst these,
Flood, the rival of Grattan in political and Parliamentary life, took
the lead. He seized on every little circumstance to create doubts of
the English carrying out the concession faithfully. He caught at an
imprudent motion of the Earl of Abingdon, in the Peers, and still more
vivaciously at the decision of an appeal from Ireland, in the Court
of King's Bench, by Lord Mansfield. The case had remained over, and
it was deemed impracticable to send it back to Ireland, though nearly
finished before the Act of Repeal. Fox explained the case, and made
the most explicit declaration of the "full, complete, absolute, and
perpetual surrender of the British legislative and judicial supremacy
over Ireland." But the suspicions had been too adroitly infused to be
removed without a fresh and still more positive Act, which was passed
in the next Session.

The claims of Ireland seeming, for the moment, to be happily satisfied,
Ministers now proceeded to carry out those reforms for which they had
loudly called during the many years that they had been in opposition.
They adopted and introduced the Bills of Sir Philip Clerke and Mr.
Carew for excluding contractors from the House of Commons, and revenue
officers from voting at elections. The Bill against the contractors
passed the Commons with little difficulty; but the Ministers
immediately felt the mischief of allowing Lord Thurlow to retain his
place of Chancellor. He opposed the measure vehemently, and divided
the House upon it. Lord Mansfield gave it his cordial resistance, and
the new Lord Ashburton, though created by the present Administration,
tacked to it a clause exempting all gentlemen who merely contracted
for the produce of their estates. The clause, however, was lopped away
again on the return of the Bill to the Commons, and the Act passed
without it. The Bill for disqualifying revenue officers was opposed
with equal pertinacity by Thurlow and Mansfield; though Lord Rockingham
stated that the elections in seventy boroughs depended chiefly on
revenue officers, and that nearly twelve thousand of such officers
created by the late Ministry had votes in other places. The Bill
passed, after exempting all officers who held their posts for life,
and therefore were charitably supposed to be beyond the reach of undue
influence, as if no such thing as promotion had its effect.

On the 15th of April a message was sent down to both Houses from the
king, in conformity with his pledge to the new Ministry, with regard
to Mr. Burke's plan of economical reform, which it proposed should
be a measure of effectual retrenchment, and to include his Majesty's
own Civil List. Lord Shelburne, in communicating it to the Lords,
assured the House that this was no mere ministerial message, but was
the genuine language of the king himself, proceeding from the heart.
Burke, in the Commons, used more exuberant terms of eulogy, declaring
that "it was the best of messages to the best of people from the
best of kings!" Early in May he moved for leave to bring in his Bill
on the subject, and then most of the promised wonders of reform and
retrenchment vanished. The duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster and the
principality of Wales were at once cut out of his scheme of reform. The
plan of supplying the Royal Household by contract was abandoned; the
Ordnance Office, in the hands of the Duke of Richmond, was not to be
touched, nor the Treasurer of the Household's office; and some other
of the royal establishments, which were mere sinecures, were left. But
he succeeded in lopping off the third Secretaryship of State, which
had been created for the American colonies, and was useless now they
were gone; the Lords of Trade and Plantations; the Lords of Police in
Scotland; the principal officers of the Great Wardrobe, Jewel Office,
Treasurer of the Chamber, Cofferer of the Household, six Clerks of the
Board of Green Cloth--in all, about a dozen offices were swept away.
The Pension List was vigorously revised. No pension was to exceed three
hundred pounds a year, and not more than six hundred pounds was to be
granted in pensions in any one year; the names of the persons to whom
they were granted were to be laid before Parliament within twenty days
after the beginning of each session, until the amount in the Pension
List should reach ninety thousand pounds. The Secret Service money was,
at the same time, limited; and a solemn oath was to be administered
to the Secretaries of State regarding its proper employment. It may
be imagined what were the consternation and the disgust of the large
class which had been revelling on these misappropriated funds of the
nation. Burke, in a letter, describes feelingly the gauntlet he had
to run in proceeding with his reform. "I was loaded," he says, "with
hatred for everything withheld, and with obloquy for everything given."
What, however, brought unjust odium on him, but just reproach on the
Cabinet, was, that Lord Rockingham made haste, before the Bill was
passed, to grant enormous pensions to his supporters and colleagues,
Lord Ashburton and Colonel Barré. The latter ardent patriot, who,
whilst Burke's Bill was in consideration, said it did not go far
enough in reform, now willingly pocketed three thousand two hundred
pounds a year, as a pension, besides the salary of his office. In the
House of Lords, Thurlow again attacked the Bill, supported by Lords
Mansfield and Loughborough; but it passed, and Burke immediately gave
an illustrious proof of his disinterestedness, by bringing in a Bill
for regulating and reducing the enormous emoluments of his own office,
the Paymastership of the Forces.

From economical and colonial, Ministers proceeded to Parliamentary
reform. Sir Harbord Harbord had introduced, before their accession to
office, a Bill to disfranchise the rotten borough of Cricklade, in
Wiltshire, as Shoreham had already been disfranchised. The new Ministry
supported it, with the exception of their strange colleague, Thurlow,
whom they ought to have insisted on being dismissed. Cricklade was a
thoroughly venal borough, regularly sold to some East Indian nabob;
and Mr. Frederick Montagu, in the debate, quoted Lord Chatham's
remark on Shoreham, which had also been the purchased lair of Indian
corruptionists, that he "was glad to find the borough of Shoreham
likely to be removed from Bengal to its ancient situation in the county
of Sussex."

The success with Cricklade encouraged William Pitt to bring forward a
motion for a general reform of Parliament. This he did on the 7th of
May, and was seconded by Wilkes's old ally, Alderman Sawbridge. Pitt
did not venture to talk of a Bill, but only to propose a Committee
to consider the subject. This was granted; but it was soon apparent
that nothing would be done. The Ministers were at variance on the
subject--some went one length, and some another; many of them were as
determined against all Parliamentary reform as any Tories. Rockingham,
the Prime Minister, especially, held much borough influence. He was
utterly opposed, in secret, to all such reforms. Pitt himself would
hear nothing of repealing the Septennial Act; but he was for sweeping
away rotten boroughs and transferring their votes to the counties;
he went for equalising the whole representation, for destroying the
influence of the Treasury and the hereditary right assumed by the
aristocracy, and, by disfranchising the rotten boroughs, for sweeping
the House of the creatures of the India House. He was zealously
supported by Fox, Sheridan, Sir George Savile; and the Duke of
Richmond, in the Lords, warmly commended the movement; but the motion
had the fate that might have been expected--it was negatived, though
only by twenty votes.

But the matters most important, and in which the Rockingham Ministry
succeeded the best, were those of attempting to accomplish the peace
with America, and with the Continental nations, on which they had so
long and so loudly insisted. Fox first tried his diplomatic genius
with the Dutch, whom he could, as he boasted, soon conciliate; but, to
his infinite chagrin, that calculating people were so elated by the
recent ill success of the English, and relied so completely on the
powerful fleets of France and Spain to protect their trade and islands,
that they returned a contemptuous answer, declaring that they could
not treat without their allies. Still more mortifying was his repulse
by the Americans. His offers of negotiations for peace were received
with a haughty indifference by Congress, and he was again referred
to France. Fox now had recourse to the mediations of Russia and
Prussia. But Frederick the Great declined to intervene, and the Czarina
Catherine coupled her offers of alliance with conditions which the king
and the majority of the Cabinet refused to accept, though Fox thought
they were reasonable.

Scarcely was the Rockingham Administration formed when they determined
to recall England's ablest admiral, Sir George Rodney, and they carried
this into execution in May of this year, and appointed Admiral Pigott
in his stead. Lord Keppel, who had shown himself so sensitive in his
own case, now he was at the head of the Admiralty not only recalled
Rodney because he was of another party, but he did it in the coldest
and most direct manner, through his secretary, Mr. Stephen. However,
before this order of recall was issued--the 1st of May--Rodney had
fought one of the greatest and most decisive battles which adorn the
history of our navy. He had gone in all haste to the West Indies, with
fourteen ships of the line, to join Sir Samuel Hood, who was vainly
contending against the fleet of De Grasse and a strong land force at
St. Christopher's. But, as De Grasse had landed eight thousand men,
under De Bouillé, and Hood had no land troops, he could not save the
island. After its capture Rodney fell in with him, and their united
fleet amounted to thirty-six ships of the line. It was well, for Hood
informed Rodney that De Grasse was intending to join the Spanish
general, Galvez, at St. Domingo, where they were to sail for a grand
attack on the chief of the British West India Islands, Jamaica, almost
the only island, excepting Barbadoes and Antigua, which Britain now
owned in that part of the globe. On the 8th of April he was signalled
that the French fleet was unmoored and proceeding to sea. Rodney
instantly put out, and the next morning discovered this fleet under
Dominica. The wind being in favour of De Grasse, he stood away for
Guadeloupe; but Rodney gave chase, and Hood's squadron getting far
in advance, De Grasse veered round in the hope of beating him before
the rest of Rodney's fleet could come up. Hood received the fire of
three men-of-war in the _Barfleur_, his ship, for some time; but he
stood bravely to the enemy, and the wind now favouring Rodney, he
came up and joined in the engagement. Several ships on each side were
so much damaged that they were almost useless, and Captain Bayne, of
the _Alfred_, was killed. The next morning the French were nearly
out of sight; but Rodney pressed after them, for he knew that if they
succeeded in joining the Spaniards, he should have sixty sail, instead
of thirty-six, to contend with.

On the evening of the 11th he had the satisfaction to find himself
close to the enemy, and at daybreak of the 12th the battle began. At
first there was so little wind that Rodney was unable to put into
execution his long-cherished scheme of breaking right through the
centre of the enemy's line, and beating one half before the other could
come to the rescue. About noon a breeze sprang up, and afforded the
long-desired opportunity. Rodney was now in the van, and after Captain
Gardiner, in the _Duke_, had made the first attempt and fallen back
disabled, Rodney's own ship, the _Formidable_, broke through, followed
by the _Namur_ and the _Canada_. The great end of Rodney was gained. He
had cut in two the vast fleet, and his ships doubling on one half threw
the whole into confusion. The half to the windward were terribly raked,
whilst the half to the leeward were unable to come up to their aid. The
battle, however, continued without respite from noon till evening, the
leeward half endeavouring to join and return to the charge, but without
being able. The most striking part of the action was the attack on the
great ship of De Grasse, the _Ville de Paris_. That huge vessel, the
pride of the French navy, towering over all far and near, attracted the
ambition of Captain Cornwallis, of the _Canada_, the brother of Lord
Cornwallis, to whose surrender De Grasse had so largely contributed.
Captain Cornwallis, as if determined on a noble revenge, attacked the
_Ville de Paris_ with fury, hugely as it towered above him, and so well
did he ply his guns that he soon reduced the monster almost to a wreck.
De Grasse fought desperately, but Hood coming up in the _Barfleur_,
about sunset, to the assistance of Cornwallis, De Grasse was compelled
to strike his flag. On board the _Ville de Paris_ were found thirty-six
chests of money, intended to pay the conquerors of Jamaica, and on
the other ships nearly all the battering trains for that purpose. The
remainder of the fleet made all sail, and Rodney pursued, but was
stopped by a calm of three days under Guadeloupe, and they escaped.
Rodney sailed to Jamaica, which he had thus saved, and was received
with acclamations of honour and gratitude. There, however, he received
the order for his recall, and returned home. To the eternal dishonour
of the Rockingham Administration, on receiving the news of this superb
and most important victory--a victory which at once restored the
drooping glories of Great Britain--they had not the pluck to cancel his
recall, though the feeling of the country compelled the Crown to grant
him a pension, and to raise him to the peerage by the title of Baron
Rodney.

[Illustration: THE ATTACK ON THE "VILLE DE PARIS." (_See p._ 292.)]

The prizes of Rodney, including the great _Ville de Paris_, on their
way home were assailed with a violent tempest, and went down, so that
the English people had not the gratification of seeing the largest
ship in the world, which had been captured by Rodney. The Dutch were
encouraged to attempt coming out of the Texel, and waylaying our
Baltic merchant fleet, but Lord Howe, with twelve sail-of-the-line,
was sent after them, and they quickly ran. His lordship remained there
blockading them till the 28th of June, when he was compelled to leave
his post and sail westward, with twenty-one ships-of-the-line and some
frigates, to watch the great combined fleet of France and Spain, which
had issued from Cadiz. The united fleet--thirty-six sail-of-the-line,
besides frigates--kept aloof, however, and allowed him safely to convoy
home the Jamaica merchant fleet, guarded by Sir Peter Parker.

No sooner did Howe return to port than he had orders to sail in aid of
Gibraltar, which was not only greatly in need of stores and provisions,
but was menaced by the combined armies and fleets of France and Spain
with one great and overwhelming attack. The evil fortune of England did
not yet, however, seem to have disappeared, for the _Royal George_,
the finest vessel in the service, went down in a sudden squall. But
this awful catastrophe did not hinder the sailing of Lord Howe. He had
by great exertion mustered a fleet of thirty-four sail-of-the-line,
and on the 11th of September steered out for Gibraltar. For upwards of
three years this famous rock had now been beleaguered. After the relief
thrown in by Admiral Darby, the Spaniards, despairing of reducing the
garrison by blockade, determined to destroy the town and works by a
terrific bombardment. This bombardment was, accordingly, opened with
unexampled fury, and continued incessantly for days and weeks. The
town was set on fire, and numbers of houses consumed; the damage done
to the ramparts and public buildings was appalling. General Elliot
displayed the utmost temper and skill during this bombardment, as he
did throughout the whole siege. He continued by night, and at other
opportunities, to repair actively the damages done; and, reserving his
fire for occasions when he saw a chance of doing particular damage, he
caused the enemy to wonder at the little impression that they made.

But, in the autumn of 1781, they resolved on a renewed attack of the
most vigorous kind. Elliot received information of this, and determined
to anticipate the plan. At midnight of the 26th of November he ordered
out all his grenadiers and light infantry, including the two veteran
regiments with which he had seen service in Germany so many years
ago, the 12th, and the regiment of General Hardenberg. Three hundred
sailors volunteered to accompany them, and the brave old general
himself could not stay behind. The detachment marched silently through
the soft sand, and entered the fourth line almost before the Spanish
sentinel was aware of them. In a very few minutes the enemy was in
full flight towards the village of Campo, and the English set to work,
under direction of the engineer officers, to destroy the works which
had cost the Spaniards such enormous labour to erect. The Spaniards for
several days appeared so stupefied that they allowed their works to
burn without any attempt to check the fire. In the following month of
December, however, they slowly resumed their bombardment. Nevertheless,
it was not till the spring of 1782 that the Spaniards were cheered by
the news that the Duke of Crillon was on his way to join them with the
army which had conquered Minorca.

In April De Crillon arrived, and was followed by the Spanish and French
troops from Minorca. From eighteen to twenty thousand men were added to
the army already encamped before the place, and the most able engineers
were engaged from almost all countries of Europe, at extravagant
salaries, and great rewards were offered for inventions which might
demolish the formidable works of the English on the rock. Nearly forty
thousand troops were now congregated against the old fortress. One
hundred and seventy pieces of heavy artillery were directed against
it, and immense stores of ammunition were accumulated for this final
and triumphant achievement. On the other hand, General Elliot had now
repaired and strengthened his defences more than ever. His garrison was
augmented to seven thousand men, including a marine brigade; eighty
pieces of cannon frowned from the walls, and the bulk of his men were
of the best and most seasoned kind.

[Illustration: THE DEFENCE OF GIBRALTAR BY LORD HEATHFIELD, 1782.

FROM THE PAINTING BY J. S. COPLEY, R.A., AT THE NATIONAL GALLERY.]

De Crillon, seeing that his bombardment from shore produced little
effect, determined to make the attack also from the sea. Amongst the
multiplicity of inventions which the offered rewards had produced,
the Chevalier D'Arcon, a French engineer, had produced a scheme which
excited the most confident expectations. The plan was to construct ten
monster floating batteries of such capacity that they should carry
the heaviest artillery, and so made and defended that they could be
neither sunk nor burnt. Loud was the clangour of hammer and saw,
and, as the secret could not be long preserved, equally busy was the
garrison within, preparing furnaces, and laying ready huge piles of
balls, to be discharged red-hot at these machines as soon as they
arrived. To constitute the intended batteries, ten large ships of from
six hundred to one thousand four hundred tons burden were cut down,
and made bombproof on the top. They were to be prevented from sinking
by the enormous thickness of the timber in their bottoms, and their
sides, which were to be six or seven feet thick, bolted, and covered
with raw hides. They were to be rendered more buoyant by thicknesses of
cork, and the interstices were to be filled with wet sand to prevent
combustion. There were to be plentiful supplies, by means of pumps,
pipes, and cisterns, of water, everywhere, to put out fire, for they
seem to have been aware of the burning balls that were being prepared
for them.

As a rumour of the approaching visit of Lord Howe had reached the
Spanish camp, all was in haste to anticipate his arrival, and take the
huge fortress before he could succour it. Accordingly the great united
fleet of Spain and France, which so lately had paraded in the English
Channel, sailed into Algeciras Bay, and on the 13th of September the
floating batteries were hauled out by a number of the ships, and
anchored at regular distances, within six hundred yards of the English
works. Whilst this extraordinary armada was approaching and disposing
itself, tremendous fire was kept up from the land, with three hundred
long guns and mortars, to divert the attention of the garrison; but
old General Elliot was ready with his red-hot balls, and, the moment
the floating batteries came within gunshot distance, he poured into
them a most destructive fire-hail. The Spaniards, notwithstanding,
placed and secured their monster machines in a very short time, and
then four hundred cannon from land and sea played on the old rock
simultaneously and incessantly. For some time the hot balls appeared
to do no damage. The timbers, being of green wood, closed up after the
balls, and so prevented their immediate ignition. In other cases, where
smoke appeared, the water-engines dashed in deluges, and extinguished
the nascent fire. But presently the fire from the batteries slackened;
it was discovered that the balls--which had many of them pierced into
the timbers three feet deep--were doing their work. The floating
battery commanded by the Prince of Nassau, on board of which was also
the engineer, D'Arcon, himself, was found smoking on the side facing
the rock, at two o'clock in the day. No water could reach the seat of
mischief, and by seven o'clock it had become so extensive as to cause
the firing to cease, and to turn the thoughts of all to endeavours for
escape. Rockets were thrown up as signals for the vessels to come up
and take off the crews. But this was found impracticable. The garrison
actually rained deluges of fire, and all approach to the monster
machines was cut off. No vessel could draw near, except at the penalty
of instant destruction. For four more hours the vaunted floating
batteries remained exposed to the pitiless pelting of the garrison.
Before midnight, the _Talla Piedra_, the greatest of the monster
machines, and the flagship, _Pastora_, at her side, were in full flame,
and by their light the indefatigable Elliot could see, with the more
precision, to point his guns. Seven of the ten floating machines were
now on fire; the guns aboard them had entirely ceased, and those on
land, as if struck with wonder and despair, had become silent too.

It might have been imagined that this magnificent and destructive
repulse would have convinced the allies that the siege was hopeless,
but they were pretty well informed that General Elliot had well nigh
exhausted his ammunition in this prodigal death-shower, and they
had still their great combined fleet, snug in the narrow bay, with
scouts in the Strait to prevent the carrying in of supplies. But
on the 24th of September news arrived at Madrid that the fleet of
Lord Howe was under weigh for Gibraltar. Howe's fleet of thirty-four
sail-of-the-line, six frigates, and three fire-ships, though in the
neighbourhood of one of fifty sail-of-the-line, besides a number of
frigates and smaller vessels, managed to get into the bay of Gibraltar
all safe, amid the wildest acclamations of soldiers and inhabitants. By
the 18th of October all the store-ships had discharged their cargoes,
and had passed through the Strait, and on the 19th Lord Howe followed
them with his fleet. The enemy's fleet then came out after him, and
the next day they were in the open ocean, and Howe proceeded to their
leeward to receive them. Some of their vessels had suffered in the
late gales, but they had still at least forty-four sail to Howe's
thirty-four, and, having the weather-gauge, had every advantage. But
after a partial firing, in which they received great damage from Howe,
they hauled off and got into Cadiz bay. Howe, then dispatching part of
his fleet to the West Indies and a second squadron to the Irish coast,
returned home himself. The news of the grand defence of Gibraltar
produced a wonderful rejoicing in England; thanks were voted by
Parliament to the officers and privates of the brave garrison; General
Elliot was invested with the Order of the Bath on the king's bastion in
sight of the works which he had preserved, and on his return, in 1787,
at the age of seventy, he was created a Peer as Lord Heathfield of
Gibraltar.

With these superb demonstrations on the part of England terminated
the war. Her enemies discovered that her hoped-for fall was yet far
off, and were much more inclined to listen to overtures of peace, of
which they were now all in great need. These negotiations had been
begun by Fox immediately on the accession of the Rockingham Ministry
to office. Unfortunately the division of work between two Secretaries
of State entailed a double negotiation. To Fox as Secretary of Foreign
Affairs fell the arrangements for peace with France and Spain and
Holland, to Lord Shelburne as Colonial Secretary fell all arrangements
connected with the colonies, that is, with the United States. It was
most important that the two Ministers should be in close accord.
Unfortunately their views differed widely. Fox was for the immediate
recognition of the independence of America; Shelburne urged that to
give independence at once was to throw away a trump card. Further,
Mr. Oswald, Shelburne's agent, was duped by Franklin into accepting
from him a paper, in which the surrender of Canada was laid down as
a basis of peace. This paper Shelburne probably showed to the king,
but, with great duplicity, refrained from mentioning its existence to
his colleagues. On the 8th of May Mr. Thomas Grenville, Fox's agent,
arrived at Paris, and negotiations were begun in real earnest. But
the naïve confession of Oswald that peace was absolutely necessary to
England greatly hampered his efforts, and in a conversation with Lord
Shelburne's envoy the existence of the Canada paper leaked out. Fox was
naturally furious, but the majority of the Cabinet were opposed to him,
and voted against his demand for the immediate recognition of American
independence. He only refrained from resigning because he would not
embitter Lord Rockingham's last moments in the world. Lord Shelburne
became Premier in July.

Upon the formation of the Shelburne Cabinet, and the news of Rodney's
victory over De Grasse, the negotiations were still continued, Mr.
Grenville only being recalled, and Mr. Alleyne Fitzherbert, afterwards
Lord St. Helens, being put in his place. France, Spain, Holland, were
all groaning under the cost and disasters of the war, yet keeping up an
air of indifference, in order to enhance their demands. The Americans
were more decided, for they were stimulated by the accounts of the
wretched condition of affairs at home. It was represented to Franklin
by Congress, that, however France or Spain might delay proposals
for peace, it was necessary for the United States. The position of
Franklin, nevertheless, was extremely difficult. There was the treaty
of alliance between France and the States of 1778, strictly stipulating
that neither party should conclude either peace or truce without the
other. What added to the difficulty was, that France had, within the
last two years, shown an unusual interest and activity of assistance.
Franklin, in order to strengthen his hands for the important crisis,
requested that other commissioners might be sent to Paris; and John Jay
quickly arrived from Spain, John Adams from Holland, and Henry Laurens
from London. The American Commissioners soon became strongly impressed
with the sentiment that France and Spain were keeping back a peace
solely for their own objects; and this was confirmed by a letter of
M. de Marbois, the secretary of the French legation at Philadelphia,
which had been seized by an English cruiser, and had been laid by
Mr. Fitzherbert before them. This letter appeared to be part of a
diplomatic correspondence between the French Minister, Vergennes, and
the French Minister in America, which threw contempt on the claim which
America set up to a share of the Newfoundland fisheries. It created
a strong belief that France was endeavouring to keep America in some
degree dependent on her; and Jay and Adams were extremely incensed at
Vergennes, and not only accused Franklin of being blindly subservient
to the French Court, but it made them resolve that no time should be
lost in effecting a separate treaty. Vergennes contended for the rights
of the Indian nations between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi, and
of Spain on the lower Mississippi, and this the American Commissioners
perceived to be an attempt to divide and weaken their territory. A
private and earnest negotiation for peace with England was therefore
entered upon as soon as a severe illness of Franklin permitted.

[Illustration: MAP OF THE UNITED STATES AT THE TIME WHEN THEY GAINED
THEIR INDEPENDENCE.]

There was no difficulty in these negotiations as to the full and entire
recognition of the independence of the States. The difficult points
were but two--one regarding the fishery, and the other regarding the
interests of the Royalists or Tories. The British Commissioners stood
out strongly for the free permission of all who had been engaged
in the war on the English side to return to their homes, and for
the restitution of all property confiscated in consequence of such
partisanship. The American Commissioners endeavoured to meet this
demand by saying the recommendations of Congress would have all the
effect that the English proposed. This the Commissioners regarded as
so many words, and they insisted so determinedly on this head, that
it appeared likely the negotiation would be broken off altogether. At
last Franklin said they would consent to allow for all losses suffered
by the Royalists, on condition that a debtor and a creditor account
was opened, and recompense made for the damages done by the Royalists
on the other side; commissioners to be appointed for the purpose of
settling all those claims. The English envoys saw at once that this was
a deception, that there would be no meeting, or no use in meeting, and
they therefore abandoned the point; and the question of the fishing
being in part conceded, the provisional articles were signed on the
30th of November, by the four American Commissioners on the one side,
and by Mr. Oswald on the other. In the preamble it was stated that
these articles were to be inserted in, and to constitute, a treaty of
peace, but that the treaty was not to be concluded until the terms of
peace had also been settled with France and Spain.

This proviso, however, by no means affected the treaty with America.
This secret treaty was made binding and effectual so far as America
and England were concerned. The first article acknowledged fully the
independence of the United States. The second fixed their boundaries,
much to the satisfaction of the Americans; and liberty was secured to
them to fish on the banks of Newfoundland, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence,
and wherever they had been accustomed to fish, but not to dry the fish
on any of the king's settled dominions in America. By the fourth,
fifth, and sixth articles it was engaged for Congress that it should
earnestly recommend to the several Legislatures to provide for the
restitution of all estates belonging to real British subjects who had
not borne arms against the Americans. All other persons were to be
allowed to go to any of the States and remain there for the settlement
of their affairs. Congress also engaged to recommend the restitution
of confiscated estates on the repayment of the sums for which they had
been sold; and no impediments were to be put in the way of recovering
real debts. All further confiscations and prosecutions were to cease.
By the seventh and eighth articles the King of England engaged to
withdraw his fleets and armies without causing any destruction of
property, or carrying away any negro slaves. By these articles, the
navigation of the Mississippi, from its source to the ocean, was to
remain for ever free and open to both parties. If West Florida happened
to be in the possession of Britain at the termination of a general
peace, a secret article determined its boundaries.

Such were the conditions on which this great contest was finally
terminated. The Americans clearly had matters almost entirely their own
way, for the English were desirous that everything should now be done
to conciliate their very positive and by no means modest kinsmen, the
citizens of the United States. It was, in truth, desirable to remove as
much as possible the rancour of the American mind, by concessions which
England could well afford, so as not to throw them wholly into the arms
of France. The conditions which the Americans, on their part, conceded
to the unfortunate Royalists consisted entirely of recommendations
from Congress to the individual States, and when it was recollected
how little regard they had paid to any engagements into which they had
entered during the war--with General Burgoyne, for example--the English
negotiators felt, as they consented to these articles, that, so far,
they would prove a mere dead letter. They could only console themselves
with the thought that they would have protected the unhappy Royalists,
whom Franklin and his colleagues bitterly and vindictively continued to
designate as traitors. Franklin showed, on this occasion, that he had
never forgotten the just chastisement which Wedderburn had inflicted
on him before the Privy Council for his concern in the purloining of
the private papers of Mr. Thomas Whateley, in 1774. On that occasion,
he laid aside the velvet court suit, in which he appeared before the
Council, and never put it on till now, when he appeared in it at the
signing of the Treaty of Independence.

On the 5th of December Parliament met, and the king, though not yet
able to announce the signing of the provisional treaty with France and
America, intimated pretty plainly the approach of that fact. Indeed,
Lord Shelburne had addressed a letter to the Lord Mayor of London
eight days before the articles with America were actually signed, that
this event was so near at hand that Parliament would be prorogued from
the time fixed for its meeting, the 26th of November, to the 5th of
December. It was, indeed, hoped that by that day the preliminaries with
France and Spain would be signed too. This not being so, the king could
only declare that conclusion as all but certain.

This announcement drew from the Opposition a torrent of abuse of
Ministers, who, in reality, had only been carrying out the very measure
which they had long recommended, and which Fox, in particular, had been
seriously endeavouring to accomplish whilst in office. Their censures
appeared to arise rather from the fact that the war was ended without
their mediation than from anything else. Fox upbraided Lord Shelburne
with having once said that, when the independence of America should
be admitted, the sun of England would have set. Yet this had been
the opinion not of Lord Shelburne merely, but of numbers who now saw
reason to doubt that gloomy view of things, and there was the less
reason for Fox to throw this in the face of the Prime Minister, as he
had been himself, whilst his colleague, earnestly labouring with him
for that end. Still he was naturally sore from Shelburne's successful
intrigues against his diplomacy. On the 18th of December he moved for
copies of such parts of the provisional treaty as related to American
independence; but in this he was supported by only forty-six members.

On the 26th the Houses adjourned for a month, for the Christmas recess,
and during this time the treaties with France and Spain made rapid
progress. The fact of America being now withdrawn from the quarrel,
coupled with the signs of returning vigour in England--Rodney's great
victory and the astonishing defence of Gibraltar--acted as a wonderful
stimulant to pacification. Spain still clung fondly to the hope of
receiving back Gibraltar, and this hope was for some time encouraged
by the apparent readiness of Lord Shelburne to comply with the desire,
as Chatham and Lord Stanhope had done before. But no sooner was this
question mooted in the House of Commons than the public voice denounced
it so energetically, that it was at once abandoned. On the 20th of
January, 1783, Mr. Fitzherbert signed, at Versailles, the preliminaries
of peace with the Comte de Vergennes, on the part of France, and with
D'Aranda, on the part of Spain. By the treaty with France, the right of
fishing off the coast of Newfoundland and in the Gulf of St. Lawrence
was restored, as granted by the Treaty of Utrecht; but the limits were
more accurately defined. The islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon, on
the coast of Newfoundland, were ceded for drying of fish. In the West
Indies, England ceded Tobago, which France had taken, and restored St.
Lucia, but received back again Grenada, St. Vincent, Dominica, St.
Kitt's, Nevis, and Montserrat. In Africa, England gave up the river
Senegal and the island of Goree, but retained Fort St. James and the
river Gambia. In India, the French were allowed to recover Pondicherry
and Chandernagore, with the right to fortify the latter, and to carry
on their usual commerce. They regained also Mahé and the factory of
Surat, with their former privileges. The articles in the Treaty of
Utrecht, regarding the demolition of the fortifications of Dunkirk,
were abrogated. Spain was allowed to retain Minorca and both the
Floridas, but she agreed to restore Providence and the Bahamas. The
latter, however, had already been retaken by us. She granted to England
the right of cutting logwood in Honduras, but without the privilege
of erecting forts or stock-houses, which rendered the concession
worthless, for it had always been found that without these it was
impossible to carry on the trade. With the Dutch a truce was made
on the basis of mutual restoration, except as concerned the town of
Negapatam, which Holland ceded. The preliminaries, however, were not
settled till nearly eight months afterwards.

It was not to be wondered at that when, on the 24th of January, the
preliminaries of peace were laid on the tables of the two Houses,
there should be a violent denunciation of the large concessions made
by Ministers. Spain had been granted better terms than in any treaty
since that of St. Quentin. She had obtained the most desirable island
of Minorca, with the finest port on the Mediterranean. She had got the
Floridas, and had given up scarcely anything, whilst, had the British,
now freed from the dead weight of America, pursued the war against
her, she must soon have lost most of her valuable insular colonies.
France had given up more, but she recovered very important territories
which she had lost, and especially her settlements of Pondicherry and
Chandernagore, in the East Indies; but America had conceded nothing,
and yet had been allowed to determine her own frontier, and to share
the benefits of the fishing all round our own Transatlantic coasts.

A new and surprising phenomenon was discovered in the attacks upon
Ministers for these concessions: Fox and North were in coalition!
Fox, who so lately had declared North and his colleagues men "void
of every principle of honour and honesty," and who would consent,
should he ever make terms with them, to be called "the most infamous
of mankind," now as warmly declared that he had ever found Lord
North--this man void of honour and honesty--a man always "open and
sincere as a friend, honourable and manly as an enemy, above practising
subterfuges, tricks, and stratagems." Lord North, on his side,
repaid the compliments of Fox, growing enthusiastic on the genius,
eloquence, and generous nature of that statesman. "While I admire
the vast extent of his understanding," exclaimed North, "I can rely
on the goodness of his heart." The coalition was looked upon with
disfavour, but it was justified to a considerable extent during the
debate on the peace. Lord John Cavendish truly represented that France
and Spain were on the verge of ruin; that Holland was in an exhausted
and helpless condition; and that as for America, it was in the very
gulf of destitution, the people refusing to pay the taxes ordered by
Congress for the continuance of the war. And it was to such defeated
and demolished enemies that Ministers had conceded almost everything
they had asked. Lord North turned more particularly to the concession
made to the French in the East Indies. It was in that quarter, he said,
that he looked for a consolidated and expanding empire, calculated to
recompense us, and more than recompense us, for the loss of America.
From that splendid continent we had completely driven the French,
and the soundest policy dictated their continued firm exclusion from
it. Yet here had Ministers most fatally readmitted them, to renew
their old plots and alliances against us, by which they would to a
certainty continue to harass, thwart, and weaken us, till we once
more went through the ruinous and sanguinary process of expulsion. He
was equally severe on the surrender of Minorca and the Floridas to
Spain, and the admission of the unconceding, unconciliating Americans
to our own proper fishing grounds. Fox called on Ministers to produce
the treaty which he had sketched a few months before, and to see what
very different terms he had demanded, and would have exacted. That the
sense of the House went with these sentiments was shown by both the
amendments of the Coalition being carried by a majority of sixteen.
Lord John Cavendish moved another resolution strongly condemning the
terms of the treaty, but consented that the peace now made should
remain inviolate. This was also carried, by a majority of seventeen,
being two hundred and seven votes against one hundred and ninety.

This majority of the Coalition compelled Lord Shelburne to resign; but
the rest of the Administration remained in their places, in the hope
that Pitt would now take the Premiership. In fact, the king, on the
24th of February, sent for Pitt and proposed this to him; but Pitt was
too sensible of the impossibility of maintaining himself against the
present combination of parties. The next day Dundas moved and carried
an adjournment for three days, to give time for the arrangement of
a new Cabinet. Pitt continued to persist in declining to take the
Premiership, and on the 2nd or 3rd of March the king sent for Lord
North. His proposal was that North should resume the management of
affairs; but North insisted on bringing in his new friends, and to that
the king objected. Matters remained in this impracticable condition
till the 12th, when the king sent for North, and proposed that the Duke
of Portland should be asked to form an Administration; but this did
not at all advance matters, for Portland was equally determined with
North to maintain the Coalition, and the king was resolved to have
nothing to do with Fox, whilst Fox was equally determined not to admit
the king's friend, Lord Stormont, to any Cabinet of which he was a
member. On the 31st the announcement was made that Pitt had resigned,
and that the king was prepared to submit to the terms of the Coalition.
George, with deep and inward groans, submitted himself once more to the
slavery of the great Whig houses, and, as some small recompense, the
Coalition admitted Lord Stormont to a place in the Cabinet.

The new Administration arranged itself as follows:--The Duke of
Portland, First Lord of the Treasury; Lord North, Home Secretary;
Fox, Secretary for Foreign Affairs; the Earl of Carlisle, Privy Seal;
Lord John Cavendish, again Chancellor of the Exchequer; Admiral Lord
Keppel, the head of the Admiralty again; Lord Stormont, President
of the Council; the great stumbling block, Thurlow, removed from
the Woolsack, and the Great Seal put into commission; Burke again
Paymaster of the Forces, and his brother Richard as Secretary to the
Treasury in conjunction with Sheridan. Such was this strange and
medley association, well deserving Burke's own description of a former
Administration, as of a strange assemblage of creatures, "all pigging
together in one truckle-bed." Those who formed exclusively the Cabinet
were Portland, North, Fox, Cavendish, Carlisle, Keppel, and Stormont,
so that the great Whigs had taken care again to shut out Burke, who was
only a man of genius. Such an incongruous company could not long hold
together. The king did not conceal his indignation at seeing Fox in
office; the whole Court openly expressed its loathing of the anomalous
union; the country had no confidence in it; Fox felt that he had
wounded his popularity by his sudden and violent change.

At first the course of affairs was not eventful. On the 7th of May
Pitt moved a series of resolutions as the basis of a Bill for reform
of Parliament. The main features of this scheme were those of taking
measures against bribery and corruption; the disfranchisement of
boroughs when a majority of the electors was proved corrupt; and the
addition of a hundred new members to the House of Commons, nearly all
of them from the counties, except an additional member or two from the
metropolis.

On the 23rd of June the king sent down a message to the Commons,
recommending them to take into consideration a separate establishment
for the Prince of Wales, who had arrived at the age of twenty-one. This
young man, whose whole career proved to be one of reckless extravagance
and dissipation, was already notorious for his debauched habits, and
for his fast accumulating debts. He was a great companion of Fox, and
the gambling roués amongst whom that grand orator but spendthrift man
was accustomed to spend his time and money, and therefore, as a pet of
this Coalition Ministry, the Duke of Portland proposed to grant him
one hundred thousand pounds a year. The king, alarmed at the torrent
of extravagance and vice which such an income was certain to produce
in the prince's career, declared that he could not consent to burden
his people, and encourage the prince's habits of expense, by such
an allowance. He therefore requested that the grant should amount
only to fifty thousand pounds a year, paid out of the Civil List,
and fifty thousand pounds as an outfit from Parliamentary funds. The
Ministers were compelled to limit themselves to this, though the saving
was merely nominal, for the debts on the Civil List were again fast
accumulating, and the prince was not at all likely to hesitate to apply
to Parliament to wipe off his debts, as well as his father's when they
became troublesome to him. Resenting, however, the restraint attempted
to be put upon him by his father, the prince the more closely connected
himself with Fox and his party, and the country was again scandalised
by the repetition of the scenes enacted when Frederick, Prince of
Wales, father of George III., was the opponent of his own father,
George II., and the associate of his opponents. Such, indeed, had been
the family divisions in every reign since the Hanoverian succession. On
the 16th of July Parliament was prorogued.

[Illustration: THE MANSION HOUSE, LONDON, IN 1760.]

The regathering of Parliament, on the 11th of November, was
distinguished by two circumstances of very unequal interest. The
Prince of Wales, having arrived at his majority, took his seat as
Duke of Cornwall, as it was well known, intending to vote for a great
measure which Fox was introducing regarding India. We shall now almost
immediately enter on the narration of the important events which had
been transpiring in India during the American war. It is sufficient
here to observe that these were of a nature to give the most serious
concern and alarm to all well-wishers of the country, and of the
unfortunate natives of that magnificent peninsula. Fox's measure for
the reform and restraint of the East India Company was comprehended
in two Bills, the first proposing to vest the affairs of the Company
in the hands of sixteen directors, seven of them to be appointed by
Parliament, and afterwards sanctioned by the Crown, and nine of them to
be elected by the holders of stock. These were to remain in office four
years; the seven Parliament nominees to be invested with the management
of the territorial possessions and revenues of the Company; the nine
additional to conduct the commercial affairs of the Company under the
seven chief directors; and both classes of directors to be subject to
removal at the option of the king, on an address for the purpose from
either House of Parliament. The second Bill related principally to the
powers to be vested in the Governor-General and Council, and their
treatment of the natives.

The Bills were highly necessary, and, on the whole, well calculated
to nip in the bud those ever-growing abuses of India and its hundred
millions of people which, some seventy years later, compelled
Government to take the control out of the hands of a mere trading
company, whose only object was to coin as much money as possible out
of the country and the folk. But it needed no sagacity to see that the
means of defeat lay on the very surface of these Bills. Those whose
sordid interests were attacked had only to point to the fact that
Parliament, and not the Crown, was to be the governing party under
these Bills, in order to secure their rejection. This was quickly done
through a most ready agent. Thurlow had been removed by the Ministry
from the Woolsack, where he had remained as a steady opponent of all
the measures of his colleagues; and it required but a hint from the
India House, and he was at the ear of the king. Nothing was easier than
for Thurlow to inspire George III. with a deep jealousy of the measure,
as aiming at putting the whole government of India into the hands of
Parliament and of Ministers, and the effect was soon seen.

Fox introduced his first Bill on the 20th of November. All went
smoothly, and the second reading was ordered for that day week. Then
the storm burst. Mr. Grenville (afterwards Lord Grenville) described
the Bill as a scheme to put the Company into the hands of Ministers,
and to annihilate the prerogatives of the Crown at the same time. He
denounced it as one of the most daring and dangerous attempts that had
ever been brought into that House. He moved that it should lie over
till after Christmas, and there was a strong phalanx ready to support
him. Grenville did not press the motion to a division, and the Bill
was read a second time on the 27th, when a vehement and long debate
took place. Pitt put forth his whole strength against it, Fox for
it, and it was carried by two hundred and twenty-nine votes against
one hundred and twenty. On the 1st of December it was moved that the
Bill be committed, when the Opposition was equally determined. On
this occasion Burke, who had made himself profoundly acquainted with
Indian affairs, took the lead, and delivered one of his very finest
speeches, full of information and eloquence. Pitt resisted the going
into Committee with all his power, and pledged himself, if the House
would throw out the Bill, to bring in another just as efficacious, and
at the same time devoid of its danger. The debate, like the former
one, did not close till half-past four in the morning, and then it was
with a triumphant majority of two hundred and seventeen against one
hundred and three. The Bill, thus carried by such majorities through
the Commons, was carried up to the Lords, on the 9th of December,
by Fox, accompanied by a numerous body of the Commoners, and it was
considered as certain of passing there; but the king and his party,
exasperated at the resolute conduct of the Commons, had gone to such
lengths to quash the Bill in the Lords as are rarely resorted to by
the Crown. As in the Lower House, so here, it was allowed to be read
the first time without dividing; but it was attacked with an ominous
solemnity by Thurlow, the Duke of Richmond, and Lord Temple, who, since
his recall from the Lord-Lieutenancy of Ireland, had thrown himself
into the Opposition with peculiar vivacity. It was known that he had
been frequently closeted with the king of late, and he bluntly declared
the Bill infamous. As a matter of fact, he had urged the king to use
his personal influence with the House of Lords. Thurlow went further,
and, fixing one of his most solemn glances on the Prince of Wales, who
was sitting in the House to vote for the Bill, declared that if this
measure passed, the crown of England would not be worth wearing; and
that if the king allowed it to become law, he would, in fact, have
taken it from his head and put it on that of Mr. Fox. On the 15th, when
the Bill was proposed for the second reading, the royal proceedings
against it were brought at once to light. The Duke of Portland rose and
said, before going into the question, he was bound to notice a report
which was confidently in circulation, and which, if true, vitally
affected the constitution of the country. This was no less than that
the king had written a note to Lord Temple, stating that "his Majesty
would deem those who voted for the Bill not only not his friends, but
his enemies; and that if Lord Temple could put this into still stronger
language, he had full authority to do so."

The Duke of Richmond read a paragraph from a newspaper in which the
report was stated, naming Lord Temple without any disguise. On this
Temple rose, and admitted that he had given certain advice to the king,
but would neither admit nor deny that it was of the kind intimated
in the report. That the rumour was founded on truth, however, was
immediately shown by the division. Numbers of lords who had promised
Ministers to vote for the Bill withdrew their support; the Prince of
Wales declined voting; and the Opposition carried a resolution for
adjournment till the next day, in order to hear evidence in defence of
the East India Company. It was clear that the Bill had received its
death-blow, and would never pass the Lords after this expression of the
royal will, and on the 17th of December it was lost by nineteen votes.

Fox was very indignant, and made no scruple of attributing the conduct
of the king, not to mere report, but to fact. "There is," he said, "a
written record to be produced. This letter is not to be put in the
balance with the lie of the day;" whereupon he pulled from his pocket a
copy of the note said to have been written by the king to Lord Temple.
When he sat down, Mr. Grenville rose and stated that he had taken down
the words read as the king's note, and had shown them to his relative,
Lord Temple, who had authorised him to say that such words had never
been made use of by him. But Fox demanded whether Lord Temple had not
used words to that effect, and Grenville was silent. Fox continued
in a very fierce strain, denouncing back-stairs lords and bedchamber
politicians, and declared that the best-meant and best-concerted plans
of Ministers were subject to the blasting influence of a villainous
whisper. He added that he could not continue in office any longer
consistently either with his own honour or the interests of the nation.
He felt that he was goaded to it, and upbraided for not resigning
instantly; but a very honourable majority of that House stood pledged
to a great measure, and Ministers were equally bound not to abandon the
affairs of State in the midst of so much anarchy. These last words, and
the division, which was nearly two to one in favour of Ministers, left
it doubtful, after all, whether Fox and his colleagues would resign. As
such language, however, could not be used by Ministers with impunity,
and a dissolution of the Cabinet was probable, Erskine moved a
resolution, pledging the House to persevere in the endeavour to remedy
the abuses in the government of India, and declaring "that this House
will consider as an enemy to this country any person who shall presume
to advise his Majesty to prevent, or in any manner interrupt, the
discharge of this important duty." All strangers were excluded, but it
was ascertained that the motion was severely censured as an invasion of
the king's prerogative; yet the resolution was carried by one hundred
and forty-seven votes against seventy-three.

Strong as was the majority of Ministers, however, the king did not wait
for their resigning. The day after this debate (Thursday, December
18th), the king sent, at twelve o'clock at night, to Fox and Lord North
an order to surrender their seals of office to their Under-Secretaries,
as a personal interview, in the circumstances, would be disagreeable.
Fox instantly delivered up his; but Lord North was already in bed,
and had entrusted his seal to his son, Colonel North, who could not
be found for some time. The Seals were then delivered to Lord Temple,
who, on the following day, sent letters of dismissal to all the other
members of the coalition Cabinet. Pitt, though in his twenty-fifth
year only, was appointed first Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor
of the Exchequer, and on him devolved the duty of forming a new
Administration. Earl Gower was nominated President of the Council, and
Lord Temple one of the Secretaries of State. When the House of Commons
met in the afternoon, Fox imagined, from a motion of Dundas to proceed
to business without the usual adjournment on Saturday, that it was the
object of the new party to pass certain money Bills, and then resort
to a dissolution. Fox opposed the motion, declaring that a dissolution
at this moment would produce infinite damage to the service of the
nation, and that, should it take place in order to suit the convenience
of an ambitious young man (meaning Pitt), he would, immediately on the
meeting of the new House, move for an inquiry into the authors and
advisers of it, in order to bring them to punishment. This caused Lord
Temple, who had occasioned the breaking up of the Coalition, to resign
again immediately, declaring that he preferred meeting any aspersions
upon him in his private and individual capacity. This certainly removed
a great danger from his colleagues, although it rendered the task of
his friend and relative, Pitt, still more difficult, in having to form
an Administration alone. The Ministry was then filled up thus:--Lord
Sydney, Secretary of State for the Home Department; the Marquis of
Carmarthen for the Foreign; the Duke of Rutland, Lord Privy Seal;
Lord Gower became President of the Council; the Duke of Richmond,
Master-General of the Ordnance; Lord Thurlow again Chancellor; Lord
Howe, First Lord of the Admiralty. With the exception of Pitt, the
whole of the Cabinet was drawn from the House of Lords. When the
Commons met, on the 22nd, Mr. Bankes said he was authorised by Mr.
Pitt, who was not in the House, a new writ for Appleby being moved
for on his appointment to office, to say that he had no intention to
advise a dissolution. His Majesty, on the 24th of December, having also
assured the House that he would not interrupt their meeting after the
recess by either prorogation or dissolution, the House adjourned till
the 12th of January, 1784.

When Parliament reassembled, Fox seized the very earliest moment to
address the Chair and occupy the attention of the House. He rose at
the unusually early hour of half-past two o'clock in the day, before
the newly returned members had taken their oaths. Pitt himself was
in this predicament, but, as soon as he had taken his oath, he rose
to speak; but Fox contended that he was already in possession of the
House, and, though Pitt announced that he had a message from the king,
Fox persisted, and moved that the House should go into committee on
the state of the nation. This allowed Pitt to speak, who declared that
he had no objection to the committee; but he thought it more advisable
to go into the question of India, on which subject he proposed to
introduce a Bill. He then made some sharp remarks on the conduct of
Fox in thus seizing, by artifice, a precedence in speaking, and on
the petulance and clamour which the Opposition had displayed, and on
the violent and unprecedented nature of their conduct, by which they
hoped to inflame the spirit of the country and excite unnecessary
jealousies. In truth, Fox and his party were now running a most unwise
career. Possessed of a large majority, they were indignant that the
king should have dismissed them, and thought that they could outvote
the new Ministry, and drive them again from office. They had, no doubt,
such a majority; but, at the same time, they had the king resolute
against them. They had insulted him by their violent denunciations
of his letter, and they had not, in their anger, the discernment to
perceive that not only would this be made use of by their opponents to
injure them, both in Parliament and out of it, but their proceeding
with so much heat and violence was calculated to make them appear
factious--more concerned for their places than for the interests of the
country. All this took place; the king and Ministry saw how all this
would operate, and calmly awaited its effects. Fox and his party were,
however, blind to the signs of the times, and carried no less than five
resolutions against the Government.

When the House met again, Pitt moved for leave to bring in his Bill
for the better government and management of the affairs of the East
India Company. He was aware, he said, how certain men would triumph
when he informed them that he had based his intended measures on the
resolutions of the proprietors of India stock. He was so miserably
irresolute, he said, as not to venture on a Bill founded on violence
and disfranchisement. He was so weak as to pay respect to chartered
rights; and he had not disdained, in proposing a new system of
government, to consult those who had the greatest interest in the
matter, as well as the most experience in it. These were all hard hits
at Fox and his party. In his Bill he went on the principle of placing
the commerce of India chiefly under the control of the Company itself;
but the civil and military government, he admitted, required some other
control than that of the Company, yet even this, in his opinion, ought
to be established in accordance with the convictions of the Company. In
truth, it was a Bill rather calculated to win the good will of the East
India Company than to reform the abuses of that body and to protect the
interests of the natives. Fox, with as much truth as personal feeling,
designated the Bill as the wisdom of an individual opposed to the
collective wisdom of the Commons of England.

The Bill was suffered to pass the second reading, but was thrown out,
on the motion of its being committed, by two hundred and twenty-two
against two hundred and fourteen. Fox then gave notice of his intention
of bringing in a new Bill of his own on India, and demanded to know
from the Ministers whether he might expect to proceed in security with
it, or whether the House would be dissolved. Pitt did not answer; the
question was repeated by other members, but Pitt continued silent, till
General Conway said it was a new thing to see a Minister sitting in
sulky silence, and refusing to satisfy the reasonable desires of the
House. This brought out Pitt with an indignant denial; but he preserved
silence as to the probability of a dissolution.

[Illustration: CHARLES JAMES FOX. (_After the portrait by Sir Joshua
Reynolds._)]

These party tactics were continued with unwonted heat by the Opposition
on all occasions, till the House adjourned for three days, to meet
again on the 29th, the Opposition revelling in large majorities, though
they were aware that both the king and the House of Lords were adverse
to them. But the country was also growing weary of this unsatisfactory
position of things, and began to sympathise with the great patience
of Pitt rather than the tumultuous conduct of Fox and his friends.
Pitt, however, was strong in the assurance of the adhesion of the
Crown and the peerage, and saw unmistakable signs of revulsion in the
feeling of the public. The majorities of the Commons were becoming
every time less, and on the 16th of February the Corporation of London
had presented a strongly expressed address to the king, declaring its
approval of the late dismissal of Ministers, and its opinion that the
India Bill of Fox was an encroachment on the prerogative of the Crown.
Dr. Johnson also regarded it as a contest whether the nation should be
ruled by the sceptre of George III. or by the tongue of Mr. Fox.

Fox saw the growing change with alarm. He saw that all their
resolutions and addresses produced no effect on the Ministerial
party; and he did not dare to go further and pass a Bill, either
legislative or declaratory, for he felt that the Lords would throw it
out; and to stop the supplies, or delay the Mutiny Bill would probably
disgust and annihilate the very majority on which he depended. In
these circumstances, he probably saw with satisfaction an attempt at
coalition. Mr. Grosvenor, the member for Chester, during the three days
of the adjournment, called a meeting of members of both parties for the
purpose of seeing whether a coalition could not be formed, and thus
put an end to this violent contest. About seventy members met, and an
address to the Duke of Portland and Mr. Pitt was signed by fifty-four.
Pitt expressed his readiness to co-operate in such a plan, but the Duke
of Portland declared that the first indispensable step towards such a
measure must be the resignation of Ministers. This put an end to all
hope of success.

The feelings of the constituencies were undergoing a speedy change, and
the fact was now being rapidly proved. For three months, whilst the
Opposition in the House of Commons were exulting on their majority, the
majority amongst the people was sliding from them; and, whilst they
were straining every nerve to prevent the dissolution of Parliament,
they were only more securely preparing their own fall, for Pitt and the
Government had been zealously at work undermining them. The nation was
pleased at his bravery, and at his disinterestedness in refusing the
sinecure of the Clerkship of the Pells, though his private means were
scarcely £300 a year.

From the 11th of February to the 1st of March the struggle went on,
many endeavours being made, but without effect, to come to an agreement
between the parties. On the last day Fox moved that an Address be
carried up to the king by the whole House, representing the violence
done to the Constitution by a Minister retaining his place after a vote
of want of confidence by the Commons, and insisting strongly on the
right and duty of that House to advise his Majesty on the exercise of
his prerogative. Pitt replied that, by attempting to force the king
to decide contrary to his judgment, they were placing the sceptre
under the mace; but the resolution was carried by a majority, though
of twelve only, and on the 4th the Address was carried up, when the
king repeated that his sentiments remained the same. Fox, on the
return of the House, moved that this answer should not be taken into
consideration before the 8th, and till then the Mutiny Bill should
remain in abeyance. His object was to stave off a dissolution until the
25th, when the Mutiny Bill expired. By refusing to renew it, he hoped
to force his rival to resign. The House on the 8th was excessively
crowded, for a very warm debate was anticipated. When it came to
divide about midnight, Fox was found to have carried his resolution,
but only by a majority of one. This was the climax of defeat. The once
triumphant Opposition saw that all was over with them, and they gave up
the contest.

The supplies and the Mutiny Bill were now passed without much
difficulty, but Ministers did not venture to introduce an Appropriation
Bill. On the 23rd, Lord North, stating that the dissolution of
Parliament was confidently asserted out of doors, declared that such
a dissolution, without passing an Appropriation Bill, would be an
unparalleled insult to the House. He expressed his astonishment that
the Minister did not condescend to utter a syllable on the subject of
the proposed change. Pitt, now confident of his position, replied that
gentlemen might ask as many questions as they pleased; that he had
adopted a course which was advantageous to the country, and did not
feel bound to enter then into any explanations. All mystery, however,
was cleared up the next day, for the king went down to the House of
Lords and prorogued Parliament, announcing that he felt it his duty
to the Constitution and the country to convoke a new Parliament.
Accordingly, on the following day, the 25th of March, he dissolved
Parliament by proclamation.

When the new Parliament met, on the 18th of May, it was seen how
completely Fox and North had destroyed their prestige by their late
factious conduct, and how entirely Pitt had made himself master of the
situation. His patience and cool policy under the tempestuous assaults
of the Opposition had given the country a wonderful confidence in him.
One party extolled him as the staunch defender of the prerogative,
another as the champion of reform and enemy of aristocratic influence.
Not less than one hundred and sixty of the supporters of the late
Coalition Ministry had been rejected at the elections, and they were
held up to ridicule as "Fox's Martyrs."




CHAPTER XIII.

REIGN OF GEORGE III.--(_continued_).

    Victory of Pitt--The King's delight--Pitt's Finance--The India
    Bill--Pitt's Budget--The Westminster Election--The Scrutiny--Fox
    is returned--The Volunteers in Ireland--Flood's Reform Bill--Riots
    in Ireland--Pitt's Commercial Policy for Ireland--Opposition
    of the English Merchants--Abandonment of the Measure--Pitt's
    Reform Bill--His Administrative Reforms--Bill for fortifying
    Portsmouth and Plymouth--Pitt's Sinking Fund--Favourable
    Reception of the Bill--Pitt's Excise Bill--Commercial Treaty
    with France--Impeachment of Warren Hastings--Retrospect of
    Indian Affairs: Deposition of Meer Jaffier--Resistance of Meer
    Cossim--Massacre of Patna--Battle of Buxar and Capture of
    Allahabad--Clive's Return to India--Settlement of Bengal and
    Oude--Domestic Reforms--Rise of Hyder Ali--His Treaty with the
    English--He is defeated by the Mahrattas--Deposition of the
    Rajah of Tanjore--Failure of Lord Pigot to reinstate him--Lord
    North's Regulating Bill--Death of Clive--Warren Hastings becomes
    Governor-General--His dealings with the Famine--Treatment of
    Reza Khan and the Nabob of Bengal--Resumption of Allahabad and
    Corah--Massacre of the Rohillas--Arrival of the New Members of
    Council--Struggle for Supremacy--Robbery of Cheyte Sing--Nuncomar's
    Charges--His Trial and Execution--Hastings' Constitutional
    Resignation--His Final Victory--Wars against the Mahrattas--Hyder
    Ali's Advance--Defeat of Baillie--Energy of Hastings--Victories of
    Sir Eyre Coote--Capture of Dutch Settlements--Naval Engagements
    between the British and French--Death of Hyder Ali--Tippoo
    continues the War--He invokes Peace--Hastings' extortions
    from Cheyte Sing--Hastings' visit to Benares--Rising of the
    People--Rescue of Hastings and Deposition of Cheyte Sing--Extortion
    from the Begums of Oude--Parliamentary Inquiries--Hastings'
    Reception in England--Burke's Motion of Impeachment--Pitt's
    Change of Front--The Prince of Wales and the Whigs--Inquiry into
    his Debts--Alderman Newnham's Motion--Denial of the Marriage
    with Mrs. Fitzherbert--Sheridan's Begum Speech--Impeachment of
    Hastings--Growth of the Opposition to the Slave Trade--The Question
    brought before Parliament--Evidence Produced--Sir W. Dolben's
    Bill--Trial of Warren Hastings--Speeches of Burke, Fox, and
    Sheridan--Illness of the King--Debates on the Regency Bill--The
    King's Recovery--Address of the Irish Parliament to the Prince of
    Wales.


The General Election of 1784 secured for Pitt a prolonged tenure of
power. The king, in opening the Session, could not repress the air
of triumph, and congratulated the Houses on the declared sense of
his people, not forgetting to designate Fox's India Bill as a most
unconstitutional measure. In fact, no one was so delighted as the king.
He had contemplated the victory of Fox and his friends over Pitt with
actual horror. He had never liked Fox, and the violent and overbearing
manner in which he had endeavoured to compel the king to dismiss his
Ministers had increased his aversion into dread and repugnance. In
his letters to Pitt he had said, "If these desperate and factious men
succeed, my line is a clear one, to which I have fortitude to submit."
Again: "Should not the Lords stand boldly forth, this Constitution must
soon be changed; for if the two remaining privileges of the Crown are
infringed, that of negativing the Bills which have passed both Houses
of Parliament, and that of naming the Ministers to be employed, I
cannot but feel, as far as regards my person, that I can be no longer
of utility to this country, nor can with honour, remain in the island."
In fact, George was menacing, a second time, a retreat to Hanover; a
step, however, which he was not very likely to adopt. The sentiment
which the words really express is his horror of the heavy yoke of
the great Whig Houses. The Addresses from both Houses of Parliament
expressed equal satisfaction in the change, Pitt's triumphant majority
having now rejected the amendments of the Opposition.

On the 21st of June Pitt introduced and carried several resolutions,
which formed the basis of his Commutation Act. These went to check
smuggling, by reducing the duty on tea from fifty to twelve and a half
per cent., and to raise the house and window tax so as to supply the
deficiency. A Bill was then passed to make good another deficiency in
the Civil List, to the amount of sixty thousand pounds. Early in August
Mr. Pitt brought in his India Bill, which differed chiefly from his
former one in introducing a Government Board of Commissioners, with
power to examine and revise the proceedings of the Court of Directors.
This, which afterwards acquired the name of the Board of Control, was
opposed by Fox, but passed both Houses with little trouble.

Before this great measure had passed, Pitt had introduced his Budget.
On the 30th of June he made his financial statement. He said that
the resources of the country were in a very burthened and disordered
state; but that was not his work, but the work of his predecessors. The
outstanding arrears, owing to the late war, were already ascertained
to amount at least to fourteen million pounds. These operated very
injuriously on the public credit, being at a discount of from fifteen
to twenty per cent.; and that without greatly affecting the public
securities, he should not be able to find more than six million six
hundred thousand six hundred pounds of them at once. To meet the
interest, he proposed to raise taxes to the amount of nine hundred
thousand pounds a year. The imposts--some entirely new, and some
augmented--were on hats, ribbons, gauzes, coals, saddle and pleasure
horses, printed linens and calicoes, candles, paper, and hackney
coaches; licences to deal in excisable commodities, bricks, and tiles;
licences for shooting game.

[Illustration: GENERAL ELECTION OF 1784: MASTER BILLY'S PROCESSION TO
GROCERS' HALL--PITT PRESENTED WITH THE FREEDOM OF THE CITY OF LONDON.
(_Reduced facsimile of the Caricature by T. Rowlandson._)]

The duties on bricks and tiles were opposed, as affecting brick-makers
rather than the public, because stones and slates were not included.
These duties were, however, carried, and the Bill passed; but great
discontent arising regarding the duties on coals and on licences to
deal in excisable commodities, the Chancellor of the Exchequer was
obliged to produce a supplementary Budget, and, after withdrawing
these, to lay others on the sale of ale, gold and silver plate, the
exportation of lead, and postage of letters, at the same time limiting
the privilege of franking. It was high time that the latter practice
were put under regulation, for the privilege was enormously abused.
Till this time, a simple signature of a member of Parliament, without
name of the post town whence it was sent, or date, freed a letter all
over the kingdom. Many persons had whole quires of these signatures,
and letters were also addressed to numbers of places where they did not
reside, so that, by an arrangement easily understood, the persons they
were really meant for received them post-free. The loss to Government
by this dishonest system was calculated at one hundred and seventy
thousand pounds a year. By the present plan, no member was to permit
any letter to be addressed to him except at the place where he actually
was; and he was required, in writing a frank, to give the name of the
post town where he wrote it, with the dates of day and year, and to
himself write the whole address.

On the 20th of August the Appropriation Bill and other measures of
routine having been carried through with great triumph by the Ministry,
the king prorogued the Parliament, which did not meet again till the
25th of January following. Fox came into the new Parliament in a very
remarkable and anomalous position. In the election for Westminster,
the candidates had been, besides himself, Admiral Lord Hood and Sir
Cecil Wray. The election was of the most violent kind, distinguished
by drunkenness, riot, and gross abuses. It continued from April the
1st to the 16th of May, and the numbers on the poll-books, at its
termination, stood as follows:--For Lord Hood, 6,694; for Fox, 6,233;
for Sir Cecil Wray, 5,598. The Prince of Wales had shown himself one of
the most ardent partisans of Fox, all the more, no doubt, because Fox
was detested by the king. The prince had displayed from his carriage
the "Fox favour and laurel," and, at the conclusion of the poll, had
given a grand _fête_ at Carlton House to more than six hundred Foxites,
all wearing "blue and buff." The Duchess of Devonshire and other lady
politicians also gave Fox substantial help. But Fox was not allowed
to triumph so easily. The Tory candidate, Sir Cecil Wray, as was well
understood, instigated and supported by the Government, demanded a
scrutiny; and Corbett, the high bailiff, in the circumstances, could
make no return of representatives for Westminster. As a scrutiny in so
populous a district, and with the impediments which Government and its
secret service money could throw in the way, might drag on for a long
period, and thus, as Government intended, keep Fox out of Parliament,
he got himself, for the time, returned for a small Scottish borough, to
the no small amusement of his enemies.

[Illustration:

    _Sir Cecil Wray._   _Sam House (Publican on the side of Fox)._
    _Charles James Fox._

GENERAL ELECTION OF 1784: THE HUSTINGS, COVENT GARDEN: THE WESTMINSTER
DESERTER DRUMMED OUT OF THE REGIMENT--DEFEAT OF SIR CECIL WRAY.
(_Reduced facsimile of the Caricature by T. Rowlandson._)]

Almost immediately on the meeting of the House of Commons, Welbore
Ellis demanded whether a return had been made for Westminster, and
being answered in the negative, moved that Mr. Corbett, the high
bailiff, with his assessor, should attend the House; and the next
day, February 2nd, Colonel Fitzpatrick presented a petition from the
electors of Westminster, complaining that they were not legally and
duly represented. In fact, the scrutiny had now been going on for
eight months, and as not even two of the seven parishes of Westminster
were yet scrutinised, it was calculated that, at this rate, the whole
process would require three years, and the city would, therefore,
remain as long unrepresented. The high bailiff stated that the
examinations, cross-examinations, and arguments of counsel were so
long, that he saw no prospect of a speedy conclusion; and Mr. Murphy,
his assessor, gave evidence that each vote was tried with as much form
and prolixity as any cause in Westminster Hall; that counsel--and this
applied to both sides--claimed a right to make five speeches on one
vote; and that propositions had been put in on the part of Sir Cecil
Wray to shorten the proceedings, but objected to on the part of Mr. Fox.

On the 18th of February, Colonel Fitzpatrick, Fox's most intimate
friend, presented another petition from the electors of Westminster,
praying to be heard by counsel, in consequence of new facts having
come to light, but Lord Frederick Campbell, on the part of Government,
moved that such counsel should not argue against the legality of the
scrutiny. The counsel, on being admitted, refused to plead under
such restrictions. The House then called in the high bailiff, and
demanded what the new facts were on which the petition was based, and
he admitted that they were, that the party of Mr. Fox had offered to
take the scrutiny in the parishes of St. Margaret's and St. John's
alone, where Mr. Fox's interest was the weakest, in order to bring the
scrutiny to an end, and that Sir Cecil Wray had declined the offer.
Colonel Fitzpatrick then moved that the high bailiff should be directed
to make a return, according to the lists on the close of the poll on
the 17th of May last. This motion was lost, but only by a majority of
nine, showing that the opinion of the House was fast running against
the new Minister, and on the 3rd of March Alderman Sawbridge put the
same question again, when it was carried by a majority of thirty-eight.
It was clear that the Government pressure could be carried no further.
Sawbridge moved that the original motion should be put, and it was
carried without a division. The next day the return was made, and
Fox and Lord Hood were seated as the members for Westminster. Fox
immediately moved that the proceedings on this case should be expunged
from the journals, but without success. He also commenced an action
against the high bailiff for not returning him at the proper time, when
duly elected by a majority of votes. He laid his damages at two hundred
thousand pounds, and the trial came on before Lord Loughborough,
formerly Mr. Wedderburn, in June of the following year, 1786, when
the jury gave him immediately a verdict, but only for two thousand
pounds, which he said should be distributed amongst the charities of
Westminster.

The king's speech, at the opening of this Session, recommended a
consideration of the trade and general condition of Ireland; and
indeed it was time, for the concessions which had been made by the
Rockingham Ministry had only created a momentary tranquillity. The
Volunteers retaining their arms in their hands after the close of the
American war, were evidently bent on imitating the proceedings of the
Americans, and the direction of the movement passed from Grattan to
Flood. In September, 1785, delegates from all the Volunteer corps in
Ireland met at Dungannon, representing one hundred thousand men, who
passed resolutions declaring their independence of the legislature
of Great Britain. The delegates at Dungannon claimed the right to
reform the national Parliament, and appointed a Convention to meet
in Dublin in the month of November, consisting of delegates from the
whole Volunteer army in Ireland. Accordingly, on the 10th of November,
the great Convention met in Dublin, and held their meetings in the
Royal Exchange. They demanded a thorough remodelling of the Irish
Constitution. They declared that as matters stood the Irish House of
Commons was wholly independent of the people; that its term of duration
was equally unconstitutional; and they passed zealous votes of thanks
to their friends in England. These friends were the ultra-Reformers of
England, who had freely tendered the Irish Reformers their advice and
sympathy. The Irish people were ready to hail the delegates as their
true Parliament, and the regular Parliament as pretenders. Within
Parliament House itself the most violent contentions were exhibited
between the partisans of the Volunteer Parliament and the more orthodox
reformers. Henry Flood was the prominent advocate of the extreme
movement, and Grattan, who regarded this agitation as certain to end
only in fresh coercion, instead of augmented liberty for Ireland,
vehemently opposed it.

On the 29th of November Flood moved for leave to bring in a Bill for
the more equal representation of the people. This was the scheme of
the Volunteer Parliament, and all the delegates to the Convention who
were members of the House, or had procured admittance as spectators,
appeared in uniform. The tempest that arose is described as something
terrific. The orders of the House, the rules of debate, the very rules
of ordinary conduct amongst gentlemen, were utterly disregarded. The
fury on both sides was uncontrollable. The motion was indignantly
rejected by one hundred and fifty-seven votes against seventy-seven;
and the House immediately voted a cordial Address to his Majesty,
declaring their perfect satisfaction with the blessings enjoyed
under his auspicious reign, and the present happy Constitution, and
their determination to support him with their lives and fortunes.
On the 13th of March Mr. Flood introduced his Bill once more, for
equalising the representation of the people in Parliament. It proposed
to abolish the right of boroughs altogether to send members, and to
place the franchise in the people at large. Sir John Fitzgibbon, the
Attorney-General, stoutly opposed it; Grattan dissented from it, and it
was thrown out on the motion to commit it.

Exasperated at the failure of this measure, a furious mob broke into
the Irish House of Commons on the 15th of April, but they were soon
quelled, and two of the ringleaders seized. The magistrates of Dublin
were censured for observing the gathering of the mob and taking no
measures to prevent its outbreak. The printer and supposed publisher
of the _Volunteers' Journal_ were called before the House and
reprimanded, and a Bill was brought in and passed, to render publishers
more amenable to the law. The spirit of violence still raged through
the country. Tumultuous associations were formed under the name of
Aggregate Bodies.

Commercial and manufacturing distress was severe in the country, and
the unemployed workmen flocked into Dublin and the other large towns,
demanding relief and menacing the police, and directing their fury
against all goods imported from England. On the 2nd of January, 1785,
a Congress sat in Dublin, consisting of delegates from twenty-seven
counties, and amounting to about two hundred individuals. They held
adjourned meetings, and established corresponding committees in
imitation of their great models, the Americans. In truth, many of the
leaders of these present movements drew their inspiration now from
American Republican correspondents, as they did afterwards from those
of France, by whom they were eventually excited to rebellion.

The Government of England saw the necessity of coming to some
conclusion on the subject of Irish commerce, which should remove the
distress, and, as a consequence, the disorder. The Irish Government, at
the instigation of the English Administration, sent over Commissioners
to consult with the Board of Trade in London, and certain terms being
agreed upon, these were introduced by Mr. Orde, the Secretary to the
Lord-Lieutenant, to the Irish House of Commons, on the 7th of February.
These were, that all articles not of the growth of Great Britain or
Ireland should be imported into each country from the other, under
the same regulations and duties as were imposed on direct importation,
and with the same drawbacks; that all prohibitions in either country
against the importation of articles grown, produced, or manufactured
in the other should be rescinded, and the duties equalised. There were
some other resolutions relating to internal taxation, to facilitate the
corn trade, and some details in foreign and international commerce.
These, after some debate, were passed on the 11th, and, being agreed to
by the Lords, were transmitted to England.

On the 22nd of February the English House of Commons resolved itself
into a Committee, on the motion of Pitt, to consider these resolutions.
Pitt spoke with much freedom of the old restrictive jealousy towards
Ireland. He declared that it was a system abominable and impolitic;
that to study the benefit of one portion of the empire at the expense
of another was not promoting the prosperity of the empire as a whole.
He contended that there was nothing in the present proposals to alarm
the British manufacturer or trader. Goods, the produce of Europe,
might now be imported through Ireland into Britain by authority of the
Navigation Act. The present proposition went to allow Ireland to import
and then to export the produce of our colonies in Africa and America
into Great Britain. Beyond the Cape of Good Hope, or the Straits of
Magellan, they could not go, on account of the monopoly granted to the
East India Company.

Delay was demanded, to hear what was the feeling of merchants and
manufacturers in England, and these soon poured in petitions against
these concessions, from Liverpool, Manchester, and other places; one
of them, from the Lancashire manufacturers, being signed by eighty
thousand persons. After two months had been spent in receiving these
petitions, hearing evidence and counsel, Mr. Pitt introduced his
propositions on the 12th of May. It was then found that British
interests, as usual, had triumphed over the Ministerial intentions of
benefiting Ireland. Not only was Ireland to be bound to furnish, in
return for these concessions, a fixed contribution out of the surplus
of the hereditary revenue towards defraying the expenses of protecting
the general commerce, but to adopt whatever navigation laws the British
Parliament might hereafter enact. Lord North and Fox opposed these
propositions, on the ground that the cheapness of labour in Ireland
would give that country an advantage over the manufacturers in this.
The resolutions were at length carried both in the Committee and in
the House at large on the 25th of July.

But the alterations were fatal to the measure in Ireland. Instead
now of being the resolutions passed in the Irish Parliament, they
embraced restrictive ones originating in the British Parliament--a
point on which the Irish were most jealous, and determined not to
give way. No sooner did Mr. Orde, the original introducer of the
resolutions to the Irish Parliament, on the 2nd of August, announce his
intention to introduce them as they now stood, than Flood, Grattan,
and Dennis Browne declared the thing impossible; that Ireland never
would surrender her birthright of legislating for herself. Mr. Orde,
however, persisted in demanding leave to introduce a Bill founded
on these resolutions, and this he did on the 12th of August. Flood
attacked the proposal with the utmost vehemence. Grattan, Curran, and
others declared that the Irish Parliament could hear no resolutions
but those which they themselves had sanctioned. Accordingly, though
Mr. Orde carried his permission to introduce his Bill, it was only by
a majority of nineteen, and under such opposition that, on the 15th,
he moved to have it printed for the information of the country, but
announced that he should proceed no further in it at present. This
was considered as a total abandonment of the measure, and there was
a general rejoicing as for a national deliverance, and Dublin was
illuminated. But in the country the spirit of agitation on the subject
remained: the non-importation Associations were renewed, in imitation
of the proceedings in Boston, and the most dreadful menaces were
uttered against all who should dare to import manufactured goods from
England. The consequences were the stoppage of trade--especially in
the seaports--the increase of distress and of riots, and the soldiers
were obliged to be kept under arms in Dublin and other towns to prevent
outbreaks.

Before the Irish affairs were done with, Pitt moved for leave to bring
in his promised Reform Bill. If Pitt were still desirous of reforming
Parliament, it was the last occasion on which he showed it, and it may
reasonably be believed that he introduced this measure more for the
sake of consistency than for any other purpose. He had taken no steps
to prepare a majority for the occasion; every one was left to do as he
thought best, and his opening observations proved that he was by no
means sanguine as to the measure passing the House. "The number of
gentlemen," he said, "who are hostile to reform are a phalanx which
ought to give alarm to any individual upon rising to suggest such a
motion." His plan was to transfer the franchise from thirty-six rotten
boroughs to the counties, giving the copyholders the right to vote.
This plan would confer seventy-two additional members on the counties,
and thus, in fact, strengthen the representation of the landed interest
at the expense of the towns; and he proposed to compensate the boroughs
so disfranchised by money, amounting to £1,000,000. Wilberforce,
Dundas, and Fox spoke in favour of the Bill; Burke spoke against it.
Many voted against it, on account of the compensation offered, Mr.
Bankes remarking that Pitt was paying for what he declared was, in
any circumstances, unsaleable. The motion was lost by two hundred and
forty-eight against one hundred and seventy-four.

But though Pitt ceased to be a Parliamentary reformer--and by degrees
became the most determined opponent of all reform--he yet made an
immediate movement for administrative reform. He took up the plans of
Burke, praying for a commission to inquire into the fees, gratuities,
perquisites, and emoluments received in the public offices, with
reference to existing abuses. He stated that, already--acting on the
information of reports of the Board of Commissioners appointed in Lord
North's time--fixed salaries, instead of fees and poundages, had been
introduced in the office of the land-tax, and the Post Office was so
improved as to return weekly into the Treasury three thousand pounds
sterling, instead of seven hundred sterling. Similar regulations he
proposed to introduce into the Pay Office, the Navy and Ordnance
Office. He stated, also, that he had, when out of office, asserted that
no less than forty-four millions sterling was unaccounted for by men
who had been in different offices. He was ridiculed for that statement,
and it was treated as a chimera; but already twenty-seven millions of
such defalcations had been traced, and a balance of two hundred and
fifty-seven thousand pounds sterling was on the point of being paid in.
In fact, the state of the Government offices was, at that time, as it
had long been, such that it was next to impossible for any one to get
any business transacted there without bribing heavily. As a matter of
course, this motion was strongly opposed, but it was carried, and Mr.
Francis Baring and the two other Comptrollers of army accounts were
appointed the Commissioners.

[Illustration: VIEW OF LONDON FROM THE TOWER TO LONDON BRIDGE IN THE
LATTER PART OF THE 18TH CENTURY. (_After the Picture by Maurer._)]

The great financial questions of 1786 were the Duke of Richmond's
plan of fortifying Portsmouth and Plymouth, and Pitt's proposal of a
sinking fund to pay off the national debt, an excise duty on wines,
and Pitt's commercial treaty with France. During the previous Session
the Duke of Richmond, Master-General of the Ordnance, had proposed
a plan of fortifying these large arsenals, so that, in the supposed
absence of our fleet on some great occasion, they would be left under
the protection of regiments of militia, for whom enormous barracks
were to be erected. A board of officers had been appointed to inquire
into the advantages of the plan, and their report was now brought up
on the 27th of February, and introduced by Mr. Pitt, who moved that
the plan be adopted. This scheme was strongly opposed by General
Burgoyne, Colonel Barré, and others. Mr. Bastard moved an amendment
declaring the proposed fortifications inexpedient. He said the militia
had been called the school of the army, but to shut them up in these
strongholds, separate from their fellow-subjects, was the way to
convert them into universities for prætorian bands. He protested
against taking the defence of the nation from our brave fleet and
conferring it on military garrisons; tearing the ensign of British
glory from the mast-head, and fixing a standard on the ramparts of
a fort. The Bill was rejected, Fox, Sheridan, Windham, and all the
leading Oppositionists declaiming against it.

On the 21st of March a Committee which had been appointed early
in the Session to inquire into the public income and expenditure,
and to suggest what might in future be calculated on as the clear
revenue, presented its report through Mr. Grenville, their chairman.
On the 29th, Pitt, in a Committee of the whole House, entered upon
the subject, and detailed the particulars of a plan to diminish
progressively and steadily the further debt. It appeared from the
report of the Select Committee that there was, at present, a clear
surplus revenue of nine hundred thousand pounds sterling, and that this
surplus could, without any great additional burthen to the public, be
made a million per annum. This he declared to be an unexpected state of
financial vigour after so long and unfortunate a war. The plan which
he proposed was to pay two hundred and fifty thousand pounds quarterly
into the hands of Commissioners appointed for the purpose to purchase
stock to that amount, which was under par, or to pay stock above par,
and thus cancel so much debt. In addition to this, the annuities for
lives, or for limited terms, would gradually cancel another portion.
All dividends arising from such purchases were to be similarly applied.
Pitt calculated that by this process, and by the compound interest
on the savings to the revenue by it, in twenty-eight years no less
than four millions sterling per annum of surplus revenue would be
similarly applied, or employed for the exigencies of the State. By
this halcyon process he contemplated the eventual extinction of that
enormous debt, to pay the mere interest of which every nerve had been
stretched, and every resource nearly exhausted. In a delightful state
of self-gratulation, Pitt declared that he was happy to say that all
this was readily accomplishable; that we had nothing to fear, except
one thing--the possibility of any Minister in need violating this fund.
Had the original Sinking Fund, he said, been kept sacred, we should
have had now very little debt. To prevent the recurrence of this fatal
facility of Ministers laying their hands on this Fund, he proposed
to place it in the hands of Commissioners, and he declared that "no
Minister could ever have the confidence to come down to that House and
desire the repeal of so beneficial a law, which tended so directly to
relieve the people from their burthens." He added that he felt that he
had by this measure "raised a firm column, upon which he was proud to
flatter himself that his name might be inscribed." He said not a word
about the name of Dr. Price being inscribed there, to whom the whole
merit of the scheme belonged; he never once mentioned his name at all.
On his own part, Dr. Price complained not of this, but that he had
submitted three schemes to Pitt, and that he had chosen the worst.

The greater part of the House, as well as the public out of doors, were
captivated with the scheme, which promised thus easily to relieve them
of the monster debt; but Sir Grey Cooper was the first to disturb these
fairy fancies. He declared that the whole was based on a fallacious
statement; that it was doubtful whether the actual surplus was as
described; but even were it so, that it was but the surplus of a
particular year, and that it was like the proprietor of a hop-ground
endeavouring to borrow money on the guarantee of its proceeds in a
particularly favourable year. Fox, Burke, and Sheridan followed in the
same strain. They argued that, supposing the assumed surplus actually
to exist, which they doubted, it would immediately vanish in case of
war, and a fresh mass of debt be laid on. Sheridan said, the only mode
of paying off a million a year would be to make a loan of a million a
year, for the Minister reminded him of the person in the comedy who
said, "If you won't lend me the money, how can I pay you?" On the 14th
of May he moved a string of fourteen resolutions unfavourable to the
report of the Committee, which he said contained facts which could not
be negatived; but the House did negative them all without a division,
and on the 15th of May passed the Bill. In the Lords it met with some
proposals from Earl Stanhope, which were to render the violation of the
Act equivalent to an act of bankruptcy, but these were negatived, and
the Bill was passed there on the 26th. It was not until 1828 that the
fallacy on which the Bill rested was finally exposed by Lord Grenville,
who, curiously enough, had been chairman of the Committee which
recommended its adoption.

In order to enable the revenue to furnish the required million surplus
for the Sinking Fund, Pitt found it necessary to propose to extend
the excise laws to foreign wine, which had hitherto been under the
jurisdiction of the Custom House. He contended that, on a moderate
calculation, the sum lost to the revenue by the frauds in the trade
in wine amounted to upwards of two hundred and eighty thousand pounds
per annum. To remedy this, and to prevent at once smuggling and the
adulteration of wine, the excise officers were to have free access to
the cellars of all who sold wine, but not into private ones. To abate
that repugnance to the law which excise laws awaken in the public mind,
Pitt stated that the change would not amount to more than thirteen
thousand pounds a year, and that not more than one hundred and seventy
additional officers would be required, who could add little to the
influence of the Crown, as they were by law incapable of voting at
elections. He carried his Bill with little difficulty through the
Commons; but in the Lords, Lord Loughborough made a decided set against
it, and pointed out one most shameful provision in it--namely, that in
case of any suit against an exciseman for improper seizure, a jury was
prohibited giving more damages than twopence, or any costs of suit,
or inflicting a fine of more than one shilling if the exciseman could
show a probable cause for such a seizure. Lord Loughborough declared
justly that this was a total denial of justice to the complaint
against illegal conduct on the part of excisemen, for nothing would
be so easy as for the excise to plead false information as a probable
cause. It was a disgraceful infringement of the powers of juries, and
Lord Loughborough called on Lord Camden to defend the sacred right of
juries as he had formerly done. Camden was compelled to confess that
the clause was objectionable; but that to attempt an alteration would
destroy the Bill for the present Session, and so it was suffered to
pass with this monstrous provision.

The commercial treaty with France, Pitt's greatest achievement as a
financier, was not signed until the recess--namely, in September. It
was conceived entirely in the spirit of Free Trade, and was an honest
attempt to establish a perpetual alliance between the two nations. Its
terms were:--That it was to continue in force for twelve years; with
some few exceptions prohibitory duties between the two countries were
repealed; the wines of France were admitted at the same rate as those
of Portugal; privateers belonging to any nation at war with one of the
contracting parties might no longer equip themselves in the ports of
the other; and complete religious and civil liberty was granted to the
inhabitants of each country while residing in the other. One result of
the treaty was the revival of the taste for light French wines which
had prevailed before the wars of the Revolution, and a decline in the
sale of the fiery wines of the Peninsula. But the treaty was bitterly
attacked by the Opposition. Flood reproduced the absurd argument that
wealth consists of money, and that trade can only be beneficial to
the country which obtains the largest return in gold. Fox and Burke,
with singular lack of foresight, declaimed against Pitt for making a
treaty with France, "the natural political enemy of Great Britain," and
denounced the perfidy with which the French had fostered the American
revolt. In spite of the illiberality of these arguments, Pitt, with
the acquiescence of the commercial classes, carried the treaty through
Parliament by majorities of more than two to one.

But, in spite of the importance of these measures, there was one
question which engrossed the attention of both parliament and the
public far more than any other. This was the demand by Burke for the
impeachment of Warren Hastings, late Governor-General of Bengal,
for high crimes and misdemeanours there alleged to have been by him
committed. It therefore becomes necessary at this point to resume our
narrative of Indian affairs from the year 1760, which our connected
view of the events of the American war necessarily suspended.

At the point at which our former detail of Indian affairs ceased,
Lord Clive had gone to England to recruit his health. He had found us
possessing a footing in India, and had left us the masters of a great
empire. He had conquered Arcot and other regions of the Carnatic;
driven the French from Pondicherry, Chandernagore, and Chinsura; and
though we had left titular princes in the Deccan and Bengal, we were,
in truth, masters there; for Meer Jaffier, though seated on the throne
of Bengal, was our mere instrument.

The English having deposed Suraja Dowlah, the nabob of Bengal, and set
up their tool, the traitor Meer Jaffier, who had actually sold his
master, the nabob, to them, the unfortunate Nabob was soon assassinated
by the son of Meer Jaffier. But Meer Jaffier, freed thus from the
fear of the restoration of the Nabob, soon began to cabal against his
patrons, the English. Clive was absent, and the government conducted by
Mr. Henry Vansittart, a man of little ability in his course of policy.
All discipline ceased to exist amongst the English; their only thought
was of enriching themselves by any possible means. Meer Jaffier was not
blind to this. He saw how hateful the English were making themselves
in the country, and was becoming as traitorous to them as he had been
to his own master. Early, therefore, in the autumn of 1760, Vansittart
and Colonel Caillaud marched to Cossimbazar, a suburb of Moorshedabad,
where Meer Jaffier lived, at the head of a few hundred troops, and
offered certain terms to him. Meer Jaffier appeared to shuffle in his
answer; and, without more ceremony, the English surrounded his palace
at the dead of night, and compelled him to resign, but allowed him to
retire to Fort William, under the protection of the British flag; and
they then set up in his stead Meer Cossim, his son-in-law.

Meer Cossim, for a time, served their purpose. They obtained, as
the price of his elevation, a large sum of money and an accession
of territory. But he was not a man of the obsequious temper of Meer
Jaffier. He removed his court from Moorshedabad to Monghyr, two hundred
miles farther from Calcutta. He increased and disciplined his troops;
he then made compulsory levies on the English traders, from which
they had always claimed exemption. There was a loud outcry, and a
determined resistance on the part of the English; but Meer Cossim not
only continued to compel them to pay the same revenue dues as others,
but imprisoned or disgraced every man of note in his dominions who
had ever shown regard to the English. It was clear that he chafed
under the impositions of his elevators, and meant to free himself from
them and their obligations together. It was in vain that the English
Council in Calcutta uttered warning and remonstrance; there was the
most violent controversy between the English factory at Patna and Meer
Cossim. Vansittart hastened to Monghyr, to endeavour to arrange matters
with Cossim. He consented to the payment, by the English, of the inland
revenue to the amount of nine per cent.; and on his part he accepted a
present for himself from Cossim of seven lacs of rupees, or upwards of
seventy thousand pounds. But on this occasion, though Vansittart had
pocketed this large bribe from Meer Cossim, the council in Calcutta,
who got nothing, voted the terms most dishonourable, and sent a fresh
deputation to Cossim at Monghyr. This deputation was headed by Mr.
Amyott; but as it went to undo what Vansittart had just done, Cossim,
who saw no end of exactions, and no security in treating with the
English, caused his troops to fall on the unfortunate deputation as
they passed through Moorshedabad, and they were all cut to pieces. Here
was an end to all agreement with this impracticable man, so the Council
immediately decreed the deposition of Meer Cossim, and the restoration
of the more pliant puppet, Meer Jaffier.

The English took the field in the summer of 1763 against Meer Cossim
with six hundred Europeans and one thousand two hundred Sepoys. Major
Adams, the commander of this force, was vigorously resisted by Meer
Cossim, but drove him from Moorshedabad, gained a decided victory
over him on the plains of Geriah, and, after a siege of nine days,
reduced Monghyr. Driven to his last place of strength in Patna, and
feeling that he must yield that, Meer Cossim determined to give one
parting example of his ferocity to his former patrons, as, under
their protection, he had given many to his own subjects. He had taken
prisoners the English belonging to the factory at Patna, amounting to
one hundred and fifty individuals. These he caused to be massacred by a
renegade Frenchman in his service, named Sombre. On the 5th of October
his soldiers massacred all of them except William Fullarton, a surgeon
known to the Nabob. The mangled bodies of the victims were thrown
into two wells, which were then filled up with stones. This done, the
monster Cossim fled into Oude, and took refuge with its Nabob, Sujah
Dowlah. The English immediately entered Patna, which was still reeking
with the blood of their countrymen, and proclaimed the deposition of
Meer Cossim, and the restoration of Meer Jaffier as Nabob of Bengal.

[Illustration: DEPOSITION OF MEER JAFFIER. (_See p._ 316.)]

The Nabob of Oude zealously embraced the cause of Meer Cossim. He
possessed not only great resources in his own province, but he
possessed additional authority with the natives from having received
also at his court the titular emperor of Delhi, Shah Allum, who, though
driven from his throne and territory by the Mahrattas, was still in the
eyes of the people the Great Mogul. With the Great Mogul in his camp,
and appointed vizier by him, Sujah Dowlah advanced at the head of fifty
thousand men against Major Adams and his little army, now numbering
about one thousand two hundred Europeans and eight thousand Sepoys.
Before the two armies came in sight of each other Adams died, and the
command was assumed by Major, afterwards Sir Hector Munro. Munro led
his army to Buxar, more than a hundred miles higher up the Ganges.
There, in the month of October, 1764, he came into conflict with the
army of Oude, and put it thoroughly to the rout, killing four thousand
men and taking one hundred and thirty pieces of cannon and much spoil.

The next day the Great Mogul went over to the stronger party. He had
no further hope of assistance from Sujah Dowlah, and so he rode, with
a few followers, to the British camp. He was received most willingly,
for, though the British had shown no disposition to recognise his
authority, now he was in their hands they acknowledged him as the
rightful sovereign of Hindostan, and lost no time in concluding a
treaty with him; and, on condition of his yielding certain territories
to them, they agreed to put him in possession of Allahabad and the
other states of the Nabob of Oude. After this, Munro continuing the
war against Sujah Dowlah, endeavoured to take the hill fort of Chunar,
in which all the treasures of Cossim were said to be deposited,
but failed. On his part, Sujah Dowlah had obtained the assistance
of Holkar, a powerful Mahratta chief, and, with this advantage,
endeavoured to make a better peace with Munro; but that officer
declined treating, unless Cossim and the assassin, Sombre, were first
given up to him. Dowlah proposed, instead of this surrender of those
who had sought his protection, the usually triumphant argument with
the English, a large sum of money. But Munro replied that all the
lacs of rupees in Dowlah's treasury would not satisfy him without the
surrender of the murderers of his countrymen at Patna. Dowlah, though
he would not surrender the fugitives, had no objection to give a secret
order for the assassination of Sombre; but Munro equally spurned this
base proposal, and the war went on. Munro was victorious, and early in
1765, having reduced the fort of Chunar and scattered Dowlah's army, he
entered Allahabad in triumph, and put the Mogul in possession of it.

In 1765 Clive embarked for India for the third and last time. He
went out with the firm determination to curb and crush the monster
abuses that everywhere prevailed in our Indian territories. He
had made a fortune of forty thousand pounds a year, and he was,
therefore, prepared to quash the system by which thousands of others
were endeavouring to do the same. No man was sharper than Clive in
perceiving, where his own interest was not concerned, the evils which
were consuming the very vitals of our power, and making our name odious
in Hindostan. The first and most glaring abuse of power which arrested
his attention was as regarded his old puppet, Meer Jaffier. He had
lately died, and his own court had proposed to set up his legitimate
grandson; but the Council preferred his natural son, Nujeem-ul-Dowlah,
a poor spiritless youth, who agreed that the English should take the
military defence of the country, and also appoint a Prime Minister to
manage the revenue and other matters of government. The Council agreed
to this, and received a present from the nabob of their creation of
one hundred and forty thousand pounds, which they divided amongst
themselves. This was directly in opposition to the recent order of the
Court of Directors, not to accept any presents from the native princes;
but, as Clive states, he found them totally disregarding everything but
their own avarice.

Nujeem-ul-Dowlah, their new puppet, proposed to have one Nuncomar as
his Prime Minister, but Nuncomar was too great a rogue even for them.
He had alternately served and betrayed the English, and his master,
Meer Jaffier, and the Council set him aside, and appointed to that
office Mohammed Reza Khan, a Mussulman of far better character. Clive
confirmed the appointment of Mohammed, but compelled Nujeem-ul-Dowlah
to retire from the nominal office of Nabob, on a pension of thirty-two
lacs of rupees.

The very name of Clive brought the war with Oude to a close. Sujah
Dowlah was encamped on the borders of Bahar, strongly reinforced by
bands of Mahrattas and Afghans, and anxious for another battle. But no
sooner did he learn that Clive was returned, than he informed Cossim
and Sombre that as he could no longer protect them, they had better
shift for themselves. He then dismissed his followers, rode to the
English camp, and announced that he was ready to accept such terms
of peace as they thought reasonable. Clive proceeded to Benares to
settle these terms. The council of Calcutta had determined to strip
Sujah Dowlah of all his possessions, but Clive knew that it was far
more politic to make friends of powerful princes. He therefore allowed
Sujah Dowlah to retain the rank and title of vizier, and gave him back
all the rest of Oude, except the districts of Allahabad and Corah,
which had been promised to Shah Allum as an imperial domain. On Shah
Allum, as Great Mogul, he also settled, on behalf of the Company, an
annual payment of twenty-six lacs of rupees. Thus the heir of the great
Aurungzebe became the tributary of the East India Company.

In return for this favour, Clive obtained one of infinitely more
importance. It was the transfer of the sole right of dominion
throughout the provinces of Bengal, Orissa, and Bahar. All that vast
territory was thus made the legal and valid property of the East
India Company. The conveyance was ratified by public deed, which was
delivered by the Great Mogul to Clive in presence of his court, the
throne on which he was elevated during this most important ceremony
being an English dining-table, covered with a showy cloth. And of this
prince--who was entirely their own puppet--the British still continued
to style themselves the vassals, to strike his coins at their mint,
and to bear his titles on their public seal! Clive saw the immense
importance of maintaining the aspect of subjects to the highest native
authority, and of avoiding alarming the minds of the native forces by
an open assumption of proprietorship. By this single treaty, at the
same time that he had freed the Company from all dependence on the
heirs of Meer Jaffier, he derived the Company's title to those states
from the supreme native power in India; and he could boast of having
secured to his countrymen an annual revenue of two millions of money.
Thus began a system which has played a leading part in our Indian
history.

Having thus arranged with the natives, Clive came to the far more
arduous business of compelling the Europeans to conform to the orders
of the Company, that no more presents should be received. In his
letters home he recommended that to put an end to the examples of
corruption in high places, it was necessary that the Governor of Bengal
should have a larger salary; that he and others of the higher officers
should be prohibited from being concerned in trade; that the chief seat
of government should be at Calcutta; and the Governor-General should
have the authority, in cases of emergency, to decide independently of
the Council. These were all sound views, but to carry them out required
the highest exercise of his authority. He exacted a written pledge
from the civil servants of the Company that they would receive no
more presents from the native princes. To this there was considerable
objection, and some resigned; but he carried this through, nominally
at least. To sweeten the prohibition of civil servants engaging in
trade, he gave them a share in the enormous emoluments of the salt
monopoly--two hundred per cent. being laid on the introduction of salt,
one of the requisites of life to the natives, from the adjoining state
of Madras into that of Bengal.

With the military he had a far more violent contest. After the
battle of Plassey, Meer Jaffier had conferred on the officers of the
army what was called double batta, meaning an additional allowance
of pay. Clive had always told the officers that it was not likely
that the Company would continue this; and, now that the territories
of Jaffier were become virtually their own, he announced that this
must be discontinued. The Governor and Council issued the orders for
this abolition of the double batta; he received in reply nothing but
remonstrances. The officers, according to Burke's phrase, in his speech
of December 1st, 1783, "could not behold, without a virtuous emulation,
the moderate gains of the civil service." Clive was peremptory, and
found his orders openly set at defiance by nearly two hundred officers,
headed by no less a person than his second in command, Sir Robert
Fletcher. These gentlemen had privately entered into a bond of five
hundred pounds to resign on the enforcement of the order, and not
to resume their commissions unless the double batta was restored.
To support such as might be cashiered, a subscription was entered
into, to which the angry civilians of Calcutta are said to have added
sixteen thousand pounds. The conspirators flattered themselves that,
in a country like India, held wholly by the sword, Clive could not
dispense with their services for a single day. They were mistaken. On
receiving the news of this military strike, Clive immediately set off
for the camp at Monghyr. He was informed that two of the officers vowed
that if he came to enforce the order, they would shoot or stab him.
Undaunted by any such threats, although in failing health, and amid
drenching rains, he pursued his journey, and, on arriving, summoned
the officers of the army, and, treating the threats of assassination
as those of murderers, and not of Englishmen, he reasoned with them on
the unpatriotic nature of their conduct. His words produced the desired
effect on many; the privates showed no disposition to support their
officers in their demand, and the sepoys all shouted with enthusiasm
for Sabut Jung, their ideal of a hero. The younger officers, who had
been menaced with death if they did not support the conspiracy, now
begged to recall their resignation, and Clive allowed it. He ordered
Sir Robert Fletcher and all who stood out into arrest, and sent them
down the Ganges to take their trial at Calcutta. Many are said to have
departed with tears in their eyes. By this spirited conduct Clive
crushed this formidable resistance, and averted the shame which he
avowed not all the waters of the Ganges could wash out--that of a
successful mutiny.

Whilst showing this firmness towards others, Clive found it necessary
to maintain it in himself. In face of the orders of the Company which
he had been enforcing, that the British officials should receive
no more presents, the Rajah of Benares offered him two diamonds of
large size, and the Nabob-vizier, Sujah Dowlah, on the conclusion of
his treaty, a rich casket of jewels, and a large sum of money. Clive
declared that he could thus have added half a million to his fortune;
and our historians have been loud in his praises for his abstinence
on this occasion. Lord Mahon observes:--"All this time the conduct of
Clive was giving a lofty example of disregard of lucre. He did not
spare his personal resources, and was able, some years after, to boast
in the House of Commons that this his second Indian command had left
him poorer than it found him." Ill-health compelled him to return to
England in January, 1767.

[Illustration: THE GREAT MOGUL ENTERING THE ENGLISH CAMP. (_See p._
317.)]

Whilst Clive had been reducing our enemies in Bengal and Oude, a
more powerful antagonist than any whom we had yet encountered in
India was every day growing more formidable in Mysore, and combining
several of the petty chiefs of the different States of Madras as
his allies against us. He was now far more considerable than when he
had appeared against us as the ally of the French general, Lally, in
the neighbourhood of Pondicherry. Hyder Ali was a self-made man. He
was originally the grandson of a wandering fakir; then the captain
of banditti; then at the head of an army composed of freebooters;
continually growing in the number of his followers, and in the wealth
procured by plunder, he at length became Commander-in-Chief of the
Rajah of Mysore. Soon rising in his ambition, he seized the Rajah,
his master, pensioned him off with three lacs of rupees, and declared
himself the real Rajah. In 1761 he was become firmly established
on the throne of Mysore, but this distinction did not satisfy him.
He determined to be the founder of Mysore as a great kingdom, and
extended his power to near the banks of the Kistnah. There he was
met and repulsed by the Peishwa of the Mahrattas, who crossed the
Kistnah, defeated him repeatedly, seized some of his newly-acquired
territory, and levied on him thirty-two lacs of rupees. Hyder returned
to Seringapatam, which he had made his capital, and had strongly
fortified, and he thence conducted an expedition against Malabar, which
he conquered, and put the chiefs to death to make his hold of it the
more secure. It is unnecessary to go minutely into the history of the
next few years. Hyder organised an army of 100,000 men, officered by
Frenchmen, and sometimes in confederation with the Nizam of the Deccan,
sometimes in conjunction with the Mahrattas of the Western Ghauts,
waged perpetual war on the English. In 1769 Indian Stock fell sixty per
cent. The resources of the Company were fast becoming exhausted, when
Hyder Ali, by an artful feint, drew the English army, in the spring
of 1769, a hundred and forty miles to the south of Madras. Then, by a
rapid march, he suddenly appeared, with a body of five thousand horse,
on the heights of St. Thomas, overlooking Madras. The whole of the city
and vicinity, except the port of St. George itself, lay at his mercy.
The terrified Council, in all haste, offered most advantageous terms
of peace, which it was the very object of Hyder to accept, and that,
too, before the English commander, Colonel Smith, could arrive and
intercept his retreat. Hyder gladly consented to the terms, which were
those of mutual restitution, and of alliance and mutual defence: the
last, a condition which, with Hyder's disposition to aggrandisement,
was sure to bring the English into fresh trouble.

[Illustration: WARREN HASTINGS.]

This was immediately made evident. The treaty was concluded on the 4th
of April, 1769, and the first news was that Hyder had quarrelled with
the Mahrattas, and called on the Presidency of Madras to furnish the
stipulated aid. But the Presidency replied that he had himself sought
this war, and therefore it was not a defensive but an offensive war.
The Peishwa of the Mahrattas invaded Mysore, and drove Hyder to the
very walls of Seringapatam, dreadfully laying waste his territory.
Hyder then sent piteous appeals to his allies, the British, offering
large sums of money; but they still remained deaf. At another time,
they were solicited by the Mahratta chief to make an alliance with
him, but they determined to remain neutral, and left Hyder and the
Peishwa to fight out their quarrels. In 1771 the Mahrattas invaded the
Carnatic, but were soon driven out; and in 1772 the Mahrattas and Hyder
made peace through the mediation of the Nabob of the Carnatic, or of
Arcot, as he was more frequently called. Hyder had lost a considerable
portion of Mysore, and besides had to pay fifteen lacs of rupees, with
the promise of fifteen more. The refusal of the English to assist him
did not fail to render him more deeply hostile than ever to them.

During this period--from 1769 to 1772--Warren Hastings had been second
in the Council at Madras; but in the latter year he was promoted
to the head of the Council in Bengal. During this period, too, the
British had been brought into hostilities with the Rajah of Tanjore.
The history of these proceedings is amongst the very blackest of the
innumerable black proceedings of the East India Company. The Rajah of
Tanjore was in alliance with the Company. In 1762 they had guaranteed
to him the security of his throne; but now their great ally, Mohammed
Ali, the Nabob of the Carnatic, called to the English for help against
the Rajah. The conduct of honourable men would have been to offer
themselves as mediators, and so settle the business; but not by such
means was the whole of India to be won from the native princes. The
Rajah of the Carnatic offered to purchase the territory of Tanjore from
the British for a large sum. The latter, however, had guaranteed the
defence of these territories to the Rajah of Tanjore by express treaty.
No matter, they closed the bargain with the Rajah of the Carnatic;
they agreed to seize Tanjore, and make it over to Mohammed Ali. An
army assembled at Trichinopoly on the 12th of September, 1771, invaded
Tanjore, seized the Rajah and his family, and invested the whole of
Tanjore in the name of the Nabob of the Carnatic.

When these infamous doings were known in England, a feeling of horror
and indignation ran through the country. The East India Company was
compelled to send out Lord Pigot to Madras to do what Clive had so
vigorously done in Bengal--control and reverse the acts of the Council.
Pigot most honourably acquitted himself; liberated the outraged
Nabob of Tanjore and his family, and restored them. But Pigot had
not the same overawing name as Clive. The Council of Madras seized
him and imprisoned him, expelling every member of the Council that
had supported him. This most daring proceeding once more astonished
and aroused the public feeling of England. An order was sent out
to reinstate Lord Pigot, but, before it arrived, his grief and
mortification had killed him. Sir Thomas Rumbold, a most avaricious
man, was appointed to succeed him, and arrived in Madras in February,
1778, Major-General Hector Munro being Commander-in-Chief, and the army
of Hyder, one hundred thousand in number, already again menacing the
frontiers.

But we have far overshot the contemporary history of Bengal. The
Presidency thought it had greatly benefited by the reforms of Clive;
yet it had since been called upon to furnish large supplies of men and
money to support the unprincipled transactions at Madras, which we
have briefly detailed, and the India House, instead of paying the usual
dividends, was compelled to reduce them. Further, a terrible famine
devastated Bengal, and more than half the population are said to have
been swept away. This state of things compelled Parliament to turn its
attention to India. General Burgoyne, now active in the Opposition,
moved and carried, on the 13th of April, 1772, a resolution for the
appointment of a Select Committee of thirteen members to inquire into
Indian affairs; and Burgoyne, who was extremely hostile to Clive, was
appointed chairman. The committee went actively to work, and presented
two reports during the Session. After Parliament met again in November,
Lord North, who had conversed with Clive during the recess, called for
and carried a resolution for another and this time a secret committee.
As the Company was in still deeper difficulties, and came to Lord North
to borrow a million and a half, he lent them one million four hundred
thousand pounds, on condition that they should keep their dividends at
six per cent. until this debt was repaid, and afterwards at eight per
cent. He at the same time relieved them from the payment of the four
hundred thousand pounds per annum, imposed by Lord Chatham, for the
same period. This was done in February, 1773, and in April he brought
in a Bill at the suggestion of Clive, who represented the Court of
Proprietors at the India House as a regular bear-garden, on account of
men of small capital and smaller intelligence being enabled to vote.
By North's Bill it was provided that the Court of Directors should, in
future, instead of being annually elected, remain in office four years;
instead of five hundred pounds stock qualifying for a vote in the Court
of Proprietors, one thousand pounds should alone give a vote; three
thousand pounds, two votes; and six thousand pounds, three votes. The
Mayor's Court in Calcutta was restricted to petty cases of trade; and a
Supreme Court was established, to consist of a Chief Justice and three
puisne judges, appointed by the Crown. The Governor-General of Bengal
was made Governor-General of India. These nominations were to continue
for five years, and then to return to the Directors, but subject to the
approval of the Crown. Whilst the Bill was in progress, the members of
the new Council were named. Warren Hastings was appointed the first
Governor-General; and in his Council were Richard Barwell, who was
already out there, General Clavering, the Honourable Colonel Monson,
and Philip Francis. Another clause of Lord North's Bill remitted the
drawback on the Company's teas for export to America, an act little
thought of at the time, but pregnant with the loss of the Transatlantic
colonies. By these "regulating acts," too, as they were called, the
Governor-General, members of Council, and judges, were prohibited from
trading, and no person in the service of the king or Company was to
be allowed to receive presents from native princes, nabobs, or their
ministers or agents. Violent and rude, even, was the opposition raised
by the India House and all its partisans to these two Bills.

The passing of these Acts was marked by attacks on Lord Clive. Burgoyne
brought up a strong report from his Committee, and, on the 17th of
May, moved a resolution charging Clive with having, when in command of
the army in Bengal, received as presents two hundred and thirty-four
thousand pounds. This was carried; but he then followed it by another,
"That Lord Clive did, in so doing, abuse the power with which he was
entrusted, to the evil example of the servants of the public." As
it was well understood that Burgoyne's resolutions altogether went
to strip Clive of the whole of his property, a great stand was here
made. Clive was not friendless. He had his vast wealth to win over
to him some, as it inflamed the envy of others. He had taken care to
spend a large sum in purchasing small boroughs, and had six or seven
of his friends and kinsmen sitting for these places in Parliament.
He had need of all his friends. Throughout the whole of this inquiry
the most persistent and envenomed attacks were made upon him. He was
repeatedly questioned and cross-questioned, till he exclaimed, "I, your
humble servant, the Baron of Plassey, have been examined by the Select
Committee more like a sheep-stealer than a member of Parliament." Then
the House thought he had suffered enough, for nothing was clearer
than that justice required the country which was in possession of the
splendid empire he had won to acknowledge his services, whilst it
noted the means of this acquisition. Burgoyne's second resolution was
rejected, and another proposed by Wedderburn, the Solicitor-General,
adopted, "That Robert, Lord Clive, did, at the same time, render
great and meritorious services to this country." This terminated the
attack on this gifted though faulty man. His enemies made him pay the
full penalty of his wealth. They had struck him to the heart with
their poisoned javelins. From a boy he had been subject to fits of
hypochondriacal depression; as a boy, he had attempted his own life in
one of these paroxysms. They now came upon him with tenfold force, and
in a few months he died by his own hand (November 22, 1774).

From Clive, events cause us to pass at once to one accused of much
greater misdemeanours, and one whose administration terminated in
a more formal and extraordinary trial than that of Clive; a trial
made ever famous by the shining abilities and eloquence of Burke and
Sheridan, and the awful mysteries of iniquity, as practised by our
authorities in India, which were brought to the public knowledge by
them on this grand occasion. Hastings commenced his rule in Bengal
under circumstances which demanded rather a man of pre-eminent humanity
than of the character yet lying undeveloped in him. In 1770, under the
management of Mr. Cartier, a famine, as we have mentioned, broke out
in Bengal, so terrible that it is said to have swept away one-third of
the population of the state, and to have been attended by indescribable
horrors. The most revolting circumstance was, that the British were
charged with being the authors of it, by buying up all the rice in the
country, and refusing to sell it, except at the most exorbitant prices.
But the charge is baseless. Macaulay says, "These charges we believe to
have been utterly unfounded. That servants of the Company had ventured,
since Clive's departure, to deal in rice, is probable. That, if they
dealt in rice, they must have gained by the scarcity, is certain. But
there is no reason for thinking that they either produced or aggravated
the evil which physical causes sufficiently explain." Hastings promptly
introduced a change in the land-tax by means of which more revenue
was obtained with less oppression, and he also freed the country from
marauders.

Besides succeeding to the government of a country whose chief province
was thus exhausted, the finances of the Company were equally drained,
both in Calcutta and at home, and the Directors were continually crying
to Hastings for money, money, money! As one means of raising this
money, they sent him a secret order to break one of their most solemn
engagements with the native princes. When they bribed Meer Jaffier to
depose his master, by offering to set him in his seat, and received in
return the enormous sums mentioned for this elevation, they settled
on Meer Jaffier and his descendants an annual income of thirty-two
lacs of rupees, or three hundred and sixty thousand pounds. But Meer
Jaffier was now dead, and his eldest son died during the famine. The
second son was made Nabob, a weak youth in a weak government, and as
the Company saw that he could not help himself, they ordered Hastings
to reduce the income to one-half. This was easily done; but this was
not enough, disgraceful as it was. Mohammed Reza Khan, who had been
appointed by the Company the Nabob's Minister, on the ground that he
was not only a very able but a very honest man, they ordered to be
arrested on pretended pleas of maladministration. He and all his family
and partisans must be secured, but not in an open and abrupt way,
which might alarm the province; they were to be inveigled down from
Moorshedabad to Calcutta, on pretence of affairs of government, and
there detained. Nuncomar, the Hindoo, who had been displaced, in order
to set up Mohammed, who was a Mussulman, and who had been removed on
the ground of being one of the most consummate rogues in India, was to
be employed as evidence against Mohammed. Hastings fully carried out
the orders of the secret committee of the India House. He had Mohammed
seized in his bed, at midnight, by a battalion of sepoys; Shitab Roy,
the Minister of Bahar, who acted under Mohammed at Patna, was also
secured; and these two great officers and their chief agents were sent
down to Calcutta under guard, and there put into what Hastings called
"an easy confinement." In this confinement they lay many months, all
which time Nuncomar was in full activity preparing the charges against
them. Shitab Roy, like Mohammed, stood high in the estimation of his
countrymen of both faiths; he had fought on the British side with
signal bravery, and appears to have been a man of high honour and
feeling. But these things weighed for nothing with Hastings or his
masters in Leadenhall Street. He hoped to draw large sums of money from
these men; but he was disappointed. Though he himself arranged the
court that tried them, and brought up upwards of a hundred witnesses
against them, no malpractice whatever could be proved against them,
and they were acquitted. They were therefore honourably restored,
the reader will think. By no means. Such were not the intentions of
the Company or of Hastings. Whilst Mohammed and Shitab Roy had been
in prison, Hastings had been up at Moorshedabad, had abolished the
office of Minister in both Patna and Moorshedabad, removed all the
government business to Calcutta, cut down the income of the young
Nabob, Muharek-al-Dowla, to one half, according to his instructions,
and reduced the Nabob himself to a mere puppet. He had transferred the
whole government to Calcutta, with all the courts of justice, so that,
writes Hastings, "the authority of the Company is fixed in this country
without any possibility of competition, and beyond the power of any but
themselves to shake it."

The manner in which Hastings had executed the orders of the Directors
in this business showed that he was prepared to go all lengths in
maintaining their interests in India. He immediately proceeded to
give an equally striking proof of this. We have seen that when the
Mogul Shah Allum applied to the British to assist him in recovering
his territories, they promised to conduct him in triumph to Delhi,
and place him firmly on the grand throne of all India; but when, in
consequence of this engagement, he had made over to them by a public
grant, Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa, they found it inconvenient to fulfil
their contract, and made over to him Allahabad and Corah instead, with
an annual payment of twenty-six lacs of rupees--two hundred and sixty
thousand pounds. The payment of this large sum, too, was regarded by
the Company, now in the deepest debt, as unnecessary, and Hastings had
orders to reduce it. It appears that the money was at no time duly
paid, and had now been withheld altogether for more than two years. The
Mogul, thus disappointed in the promises of restoration by the English,
and now again in the payment of this stipulated tribute, turned to the
Mahrattas, and offered to make over the little provinces of Allahabad
and Corah, on condition that they restored him to the sovereignty of
Delhi. The Mahrattas gladly caught at this offer, and by the end of the
year 1771 they had borne the Mogul in triumph into his ancient capital
of Delhi. This was precisely such a case as the Directors were on the
watch for. In their letter to Bengal of the 11th of November, 1768,
they had said: "If the Emperor flings himself into the hands of the
Mahrattas, or any other Power, we are disengaged from him, and it may
open a fair opportunity of withholding the twenty-six lacs of rupees we
now pay him." The opportunity had now come, and was immediately seized
on by Hastings to rescind the payment of the money altogether, and he
prepared to annex the two provinces of Allahabad and Corah. These were
sold to the Nabob of Oude for fifty lacs of rupees. This bargain was
settled between the vizier and Hastings at Benares, in September, 1773.

[Illustration: BENARES. (_From a Photograph by Frith and Co._)]

But the Nabob of Oude held out new temptations of gain to Hastings. The
Rohillas, a tribe of Afghans, had, earlier in the century, descended
from their mountains and conquered the territory lying between the
Ganges and the mountains to the west of Oude. They had given it the
name of Rohilcund. These brave warriors would gladly have been allies
of the British, and applied to Sujah Dowlah to bring about such an
alliance. Dowlah made fair promises, but he had other views. He hoped,
by the assistance of the British, to conquer Rohilcund and add it to
Oude. He had no hope that his rabble of the plains could stand against
this brave mountain race, and he now artfully stated to Hastings that
the Mahrattas were at war with the Rohillas. If they conquered them,
they would next attack Oude, and, succeeding there, would descend the
Ganges and spread over all Bahar and Bengal. He therefore proposed
that the British should assist him to conquer Rohilcund for himself,
and add it to Oude. For this service he would pay all the expenses of
the campaign, the British army would obtain a rich booty, and at the
end he would pay the British Government besides the sum of forty lacs
of rupees. Hastings had no cause of quarrel with the Rohillas, but for
the proffered reward he at once acceded to the proposal. In April,
1774, an English brigade, under Colonel Champion, invaded Rohilcund,
and in a hard-fought field defeated the Rohillas. In the whole of
this campaign nothing could be more disgraceful in every way than the
conduct of the troops of Oude. They took care to keep behind during
the fighting, but to rush forward to the plunder. The Nabob and his
troops committed such horrors in plundering and massacreing not only
the Rohillas, but the native and peaceful Hindoos, that the British
officers and soldiers denounced the proceedings with horror. It was
now, however, in vain that Hastings called on the Nabob to restrain his
soldiers, for, if he did not plunder, how was he to pay the stipulated
forty lacs of rupees? and if he ruined and burnt out the natives, how
were they, Hastings asked, to pay any taxes to him as his new subjects?
All this was disgraceful enough, but this was not all. Shah Allum now
appeared upon the scene, and produced a contract between himself and
the Nabob, which had been made unknown to Hastings, by which the Nabob
of Oude stipulated that, on condition of the Mogul advancing against
the Rohillas from the south of Delhi, he should receive a large share
of the conquered territory and the plunder. The Nabob now refused to
fulfil the agreement, on the plea that the Mogul ought to have come and
fought, and Hastings sanctioned that view of the case, and returned to
Calcutta with his ill-gotten booty.

But Hastings had scarcely terminated these proceedings, when the new
members of Council, appointed under the Regulating Act, arrived. On the
19th of October, 1774, landed the three Councillors, Clavering, Monson,
and Francis; Barwell had been some time in India. The presence of the
three just arrived was eminently unwelcome to Hastings. He knew that
they came with no friendly disposition towards him, and that Philip
Francis, in particular, was most hostile. The letter of the Court of
Directors recommended unanimity of counsels, but nothing was further
from the views of the new members from Europe. As they were three,
and Hastings and Barwell only two, they constituted a majority, and
from the first moment commenced to undo almost everything that he had
done, and carried their object. They denounced, and certainly with
justice, the Rohilla war; they demanded that the whole correspondence
of Middleton, the agent sent to the court of Oude by Hastings, should
be laid before them. Hastings refused to produce much of it, as
entirely of a private and personal nature; and they asserted that this
was because these letters would not bear the light, and that the whole
of Hastings' connection with Sujah Dowlah was the result of mercenary
motives. In this they did the Governor-General injustice, for, though
he drew money sternly and by every means from the India chiefs and
people, it was rather for the Company than for himself. They ordered
the recall of Middleton from Oude, deaf to the protests of Hastings
that this was stamping his conduct with public odium, and weakening the
hands of government in the eyes of the natives. Still, Middleton was
recalled, and Mr. Bristow sent in his place. Hastings wrote home in the
utmost alarm both to the Directors and to Lord North, prognosticating
the greatest confusion and calamity from this state of anarchy; and
Sujah Dowlah, regarding the proceedings of the new members of Council
as directed against himself, and seeing in astonishment the authority
of Hastings apparently at an end, was so greatly terrified that he
sickened and died.

The Council now recalled the English troops from Rohilcund; and Bristow
demanded, in the name of the Council, from Asaph-ul-Dowlah, the young
Nabob, a full payment of all arrears; and announced that, Sujah Dowlah
being dead, the treaty with him was at an end. Under pressure of these
demands, Bristow, by instructions from the new regnant members of
the Council, compelled the young Nabob to enter into a fresh treaty
with them; and in this treaty they introduced a clause to the full as
infamous as anything which Hastings had done. In return for renewing
the possession of the provinces of Corah and Allahabad, they compelled
him to cede to them the territory of Cheyte Sing, the Rajah of Benares,
though this did not at all belong to the Nabob of Oude, and was,
moreover, guaranteed to Cheyte Sing by Hastings, in solemn treaty. The
revenue of Cheyte Sing, thus lawlessly taken possession of, amounted to
twenty-two millions of rupees; and the Nabob of Oude was also, on his
own account, bound to discharge all his father's debts and engagements
to the Company, and to raise greatly the pay to the Company's brigade.
Hastings utterly refused to sanction these proceedings; but the
Directors at home, who cared not how or whence money came, warmly
approved of the transactions.

At Calcutta, Francis, Clavering, and Monson were deeply engaged in
what appeared to them a certain plan for the ruin of Hastings. The
Maharajah Nuncomar, who styled himself the head of the Brahmins, came
forward and laid before them papers containing the most awful charges
against Hastings. These were that Hastings had encouraged him, at the
command of the Secret Committee, to produce charges against Mohammed
Rheza Khan and Shitab Roy, when they were in prison, in order to extort
money from them; and that Hastings had accepted a heavy bribe to allow
Mohammed to escape without punishment. Hastings broke up the Council,
declaring that he would not sit to be judged by his own Council. If
they had charges to prefer against him, they might form themselves
into a committee, and transmit such evidence as they received to
the Supreme Court of Justice at Calcutta, or to the Directors at
home. But the three declared themselves a majority, voted their own
competence to sit and try their own chief, and preferred another huge
charge introduced by Nuncomar--namely, that Hastings had appropriated
to himself two-thirds of the salary of the Governor of Hooghly, a
post formerly held by Nuncomar himself. They determined to introduce
Nuncomar to confront Hastings at his own Council board. Hastings
declared the Council not sitting; the three declared it sitting and
valid, and called in Nuncomar, who proceeded to detail his charges,
and ended by producing a letter from the Munny Begum, now Governor of
Oude, expressing the gratitude which she felt to the Governor-General
for her appointment as guardian of the Nabob, and that in token of this
gratitude she had presented him with two lacs of rupees. Immediately on
hearing that, Hastings declared the letter a forgery, and that he would
prove it so; and he was not long in procuring an absolute denial of
the letter from the Begum. Things being driven to this pass, Hastings
commenced an action against Nuncomar, Mr. Fowke, one of the most active
agents of the trio, and others, as guilty of a conspiracy against
him. This was supported by native witnesses, and the Supreme Court
of Justice, after a long and careful examination of the case, held
Nuncomar and Fowke to bail, and bound the Governor-General to prosecute.

But, on the 6th of May, a blow fell on Nuncomar from an unexpected
quarter. He was arrested and thrown into prison at the suit of a
merchant named Mohun Persaud. The charge was, that he had forged a
bond five years before. He had been brought to trial for this before
the Mayor's Court at Calcutta--the Supreme Court not then being in
existence. On this occasion, being in favour with Hastings, he had
procured his release; but now, the merchant seeing that Hastings'
favour was withdrawn, and that, therefore, he might have a better
chance against him, the charge was renewed. Hastings, on the trial,
declared before the Supreme Court that neither directly nor indirectly
had he promoted the prosecution. The opposition members were highly
incensed at this proceeding. Three days after Nuncomar's committal they
realised their threat of dismissing the Munny Begum, and appointed
Goordas, the son of Nuncomar, to her office. They sent encouraging
messages to Nuncomar in his prison, and made violent protests to
the judges against the prosecution. Their efforts were useless. The
trial came on in due course. One of the judges, Sir Robert Chambers,
had endeavoured to have Nuncomar tried on an earlier statute, which
included no capital punishment, for forgery was no capital crime by
the native laws. But Sir Elijah Impey and the other judges replied
that the new Act compelled them to try him on the capital plea, and
he had been, on this ground, refused bail. Nuncomar knew nothing of
our estimate of forgery, and he could not comprehend how a man of his
rank, and a Brahmin of high dignity, should be tried for his life on
such a charge. But he was found guilty, and condemned to be hanged.
Strong efforts were then made to have him respited till the judgment of
the Court of Directors could be taken on the question, but Impey and
the other judges declared that it could not be done unless they could
assign some sufficient reasons, and they contended that there were no
such reasons. Yet the new Acts expressly gave them this power, and,
what made it more desirable, was that no native of any rank had been
tried by the Supreme Court and the British law, and only one native
had ever been capitally convicted for forgery in any of our Indian
courts. Moreover, the indignity of hanging a high-caste Brahmin was so
outraging to the native feeling that it was deemed most impolitic to
perpetrate such an act. All was pleaded in vain; on the 5th of August,
1775, Nuncomar was brought out and publicly hanged, amid the terrified
shrieks and yells of the native population, who fled at the sight, and
many of them rushed into the sacred Ganges to purify them from the
pollution of ever witnessing such a scene. The death of Nuncomar put
an end to all hope of procuring any further native evidence against
Hastings. The natives were so terrified at this new kind of execution,
that nothing could convince them but that, in spite of the opposition
of his colleagues, Hastings was all powerful.

When the news of this distractedly hopeless condition of the Council in
Calcutta reached London, Lord North called upon the Court of Directors
to send up to the Crown an address for the recall of Hastings, without
which, according to the new Indian Act, he could not be removed till
the end of his five years. The Directors put the matter to the vote,
and the address was negatived by a single vote. The minority then
appealed to the Court of Proprietors, at the general election in the
spring of 1776, but there it was negatived by ballot by a majority of
one hundred, notwithstanding that all the Court party and Parliamentary
Ministerialists who had votes attended to overthrow him. This defeat
so enraged Lord North that he resolved to pass a special Bill for the
removal of the Governor-General. This alarmed Colonel Maclean, a friend
of Hastings, to whom he had written, on the 27th of March. 1775,
desiring him, in his disgust with the conduct of Francis, Clavering,
and Monson, and the support of them by the Directors, to tender his
resignation. Thinking better of it, however, he had, on the 18th of the
following May, written to him, recalling the proposal of resignation.
But Maclean, to save his friend from a Parliamentary dismissal, which
he apprehended, now handed the letter containing the resignation to the
Directors. Delighted to be thus liberated from their embarrassment,
the Directors accepted the resignation at once, and elected Mr. Edward
Wheler to the vacant place in the Council.

But matters had greatly changed at Calcutta before this. Maclean did
not present the letter of resignation till October, 1776; but, in
September of that year, Colonel Monson had died, and, the members
in the Council being now equal, the Governor-General's casting vote
restored to him his lost majority. Hastings was not the man to defer
for a moment the exercise of his authority. He began instantly to
overturn, in spite of their most violent efforts, the measures of
Francis and friends. He dismissed Goordas from the chief authority
in Oude, and reinstated his "dear friend, Nat Middleton," as he
familiarly termed him. He revived his land revenue system, and was
planning new and powerful alliances with native princes, especially
with the Nabob of Oude, and the Nizam of the Deccan, not omitting to
cast a glance at the power of the Sikhs, whose dangerous ascendency
he already foresaw. In the midst of these and other grand plans for
the augmentation of British power in India--plans afterwards carried
out by others--he was suddenly astounded by the arrival of a packet
in June, 1777, containing the news of his resignation, and of its
acceptance by the Directors. He at once protested that it was invalid,
as he had countermanded the resignation before its presentation; but
General Clavering, as next in succession, at once claimed the office
of Governor-General, and Francis, in Council, administered the oath
to him. Clavering immediately demanded the keys of the fort and the
treasury from Hastings; but that gentleman refused to admit his own
resignation, much less Clavering's election to his post. Here, then,
were two would-be Governor-Generals, as Europe had formerly seen two
conflicting Popes. To end the difficulty, Hastings proposed that the
decision of the question should be referred to the Supreme Court. It
is wonderful that Clavering and Francis should have consented to this,
seeing that Impey, Hastings' friend, and the judge of Nuncomar, was
at the head of that Court; but it was done, and the Court decided in
Hastings' favour. No sooner was Hastings thus secured, than he charged
Clavering with having forfeited both his place in the Council, and
his post as Commander-in-Chief of the Forces, by attempting to seize
on the Governor-Generalship. Clavering and Francis were compelled to
appeal once more to the Supreme Court, and this time, to his honour,
Impey decided in favour of Clavering. Clavering, who had been deeply
mortified by his defeat, died a few days after this occurred, in
August, 1777. By this event the authority of Hastings in the government
was sufficiently restored, notwithstanding that Wheler generally sided
with Francis, for him to carry his own aims.

It was at this crisis, when Hastings was just recovering his authority
in the Council, that the news arrived in India, and spread amongst the
native chiefs, that in Yenghi Dunia, or the New World, the Company
Sahib--for the East Indians could never separate the ideas of the East
India Company and England itself--there had been a great revolution,
and the English driven out. This, as might be expected, wonderfully
elated the native chiefs, and especially those in the south. There the
French of Pondicherry and Chandernagore boasted of the destruction
of the British power, and that it was by their own hands. Hastings,
who was as able and far-seeing as he was unprincipled in carrying
out his plans for the maintenance of the British dominion in India,
immediately set himself to counteract the mischievous effects of these
diligently-disseminated rumours, and of the cabals which the French
excited. These were most to be feared amongst the vast and martial
family of the Mahrattas. The Mahrattas had risen on the ruins of the
great Mogul empire. They now extended their tribes over a vast space of
India from Mysore to the Ganges. The Peishwa, as head of these nations,
held his residence at Poonah. Besides his, there were the great houses
of Holkar and Scindia; the Guicowar, who ruled in Guzerat; the Bonslah,
or Rajah of Berar, a descendant of Sivaji. The Mahrattas were, for the
most part, a rude, warlike race, rapacious and ambitious, and living
in the most primitive style. To destroy the confidence of these fierce
warriors in the French, Hastings gave immediate orders, on receiving
the news of the proclamation of war in Europe, for the seizure of the
French settlements. This was on the 7th of July, 1778; on the 10th
he had taken Chandernagore, and ordered Sir Hector Munro to invest
Pondicherry. That was soon accomplished, and the only remaining
possession of France, the small one of Mahé, on the coast of Malabar,
was seized the next spring.

[Illustration: SURRENDER OF BAILLIE TO HYDER ALI. (_See p._ 330.)]

Hastings then mustered fresh regiments of sepoys; demanded and received
three battalions from Cheyte Sing, the Rajah of Benares; armed
cruisers; laid up stores of ammunition and provisions for three months
in Fort William; enrolled a thousand European militia at Calcutta,
and stood ready for any French invasion from sea. He then despatched
Colonel Leslie with a strong force into the very heart of the Mahratta
country. Leslie appeared to have lost his energy, made four months'
delay in the plains of Bundelcund, and the next news was that he was
dead. Colonel Goddard was sent to take his command, and advanced into
Berar; but there hearing that successive revolutions were taking place
at Poonah, he waited the result of them. Meanwhile, the presidency of
Bombay, desirous of anticipating the expeditions from Calcutta, now
undertook to reinstate Ragunath Rao, a deposed peishwa, whom they had
lately left to his fate, and taking him along with him, the British
commander, Colonel Egerton, marched into the Mahratta country with four
thousand men. The army, when it had reached within sixteen miles of
Poonah, was surrounded by hosts of Mahratta cavalry, and was compelled
to surrender. The Mahrattas, as conditions--which the British were
in no position to decline--insisted on the restoration of all the
territory won from them by the British since 1756, and the surrender to
them of Ragunath Rao. But Hastings refused to recognise this treaty.
He ordered Colonel Goddard to advance. The title of general was
conferred on him, and he well justified the promotion. In that and the
succeeding campaign he won victory on victory; stormed Ahmedabad; took
the city of Bassein; gained a splendid victory over forty thousand of
the combined forces of Holkar and Scindia, and, in a great measure,
retrieved all the losses, and restored the fame of the British arms. In
another quarter the success against the Mahrattas was equally decisive.
Captain Popham with a small body of troops stormed and took the city of
Lahore, and the huge fortress of Gwalior, which the Mahrattas deemed
impregnable.

To assist the Governor-General, the British Government had sent out
Sir Eyre Coote in 1780 to the scene of his former fame, not only as
Commander of the Forces in place of Clavering, but also as member
of Council. Coote usually supported Hastings in the Council, but he
greatly embarrassed him by the insatiable spirit of avarice which
had grown upon him with years; and in making arrangements with the
Nabob of Oude and others to supply the means of accommodation to the
old commander, Hastings largely augmented the grounds of his future
persecutions. The war with the Mahrattas and the announcement of the
speedy arrival of a French armament on the coast of Coromandel induced
the Company's old enemy, Hyder Ali, to think it a good opportunity
to recover some of his territory from the Company. He saw that the
present opportunity was most favourable for taking a signal revenge on
the English. For years he had concerted with the French a grand plan
for the destruction of the British power; and even whilst he remained
quiet, he was preparing with all his energies for its accomplishment.
He had squeezed his treasurers and collectors to the utmost for the
accumulation of money, and mustered an army of nearly ninety thousand
men, including twenty-eight thousand cavalry and two thousand artillery
and rocketmen, besides four hundred engineers, chiefly French. Hyder
suddenly poured down from his hills with this host into the plains of
Madras. To the last moment the authorities there appear to have been
wholly unconscious of their danger. Besides this, the army in the
presidency did not exceed six thousand men, and these were principally
sepoys. This force, too, was spread over a vast region, part at
Pondicherry, part at Arcot, part in Madras, but everywhere scattered
into cantonments widely distant from each other, and in forts capable
of very little defence. As for the forces of their ally, the Nabob of
Arcot, they ran at the first issue of Hyder's army through the ghauts.
On came the army of Hyder like a wild hurricane. Porto Novo on the
coast, and Conjeveram near Trichinopoli, were taken; and Hyder advanced
laying all waste with fire and sword, till he could be seen--a dreadful
apparition--with his host from Mount St. Thomas, his progress marked by
the flames and smoke of burning villages.

The inhabitants, men, women, and children, fled in terror from their
splendid villas, around the city, into the fort of St. George.
A fast-sailing vessel was dispatched to Calcutta, to implore the
Governor-General to send them speedy aid of men and money. The forces
were called together from different quarters, and Sir Hector Munro at
the head of one body, and Colonel Baillie at the head of another, were
ordered to combine, and intercept Hyder. First one place of rendezvous
and then another was named, but, before the junction could take place,
Baillie had managed to allow himself to be surrounded by the whole host
of Hyder, and after a brave defence was compelled to surrender, one
half of his troops being cut to pieces. The insults and cruelties of
the troops of Hyder to their captives were something demoniac. Munro
had sent to demand troops from the Nabob of Arcot, for whom the British
were always fighting, and received a message of compliments, but no
soldiers. On the defeat of Baillie he made a hasty retreat to Mount St.
Thomas. Meanwhile, the call for aid had reached Calcutta, and Hastings
instantly responded to it with all his indomitable energy. He called
together the Council, and demanded that peace should be made at once
with the Mahrattas; that every soldier should be shipped off at once to
Madras; that fifteen lacs of rupees should be sent without a moment's
delay to the Council there; that the incompetent governor, Whitehill,
should be removed; and Sir Eyre Coote sent to perform this necessary
office, and take the command of the troops. Francis, who was just
departing for England, raised as usual his voice in opposition. But
Hastings' proposals were all carried. The troops, under Sir Eyre Coote,
were hurried off, and messengers dispatched in flying haste to raise
money at Moorshedabad, Patna, Benares, Lucknow--in short, wherever the
authority of Hastings could extort it. At the same time, other officers
were sent to negotiate with the Mahrattas for peace.

Coote landed at Madras at the beginning of November. A council was
immediately called, Whitehill was removed from the government of the
Presidency, and the member of Council next in seniority appointed.
Coote had brought with him only five hundred British troops and six
hundred Lascars. The whole force with which he could encounter Hyder
amounted only to one thousand seven hundred Europeans and five thousand
native troops. Coote, whose name as the conqueror of the French at
Wandewash and Pondicherry struck terror into Hyder, soon resumed his
triumphs on his old ground, driving the enemy from Wandewash. Hearing
then of the arrival of the French armament off Pondicherry, he marched
thither, and posted himself on the Red Hills. The French fleet,
consisting of seven ships of the line and four frigates, was anchored
off the place. But the French squadron having sailed away for the Isle
of France, from apprehension of the approach of a British fleet, Hyder
retreated, and, entering the territory of Tanjore, laid it waste,
while his son, Tippoo, laid siege again to Wandewash. Hyder was again
encouraged to advance, and on the 6th of July, 1781, Coote managed to
bring him to action near Porto Novo, and completely routed him and his
huge host, though he had himself only about eight thousand men. Hyder
retired quite crestfallen to Arcot, and ordered Tippoo to raise the
siege of Wandewash.

Notwithstanding that Hyder had established his camp soon after in a
strong position near the village of Pollilore, he was attacked on
the 27th of August by Eyre Coote. On this occasion Sir Hector Munro
warned Coote of the disadvantages of ground under which he was going to
engage, and the inevitable sacrifice of life. Coote replied angrily,
"You talk to me, sir, when you should be doing your duty!" His warning,
however, was just. Coote did not succeed in driving Hyder from his
post without severe loss. But again, on the 27th of September, another
battle was fought between them in the pass of Sholinghur, near Bellore,
in which Coote defeated Hyder with terrible loss. This battle relieved
the English garrison in Bellore, and the rainy season put an end to
operations, but the Carnatic was saved.

On the 22nd of June, 1781, Lord Macartney arrived at Madras to take
the place of Whitehill as Governor. He brought the news of the war
having broken out between the British and the Dutch, and he determined
to take advantage of it to seize the Dutch settlements on the coast of
Coromandel and in Ceylon. But Sir Eyre Coote had lately had a stroke
of palsy; his faculties were failing, and his temper had grown morose.
Finding he could obtain no assistance from the Commander-in-chief,
Macartney called out the militia of Madras, and at their head reduced
the Dutch settlements of Sadras and Pulicat. Finding Sir Hector Munro
waiting at Madras for a passage to England, in consequence of the
insulting conduct of Sir Eyre Coote, he induced him to take the command
of an expedition against Negapatam. Admiral Hughes landed the troops
near Negapatam on the 21st of October; they then united with a force
under Colonel Braithwaite, and on the 12th of November Negapatam was
taken, with large quantities of arms and military stores. Leaving
Braithwaite to make an expedition in Tanjore, where, in February of the
coming year, he was surrounded by Tippoo and Lally, the French general,
and taken prisoner, Admiral Hughes sailed across to Ceylon, a most
desirable conquest, because of its secure harbour of Trincomalee, as
well as the richness and beauty of the island, and also on account of
its position, for it lay only two days' sail from Madras. On the 11th
of January, 1782, Trincomalee was won.

But in February the long-expected armament from France arrived on
the Coromandel coast. Suffren, the admiral, was one of the ablest
sea-commanders of France. On his way he had secured the Cape of Good
Hope against the English, and he now landed at Porto Novo two thousand
French soldiers to join the army of Hyder Ali. Tippoo, flushed with the
recent capture of Colonel Braithwaite, invited the French to join him
in an attack on Cuddalore, an important town between Porto Novo and
Pondicherry. This was done, and Cuddalore was wrested from the English
in April. Whilst these events were taking place on land, repeated
engagements occurred with the British fleets on the coasts. That of
Admiral Hughes was reinforced by fresh ships from England, and between
February, 1782, and June, 1783, the British and French fleets fought
five pitched battles with varied success. In none of these was any
man-of-war captured by either side, nor any great number of men lost;
but, eventually, Suffren succeeded in retaking Trincomalee, in Ceylon,
from the British.

From Cuddalore, Tippoo and Bussy, the French general, turned their
forces against Wandewash; but they were met by Coote, though he was
now sinking and failing fast. They retreated, and he attempted to make
himself master of the strong fort of Arnee, where much of the booty
of Hyder was deposited; but Hyder made show of fighting him whilst
Tippoo carried off all the property. Tippoo was obliged to march
thence towards Calicut, where the Hindoo chiefs, his tributaries, were
joining the British under Colonel Mackenzie. Hyder at this moment
was confounded by the news of the peace made by Hastings with the
Mahrattas, and expected that those marauders would speedily fall on
Mysore. His health was fast declining, and yet he dared not introduce
his allies, the French, into his own territory, lest he should not so
readily get them out again. Besides his suspicions of the French, he
had constant fears of assassination. Hyder died in December, 1782.

At the time that Tippoo heard of the death of his father, he was,
assisted by the French, eagerly pressing on the most inferior force
of Colonel Mackenzie, not very far from Seringapatam. Mackenzie being
obliged to retire, was suddenly set upon, before daylight, near
Paniany, about thirty-five miles from Calicut, by the whole force;
but he repulsed them with great slaughter. Tippoo then fell back and
made the best of his way to his capital to secure his throne and the
treasures of Hyder Ali. He found himself at the age of thirty master
of the throne, of an army of nearly one hundred thousand men, and of
immense wealth. With these advantages, and the alliance of the French,
Tippoo did not doubt of being able to drive the British out of all the
south of India. Yet, with his vast army, accompanied by nine hundred
French, two thousand Sepoys, and nearly three hundred Kafirs, Tippoo
retreated, or appeared to be retreating, before General Stuart, with a
force of only fourteen thousand men, of whom three thousand alone were
British. He was, in fact, however, hastening to defend the north-west
districts of Mysore from another British force on the coast of Canara.
This force was that of Colonel Mackenzie, joined by another from
Bombay, under General Matthews, who took the chief command in that
quarter.

News now arrived of peace concluded between Britain and France. The
French, to whom their possessions were restored, at once ceased
hostilities and went to occupy their reacquired settlements. But Tippoo
continued the war, bent on taking Mangalore. Nothing could now have
prevented the English from completely conquering but the stupidity of
the Council of Madras. They sent commissioners to treat with Tippoo,
who, once getting them into his camp, made them really prisoners,
kept all information from them, and induced them to issue orders to
the English officers to cease hostilities. By these orders a junction
between Stuart and Colonel Fullarton, and the immediate investment and
seizure of Seringapatam, Tippoo's capital, were prevented. Fullarton
had overrun a great portion of the southern districts of Mysore, and
had entered into close alliance with the Zamorin of Calicut, the Rajah
of Travancore, and other rajahs, tributary to Tippoo, all the way from
Cochin to Goa. With ample supplies of provisions and other aids from
these chiefs, Fullarton was in full march to join Stuart, and laid
siege to Seringapatam, when he received peremptory orders to give up
the enterprise, as the British were about concluding terms with Tippoo.
Exceedingly disconcerted by these commands, which thus frustrated
the results of this wonderful campaign, Fullarton, however, had no
alternative but to obey, and Tippoo thus held on till he had starved
out Campbell, and gained the fort of Mangalore. Then he concluded peace
on condition of mutual restitution of all conquests since the war. This
peace was signed on the 11th of March, 1784.

Warren Hastings had saved Madras and the Carnatic, but only at the
cost of extortion. To obtain the necessary money, he began a system of
robbery and coercion on the different princes of Bengal and Oude. The
first experiment was made on Cheyte Sing, the Rajah of Benares, who had
been allowed to remain as a tributary prince when that province was
made over to the British by the Nabob of Oude. The tribute had been
paid with a regularity unexampled in the history of India; but when the
war broke out with France, Hastings suddenly demanded an extraordinary
addition of fifty thousand pounds a year, and as it was not immediately
paid, the Rajah was heavily fined into the bargain. This was rendered
still more stringent in 1780, when the difficulties in Madras began.
Cheyte Sing sent a confidential agent to Calcutta, to assure Hastings
that it was not in his power to pay so heavy a sum, and he sent him
two lacs of rupees (twenty thousand pounds), as a private present to
conciliate him. Hastings accepted the money, but no doubt feeling the
absolute need of large sums for the public purse, he, after awhile,
paid this into the treasury, and then said to Cheyte Sing that he must
pay the contribution all the same. He compelled the Rajah to pay the
annual sum of fifty thousand pounds, and ten thousand pounds more as
a fine, and then demanded two thousand cavalry. After some bargaining
and protesting, Cheyte Sing sent five hundred horsemen and five hundred
foot. Hastings made no acknowledgment of these, but began to muster
troops, threatening to take vengeance on the Rajah. In terror, Cheyte
Sing then sent, in one round sum, twenty lacs of rupees (two hundred
thousand pounds) for the service of the State; but the only answer he
obtained for the munificent offering was, that he must send thirty lacs
more, that is, altogether, half a million.

[Illustration: ARREST OF THE RAJAH OF BENARES. (_See p._ 334.)]

Following his words by acts, he set off himself, attended only by a few
score sepoys, for Benares. Cheyte Sing came out as far as Buxar to meet
the offended Governor, and paid him the utmost homage. He continued his
journey with the Rajah in his train, and entered the Rajah's capital,
the great Mecca of India, the famed city of Benares, on the 14th of
August, 1781. He then made more enormous demands than before; and the
compliance of the Rajah not being immediate, he ordered Mr. Markham,
his own-appointed resident at Benares, to arrest the Rajah in his
palace. Cheyte Sing was a timid man, yet the act of arresting him in
the midst of his own subjects, and in a place so sacred, and crowded
with pilgrims from every part of the East, was a most daring deed.
The effect was instantaneous. The people rose in fury, and pouring
headlong to the palace with arms in their hands, they cut to pieces
Markham and his sepoys. Had Cheyte Sing had the spirit of his people
in him, Hastings and his little party would have been butchered in
half an hour. But Cheyte Sing only thought of his own safety. He got
across the Ganges, and whole troops of his subjects flocked after him.
Thence he sent protestations of his innocence of the _émeute_, and of
his readiness to make any conditions. Hastings, though surrounded and
besieged in his quarters by a furious mob, deigned no answer to the
suppliant Rajah, but busied himself in collecting all the sepoys in
the place. But the situation of Hastings was at every turn becoming
more critical. The sepoys, sent to seize Cheyte Sing in the palace
of Ramnuggur, were repulsed, and many of them, with their commander,
killed. The multitude were now more excited than ever, and that night
would probably have seen the last of Warren Hastings, had he not
contrived to escape from Benares, and to reach the strong fortress
of Chunar, situated on a rock several hundred feet above the Ganges,
and about seventeen miles below Benares. Cheyte Sing, for a moment,
encouraged by the flight of Hastings, put himself at the head of the
enraged people, and, appealing to the neighbouring princes as to his
treatment, declared he would drive the English out of the country.
But troops and money were speedily sent to Hastings from Lucknow,
others marched to Chunar from their cantonments, and he found himself
safe amid a sufficient force commanded by the brave Major Popham,
the conqueror of Gwalior, to defy the thirty thousand undisciplined
followers of Cheyte Sing. From the 29th of August to the 20th of
September there were different engagements between the British and the
forces of Cheyte Sing; but on every occasion, though the Indians fought
bravely they were worsted, and on the last-named day, utterly routed
at Pateeta. Cheyte Sing did not wait for the arrival of the British
troops; he fled into Bundelcund, and never returned again to Benares.
Hastings restored order, and set up another puppet Rajah, a nephew of
Cheyte Sing, but raised the annual tribute to forty lacs of rupees, or
four hundred thousand pounds a year, and placed the mint and the entire
jurisdiction of the province in the hands of his own officers.

Hastings next determined to experiment on the Nabob of Oude. This
Nabob, Asaph-ul-Dowlah, was an infamously dissipated prince, spending
his own money in licentious pleasures, and extorting what he could
from the Begums, his mother and grandmother. The old ladies lived at
the palace of Fyzabad, or the "Beautiful Residence," situated in a
charming district, amid hills and streams, about eighty miles from
Lucknow. The Nabob's father had left them large sums of money and
extensive estates, so that they kept a handsome court, and yet had the
reputation of having accumulated about three million pounds sterling.
The Nabob had compelled them, by coercive means, to let him have, at
different times, about six hundred thousand pounds, and he thirsted
exceedingly for more. Hastings determined to anticipate him. He sent
for the Nabob of Oude while he was still in the fortress of Chunar,
and there reminding him of his debts to the British Government, which
were considerable, coolly proposed to him the robbery of his mother
and grandmother. The proposal was so barefaced that, when Hastings
came to make it to the Nabob, he felt that he really required some
pretended reason for thus arbitrarily laying hands on the property of
these innocent women, and therefore unblushingly asserted that they had
been concerned in stirring up the insurrection at Benares--a matter,
besides that it was so notoriously the result of Hastings' own daring
arrest of Cheyte Sing, the Begums had neither motive for meddling in
nor time for doing it. Till now they had regarded the British as their
only protectors. They were living quietly at Fyzabad, one hundred
and fifteen miles from Benares, when the insurrection broke out from
very obvious causes. This infamous bargain being concluded at Chunar,
Hastings relying on his agent at Lucknow, Mr. Middleton, compelling the
Nabob to carry it out, retreated to Benares, and thence to Calcutta.
The Nabob returned to Lucknow to enforce the diabolical scheme; but he
found his mother and grandmother determined to resist the iniquitous
order, and so shameful was it that even the needy and debauched Nabob
felt compunctions in proceeding with it. He left it to Middleton
to execute it, but Middleton, in his turn, recoiled from the odious
business. Not so Hastings; cold and resolute, he wrote to Middleton,
that if he could not rely upon his firmness he would free him from his
charge, and himself proceed to Lucknow and enforce his own orders. To
induce Middleton to abandon his scruples of conscience and honour, the
ever-ready friend of Hastings, the Chief Justice of Bengal, Sir Elijah
Impey, it appears, wrote to Middleton, and inculcated the necessity of
obedience. Middleton and the Nabob, therefore, seized on the estates of
the Begums, and suddenly surrounded Fyzabad and the palace with troops,
and made themselves masters of both. But the old ladies had not been so
inattentive to the approaches of the storm as to neglect the hiding of
their treasures; they could not be found. Thus cruelly disappointed of
the expected hoard, and the Begums remaining firm in their refusal to
produce any part of it, Middleton seized on their two chief ministers,
the eunuchs, Jewar Ali Khan and Behar Ali Khan. They were now thrown
into prison, put in irons, and orders were given to starve and torture
them till they revealed the secret of the concealment of the treasure
of their mistresses. At the same time, the two ladies were placed in
rigorous confinement themselves. This system was continued till they
had extorted upwards of a million sterling from the Begums, and found
that they might kill both them and their aged ministers, but could
get no more. When the Begums and the two old men were liberated, they
were told by the Resident--not now Middleton, but Bristow--that they
owed this favour to the Governor-General, who had determined to have
them "restored to their dignity and honour." There was another name
connected with these events, and with almost equal disadvantage, that
of Sir Elijah Impey, the Chief Justice. Impey, who had no jurisdiction
in Oude, was found up there in the midst of these transactions,
volunteering his assistance in getting up charges against the Begums.
These charges were supported by a host of venal witnesses, and
affidavits of their evidence were made out, and sent down to Calcutta,
to justify the dark doings of Hastings.

But the violent proceedings of Hastings and his Council, partly
against each other, and still more against the natives, did not
escape the authorities at home. Two committees were appointed in the
House of Commons in 1781, to inquire into these matters. One of them
was headed by General Richard Smith, and the other by Dundas, the
Lord Advocate of Scotland. In both of these the conduct of Hastings,
especially in the war against the Rohillas, was severely condemned,
and the appointment of Impey to the new judicial office was greatly
disapproved. In May, 1782, General Smith moved an address praying his
Majesty to recall Sir Elijah Impey, which was carried unanimously, and
he was recalled accordingly. Dundas also moved and carried a resolution
declaring it to be the duty of the Court of Directors to recall Warren
Hastings, on the charge of his "having, in sundry instances, acted in
a manner repugnant to the honour and policy of the nation." The Court
of Directors complied with this suggestion; but Lord Rockingham dying,
his Ministry being dissolved, and Burke, the great opponent of Indian
oppressions, being out of office, in October the Court of Directors,
through the active exertions of the friends of Hastings, rescinded his
recall. The succeeding changes of administration, and their weakness,
first that of the Shelburne, and then that of the Coalition Ministry,
enabled Hastings to keep his post in India, and finish the war in
Madras. It was the India Bill of Pitt in 1784, which, by creating
the Board of Control, and enabling the Government to take immediate
cognisance of the proceedings of the Governors-General, and other chief
officers in India, broke the power of Hastings, and led him to resign,
without, however, enabling him to escape the just scrutiny which his
administration needed.

Hastings embarked on the 8th of February, 1785, and arrived in England
in June, 1786. He had sent home before him his wife, whose health
had begun to suffer from the climate of India, and she had been most
graciously received by King George and Queen Charlotte. He had been
accompanied to his ship, on leaving Calcutta, by all the authorities,
and by all people of distinction; he had received the most enthusiastic
addresses of regret and of admiration as the saviour of India. In
London, not only at Court, but in Leadenhall Street, he met with the
same gratifying honour. He spent the autumn at Cheltenham with his
wife, where he was courted and fêted in a manner to warrant his writing
to a friend, "I find myself everywhere and universally treated with
evidences, apparent even to my own observation, that I possess the good
opinion of my country." He was busy trying to purchase Daylesford, the,
old family estate, and anticipating a peerage.

But this was only the lull before the storm. Burke and Francis were
living, and the thunder-bolts were already forged which were to
shatter his pleasing dream of approval. His agreeable delusion was,
indeed, soon ended. On the 24th of January, 1787, Parliament met,
and Major Scott, an officious friend of Hastings, unfortunately for
the ex-Governor-General, relying on the manifestation of approbation
of Hastings by the Court and fashionable circles, got up and asked
where now was that menace of impeachment which Mr. Burke had so long
and often held out? Burke, thus challenged, on the 17th of February
rose and made a call for papers and correspondence deposited in the
India House, relative to the proceedings of Hastings in India. He
also reminded Pitt and Dundas of the motion of the latter on the 29th
of May, 1782, in censure of the conduct of Hastings on the occasions
in question. This was nailing the ministers to their opinions; but
Dundas, now at the head of the Board of Control, repeated that he still
condemned the conduct of Hastings, but taken with the services which
he had rendered to the country in India, he did not conceive that this
conduct demanded more than censure, certainly not impeachment. Fox
supported Burke, and Pitt defended Hastings, and attacked Fox without
mercy. There was a feeling abroad that the king was determined to
support Hastings, and the proceedings of Pitt confirmed this. Burke's
demand for papers was refused, but this did not deter Burke. On the
4th of April he rose again and presented nine articles of impeachment
against Hastings, and in the course of the week twelve more articles.
To these a twenty-second article was afterwards added.

The affair was now becoming serious, and Hastings demanded to be heard
at the bar, where he appeared on the 1st of May, and read a long and
wearisome defence, which did not go to a denial of the charges, but a
justification of them, from the need of money to save India, and from
the approbation awarded to these actions both in India and at the India
House. On the 1st of June Burke brought forward his first charge--the
Rohilla war. The debate was not finished till seven o'clock on the
morning of the 3rd. The motion was rejected by one hundred and nineteen
against sixty-seven, and it was fondly hoped that the proceedings
against Hastings were altogether crushed. Lord Thurlow advised the king
to carry out his intention to make Hastings Baron Daylesford, and the
talk in the clubs and West End assemblies was the triumph of Hastings.
But the rejoicing was premature. On the 13th of June Fox took up the
second charge--the treatment of Cheyte Sing and Francis, with all the
bitterness of his character, and of his hatred of Hastings, supported
it. So black were the facts now produced that Pitt was compelled to
give way. He defended the Governor-General for calling on Cheyte Sing
to contribute men and money for the war against Mysore; he lauded the
firmness, decision and ability of Hastings, but he was forced to admit
that he had been excessive in his demands, and must support the charge.

This was a thunderstroke to Hastings and his friends. Fifty of Pitt's
followers immediately wheeled round with him; Dundas voted with Pitt,
and the motion was carried by an exact inversion of the numbers which
had negatived the former article on the Rohilla war, one hundred and
nineteen against sixty-seven. The Session closed on the 11th of July
with the rest of the charges hanging over the ex-Governor's head in
ominous gloom.

In the interval, the character and conduct of the Prince of Wales came
prominently before the public. The two great friends of the prince were
Fox and Sheridan. If the intellectual qualities of these two remarkable
men had been equalled by their moral ones, no fitter companions for
a young prince could have been found. But, unfortunately, they were
as distinguished for their drinking and dissipation, and Fox for his
reckless gambling, as for their talents. Pitt and they were in violent
opposition, and as Pitt, with his cold, unimpulsive nature, stood
firmly by the king, Fox and Sheridan were, as matters of party, warmly
the advocates of the prince. Hence the king and his son, sufficiently
at strife on the ground of the prince's extravagance and debauchery,
were rendered doubly so by the faction fire of their respective
adherents. Pitt, who might have softened greatly the hostile feeling
between the royal father and son, by recommending less parsimony on
the part of the king, and kindly endeavouring to induce the prince to
exhibit more respect for his father, never displayed the slightest
disposition to act so generous and truly politic a part. Sheridan and
some others of the Whig party mentioned the prince's debts, and urged
the propriety of something being done to save the honour of the Heir
Apparent; but Pitt turned a deaf ear, and the king informed the prince
that he could not sanction the payment of his debts by Parliament, nor
was he disposed to increase his allowance from the Civil List. On
this the prince determined to break up his household, which had been
appointed by the king, and cost the prince twenty thousand pounds,
to sell his horses and carriages, and to live in a few rooms like a
private gentleman. This he did; his fine horses were paraded through
the streets on their way to Tattersall's to be sold, and he stopped the
building of Carlton House. All this would have been admirable had it
proceeded from a real desire to economise on the part of the prince, in
order to satisfy his clamorous creditors, and to commence a real reform
of his habits; but the whole was only a mode of mortifying the king and
Court party by thus exhibiting the Heir Apparent as compelled, by the
refusal of a proper allowance, to abandon the style befitting his rank,
and sink himself into that of a mere lodger of scanty means. If this
grand manœuvre did not accomplish its object at Court, it, however,
told on his own party, who resolved in the next Session to make a grand
effort for the liquidation of his debts.

[Illustration: RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. (_After the Portrait by Sir
Joshua Reynolds._)]

The great question of the Prince of Wales's debts was brought on by
Alderman Newnham, who had been selected by the prince's set for that
purpose, to give it more an air of independence. Newnham, on the 20th
of April, asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether his Majesty's
Ministers proposed to make any arrangement for this purpose. He praised
the prince for his generous conduct in breaking up his establishment
to facilitate the payment of his debts; but declared it disgraceful
to the nation that he should remain in that condition. Not receiving
any satisfactory answer, the alderman gave notice of a motion on the
subject for the 4th of May. Pitt then endeavoured to deter the alderman
from bringing in the motion, by saying that it was not his duty to
do so except by command of the king. Newnham, however, persisted in
his motion, and in the course of the debate Mr. Rolle, the member for
Devonshire, pointedly alluded to the rumours that were afloat as to the
marriage of the prince with Mrs. Fitzherbert, a Roman Catholic lady. As
a matter of fact, these rumours were true: the prince had been secretly
united to her by a Protestant clergyman on December 21st, 1785, in
the presence of several witnesses. The marriage placed the prince in
this dilemma: by the Act of Settlement, marriage with a Roman Catholic
invalidated all claims to the throne; but by the Royal Marriage Act,
any marriage contracted without the royal consent was null. He could
therefore annul the action of the first Act by pleading the second, but
by so doing he would obviously take away the character of his wife.
The prince saw a better way out of the difficulty--namely, a denial
that the marriage had taken place at all. Fox, completely duped by the
mendacious assurances of his royal friend, was induced to get up and
contradict the rumour, "by direct authority." The revulsion of feeling
in the House was immediate. On the 23rd of May Pitt laid before the
members a schedule of the prince's debts, amounting to one hundred
and ninety-four thousand pounds. Of this sum a hundred and sixty-one
thousand were voted, together with twenty thousand for the completion
of Carlton House, and the king was induced to add ten thousand a year
from the Civil List to the prince's income. He was thus placed for the
time being in affluence, and only had to reckon with Mrs. Fitzherbert.
This he did by disavowing Fox, whom he declared to have spoken without
authority. But the lady appears to have urged some public explanation.
The prince naturally avoided Fox, but sent for Grey, who, however,
declined to have anything to do with the dirty business. "Then,"
said the prince, "Sheridan must say something." Accordingly, a few
days later, Sheridan got up and paid a few vapid compliments to Mrs.
Fitzherbert, which assuaged her wrath, without exposing the royal liar.

On the 1st of February the inquiry into the crimes of Warren Hastings
was renewed. The third charge of the impeachment, the treatment of the
Begums, was undertaken by Sheridan, as the first was by Burke, and the
second by Fox. We have stated the facts of that great oppression, and
they were brought out in a most powerful and dramatic light by Sheridan
in a speech of nearly six hours. Sheridan had little knowledge of
India; but he was well supplied with the facts from the records of the
India House and the promptings of Francis, who was familiar with the
country and the events. The effect of Sheridan's charge far exceeded
all that had gone before it. When he sat down almost the whole House
burst forth in a storm of clappings and hurrahs. Fox declared it the
most astounding speech that he had ever heard, and Burke and Pitt gave
similar evidence. The wit and pathos of it were equally amazing; but it
was so badly reported as to be practically lost. The following remark,
however, seems to be reported fairly accurately:--"He remembered to
have heard an honourable and learned gentleman [Dundas] remark that
there was something in the first frame and constitution of the Company
which extended the sordid principles of their origin over all their
successive operations, connecting with their civil policy, and even
with their boldest achievements, the meanness of a pedlar and the
profligacy of pirates. Alike in the political and the military line
could be observed auctioneering ambassadors and trading generals; and
thus we saw a revolution brought about by affidavits; an army employed
in executing an arrest; a town besieged on a note of hand; a prince
dethroned for the balance of an account. Thus it was they exhibited a
government which united the mock majesty of a bloody sceptre and the
little traffic of a merchant's counting-house--wielding a truncheon
with one hand, and picking a pocket with the other." The debate was
adjourned to the next day, for the House could not be brought to listen
to any other person after this most intoxicating speech. The motion was
carried by one hundred and seventy-five votes against sixty-eight.

The other charges having been voted, on the 25th of April Burke brought
up the articles of impeachment. There was a long debate, in which
Wilkes, who had completely changed his politics, and had cultivated a
friendship with Warren Hastings and his wife, made a very effective
speech in his defence. He tried to shift the blame from Hastings to the
Company. Pitt again pointed out the fact that honourable members had
not been showing the innocence of Hastings, but raising all manner of
set-offs for his crimes--a course which he had before said he had hoped
would have been abandoned; that for his part, without going to the
length of all the charges brought forward, he saw sufficient grounds
for an impeachment. He could conceive a State compelled by sudden
invasion and an unprovided army, to lay violent hands on the property
of its subjects, but then such a State must be infamous if it did not,
on the first opportunity, make ample satisfaction. But was this the
principle on which Mr. Hastings had acted? No; he neither avowed the
necessity nor the exaction. He made criminal charges, and, under colour
of them, levied immoderate penalties, which, if he had a right to take
them at all, he would be highly criminal in taking in such a shape; but
which, having no right to take, the mode of taking rendered much more
heinous and culpable.

The report was agreed to, the impeachment was voted, and Burke,
attended by the majority of the House, on the 10th of May, carried it
up to the Lords. On the motion of Burke, Warren Hastings was then taken
into custody, and delivered over to the Lords, who bound him to appear
to take his trial, when called upon, in a bond of twenty thousand
pounds himself, and Messrs. Sullivan and Sumner as his sureties in ten
thousand pounds each.

In this Session the first step was taken in one of the greatest
achievements of humanity which adorn the name of Britain. It was the
grand preliminary towards annihilating the slave trade. The spirit
of revolt against this odious trade had been gaining rapidly in the
British mind. One of the earliest stabs given to it was by the pathetic
story of Inkle and Yarico, in the "History of Barbadoes," by Lygon,
which was taken up and amplified in the _Spectator_, and afterwards
elaborated into an effective drama by Colman. Defoe, Dr. Johnson,
Warburton in his "Divine Legation of Moses," and in his sermons so
early as 1766, Voltaire, and other writers, had diffused a strong and
sound feeling on the subject. It had been early attempted to establish
the legal maxim, that a slave becomes a freed man in England; but in
1729 this had been positively pronounced against by Talbot and Yorke,
then the highest legal authorities. But a more successful essay was
made by Granville Sharp in 1772, in the case of James Somerset, and
the principle was established, that the moment a slave set his foot on
English ground he became free. In 1782 the Friends presented a petition
to Parliament for the abolition of the slave trade. In 1785 Thomas
Clarkson, then a student at the University of Cambridge, competed for
and won the first prize for an essay on "The Slavery and Commerce in
the Human Species," and this, which was undertaken as an academical
exercise, led him to devote himself to the great work of the utter
extinction of this evil. Mr. Ramsay, a clergyman of Kent, who had lived
in St. Kitts, published a pamphlet on the same subject. The friends
of Ramsay, Lady Middleton and Mrs. Bouverie, became zealous advocates
of the cause, and finally Wilberforce resolved to make it the great
object of his life. A society was now established in London, consisting
only originally of twelve individuals, including the benevolent Mr.
Thornton, and having Granville Sharp for its chairman. The members,
however, were opulent merchants and bankers, and they set agents to
work to collect information on the subject. The feeling rapidly spread;
committees were formed in Manchester and other provincial towns for
co-operation.

It was resolved to make the first attack only on the trade in slaves,
not on the whole gigantic subject, with all its widely-ramified
interests. Nay, it was deemed prudent by the committees, seeing well
that the abolition of the monstrous practice of slave-holding must be
a work of many years, in the first place to limit their exertions to
the ameliorating of the sufferings of the negroes, in their passage
from Africa to the scenes of their servitude. Numerous petitions had
now reached the Houses of Parliament on the subject of the trade in
and the sufferings of slaves, and a Committee of the Privy Council was
procured to hear evidence on the subject. This commenced its sittings
on the 11th of February, 1788. Before this committee were first heard
the statements of the slave merchants of Liverpool. According to
these gentlemen, all the horrors attributed to the slave trade were
so many fables; so far from instigating African sovereigns to make
war upon their neighbours and sell them for slaves, the oppressions
of these despots were so horrible that it was a real blessing to
bring away their unfortunate victims. But very different facts were
advanced on the other side. On the part of the Liverpool merchants
was the most palpable self-interest to colour their statements; on
the other, was disinterested humanity. Amongst the gentlemen brought
forward to unfold the real nature of the African traffic was Dr. Andrew
Sparrman, Professor of Natural Philosophy at Stockholm, who had, with
Mr. Wadström, been engaged in botanical researches in Africa. This
information put to flight the pleasant myths of the Liverpool traders,
and produced a profound impression.

It was resolved to bring the matter before Parliament. Wilberforce gave
notice of motion on the subject, but falling ill at Bath, Clarkson
applied to Pitt and Mr. Grenville, and was strongly supported by
Granville Sharp and the London committee. Pitt had not considered the
subject till it was forced on his attention by the evidence before
the Privy Council; but he had come to the conclusion that the trade
was not only inhuman, but really injurious to the interests of the
nation. He consented to introduce the question, and, on the 9th of
May, gave notice that early in the next Session Parliament would take
into consideration the allegations against the slave trade, made in
upwards of a hundred petitions presented to it. He recommended this
short delay in order that the inquiries before the Privy Council might
be fully matured. But both Fox and Burke--the latter of whom had been
thinking for eight years of taking up the question--declared that the
delay would be as cruel as it was useless; that it did not become the
House to wait to receive instructions from the Privy Council, as if it
were dependent upon it, but that it ought to originate such inquiries
itself. Sir William Dolben supported this view of immediate action,
contending that at least a Bill should be brought in to restrain the
cruelties of the sea-passage, which would otherwise sacrifice ten
thousand lives, as hundreds of thousands had been sacrificed before.
This was acceded to. Pitt's resolution was carried by a considerable
majority; and Sir William Dolben, on the 21st of May, moved to bring
in a Bill to regulate the transport of slaves. Sir William stated that
there was no law to restrain the avarice and cruelty of the dealers,
and that the mortality from the crowding of the slaves on board was
frightful.

The slave merchants of Liverpool and London demanded to be heard
against even this degree of interference. On the 2nd of June counsel
was heard on their behalf at the bar of the House of Commons. These
gentlemen endeavoured to prove that the interest of the merchants was
the best guarantee of the good treatment of the slaves; and they called
witnesses to prove that nothing could be more delightful and salubrious
than the condition of slaves on the voyage; and that the negroes passed
their time most charmingly in dancing and singing on the deck. But,
on cross-examination, these very witnesses were compelled to disclose
one of the most revolting pictures of inhuman atrocity ever brought
to the light of day. It was found that no slave, whatever his size,
had more room during the whole voyage than five feet six inches in
length, and sixteen inches in breadth; that the floor of every deck was
thus densely packed with human beings; between the floor and the deck
above were other platforms or broad shelves packed in the same manner!
The height from the floor to the ceiling seldom exceeded five feet
eight inches, and in some cases not four feet. The men were chained
together two and two by their hands and feet, and were fastened by
ringbolts to the deck or floor. In this position they were kept all the
time they remained on the coast--often from six weeks to six months.
Their allowance was a pint of water daily and two meals of yams and
horse-beans. After eating they were ordered to jump in their irons
to preserve their health, and were flogged if they refused. When the
weather was wet they were often kept below for several days together.
The horrors of what was called the "middle passage" were terrible and
fatal beyond description. It was calculated that up to that time the
Europeans had consumed ten millions of slaves, and that the British
alone were then carrying over forty-two thousand Africans annually.

Besides the truths drawn by cross-examination from the witnesses for
the slave-dealing merchants, who contended that even Sir William
Dolben's Bill would nearly ruin Liverpool, Captain Parry, who had been
sent by Pitt to Liverpool to examine some of the slave-ships, brought
the directest proofs that the representations of these witnesses were
false, and the accommodation for the slaves was most inhuman; Sir
William Dolben himself had examined a slave-ship then fitting out in
the Thames, and gave details which horrified the House. This Bill
went to prohibit any ship carrying more than one slave to a ton of
its register; the only matter in which the House gave way was that
none should carry more than five slaves to every three tons, and a
very few years proved that this restriction had been the greatest
boon to the dealers as well as the slaves in the preservation of the
living cargoes. The Bill met with some opposition in the Lords, and
there Admiral Rodney and Lord Heathfield, both naturally humane men,
were amongst its strongest opponents. The measure, however, passed,
and received the Royal Assent on the 11th of July. Some well-meaning
people thought that by legalising the freightage of slaves, England
had acknowledged the lawfulness of the trade; but the advocates of the
abolition made no secret of their determination to persevere, and this
victory only quickened their exertions.

[Illustration: THE TRIAL OF WARREN HASTINGS. (_See p._ 342.)]

On the day appointed for the trial of Warren Hastings there was a
wonderful crowding into the great hall at Westminster. The walls had
been in preparation hung with scarlet, and galleries raised all round
for the accommodation of spectators. The seats for the members of the
House of Commons were covered with green cloth, those for the lords and
all the others with red. Galleries were set apart for distinguished
persons, and for the members of the foreign embassies. When the lords,
nearly one hundred and seventy in number, entered in procession, the
vast hall presented a striking scene, being crowded, with the exception
of the space in the centre for the peers, with all who were noted in
the land, from the throne downwards. The lords were all in their robes
of gold and ermine, marshalled by the king-at-arms and the heralds.
First entered Lord Heathfield, the brave old Elliot of Gibraltar,
as the junior baron, and the splendid procession was closed by the
Earl Marshal of England, the Duke of Norfolk, and by the brothers and
sons of the king, the Prince of Wales last of all. The twelve judges
attended to give their advice on difficult points of law, and the
Managers were attended also by their counsel, Drs. Scott and Lawrence,
and Mr. Mansfield, Mr. Pigot, Mr. Burke, and Mr. Douglas. The galleries
blazed with the rich array of ladies and foreign costumes. There were
seen the queen with her daughters, and the Princesses Elizabeth,
Augusta, and Mary, the Duchess of Gloucester, Mrs. Fitzherbert, the
beautiful Duchess of Devonshire, Sheridan's handsome wife, and the
great actress, Mrs. Siddons. Gibbon the historian, Dr. Parr, Mr.,
afterwards Sir, James Mackintosh, and numbers of distinguished artists,
amongst them Sir Joshua Reynolds and Gainsborough, were also present.

Warren Hastings was summoned to the bar, and there kneeling, the Lord
Chancellor, Thurlow, intimated the charge against him, and assured him
that, as a British subject, he would receive full justice from the
highest British court. Hastings replied, in a clear and firm voice,
that he had the highest confidence in the justice and integrity of
that august court. The clerks of the court then commenced reading the
charges against him, and the answers to them, and this reading occupied
the whole of that day and the following one; and on the third, Burke
rose to deliver his opening speech. This occupied the whole of four
days, beginning on the 15th, and terminating on the 19th of February.
The effect of that speech, notwithstanding its enormous length, was
such as had scarcely ever been witnessed in a court of justice before.
As he detailed the horrors practised by Hastings on the princes and
people of India, both the orator and his audience were convulsed with
terror and agitation. Ladies fainted away in the galleries; Mrs.
Sheridan, amongst others, had to be carried out insensible: the faces
of the strongest men, as well as of the more sensitive women, were
flushed with emotion, or bathed in tears. In his peroration Burke far
exceeded even himself. He appeared raised, enlarged into something
ethereal by his subject, and his voice seemed to shake the very walls
and roof of that ancient court. Finally, he exclaimed:--"I impeach
Warren Hastings, Esquire, of high crimes and misdemeanours. I impeach
him in the name of all the Commons of Great Britain in Parliament
assembled, whose parliamentary trust he has betrayed. I impeach him
in the name of the people of India, whose laws, rights, and liberties
he has subverted, whose properties he has destroyed, whose country he
has laid waste and desolate. I impeach him in the name, and by virtue
of those eternal laws of justice which he has violated. I impeach him
in the name of human nature itself, which he has cruelly outraged,
injured, and oppressed, in both sexes, in every age, rank, situation,
and condition of life. And I conjure this high and sacred court to let
not these proceedings be heard in vain." Such was the effect of this
wonderful torrent of eloquence that Hastings himself said, "For half
an hour I looked up at the orator in a reverie of wonder; and during
that space I actually felt myself the most culpable man on earth; but I
recurred to my own bosom, and there found a consciousness that consoled
me under all I heard and all I suffered."

When the intense agitation had in some degree subsided, Fox rose and
proposed the mode in which the trial should be conducted, which was
that the evidence on both sides should be gone through on each separate
charge, and that charge immediately decided, whilst all the facts
were fresh in the minds of the lords, who were the judges. But this
was opposed by the counsel of Hastings, who knew well the advantage
of leaving the decision till the vivid impression of the events was
worn off. They succeeded in carrying their object, and when the trial
terminated eight years afterwards, the result was quite according to
their hopes. The Managers complained loudly, but there was no remedy.
Fox, therefore, proceeded to open the Benares case, which occupied
five hours. Grey took it up, and completed it the next day. Several
succeeding days were employed in reading papers and hearing witnesses,
and then Anstruther summed up and commented on the charge.

The court then adjourned to the 15th of April. The case of the Begums
was opened by Mr. Adams, and concluded the next day by Mr. Pelham.
Then sixteen days were occupied by the evidence, and at length, on the
3rd of June, Sheridan began to sum up the evidence, and, in a speech
which lasted three days, he kept the court in the highest state of
excitement. The place was crowded to suffocation during the whole time,
and as much as fifty guineas is said to have been paid for a single
seat. Greatly as this speech of Sheridan's was admired, it was felt to
be too ornate and dramatic: there was not the deep and genuine feeling
of Burke in it, and the effect was so evidently studied, that, on
concluding, Sheridan fell back into the arms of Burke, as if overcome
by his own sensations. The prorogation of Parliament was now at hand,
and only two out of the twenty charges had been gone through: neither
of them had yet been replied to, and yet other causes of engrossing
interest arising, the trial was entirely suspended till the 20th of
April of the following year! Then it was taken up languidly and at
uncertain intervals, and rapidly became a mere exhibition of rhetoric.
Further, Burke's unlawyer-like style and intemperance of language drew
upon him the censure of the Lord Chancellor, and even of the House of
Commons. A revulsion of public feeling took place, and was seen in the
acquittal of Stockdale who was tried for libelling the promoters of the
trial. Three years afterwards Burke himself renounced sixteen of his
charges, and all popular interest in the trial gradually disappeared.

But the public attention was now freely withdrawn from Warren Hastings
to much more exalted personages. On the 11th of July the king in person
prorogued Parliament. He then appeared in his usual health, but soon
afterwards it was whispered about that he was far from well, and had
gone to Cheltenham by the advice of his physicians. When he returned
in the autumn, the opinion of his derangement had gained ground, and,
to remove this, a Drawing-room was held at St. James's on the 24th of
October. Every means had been taken to secure the impression of his
Majesty's saneness, but they failed, and the contrary impression was
confirmed. Still, the king returned to Windsor, and the endeavours
were strenuously maintained by the queen to conceal the melancholy
fact from the public; but this was too positive to be long suppressed.
On the 5th of November he met his son, the Duke of York, after he had
been riding about Windsor Forest for five hours in a state of frenzy,
and, bursting into tears, wished that he was dead, for that he felt he
should go mad. No doubt he remembered his old sensations when he had a
short but sharp fit of lunacy in 1764. The time was hurrying on which
must reveal the whole truth; the prorogation of Parliament terminated
on the 20th of November; the House would meet, and the king would
not be able to attend and open the Session. Pitt was in a state of
indescribable anxiety, having no precedents to guide him.

The 20th of November arrived; the two Houses met, and Lord Camden
in the Peers, and Pitt in the Commons, were obliged to announce
the incapacity of the king to open the Session, and to move for an
adjournment till the 4th of December, in order that the necessary
measures for transferring the royal authority, temporarily, might be
taken. Fox, at this important crisis, was abroad, and had to hurry
home with headlong speed, in order to join his party in their anxious
deliberations preparatory to the great question of the regency. In the
meantime, the king's physicians had been examined before the Privy
Council, and had given their opinion that the royal malady would prove
only temporary. This in particular was the opinion of Dr. Willis, a
specialist who had the chief management of the case, and whose mild
treatment, in contrast to the violent means previously employed, had
already produced a marked improvement. From this moment Pitt appears
to have taken his decision--namely, to carry matters with a high hand,
and to admit the Prince of Wales as regent only under such restrictions
as should prevent him from either exercising much power himself, or
conferring much benefit on his adherents. When, therefore, Parliament
met, after the adjournment, and that in great strength--for men of
all parties had hurried up to town,--Lord Camden moved in the Lords,
and Pitt in the Commons, that, in consequence of the king's malady,
the minutes of the Privy Council containing the opinions of the royal
physicians should be read, and that this being done, these opinions
should be taken into consideration on the 8th of December.

This being done, Mr. Vyner suggested that the physicians should
rather be examined by the House itself, a proposal supported by
Fox. Pitt replied that this was a matter requiring much delicacy,
and that the opinions of the physicians before the Council being on
oath, he imagined that they had greater force than any given before
Parliament, where they would not be on oath. But, during the four
days' adjournment, he had ascertained, to his satisfaction, that the
majority of the physicians were of opinion that the king would pretty
soon recover, and that especially Dr. Willis was of this opinion, under
whose more immediate care he was; and no sooner did the Commons meet,
than Pitt most judiciously acquiesced in the suggestions of Vyner and
Fox; and the physicians were examined by a committee of twenty-one
members, of which he himself was chairman. On the 16th of December Pitt
brought up the report of the committee, in which a majority of the
physicians had expressed the opinion that the malady of the king would
not be of long duration; and he then moved for another committee to
search for precedents as to the power to be exercised by a regent. Fox
declared that Pitt knew very well that there were no precedents to be
found while there existed an Heir Apparent, at the time, of full age
and capacity; that he was seeking only the means of delaying what ought
to be done at once; that the failure of the mind of the sovereign was
a case of natural demise, and that the Heir Apparent succeeded to the
exercise of the royal authority from the period of that failure, as a
matter of course; that the Parliament had, indeed, the authority to
decide that such failure had actually taken place, and to sanction the
assumption of the powers of regency, as the other two Estates of the
realm, but nothing more. When Fox made this astounding assertion, Pitt
slapped his thigh and exclaimed to a colleague sitting near him, "I'll
_unwhig_ the gentleman for the rest of his life."

He immediately made use of the opportunity with great skill. In his
reply he urged that Fox was announcing a doctrine destructive of the
Constitution; that he was denying the right by which Parliament had
placed the present family on the throne, and he asserted that the
Prince of Wales had no more natural right to assume the regency than
any other individual. This led to the severest censures of the Premier
by Burke, who declared that Pitt was making himself a dictator, and
changing the succession to the regal power in England from hereditary
to elective. The same doctrine was announced and combated in the Lords;
but there, though Thurlow was silent, waiting to see how matters would
go before he hazarded an opinion, Loughborough boldly supported Fox's
doctrine, and declared that had the derangement of the king taken place
during the non-existence of Parliament, the prince undoubtedly would
have been warranted in issuing writs and summoning one. On the 15th of
December the Duke of York and his uncle, the Duke of Gloucester, both
spoke on the question, expressing their sense of the inexpediency of
pressing the delicate question of right, and stating that Parliament
could proceed to invest the Prince of Wales with the powers of the
regency without waiting, as they certainly could not appoint any
one else. Thurlow had by this time found that he had no chance with
the Whigs, and he now, with unblushing assurance, took the part of
Pitt, though every one knew why he had been hanging back till this
moment. He declared that he could not see how Parliament could avoid
coming to some conclusion on the question of right, seeing that it
had been raised. At the same time, he made a most pretendedly pious
defence of the rights of the king against the prince and the Whigs,
exclaiming--"When I forget my king, may God forget me!" John Wilkes,
who was standing in a knot of spectators near the throne, and within
a few feet of Thurlow, expressed his disgust at this duplicity in his
characteristically vigorous fashion.

Pitt, in a series of motions and violent debates on them--which did
not terminate till the 23rd of January, 1789--not only carried his
point, that Parliament should assert the whole right of appointing a
regent, but he contrived to tie down the prince completely. On the 16th
of December Pitt moved three resolutions--the third and most material
of which was, that it was necessary that both Houses should, for the
maintenance of the constitutional authority of the king, determine the
means by which the royal assent might be given to an Act of Parliament
for delegating the royal authority during the king's indisposition.
After most determined opposition by the Whigs, he carried the whole of
these resolutions, and it was then moved that the proper mode of doing
this was to employ the Great Seal just as if the king were in the full
exercise of his faculties. To prepare the way for this doctrine, the
lawyers in Pitt's party had declared that there was a broad distinction
between the political and the natural capacity of the king; that, as
the king could do no wrong, so he could not go politically, though he
might go naturally, mad; that therefore the king, in his political
capacity, was now as fully in power and entity as ever, and therefore
the Great Seal could be used for him as validly as at any other time.
In vain did Burke exclaim that it was "a phantom," "a fiction of
law," "a mere mummery, a piece of masquerade buffoonery, formed to
burlesque every species of government." In the midst of the debate
Mr. Rushworth, the young member for Newport, in Hampshire, standing
on the floor of the House, exclaimed, in a loud and startling tone,
"I desire that gentlemen of more age and experience than myself will
refer to the glorious reign of George II. Let them recall to their
memory the year 1745. Suppose that great and good king had lain under a
similar affliction of madness at that period, where are the men, much
less a Minister, that would have dared to come down to that House, and
boldly, in the face of the world, say that the Prince of Wales had no
more right to the regency than any other subject? The man or Minister
who could have dared to utter such language must henceforward shelter
in some other place than in the House of Commons, and in some other
country than England!" The Prince of Wales, by letter, complained of
the want of respect shown to him, but Pitt carried the resolution
regarding the Great Seal, that it should be appended to a commission
for opening Parliament, it now occupying the position of a convention,
and that the commission should then affix the royal assent to the
Bill for the regency. This done, he consented to the demand for the
appearance of the physicians again before proceeding with the Bill, and
the physicians having expressed hopes of the king's speedy recovery,
on the 16th of January Pitt moved the following resolutions:--That the
Prince of Wales should be invested with the royal authority, subject,
however, to these restrictions, namely, that he should create no peers;
that he should grant no place or pension for life, or in reversion,
except such place as in its nature must be held for life, or during
good behaviour; that the prince should have no power over the personal
property of the king, nor over the king's person or household; that
these two latter powers should be entrusted to the queen, a council
being appointed to assist her in these duties by their advice, but
subject to her dismissal, and without any power of alienation of
any part of the property. The bad character of the prince, combined
with the rumours of his indecent jests at the expense of his unhappy
parents, rendered the restrictions universally popular.

[Illustration: CARLTON HOUSE, LONDON (1780).]

These resolutions being carried, it then became a question whether the
prince would accept this restricted regency. Burke had warned the House
that perhaps, after all, the prince would not accept such a shadow of
his own natural powers, and he warned them likewise that the British
Parliament might find itself electing the prince as regent, whilst the
Irish Parliament was nominating him as by right. But it would appear
that the Whigs were so anxious to seize on office, even under such
cramping restrictions, and to see Pitt dethroned, that they advised the
prince to accept. A joint committee of Lords and Commons waited on him
on the 30th of January, the anniversary of the execution of Charles
I., and another joint-committee the same day waited on the queen,
and the next day their answers, accepting their respective offices,
were communicated to Parliament. The prince, indeed, qualified his
acceptance by declaring that he did it only as a temporary arrangement,
and in the hope, notwithstanding the peculiar and unprecedented
circumstances, of preserving the interests of the king, the crown, and
the people.

A commission was then moved for, under the Great Seal, by Lord
Camden, and in this commission were included the names of the Prince
of Wales, the Dukes of York, Gloucester, and Cumberland. These royal
personages, however, declined to be named in it. With these remarkable
omissions, Camden's motion was passed, and the result was communicated
to the Commons, on which Pitt, on the 2nd of February, moved for the
concurrence of that House. This again brought up the question of the
prince's right. Lord North, who, though now blind, had mixed in these
debates with his usual moderation, and with a great display of good
sense, based on official experience, expressed his pleasure that the
prince had condescended to accept the regency, notwithstanding its
limitations. This prudence, he observed, had given the country an
agreeable surprise, considering the temptations to stand upon his
right, which must have produced inconceivable embarrassments. Pitt
could not resist the impulse to arise and again deny the right, and
observe that he believed those who had advocated that right were now
really ashamed of it. This immediately called up Burke, for Fox was
ill, and away at Bath, and he exclaimed, "I assert that the Prince
of Wales's right is clear as the sun, and that it is the duty of the
House to appoint him regent, with the full powers of sovereignty." He
asserted with equal warmth, that Ministers were about to purloin the
Great Seal, and commit an act of forgery. A stormy debate followed, in
which Burke's violence was met with moderation and dignity.

On the 3rd of February the Commons attended to hear the commission
read at the bar of the Lords, which was done by Earl Bathurst, in the
absence of Thurlow. On returning to their House now as an authorised
Parliament, the Commons read the Bill for the first time without a
division, but on the second reading, on the 6th of February, Burke
attacked it with unabated ferocity. He wanted to know how they were to
determine when the king was sane again. Who was to inform them of it?
Who was to certify it? He asserted the utter impossibility of adducing
proof whether a person who had been insane were perfectly recovered
or not. If this doctrine had been established, the regency must have
become permanent. But this mode of reasoning was too metaphysical for
the House of Commons; the debate passed on, and the Bill was committed.
The clause providing against the non-residence of the prince, and
against his marrying a papist, again brought up Mr. Rolle. He said that
he had given his assent to the appointment of the prince regent on the
assurance of his friends, that he was not married to a certain lady,
either in law or in fact; but that he had since read a famous pamphlet,
which affirmed that the facts were in opposition to those avowals.
This was a _brochure_ of Horne Tooke's, in the shape of a letter to a
friend, in which he declared his positive knowledge of the prince's
marriage with "the late Mrs. Fitzherbert," who, he contended, in spite
of the Marriage Act, was his lawful wife. Rolle was answered by Lord
North, who declared that the object of the pamphleteer was simply
to make mischief by throwing out assertions that he never meant to
prove, and Welbore Ellis called for the reading of the Royal Marriage
Act, and showed that no royal marriage could be valid without the
king's consent, and that, therefore, whatever was the case, all those
objections were a mere waste of words. Rolle did not press the question
to a division. The other clauses of the Bill raised much debate, but
were all passed, and on the 10th of February the council was appointed
to assist the queen in her charge, and Pitt named as members of it the
four principal officers of the household, the Lord Chamberlain, the
Lord Steward, the Master of the Horse, and the Groom of the Stole, with
the addition of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Chancellor Thurlow,
the Archbishop of York, and Lord Kenyon. The names of the Prince of
Wales, the Duke of York, several of the other princes, the Lord Mayor
of London, and the Speaker of the House of Commons, were all strongly
urged upon Parliament as persons who ought to be members of this
council, but they were, to a man, rejected by a majority of about fifty.

Pitt had not forgotten the difficulty started by Burke, as to the
recognition of the return to entire sanity of the king, and he now met
it by proposing that when five out of the eight councillors appointed
to assist the queen should declare the king's health restored, they
should notify this to the political servants of the regent, and
announce it in the _London Gazette_, as well as communicate it to the
Lord Mayor; that the king should then summon nine of his Privy Council,
who, sitting in council with him should be able to observe whether he
were perfectly restored or not; and if six of the nine agreed that he
was so, these six should sign a proclamation to that effect, on which
the regency should cease and determine. Various amendments on this
motion were made, but without effect, and it was carried. On the 12th
of April the Regency Bill finally passed the Commons, and was carried
up to the Lords, with the addition of a clause limiting the restriction
on the making of peers to three years.

Reports that the king was rapidly recovering now began to fly about
Court, daily gaining strength. The Whigs, impatient to seize on
office, were in a state of strange excitement; but to go in with the
prospect of being immediately dismissed by the king, did not accord
with the dignity of the leaders. On the other hand, there were so many
good things to be given away--one or two bishoprics, the office of
Chief Justice in Eyre, sundry commissions of Major-General, besides
expectations of promotions to the rank of Field-Marshal--that the
dependents of the party grew impatient. Neither the Whigs nor Pitt
knew well what to do. The Lords did not commit the Bill till the 17th,
when they made two important additions to it, namely, to place all the
palaces, parks, houses, and gardens of the king under the control of
the queen, and to give her the care of all the royal children under the
age of twenty-one. But, at that very crisis, the king was pronounced
convalescent. On the 19th, Lord Thurlow announced this, on the
certificate of the physicians; and it was declared by him that their
lordships could not, in these circumstances, proceed with the Bill,
but had better adjourn till Tuesday next. The Duke of York observed
that he should most gladly have corroborated the statement of the Lord
Chancellor, but could not, having called the day before at Kew, to
desire that he might see his father, but had not been permitted. The
House, however, adjourned, and on Tuesday, the 24th, Thurlow informed
it that he had seen his Majesty, had found him perfectly recovered, and
therefore he moved another adjournment to the Monday following, which
was agreed to.

On the very next day took place what Burke had foreseen. A deputation
from the two Irish Houses of Parliament arrived in London, with an
address to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, requesting him
to assume the regency as his right. Though the English Bill was now
certain to be abandoned, this address was presented on the 26th of
February, the day after the arrival, and was received by the prince
in a manner likely to mark his sense of his treatment by Pitt and his
party. The deputies were entertained at a splendid banquet; the walls
of the dining-room at Carlton House were adorned with Irish harps,
the shamrock, and other Irish emblems; the arms of Ireland, encircled
by a glory, blazed in the centre of the table, and the richest wines
flowed in torrents. But these banquetings had not been confined to
this more auspicious day. Whilst the great contest had been going on
in Parliament, dinners had been given on the Saturdays and Sundays of
every week at Carlton House, to which about thirty of the members of
both Houses had been invited, and at which the prince and the Duke of
York had presided. Besides these, the attractions and persuasive powers
of the great ladies on both sides had been enthusiastically called
into play. The fascinating Duchess of Devonshire, who, in 1784, had
so successfully canvassed for Charles James Fox in Westminster, had
now thrown open her house, and employed all her amiabilities to win
supporters to the prince's party. On the other hand, the more bold and
vigorous Duchess of Gordon had feasted, entreated, and almost commanded
adherence to Pitt, through whom it was said her husband had obtained
the Great Seal of Scotland, and his brother, Lord William Gordon, the
sinecure Rangerships of St. James's and Hyde Parks. The rivalries
of these parties had been carried on in the most public manner, by
caricatures, lampoons, ballads, and popular jests. Westminster was
pre-eminently Whig; but London, which had formerly been so democratic,
had become essentially loyal. The Coalition had given the first shock
to the popularity of the Whigs in the City, and the sympathy for the
calamity of the king, combined with disgust at the prince's levity and
heartlessness, had produced a wonderful degree of loyalty there.

[Illustration: WILLIAM PITT. (_After the Portrait by John Hoppner,
R.A._)]

Both Houses adjourned, by successive motions, to the 10th of March;
they then met, and were informed by the Lord Chancellor that, by
the blessing of Providence, his Majesty being recovered from his
severe indisposition, and able to attend to the public affairs of
his kingdom, had issued a commission authorising the holding and
continuing of Parliament; and the commission having been read, the
Chancellor declared himself commanded to convey to them his Majesty's
warmest acknowledgments for the additional proofs they had given of
their attachment to his person. Addresses were then moved, as at the
commencement of a Session, by both Houses, and also addresses of
congratulation to her Majesty the queen; and the same evening the
capital was illuminated, and the most sincere joy was evidenced in
the happy event of the royal convalescence. On the 8th of April Pitt
informed the House that the king had appointed Thursday, the 23rd
of that month, as a day of public thanksgiving for his recovery,
and that it was his Majesty's intention to go in procession to St.
Paul's Cathedral on that day, to return thanks to Almighty God. The
House voted thanks for his Majesty's having taken measures for their
accommodation on the occasion, and passed a resolution to attend.

On the appointed day the two Houses of Parliament, the officers of
State, the judges, all in their robes of state, the queen, and princes
and princesses, attended the king on this solemn occasion. The streets
were crowded with the inhabitants; the Lord Bishop of London, and the
Dean and Canons of St. Paul's received him at the door. His entrance
was announced by the sound of martial music from military bands on the
outside, and the roar of the organs and the voices of five thousand
children of the City charity schools inside, singing the Hundredth
psalm. On walking across the area, under the great dome, the king was
deeply affected, and observed to the Bishop of London and the Dean of
St. Paul's, "I now feel that I have been ill." After the singing of
the Te Deum, and the firing of the Tower and Park guns, the procession
returned to St. James's as it had come. The popularity of the king was
unbounded, and so was that of the great Minister who had stood by him
in the hour of his adversity. Pitt was now at the zenith of his career.




CHAPTER XIV.

REIGN OF GEORGE III. (_continued_).

    Unsettled Condition of Europe--Machinations of Russia and
    Austria against Turkey--Disasters of the Austrians--Capture
    of Oczakoff--Further Designs of Catherine--Intervention
    of Pitt--Gustavus of Sweden invades Russia--His Temporary
    Check--He remodels the Diet and pursues the War--Joseph renews
    the War--Disaffection in Hungary--Revolution in the Austrian
    Netherlands--Abolition of the _Joyeuse Entrée_--The Emperor
    declared to have forfeited the Crown--The Austrian Troops
    retired to Luxembourg--Death of Joseph--Outbreak of the French
    Revolution--Efforts of Turgot and his Successors to introduce
    Reforms--Loménie de Brienne--Recall of Necker--Assembly of the
    States General--The Third Estate becomes the National Assembly--The
    Meeting in the Tennis Court--Contemplated _Coup d'État_--Project
    of a City Guard--Dismissal of Necker--Insurrection in Paris--The
    City Guard--Capture of the Bastille--The Noblesse renounce their
    Privileges--Bankruptcy and Famine--"_O Richard, O Mon Roi!_"--The
    Women and the National Guard march on Versailles--The King brought
    to Paris--Effect of the Revolution in England--Different Views
    of Burke and Fox--Rejection of Flood's Reform Bill--The Nootka
    Sound Affair--Satisfaction obtained from Spain--Motions of Reform
    in the Irish Parliament--Convention of Reichenbach--Continuance
    of the War between Sweden and Russia--Renewal of the War with
    Tippoo Sahib--Debates in Parliament--Discussions on the Eastern
    Question--The Canada Bill--It is made the occasion of speeches
    on the French Revolution--Breach between Fox and Burke--Abuse
    of Burke by the Whigs--Wilberforce's Notice for Immediate
    Emancipation--Colonisation of Sierra Leone--Bill for the Relief
    of Roman Catholics--Fox's Libel Bill--Burke's "Reflections on the
    French Revolution"--Replies of Mackintosh and Paine--Dr. Price--Dr.
    Priestley--The Anniversary of the taking of the Bastille--The
    Birmingham Riots--Destruction of Priestley's Library--Suppression
    of the Riots--Mildness of the Sentences.


Whilst the war of parties had been raging in England, matters abroad
had been rapidly assuming a shape which threatened the tranquillity of
all Europe. In France the elements of revolution had been fermenting,
and had already burst into open fury with a character which, to
observant eyes, appeared to bode inevitably their spread into every
surrounding country. At the same time, the sovereigns of these
countries, instead of discerning the signs of the times, and taking
measures to guard their people from the contagious influence, were
some of them acting so as certainly to invite the specious anarchy.
In others, they were wasting their strength on schemes of conquest
which only too much enfeebled them for opposition to the dangers thus
preparing. Some of these warlike movements seem, at first sight, to
have little connection with the history of England, but, more or less,
they all are necessary to our comprehension of our own position in the
time of those marvellous subversions which were at hand.

Least of all did the ambitious designs of the Czarina Catherine against
Turkey seem menacing to us; yet these designs speedily drew into
their current the whole power of Austria, endangered our relations
with the countries on the Baltic, and attracted the revolutionary
torrent over the fertile plains of the Netherlands, opposite to our
own shores, menacing the stability of our allies, the Dutch. Catherine
had found the Turks not so easily to be overcome as she imagined,
feeble and tottering as she considered their empire. The absorption
of the Ottoman kingdom and the establishment of the Muscovite throne
at Constantinople had been her confident dream. But the Turks, though
in a condition of decline and disorganisation which promised an easy
subjugation of them, had still their spirit of fanatic fatalism, which
could rouse them to deeds of impetuous valour. The whole organisation
and regulations of their army were in the worst condition. The
janissaries, which had been amongst the finest infantry in the world,
were now thoroughly demoralised and in insolent insubordination towards
their own government. Their cavalry was numerous, but wretchedly
disciplined. The commissariat was in the worst state conceivable, and
their artillery, though it had received the energetic attentions of
the French Baron De Toff, was contemptible. It might have appeared
that nothing was necessary but to enter Turkey and drive the army, as
a disorganised rabble, before the foe. But Catherine had not found
it so. Her favourite, Potemkin, had been repeatedly defeated in his
attempts to advance into Turkey from the Crimea, and Catherine had been
glad to engage Joseph II. of Austria in the enterprise by a promise of
an ample share of the spoil. In fact, the pair contemplated something
like a partition of Europe. In their meeting at Cherson in 1787,
Joseph had engaged to send one hundred thousand men to the campaign
against Turkey. He had no quarrel with the Sultan, and though a zealous
advocate for national reforms, he paid very little regard to national
or international justice. In all his reforms, Joseph, with true
Austrian spirit, showed the despot still. He did not attempt to carry
such reforms as his subjects desired, but such as he thought proper for
them; and he was always ready to force what he deemed liberalism and
improvement upon them at the point of the bayonet. In attacking Turkey,
he did not wait to proclaim war, much less to have a pretence for it,
but he suddenly made a rush upon the neighbouring city and frontier
fortress of Belgrade. The Turks, though taken by surprise, defended the
place victoriously; and Joseph's subsequent assault on the fortress of
Gradiska was equally unsuccessful and equally disgraceful.

In prosecution, however, of his unrighteous engagement to Catherine,
he mustered the large army he had engaged to bring against Turkey, and
in February, 1788, he made a formal proclamation of war, having no
cause of hostility to assign of his own, but merely that his alliance
with Russia demanded that he should support that power in its equally
lawless invasion of Turkey. The Prince of Saxe-Coburg, who commanded
one division of Joseph's army, entered Moldavia, and spent the whole
campaign nearly in the siege and reduction of the fortress of Choczim.
The Emperor himself accompanied another division, the destination of
which was the renewal of the siege of Belgrade. He had been led by
Catherine to hope, as his reward for the co-operation, the recovery
of Bosnia and Servia, the acquisition of Moldavia and Wallachia, and
the extension of his boundaries to the Dnieper. But, having waited
some time for the junction of the Russians, Joseph's army assembled on
the banks of the Danube in February, and occupied itself in securing
the banks of that river and of the Save. Joseph himself joined it in
April, accompanied by his favourite marshal and counsellor, Lacy,
and having also with him, but paying little attention to him or his
advice, the brave and able Laudohn, who had so successfully coped
with Frederick of Prussia in Silesia. On the 24th he took the little
fortress of Szabatch, whilst another part of his army suffered a
defeat from the Turks at Dobitza. He then sat down before Belgrade,
but carried on the siege with such slackness as to disgust his own
troops and astonish all Europe. He was at length roused by the advance
of the vizier, Yussuff, who was coming rapidly down upon him. At his
approach, Joseph precipitately retreated behind the Save, while Yussuff
threw bridges over the Danube at Cladova, broke the Austrian cordon by
the defeat of a portion of the forces of General Wartesleben on the
heights of Meadiha, and swept through the banat of Temeswar, Joseph's
own territory, which he held, and threatened to invade Hungary. Joseph
hastened with forty thousand men to support Wartesleben, leaving
General Laudohn to conduct the war in Croatia. The army was delighted
to have Laudohn at their head instead of the Emperor. He led it on
the very day of his arrival against the fortress of Dobitza, which he
took; he then passed the Save, drove the Turks before him, defeated
seven thousand of the enemy before Novi, and took that place, where his
operations were suspended by the winter. Joseph gained little credit by
his junction with Wartesleben. The Turks attacked him, and, though they
were for the moment repulsed, the Emperor retreated in a dark night,
and Turks and Austrians resumed their former positions. After taking
Verplanka, the campaign ended with a three months' truce. But the
Austrians had suffered more severely from the miasma of the marshes of
the Danube and Save than from the Turks.

Meanwhile, the Russians had been occupied with the siege of Oczakoff,
near the mouth of the Dnieper. There the Turks had endeavoured to burn
their flotillas and flat-bottomed boats, in the shallows, at the mouth
of the river; but besides Potemkin, they had the able Suvaroff to
contend with. This sagacious general drew the Russian flotilla under
the forts of Kinburn, nearly opposite to Oczakoff, of which they were
in possession. Thus safe himself, he swept the broad liman with his
guns, destroyed many of the boats of the Turks, as they got entangled
in the sands of the shallows, and compelled the admiral, who commanded,
to withdraw his fleet. After several vain attempts, Oczakoff was
stormed on St. Nicholas' Day, the 17th of November. But this success
was only obtained at the last moment, in the very desperation of
despair, and when the campaign had cost Russia twenty thousand men, of
whom five thousand perished in the final assault.

But the Czarina, though mistress of Oczakoff, was far from the end
of her designs. She contemplated nothing but the subjugation of the
Turkish empire. For this purpose she determined to excite insurrection
in all the tributary states of that empire. Her agents had excited
the Montenegrins to an outbreak; they had prepared the Greeks for the
same experiment, and the Mameluke Beys in Egypt. She determined to
send a powerful fleet into the Mediterranean to co-operate with these
insurgents, to seize on the island of Crete, to ravage the coasts of
Thrace and Asia Minor, and to force the passage of the Dardanelles,
or, if that were not practicable, to blockade them. Thus opening the
communication between her forces in the Mediterranean and in the Black
Sea, she considered that Turkey would lie helpless at her feet. To give
the necessary ascendency to her fleet, she had long been encouraging
English naval officers to take commands in it. At the famous battle of
Chesmé, it was the British Admirals Elphinstone, Greig, and others who
had made Potemkin victorious. Greig was now at the head of the fleet
that was being prepared at Cronstadt for this Mediterranean enterprise.
She had also managed to engage eighteen British ships to serve as
transports of troops, artillery, and stores.

If Pitt had possessed the far-seeing genius of his father Chatham, it
was at this moment in his power, as the ally of Turkey, to have stepped
in and given a blow to the ambitious designs of Russia which would
have saved a far more arduous and costly effort for that very purpose
afterwards. Russia had spared no pains to insult Britain, especially
since the unfortunate contest on account of America. It was certain
that if she once obtained Turkey she would become a most troublesome
power in the Mediterranean; and it now required only the dispatch of
a tolerable fleet to the Baltic, and of another to the Black Sea, to
annihilate in a few days every vestige of her maritime force. Such a
check would have caused her to recoil from her Eastern aggressions
for the purpose of defending her very existence at home. Holland was
bound to us by the re-establishment of the Prince of Orange, our fast
friend, whom Pitt, with the assistance of Prussia, had restored to
the throne, whence he had been driven by his democratic subjects, in
spite of the assistance given to the rebels by France; we were at peace
with Prussia; France was engrossed inextricably with her own affairs;
Denmark was in terror of us; and Sweden longed for nothing so much as
to take vengeance for Russian insults and invasions. Catherine's fleets
destroyed, Sweden would have full opportunity to ravage her coasts,
and to seek the recovery of her Finnish dominions. But Pitt contented
himself with diplomacy. Instead of destroying the Russian fleet in the
Baltic, or of attacking it in the Mediterranean the moment it commenced
its operations on the Turkish dependencies, and then clearing the Black
Sea of their ships, he contented himself with issuing a proclamation in
the _London Gazette_, forbidding English seamen to enter any foreign
service, and commanding the owners of the vessels engaged by Russia to
renounce their contracts. Thus the fleet before Oczakoff was left to
operate against the Turks, and the fleet in the Baltic was detained
there.

To insure a powerful diversion, the Sultan had engaged the military
co-operation of Sweden. Sweden had been forcibly deprived of Finland by
Peter the Great, and she longed to recover it. She had a brave army,
but no money. The Grand Turk, to enable her to commence the enterprise,
had sent her a present of about four hundred thousand pounds sterling.
Sweden put her fleet in preparation in all haste, and had Pitt merely
allowed the Russian fleet to quit the Baltic, there was nothing to
prevent the execution of the Swedish design on Finland, nor, indeed, of
marching directly on St. Petersburg in the absence of the army.

But the English measures detained the Russian fleet in the Baltic with
Greig at its head, and Russia was saved from her due chastisement.
The King of Sweden, indeed, landed an army of thirty-five thousand
men in Finland; and his brother, the Duke of Sudermania, appeared
in the Baltic at the head of a strong fleet. Nothing could have
prevented Gustavus from marching directly on the Russian capital, and
St. Petersburg was consequently thrown into the wildest alarm. But
Gustavus was only bent on recovering the provinces which Russia had
reft from Sweden. He advanced successfully for some time, the Russians
everywhere flying before him; but Russian gold and Russian intrigue
soon altered all this. Catherine ordered her fleet, which was in the
Gulf of Finland, with Greig at its head, to bear down on the Swedish
fleet, and, at the same time, emissaries were despatched amongst the
officers of Gustavus's army with plenty of gold, and letters were sent
to the States of Sweden, calling on them to disavow the proceedings of
the king. Before Gustavus had left Sweden with his army, her Minister,
passing over the king himself, had made similar communications to
Gustavus's proud and disaffected nobles, and Gustavus had ordered him
out of the country. The Russian and Swedish fleets now came to an
engagement in the straits of Kalkbaden. The battle was desperate; the
Swedes fought with their wonted valour; and the Russians, under the
management of Greig and the British officers, showed that they were
apt scholars. The two fleets separated, after doing each other great
mischief, each claiming the victory. Catherine immediately rewarded
Greig with a letter of thanks, written by her own hand, and with the
more substantial present of a large sum of money, and a good estate in
Livonia. Moreover, the partial success of Russia by sea had the effect
of encouraging the corrupted officers of Gustavus to refuse to proceed
farther in Finland.

Gustavus despatched the chief mutineers under arrest to Stockholm; but
he found those who remained equally infected. In fact, the whole of
the Swedish aristocracy had long aimed at usurping the entire powers
of the State, and of dictating to the king. Whilst thus suddenly
disabled, the men themselves in a great measure assuming the language
of their officers, Gustavus found that Sweden itself was menaced with
an invasion of the Danes from the side of Norway, at the instigation
of Russia. It was necessary to hurry home, leaving the portion of the
army in Finland, which remained subordinate, under the command of his
brother. On arriving, Gustavus issued an earnest proclamation to his
people to follow him to the defence of their country. But to lose no
time he hastened on to Dalecarlia, the brave inhabitants of which had
first placed his great ancestor, Gustavus Vasa, on the throne. They
speedily mustered to his aid, and he led them directly against the
Danes, who, under the Prince of Hesse, were already in possession of
Strömstad and Uddevalla, and in full march on Gothenburg, the chief
commercial town of Sweden.

His arrival gave great joy and confidence to the people of Gothenburg;
and at this moment, seeing the consequence of their too easy conduct,
the British Government sent a peremptory demand to Copenhagen through
Mr. Elliot, their ambassador there, that Denmark should desist from
this invasion of Sweden, the ally of Britain, or, in default of this,
that a powerful British fleet should be dispatched to the Baltic. The
Danes evacuated Sweden, again retiring into Norway, but Gustavus was
left to continue his contest with Russia. His broken army, under his
brother in Finland, took up their winter quarters at the strong seaport
of Sveaborg; and he himself prepared to make some decisive movement
against his haughty and refractory nobles. Besides the Order of
nobility, three other Orders sat in the General Assembly of the States;
and Gustavus, confident of their affection to him, determined to throw
himself upon them for protection against the nobles. He therefore, in
the first place, sent for the chief magistrates, clergy, and citizens,
and laid before them forcibly his position. He showed them how the
recovery of the ancient Swedish provinces on the other side of the
Baltic had been prevented by the defection of the aristocracy, and how
the country had been invaded by the Danes through this encouragement.
Made certain of their support, he then summoned a Diet, which met on
the 26th of January, 1789.

The nobles rose in a body and quitted the Assembly; but Gustavus
continued his speech to the three remaining Orders. He declared it
necessary, for the salvation of the country, for him to assume almost
despotic powers, and he called on the three Estates to support him in
punishing the traitorous nobles, promising to secure the liberties
of the country as soon as this was accomplished. Not only the three
Orders, but the public at large zealously supported him. Stockholm was
in a state of high excitement. Gustavus surrounded the houses of the
chief nobility with his brave Dalecarlians; secured twenty-five of
the principal nobles, including the Counts Brahé, Fersen, Horne, and
others, who were consigned to the castle. He had already arrested nine
of the leaders of the insurrection in the army in Finland, and these
officers were now also confined in the castle; others had escaped
and fled to their patroness in St. Petersburg. To intimidate the
king, nearly all the officers of the army, the fleet, and the civil
department threw up their commissions and appointments, believing that
they should thus completely paralyse his proceedings. But Gustavus
remained undaunted. He filled up the vacancies, as well as he could,
from the other Orders of the State; he brought the nobles and officers
to trial, and numbers of them were condemned to capital punishment,
for treason and abandonment of their sworn duties. Some few examples
were made; the rest, after a short confinement, were liberated, and
they hastened to their estates in the country. But it was found
there, as everywhere else, that rank confers no monopoly of talent.
The three other Orders warmly supported Gustavus, and he remodelled
the Diet, excluding from it almost all the most powerful nobles, and
giving greater preponderance to the other three Orders. In return for
this, these Orders sanctioned an act called the Act of Safety, which
conferred on the king the same power which is attached to the British
Crown, namely, that of making peace or war. They granted him liberal
supplies, and he quickly raised an army of fifty thousand men. As he
considered the reduction of the restless and lawless power of Russia
was equally essential to Britain, Holland, and Prussia, as to Sweden,
Gustavus called on them to second his efforts. But Pitt would do
nothing more than guarantee the neutrality of Denmark; and even this
guarantee he permitted to become nugatory, by allowing the Danish
fleet to give protection to the Russian fleet in the Baltic. A second
Russian squadron, commanded by Dessein, a French admiral, descended
from Archangel, entered the Baltic, menaced Gothenburg, and by the aid
of the Danish ships was enabled to join the other Russian fleet at
Cronstadt.

[Illustration: EXPULSION OF THE PROFESSORS FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF
ANTWERP. (_See p._ 355.)]

The Swedes cursed the less than half assistance of their British
allies, and Gustavus endeavoured to fight his way without them. He
continued to win victory after victory on land; but Catherine soon
brought down on his squadron of galleys, which attended his march along
the coast to keep up his supplies, an overwhelming fleet of galleys of
her own. A desperate battle ensued, but the Swedish galley-fleet was at
length overcome. Gustavus was thus greatly embarrassed, and compelled
to stand merely on the defensive, till it was time to go into winter
quarters. He continued for twelve months to do battle with Russia, and,
though with insufficient forces, threatened the very capital of that
country. A little support from Britain, Prussia, and Holland, would
have enabled Sweden to regain its territories on the eastern shores of
the Baltic, to curb the power of Russia, and to assume that station in
the North which is essential to the peace of Europe. These countries,
however, had not the statesmanship to appreciate this point, or the
friendly feeling to effect it, and Gustavus was left to struggle on
alone.

The Emperor Joseph of Austria had returned from the campaign of 1788
against Turkey greatly chagrined, and with fast-failing health. Had he
been wise, he would have accepted the overtures for peace made to him
by the Sultan, and have spent the few remaining days of his existence
in tranquillity. But his ambitious and persuasive ally, Catherine,
prevailed upon him to make another effort. He mustered fresh troops.
A hundred and fifty thousand men were marched against the Turkish
frontier, early in the year of 1789, in different divisions. It was
a circumstance very much in their favour that the able Sultan, Abdul
Hamid, died suddenly in April, and was succeeded by his nephew, Selim,
a young, rash, and unprincipled man. The acts of Selim, in murdering
and dismissing his father's best ministers and commanders, and the
unruly condition of the janissaries, rendered Turkey especially open
to the attacks of its enemies. Marshal Laudohn, supporting his earlier
fame, took the fortress of Gradiska, and stormed Belgrade. But this was
not accomplished till the 8th of October, and an attempt was then made
to reduce Orsova, but this failed. Coburg and Suvaroff having joined,
won a great victory over the new Vizier, Martinitzi, in Wallachia, on
the 22nd of September, and the remains of the Turkish army retired to
the pass of Shumla, on the Balkan mountains. Potemkin, on his part, had
greatly increased his forces after the reduction of Oczakoff, and after
a desperate resistance took Bender, famous as the abode of Charles XII.
of Sweden, after the battle of Pultawa. Before winter, the Russians
had made decided progress in their inroads into the Turkish dominions
on the Black Sea. They had gained possession of Akerman, at the mouth
of the Dniester; of Keglia Nova, on the northern banks of the Danube,
and of other places on the Black Sea. They had also extended their
frontier to the left bank of the Danube, and they had actually reduced
every important place between the Bug and Dniester and that river. Had
Catherine had a sufficient fleet in the Black Sea, Constantinople might
have trembled for its safety.

But Catherine's ally, Joseph, was fast sinking, and his mortal sun was
going down amid storm clouds, all collected by his reckless disregard
of the rights of his subjects, great reformer as he desired to be.
He had wantonly invaded the ancient constitution of Hungary; and on
this the high-spirited and martial Hungarians had expressed their
determination not to submit to it. They insisted that he should restore
the regalia of their ancient kingdom, which he had carried off from
Buda, the old capital, and where the Austrian emperors, as kings of
Hungary, were always expected to be crowned, and to take the oath to
observe the constitution. The Turks, already in possession of the banat
of Temeswar, invited their alliance, offering to assist them in driving
out the Austrians, and establishing their independence. Joseph, alarmed
at this prospect, made haste to avert the danger by conceding the
restoration of the Hungarian constitution and of the regalia, and the
generous Hungarians were at once appeased.

But far different was the issue of the troubles with his Flemish
subjects, which, with an unaccountable folly and absence of good faith,
he had excited. He sent into the Netherlands Count Trautmansdorff
as Governor, and General Dalton, a brutal Irishman, as commander.
The latter ordered the professors of theology at Louvain to give
way to the Emperor's reforms, and, as they refused, Dalton turned
them out by force, shut up the colleges, and Joseph sent back again
the German professors, who had been before recalled, to appease the
popular indignation. But the colleges remained empty; not a student
would attend the classes of the Germans. As the volunteer corps had
disbanded themselves, in reliance on the Emperor's wish, Trautmansdorff
calculated on an easy compulsion of the people, and he called on the
Grand Council at Brussels to enforce the decrees of the Emperor. The
Council paid no regard to the order.

The people having collected in great crowds in the neighbourhood of
the Council House, Dalton ordered out a company of soldiers, under
a young ensign, to patrol the streets, and overawe any attempts at
demonstrations in support of the Council. The young ensign, having a
stone flung at him, without further ceremony ordered his men to fire
into the crowd, and six persons were killed, and numbers of others
wounded. No sooner did Joseph hear of this rash and cruel act, than he
wrote highly approving of it, and promoting the ensign. The people,
greatly enraged, rose in the different towns, and were attacked by the
Imperial troops, and blood was shed in various places. With his usual
disregard of consequences, Joseph was at this moment endeavouring to
raise a loan in the Netherlands, to enable him to carry on the war
against Turkey. But this conduct completely quashed all hope of it;
not a man of money would advance a stiver. Trautmansdorff continued to
threaten the people, and Dalton was ready to execute his most harsh
orders. It was determined to break up the University of Antwerp, and
on the 4th of August, 1789, troops were drawn up, and cannon planted
in the public square, to keep down the populace, whilst the professors
were turned into the streets, and the college doors locked. Here there
occurred an attack on the unarmed people, as wanton as that which took
place at Brussels, and no less than thirty or forty persons were killed
on the spot, and great numbers wounded. This Massacre of Antwerp, as it
was called, roused the indignation of the whole Netherlands, and was
heard with horror by all Europe. The monks and professors who had been
turned out became objects of sympathy, even to those who regarded with
wonder and contempt their bigotry and superstition. But Joseph, engaged
in his miserable and disgraceful war against the Turks, sent to Dalton
his warmest approval of what he called these vigorous measures.

Joseph, in the face of these things, passed an edict sequestrating all
the abbeys in Brabant. The States of Brabant therefore refused the
voting of any subsidies, and Joseph, irritated to deeper blindness,
determined to abolish the Great Charter entitled the _Joyeuse Entrée_,
so called because granted on the entry of Philip the Good into
Brussels, and on which nearly all their privileges rested. To compel
them to vote a permanent subsidy, the military surrounded the States
of Hainault, forcibly dissolved their sitting, and then calling an
extraordinary meeting of the States of Brabant, Trautmansdorff ordered
them to pass an Act sanctioning such a subsidy. But the deputies
remained firm, and thereupon the _Joyeuse Entrée_ was annulled by
proclamation, and the House of Assembly dissolved. Joseph vowed that he
would extinguish the rebellion in blood, and reduce the Netherlands to
the same despotism which ruled all his other states, except Hungary and
the Tyrol.

Trautmansdorff declared that, if necessary, forty thousand troops
should be marched into the country; but this was an empty boast, for
Joseph had so completely engaged his army against Turkey, that he could
only send a thousand men into the Netherlands. On the contrary, the
French Revolutionists offered the oppressed Netherlands speedy aid,
and the Duke d'Aremberg, the Archbishop of Malines, and other nobles
and dignitaries of the Church, met at Breda on the 14th of September,
and proclaimed themselves the legitimate Assembly of the States of
Brabant. They sent the plainest remonstrances to the Emperor, declaring
that unless he immediately repealed his arbitrary edicts, and restored
their Great Charter, they would assert their rights by the sword. In
proof that these were no empty vaunts, the militia and volunteers
again flew to arms. Scarcely a month had passed after the repeal of
the _Joyeuse Entrée_ before a number of collisions had taken place
between these citizen soldiers and the Imperial troops. In Tirlemont,
Louvain, Antwerp, and Mons blood was shed. At Diest, the patriots, led
on by the monks, drove out the troops and the magistrates. Dalton and
Trautmansdorff, instead of fulfilling their menace, appeared paralysed.

Numbers of persons fled from the different towns to the frontiers of
Holland, trade became stagnant, manufactories stood empty; the whole
country began to assume a melancholy and ruinous aspect. Many of the
refugees, formed into revolutionary clubs by French emissaries, were
prepared not merely to oppose Joseph's despotism, but all monarchical
government whatever. A powerful body of these placed themselves under
the leadership of Van der Noot, a lawyer, who assumed the title of
plenipotentiary agent of the people of Brabant; and of Van der Mersch,
an officer who had served in the Seven Years' War, who was made
their commander-in-chief. These two men were in league with the new
Assembly of Breda, and issued their proclamations. These Trautmansdorff
caused to be burnt by the executioner. The patriots in Brussels who
sympathised with those in arms were, many of them, arrested; the
citizens were disarmed, the fortifications strengthened by palisades,
and every means of defence was resorted to.

But in October the patriots of Breda surprised the forts of Lillo and
Liefkenshoek, on the Scheldt. Dalton dispatched General Schröder with
a strong force, who retook the forts; but on Schröder's venturing to
enter Turnhout after the insurgents, a body of three thousand of them,
under Van der Mersch, armed with pitchforks, bludgeons, and staves,
attacked and drove him out. General Bender, who had been dispatched
against the insurgents at Tirlemont, was driven out in the same manner.
General Arberg was compelled to retreat behind the Scheldt, and the
people were victorious in Louvain, Ghent, Bruges, Ostend, and most
towns of the district. Both Joseph and his Governor and Commander in
the Netherlands now fell into the utmost alarm. The news which Marie
Antoinette sent from Paris to her Imperial brother only rendered
this consternation the greater. Joseph, with that sudden revulsion
which he had manifested on other occasions, after equally astonishing
rashness, now issued a conciliatory proclamation, offering to redress
all grievances on the condition of the Netherlanders laying down their
arms. But they were not likely, after former experience, to trust any
such promises of Joseph. On the 20th of November the States of Flanders
assumed the title of the High and Mighty States; they declared the
Emperor to have forfeited the Crown by tyranny and injustice; they
proclaimed their entire independence, and ordered a levy of twenty
thousand men.

Trautmansdorff now hastened to conciliate in earnest. He issued
two-and-twenty separate proclamations, made all kinds of fair promises,
restored the arms of the citizens, and liberated the imprisoned
patriots. But it was too late. The insurgents, under Van der Mersch,
were fast advancing towards Brussels, and Dalton marched out to meet
them; but he was confounded by the appearance of their numbers, and
entered into an armistice of ten days. But this did not stop the
progress of insurrection in Brussels. There the people rose, and
resolved to open the gates to their compatriots. Women and children
tore up the palisades, and levelled the entrenchments. The population
assumed the national cockade, and the streets resounded with cries of
"Long live the Patriots!" "Long live Van der Noot!" Dalton retreated
into Brussels, but found no security there. The soldiers began to
desert. The people attacked those who stood to their colours, and
Dalton was glad to secure his retreat by a capitulation. In a few days
the insurgents from Breda entered, Trautmansdorff having withdrawn
at their approach, and the new federal union of the Netherlands was
completely established. The State of Luxembourg was the only one
remaining to Joseph, and thither Dalton retired with his forces, five
thousand in number.

But Joseph did not live to see the full extent of the alienation of
the Netherlands. He had despatched Count Cobentzel to Brussels on the
failure of Trautmansdorff's efforts. Cobentzel was an able diplomatist,
but all his offers were treated with indifference. On the last day of
1789 the States of Brabant, in presence of the citizens of Brussels,
swore to stand by their new freedom--an act which was received by the
acclamations of the assembled crowds. They soon afterwards ratified
their league with the other States, and entered into active negotiation
with the revolutionists of France for mutual defence. On the 20th of
February, 1790, Joseph expired, leaving a prospect full of trouble to
his brother Leopold, the new Emperor.

At the period at which we have now arrived France was in a state of
the wildest and most awful convulsion. A revolution had broken out,
more terrible and furious than had ever yet appeared in the history
of nations. The French people, so long trodden down by their princes,
their aristocracy, and their clergy, and reduced to a condition of
wretchedness and of ignorant brutality, almost unparalleled, seizing
the opportunity of the distresses of the impoverished Government, and
encouraged by a new race of philosophers who preached up the equality
of the human race, had broken through their ancient subserviency,
and were pulling down all the old constituted powers, ranks, and
distinctions, with a rapidity which electrified the whole world.

The people might have dragged on a considerable time still in their
misery; but the Government was in its death-throes for want of revenue,
and Louis XVI., who ascended the throne in 1774, had but little
political sagacity. The administration groaned beneath a mountain
of debts; the mass of the people were exhausted in their resources;
trade was ruined by these causes; and the nobility and clergy clung
convulsively to their prescriptive exemptions from taxation. Long
before the American war the State was in reality bankrupt. The Prime
Minister of Louis XVI., the Count de Maurepas, was never of a genius
to extricate the nation from such enormous difficulties; but now he
was upwards of eighty years of age; and, besides that, steeped in
aristocratic prejudices. Still, he had the sense to catch at the wise
propositions of Turgot, who was made Comptroller-General, and had
he been permitted to have his way, might have effected much. Turgot
insisted that there must be a rigid and inflexible economy introduced
into all departments of the State, in order gradually to discharge
the debts. The excellent Malesherbes being also appointed Minister of
Justice, these two able and good men recommended a series of reforms
which must have struck the old and incorrigible courtiers and nobility
with consternation. They prevailed in having the Parliament restored,
and they recommended that the king should himself initiate the business
of reform, thus preventing it from falling into less scrupulous hands,
and so attaching the body of the people to him by the most encouraging
expectations. Turgot presented his calculations and his enlightened
economic plans, and Malesherbes drew up his two memoirs "On the
Calamities of France, and the Means of Repairing them;" but they had
not a monarch with the mind and the nerve to carry out the only reforms
which could save the monarchy. Turgot, who was of the modern school of
philosophy himself, and well knew the heads of the school, recommended
that they should be employed by Government. Had this been done, the
voices that were raised so fatally against the king and Crown might
have been raised for them, and the grand catastrophe averted. But Louis
could not be brought to listen to any measures so politic; indeed, he
was listening, instead, to the cries of fierce indignation which the
privileged classes were raising against all reform. Turgot succeeded
in abolishing the _corvées_, the interior custom-houses between one
province and another, and some other abuses, but there the great plan
was stopped. Both Louis and his Minister, Maurepas, shrank from the
wrath of the noblesse and the clergy, and desisted from all further
reform.

[Illustration: NOTRE DAME, PARIS.]

By a still greater fatality, Louis was persuaded to comply with the
solicitations of the American colonists, to assist them in throwing off
their allegiance to Britain. To rend these colonies from Britain, which
had deprived France of Canada and Nova Scotia, was too flattering to
French vanity and French desire of revenge. Turgot in vain protested
that the first cannon that was fired would insure revolution; Louis
consented to the American alliance, and thus set the seal to his own
destruction. Bitterly did he rue this afterwards, still more bitterly
was it rued by his queen when they both saw the fatal infection of
Republicanism brought back from America by the army. When Turgot saw
that this fatal war was determined upon, he retired before the wild
rage of the noblesse and clergy, and from the ruinous weakness of the
king. Minister after minister rapidly succeeded each other in the
vain endeavour to keep up the old partial laws and privileges, the
old extravagance and encumbrances, at the command of the king, and
yet avert revolution. In turn Clugny, Necker, and Calonne withdrew
discomfited.

The next person to attempt the impossible in the vain endeavour to
keep the vessel of the old French monarchy afloat with all its leaks
and rottenness, was the Archbishop of Toulouse, Loménie de Brienne. He
had vigorously opposed Calonne; but there was no way of raising the
necessary revenue but to adopt some of the very proposals of Calonne,
and tax the privileged classes, or to attempt to draw something still
from the exhausted people. As the less difficult experiment of the two,
he was compelled to cast his eyes towards the property of the nobles
and the Church; but he found the nobles and the clergy as ready to
sacrifice him as they had been to sacrifice Calonne. When one or two of
the more pliant or more enlightened members of those classes ventured
to remark on the vast amount of untaxed property, and particularly
of tithes, there was an actual tempest of fury raised. Tithes were
declared to be the voluntary offerings of the piety of the faithful,
and therefore not to be touched. As further loans were out of the
question, some one ventured to assert that the only means of solving
the difficulty was to assemble the States General. "You would convoke
the States General?" said the Minister in consternation. "Yes," replied
Lafayette, who was bent on revolutionising France, as he had helped
to revolutionise America--"yes, and something more than that!" These
words were taken down as most exceptionable and dangerous. All that
the Assembly of Notables could be brought to do was to confirm the
abolition of the _corvée_, and to pass a stamp act. They would not move
a step further, and they were dismissed by the king on the 25th of May,
1787. The Parliament, or Chief Court of Justice, adopted a similar
course, and it also was dismissed. The king then promulgated a new
constitution, but it fell hopelessly to the ground.

Events now rushed on with accumulating force and accelerated pace.
There had been a long drought, withering up the prospects of the
harvest, and now, in July, came a terrible hailstorm, which extended
one hundred and fifty miles round Paris, destroying the nearly ripe
corn, the fruit on the trees, and leaving all that extent of country a
desert, and the inhabitants the prey of famine. In such circumstances
the people could not, those in other quarters would not, pay taxes; the
Treasury was empty, and the king was compelled to promise to convoke
the States General in the following May; Brienne endeavoured to amuse
the active reformers by calling on men of intelligence to send in plans
for the proper conduct of the States General, as none had been held for
one hundred and seventy-two years. The public was impatient for a much
earlier summons, but probably they would not have been much listened
to, had Loménie de Brienne known how to keep things going. His empty
exchequer, however, and the pressing demands upon him, drove him to
solicit the king to recall Necker and appoint him once more Comptroller
of the Finances. He imagined that the popularity of Necker would at
least extend the public patience. The queen energetically opposed the
reinstatement of Necker; the position of affairs was, however, too
desperate, and Necker was recalled. His triumphant return was speedily
followed by the meeting of the States.

On the 4th of May, 1789, Versailles was crowded by immense masses of
people from Paris and the country round, to see the grand procession
of the deputies of the three Orders advancing from the church of Notre
Dame to that of St. Louis. The whole of the costumes, the order of
march, and the spectacle had been carefully studied by the Court, so
as to impress deeply the distinctions of the three Orders, and to
humiliate the Tiers État. The evening before, the deputies had waited
on the king, and even then he had greatly incensed those of the Tiers
État who came most favourably disposed to him. Even whilst he hoped
to obtain essential advantages from the people against the presumption
of the privileged orders, Louis or his advisers could not refrain from
humiliating the Third Estate. Instead of receiving the deputies in
one body, they had been carefully separated; the clergy were received
first, the nobles next, and then, not till after a considerable
pause, the Tiers État. Now, on the great morning, all Paris and the
vicinity--thousands from distant towns--was astir. The streets of
Versailles were lined with French and Swiss guards and made gay with
garlands of flowers, and from the windows hung rich tapestries. The
balconies and windows were crowded with spectators of all ages and both
sexes--the handsomest ladies gorgeously attired. The deputies, instead
of one thousand, amounted to one thousand two hundred. First marched
the members of the Tiers État, six hundred in number, all clad in plain
black mantles, white cravats, and slouched hats. Next went the nobles
in black coats, but the other garments of cloth of gold, silk cloak,
lace cravat, plumed hat turned up _à la_ Henry IV.; then the clergy,
in surplice, with mantle, and square cap; the bishops in their purple
robes, with their rochets. Last came the Court, all ablaze with jewels
and splendid robes; the king in good spirits, the queen anxious, and
dimly conscious even then of the miseries that were to follow. Her
eldest son, the Dauphin, was lying at the point of death in the palace,
and her reputation was being daily murdered by atrocious calumnies.
Yet still Marie Antoinette, the daughter of the great Maria Theresa,
the once light-hearted, always kind and amiable woman, was the perfect
queen in her stately beauty. Two things were remarked--the absence of
Siéyès, and the presence of Mirabeau, two men who had already become
popular leaders. Siéyès had not yet arrived; Mirabeau drew all eyes.
His immense head of hair; his lion-like appearance, marked by an
ugliness quite startling, almost terrifying; the spectators seemed
fascinated by his look. He marched on visibly a man; the rest, compared
with him, were mere shadows.

It was not long before the Third Estate was discovered to be in
hopeless antagonism with the Court and privileged Orders, and they
resolved to act separately. They must act for themselves and for the
people at large, or, by further delays, lose all the advantages of the
moment. They resolved to assume the character of the representatives of
the entire nation. Siéyès declared that the Commons had waited on the
other Orders long enough. They had given in to all the conciliations
proposed; their condescensions had been unavailing; they could delay no
longer, without abandoning their duty to the country. A great debate
arose regarding the name that the body of deputies which resolved to
become the real legislative power should choose. Mirabeau proposed,
the "Representatives of the People;" Mounier, "The Deliberative
Majority in the absence of the Minority;" and Legrand, "The National
Assembly." The proposal of Mounier was soon disposed of; but there
was a strong inclination in favour of "The National Assembly," and
Mirabeau vehemently opposed it. The name of "National Assembly" had,
it is said, been recommended to Lafayette by Jefferson, the American
Minister, and as Lafayette had not yet ventured to move before his
Order, and join the Tiers État, Legrand, an obscure member, and lately
a provincial advocate, was employed to propose it. But Siéyès had,
in his famous _brochure_ on the "Rights of Man," long before thrown
out these words:--"The Tiers État alone, it will be said, cannot form
a States General. So much the better; it will constitute a National
Assembly!" On the 15th of June, Siéyès proposed that the title should
be "The National Assembly of Representatives, known and verified by the
French Nation." Mirabeau indignantly repelled the title in any shape.
He declared that such a title, by denying the rights and existence of
the other two Orders, would plunge the nation into civil war. Legrand
proposed to modify the name by making it "The General Assembly." Siéyès
then came back to his original title of simply "The National Assembly,"
as devoid of all ambiguity, and Mirabeau still more violently opposed
it. But it was soon seen that this name carried the opinion of the mob
with it; the deputies cried out loudly for it; the galleries joined
as loudly in the cries. Mirabeau in a fierce rage read his speech,
said to have been written by his friend Dumont, before the president
Bailly, and withdrew, using violent language against the people who
had hooted him down, declaring that they would soon be compelled to
seek his aid. He had protested in his speech that the veto, which some
of the deputies wished to refuse to the king, must be given to him;
that without the royal veto he would rather live in Constantinople
than in France; that he could conceive nothing more dreadful than the
sovereignty of six hundred persons; that they would very soon declare
themselves hereditary, and would finish, like all other aristocracies
that the world had ever seen, by usurping everything. These words, only
too prophetic, had brought down upon him a tempest of execration; and
writhing under it he had hastened to the Court and had an interview
with Necker, warning him of the danger of the crisis, and offering to
use his influence in favour of the king's authority. Necker received
him coldly, and thus Mirabeau was thrown back on the people. Siéyès's
motion was carried by a majority of four hundred and ninety-one
against ninety; and the National Assembly was proclaimed amid loud
acclamations, mingled with cries of "_Vive le Roi!_"

[Illustration: THE FRENCH REVOLUTION: COSTUME OF LADY OF THE PERIOD.]

This alarming event produced an instant and zealous union of the Court
and the nobles. The heads of the aristocracy and of the dignified
clergy threw themselves at the feet of the king, declaring the
monarchy lost if he did not at once dismiss the States. The utmost
confusion reigned in the palace. The unhappy Louis, never able to
form a resolution of his own, was made to sway to and fro like a
pendulum between opposite recommendations. The Assembly had adjourned
on the 19th to the next day, and Bailly, on reaching the door of the
hall, attended by many other deputies found it not only closed, but
surrounded by soldiers of the French Guard, who had orders to refuse
admittance to every one. Some of the fiercer young spirits amongst the
deputies proposed to force their way in; but the officer in command
ordered his men to stand to their arms, and showed that he would make
use of them. Bailly induced the young men to be patient, and obtained
leave from the officer to enter a court and write a protest. A brisk
conference was then held, while standing in the Avenue de Paris, in the
midst of pouring rain, as to whither they should betake themselves. The
deputy Guillotin recommended that they should go to Old Versailles, to
the Jeu de Paume, or Tennis Court, and this plan was adopted.

[Illustration: THE FRENCH REVOLUTION: COSTUME OF 1790.]

Before leaving, the courteous officer permitted Bailly and about
half-a-dozen deputies to enter and bring out their papers. The
carpenters were already at work making preparations for the royal
séance, which was intended for a counter-manifestation, and as the
body of the deputies, now nearly completing their six hundred, marched
through the streets, they heard the heralds proclaiming it for Monday,
the 22nd. Bailly felt that there was more indignity intended than even
that of turning them so unceremoniously out of their house, for a
message had been sent to him from the king, announcing the séance, but
it had not been delivered to him, as etiquette required, at the hall,
but at his private house, and not by a written dispatch, but verbally
by De Brézé, the master of ceremonies. When the deputies, with their
president at their head, reached the Tennis Court, they found it a very
spacious apartment, but naked, unfurnished, and desolate. There were no
seats for the deputies, and a chair being offered to Bailly he declined
it, saying he would not sit whilst the other members were standing.
A wooden bench was brought, and served for a desk, two deputies were
stationed as doorkeepers, and the keeper of the Court appeared and
offered them his services. Great numbers of the populace crowded in,
and the deliberations commenced. There were loud complaints of the
interruption of their sitting, and many proposals to prevent such
accidents in future. It was proposed to adjourn to Paris, where they
would have the support of the people, and this project was received
with enthusiasm; but Bailly feared that they might be attacked on
the way, and, moreover, that such a measure would give an advantage
to their enemies, looking like a desertion of their ground. Mounier
then proposed that the deputies should bind themselves by an oath
never to separate till they had completed the Constitution. This was
hailed with enthusiasm. The oath was drawn up, and Bailly, standing
on the bench, read it aloud:--"You solemnly swear never to separate,
and to re-assemble whenever circumstances shall require it, until the
Constitution of the kingdom is founded and established on a solid
basis." As he read this all the deputies held up their right hands,
and repeated after him the words, "We swear!" The formula was read so
loud that not only the spectators within but numbers without heard it,
and all joined in the cry, "We swear!" Then followed loud acclaims of
"_Vive l'Assemblée!_" "_Vive le Roi!_"

[Illustration: THE FRENCH REVOLUTION: COSTUME "À LA ROBESPIERRE."]

[Illustration: TRICOTEUSE, OR KNITTING WOMAN, OF THE NATIONAL
CONVENTION.]

After this the royal sitting was useless, as the king's authority was
disregarded by the Third Estate. The Court had to learn that the Tiers
État had remained in their seats after the king and the nobles had
retired. The Assembly then, on the motion of Mirabeau, declared its
members inviolable, and that whoever should lay a hand on any one of
them was a traitor, infamous, and worthy of death.

"Thus," says Thiers, "was effected the first revolution. The Tiers
État had recovered the Legislature, and its adversaries had lost it
by attempting to keep it entirely to themselves. In a few days this
legislative revolution was completely consummated." But it was not
consummated without a violent fermentation of the populace.

The Court and the nobles were greatly alarmed, and secretly preparing
for war. The nobles had joined the Assembly with the utmost repugnance,
and many only on the assurance that the union would not continue. The
members of that Order continued to protest against the proceedings of
the Assembly, rather than join in its deliberations. The king himself
had consented to the union, in the hope that the nobles would be able
to put a check on the Tiers État. King and nobles saw now that all such
hopes were vain. And whilst Necker was retained to satisfy the people
for the present, and whilst Mounier, Lally Tollendal, and Clermont
Tonnerre were consulting with him on establishing a Constitution
resembling that of Britain, the Court was preparing to put down the
insurrection and the Assembly by force. Marshal Broglie was placed at
the head of the troops which surrounded both Paris and Versailles.
He judged of both soldiers and citizens by the recollections of the
Seven Years' War, and assured the king that a little grape-shot would
soon disperse the rioters. Fifteen regiments, chiefly foreign, had
been gradually drawn round the capital. The headquarters of Broglie
were at Versailles, where he had a brilliant staff and a formidable
train of artillery, some of which commanded the very hall in which the
Assembly sat. There was a battery at the bridge of Sèvres, commanding
the road to Paris, and in Paris itself there were strong batteries
on Montmartre, which overlooked the city, and which, moreover, were
carefully entrenched. Besides these preparations, there were French
regiments quartered at St. Germain, Charenton, St. Cloud, and other
places. Altogether, fifty thousand troops were calculated to be
collected. The old noblesse were impatient for the king to give the
order to disperse the people both in Paris and Versailles; to surround
the Assembly, seize the chief members, put them in prison, and send
the rest adrift; to treat the ringleaders of the electors in the same
manner; to dissolve formally the States General, and restore the old
order of things. Had the reins of government been in the hands of a
Bonaparte, the whole plan would have been executed, and would for the
time, without doubt, have succeeded. But Louis XVI. was not the man
for a _coup-d'état_ of that rigorous nature. He shuddered at the idea
of shedding his subjects' blood; and instead of doing that for which
the troops had been assembled, he now listened to Necker, who reminded
him that when the people were put down or shot down, and the States
General dispersed, the old debts and difficulties would remain, and
without States General or Parliament there would be no authority to
impose or collect taxes. To Necker's arguments, the more timid and
liberal nobles added that the excitement would soon wear itself out;
that nothing serious could be done in the presence of such forces, and
that the Constitution, once completed, all would right itself, and
that he would have to congratulate himself on his bloodless patience
in a new and happier reign. This was humane but fatal advice in the
circumstances. The soldiers, allowed to remain inactive in the very
midst of the hotbed of sedition, were sure to become infected with
the spirit of revolution. The debates in the National Assembly were
actively distributed in print, and the soldiers read them eagerly.

Whilst the Court had been conspiring, the people had conspired too. The
electors at the Hôtel de Ville listened with avidity to a suggestion
of Mirabeau, thrown out in the National Assembly, which passed at the
time without much notice. This was for organising the citizens into a
City Guard. The plan had originated with Dumont and his countryman,
Duroverai, both Genevese. Mirabeau had adopted and promulgated it.
Fallen unnoticed in the Assembly, on the 10th of July Carra revived
it at the Hôtel de Ville. He declared that the right of the Commune
to take means for the defence of the city was older than the Monarchy
itself. The Parisian people seconded, in an immense multitude, this
daring proposition, and desired nothing more than a direct order to
arm themselves and to maintain their own safety. Thus encouraged,
Mirabeau renewed his motion in the National Assembly. He demanded that
the troops should be withdrawn from the neighbourhood of Versailles
and Paris, and a burgher guard substituted. He also moved that the
"discussion on the Constitution should be suspended till the security
of the capital and the Assembly were effected." He moved for an
address to the king, praying him to dismiss the troops, and rely on
the affections of his people. The motion was carried, and a committee
appointed to draw up the address. The address was presented by a
deputation of twenty-four members. The king replied that the troops
had been assembled to preserve public tranquillity and to protect the
National Assembly; but that if the Assembly felt any apprehension, he
would send away the troops to Noyon or Soissons and would go himself to
Compiègne. This answer was anything but satisfactory, for this would
be to withdraw the Assembly much farther from Paris, and the movement
would thus weaken the influence of the Assembly, and at the same time
place the king between two powerful armies--the one under Broglie, at
Soissons, and another which lay on the river Oise, under the Marquis
de Bouillé, a most determined Royalist. The Assembly was greatly
disconcerted when this reply was reported.

At this very moment Necker was receiving his dismissal. His situation
at Court had been most painful. The people surrounded the palace,
crying, "Vive Necker!" "Vive le Ministre du Peuple!" He was more
popular than ever, because he had had no part in the insult to the
Tiers État on the 23rd of June. At the same time, when the queen
appeared on the balcony with a child in her arms, the fiercest
execrations were uttered amid curses on the aristocrats. This made
Necker all the more unpopular within the palace. He was accused of
having produced all the mischiefs by advising the king to summon the
States General. He retorted that the nobles and bishops were the cause,
by preventing the king from following the plans he had laid down.
Necker, therefore, begged to resign; but he had been always desired to
remain, for the Court apprehended an outbreak if he were dismissed. But
now, matters being deemed sufficiently safe--the army being in grand
force--the king, on the 11th of July, took him at his word. Necker
was just sitting down to dinner when he received the king's note,
which begged him to keep his retirement secret, and to get across the
frontier as expeditiously as possible.

On the morning of the next day, Sunday, the 12th of July, the news
was all over Paris that Necker was dismissed. The alarm was intense.
Paris was in an uproar. The Palais Royal was choked with people in
a frenzy of excitement. All at once a young man leaped upon a table
and shouted, "To arms! to arms! Whilst we are talking, foreign troops
are gathering round us to massacre us!" This orator, whose loud voice
and dramatic action stopped in a moment the buzz of tongues and the
voices of lesser orators, mounted on chairs and tables, was Benoit
Camille Desmoulins, already a favourite orator of the people on this
spot. This fanatic revolutionist now held up a brace of pistols; and,
snatching a green twig from a tree, stuck it into his hat as a cockade.
There was an instantaneous imitation of the act by the whole mass of
people. The trees were all stripped, and a woman brought out a great
roll of green ribbon, and cut off cockades for the patriots as far as
it would go. The mob, armed with pistols, clubs, swords, and axes,
continued their procession along the Rue Richelieu; then turning on the
Boulevard, along the Rues St. Martin, St. Denis, St. Honoré, to the
Place Vendôme. There a German squadron was drawn up before the hotel of
the farmers of the taxes, and attacked the crowd, destroyed the busts,
and killed a soldier of the French Guard who stood his ground. The
commandant, Besenval, remained inactive in the École Militaire; he was
without orders from Broglie; and, besides, dared not trust the French
Guard, but kept them close in their barracks. But he had three foreign
regiments at his disposal, one of Swiss and two of German cavalry.
Towards afternoon, seeing the disorder increase, he sent the Swiss
into the Champs Elysées with four pieces of cannon, and the German
cavalry into the Place Louis Quinze, adjoining. As Prince Lambesc,
with the Germans, was marching along the Chaussée d'Antin, he was met
by a body of the French Guard, who had escaped from their barracks
to avenge their slain comrade. They fired on him and killed three of
the German cavalry, and wounded numbers more. They then advanced with
fixed bayonets to the Place Louis Quinze, where the Swiss Guard were
posted. There they and the Swiss remained facing each other under arms
all night, the people feasting and encouraging the French Guard; who,
however, did not come to blows with the Swiss. Lambesc had continued
his route to St. Cloud, leaving the city all night in the hands of
the mob, who burnt the barriers at the different entrances, so as to
allow free access to the people from the country; and broke open the
gunsmiths' shops, and carried off the arms. During the whole of the
next day the city was in the hands of the mob.

Whilst these scenes were going on all around, and the city was
menaced every moment by troops, by the raving multitude, and by whole
squadrons of thieves and assassins, the electors were busily employed
in organising a City Guard. But, previous to entering on this task,
it was necessary to establish some sort of municipal authority more
definite and valid than that of the electors at large. A requisition
was then presented to the provost of trades (prévôt des marchands) to
take the head. A number of electors were appointed his assistants. Thus
was formed a municipality of sufficient powers. It was then determined
that this militia, or guard, should consist of forty-eight thousand
men furnished by the districts. They were to wear not the green, but
the Parisian cockade, of red and blue. Every man found in arms, and
wearing this cockade, without having been enrolled in this body by his
district, was to be apprehended, disarmed, and punished. And thus arose
the National Guard of Paris.

During these proceedings, the National Assembly was sitting at
Versailles in the utmost agitation. On the morning of the 13th, Mounier
had risen and censured the dismissal of the Ministers, and had been
seconded by Lally Tollendal, who had pronounced a splendid panegyric
on Necker, and recommended an address to the king for his recall. M.
de Virieu, a deputy of the noblesse, proposed to confirm by oath the
proceedings of the 17th of June; but Clermont Tonnerre declared that
unnecessary, as the Assembly had sworn to establish a constitution, and
he exclaimed, "The Constitution we will have, or we will perish!" In
the midst of this discussion came the news of the rising of the people
of Paris, on the morning of the 13th, and an address was immediately
voted to the king, beseeching him to withdraw the foreign troops,
and authorise the organisation of the Civic Guards. The Duke de la
Rochefoucauld said, the foreign troops in the hands of despotism were
most perilous to the people, who were not in any one's hands. The
address was sent, and the king returned a curt answer, that Paris was
not in a condition to take care of itself. The Assembly then assumed a
higher tone, asserted that the present counsellors of the king would be
responsible for all the calamities which might take place, and declared
itself in permanent session, that is, that it would sit day and night
till the crisis was over. It appointed M. de Lafayette vice-president,
in the place of the aged Bishop of Vienne, who was not capable of much
exertion.

But the Court had hesitated too long. The people had taken the start
of them, and now came sounds which paralysed the Court party with
consternation. Scarcely was midnight passed on this eventful 14th of
July, when the throngs increased rapidly around the Bastille, and the
cries grew fiercer, "Down with it!" "Let us storm it!" De Launay, the
governor, had made all necessary preparations, charged a dozen long
guns on the towers with balls of a pound and a half each, and disposed
his little force to the best advantage. While the democratic leaders
were negotiating with the garrison, the crowd grew first impatient,
then furious. They advanced impetuously against the first drawbridge.
Two men mounted the roof of the guard-house, and, with axes, cut the
chains of the bridge, which fell down. The mass of assailants rushed
forward towards the second bridge, but were met by a discharge of
musketry, which did deadly execution amongst them and brought them to
a stand. The firing proceeded at once from the towers and from the
loop-holes below. A number of the assailants fell, whilst only two
of the muskets fired by the people during the whole day took effect.
De Launay now gave orders to fire on the assailants with grape. This
drove them back to some distance, but they soon came on more furious
than ever. De Launay looked in vain for the promised succour from
Besenval or Broglie, and seeing the ever-increasing and ever more
raging thousands around, he lost his head, was seized with despair, and
resolved to blow up the prison and a great part of the old town near
it. Six hundred and thirty-five barrels of gunpowder were deposited in
the magazine. Seizing a match, he ran to cast it into an open barrel,
and thus send into the air the horrible old fortress, himself, and
garrison. With it must inevitably have been destroyed all the quarter
of the Bastille, all the Marais, and a great part of the Faubourg St.
Antoine. Two uncommissioned officers stopped him by crossing their
bayonets. He then attempted to kill himself, but was secured. His head
was wholly gone--he was no longer capable of issuing an order.

The Bastille surrendered almost immediately after the governor had been
seized with despair. The French Guard began to cannonade the fortress;
the captain of the Swiss, who might undoubtedly have held out much
longer, saw that no rescue came, and that prolonged resistance would
only lead in the end to sanguinary vengeance, he therefore hoisted
a white flag. The captain of the Swiss demanded to be allowed to
capitulate, and to march out with the honours of war; but the furious
mob cried out, "No capitulation! no quarter! The rascals have fired
upon the People!" The Swiss captain then said that they would lay
down their arms, on condition that their lives should be spared. Then
the gates of the old prison were thrown open, and the furious and
triumphant mob burst in. The news of the fall of the Bastille came as a
thunder-clap. The king, who had not been so confident, was gone to bed.
The Duke de Liancourt, Grand Master of the Wardrobe, by virtue of his
office went to his bedside, awoke him, and told him the amazing fact.
"What!" exclaimed Louis, "is it, then, really a revolt?" "Say, rather,
sire," replied the Duke, "a revolution!"

[Illustration: THE CONQUERORS OF THE BASTILLE. (_After the Picture by
François Flameng._)]

The king agreed to visit the Assembly in the morning; and he went,
attended by his two brothers. He addressed them in a kind and
conciliatory tone. He said, "You have been afraid of me; but, for my
part, I put my trust in you." This avowal was received with applause,
in one of those bursts of sentiment, so sudden and so soon over, which
mark French history one moment with tearful emotions and the next with
savage bloodshed. The deputies surrounded the monarch, and escorted him
back to the palace with tears in their eyes. The queen, from a balcony,
saw this enthusiastic procession. She stood with the little dauphin in
her arms, and her daughter holding by her dress; and herself, greatly
moved, was hailed for the moment also by the senators. For the time all
seemed to be forgotten. The king consented to the recall of Necker.
The Duke de Liancourt was appointed president of the Assembly, in the
place of Bailly; and the nobles, who had hitherto absented themselves
from the sittings, now attended and voted. Thus was the Assembly
apparently amalgamated, and the revolution completed. A sudden fit
of generosity seemed to seize the nobles in the Assembly--which, in
fact, was a fit of terror--for they had come to the conclusion that no
protection was to be expected from the Assembly against the fury and
cupidity of the people. They saw that the Assembly was the slave of the
people; that the army had fraternised with the people; and that they
were at the mercy of the merciless populace. The Viscount de Noailles
and the Duke d'Aiguillon declared that it would be wicked and absurd
to employ force to quiet the people. They must destroy the cause of
their sufferings, and all would be accomplished. The nobles hastened to
renounce their privileges. They crowded round the table to enumerate
what they surrendered. The Commons, having nothing of their own to give
up, surrendered the privileges and charters of towns and provinces.
Some offered up their pensions; and one deputy, having nothing else,
surrendered his personal convenience, pledging himself to devote his
energies to the public welfare. The whole Assembly was in a ferment and
fever-heat paroxysm of renunciation, such as could only be witnessed
in France. Lally Tollendal, unable to approach the tribunal, sent
up a note to the President--"Everything is to be apprehended, from
the enthusiasm of the Assembly. Break up the sitting!" Lally moved
that the king should be proclaimed the restorer of French liberty,
which was carried by acclamation; that a Te Deum should be performed
for this joyful event; and the Assembly broke up about midnight in a
bewilderment of rapture and wonder at its own deed.

The Assembly had, on this memorable night of the 4th of August,
decreed nothing less than--the abolition of all serfdom; the right
of compounding for the seignorial dues, and the abolition of
seignorial jurisdictions; the suppression of exclusive rights of
hunting, shooting, keeping warrens, dovecotes, etc.; the abolition
of tithes; the equality of taxes; the admission of all citizens to
civil and military employments; the abolition of the sale of offices;
the suppression of all the privileges of towns and provinces; the
reformation of wardenships; and the suppression of pensions obtained
without just claims. The Assembly then continued the work of the
constitution.

In the midst of this constitution-making, famine was stalking through
the country, and bankruptcy was menacing the exchequer. The first loan
of thirty millions had proved a total failure; a second of eighty,
according to a fresh plan of Necker's, was equally a blank. With the
necessities of the Government, the necessities of the people kept pace.
The whole country was revolutionising instead of working; destroying
estates instead of cultivating them. Farmers were afraid of sowing
what they might never reap; trade and manufactures were at an end, for
there was little money and no confidence. The country was not become
unfruitful, but its people had gone mad, and the inevitable consequence
was an ever-increasing famine. This, instead of being attributed to the
true causes, was ascribed by the mob orators to all kinds of devilish
practices of the Court and the aristocracy.

The Court was soon alarmed by the report that the National Guard
intended to march from Paris to Versailles, and, after removing the
Bodyguard, to do duty at the palace themselves, in order to prevent
the royal family from escaping abroad. Lafayette, now head of the
National Guard, on the 17th of September wrote to St. Priest, one of
the Ministers, to assure him that there was no truth in the report,
and therefore no danger. D'Estaing, the commander of the Bodyguard,
however, to whom Lafayette's letter was communicated by St. Priest,
did not feel satisfied, and proposed to bring the regiment of Flanders
to Versailles, and the Assembly being applied to for its sanction,
declared it was no business of theirs; and thus, neither encouraging
nor discouraging the measure, the regiment was sent for. It arrived on
the 23rd of September; and, at the sight of the long train of waggons
that followed, alarm seized both the people of Versailles and the
Assembly. Mirabeau, who, by a word, could have prevented the coming of
the regiment, now denounced it as dangerous. News flew to Paris that
a counter-revolution was preparing, and that the foreigners would be
marched on the city. All this terror of one single regiment showed
a disposition to feign alarm, rather than the real existence of it;
but the Court committed the great folly of creating fresh reasons for
jealousy. The officers of the Life Guard showed a most lively desire
to fraternise with those of the Flanders regiment, and the courtiers
were equally attentive to them. The officers of the Flanders regiment
were not only presented at the king's levee, but invited to the queen's
drawing-room, and treated in the most flattering manner. The Gardes du
Corps gave a grand dinner to welcome them; and, what was extraordinary,
they were allowed to give it in the theatre of the palace. This took
place on the 2nd of October. The boxes were filled by people belonging
to the Court. The officers of the National Guard were amongst the
guests. After the wine had circulated some time amongst the three
hundred guests, the soldiers, both of the Flanders regiment and of the
other corps, the company, with drawn swords, and heated by champagne,
drank the health of the royal family; the toast of the nation was
rejected or omitted. The grenadiers in the pit demanded to be allowed
to drink the royal healths, and goblets of wine were handed to them,
and they drank the health of the king, the queen, the dauphin, and the
rest of the royal family amid mutual shaking of hands and loud shouts
of "_Vive le Roi! Vive la Reine!_" The band of the Flanders regiment
then struck up the very expressive and celebrated song of Blondel when
seeking his captive king, Cœur de Lion--

    "O Richard! o mon Roi!
    L'univers t'abandonne--"

The whole company caught the royal infection. They vowed to die for
the king, as if he were in imminent danger. Cockades, white or black,
but all of one colour, were distributed; and it is said the tricolour
was trodden under foot. In a word, the whole company was gone mad with
champagne and French sentiment, and hugged and kissed each other in
a wild frenzy. At this moment a door opened, and the king and queen,
leading the dauphin by the hand, entered, and at the sight the tumult
became boundless. Numbers flung themselves at the feet of the royal
pair, and escorted them back to their apartments.

All this was little less than madness on the part of the royal family.
They knew that the army at large was disaffected to royalty, and of
what avail were two regiments? If they really sought to escape, it
could only have been done by the utmost quiet and caution. The Flanders
regiment could have guarded them. But now the certain consequence must
be to rouse all the fury of Paris, and bring it down upon them. This
was the instant result. Paris, in alarm, cried, "To Versailles!" On
the night of the 4th of October the streets were thronged with excited
people; the National Guard were under arms everywhere, and maintained
some degree of order. On the morning of the 5th the women took up the
matter. They found no bread at the bakers', and they collected in
crowds, and determined to march to the Hôtel de Ville, and demand it
of the mayor. The women had refused to allow the men to join them,
declaring that they were not fit for the work they were going to do;
but numbers had followed them, better armed than themselves, and they
now assisted them to break open doors, where they obtained seven or
eight hundred muskets, three bags of money and two small cannon. As
they were proceeding to make a bonfire of the papers, which would
probably have burnt the whole place down, the commander of the National
Guard gave up the matter in despair; but one Stanislas Maillard,
a riding-messenger of the municipality, with more address, called
out to them to desist; that there was a much better thing to do--to
march at once to Versailles, and compel the Court to furnish bread,
and that he would be their leader. He seized a drum and beat it; the
women cried lustily, "To Versailles!" Some ran to the tower of the
Hôtel and sounded the tocsin. The bells soon began to ring out from
every steeple in Paris; the whole population was afloat; the men and
women, armed with all sorts of weapons, followed their new leader, who
had been one of the heroes of the Bastille, and he marched them to
the Champs Elysées. There he arranged his motley and ever-increasing
army: the women in a compact body in the middle, the men in front and
rear. Horses, waggons, carriages of all kinds, were seized on wherever
they were seen; some of these were harnessed to the cannon, and then
Maillard, drumming at their head, put his army in motion, and on they
went towards Versailles, stopping every carriage that they met, and
compelling even ladies to turn again and accompany them.

Meanwhile, Lafayette and Bailly, summoned by this strange news, had
hurried to the Hôtel de Ville, where they found the National Guard and
the French Guard drawn up, and demanding to be led to Versailles. The
French Guard declared that the nation had been insulted by the Flanders
regiment--the national cockade trampled on; and that they would go
and bring the king to Paris, and then all should be well. Bailly and
Lafayette attempted to reason with them; but they, and thousands upon
thousands of armed rabble again collected there, only cried, "Bread!
bread! Lead us to Versailles!" There was nothing for it but to comply;
and at length Lafayette declared that he would conduct them there. He
mounted his white horse, and this second army, about three o'clock in
the afternoon, marched in the track of the amazons who had already
reached Versailles.

"It was on foot," says Mounier, "in the mud, and under a violent storm
of rain. The Paris women intermixed with a certain number of men,
ragged and ferocious, and uttering frightful howlings. As we approached
the palace, we were taken for a desperate mob. Some of the Gardes du
Corps pricked their horses amongst us and dispersed us. It was with
difficulty that I made myself known, and equally difficult it was to
make our way into the palace. Instead of six women, I was compelled
to admit twelve. The king received them graciously, but separated
from their own raging and rioting class, the women were overcome by
the presence of the king, and Louison Chabry, a handsome young girl
of seventeen, could say nothing but the word 'Bread!' She would have
fallen on the floor, but the king caught her in his arms, embraced and
encouraged her; and this settled completely the rest of the women, who
knelt and kissed his hand. Louis assured them that he was very sorry
for them, and would do all in his power to have Paris well supplied
with bread. They then went out blessing him and all his family, and
declared to those outside that never was there so good a king. At
this the furious mob exclaimed that they had been tampered with by
the aristocrats, and were for tearing them to pieces; and, seizing
Louison, they were proceeding to hang her on a lamp-post, when some
of the Gardes du Corps, commanded by the Count de Guiche, "interfered
and rescued her." One Brunout, an artisan of Paris, and a hero of
the Bastille, having advanced so as to be separated from the women,
some of the Guard struck him with the flat of their swords. There was
an instant cry that the Guard were massacring the people; and the
National Guard of Versailles being called on to protect them, one of
them discharged a musket, and broke the arm of M. de Savonières, one
of the Life Guard. The firing on the Life Guard by the National Guard
then continued, and the Life Guard filed off, firing as they went. The
mob, now triumphant, attempted to fire two pieces of cannon, which
they turned upon the palace; but the powder was wet and would not
explode. The king, having meanwhile heard the firing, sent the Duke
of Luxembourg to order that the Guard should not fire, but retire to
the back of the palace. The mob then retired into Versailles in search
of bread, which Lecointre, a draper of the town, and commander of its
National Guard, promised to procure them from the municipality. But
the municipality had no bread to give, or took no pains to furnish it,
and the crowds, drenched with rain, sought shelter wherever they could
for the night. The women rushed again into the Hall of the Assembly,
and took possession of it without any ceremony. Soon after midnight
the roll of drums announced the arrival of Lafayette and his army.
An aide-de-camp soon after formally communicated his arrival to the
Assembly; that they had been delayed by the state of the roads; and
that Lafayette had also stopped them to administer to them an oath of
fidelity to the nation, the law, and the king; that all was orderly,
and that they had nothing to fear. Lafayette soon after confirmed
this by leading a column of the National Guard to the doors of the
Assembly, and sending in this message. The Assembly being satisfied,
adjourned till eleven o'clock the next day. Lafayette then proceeded
to the palace, where he assured the king and the royal family of the
loyalty of the Guard, and that every precaution should be taken for
tranquillity during the night. On this the king appeared to be at ease
and retired to rest. The mob attacked the palace in the night, but
Lafayette prevented an assault on the royal family, though two of the
Guard were butchered. The king during the night repeatedly sent to
inform the deputies of his intention to go to Paris.

[Illustration: THE BASTILLE.]

The Assembly had not paid him the respect to wait on him; but, at the
last moment, they passed a resolution that the Assembly was inseparable
from the person of the king, and appointed one hundred deputies to
attend him. Amongst them was Mirabeau. It was about one o'clock when
the king quitted Versailles amid a general discharge of musketry,
falsely, on this occasion, termed a _feu-de-joie_. The king and queen,
the dauphin, and the little daughter, Monsieur, the king's brother, and
Madame Elizabeth, the king's sister, went all in one great State coach.
Others of the royal household, with the ladies of honour, and the one
hundred deputies, followed in about a hundred vehicles of one kind or
other. The Mayor, Bailly, received them at the barrier of Paris, and
conducted them to the Hôtel de Ville. So soon as they had passed the
barrier, the numerous procession were joined by the whole leviathan mob
of Paris, calculated at two hundred thousand men! It was night, and the
crushing and shouting throngs prevented the royal carriage from more
than merely moving all the way from the barrier to the Place de Grève.
At the Hôtel de Ville, Moreau de St. Mery addressed the king in a long
speech, congratulating him on his happy arrival amongst his people--his
"loving children of the capital." The poor tired and dispirited king
replied that he always came with confidence amongst his people. Bailly
repeated the words in a loud tone to the people, but omitted the words
"with confidence," whereupon the queen said, with much spirit, "Sir,
add 'with confidence';" so Bailly replied, "Gentlemen, in hearing it
from the lips of the queen you are happier than if I had not made
that mistake." The king was then exhibited on the balcony to the mob,
with a huge tricolour cockade in his hat, at which sight, in French
fashion, the people hugged and kissed each other and danced for joy. It
was eleven o'clock at night before the miserable royal captives were
conducted by Lafayette to their appointed prison--for such it was, in
fact--the great palace of their ancestors, the Tuileries, which had
been uninhabited for a century, and had not been prepared for their
reception. The Assembly followed, and proceeded to work under the eyes
of the Paris commune and the people. Power was fast slipping from their
hands.

In such circumstances closed the year 1789. The intense excitement
which the rapid course of these French events had produced in England
had nearly superseded all other topics of interest. At first there
was an almost universal jubilation over this wonderful revolution.
The dreadful state of misery and oppression to which France had been
reduced; the fearful exactions; the system of popular ignorance
maintained by priestcraft; the abominable feudal insolence; the abuse
of _lettres de cachet_; and the internal obstructions of customs
and barriers between one province and another, made every friend of
freedom desirous of seeing all these swept away. The early progress
of their destruction was hailed with enthusiasm in England. Even the
retired and timid poet, Cowper sang a triumphal note on the fall of the
Bastille; but soon the bloody fury of the populace, and the domineering
character of the Assembly, which did not deign to stop at the proper
constitutional limits, began to create distrust and alarm. Amongst the
first to perceive and to denounce this work of anarchy rather than
of reform, was Burke. In common with Fox and Pitt, and many other
statesmen, he had rejoiced in the fall of the corrupt government of
France; but he soon began to perceive that the people were displaying
the same ferocious character as in all their former outbreaks. "If,"
he wrote to M. Menonville, a moderate Member of the Assembly, "any of
these horrid deeds were the acts of the rulers, what are we to think
of the armed people under such rulers? But if there be no rulers in
reality, and the chiefs are driven before the people rather than lead
them; and if the armed corps are composed of men who have no fixed
principle of obedience, and are moved only by the prevalence of some
general inclination, who can repute himself safe amongst a people so
furious and so senseless?" As he continued to gaze, he was compelled
to confess that he saw no great and wise principles of legislation
displayed by the Assembly; but that it went on destroying, without
knowing how to rebuild in a manner likely to last or to work any one
any good. The whole of the constitution-making, which annihilated
the royal power, which erected no second chamber, but absorbed all
authority into the Assembly, a mixed and heterogeneous body, he
declared to be a bungling and monstrous performance. On the other
hand, Dr. Price, Dr. Priestley, and numbers of equally enthusiastic
men, saw nothing but what was animating in the progress of the French
Revolution. "The Revolution Society," including many of the highest
names of the Whig aristocracy, which was accustomed to meet on the 5th
of November, to celebrate the anniversary of the landing of William
III., and the English Revolution of 1688, this year presented a glowing
address of congratulation to the French National Assembly, which was
carried over by Lord Stanhope and Dr. Price. Of course, they and the
address were received with great acclamation by the Assembly. The
admiration of the French Revolution spread over Britain. Clubs were
established, both in London and in the country, in sympathy with it,
and the press became very Gallican and Republican in its tone, and
there was much corresponding with admirers of the revolution in France,
especially with Thomas Paine, who had now transferred himself from
America, with a political fanatic destined to acquire considerable
attention, calling himself Anacharsis Clootz, the "orator of mankind,"
and with many others.

We must open the year 1790 by reverting to the affairs of Britain,
and of other countries having an influence on British interests. The
Parliament met on the 21st of January; and, in the course of the debate
on the Address in the Commons, Fox took the opportunity to laud the
French Revolution, and especially the soldiers for destroying the
Government which had raised them, and which they had sworn to obey.
Burke, in reply, whilst paying the highest compliments to the genius
of Fox, and expressing the value which he placed on his friendship,
endeavoured to guard the House and country against the pernicious
consequences of such an admiration as had been expressed by Fox.
He declared the conduct of the troops disgraceful; for instead of
betraying the Government, they ought to have defended it so far as to
allow of its yielding the necessary reforms. But the so-called reforms
in France, he said, were a disgrace to the nation. They had, instead
of limiting each branch of the Government for the general good and for
rational liberty, destroyed all the balances and counterpoises which
gave the State steadiness and security. They had pulled down all things
into an incongruous and ill-digested mass; they had concocted a digest
of anarchy called the Rights of Man, which would disgrace a schoolboy;
and had laid the axe to the root of all property by confiscating that
of the Church. To compare that revolution with our glorious one of
1688, he said, was next to blasphemy. They were diametrically opposed.
Ours preserved the Constitution and got rid of an arbitrary monarch;
theirs destroyed the Constitution and kept a monarch who was willing
to concede reforms, but who was left helpless. Fox replied that he had
been mistaken by his most venerated and estimable friend; that he was
no friend to anarchy and lamented the cruelties that had been practised
in France, but he considered them the natural result of the long and
terrible despotism which had produced the convulsion, and that he had
the firmest hopes that the French would yet complete their Constitution
with wisdom and moderation. Here the matter might have ended, but
Sheridan rose and uttered a grand but ill-considered eulogium on
the French Revolution, and charged Burke with being an advocate of
despotism. Burke highly resented this; he made a severe reply to
Sheridan; and instead of the benefits which he prognosticated, Burke,
with a deeper sagacity, declared that the issue of that revolution
would be not only civil war but many other wars.

The Whig party were in consternation at this sudden disruption of the
union of the heads of their party. A meeting was held on the night
of the 11th of February at Burlington House, which did not separate
till three in the morning. The result did not appear to have been very
satisfactory, and the fears of the Whigs were greatly augmented by
finding Pitt, who had hitherto praised the Revolution, now express the
great obligations of the country to Mr. Burke, for the able warning
which he had given against revolutionary principles. The king made no
secret of his abhorrence of these principles. He considered the French
Revolution as the direct result of the American one; and having come
to the conclusion that he had himself erred by too much concession,
he now censured the concessions of Louis XVI. as fraught with certain
calamity. All this boded a decided resistance to the spirit of reform
at home. There was a new schism amongst the organs of the press.
Many of the newspapers still fostered in their columns the wildest
hopes of universal advantage to the cause of liberty from the French
Revolution; but others adopted the opinions and views of Burke--and no
few of the Whig and Foxite papers were of this class. The effect of
the alarm at the wild conduct of the French was speedily seen in the
refusal to consider the repeal of the Test and Corporation Act, which
was brought forward by Fox, on behalf of the Dissenters, and a motion
for parliamentary reform, introduced by Mr. Flood. Both were strongly
opposed, on the ground that this was not the time to make any changes
whilst so riotous a spirit of change was near us, and was so warmly
admired by many of our own people. Both motions were rejected by large
majorities.

On the 31st of March Dundas introduced the Indian Budget, and soon
afterwards Pitt congratulated the country on the fact that, so far from
the American war having injured the trade or the power of Britain,
the fact was that our shipping had increased considerably more than
one-third since 1773, and we had been continually gaining strength
even during the American war, and had relieved ourselves of a load
of expense always incurred by the government of the States. This was
an admirable argument for declaring all our colonies independent, if
it meant anything; but Pitt went on seconding, and even surpassing
Dundas in the prognostications of a long peace. What such ministerial
speeches were worth was shown on the 5th of May, only a month and
five days since the prophecy of Dundas, and not three weeks since his
own prophecy, by Pitt announcing that the peace was already disturbed
with Spain. It appeared that the high prices obtained by the crews of
Captain Cook's ships, the _Discovery_ and _Resolution_, at Canton,
on his exploring voyages in the South Seas, for the ill-selected,
half-worn furs brought from the north-west coast of America, had
attracted the attention of adventurers under the direct protection
of the East India Company. Mr. Mears, who had been a lieutenant in
the royal navy, and a Mr. Tippin, were sent out in command each of
a vessel. Tippin was wrecked on the coast of Kamtschatka; but Mears
reached Prince William's Sound and wintered there, opening a good trade
with the natives. In the spring of 1788 he discovered Nootka Sound,
a fine bay on the west side of a small island on the west coast of
Vancouver's Island. There he formed a settlement, making a bargain
with the chief for it. He went to Canton with furs and was opening a
fine trade, when the Spaniards came down on the settlement, seized
four British vessels, but permitted two United States' vessels to
remain unmolested. Part of the English crew were shipped in one of the
American vessels to China, and the rest suffered to depart in one of
their own ships after it had been plundered. The Spanish commander then
settled himself in the new colony, and Spain set up a general claim to
all coasts and islands, and the whole Pacific as far as China.

Pitt, on the day mentioned, announced these facts, and declared that
his Majesty had demanded satisfaction from the Court of Spain for the
insult to our flag and for the usurpation of our settlement; but that
considerable armaments were making in the ports of Spain. He called
upon the House to address his Majesty, imploring him to take all
necessary measures for the vindication of our honour and our rights.
Fox naturally expressed his surprise at this announcement, after the
high assurances of such profound prospects of peace little more than a
fortnight before. He moreover asserted that not only were the Ministers
fully aware of all these circumstances at the very moment when the
Premier made these statements, but that he had himself been aware of
them a considerable time before that. Pitt endeavoured to explain that
all the circumstances were not known when he professed such confidence
in peace; but these assertions were clearly as little true as the
former, for the British Government had received information from
the Spanish Government itself, as early as the 10th of the previous
February. Notwithstanding, the House supported the Government warmly
in its determination to resist the enormous claims of Spain and to
compel her to make satisfaction. Lord Howe was desired to have a fleet
in readiness, and the Spanish Court having taken a high tone to Mr.
Merry, our Minister at Madrid, Mr. Fitzherbert was dispatched thither
as our plenipotentiary. He arrived at Madrid in the beginning of June.
At first the Spanish Court were very high, and applied to France for
co-operation, according to treaty; but France, in the throes of the
Revolution, had no money to spend in such armaments and, on second
thoughts, Spain dreaded introducing French revolutionary sailors
amongst their own. They soon, therefore, lowered their tone, agreed to
surrender Nootka Sound, make full compensation for all damages, and
consented that British subjects should continue their fisheries in the
South Seas, and make settlements on any coasts not already occupied.
Captain Vancouver, who had been with Cook as a midshipman in his
last two voyages, being present at his tragical death, was sent out
in the following year to see that the settlement of Nootka Sound was
duly surrendered to England. He saw this done, the Spanish commander,
Quadra, behaving in a very friendly manner; and he proceeded then,
during the years 1792 and 1793, to make many accurate surveys of the
western coasts of North and South America, in which the Spaniards gave
him every assistance. The British took formal possession not only of
Nootka Sound, but of the fine island called after Vancouver. Pitt was
highly complimented for his firmness and ability in the management of
this business.

Wilberforce, on the 27th of January, had obtained a committee of
inquiry into the slave trade. He, Clarkson, and the anti-slavery
committees, both in London and the provinces, were labouring with
indefatigable industry in collecting and diffusing information on
this subject. The Committee of the Commons found strong opposition
even in the House, and, on the 23rd of April, Lord Penrhyn moved that
no further evidence should be heard by the Committee; but this was
overruled, and the hearing of evidence continued through the Session,
though no further debate took place on the question.

In Ireland, the influence of the free notions of France was already
become broadly manifest, and though it resulted in no unconstitutional
act, it wonderfully invigorated the resentment of the Irish against
corruptions of Government. These truly demanded reprehension and
reform; but the Government of Pitt was strong, and set both Ireland and
reform at defiance. The Marquis of Buckingham, the Lord-Lieutenant,
was recalled, because he had not been able to repress the movement in
the Irish Parliament on the Regency question. The Earl of Westmoreland
was sent in his place; but the Parliament still showed its resentment
as strongly as ever, and proceeded to delve vigorously into the sink
of Government corruption, and demand numerous corrections of abuses.
Direct motions on the subject were made in both Houses; in the Peers
by Lord Portarlington, in the Commons by Grattan, and, in truth,
the ministerial abuses of the Irish Government were disgraceful.
Grattan, on the 1st of February, pointed out the increased number of
commissioners of revenue, and moved that his Majesty be addressed to
inquire by whose advice this had been done. Next the increase of the
Pension List came under discussion; then the granting of no less than
fourteen Government offices to members of the Irish Commons. Lastly
was noticed the paltry withdrawal of Lord Strangford's pension of
four hundred pounds, which had been granted him at the request of the
Irish House of Lords, in consequence of his small income, because he
had voted against Ministers on the Regency Bill, at the same time that
numbers of men who were not Irishmen, and had never done anything for
Ireland or any other country, were saddled on the Irish revenue in a
variety of sinecure posts and pensions. All these motions, however,
were rejected by large Ministerial majorities.

[Illustration: CAPTAIN COOK.

(_After the Portrait by Dance, in Greenwich Hospital._)]

Before returning to the progress of the French Revolution, we must pass
a hasty glance over the affairs of the Netherlands and the north of
Europe. On the accession of Leopold, the brother of Joseph, a sweeping
change was made in Austrian policy. Leopold had ruled his dominions,
as Grand Duke of Tuscany, with remarkable wisdom and benevolence. He
had introduced many admirable reforms, and had abolished the punishment
of death--a grand example to the other nations of Europe, and proved
to be as sound as it was striking by its results. He now made haste to
assure the Netherlanders that all their grievances should be redressed,
and their old charters and constitution restored. There had always
been a considerable party in favour of the Imperial Government, and
this party was now greatly increased by these wise assurances, which
were relied on from the known magnanimous character of the Emperor.
A Congress met at Reichenbach to endeavour to make a peace between
Austria and the Sultan, and this was accomplished by the mediation of
Britain, Prussia, and Holland, backed up by the threat of an immediate
invasion by Prussia, which was instigated by Pitt. The Ministers of
the three Powers that had brought about this peace of Reichenbach,
next guaranteed to Leopold all the possessions of Austria in the
Netherlands, on condition that he should restore all the ancient
privileges and constitution. On the other hand, the democratic party
had a congress of the United Belgic States, and this congress, infected
by the French Republican principles, declared still for independence,
in which they were at first encouraged by the democrats in France.
Lafayette reverted to the idea of a republic in the Netherlands, which
should form a barrier between Austria and France, in case that Austria
should attempt to invade France and crush the Revolution, as appeared
probable. Dumouriez was sent to Brussels to inquire into the real
state of the Netherlands, as the Belgians had sent deputies to Paris
to make certain overtures. The result of Dumouriez's inquiries was so
extremely unfavourable that the French Government gave up all idea
of meddling in Netherland affairs. To Dumouriez, Van der Noot, the
leader of the revolutionary party, appeared a regular adventurer and
impostor, the people to be ignorant and bigoted; and the army, though
full of courage, yet destitute of good officers, money, clothing,
and discipline. Dumouriez, therefore, shrewdly concluded that France
had better make no present engagements with the Belgian reformers,
but leave the destinies of the country to be decided by the Congress
at Reichenbach, where the British, Dutch, and Prussian Ministers
had guaranteed the restoration of the government to Leopold, on the
renewal of the ancient institutions. Here again Pitt's foreign policy
was completely successful. Leopold easily crushed the rebellion,
and, having crushed it, proceeded to carry out the conditions of the
Convention of Reichenbach.

The Pitt Ministry figured with less success as regarded the
encroachments of Russia on the Turkish empire. The undisguised policy
of Catherine was to press on her operations against Turkey till she
had planted herself in Constantinople. Pitt continued as inactive as
if there were no danger at all, and the same policy actuated Holland
and Prussia. The least support given by these Powers to Gustavus of
Sweden would have effectually checked the Russian designs in the East,
and have raised Sweden into a position capable of acting as a dead
weight on Russian aggression. By very little aid Gustavus would have
been able to recover all the territories on the eastern side of the
Baltic which had been wrested from Sweden by Russia, and would thus
have kept a formidable power always, as it were, at the very gates of
St. Petersburg. But Gustavus was left, with his brave heart but limited
forces, to contend with Russia alone. He kept down his disaffected
nobles by cultivating the interests of the people at large, and
maintained a determined struggle with Russia. He sent over the Prince
of Anhalt with a small army of about three thousand men at so early a
season that the ground was covered with ice and snow. The prince pushed
on boldly towards St. Petersburg, and made himself master of the strong
forts and defences at Karnomkoski, on the Lake Saima, within two days'
march of that capital. In April they were encountered by ten thousand
Russians under the command of General Ingelstrom, whom they defeated
after a desperate battle, leaving two thousand Russians dead on the
field. But the Prince of Anhalt was killed, and the Swedes were not
able, with a handful of men, to advance on St. Petersburg, which was in
fearful panic. Gustavus was more successful at sea. He and his brother,
the Duke of Sudermania, fought the Russians with a very inferior force
of ships off Revel, and afterwards off Svenskasund. A considerable
number of English officers were serving in the Swedish fleet, amongst
them one destined to rise to high distinction, Sidney, afterwards Sir
Sidney, Smith. After two days' sanguinary fight at the latter place,
Gustavus beat the Russian Admiral Chitschakoff so completely that he
took four thousand prisoners, destroyed several of the largest Russian
ships, and took or sank forty-five galleys. Catherine was now glad
to make peace, which was concluded at Warela, near the river Kymen,
but with very different results to what would have been obtained had
Gustavus found that support which it was the obvious interest of the
whole civilised world to afford him. He agreed that each Power should
retain what it possessed before the war, thus conferring on Russia
the provinces torn from Sweden. Gustavus complained bitterly of his
treatment, and with ample cause.

During this campaign Catherine had made great progress in her road
to Constantinople. Suvaroff had reduced Ismail, a remarkably strong
place, which was the key of the lower Danube and the only obstruction
of any importance to the Russian advance to the Balkan mountains and
to Constantinople. This city had been taken by storm, after a most
desperate defence, on the 25th of December, and when, with a little
more resistance, the Russians would have been compelled to quit the
field by the severity of the season. The carnage on this occasion
was of the most frightful kind. The Russians themselves lost nearly
ten thousand men, and the Turks thirty thousand people--men, women,
and children, who were indiscriminately butchered by the orders of
Suvaroff, who said to his soldiers, "Brothers, no quarter to-day, for
bread is scarce." Every horror possible in war, especially between
barbarians, was perpetrated by the Russian hordes in Ismail, who
were guilty of the most diabolical atrocities, such as burning whole
streets, mosques, and serais. Suvaroff sat down and wrote in Russian
rhyme the words quoted by Lord Byron in "Don Juan," "Glory to God and
the Empress, Ismail is ours." When Sir Charles Whitworth, the British
ambassador, next saw Catherine, she said, in allusion to some strong
remonstrances from Britain and Prussia, which took care not to go
beyond remonstrances, which were cheap--"Since the king, your master,
wishes to drive me out of Petersburg I hope he will permit me to retire
to Constantinople." The Czarina Catherine still continued her war
on the Ottoman empire. The Turks gained several advantages over the
Russians on the shores of the Black Sea, and near the Danube, but they
were severely repulsed in an attempt to drive the Russians from their
conquests between the Black and Caspian Seas, and suffered a terrible
slaughter on the banks of the River Kuban. Then Britain, Prussia,
Holland, and Austria, from the Congress of Reichenbach, announced to
Catherine that they were resolved not to permit further encroachments
on Turkey, but Catherine paid not the slightest attention to their
remonstrances.

A fresh war had broken out with us in India. Tippoo Sahib had resumed
hostilities. He conceived the idea of obtaining the aid of an army
from France, and of thus driving us, according to his vow, entirely
out of India. He opened communications with M. du Fresne, the Governor
of Pondicherry, which Britain had very imprudently restored to France
at the peace after the American war. M. Leger, civil administrator in
England, brought Tippoo's proposals to Paris. Louis replied to the
proposal that the matter too keenly reminded him of the endeavour to
destroy the power of Britain in America, in which advantage had been
taken of his youth, and which he should never cease to regret. He had
learned too deeply the severe retribution which the propagation of
Republicanism had brought upon him. But, without waiting the arrival
of the hoped-for French troops, Tippoo had broken into the territories
of the British ally, the Rajah of Travancore, and by the end of 1789
had nearly overrun them. Lieutenant-Colonel Floyd, suddenly attacked
by Tippoo with an overwhelming force, had been compelled to retire
before him, with severe losses amongst his sepoys. But General Medows
advanced from Trichinopoly with fifteen thousand men, and following
nearly the route so splendidly opened up by Colonel Fullarton, took
several fortresses. Tippoo retreated to his capital, Seringapatam; but
there he again threatened Madras; and General Medows was compelled to
make a hasty countermarch to prevent that catastrophe. In the meantime,
General Abercrombie landed at Tellicherry with seven thousand five
hundred men from the presidency of Bombay; took from the Mysoreans all
the places which they had gained on the Malabar coast; restored the
Hindoo Rajahs, who, in turn, helped him to expel the forces of Tippoo
from the territories of the Rajah of Travancore, who was completely
re-established. This was the result of the war up to the end of the
year 1790; but Tippoo still menaced fresh aggressions.

The new British Parliament met on November 26, and Ministers were seen
to have a powerful majority. The king announced, in his speech from the
throne, that hostilities had broken out in India with Tippoo, and that
a peace had been effected between Russia and Sweden, and he mentioned
the endeavours that were in progress for restoring amity between the
Emperor of Austria and his subjects in the Netherlands. In the debate
on the Address in the Commons, Fox appeared inclined still to laud
France, and to condemn our interference in the Netherlands. His eyes
were not yet opened to the real danger from France, whose example was
indeed exciting popular disturbances in the Netherlands and in Poland.
Already the doctrines of Liberty and Equality had reached the ears of
the negroes in St. Domingo, who had risen to claim the rights of man so
amiably proclaimed by France, and the troops of France were on their
way thither to endeavour to put them down, in direct contradiction of
their own boasted political philosophy. In the Lords, Earl Grey--the
father of the Whig statesman--on the 13th of December, called for
the production of papers relating to Nootka Sound. The motion was
negatived by two hundred and fifty-eight against one hundred and
thirty-four votes. But the Marquis of Lansdowne contended that Spain
had a right to the whole of the North American coast on which Nootka
Sound is situated, and had had it since the reign of Queen Elizabeth.
He asserted that we had insulted the weakness of Spain; and that Mr.
Mears and the other projectors of the trading settlement of Nootka
Sound were a set of young men of letters, seeking for novelties. He
completely overlooked the provocations which Spain had lately given
us, and her endeavours to enter into a conjunction with France against
us. He condemned Ministers for having alienated France, Spain, Russia,
Denmark, and Sweden, overlooking the fact that they had made alliances
with Prussia, Austria, Holland, and the Netherlands. Pitt's cousin,
Lord Grenville, replied to this one-sided view of things, and proudly
contrasted the position of Britain at this moment to what it was at the
conclusion of the American War, when Lord Lansdowne himself, as Lord
Shelburne, had been in the Ministry. Pitt, on the 15th of December,
stated that the expenses of the late armament, and the sums necessary
to keep up the increased number of soldiers and sailors for another
year, before which they could not be well disbanded, owing to certain
aspects of things abroad, would amount to something more than three
millions, which he proposed to raise by increasing the taxes on sugar,
on British and foreign spirits, malt, and game licences, as well as
raising the assessed taxes, except the commutation and land taxes.
He stated that there was a standing balance of six hundred thousand
pounds to the credit of the Government in the Bank of England, which
he proposed to appropriate to the discharge of part of the amount.
He, moreover, introduced a variety of regulations to check the frauds
practised in the taxes upon receipts and bills of exchange, which he
calculated at three hundred thousand pounds per annum. With this,
Parliament adjourned for the Christmas recess, and thus closed the
eventful year of 1790.

The Parliamentary Session of 1791 was opened, after the Christmas
recess, by Sir Philip Francis denouncing the war against Tippoo Sahib
in India, and eulogising that prince. He moved thirteen resolutions
condemnatory of the war; but they were all rejected, and Dundas, as
head of the Board of Control, moved three counter-resolutions declaring
that Tippoo had voluntarily broken the treaty made with him in 1784,
and that faith must be kept with the Rajah of Travancore, whom he
had attacked, as well as with the Nizam and the Mahrattas, and these
resolutions were carried without a division.

The British Ministry was at length becoming aware of the mischief of
allowing the Empress of Russia to make continual inroads on the Turkish
Empire. The British Ambassador, Mr. Fawkener, had been instructed to
inform Catherine that Britain could not quietly acquiesce in these
usurpations, which were seriously disturbing the balance of power in
Europe. Catherine replied, haughtily, that she did not recognise the
right of Britain to interfere, and that she should keep possession
of Oczakoff, and all her conquests between the Bug and the Dniester.
On the 28th of March Pitt communicated this answer to the House, in
a message from his Majesty, and that he had deemed it necessary to
come to an understanding with his allies, Prussia and Austria, on
the subject, and to maintain the fleet in its augmented condition.
He moved, the next day, an address to his Majesty, thanking him for
his care in these respects. The Whigs, almost to a man, condemned
this policy. Coke of Norfolk, Lord Wycombe, Mr. Lambton, afterwards
Earl of Durham, and others, stoutly opposed it. Fox treated the idea
of Russia having become a power formidable to the peace of Europe
as ludicrous. Both he and Burke contended that there was nothing in
the aggressions of Russia to occasion any alarm; that Turkey was a
decaying nation, which it was useless to attempt to support; and that
to bolster it up was only to maintain a barbarous people in domination
over Christian populations. Fox upbraided the Government with their
folly and inconsistency, if such were their fears of Russia, in having
till recently encouraged her in her plan of aggressions in that
direction. He reminded them that, twenty years ago, Great Britain, on
war breaking out between Russia and the Porte, had aided Catherine
in sending a fleet to the Mediterranean, and had thus enabled her to
acquire a maritime force in the Black Sea. The truth, however, was that
it was not the present Ministry that had committed this folly, but a
Whig Ministry, of which Fox was one. He confessed to this, and also
to the fact that in 1782, when Catherine seized more completely on
the Crimea and Kuban Tartary, France and Spain had urged us to unite
with them in preventing this, but that we had declined, and these
countries had become permanently united to Russia. Now all this was,
in truth, a simple confession of the incapacity of the Whigs, and of
Fox himself included, to see the dangerous tendency of the Russian
policy, and the only circumstance on which he could justly condemn the
Ministry of Pitt was for not strenuously supporting Turkey and Sweden,
the ally of Turkey against Russia, when they did see this tendency.
By mean and parsimonious conduct they had allowed Sweden to be driven
out of her territories on the eastern shore of the Baltic by Russia,
when, had they given her but moderate support, that Power would have
become a permanent check on the aggressive spirit of Russia. The motion
of Pitt was carried by a large majority. A few days afterwards Mr.
Grey renewed the subject in a series of resolutions, condemning all
interference on behalf of Turkey, and contending that Russia was only
weakening instead of strengthening herself by extending her dominions.
But Pitt, in reply, showed the very obvious facts that the retention
of Oczakoff opened the way to Constantinople, and that the possession
of Constantinople prepared the way for the seizure of Egypt, and the
supremacy of the Mediterranean, with the most formidable consequences
to our commerce. The resolutions of Grey were negatived; but twice
again during the session the Whigs returned to the charge--on the 15th
of April and on the 25th of May,--but with no better success. The
armament was maintained, but the isolated threats of England had little
effect on Catherine. Pitt was accordingly compelled to change his
policy, and acquiesce in a peace by which she retained the territory
between the Bug and the Dniester, and the fortress of Oczakoff.

[Illustration: SCENE IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS: BREACH BETWEEN BURKE AND
FOX. (_See p._ 379.)]

On the opening of the Session, the king called the attention of
Parliament to the state of Canada. That colony had flourished since it
had come into the possession of Britain, especially since the passing
of the Bill of 1774, which had given freedom to the Roman Catholic
church there, the church of the French inhabitants. But one part of
the colony was still inhabited by the descendants of the French, and
another by those of the English and Americans. It was, therefore,
found desirable to put an end to the competition which still existed,
from differences of faith and of national sentiments and customs,
between the two races, by dividing the colony into two provinces, the
one inhabited by the French to be called Lower Canada, and the other,
inhabited by the British, to be called Upper Canada. On the 25th of
February the king sent a message to Parliament, proposing to carry out
this division; and on the 4th of March Pitt moved to bring in a Bill
for that purpose, and stated the intended plan of arrangement. Besides
an elective assembly, each province was to have a Council, the members
of which were to be appointed for life, with hereditary succession to
the descendants of such as should be honoured with hereditary titles,
which titles were to confer on an inhabitant of either province the
dignity of a member of the Council. Landed property was to be held
according to English law, in soccage tenure; the Habeas Corpus was to
be established in both provinces. An allotment of lands was to be made
for the Protestant clergy; but, as the majority of the inhabitants
in the Lower Province would be Catholic, the Council and Assembly
were empowered to allot lands also to their clergy, which allotment,
on sanction of the Crown, was to be valid without intervention of
Parliament. No taxes were to be imposed by the British Government
except such as were necessary for the regulation of commerce, and
these were to be levied by the provincial legislature to prevent any
heartburnings like those which had occurred in the American States.

This Bill made it obvious that a great light had broken on the
British Government from the American Revolution; it was discovered
that the best way to govern and retain our colonies was to allow
them to govern themselves. This knowledge was worth all the loss and
annoyance of the American Revolution. Fox expressed his approbation
of the principle, and all appeared favourable to the passing of the
measure. It was allowed to proceed without opposition through its
first and second reading, and through the committee; but when it was
reported, then came a scene of violent contention, arising not so much
from the Bill itself as from the state of parties, and the making a
peg of this question on which to hang the conflicting opinions of
different members on a very different question--that of the French
Revolution. Not only had Fox and Burke and Sheridan broken up their
old friendship on this question, Sheridan being as enthusiastic about
the Revolution as Fox, but it had split up the whole Whig party. Burke
had published his eloquent "Reflections on the French Revolution," and
subsequently, in February of this year, a "Letter to a Member of the
National Assembly," in which he had repeated and extended his opinions
upon it. The Duke of Portland and Mr. Windham took Burke's view of
the nature of the French principles. However, it was not merely in
Parliament, but also throughout the country that opinions were divided
on the subject. Societies were formed to recommend the introduction of
French Revolutionary principles into Great Britain, and many eminent
men, especially among the Dissenters, took the lead in them, as we
shall presently see. The tendency to despotic government in Britain,
and a spreading conviction that Parliament was not truly elected by
the people, rendered large numbers favourable to these views. In
Parliament, however, the great shock of battle took place between the
so long united friends and fellow-labourers in reform, Fox and Burke,
and because the Canada Bill affected a French people, it was thought a
proper occasion by these statesmen to indulge in a lengthy and violent
discussion of their clashing views, in which the proper question before
Parliament, the Quebec Bill, was soon lost sight of.

On the motion for taking this Bill into further consideration, on the
8th of April, Mr. Hussey presented various petitions from merchants
regarding the measure, and moved that the Bill required recommittal. He
was seconded by Fox, who now, though approving of the main principles
of the Bill, took occasion to contend for the development of the
advanced doctrines of political liberty inculcated by the French
revolutionists, and to urge the insertion of clauses in the Bill, in
accordance with them. When the day for the debate on the Bill arrived,
Fox called on Burke, though he had not done so for some time, and,
in the presence of a common friend, entered into explanations which
appeared satisfactory. Fox then proposed that the answer of Burke
should not take place on the discussion of the Quebec Bill, though this
was the Bill on which this topic had been introduced. Burke refused
to comply; but the two old friends walked to the House together,
displaying the last show of friendship which was to take place between
them. Accordingly, on the 6th of May, when the chairman of the
Committee put the question, that the Quebec Bill be read paragraph by
paragraph, Burke rose, and determined to have a fair hearing on the
question of the French Revolution, and proceeded to inveigh strongly
against it. Then there were loud cries of "Order!" and "Question!"
and Mr. Baker declared that the argument of Mr. Burke was calculated
to involve the House in unnecessary altercation, and perhaps with the
Government of another nation. Fox said his right honourable friend
could scarcely be said to be out of order, for it seemed to be a day of
privilege, when any gentleman might stand up and take any topic, and
abuse any Government, whether it had reference to the point in question
or not; that not a word had been said of the French Revolution, yet
he had risen and abused it. He might just as well have abused that
of China or Hindostan. This taunt came with ill grace from Fox, who
had himself introduced this extraneous topic into the debates on this
very Bill, and seized that occasion to attack Burke's opinions in his
absence.

Burke proceeded amidst constant interruption to review the many scenes
and debates in which Fox and himself had acted, as well as those on
which they had differed, especially their difference of opinion on
the Royal Marriage Act; but no difference of opinion had ever before
affected their friendship. He alluded to his own long services and his
grey hairs, and said that it was certainly an indiscretion, at his
time of life, to provoke enemies, or induce his friends to desert him;
but that, if his firm and steady adherence to the British Constitution
placed him in that dilemma, he would risk all, and, as public
duty required, with his last breath exclaim, "Fly from the French
Constitution!" Here Fox whispered that there was no loss of friends;
that there could be no loss of friendship between them; but Burke
said--"Yes, there was a loss of friends: he knew the penalty of his
conduct; he had done his duty at the price of his friends--there was an
end of their friendship." It was some time before Fox could answer; he
was completely overcome by his emotion; and it was only after a free
flow of tears that he could proceed. He then said: "Painful as it was
to listen to such sentiments as those just delivered by one to whom
he owed so many obligations, he could never forget that, when little
more than a boy, he had been in the habit of receiving instructions
and favours from his right honourable friend. Their friendship had
grown with their life; it had continued for upwards of five-and-twenty
years; and he hoped, notwithstanding what had happened that day, that
his right honourable friend would think on past times, and would give
him credit for not intending anything unkind. It was quite true that
they had before now differed on many subjects, without lessening their
friendship, and why should they not now differ on the French Revolution
without a severance of friendship? He could not help feeling that the
conduct of his right honourable friend tended to fix upon him the
charge of Republican principles, whereas he was far from entertaining
such principles. His friend had heaped very ignominious terms upon him
that day." Here Burke said aloud, he did not recollect having used such
terms; and Fox promptly observed that "if his friend did not recollect
those epithets--if they are out of his mind, then they were for ever
out of his mind, too; they were obliterated and forgotten." He then
denied that there was any marshalling of a party on this subject; that
not one gentleman who had risen to call his right honourable friend to
order had done it by his desire; on the contrary, he had entreated his
friends not to interrupt him. After again dwelling for some time on the
merits of the French Revolution, he once more lamented the breach in
the unanimity of his friend and himself, and said he would keep out
of the way of his right honourable friend till he had time to reflect
and think differently, and that their common friends might bring them
together again; that he would endeavour to discuss the question on
some future day, with all calmness, if his friend wished, but for the
present he had said all that he desired to say.

With this debate terminated the friendship of Fox and Burke. Fox
disclaimed any premeditated attack on Burke, but the severe things
which he himself had said of his old friend, the contempt which he
expressed for Burke's "Reflections on the French Revolution," and
the private conversations which he invariably dragged into these
public debates, give us less confidence in this assertion; whilst the
co-operation of his party with him bore all the marks of a systematic
assault. On the one side stood Fox, expressing much feeling and regret,
but uttering the most cutting things, taunting Burke with his age and
his enthusiastic temperament, and backed by a violent and insulting
crew; on the other side stood Burke, deserted by those, and they
were numerous, who thought entirely with him. Not a few expressed to
Burke, in private, their agreement of opinion and admiration of his
conduct; but to make this expression of any value it should have been
open and bold. As it was, the great master who had taught the whole
generation of politicians their principles, was left to stand alone
in the conflict. He sustained his part nobly, and time was not long
in justifying his accuracy of calculation and his prescience. All the
results, however, which he declared inevitable, were already rushing
into open day, and the enamoured lovers of the French Revolution were
forced to hang their heads. In the meantime, the newspapers had poured
on the head of Burke their vials of abuse. On the very day on which
the Quebec debates terminated, the _Morning Chronicle_, the organ of
the Whigs, published this paragraph:--"The great and firm body of
the Whigs of England, true to their principles, have decided on the
dispute between Mr. Fox and Mr. Burke; and the former is declared to
have maintained the pure doctrines by which they are bound together,
and upon which they have invariably acted. The consequence is that
Mr. Burke retires from Parliament." They were not contented with this
premature announcement; they charged him with corruption and apostacy,
and described his life, one of honour and generosity, as a long series
of basenesses.

Whilst these violent dissensions had sprung up from the French
Revolution, Wilberforce and his coadjutors had been active in their
exertions to abolish the Slave Trade. Thomas Clarkson, now devoted
heart and soul to this object, was, with Dr. Dickson, sent out by the
parent Anti-Slavery Society through the country, to call into life
provincial societies and committees, and found themselves zealously
supported and warmly welcomed by philanthropists, and especially by
the Society of Friends. They circulated the evidence taken before
the House of Commons' Committee, and made a great impression. On
the other hand, the French Revolution proved as antagonistic to the
cause of the abolitionists as it had to the friendship of Burke and
Fox. The dreadful insurrection in St. Domingo was attributed to the
formation of the Society in Paris of _Les Amis des Noirs_, and many
otherwise enlightened men took the alarm, lest similar scenes in our
West Indian colonies should be the result of the doctrines of the
abolitionists. Few persons could be found willing to entertain the
idea of immediate abolition of the trade in slaves; and even Dr. Parr,
though a great Whig and adherent of Fox, declared that these Utopian
schemes of liberty to blacks were alarming to serious men. Wilberforce
was earnestly entreated to reconsider his plan; he was assured that
immediate abolition would not pass the Commons, nor even gradual
abolition the Lords. Wilberforce, however, could not be deterred from
bringing on the question. On the 18th of April he moved for leave to
bring in a Bill to prevent the introduction of any more slaves into our
colonies. Besides showing the cruelties practised in the collection
and transmission of negroes, he brought forward evidence to prove
that, so far from this trade being, as had been represented before the
Committee of the Commons, the nursery of British seamen, it was their
grave. He showed that of twelve thousand two hundred and sixty-three
men employed in it, two thousand six hundred and forty-five had been
lost in twelve months. This was calculated to produce far less effect
than the surrender of hundreds of thousands of negroes, inasmuch as
profit and loss was a more telling argument with the slave traders
than mere humanity; and they exerted all their influence in defence of
their traffic. Wilberforce added that even had this trade really been
a beneficial one as regarded mere political economy, there was a smell
of blood about it that all the perfumes of Arabia could not disguise.
He was ably supported by Fox and Pitt; but, on this occasion, the Prime
Minister could not command his large majority; the motion was lost by
one hundred and sixty-three against eighty-eight.

[Illustration: WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. (_After the Portrait by G.
Richmond._)]

During the Session, however, a Bill was passed sanctioning the
establishment of a company which had been formed several years before,
for trading to the new settlement of Sierra Leone, on the coast of
Africa. In 1787 this settlement was begun by philanthropists, to show
that colonial productions could be obtained without the labour of
slaves, and to introduce civilisation into that continent through the
means of commerce carried on by educated blacks. In that year four
hundred and seventy negroes, then living in a state of destitution in
London, were removed to it. In 1790 their number was increased by one
thousand one hundred and ninety-eight other negroes from Nova Scotia,
who could not flourish in so severe a climate. Ten years after the
introduction of the blacks from Nova Scotia, five hundred and fifty
maroons were brought from Jamaica, and in 1819 a black regiment,
disbanded in the West Indies, was added. The capability of this
settlement for the production of cotton, coffee, sugar, etc., was fully
demonstrated; but no spot could have been selected more fatal to the
health of Europeans. It is a region of deep-sunk rivers and morasses,
which, in that sultry climate, are pregnant with death to the white man.

During this Session, also, an important Bill was passed for the relief
of Roman Catholics. The Bill was introduced by Mr. Mitford and seconded
by Mr. Windham. Mr. Mitford showed that the enactments still in force
against them occupied, by mere recital of their penalties, seventy
pages of "Burn's Ecclesiastical Law." Priests were still guilty of
high treason and liable to death for endeavouring to convert people
to the tenets they deemed essential to salvation; and the laity were
liable to heavy penalties for not going to church, and for hearing
Mass at their own chapels. The Bill was supported by Pitt and Fox, by
Lord Rawdon, by the Archbishop of Canterbury (Dr. Moore), and by Dr.
Horsley, Bishop of St. David's. It passed. By this Act all the severe
restrictions and penalties were removed from those Roman Catholics
who would comply with its requisitions, to appear at one of the
courts of Westminster, or at quarter sessions, and make and subscribe
a declaration that they professed the Roman Catholic religion, and
also an oath exactly similar to that required by the Statute of 1778.
On this declaration and oath being duly made, they were enabled to
profess and perform the offices of their religion, to keep schools,
to exercise parochial or other offices in person or by deputy, and
the ministers of that religion were exempt from serving on juries
and from parochial offices. Their congregations were protected from
disturbance; but their priests were restrained from officiating in
places consecrated to the burial of Protestants, and from wearing their
habits anywhere but in their own places of worship. They were also
restrained from establishing religious orders; and the endowment of
schools and colleges was still to be deemed unlawful. No person could
in future be summoned to take the Oath of Supremacy and the declaration
against Transubstantiation; nor were Roman Catholics who had qualified
removable from London and Westminster, or punishable for coming into
the presence or palace of the king or queen. They were no longer
obliged to register their names and estates, or enrol their deeds and
wills; and every Roman Catholic who had duly qualified might act as
barrister, attorney, or notary.

On the 20th of May Fox moved for a Grand Committee on courts of
justice, to inquire into some late decisions of the courts in cases of
libel. Thomas Erskine, the eloquent advocate, had lately, in the case
of the Dean of St. Asaph, delivered a most brilliant and effective
speech on the right of juries to decide both on fact and on law in such
cases, the duty of the judge being only to explain the law. Fox adopted
this doctrine of Erskine, and framed his speech in the most glowing
terms. He complained, however, that such was not the practice of the
courts, and he particularly animadverted on the custom and the doctrine
of Lord Mansfield on this subject. He observed that in murder, in
felony, in high treason, and in every other criminal indictment, it
was the admitted province of the jury to decide both on law and fact.
The practice in the case of libel was an anomaly, and clearly ought
not to be so. He said that the doctrine which he recommended was no
innovation; it had been asserted by John Lilburne, who, when prosecuted
for a libel under the Commonwealth, declared that the jury were the
real judges, and the judges themselves mere cyphers, so far as the
verdict was concerned; and Lilburne had been acquitted, in spite of
the judge and of the influence of Cromwell. He reviewed the doctrines
of the Stuarts regarding libel, and observed that these could not be
wrong then and right now. He contended that the late practice had been
a serious inroad on the liberty of the press, and noted the case of
the printer of the _Morning Herald_, who had been tried for merely
commenting strongly on the sending of an armament to Nootka Sound, and
on the conduct of Parliament in granting supplies for this purpose.
He had been condemned to a year's imprisonment and to stand in the
pillory. Pitt observed that he had always, since he had had a place in
the Ministry, condemned the use of the pillory, and that there could be
no difficulty in remitting that part of the sentence in this particular
case. He supported Fox's view of the law, and recommended him to bring
in two short Bills, instead of going into committee on the subject. Fox
followed this advice, and brought in two Bills--one to remove doubts
respecting the rights and functions of juries in criminal cases; and
the other to amend the Act of the 9th of Queen Anne for rendering the
proceedings upon writs of Mandamus and informations in the nature of
a Quo Warranto more speedy and effectual. The first Bill passed the
Commons on the 2nd of June, but was thrown out in the Lords, through
the influence of Chancellor Thurlow, who had never forgiven Pitt his
contempt of his conduct on the Regency question during the king's
malady. This defeated the object of Fox during this Session, but it
was carried in the next, and Lord Thurlow's opposition lost him his
position. The Great Seal was put into commission.

Meanwhile, the publication of Burke's "Reflections on the French
Revolution" had caused an immense sensation. It went through edition
after edition, and elicited a warm and wide response in hearts already
convinced of, or beginning to see, the real tendency of the French
outbreak. On the other hand, it greatly exasperated the ultra-admirers
of French republicanism, and produced a number of vindications of it
by men who, for the most part, were exceedingly bitter against Burke,
and denounced him as an apostate, a renegade, and a traitor to liberty.
Amongst the most conspicuous of those who took the field against Burke
in books were Sir James Mackintosh, Thomas Paine, Dr. Price, and Dr.
Priestley, the two latter of whom also made free use of the pulpit for
the propagation of their political ideas. Ladies also distinguished
themselves in this contest, such as Mary Wollstonecraft, and Mrs.
Macaulay, the historian.

Mackintosh, who was a young lawyer of excellent education, but yet
entirely unknown, this year published his "Vindiciæ Gallicæ," in reply
to Burke; but he did it with the behaviour of a gentleman, and evident
admiration of the genius and political services of the great man whom
he opposed. His book was immensely admired, and at once lifted him into
notice. But it was not long before he began to see the correctness of
Burke's views and prophecies as to the French Revolution, and he did
not shrink from avowing the change of his sentiments in the _Monthly
Review_ and in conversation. His talents and this alteration of his
views recommended him to the Ministers, and he was appointed by Pitt
and Loughborough a professor of Lincoln's Inn, where, in a course of
lectures on the Constitution of England, he exhibited himself as an
uncompromising censor of the doctrines he had approved in his "Vindiciæ
Gallicæ." For this he was classed, by the vehement worshippers of
French ideas, with Burke, as a venal turncoat. Mackintosh did not
content himself with recanting his opinions on this topic from the
platform and the press; he wrote directly to Burke, who was now fast
sinking under his labours and his disappointments, and expressed his
undisguised admiration of his sagacity as a politician, and of his
general principles and political philosophy. Burke invited him down to
Beaconsfield, where a closer view of the philosopher and orator greatly
increased his esteem and admiration of the man.

Paine, in his "Rights of Man," was far from restricting himself to the
courtesies of life in attacking Burke. He had been most hospitably
received by Burke on many occasions at his house, and had corresponded
with him, and must therefore have seen sufficient of him to know that,
though he might become extremely enthusiastic in his championship of
certain views, he could never become mean or dishonest. Yet Paine
did not hesitate to attribute to him the basest and most sordid
motives. He branded him as the vilest and most venal of apostates.
Paine had, in fact, become a monomaniac in Republicanism. He had been
engaged to the last in the American Revolution, and was now living in
Paris, and constantly attending the Jacobin club. He was hand-in-hand
with the most rabid of the Republicans, and was fast imbibing their
anti-Christian tenets. Paine fully believed that the French were
inaugurating something much finer than any millennium; that they
were going to establish the most delightful liberty, equality, and
fraternity, not simply throughout France but throughout the world.
Before the doctrines of the French clubbists and journalists, all
superstition, all despotism, all unkindness were to vanish from amongst
mankind, and a paradisiacal age of love and felicity was to commence.
To those who pointed to the blood and fury already too prominently
conspicuous in this business, he replied that these were but the dregs
of corrupt humanity, which were working off in the great fermentation,
and all would become clear and harmonious.

Amongst those who hailed enthusiastically the French Revolution, and
gave credit to its promises of benefit to humanity, were a considerable
number of the Dissenting body, and especially of the Unitarian class.
Amongst these, Drs. Price, Priestley, Kippis, and Towers were most
prominent. Dr. Price--who furnished Pitt with the theory of the Sinking
Fund, and with other propositions of reform,--on the breaking out
of the French Revolution was one of the first to respond to it with
acclamation. He was a member of the Revolution Society, and in 1789 he
preached before it a sermon on "The Love of our Country," and in this
drew so beautiful a picture of the coming happiness of man from the
French Revolution, that he declared that he was ready to exclaim with
Simeon, "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine
eyes have seen thy salvation." At the dinner on the same occasion he
moved that a congratulatory address be sent to the National Assembly on
that glorious event, which was seconded by Lord Stanhope the chairman,
and which was sent, and received with great acclamation by the National
Assembly. Burke, in his "Reflections on the French Revolution," was
very severe on Price, as well as on his coadjutors; and as Price died
this year it was said that the "Reflections" had killed him, which,
were it true, could not be said to have done it very prematurely, for
the doctor was in his seventieth year.

But far more remarkable were the effects of the championship of
French principles in the celebrated Dr. Joseph Priestley. Priestley
was now nearly sixty years of age--a time of life when men rarely
become great enthusiasts in any cause. He was a Unitarian minister,
and was now the pastor of a congregation at Birmingham. He was well
known for various theological writings, in which he had announced
his doubts of the immateriality of the sentient principle in man,
especially in his "Disquisition on Matter and Spirit." He had been
tutor to Lord Shelburne, first Lord Lansdowne; but had quitted that
post, as supposed, in consequence of the objection of Lord Shelburne
to these principles, retaining, however, an annuity of one hundred and
fifty pounds a-year. But Priestley was far more known and esteemed
for his researches and discoveries in natural philosophy, especially
in electricity, chemistry, and pneumatics. Orthodoxy and Toryism were
extremely rampant in Birmingham, and Priestley was regarded as the very
patriarch and champion of Socinianism and Republicanism. There wanted
only a spark to fire trains of fierce intolerance against Priestley
and his party, and, unfortunately, this was furnished by themselves.
They resolved to celebrate, by a dinner, the anniversary of the taking
of the Bastille, on the 14th of July. Before the dinner took place,
such were the rumours of impending riots that the party proposed to
defer the celebration to a future day; but the landlord had prepared
the dinner, and declared his opinion that there would be no danger
if the party dispersed early, without stopping to drink many toasts.
Darbley, the innkeeper, curiously enough, was a Churchman, and in good
odour with the Tory party. Satisfied by his representations, about
eighty persons determined to hold the dinner on the appointed day,
though a considerable number stayed away, and amongst those Priestley
himself. The company were hooted as they entered the inn, but chiefly
by a crowd of dirty lads, who cried "Church and King!" On the table
were ranged three figures: a medallion of the king encircled with
a glory, an emblematical figure of British Liberty, and another of
French Slavery bursting its chains. In the evening a fierce riot broke
out, instigated--according to Priestley's account--by some prominent
magistrates, though the statement was never proved. The mob rushed
to Darbley's hotel after the dinner was over and most of the people
were gone. There they raised the cry of "Church and King!" and began
to throw stones. Some one cried out, "Don't break Darbley's windows;
he is a Churchman!" But the Church-and-King people and their set,
now flushed with wine and loyalty, waved their handkerchiefs from
the windows of the opposite inn, and hurrahed the mob on. With this
encouragement, which seemed to the crowd to legalise their proceedings,
the mob rushed into the house, declaring that they wanted to knock
the powder out of Dr. Priestley's wig. They did not find the doctor,
so they smashed most of the furniture in the house, and dashed in the
windows, notwithstanding the host's orthodoxy. Some one then cried,
"You have done mischief enough here; go to the meetings!" and the mob
rolled away, first to the new meeting-house, where Priestley preached,
which they soon demolished and set fire to. They then proceeded to the
old meeting-house, and destroyed that too, being hounded on by people
of decent station in the place, and made furious by the beer which was
distributed among them.

This destruction accomplished, the mob marched away to the house of
Priestley, which was at Fair Hill, where they utterly burned and
destroyed all the invaluable library, philosophical instruments,
and manuscripts, containing notes of the doctor's further chemical
experiments and discoveries. Fire-engines were called out to prevent
the flames of the meeting-houses from spreading to the adjoining
houses, but they were not suffered to play on the meeting-houses
themselves, nor does any effort appear to have been made to save
Priestley's house. The doctor and his family had made a timely retreat.
He himself passed the first two nights in a post-chaise, and the two
succeeding on horseback, but less owing to his own apprehensions of
danger than to those of others. An eye-witness said that the high road
for fully half a mile from his house was strewed with books, and that,
on entering the library, there were not a dozen volumes on the shelves;
while the floor was covered several inches deep with torn manuscripts.
This was the work of the night of the 14th of July, and the riots
continued from Thursday to Sunday; among the buildings destroyed being
the paper warehouse of William Hutton, the historian of the place, and
the author of several antiquarian treatises. Hutton was a man who had
raised himself from the deepest poverty, for his father was a poor
stocking-weaver of Derby. He had found Birmingham without a paper
warehouse; had opened one, and, by that shrewdness and carefulness in
business, which are so conspicuous in his "Autobiography," and afford
a valuable study for young men, had acquired a competence. He was not
only an honour to the town by his upright character, and reputation
as a self-taught author, but he had been an active benefactor to it.
He had been the first to establish a circulating library in the town;
was always an advocate and co-operator in works and institutions of
improvement, and was the most active and able commissioner of the Court
of Requests. His only crime was that of being a Nonconformist, and an
advocate of advanced principles.

[Illustration: THE PRIESTLEY RIOTS AT BIRMINGHAM (_see p._ 384)]

During these disgraceful days the Church-and-King party took no
measures to prevent the destruction of the property of Dissenters.
Noblemen, gentlemen, and magistrates rode in from the country on
pretence of doing their duty, but they did little but sit and drink
their wine, and enjoy the mischief. They could have called out the
militia at once, and the mob would have been scattered like leaves
before the wind; but they preferred to report the outbreak to the
Secretary-at-War, and, after the time thus lost, three troops of
the 15th Light Dragoons, lying at Nottingham, were ordered to march
thither. But the arrival of the Light Dragoons showed what might have
been done at first if the magistrates had been so minded. The mob
did not stay even to look at the soldiers; at their very name they
vanished, and Birmingham, on Monday morning, was as quiet as a tomb.
Government itself took a most indifferent leisure in the matter. It
did not issue a proclamation from the Secretary of State's office till
the 29th, when it offered one hundred pounds for the discovery and
apprehension of one of the chief ringleaders.

At the ensuing assizes in August, those rioters who had been
apprehended were tried; some at Worcester for participating in the
outrages, but there only one prisoner was committed. Of those tried at
Warwick, on the 25th of the month, four received sentence of death.
Of these five rioters condemned, only three actually suffered, while
two received his Majesty's gracious pardon. The victims of this riot
thought the penalty much too trivial! Such, indeed, was the perverted
state of public feeling in and around Birmingham, that the sufferers
were regarded as men seeking the lives of innocent men who had only
shown their loyalty to Church and King. They were declared to be no
better than selfish murderers. Whilst they attended at the assizes,
their lives scarcely seemed safe. They were publicly abused in the
streets, or menaced and cursed wherever they appeared. In the very
assize-hall there were persons who, on seeing Priestley, cried, "Damn
him! there is the cause of all the mischief!" He was followed in the
streets, especially by an attorney, who cursed him furiously, and
wished he had been burned with his house and books. The favourite toast
of the Church-and-King party was, "May every Revolutionary dinner be
followed by a hot supper!" The damages awarded to the sufferers were,
in most cases, ludicrously inadequate. Hutton was a heavy loser;
Priestley received three thousand and ninety-eight pounds, but he
complained that this was two thousand pounds short of the extent of his
loss. But this deficiency was made up by sympathising friends.




CHAPTER XV.

REIGN OF GEORGE III. (_continued_).

    Progress of the French Revolution--Death of Mirabeau--Attempted
    Flight of the King from Paris--Attitude of the Sovereigns
    of Europe--The Parties of the Right and of the Left--The
    Girondists--Decrees against the Emigrants--Negotiations
    between Marie Antoinette and Pitt--Condition of the French
    Army--Session of 1792; Debates on Foreign Affairs--Marriage
    of the Duke of York--The Prince of Wales's Allowance--The
    Budget--The Anti-Slavery Movement--Magistracy Bill--Attempts at
    Reform--The Society of the Friends of the People--Proclamation
    against Seditious Writings--Fox's Nonconformist Relief
    Bill--Prorogation of Parliament--Associations and
    Counter-Associations--Lord Cornwallis's War against Tippoo
    Sahib--Capture of Seringapatam--Peace with Tippoo--Embassy to
    China--Designs of the Powers against Poland--Catherine resolves
    to strike--Invasion of Poland--Neutrality of England--Conquest
    of Poland--Imminence of War between France and Austria--It is
    declared--Failure of the French Troops--The Duke of Brunswick's
    Proclamation--Insurrection of the 10th of August--Massacre of the
    Swiss--Suspension of the King--Ascendency of Jacobinism--Dumouriez
    in the Passes of the Argonne--Battle of Valmy--Retreat of
    the Prussians--Occupation of the Netherlands by the French
    Troops--Custine in Germany--Occupation of Nice and Savoy--Edict
    of Fraternity--Abolition of Royalty--Trial and Death of the
    King--Effect of the Deed on the Continent--The Militia called
    out in England--Debates in Parliament on War with France--The
    Alien Bill--Rupture of Diplomatic Relations with France--War
    declared against Britain--Efforts to preserve the Peace--They are
    Ineffectual.


While these things had been passing in England, the Revolution in
France had been making great strides. The Assembly, after its removal
to Paris, passed completely under the influence of the violent Jacobin
Club, and the work of destruction and reconstitution proceeded with
startling rapidity. By the division of France into Departments all the
old territorial arrangements and provincial Assemblies were abolished;
the judicial system was re-established on a popular basis, and its
dependence on the Crown swept away; the Church was made a department
of the State, and its vast property sold, chiefly by means of bills
payable in Church lands and called _assignats_. The position of the
king became well-nigh intolerable. There was a chance, indeed, that
Mirabeau might extricate him from the toils of his enemies. That
great man, now reconciled to the Court, advised him to withdraw from
the capital, and throw himself upon the conservatism of the country
districts. But the death of Mirabeau in April, 1791, deprived Louis
of his only wise adviser, and in June he adopted the ill-judged
course of flying from Paris, with the object of making his way across
the frontier and joining the enemies of his country. The flight was
ill-managed, the royal family were arrested at Varennes and brought
back as prisoners to Paris, where they were placed under the strictest
surveillance.

Had the sovereigns of Europe been in earnest in behalf of the King
of France, and had they at once marched into the country, they could
scarcely have failed to make themselves masters of Paris; though
they might have precipitated the deaths of the king and queen. But,
in truth, the kings of Europe were in no such chivalrous mood; they
were thinking more of their own interests, and actually, some of
them, planning the most disgraceful robberies of their neighbours.
Spain, seeing no sign of coalition amongst the northern sovereigns,
expressed its friendly disposition towards the French Government, and
prevented an attempt on its southern provinces, in which the Knights
of Malta were to assist with two frigates. The French Emigrants at
Brussels and Coblenz were in a state of agitation, declaring that
Monsieur, who had now joined them, was the Regent of the kingdom,
seeing that the king was a prisoner and had no will of his own. The
poor king was compelled by the Assembly to write to them, disavowing
these proceedings. As to the Powers in general, Leopold of Austria,
who had the most direct interest in the rescue of his sister and her
family, was, notwithstanding his recent declarations, desirous rather
of peace and by no means pleased with the Emigrants. A declaration
of allied sovereigns was, indeed, made at Pillnitz, that Prussia and
Austria and Russia would advance to the rescue of Louis XVI.; but the
more immediate object of the agreement made there was the dismemberment
of Poland, which was determined in secret articles. Any concerted
action on the part of the Powers was, in fact, rendered impossible
by the action of Pitt, who, true to his policy of neutrality and of
holding aloof from any interference in the domestic concerns of France,
declined to sanction any appeal to arms.

In September, 1791, the Assembly, having completed the Constitution,
which was accepted by the king, dissolved. Its place was taken by the
National Legislative Assembly, which met on the 1st of October. As the
Jacobins had expected, the elections of the Departments had occupied
but little attention. The public gaze had been fixed on the acts of the
Assembly about to retire, so that a race of new men appeared, which
seemed at first to divide itself into two parties--the _Coté Droit_,
or Constitutional party, and the _Coté Gauche_, or Democratic party;
but the latter party soon divided itself into two, the Mountain and
the Gironde. It is difficult to discern the distinguishing traits of
these two Revolutionary parties. At first they all worked together,
clearly for the downfall of the monarchy. Robespierre, Petion,
Marat, Danton, were associated with those who afterwards divided
themselves into the Gironde, with Condorcet, Brissot, the Rolands,
and Vergniaud. Though Robespierre, Petion, and Danton were no longer
in the Assembly, they ruled the Jacobin party there from the clubs.
It was not till the question of war arose that the split took place.
The Jacobins and Girondists were for war, Robespierre was obstinately
against it. At first he stood nearly alone, but by degrees, though
he did not draw the Jacobins very soon to his views, he drew them
speedily away from the Girondists. This party of the Girondists had
been growing and forming for some time. It took its rise originally at
Bordeaux, the great commercial city of the department of the Gironde.
Bordeaux was of Roman origin. It had always displayed a warm love of
independence, which its Parliaments had continually kept alive. It had
of late years become the chief commercial link between France and the
revolutionised United States. It had early, too, become leavened with
the new philosophy; it was the birthplace of Montaigne and Montesquieu.
The Gironde sent up to the new Assembly twelve deputies, all as yet
unknown, but all deeply imbued with the new principles. These, on
arriving in Paris, soon found themselves mixed up, at the house of
Condorcet and the Rolands, with Robespierre, Danton, Petion, Buzot,
Brissot, Carra-Louvet, Thomas Paine, and, in fact, nearly all the
thorough Revolutionists. The active centre of the whole party, up to
the period of the question of the war against the Emigrants, was Madame
Roland, and such she continued to be of the Girondists after their
separation into a distinct party, and after that they had become the
antagonists of the Mountain or Jacobin party.

The Emigrants had continued to flock to Coblenz, and their number,
with their families, now amounted to nearly one hundred thousand of
the most wealthy and influential class in France. They continued to
make preparations for war, and it is no wonder that the people of
France beheld their menacing attitude with uneasiness. Though the
king publicly wrote letters to the Emigrants, desiring them to return
to their country, and employ themselves as good citizens under the
Constitution, there was a strong suspicion that he privately gave them
different advice. That the king did maintain a secret correspondence
with some of the insurgents is certain; but it is neither proved, nor
does it appear probable, that he sanctioned their intention of making
war on the country. But their obstinate absence drove the Assembly now
to such severe measures against them as compelled Louis to exercise
his veto in their favour, and he thus destroyed his popularity with
the public, and caused himself to be considered as really in league
with the Emigrants. Nevertheless, it was the advice of all the king's
Ministers, as well as it appears to have been his own feeling, that
they should return, for they might have added immensely to the
influence in favour of the throne. Louis, therefore, again exhorted
the Emigrants to return; but they continued inflexible. He next wrote
to the officers of the army and navy, deploring the information that
he had received that they were quitting the service, and that he could
not consider those his friends who did not, like himself, remain at
their posts; but this was equally ineffectual, and the Minister of War
reported to the Assembly that one thousand nine hundred officers had
deserted. The Assembly was greatly incensed; the Girondists deemed it
a good opportunity to force the king to deal a blow at the nobility
and at his own brothers. On the 20th of October Brissot ascended the
tribune, and demanded measures of severity against the Emigrants.
At the close of the debate a decree was passed requiring the king's
brothers to return to France within three months, on pain of forfeiting
all their rights as citizens, and their claims as princes on the
succession to the Crown. On the 9th of November a second decree was
passed, declaring that all Frenchmen assembled on the frontiers were
suspected of conspiracy against the country; that all such as should
continue there till the 1st of January should be treated as traitors;
that princes and public functionaries should become amenable to the
same punishments; that the incomes of all such Emigrants, from lands,
moneys, or offices, should from the present moment be sequestrated;
that a court should be appointed in January to try them; and that any
Frenchman, after this, crossing the frontiers, or found guilty of
endeavouring to seduce the people from their allegiance, should be put
to death.

Whilst the nation was growing every day more Jacobinical, and the
danger was becoming more imminent, the queen sent a secret agent to
London to sound Pitt. She hoped to win him to an announcement of
supporting the throne of France in conjunction with the Continental
sovereigns; but Pitt showed his usual reserve. He declared that England
would not allow the Revolutionary spirit to put down the monarchy, but
he said nothing expressly of supporting the monarch himself; and the
queen, who was always suspicious that the Duke of Orleans was aiming at
the Crown, and that he had made himself a party in England, was filled
with alarm, lest Pitt's words only concealed the idea of such a king.
Still the attitude of the Continental Powers became more menacing.
The troops of the Emperor, in Belgium and Luxembourg, pressed upon
the very frontiers of France, and the numbers of the Emigrants were
constantly increasing in the territories of the Electors of Treves,
Mayence, and Spires. Two hundred thousand men, in fact, formed a line
along the French frontiers from Basle to the Scheldt.

The French, exasperated beyond further endurance, on the 22nd of
November entered on the question of war in the Assembly in earnest.
Koch, of Strasburg, the well-known historian, declared that no time
was to be lost; that the German nations were every day violating the
frontiers of France, and that the Minister for Foreign Affairs was
not to be trusted. Three armies were formed. Rochambeau, who was now
ailing, and out of humour, was appointed to that stationed in Flanders,
and called the army of the north; Lafayette was put in command of the
central division stationed at Metz, and Luckner of the one stationed
in Alsace. Narbonne, the new Minister, made a rapid journey, and
returning, announced to the Assembly that the different fortresses were
fast assuming a creditable condition, and that the army, from Dunkirk
to Besançon, presented a mass of two hundred and forty battalions, one
hundred and sixty squadrons, with artillery requisite for two hundred
thousand men, and supplies for six months. This report was received
with acclamations. So closed the year 1791.

The year 1792 opened in England with a state of intense anxiety
regarding the menacing attitude of affairs in France. There were all
the signs of a great rupture with the other Continental nations; yet
the king, in opening Parliament, on the 31st of January, did not
even allude to these ominous circumstances, but held out the hope of
continued peace. George III. stated that he had been engaged with
some of his allies in endeavouring to bring about a pacification
between the Russians and Austrians with Turkey, and that he hoped for
the conclusion of the war in India against Tippoo Sahib, ere long,
through the able management of Lord Cornwallis. He also announced the
approaching marriage of the Duke of York with the eldest daughter of
the King of Prussia. Grey and Fox, in the debate upon the Address,
condemned strongly our interference on behalf of Turkey--a state which
they contended ought, from its corruption, to be allowed to disappear.
They also expressed a strong opinion that the war in India would not
be so soon terminated. Fox was very severe on the treatment of Dr.
Priestley and the Dissenters at Birmingham, declaring the injuries
done to Priestley and his friends equally disgraceful to the nation and
to the national Church. He passed the highest encomiums on the loyalty
of the Dissenters. Pitt regretted the outrages at Birmingham, but slid
easily over them to defend the support of Turkey as necessary to the
maintenance of the balance of power in Europe; and he concluded the
debate by stating that the revenue of the last year had been sixteen
million seven hundred and seventy thousand pounds, and that it left
nine hundred thousand pounds towards the liquidation of the National
Debt.

[Illustration: THE COUNT DE MIRABEAU.]

Grey and Fox then made an equally brisk attack on the support of Turkey
by Ministers. They greatly applauded the Czarina, and Fox affirmed
that so far from Turkey soliciting our interference, it had objected
to it. On the same day, in the Lords, Lord Fitzwilliam opened the same
question. He contended that we had fitted out an expensive armament to
prevent the conquest by Russia of Oczakoff, and yet had not done it,
but had ended in accepting the very terms that the Czarina had offered
in 1790. Ministers replied that, though we had not saved Oczakoff,
we had prevented still more extensive attempts by Russia. Though the
Opposition, in both cases, was defeated, the attack was renewed on the
27th of February, when the Earl Stanhope--an enthusiastic worshipper
of the French Revolution--recommended, as the best means of preventing
aggression by Continental monarchs, a close alliance on our part with
France. Two days afterwards Mr. Whitbread introduced a string of
resolutions in the Commons, condemning the interference of Ministers
between Russia and Turkey, and the needless expenditure thus incurred,
in fact, going over much the same ground. A strenuous debate followed,
in which Grey, Fox, Windham, Francis, Sheridan, and the whole Whig
phalanx, took part. On this occasion, Mr. Jenkinson, afterwards Earl
of Liverpool, first appeared, and made his maiden speech in defence of
Ministers. He showed that the system of aggression had commenced with
Russia, and menaced the profoundest dangers to Europe; that Britain
had wisely made alliance with Prussia to stem the evil, and he utterly
repudiated all notion of the moderation of the Czarina, whose ambition
he asserted to be of the most unscrupulous kind.

Prussia having been introduced into the debate, on the 1st of March
it was renewed by Mr. Martin, followed by Francis, Fox, and others,
who argued that the secret was thus out; we were fighting again on
account of the old mischief--German alliances. Pitt defended the
policy of Ministers. He asked whether Russia was to be permitted to
drive the Turks from Europe and plant herself in Constantinople, with
Greece as part of her empire? In that case, Russia would become the
first maritime power in the world, for her situation in the heart of
the Mediterranean, and with Greeks for her sailors--the best sailors
in that sea--would give her unrivalled advantages, and make her the
most destructive opponent of British interests that had ever arisen.
Pitt drew a dark character of the Czarina--the Messalina of the
North; reminded the House of her endeavours to strike a mortal blow
at us during the American war; of her arrogance and insolence on many
occasions, and said that he did not envy Fox the honour of having his
bust ordered by this notorious woman from Nollekens, the sculptor. Fox
well deserved this hard blow, for he had shown a strange blindness to
the grasping designs of Russia, and confessed that, whilst in office,
he had refused to concur in remonstrances to Russia against the seizure
of the Crimea. The motion of Whitbread was rejected by a majority of
two hundred and forty-four against one hundred and sixteen.

On the 7th of March the House of Commons went into committee on the
establishment of the Duke of York, on account of his marriage. Fox
united with Pitt in supporting the recommendation that twenty-five
thousand pounds _per annum_ should be added to the twelve thousand
pounds which the duke already had; besides this the duke had a private
yearly revenue of four thousand pounds, making altogether forty-one
thousand a year, in addition to the bishopric of Osnaburg, in Germany,
which had been conferred on the duke, though a layman and a soldier.
Notwithstanding the union of Whigs and Tories on this occasion,
the vote did not pass without some sharp remarks on the miserable
stinginess of the King of Prussia, who only gave his daughter the
paltry sum of twenty-five thousand pounds as a dowry, and stipulated
that even that should be returned in case of the duke's death, though
in that case his daughter was to have a permanent allowance of eight
thousand pounds a year.

Fox, on this occasion, also introduced the subject of the Prince of
Wales's allowance, who, he contended, had far less than had been
granted to a Prince of Wales since the accession of the House of
Hanover, that allowance being one hundred thousand pounds a-year; and
the present parsimony towards the prince being grossly aggravated
by the royal Civil List having been raised, in this reign, from six
hundred thousand pounds to nine hundred thousand pounds, and the Privy
Purse from six thousand pounds to sixty thousand pounds. Fox's remarks
were rendered all the more telling because, when the House went into
committee on the finances, Pitt had made a most flourishing statement
of the condition of the Exchequer. He took off the taxes which pressed
most on the poorer portion of the population--namely, on servants, the
late augmentations on malt, on waggons, on inhabited houses, etc.,--to
the amount of two hundred thousand pounds and appropriated four hundred
thousand pounds towards the reduction of the National Debt. Still blind
to the storm rising across the strait of Dover, he declared that these
were mere trifles compared with what he should be able to do shortly,
for never was there a time when a more durable peace might be expected!

But besides nascent war, the Anti-Slavery movement of Wilberforce,
Pitt's friend, was decidedly adverse to the expected increase of
income. The Abolitionists had now begun to abandon the use of
slave-grown sugar, and they proposed to extend this to all the produce
of the West India islands, till the slave trade should be extirpated.
This alarmed Pitt, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, and he prevailed
on Wilberforce to discourage this project for awhile. The Abolition
cause received serious injury from the frightful insurrection
which had broken out in St. Domingo, and from the outrages which
the insurgent blacks had perpetrated on the whites. Such were held
up by the friends of slavery as the natural consequences of novel
doctrines of philanthropy. What made the matter more serious was,
that Brissot and the worst of the Jacobins were the authors of these
bloody tragedies, by their violent advocacy of the universal adoption
of the Rights of Man. All these men were enthusiastic applauders of
the English Abolitionists. Paine was a prominent Abolitionist; and
Clarkson, the right hand of Wilberforce, was an equal admirer of the
French Revolution, and gave serious offence by attending a dinner at
the "Crown and Anchor," to celebrate the taking of the Bastille. These
circumstances had a great effect when Wilberforce, on the 2nd of April,
brought in his annual motion for the immediate abolition of the slave
trade. Fox and Pitt eloquently supported him; but Dundas, now become
Secretary of State, prevailed to introduce into the motion the words
"gradual abolition." The Wilberforce party managed to carry a motion in
the Commons, for the abolition of the trade to the West Indies, on the
1st of January, 1796; but this was thrown out in the Lords, where it
was opposed by the Duke of Clarence, who had been in the West Indies,
and thought the descriptions of the condition of the slaves overdrawn.
It was also opposed by Thurlow, by Horsley, Bishop of St. Davids, and a
considerable majority.

During this Session a very important Bill was introduced, and passed
both Houses, for the improvement of the police, and the administration
of justice in London. The old unpaid and very corrupt magistrates were
set aside. The metropolis was divided into five districts, each having
its police office, at which three justices were to sit, each having
a salary of three hundred pounds per annum. They were not allowed to
take fees in their own persons, and all fines paid in the courts were
to be put in a box towards defraying the salaries and other official
expenses. Constables and magistrates were empowered to take up persons
who could not give a good account of themselves, and commit them as
vagabonds.

A great raid of reform was made in the Opposition, and it fell first
on the corruption of the boroughs, both in Scotland and England. The
subject was brought on, as it were, incidentally. An Enclosure Bill,
affecting some parts of the New Forest, Hampshire, was attacked, as
a job intended to benefit Pitt's staunch supporter, George Rose, who
had rapidly risen from an obscure origin to the post of Secretary to
the Treasury. Rose had a house and small estate in the Forest, and
there was a universal outcry, both in Parliament and in the public
press, that, in addition to the many sinecures of the fortunate
Rose, there was also a sop intended for him at the cost of the
Crown lands. The reformers were successful in casting much blame on
Ministers, and they followed it up by charging Rose with bribing one
Thomas Smith, a publican in Westminster, to procure votes for the
Ministerial candidate, Lord Hood. Though the motion for a committee of
the House to inquire into the particulars of this case was defeated,
yet the debates turned the attention of the country on the scandalous
bribery going on in boroughs. The Scots, the countrymen of Rose,
petitioned for an inquiry into the condition of their boroughs. Of
the sixty-six boroughs, petitions for such inquiry came from fifty.
They complained that the members and magistrates of those corporations
were self-elected, and by these means the rights and property of the
inhabitants were grievously invaded.

Sheridan introduced the subject on the 18th of April, and Fox ably
supported him; but the motion was negatived. But this defeat only
appeared to stimulate the reformers to higher exertions. On the 28th
of April a new Reform society, entitled the Society of the Friends
of the People, was formally inaugurated by the issue of an address,
which was signed by no less than twenty-eight members of the House of
Commons, and a considerable number of Lords, amongst them the Lords
Lauderdale, John Russell, Stanhope, and Fitzgerald. Their title was
unfortunate, for, though they were united only for Parliamentary
reform, this cognomen was so much in the French style as to create
suspicion and alarm. Many of the members were known to be admirers of
the French Revolution, and about the same time another and decidedly
French-admiring society was started, calling itself the Corresponding
Society, and prosecuting a zealous intercourse with the Girondists
and Jacobins. The admiration of French political principles rendered
the conservative portion of the population quite determined to resist
all innovations; and as this Society of the Friends of the People
was regarded as a direct imitation of the Jacobin Club, it was
violently opposed and stigmatised. On the 30th of April Mr. Grey, as
representative of this Society, rose to announce that in the next
Session he meant to introduce a regular measure for the reform of
Parliament; that it was necessary, he said, had long been asserted by
the two leading men of the House--Pitt and Fox. Pitt rose on this, and
declared himself still the friend of Reform; but he contended that this
was not the time to attempt it. He had only, he said, to point to
the state of things in France, and to the effervescence which those
principles of anarchy had produced in Britain, to show the necessity of
remaining quiet for the present; neither did he believe that the mass
of the English people would support any change in our Constitution.
Fox upbraided Pitt with the abandonment of his former sentiments, and
contended that we had only to look at the money spent lately in the
armament against Russia, money thus spent without any consent of the
people, to perceive the necessity of reform in our representation.
He referred to Pitt's remarks on revolutionary books and pamphlets
recently published, and declared that he had read very few of them.
He had only read one of the two books of Thomas Paine, the "Rights of
Man," and did not like it. Burke replied to him, and drew a most dismal
picture of the condition of France under her Revolutionists. He said
that the French Assembly was composed of seven hundred persons, of whom
four hundred were lawyers, and three hundred of no description; that he
could not name a dozen out of the whole, he believed, with one hundred
pounds a-year; and he asked whether we should like a Parliament in
Great Britain resembling it. In this debate, the further dissolution of
the Whig party became obvious when Windham and others took the side of
Burke.

Immediately after this debate the Government took active steps to crush
that spirit of free discussion in books, pamphlets and associations,
which no doubt had been greatly stimulated by the excitement of the
French Revolution, and which they professed to believe was aiming at
the same object--the destruction of the monarchy. But in attempting to
check this spirit, they adopted the un-English plan of fettering the
press and individual opinion. Pitt's Government issued a proclamation
against seditious books, and societies corresponding with the
Republicans across the water; and magistrates were desired to make
diligent inquiries as to the authors of seditious books and pamphlets,
to put down all mischievous associations, and to take the promptest
means of suppressing and preventing riots and disturbances. An Address
in approbation of this proclamation was moved by Mr. Pepper Arden,
the Master of the Rolls, in the Commons, and a short debate was the
consequence. In this Grey and Fox declared that the proclamation was
unconstitutional, mischievous, and oppressive; that it was a stimulus
given to hot-headed and bigoted magistrates all over the country to
invade the freedom of the press and of private life, on pretence of
preventing disturbance; that the true constitutional remedy for any
wrong opinions promulgated by the press was their regulation by right
and sound opinions; that the blow was aimed against the Society of
the Friends of the People, and intended to crush Reform, and divide
the Whig party; that, in truth, the riots and instigations to anarchy
came not from the Reformers, but from the Church, the magistracy, and
the Tories; and they appealed for the truth of this to the disgraceful
scenes which had occurred at Birmingham. They reminded Government that
in 1782 Pitt had joined the Duke of Richmond, Major Cartwright, and
Horne Tooke, in a meeting, at the Thatched House Tavern, for Reform;
that they, the Whigs, had never gone to the length of Cartwright and
Horne Tooke in their principles of Reform, as Pitt had done; and
they reproached the Minister with his shameful inconsistency. Lord
John Russell, Francis, Lambton, and others, supported Grey and Fox;
and Windham, Lord North, Dundas, etc., supported Pitt. The Address
was carried; and when sent up to the Lords produced another striking
exhibition of the change going on in the Whig party; for the Prince of
Wales, who had hitherto been in such close union with them, and had
been so zealously supported by them, now rose and gave his decided
approbation to the Address, declaring that he had been educated in
admiration of the established Constitution, and was determined, so far
as in him lay, to support it. These words were received with triumph by
the Government party, the Address was carried almost unanimously, and
was followed by an immediate prosecution of the "Rights of Man," by the
Attorney-General, which caused it to be far more generally read than it
otherwise would have been.

It appeared to be the design of the Whigs to agitate this Session a
series of questions connected with freedom of opinion, which, from
the spirit of the times, they could not have the slightest chance of
carrying, but merely to maintain the cause of liberty and liberality
against the spirit of alarm and the spirit of tyranny that dogged
its steps. On the 11th of May Fox moved for leave to bring in a Bill
to repeal certain old statutes affecting the Dissenters, but his
principal remarks were directed against the outrages perpetrated on Dr.
Priestley and the Unitarians at Birmingham, his tone being taken from
a petition from that body presented a few days before. Burke replied
to him, and asserted that this body of so-called Religionists was
rather a body of political agitators. He noticed, in proof, the close
connection of Drs. Price and Priestley, and their adherents, with the
French Revolutionists. He quoted Priestley's own writings to show that
they avowed a desire to destroy the National Church. He expressed
his conviction that, from the intolerance shown by this party in the
prosecution of their views, they would, did they succeed in destroying
the Church and the Constitution, prove worse masters than those whom
the English nation then had. He had no desire to see the king and
Parliament dragged after a National Assembly, as they had been by the
admired reforms of Priestley, Price, and that party, and much preferred
to live under George III. or George IV. than under Dr. Priestley or Dr.
Kippis. Pitt expressed his unwillingness to give more power to a party
that declared its desire to overturn both Church and Constitution; and
Fox, in reply, attacked Burke's "Reflections on the French Revolution,"
saying that Paine's "Age of Reason" was a libel on the Constitution
of Great Britain, but that Burke's book was a libel on every free
Constitution in the world. The motion was rejected by one hundred and
forty-two votes against sixty-three.

[Illustration: GOVERNMENT HOUSE, CALCUTTA. (_From a Photograph by Frith
& Co._)]

Lord Rawdon again attempted to mitigate the condition of debtors
imprisoned by their creditors, but did not succeed; and after Dundas
had drawn a very flattering picture of the condition of India in
presenting his annual statement of Indian finance, and had procured
some regulations for insuring the payment of seamen's wages to
themselves or their families, the king prorogued Parliament on the 15th
of June, still congratulating the country on the prospect of peace and
of reducing substantially the National Debt.

During the recess of Parliament there was an active contest between
the new French opinions and the old constitutional ones. One called
forth and provoked the other. Clubs and societies for Reform were
more after the model of the wholesale proceedings of France than the
old and sober ones of England. The Society of the Friends of the
People was compelled to disclaim all connection with the Society for
Constitutional Information in London, which was in open correspondence
with the Jacobins of Paris. It was forced to disown societies in the
country of the same stamp, and especially to check a branch of the
Society for Constitutional Information in Sheffield, which, in May of
the present year, called on the Society of the Friends of the People to
establish a Convention in London. To allow of no mistake as to their
principles, the Society of the Friends of the People held a great
meeting on the 5th of May, in which they announced that they had no
other object but to obtain Parliamentary Reform by strictly legal and
constitutional means, and that after this end had been secured they
should dissolve themselves. Yet, notwithstanding this, there were those
in the Society who deemed that they were in connection with persons
and associations whose views went farther than their own, and, on this
ground, on the 9th of June, Mr. Baker, who had been the chairman at the
late meeting at the Freemasons' Tavern, Lord John Russell, who had been
deputy-chairman, Dudley North, Mr. Curwen, and Mr. Courtney, withdrew
from it.

On the other hand, the Corresponding Society and the Society for
Constitutional Information kept up an open correspondence with the
National Convention of France, even after the bloody massacres of
September of this year, which we have yet to mention. Unwarned by these
facts, they professed to see, in the example of Frenchmen, the only
chance of the liberation of the English nation from the oppressions
of the Crown and of an overgrown aristocracy. They made no secret
of their desire to establish a Republic in Great Britain; and the
Society for Constitutional Information included amongst its members
a number of red-hot Americans. These Societies and the Revolutionary
Society in London continued to send over glowing addresses to the
French Convention, declaring their desire to fraternise with them for
liberty and equality, and their determination never again to fight with
Frenchmen at the command of despots.

These proceedings called forth an opposite class of Associations, in
which the clergy of the Establishment took the lead. The bishop and
clergy of Worcester, and Dr. Watson, the bishop, and the clergy of
Llandaff, met and presented addresses to the king, expressing their
abhorrence of the doctrines of these Associations, which made no
secret of their demand for "the rights of man--liberty and equality,
no king, no Parliament;" and they expressed their conviction that this
country already possessed more genuine liberty than any other nation
whatever. They asserted that the Constitution, the Church, and State
had received more improvements since the Revolution in 1688 than in
all previous ages; that the Dissenters and Catholics had been greatly
relieved, the judges had been rendered independent, and the laws in
various ways more liberalised since the accession of his present
Majesty than for several reigns previously. They asserted boldly that
in no country could men rise from the lowest positions to affluence
and honour, by trade, by the practice of the law, by other arts and
professions, so well as in this; that the wealth everywhere visible,
the general and increasing prosperity, testified to this fact, in
happy contrast to the miserable condition of France. They concluded
by recommending the formation of counter-associations in all parts of
the country, to diffuse such constitutional sentiments and to expose
the mischievous fallacies of the Democratic societies. This advice
was speedily followed, and every neighbourhood became the arena of
conflicting politics. The Democrats, inoculated by the wild views of
French licence, injured the cause of real liberty and progress by their
advocacy of the mob dominion of Paris; and the Constitutionalists,
urged by the alarm and the zeal inspired by opposition, grew intolerant
and persecuting. The eyes of thousands who had at first hailed the
French Revolution as the happy dawn of a new era of liberty and
brotherhood, were now opened by the horrors of the massacres of the
French clergy in September of this year, and by the sight of swarms
of priests, who had fled for security to London and were everywhere
to be seen in the streets, destitute and dejected. A public meeting
was called at the London Tavern towards the close of 1792, and a
subscription entered into for their relief.

In March of this year Lord Cornwallis had brought a war in India with
the implacable enemy of the British to a very successful close. Early
in the preceding year, 1791, he had reinstated our ally, the Rajah
of Travancore, in his dominions, and had further seized nearly all
Tippoo's territories on the Malabar coast. He then determined to strike
a decisive blow, by marching upon Tippoo's capital, Seringapatam. In
February he took the city of Bangalore, and early in May he was on
his route for Seringapatam. Tippoo was in the deepest consternation.
Lord Cornwallis arrived in the neighbourhood of Seringapatam on the
13th of May, and immediately attacked Tippoo, who was drawn up with a
large force. The Mysoreans broke and fled before the British bayonets.
The British army was in full view of the capital, and expected a rich
booty, when Cornwallis was compelled to order a retreat. The forces
of General Abercromby, who had to make his way from another quarter
through the mountains, had not come up; neither had the Mahrattas,
who were to join with twenty thousand men. The rains had set in, and
the army was without provisions, for Tippoo had laid all the country
waste. In these circumstances, Lord Cornwallis somewhat precipitately
destroyed his battering guns, and retired from before Seringapatam.
He sent word to Abercromby, who was now approaching, to retire also.
On the 26th of May, the very first day of his retreat, the Mahrattas
arrived; but as the rains continued and his soldiers were suffering
from illness, he determined to retreat to Bangalore, where he procured
four battering trains; and having laid in plentiful stores and obtained
strong reinforcements, as soon as the season was favourable he again
set out for Seringapatam. After taking different forts on his way, he
appeared before that wealthy city on the 5th of February, 1792, in
company with General Abercromby and a native force belonging to our
ally, the Nizam. Tippoo was drawn up before the city, having between
it and himself the rapid river Cauvery, and the place extremely well
fortified and defended by batteries. He had forty thousand infantry
and five thousand horse; but he was speedily defeated, and driven
across the river into the city. There the British followed him, and,
under the guidance of the brave generals, Medows and Abercromby, they
soon penetrated so deeply into the place that Tippoo was compelled to
capitulate. In these actions the British were said to have lost about
six hundred men, Tippoo four thousand.

The conditions proposed by Lord Cornwallis were, that Tippoo should
cede one-half of his territories; that he should pay three crores and
thirty lacs of rupees; that he should restore all the prisoners taken
since the time of his father, Hyder Ali; and that two of his eldest
sons should be given up as hostages for the faithful fulfilment of
the articles. On the 26th the boys, who were only eight and ten years
old, were surrendered, and part of the money was sent in. Cornwallis
received the little princes very kindly, and presented each of them
with a gold watch, with which they were delighted. When, however, it
came to the surrender of the territory, Tippoo refused and began to
make preparations for resistance; but Lord Cornwallis's active firmness
soon compelled him to submit. He ordered the captive children to be
sent away to Bangalore, and prepared to storm the town, for which both
our soldiers and those of the Nizam were impatient. Tippoo gave way;
and the surrender of territory according to the treaty was completed.

These acquisitions were more valuable for the defence which they
afforded the British than for the direct income, which did not amount
to more than half a million sterling a year; but they included all
Tippoo's dominions on the coast of Malabar, thus cutting off his
mischievous communications with the French by sea. It would have been
easy at this time to have stripped Tippoo of the whole of Mysore, but
it was not deemed politic. We were far from having great faith in the
continued fidelity of the Mahrattas, and it was thought necessary
not to remove the check which the existence of Tippoo's power, and
his desire for revenge on the Mahrattas, presented. Besides, the
finances of India were in a very embarrassed state, and the question of
Indian war was unpopular in Britain. With all the territory resigned
to the Indian allies, Lord Cornwallis could not avoid giving deep
offence to the Mahrattas, who desired to obtain a regiment of British
troops in pay. The ill-concealed jealousy between them and the Nizam
made an outbreak between these States very possible; and the moody
resentment of Tippoo, who writhed under his humiliation, added greatly
to the uncertainty of long-continued peace. On the other hand, the
soldiers were highly discontented at not having had the opportunity
of plundering the opulent city of Seringapatam; and to soothe them
Cornwallis and General Medows, the second in command, surrendered to
them their shares of prize money, and the former ordered them, besides,
six months' batta out of the money paid by Tippoo.

It was during Lord Cornwallis's campaign in Mysore that Lord Macartney
made his celebrated embassy to China, to endeavour to induce the
Chinese to open their ports to trade with Britain; but his lordship
succeeded in very little beyond making the Chinese and their country
better known in the work written by his secretary, afterwards Sir John
Barrow.

Very important events had during this time been taking place in Europe.
In the north, Russia, checked in its encroachments on Turkey for the
present, turned its eyes on the inviting region of Poland. Poland,
after neglecting its own internal improvement, and the raising of
the condition of its people, so as to give them a real interest in
the defence of the country, had suddenly set about establishing a
new Constitution, very much on the model of the French Revolutionary
one. The Diet declared the throne hereditary, and not elective, as
hitherto; and Stanislaus Augustus, the king--that is, Poniatowski, the
former lover and favourite of Catherine of Russia--was wholly agreeable
to this. The Diet proposed the Elector of Saxony as Poniatowski's
successor, the king having no children. It also admitted the burgher
class into its body. As there was a strong party, however, in
opposition to the popular party, the patriots met secretly, and not
only pledged themselves to the new Constitution, but to pass it _en
masse_ and at once, without canvassing the particular articles of it.
The king, being privy to this, on the 3rd of May, 1791, entered the
hall of the Diet. The new Constitution was read, passed by a majority,
and signed by the king. Stanislaus then led the way to the cathedral,
where he was followed by all the nuncios except twelve, and there both
he and they swore to maintain this new Constitution. An unexpected
difficulty was found in persuading the Elector of Saxony to accept the
Crown; for, though both Russia and Prussia still professed friendship
for Poland, he was too well aware of the designs of Russia on Poland to
accept the dangerous post without much hesitation. At length, in the
month of April, 1792, the Elector gave his reluctant consent, but not
without stipulating that they should give more power to the sovereign,
and limit more that of the Diet; that the right of determining peace
and war should belong to the king, as well as the authority over the
army. He objected to a number of things, evidently borrowed from the
revolutionary French, such as the oath taken to the nation, and the
education of the heir by the Diet, just as the National Assembly had
claimed the right to educate the Dauphin.

But now Catherine of Russia had concluded her entanglements with
Turkey. It was the August of 1791, and her eyes turned immediately
on Poland, and she pretended to take great offence and alarm at the
new Constitution, as full of French and Revolutionary principles, and
therefore intolerable to any neighbouring state. She began to negotiate
with Sweden, and Prussia, and Austria, to co-operate with her in her
design against Poland. Prussia was easily led to adopt her ideas, for
the king was like herself, greedy of his neighbour's dominions, and had
been repulsed by the Poles in grasping at Thorn and Dantzic. Leopold
of Austria was, by his connection with the royal party of France,
through his sister, naturally ready to put down any influence from the
French Revolution in a neighbouring country; but he was indisposed to
war, and too just and moderate for aggression. His death, on the 1st
of March, 1792, removed this obstacle, and Francis, his successor, was
found to be more accessible to the Czarina's selfish arguments. Russia,
Prussia, and Austria were all agreed on the plunder of Poland, whilst
they still preserved the most hypocritical appearance of caring only
for its unity and national interests. As for Gustavus III., of Sweden,
brave and honest as he was, he was of such chivalrous and, to a certain
degree, insane character, that he was easily led on by the artful
Empress of Russia to lend himself to her designs, without being aware
of them. He had declared himself the knight of Marie Antoinette, and
had sworn to rescue her. He was avaricious of military glory, and, like
his predecessor, Charles XII., he was desirous only of conducting some
great and brilliant enterprise. He desired to lead an army against the
French, now bursting out under the Revolutionary general, Custine, on
Germany, and, joining with the army of the Emigrants, eighteen thousand
in number, to beat back the Democratic general, to march into France,
and restore the throne of Louis and Marie Antoinette. But he had no
money; the Empress of Russia, who wished him employed at a distance,
and especially in keeping back the French Democrats, whilst she carved
up Poland, offered him both money and arms. But the Empress was
relieved of the high-minded Gustavus in a manner which she had by no
means contemplated. He fell, on the 16th of March, in his own capital,
by the hand of an assassin called Ankarström.

Catherine of Russia, thus rid of the only two monarchs who were
likely to trouble her with scruples, hastened her grand design of
absorbing Poland. She professed to be much scandalised and alarmed
at the proceedings of the king, who had attended a dinner given by
the municipality of Warsaw on the anniversary of the passing of their
new Constitution, at which he had not only responded to the toast
of his health by drinking to the nation and the municipality, thus
sanctioning them as great powers, as the French had done, but had sat
complacently amid the loud cries of "Long live Liberty! Long live the
nation, and our citizen king, the friend of the Rights of Man!" The
Poles had certainly become enthusiastic imitators of the French; they
had established clubs in imitation of the clubs of Paris, had sent
a deputation to congratulate the French on their Revolution, and had
passed various decrees of a Jacobin character. Neither did she lack
a sanction from the Poles themselves. There had always been violent
parties in that kingdom; and at this time a number of nobles, who
opposed the new Constitution, sent a deputation with a memorial to the
Empress, at St. Petersburg, inviting her to assist them in restoring
the old Constitution. Catherine gave them a ready promise, and, on
the 14th of May, Felix Potocki, Branicki, Rzewinski, and eleven other
nobles, met at Targowica, and entered into a confederacy for this
purpose. This confederacy was followed, only four days after its
signing, by a protest issued by Bulgakoff, the Russian Minister, at
Warsaw, against the whole of the new institutions and decrees. On the
18th of May, the same day that this proclamation was issued at Warsaw,
a hundred thousand Russian troops marched over the Polish frontiers,
attended by some of the pro-Russian confederates, and assumed the
appearance of an army of occupation.

[Illustration: VIEW IN OLD PARIS: RUE DE PIROUETTE, NORTH SIDE OF LES
HALLES. (_After Martial._)]

The Diet issued a counter-proclamation rebutting Catherine's long
catalogue of charges _seriatim_, and denying the right of any nation,
under any pretence whatever, to interfere with the internal changes of
another nation executed by the proper authorities and representatives
of the people. Stanislaus Augustus issued an address to the Polish
army, calling upon it to defend the national rights from the domination
of Russia. But, unfortunately, Poland was in no condition to cope with
the might of Russia. No pains had been taken to organise the army
in years past on any scale capable of defending the nation; the new
rights conferred on the people were too new to have given them yet any
interest in them. Poland, therefore, in all haste, made solicitations
for help to Prussia, Austria, Britain, Sweden, and Denmark; but in
vain. Sweden and Denmark had, now that Gustavus was dead, determined
to have no concern in wars resulting in any way from the French
Revolution. Frederick William of Prussia pretended to have foreseen
this offence to Russia in the alarming measures of the Diet, and
protested that had it not been for these, Russia would never have taken
the decided step which she had now done. He, however, coldly professed
himself ready to unite with Russia and Austria to restore the former
state of things in Poland. As for Austria, she lay cold and neutral
in appearance; but though Poland was not aware of it, both Prussia
and Austria were in the secret league for the dismemberment of that
unfortunate country.

Britain was anxiously appealed to for aid; but Pitt, who had raised
so powerful an armament to check the attacks of Russia on Turkey, was
not disposed to denounce the attempts of Russia on Poland. He might
be blamed for refraining from exerting the moral power of Britain in
condemnation of the unprincipled aggression of Russia, but he could
not be expected to take arms in defence of Poland, so far removed from
the influence of a maritime nation. Colonel Gardiner, our Minister
at Warsaw, was instructed by our Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Lord
Grenville, to express a friendly interest towards Poland, but to
take care to avoid raising hopes of assistance. The Poles, repelled
by Prussia and Austria, and finding no warmth of sympathy in the
agent of Britain, dispatched Count Bukaty in June to London to plead
for aid. But Pitt was cold and immovable, though he saw with regret
that the absorption of this large country, in the centre of Europe,
would formidably increase that preponderance of Russia, which he had
attempted to prevent when there was a question of the absorption
of Turkey. He adopted an attitude of strict neutrality. No motion
condemnatory of Russia's grasping schemes was made in Parliament; it
seemed to Britain a matter of no moment that one of the chief nations
of Europe should be torn in pieces by rapacious Powers, contrary to
all moral and international law. The Whigs, those warm advocates of
revolution and of popular freedom, were dumb. In fact, what could
they say? Fox and his admirers had all along been lauding the Russian
Empress as one of the greatest, ablest, and most innocent of monarchs,
simply in opposition to Pitt and his endeavours to repress her schemes
of aggrandisement. Fox had even sent Mr. Adair as his emissary to St.
Petersburg, to congratulate her on her successes, and to assure her of
the admiration of Englishmen. Such are the perversities into which men
are driven by party spirit! At this very moment Fox and the Whigs were
flattering and patting Catherine on the back, when her bandit armies
had already their feet on the doomed soil of Poland, and they were
still applauding the Revolutionists of France, when they were already
beyond the Rhine, on that crusade of conquest which plunged Europe
into more than twenty years of the most horrible bloodshed. They saw
all this when too late. For the present, what was done for Poland was
to call a meeting at the Mansion House and open a subscription for the
suffering Poles.

Poland, abandoned to her own resources, made a brave but ineffectual
defence. The Russians received several severe checks in their advance.
At Zadorsk, at Palorma, and finally at Dulienska, the Poles fought
them gallantly. At the last-named battle, on the 17th of July, the
heroic Kosciusko made terrible havoc of the Russian lines, and was
only prevented from utterly routing them by his flank being turned by
another arrival of Russians, whom the Emperor Francis, of Austria, had
allowed to march through Galicia. The Russians advanced to Warsaw,
took regular possession of it, and of all the towns and military
forts throughout the country. They dismissed the patriot officers
of the army, and dispersed the army itself in small divisions into
widely-separated places. They abolished the new Constitution, thrust
the burgher class again out of their newly-acquired privileges, and
put the press under more ignominious restrictions than before. They
confiscated the estates of nobles who had advocated the new reforms.
Both Catherine and her Ministers treated the idea of any partition of
Poland as the most groundless and ridiculous of notions. They pointed
to the invasion of Germany already by Custine, the French Revolutionary
general, and justified the temporary occupation of Poland as necessary
to the security of both Poland and the neighbouring states. We must
leave the three robber Powers, Russia, Prussia, and Austria, therefore,
gloating over their prey, and ready to rend it asunder, in order to
continue the narrative of the wild explosion of France.

The Girondists were, at the opening of the year 1792, vehemently urging
on war against the Emigrants and the Emperor of Germany. Just at this
crisis, as we have seen, Leopold of Austria died, and was succeeded by
his nephew, Francis II.; and war became more inevitable, for Francis
had not the same pacific disposition as Leopold, and the Gironde was
bent on war. The internal condition of France also seemed to indicate
that there must soon be war abroad or civil war at home. The Ministers
were at variance; the Jacobins and Girondists were coming to an open
and desperate feud; the people, both in Paris and throughout the
country, were excited by the Jacobin publications to the utmost pitch
of fury against the Royalists and the priests.

Whilst the Gironde was thus weakened by this implacable and incurable
feud with the Jacobins, Austria was making unmistakable signs of
preparations for that war which Leopold had often threatened, but never
commenced. Francis received deputations from the Emigrant princes,
ordered the concentration of troops in Flanders, and spoke in so firm a
tone of restoring Louis and the old system of things, that the French
ambassador at Vienna, M. De Noailles, sent in his resignation, stating
that he despaired of inducing the Emperor to listen to the language
which had been dictated to him. Two days afterwards, however, Noailles
recalled his resignation, saying he had obtained the categorical answer
demanded of the Court of Vienna. This was sent in a dispatch from Baron
von Cobentzel, the Foreign Minister of Austria. In this document, which
was tantamount to a declaration of war, the Court of Vienna declared
that it would listen to no terms on behalf of the King of France,
except his entire restoration to all the ancient rights of his throne,
according to the royal declaration of the 23rd of June, 1789; and the
restoration of the domains in Alsace, with all their feudal rights, to
the princes of the Empire. Moreover, Prince Kaunitz, the chief Minister
of Francis, announced his determination to hold no correspondence with
the Government which had usurped authority in France.

Dumouriez, the new Foreign Minister, advised the king to communicate
this note to the Assembly without a moment's delay. There was immediate
dissension in the royal council. This was the commencement of the
division in the Gironde Ministry, which quickly destroyed it. Dumouriez
proceeded, in the presence of the king, the rest of the Ministers, and
a number of courtiers, on the 20th of April, to make that announcement
which was to decide the fate of France and of Europe. Roland and
the more determined Girondists had recommended that the king should
himself make the declaration of war; but as the war itself was most
repugnant to the king, Dumouriez had advised that he should only
consult with the Assembly on the necessity of this declaration, and
thus throw the responsibility on that body. There had been division of
opinion amongst Ministers, and now Dumouriez read a detailed account
of the negotiations with Austria, and then Louis, who looked jaded
and anxious, stated that he had followed the recommendations of the
Assembly, and of many of his subjects in various parts of France, in
these negotiations, and, as they had heard the results, he put it to
the Assembly whether they could any longer submit to see the dignity
of the French people insulted, and the national security threatened.
The speech was received with loud acclamations and cries of "_Vive le
Roi!_" The President said they would deliberate, and the result was
that a decree was passed resolving upon war. This resolve the Assembly
justified by the declaration that the Emperor of Austria had concerted
with the Emigrants and foreign princes to threaten the peace and the
constitution of France; that he had refused to abandon these views
and proceedings, and reduce his army to a peace establishment, as
demanded of him by a vote of the 11th of March of this year; that he
had declared his intention to restore the German princes by force to
the possessions they had held in Alsace, although the French nation
had never ceased to offer them compensation; and that, finally, he
had closed the door to all accommodation by refusing to reply to the
dispatches of the king.

Dumouriez had no sooner come into office than he laid down a great
military plan. He proposed that wherever France extended to what
he called her natural limits--that is, to the Rhine, the Alps, the
Pyrenees, and the sea--they should act only on the defensive; but in
the Netherlands, where the territory did not extend to the Rhine, and
in Savoy, where it did not extend to the Alps, there they should act
on the offensive, and carry France to what he called its boundaries by
the genuine laws of nature. This plan was adopted. The Austrians had
only thirty thousand men in Belgium, and Lafayette was to make a dash
on that division of the Netherlands. From Namur he was to push on for
Liége, which would make him complete master of the country, and was
to be strengthened by a reinforcement of thirty thousand infantry, so
that he would be seventy-five thousand strong before the Emperor could
advance to his attack. Further, while Lafayette was marching from Givet
on Namur, a division of his army of ten thousand men, under General
Biron, was to march upon Mons, where Beaulieu, the Austrian general,
was posted with only two thousand five hundred men. On the same day
Major-General Theobald Dillon was to advance with three thousand six
hundred men from Lille, in Tournay, and to surprise that place. The
French calculated on the support of the Belgians who had been strongly
inoculated with the spirit of the Revolution. The two smaller divisions
were punctual in their movements; but Lafayette, instead of marching
simultaneously, remained strengthening himself in his position at
Givet. General Biron set out from Valenciennes, and, on the 29th of
April, crossed the Belgian frontiers, and the next day marched towards
Mons. But no sooner did the French cavalry come in sight of some light
troops, said only to amount to about five hundred men, than they fled,
crying that they were betrayed. Beaulieu's horse pursued and captured
Biron's baggage and military chest. On the very same day, Dillon's
division, on their march from Lille to Tournay, fled with the very same
cry from nine hundred Austrians who had issued from Tournay. The French
officers in vain endeavoured, in both cases, to rally their forces,
and Dillon was murdered by his own men on re-entering Lille with a
lieutenant-colonel and an unsworn priest. Lafayette, hearing this
strange news, did not venture to quit Givet.

The news of this astonishing cowardice of the soldiery caused great
consternation in Paris. Lafayette and Rochambeau wrote complaining
of Dumouriez and the Gironde Ministry; the Girondists accused the
Jacobins of inciting the troops to this conduct; and the Jacobins
blamed the incompetence of the Gironde. The king proceeded to dismiss
his Girondist Ministry, and to rule with something like independence.
In the early part of July it was known at the Tuileries that the
Prussians, having joined the Austrians, had marched on Coblenz, to the
number of eighty thousand men, all old soldiers of the great Frederick,
and commanded by the Duke of Brunswick, the nephew of Frederick, who
had won so much distinction in the Seven Years' War. Marshal Luckner,
not deeming himself strong enough to resist this force, had retired
upon Lille and Valenciennes. The Court was in high spirits; the queen
told her ladies, in confidence, that the Allies would be in Paris in
six weeks. The king wrote to the allied camp recommending moderation.
In this moment of effervescence appeared the proclamation of the Duke
of Brunswick as commander of the allied armies, and in the name of the
allied monarchs. This proclamation arrived in Paris on the 28th of
July, though it was dated Coblenz, July 25th. It was far from being
of the reasonable nature which the king had recommended, and was
calculated to do the most fatal injuries to his interests. It stated
that the Emperor and the King of Prussia, having seen the manner in
which the authority of the King of France had been overturned by a
factious people, how his sacred person and those of his family had been
subjected to violence and restraint, in which those who had usurped
his Government had, besides destroying the internal order and peace
of France, invaded the Germanic Empire, and seized the possessions of
the princes of Alsace and Lorraine, had determined to march to his
assistance, and had authorised himself, a member of the Germanic body,
to march to the aid of their friend and ally; that he came to restore
the king to all his rights, and to put an end to anarchy in France;
that he was not about to make war on France, but on its internal
enemies, and he called on all the well-disposed to co-operate in this
object; that all cities, towns, villages, persons, and property would
be respected and protected, provided that they immediately concurred
in the restoration of order. He summoned all officers of the army and
the State to return to their allegiance; all Ministers of Departments,
districts, and municipalities were likewise summoned, and were to be
held responsible, by their lives and properties, for all outrages and
misdemeanours committed before the restoration of order; and all who
resisted the royal authority, and fired on the royal troops or the
Allies, should be instantly punished with all rigour, and their houses
demolished or burned. Paris, in case of any injury done to the royal
family, was to be delivered up to an exemplary and ever-memorable
vengeance; that no laws were to be acknowledged as valid but such
as proceeded from the king when in a state of perfect liberty.
[Illustration: THE ROYAL FAMILY OF FRANCE ON THEIR WAY TO THE ASSEMBLY.
(_See p._ 403.)]

This was an announcement of the utter overthrow of the Revolution,
and the restoration of the ancient condition of France, with its
aristocracy and its slaves. The sensation which it produced was
intense. The king was immediately accused of secretly favouring this
language, though it was far from being the case. It was in vain that he
disavowed the sentiments of this haughty and impolitic proclamation to
the Assembly; he was not believed, and the exasperation against him was
dreadfully aggravated.

The crisis was at hand. The efforts of the Jacobins had culminated in
the great blow which should crush this ancient monarchy to the earth.
The Federates called a meeting of the Committee of Insurrection to
arrange the final plans, and it was resolved that the insurrection
should take place on the 10th of August.

On this day all Paris was astir. The drums were beating in all
quarters; the National Guard were assembling at their different posts;
the Insurrectional Committee had divided itself into three sections.
One took its station in the Faubourg St. Marceau, with Fournier at its
head; another in the Faubourg St. Antoine, headed by Westermann and
Santerre; whilst Danton, Camille Desmoulins, and Carra, were at the
Cordeliers. About twelve o'clock the tocsin began to ring out from
the Hôtel de Ville, and was quickly followed by the bells in every
church tower in Paris. By one o'clock the palace was surrounded by
vast throngs of armed people. They could be seen by the inmates of the
palace through the old doors of the courts, and from the windows. Their
artillery was visibly pointed at the palace, and the noise of their
shouting, beating of drums, and singing of insurrectionary songs, was
awful. The king had issued an order that the Swiss and Guards should
not commence the attack, but should repel force by force. It was now
recommended that the king also should go down, and by showing himself,
and addressing a few words to them, should animate them in their duty.
The queen, her eyes inflamed with weeping, and with an air of dignity,
which was never forgotten by those who saw her, said also, "Sire, it is
time to show yourself." She is said to have snatched a pistol from the
belt of old General d'Affry, and to have presented it in an excitement
that scarcely allowed her to remain behind. Could she have changed
places, had she been queen in her own right, there would soon have
been a change of scene. As for Louis, with that passive courage which
he always possessed, and so uselessly, he went forward and presented
himself to view upon the balcony. At the sight of him, the Grenadiers
raised their caps on the points of their swords and bayonets, and
there were cries of "_Vive le Roi!_" the last that saluted him in his
hereditary palace. Even at this cry, numbers of the National Guard took
alarm, imagining that they were to be surrendered to the knights of
the dagger, and that they had been betrayed. The gunners, joining in
the panic, turned their guns towards the palace, but the more faithful
Guard drove them from the guns, disarmed them, and put them under watch.

The king, undeterred, descended into the court, and passing along the
ranks, addressed them from time to time, telling them he relied on
their attachment, and that in defending him they defended their wives
and children. He then proceeded through the vestibule, intending to
go to the garden, when he was assailed by fierce cries from some of
the soldiers: "Down with the veto!" "Down with the traitor!" "Vive la
nation!" Madame Campan, who was at a window looking into the garden,
saw some of the gunners go up to the king, and thrust their fists in
his face, insulting him in the most brutal language. He was obliged
to pass along the terrace of the Feuillants, which was crowded with
people, separated from the furious multitude merely by a tricolour
line, but he went on in spite of all sorts of menaces and abuse. He
saw the battalions file off before his face, and traverse the garden
with the intention of joining the assailants in the Place du Carrousel,
whilst the gensdarmes at the colonnade of the Louvre and other places
did the same. This completely extinguished all hope in the unhappy
king. The Viscomte Du Bouchage, seeing the situation of Louis from
the palace, descended in haste with another nobleman, to bring him
in before some fatality happened to him. He complied, and returned
with them. When the gunners thrust their fists in his face, Madame
Campan says Louis turned as pale as death; yet he had shown no want
of courage, had it been of the right sort. He had, indeed, refused to
wear a kind of defensive corset which the queen had had made for him,
saying, on the day of battle it was his duty to be uncovered, like the
meanest of his servants. When the royal family came in again, Madame
Campan says, "The queen told me all was lost; that the king had shown
no energy, and that this sort of review had done more harm than good."
The royal family, amidst insults and reproaches, walked on fast to the
Assembly, and placed themselves under its protection. Vergniaud, the
president, assured them of safety.

Hardly had they arrived, when a discharge of cannon was heard. The
Assembly was horror-struck; and the king exclaimed, "I assure you I
have forbidden the Swiss to fire!" But he was interrupted by fresh
reports of cannon, showing that a fierce conflict was taking place at
the Tuileries. No sooner was the royal family gone than the gensdarmes
and the National Guard fraternised with the people, and breaking open
the chief gate with hatchets rushed into the court. They then formed
in column, and turning the guns which had been left in the court on
the palace, they called out to the Swiss within to give up the place
to them, and they would be friends. The Swiss, to show their amicable
disposition, threw cartridges out of the windows, but remained firm to
their duty. Some of the mob, with long poles and hooks at the end, then
dragged some of the Swiss out of the vestibule and murdered them. They
next fired three of the cannon right into the palace, and the Swiss
thereupon returned a smart fire of musketry. Those of the servants
and courtiers that still remained in the palace now made haste to
escape, if possible. Cléry, one of the king's valets-de-chambre, who
has left a vivid narrative of these events, escaped by dropping from
a window upon the terrace. At the same moment the mob was breaking
in at the grand entrance. They found a stout piece of timber placed
as a barrier across the staircase, and the Swiss and some of the
National Guard entrenched behind it; then commenced a fierce struggle;
the barrier was forced, and the throng pushed back the Swiss up the
staircase. These now fired a sharp volley, and the crowd fled, crying
that they were betrayed. They were struck by another volley in their
retreat, and the Swiss then descended into the court, made themselves
masters of the cannon, and, firing, killed a great number. Had the
Swiss followed their advantage and scoured the streets of the city,
they would have completely trodden out this insurrection, releasing
the royal family, and, had there been any one in command capable of
it, he would have ended the Revolution as promptly as Buonaparte did
afterwards. Buonaparte, then a poor lieutenant of artillery, was
himself a spectator of the scene; and it was his opinion that the Swiss
only wanted an adequate commander to crush the whole rebellion. But, by
that fatality which attended all Louis XVI.'s affairs, at this moment
arrived M. d'Hervilly from the Assembly with the king's order not to
fire on the people, but to follow d'Hervilly to the Assembly. This was,
in fact, to leave the palace at the mercy of the mob. Such as were in
the court did follow d'Hervilly to the Assembly, where he promised them
their lives and security under the protection of that body. At this
sight the populace recovered their courage. The palace was attacked
on both sides; the crowds every moment became greater, and the Swiss
poured successive volleys upon them from the windows. Numbers fell
dead before they forced an entrance; but this once effected, the crowd
not only rushed in a dense mass up the great staircase, but dragged up
cannon by main force to blow open the interior doors. For some time
the Swiss made a stout stand against this raging mob; but being few
against tens of thousands, and having exhausted their cartridges, they
grounded their arms and called for quarter. They called in vain; the
bloodthirsty sansculottes commenced a relentless massacre of them;
women and children, armed with knives, assisted in their slaughter. The
unhappy men, fixing their bayonets, drove the furious mass before them,
resolving to cut their way through the Champs Elysées to Courbevoie,
where was another detachment of their countrymen in barracks; but no
sooner were they outside than they were surrounded and shot and cut
down without mercy. Vainly did they cry for quarter; none was given.
They then broke and fled in small parties, one of them seeking to gain
the Assembly for protection; but they were butchered, nearly to a man,
their heads stuck on pikes and paraded through the city.

The butcheries were not terminated till late at night; but the shouts
of victory had, so early as eleven o'clock in the morning, informed the
Assembly that the people were masters of the Tuileries. Numbers of
the insurrectionists had appeared at the Assembly from time to time,
crying, "_Vive la Nation!_" and the members replied with the same cry.
A deputation appeared from the Hôtel de Ville, demanding that a decree
of dethronement should be immediately passed, and the Assembly so far
complied as to pass a decree, drawn up by that very Vergniaud who had
assured the king that the Assembly was prepared to stand to the death
for the defence of the constituted authorities. This decree suspended
the royal authority, appointed a governor for the Dauphin, stopped
the payment of the Civil List, but agreed to a certain allowance to
the royal family during the suspension, and set apart the Luxembourg
for their residence. The Luxembourg Palace being reported full of
cellars and subterranean vaults and difficult of defence, the Temple, a
miserable dilapidated old abbey, was substituted, and the royal family
were conveyed thither.

The triumph of the mob had consummated the triumph of Jacobinism.
The Republic was at length established, but not to the benefit of
the Girondists. The ruin of royalty, for which they had so zealously
laboured, was in reality their own ruin. The Jacobins, and at their
head the sanguinary Robespierre, were left without a rival, except
in that mob by which they worked, and which was destined to destroy
them too. Danton appeared before the Assembly on the morning of
the 10th, at the head of a deputation of the Commune, to state
what had been done, and said plainly, "The people who send us to
you have charged us to declare that they think you worthy of their
confidence, but that they recognise no other judge of the extraordinary
measures to which necessity has forced them to recur than the French
nation--our sovereign and yours--convoked in primary Assemblies."
This was announcing without disguise that the Clubs were the supreme
authorities. The Assembly felt its weakness and professed to approve of
everything. Next, the new Ministers were chosen; Roland, as Minister
of the Interior; Servan, as War Minister; and Clavière as Minister
of Finance. But to these were added Danton as Minister of Justice,
Mongé as Minister of the Marine, and Le Brun as Minister of Foreign
Affairs. They were to receive instructions, not from Louis, but from
the Assembly. And now came into full light the mortal antagonism of
the Assembly and the Clubs, and the real ascendency of the latter.
The Assembly voted for the education of the Dauphin; the Clubs called
for the utter removal of royalty. The Assembly recommended an active
campaign against Foreign Powers, but mercy to the vanquished; the
Clubs called for instant and universal vengeance on all supporters of
royalty, who, they said, had intended to massacre the people and bring
in the Prussians. They declared that there was no need of electoral
bodies to form a new Assembly, but that every man, and some said every
woman, was entitled to vote; and they insisted that the people ought to
come in arms to manifest their wishes to the legislative body. This was
plainly-avowed mob rule. Marat argued loudly for this and for purging
France, as he called it, by cutting off every man, woman, and child
that was not for mob rule; and Robespierre demanded the removal of the
Assembly as effete and the summoning of a Convention. His advice was
adopted, and the National Democratic Convention was convoked for the
21st of September. In the interval the Royalists were murdered in the
prisons, and the Revolutionary Commune established at Paris. News of
the most alarming character arrived from the frontier, Lafayette had
gone over to the enemy, and the Prussians had taken Longwy.

At this point the advance of the Prussians was unexpectedly checked.
After the capture of Verdun, on the 2nd of September, they had spread
themselves over the plains of the Meuse, and occupied, as their
main centre, Stenay. Dumouriez and his army lay at Sedan and in its
neighbourhood. To reach him and advance on Châlons in their way to
Paris, the Allies must pass or march round the great forest of Argonne,
which extends from thirteen to fifteen leagues, and was so intersected
with hills, woods, and waters, that it was at that time impenetrable
to an army except through certain passes. These were Chêne-Populeux,
Croix-aux-Bois, Grand Pré, La Chalade, and Islettes. The most important
were those of Grand Pré and Islettes, which however were the two most
distant from Sedan. The plan therefore was to fortify these passes;
and in order to do this Dumouriez immediately ordered Dillon to march
forward and occupy Islettes and La Chalade. This was effected; a
division of Dillon's forces driving the Austrian general, Clairfayt,
from the Islettes. Dumouriez followed, and occupied Grand Pré, and
General Dubouquet occupied Chêne-Populeux, and sent a detachment to
secure Croix-aux-Bois between Grand Pré and Chêne-Populeux.

[Illustration: LOUIS XVI. AND MARIE ANTOINETTE IN THE PRISON OF THE
TEMPLE.

FROM THE PAINTING BY E. M. WARD. R.A.]

On the 10th of September the Prussians began to examine the passes
of the forest; and finding them defended, they attacked the French
entrenchments but were everywhere repulsed. On the 11th, they
concentrated their efforts on the pass of Grand-Pré, defended by
Dumouriez himself, and were again repulsed by General Miranda at
Mortaume, and by General Stengel at St. Jouvion. The Allies, thus
unexpectedly brought to a check, for they had been led by the Emigrants
to expect a disorganised or as yet undisciplined army, determined to
skirt the forest and endeavour to turn it near Sedan. Whilst engaged in
this plan, the Austrians discovered the weakness of the force in the
defile of Croix-aux-Bois, where only two battalions and two squadrons
of volunteers were posted, for Dumouriez had not examined the pass
himself and was assured that this force was amply sufficient. Once
aware of this mistake, the Austrians, under the Duke de Ligne, briskly
attacked the position and drove the French before them. Dumouriez,
informed of this disorder, ordered forward General Chasot with a strong
force, who defeated the Austrians, killed De Ligne, and recovered the
pass. But the advantage was but momentary; the Austrians returned to
the charge with a far superior force, and again cleared the pass and
remained in possession of it. Thus Dumouriez saw his grand plan of
defence broken up; and finding that Chasot, who had fallen back on
Vouziers, was cut off from him on his left along with Dubouquet, he
saw the necessity of falling back himself into the rear of Dillon,
on his right, who was yet master of the Islettes and the road to
St. Menehould. He then sent messages to Chasot, Dubouquet, and to
Kellermann, to direct their march so as to meet him at St. Menehould.

[Illustration: MARIE ANTOINETTE (1783.)]

At the same time, the Duke of Brunswick was approaching from the rear,
and Kellermann from Metz, but both with equal tardiness. Dumouriez
dispatched a courier to order Kellermann, on arriving, to take his
position on the heights of Gisancourt, commanding the road to Châlons
and the stream of the Auve; but Kellermann, arriving in the night of
the 19th, instead of reaching the heights of Gisancourt, advanced
to the centre of the basin at Valmy, where, on the morning of the
20th, he found himself commanded by the Prussians, who had come up
and formed on the heights of La Lune, when, had Kellermann taken the
position assigned him on Gisancourt, he would have commanded La Lune.
The Prussians had been in full march for Châlons when they took post
here, and discovered Kellermann below them by the mill of Valmy, and
Dumouriez above on the heights of Valmy. Kellermann, perceiving the
error of his position, and that the Prussians would soon seize on the
heights of Gisancourt, which he ought to occupy, sent to Dumouriez for
assistance to extricate himself. The King of Prussia, perceiving that
forces were thrown forward towards Kellermann's position, imagined that
the French meant to cut off his march towards Châlons, and immediately
commenced firing. From the heights of La Lune and of Gisancourt, which
he now occupied, he poured a deadly fire of artillery on Kellermann;
and the Austrians, about to attempt to drive the French from the
heights of Hyron, if they succeeded, would leave him exposed on all
sides. The battle now was warmly contested, but only through the
artillery. A shell falling into one of Kellermann's powder waggons
exploded it, and occasioned much confusion. The King of Prussia thought
this the moment to charge with the bayonet, and now, for the first
time, the Revolutionary soldiers saw the celebrated troops, bearing
the _prestige_ of the great Frederick, marching down upon them in
three columns, with the steady appearance of victory. Kellermann, to
inspirit his inexperienced soldiers, shouted, "_Vive la Nation!_" The
troops caught the enthusiasm of the cry, replied with a loud "_Vive
la Nation!_" and dashed forward. At this sight the Duke of Brunswick
was astonished; he had been led to expect nothing but disorder and
cowardice; he halted, and fell back into his camp. This movement raised
the audacity of the French; they continued to cannonade the Prussians,
and after one or two more attempts to reach them with the bayonet,
Brunswick found himself, as night fell, in anything but a victorious
position. About twenty thousand cannon shots had been exchanged, whence
the battle was called the cannonade of Valmy. Yet there stood the
French, who, according to the reports of the Emigrants, were to have
run off at the first smell of powder, or to have come over to them
in a body. The next morning it was worse. Kellermann, in the night,
had recovered himself from his false position; had gained the heights
of Gisancourt which he should have occupied at first; had driven the
Prussians thence, and now commanded them in La Lune.

The condition of the Prussian camp was daily growing worse; the troops
were compelled to kill their horses for food; they were drenched with
heavy rains and decimated by dysentery. The King of Prussia and the
Duke of Brunswick were full of resentment at the false representations
of the Emigrants, who had assured them that they would have little to
do but to march to Paris, loaded with the welcomes and supplies of the
people. Europe was surprised at the easy repulse of the Prussians;
with their reputation, it was expected that they would march rapidly
on Paris, and disperse the Republican troops with scarcely an effort.
But they were no longer commanded by old Frederick; and even he would
have found it difficult to make his way through a country which refused
the barest food for an army, and which almost to a man was in arms to
resist the foe. On the 24th of September overtures were made by the
Prussians for an exchange of prisoners, to which Dumouriez agreed,
refusing, however, to give up a single Emigrant captive. This led
to discussions on the general question, and having bargained for a
safe retreat, the Allies hurried homeward with all speed. Oppressed
by famine and disease, and disgusted with the Emigrants, who had led
them to suffering and disgrace, they made the best of their way to the
Rhine, and, at the end of October, reached Coblenz, a sorry spectacle,
reduced from eighty thousand, who had entered France three months
before confident of victory and fame, to fifty thousand humbled and
emaciated men. If Dumouriez had had unity and subordination amongst
his generals he would have been able by a forced march to outstrip the
Allies, cut them off from the Rhine, and scarcely a thousand of them
would have escaped. The blame thrown upon him for not thus inflicting a
terrible chastisement appears unmerited.

After a visit to Paris, Dumouriez arrived at Valenciennes on the
27th of October, and prepared to follow the Austrian commander,
Saxe-Teschen, who had been in vain bombarding Lille. On the 5th of
November he overtook Saxe-Teschen at Jemappes. The Austrians were
strongly posted, but were only about fifteen thousand men opposed to
the sixty thousand French; yet they made a vigorous resistance. The
battle raged from early in the morning till two in the afternoon,
when the Austrians gave way. They retired, however, in good order;
and Dumouriez, who had led his forces into the field singing the
Marseillaise hymn, did not make much pursuit. Upwards of two thousand
men are said to have fallen on each side. The battle placed all
Flanders at the mercy of the French; Tournay opened its gates to
Labourdonnais, and Courtrai, Menin, and Bruges sent deputies to welcome
Dumouriez. Other towns rapidly followed their example. The country
had been already Jacobinised, and now fancied it was going to enjoy
liberty and equality in alliance with the French. The people were
soon undeceived. The French had no intention of anything but, under
those pretences, of subduing and preying on the surrounding nations.
Flanders had speedy proofs of what every country where the French came
had to expect. Jacobin Commissioners arrived from the Convention to
levy contributions for the maintenance of the army, as if they were a
conquered people. Dumouriez issued an order on entering Mons for the
clergy to advance one year's income for the same purpose. Saxe-Teschen
and old Marshal Bender evacuated Brussels, and on the 14th Dumouriez
entered and took up his headquarters there. He there made heavy forced
loans, and soon after arrived what was styled a Committee of Purchases
from Paris, headed by Bidermann, the banker, and partner of Clavière,
Minister of Finance. This Committee, on which were several Jews, made
all the bargains for the army, and paid for them--not in gold but in
the worthless _assignats_ of France. The Belgians remonstrated and
resisted, but in vain. Dumouriez advanced to Mechlin, having dispatched
Labourdonnais to lay siege to Antwerp and Valence, and to reduce
Namur. At Mechlin he found a great store of arms and ammunition, which
enabled him to equip whole flocks of volunteers who came after him from
France. On the 22nd, at Tirlemont, he again overtook Saxe-Teschen, who
made another stout resistance, and then retired to Liége, where the
Austrians made another stand on the 27th. They were repulsed, but with
heavy loss on both sides; and soon afterwards, Antwerp and Valence
having surrendered, all the Austrian Netherlands, except Luxembourg,
were in the hands of France within a single month. Dumouriez sent
forward Miranda, a Peruvian, who had superseded Labourdonnais at
Antwerp, to reduce Roermond, and to enter Holland by the seizure of
Maestricht; but the Convention were not yet prepared for this invasion
of Holland, and Dumouriez pushed on to Aix-la-Chapelle, where he again
defeated the Austrians on the 7th of December, and levying heavy
contributions there, took up his winter quarters in the ancient city of
Charlemagne, and within little more than a day's march of the Rhine.

Whilst Dumouriez had thus overrun the Netherlands, other French
generals had been equally pushing on aggressions. Custine, with about
twenty thousand men, had marched upon the German towns on the Rhine;
had taken Spires, Worms, and Mayence by the 21st of October. These
towns abounded with Democrats, who had imbibed the grand doctrine
of the Rights of Man, and laboured, to their cost, under the same
delusion as the Belgians--that the French were coming solely for their
liberation and advantage. Custine advanced to Frankfort-on-the-Main,
which he plundered without mercy. Custine called loudly for
co-operation from Kellermann; but Kellermann not complying, he was
superseded by Beurnonville, who was ordered to take Trèves. He
attempted it, but too late in the season, and failed. Custine, who had
advanced too far from the main army to support his position, still,
however, garrisoned Frankfort with two thousand men, and took up his
own quarters at Ober-Ursel and Homburg, a little below Frankfort, in
the commencement of December.

This was a broad indication of the French seizing, under the pretence
of propagating liberty, on what had been called the natural boundaries
of France in the time of Louis XIV.,--namely, the Rhine and the
Alps, thus including Belgium, part of Holland, Nice, and Savoy.
They dispatched emissaries to Victor Amadeus, the King of Sardinia,
offering to drive the Austrians out of Italy, and give Italy to the
Italians. As they had, however, previously sent numbers of their
Jacobin propagandists to inoculate his people with Republicanism, the
king refused their offers, and forbade General Semonville to enter
the country. On this, the Convention proclaimed war against him, and
ordered Montesquieu to invade Nice and Savoy. With an army of fifteen
thousand men and twenty pieces of artillery, Montesquieu entered
Savoy, and the few Savoyard troops being unable to compete with him,
the people, moreover, being already prepared by French Republicans,
he overran the country, entered Chambéry in triumph, and occupied
the province to the foot of Mont Cenis. Elated by the successes of
these campaigns, the French Convention passed a decree, declaring
that it would grant succour and fraternity to all peoples desirous of
recovering their liberty; it ordered its generals to give such aid
to all citizens who were, or might be, harshly treated on account of
their desire for liberty; and the generals were instructed to post this
decree in all public places to which they should carry the arms of the
Republic. Two days afterwards Savoy was formed into a new department as
the Department of Mont Blanc.

On the 21st of September the Convention had met in the Tuileries. The
first act of the Convention was to send to the Legislative Assembly the
notification of its formation, and that the existence of that body was,
as a matter of course, at an end. They then marched in a body to the
Salle de Manege, and took possession of it. The Girondists now appeared
on the Right, the Jacobins on the Left, under the name of the Mountain,
and the Centre, or Moderates, took the name of the Plain. The first
speech and motion was made by Manuel, proposing that the President
of the Convention and of France should be lodged in the Tuileries,
attended by all the state which had accompanied the king, and that,
whenever he appeared in the House, all the members should receive him
standing. The motion was received with a storm of reprobation, and
dismissed. The second motion, made by Collot d'Herbois, was for the
immediate abolition of royalty. He was seconded by the Abbé Gregoire,
and it was unanimously abolished accordingly. No time was lost in
communicating this fact to the royal family in the Temple.

The Convention proceeded to debate the question of Louis's trial. On
the 6th of November Valazé, a Girondist, presented to it the report of
the Committee of Twenty-Four. This report charged Louis Capet with high
treason against the nation, and declared that his punishment ought to
be more than simple deposition. The next day Mailhé, another Girondist,
presented the report of the Committee of Legislation, and accompanied
it by a speech, in which he accused Louis of all the crimes which had
been committed during the Revolution, and recommended the trial of
Charles I. as the model for his trial. The queen, he said, ought to
be tried by an ordinary tribunal, observing that the heads of queens
were no more inviolable than other women's heads. This was as plainly
intimating the wishes of the Girondists for the execution of the king
and queen as any Jacobins could do. In fact, so completely did his
remarks coincide with the views of the Jacobins, that he was applauded
by Jacobins, Girondists, and Plain. It was voted that the report should
be printed and circulated through the Departments; that a committee
should be appointed to collect the necessary papers and other evidence;
that these should be submitted to Louis, or his counsel; that the
Convention should fix the day of trial, and should pronounce sentence
by every member voting separately, and aloud. It was decreed that
Louis should be brought to the bar of the Convention on the 26th of
December. The king's demand to be allowed counsel having been conceded,
he began to prepare his defence. In the afternoon of the 16th, four
commissioners, who had been members of the Committee of Twenty-Four,
appeared, and presented him with a copy of his impeachment, and also
submitted to him a number of papers that were to be produced against
him. At half-past nine in the morning of the 26th all Paris was again
under arms, and Chambon, the mayor, appeared at the Temple, attended
by Santerre with a strong force. Louis was conducted to the mayor's
carriage, and was thus guarded to the Feuillants, the House of the
Convention.

At the close of an admirable defence by his counsel Desèze, Louis rose
and read the following few remarks, which he had prepared:--"My means
of defence are now before you. I shall not repeat them. In addressing
you--perhaps for the last time--I declare that my conscience reproaches
me with nothing, and that my defenders have told you the truth. I was
never afraid that my conduct should be publicly examined; but it wounds
me to the heart to find, in the act of accusation, the imputation that
I caused the blood of the people to be spilt; and, above all, that the
calamitous events of the 10th of August are attributed to me.

"I confess that the multiplied proofs which I have given at all times
of my love for the people, and the manner in which I have always
conducted myself, ought, in my opinion, to demonstrate that I was not
afraid to expose myself in order to prevent bloodshed, and ought to
clear me for ever from such an imputation."

On the 14th of January, 1793, the members of the Convention met, amid a
mob surrounding the House, and demanding, "Death to the tyrant! Death
to him or to us!" Other crowds crammed the galleries. The debate, which
had begun immediately after the king's speech, was renewed, and furious
menaces and recriminations between the Girondists and the Mountain were
uttered. At length the Convention reduced all the questions to these
three: 1st. Is Louis Capet guilty of conspiring against the liberty
of the nation and the safety of the State? 2nd. Shall the judgment,
whatever it be, be referred to the sanction of the people? 3rd. What
punishment shall be inflicted on him?

[Illustration: VIEW IN OLD PARIS: THE PORTE AU BLÉ, FROM THE END OF
THE OLD CATTLE MARKET TO THE PONT NOTRE DAME. (_From a Print by De
l'Espinasse in_ 1782.)]

The debates and voting on these three questions occupied the
Convention till late in the evening of the 17th. On the first question
thirty-seven pronounced Louis guilty, but proposed only that he should
be taken care of for the general safety; six hundred and eighty-three
declared him guilty simply; and, as the Assembly consisted of seven
hundred and forty-nine members altogether, there was a majority
affirming his guilt of the whole, except twenty-nine members. He was
therefore declared, by the President, guilty of conspiracy against
the liberty and safety of of State. On the second question thirty-one
members were absent: four refused to vote; eleven voted conditionally;
two hundred and eighty--and these almost exclusively were members of
the Girondist section--for the appeal to the people; and four hundred
and twenty-three rejected it. The President, therefore, proclaimed that
the appeal to the people was declined. The last fatal question of death
to the monarch was put on the 16th. By this time the excitement was as
intense all over Paris as within the walls of the Convention itself.
It was found, that of the seven hundred and forty-nine members, three
hundred and eighty-seven voted in favour of death unconditionally,
while three hundred and thirty-four voted in favour of Louis'
detention, or imprisonment, or death under defined conditions and in
certain circumstances. Twenty-eight votes were not accounted for.
Either they were lost amidst the excitement of the hour, or members to
that number took no part in the decision. The king's death, therefore,
was carried by a majority of only fifty-three votes. Then came the
question of a reprieve.

On the 20th, at three o'clock in the morning, the voting on this point
terminated, and the President declared that there was a majority of
three hundred and eighty votes against three hundred and ten, and that
there could be no reprieve; the execution must take place without
delay. Louis met his death with dignity on the 21st of January, 1793.

For a short time quiet prevailed, as if the nation, and Europe, too,
were stunned by the news of the execution of the king. In spite of the
loud talk of the Jacobins and sansculottes throughout France, there
was a startled sense of terror--a foreboding of calamity. In La Vendée
there was intense horror and indignation. Abroad, every monarchy seemed
thrown into a new attitude by the death of Louis. Spain and England,
which had maintained a careful neutrality, assumed a threatening
aspect. Germany, which had not yet federally allied itself with the
movements of Austria and Prussia, became agitated with resentment;
and Holland, by the fear of suffering the fate of Belgium. The axe
which severed the head of Louis from his body seemed to sever every
international sympathy with France. In England, the sensation on the
news of the execution was profound. People in general had not believed
that the French would proceed to such an extremity with a monarch of so
inoffensive a character. The crime seemed to verify all the predictions
and the denunciations of Burke. There was, except amongst a certain
class of almost frantic Republicans, a universal feeling of abhorrence
and execration. There was a gloomy sense of approaching war; a gloomy
sense, as if the catastrophe was a national rather than a foreign one.
Pitt had hitherto maintained a position of neutrality. He had contrived
to avoid giving any support to the royal family of France, which must
have produced immediately hostile consequences, but he had not failed,
from time to time, to point out in Parliament the atrocious conduct of
the French revolutionists, which justified all the prophecies of Burke,
and threw shame on the laudatory language of Fox.

Whilst the fate of Louis XVI. was drawing to a crisis, the question
of danger menaced by the French revolution had been warmly discussed
in the British Parliament. The Government had already called out the
militia when Parliament met on the 13th of December, 1792. The speech
from the throne attributed this to the attempts of French incendiaries
to create disturbance in the country, coupled with the doctrines of
aggression promulgated by the French Convention, and their invasion
of Germany and the Netherlands, which had already taken place. The
latter country was overrun with French armies, and Holland, our ally,
was threatened. The Address to the Speech, in the Commons, was moved
by Mr. Wallace and seconded by Lord Fielding in the same tone. Fox,
on the other hand, strongly opposed the warlike spirit of the speech.
He declared that he believed every statement in the royal speech was
unfounded, though the invasion of Germany and of the Netherlands
was no myth. Fox had not yet, despite the horrors perpetrated by
the French revolutionists, given up his professed persuasion of
the good intentions of that people--a wonderful blindness--and he
recommended that we should send a fresh ambassador to treat with the
French executive. Grey and Sheridan argued on the same side; Windham
and Dundas defended the measures of Government, declaring that not
only had the French forced open the navigation of the Scheldt, the
protection of which was guaranteed by Britain, but that they were
preparing for the regular subjugation of Holland. Burke declared
that the counsels of Fox would be the ruin of England, if they could
possibly prevail. He remarked that nothing was so notorious as the
fact that swarms of Jacobin propagandists were actively engaged in
disseminating their levelling principles in Great Britain, and were in
close co-operation with Republican factions. These factions had sent
over deputations to Paris, who had been received by the Jacobin society
and by the Convention. He read the addresses of Englishmen and Irishmen
resident in Paris, and of Joel Barlow and John Frost, deputies of the
Constitutional Society of London. Burke said the question was, if they
permitted the fraternising of these parties with the French Jacobins,
not whether they should address the throne, but whether they should
long have a throne to address, for the French Government had declared
war against all kings and all thrones. Erskine replied, ridiculing the
fears of Burke, and denouncing the prosecution of Paine's "Rights of
Man" by Government. The Address was carried by a large majority. Fox,
however, on the 14th of December, moved an amendment on the Report;
and in his speech he rejoiced in the triumph of the French arms over
what he called the coalition of despots, Prussia and Austria. He
declared the people of Flanders had received the French with open
arms; that Ireland was too disaffected for us to think of going to
war; and that it was useless to attempt to defend the Dutch, for the
people there would go over to France too. He again pressed on the House
the necessity of our acknowledging the present French Government,
and entering into alliance with it. He said France had readily
acknowledged the Revolution in England, and entered into treaty with
Cromwell. Burke again replied to Fox, declaring that France had no real
Government at all to enter into terms with. It was in a condition of
anarchy, one party being in the ascendency one day, another the next;
that such was not the condition of England under Cromwell. There was
a decided and settled Republican Government, but a Government which
did not menace or overthrow all monarchies around it, any more than
Switzerland or the United States of America did now. Dundas reminded
the House that we were bound by treaties to defend Holland if attacked,
and that we must be prepared for it. Whigs, who had hitherto voted
with Fox, now demanded to whom we were to send an ambassador--to the
imprisoned king, to the Convention, or to the clubs who ruled the
Convention? Fox's amendment was rejected without a division.

Undismayed, Fox renewed the contest on the following day, December
15th, by moving that an humble address should be presented to his
Majesty, praying him to send an ambassador to France to treat with the
persons constituting the existing executive Government. He said that
he did not mean to vindicate what had taken place in that country,
although, if we condemned the crimes committed in France, we must also
condemn those of Morocco and Algiers, and yet we had accredited agents
at the courts of those countries.

Grey followed, contending that we ought to avoid the calamities of war
by all possible means. A long debate ensued, in the midst of which Mr.
Jenkinson declared that on that very day, whilst they were discussing
the propriety of sending an ambassador to France, the monarch himself
was to be brought to trial, and probably by that hour was condemned to
be murdered. All the topics regarding Holland and Belgium were again
introduced. Fox was supported by Grey, Francis, Erskine, Whitbread, and
Sheridan; but his motion was negatived without a division.

On Monday, the 17th, Fox renewed the discussion, supported by Mr. Grey,
who complained that at a so-called loyal meeting held at Manchester,
the people had been incited to attack the property of those of more
liberal views; and that an association had been formed in London, at
the "Crown and Anchor" Tavern, which had issued a paper called "A
Pennyworth of Truth from Thomas Bull to his Brother John," containing
most unfounded censures on the Dissenters, whom it charged as being the
authors of the American war. He declared that this paper was far more
inflammatory than Paine's "Rights of Man," and he desired that it might
be read at the table. Fox severely criticised the conduct of the loyal
associations, and the means taken by the subscription papers to mark
out those who maintained Liberal opinions; all such marked persons,
he said, were in danger, on any excitement, of having their persons
or houses attacked. He mentioned one paper concluding with the words,
"Destruction to Fox and all his Jacobin crew!" This was, he thought,
pretty plainly marking him out for such treatment as Dr. Priestley and
Mr. Walker had received. The motion was rejected.

Immediately after this, Fox encouraged the formation of a Society
of Friends of the Liberty of the Press, of which Erskine and Horne
Tooke were members. As several French emissaries were traversing the
country disseminating their opinions, Lord Grenville, on the 19th of
December, 1792, introduced a bill into the House of Lords, subjecting
aliens to certain regulations not included in the ordinary Alien Bill.
All foreigners were to announce themselves on their arrival, and
surrender any arms brought with them; they were to take out passports,
and to have them viséd on every fresh removal through the country,
so that their movements might be known to the authorities; those who
had arrived during the year 1792 to be particularly observed, and
the motives for their coming ascertained; all such foreigners as
received allowances from the British Government to be distributed
into particular districts, under the eye of the authorities. With
some opposition, this Bill was carried. The Marquis of Lansdowne
forthwith moved that a negotiation should be immediately opened with
the French Government, requiring it to receive back the numerous
Frenchmen driven into exile, or to provide for their support, and at
the same time to endeavour to save Louis XVI. from the terrible fate
which threatened him. This was negatived on the declaration of other
lords, who said that both propositions would be useless; the latter
one would in all probability hasten, rather than avert, the fate of
the French king. In the Commons, Fox and Sheridan strenuously resisted
the new Alien Bill, and Burke as vehemently supported it. He declared
that no measures of precaution could be too strict; that thousands of
daggers had been manufactured in Birmingham for France, and intending
to produce a startling effect he drew an actual dagger from his bosom,
and flinging it on the floor of the House exclaimed, "That is what you
are to obtain from an alliance with France. You must equally proscribe
their tenets and their persons; you must keep their principles from
your minds, and their daggers from your hearts!" In the French
Convention such an action would have created a sensation, but in the
matter-of-fact British Parliament it produced only surprise followed
by laughter. Fox endeavoured as much as possible to weaken the sense
of danger of French principles, though he expressed his abhorrence of
the September massacres. The Bill was passed, and was succeeded by one
prohibiting the circulation of French _assignats_, bonds, promissory
notes, etc., and another, prohibiting the exportation of naval stores,
saltpetre, arms, and ammunition.

On the 30th of January, 1793, Dundas announced to the House of Commons
a message from the throne, communicating the news of the execution of
the French king. This was accompanied by copies of a correspondence
with M. Chauvelin, the late plenipotentiary of Louis, and of an order
for his quitting the kingdom, in consequence of this sanguinary
act. The message made a deep impression on the House, though the
circumstances were already well known. It was agreed to take these
matters into consideration on the 2nd of February, when Pitt detailed
the correspondence which had for some time taken place between the
British Cabinet and the French Government. He said that Britain,
notwithstanding many provocations, had carefully maintained an attitude
of neutrality, even when, in the preceding summer, France was at war
with Austria and Prussia, and was menacing our Dutch allies. The
French, on their part, had, he said, made similar professions. They had
publicly renounced all aggression, and yet they had annexed Saxony,
overrun Belgium, and now contemplated the invasion of Holland. They
had done more: they had plainly menaced this country with invasion.
So recently as the last day of the year, their Minister of Marine had
addressed a letter to the seaports of France, in which this was the
language regarding England:--"The King and his Parliament mean to make
war against us. Will the English Republicans suffer it? Already these
free men show their discontent, and the repugnance they have to bear
arms against their brothers, the French. Well, we will fly to their
succour; we will make a descent on the island; we will lodge there
fifty thousand caps of liberty; we will plant there the sacred tree; we
will stretch out our arms to our Republican brethren, and the tyranny
of their Government shall soon be destroyed!" There was a strong war
spirit manifest in the House. Fox and his diminished party combated
it in vain. The same prevailing expression was exhibited in a similar
debate in the House of Lords, in which Lord Loughborough--who, on the
20th of January, succeeded Thurlow as Lord Chancellor--supported the
views of Ministers. But there was little time allowed for the two
Houses to discuss the question of peace or war, for on the 11th of
February Dundas brought down a royal message, informing the Commons
that the French had declared war on the 1st of February, against both
Britain and Holland. On the following day Pitt moved an Address to his
Majesty, expressing a resolve to support him in the contest against
France. In the debate, Burke declared the necessity of war against a
nation which had, in fact, proclaimed war against every throne and
nation. At the same time, he declared that it would be a war in defence
of every principle of order or religion. It would not be the less a
most desperate war. France was turning almost every subject in the
realm into a soldier. It meant to maintain its armies on the plunder
of invaded nations. Trade being ruined at home by the violence of mob
rule, the male population was eager to turn soldiers, and to live on
the spoils of the neighbouring countries. Lyons alone, he said, had
thirty thousand artisans destitute of employment; and they would find
a substitute for their legitimate labour in ravaging the fields of
Holland and Germany. He deemed war a stern necessity. A similar Address
was moved and carried in the Peers.

On the 18th of February, however, Fox moved a string of resolutions
condemnatory of war with France. They declared that that country
was only doing what every country had a right to do--reorganise its
internal Constitution; that, as we had allowed Russia, Prussia, and
Austria to dismember Poland, we had no right to check the aggressions
of France on these countries; as we had remained quiescent in the one
case, we were bound to do so in the other, and not to make ourselves
confederates of the invasion of Poland; and his final resolution went
to entreat his Majesty not to enter into any engagements with other
Powers which should prevent us from making a separate peace with
France. Burke did not lose the opportunity of rebuking Fox for his long
advocacy of the Empress Catherine, whose unprincipled share in the
partition of Poland he was now compelled to reprobate. The resolutions
of Fox were negatived by two hundred and seventy votes against
forty-four. Not daunted by this overwhelming majority, Fox again, on
the 21st of February, brought forward his resolution in another form,
declaring that there were no sufficient causes for war. The motion was
negatived without a division.

[Illustration: TRIAL OF LOUIS XVI. (_See p._ 409.)]

During these debates, Ministers detailed the proceedings which had
for some time past taken place between the Governments of France and
Britain, to show that the maintenance of peace was impossible. The
chief of these transactions were briefly these:--From the date of the
conferences at Pillnitz in 1791, when Prussia and Austria resolved to
embrace the cause of the French king, and invited the other Powers to
support them, Britain declared, both to those Powers and to France,
her intention of remaining neutral. It was no easy matter to maintain
such neutrality. To the Jacobin leaders, every country with an orderly
Government, and still more a monarchy, was an offence. Against Britain
they displayed a particular animus, which the most friendly offices
did not remove. When, towards the end of 1791, the Declaration of
the Rights of Man having reached St. Domingo, the negroes rose in
insurrection to claim these rights, Lord Effingham, the Governor of
Jamaica, aided the French Colonial Government with arms and ammunition,
and the fugitive white people with provisions and protection. When
this was notified to the National Assembly, with the King of Britain's
approval of it, by Lord Gower, the ambassador at Paris, a vote of
thanks was passed, but only to the British nation, and on condition
that not even Lord Effingham's name should be mentioned in it. Other
transactions on the part of the French still more offensive took place
from time to time, but Britain still maintained her neutrality. When
war was declared by France against Austria, in April, 1792, Chauvelin
announced the fact to the British Government, and requested that
British subjects should be prohibited from serving in any foreign army
against France. Government at once issued an order to that effect.
In June the French Government, through Chauvelin, requested the good
offices of Britain in making pacific proposals to Prussia and Austria;
but find that France expected more than friendly mediation--actual
armed coalition with France--the British Government declined this, as
contrary to existing alliances with those Powers. The proclamations of
the French Government were already such as breathed war to Europe; all
thrones were menaced with annihilation. At this time Mr. Miles, who
exerted himself to maintain a friendly feeling between the nations,
records, in his correspondence with the French Minister Lebrun and
others, that Roland declared to one of his friends that peace was out
of the question; that France had three hundred thousand men in arms,
and that the Ministers must make them march as far as ever their legs
could carry them, or they would return and cut all their throats.

This was the state of things when, on the 17th of August, 1792, the
French deposed Louis, and prepared for his death. Lord Gower was
thereupon recalled, on the plain ground that, being accredited alone to
the king, and there being no longer a king, his office was at an end;
he was, however, ordered to take a respectful leave, and to assure the
Government that Britain still desired to maintain peaceful relations.
Yet at this very time London was swarming with paid emissaries of the
French Government, whose business was to draw over the people to French
notions of republican liberty. Nay, more, Lebrun, the Foreign Minister,
took no pains to conceal the assurance of the French that Ireland would
revolt and that France would secure it. On the 18th of November a
great dinner was given at White's Hotel in Paris, at which Lord Edward
Fitzgerald and other Irish Republicans, Thomas Paine, Santerre, and a
host of like characters, English, Irish, French, and others, toasted
the approaching National Convention of Great Britain and Ireland, and
amid wild acclamations drank the sentiment, "May revolutions never be
made by halves!" The very next day, the 19th, the National Convention
issued its decree, declaring war against all thrones and proclaiming
the enfranchisement of all peoples. This was immediately followed by
Jacobinised deputations of Englishmen, thanking the Convention for
this proclamation; and the President, in reply, said, "Citizens of
the world! Royalty in Europe is utterly destroyed, or on the point of
perishing on the ruins of feudality; and the Rights of Man, placed by
the side of thrones, are a devouring fire which will consume them all.
Worthy Republicans! Congratulate yourselves on the festival which you
have celebrated in honour of the French Revolution--the prelude to the
festival of nations!"

Before the close of 1792 the French resolved to send an ambassador to
the United States to demand a return of the aid given to the Americans
in their revolution, by declaration of war against Great Britain.
M. Genet was dispatched for this purpose at the beginning of 1793.
Still neutrality was maintained, though our ambassador was withdrawn
from Paris, and M. Chauvelin was no longer recognised in an official
capacity by the British Court. This gentleman, however, continued in
London, ignoring the loss of his official character, and officiously
pressing himself on the attention of Ministers as still French
plenipotentiary. Lord Grenville was repeatedly obliged to remind him
that he had no power to correspond with him officially. He, however,
informed him privately that, if the French Government wished to be
duly recognised in Great Britain, they must give up their assumed
right of aggression on neighbouring countries and of interference with
established Governments. The French Girondist Ministers took advantage
of this letter which Chauvelin transmitted to them to send a reply, in
which, however, having now invaded Holland, they gave no intimation
of any intention of retiring. They even declared that it was their
intention to go to war with Britain; and if the British Government did
not comply with their desires, and enter into regular communication
with them, they would prepare for war. Lord Grenville returned this
letter, informing Chauvelin again that he could receive no official
correspondence from him in a private capacity. This was on the 7th of
January, 1793; Chauvelin continued to press his communications on Lord
Grenville, complaining of the Alien Bill, and on the 18th presented
letters of credence. Lord Grenville informed him, in reply, that his
Majesty in the present circumstances could not receive them. These
circumstances were the trial and conviction of Louis XVI. On the 24th
arrived the news of Louis's execution, and Chauvelin immediately
received passports for himself and suite, and an order to quit the
kingdom within eight days. This order created the utmost exultation
in the French Convention, for the Jacobins were rabid for war with
all the world, and on the 1st of February the Convention declared war
against Britain, and the news reached London on the 4th. Such was the
Ministerial explanation.

The declaration of war against Britain by the Convention was unanimous.
The decree was drawn up by the Girondists, but it was enthusiastically
supported by the Jacobins, including Robespierre and Danton. A vote
creating _assignats_ to the amount of eight hundred million livres was
immediately passed, a levy of three hundred thousand men was ordered,
and to aggravate the whole tone of the affair, an appeal to the
people of Great Britain was issued, calling on them to act against and
embarrass their own Government.

It must be confessed that it was impossible to keep peace with a nation
determined to make war on the whole world. Perhaps on no occasion had
the pride of the British people and their feelings of resentment been
so daringly provoked. War was proclaimed against Britain, and it was
necessary that she should put herself in a position to protect her
own interests. The country was, moreover, bound to defend Holland
if assaulted. But though bound by treaty to defend Holland, Great
Britain was not bound to enter into the defence of all and every one
of the Continental nations; and had she maintained this just line of
action, her share in the universal war which ensued would have been
comparatively insignificant. Prussia, Russia, and Austria had destroyed
every moral claim of co-operation by their lawless seizure of Poland,
and the peoples of the Continent were populous enough to defend their
own territories, if they were worthy of independence. There could be
no just claim on Britain, with her twenty millions of inhabitants, to
defend countries which possessed a still greater number of inhabitants,
especially as they had never been found ready to assist us, but on the
contrary. But Britain, unfortunately, at that time, was too easily
inflamed with a war spirit. The people as well as the Government were
incensed at the disorganising and aggressive spirit of France, and
were soon drawn in, with their Quixotism of fighting for everybody or
anybody, to league with the Continental despots for the purpose not
merely of repelling French invasions, but of forcing on the French a
dynasty that they had rejected.

Fox and his party still maintained a vigorous and persevering endeavour
to remain at peace; but he weakened his efforts by professing to
believe that we might yet enter into substantial engagements with
the French, who had at this moment no permanent settled Government
at all, but a set of puppet Ministers, ruled by a Convention, and
the Convention ruled by a mob flaming with the ideas of universal
conquest and universal plunder. If Fox had advocated the wisdom of
maintaining the defensive as much as possible, and confining ourselves
to defending our Dutch allies, as we were bound, his words would have
had more weight; but his assurance that we might maintain a full and
friendly connection with a people that were butchering each other at
home, and belying all their most solemn professions of equity and
fraternity towards their dupes abroad, only enabled Pitt to ask him
with whom he would negotiate--Was it with Robespierre, or the monster
Marat, then in the ascendant? "But," added Pitt, "it is not merely to
the character of Marat, with whom we would now have to treat, that I
object; it is not to the horror of those crimes which have stained
their legislators--crimes in every stage rising above one another in
enormity,--but I object to the consequences of that character, and
to the effect of those crimes. They are such as render a negotiation
useless, and must entirely deprive of stability any peace which could
be concluded in such circumstances. The moment that the mob of Paris
comes under a new leader, mature deliberations are reversed, the most
solemn engagements are retracted, or free will is altogether controlled
by force. All the crimes which disgrace history have occurred in one
country, in a space so short, and with circumstances so aggravated, as
to outrun thought and exceed imagination." In fact, to have made an
alliance with France at that moment, and for long afterwards, would
have been to sanction her crimes, and to share the infamy of her
violence and lawlessness abroad.

In the presence of this great exciting cause the remaining business
of the Session of the British Parliament appeared tame. Mr. R. Smith
introduced a petition for Parliamentary reform from Nottingham, and
this was followed by a number of similar petitions from other places:
but whilst French emissaries and English demagogues were preaching up
revolution, nobody would listen to reform, and a motion of Mr. Grey,
to refer these petitions to a committee, was rejected by two hundred
and eighty-two votes to forty-one. On the 25th of February Dundas
introduced an optimistic statement of the affairs of India, declaring
that dependency as very flourishing, in spite of the continuance of the
war with Tippoo; and this was preparatory to a renewal of the charter
of the East India Company, which was carried on the 24th of May.
Francis, Fox, and others, opposed the Bill, and made very different
statements in vain. The real condition of India was not destined to
force itself on the nation till it came in the shape of a bloody
insurrection, and seventy million pounds of debt, more than sixty years
afterwards.

On the 6th of March the first blessings of war began to develop
themselves in the announcement, by Pitt, that his Majesty had engaged a
body of his Hanoverian troops to assist the Dutch; and, on the 11th,
by his calling on the House to form itself into a Committee of Ways and
Means to consider the propriety of raising a loan of four millions and
a half, and of issuing four millions of Exchequer Bills, in addition
to the ordinary revenue, to meet the demands of the year. Resolutions
for both these purposes were passed; and, on the 15th, a Bill was
introduced, making it high treason for any one to sell to the French
any muniments of war, bullion, or woollen cloth. Fox and his party
opposed this Bill, but it was readily carried through both Houses.

The repulse of the French in their attack on Holland, and their
repeated defeats in Belgium, which will be mentioned in the next
chapter, induced the French Government to make overtures for peace
with Britain, but in a secret and most singular way. Instead of an
open proposal through some duly-accredited envoy, the proposals came
through a Mr. John Salter, a public notary of Poplar. This notary
delivered to Lord Grenville two letters from Lebrun the French Foreign
Minister, dated the 2nd of April, stating that France was desirous to
accommodate its differences with Britain, and, provided the idea was
accepted, M. Marat should be sent over with full powers, on passports
being duly forwarded. A Mr. John Matthews, of Biggin House, Surrey,
attested that these notes were perfectly genuine, and had been signed
in the presence of himself and Mr. John Salter. Lord Grenville,
suspecting a correspondence coming through so extraordinary a medium,
and believing that the design of the French was only to gain time, in
order to recover their losses, took no notice of the letters. Moreover,
as the Jacobins were then following up their attacks on the Girondists
from day to day, he saw no prospect of any permanence of this party in
power. In fact, they were expelled by the 2nd of June, and on the 22nd
of that month Lebrun was in flight to avoid arrest. Marat arrived, but
held no communications with Grenville, and very shortly returned to
France. Soon afterwards came indirect overtures through Dumouriez to
our ambassador, Lord Auckland, but they were too late. War had been
declared.

Before the close of April a great commercial crisis had taken place in
England, and Ministers were compelled to make a new issue, by consent
of Parliament, of five millions of Exchequer Bills, to assist merchants
and manufacturers, under proper security. The sudden expansion of
industry which was met by an undue increase of the paper currency
rather than bullion, combined with reckless banking, produced the
crisis. It was calculated that out of the 350 provincial banks 100
failed. In the circumstances the issue of Exchange Bills was a most
successful makeshift.

[Illustration: ROBESPIERRE.]

Fox did not suffer the Session to close without another powerful
effort to avoid war with France. A petition had been handed to him for
presentation to the Commons, drawn up by Mr. Gurney of Norwich, and
signed by the Friends and other inhabitants of that city, praying that
peace with France might be concluded. Fox not only agreed to present it
and support its prayer, but he earnestly exhorted Mr. Gurney and his
friends to promote the sending of petitions from other places for this
object, as the only means of influencing the House, bent determinedly
on war. On the 17th of June, only four days before the close of the
Session, Fox moved an Address to the Crown, praying that, as the French
had been driven out of Holland, peace should be made. In pursuance of
his object--a great one, if attainable--he did not spare his former
favourite, the Empress of Russia, and the other royal robbers of
Poland. Burke replied that Fox knew very well that the defence of
Holland was but a very partial motive for the war. The real obstacles
to peace were the avowed principles of the French--those of universal
conquest, of annexation of the kingdoms conquered, as already Alsace,
Savoy, and Belgium; their attempts on the Constitution of Great Britain
by insidious means; the murder of their own monarch held up as an
example to all other nations. To make peace with France, he said truly,
was to declare war against the rest of Europe, which was threatened
by France; and he asked with whom in France should we negotiate for
peace, if so disposed? Should it be with Lebrun, already in a dungeon,
or with Clavière, who was hiding from those who were anxious to take
his head? or with Egalité, who had been consigned to a dungeon at
Marseilles? Burke declared that you might as well attempt to negotiate
with a quicksand or a whirlwind as with the present ever-shifting and
truculent factions which ruled in France.

The motion of Fox was negatived by a large majority, and on the 21st of
June the king prorogued Parliament.




CHAPTER XVI.

THE REIGN OF GEORGE III. (_continued_).

    Invasion of Holland by Dumouriez--He is defeated at Neerwinden
    and goes over to the Enemy--Second Partition of Poland--The
    Campaign in the Netherlands--And on the Rhine--The English
    Fleets in the Channel and West Indies--Siege of Toulon--First
    appearance of Napoleon Buonaparte--Fall of Lyons--The Reign of
    Terror--Insurrection in La Vendée--Its brutal Suppression--Worship
    of the Goddess of Reason--Opposition to the War in
    England--Prosecutions for Sedition--Trials in Scotland--Discussions
    on the subject in Parliament--Arrests of Horne Tooke, Thelwall,
    Hardy, and others--Battle of the First of June--The War in the
    West Indies--Annexation of Corsica--The Campaign of 1794--The
    Prussian Subsidy--Successes of Pichegru against the Austrians--The
    Struggle for the Sambre--Loss of Belgium--Danger of Holland--The
    War in the South--The Reign of Terror continues--The Festival of
    the Supreme Being--Death of Robespierre and his Associates--The
    Thermidorians--Final extinction of Poland--The Portland Whigs
    join the Ministry--Trials of Hardy, Horne Tooke, and their
    Associates--Opening of Parliament--The Budget--Attempts at
    Reform--Marriage of the Prince of Wales--His Allowance--The
    French occupy Holland--It becomes a Republic--Prussia and Spain
    leave the Coalition, but the War continues--Campaigns on the
    Rhine and in Italy--The War in La Vendée and in Brittany--The
    Expedition from England planned--Destruction of the Expedition
    at Quiberon--Extinction of the War in La Vendée--Establishment
    of the Directory--Attack on George the Third--The Budget--Pitt's
    first Negotiations for Peace--Failure of Lord Malmesbury's
    Mission--Successes in the West Indies and Africa--Expedition to
    Bantry Bay--The Campaign of 1796--Retreat of the French--Napoleon's
    Italian Campaign--The Battles of Arcole--A new British
    Loan--Suspension of Cash Payments--Grievances of the Seamen--Mutiny
    at Portsmouth--Its Pacification--Mutiny at the Nore--Descent on the
    Welsh Coast--Campaign of 1797--Preliminaries of Leoben--Treaty of
    Campo Formio--Lord Malmesbury's Mission to Lille.


Dumouriez was now making his projected attack upon Holland. On the
17th of February, 1793, he entered the Dutch territory, and issued a
proclamation, promising friendship to the Batavians, and war only to
the Stadtholder and his British allies. His success was brief, and he
was soon forced back at all points. He received peremptory orders from
the Convention to retire into Belgium. He obeyed with reluctance. On
Dumouriez' return to Belgium, he was greatly incensed at the wholesale
rapacity of the Commissioners of the Convention. They had plundered
the churches, confiscated the property of the clergy and the wealthy
inhabitants, and driven the people, by their insolence and violence,
into open revolt. He did not satisfy himself by simply reproving these
cormorants by words; he seized two of the worst of them, and sent them
to Paris under a military guard. General Moreton-Chabrillant, who
defended the Commissioners, he summarily dismissed; he restored the
plate to the churches, as far as he was able, and issued orders for
putting down the Jacobin clubs in the army. On the 16th of March he
was attacked at Neerwinden by the Prince of Saxe-Coburg, and after a
sharply-fought field, in which both himself and the Duke of Chartres
fought bravely, he was routed with a loss of four thousand killed and
wounded, and the desertion of ten thousand of his troops, who fled at
a great rate, never stopping till they entered France, and, spreading
in all directions, they caused the most alarming rumours of Dumouriez'
conduct and the advance of the enemy. The Convention at once dispatched
Danton and Lacroix to inquire into his proceedings, and, roused by
all these circumstances, no sooner had these two envoys left him than
he entered into communication with the Prince of Saxe-Coburg. Colonel
Mack, an Austrian officer, was appointed to confer with Dumouriez,
and it was agreed that he should evacuate Brussels, and that then the
negotiation should be renewed. Accordingly, the French retired from
Brussels on the 25th of March, and on the 27th they encamped at Ath,
where Dumouriez and Mack again met. The result of this conference was
the agreement of Dumouriez to abandon the Republic altogether, to march
rapidly on Paris, and disperse the Convention and the mother society
of the Jacobins. His designs, however, were suspected by the Jacobins,
and he was eventually compelled to go over to the enemy almost alone.
Dampierre, who had been appointed by the Convention to supersede
Dumouriez, took the command of the army, and established himself in
the camp at Famars, which covered Valenciennes. He was there attacked,
on the 8th of May, by the combined armies of Austrians, Prussians,
English, and Dutch, under Clairfayt, the Duke of Saxe-Coburg, and the
Duke of York. He was defeated with terrible slaughter, four thousand
men being killed and wounded, whilst the Allies stated their loss at
only eight hundred men. Dampierre himself lost a leg and died the
next day. Lamarque, who succeeded him, might have easily been made
to retreat, for the French were in great disorder; but the Allies
had resolved to advance no farther till Mayence should be retaken.
Lamarque, therefore, fortified himself in his camp at Famars, and
remained unmolested till the 23rd of the month. He was then attacked
and beaten, but was allowed to retire and encamp again between
Valenciennes and Bouchain. The Allies, instead of pushing their
advantages, waited the advance of the King of Prussia upon Mayence.
Custine, who was put in command of the Rhine, was enabled to keep back
the Prince of Hohenlohe, who had but an inconsiderable force, the King
of Prussia having been compelled to send a large force to Poland,
instead of forwarding it according to agreement to the Rhine.

In fact, whilst these events had been proceeding on the frontiers of
France, Russia, Prussia, and Austria had been dividing Poland amongst
them. The King of Prussia, when contemplating his participation in
this vile business, issued a proclamation assigning the most virtuous
reasons for it. It was to check the spread of French principles in
Poland, which had compelled himself and his amiable allies, the
Empress of Russia and the Emperor of Germany, to invade Poland. But
these pretences were merely a cloak for a shameless robbery. Poland
abutted on Prussia with the desirable ports of Thorn and Dantzic, and
therefore Great Poland was especially revolutionary in the eyes of
Frederick William of Prussia. The Polish Diet exposed the hollowness
of these pretences in a counter-manifesto. This produced a manifesto
from Francis of Austria, who declared that the love of peace and
good neighbourhood would not allow him to oppose the intentions of
Prussia, or permit any other Power to interfere with the efforts of
Russia and Prussia to pacify Poland; in fact, his love of peace would
not allow him to discountenance an aggressive war, but his love of
good neighbourhood would allow him to permit the most flagrant breach
of good neighbourhood. As for the Empress of Russia, she had a long
catalogue of ingratitude against the Poles, in addition to their
Jacobinical principles, and for these very convenient reasons she had
now taken possession of certain portions of that kingdom, and called
on all the inhabitants of these districts to swear allegiance to
her immediately. The Empress having thus broken the ice of her real
motives, the King of Prussia no longer pretended to conceal his, but
called on all the inhabitants of Great Poland to swear allegiance to
him forthwith. The Russian Ambassador at Grodno commanded the Poles
to carry these orders of Russia and Prussia into effect by a circular
dated the 9th of April. The great Polish Confederation, which had
invited the interference of Russia in order to carry out their own
party views, were much confounded by these announcements of their
friends. They reminded the marauders of the engagements entered into by
Russia, Prussia, and Austria, at the time of the former partition, to
guarantee the integrity of the remainder. But this was merely parleying
with assassins with the knife at their throats. The aggressive Powers
by force of arms compelled poor King Poniatowski and the nobles to
assemble a Diet, and draw up and sign an instrument for the alienation
of the required territories. By this forced cession a territory,
containing a population of more than three millions and a half, was
made over to Russia; and another territory to Prussia, containing a
million and a half of inhabitants, together with the navigation of the
Vistula, with the port of Thorn on that great river, and of Dantzic
on the Baltic, so long coveted. As for the small remainder of what
once had been Poland, which was left to that shadow-king, Poniatowski,
it was bound down under all the old oppressive regulations, and had
Russian garrisons at Warsaw and other towns. But all these Powers were
compelled to maintain large garrisons in their several sections of the
appropriated country.

[Illustration: VIEW IN THE OLD TOWN, WARSAW.]

Thus it happened that the King of Prussia, with hands full of
aggression, did not appear on the Rhine to chastise the aggressions of
France, before the month of April. He brought with him about fifty
thousand men, Prussians, Saxons, Hessians, and Bavarians. He was joined
by fifteen or twenty thousand Austrians, under Wurmser, and five or six
thousand French Emigrants under the Prince of Condé. But the French
had on the Rhine one hundred and forty thousand men at least, of whom
twenty thousand were within the walls of Mayence. The Prussians laid
siege to that city, and the Austrians and British to Valenciennes. On
the 21st of July the French engaged to give up Mayence on condition
that they should be allowed to march out with the honours of war, and
this the King of Prussia was weak enough to comply with. They must,
of necessity, have soon surrendered at discretion; now they were at
liberty to join the rest of the army and again resist the Allies.
Valenciennes did not surrender until the 28th of July, and not till
after a severe bombardment by the Duke of York. Thus three months of
the summer had been wasted before these two towns, during which time
the French had been employed in drawing forces from all quarters to
the frontiers of Belgium, under the guidance of Carnot. The Duke of
York was recalled from Valenciennes to Menin, to rescue the hereditary
Prince of Orange from an overwhelming French force, against which his
half-Jacobinised troops showed no disposition to act. Having effected
his deliverance, the Duke of York marched on Dunkirk, and began,
towards the end of August, to invest it; but he was left unsupported by
the Prince of Orange, and being equally neglected by the Austrians, he
was compelled to raise the siege on the 7th of September, and retreated
with the loss of his artillery. The Prince of Orange was himself not
long unassailed. Houchard drove him from Menin, and took Quesnoy from
him, but was, in his turn, routed by the Austrian general Beaulieu, and
chased to the very walls of Lille. According to the recent decree of
the Convention, that any general surrendering a town or post should be
put to death, Houchard was recalled to be guillotined. There continued
a desultory sort of warfare on the Belgian frontiers for the remainder
of the campaign. On the 15th and 16th of October Jourdain drove the
Duke of Coburg from the neighbourhood of Maubeuge across the Sambre,
but the Duke of York coming up with fresh British forces, which had
arrived at Ostend under Sir Charles Grey, the French were repulsed, and
the Netherland frontiers maintained by the Allies for the rest of the
year.

[Illustration: RETREAT OF THE ROYALISTS FROM TOULON. (_See p._ 423.)]

On the Rhine, the war was carried on quite into the winter. The King of
Prussia did not stay longer than to witness the surrender of Mayence;
he then hurried away to look after his new Polish territory, and left
the army under the command of the Duke of Brunswick. Brunswick, in
concert with Wurmser and his Austrians, attacked and drove the French
from their lines at Weissenburg, took from them Lauter, and laid
siege to Landau. Wurmser then advanced into Alsace, which the Germans
claimed as their old rightful territory, and invested Strasburg. But
the Convention Commissioners, St. Just and Lebas, defended the place
vigorously. They called forces from all quarters; they terrified the
people into obedience by the guillotine, Lebas saying that with a
little guillotine and plenty of terror he could do anything. But he did
not neglect to send for the gallant young Hoche, and put him at the
head of the army. Wurmser was compelled to fall back; Hoche marched
through the defiles of the Vosges, and, taking Wurmser by surprise,
defeated him, made many prisoners, and captured a great part of
Wurmser's cannon. In conjunction with Pichegru, Dessaix, and Michaud,
he made a desperate attack, on the 26th of December, on the Austrians
in the fortified lines of Weissenburg, whence they had so lately
driven the French; but the Duke of Brunswick came to their aid, and
enabled the Austrians to retire in order. Hoche again took possession
of Weissenburg; the Austrians retreated across the Rhine, and the
Duke of Brunswick and his Prussians fell back on Mayence. Once there,
dissatisfied with the Prussian officers, he resigned his command, he
and Wurmser parting with much mutual recrimination. Wurmser was not
able long to retain Mayence; and the French not only regained all
their old positions, before they retired to winter quarters, but Hoche
crossed the lines and wintered in the Palatinate, the scene of so many
French devastations in past wars. The French also repulsed the enemy on
the Spanish and Sardinian frontiers.

Though war had long been foreseen with France, when it took place we
had no fleet in a proper condition to put to sea. It was not till the
14th of July that Lord Howe, who had taken the command of the Channel
fleet, sailed from Spithead with fifteen ships of the line, three of
which were first-rates, but none of them of that speed and equipment
which they ought to have been. He soon obtained intelligence of a
French fleet of seventeen sail of the line, seen westward of Belleisle.
He sent into Plymouth, and had two third-rate vessels added to his
squadron. On the 31st of July he caught sight of the French fleet, but
never came up with them, the French ships being better sailers. After
beating about in vain, he returned to port, anchoring in Torbay on the
4th of September. At the end of October Howe put to sea again with
twenty-four sail of the line and several frigates, and several times
came near the French fleet, but could never get to engage. He, however,
protected our merchant vessels and disciplined his sailors. One French
ship was taken off Barfleur by Captain Saumarez of the _Crescent_, and
that was all.

In the West Indies a small squadron and some land troops took the
islands of Tobago, St. Pierre, and Miquelon. At the invitation of the
planters, we also took possession of the western or French portion of
St. Domingo; but in Martinique, where we had had the same invitation,
the Royalist French did not support our efforts according to promise,
and the enterprise failed from the smallness of the force employed.
Besides these transactions, there occurred a severe fight between
Captain Courteney, of the frigate _Boston_, with only thirty-two
guns and two hundred men, and the _Ambuscade_, a French frigate of
thirty-six guns and four hundred picked men, in which both received
much damage, and in which Captain Courteney was killed, but in which
the Frenchman was compelled to haul off. In the East Indies we again
seized Pondicherry, and all the small factories of the French.

The great maritime struggle of the year was at Toulon. The south of
France was then in active combination against the Convention and the
Jacobin faction. There was a determination in Toulon, Marseilles,
and other places on the coast to support the Royalist party in Aix,
Lyons, and other cities. For this purpose they invited the British to
co-operate with them. Lord Hood, having obtained from the people of
Toulon an engagement to surrender the fleet and town to him, to be held
for Louis XVII., arrived before that port in July, with, however,
only seven ships of the line, four frigates, and some smaller vessels.
Nearly all the old Royalist naval officers were collected in Toulon,
and were so eager for revenge on the Jacobin officers and sailors--who
had not only superseded them, but had persecuted them with all the
savage cruelty of their faction--that they were all for surrendering
their fleet to Lord Hood, and putting him in possession of the forts
and batteries. There was a firm opposition to this on the part of
the Republicans, both in the fleet and the town, but it was carried
against them. Besides the Royalist townsmen, there were ten thousand
Provençals in arms in the town and vicinity. As General Cartaux had
defeated the Royalists at Marseilles, taken possession of the town,
and, after executing severe measures on the Royalists there, was now in
full march for Toulon, there was no time to be lost. Lord Hood landed
a body of men under Captain Elphinstone, to whom the forts commanding
the port were quietly surrendered. Lord Hood was thus at once put into
possession of the best French port in the Mediterranean, and a great
fleet, with all the stores and ammunition. But he knew very well that
the place itself could not long be maintained against the whole force
of Republican France. He resolved, however, to defend the inhabitants,
who had placed themselves in so terrible a position with their
merciless countrymen, to the utmost of his power. He therefore urged
the Spaniards to come to his assistance, and they sent several vessels,
and three thousand men. He received reinforcements of ships and men
from Naples--the queen of which was sister to Marie Antoinette--and
from Sardinia. Fresh vessels and men also arrived from England. Lord
Mulgrave arrived from Italy, and at Lord Hood's request assumed
command, for the time, of the land forces.

General Cartaux arrived and took up his position in the villages
around Toulon. He was reinforced by General Doppet, from the Rhone,
and General Dugommier, from the Var; and the latter had in his
corps-d'armée a young lieutenant of artillery, who contained in his yet
unknown person the very genius of war--namely, Napoleon Buonaparte.
Cartaux was a man who had risen from the ranks; Doppet had been a
physician in Savoy; and Dugommier was acting on a plan sent from the
Convention. Buonaparte suggested what he thought a much superior
plan. "All you need," he said, "is to send away the English; and to
do that, you have only to sweep the harbour and the roadstead with
your batteries. Drive away the ships, and the troops will not remain.
Take the promontory of La Grasse, which commands both the inner and
outer harbour, and Toulon will be yours in a couple of days." On this
promontory stood two forts, Equilette and Balaquier, which had been
much strengthened by the English. It was resolved to assault these
forts, and batteries opposite to them were erected by the French under
Buonaparte's direction. After much desperate fighting, vast numbers of
troops being pressed against the forts, that of Balaquier was taken.
This gave the French such command of the inner harbour, that Lord Hood
called a council of war, and showed the necessity of retiring with the
fleet, and thus enabling the Royalists to escape, who would otherwise
be exterminated by their merciless countrymen. This was agreed to, and
it was resolved to maintain the different forts till the ships had
cleared out. The Neapolitans behaved very ill, showing no regard for
anything but their own safety. They held two forts--one at Cape Lebrun,
and the other at Cape Lesset; these, they said, they would surrender
as soon as the enemy approached. They made haste to get their ships
and men out of harbour, leaving all else to take care of themselves.
The Spaniards and Piedmontese behaved in a much nobler manner. They
assisted willingly all day in getting on board the Royalists--men,
women, and children. All night the troops began to defile through a
narrow sallyport to the boats under the guns of the fort La Malaga.
This was happily effected; and then Sir Sidney Smith, who had recently
arrived at Toulon, and had volunteered the perilous office of blowing
up the powder-magazines, stores, arsenals, and the ships that could not
be removed, began his operations. He succeeded in setting fire to the
stores and about forty ships of war that were in the harbour.

After the departure of the British fleet, the Jacobin troops, townsmen,
and galley convicts, were perpetrating the most horrible scenes on the
unfortunate Toulonese. Even the poor workmen who had been employed by
the English to strengthen the defences, were collected in hundreds,
and cut down by discharges of grape-shot. Three Jacobin commissioners,
the brother of Robespierre, Barras, and Freron, were sent to purge the
place, and besides the grape-shot the guillotine was in daily activity
exterminating the people. The very mention of the name of Toulon was
forbidden, and it was henceforth to be called Port de la Montagne.

The troops of the Convention were equally successful against Lyons.
It was speedily invested by numerous troops, under the command of
Dubois-Crancé, one of the Commissioners of the Convention. On the 21st
of August he summoned the place to surrender, but the Lyonese held out
till the 2nd of October, when Couthon, one of the most ruthless of the
Jacobin deputies, arrived, with twenty-eight thousand armed peasants,
from Auvergne. He demanded that the city should be instantly bombarded,
and, if necessary, reduced to ruins. Dubois-Crancé said there was
no need for this merciless alternative, as the place must very soon
yield from famine. Couthon thereupon obtained an order from the
Convention to supersede Dubois-Crancé, as devoid of proper Republican
zeal; and on the 7th of October commenced a terrible bombardment. The
inhabitants came to a parley with Couthon, and agreed to surrender
without conditions. Couthon immediately appointed a committee to try
all rebels, and he sent his opinion of the population at large to the
Convention, describing the people as of three kinds--the wicked rich,
the proud rich, and the ignorant poor, who were too stupid to be good
Republicans. He proposed to guillotine the first class, to seize the
property of the second, and to remove the last into different quarters
of France. The Convention adopted his views cordially, and passed a
decree that Lyons should be destroyed; that nothing should be left but
the houses of the poor, the manufactories, the hospitals, the school of
arts, the public schools, and public monuments; that the name of Lyons
should be buried for ever, and that on its ruins should be erected a
monument bearing this inscription:--"Lyons made war against liberty:
Lyons is no more!" The name of the spot ever afterwards was to be the
Liberated Commune. The massacres were carried out by Collot d'Herbois.

The same scenes, but on a still larger scale, were exhibiting in
the capital. The Reign of Terror was fully inaugurated, and rapidly
extending itself. At first, on the expulsion of the Girondists from the
Convention--that is, in June--the guillotinings were only fourteen. In
July the number was about the same; but in August Robespierre became
a member of the Committee of Public Safety, which carried on the
machinery of government, and then the work went on swimmingly. From the
moment that Robespierre took his place on the Committee, the stream
of blood flowed freely and steadily. His friend--if such monsters can
be said to have any friends--Barrère, who belonged to the timid Plain
till the Girondists were overthrown, now became his active agent. He
proposed, on the 7th of August, that William Pitt should be proclaimed
the enemy of the whole human race, and that a decree should be passed
that every man had a right to assassinate him. On the 9th it was
announced that the Republic was completed; that Hérault de Séchelles
had produced a new and perfect constitution, which was at once adopted
by the Convention. It was a constitution containing all the doctrines
of the Mountain, in the bombast of that truculent faction. As it
was quickly set aside, we need not detail its principles. Then this
constitution was celebrated on the 10th of August, the anniversary
sacred to the downfall of monarchy. Next followed fresh executions,
among the most notable victims being Marie Antoinette (October 16) and
Madame Roland (November 9), while most of the prominent Girondists were
hunted down and killed.

Whilst blood was thus flowing by the guillotine, not only in Paris,
but, under the management of Jacobin Commissioners, in nearly all
the large towns of France, especially Lyons, Bordeaux, and Nantes, a
terrible work of extermination was going on against the royalists of La
Vendée. The simple people of that province, primitive in their habits
and sincere in their faith, desired no Republic. Their aristocracy, for
the most part of only moderate possessions, lived amongst them rather
like a race of kindly country squires than great lords, and the people
were accordingly cordially attached to them. In March of the year 1793
the Convention called for a conscription of three hundred thousand, and
the Vendéans, to a man, refused to serve under a Government that had
persecuted both their priests and their seigneurs. This was the certain
signal of civil war. Troops were ordered to march into La Vendée,
and compel obedience. Then the peasants flew to arms, and called on
the nobles and priests to join them. At first they were entirely
successful, but matters changed when Kleber was put in practical
command.

Their general, Lescure, was killed, and most of their other leaders
were severely wounded. Kleber triumphed over them by his weight of
artillery, and they now fled to the Loire. Amongst a number of royalist
nobles who had joined them from the army of the Prince of Condé on the
Rhine, was Prince de Talmont, a Breton noble, formerly of vast property
in Brittany, and now of much influence there. He advised them, for
the present, to abandon their country, and take refuge amongst his
countrymen, the Bretons. The whole of this miserable and miscellaneous
population, nearly a hundred thousand in number, crowded to the edge of
the Loire, impatient, from terror and despair, to cross. Behind were
the smoke of burning villages and the thunder of the hostile artillery;
before, was the broad Loire, divided by a low long island, also crowded
with fugitives. La Roche-Jaquelein had the command of the Vendéans
at this trying moment; but the enemy, not having good information of
their situation, did not come up till the whole wretched and famished
multitude was over. On their way to Laval they were attacked both
by Westermann and Léchelle; but being now joined by nearly seven
thousand Bretons, they beat both those generals; and Léchelle, from
mortification and terror of the guillotine--now the certain punisher of
defeated generals--died. The Vendéans for a time, aided by the Bretons,
appeared victorious. They had two courses open before them: one, to
retire into the farthest part of Brittany, where there was a population
strongly inspired by their own sentiments, having a country hilly and
easy of defence, with the advantage of being open to the coast, and
the assistance of the British; the other, to advance into Normandy,
where they might open up communication with the English through the
port of Cherbourg. They took the latter route, though their commander,
La Roche-Jaquelein, was strongly opposed to it. Stofflet commanded
under Jaquelein. The army marched on in great confusion, having the
women and children and the waggons in the centre. They were extremely
ill-informed of the condition of the towns which they approached.
They might have taken Rennes and St. Malo, which would have greatly
encouraged the Bretons; but they were informed that the Republican
troops were overpowering there. They did not approach Cherbourg for
the same cause, being told that it was well defended on the land side;
they therefore proceeded by Dol and Avranches to Granville, where they
arrived on the 14th of November. This place would have given them open
communication with the English, and at the worst an easy escape to the
Channel Islands; but they failed in their attempts to take it; and
great suspicion now having seized the people that their officers only
wanted to get into a seaport to desert them and escape to England,
they one and all protested that they would return to the Loire. In
vain did La Roche-Jaquelein demonstrate to them the fatality of such a
proceeding, and how much better it would be to make themselves strong
in Normandy and Brittany for the present; only about a thousand men
remained with him; the rest retraced their long and weary way towards
the Loire, though the Republicans had now accumulated very numerous
forces to bar their way. Fighting every now and then on the road, and
seeing their wives and children daily drop from hunger and fatigue,
they returned through Dol and Pontorson to Angers: there they were
repulsed by the Republicans. They then retreated to Mons, where
they again were attacked and defeated, many of their women, who had
concealed themselves in the houses, being dragged out and shot down
by whole platoons. At Ancenis, Stofflet managed to cross the Loire;
but the Republicans got between him and his army, which, wedged in at
Savenay, between the Loire, the Vilaine, and the sea, was attacked by
Kleber and Westermann, and, after maintaining a desperate fight against
overwhelming numbers and a terrible artillery, was literally, with the
exception of a few hundred who effected their escape, cut to pieces,
and the women and children all massacred by the merciless Jacobins.
Carrier then proceeded to purge Nantes in the same style as Collot
d'Herbois had purged Lyons.

[Illustration: NAPOLEON BUONAPARTE, LIEUTENANT OF ARTILLERY.

(_After the Portrait by J. B. Greuze._)]

These godless atrocities, these enormous murders, beyond all historic
precedent, proclaimed a people which had renounced God as well as
humanity; and they soon proceeded to avow this fact, and to establish
it by formal decree. In their rage for destroying everything old, there
was nothing that escaped them. They altered the mode of computing
time, and no longer used the Gregorian calendar, but dated all deeds
from the first year of Liberty, which they declared to have commenced
on the 22nd of September, 1792. The next and greatest achievement
was to dethrone the Almighty, and erect the Goddess of Reason in His
place. Under the auspices of the Goddess of Reason they did a very
unreasonable thing: they deprived all working people and all working
animals of one rest-day in every month. Instead of having the four
weeks and four Sundays in a month, they decimalised the months,
dividing them each into three decades, or terms of ten days each, so
that there were only three rest-days, instead of four, in the month.

The British Parliament met on the 21st of January, 1794. The
Opposition, on the question of the Address, made a strong remonstrance
against the prosecution of the war. They urged the miserable conduct
of it, and the failures of the Allies, as arguments for peace. They
did not discourage the maintenance of a proper system of self-defence,
and therefore acceded to the demands of Ministers for raising the navy
to eighty-five thousand men. The production of the Budget by Pitt, on
the 2nd of February, gave additional force to their appeals for peace.
He stated that the military force of England, including fencibles
and volunteers, amounted to a hundred and forty thousand men, and he
called for nineteen million nine hundred and thirty-nine thousand
pounds for the maintenance of this force, and for the payment of sixty
thousand German troops. Besides this, he asked for a loan of eleven
million pounds, as well as for the imposition of new taxes. This was an
advance in annual expenditure of fifteen million pounds more than only
two years ago; and when the manner in which the money was spent was
inquired into, the objections became far more serious. It thus appeared
that we were not only fighting for Holland and Belgium, but that we
were subsidising German princes to fight their own battles. There had
been a large subsidy to the King of Prussia, to assist him, in reality,
to destroy Poland. We were, in fact, on the threshold of that system
of Pitt's, by which Britain engaged to do battle all over Europe with
money as well as with men. But remonstrance was in vain. Fox, Grey, and
Sheridan, and their party in the Commons, the Marquis of Lansdowne,
the Duke of Bedford, and the Whigs in the Peers, made amendment after
amendment on these points, but were overwhelmed by Pitt's majorities.
Burke, in the Commons, was frantic in advocacy of war, because France
was revolutionary and impious.

The anti-Gallic spirit was at the same time made violent use of to
crush opinion at home. It is true that there was a foolish zeal on
behalf of the French Revolution in a certain portion of the British
public, which ought, by this time, to have been cooled by the too
obvious nature and tendency of that Revolution; but this might readily
have been prevented from doing harm by a fair exposure of the folly
of the admirers of so bloody and dishonest a system as that of the
French Jacobins. But it was more in accordance with the spirit of
Government at that time to endeavour to crush the freedom of the press
and of speech, under cover of the repression of a Gallic tendency. The
persecution began in Scotland.

The first indictment was preferred against James Tytler, a chemist, of
Edinburgh, for having published an address to the people, complaining
of the mass of the people being wholly unrepresented, and, in
consequence, being robbed and enslaved; demanding universal suffrage,
and advising folk to refuse to pay taxes till this reform was granted.
However strange such a charge would appear now, when the truth of
it has long been admitted, it was then held by Government and the
magistracy as next to high treason. Tytler did not venture to appear,
and his bail, two booksellers, were compelled to pay the amount of his
bond and penalty, six hundred merks Scots. He himself was outlawed,
and his goods were sold. Three days afterwards, namely, on the 8th of
January, 1793, John Morton, a printer's apprentice, and John Anderson
and Malcolm Craig, journeymen printers, were put upon their trial for
more questionable conduct. They were charged with endeavouring to
seduce the soldiers in the castle of Edinburgh from their duty, urging
them to drink, as a toast, "George the Third and Last, and Damnation
to all Crowned Heads;" and with attempting to persuade them to join
the "Society of the Friends of the People," or a "Club of Equality
and Freedom." They were condemned to nine months' imprisonment, and
to give security in one thousand merks Scots for their good behaviour
for three years. Next came the trials of William Stewart, merchant,
and John Elder, bookseller, of Edinburgh, for writing and publishing a
pamphlet on the "Rights of Man and the Origin of Government." Stewart
absconded, and the proceedings were dropped against the bookseller.
To these succeeded a number of similar trials, amongst them those of
James Smith, John Mennings, James Callender, Walter Berry, and James
Robinson, of Edinburgh, tradesmen of various descriptions, on the
charges of corresponding with Reform societies, or advocating the
representation of the people, full and equal rights, and declaring the
then Constitution a conspiracy of the rich against the poor. One or two
absented themselves, and were outlawed; the rest were imprisoned in
different towns. These violent proceedings against poor men, merely for
demanding reforms only too much needed, excited but little attention;
but now a more conspicuous class was aimed at, and the outrageously
arbitrary proceedings at once excited public attention, and, on the
part of reformers, intense indignation.

The persons now indicted were Thomas Muir and the Rev. Thomas Fyshe
Palmer. Muir was a young advocate, only eight-and-twenty years of age.
He was brought to trial at Edinburgh, on the 30th of August, 1793.
He was charged with inciting people to read the works of Paine, and
"A Dialogue between the Governors and the Governed," and with having
caused to be received and answered, by the Convention of Delegates, a
seditious address from the Society of United Irishmen in Dublin, to
the Delegates for promoting Reform in Scotland. He was also charged
with having absconded from the pursuit of justice, and with having been
over to France, and with having returned in a clandestine manner by way
of Ireland. To these charges Muir replied that he had gone to France
after publicly avowing his object, both in Edinburgh and London, that
object being to endeavour to persuade the French Convention not to
execute Louis XVI.; that when in Paris he urged this both on the ground
of humanity and good policy, as tending to make constitutional reform
easier, as well as the keeping of peace with England; that the sudden
declaration of hostilities whilst there had warned him to return, but
had closed up the direct way; that that was the reason of his taking a
vessel from Havre to Ireland; that he had, however, returned publicly,
and surrendered himself for trial at the earliest opportunity.

The most respectable witnesses testified in his favour, that he
had always argued that the monarchy of the country was good; the
government far superior to that of France; that many opinions of Paine
were unsound and untenable; that an equal division of property was
a chimera, and that we here wanted no revolution, but only moderate
reform. The chief witness against him was a woman-servant, who had
lived in his father's family, who deposed to his telling people to
read the "Rights of Man;" to giving an organ-man something to play
"_Ça ira!_" and the like. It is clear that Mr. Muir was what would now
be considered a very moderate reformer indeed. But the Lord Advocate
treated him with the most scurrilous indignity, calling him "that
unfortunate wretch at the bar;" "that demon of mischief;" "that pest of
Scotland." The very proofs of Muir's moderation were turned by the Lord
Justice Clerk into crimes; it was only "policy;" and he proceeded to
pass on him the monstrous sentence of transportation for fourteen years!

This base and disproportionate sentence startled the people of England.
In Scotland then party spirit ran furiously high. As there were clubs
for advocating thorough reform, so there were others for discouraging
and crushing it. The Tory arbitrary principle was rampant, and Muir was
the victim of it.

Mr. Fyshe Palmer was not tried till the 12th of September. He was then
brought before the Circuit Court of Justiciary at Perth, and charged
with writing and publishing an "Address to the People," which had been
issued by the Society of the Friends of Liberty, at Dundee. Palmer was
an Englishman of good family, in Bedfordshire. He had taken his degree
at Cambridge, and obtained a fellowship at Queen's College; but he had
afterwards joined the Unitarians, and had resided and preached some
time at Montrose and Dundee, and had delivered lectures on Unitarianism
in Edinburgh and Forfar. It appeared that Palmer was not the author
of the Address, but had only been asked to correct the proof of it,
and that he had, whilst so doing, struck out some of the strongest
passages. One Mealmaker, a weaver, acknowledged himself the author
of the Address; but Palmer was a Unitarian, and this, to the bigoted
Presbyterianism of his judges, was rank poison. His advocate pleaded
that he was not quite sane, but neither did this avail; the jury
brought in an instant and unanimous verdict of guilty, and the judges
condemned him to be transported for seven years. This was a still more
outrageous sentence than that of Muir, for Palmer had corresponded with
no French or Reforming societies whatever; he had simply corrected a
proof!

Not at all dismayed by this unrighteous severity, the Scottish Friends
of the People met in convention, in Edinburgh, on the 9th of October.
At this Convention delegates appeared, not only from most of the large
towns of Scotland, but also from London, Sheffield, and Dublin. Letters
were also received from the Societies in England. Mr. William Skirving,
a friend of Muir and Palmer, as secretary to the Convention, read these
letters, and other papers, demanding annual parliaments and universal
suffrage. As the British Parliament was considered, and truly, merely a
corrupt clique of the representatives of boroughmongers, they proposed
to apply directly to the king, that he might urge those necessary
reforms on the Legislature. In Scottish fashion, the Reformers opened
and closed their sittings with prayer, presenting a striking contrast
to the French Revolutionists. On the 6th of November delegates appeared
from the Society of United Irishmen, and Margarot and Gerald from
the Society of the Friends of the People in London. Margarot stated
that five hundred constables had beset the meeting in London, to
prevent delegates from getting away to this Convention, but that the
manufacturing towns of England were almost all in favour of Reform;
that in Sheffield alone there were fifty thousand; that a general union
of the Reformers of the United Kingdom would strike terror into their
enemies, and compel them to grant annual parliaments and universal
suffrage.

The Irish delegates described the condition of Ireland as most
deplorable. They said that the Government interest, through the landed
aristocracy, was omnipotent; that the manufacturers were unemployed;
that an infamous coalition had taken place between the Irish Opposition
and Ministry; that the Catholics had been bought up so that all parties
might combine to crush Reform; that the United Irishmen were everywhere
persecuted, and that one of them had only just escaped from a six
months' imprisonment.

Amongst these, for the most part working men, sat a number of
gentlemen, and even one lord, Lord Dacre, who had lived in Paris
and was a regular Revolutionist. The Convention sat unmolested till
the 5th of December, arranging for a future meeting in England, and
organising committees and correspondents in different towns. They also
recommended to all Reform clubs and societies to invoke Divine aid on
their endeavours for just reform. On meeting on the morning of the 5th,
the president, Paterson, announced that himself, Margarot, and the
delegates had been arrested, and were only out on bail. Immediately
after this, the Lord Provost appeared with a force to disperse the
meeting, and though Skirving informed him that the place of meeting was
his own hired house, and that they had met for a purely constitutional
purpose, the Lord Provost broke up the meeting and drove out the
members. That evening they met again at another place, but only to be
turned out again. Still they did not disperse before Gerald had offered
up a fervent prayer for the success of Reform. Mr. Skirving then issued
a circular inviting the delegates to meet in his private house, and for
this he was arrested on the 6th of January, 1794, brought before the
Court of Justiciary, and sentenced to fourteen years' transportation.
On the 13th Margarot received the same sentence; and, in the month of
March, Gerald likewise.

Muir and Palmer, on the 19th of December, 1793, had been conveyed on
board the hulks at Woolwich, before being shipped off to the Antipodes,
and were put in irons; but before they were sent off, the matter was
brought before Parliament. It was introduced by Mr. Adams, on the 14th
of February, 1794, moving for leave to bring in a bill to alter the
enactment for allowing appeals from the Scottish Court of Justiciary in
matters of law. This was refused, and he then gave notice of a motion
for the revision of the trials of Muir and Palmer. Sheridan, on the
24th, presented a petition from Palmer, complaining of his sentence
as unwarranted by law. Pitt protested against the reception of the
petition, and Dundas declared that all such motions were too late; the
warrant for Palmer's transportation was already signed and issued.
Wilberforce moved that Palmer's being sent off should be delayed till
the case was reconsidered, but this was also rejected by a large
majority. Such was the determined spirit of Pitt and his parliamentary
majority against all Reform, or justice to Reformers. On the 10th
of March Mr. Adams again moved for a revision of the trials of Muir
and Palmer, declaring that "leasing-making" (verbal sedition), their
crime by the law of Scotland, was punishable by fine, imprisonment,
or banishment, but not by transportation, and that their sentence
was illegal. Fox exposed the rancorous spirit with which the trials
had been conducted, and to which the judges had most indecently lent
themselves; that the Lord Justice Clerk, during Muir's trial, had said,
"A government in every country should be just like a corporation; and,
in this country, it is made up of the landed interest, which alone has
a right to be represented. As for the rabble, who have nothing but
personal property, what hold has the nation on them? They may pack
up all their property on their backs, and leave the country in the
twinkling of an eye!" Lord Swinton said, "If punishment adequate to
the crime of sedition were to be sought for, it could not be found in
our law, now that torture is happily abolished." The Lord Advocate was
in his place to defend his conduct and doctrine, but Pitt and Dundas
supported these odious opinions. The House also sanctioned them by a
large majority, and Adams's motion was rejected. In the Upper House,
similar motions, introduced by Lords Lansdowne and Stanhope, were
similarly treated.

[Illustration: THE TOLBOOTH, EDINBURGH.]

The success of the Scottish courts in sentencing Reformers encouraged
the Ministers to try the experiment in England; but there it did not
succeed so well. First, one Eaton, a bookseller, of Bishopgate, was
indicted for selling a seditious libel, called "Politics for the
People; or, Hog's-wash." On the 2nd of April, Thomas Walker, a merchant
of Manchester--was, with six others, indicted at the Lancaster assizes;
but Eaton, in London, and these Manchester men, were acquitted. Rather
irritated than discouraged by these failures, Pitt and Dundas made a
swoop at the leaders of the Corresponding Society, and the Society
for Constitutional Information in London; and, in the month of May,
Horne Tooke, John Thelwall--a celebrated political lecturer--Thomas
Hardy, Daniel Adams, and the Rev. Jeremiah Joyce--private secretary to
the Earl of Stanhope, and tutor to his son, Lord Mahon--were arrested
and committed to the Tower on a charge of high treason. No sooner was
this done, than, on the 12th of May, Dundas announced to the House of
Commons that, in consequence of the Government having been informed
of seditious practices being carried on by the above-named societies,
they had seized their papers, and he now demanded that a committee of
secrecy should be appointed to examine these papers. This was agreed
to; and on the 16th Pitt brought up the report of this committee, which
was so absurd in its results that nothing but the most blind political
desperation could have induced the Government to make it known. The
committee found nothing amongst these papers but the reports of the
societies since the year 1791, which had been annually published and
made known to every one. Yet on this miserable evidence Pitt called
for the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, and it was accordingly
granted, Burke--who now seems to have grown quite politically mad
by dwelling on the horrors of the French Revolution--believing it
the only measure to insure the safety of the country. Windham and
others asserted that the mere suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act
was hardly sufficient: there required yet more stringent measures.
Similar language was held in the Lords, but did not pass without some
severe comments from the Duke of Bedford, and the Lords Stanhope,
Lauderdale, and Albemarle, who declared that Ministers, instead of
suppressing, were creating a veritable reign of terror. The Bill was,
notwithstanding, readily passed; and on the 13th of June an Address
was carried to his Majesty, expressing the determination of their
lordships to punish the men who had been concerned in the so-called
conspiracy. Fox and Lambton condemned this course energetically in the
Commons, declaring that, if there were any conspiracy, the ordinary
laws and tribunals were amply sufficient for their punishment. Fox
moved that all that part of the Address which expressed a conviction of
the existence of a conspiracy should be struck out, but it was carried
entire; and such was the alarm of the country at the reverses of the
Allies on the Continent and the successes of France, that far more
violent measures would have been readily assented to.

Meanwhile Lord Howe had been on the look-out some time for the French
fleet, which, it was understood, was about to leave Brest, in order
to meet a convoy of merchant ships from the West Indies, and aid it
in bringing that trade fleet into port. On reaching Brest, however,
he discovered that the French fleet had sailed, and it was not till
the 28th of May that he caught sight of it out at sea, opposite the
coast of Brittany. The French fleet, commanded by Admiral Villaret
Joyeuse, was greatly superior to Howe's in ships, number of seamen,
and weight of metal. Howe had twenty-five sail of the line and five
frigates, carrying two thousand and ninety-eight guns, in weight
of metal twenty-one thousand five hundred and nineteen pounds, and
sixteen thousand six hundred and forty-seven men. Joyeuse, now joined
by Admiral Neilly, had twenty-six line-of-battle ships and smaller
vessels, carrying two thousand one hundred and fifty-eight guns, in
weight of metal twenty-five thousand five hundred and twenty-one
pounds, and nineteen thousand eight hundred and twenty-eight men. After
some skirmishing, on the 1st of June--"the glorious first"--Howe came
to close quarters with the enemy, who was compelled to fight by the
presence of the Conventional Commissioner Bon St. André. He ordered his
fleet to follow his ship, the _Charlotte_, in cutting right through
the enemy's line. Only five ships, however, accomplished this so as
to engage the French to the leeward, and prevent them from escaping.
Howe afterwards complained that some of his captains had not obeyed
his orders, and threatened them with a court-martial; but some replied
that their ships were in such bad sailing condition that they could
not effect this movement, and others that they did not understand
the signal. Thus, five vessels fighting to the leeward, and the rest
to the windward, the battle raged furiously from nine in the morning
till three in the afternoon, when the French admiral sheered off for
Brest, leaving behind seven of his finest vessels in the hands of the
British. The British lost in the action two hundred and seventy-nine
men, and had eight hundred and seventy-seven wounded. The French lost
in six of the captured ships alone six hundred and ninety men, and had
five hundred and eighty wounded. The seventh, the _Vengeur_, went down
almost as soon as the British flag was hoisted on her, with, it is
supposed, three hundred men in her. Altogether, it is likely that the
French did not lose less than fifteen hundred men, besides wounded,
and two thousand three hundred prisoners. The British lost a number of
officers, who were either killed in the battle or died afterwards of
their injuries Amongst these were Sir Andrew Douglas, second captain
of Howe's own ship; Captains Montagu of the _Montagu_, Hutt of the
_Queen_, and Harvey of the _Brunswick_; Rear-Admirals Pasley of the
_Bellerophon_, and Bowyer of the _Barfleur_. Admiral Graves and Captain
Berkeley were severely wounded. Howe made every effort to pursue and
bring the French admiral again to action; but, owing to the bad sailing
qualities of English ships at that time, and the shattered state of
many of them, he could not overtake Villaret, who made the best of
his way to Brest. During the remainder of the year there were various
engagements between small squadrons in different quarters, in which the
advantage generally remained with the British, besides the training
thus afforded to the officers and sailors for the mighty victories
which awaited them.

During the spring of 1794 the British, under Lieutenant-General Sir
Charles Grey, took the French island of Martinique, in which attempt
the Duke of Kent, father of Queen Victoria, distinguished himself. They
also took St. Lucia, Guadeloupe, and its dependencies, Marie-Galante,
Deseada, and the Saintes. But they were not so successful in assisting
the French Royalists in St. Domingo to expel the Republicans. They
beat the French in three successive battles, but our troops were
then attacked by the yellow fever. General Whyte made himself master
of the French capital, Port-au-Prince; but General Dundas, who was
appointed governor, was carried off by the fever, as also were numbers
of the troops. The French general also fell a victim to the fever;
but at this juncture arrived the Jacobin Commissioner, Victor Hugues,
with a reinforcement of from fifteen hundred to two thousand men. He
immediately assumed the command, proclaimed freedom to all the blacks,
and the plunder of the Royalists. The Royalists, terrified, submitted,
or only feebly supported their British allies, who were thereupon
compelled to yield them to their fate. Hughes, one of the bloodiest
of the French revolutionists, set the guillotine to work in the hands
of the negroes. The Royalists were beheaded or fusilladed in troops,
their houses burnt, and their estates ravaged. Before the end of the
year this monster had reduced the island to a dreadful desert. In
his ferocious fury, he had caused the very sick and wounded in the
hospitals to be massacred, and the dead to be thrown out of their
graves. Amongst these were the remains of General Dundas, and the
other dead British officers, which were flung into the river. Hugues
also recovered Guadeloupe, and perpetrated the same cruelties and
abominations there.

During this summer the island of Corsica fell into our hands, and that
by conduct as brilliant on the part of Nelson and the troops and seamen
under him, as was at the time the formal inefficiency of our generals
there. The Corsicans soon experienced the insolence and rapacity of
the godless French Republicans, and rose in general insurrection. The
patriot Paoli was the first to advise them to renounce all connection
with such a race of fiends, and was, in consequence, proscribed by
the Convention, but at the same time appointed General-in-Chief and
President of the Council of Government by his own people. As he well
knew that little Corsica was no match for France, he applied to the
British for assistance. Lord Hood was then engaged in the defence of
Toulon, but he sent a few ships and troops during the summer and autumn
to Paoli's aid, and by this assistance the French were driven out
of every part of the island except San Fiorenzo, Calvi, and Bastia.
The mother of Buonaparte, and part of the family, who were living
at Ajaccio, fled to France, imploring the aid of the Convention for
her native island. Lord Hood, however, having evacuated Toulon, made
haste to be beforehand with them. By the 7th of February, 1794, he
had blockaded the three ports still in the hands of the French, and
had landed five regiments, under the command of General Dundas, at
San Fiorenzo. The French were soon compelled to evacuate the place,
but they retreated to Bastia, without almost any attempt on the part
of Dundas to injure or molest them. Lord Hood now urged the immediate
reduction of Bastia, but Dundas, an incompetent officer, and tied up by
all the old formal rules of warfare, declared that he could not attempt
to carry the town till the arrival of two thousand fresh troops from
Gibraltar. But there was a man of very different metal and notions
serving there, namely, Nelson, who was indignant at this timid conduct.
He declared that if he had five hundred men and the _Agamemnon_
ship-of-war, he could take the place. Lord Hood was resolved that
he should try, whilst he himself blockaded the harbour. Nelson, who
declared his own seamen of the _Agamemnon_ were of the right sort, and
cared no more for bullets than for peas, had one thousand one hundred
and eighty-three soldiers, artillerymen, and marines, with two hundred
and fifty sailors, put under his command, with the title of brigadier.
They landed on the 4th of April, dragged their cannon up to the tops of
the rocks overhanging Bastia, to the astonishment of French, Corsicans,
and the timid Dundas. On the 10th Nelson was aloft with his whole
force, and with all his cannon in position. A body of Corsicans rather
kept guard than gave any active assistance on another side of the town;
for they had no cannon, or could not drag them up precipices like
British seamen. On the 11th Lord Hood summoned the town to surrender;
but the French commander and Commissioner, Lacombe-Saint-Michel,
replied that he had red-hot shot for the ships and bayonets for
the British soldiers, and should not think of yielding till he had
two-thirds of his garrison killed. But Nelson, ably seconded by Colonel
Vilettes, plied his artillery to such purpose, that, on the 10th of
May, Lacombe-Saint-Michel made offer of surrender, and on the 19th the
capitulation was completed. The French forces and the Corsicans in
their interest were shipped off to Toulon, after the signing of the
capitulation on the 21st; and now General D'Aubant, who had succeeded
General Dundas, but who had continued lying at San Fiorenzo instead of
assisting at the siege, came up with his troops and took possession
of Bastia. The whole loss of the British in this brilliant affair was
only fourteen men killed and thirty-four wounded. Calvi, the most
strongly-situated and fortified place, still remained to be taken. By
the middle of June it was thoroughly invested, both by sea and land,
and Nelson again serving on shore, assisted by Captains Hallowell and
Serecold, was pouring shells and red-hot shot into the fort. Captain
Serecold was killed at the very outset; but Nelson and Hallowell,
chiefly with the sailors and marines, continued the bombardment through
the terrible heat of the dog-days, and the enervating effects of
malaria from stagnant ponds in the hills, and compelled the surrender
on the 10th of August, but not before one-half of the two thousand men
engaged were prostrated by sickness. The island was now, by the advice
of Paoli, offered to the British Crown and by it accepted; but a gross
blunder was made in not appointing Paoli Governor, as was expected
both by himself and his compatriots. Instead of this most proper and
conciliatory measure, Sir Gilbert Elliot was appointed Governor, to
the disappointment and disgust of the Corsicans. Sir Gilbert attempted
to gratify the islanders by framing a new Constitution for them, and
granting them trial by jury; but neither of these institutions was
adapted to their ideas, and both failed to heal the wound which the
ignominious treatment of their great patriot occasioned.

[Illustration: CALVI, CORSICA.]

But this little episode of the war presented one bright spot amid
the vast picture of miserable mismanagement, want of concert and of
activity, amongst the Allies engaged against France. The campaign
of 1794 was most disgraceful and discouraging. The plan still was
for the different armies of the Allies to advance from the different
frontiers, north, west, east, and south, and concentrate themselves on
Paris; but all the activity and concentration were on the side of the
French. In the very commencement of it, it was observed that Prussia
was not bringing by any means the stipulated amount of forces into the
field. The king, thinking much more of securing his Polish robberies
than of co-operating against France, remained in Poland, and was even
discovered to be secretly negotiating with the French Convention for
peace. Britain was alarmed at this symptom of Prussian defection and
made strong remonstrances. Frederick William coolly replied that it was
impossible for him to go on without a large sum of money. The hint of
Prussia was not lost; money was promised, and in April of this year a
subsidy of two millions two hundred thousand pounds was paid to Prussia
to secure her more active operation, and on condition that she brought
into the field sixty thousand men. The bulk of this money was paid by
Britain, a small fraction by Holland; and what was the result? The King
of Prussia sent very few troops into the field, but employed the money
in paying and maintaining armies to keep down the invaded provinces of
Poland, and to invade more! Thus Britain was duped into the disgraceful
business of riveting the fetters of unhappy Poland; and it would have
been well had this taught the British Government wisdom. But it was now
intent on that astonishing career of subsidising almost all the nations
of Europe against France; of purchasing useless German soldiers at
astounding prices; of pouring out the wealth and blood of Britain like
water to enable the Germans and Russians to defend their own hearths
and homes, and in vain. The results of this subsidy ought to have
satisfied Britain, and would have satisfied any other nation; for it
did not long retain Prussia as an ally, even in name.

[Illustration: ST. JUST. (_After the Portrait by David._)]

Belgium, this summer, was the great battle-ground. In it were
Austrians, Dutch, British, and Hanoverians. At the opening of the
campaign the Allies had probably two hundred thousand men scattered
along the frontiers, and the French upwards of three hundred thousand.
But whilst the French were united in one object, and the Convention
kept pouring fresh masses of men in, the Allies were slow and
disunited. The Duke of York, who commanded the English and Hanoverians,
about thirty thousand men, was completely tired of the sluggish
formality of the Austrian general, Clairfait, and refused to serve
under him. To remove the difficulty, the Emperor of Austria agreed to
take the command of his forces in the Netherlands in person, so that
the Duke of York would serve under him. Francis II. arrived in April,
and great expectations were excited by his presence. Instead of urging
all the different divisions of the allied armies to concentrate in
large masses against the able generals, Pichegru and Jourdain, Francis
sat down before the secondary fortress of Landrecies, though the Allies
already held those of Valenciennes, Condé, and Quesnoy. This enabled
Pichegru to advance on West Flanders, and take Courtrai and Menin in
the very face of Clairfait. At the same time Jourdain had entered the
country of Luxembourg with a large force, and whilst the Austrians were
wasting their time before Landrecies, he was still further reinforced
from the army of the Rhine, which the absence of the King of Prussia
left at leisure, and he now fell upon the Austrian general, Beaulieu;
and though Beaulieu fought bravely for two days, he was overwhelmed by
successive columns of fresh troops, and driven from his lines. Jourdain
then advanced upon the Moselle, where the Prussians ought to have been,
and were not, in spite of the subsidy.

Pichegru, on his part, having driven back Clairfait, turned round
on the Duke of York, who lay at Tournay. There he met with a severe
repulse, and fell back with heavy loss; but Clairfait having again
advanced to regain Courtrai, Pichegru once more engaged and defeated
him. Clairfait then fell back into Flanders, to cover Ghent, Bruges,
and Ostend. Pichegru, urged on against his better judgment by St.
Just, who was the Commissioner from the Convention, sent Kleber and
Marceau across the Sambre to attack General Kaunitz; but Kaunitz gave
the French a severe defeat, killing four thousand of them; and had the
Austrians been as rapid as they were brave, they might have nearly
exterminated the whole of the French division. This success inspirited
the Allies to advance actively, but the Duke of York, not taking into
account the habitual slowness of German troops, shot ahead, expecting
to fall in with Clairfait's columns at Turcoing; but there he only
found the French, under Souham and Bonnaud, who well nigh enveloped
him by their vast numbers, totally defeated, and nearly took him
prisoner. This gave such a panic to the Austrians, that the entire
army fell back, and Francis II., thoroughly discouraged, withdrew from
the command and left it to the Prince of Coburg. The Duke of York
rallied, and maintained his ground at Tournay against Pichegru, and
Kaunitz followed up his advantage against Kleber and Moreau, driving
them across the Sambre; but these were only temporary successes.
Jourdain, finding no Prussians in the Moselle, drew nearer to the camp
of Pichegru. There were various conflicts at Ypres, Charleroi, and on
the plains of Fleurus. The Allies drove the French three times across
the Sambre, but they returned with fresh and never-ending forces, and
compelled the Allies to a general retreat. Bruges opened its gates to
the French; Pichegru, aided by Moreau, compelled the Duke of York to
retire successively on Oudenarde, Tournay, and Antwerp, places filled
with the fame of Marlborough. At Antwerp the Duke of York was joined by
Lord Moira, with ten thousand men, intended originally for La Vendée,
but too late to prevent the massacre of Savenay. The English garrison
quitted Ostend, and came round to Antwerp; and the British occupied
that town, whilst Clairfait lay at Louvain, and the two armies,
unitedly, protected Mechlin.

The French allowed the retreating Allies no rest. There was no want
of men. The Convention, by the menace of the guillotine at home, and
the promises of plunder and licence abroad, could raise any number of
thousands of men, could find millions of money, and they had not a
single feeling of humanity, as the streaming axes of the executioners
all over the country showed. They could also fight and daunt their
enemies by the same unhesitating ferocity. They had long published
to all their armies that no quarter was to be given to British or
Hanoverians--they were to be massacred to a man; and they now sent word
to the fortresses of Valenciennes, Condé, Quesnoy, and Landrecies, that
unless the garrisons surrendered every soul on their being taken should
be butchered. The fortresses were immediately surrendered, for the
menace was backed by one hundred and fifty thousand men--the combined
troops of Pichegru and Jourdain. Besides, the fortresses in the hands
of the Allies were so badly supplied both with ammunition and stores,
that they were but dens of famine and impotence. On the 5th of July
Ghent opened its gates to the French; on the 9th the French entered
Brussels, having driven the Duke of Coburg out of his entrenchments in
the wood of Soignies, near which the battle of Waterloo was afterwards
fought. They next attacked the Duke of York and Lord Moira at Mechlin,
and after a sharp conflict drove them thence. The very next day
Clairfait was defeated and obliged to abandon both Louvain and Liége.
General Beaulieu was driven out of Namur, solely because he had no
provisions there for his army, though otherwise the place could have
made a long defence. The Duke of York was compelled to abandon the
strong and important citadel of Antwerp from the same cause, and to
cross the Scheldt into Dutch territory, leaving the French to make
their triumphant entry into Antwerp on the 23rd of July. Such was the
brilliant campaign of the French in the Netherlands in the summer of
1794--such the ignominious defeat of the Allies, with an army of two
hundred thousand men. Pitt, however, bravely struggled to keep up the
Coalition. A loan of four million pounds was granted to Austria. At the
same time, in addition to the Hessian soldiers engaged, the Duke of
Brunswick, the king's relative, was to furnish two thousand two hundred
and eighty-nine men on the same liberal terms, and was himself to have
an annual allowance of sixteen thousand pounds sterling.

Those princes that did bring men into the field, such as the Hessians,
Brunswickers, etc.--the Menschen-Veräufer, or man-sellers, as they
were styled by their own people--were rapacious beyond example. During
the American war we had employed these Hessians, Brunswickers, and the
like, at a cost that excited general indignation. Besides paying seven
pounds ten shillings and a penny for every man, the Duke of Brunswick,
who furnished only four thousand and eighty-four men, had had an annual
subsidy of fifteen thousand five hundred and nineteen pounds. The
Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, who furnished twelve thousand men, had ten
thousand two hundred and eighty-one pounds a year.

It was towards the end of May before Marshal Möllendorf, the Prussian
general, began the campaign. He then attacked the French, and drove
them out of their entrenchments at Kaiserslautern with great slaughter.
There, however, his activity seemed to cease; and on the 12th of July
the French again fell upon him. He fought bravely for four whole days,
supported by the Austrians; but both these Powers were compelled to
retreat down the Rhine, the Prussians retiring on Mayence and the
Austrians crossing the river for more safety. The French marched
briskly after the Prussians, took Trèves, and then sent strong
detachments to help their countrymen to make a complete clearance
of Belgium and to invade Holland. Clairfait, who was still hovering
in Dutch Flanders, was attacked by overwhelming numbers, beaten
repeatedly, and compelled to evacuate Juliers, Aix-la-Chapelle, and
finally Cologne. The French were so close at his heels at Cologne that
they shouted after him that "that was not the way to Paris." Coblenz,
where the Royalist Emigrants had so long made their headquarters,
though strongly fortified, soon after surrendered. The stout fortress
of Venloo, on the Meuse, and Bois-le-Duc, as promptly surrendered, and
the French marched on Nimeguen, near which the Duke of York lay, hoping
in vain to cover the frontiers of Holland. The people of Holland, like
those of Belgium, were extensively Jacobinised, the army was deeply
infected by French principles, and to attempt to defend such a country
with a mere handful of British was literally to throw away the lives
of our men. Yet the duke stood stoutly in this hopeless defence, where
half Holland ought to have been collected to defend itself.

On the 19th of October the French attacked the duke with sixty thousand
men, and though his little army fought with its usual dogged bravery
it was compelled to give way. It did this, however, only to assume
a fresh position, still covering Nimeguen, where, on the 27th, the
French again attacked it, and compelled it to retire from the contest.
The duke led the wreck of his army across the Waal and the Rhine, and
posted himself at Arnhem in Guelderland, to throw some impediment
in the path of Pichegru, who was advancing, at the command of the
Convention, to reduce Holland. Nimeguen, full of Dutch traitors, soon
opened its gates; Maestricht did the same to Kleber; and at the end of
the campaign the gloomiest prospects hung over Holland.

In the south great successes had been won by the French. A formidable
attack was made on the territories of the King of Sardinia and the
position of Saorgio was turned. But another division of these French
descended from the Alps. It was the month of May when General Dumas,
with the army of the Alps, had forced his way through the defiles of
Mont Cenis. The Piedmontese garrisons of the forts there had fled
without much resistance, astonished and confounded at seeing the French
appear on the loftiest heights around them. The French pursued their
retreating troops as far as Susa, led on by Jacobinised Savoyards,
who hated the Piedmontese. But Dumas, finding that strong forces of
Piedmontese and Austrians, under the King of Sardinia and the Austrian
General Wallis, were drawn up at the foot of the Alps, did not venture
to descend into the plains. Another body of the army of Italy was
delayed some time in the Genoese territory, whilst Buonaparte was
employed in sounding the condition and intentions of the people of
Genoa. All the Alpine passes were in their hands, and Italy was doomed
to drink the cup of misery to the very dregs.

Whilst the French armies had been carrying bloodshed and misery into
the countries around them, their brethren at home had been equally
busy in pushing forward those mutual hatreds which appeared likely
to end in the extermination of the whole race of revolutionists. The
Girondists being destroyed, new divisions showed themselves in those
who had hitherto been allies--Robespierre and his coadjutors. Hébert,
Chaumette, Clootz, Ronsin, and others, began to raise their heels
against their chief, and their chief doomed every one of them to the
guillotine. His most important victim was Danton, a man by no means
contemptible (guillotined April 5th, 1794).

Robespierre believed that there was a majority of the Republicans who
thought they had gone too far in abolishing the Deity and setting up
the Goddess of Reason. He declared that the people needed festivals,
and immediately it was decreed that every decade should be celebrated
as a festival. A festival in honour of the Supreme Being inaugurated
this series of special holidays, and it was to be followed by festivals
to the Human Race, the French People, the Love of Country, Agriculture,
Necessity, Misfortune, Posterity, and various other qualities and
sentiments, each having one decade in the year. The first festival
to the Supreme Being was fixed for the 20th of Prairial, or 8th of
June. The painter David was commissioned to prepare the scenes and
ceremonies of the festival, which was enacted in the gardens of the
Tuileries. Robespierre, in his sky-blue coat and most showy waistcoat,
and carrying in his hand a grand bouquet of flowers mixed with ears of
wheat, led the procession and officiated as high priest. But though
Robespierre had proclaimed the reign of the Supreme Being, he had not
the least intention that it should on that account be any the more a
reign of mercy. In his speech at the festival of the Supreme Being,
he declared that the Republic must be still further purged--that they
must remain inexorable. On this point he and all his colleagues were
agreed, but they were agreed in nothing else. They immediately broke
into fresh schisms, as would necessarily be the case with such men,
who must go on exterminating one another to the last. Robespierre, St.
Just, and Couthon still hung together; but Barrère, Collot d'Herbois,
Billaud-Varennes, and most of the other members of the Committees of
Public Welfare and Public Safety, were in the very act of rushing into
opposition, and beginning a struggle with the triumvirate--Robespierre,
Couthon, and St. Just--to the death. St. Just advised Robespierre to
anticipate them, but he, relying on his authority with the Convention,
remained inactive. It was a fatal mistake. Barrère and his faction
determined to strike a decisive blow at Robespierre; and Tallien
volunteered to commence the attack on Robespierre in the Convention.
To Robespierre's utter astonishment, his friends were outnumbered, and
decrees were immediately passed for the arrest of Couthon, Lebas, St.
Just, Robespierre and his brother. He escaped and fled to the Commune.
For a moment it seemed as if a revolution would have restored him
to power. But the Parisians were weary of their tyrant, and on the
following day Robespierre with twenty members of the Commune perished
on the scaffold (July 28th, 1794).

No sooner had Collot d'Herbois, Barrère, and that party triumphed
over Robespierre than they summoned the members of the tribunal to
their bar--ay, on the very morning of the day of his execution--and
voted them honours amid much applause. The tribunal replied, that
though a few traitors like Coffinhal and Dumas had found their way
into the tribunal, the majority of them were sound and devoted to the
Convention. Accordingly, the next day the Convention handed over to
Fouquier-Tinville and his colleagues a list of fresh proscriptions of
sixty-nine municipals, and a few days afterwards--namely, the 12th of
Thermidor, being the 30th of July--they added twelve more, completing
eighty-one victims! These were all executed within twenty-four hours.
The Convention then fell into new divisions, some members contending
for its being time to cease these tragedies, others insisting on
maintaining them. Billaud-Varennes, Barrère, and Collot d'Herbois
defended the guillotine and Fouquier-Tinville, but the greater number
of the enemies of Robespierre denounced them, declared themselves the
overthrowers of Robespierre, and assumed the name of Thermidorians,
in honour of the month in which they had destroyed him. For the
Thermidorians saw that the better part of the public had become sick
of blood, and they set about contracting the Reign of Terror. They
reduced the powers of the two governing Committees; they decreed that
one-fourth of the members should go out every month; they reduced
the revolutionary sections of Paris from forty-eight to twelve, and
abolished the forty sous a day to the sansculotte patriots for their
attendance. A month after the execution of Robespierre, Tallien made a
fierce onslaught on the Terrorist system, and declared that there were
numbers yet living who had been equally merciless with Robespierre,
Couthon, and St. Just; and the next day Lecointre denounced by name
Barrère, Billaud-Varennes, and Collot d'Herbois. To put an end to the
Jacobin resistance, the Convention closed the Jacobin Club altogether,
which had thus only survived the fall of Robespierre about four
months. Thereupon the Jacobins began to denounce the Thermidorians as
anti-Republicans, but they retorted that they were Republicans of the
purest school--that of Marat.

[Illustration: PARIS UNDER THE REIGN OF TERROR: A VAIN APPEAL. (_After
the Picture by Paul Svedomsky_)]

Whilst these frightful horrors were taking place, Russia, Prussia, and
Austria had been completing the extinction of Poland. An ill-advised
attempt by the Poles for the recovery of their country had precipitated
this event. The Russian Minister in Poland had ordered the reduction
of the little army of that country, under its now almost nominal king,
Stanislaus Augustus, from thirty thousand to fifteen thousand. The
Poles resented this, without considering that they were unable, at the
moment, to resist it. Kosciusko was appointed Commander-in-Chief, and
he issued an order for the rising of the people in every quarter of
Poland, and for their hastening to his flag. At first, the enthusiasm
of the call to liberty and to the rescue of the common country gave
some brilliant successes. Kosciusko, on his march from Cracow to
Warsaw, at the head of only four thousand men, encountered a Russian
army of upwards of twelve thousand, and defeated it with a slaughter
of three thousand of the enemy. On the 17th of March, 1794, the Polish
troops in Warsaw attacked the Russian garrison, eight thousand strong,
and slaughtering more than half of them, drove the rest out of the
city, and Kosciusko marched in soon afterwards. A week later the
population of Lithuania, Kosciusko's native province, rose, and drove
the Russians with much slaughter from Wilna, its capital. But this
could not save Poland: its three mighty oppressors were pouring down
their multitudinous legions on every portion of the doomed country. The
Emperor of Austria marched an army into Little Poland at the end of
June, and an army of fifty thousand Russians and Prussians was in full
march on Warsaw. For a time, Kosciusko repulsed them, and committed
great havoc upon them on the 27th of July; again, on the 1st and
3rd of August. At the same time, Generals Dombrowski, Prince Joseph
Poniatowski, and other Polish generals, were victorious in different
quarters, and the King of Prussia was compelled to draw off his army,
forty thousand strong, from Warsaw, in order to recover Great Poland.
This gleam of success on the part of the Poles, however, was but
momentary. Their army in Lithuania, commanded by corrupt, gambling,
and gormandising nobles, was beaten at all points by the Russians,
and driven out of Wilna on the 12th of August. At the same time, the
savage Suvaroff, the man who had cried "Glory to God and the Empress!"
over the ruthless massacre of Ismail, was marching down on Warsaw.
Kosciusko had unwisely weakened his army by sending a strong detachment
under Dombrowski into Great Poland, and, attacking a Russian force
under Count Fersen, at Macziewice, about fifty miles from Warsaw, on
the 17th of September, he was utterly routed. He had only about twenty
thousand men, whilst Fersen had at least sixty thousand. But Kosciusko
was anxious to prevent the arrival of Suvaroff before the engagement,
and thus rushed into battle with this fatal inequality of strength. He
was left for dead on the field, but was discovered to be alive, and
was sent prisoner to St. Petersburg, where he was confined till the
accession of the Emperor Paul, who set him at liberty. The fall of
Kosciusko was the fall of Poland. Not even Kosciusko could have saved
it; but this catastrophe made the fatal end obvious and speedy. Still
the Poles struggled on bravely against such overwhelming forces for
some months. The ultimate partition treaty was at length signed on the
24th of October, 1795; some particulars regarding Cracow, however, not
being settled between Prussia and Austria till the 21st of October,
1796. Stanislaus Augustus was compelled to abdicate, and he retired,
after the death of Catherine, to St. Petersburg, with a pension of two
hundred thousand ducats a year. He died there in the month of February,
1798, only about fifteen months after his former mistress, the Czarina.
And thus Poland was blotted out of the map of nations.

In England there had been a coalition of what was called the Portland
section of the Whigs, with Pitt's Ministry. These Whigs had not only
separated from Fox and his friends, but they had, from the first
outbreak of the French Revolution, followed the lead of Burke and
supported all Pitt's measures. The Duke of Portland, therefore, was, in
July, made Third Secretary of State; Lord Fitzwilliam, President of the
Council, and, in December, Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland; Earl Spencer was
made, at the same time, Lord Privy Seal, and, in December, First Lord
of the Admiralty; Pitt's elder brother, Lord Chatham, being removed for
him, and made Privy Seal; and Windham became Secretary of War in place
of Sir George Yonge.

But this large infusion of Whiggery did not render the Administration
any the more liberal. It was determined to bring the politically
accused, now out on bail, to trial. On the 6th of October true bills
were found by the grand jury of Middlesex against Thomas Hardy,
the secretary of the Corresponding Society, John Horne Tooke, John
Augustus Bonney, Stewart Kyd, the Rev. Jeremiah Joyce, Thomas Wardle,
Thomas Holcroft, John Richter, Matthew Moore, John Thelwall, Richard
Hodgson, and John Baxter, for high treason. Hardy was put upon his
trial first at the Old Bailey, October 29th, before Chief Justice
Eyre, a judge of noted severity, Chief Baron Macdonald, Baron Hotham,
Mr. Justice Buller, and Mr. Justice Grose, with other judges. Sir
John Scott, afterwards Lord Eldon, as Attorney-General, opened the
case against him in a speech of nine hours. In this he laboured to
represent the Corresponding Society, and Hardy as its secretary, as
guilty of a treasonable intercourse with the French revolutionists,
and read numbers of documents expressing great admiration of the
French institutions. But these were merely the documents which had
long and openly been published by the Society, and were well known
through insertion in the newspapers. There was nothing clandestine
about them, nothing suggestive of a concealed and dangerous conspiracy.
Their invariable burthen was the thorough reform of Parliament, and
the utter disfranchisement of the rotten boroughs, by which the whole
representation of the country was transferred to the aristocracy. Next
a strong attempt was made to connect the secretary of the Society with
the men lately condemned in Scotland, especially Margarot, with whom,
as all undoubtedly engaged in the same object of Reform, Hardy, as
secretary, had considerable correspondence. The whole failed to impress
an English jury, and Hardy was acquitted after a trial of eight days.

The next who took his trial was Horne Tooke. The evidence was much
the same, but the man was different. Tooke was one of the keenest
intellects of the time, full of wit and causticity, by which he had
worsted even Junius. He summoned as witnesses the Prime Minister
himself, the Duke of Richmond, Master-General of the Ordnance, and
others of the Cabinet, who had all in their time been ardent Reformers,
and cross-questioned them in a style which, if he were guilty, showed
that they had once been as much so. Tooke's trial was very damaging to
the Government, and he was also acquitted after a trial of six days,
during the whole of which the jury had not been allowed to separate,
that they might not receive any popular impressions from without--a
course which was not calculated to put them in a particularly good
humour with the prosecutors.

On the 1st of December Bonney, Joyce, Kyd, and Holcroft were brought
up, but the evidence was precisely the same against them as against
Tooke; they were discharged without trial. Holcroft would have made
a speech condemnatory of these prosecutions, but was not allowed.
As these gentlemen were removed from the bar, John Thelwall, the
well-known elocutionist and political lecturer, was brought up. As
the Government thought there were some other charges against him, the
trial went on, and lasted four days, but with the same result; and as
it was found that it was hopeless to expect verdicts of guilty from
English juries for mere demands of Reform, the rest of the accused were
discharged. To the honour of the nation, people of all parties appeared
to rejoice at the independent conduct of the juries.

This noble independence was in bright contrast to that of Scottish
juries. In this very autumn, fresh trials of accused seditionists
had taken place at Edinburgh, in which the conduct of Government and
the servility of the Scottish juries were equally reprehensible.
One Robert Watt, a ruined tradesman of that city, was put upon his
trial, on the 14th of August, charged with eighteen overt acts of high
treason--in exciting many individuals to arm themselves, and to meet
in convention to concoct plans for the overthrow of the Government.
But it appeared on the trial that Watt had long been a Government spy,
employed to instigate people to these courses, by direct orders from
Mr. Secretary Dundas and the Lord Advocate of Scotland. Letters from
these gentlemen containing these orders, and proofs of Watt being in
the pay of Government for these purposes, were produced by Mr. Henry
Erskine, the prisoner's counsel. It was shown unanswerably that he
had been encouraged to have arms made and distributed, and to tempt
soldiers in Edinburgh. He had been thus employed to mislead and ensnare
unsuspecting persons from August, 1792, to October, 1793--more than
twelve months; and it was shown that after this the Government had
abandoned him, and that he had then joined the Reformers in earnest.
Notwithstanding this display of the infamous conduct of the Government,
Watt was condemned to be hanged, drawn, and quartered.

One Samuel Downie was next arraigned on the same charges, on the
5th of September, as an accomplice of Watt. But it appeared that he
had been rather the dupe of Watt and the spy-employing Government
than anything else; and though the jury pronounced him guilty, they
recommended him to mercy. He was respited and eventually pardoned; but
Watt underwent his sentence, so far as being hanged and beheaded,--a
warning to spies how they trusted a Government equally faithless to the
people and to the tools by which they sought to betray them.

The last act of this year, 1794, was the opening of Parliament on the
30th of December. The king, in his speech, was compelled to confess the
deplorable defeat of our Allies, and of our own army under the Duke
of York. He had to admit that, Robespierre having fallen, there might
possibly be a more pacific spirit in France; that Holland, the only
ally for whom we were verbally bound to take up arms, was negotiating
a peace with the French; that the United States of America had refused
to coalesce with the French against us, and had, on the contrary, made
a treaty of amity, commerce, and navigation with us. Here, then, was
an end of all real causes for anything more than a mere defensive war
on our part. Yet the speech breathed a most warlike spirit, and made a
great deal of the secession of the island of Corsica from France and
its adhesion to England. In the same spirit were the Addresses from
both Houses carried by overwhelming Ministerial majorities.

Canning, now rising into note, and Windham, declared that there were no
motives for peace, but everything to necessitate the active prosecution
of the war; and Windham could not help severely condemning the
acquittal of Horne Tooke, Hardy, Thelwall, and the rest of the accused
Reformers. He was called to order for thus impugning the conduct of
independent juries, and reminded that no legal proofs of the guilt of
the prisoners had been produced--on which he replied that they ought to
have been condemned, then, on moral proofs.

Sheridan marked the opening of the year 1795 by moving, on the 5th of
January, for the repeal of the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act.
He showed that the very grounds on which this suspension had been
based had miserably given way on the trials of Tooke, Hardy, and the
rest; that the whole amount of arms and money on which the so-called
"formidable" conspiracy had rested had been shown to be one pike, nine
rusty muskets, and a fund of nine pounds and one bad shilling! He
said that the great thing proved was the shameful conspiracy of the
Government against the people, and their infamous employment of spies
for that end; that eight thousand pounds had been spent on the Crown
lawyers, and a hundred witnesses examined, only to expose the guilt of
the Ministry. Windham defended the measures of Government, and charged
the juries with ignorance and incapacity, for which Erskine severely
reprimanded him. But the standing majorities of Pitt were inaccessible
to argument, and the continuance of the suspension was voted by a
majority of two hundred and thirty-nine against fifty-three. A like
result attended the debate in the Lords, where, however, the Dukes
of Norfolk and Bedford, the Marquis of Lansdowne, and the Earls of
Lauderdale and Guildford strongly opposed the suspension.

These debates were immediately followed by the opening of the Budget
on the 23rd of February--an opening which was enough to have made any
men but such as were then at the head of British affairs pause in their
ruinous career. There was a call for one hundred thousand seamen,
for one hundred and sixty thousand regulars, and fifty-six thousand
militia--total, two hundred and sixteen thousand soldiers, besides
volunteers, fencibles, and foreign troops in British pay, amounting, by
land and sea, to at least four hundred thousand men! For their support
there were demanded sixteen million and twenty-seven thousand pounds,
in addition to other taxes to make up deficiencies and interest on the
Debt; the whole revenue demanded was twenty-seven million five hundred
thousand pounds. Besides this there was an annual subsidy to the King
of Sardinia of two hundred thousand pounds, although there was no
prospect whatever of saving him. To raise all this, new duties had to
be laid on tea, coffee, raisins, foreign groceries and fruits, foreign
timber, insurances, writs, affidavits, hair-powder, licences, etc., and
the revenue from the Post Office, while the privilege of franking had
to be abridged. The only tax that the compliant aristocracy protested
against was that on the powdered pates of their menials; but the
country cried lustily and in vain against the increase of taxation,
which, gross as it was, was but the beginning of their burdens and of
the burden of posterity.

The Reformers made repeated and strenuous efforts to obtain a
parliamentary expression of the desirableness of this country
refraining from interfering with the internal affairs of France, and of
making specific arrangements with that country. Earl Stanhope made such
a motion in the Lords on the 6th of January, and the Duke of Bedford
made a similar one on the 27th of February. Lord Grey had moved the
same thing on the day before, but all these endeavours were rendered
abortive by Pitt's standing majority. It was replied that France had
no government that could be treated with, and Lord Mansfield asserted
that we had a right to interfere in the internal affairs of any country
that acted on principles dangerous to its neighbour. Fox, on the 24th
of March, moved for a committee of the whole House to inquire into the
state of the nation, but this was rejected on the ground that the times
were too critical, and Canning adduced the condition of Ireland, just
on the verge of rebellion, as a sufficient cause for not ascertaining
our actual state.

[Illustration: THE PALACE OF THE TUILERIES, PARIS.]

The only attempts at reform were in the commissariat and discipline
of the army. The soldiers were allowed an extra quantity of bread and
meat, and the militia regiments were permitted to have artillery,
and to increase their force and improve their staffs. But even these
reforms were made unconstitutionally by the dictum of the Ministers,
without the authority of Parliament, and occasioned smart but
ineffectual remonstrances from the House. Every motion for inquiry or
censure was borne down by the Ministerial majority.

The remainder of the parliamentary session was occupied with royal
marriages and settlements. George III. and his queen, though pious and
decorous in their own lives, had the misfortune to have amongst their
sons some of the most dissolute and debauched men that ever figured in
the corrupt atmosphere of courts. The Prince of Wales was become a very
byword for his profligacy and extravagance. The Duke of York was but
little better, so far as his means allowed him; and the Duke of Sussex,
wishing to marry a woman to whom he was really attached, found the
Royal Marriage Act standing in his way.

The marriage of the Prince of Wales with Mrs. Fitzherbert was
notorious; but as it was not openly avowed by the Prince, no steps were
taken to dissolve it. But in 1794 the Prince had got a new favourite,
the Lady Jersey, already a grandmother, but a young one. For her Mrs.
Fitzherbert was dismissed, showing how little the Prince thought of
the reality of the marriage with that fair lady, and he now lived
openly and ostentatiously with Lady Jersey, Lord Jersey being well
contented with the arrangement for the sake of the good things he hoped
to gain by it, being at once appointed Master of the Horse to the
Prince. But the Prince's extravagance and gambling, by the practice
of which, notwithstanding his own losses, he reduced his friends, one
after the other, as the Earl of Moira, Sir Wallace Porter, and others,
to beggary, had now brought him into extreme difficulties. His debts,
after having been more than once paid off by Parliament, now again
amounted to six hundred and thirty thousand pounds! Another appeal
to Parliament was absolutely necessary, for his creditors were grown
excessively clamorous. The king seized the opportunity to induce the
Prince to marry a foreign princess, representing it as the only plan
by which they could apply to Parliament for such an increase of means
as would enable him to liquidate his debts. But instead of allowing
the Prince to go abroad and make his own selection, so that there
might be possibly some degree of freedom of choice in the matter, the
queen was anxious to have her own niece, the Princess Louisa Augusta
Amelia of Mecklenburg, selected for him. This Princess, afterwards the
popular Queen of Prussia, was a good creature, and might possibly have
wrought some favourable change even in so depraved a nature as that
of the Prince of Wales. But the king was equally determined to secure
the unenviable post for his own niece, Caroline Amelia Elizabeth, the
second daughter of the Duke of Brunswick, who was one of the petty
princes of Germany. To effect this arrangement, an attachment between
the Crown Prince of Prussia and this Princess Caroline had to be rent
asunder. The Prince was ready to fall in with any such bargain, on
condition that he was liberated from his debts. It was certain that he
would please himself as to the lady or ladies with whom he would really
live. All obstacles of nature, or of nearness of consanguinity, or of
private attachments were overborne by diplomacy, and by the promise of
the discharge of the Prince's debts. The Princess Caroline of Brunswick
was selected--a young lady of not unpleasing person in her youth,
according to the descriptions of the time, but of defective education,
and coming to this country with the repugnance of a prior and
rudely-sundered attachment. She landed at Greenwich on Sunday, the 5th
of April, 1795, and the marriage ceremony was performed at St. James's,
by the Archbishop of Canterbury, on the 8th. The Princess had not
been ignorant of the dissolute character of her appointed husband, and
his mode of receiving her was not calculated to inspire any brilliant
hopes of his improvement. He had sent his mistress, the Lady Jersey,
to meet her on landing, and he made no disguise of his connection with
her before or after the marriage. The Memoirs of the time assert that
Lady Jersey omitted no arts to render the Princess ridiculous and even
disgusting to the Prince; but what chagrined him far more deeply was
the breach of the promises held out to him of the discharge of his
debts by a parliamentary grant or grants.

On the 27th of April Pitt introduced a message from the king,
recommending the settlement of a suitable provision on the Prince of
Wales on his marriage. The Prince expected that Pitt would propose and
carry, by means of his compliant majority, which had readily voted
away millions to foreign monarchs, a vote for the immediate discharge
of his debts. His astonishment may therefore be imagined, when Pitt
proposed that Parliament should grant him such an income as should
enable him, by decent economy, to defray these debts by instalments
through a course of years. Having stated these debts at six hundred and
thirty thousand pounds, he proposed to increase the Prince's allowance
from seventy-five thousand to one hundred and forty thousand pounds,
an increase of sixty-five thousand pounds a-year. Twenty-five thousand
pounds of this were to be set apart every year for the liquidation
of the debts in the course of twenty-seven years. This was, in fact,
only giving him an increase on his marriage of forty thousand pounds
per annum; but so unpopular was the Prince that not even that amount
of money could be obtained. The question was warmly debated during
two months, and it was not till the 27th of June that it was finally
settled in still worse terms for the Prince, namely, that his allowance
should be one hundred and twenty-five thousand pounds per annum, with
the income of the Duchy of Cornwall, about fifteen thousand pounds
more, thus making up the one hundred and forty thousand pounds; but out
of this seventy-five thousand pounds per annum were appropriated to the
payment of his debts, leaving him only sixty-seven thousand pounds a
year clear for his own expenditure, or eight thousand pounds per annum
less than his previous allowance. With the grant to the Prince this
Session closed, namely, on the 27th of June.

The first transactions of the campaign of 1795 which demand our
attention, are those of Holland. To the British army these were most
disastrous, and came to an end before the winter closed. The Duke of
York had returned to England early in December, 1794, leaving the chief
command to General Walmoden, a Hanoverian, second to whom was General
Dundas. Walmoden had gone quietly into winter quarters in the isle of
Bommel, forgetting that the firmness of the ice would soon leave him
exposed with his small force to the overwhelming swarms of the French,
under Pichegru, who, in the middle of December, crossed the Waal with
two hundred thousand men, and drove in his lines. General Dundas
advanced against him with eight thousand men, and, for the time, drove
the French back, on the 30th of December, across the Waal. But this
could not last with such disproportionate forces, especially as our
troops were left with the most wretched commissariat, and an equally
wretched medical staff; in fact, there were neither surgeons to attend
the greater part of the wounded, nor medicines for the sick. On the
4th of January, 1795, the French came back with their overpowering
numbers, and on the 6th the British were compelled to retire across
the Leck, and continue their retreat, suffering indescribable miseries
from the want of food, tents, and proper clothes, in the horrors of a
Dutch winter. Notwithstanding this, the British repeatedly turned and
drove back the enemy with heavy slaughter. But on the 11th of January
Pichegru attacked them in a defile between Arnhem and Nimeguen, with
a condensed force of seventy thousand men, and took every measure to
destroy, or compel the surrender of, the whole British army. They,
however, fought their way through and continued their march for the
Elbe, the only quarter open to them. During this retreat they were less
harassed by the French, who fell off to occupy Utrecht and Rotterdam,
than by the fury of the winter and the hostility of the Jacobinised
Dutch, who cursed them as the cause of all the sufferings of their
country. Such was the end of Britain's campaign for the defence of
her Dutch allies. Holland was proclaimed a free Republic under the
protection of France, and Britain immediately commenced operations for
indemnifying herself, by seizing the ships and colonies of her late
ally in every quarter of the globe. They intercepted the homebound
Dutch Indiamen, and when the Council of Government sent deputies to
London to reclaim them, Lord Grenville, the Foreign Minister, asked
them in what character they came. They replied, that they came as
representatives of the sovereign people of Batavia. The Foreign
Minister said he knew of no such Power, and declined to receive them.
No time was lost in seizing the Dutch colonies and factories. On
the 14th of July Admiral Sir G. Keith Elphinstone appeared in Table
Bay, and landed a considerable force under command of Major-General
Craig. They possessed themselves of Simon's Town and the strong fort
of Muyzenberg, and in the beginning of September, being reinforced by
another body of troops, under Major-General Alured Clarke, on the 23rd
of that month they were masters of Cape Town. A similar activity was
displayed in the East Indies; and in the course of the year, or early
in 1796, all the Dutch possessions in Ceylon, Malacca, Cochin, Amboyna,
and other places were surrendered to the British. The same seizures
were in course of execution on the settlements of the Dutch in the West
Indies, and on the coast of South America.

But though we punished the Dutch for their French predilections,
the tide of French success was rolling on in various quarters, and
presenting a prospect of a single-handed conflict with France. The
powers on whose behalf we had armed were fast, one after another,
making terms with the Republicans. Holland was in their hands, and the
King of Prussia, on the 5th of April, concluded a peace with them at
Basle, in which he agreed to surrender to France all his possessions
on the left bank of the Rhine, on condition of retaining those on the
right. There was a mutual exchange of prisoners, including the troops
of such other German States as had served with Prussia. Spain hastened
to follow the example of Prussia. A peace was concluded at the same
place--Basle--on the 22nd of July, by which she gave up all the Spanish
part of San Domingo. To purchase the French evacuation, the Ministers
of Spain itself recognised the Batavian Republic--which was become, in
reality, a province of France--and promised to intercede with Portugal,
Naples, Parma, and Sardinia. The Grand Duke of Tuscany followed with
a proclamation of a treaty of neutrality with France, on the 1st of
March. Sweden and the Protestant Cantons recognised the French Republic
and the Batavian one, its ally; and the Duke of Hesse-Cassel, and even
George III., as Elector of Hanover, were compelled to an agreement to
furnish no more troops to the Emperor of Germany. Whilst the Allies
were thus falling away in rapid succession before the forces of
Republican France, Britain, instead of taking warning, and resolving
to mind only her own business, went madly into fresh treaties with
Continental Powers. Russia and Austria were received into fresh
treaties of mutual defence. Russia we were to assist with ships, and
Austria with twenty thousand foot and six thousand horse, or to pay
each month ten thousand florins for every thousand infantry, and
thirty thousand florins for every thousand of cavalry. To complete the
circle of treaties, Sir Gilbert Elliot, British Governor of Corsica,
entered into a treaty with the Dey of Algiers, by which, on payment
of a hundred and seventy-nine thousand piastres, he was to restore
all the Corsicans captured and enslaved by him, and was to enjoy the
strange privilege of carrying all his piratical prizes into the ports
of Corsica, and to sell them there--which was, in fact, licensing this
chief of sea-robbers to plunder all the other Italian States.

On the Rhine there was a good deal of sharp fighting between the
French and Austrians. General Bender had been compelled to surrender
Luxembourg, on the 7th of July, and allowed to retire with his army of
ten thousand men into Germany, on condition of not serving again till
exchanged. There then remained little on either bank of the Rhine to
restrain the advance of the French, except Mayence on the left bank,
and Manheim and Düsseldorf on the right. Pichegru, in August, made
himself master of both Düsseldorf and Manheim, and was advancing to
the reduction of Heidelberg when he was met by old General Wurmser,
and driven back to Manheim. He was, in fact, meditating treachery.
Jourdain, who was advancing in another direction to co-operate with
Pichegru in the reduction of Mayence, was encountered by Clairfait, and
driven back to Düsseldorf. Clairfait then attacked the French forces
already investing Mayence, and the garrison making a sally at the
same time, the French were completely dispersed, and part retreated
north and part south. Wurmser then invested Manheim, and compelled its
surrender on the 22nd of November. Pichegru signed an armistice with
the Austrians before joining them. Jourdain also retreated.

In Italy nothing was done till late in the year. Towards the end of
November, the French army, under Massena, commenced operations in
earnest. The Austrians and Piedmontese being scattered over a wide
extent of country, defending various passes, the French attacked and
beat them from different points. The right and centre of the Allies
were ere long routed; and the left, posted on the shores of the bay St.
Pier d'Arena, near Genoa, was attacked, both from the land and from the
water, by gunboats, which Nelson, who had been detached to co-operate
with the Austrians, had no means of coping with, except by letting
loose a far greater number of armed vessels, and was also compelled
to flight. Nelson managed to keep open the Bochetta pass for them, or
from eight thousand to ten thousand prisoners would have been made,
including the Austrian General Devins himself, who was laid up at Novi,
at the foot of the Apennines. The French were then in a position to
open the campaign against Italy in the spring.

The massacre of Savenay had not settled La Vendée. In the spring of
1794 armed parties were again on foot. The largest body was that
under Charette, posted on the Isle Noirmoutier, to which many of the
fugitives who escaped from the massacre of Savenay betook themselves.
Amongst these was the wounded General D'Elbée, with his wife, and a
brother of Cathelinau. Charette quitted the isle to make an attack on
some of the Republican troops left in small bodies in the country,
consigning the care of the sick and wounded to the protection of a
garrison of one thousand eight hundred men. This garrison was soon
corrupted by the Republican general, Turreau; it surrendered, and
D'Elbée and his wife were both shot, and the sick and wounded treated
with merciless cruelty. This was about the only place of any strength
left the Vendéans; but a worse misfortune was at hand. The young and
chivalrous Henri La Roche-Jaquelein, marching, at the head of a body of
his own peasantry, between Trementine and Nouaillé, met two Republican
soldiers. The count generously offered them quarter; but, instead of
accepting it, one of them instantly levelled his musket and shot him
through the head. The two soldiers were immediately dispatched by his
followers and, supposing that a Republican column must be at hand,
they buried the three hastily in one grave and fled. The young count
was only in his twenty-first year, and with him died the hopes and
confidence of his peasantry. Stofflet succeeded him in the command of
his people, but Charette might be considered the Commander-in-Chief of
the Vendéans.

The fall of Robespierre produced a marked change in the policy of
the Convention towards the Royalists of this district, and they were
promised, on laying down their arms, that they should enjoy their
country and their religion in peace. On this assurance, Charette
signed a treaty of pacification with the agents of the Government at
Nantes, in February, 1795. But scarcely was the peace signed, when
Charette received a letter from Monsieur--brother of the late king,
and now appointed by the Royalist party Regent to the Dauphin, now
styled by them Louis XVII.--assuring him of his confidence, declaring
him the second founder of the monarchy, and appointing him his
Lieutenant-General. Charette wrote back to inform him that he had been
compelled to sign a peace, but that his submission was only apparent,
and when the Royalist affairs were somewhat reinstated, he should be
ready to take up arms and die in the service of his prince. The young
General Hoche, who was sent to reduce the insurgents of Brittany,
whilst Canclaux reduced those of La Vendée, did not for a moment
believe in the sincerity of the peace. He was aware that Puisaye,
the chief of the insurgents in Brittany, was gone to England, to
endeavour to induce Pitt to do what all the efforts and importunities
of the Bourbon princes and Emigrant nobles had failed to do--to send
an expedition to the coast of Brittany, with another to the coast
of La Vendée, in which the British fleet should support the bodies
of Emigrants who had, in England and the Channel Islands, formed
themselves into regiments for the purpose. Aware of this, he still did
all he could to reconcile the peasantry to the peace, and very soon
they would have been pacified by this judicious treatment, and been
averse from rising again, with a prospect of re-experiencing their
former sufferings; but the Bourbon princes and the tribes of Emigrants
now driven from the Rhine did not allow them that chance.

[Illustration: LA ROCHE-JAQUELEIN AND THE REPUBLICAN SOLDIERS.
(_See p._ 444.)]

Puisaye's mission to London had been successful. Pitt was weak enough
to fall into the plan of sending over the Emigrants in our ships--as
if any such force could do more against the Republican armies than
create fresh miseries to all parties, and bring down worse vengeance
on the unfortunate Vendéans and Bretons. Puisaye, with the aid of
the Counts d'Hervilly, d'Hector, du Dresnay, Colonel Routhalier, and
other Royalist officers, had mustered a most miscellaneous body of
three thousand Emigrants, most of whom had been soldiers, and who
were accompanied by four hundred artillerymen of Toulon, commanded by
Routhalier. Besides these men, of whom the Count d'Artois, for the
time, gave the command to Puisaye, intending himself to follow, Puisaye
carried over ten thousand pounds, furnished by the Count d'Artois,
twenty-seven thousand muskets, six hundred barrels of gunpowder,
uniforms for seventeen thousand infantry and four thousand cavalry,
as well as provisions for three months. These troops and stores were,
after many delays, conveyed in a little squadron of three ships of
the line and six frigates, attended by transports, and commanded by
Sir John Borlase Warren. They sailed from the Isle of Wight in the
beginning of June, another squadron being sent to take up the Emigrant
troops in the Channel Islands, and land them at St. Malo, where they
were to co-operate with bodies of Chouans. These Chouans were smugglers
and bandits, who had led a life of plunder, and had been easily
collected into a sort of guerilla force, and their mode of warfare
still bore a strong resemblance to their old habits. These men, under
their different chiefs, had been excited by Puisaye to combine for a
strong resistance to the Republicans. They were dressed in green coats
and pantaloons, with red waistcoats. During his absence, Puisaye had
deputed the chief command of the Chouan bands to the so-called Baron
Cormatin, or Sieur Désoteux, who had assumed the title of Baron de
Cormatin from an estate of his wife's. Cormatin was a vain, weak man,
and by no means trustworthy, being ready, at any moment, to supersede
his chief, Puisaye, and act for himself. If the expedition against St.
Malo did not succeed, it was to join Puisaye and his detachment in the
Bay of Quiberon; and transports were also sent to the mouth of the
Elbe, to fetch thence the Emigrant regiments with the black cockade,
and bring them to join Puisaye. If all went well, the Count d'Artois
was to follow with British troops. The grand error of the whole was,
that the French prince did not put himself at once at the head of
the expedition, and see the different squadrons united in the Bay of
Quiberon before making the descent, though, even then, it could have
effected no great success.

On the passage, the squadron of Sir John Warren came in sight of the
French fleet of Villaret-Joyeuse, of nine ships of the line, but it
bore away, and left them to pursue their course. They entered the
Bay of Quiberon on the 25th of June and, after much wrangling as to
the best situation for landing, they put the troops ashore at the
village of Carnac. There they were immediately joined by Georges
Cadoudal, d'Allègre, Dubois-Berthollet, and other Chouan chiefs, with
about four thousand or five thousand of their wild and bandit-looking
soldiers. Along with the Chouans came troops of peasants, crying
"_Vive le Roi!_" and bringing in abundance of fresh eggs, poultry, and
other provisions. Puisaye was delighted, and felt confident that all
Brittany was ready to rise. But this delusion was soon dissipated. The
Emigrants, accustomed to regular armies, looked with contempt on this
wild and ragged band, and they, on their part, were not restrained, on
the landing of the arms and uniforms, from seizing and carrying them
off, without much exertion on the part of Puisaye. There was danger
of bloodshed. At length, in about a couple of days, ten thousand of
them were put into red coats, and furnished with muskets. But fatal
dissensions prevented all operations. Puisaye proposed to march up the
country, seize different towns, such as Vannes and Rennes, and take up
their position behind the Mayenne; but d'Hervilly refused to march till
the troops were formed into regular regiments, and the Emigrants joined
him in despising the Chouans, and in complaining that they had not
been taken to La Vendée to join Charette. Puisaye and d'Hervilly also
disputed the supreme command, and Puisaye had to dispatch letters to
London, to Count d'Artois, on the subject. At length, after five days
had been wasted in this contention, Puisaye proposed that they should
endeavour to carry Fort Penthièvre, which stood on a small peninsula on
Quiberon Bay, and was united to the main land by a sandy isthmus. To
this d'Hervilly consented, and Sir John Warren agreed to support him in
the attempt. On the 1st of July Warren began to bombard the fort, and
on the 3rd, the place being warmly assailed by both the British and the
Chouans, the Republicans surrendered. Meanwhile, Puisaye had sent off
emissaries all over Brittany, to rouse Scépeaux, Charette, Stofflet,
and the rest of the insurgent chiefs. The news of the landing had flown
all over Brittany in a few days, and the Royalists were full of joy.

But the Convention sent to Hoche two extraordinary Commissioners to
stimulate him to the utmost activity. Hoche immediately wrote to the
Committee of Public Welfare to assure them that nothing was wanting
to his success but for Government to support him with "provisions, of
which we are in want, and the twelve thousand men whom you promised me
so long ago." He posted his generals on every frontier, and in every
strong place. Thus he had enveloped Brittany on all sides; instead of
the Bretons rising _en masse_, as was expected, they kept quiet, and
only the Chouans appeared in arms. Even they demanded that the Count
d'Artois should come and put himself at their head; and the Emigrants
asked to be re-embarked, and taken to La Vendée to support Charette.
On their part, the able arrangements of Hoche and Canclaux prevented
the Vendéans from operating in favour of the Bretons, and Puisaye saw
himself paralysed by the vigour of his opponents and the dissensions
of his followers. The different bodies of Chouans were repulsed by the
Republicans as they advanced towards Quiberon Bay, and they complained
that d'Hervilly had withdrawn the four hundred men of the line who had
been ordered to support them. D'Hervilly replied that he had recalled
them to assist at the taking of Penthièvre. Thus favoured by the
wranglings of the Royalists, Hoche, on the 5th of July, found himself
established on the heights of St. Barbe, commanding the Isthmus of
Falaise. On the 7th d'Hervilly, supported by his regulars and by two
hundred British marines, endeavoured to drive him thence, but was
repulsed with great slaughter. Hoche then bore down from the heights,
and drove all the miscellaneous forces of Emigrants and Chouans,
mingled with women and children, to the promontory, and under the guns
of Fort Penthièvre. But for the well-directed fire from Warren's boats
the mass, nearly twenty thousand fugitives, must have surrendered at
once, having no outlet of escape. There, however, for some days they
stoutly defended themselves.

On the 15th the British squadron brought in the Emigrant troops from
the Elbe, under the young and gallant Count de Sombreuil; but they
amounted only to eleven thousand men. Puisaye now ordered the Count
de Vauban to advance against Hoche with twelve thousand Chouans, and,
whilst they attacked on the right, he himself attacked his lines in
front. After some desperate fighting they were driven back, and lost
most of their cannon in the deep sand of the isthmus. Their misfortunes
were completed, on the 20th, by the garrison of the fort of Penthièvre
going over to the enemy, surrendering the fort to them, and helping to
massacre such of their officers and comrades as refused to follow their
example. The English admiral exerted himself to receive the remainder
of the troops who remained true on board his ships; but the storminess
of the weather and the impatience of the fugitives rendered this a
most difficult task. About fourteen thousand regulars and two thousand
four hundred Chouans were got on board; but Sombreuil, exposed to the
murderous fire from the enemy whilst waiting on the beach, surrendered
on promise of life. No sooner, however, were they in the hands of the
Republicans than all the officers and gentlemen were led out and shot;
and the common men enrolled in Hoche's regiments.

Sir John Warren put the two thousand four hundred Chouans on shore
near Lorient, and left them to return to their own predatory mode of
warfare. He then located himself on two small neighbouring islands,
and waited for a fresh squadron carrying four thousand British troops,
which arriving in September, he bore away with them for La Vendée, and
thus terminated the miserable descent on the coast of Brittany. The
descent on the coast of La Vendée was still more unsatisfactory. On
arriving there, it was found that fifteen thousand Republicans were
in possession of the Isle Noirmoutier, formerly the stronghold of
Charette. The British, therefore, disembarked on the little desolate
Isle Dieu, about five leagues from Noirmoutier, and there awaited the
arrival of Count d'Artois, who did not come till the 10th of October,
and then, alarmed at the fusillading of the officers at Quiberon,
declined to land. On hearing this, Charette exclaimed--"We are lost!
To-day I have fifteen thousand men about me; to-morrow I shall not have
five hundred!" And, in fact, chagrined at the pusillanimous conduct of
the prince, and the approach of Hoche with his victorious troops from
Brittany, his followers rapidly dispersed, and at the end of the year
the British armament returned home, having done nothing. From this
day may be dated the extinction of the war in La Vendée. Stofflet, in
January, 1796, was defeated, and in February was betrayed to the enemy,
and on the 26th of that month was executed at Angers with four of his
companions. Charette was captured a month afterwards, and was shot at
Nantes on the 29th of March. With him died the last Vendéan general of
mark. By this time, the spring of 1796, not a fifth part of the male
population of La Vendée remained alive; and Hoche himself calculated
that the Vendéan war had cost France a hundred thousand men.

Meanwhile the Convention determined to proceed to the abolition of the
Constitution of '93, and to the establishment of one more accordant
with their own tendencies. In 1793 the Revolutionists were as violent
against aristocracy as against monarchy, and had allowed only one
legislative body. The precipitate acts of the last three years had
now persuaded them that at least a second, if not an aristocratic,
chamber might be useful, as a balance against legislation under violent
impulses. They proposed, then, to have two chambers--one called the
Council of Five Hundred, composed of that number of members of at least
thirty years of age, having exclusively the right of proposing laws,
of whom one-third should be renewed every year; the second, called the
Council of the Ancients, to consist of two hundred and fifty members,
of at least forty years of age, all either widowers or married,
having the sanctioning of the law, and also to be annually renewed
by one-third. No sooner were these decrees passed than there was a
violent outburst of discontent. On April 1st, and again on May 20th,
the Parisian mob rose in insurrection, but were completely suppressed.
This was the death-blow of the Democratic party. Then came the turn of
the Royalists. A meeting took place in the Odéon theatre, on the 3rd
of October, under protection of some battalions of National Guard. The
Duke of Nivernois presided. The Committees of Public Safety and Welfare
gave the alarm to the Convention, and the Convention sent a force to
disperse the meeting, but it had already dissolved itself. The Sections
had committed the mistake of refusing to allow the ultra-Jacobins to
vote, and the Convention now embodied and armed one thousand eight
hundred of these, ready, in their indignation, to do anything. On the
4th, the Section Lepelletier beat to arms, and the committee held its
meeting in the convent of Filles St. Thomas, in the Rue Vivienne.
General Menou was summoned from the camp at Sablons, and ordered to
disperse the meeting. He proceeded to the convent, found the committee
of the Section armed, and, instead of dispersing them, agreed to retire
on a promise that they would withdraw of themselves. The Convention
immediately arrested Menou as a traitor, and deprived him of his
command. They forthwith appointed Barras general of the interior in
the place of Menou, and ordered him to clear the streets, and place
troops in a position to insure the safety of the Convention. Barras
was a general of brigade, but he was not too fond of exposing himself
and, fortunately for him and for another, he had his eye on one who
would execute the orders of the Convention without shrinking. This was
Napoleon Buonaparte. The Convention had about five thousand troops;
but the decision of the conflict must depend on the cannon. These were
in the camp at Sablons. Buonaparte instantly dispatched Murat to secure
them, and received the insurrectionists with such a shower of grape
that after a short resistance they were completely defeated.

During this time Britain was suffering severely from the effects of
the war. The nation was indignant under the disgrace of the complete
defeat of its army on the Continent, at the defection of those very
Allies who had been so profusely subsidised, at the perfidy by which
these despot Powers had made Britain the efficient party in the
dismemberment of Poland, and at the heavy taxes imposed in consequence.
Political meetings were held in most large towns and in the metropolis,
expressing the most decided disapprobation of the policy of Ministers
and at the refusal of all reforms. At the end of June a monster meeting
had been held in St. George's Fields, and on the 26th of October,
another, of fifty thousand people, near Copenhagen House, at which the
lately prosecuted but acquitted agitators, Thelwall, Gale Jones, and
others, were the speakers. The numbers and tone of these meetings,
which were accompanied with loud cries of "Bread! Bread!" and "Down
with Pitt!" greatly alarmed Government, and there was a summons of
Parliament at the unusually early date of October 29th, only three
days after the meeting in Copenhagen Fields. On going to the House to
open the session, the king--who had become very unpopular from his
eager support of the war, and his going about saying, "The French won't
leave a single crowned head in Europe!"--was shot at with an air-gun in
Margaret Street, opposite to the Ordnance Office, the ball from which
passed through the windows of the carriage, between his Majesty and the
Earl of Westmoreland. The king on entering the House, exclaimed to the
Lord Chancellor, "My lord, I have been shot at!" As the king returned,
he was again furiously hissed; there was the same vociferous shouting
of "Bread! Bread!" and "No Pitt!" Stones were thrown at the royal
carriage; and, in the haste and confusion to escape into the palace
of St. James's, one of the royal grooms was thrown to the ground, and
had his thigh broken. The king got into a private coach to regain
Buckingham House, where his family was; but he was recognised, and
pursued by the same cries of "Bread! Bread!" and "Peace!" That evening
the king, who had behaved throughout with great courage, accompanied
the queen and three of his daughters to Covent Garden Theatre, where
he was received with zealous acclamations; the actors sang "God save
the king!" three times over. Some of the people in the gallery were,
however, pretty vehement in their hisses, but were attacked and turned
out.

[Illustration: ATTACK ON THE ROYAL CARRIAGE. (_See p._ 448.)]

The Ministers, instead of making rational concessions to the demands
of the people for Reform, proceeded without delay to fresh aggressions
on their liberties. Not contented with the existing suspension of the
Habeas Corpus Act, and with introducing into the Lords a Bill for the
protection of the king's person and Government, they passed a law
prohibiting all political meetings, and another to extend the law of
treason; they recommenced arrests and prosecutions, and sent out shoals
of spies and informers, so that all the safeguards of public liberty
were completely annihilated. These despotic measures did not pass
without energetic opposition and a good deal of violent language from
Fox; but all remonstrance was useless against Pitt's majority. Still
the alarm of the Government was not allayed. On the 8th of December
the king sent a message to both Houses, reiterating his assurance of
an earnest desire to negotiate peace with France. The Opposition very
properly pointed out that, so far as France was concerned, victorious
in its armies, and as anti-monarchical in its government as ever,
there were less hopes of any consent on its part to peace than when
the Opposition had so repeatedly urged the same measure. In this
unsatisfactory state closed the year 1795.

Mr. Grey seized the professed desire of peace by Government, so soon
as Parliament met after the Christmas recess, to bind them to it by a
resolution. He complained that, so far from any intentions of peace,
Ministers were making fresh preparations for the prosecution of the
war. Pitt denied this, and asserted that the Government was really
anxious for peace, but could not consent to it unless France agreed
to yield up its conquests of Belgium, Holland, Savoy, and Nice. On
the 10th of March Mr. Grey moved for an inquiry into the state of the
kingdom. He showed that this contest, so unsuccessful, had already, in
three years, added seventy-seven millions to the national debt; more
than the whole expense of the American war, which had cost sixty-three
millions. He commented severely on the wasteful manner in which this
money had been thrown away on monarchs who had badly served the cause,
or had perfidiously betrayed it; and on the plunder of the country by
jobbers, contractors, commissaries, and other vampires, who had left
the poor soldiers to neglect, starvation, and death, amid the horrors
of winter, and inhospitable, pretended friends, for whom they had been
sent to fight. Grey and Fox followed this up by fresh resolutions and
motions condemning Ministers for their misconduct of the war, and
enormous waste of the public money; but all these were triumphantly got
rid of by overwhelming majorities; and in the face of this ineffectual
assault, Pitt introduced his Budget, calling for fresh loans, amounting
to no less than twenty-five million five hundred thousand pounds, and
for supplies to the amount of upwards of forty-five millions. Some
of the items of this sum were--navy, seven million five hundred and
twenty-two thousand five hundred and fifty-two pounds; army, eleven
million nine hundred and eleven thousand eight hundred and ninety-nine
pounds; ordnance, one million nine hundred and fifty-four thousand
six hundred and sixty-five pounds; miscellaneous and extraordinary,
thirteen million eight hundred and twenty-one thousand, four hundred
and thirty pounds. The last item alone amounted to more than the whole
national expenditure before the commencement of this war, yet the whole
of these startling sums were readily voted away by the Ministerial
majority; and with these funds in hand for renewed prosecution of the
war, the Session ended, on the 19th of May.

In March, 1796, Mr. Wickham, the British envoy to Switzerland, asked
of M. Barthélemy, by direction of Pitt, whether the French Directory
were desirous of entertaining the question of peace. Barthélemy
replied that the Directory would enter into negotiations on the basis
of France retaining all the Netherlands won from Austria, which were
now annexed to the Republic, and which France would never restore.
The reply was certainly insincere. France was as busy as ever by her
emissaries undermining the loyalty of all the populations around her
on pretence of liberating them. She had worked upon the Swiss, so that
it was evident that they would soon fall into her net. She had entered
into a treaty with the disaffected in Ireland, namely, Lord Edward
Fitzgerald, Wolfe Tone, Arthur O'Connor, and their fellow-conspirators,
and the treaty was already signed, and a large fleet and force
preparing for the invasion of Ireland. Not only was France on the
very eve of invading Ireland, but she had issued a decree prohibiting
the introduction of all British manufactures into Holland, Belgium,
and the German states on the Rhine, as well as into any of the French
colonies, on the severest penalties. Yet, in the face of all these
hostile demonstrations, did Pitt send over Lord Malmesbury to endeavour
to negotiate a peace. Lord Malmesbury arrived in Paris, on the 22nd of
October, with a splendid retinue. The Directory received him haughtily,
and commissioned M. Delacroix to discuss the matter with him. Lord
Malmesbury insisted on the restoration of the Netherlands to Austria,
a point on which the French Government had declared there could be
no treaty, and which rendered the embassy, from the first moment,
utterly absurd. Delacroix communicated the proposal to the Directory,
and the Directory immediately published it, contrary to all the rules
of diplomacy, in the _Moniteur_, Instead of proceeding further with
Britain, the Directory immediately dispatched General Clarke, an
officer of Irish extraction, and afterwards made Duke of Feltre, under
Buonaparte, to Vienna, to treat separately with Austria. This failed,
and, of course, with it all failed; though there was much talk between
Malmesbury and the Directory on the subject of Britain restoring the
French colonies in the East and West Indies, since the restoration of
Belgium and Holland was a _sine quâ non_. Thus, as might have been seen
from the first, the negotiation was at a deadlock. The King of Sardinia
was already in negotiation for peace for himself; and therefore British
Ministers did not add to his difficulties by demanding the restoration
of Savoy and Nice.

At the very moment that these negotiations on the part of Britain were
going on, Buonaparte, who had been appointed to the command of the army
of Italy, was achieving there victory after victory. Genoa had shut her
ports against our ships, Naples had concluded peace with France, Spain
had been induced to proclaim war against us, and Hoche had sailed for
Ireland with twenty-five thousand troops. On the 19th of December Lord
Malmesbury received a message to quit Paris within forty-eight hours,
with the additional assurance, that whenever Great Britain was prepared
to accept the terms of France, an ordinary courier would answer the
same purpose as well as a lord. The blame of continuing the war thus
lay entirely with the French.

During the year 1796 strong forces were sent to the West Indies, and
the Island of Grenada was recovered by General Nichols; St. Lucia,
by General Abercromby, whilst General Whyte conquered the Dutch
settlements of Demerara, Berbice, and Essequibo; but some of these
possessions were dearly purchased by the number of the troops who
perished from the unhealthiness of their climate. The Dutch made
an effort to recover the Cape of Good Hope. They were to have been
assisted by the French in this enterprise, but their allies not keeping
their engagement, they sailed alone, and reached Saldanha Bay on the
3rd of August, when Rear-Admiral Sir George Elphinstone surprised and
captured the whole of their vessels, consisting of two sixty-four-gun
ships, one fifty-four, five frigates and sloops, and a store-ship. A
squadron then proceeded from the Cape to Madagascar, and destroyed a
French settlement there, seizing five merchant vessels.

During the summer a French squadron stretched away across the Atlantic
with six sail of the line, and finding our Newfoundland coasts almost
wholly unprotected, destroyed and plundered the fishermen's huts and
fishing stages, as well as their vessels, and then, returning, picked
up a considerable number of our merchantmen at sea, and was lucky
enough to make a retreat, by favour of a fog, through our watching
squadrons, into Brest. After this clever exploit, they joined the great
Brest fleet, which sailed for Ireland on the 15th of December. This
consisted of no fewer than forty-three sail, seventeen of them of the
line, four frigates, six corvettes and brigs, with six transports. On
board the transports were twenty-five thousand men, who had been well
tried in the war of La Vendée, and abundance of arms and ammunition, as
well as extra arms to put into the hands of the disaffected Irish, for
to Ireland the armament was bound. General Hoche, who had terminated
the Vendéan war, was appointed to terminate all the woes of Ireland,
and convert that sacred island into another French paradise. Besides
Hoche, Generals Grouchy, Hombert, and Bruix were attached to the
expedition. The fleet sailed out and anchored in Camaret Bay, but no
British fleet was visible to intercept them. But no sooner did the
armament put out to sea again the next day, than it was assailed by
a tempest and the ships were driven different ways. One of them was
forced immediately on the Grand Stenet rock, and wrecked--out of one
thousand four hundred souls on board only sixty were rescued. Seven
ships of the line, and ten of the vessels commanded by Rear-Admiral
Bouvet, managed to reach Bantry Bay on the 24th of December, but
there the storms continued to batter them. There being no sign of an
insurrection, and no other part of the fleet appearing, they sailed
back and reached Brest on the 1st of January, 1797. When they were
gone, another portion of the fleet arrived in Bantry Bay, but only to
be tossed and driven about without rest, to lose several of the ships,
and to put back again. As for Hoche, he never saw Ireland; the greater
part of the fleet being driven about and swamped in the Channel. Of
the forty-three sail, only thirty-one returned, and thousands of the
soldiers were drowned in the foundering transports. Sir Edward Pellew,
in the _Indefatigable_, of forty-four guns, and Captain Reynolds, in
the _Amazon_, of thirty-six guns, fell in with the _Droits de l'Homme_,
of seventy-four guns, and after a severe fight close in Audierne Bay,
south of Ushant, left her a wreck aground, where, of the one thousand
eight hundred men aboard, scarcely more than three hundred were saved,
notwithstanding the greatest exertions of the British seamen to rescue
them.

The Directory began its campaigns of 1796 with much spirit and ability.
The plans which had been repeatedly pointed out by Dumouriez, Pichegru,
Moreau, and more recently by Buonaparte, of attacking the Austrians
in Germany and Italy simultaneously, and then, on the conquest of
Italy, combining their armies and marching them direct on the Austrian
capital, were now adopted. Pichegru, who had lost the favour of the
Directory, was superseded by Moreau, and that general and Jourdain were
sent to the Rhine. Jourdain took the command of sixty-three thousand
foot and eleven thousand horse, at Coblenz, and immediately invested
the famous fortress of Ehrenbreitstein, on the opposite bank of the
river. Moreau was sent to lead the army at Strasburg, consisting of
seventy-two thousand foot and nearly seven thousand horse. Jourdain
found himself soon menaced by the Archduke Charles, the Emperor's
brother, the ablest and most alert general that the Austrians possessed
at that period. He advanced rapidly on Jourdain's position with seventy
thousand foot and twenty thousand horse, defeated a division of
Jourdain's army under General Lefebvre, and compelled Jourdain himself
to raise the siege. But the archduke, out of too much anxiety for
Wurmser, who was opposed to Moreau with much inferior forces, ascended
the Rhine to support him, and Jourdain immediately availed himself of
his absence to advance and seize Frankfort on the Main, Würzburg, and
other towns. Moreau advanced to drive back Wurmser and the archduke,
till a union with Jourdain would enable them to fall conjointly on
the Austrians. But the archduke perceived that, in consequence of the
orders of the Directory, Moreau was spreading his army too wide, and he
retreated so as to enable Wurmser to join him. This retrograde movement
was mistaken, both by friends and enemies, for a sign of weakness;
and whilst Moreau advanced with increased confidence, many of the raw
contingents of the archduke's army deserted, and several of the petty
States of Germany sued to the Directory for peace. But the moment for
the action of the archduke had now arrived. Whilst Moreau was extending
his lines into Bavaria, and had seized Ulm and Donauwörth, and was
preparing to occupy the defiles of the Tyrol, the Archduke Charles
made a rapid detour, and, on the 24th of August, fell on Jourdain, and
completely defeated him. He then followed him to Würzburg, and on the
3rd of September routed him again. With a velocity extraordinary in an
Austrian, the archduke pushed on after Jourdain's flying battalions,
and on the 16th of September gave him a third beating at Aschaffenburg,
and drove his army over the Rhine. Moreau--left in a critical position,
so far from the frontiers of France, and hopeless of any aid from
Jourdain, who had lost twenty thousand men and nearly all his artillery
and baggage--made haste to retrace his steps. Thus both of the French
armies were beaten back to the left bank of the Rhine, and Germany was
saved.

But meanwhile in Italy the French had been completely successful.
Buonaparte reached the French headquarters at Nice on the 26th of
March, and immediately set himself to organise and inspirit the
forces, which were in great disorder; he found the commissariat also
in a deplorable condition. The troops amounted to fifty thousand;
the Austrians, under the veteran General Beaulieu, to considerably
more. The united army of the Sardinians and Austrians, Beaulieu on
the left, d'Argenteau in the centre, and Colli with the Piedmontese
division on the right, hastened to descend from the Apennines, to which
they had retreated at the end of the last campaign. Beaulieu met the
French advanced guard at Voltri, near Genoa, on the 11th of April, and
drove it back. But d'Argenteau had been stopped in the mountains by
the resistance of a body of French, who occupied the old redoubt of
Montenotte. Buonaparte, apprised of this, hurried up additional forces
to that point, and defeated d'Argenteau before Beaulieu or Colli could
succour him. Having now divided the army of the Allies, Buonaparte
defeated a strong body of Austrians under General Wukassowich; and
having left Colli and the Piedmontese isolated from their Allies,
debouched by the valley of Bormida into the plains of Piedmont.
Beaulieu retreated to the Po, to stop the way to Milan; and Buonaparte,
relieved of his presence, turned against Colli, who was compelled to
retreat to Carignano, near Turin. Trembling for his capital, and with
his means exhausted, Victor Amadeus made overtures for peace, which
were accepted; the terms being the surrender of all the Piedmontese
fortresses and the passes of the Alps into the hands of the French,
and the perpetual alienation of Nice and Savoy. This humiliation broke
the heart of the poor old king, who died on the 16th of October.
Buonaparte, however, did not wait for the conclusion of this peace;
the truce being signed, he hastened on after Beaulieu whom he defeated
and drove across the Po. Beaulieu next posted himself at Lodi, on the
Adda; but Buonaparte, after a fierce contest, drove him from the bridge
over the Adda on the 10th of May, and with little further opposition
pursued him to Milan. Beaulieu still retreated, and threw himself into
the fastnesses of the Tyrol. On the 15th Buonaparte made a triumphal
entry into Milan, and immediately sent troops to blockade Mantua.
Buonaparte then advanced into the Papal States, rifling the Monti de
Pietà at Bologna and Ferrara. Everywhere contributions were demanded
at the point of the bayonet, and French authorities superseded the
native ones. Pius VI. made haste to sue for peace, and it was granted
on the most exorbitant terms. Fifteen millions of francs must be paid
down in cash, six millions in horses and other requisites for the army.
A great number of paintings and statues were to be selected from the
galleries of art, and five hundred manuscripts from the library of the
Vatican. The provinces of Ferrara and Bologna must be ceded; the port
and citadel of Ancona, and all the Papal ports, must be closed against
the British. This most costly peace was signed on the 23rd of June,
and Buonaparte hastened northward to stop the advance of the army of
Wurmser, which had been sent through the Tyrol to compete with the
rising Corsican.

[Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL OF MILAN.]

Wurmser advanced down the valley of Trent with fifty thousand men,
whose number was increased, by the remains of the army of Beaulieu, to
sixty thousand. With such a force well conducted, the Austrians might
have worsted Buonaparte, whose troops were not more than forty-five
thousand, and already greatly harassed by rapid marches. But there was
no comparison between the genius of the commanders. The conduct of the
Austrians was a series of fatal blunders. Had the Archduke Charles
been there it might have been different; but the first thing which
Wurmser did was to weaken himself by dividing his forces, and sending
one detachment under Quasdanowich along the western shore of the Lake
of Garda, and marching along the eastern bank himself with the other.
The quick eye of Buonaparte instantly saw his advantage; neither of the
divisions was now equal to his own, and he beat them both in detail. He
raised the blockade of Mantua, defeated Quasdanowich at Lonato, chased
him back into the mountains, and then engaged and routed him twice
near Castiglione, on the 3rd and 5th of August. Wurmser had to make a
hasty retreat into the mountains, leaving behind his artillery and many
thousand men slain. Buonaparte pursued him into the very gorges of the
Tyrol, and inflicted fresh losses upon him. The sturdy but not very
bright old Austrian, however, made a detour in the hills, and again
issued on the plains from the valley of the Brenta. With remarkable
address and agility for him, he made his way to Mantua, and threw
himself into the fortress with the wretched remains of his army, about
eighteen thousand men.

There was still a fair chance for the Austrians--Britain had furnished
them with money--and two fresh armies were descending from the hills.
One of these, amounting to thirty thousand, was led by a brave officer,
General Alvinzi; the other of twenty thousand, under Davidowich, was
marching from the Tyrol to meet Alvinzi near Verona, who was coming
from Carinthia by Belluno. Buonaparte did not allow them to meet.
He attacked Alvinzi on the 6th of November, and met with a terrible
repulse. A detachment of French under Vaubois had been dispatched to
impede the march of Davidowich, but was also in retreat. Buonaparte
again attacked Alvinzi near Verona, and again was repulsed. Had the
Austrians united their two new armies before entering Italy, or had
Wurmser marched from Mantua to support Alvinzi, the French must
have been utterly annihilated. As it was, Napoleon was dreadfully
disheartened, and wrote a despairing letter to the Directory, saying
his best officers were killed, and his men exhausted from fighting
and severe marches. But his pride and dogged pertinacity came to his
aid. He made a rapid march and got into the rear of Alvinzi, but found
himself stopped by a narrow bridge over the Alpone at Arcole. The
country on each side was a marsh, and the only approach to the bridge
was by long narrow causeways. As the French advanced along the causeway
on their side to storm the bridge, they were swept down by hundreds
by the Austrian cannon. Time after time, Buonaparte drove his columns
along the causeway, but only to see them mown down by grape shot. His
men fled into the very marshes to save themselves, and he himself was
thrown from his horse into the marsh, and had to be dragged from the
mire. Bodies of Hungarians and Croats made a final sally along the
causeway, cutting down all before them, and it was marvellous that he
escaped them. By this time Alvinzi had brought up his main body to the
neighbourhood of the bridge, and the battle raged obstinately there
for three days. Seeing it impossible to carry the bridge against that
solid mass of troops, Buonaparte dispatched General Guyeuse to cross
the Adige at the ferry of Albaredo, below the confluence of the Alpone,
and take Alvinzi in flank. Guyeuse succeeded in crossing, but was
repulsed on the other side by the Austrians. Buonaparte again, on the
16th, made one more desperate rush at the bridge, but only to receive
another bloody defeat. The next day he threw a bridge over the Alpone,
just above its confluence with the Adige, and sent over Augereau with
a powerful force, whilst he again assailed the bridge from his side.
These combined operations succeeded. Alvinzi was compelled to retreat
to Vicenza and Bassano. Scarcely had he given way, when Davidowich,
who ought to have joined him long before, came down the right bank of
the stream. He now came only to experience a severe defeat, whereas
his timely arrival might have insured a complete victory. He again had
recourse to the security of the hills. The belligerents then went into
winter quarters, leaving the French victorious.

Whilst the French had been thus beating the Austrians out of Italy,
and thus rendering abortive our new and lavish subsidy to the Emperor,
Ministers had been busy in the election of a new Parliament. This new
Parliament assembled on the 6th of October, and was full of patriotism.
As Hoche's army had not yet sailed, and as nobody seemed to know its
destination, Pitt represented that it probably was for the coast of
England, and called for the enrolment of fifteen thousand men from
the parishes, half of whom were to be sent into the navy, and for
sixty thousand militia and twenty thousand more yeomen cavalry, all
which were carried. On the 26th of October Windham, as Secretary at
War, announced the whole military force of the country at home and
abroad, apart from the troops in the East Indies, which were raised and
maintained by the Company, to be one hundred and ninety-six thousand
men, and he demanded for their payment five million one hundred and
ninety thousand pounds. On the 7th of November Pitt opened his Budget,
requiring no less than twenty-seven million nine hundred and forty-five
thousand pounds for the total expenditure of the year. There was
another loan called for of eighteen million pounds, and though the
terms were then considered low, such was the spirit of the nation that
the amount was subscribed within two days.

The year 1797 was opened by the suspension of cash payments. The
Bank of England had repeatedly represented to Pitt, as Chancellor of
the Exchequer, that his enormous demands upon it for specie, as well
as paper money, had nearly exhausted its coffers and could not long
be continued. The payment of our armies abroad, and the advances to
foreign kings, were necessarily made in cash. The Government, in spite
of enormous taxation, had already overdrawn its account eleven million
six hundred and sixty-eight thousand eight hundred pounds, and the sole
balance in the hands of the Bank was reduced to three million eight
hundred and twenty-six thousand eight hundred and ninety pounds. Pitt
was demanding a fresh loan for Ireland, when a message came from the
Bank to say that, in existing circumstances, it could not be complied
with. Thus suddenly pulled up, the Privy Council was summoned, and
it was concluded to issue an order for stopping all further issue of
cash, except to the Government, and except one hundred thousand pounds
for the accommodation of private bankers and traders. Paper money was
made a legal tender to all other parties, and the Bank was empowered
to issue small notes for the accommodation of the public instead of
guineas. A Bill was passed for the purpose, and that it might not
be considered more than a temporary measure, it was made operative
only till June; but it was renewed from time to time by fresh Acts of
Parliament. The system was not abolished again till 1819, when Sir
Robert Peel brought in his Bill for the resumption of cash payments,
and during the whole of that time the depreciation of paper money was
comparatively slight.

At the same time, our seamen--who were the real and proper defenders
of the country but were so miserably paid and so abominably treated
in many ways, that they could only be compelled into the service by
the odious operation of pressgangs--now burst forth into mutiny. Their
complaints and resistance compelled a small advance and improvement.
None since then had taken place. This advance of wages did not amount
to more than eightpence-halfpenny a day to able seamen and sevenpence
to ordinary seamen. And the low pay was but the smallest part of the
complaint of these brave men. They complained that a most unfair
system of prize-money had prevailed, by which the admirals and chief
officers swept off most of the money and left little or nothing to
the petty officers and the men; that their treatment on board was
barbarous, unfeeling, and degrading; that their provisions were of the
vilest description, being the direct consequence of the contracts with
villainous purveyors, through equally rascally Navy Commissioners, so
that, in fact, they were served with such salt beef, salt pork, and
biscuit as no dog would touch. Nor did their list of grievances only
too real end here. Instead of Government paying the pursers direct
salaries, they were paid by deducting two ounces from every pound
of provisions served out to the men. Thus, instead of sixteen ounces
to the pound, they received only fourteen ounces; and the same rule
applied to the measurement of liquids--beer and grog--served out to
them. Things had come to such a pass from these causes, and the neglect
of their complaint was so persevering, that the whole fleet determined
on a mutiny.

Accordingly, petitions were sent in from several of the principal
men-of-war lying at Portsmouth, to Lord Howe, the commander of the
Channel fleet, praying him to intercede with the Admiralty for the same
liberality towards the seamen of the royal navy and their families as
had been shown to the army and militia, in increase of pay and better
provisions. Lord Howe, instead of complying with this reasonable
desire, sent the petitions to the port-admiral, Sir Peter Parker, and
to Lord Bridport, who commanded the Channel fleet under Howe. They
treated the petitions as the work of some ill-disposed person, and
therefore of no consequence; but Parker was very soon compelled to
inform Lord Spencer, the head of the Admiralty, that he had discovered
that there was a general conspiracy to take the command of the ships
from the officers on the 16th of April. To test this, orders were
immediately issued to put out to sea; and the moment that Lord Bridport
signalled this order to the fleet, the effect was seen. The sailors
all ran up into the rigging and gave several tremendous cheers. They
instantly followed up this by taking the command from the officers,
and sending two delegates from each ship to meet on board the _Queen
Charlotte_, Lord Howe's flag ship. They thence issued orders for all
the seamen to swear fidelity to the cause, and the next day they all
swore. They kept part of the officers on board as hostages, and put
others, whom they accused of oppression, on shore. They next passed
resolutions to maintain order, and treat the confined officers with
all due respect. They then drew up a petition to the Admiralty stating
their grievances, and respectfully praying for redress. This brought
down to Portsmouth Lord Spencer, and other lords of the Admiralty,
where they met in council with Bridport and other admirals. Had these
admirals shown a proper attention to the health and claims of these
men, their grievances must long ago have ceased; but though they
were perfectly well aware of them, they now proposed, along with the
Admiralty, to recommend the granting of part of their demands. The
deputies replied that they sought nothing but what was reasonable,
and would never lift an anchor till those terms were granted. This
Admiralty committee then offered some of the terms, but left out
the proposal that the pensions of the Greenwich veterans should be
raised from seven pounds to ten pounds, and the crews of men-of-war
should have vegetables when in port. The sailors, indignant at this
miserable parsimony, returned on board and hoisted the red flag at
every mast-head. This was a sign that no concession would be made.
Yet, on the 22nd, the delegates addressed letters to the Admiralty,
and to Lord Bridport, firm, but respectful. Government then tried its
usual resource, the proclamation of a pardon, but without taking notice
of the necessary concessions. With this proclamation, Lord Bridport
went the next day on board the _Royal George_, and assured the seamen
that he had brought a royal pardon, and also the redress of all their
grievances. On this assurance, the crew hauled down the red flag, and
all the other ships did the same.

News now came that the Brest fleet was putting to sea. On the 7th of
May Lord Bridport went on board and ordered anchor to be weighed. Not
a man stirred; nor was it likely. No sooner had Lord Bridport told
them what was not true, that their demands were acceded to, than, in
the House of Lords and the House of Commons, Ministers had spoken
of the subject in very ambiguous terms, and the Board of Admiralty
had only ended the ambiguity by issuing an order on the 1st of May,
commanding, in consequence of "the disposition lately shown by the
seamen of several of his Majesty's ships," that the arms and ammunition
of the marines should be kept in readiness for use in harbour, as
well as at sea; and that on the first appearance of mutiny the most
vigorous measures should be taken to quell it. This was ordering the
officers of marines to fire on the sailors who should refuse to be thus
shamefully juggled out of their promised rights by the Government. On
board the _London_, Vice-Admiral Colpoys pushed the matter so far that
his men resisted orders; and as one was unlashing a gun, Simpson, the
first-lieutenant, told him that if he did not desist he would shoot
him. The man went on unlashing, and Simpson shot him dead! On this,
the sailors, in a rage, disarmed the officers and proceeded to hang
Simpson at the yard-arm. Colpoys then begged for the lieutenant's
life, assuring them that the order was his own, and that Simpson had
only done his duty in obeying it. The chaplain and surgeon joined in
the entreaty; and the men, far more merciful and reasonable than
their commanders, complied. They ordered, however, Colpoys and all
the officers to their respective cabins, and put the marines, without
arms, below deck. Similar scenes took place on the other ships, and the
fleet remained in the hands of the sailors from the 7th to the 11th
of May, when Lord Howe arrived with an Act of Parliament, granting
all their demands. Howe, who was old and infirm, persuaded them to
prepare a petition for a full pardon. They, however, accompanied this
petition by an assurance that they would not serve again under the
tyrannical officers whom they had put on shore; and this was conceded.
Admiral Colpoys was included in this list of officers proscribed by
their oppressed men, along with four captains, twenty-nine lieutenants,
seventeen masters' mates, twenty-five midshipmen, five captains of
marines, three lieutenants, four surgeons, and thirteen petty officers
of marines. The whole being arranged on the 15th of May, the red flag
was struck; and the deputies waited on Lord Howe to express their
obligations to him for his kind services on behalf of the oppressed
seamen. His lordship gave them luncheon, and then was escorted by
them, along with Lady Howe, on board the fleet. On their return, they
carried Lord Howe on their shoulders to the Governor's House. Sir Roger
Curtis's squadron had just come in from a cruise, and on learning what
had passed, declared themselves ready to support the rest of the fleet;
but the news which Howe had brought at once satisfied them, and all
eagerly prepared to set sail, and demonstrate their loyal zeal by an
encounter with the Brest fleet.

But the fleet at Sheerness, which sympathised with that at Portsmouth,
did not think fit to accept the terms which had satisfied the seamen
of Portsmouth. They were incited by a sailor, named Richard Parker,
to stand for fresh demands, which were not likely to meet with the
sympathy of either sailors or landsmen, being of a political character
and including a revision of the Articles of War. On the 20th of May,
the ships at the Nore, and others belonging to the North Sea fleet,
appointed delegates, and sent in their demands, in imitation of the
Portsmouth men. The Admiralty flatly rejected their petition. On the
23rd of May the mutineers hoisted the red flag; and all the ships of
war lying near Sheerness dropped down to the Nore. On the 29th, a
committee from the Board of Admiralty went down to Sheerness, to try to
bring them to reason, but failed. The mutineers then drew their ships
in a line across the Thames, cutting off all traffic between the sea
and London. On this, the Government proceeded to pull up the buoys at
the mouth of the river, to erect batteries along the shores for firing
red-hot balls; and a proclamation was issued declaring the fleet in
a state of rebellion, and prohibiting all intercourse with it. This
soon brought some of the mutineers to their senses. They knew that
every class of people was against them. On the 4th of June, the king's
birthday, a royal salute was fired from the whole fleet, as a token of
loyalty; the red flag was pulled down on every ship but the _Sandwich_,
on board of which was Parker, and all the gay flags usual on such
occasions were displayed. Several of the ships now began to drop away
from the rest, and put themselves under protection of the guns of
Sheerness. On the 13th of June the crew of the _Sandwich_ followed this
example, and delivered up the great agitator, Richard Parker, who was
tried, and hanged at the yard-arm of that ship on the 30th. Some others
of the delegates were executed, and others imprisoned in the hulks; and
thus terminated this mutiny, as disgraceful to the sailors as that at
Portsmouth was reasonable and honourable.

[Illustration: THE MUTINY AT SPITHEAD: HAULING DOWN THE RED FLAG ON THE
"ROYAL GEORGE." (_See p._ 456.)]

Early in this year Admiral Sir John Jervis fell in with the great
Spanish fleet, which was intended to co-operate with the French in the
invasion of Ireland, and defeated it. Nelson had predicted that the
Spanish fleet would not take much destroying. Admiral de Langara had
had a fortunate escape in the Mediterranean, in venturing to Corsica.
He had now been superseded by Don Juan de Cordova, and Jervis, on
the 14th of February, met with him off Cape St. Vincent. Cordova
had twenty-seven sail of the line, Jervis only fifteen; but he had
Nelson in his fleet, which more than counterbalanced the inequality of
numbers; and the discipline on board the Spanish ships was far below
that of the British. Nelson broke through the Spanish line, and chiefly
by his exertions and manœuvres four of the largest vessels were taken,
including one of one hundred and twelve guns. The rest escaped into
Cadiz, and there the British blockaded them. The news of this brilliant
victory arrived in London when the public was greatly dispirited by
the exhausted state of the Bank of England, and helped to revive
confidence. Sir John Jervis was made Earl of St. Vincent, and Nelson,
the real hero, a Knight of the Bath.

A still more signal victory was won by Admiral Duncan in the autumn.
On the 11th of October, the Admiral, who had been watching the Dutch
fleet in the Texel, found that during a storm it had stolen out, and
was on its way to join the French fleet at Brest. There were eleven
sail of the line, and four fifty-six gun ships, commanded by Admiral
de Winter. Duncan had sixteen sail of the line. Notwithstanding our
superiority of numbers, the Dutch fought with their accustomed valour,
but Duncan ran his ships between them and the dangerous coast, to
prevent their regaining the Texel, and so battered them that they were
compelled to strike. Eight sail of the line, two fifty-six gun ships,
and two frigates remained in our hands; but the Dutch had stood it
out so stoutly, that the vessels were few of them capable of being
again made serviceable. The loss in killed and wounded on both sides
was great. Duncan was elevated to the peerage for this victory of
Camperdown, and the danger of immediate invasion was at an end.

On the 10th of February, 1797, the French made a descent on the Welsh
coast, which created much alarm at the time, and no less speculation
as to its meaning. Four armed vessels, containing about fourteen
hundred men, had appeared in the Bristol Channel, off Ilfracombe, in
north Devon. They did not attempt to land there, but stood over to the
Welsh coast, and landed in a bay near Fishguard. They were commanded
by General Tate, and commenced marching inland, and the whole country
was in alarm. Lord Cawdor marched against them with three thousand men,
including a considerable body of militia, and they at once laid down
their arms and surrendered without a shot. Many were the conjectures
as to the object of this descent, and historians have much puzzled
themselves about a matter which appears plain enough. The men looked
ragged and wild, more like felons than soldiers, and were apparently
not unwilling to be made prisoners. They were, no doubt, a part of the
great Brest fleet meant for Ireland, which had been driven about by the
tempests ever since they quitted that port on the 17th of December, and
were only too glad to set foot on any land at all, and probably were
by this time so famished and bewildered that they did not know whether
they were in England or Ireland. Many of their comrades of the same
unfortunate expedition never did see land again.

The opening of the campaign on the Rhine in 1797 restored the positions
of the French. On the lower part of the river, Hoche, who now commanded
them, defeated General Kray; on the upper Rhine Moreau retook the
fortress of Kehl, opposite to Strasburg; and such was the alarm of
Austria that she began to make overtures of peace. The fortunes of her
army in Italy made these overtures more zealous; Alvinzi was defeated
at Rivoli on the 14th of January, and Provera soon after surrendered
with four thousand men, and Wurmser capitulated at Mantua. The Archduke
Charles was now sent into Italy with another army, but it was an
army composed of the ruins of those of Beaulieu, Alvinzi, Wurmser,
and Davidowich, whilst it was opposed by the victorious troops of
Buonaparte, now supported by a reinforcement of twenty thousand men
under Bernadotte. The archduke, hampered by the orders of the Aulic
Council in Vienna, suffered some severe defeats on the Tagliamento
in March, and retreated into Styria, whither he was followed by
Buonaparte. But the danger of a rising in his rear, where the Austrian
General Laudon was again collecting numerous forces, induced Buonaparte
to listen to the Austrian terms for peace. The preliminaries were
signed on the 18th of April at Leoben, and Buonaparte, to bind the
Emperor to the French cause, and completely to break his alliance
with Britain, proposed to hand over to the Austrians the territory
of Venice. This being effected, Buonaparte hurried back to seize and
bind the promised victim. He took a severe vengeance on the people
of Verona, who had risen against the French in his absence, and then
marched to Genoa, where, under pretence of supporting the people in
their demands for a Republic, he put down the Doge and Senate, set
up a democratical provisional government, seized on all the ships,
docks, arsenal, and stores--in fact, took full possession. All further
pretence of regard for the neutrality of Genoa was abandoned.

On the 17th of October the peace between France and Austria was
definitively signed at Campo Formio. To France Austria ceded Belgium,
the left bank of the Rhine, including Mayence, the Ionian islands, and
the Venetian possessions in Albania, both of which really belonged to
Venice. Venice itself, and its territory as far as the Adige, with
Istria and Venetian Dalmatia on the other side of the Adriatic, were
made over to Austria without ceremony. The Milan and Mantuan states
were given up by Austria, with Modena, Massa, Carrara; and the papal
provinces of Bologna, Ferrara, Ravenna, and the rest of them, as far
as the Rubicon, were included in a new so-called Cisalpine Republic
belonging to France. Tuscany, Parma, Rome, and Naples were still called
Italian, but were as much, Naples excepted, in the power of France as
the rest. In fact, except Venetia, which Austria secured, all Italy
except Naples was subjected to the French, and the regular process of
democratising was going on, in the latter kingdom, for an early seizure.

Before the conclusion of this treaty Pitt had made another effort to
obtain peace with France. The fact that one ally, Austria, was engaged
in separate negotiations gave him a fair excuse, and Lord Malmesbury
was once more sent to negotiate. He went to Lille, presented his plan
of a treaty, and at first all went well. Britain promised to restore
all her conquests with the exception of Ceylon, the Cape of Good Hope,
and Trinidad. But the Directory suffered the negotiations to drag on,
and when intestine struggles in France had been terminated in the
triumph of the Republican party on the 18th Fructidor (September 4),
the negotiations were suddenly broken off on the ground that Malmesbury
had not full authority. Once more the war party in France had gained
the day, and the weary contest was resumed.

[Illustration: THE DOGE'S PALACE, VENICE.]




CHAPTER XVII.

REIGN OF GEORGE III. (_continued_).

    Sympathy in Ireland for the French Revolution--Intrigues with the
    French--Attitude of the Roman Catholics--Failure of Fitzwilliam's
    Efforts at Reform--Open Rebellion begins--The Mission of Fitzgerald
    and O'Connor to France--Disclosure of the Conspiracy--Arrest of
    Fitzgerald and his Confederates--Outbreak of the Rebellion--Battle
    of Vinegar Hill--Arrival of Humbert's Expedition--Its brief Success
    and Surrender--Suicide of Wolfe Tone--Desire of France to invade
    England--Napoleon advises the Expedition to Egypt--He gives Nelson
    the slip--His gigantic Projects--Surrender of Malta--Nelson's
    Pursuit--Napoleon's Campaign--Battle of the Pyramids--Surrender
    of Cairo--Battle of the Nile (or Aboukir Bay)--Pitt's second
    Coalition--The Income Tax--Projected Union of Great Britain and
    Ireland--Proclamation of the Parthenopean Republic--Italy regained
    by the Coalition--Suppression of the Revolution in Naples--The
    Allies in Holland--Napoleon's March into Syria--His Defeat at
    Acre--Battle of Aboukir--Napoleon returns to France--_Coup
    d'État_ of the 18th Brumaire--Death of Tippoo Sahib--Napoleon's
    Letter to the King--The Union with Ireland--Means by which it
    was carried--Its Reception in England--Napoleon Crosses the
    Alps--Battle of Marengo--The French recover Lombardy--Battle
    of Hohenlinden--Treaty of Lunéville--Corn Riots--Breach
    with Russia--Pitt's Resignation--The King's Illness--The
    Addington Ministry--Revival of the Armed Neutrality--Battle of
    Copenhagen--Peace between Britain and the Northern Powers--The
    Expedition to Egypt--Battle of Alexandria--Evacuation of Egypt by
    the French--Negotiations for Peace--Treaty of Amiens.


Britain had seen her Continental Allies fall away one by one. The
time was now approaching when some good allies might have been very
useful to herself, if such people were ever to be found. We have seen
that, during the American Revolution, the rebellious colonists found
admirable allies in the Irish. They had no difficulty in exciting
disturbances amongst that ardent Celtic race, and thus greatly to
augment our difficulties. No sooner did the French commence the work
of revolution than the Irish became transported with admiration of
their doings. Not all the bloodshed and horrors of that wild drama
could abate their delight in them, and their desire to invite them
over to liberate Ireland, as they had liberated Belgium. These views
found expression in the north of Ireland, especially in Belfast and
other places, where the population was Presbyterian and to a certain
extent Republican. The Roman Catholics were inert, and disposed to
wait patiently. Ever since the American revolt the necessity of
conciliating the Irish had been impressed on the British Government,
and many important concessions had been granted them. They had not
yet obtained Catholic emancipation, but the public mind was ripening
for it, and the chief difficulty was the opposition of the extreme
Protestant party in the Irish Parliament. Whatever were the evils which
England had inflicted on Ireland, they were nothing compared with
those which French fraternity would have perpetrated. But the United
Irishmen, as the revolutionaries called themselves, could see nothing
of this, not even after all the world had witnessed the French mode of
liberating Belgium, and French waggons, guarded by soldiers, were day
after day, and month after month, bearing over the Alps the priceless
_chefs-d'œuvre_ of the arts from ravaged Italy. In the spring of 1798
the preparations of the French Directory for the invasion of Ireland
were too open and notorious to be overlooked by anybody.

The British Government had employed the best portion of the Session of
Parliament between the commencement of November and Christmas, 1797,
in receiving the report of the insults of the French Commissioners at
Lille to our Ambassador, and his summary dismissal from the place of
meeting without any chance of peace, and in voting money to carry on
the war at our own doors. Pitt called for the grant of twenty-five
million five hundred thousand pounds, and for trebling all the assessed
taxes. All this was readily granted. In April, 1798, he called for
three millions, and that was as freely conceded. In fact, by that
time, the Irish were on the very verge of appearing in arms to cast
off the yoke of England and accept the boasted fraternity of France.
Lord Edward Fitzgerald, brother of the Duke of Leinster, one of the
leading members of the Society of United Irishmen, had spent some time
in France during the Revolution. He had married Pamela, the daughter of
Madame de Genlis. To him, on his return to Ireland, French emissaries
of revolution were secretly sent over, and he introduced them to
the leading members of the projected revolt. In 1794 a Jacobinised
Irishman, the Rev. William Jackson, came over from Paris, at the time
of the fiercest raging of the Reign of Terror, to concert with Wolfe
Tone and his fellow-conspirators the plans of insurrection. At the
very time that some of these--Bond, Simon Butler, and Hamilton Rowan--were
tried as accomplices of the Scottish reformers, Muir and the
rest, and acquitted as men only seeking reform of Parliament, they were
deep in this scheme of French invasion. Jackson was arrested in Dublin,
was tried and convicted of high treason, but anticipated his sentence
by suicide. The most public display of sympathy with his views and
mission was made by a vast attendance of carriages at his funeral, and
the features of rebellion became so undisguised that a stop was put to
all questions of political concession and amelioration.

[Illustration: DUBLIN CASTLE. (_From a Photograph by W. Lawrence,
Dublin._)]

Hitherto the United Irishmen had obtained little support from the
Catholics, who were entirely out of sympathy with the Protestantism
of one section of the party, and the irreligion of Wolfe Tone and his
immediate associates. They preferred to look to the British Government,
and especially to Pitt who was known to be favourable to the Catholic
claims. But the Protestants in the Irish Parliament were too strong
for him, and only a few remedial measures were passed and those
inconsiderable in extent. In 1792 Sir Hercules Langrishe, with the
consent of the Government, succeeded in carrying a Bill which admitted
Catholics to the profession of the law, removed restrictions on their
education, and repealed the Intermarriage Act. In 1793 the Irish
Secretary, Major Hobart, succeeded, after much Government pressure,
in carrying a second Catholic Relief Bill, admitting Catholics to the
grand juries, magistracy, and finally to the franchise, though not to
Parliament. Further than that Pitt could not be induced to go. He would
neither consent to the admission of Catholics to Parliament, nor would
he consent to a measure of Parliamentary reform, though the state of
the representation was about as rotten as could possibly be conceived.
From an inquiry instituted some years earlier it appeared that out of
a House of 300 members 124 were nominated by 53 peers, while 91 others
were chosen by 52 commoners. The British ascendency was, in fact,
maintained by a system of organised corruption and place-holding, which
failed only when religious bigotry carried the day.

Disappointed in their hopes from England, educated Roman Catholic
opinion in Ireland began to drift towards the United Irishmen, in
spite of the peasants' war that was rife in various parts of the
country between the members of the two religions. Suddenly their
expectations received an unlooked-for impulse. During the spring of
1794 Pitt determined to send over Lord Fitzwilliam, who was heir to the
Marquis of Rockingham and a prominent member of the Portland Whigs, as
Lord-Lieutenant. It was clearly understood that Fitzwilliam should be
allowed to inaugurate a policy of reform, but Pitt wished that reform
to be gradual and cautious. It is plain that he gave Grattan intimation
to that effect, and that Grattan thought the stipulation a reasonable
one, but it is equally clear that he somehow or other failed to make
much impression upon Fitzwilliam. No sooner had the new Lord-Lieutenant
arrived in Ireland than he proceeded to dismiss Castle officials before
he could possibly have had time to inquire into the rights and wrongs
of their cases, and with equal abruptness turned out the Attorney, and
Solicitor-General, and Mr. Beresford, the Commissioner of Revenue, the
head of the most powerful of the Protestant families. The result was a
violent outcry, which was increased when he proceeded, in conjunction
with Grattan, to draw up a Bill for the immediate granting of the
Catholic claims. The Ascendency party clamoured for his recall, and
the Lord Chancellor Fitzgibbon represented to the king that to admit
Roman Catholics to Parliament would be to violate his Coronation Oath.
Pitt was obliged to give way, and on March 25th, 1794, Fitzwilliam
left Ireland, amidst every sign of national mourning. The incident is
a melancholy one, but a calm review of the circumstances produces the
conclusion that the indiscretion of Lord Fitzwilliam was very much the
cause of it.

After the departure of Fitzwilliam an open rebellion began. But the
measures of his successor, Lord Camden, were at once moderate and
prompt. A vigilant eye was kept on the agents of sedition and the
Democratic clubs, which swarmed all over Ireland, as much in the
Presbyterian north as in the Catholic south. Wolfe Tone and Hamilton
Rowan had escaped to the United States; but there they fell in with Dr.
Reynolds, Napper Tandy, and other enthusiastic Irish revolutionists.
Tone was supplied with money, and dispatched to France to stimulate the
Directory to the Irish invasion. He arrived at Havre in February, 1796,
and on reaching Paris he presented letters from M. Adet, the French
Minister to the United States, and was warmly received by Carnot,
General Clarke, acting as Minister of War, and the Duke de Feltre. He
was assured that General Hoche should be sent over with a resistless
army as soon as it could be got ready, but the Directory desired to
see some other of the leading members of the United Irishmen before
engaging in the enterprise. Tone promised General Clarke one thousand
pounds a year for life, and similar acknowledgments to all the other
officers, on the liberation of Ireland; and he solicited for himself
the rank of Brigadier-General, with immediate pay, and obtained it.

Lord Edward Fitzgerald and Mr. Arthur O'Connor, nephew of Lord
Longueville, went over to Paris to arrange the invasion. In London,
Fitzgerald, his French wife, who accompanied him, and O'Connor, were
entertained by members of the Opposition, and dined at the house of a
peer in company with Fox, Sheridan, and several other leading Whigs;
and Thomas Moore, in his Life of Fitzgerald, more than hints that
he made no secret to these patriots of the object of his journey,
for he was of a very free-talking and open Irish temperament. The
friends of Fox have been inclined to doubt this discreditable fact,
but no one was more likely than Moore to be well informed about it;
and when Fitzgerald and O'Connor were on their trial, not only Fox,
but Sheridan, Lord John Russell, the Dukes of Suffolk and Norfolk,
Lords Thanet and Oxford came forward, and gave them both the highest
character as excellent, honourable men. These emissaries reached
Basle, by way of Hamburg, in the spring of 1797, and there, through
Barthélemy, negotiated with the Directory. The Directory objected to
receive Lord Edward Fitzgerald at Paris, on account of his connection
with the Orléans family through his wife, lest the people should
imagine that it was with some design on the Orléans estate; he
therefore returned again to Hamburg, and O'Connor proceeded to Paris
and arranged for the expedition under General Hoche, whose disastrous
voyage we have already related. Fitzgerald and O'Connor did not reach
Ireland again without the British Government being made fully aware
of their journey and its object, from a lady fellow-traveller with
Fitzgerald to Hamburg, to whom, with a weak and, as it concerned the
fate of thousands, unpardonable garrulity, he had disclosed the whole.
Almost simultaneously the arrest of the revolutionary committee of the
North disclosed a systematic and well-organised conspiracy. In March,
1797, General Lake proceeded to disarm the revolutionaries in Ulster,
and accomplished his task with ruthless severity.

Still, emissaries continued to pass to and fro, and notwithstanding
that the promised armament had failed to reach Ireland, the impatient
Irish were determined to rise. In February, 1798, they sent appeals
to the French to come over, assuring them that they had three hundred
thousand men banded to receive them, who only wanted arms; and
Talleyrand sent them word that a fresh armament was preparing. But
on the 28th of that month, O'Connor, one O'Coigley, an Irish priest,
and Burns, a leading member of the London Corresponding Society, were
arrested at Margate as they were about to embark for France. Papers
found on O'Coigley, or Quigley, proved his treason. One was a direct
invitation to the French to send an army into England, as certain to
prevent the sending of British forces into Ireland, and thus to make
the descent there sure. He was condemned and executed, but Burns was
acquitted, and O'Connor remanded for fresh evidence. That was soon
forthcoming; for one Thomas Reynolds, who had been the treasurer for
the insurgents in his county, and also a colonel in the intended
revolutionary army, being pressed for money, betrayed his associates.
In consequence of the information which he gave, a number of the
conspirators were arrested at their place of meeting. The four chief
leaders, however, were not there, as expected, namely, Lord Edward
Fitzgerald, Emmet, Sampson, and MacNevin, but they were afterwards
secured. Lord Edward Fitzgerald was surprised at one Murphy's, 153,
Thomas Street, Dublin, and made a desperate resistance. He attacked
Major Swan, who presented the warrant, with a dagger, and, being a
powerful man, was very formidable. Major Swan discharged a pistol at
him, but missed. Captain Ryan, next entering, was stabbed mortally
by Lord Edward, and a bloody struggle ensued, Captain Ryan, who
was, practically speaking, unarmed, behaving with great courage and
self-sacrificing heroism. Major Sirr, who had surrounded the house
with soldiers, then rushed in and fired at Fitzgerald, and wounded him
in the shoulder. He was then overpowered and secured by the soldiers,
and conveyed first of all to Dublin Castle and then to Newgate. This
took place on the 19th of May. Captain Ryan died of his wounds on the
30th. Lord Edward died of fever, the consequence of his wounds, and of
mortification at the failure of the enterprise (June 4).

On the 23rd, the day fixed for the rising, the insurgents turned out
in many places, notwithstanding the arrest of their leaders. They did
not succeed at Carlow, Naas, and Kilcullen. But, on the 25th, fourteen
thousand of them, under one Father Murphy, attacked Wexford, defeated
the garrison which came out to meet them, took a considerable number
of prisoners, whom they put to death, and frightened the town into a
surrender on the 30th. They treated such Protestants as remained in the
place with the utmost barbarity. They took Enniscorthy and, seizing
some cannon, encamped on Vinegar Hill. On the 31st they were attacked
by General Lake, who drove them from their camp, made a great slaughter
of them, and then retook Wexford and Enniscorthy. General Johnson
attacked another party which was plundering the town of New Ross,
killing and wounding two thousand six hundred of them. On this news
reaching Scullabogue, the insurgents there massacred about one hundred
Protestant prisoners in cold blood. These massacres of the Protestants,
and the Presbyterians in the north having been too cautious to rise,
after the betrayal of the plot, caused the whole to assume the old
character of a Popish rebellion. Against this the leading Catholics
protested, and promptly offered their aid to Government to suppress
it. Of the leaders, MacCann, Byrne, two brothers named Sheares, the
sons of a banker at Cork, were executed. The success of the soldiers
was marked by worse cruelty than that of the rebels; for instance,
at Carlow about 200 persons were hanged or shot. Arthur O'Connor,
Emmet, MacNevin, Sampson, and a number of others, were banished. Lord
Cornwallis was appointed Lord-Lieutenant in place of Lord Camden, and
pardons were assured to those who made their submission. All now seemed
over, when in August there appeared at Killala three French frigates,
which landed nine hundred men, who were commanded by General Humbert.
Why the French should send such a mere handful of men into Ireland,
who must inevitably be sacrificed or made prisoners, can perhaps only
be accounted for by the assurances of the disaffected Irish, that the
whole mass of the people, at least of the Catholics, were ready to
rise and join them. But if that were true--if, as Wolfe Tone assured
them, there were three hundred thousand men already disciplined, and
only in need of arms, it would have been sufficient to have sent them
over arms. But then Tone, who had grown as utterly reckless as any
sansculotte Frenchman, described the riches of Ireland, which were
to repay the invaders, as something prodigious. In his memorial to
the Directory he declared that the French were to go shares with the
nation whom they went to liberate, in all the church, college, and
chapter lands, in the property of the absentee landlords, which he
estimated at one million pounds per annum, in that of all Englishmen,
and in the income of Government, which he calculated at two millions
of pounds per annum. General Humbert, who had been in the late
expedition, and nearly lost his life in the _Droits de l'Homme_, no
doubt expected to see all the Catholic population flocking around him,
eager to put down their oppressors; but, so far from this, all classes
avoided him, except a few of the most wretched Catholic peasants. At
Castlebar he was met by General Lake, with a force much superior in
numbers, but chiefly yeomanry and militia. Humbert readily dispersed
these--the speed of their flight gaining for the battle the name of
the Castlebar Races--and marched on through Connaught, calling on the
people to rise, but calling in vain. He had made this fruitless advance
for about seventeen days when he was met by Lord Cornwallis with a
body of regular troops, and defeated. Finding his retreat cut off, he
surrendered on the 8th of September, and he and his followers became
prisoners of war. But the madness or delusion of the French Government
had not yet reached its height; a month after this surrender Sir John
Warren fell in with a French line-of-battle ship and eight frigates,
bearing troops and ammunition to Ireland. He captured the ship of the
line and three of the frigates, and on board of the man-of-war was
discovered the notorious Wolfe Tone, the chief instigator of these
insane incursions, and who, before sailing, had recorded in his diary,
as a matter of boast, that every day his heart was growing harder, that
he would take a most dreadful vengeance on the Irish aristocracy. He
was condemned to be hanged, but he managed to cut his throat in prison
(November 19, 1798). And thus terminated these worse than foolish
attempts of France on Ireland, for they were productive of great
miseries, both at sea and on land, and never were conducted on a scale
or with a force capable of producing any permanent result.

Meanwhile, Buonaparte, summoned by the Directory to take the command
of the army of England, had arrived in Paris on the 5th of December,
1797, and had taken up his abode in his former residence, in the Rue
Chantereine, which the Commune immediately changed, in honour of the
conquest of Italy, into the Rue de la Victoire. But it was necessary
that Buonaparte should prepare for the invasion of England, for which
purpose he had been called home. All France was in transports of joy
at the thought of seeing England at last overrun. The Directory had
raised their cry of "_Delenda est Carthago!_" "It is at London," they
said, "that all the misfortunes of Europe are manufactured; it is in
London that they must be terminated." On the 8th of February, 1798,
Napoleon left Paris to obtain information as to the coasts of the
English Channel, preparatory to the sailing of the armament. He visited
Étaples, Ambleteuse, Boulogne, Calais, Dunkirk, Furnes, Nieuwport,
Ostend, and Walcheren, making at these different ports the necessary
surveys, and holding long and earnest conversations with sailors,
pilots, smugglers, and fishermen. He returned to Paris on the 22nd,
having, in a fortnight, quite satisfied himself that the attempt had
better be relinquished so long as England commanded the sea.

But though the abandonment, for the present, of this enterprise,
so fondly cherished by France, was calculated to cast a damp on
the country, Buonaparte had another project ready which flattered
the French pride of conquest. This was to seize on Egypt, as the
preliminary to the fall of Britain. He had for some time entertained
this idea, and had written from Italy to the Directory on the subject
in the previous September. To insure the real destruction of England,
he said, they must make themselves masters of Egypt. Malta and Corfu
must be seized first, and for this purpose he conceived eight or ten
sail of the line and twenty-five thousand men would suffice. The
possession of Egypt, he contended, would draw all the commerce of
the East thither, instead of taking the circuitous route by the Cape
of Good Hope. He had thoroughly inspired Talleyrand with his scheme.
Egypt was imagined to be much more wealthy than it was, and there were
monuments of ancient art for Buonaparte and his right-hand bandit,
Monge, to lay hands on. The Directory, which was extremely unpopular,
uneasy at the presence of so popular and daring a person, were glad
to be rid of him anywhere, the farther off the better. There were not
wanting counsellors who already advised him to perpetrate a _coup
d'état_, and place himself at the head of affairs; but Buonaparte, not
at all averse from the prospect, replied, "The pear is not ripe." He
knew that, however popular with his own army, he was looked on with
jealousy by the army of the Rhine, which served under, and prided
themselves in, Moreau. He knew that the middle classes hated him for
sweeping them away with grape-shot in the affair of the Sections. He
hoped to make himself yet more popular and more necessary, and that
in the meantime the Directory would have completed their full measure
of odium. He now therefore plunged into arrangements for this grand
conquest of the East.

[Illustration: CAPTURE OF WOLFE TONE. (_See p._ 464.)]

The preparations for invasion turned the attention of the British
Government to ports where it was supposed the troops would be embarked.
Ostend was regarded with particular suspicion, and Sir Home Popham was
sent in May with a small squadron, conveying a thousand men, under
Colonel Coote, to destroy the ships and sluices of the Bruges canal
there. The troops were landed, and did their work, but found themselves
unable to regain the ships from the violence of the wind and the surf,
and were surrounded and compelled to surrender. In the autumn of this
year Admiral Duckworth sailed for Minorca, and landed eight hundred
men, under Sir Charles Stuart, who readily made themselves masters of
the island.

Meanwhile, the fleet which was to bear Buonaparte to Egypt was lying in
various squadrons in the ports of Genoa, Civita Vecchia, and Bastia,
ready, when any adverse wind should drive the British fleet from
the coast, where it blockaded them, to drop down to Toulon and join
the main body. On board of these vessels were thirty thousand men,
chiefly from the army of Italy. Nelson, with a numerous fleet, was
maintaining the blockade, though the secret of the fleet's destination
had been so well kept that it was only surmised that Egypt might be its
destination. Buonaparte himself had been recalled to Paris. A sudden
message sent him back to Toulon. A gale had driven Nelson's fleet
from the coast, and so much damaged it that he was obliged to make
for Sardinia to repair. The moment was come; the different squadrons
joined from the Italian ports, and the Egyptian armament issued on
the 19th of May from Toulon. Napoleon was on the mission destined,
he believed, to conquer Egypt, and thus to place not only a powerful
barrier between us and our Indian possessions, but, having established
a strong empire in Egypt and Syria, to enable France to maintain a
large fleet in the Persian Gulf, and to accomplish the invasion and
conquest of British India by land or sea, with the aid of Tippoo Sahib,
who was once more at war with Britain. Nay, like another Alexander,
the boundless ambition of Buonaparte--an ambition which was his final
ruin--contemplated the conquest of all Asia and the founding of a giant
empire there. "If St. Jean d'Acre," he said to Las Cases, "had yielded
to the French arms, a great revolution would have been accomplished in
the East. The general-in-chief would have founded an empire there, and
the destinies of France would have undergone different combinations
from those to which they were subjected." He would have come back and
proceeded to the conquest of Europe.

With such chimerical fancies, the young Corsican saw the fleet, on a
splendid morning, stand out into the Mediterranean, the line-of-battle
ships extending for a league, and the semicircle formed by the convoy
six leagues in extent. On their way to Malta, the first object of
their enterprise, they were joined by a large fleet of transports,
bringing the division of General Desaix. On the 10th they were before
Valetta, a fortress which, properly defended, would have set the French
at defiance for months, before which time the British Admiral would
have been upon them, and destroyed the whole scheme of the expedition,
and probably its commander and projector with it; but the surrender
of the place had been bargained for with the Grand Master, Hompesch,
before starting. The once formidable Knights of Malta were now sunk
in indolence and sensual sloth, and the French agent had agreed for
the surrender for a bribe of six hundred thousand francs to the Grand
Master. As General Caffarelli passed through the most formidable
defences with Napoleon on their way to the house of the Grand Master,
he said to him, "It is well, General, that there was some one within to
open the gates for us. We should have had more trouble in entering if
the place had been altogether empty."

A strong garrison was left in Malta, under General Vaubois, and on
the 16th the fleet was again under sail. As they were off the coast
of Crete, and the savants were gazing on the birthplace of Jupiter,
and speculating on the existence of the remains of the celebrated
labyrinth, Nelson, who had missed the French fleet, and had sailed in
quest of it, was near enough to be perceived by some of the frigates
on the look-out, and created a terrible panic. But Nelson, not having
frigates to send out as scouts, did not observe them, and suspecting
that Egypt was their destination he made all sail for Alexandria.
Finding no traces of them there, in his impatience he returned towards
Malta. If he had but waited a while they would have come to him; but on
reaching Malta and finding that they had taken and manned it, he again
put about and made for Alexandria. He had actually been seen by some
of the French frigates as he was crossing their track on his return
from Alexandria, and Napoleon was impatient to reach land before he
could overtake them again. On the 1st of July the French fleet came in
sight of Alexandria, and saw before them the city of the Ptolemies and
Cleopatra with its pharos and obelisks. The landing was effected at
Marabout, about a league and a half from Alexandria.

As soon as five or six thousand of his troops were landed, Buonaparte
commenced his march on Alexandria. The Turks manned the walls, and
resisted furiously, incensed at this invasion by a Power with which
they were nominally at peace. But the walls were ruinous; the French
forced their way over several breaches, and commenced an indiscriminate
massacre. The place was abandoned to pillage for four hours. As the
Mamelukes were hated by the Arabs and the Copts, and were the military
mercenaries of the country, chiefly recruited from Georgia and
Circassia, Buonaparte determined to destroy them. He considered that he
should thus rid himself of the only formidable power in Egypt, and at
the same time conciliate the Bedouins and Fellahs. On the 7th of July
he set out on his march for Cairo with his whole force. He marched up
the bank of the Nile, but at such a distance as to prevent the soldiers
from getting any water to quench their burning thirst. It was all that
Buonaparte could do to keep his troops in subordination. For fourteen
days this melancholy march was continued, when they came at once in
sight of the Pyramids, not far distant from Cairo, and of the army of
the Mamelukes, drawn up across their way, headed by Murad Bey. This
force consisted of five thousand cavalry--Mamelukes, mounted on the
finest Arabian horses in the world, trained to obey the slightest touch
of the rein, to advance, wheel, or fly with wonderful rapidity. The
riders were all fine men, armed with sabres, pistols, and blunderbusses
of the best English workmanship. They were deemed invincible and were
ruthlessly cruel. They presented in appearance the finest body of
cavalry in the world, the plumes of their turbans waving in the air,
and their arms glittering in the sun. There were, moreover, twenty
thousand infantry lying in a slightly-entrenched camp on their right;
but these were a mere rabble--fellaheen, or, in other words, peasantry,
brought from their fields, and armed with matchlocks. They had forty
pieces of cannon to defend the camp, but these had no carriages, being
mounted on clumsy wooden frames. Buonaparte drew up his army so as to
keep out of gunshot of the camp, and to deal only with the cavalry
first. He formed his troops into squares to resist the onslaught of
the cavalry; and as he saw the Mamelukes come on, he called to his
men, "From yonder Pyramids twenty centuries behold your actions!" The
Mamelukes came thundering on like a whirlwind, and sending before them
the most horrible yells. Murad Bey said he would cut up the French
like gourds. One of the French squares was thrown into confusion, but
it recovered itself, and the battle was instantly a scene of the most
desperate fury. The Mamelukes fought like demons; but, finding that
they could not break the French ranks, whilst they and their horses
were mown down by musketry and artillery, in despair they flung their
pistols at their foes, backed their horses up to them to break them by
kicking, and finding all unavailing, fled. Such as were left wounded
on the ground crept forward to cut at the legs of the French soldiers.
Both cavalry and infantry then, by swimming their horses, or in boats,
attempted to cross the Nile, but the greater part were drowned in the
attempt. Murad Bey, with the residue of his Mamelukes, escaped into
Upper Egypt.

To give to this action greater importance in the eyes of the world,
Buonaparte called it the Battle of the Pyramids. He then marched to
Cairo, which surrendered without opposition. Napoleon called together
a council of about forty of the most distinguished sheiks, who were to
continue the government of all Lower Egypt, as before his arrival. He
professed to listen to their counsels, and in fact to be a Mahometan;
he said he was not come to destroy the practice of the doctrines of the
Koran, but to complete the mission of Mahomet; he celebrated the feast
of the Prophet with some sheik of eminence, and joined in the litanies
and worship enjoined by the Koran.

But Nelson had now tracked the French to their goal, and was preparing
to annihilate their fleet. Admiral Brueys, unable to enter the harbour
of Alexandria, had anchored his ships in the Bay of Aboukir, in a
semicircular form, so close in shore that he deemed it impossible for
ships of war to thrust themselves between him and the land. He had
altogether thirteen ships of war, including his own flagship of one
hundred and twenty guns, three of eighty, and nine of seventy-four,
flanked by four frigates and a number of gunboats, with a battery of
guns and mortars on an island in the van. Nelson had also thirteen
men-of-war and one five-gun ship, but the French exceeded his by about
forty-six guns, three thousand pounds' weight of metal, considerably
more tonnage, and nearly five thousand men. No sooner did Nelson
observe the position of the French fleet than he determined to push
his ships between it and the shore. No sooner was this plan settled
than Nelson ordered dinner to be served, and on rising from table
said, "Before this time to-morrow I shall have gained a peerage, or
Westminster Abbey." It was half-past five o'clock on the afternoon of
the 1st of August, 1798, when this celebrated battle was commenced.
As the British vessels rounded a shoal, to take up their position,
the battery of the island played upon them; but this ceased as they
came near the French line of vessels, lest they should damage their
own countrymen. Unfortunately, Nelson lost the use of the _Culloden_,
a seventy-four, commanded by Captain Trowbridge, which struck on a
ledge of rocks, and could not be got off in time for the engagement.
Nelson's own vessel was the first that anchored within half pistol-shot
of the _Spartiate_, the third ship of the French line. The conflict
immediately became murderous, and Nelson received a severe wound
on the head, which compelled him to go below. The battle continued
with a terrible fury till it was so dark that the only light the
combatants had to direct their operations was the flashes of their own
broadsides. At ten o'clock the _Orient_, Admiral Brueys' own great
ship, was discovered to be on fire. He himself had fallen, killed by a
cannon-shot. The stupendous ship continued to burn furiously, lighting
up the whole scene of action. At eleven it blew up, with an explosion
which shook the contending fleets like the shock of an earthquake, and
with a stunning noise that caused the conflict instantly to cease. A
profound silence and a pitchy darkness succeeded for about ten minutes.
Nelson, wounded as he was, had rushed upon deck before the explosion,
to order every possible succour to be given to the shrieking sufferers
in the burning ship, and many of the crew had been got into boats and
saved. The cannonade was slowly resumed, but when morning dawned two
French ships and two frigates only had their colours flying and were
able to get away, none of the British vessels except the _Zealous_
being in a condition to give chase. The two ships of the line and
one of the frigates were afterwards intercepted by our Mediterranean
fleet, so that of all this fine fleet only one frigate escaped. Had
Nelson not been wounded, and had Captain Trowbridge been able to bring
up his ship, probably not even that frigate would have got away. The
British took eight vessels of the line; the rest were destroyed in
one way or other. The loss of the British, in killed and wounded, was
eight hundred and ninety-five; of the French, in killed, wounded,
and prisoners, was nine thousand eight hundred and thirty. Brave
Brueys, as has been stated already, was slain. Captain Westcott, of
the _Majestic_, was the only commander of a ship who fell. Such was
the victory of Aboukir; but "victory," said Nelson, "is not a name
strong enough for such a scene--it is a conquest!" Fortunately for the
French, Admiral Brueys had secured the transports and store-ships in
shallow water in the port of Alexandria, where Nelson could not come
at them for want of small craft. Half-a-dozen bomb ships would have
destroyed them all, and have left Buonaparte totally dependent on the
Egyptians for supplies. And these he must have collected by force, for
now the news of the destruction of his fleet was spread over all Egypt
by bonfires, kindled by the Arabs, along the coast and far inland. He
was cut off from communication with France. On the 22nd of October
the people of Cairo rose on the French, and endeavoured to massacre
them; but the French took a bloody vengeance, sweeping them down with
grape-shot, pursuing them into their very mosques, and slaughtering in
one day five thousand of them.

Nelson, having blockaded the port of Alexandria, sailed to Naples
to repair. There he received the news of the intense rejoicing his
victory had spread through England, and that he was raised to the
peerage by the title of Baron Nelson of the Nile. He found Ferdinand
of Naples already collecting an army to drive the French from Rome and
Tuscany. Austria, Switzerland, and other countries were again in arms.
The Treaty of Campo Formio was at an end by the French violation of
it everywhere, and as it was supposed that Buonaparte would never be
allowed to get back again, the spirit of Europe had revived. Nelson,
allowing himself as little repose as possible, in November had made
himself master of the Island of Gozo, separated only by a narrow
channel from Malta. He had blockaded Malta itself, and it must soon
surrender. Pitt, elated by Nelson's success, and in consequence of
the death of the old czarina, Catherine, some two years earlier, now
entered into a treaty with her successor, Paul, who was subsidised by a
hundred and twelve thousand pounds a month, and great expectations were
raised of the effect of his victorious general, Suvaroff, leading an
army into Italy. The other members of the second grand coalition were
Austria, the Princes of Germany, and the Ottoman Empire. Prussia weakly
held aloof. When the British Parliament met on the 20th of November,
the late victory and this new alliance with Russia were the themes of
congratulation from the throne. Twenty-nine million two hundred and
seventy-two thousand pounds were granted with alacrity for the ensuing
year, and the nation willingly submitted to the imposition of a new
impost--the income tax.

The year 1799 opened by the discussion of this new scheme of revenue.
It was a mode of making every man tax himself by stating the amount
of his income, on which he was to be charged ten per cent., with the
exception only of such persons whose incomes were less than two hundred
pounds per annum, who were to be charged less than ten per cent. It was
to include all who had more than sixty pounds a-year. Pitt calculated
the income of the nation at a hundred and two million pounds, which
would thus produce a revenue of ten million pounds. To make this
excellent device the more palatable, the increase in the assessed taxes
made in the preceding Session was to be repealed. To such a degree did
the nation trust the great Minister, that this tax was carried through
both Houses with comparatively little difficulty.

A still more important proposition was laid before Parliament by royal
message, on the 22nd of January--the union of Ireland with Great
Britain. It was argued that the late attempts to bring in a French
army, and to alienate Ireland from Great Britain altogether, showed the
necessity of drawing closer the bonds between the two countries. On
the 31st of January a series of resolutions was agreed to as the basis
of this union, but for the present year the matter ended in a joint
address on the subject from both Houses being presented to the king.

[Illustration: LADY HAMILTON WELCOMING THE VICTORS OF THE NILE.

FROM THE PICTURE BY ROBERT HILLINGFORD.]

On the Continent the struggle against the French was renewed. The
King of Naples and the Emperor of Austria, in alliance with Russia,
determined to free Italy of them in the absence of Buonaparte; but
without waiting for the arrival of the Austrians and Russians,
Ferdinand mustered nearly forty thousand men, badly disciplined, and
worse officered, and set out to drive the French from Rome. General
Mack, still in high repute, was sent from Vienna to command this army,
and Ferdinand, a most self-indulgent and unwarlike monarch, was advised
to march with them in person. Nelson was employed, with an addition
of some Portuguese ships, to land a division of five thousand men
of this army at Leghorn. Mack, in true Austrian style, then divided
the remaining thirty-two thousand men into five columns, and marched
them by different routes towards Rome. Nelson had narrowly watched
the manœuvres of Mack, and pronounced him incompetent, and that the
whole would prove a failure. This was speedily realised. Ferdinand,
with a portion of his forces, entered Rome in triumph on the 29th of
November; but Championnet, the French general, who evacuated Rome to
concentrate his forces at Terni, soon defeated the other divisions of
the Neapolitan army in detail, and Ferdinand fled from Rome back to
Naples. But there was now no security for him there. Championnet was
marching on that capital with twenty thousand veteran soldiers, and
Ferdinand availed himself of Nelson's fleet to get over to Palermo. The
lazzaroni defended the deserted city for three days with incredible
bravery against the French, but they were betrayed by a republican
party in the city, which hoisted the tricolour flag, surrendered the
forts to the enemy, and fired on the defenders from the Castle of St.
Elmo, which commands the town. Championnet took possession of Naples on
the 23rd of January, 1799, and proclaimed a republic under the title of
"Respublica Parthenopea."

[Illustration: LORD NELSON. (_After the Portrait by Sir William
Beechey, R.A._)]

The Austrians and Russians by this time were in full march for Italy.
Leaving the Archduke Charles to cope with Jourdain, who had made
himself master of the fortress of Ehrenbreitstein in January, and
menaced a march on the Danube, an army of Austrians, under Generals
Bellegarde and Hotze, entered Switzerland, re-occupied the Grisons
country, drove the French from the St. Gothard, and menaced Massena at
Zurich. Another army of Austrians, under old General Mélas, issued from
the Tyrol and drove the French General, Scherer, from post to post in
Upper Italy, till he took refuge behind the Mincio. Moreau was then
sent to supersede Scherer, but found himself in April confronted not
only by Mélas, but by Suvaroff, with an addition of fifty thousand men.
On the 27th of that month he was attacked by this combined force and
beaten. Brescia and Peschiera surrendered, Mantua was invested, and
Suvaroff entered Milan. Moreau was compelled to retreat upon Genoa, and
await the arrival of Macdonald, who was rapidly marching from Naples to
his aid. But Macdonald was confronted on the banks of the Trebia, and
after a fierce battle of three days he was routed, and escaped only to
Moreau with the remnant of his army. Moreau now stationed himself in
the entrance of the Bochetta Pass, in the Apennines, behind the town
of Novi; but there he was superseded by General Joubert, the Directory
having lost faith in him. Joubert, however, had no better success than
Moreau. Suvaroff attacked him on the 16th of August, routed his army
and killed him; the French abandoning nearly all their artillery on the
field, and flying in disorder towards Genoa.

Leaving Mélas to complete the subjection of Italy, Suvaroff then turned
his army towards Switzerland, where Massena had effectually opposed
the Austrians under Bellegarde and Hotze, and defeated a Russian force
under Korsakoff, sent to reinforce them. But Suvaroff found himself
unable to unite with Korsakoff till after much fighting with Massena;
and the two Russian generals retreated to Augsburg, leaving Massena
master of Switzerland.

The French were driven again out of Naples by the end of July. Cardinal
Ruffo brought down a wild army of Calabrians, and an army made up of
Russians, Turks, Portuguese, and British, completed the expulsion of
the Republicans and restored the king. In this restoration Nelson
and his squadron took a most effective part; but unfortunately for
his fame, he at this time became acquainted with Lady Hamilton, the
wife of the British ambassador, and gave himself up entirely to her
fascinations. Lady Hamilton was the friend of the Queen of Naples (a
sister of the unfortunate Marie Antoinette), and she was said to have
instigated Nelson to take a melancholy part in the savage retaliations
of the court on the Neapolitan Republicans, but the charge has since
been completely disproved. Nelson sent Commodore Trowbridge to Civita
Vecchia to blockade it, and both that port and the castle of St. Angelo
soon surrendered, and Captain Lewis rowed up the Tiber in his barge,
hoisted the British colours on the Capitol, and acted as Governor of
Rome till Pius VI., ejected by the French in the previous year, was
nominally restored. The poor old man, however, never returned to his
kingdom; he died at Valence, on the Rhône, on the 29th of August of
this year. The election of the new Pope, Pius VII., did not take place
till March, 1800. Before the end of the year, nearly all Italy, except
Genoa, was cleared of the French.

While these changes were being made in Italy, the British, with their
new allies, the Russians, made an abortive attempt to drive the French
from Holland. An army of seventeen thousand Russians and thirteen
thousand British was assembled on the coast of Kent, and Sir Ralph
Abercromby, who was destined to fall on a more memorable field, taking
the command of a division of twelve thousand men, Admiral Mitchell
put them across to the coast of Holland. Abercromby landed, and took
the fort of the Helder, and our fleet, occupying the Texel, compelled
the Dutch fleet to surrender and mount the Orange flag. So long as
Abercromby commanded, he repelled all the attacks of the French
general, Brune, with a force more than double in number; but on the
13th of September the Duke of York arrived with the remainder of the
Anglo-Russian army and took the chief command. From that moment all
went wrong. The old want of success followed the royal duke, who,
whatever his courage, certainly possessed no abilities as a general.
By the 17th of October, notwithstanding the bravery of his troops,
he was glad to sign a convention by which he was allowed to withdraw
his army, on condition of the liberation of eight thousand French
and Dutch prisoners of war in England. In Switzerland, too, Massena
defeated Korsakoff at Zurich, and Suvaroff, believing himself to have
been betrayed by the Austrians, effected a brilliant retreat over the
mountains.

Buonaparte in Egypt, now cut off from all communication with France,
soon found himself threatened by the attack of two Turkish armies, one
assembling at Rhodes, and one in Syria. To anticipate this combination,
he determined to march into Syria, where he expected to startle the
Turks by the progress that he should make there. He therefore commenced
his march through the desert at the head of ten thousand men, easily
routed a body of Mamelukes, and took the fort of El Arish, reckoned one
of the keys of Egypt. He set out in February and, passing the desolate
wilderness, not without experiencing some of the sufferings which might
be expected, entered Gaza, where he found plenty of provisions. He then
attacked Jaffa, the Joppa of the Gospels, carried it, and put three
thousand Turks to the sword, giving up the town to licence and plunder
and brutally massacring some two thousand prisoners.

He next marched to St. Jean d'Acre, and summoned it to surrender. The
pacha, named, from his fierce cruelties, Djezzaar, or the Butcher,
instead of returning an answer, cut off the head of the messenger.
Buonaparte vowed an awful revenge. But the pacha had warned Sir Sidney
Smith, who was off the coast ready to convey the Turkish army to
Egypt, of the appearance of the French before Acre; and Sir Sidney, so
famous already for his exploits at Toulon, where he and Buonaparte had
met, sailed into the port with two ships of the line, the _Tigre_ and
the _Theseus_. Scarcely had Sir Sidney arrived, when he heard of the
approach of a French frigate flotilla bringing to Buonaparte artillery,
ammunition, and machines for the siege. He captured seven vessels out
of the nine, and turned the artillery on the walls against the French
themselves. A French royalist officer, General Phillippeaux, took
charge of these cannon. The siege began on the 17th of March, and ended
on the 21st of May--a period of sixty-five days, during which eight
desperate assaults had been made, and eleven as desperate sallies. At
one time Buonaparte had to march to Mount Tabor to disperse an army of
Moslems; at another, he succeeded in making himself master of a tower
which commanded the rest of the fortifications; but Sir Sidney Smith,
himself leading on a body of his seamen armed with pikes, drove the
French, in a hand-to-hand fight, from the tower. Buonaparte, one day
walking on the hill still called Cœur de Lion's Mount, pointing to
Acre, said to Murat, "The fate of the East depends upon yonder petty
tower." Buonaparte had now, however, lost several of his best generals,
and retreat was inevitable; but he endeavoured to cover the disgrace
of it by asserting that it was the plague raging at Acre that drove him
from it. On the march he proposed to Desgenettes, the surgeon, to end
the lives of some of the wounded who encumbered him, by poisoning them
with opium. Desgenettes replied indignantly that his art was employed
to save, and not to kill. But the proposal soon grew into a rumour that
it had been carried into execution, and that not on a few dozens, but
on several hundreds--a rumour which continued to be believed for many
years, not only by the other European nations, but by Buonaparte's
own army. He continued his march back to Cairo, burning the crops and
villages by the way, in revenge for the hostility of the natives. He
reached Cairo on the 14th of June, his reputation much diminished by
his repulse.

Buonaparte found that, during his absence in Syria, Egypt had been
disturbed by insurrections, which Desaix had put down, and had again
defeated, and driven back into Upper Egypt, Murad Bey, who had made a
descent thence. Soon after his return, however, Murad was once more in
motion, descending the Nile in two bodies, and Ibrahim Bey was moving
on the frontiers of Syria, as if to form a union with Murad. Lagrange
was despatched against Ibrahim, and Murat against Murad. Scarcely
were they repulsed when the cause of their manœuvres became evident.
A Turkish fleet, containing eighteen thousand men, appeared in the
Bay of Alexandria, commanded by Mustapha Pacha. They seized the fort,
and, landing, began to fortify themselves, expecting the arrival of
the Mamelukes, as had been concerted. On the 25th of July Buonaparte
attacked them, and drove in all their outposts; but on coming within
reach of their batteries and their gunboats in the bay, the French
were checked, and the Turks, rushing out, with their muskets slung
at their backs, made terrible havoc amongst them with their sabres,
poniards, and pistols. The defeat of Napoleon must have been complete
had not the Turks stopped to cut off the heads of the slain, for which
they were offered a reward. This gave time for the French to rally.
It was now the turn of the Turks to give way, and Murat, who had
fought at the head of the troops, followed them so impetuously with
the bayonet that the confusion and panic became general. The Turks
threw themselves _en masse_ into the sea to regain their ships; and by
drowning and the bayonets and bullets of the French, ten thousand out
of the eighteen thousand perished. Mustapha Pacha himself was taken,
and carried in triumph before Buonaparte. This battle had been fought
at Aboukir, near the spot where Nelson had so signally triumphed over
them. The victory was the event which Buonaparte needed to enable him
to return with credit to France. He immediately embraced it. All his
plans and brilliant visions of empire in the East had perished for
the present, and private letters from his brothers in Paris, and a
number of newspapers, which Sir Sidney Smith had furnished him with to
mortify him, roused him to instant action. From these he learnt that
the Directory had, as he expected, consummated their unpopularity;
that Italy, which he had won to France, was again lost by the other
generals. To remain in Egypt was to sink into a sort of provincial
or proconsular general; to return to Paris was, by a bold and adroit
stroke, to make himself the master of France. He immediately ordered
Admiral Gantheaume to have ready a couple of frigates, which lay in the
harbour of Alexandria; and, taking with him his favourite generals,
Murat, Lannes, Marmont, Berthier, Desaix, Andréossy, and Bessieres, and
the two principal _savants_, Monge and Denon, to give an account of
the scientific results of the expedition, he rushed on board. He had
left the care of the army to Kleber and Menou; and he issued a short
proclamation, saying that events in Paris demanded his presence there,
but that he would return with all possible expedition. He arrived in
Paris without mishap.

Though Buonaparte had been absent, his family had taken care to keep
public opinion alive to his importance. His wife, Josephine, lived at
great expense, and collected around her all that was distinguished in
society. His brother Lucien had become President of the Council of Five
Hundred; and Joseph, a man much respected, kept a hospitable house, and
did much to maintain the Buonaparte prestige. Talleyrand and Fouché
were already in Napoleon's interest, and Bernadotte, now Minister of
War, Jourdain, and Augereau, as generals, were prepared to act with
him. The Abbé Siéyès, with his perpetual constitution-making, had also
been working in a way to facilitate his schemes. He had planned a new
and most complicated constitution, known as that of the year Eight,
by which the executive power was vested in three Consuls. Of the five
Directors Buonaparte left in office, the most active had been removed;
Abbé Siéyès had succeeded Rewbell, and two men of no ability, Gohier
and Moulins, had succeeded others. Roger Ducos, also in the interest
of Buonaparte, made the fifth. All measures being prepared, on the
18th Brumaire, that is, the 10th of November, Buonaparte proceeded
to enact the part of Cromwell, and usurp the chief authority of the
State, converting the Republic into a military dictatorship. The army
had shown, on his return, that they were devoted to his service.
Jourdain, Bernadotte, Moreau, and Augereau were willing to co-operate
in a _coup-de-main_ which should make the army supreme. He therefore
assembled three regiments of dragoons on pretence of reviewing them,
and, everything being ready, he proceeded to the Council of Ancients,
in which the moderate, or reactionary, party predominated, on the
evening of the 10th of November. They placidly gave way in the midst
of a most excited debate on the menaced danger, and every member,
including Lucien Buonaparte, who was the President, had just been
compelled to take an oath to maintain inviolable the Constitution of
the year Three, when Napoleon entered, attended by four grenadiers of
the Constitutional Guard of the Councils. The soldiers remained near
the door, Napoleon advanced up the hall uncovered. There were loud
murmurs. "What!" exclaimed the members, "soldiers--drawn swords in
the sanctuary of the laws!" They rushed upon him, and seized him by
the collar, shouting, "Outlawry! outlawry! proclaim him a traitor!"
For a moment he shrank before them, but soon at the instigation of
Siéyès returned, and quietly expelled them. Thus Buonaparte, with an
army at his back, was openly dictator. He removed to the Palace of the
Luxembourg, and assumed a state little inferior to royalty. He revised
the Constitution of the Abbé Siéyès, concentrating all the power of the
State in the First Consul, instead of making him, as he expressed it,
a personage whose only duties were to fatten, like a pig, upon so many
millions a-year.

[Illustration: NAPOLEON'S COUP DE MAIN: SCENE IN THE HALL OF THE
ANCIENTS. (_See p._ 472.)]

In concluding the remarkable events of this year, we must turn to
India, and witness the termination of the career of Tippoo Sahib.
This prince, for ever restless under the losses which he had suffered
from the British, though nominally at peace with them, was seeking
alliances to help him once more to contend with them. He sought to
engage the Afghans in his favour, and to bring over the British ally,
the Nizam of the Deccan. Failing in this, he made overtures to the
French Republic through the Governor of the Isle of France. Buonaparte,
as we have said, had Tippoo in his mind when he proposed to march to
India and conquer it, but only a few hundreds of French of the lowest
caste reached Seringapatam from the Isle of France. Lord Mornington,
afterwards the Marquis of Wellesley, determined to anticipate the plans
of Tippoo, and dispatched General Harris with twenty-four thousand men
into Mysore, at the same time ordering another force of seven thousand,
under General Stuart, from Bombay, to co-operate with him. To these
also was added a strong reinforcement of British troops in the pay of
the Nizam, and some regiments of sepoys, commanded by English officers.
The united forces of Harris and the Nizam came into conflict with
Tippoo's army on the 22nd of March, 1799, when within two days' march
of Seringapatam. In this action, Colonel Wellesley, afterwards the
Duke of Wellington, greatly distinguished himself, and the success of
the action was ascribed to his regiment, the 34th. On the 5th of April
General Harris invested Seringapatam, and on the 14th General Stuart
arrived with the Bombay army. Tippoo soon made very humble overtures
for peace, but the British, having no faith in him, continued the
siege, and the city was carried by storm on the 4th of May, and Tippoo
himself was found amongst the slain. Two of his sons fell into the
hands of the victors; his territories were divided between the British
and the Nizam. The former retained Seringapatam and the island on which
it is situated, and the whole of his territory on the Malabar coast,
with Coimbra, and all the rest of his possessions stretching to the
Company's territories west and east, thus completing their dominion
from sea to sea. The Nizam received equally valuable regions in the
interior, and a province was bestowed on the descendant of the Hindoo
rajah who had been dispossessed of it by Hyder Ali, Tippoo's father.
Thus was the British empire of India freed from its most formidable
enemy, and thus was it enabled, soon afterwards, to send an armament up
the Red Sea to assist in driving the French from Egypt.

The year 1800 opened in the British Parliament by a debate on an
Address to the king, approving of the reply to an overture for peace
by Buonaparte, as First Consul of France. The letter addressed
directly to the king was a grave breach of diplomatic etiquette, and
was answered by Lord Grenville, the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, in
a caustic but dignified tone. A correspondence ensued between Lord
Grenville and M. Talleyrand, as French Minister for Foreign Affairs;
but it ended in nothing, as the British Minister distinctly declined
to treat. If Buonaparte had been sincerely desirous of peace, he must
have withdrawn the French army from Egypt, as it was there with the
open declaration of an intention to make that country a stepping-stone
to India. But, so far from this, Buonaparte was, at the same moment,
preparing to make fresh and still more overwhelming invasions of Italy,
Switzerland, and Germany, and the proposal was simply made to gain time.

In July of the present year the Union of Ireland with Great Britain
was carried. Pitt and Lord Cornwallis had come to the conclusion
that a double Government was no longer possible, and that unless the
Irish were to be allowed to exterminate one another, as they had
attempted to do during the late rebellion, the intervention of the
British Parliament was absolutely necessary. A resolution had passed
the British Parliament in 1799, recommending this union, and the
news of this created a tempest of indignation in Protestant Ireland.
In January, 1799, the speech on the Address to the throne in the
Irish Parliament was, on this account, vehemently opposed, and an
amendment was carried against the Government by a majority of one; yet
in January, 1800, a motion was carried, at the instigation of Lord
Castlereagh, the Secretary, in favour of the union, by a majority of
forty-two. Whence this magical change in twelve months? On the 5th of
February the whole plan of the union was detailed by Lord Castlereagh,
the principal Secretary of State for Ireland, in the Irish Commons.
He stated that it was intended to give to Ireland in the Parliament
of the United Kingdom four lords spiritual sitting in rotation of
sessions, and twenty-eight lords temporal elected for life by peers
of Ireland, and that the Irish representatives in the united House of
Commons should be a hundred. The motion for this plan was carried in
the Irish Commons by a majority of forty-two in spite of a magnificent
speech from Grattan, and by a great majority in the House of Lords; but
this was in the face of the most unmitigated amazement on the part of
the opposition, and of the people, who were not in the secret. Their
rage was beyond description. On the 13th of March Sir John Parnell
declared that this measure had been effected by the most unexampled
corruption, and moved for an Address to his Majesty, imploring him to
dissolve this Parliament, and present the question to be decided by
a new one. But the Solicitor-General declared that this motion was
"unfurling the bloody flag of rebellion;" and Mr. Egan replied that the
Solicitor-General and other members of the administration had already
"unfurled the flag of prostitution and corruption." But the measure
was now passed, and that by the same Parliament which, only a year
before, had rejected the proposition _in toto_. But what were the means
employed by the British Government to produce this change? The answer
is simple; a million and a quarter was devoted to the compensation
of borough owners, lawyers who hoped to improve their prospects by
entering the House, and the Dublin tradesmen.

The names and prices of all the purchased members of the Irish
Parliament were preserved in the Irish Black and Red lists. A selection
of a few of them will interest the reader:--

    J. Bingham, created Lord Clanmorris; £8,000 for two seats, and
    £15,000 compensation for Tuam. Had first offered himself for sale
    to the anti-Unionists.

    Joseph H. Blake, created Lord Wallscourt.

    Sir J. G. Blackwood, created Lord Dufferin.

    Sir John Blaquiere, created Lord de Blaquiere, with offices and
    pensions.

    Lord Boyle, son of Lord Shannon, father and son received each
    £15,000 for their boroughs.

    Charles H. Coote, created Lord Castlecoote, with a regiment,
    patronage in Queen's County, and £7,500 in cash.

    James Cuffe; his father made Lord Tyrawley.

    Lord Fitzgerald, a pension and peerage.

    Luke Fox, made judge of Common Pleas.

    William Fortescue, a pension of £3,000 a year.

    J. Galbraith, a baronetage.

    Richard Hare, made Lord Ennismore, with patronage.

    Colonel B. Heneker, a regiment, and £3,500 a-year for his seat.

    Hon. J. Hutchinson, made Lord Hutchinson, and a general.

    Hugh Howard, made Postmaster-General.

    William Handcock, an extraordinary instance. He made and sang songs
    against the Union, in 1799, at a public dinner, and made and sang
    songs for it in 1800; for which he was made Lord Castlemaine.

    W. G. Joscelyn, promotion in the army, and his brother made Bishop
    of Lismore.

    William Johnson, according to his own statement, "returned to
    Parliament by Lord Castlereagh, to put an end to it;" a judgeship.

    Rt. Hon. Sir H. Langrishe, £15,000 for his patronage of
    Knocktopher, and a commissionership of revenue.

    T. Lingray, £1,500, and a commissionership of stamps.

    T. Lingray, junior, £1,500, and made usher at the Castle.

    J. Longfield, made Lord Longville.

    Lord Loftus, £30,000 for boroughs, and made an English marquis.

    H. D. Massey, £4,000 in cash.

    Rt. Hon. Lodge Morris, made a peer.

    Sir R. Musgrove, made receiver of customs, with £1,200 a year.

    James M'Cleland, made Baron of Exchequer.

    Sir W. G. Newcomen, a peerage for his wife, etc.

    H. F. Prittle, made Lord Dunally.

    Sir Richard Quin, made a peer.

    The Hon. H. Skeffington, made clerk of Paper Office at the Castle,
    with £7,500 for his patronage.

    H. M. Sandford, made Lord Mount Sandford.

    John Stewart, made Attorney-General and a baronet.

Hon. B. Stratford, £7,500, as half compensation for Baltinglass.

Hon. J. Stratford, £7,500 for the other half of Baltinglass, and
paymaster of foreign troops, with £1,300 a year.

Rt. Hon. J. Toler, a peerage and chief justiceship.

Hon. R. Trench, made a peer and ambassador.

This is a mere fragment of a list of a hundred and forty persons thus
bought up. Amongst the most prominent pickings were those of--

    Lord Shannon, for his patronage in the Commons  £45,000
    The Marquis of Ely        "               "      45,000
    Lord Clanmorris           "               "      45,000
    Lord Belvidere            "               "      45,000
    Sir Hercules Langrishe    "               "      45,000

Then follows a long list of lawyers. We may select a few of the most
lavishly paid:--

    Mr. Charles Osborne, made judge of the King's Bench            £3,300
    Mr. St. John Daly, ditto                                        3,300
    Mr. Williams, made Baron of the Exchequer                       3,300
    Mr. M'Cleland, ditto                                            3,300
    Mr. Robert Johnson, made judge of Common Pleas                  3,300
    Mr. William Johnson, ditto                                      3,300
    Mr. Torres, ditto                                               3,300
    Mr. Vandeleur, made judge of Queen's Bench                      3,300
    Mr. Charles Ormsby, counsel to commissioners, value             5,000
    Mr. Henry Deane Grady, ditto ditto                              5,000
    Mr. Jemison, as commissioner for distributing a million and a
        half of this compensation money!                            1,200

Besides this, there remains a number of other lawyers, amounting, in
the whole, to thirty-four, bought up at from four and five hundred to
six and eight hundred a year.

Such were the means by which the union of Ireland with Great Britain
was accomplished, and it would be idle to argue that a majority in
the Irish Parliament was not purchased by places, pensions, peerages,
and compensation for suppressed seats. But it was a bargain, made
above-board, and in the open market. It was, moreover, in agreement
with the sentiment of the age, a borough-owner was thought to have a
right "to do what he willed with his own," and Pitt, in one of his own
Reform bills, had acted on the theory that boroughs were a species of
property. Lord Cornwallis, though he acknowledged that he was engaged
in dirty work, declared that the union was imperatively necessary, and
could be accomplished only by those means. The Irish Parliament was
profoundly corrupt, and from no point of view could its extinction be
regretted, but that extinction could be accomplished only by further
corruption. Nor is there any proof that the Irish nation as a whole
were opposed to the union. It was, of course, hard on a pure patriot
like Grattan to be involved in the fate of a corrupt gang of placemen,
but, as a Protestant, he only represented the minority. The Catholics
were either indifferent, with the indifference resulting from long
oppression, or in favour of the measure. They knew that from the Irish
Parliament it had become, since the Rebellion, hopeless to expect
Catholic emancipation; they believed the assurances of Pitt that a
measure for their relief would speedily be introduced in the British
Parliament. Had he been able to fulfil his promise, the Union would
have been--to use Macaulay's familiar phrase--a Union indeed.

The British Parliament accepted the measure without much debate,
regarding it as a simple case of necessity. It passed the House of
Lords with only three non-contents--Lords Derby, King, and Holland. In
the Commons it was passed by a majority of two hundred and thirty-six
against thirty. Mr. Grey moved an amendment, praying his Majesty to
suspend the question till the sentiments of the Irish people at large
could be ascertained regarding this measure. He said that twenty-seven
counties had petitioned against the measure; that seven hundred and
seven thousand persons had petitioned against it, and only three
thousand for it. But this amendment was swept away by a vast majority;
the Act was passed, and received the royal assent on the 2nd of July.
This and the vote of the necessary moneys being the great business of
the Session, Parliament was prorogued on the 29th of the same month.

Napoleon Buonaparte, who had appeared so anxious for peace with
Britain, was, in truth, greatly rejoiced at the rejection of his
proposals, for it furnished him with the pleas which he desired,
for the still more extended schemes of military ambition that he
entertained. He issued a proclamation complaining of the obstinate
hostility of Britain, and called on the people to furnish men and arms
to conquer peace by force. Having placed Moreau at the head of the
army on the Rhine, Buonaparte prepared for his favourite project of
reconquering Italy. He had judged right in sending Moreau to Germany,
who took care to prevent the Austrians from sending reinforcements to
Italy to increase Buonaparte's difficulties; and another circumstance,
most auspicious to the Chief Consul, was the fact that Paul of Russia,
offended at the Austrians for not better supporting his generals,
Korsakoff and Suvaroff, had withdrawn his army from the campaign.
The Austrians, under Mélas, in the north of Italy, amounted to one
hundred and forty thousand men. They had spent the winter on the plains
of Piedmont, and contemplated, in the spring, reducing Genoa, by
assistance from the British fleet, and then, penetrating into Provence,
to join the Royalists there, ready to take arms under Generals Willot
and Pichegru. Massena, freed by the retreat of the Russians from his
confinement at Zurich, lay, with an army of forty thousand, between
Genoa and the Var; but his troops had suffered great distress from
want of provisions, and whole regiments had abandoned their posts,
and, with drums beating and colours flying, had marched back into
France. Buonaparte first arrested their desertion by several stirring
appeals to the soldiers, and then prepared to march with a strong
army of reserve through the Alps, and to take Mélas unexpectedly in
the rear. To effect this it was necessary to deceive the Austrians
as to his intentions; and for this purpose he assembled a pretended
army of reserve at Dijon, as if meaning to obstruct the march of the
Austrians southward. To favour the delusion, Buonaparte went to Dijon,
and reviewed the pretended army of reserve with much display, he then
got quietly away to Lausanne, and pushed across the Great St. Bernard,
amidst incredible difficulties.

Mélas, who had been besieging Genoa, had left part of his army to
reduce that city, defended by a strong French division under Massena
and Soult, and advanced to Nice, which he had entered, and was
contemplating his descent on Provence, when the news of Buonaparte's
entrance of Piedmont reached him. He directed his march now to meet
him. In the meantime, Massena and Soult, worn out by famine, the
fort being blockaded by Admiral Lord Keith, had surrendered Genoa to
General Otto, whom Mélas had ordered to raise the siege and join him.
Mélas summoned his scattered forces to make head against Buonaparte,
and was himself pursued from the neighbourhood of Nice by Suchet.
Buonaparte deceived Mélas by false movements, making him imagine that
his object was Turin, and so entered Milan in triumph on the 2nd of
June. After various encounters and manœuvres between Buonaparte and
Mélas, the First Consul crossed the Po at Piacenza, drove back the
advanced guard of the Austrians, and took up a position on the plains
of Marengo, on the right bank of the little stream, the Bormida, and
opposite to Alessandria, where Mélas was lying. The next day--the
14th of June--Mélas drew out his forces, and attacked the French
with great spirit. The Austrians amounted to about forty thousand,
including a fine body of cavalry, for which the ground was highly
favourable; the French were not more than thirty thousand, posted
strongly in and around the village of Marengo, in three divisions,
each stationed about a quarter of a mile behind the other. After two
or three attempts the Austrians drove the French out of the village
of Marengo, threw the second division, commanded by Lannes, into
confusion, and put to rout the left wing of Buonaparte's own division,
threw his centre into disorder, and compelled him to retreat as far as
St. Juliano. The whole tide of battle was running against Buonaparte,
and a short time must have completed his rout, when the strength of
the old general, Mélas--more than eighty years of age--gave way, for
he had been many hours on horseback. He retired from the field quite
secure of the victory, and left General Zach to finish it. But, at
this moment, General Desaix, who had lately arrived from Egypt, and
had been sent by Buonaparte to make a diversion at Rivolta, came back
with his detachment of twenty thousand men. Kellermann, also, who was
posted in the rear with a body of reserve, marched up at the same
time. A new and desperate charge was made on the fatigued Austrians,
and they were broken and put to the rout. They retreated across the
Bormida, towards Alessandria, in a panic, the horse galloping over the
infantry. Mélas, dispirited by his defeat, but more by his age, gave up
the struggle and on the 16th of June concluded an armistice, resigning
not only Alessandria, where he might have stood a longer siege, but
Genoa, which had just surrendered to the Austrians, and all the Genoese
territory, agreeing to retire behind the line of Mantua and the Mincio,
and leaving to the French all Lombardy as far as the Oglio. The French
themselves could scarcely believe the reality of such a surrender.

[Illustration: GENOA.]

During this brilliant campaign in Italy, Moreau, in Germany, had
beaten General Kray in several engagements, advanced to Ulm, and
there, crossing the Danube, had overrun a great part of Bavaria, and
had made himself master of Munich and menaced Vienna. On hearing of
the armistice in Italy, the Emperor demanded one for Austria, to
continue till September; and Buonaparte, seeing that the Czar Paul
had ceased to support Austria, recommended the Emperor to make peace
with France. The Emperor required that Britain should be included
in it. But Napoleon demanded a separate negotiation, which Austria
was afraid to grant. No sooner was this answer received in Paris than
Buonaparte gave the word for renewed and vigorous action, both in
Italy and Germany. Moreau advanced by Salzburg towards Vienna, whilst
Brune drove the Austrians from the Mincio, and over the Adige and the
Brenta to the very vicinity of Venice, whilst Macdonald occupied the
passes of the Tyrol, ready to march to the support of the army either
in Italy or Germany. The Archduke John met Moreau near Haag, and for a
moment worsted him; but on the 2nd of December the two armies came to
a general engagement at Hohenlinden, between the rivers Iser and Inn,
in which the Austrians were routed, with a loss of ten thousand men.
Moreau advanced and occupied Salzburg, and trembling for the safety
of Vienna itself, the Emperor hastened to make peace. An armistice
was signed on the 25th of December, and the treaty was concluded
at Lunéville on the 9th of February, 1801. By this treaty all the
conditions of the Treaty of Campo Formio were renewed, and the frontier
of the Rhine was again ceded to France.

In Britain there were terrible outcries in consequence of the scarcity
of bread. There were rioting and plundering of corn-factors' and
bakers' shops, and Government passed a number of Acts giving premiums
on the importation of grain, and forbidding the making of any but
mixed and coarse breads. Had not large subscriptions been raised, and
private benevolence been called forth to an immense extent for the
relief of the distress, the consequences would have been more terrible.
Pitt was in favour of remedial legislation, but Grenville was against
interfering with the laws of supply and demand.

On the 22nd of January, 1801, the first Imperial Parliament met,
and Addington was re-elected Speaker. The king did not meet this
Parliament till the whole of its members had been sworn; his opening
of it for business took place on the 2nd of February, and his speech
had no cheering topics to give spirit to its first proceedings; on the
Continent there had been nothing but defeat on the part of the Allies,
of triumph on that of France. Our late ally, Paul, had not only seized
our merchant vessels in the ports of the Baltic, and the property of
our merchants in the Russian towns, but he had entered into a league
with Sweden and Denmark to close the Baltic altogether to us, and to
compel us to relinquish the right of search. This confederacy, by
stopping the supplies of corn from the North, threatened us with great
aggravation of the distresses at home; and some members advocated the
surrender of the right of search, or the acceptance of the principles
of an armed neutrality, such as Catherine of Russia had endeavoured
to establish. But Pitt plainly showed that to allow neutral vessels
to carry arms, ammunition, and commodities of life into the ports
of our enemies would render all blockades of their forts useless,
and enormously increase our difficulties during war. Orders were
immediately issued to send a powerful fleet into the Baltic to chastise
the insane Czar.

But there was another topic started in this first Imperial Parliament
which was as odious to George III. as the perfidious conduct of his
late Russian ally. As one means of bringing about the union with
Ireland, Pitt held out to the Irish Catholics the argument that by
having Irishmen in the united Parliament they would be most likely
to obtain a repeal of the Catholic disabilities. Both he and Lord
Cornwallis had sent circulars to this effect, anonymous, it is true,
but with a secret avowal of their authorship, amongst the leading
Catholics, which had a great effect in procuring their assent to the
Union. Lord Castlereagh, who as Secretary of State for Ireland had
helped to carry the Union, claimed the redemption of this pledge.
The matter was talked over in the Cabinet during the autumn of 1799,
and again in September, 1800. Pitt introduced the subject about the
middle of January in the Privy Council. But in the interval the
Chancellor, Lord Loughborough, had betrayed the plan to the king, and
in conjunction with Lord Auckland had convinced his Majesty that it
would involve a violation of the Coronation Oath. George was indignant,
and almost furious. At the levee on the 28th of January, when Lord
Castlereagh was presented, he said to Dundas, "What is this which this
young lord [Castlereagh] has brought over to fling at my head?" He
alluded to a plan for Catholic emancipation, and added, "I shall reckon
every man my personal enemy who proposes any such measure! This is
the most jacobinical thing I ever heard of." Dundas replied that his
Majesty would find amongst those friendly to the measure some whom he
had never supposed to be his enemies. On the 31st of January Pitt wrote
to the king, assuring him that the union with Ireland would render it
absolutely necessary that important questions regarding the Catholics
and Dissenters should be discussed; but, as he found how extremely
such topics were disliked by his Majesty, and yet how just it was
that Catholics should be admitted to Parliament as well as Protestant
Dissenters, who were already admitted, he begged to be permitted to
resign. At the same time, not to inconvenience his Majesty, he was
willing to hold office till his Majesty had reconstructed a Cabinet
wholly to his mind. George replied, the very next day, that Mr. Pitt's
letter had occasioned him the liveliest concern; that, so far from
exposing him to the agitation of this question, he had flattered
himself that the Union, by uniting the Protestants of both kingdoms,
would for ever have excluded the question of Catholic emancipation.
He expressed his ardent wish that Pitt should continue to be his
Minister as long as he lived; and he only required, as a condition,
that he should stave off this question. Pitt replied, on the 3rd of
February, that his Majesty's determined tone on the subject of Catholic
emancipation left him no alternative but to resign, in compliance
with his duty; and that, as his Majesty's resolve was taken, it
would certainly be best for the country that his retirement should
be as early as possible. On the 5th the king wrote, accepting Pitt's
resignation, though with expressions of deep regret.

Five days after this, February 10th, the matter was made public by Lord
Darnley rising in the Upper House, and moving for an inquiry into the
conduct of the Ministry. This roused up Lord Grenville, who candidly
avowed that, in consequence of their failure to introduce the question
of Catholic emancipation, the Ministers had resigned and only held
office till a new Cabinet was formed. On this, Lord Darnley postponed
his motion. On the same day, in the Commons, a letter from Addington,
the Speaker, was read, announcing his resignation of the Speakership
in consequence of the king's proposal to nominate him to a situation
incompatible with that post. Pitt then rose and confirmed this, and
proposed an adjournment till the next day in order to prepare for
the nomination of the new Speaker. The House adjourned accordingly,
and next day, the 11th of February, elected Sir John Mitford, the
Attorney-General, as Speaker. Before the House could resume business,
it was announced that the king was ill--confined to the house by a
severe cold; but it was soon known that it was a return of his old
malady, lunacy, in consequence of his extreme agitation on the proposal
of the Catholic question and the resignation of Pitt. The report was
soon augmented into the startling rumour that the king was dangerously
ill, and that a regency must take place--if not superseded by his
death. At this news Fox, who had for some time absented himself from
Parliament, on the plea that all endeavours to carry sound and prudent
measures were hopeless with Pitt's great martial majority, hastened up
to town from St. Anne's Hill; and the Whig body was in a flutter of
expectation that he would soon be the Minister of the prince regent,
or of George IV. But all these hopes were speedily overthrown by the
news of the rapid improvement of the king, and on the 12th of March
the royal physicians announced him perfectly recovered. He attributed
his illness to Pitt's conduct, and the ex-Premier thereupon wrote and
promised never to re-open the question again.

The new Ministry consisted of Addington, son of Chatham's old
physician, Dr. Addington, as First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor
of the Exchequer: the Duke of Portland, President of the Council; Lord
Eldon, Chancellor; Earl St. Vincent, First Lord of the Admiralty; the
Earl of Chatham, Master-General of the Ordnance; Lord Pelham, Secretary
of the Home Department; Lord Hawkesbury, the eldest son of the Earl of
Liverpool, Secretary for Foreign Affairs; Lord Hobart, Secretary for
the Colonies. Several of Pitt's Ministers remained, but the important
members, Grenville, Dundas, Woodham and Spencer retired with him.
It was soon seen, however, that though Pitt was out of office his
principles dominated in it, and that there was no chance of a change of
system. The Cabinet was one of mediocrities, and was probably regarded
by Pitt as a convenient makeshift until he could return to power.

[Illustration: NELSON AT THE BATTLE OF COPENHAGEN. (_See p._ 481.)]

But long before this--as early, indeed, as the 15th of April--news
had reached London of the death of the erratic Emperor Paul, and of
the bombardment of Copenhagen by the British fleet. Paul had been won
over by Buonaparte to his views, and had been flattered by him by
being elected--though irregularly and illegally--Grand-Master of the
Knights of Malta. He had been persuaded that the conquest of Malta
by the British was an invasion of his rights, and by these and other
flatteries Buonaparte had influenced his weak mind to become the
agent of his plans in destroying the British ships in the Baltic, and
in closing that sea to British commerce. Paul pretended that we had
captured Danish convoys, these same convoys being engaged in guarding
vessels loaded with materials of war for France, and that thus the
independence of the North was menaced by us. On this ground, and on
that of the invasion of Malta, he immediately laid an embargo on all
British vessels in Russian ports, and as two vessels in the harbour
of Narva resisted the attempts to seize them, in consequence of the
embargo, he ordered all the British vessels in that port to be burned.
In consequence of this sudden and unwarrantable order, contrary to all
the laws of nations, about three hundred British vessels were seized,
and the officers and crews dragged on shore, put into irons, and sent
up the country under menaces of Siberia. Paul next ordered all property
of Englishmen in Russia to be seized and sold. Denmark--with whom we
had various rencontres, on account of its men-of-war convoying vessels
laden with stores for French ports--soon joined Russia. We sent Lord
Whitworth to Copenhagen to endeavour to come to some understanding on
these matters in 1800, but though a convention was signed, it was not
satisfactory. Sweden followed the example of Denmark, and the three
Northern Powers entered into a treaty of armed neutrality to resist our
search of their vessels in any circumstances. As the consequence of
this policy would be to shut us out of all trade with the ports of the
Baltic, it was resolved to send a fleet to chastise these Powers and
break up their co-operation with France. Mr. Vansittart was despatched
to Copenhagen, accompanied by a fleet of eighteen sail of the line,
with several frigates and smaller vessels, under command of Admiral
Sir Hyde Parker, with Vice-Admiral Nelson as second. The fleet left
the Yarmouth Roads on the 12th of March, 1801, and arriving at the
mouth of the Sound, Nelson recommended that they should sail directly
up to Copenhagen, and be prepared, on the refusal of our proposals, to
bombard the place, as this would not allow them time to get ready their
batteries, and thus do all the more damage to our ships and men. But
this was deemed too offensive before any attempt at negotiation, and
accordingly Mr. Vansittart was sent forward in a frigate with a flag
of truce, leaving the fleet at the Scaw. He returned without effecting
anything more than what Nelson anticipated. Sir Hyde Parker wasted time
in making the needless inquiry by a flag of truce of the Governor
of Elsinore, whether the passage of the Sound would be disputed, who
replied that it would. It was then proposed to enter by the Belt.
Nelson said:--"Let it be by the Sound, or the Belt, or anyhow--only
don't let us lose an hour."

[Illustration: COPENHAGEN.]

On the 30th of March the British cast anchor before Copenhagen, between
it and the island of Huen. On reconnoitring, the defences of the place
were found to be very formidable. Nelson was appointed to make the
attack with twelve line-of-battle ships, and some smaller craft. He
had asked for ten. The next morning--the 2nd of April--the wind was
favourable, and Nelson weighed and drew nearer to the town--Sir Hyde
Parker on the outside threatening the batteries and vessels at the
mouth of the harbour. At ten o'clock the firing commenced, and at
eleven it was general. Three of the British vessels--the _Agamemnon_,
the _Bellona_, and the _Russell_--stuck fast on the shoal. For three
hours the battle raged fiercely, for the Danes fought with their
well-known valour. It was necessary for Nelson to silence or destroy
the floating batteries and gunboats before he could come at the ships
of the line and the great land batteries. He had ordered five hundred
seamen, under the Hon. Colonel Stuart and Captain Freemantle to storm
the Kroner Battery as soon as it was silenced; but at this moment Sir
Hyde Parker, seeing the signals of distress flying at the mast-heads
of the three vessels aground, and that three others, which he had sent
forward as a reinforcement, were making but slow way to the front,
signalled for the fleet to draw off, and cease the engagement. But
Nelson took no notice of the signal: he continued to walk the deck,
and asked if his signal for close action was still hoisted, and, being
told it was, said:--"Mind you keep it so." About half-past one o'clock
the fire of the Danes slackened, and by two it had nearly ceased. But
the vessels that had struck their flags recommenced firing on our boats
sent to take possession of them, and the fire of the batteries on land
and on Amager Island struck these surrendered vessels on one side,
and that of our ships on the other. To prevent the destruction of the
unhappy Danes placed in this fatal situation, Nelson sent on shore
Sir Frederick Thesiger with a flag of truce, and a letter to the Crown
Prince, entreating him to put an end to a contest that was uselessly
wasting the lives of the brave Danes. Within half an hour after
Thesiger's departure, the firing from the Kroner Battery ceased, and
Adjutant-General Lindholm came on board to learn the precise object of
Nelson's note. Nelson replied that his object was humanity. He demanded
that the action should cease, and that the wounded Danes should be
taken on shore; that then he would burn or carry away the surrendered
vessels, as he should think fit. It was agreed that the combat
should cease for twenty-four hours, during which negotiations should
be entered into. After five days' arduous discussion, an armistice
was concluded for fourteen weeks, during which the treaty of armed
neutrality with Russia was to be suspended. Nelson was to have full
liberty to purchase any necessaries for his fleet, in Copenhagen or
along the coast, and in case of renewal of hostilities all the Danish
prisoners were to be again surrendered.

The ships being got afloat again, on the 12th of April Parker sailed
away with the main body of the fleet, leaving the _St. George_ (with
Nelson) and a few other ships to repair their damages. Sir Hyde Parker
went in quest of the Swedish fleet, which consisted only of six ships,
and which had taken refuge behind the forts of Karlskrona. Parker sent
in a flag of truce, informing them of the armistice with Denmark, and
demanding an answer as to the intentions of Sweden. Gustavus, the
King of Sweden, hastened to Karlskrona, and on the 22nd informed the
English admiral that he was ready to treat with an envoy accredited to
the Northern Powers. Admiral Parker then proceeded towards the Gulf
of Finland to attack the Russian fleet, but was soon overtaken by a
dispatch boat from the Russian ambassador at Copenhagen, announcing
that the Emperor Paul had been murdered by his courtiers, and that his
son, Alexander, had accepted the proposals of Britain to treat. Parker
considered the news of Paul's death as tantamount to the conclusion
of peace, and proposed sailing down the Baltic again; but Nelson, who
had joined him at Karlskrona, thought very differently. He had blamed
Parker's slowness and easiness all through the affair of Copenhagen,
and he now wanted to push on to Revel, and destroy the Russian fleet
before the ice allowed it to retire into Cronstadt. Sir Hyde Parker
refused; and the fleet was on its way down the Baltic when an order
came recalling Parker and giving the command to Nelson. He immediately
put about and proceeded to Revel, but the thaw had allowed the Russian
fleet to get into Cronstadt. Nelson, however, opened communications
with the Emperor Alexander, and proposed to land and terminate a
convention with him at once. Alexander, not liking to have Nelson's
fleet too near, declined the proposal in terms of courtesy, and Nelson
took his leave in no complimentary mood. The emperor thought it best
to send after him Admiral Tchitchagoff, to assure him that Alexander
regretted that any misunderstanding had ever taken place between Russia
and Britain; that all the British subjects seized by Paul should be
immediately liberated, all their property restored, and that the Czar
would be glad to see Nelson at St. Petersburg in any style which he
liked to assume. But Nelson had now resolved to return at once to
Britain, his shattered health ill bearing the severity of the northern
climate; nor was his presence necessary, for on the 17th of June, two
days before Nelson went on board the brig which took him to Britain,
Lord St. Helens, who had proceeded to St. Petersburg as ambassador, had
signed a convention, by which all subjects of dispute between the two
countries were ended. Denmark and Sweden came into the convention as a
matter of course.

General Kleber, whom Buonaparte had left in command of the Egyptian
army, was an excellent officer, and he had improved the condition of
the forces there. Instead of the French army in Egypt being weaker
than when Buonaparte left it, it was much stronger. In 1800 Kleber was
attacked at the fort of El Arish, in the Desert, by a strong Turkish
force, supported by the British squadron under Sir Sidney Smith. Being
defeated, he agreed to a convention, by which he promised to evacuate
Egypt, on condition of his army being allowed to return unmolested to
Europe; but no sooner were these terms communicated to the British
Government than they disavowed them, declaring that Sir Sidney had no
authority to propose them. Kleber, therefore, resumed hostilities and
returned towards Cairo; but being attacked by the Turks, he fought and
routed them with great slaughter, on the 20th of March, 1800, near
the ruins of the ancient city of Heliopolis. The Moslems of Cairo,
encouraged by Murad Bey, who still hovered about with his Mameluke
cavalry, rose on the French there, and massacred such as could not
escape into the citadel. Kleber hastened to Cairo, relieved the forces
in the citadel, and entered into a truce with Murad Bey, but whilst
thus busily engaged he was assassinated by an Arab, who declared
he was commissioned by Allah to free the country of the infidels.
The command was taken by Menou, whose administration of the army and
general affairs was far inferior to that of Kleber. At the time that
matters were changing thus for the worse, amongst the French, Dundas,
now Lord Melville, urged upon Ministers the good policy of sending an
army to Egypt and compelling the surrender of the French. He contended
that, whilst one army was sent from Britain, another should be
brought across the Persian Gulf from India, and success made certain.
The plan was much too bold, even for Pitt; and the king opposed it
energetically, as "a dangerous expedition against a distant province."
But the danger of having this French army transferred to Europe at some
critical moment--as it would have been had the Convention of El Arish
been carried out, by which these twenty thousand seasoned men could
have been landed in Italy to act against Suvaroff--at length brought
the British Ministry to dare the attempt.

On the 8th of March, 1801, General Sir Ralph Abercromby landed in
Egypt, where Nelson had fought the battle of Aboukir. Menou brought
down against the British twelve or fourteen thousand men, including
a fine body of cavalry. Sir Ralph Abercromby landed only about ten
thousand in effective order, but these were men full of ardour and
disciplined to perfection. On the 8th of March they landed in face of
the French, five thousand being put on shore at once, these returning
no single shot whilst in the boats, though assailed by fifteen pieces
of artillery from the opposite hill, and by grape-shot from Aboukir
Castle. They were led on by General (afterwards Sir John) Moore; and
running, or climbing on hands and knees, up the steep sand-hills,
they drove the French from their cannon, and seized them. The French
retreated, and posted themselves on some heights between Aboukir and
Alexandria. On the 19th, having compelled Fort Aboukir to surrender,
General Abercromby advanced, and found Menou had concentrated all his
forces between them and Alexandria. On the 21st of March a general
engagement took place. It commenced as early as three o'clock in the
morning, whilst quite dark, by an attack on the British left, which
was meant to draw all attention to that quarter, then a desperate
charge was made on the right by the main body of the French cavalry,
which hoped to get into the rear of the British infantry; but the
attempted surprise failed: the French were driven back with great
loss. As the day dawned the battle became general, and the French found
themselves opposed not only by accustomed British doggedness, but by a
precision of fire and an adroitness of manœuvre which astonished them.
By ten o'clock the French were in full flight for Alexandria, leaving
seventeen hundred men on the field. The loss of the British was stated
at fourteen hundred killed and wounded; and, unfortunately, the brave
Abercromby was killed. To complete the success, the Capitan Pacha's
fleet in a few days brought a Turkish army of between five and six
thousand men, and the Grand Vizier, posted at El Arish, began to march
towards Cairo. General Hutchinson, now chief in command of the British
army, hastened to join the Grand Vizier; but before he could accomplish
this, he had to drive four thousand French from a fortified camp at
Ramaneeh, and meanwhile five thousand French rushed out of Cairo and
attacked the Grand Vizier. On the 27th of June Cairo capitulated,
General Belliard obtaining the condition that his troops should be
conveyed to the ports of France on the Mediterranean with their arms
and baggage; yet they left behind them three hundred and thirteen heavy
cannon and one hundred thousand pounds of gunpowder. On the 8th of June
General Baird had landed at Cosseir on the Red Sea with his Indian
army, and was marching through the burning desert for Cairo. Menou,
cooped up at Alexandria, found it useless to contend further and,
before Baird could join the main army, capitulated on the same terms
as Belliard, and the Egyptian campaign was at an end. The news of the
French expulsion reached France sooner than it did England, and created
a strong sensation.

[Illustration: SIR RALPH ABERCROMBY. (_After the Portrait by J.
Hoppner, R.A._)]

Britain was everywhere successful on the sea, and Lord Nelson, on
the 1st of August, made an attempt on the French flotilla lying at
Boulogne for the invasion of England. He was furnished with a flotilla
of gunboats for the purpose, and he was able to destroy two floating
batteries and a few gunboats, but found the fleet too strongly posted
under the batteries of the harbour to make further impression. However,
Napoleon saw that for the present an invasion was out of the question,
and the autumn of this year was employed in endeavours to arrange a
peace. Lord Cornwallis proceeded to Paris for this object, and went
to Amiens, which was appointed as the place for the conference. The
preliminaries were signed on the 1st of October, and General Lauriston,
the schoolfellow and first aide-de-camp of Buonaparte, brought them
over to London. The negotiations progressed slowly, being arrested
now and then by the conduct of the First Consul. Without waiting for
the ratification of peace, he sent off, on the 14th of December, 1801,
only ten days after the signing of the preliminaries, a strong fleet
and army to the West Indies to reduce the independent black Republic
in St. Domingo. Britain was obliged to send reinforcements to her own
West Indian fleet by Admiral Martin--so that it looked much more like
war than peace. Again, in January, 1802, came the news of the election
of Buonaparte to the Presidency of the Cisalpine Republic, directly
contrary to the Treaty of Lunéville, and betraying the ambitious aims
of Napoleon. Immediately followed the news that Buonaparte had exacted
from Spain a treaty by which Parma and the island of Elba were made
over to France on the death of the present, already aged, duke; that
Spain had been compelled to cede part of the province of Louisiana
in North America, by the same treaty; and that Portugal, though the
integrity of her dominions had been carefully guaranteed by the
preliminaries of peace, had by a secret article given up to France her
province of Guiana. A Republican constitution was forced on Holland,
and in Switzerland instructions were given to the French Minister to
thwart all efforts at the formation of a stable constitution. These
revelations startled the British Ministers, but did not deter them
from concluding the peace, with the full approbation of Pitt. It was
not that the First Consul, who every day betrayed some fresh symptom
of an insatiable ambition, was disposed to offer them tempting terms;
on the contrary, though we were never more able to dictate measures
at sea, and he never less so, he was as haughty and dictatorial in his
demands as if Great Britain had been completely under his feet. Yet
the treaty went on, and was concluded and signed on the 27th of March,
1802. It settled nothing, as Britain refused to acknowledge the newly
organised Republics, and declined to entertain Napoleon's preposterous
suggestion that Malta was to be occupied by Neapolitan troops, under a
neutrality guaranteed by all the chief European Powers; since it was
well known that Napoleon, when it suited him, would cease to respect
the conditions, and would readily dispossess the troops of Naples.
Though Pitt believed him to have been sincere, Grenville, Windham, and
Spencer saw that the ambition of the "Little Corporal" was insatiable,
and denounced the treaty.




CHAPTER XVIII.

REIGN OF GEORGE III. (_continued_).

    Napoleon's Plans of Conquest--Sebastiani's Report--Napoleon's
    Complaints against the British Press--Espionage and
    Confiscation--He continues his Continental Aggressions--Napoleon's
    Interview with Lord Whitworth--Imminence of War--Negotiations for
    Pitt's Return to Office--War Declared--Napoleon Arrests British
    subjects in France--Seizure of Hanover--Emmett's Rebellion--Naval
    Attacks on the French Coast--The Mahratta War--Battle of
    Assaye--Successes of General Lake--Battle of Laswaree--Battle
    of Argaum--Conclusion of the War--Renewed Illness of George
    III.--Increasing Opposition of Pitt--He offers to undertake the
    Government--He forms a Tory Ministry--Wilberforce's Abolition
    Motion--The Additional Force Bill--Scheme for blowing up the
    French Fleet--War with Spain--The Georges Conspiracy--Murder
    of the Duke D'Enghien--Napoleon becomes Emperor--His
    Letter to the British King--The Condition of Europe--Lord
    Mulgrave's Reply to the Letter--Ministerial Changes--Weakness
    of the Ministry--Attack on Lord Melville--Whitbread's
    Motion--Melville's Defence--His Impeachment voted--Secession of
    Lord Sidmouth--The European Coalition--Hastened by Napoleon's
    Aggressions--Rashness of Austria--Invasion of Bavaria--Napoleon
    marches on the Rhine--Capitulation of the Austrian Army at
    Ulm--Occupation of Vienna--Battle of Austerlitz--Treaties of
    Schönbrunn and Pressburg--The Baltic Expedition--Expedition to
    Naples--Naval Affairs--Nelson's Pursuit of Villeneuve--Calder's
    Engagement--Battle of Trafalgar--Death of Nelson--Continuation
    of the Mahratta War--Lord Lake's Engagements with Holkar--Siege
    of Bhurtpore--Defeat of Meer Khan--The Rajah of Bhurtpore makes
    Peace--Treaties with Scindiah and Holkar--Death of Pitt--Payment of
    his Debts by the Nation.


The Peace of Amiens, instead of turning the attention of Buonaparte
to internal improvements, seemed to give it opportunity to range, in
imagination, over the whole world with schemes of conquest and of the
suppression of British dominion. There was no spot, however remote,
that he did not examine on the map with reference to plans of conquest.
Louisiana and Guiana, obtained from Spain and Portugal, were viewed
as ports whence conquest should advance to Nova Scotia, Canada, the
Brazils, Mexico, and Peru. Every station in the West India Isles was
calculated as a point for this purpose, and for seizing some day all
the British islands there. The Cape of Good Hope, Madagascar, the isles
of France and Bourbon, the Dutch spice isles, and their settlements
in Java, Sumatra, etc., were regarded as a chain of ports which would
enable Buonaparte to become master of India. He sent out expeditions,
under different officers, to examine every island and region where the
British had a settlement, or where he might plant one, to oppose them.
One of these expeditions sailed in a couple of corvettes, commanded
by Captain Baudin, who was accompanied by a staff of thirty-three
naturalists, geologists, _savants_, etc., the ostensible object being
science and discovery--the real one the ascertaining of the exact
possessions of Britain, and of the best means of becoming master of
them. The head of the scientific staff was M. Péron. On their return
their report was published, and it is singular that in this report
St. Helena, destined to be the prison of Napoleon, is described in
rapturous terms as an earthly paradise.

Another expedition was that of Colonel Sebastiani, a Corsican, who
was despatched to Egypt, Syria, and other countries of the Levant.
Sebastiani reported to Buonaparte that the British were so detested
in Egypt that six thousand men would suffice to re-take it; that
Buonaparte's name was so venerated that it had procured him the utmost
honour everywhere, and especially with Djezzar Pacha, Viceroy of Egypt.
He asserted that General Stuart, the British envoy, had endeavoured to
excite the Turks to assassinate him. He harangued the natives in the
Ionian Isles, and assured them of the protection of Buonaparte, and
besides many calumnies against the British officers, he told Napoleon
that so hateful was the British rule that both Greeks and Venetians in
those islands were ready to rise against them at the first word from
France. On the appearance of this base report, our ambassador at Paris
made a strong remonstrance; but Napoleon only replied by complaining
of the late account of the campaign in Egypt by Sir Robert Wilson, in
which he had detailed the butchery of the Turks and Arnauts at Jaffa,
and Napoleon's command to poison his own wounded on the retreat from
Acre. Through M. Otto, the French envoy in London, Napoleon demanded
that statements injurious to his character made by the British press
should be stopped by Government, that all French emigrants should be
expelled from England, that Georges Cadoudal should be transported to
Canada, and such princes of the House of Bourbon as remained there
should be advised to repair to Warsaw, where the head of their house
now resided. To these peremptory demands the British Government,
through Lord Hawkesbury, replied that his Britannic Majesty did not
possess the absolute power necessary for these acts, and that whilst
the statements charging upon a British Ambassador instigations to
murder were published in the _Moniteur_, the official organ of the
French Government, the statements by the British press were protected
by the freedom of that press guaranteed in Great Britain, which the
king was not disposed to invade, but from which any man, British or
foreign, might claim redress by an action at law. To show the First
Consul how this might be done, the British Government commenced an
action against M. Peltier, a French emigrant, for a libel on Napoleon
in a newspaper published by him in London, called the _Ambigu_. Peltier
was found guilty; but this by no means answered Buonaparte's object.
He wanted the accounts of his darkest actions suppressed by a power
above the law, not thus made more public by the action of the law. As
Sir Walter Scott has observed, he wanted darkness, and the British
Government gave him light.

The audacity of Buonaparte still further excited the indignation of the
British Government. Under the name of consuls, he sent over to England
and Ireland a number of military officers, whose real business was to
act as privileged spies, to prepare plans of all the chief ports,
with soundings, and an exact account of the winds with which vessels
could go out or come in with most ease, and also at what draught of
water the harbours might be entered by large vessels. These agents
had been instructed to maintain the utmost secrecy as to their real
objects, but they became known, and Ministers announced that any person
coming in such a character to this country should be ordered instantly
to quit it. Neither was the temper of the nation at all improved by
the irritating proceedings of the French authorities on the coasts of
France. A law had been passed by the Jacobins, in the most rabid time
of the Revolution, condemning any vessel under a hundred tons burden
found within four leagues of the French shores, having on board British
merchandise. It was taken for granted that this decree was virtually
annulled by the Peace of Amiens; but repeated seizures were now made
of British merchant vessels driven by stress of weather on the French
coasts, and the mere fact of having plates, knives, and forks for the
crew, of British make, was used as a plea for confiscation of ships.
It was in vain that remonstrances were made to the First Consul: they
passed without notice. Such a peace it was evident could not last long.
Napoleon was in a mood to brook no control from any quarter; he at this
time showed how completely he would crush any creature who offended him
when he had the power.

The Treaty of Amiens did not for a moment, even in appearance,
interrupt the unlimited plans of aggression which Buonaparte had
formed. Whether these plans tended to alarm Britain or not gave him no
concern whatever. The encroachments on Italy never paused. Before the
signing of the Peace of Amiens, Buonaparte had made himself President
of the Cisalpine Republic; and though he had pledged himself to
Alexander of Russia that he would not interfere further with Piedmont,
because Alexander would not entertain the scheme of co-operating with
France in the march to India, as his father had done, Buonaparte seized
on all Piedmont in September of this year, annexed it to France,
and divided it into six Departments. Charles Emmanuel, the King of
Piedmont, retired to his island of Sardinia, and then abdicated in
favour of his brother Victor Emmanuel. But Victor Emmanuel would not
have been left long king, even of that small territory, had it not
been for the protection of Britain. In October he annexed Parma and
Placentia. He next made an agreement with the King of Naples for Elba,
and took possession of it. Every movement of this restless being showed
his intention to drive Britain out of the Mediterranean, and convert it
into a French lake. But on the mainland he was equally active. There
was no country on the Continent in which Buonaparte did not presume
to dictate, as if he already were universal monarch. In the Diet of
Germany his influence was prominently conspicuous, and he prevailed to
have towns and districts transferred as he pleased. To have all the
territory on the left bank of the Rhine secured to France, Prussia
received valuable compensation at the expense of the German empire for
the cession of the Duchy of Cleves and other provinces transferred to
France. Bavaria and other minor States were benefited in the same way,
because Napoleon already meant to use these States against Austria and
Russia, as he afterwards did. Every endeavour was made, contrary to the
articles of the Peace of Amiens, to shut out the trade of Britain, not
only with France--as he had a right to do--but with Holland, Belgium,
and Germany. It was in vain that Britain remonstrated. Buonaparte,
through his official organ, the _Moniteur_, declared that "England
should have the Treaty of Amiens, the whole Treaty of Amiens, and
nothing but the Treaty of Amiens"; but he interpreted this treaty
to give every advantage to France to the exclusion of Britain. Half
Europe was closed to British trade. It was a condition of the Treaty
of Lunéville that the independence of Switzerland should be respected,
and this was guaranteed by the Batavian, Cisalpine, and Ligurian
Republics, as well as by France and Austria. But Buonaparte had already
absorbed all these republics into France, and Austria he set at
defiance. He had never withdrawn the French troops from Switzerland,
but whilst they remained French emissaries had continued to foment
the feuds between the people and the nobles, between one canton and
another. He now declared this state of things must end, and he assumed
the office of umpire, to settle the affairs of the Swiss for them.
He had no right to assume this office--if needed, it belonged to the
other Powers of Europe as well as France; but he knew that he had the
might--and he used it. At the end of September he sent General Rapp to
issue a manifesto announcing that Napoleon was determined to put an
end to all their differences. This manifesto was immediately followed
by the appearance of General Ney at the head of forty thousand men,
in addition to those already in the country. Thus Switzerland was
invaded, and its constitution trodden out by an armed occupation.
Buonaparte assumed the title of Mediator of the Helvetic League, and
dictated his own terms to the deputies of the French party who were
sent to Paris.

The king's speech at the opening of Parliament, and the martial tone
of the speeches by the members of both Houses, exceedingly exasperated
Napoleon; for though preparing for war he was scarcely ready, and meant
to have carried on the farce of peace a little longer. Talleyrand
demanded of Lord Whitworth the reason of this ebullition of the
British Parliament and of the Press. Lord Whitworth replied, as he had
done regarding the comments on the trial of Peltier, that it was the
direct result of the insulting articles in the _Moniteur_, which was
known to be the organ of the French Government; whereas, in Britain,
the Government had no direct control, either over the speeches in
Parliament or over the press. Talleyrand and Whitworth again discussed
all the vexed questions of the retention of Malta, the conduct of
Colonel Sebastiani in the East, the aggressions of Napoleon in Italy,
Germany, and Switzerland, in violation of the Treaty of Amiens; and
Lord Whitworth declared that all Britain wanted was, that the Treaty
should be faithfully carried out on both sides; that we were ready to
evacuate Malta, and recall our complaints, on that being done. But
this was what Napoleon was resolved never to do, and he therefore
resorted to the most extraordinary insults to the British Ambassador.
He requested Lord Whitworth to call at the Tuileries at nine o'clock
in the evening of the day on which he had had his conference with
Talleyrand. Napoleon had, by an assumption of extreme hauteur and
impetuosity, frightened the Austrian Ambassador at Campo Formio, and
he probably thought of frightening the British one; but Britain had
not been beaten like Austria, and such a proceeding could only enrage
the British people. In this interview, Buonaparte ran over, in a
rapid and excited harangue of two hours' length, scarcely permitting
Lord Whitworth to interpose a word of reply, all the alleged causes
of dissatisfaction with England; at one moment threatening to invade
it, if it cost him his life; at another, proposing that France and
England should unite to rule the Continent, and offering to share
with it all the benefits of such an alliance. Lord Whitworth replied,
as before, that the British Government desired nothing but the _bonâ
fide_ execution of the Treaty of Amiens, and could not for a moment
entertain such schemes of aggression and domination as the First Consul
proposed to her. He began to comment gravely on the aggressions in
Switzerland and Italy, but Buonaparte cut him short angrily, saying
those things were no business of his and that he had no right to
talk of them. There was a fresh interview with Talleyrand, and fresh
notes from him and Andreossi of the same character. A similar though
more violent scene occurred at a levee on the 13th of March, in which
Napoleon passionately accused Britain of driving France into war. A
shrewd observer, Madame de Rémusat, was of opinion that his rage was
simulated.

Everything in Parliament and in Ministerial movements now denoted the
near approach of the renewal of war. On the 8th of March a message was
received by both Houses of Parliament from his Majesty, stating that
great military preparations were going on in Holland and France, and
that his Majesty deemed it highly necessary to take measures for the
security of his dominions. It added that negotiations were going on
with France, the issue of which was uncertain, but it neither stated
what these negotiations were, nor the measures called for. The message
was taken for what it was--a note of war, and both in the Lords and
Commons strong expressions of defiance were used to France. This
seemed to have encouraged Ministers to a plainer expression of their
intentions, for only two days later another message came down, calling
for an increase of the navy. The next day, the 11th, the Commons formed
themselves into a committee, and voted an addition of ten thousand
seamen to the fifty thousand already voted. The militia were embodied.
Sheridan was very zealous for war; Ministers, however, professed to
desire the continuance of peace if possible.

There were rumours of negotiations going on for a return of Pitt to
power; but as Mr. Addington showed no disposition to resign altogether
in favour of Pitt, these came to nothing. Already in the previous
November Canning and Lord Malmesbury, two of Pitt's most zealous
supporters, had set on foot an address to Addington begging him to
resign. But this plan was abruptly stopped by Pitt himself, who felt
that he was to a certain extent the creator of the Ministry. Now
Addington made overtures to Pitt through Dundas, become Lord Melville.
But his propositions were absurd. He stipulated that Greville and
Windham, who had opposed the Peace of Amiens, should be excluded from
the arrangements. He also wished that Pitt's brother, Lord Chatham,
should be the nominal Prime Minister, while he and Pitt should be equal
secretaries. At this, Pitt put a stop to the envoy's conversation.
"Upon my word," he said afterwards, "I had not the curiosity to ask
what I was to be." So England engaged in war, with her greatest
statesman excluded from office.

On the 6th of May Lord Pelham communicated to the Lords, and Mr.
Addington to the Commons, another message from his Majesty, informing
them that he had ordered Lord Whitworth, our Ambassador, to quit Paris
immediately, unless he saw a prospect of closing the negotiations
with the First Consul within a certain date; and that M. Andreossi,
the French Ambassador, had applied for his passport, in order to quit
London when Lord Whitworth should quit Paris. In consequence of the
uncertainty of the result there was an adjournment, and then a second;
but on the 16th of May all suspense was terminated by the announcement
of Ministers that Lord Whitworth had quitted Paris, and M. Andreossi
London. The papers which had passed between this Government and France,
in the late negotiations, were ordered to be produced, and an Order
in Council was issued, directing reprisals to be granted against the
ships, goods, and subjects of the French Republic, and also for an
embargo not only on all French ships in British ports, but on all Dutch
vessels, and vessels of any Power under the military rule of France.
Britain was once more at war. On the 17th of June the king announced,
by message, that, in consequence of the Batavian Republic refusing to
order the French troops to quit Holland--which, indeed, would have
paid no attention to such orders--he had recalled his Ambassador from
the Hague and had issued letters of marque and reprisals against that
Republic. Thus, we were also at war with Holland. At the same time a
demand was made for a grant of sixty thousand pounds, and a pension
of sixteen thousand pounds per annum to the Prince of Orange, the
ex-Stadtholder, on the plea that he was an exile and destitute; and the
grant was voted. Parliament was now daily occupied in passing fresh
measures for the defence of the country. It was voted, on the 20th of
June, that a reserve army of fifty thousand should be raised by ballot,
like the militia; and, indeed, it was no other than the extension of
the militia: for during the war this division was to serve only in
Great Britain, Ireland, and the Channel Islands. On the 18th of July it
was proposed to pass a Bill enabling his Majesty to raise a levy _en
masse_ in case of invasion. Pitt strongly supported it, and proposed
fresh fortifications on the coasts.

[Illustration: NAPOLEON AND HIS SUITE AT BOULOGNE. (_See p._ 490.)]

On the declaration of war, Buonaparte resorted to a proceeding that
had never been practised before, and which excited the most violent
indignation in England. He ordered the detention of British subjects
then in France, as prisoners of war. Talleyrand previously assured some
British travellers, who applied to him for information, that they had
nothing to fear; that their persons would be safe under the protection
of a Government which, unlike that of Britain, observed the laws of
nations, and Buonaparte caused his well-known agent, Louis Goldsmith,
the editor of a French paper, the _Argus_, published in London, to
insert the same assurance in that journal. Thus thrown off their guard,
all the British in France were seized by authority of a proclamation
of the 22nd of May. Numbers of these were families and individuals not
resident in France, but merely hurrying home from Italy, Switzerland,
etc. They numbered some 12,000, and were kept confined till the close
of the wars. The pretext was the capture of two ships before war
was declared, but they were not captured until the Ambassadors had
withdrawn, or until an embargo had been laid by Napoleon on British
shipping.

There was another point, besides the seizure of unsuspecting British
travellers, on which Buonaparte could deeply wound the honour of the
British monarch, and at the same time furnish himself with considerable
materials of war--the seizure of Hanover. George III. held this
hereditary territory distinct from his Crown of Britain, as a State of
the German federation. It was impossible to defend this against France
with the forces kept there, and Napoleon ordered General Mortier to
cross the Dutch frontier, and march into the Electorate with twenty
thousand men. The Duke of Cambridge, who was Viceroy there, and General
Walmoden, at first, put themselves in an attitude of resistance; they
called on the chief Powers of Germany to protest against this invasion
of the German Empire, and to come to their aid, if this remonstrance
was disregarded. The Duke of Cambridge, seeing himself totally deserted
by Germany, thought it best to surrender Hanover to France, by
agreement that the troops should retire behind the Elbe, and not serve
again till exchanged. This was done at the end of May; the different
towns made their submission on the 3rd of June, and on the 5th Mortier
entered Hanover; the Duke of Cambridge had quitted the country; and the
British Cabinet refusing to ratify the Convention previously made with
him, he called on the Hanoverian army to surrender as prisoners of war.
Walmoden would have resisted with anything like equal forces, but as
that was impossible, he made the best terms he could, which were that
his army should give up their arms and disband themselves.

Napoleon also exerted himself to excite a rebellion in Ireland. He was
the more bent on this, because he saw that it was hopeless to make a
direct descent on England itself. He had collected a great fleet in
the harbours of Boulogne, Dieppe, Havre, Dunkirk, Ostend, and other
smaller ports, many of them capable only of receiving the gunboats in
which he proposed to transport his soldiers. He had assembled a very
fine army on the heights above Boulogne, called the Army of England,
and there continually exercised it, under the inspection of Soult,
Ney, Davoust, and Victor--men, the pride of his army; but he saw such
powerful fleets crowding the Channel, blockading his very ports,
cutting out, every now and then, some of his gunboats under the very
batteries, and the war-ships of Britain even standing in and firing
at him and his suite as they made observations from the cliffs, that,
combined with the information that England was almost all one camp,
he abandoned the project, for the present, in despair. But Ireland he
deemed vulnerable, from the treason of her own children. He assembled
all the Irish refugees in Paris, formed the Irish Brigade into the
Irish Legion, and sent over active agents to arouse their countrymen
in Ireland. Amongst these were Quigley and Robert Emmett, who had
been engaged in the Rebellion of 1798. Quigley had been outlawed,
and Emmett had been so deeply implicated in that Rebellion with his
brother Thomas, who was banished, that he had found it necessary to
quit the country. These emissaries soon collected around them, in
Dublin, disaffected associates, amongst them being Dowdall, Redmond,
and Russell. They formed a central committee, and corresponded with
others in different towns, and especially with one Dwyer, who had also
been in the former Rebellion, and had ever since maintained himself
and a knot of desperate followers in the mountains of Wicklow. The
Government received, from time to time, information of the proceedings
of these foolish men--Emmett being a rash youth of only twenty-two or
twenty-three years of age--but they took no precautions; and when,
on the 23rd of July, the eve of the Festival of St. James, these
desperadoes rushed, at evening, into the streets of Dublin, armed with
pikes, old guns, and blunderbusses, the authorities were taken entirely
by surprise. There were from two thousand to three thousand soldiers
in the Castle, but neither police, soldier, nor officer appeared till
the mob had murdered Colonel Brown, who was hastening to the Castle
to arouse the troops, and Lord Kilwarden, the Chief Justice, whom
they dragged from his carriage as it passed, and killed, along with
his nephew, but, at the same time, they allowed the Chief Justice's
daughter, who was with them, to depart. Soon after this--but not before
the insurgents had severely wounded a Mr. Clarke, a manufacturer, who
was riding to alarm the Castle--the soldiers appeared, and the mob fled
at their very sight. The same day Russell had turned out at Belfast,
and Quigley at Kildare, but with as little success. Emmett had escaped
to the Wicklow mountains to join Dwyer; but having assumed the fatal
disguise of French officers, the country people, who hated the French
since their appearance under General Humbert, when they had ridiculed
the Catholic religion, drove him and twelve of his companions back. In
a short time, Emmett, Russell, Redmond, and others were all secured
and executed. Dowdall escaped, with Allen and others, out of Ireland;
Quigley and Stafford, one of his companions, were admitted as king's
evidence, and thus escaped. The project of Napoleon had thus entirely
failed, with the sacrifice of some of his leading agents.

During this year Great Britain held that position which properly
belonged to her, and which showed how unassailable she was whilst
employed in self-defence. Her fleets covering the Channel, and at the
same time plying in the most distant regions for that money which
for years had been wasted on helpless and ungrateful Continental
nations, were calculated to make her invincible on the ocean. So far
from permitting Buonaparte to set foot on her coasts, she continually
insulted his. She entered the ports and roadsteads of Hâvre, St.
Valery, and other places, and brought away ships and gunboats; she
attacked Dieppe, and destroyed its batteries; she bombarded Granville,
and demolished its pier, under the eyes of some of Napoleon's most
distinguished officers. Her fleet amounted to nearly six hundred
vessels of different kinds, and she began rapidly to recapture the
colonies which she had so tamely, and without compensation, surrendered
at the strange Peace of Amiens. St. Lucia was retaken by Commodore
Hood and General Grinfield on the 22nd of June. In one day, the 30th
of June, were retaken Tobago, in the West Indies, and St. Pierre and
Miquelon, on the coast of Newfoundland. Demerara, Essequibo, and
Berbice were soon after reconquered, and Guadeloupe was invested, and
destined to fall into our hands ere long.

But our military achievements in the East Indies were on a scale to
throw even these successes far into the shade. Lord Wellesley, the
Governor-General, was entreated by the Peishwa of Poonah to assist him
against the other Mahratta chiefs, Scindiah and Holkar. The Peishwa had
been driven out of his territory by these chiefs, aided principally by
the military talents of M. Perron, a Frenchman, who had for many years
entered, with several other French officers, on the fall of the Mysore
power, into the service of Scindiah. He had been extremely successful,
and had been rewarded with a wide territory on the Jumna; and when,
in 1793, Shah Allum, the Mogul, had been made prisoner, he had been
consigned to the custody of M. Perron. The Frenchman had now given
his aid to expel the Peishwa, and Lord Wellesley, in sending General
Lake to restore the Peishwa, authorised him to attempt to win over M.
Perron to the British interest by very brilliant offers of property and
distinction, for Perron was deemed avaricious. The temptation, however,
failed, both with Perron and his French officers. He took the field in
support of Scindiah, with seventeen thousand infantry, from fifteen to
twenty thousand Mahratta horse, and a numerous train of artillery.

The conjuncture was most critical, for the incompetent and
short-sighted Addington had, by the Peace of Amiens, restored the
French possessions which had cost us so much to make ourselves masters
of in India; and had Buonaparte conceived the idea of supporting
Perron there with strong reinforcements, the consequences might have
been serious. Fortunately, he seemed too much engrossed with his plans
nearer home, and as fortunately also for us, we had now rising into
prominence in India a military chief, destined not only to dissipate
the hostile combination of the Mahrattas, but also to destroy the
dominion of Buonaparte himself. Major-General Wellesley, the younger
brother of the Governor-General, and afterwards Duke of Wellington, by
a rapid march upon Poonah surprised and drove out the Mahratta chief,
Holkar, and saved the city from a conflagration which Scindiah's troops
endeavoured to effect. Holkar fled to join Scindiah and the Rajah of
Berar, and the Peishwa entered his own capital in the month of May.
General Wellesley, being put into full command of all the troops
serving under the Peishwa and the Nizam of the Deccan, and being also
director of the civil affairs of the British in those provinces, made
arrangements for their security, and then marched after Scindiah and
the Rajah of Berar. After various marchings and counter-marchings, in
consequence of their movements to avoid him, he came up with them near
the village of Assaye, or Assye. General Stevenson, who had repulsed
them from the territory of the Nizam, was also encamped only eight
miles off. On coming in sight of them, Wellesley found them fifty
thousand strong, with a splendid body of Mahratta cavalry, whilst he
had only four regiments of cavalry, three of them being native, and
seven battalions of infantry, five of them Sepoys. He determined,
however, to attack them at once, and, sending word to Stevenson to come
up, he crossed the river at a ford in face of the artillery of the
enemy, and, after a sharp encounter, routed them before Stevenson could
arrive. The Mahrattas had ninety pieces of artillery, with which they
did terrible execution till the cavalry could come to close quarters
with them, and the infantry reach them with their bayonets; then they
fled headlong, leaving behind all their cannon (September 23rd, 1803).
The Mahrattas rallied in the village of Assaye, and it required a
desperate effort to expel them. It was dark before it was accomplished.
General Stevenson had been prevented from crossing the river, and did
not come up till the next day, when Wellesley sent him in pursuit of
the enemy's infantry, which had been abandoned by the cavalry, and was
thus exposed to attack.

In the meantime, General Lake had made a march on Delhi, continuing, as
he went, his correspondence with M. Perron. As General Lake approached
the fortress of Allyghur, the stronghold of Perron, the Frenchman came
out with fifteen thousand men, but again retreated into the fortress.
This was on the 29th of August. Perron made a strong resistance, and
held out till the 4th of September, when the place was stormed by a
party headed by Colonel Monson and Major Macleod. The success was
somewhat clouded by the surprise and surrender of five companies of
General Lake's sepoys, who had been left behind to guard an important
position, but with only one gun. This accident, however, was far more
than counterbalanced by the withdrawal of Perron from the service of
the Mahrattas. He had found so much insubordination amongst his French
officers, and saw so clearly that there was no chance of competing
with the British, that he had at length closed with General Lake's
offers, and, abandoning his command, had obtained a passport for
himself, family, suite, and effects, and retired to Lucknow. This being
accomplished, General Lake continued his march on Delhi, in order
to release Shah Allum, the Mogul, and drew near it on the 11th of
September. He there found that the army previously commanded by Perron,
but now by Louis Bourquien, nineteen thousand strong, had crossed the
Jumna and was posted between him and the city. Bourquien had posted his
army on a rising ground, flanked on both sides by swamps, and defended
in front by strong entrenchments and about seventy pieces of cannon. As
Lake had only four thousand five hundred men, to attack them in that
position appeared madness. The British were briskly assailed before
they could pitch their tents, and General Lake, feigning a retreat,
succeeded in drawing the enemy down from their commanding situation
and out of their entrenchments; he then suddenly wheeled, fired a
destructive volley into the incautious foe, and followed this rapidly
by a charge with the bayonet. The enemy fled, and endeavoured to regain
their guns and entrenchments; but Lake did not leave them time--another
volley and another bayonet charge completely disorganised them, and
they fled for the Jumna and the road by which they had come. The troops
of Scindiah, which had held the Mogul prisoner, evacuated the city,
and on the 16th General Lake made a visit of state to the aged Shah
Allum, who expressed himself as delighted at being delivered from his
oppressors and received under the protection of the British.

[Illustration: THE JUMMA MUSJID, DELHI. (_From a Photograph by Frith &
Co._)]

General Lake had no sooner seen Delhi clear of the enemy than he
marched to Agra, which he reached on the 4th of October, and carried
on the 17th. But Scindiah had availed himself of his absence, and made
a sudden rush on Delhi, with seventeen well-disciplined battalions
of infantry and between four thousand and five thousand cavalry. The
Mahratta troops had been well trained by the French, who hoped, by
their means, to crush the power of the British in India, and had shown
throughout this war wonderfully increased efficiency, yet General Lake
did not hesitate, with his small force, to go in quest of them. He
started on the 27th of October, and after marching in heavy rains and
through dreadful roads--the country having been purposely inundated
by Scindiah's officers cutting down the banks of reservoirs--he came
upon the Mahrattas on the 31st, near the village of Laswaree, their
left flanked by that village, their right by a stream, and their front
protected by seventy-two pieces of cannon. A furious battle took place,
in the course of which Lake's troops were repeatedly repulsed, but
returned to the attack undauntedly, and the successive charges by the
bayonet, and the gallant conduct of the cavalry, at length, in the face
of terrible discharges of grape-shot and canister, drove the Mahrattas
from all their positions. The enemy had fought desperately, and step by
step only had given way, but in the end the rout was complete--cannon,
baggage, and almost everything, being left in the hands of the British
(November 1st, 1803). This division of Scindiah's army was thus
annihilated, and all the territory watered by the Jumna left in the
hands of the British.

[Illustration: THE CHASE AT ARGAUM. (_See p._ 493.)]

This blow induced Scindiah to sue for peace from General Wellesley in
November, and a truce was accordingly entered into with him; but as the
Rajah of Berar still kept the field, Wellesley marched against him,
and encountered him on the plains of Argaum, about one hundred and
twenty miles north of the Purna river. He was surprised to find the
treacherous Scindiah, notwithstanding the truce, also encamped with
him. Wellesley attacked the allies on the 28th of November, though
it was evening when he was ready for action, and there remained only
twenty minutes of daylight. But it proved a brilliant moonlight night,
and he routed the whole army, and his cavalry pursued the fugitives
for several miles, taking many elephants, camels, and much baggage.
He captured all their cannon, thirty-eight pieces, and all their
ammunition. This done, he hastened to reduce the formidable fortress
of Gawilgarh, situated on a lofty rock. On the 15th the outer walls
were carried, and the 94th regiment, led on by Captain Campbell,
scaled the inner one, opened the gate, and the whole place was soon
in possession of the British. This closed the opposition of the Rajah
of Berar. On the 17th of December he came to terms, and surrendered
to Wellesley the important province of Cuttack and the district of
Balasore. Immediately afterwards Scindiah was compelled to treat in
earnest. He consented to surrender all the country between the Jumna
and the Ganges, with numerous forts and other territories, and agreed
to recognise the right of the Peishwa to the domains which the British
had conferred upon him. Both he and the Rajah of Berar stipulated to
send away all Frenchmen or other Europeans and Americans, and not to
employ them again, nor even to employ British subjects, native or
European, without the consent of the British Government.

Sir Arthur Wellesley, brilliantly seconded by General Lake, Stevenson,
and others, had thus worked out the plans of the Governor-General, Lord
Wellesley. With small forces, and those principally native ones, but
admirably disciplined, they had beaten two hundred and fifty thousand
men in four pitched battles and eight sieges. They had taken from them
upwards of one thousand pieces of cannon, besides an enormous amount of
ammunition, baggage, and other spoil. They had made themselves masters
of all the Mahratta territory between the Jumna and the Ganges; of
Delhi, Agra, Calpee, the greater part of the province of Bundelcund,
the whole of Cuttack, and a territory in Gujerat, which secured us
all the ports by which France could have entered, so that we enjoyed
the whole navigation of the coast from the mouth of the Ganges to the
mouth of the Indus. They had added most important acquisitions to the
territories of our allies, the Peishwa and the Nizam of the Deccan, and
to the Company itself a stronger frontier in the latter region; and all
this had been achieved in the short space of four months. The French
influence was completely annihilated, and every part of India placed in
greater strength and security than it had ever known before.

The year 1804 opened by an announcement that his Majesty was suffering
under a return of his old malady. On the 14th of February an official
bulletin was issued at St. James's Palace, informing the public of the
royal indisposition; and the repetition of it from day to day, without
specifying the nature of the illness, left no doubt of its real
character. Still, on the 29th, Addington assured the House that there
was no necessary suspension of the royal functions, and the bulletins
grew more favourable; but it was well known that he was not really in a
condition to transact business till the following September, though at
times, as on the 9th, 10th, and 11th of May, he drove about in public,
in company with the queen and princesses. Probably his advisers thought
that the hearty cheers with which he was received might have a bracing
effect on his mind, which had been cruelly harassed by the separation
of the Prince of Wales from his wife, the king's niece, amid grave
public scandals. Such a circumstance was exactly calculated to throw
the royal mind off the balance; but besides this, the unsatisfactory
state of his Cabinet and of parties in Parliament was such as greatly
to aggravate his anxiety.

The Ministry of Addington was felt to be utterly inadequate to the
difficulties of the times. The country felt that Pitt or Fox must soon
be called to the helm. Addington had shown a desire to strengthen
his administration by bringing into it George Tierney, whom he had
appointed Treasurer of the Navy and a Privy Councillor. Pitt, who
had an intense dislike to Tierney--with whom he had, in 1798, fought
a duel--showed increasing determination, from the introduction of
Tierney to the Cabinet, to oppose the Ministry of Addington with all
his vigour. An opportunity was given him on the 27th of February. The
Hon. Sir Charles Yorke, the Secretary-at-War, had introduced a Bill
for consolidating all the existing laws respecting the volunteers. In
the debate on the second reading of this Bill on this day, a question
was incidentally introduced by Sir Robert Lawley as to the exact
state of the king's health, which, he said, concerned the safety of
the country as much as the affairs of the volunteers. Fox followed
up this idea, and demanded more perfect information on this subject
from Ministers. He declared that the House had no information on this
important subject, and he asked whether the Chancellor of the Exchequer
really had any. He supported the motion for an adjournment which
Sir Robert Lawley had made, in order that the House might be put in
possession of the truth. Fox made it felt that he was looking forward
to the fact of a regency. Addington, on this, declared that there was
no necessity for any serious measures, that he was persuaded that the
king's indisposition would be of short duration. Pitt made some strong
observations on the conduct of Ministers in keeping Parliament in the
dark on this head, though he opposed the adjournment.

On the 15th of March he took a more decided position of hostility to
the Cabinet, by moving for an inquiry into the state of the navy. The
Earl St. Vincent was now First Lord of the Admiralty, and he proved
quite incompetent. Many gunboats had been broken up from motives of
economy, and naval stores sold, for the most part, to the French. Pitt
declared that only twenty-three gunboats had been built since January,
1803, and that the whole management of the navy was inert.

After accepting an offer from the Irish militia serving in England
during the war, and agreeing that ten thousand should be the number,
and that this number should be reinstated in Ireland by a new levy, the
House adjourned on the 29th of March for the Easter recess. But during
the recess Pitt was planning fresh measures of opposition, and in fact
driving out Addington and taking his place. On the re-assembling of the
House on the 23rd of April, Fox moved that it should resolve itself
into a committee of inquiry regarding the measures of defence necessary
for the country. Addington opposed the inquiry as unnecessary, but
Pitt declared that it was never more necessary; that though there
were a hundred and eighty-four thousand troops of the line, and
four hundred thousand volunteers, the measures of Government were
not of that vigorous character which the times demanded. Yorke, the
Secretary-at-War, and Spencer Perceval defended Addington, who asserted
that great exertions had been made to bring up members to vote for Mr.
Pitt's views, and that he did not see how the present Ministry could
remain in office if this measure was carried against them. It was not
carried; but Addington's majority had sunk to only fifty-two, the
numbers being for Fox's motion two hundred and four, against it two
hundred and fifty-six. Wilberforce, who had much respect for Addington,
as he had a great admiration for Pitt, exerted himself to reconcile
the two and to get Pitt into the Cabinet with Addington. He consulted
with Lord Chancellor Eldon on the plan for bringing in Pitt to join
Addington.

But Pitt was already doing his own work and paving his own way. He
wrote to the king on the 25th of April, informing him of the determined
opposition he felt himself called upon to make to Addington's mode
of administration, but assuring him that he would never attempt to
force Fox upon him. This was saying, as plainly as he could speak to
the king, that he was ready to resume the helm himself, and that,
with the opposition that he could exert, the Government of Addington
could not go on. Accordingly, Pitt received a notice that his Majesty
would soon call for him to attend on him. On the 30th of April the
Marquis of Stafford, in the House of Lords, gave notice of a motion
identical with that of Fox in the Commons--namely, for inquiry into the
national defences. Lord Hawkesbury immediately entreated the marquis
to postpone his motion, for reasons which, he assured the House, it
would deem fully satisfactory if he were at liberty to state them. It
was at once understood that negotiations were on foot for a change of
Administration. Lord Grenville, who was a relative of Pitt, but at the
same time pledged to include Fox in any offers to himself of entering
the Ministry, called upon Lord Hawkesbury to be more explicit; but he
declined, and after some discussion the motion was postponed. Pitt,
in fact, had received a message from the king, and on the 2nd of May,
through Lord Chancellor Eldon, presented a letter sketching a plan of a
new Cabinet, in which he included not only Lord Grenville but Fox also.
On the 7th he had, for the first time, an interview with the king,
which lasted three hours, and Pitt then more fully stated his views,
and recommended a mixed Cabinet on the ground that there was every
prospect of a long war, and that it was desirable that they should
have a strong administration. Whether such a coalition would have been
strong is more than doubtful, opposed as the views and tempers of Fox
and Pitt were. But the king would not allow the name of Fox to be in
the list. On the other hand, Lord Grenville refused to become part of
an Administration from which Fox was excluded. He said he could not
accept office in a Cabinet formed on the basis of exclusion, being
convinced that an effective government could only be secured by uniting
in it as large a proportion as possible of the weight, talents, and
character to be found in public men of all descriptions. Pitt was thus
forced to form a Government on a narrow Tory basis. On the 11th of May
the Marquis of Stafford said, in the House of Lords, that he understood
that a certain right honourable gentleman, who had turned his great
abilities to the subject of the national defences, was about to take
the management of public affairs, and that he therefore withdrew his
motion. The next day the public announcement was made that Addington
had resigned, and that Pitt had accepted the Chancellorship of the
Exchequer. Of the Addington Ministry Pitt retained--Lord Chancellor
Eldon; the Duke of Portland, President of the Council; the Earl of
Westmoreland, Lord Privy Seal; his own brother, the Earl of Chatham,
Master-General of the Ordnance; and Lord Castlereagh, President of
the Board of Control. To these he added Dundas, now Lord Melville, as
First Lord of the Admiralty; Lord Harrowby as Secretary of Foreign
Affairs, in place of Lord Hawkesbury; and Lord Camden as Secretary of
the Colonies, in place of Lord Hobart. Lord Mulgrave became Chancellor
of the Duchy of Lancaster, in place of Lord Pelham. George Canning,
now becoming a marked man, was made Treasurer of the Navy, in place
of Tierney, but this gave him no seat in the Cabinet. Huskisson was
Secretary to the Treasury, and Mr. Perceval remained Attorney-General.

The first measure of importance after the appearance of Pitt in the
House of Commons as Prime Minister was the annual motion of Wilberforce
for leave to bring in a Bill for the abolition of the Slave Trade.
Pitt and Fox both supported it, and it was carried by seventy-five
against forty-nine. The second reading was carried by a still larger
majority--one hundred against forty-two--but on going into committee
upon it, it was postponed to the next Session. War and preparations for
war were the all-absorbing business of those times.

On the 5th of June, the day after the king's birthday, Pitt introduced
his plan of military defence. It was to leave the militia what it was,
but to increase the regular army by making it compulsory on parishes
to furnish each a certain number of men to what was called the Army
of Reserve--a body called out for five years, and only to be employed
within the United Kingdom. He desired to break down the distinctions
between this and the regular army by attaching the Reserve to the
Regulars as second battalions, and encouraging volunteering thence
into the Regulars. This was known as the Additional Force Bill, which
was denounced by the Opposition as veiled conscription. In other ways,
notably by the erection of his martello towers, Pitt set himself to
rouse the spirit of the nation, in face of the very real danger of
invasion.

In the autumn of this year the British Admiralty tested a plan to
blow up and destroy the French invasion flotilla in the harbour of
Boulogne. It consisted of a chest, pitched outside and made waterproof,
containing forty barrels of gunpowder, which was to be ignited by
a certain contrivance when it struck smartly against a solid body.
This machine was called a catamaran. The experiment was tried by
Lord Keith on the 2nd of October. There were one hundred and fifty
French gunboats, praams, and floating batteries anchored outside the
pier of Boulogne. Lord Keith anchored opposite to them with three
line-of-battle ships and several frigates, covering a number of
bomb-ships and fire-ships and the catamarans. Four fire-ships were
towed into the neighbourhood of the French flotilla and exploded with
a terrific noise, but did no injury whatever to the flotilla or the
French, beyond wounding some half-dozen men. The catamarans exploded,
for the most part, with the same failure of effect.

Though a declaration of war had been issued both against France and
Holland, there had been none against Spain. But Ministers hearing that
a strong Spanish armament was being equipped in the port of Ferrol, and
that French soldiers were expected to join and sail in it, despatched
Captain Graham Moore, the brother of Sir John Moore, with four frigates
to intercept four Spanish treasure-ships. The proceeding was certainly
high-handed, but Ministers were justified by their knowledge that
Spain paid subsidies to France. The Spaniards were furious in their
indignation; an order was speedily issued to make reprisals on British
ships and property, and on the 12th of December war was formally
proclaimed against us.

[Illustration:

    _Reproduced by André & Sleigh, Ld., Bushey, Herts._

NELSON'S CHASE AFTER THE FRENCH FLEET, 1805.

BY THOMAS DAVIDSON.]

At this juncture Napoleon proceeded to set all Europe against him.
A conspiracy had been set on foot against his Government by the
Royalists, notably by one Lajolais, who had formerly fought under
Pichegru, and in 1794 had assisted him in his intrigues with the
Bourbon princes. On arriving in London he had interviews with Pichegru,
Georges Cadoudal, the Chouan chief, the Polignacs, the Count d'Artois,
the Duke of Berry, etc., and assured them that such was the feeling
against Buonaparte in France, that it only needed the appearance of
the Royalist leaders, and their forming a league with Moreau, the
victor of Hohenlinden, whom he truly represented as greatly disgusted
with Buonaparte, to produce a revolution and crush the aspiring First
Consul. The statements of Lajolais were listened to, and a vessel,
under the command of Captain John Wesley Wright, was despatched to
the coast of Brittany, with General Georges Cadoudal, the Marquis de
la Rivière, the brothers Armand and Jules Polignac, and some others,
whom he put safely ashore in the autumn of 1803. Pichegru, Georges
Cadoudal, the Polignacs, de la Rivière, and the rest of the Royalists,
about thirty in number, had made their way to Paris, and were
living there secretly, endeavouring to learn the real state of the
public mind, and Pichegru and Cadoudal had been introduced to Moreau.
Pichegru saw Moreau at least twice, and on one of these occasions he
took with him Georges Cadoudal; but Moreau seemed taken by surprise by
their communications with him, and was so horrified by the language and
proposals of the daring Chouan, that he desired Pichegru not to bring
that irrational savage again into his company. It appeared pretty clear
that there was some mistake somewhere; and that Moreau, however much
dissatisfied with Napoleon, was by no means disposed to enter into any
Royalist conspiracy. Had the delegates found things ripe for such a
revolution, they were to inform the Bourbon princes in London, and they
were to make a strong descent on the coast of Brittany; but they all
felt so satisfied that Lajolais had given them false information, that
they were about to quit the capital, and to return to England, Captain
Wright having been lingering with his frigate on the Breton coast for
that purpose, when Fouchè the Minister of Police, pounced upon them.
He had been keeping a strict watch on all their movements; he had now
established their intercourse with Moreau, and trusted to be able to
make sufficient use of that fact to destroy both them and him. It was
asserted, although there is no proof whatever of the fact, that the
plan included the murder of the First Consul. Further, in order to
bring odium upon England, Buonaparte succeeded, by means of his agents,
in entrapping Messrs. Drake and Spencer Smith, our Ministers at the
courts of Bavaria and Würtemberg, into consenting to the conspiracy.
They knew nothing of the real plot, but being informed that a Royalist
conspiracy was on foot, gave it a certain amount of countenance.
Napoleon thereupon accused them of being accomplices in a diabolical
plot to assassinate him, forced the Courts to which they were
accredited to expel them, and circulated throughout Europe a violent
attack on the British Government. In an exceedingly able and dignified
reply Lord Hawkesbury pointed out that Britain was at war with France,
and had a right, which she intended to use, to take advantage of the
political situation in that country. Napoleon gained little by his
Machiavellian manœuvre.

[Illustration: KIDNAPPING OF THE DUKE D'ENGHIEN. (_See p._ 498.)]

The Georges conspiracy, as it is commonly called, was followed by a
still more startling act of violence. As the Bourbons still continued
to watch for the overthrow of his power, Buonaparte determined to
take a deep revenge on the persons of any of that family whom he
could by any means get into his hands. Could he have inveigled the
Count d'Artois and the Duke of Berry, as he attempted, to leave
London and land in Brittany, he would have seized them and put them
to death without ceremony or mercy. But there was another member of
the family, though the farthest off from succession to the throne,
who was living on the French frontiers, within a tempting reach of
his soldiers in Alsace, and him he determined to kidnap and kill.
This proposed victim of a most lawless and wicked vengeance was
Antoine-Henri de Bourbon, Duke d'Enghien, the son of the Prince of
Condé. The project was so odious, so certain to cover both Napoleon
and France with inextinguishable infamy, that it startled the not very
sensitive mind of Talleyrand, who, it is said, gave the duke secret
warning of his danger, and advised him to remove farther from the
Rhine. In consequence, the duke applied to Sir Charles Stuart to get
him a passport from the Austrian Minister, to enable him to cross the
Austrian territory to rejoin his grandfather, then at Warsaw with Louis
XVIII. Sir Charles Stuart applied to M. de Cobenzl for this purpose,
and had the Austrian Court been quicker in its movements, the duke
would have been safe enough from the myrmidons of Buonaparte; but,
whilst lingering at Ettenheim in Baden for the necessary passport, the
duke had so little suspicion of the prompt and deadly nature of the
usurper's design against him, that he took no means to conceal himself,
or he might still have escaped. But in the middle of the night of
the 14th of March he was aroused by the sound of horses' hoofs, and,
looking out, saw that the château was surrounded by a troop of French
cavalry. Buonaparte had despatched his aide-de-camp, Caulaincourt, to
Strasburg to effect this capture, and he had sent on Colonel Ordenner
to bring the duke away from the heart of a neutral territory. The duke
was summarily tried by a military tribunal and shot (March 21, 1804) at
Vincennes. The news of this most audacious crime soon transpired, and
filled Europe with horror and execration against its perpetrators.

In the midst of these deeply-planned manœuvres Buonaparte proceeded to
make his last move in his great game. He had intimidated the Royalists
by the seizure and fusilading of the Duke d'Enghien; he had deprived
the Republicans of their leader in Moreau, who was exiled; the nation
was passive; all its branching lines of authority were in his hands;
and there remained only to erect a throne and seat himself upon it.
It must not be a regal throne, because that would too much remind
the world of the claims of the Bourbons: it should, therefore, be an
imperial one, and mark a totally new era in France. It was one which
was especially calculated to flatter the French vanity. Accordingly,
on the 30th of April, Curée--a man of no particular note, and perhaps
selected on that account for the occasion, as his proposal might be the
more easily disavowed, if it were resisted--rose in the tribunate, and
proposed that Napoleon Buonaparte should be invested with the title of
Emperor.

No sooner had the tribunate sent up its decision to the Senate, signed
by all except Carnot, than the Senate hastened at once to adopt it, and
to sign the answer to the message of the First Consul, which had been
drawn up by Fouché for the Committee of Ten appointed by the Senate.
In July Napoleon went to Boulogne to review the grand army of England,
on the heights above the town, overlooking the English Channel, and
from which the white cliffs of England were conspicuous. Everything
had been elaborately got up for this occasion, on which the enthusiasm
of the soldiers was to be raised to the highest pitch. The common
people believed that he was going to lead the army at once across the
Channel, and return loaded with the enormous wealth of London, and with
the king, queen, royal family, William Pitt, and the leading members
of the aristocracy as prisoners in his train. Buonaparte had no such
wild idea; but since the Duke d'Enghien's murder the Powers of almost
all Europe had manifested unequivocally their abhorrence of the act,
and of the man who perpetrated it, and he now designed, by the display
of enthusiasm in his army, at once to awe his own people and the
sovereigns of other nations.

From Boulogne, Buonaparte proceeded to Brussels, Ostend, Antwerp, and
so through Belgium, where Josephine met him, to the Rhine. Wherever he
appeared, the authorities of the towns, both then and on his return
through France, presented him with the most adulatory addresses. One
would no longer believe it the same people who had, for ten years,
committed such unexampled horrors to destroy the royalty they were now
again adoring. The Mayor of Arras, Robespierre's own town, put the
climax to all this civic incense by declaring, in his address, that
"God made Napoleon, and then rested!"

Buonaparte now prepared for his coronation. Whilst at Mayence, on the
Rhine--where the German princes flocked to pay abject homage to him
as their protector, no nations, except Great Britain, Russia, and
Sweden, keeping aloof--he despatched one of his aides-de-camp, General
Caffarelli, an Italian, to invite the Pope to go to Paris to crown the
new emperor and empress. Pius VII. had already been compelled to submit
to the terms of the Concordat, which had made such inroads into the
ancient power of the Church; and he knew very well that to refuse this
request would bring down upon him fresh humiliations. Buonaparte, who
affected to imitate Charlemagne as the founder of the French nation,
passing over all the kings of France as unworthy of notice, determined
to inaugurate the Second Empire by a still bolder stretch of authority
than Charlemagne himself. That monarch had condescended to make the
journey to Italy to receive the privilege of coronation from Pope
Leo; but Buonaparte resolved that poor old Pope Pius VII. should come
to him in France. His desire was carried out to the letter, and Pius
arrived at Fontainebleau on the 25th of November. The 2nd of December
having been fixed for the coronation, the Cathedral of Notre Dame was
gorgeously decorated for the occasion, and the ceremony was performed
amidst the utmost pomp and magnificence, Napoleon himself putting the
crown on his head and then placing the Empress's diadem on the head of
the kneeling Josephine. During the whole proceedings the Pope was made
to play a secondary part. He simply "assisted" at the function. The
ceremony was followed by a profuse creation of marshals and nobles.

The year 1805 was opened by Buonaparte addressing a second letter to
George III. Its tenor may be gathered from the concluding paragraph.
"Alas! what a melancholy prospect to cause two nations to fight, merely
for the sake of fighting. The world is sufficiently large for our two
nations to live in it, and reason is sufficiently powerful to discover
means of reconciling everything, when the wish for reconciliation
exists on both sides. I have, however, fulfilled a sacred duty, and one
which is precious to my heart. I trust your Majesty will believe in the
sincerity of my sentiments, and my wish to give you every proof of
it.--NAPOLEON."

Nothing could be more just or more excellent than the sentiments and
arguments of this letter; but, unfortunately, circumstances on both
sides were such as really precluded any hope of making peace. Great
Britain foresaw Italy under the foot of France; Holland and Belgium
in the same condition; Bavaria, Baden, Würtemberg, and other smaller
German States, allied with France against the other German States. It
was impossible for her to conclude a peace without stipulating for the
return of these States to the _status quo_; and was Buonaparte likely
to accede to such terms? On the contrary, at this very moment, besides
being in possession of Hanover, George III.'s patrimony, he had been
exercising the grossest violence towards our Ambassadors in various
German States, was contemplating making himself king of Italy, and was
forcibly annexing Genoa, contrary to the Treaty of Lunéville, to the
Cisalpine Republic--that is, to the French State in Italy. Whilst he
was thus perpetuating want of confidence in him, on the other hand a
league for resistance to his encroachments was already formed between
Great Britain, Russia, Sweden, and Austria. Peace, therefore, on
diplomatic principles was impossible, and Napoleon must have known it
well. True, we had no longer any right to complain of the expulsion of
the Bourbons from France, seeing that the nation had ostensibly chosen
a new government and a new royal family, any more than France had a
right to attack us because we had expelled the Stuarts and adopted the
line of Brunswick. But the very nature of Napoleon was incompatible
with rest; for, as Lord Byron says, "quiet to quick bosoms is hell."
Buonaparte had repeatedly avowed that he must be warlike. "My power,"
he said, "depends upon my glory; my glory on my victories. My power
would fall if I did not support it by fresh glory and new victories.
Conquest has made me what I am, and conquest alone can maintain me.
A newly-born government, like mine, must dazzle and astonish. When
it ceases to do that, it falls." With such an avowal as that, in
entire keeping with his character, there must be constant aggressions
by him on the Continent which intimately concerned us. Accordingly,
the British Government replied to Buonaparte by a polite evasion.
As Britain had not recognised Napoleon's new title, the king could
not answer his letter himself. It was answered by Lord Mulgrave, the
Secretary for Foreign Affairs, addressed to M. Talleyrand, as the
Foreign Secretary of France, and simply stated that Britain could not
make any proposals regarding peace till she had consulted her Allies,
and particularly the Emperor of Russia. The letter of Buonaparte and
this curt reply were published in the _Moniteur_, accompanied with
remarks tending to convince the French that the most heartfelt desires
of peace by the Emperor were repelled by Great Britain, and that a
storm was brewing in the North which would necessitate the Emperor's
reappearance in the field.

Pitt had returned to office in anything but promising circumstances.
Britain was at war with a great nation, and as yet the coalition which
he was laboriously building up was far from being complete. Pitt's
health was failing: his energies were prematurely worn out by the
gigantic task that was forced upon him; his end was fast approaching,
and his majority was shrunk and attenuated to an alarming degree.
The Fox and Grenville opposition held together firmly, and Addington
had carried a strong party along with him on retiring. Pitt felt his
situation keenly and the king was sensibly alarmed at it. He attempted
to conciliate Grenville, but, as Fox could not be accepted too, that
failed. He then turned to Addington, and as the king was favourably
disposed to his old minister, he warmly recommended this coalition.
It was effected, and Addington was made a peer--Viscount Sidmouth,
of Sidmouth. This was one of those rapid political promotions of
George III.'s reign in which politics were made to ennoble men of
no particular mark or abilities; and certainly the son of Pitt's
father's doctor had never shown those splendid talents or rendered
those brilliant services which justified such an elevation. But, as
Pitt would take the lead in the Commons, it was, no doubt, felt more
convenient that one who had lately been Prime Minister should not serve
under the present Prime Minister, but should represent the Cabinet in
the Upper House. There were some other changes at the same time. The
Duke of Portland, who was growing old and infirm, retired from the post
of President of the Council, which Sidmouth took up. Lord Harrowby,
a warm friend of Pitt, retired, in consequence of continued illness,
from the Foreign Department, and Lord Mulgrave took it, the Earl of
Buckinghamshire succeeding to Lord Mulgrave's post as Chancellor of the
Duchy of Lancaster.

But the Ministry of Pitt contained many elements of weakness and
discord. Addington and Melville were violently opposed to each other.
Wilberforce found this to his cost when he returned to his annual vote
for the abolition of the Slave Trade. Addington and Melville, hostile
to each other, were both hostile to him and to his project. Pitt warned
him of this, and begged him to let his usual motion lie over this
Session; but Wilberforce had been so fortunate in carrying it last
Session through the Commons, that he was sanguine of succeeding now
with both Commons and Lords. He introduced the Bill, obtained a first
reading on the 10th of February, and had the second reading fixed for
the 28th, but then it was thrown out by seventy-seven against seventy.
The Scots members, who the preceding year were neutral, now, probably
influenced by Melville, voted against him in a body; the Irish, who
had been his warm supporters, now opposed him or held aloof, incensed
by his having voted for the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act in
Ireland. It was a terrible blow to Wilberforce, but a worse blow was
impending over one of his underminers--Melville.

A Commission had been appointed to inquire into the Department of
Naval Affairs. The Commissioners, at whose head was Mr. Whitbread, had
extended their researches so far back as to include the time when Lord
Melville, as Mr. Dundas, had presided over that Department. They there
discovered some very startling transactions. Large sums of money had
been drawn out of the Bank of England on the plea of paying accounts
due from the Naval Department; these sums had been paid into Coutts's
Bank in the name of the Treasurer of the Navy, Mr. Trotter, who, for
long periods together, used these sums for his own benefit. Other
large sums had been drawn in the name of Dundas, and had been employed
for his profit. Other sums had disappeared, and there was no account
showing how they had vanished; but these were scored under the name of
Secret Service Money, and Melville declared that the money paid into
his account had gone in the same way. As much as forty-eight thousand
pounds had been paid over to Pitt at once, and no account given of its
expenditure. Indeed, as Pitt had nothing to do with that Department,
the payment to him was altogether irregular. These discoveries created
a great sensation. George Rose, who had begun life without a sixpence,
but who, after attracting the attention of Pitt, had rapidly thriven
and become extremely wealthy, had confessed to Wilberforce that some
strange jobs had come under his notice as a member of that Department.
There was a loud outcry for the impeachment of Melville. Melville
appears to have been a jovial, hard-drinking Scotsman, of a somewhat
infidel turn, according to Scottish philosophy of that period. Amongst
Melville's faults, however, it does not appear that he was of an
avaricious character, but rather of a loose _morale_, and ready to fall
in with the licence practised by the officers of all departments of
Government in the duties entrusted to them.

[Illustration: THE CORONATION OF NAPOLEON IN NOTRE DAME. (_See p._
499.)]

On the 6th of April Whitbread brought forward these charges against
Melville in the House of Commons, as detailed in the tenth report of
the Naval Commissioners. In doing so, he paid a high compliment to the
manner in which the naval affairs had been conducted since Lord St.
Vincent became head of that Department; but he charged Lord Melville
with having applied the public money to other uses than those of
the Naval Department, in contempt of the Act of 1785--an Act which
Melville himself, then Dundas, had supported: that he had connived at
a system of peculation in the Treasurer of the Navy, Mr. Trotter, an
individual for whom he was responsible. The salary of this Mr. Trotter
had been fixed by the Act of 1785 at four thousand pounds a year, but
he contended that Dundas had allowed Trotter to draw large sums from
the Bank of England out of the navy deposit, pay them into Coutts's
Bank, and use them for his own benefit; and that, moreover, he had
participated in the profits of this system. This charge called forth
a vehement contest of parties. Tierney, who had been Treasurer of the
Navy under Addington, declared that he had found no inconvenience in
complying with the Act of 1785, whilst holding that office. Fox, Grey,
Ponsonby, Windham, Wilberforce, Lord Henry Petty, afterwards Lord
Lansdowne, supported Whitbread's charges, and Pitt, Canning, and Lord
Castlereagh defended Melville. On putting the resolutions moved by
Whitbread, after a debate till quite late in the morning, they were
carried by the casting vote of the Speaker. The scene, which is one
of the most striking in our Parliamentary annals, has frequently been
described, notably by Lord Fitzharris:--"I sat edged close to Pitt
himself," he wrote, "the night when we were two hundred and sixteen,
and the Speaker, Abbot, after looking as white as a sheet, and pausing
for ten minutes, gave the casting vote against us. Pitt immediately
put on the little cocked hat that he was in the habit of wearing when
dressed for the evening, and jammed it down deeply over his forehead,
and I distinctly saw the tears trickling down his cheeks. We heard
one or two, such as Colonel Wardle, say they would see 'how Billy
looked after it'! A few young ardent followers of Pitt, with myself,
locked their arms together and formed a circle, in which he moved, I
believe unconsciously, out of the House, and neither the colonel nor
his friends could approach him." But the Opposition were not content
with the vote of censure. Whitbread moved that an Address should be
presented to his Majesty, praying him to remove Lord Melville for ever
from his councils and presence, but the motion was withdrawn as soon as
Melville's resignation was known. On the 6th of May Whitbread was about
to move a resolution that his Majesty should be requested to erase the
name of Lord Melville from the list of the Privy Council, but Pitt rose
and said that the motion was unnecessary, as his Majesty had already
done it.

Melville was now permitted by the House of Peers to go down to the
House of Commons, notwithstanding their conclusion on the subject, to
make his defence, and he made a very long speech, contending that he
had not embezzled a farthing of the public money, and exalting his
services to the country, especially in his India administration. But
on the head of Secret Service Money he was as close as the grave. He
declared that "if he had disclosed any of these transactions he should
have felt himself guilty not only of a breach of public duty, but of
a most unwarrantable breach of private honour." There were twenty
thousand pounds which he never did, and never could, account for on
this ground, and there were forty thousand pounds drawn at once by
Pitt from the Navy Fund. He said he knew very well for what purposes
these sums had been paid, but that nothing would compel him to disclose
it. When it was asked him whether Mr. Trotter had not kept large sums
belonging to the Navy Fund in Coutts's Bank, and speculated with them
to his own great enrichment, he admitted that Trotter had had such sums
for considerable times in Coutts's Bank, but that they were always
forthcoming when wanted, and that no single payment had been delayed on
that account; and that out of the one hundred and thirty-four millions
which had passed through his hands, nothing had been lost. He praised
Trotter in the highest manner, but was silent as to the private use
that he had so long, and to such advantage to himself, made of the
public money. He admitted that he had himself held considerable sums
of this money at different times in his own hands, but had repaid
the whole before quitting office, and this was all that the Act of
1785 required. He seemed to admit that he had paid money out of the
Navy Fund for other than naval objects, and for these secret service
purposes. Some of these were in Scotland, of which, also, he had the
administration to a certain degree. And here the public called to
mind that Watt, the spy and informer against the Scottish Reformers,
had acknowledged to have been employed and paid by Dundas, so that it
was clear whither some of the Navy Fund had gone. Melville entered
into long explanations regarding a written release which had passed
reciprocally between him and Trotter on winding up their affairs, in
which they agreed to destroy all their vouchers for the sums paid
away. This looked very black, but Melville contended that it was only
a matter of course--a thing constantly done by officials in like
circumstances, which, if true, made the matter all the worse for the
country. But Melville contended that this clause in the release was
merely a form; that it did not mean that they should literally destroy
the vouchers, but only that they should be rendered invalid as evidence
in any prosecution, which very little mended the matter. Melville
declared that he had not, in consequence of the clause, destroyed a
single paper.

On the withdrawal of Melville, Whitbread moved for his impeachment, and
Mr. Bond for his prosecution in the ordinary courts of law, and this
amendment was carried. But Melville preferred impeachment to a trial
at common law. Mr. Bond was induced to withhold any further procedure
in consequence of his motion, and Mr. Leycester, one of Melville's
friends, made a fresh motion for impeachment, which was carried, and on
the 26th of June Whitbread, accompanied by a great number of members,
impeached him at the bar of the House of Lords. A Bill was also passed
through both Houses regulating the course of his impeachment. The
impeachment itself, owing to very important events, including the death
of Pitt, was not proceeded with till April, 1806. On the 10th of July
Lord Sidmouth and the Earl of Buckinghamshire resigned. It was supposed
that difference of opinion regarding Lord Melville's case was the
cause, and the surmise was correct, Addington taking strong exception
to the appointment of Sir Charles Middleton, a very old man, to succeed
Melville. Lord Camden succeeded Sidmouth, and Lord Harrowby Lord
Buckinghamshire. Castlereagh obtained Camden's post of Secretary of
Colonial Affairs. This secession weakened Pitt's Ministry considerably.
On the 12th of July Parliament was prorogued, but a message was sent
down to the House to enable his Majesty to carry out some arrangements
in the north of Europe, which were necessary for the security and
independence of Britain, and a sum, in addition to the large supplies
already granted, was voted, which was not to exceed three millions and
a half.

Great exertions had been made to draw Prussia into the confederation
that was forming, and on the 25th of May, 1804, a defensive alliance
had been concluded between Prussia and Russia. But the King of Prussia
was, at the same time, listening to the offers of Buonaparte, who was
encouraging him to expect the annexation of Hanover, and also further
territory at the cost of Austria. In these circumstances, Prussia
kept a dubious position, but continued to strengthen her armies for
an emergency, holding herself ready to close with the best offer.
Austria herself was afraid of another war with Buonaparte, and strongly
urged that negotiations should be opened with him before proceeding
to extremities. However, she too concluded a treaty with Russia
in November. It was Pitt's object to draw these threads together.
Fortunately the Czar sent his Minister, Nowosiltzoff, to England in
1805, and he readily fell in with Pitt's ideas. Accordingly, on the
11th of April the Treaty of St. Petersburg was signed on the basis of
the maintenance of the Treaties of Lunéville and Amiens. The great
coalition was thus practically complete, when news arrived that
Buonaparte had annexed Genoa to France. This was a most gross violation
of the Treaty of Lunéville. But the annexation of Genoa was but a
small part of the aggressions of Buonaparte on Italy. On the very same
journey he made himself King of Italy. On Sunday, the 26th of May,
he was crowned in the cathedral of Milan. The Archbishop of Milan
performed the ceremony, blessing the old iron crown of the ancient
kings of Lombardy, and Buonaparte putting it himself on his head, as he
had done that of France. Nor did Napoleon stop here. He wanted a little
snug principality for his sister Eliza and her husband, the Corsican
Bacciochi, and he turned the Republic of Lucca into such an one, and
conferred it upon them.

But these assumptions of new territories and new honours had, as we
have seen, alarmed the Northern Powers and Austria. They saw that
they could have no peace with such a man, except it were a peace of
continual encroachment, humiliation, and slavery, and Russia went so
far as to recall her Ambassador, though without a declaration of war.
There was the utmost necessity for union, caution, and the exertion of
every ability. But the folly and incapacity of those nations appeared
to rise in intensity in proportion to the actual need of wisdom, and
to the genius of their enemy. Britain, could give them money, but she
could not give them talent and sagacity. Before Russia could march down
to unite with Austria, Austria, which had so long hung back, and thus
delayed the operations of Alexander, now showed as fatal a temerity,
and commenced the campaign alone. She rushed into Bavaria, whose
Elector, Maximilian Joseph, had entered into league with Buonaparte,
in common with Würtemberg and other German States. The Emperor Francis
had despatched Schwarzenberg to Munich, to endeavour to prevail on him
to unite with Austria against the common enemy of Germany. Maximilian
Joseph pleaded that he was quite resolved on doing that, but that
his son was travelling in France, and he prayed time to recall him,
or Buonaparte would wreak his vengeance upon him. This should have
induced Francis of Austria to delay at least a sufficient time for
this purpose, especially as it gave another chance for the decision of
Prussia in their favour, when it saw the Russians already on the march.
Whether the Elector of Bavaria would eventually have kept his promise
is doubtful, for Napoleon was, on the other hand, pressing him close,
through his Ambassador, M. Otto, to proclaim openly the secret alliance
concluded with France.

The troops of Austria were already in Bavaria on the 21st of August.
They amounted to eighty thousand men, under the nominal command of
the Archduke Ferdinand--a prince of high courage and great hopes--but
really under that of General Mack, whose utter incapacity had not
been sufficiently manifested to Austria by his miserable failures in
the Neapolitan campaign, and who was still regarded in Germany as a
great military genius. His army had been posted behind the Inn, in the
country between the Tyrol and the Danube, into which the Inn falls at
Passau. This was a strong frontier, and had the Austrians waited there
till the arrival of the Russians, they might have made a powerful
stand. But Mack had already advanced them to the Lech, where again
he had a strong position covering Munich. Meanwhile, the Archduke
Charles, Austria's best general, was posted in the north of Italy, with
another eighty thousand men, and the Archduke John in the Tyrol with an
inferior force. Such were the positions of the Austrian armies when
Mack was invading Bavaria, and Buonaparte was preparing to crush him.

Buonaparte had watched all the motions of the Northern Powers and
of Austria from the first, and was fully prepared to encounter and
overthrow them. Even before his return from Italy his plans were
laid. No sooner, indeed, was he in France again than he proceeded to
his great camp at Boulogne, and dated several decrees thence, thus
drawing attention to the fact. All France was once more persuaded that
he was now going to lead his invincible Army of England across the
strait, and add perfidious Albion to his conquests. He had increased
that army greatly; it had been diligently disciplined, and contained
soldiers who had carried him to victory in Italy and in Egypt.
Such an army of a hundred and fifty thousand picked men was deemed
capable of achieving anything, with the Emperor at their head. But
Napoleon had no intention of making the desperate attempt to cross
the Channel without an overwhelming fleet, and this, for reasons
which we will mention by-and-bye, did not come. The maps of England
had all been thrown aside, and those of Germany substituted. He was
busy collecting material for artillery; he was sending everywhere to
buy up draught-horses to drag his baggage and ammunition and guns;
and suddenly, when people were looking for the ordering out of his
flotilla, they were surprised by hearing that he was in full march for
the Rhine. On the 23rd of September he sent a report to the Senate
in these words:--"The wishes of the eternal enemies of the Continent
are accomplished; hostilities have commenced in the midst of Germany;
Austria and Russia have united with England; and our generation is
again involved in all the calamities of war. But a very few days ago
I cherished a hope that peace would not be disturbed. Threats and
outrage only showed that they could make no impression upon me; but
the Austrians have passed the Inn; Munich is invaded; the Elector
of Bavaria is driven from his capital; all my hopes have therefore
vanished. I tremble at the idea of the blood that must be spilled in
Europe; but the French name will emerge with renovated and increased
lustre." This was accompanied by two decrees: one for ordering eighty
thousand conscripts, and the other for the organisation of a national
guard. The next day he was on the way to Strasburg. He said to Savary,
"If the enemy comes to meet me"--for Mack, like a madman, was rushing
towards the Rhine, far away from his allies--"I will destroy him
before he has re-passed the Danube; if he waits for me, I will take
him between Augsburg and Ulm." The result showed how exactly he had
calculated.

[Illustration: THE BATTLE OF TRAFALGAR AND THE VICTORY OF LORD NELSON
OVER THE COMBINED FRENCH AND SPANISH FLEETS, OCTOBER 21ST, 1805.

FROM THE PICTURE BY CLARKSON STANFIELD, R. A., IN THE NATIONAL
GALLERY.]

Mack, who was advancing rashly out of reach of any supporting bodies of
troops, expected to encounter the French in front. He therefore took
possession of Ulm and Memmingen, and threw his advanced posts out along
the line of the Iller and the Upper Danube, looking for the French
advancing by way of the Black Forest. But Buonaparte's plan was very
different. He divided his army into six grand divisions. That commanded
by Bernadotte issued from Hanover, and, crossing Hesse, appeared
to be aiming at a junction with the main army, which had already
reached the Rhine. But at once he diverged to the left, ascended the
Main, and joined the Elector of Bavaria at Würzburg. Had Mack had a
hundredth part of the strategic talent attributed to him, he would
have concentrated his forces into one powerful body, and cut through
the cordon which Buonaparte was drawing around him, and, under good
generalship, such soldiers as the Hungarians would have done wonders;
but he suffered his different detachments to be attacked and beaten
in detail, never being ready with fresh troops to support those which
were engaged, whilst the French were always prepared for this object.
Accordingly, Soult managed to surround and take one entire Austrian
division at Memmingen, under General Spangenberg, and Dupont and Ney
defeated the Archduke Ferdinand at Günzburg, who had advanced from
Ulm to defend the bridges there. Ferdinand lost many guns and nearly
three thousand men. This induced Mack to concentrate his forces in Ulm,
where, however, he had taken no measures for supplying his troops with
provisions during a siege. He was completely surrounded, and compelled
to capitulate on the 19th of October, 1805.

[Illustration: HERRENHAUSEN CASTLE, HANOVER.]

On the day after the surrender of Ulm, Buonaparte announced by
proclamation to the army that he was going to annihilate the Russians,
as he had done the Austrians; that Austria, in fact, had no generals
with whom it was any glory to compete; and that Russia was only brought
by the gold of England from the ends of the earth, for them to chastise
them. At the end of October, accordingly, he commenced his march on
Vienna.

The Emperor Francis did not attempt to defend his capital--that
capital which had twice repelled all the efforts of the Turks--but
fled into Moravia, to join his Russian ally, the Czar Alexander, who
was there at the head of his army. On the 7th of November Francis took
his departure, and on the 13th of November Napoleon entered Vienna
without any opposition. Whilst Napoleon remained there he continued to
receive the most cheering accounts of the success of his arms in Italy
against the Austrians. There, Massena, on hearing of the capitulation
of Ulm, made a general attack on the army of the Archduke Charles, near
Caldiero. The French were victorious, and were soon joined by General
St. Cyr, from Naples, with twenty-five thousand men. At the moment of
this defeat, the Archduke received the news of the fall of Ulm, and the
march of the French on Vienna. He determined, therefore, to leave Italy
to its fate. He commenced his retreat in the night of November 1st, and
resolved to make for Hungary.

Napoleon had so far executed his plans with wonderful success. He
had rescued Bavaria, reduced the enemy's army and _prestige_ at
once by the capture of Ulm and Vienna, and had driven the Austrians
simultaneously from Upper Italy and the Tyrol. But still his situation,
for any general but himself, was very critical. The defeated army of
the Emperor Francis had united itself to that of the young Emperor of
Russia, in Moravia; the two archdukes were mustering great bodies of
troops on the confines of Hungary, ready to rush forward and swell the
Austro-Russian army; and the King of Prussia was watching the movements
of the two parties, ready to strike, if France met with a reverse.
Napoleon saw that his only security lay in a bold and decisive blow. He
therefore crossed the Danube on the 23rd of November, and began a brisk
march into the heart of Moravia, to attack the main body of the Allies
under their two Emperors. He was soon before Brünn, its little capital,
and the Allies retreated, at his approach, as far as Olmütz. This
movement was, however, made to form a junction with the twenty-four
thousand men under Benningsen. This being effected, they amounted to
about eighty thousand men, but of these, many of the Austrians were
troops already discouraged by defeat, and many more were raw recruits.
The French were in number about equal, but consisting of veteran
soldiers flushed with victory. On the 2nd of December Napoleon brought
on the battle of Austerlitz, and before the close of the day the forces
of the Coalition were completely beaten, losing upon the field some
27,000 killed and wounded, 20,000 prisoners, and 133 pieces of cannon.

Even now, had the Russians and Austrians possessed the spirit which the
circumstances of the time demanded of them, they were far from being in
a hopeless condition. Buonaparte was at an immense distance from his
country. Besides the army still remaining with the two Emperors--at
least sixty thousand in number--there were the strong forces of the
Archdukes Charles and John in Hungary, and of Prince Ferdinand in
Bohemia. By bold and skilful manœuvres they might have cut off his
communications with France and Italy, and have harassed him, without
committing themselves to a decided battle, till he must have found
himself in a most perilous position. But Francis of Austria gave up the
struggle in despair; he sent Prince John of Lichtenstein to propose
a suspension of arms. Buonaparte insisted that they should first
break with the Russians, and Lichtenstein said that Francis was quite
willing, and to treat with Napoleon for a separate peace, but that
he must claim for the Emperor Alexander the privilege of retreating
into his own country without molestation. Buonaparte granted this as
a favour, and added words so complimentary to Alexander, that they
betrayed a wish to complete an agreement also with him. He returned
to Vienna, and again occupied the palace of Schönbrunn. There he and
Talleyrand concerted the demands which should be made; and an armistice
was signed, on these terms, with Prince John of Lichtenstein, on the
6th of December. The final treaty was signed by the Emperor Francis, at
Pressburg, on the 26th of December, a fortnight after Austerlitz. By
this treaty Austria surrendered to Buonaparte all her territories in
Italy, as well as her Venetian provinces of Dalmatia and on the coast
of Albania. She surrendered her only seaport on the Adriatic, Trieste,
and thus reduced herself to a mere inland power. She was compelled
to cede to her rival, Bavaria, the Tyrol--a country most faithfully
attached to the House of Hapsburg,--the bishopric of Passau, and
other regions. Bavaria and Würtemberg, for their hostility to their
own German race, were elevated into kingdoms, and Baden, for the same
unpatriotic services, into a grand duchy. Thus France and her allies,
or rather subjects, were now in possession of Switzerland, Italy, and
the Tyrol on one side, and of Holland and Belgium on the other, so
that she had everywhere an open high road into Germany, and nations
of tributary princes, which were to aid in further enslaving it.
Prussia had made up her mind on hearing of the victory of Austerlitz,
and Haugwitz appeared at Schönbrunn, not to declare war on Buonaparte,
but to compliment him on his victory. Buonaparte could not conceal his
contempt for this despicable conduct. He said, "Ah! this compliment was
intended for others, but fortune has transferred it to me;" but as he
still intended to make use of Prussia, and could humiliate George III.
by her means, he concluded a treaty with Haugwitz, by which he handed
over Hanover to our late ally, and claimed Anspach in lieu of it. He
then strengthened the Confederation of the Rhine, of which he was
Protector, and so completely broke up the old federation of Germany,
that Francis of Austria soon abandoned the title of Elective Emperor of
Germany, and assumed that of Hereditary Emperor of Austria.

Pitt's expeditions were not particularly well arranged. Instead of
sending an army of thirty or forty thousand to the Baltic, and calling
on Russia to do the same, which she could have done, notwithstanding
the army under the Emperor Alexander, he sent only about six thousand,
and sent another eight thousand from Malta, to co-operate with
twelve thousand Russians in a descent on the kingdom of Naples. This
expedition might have been left till the success in the North was
secured; in truth, it had better have been left altogether. When
General Don and Lord Cathcart landed in Swedish Pomerania, and were
joined by the king's German legion and some other German hired troops,
our army amounted only to sixteen thousand men, the Swedes to twelve
thousand, and the Russians to ten thousand--altogether, not forty
thousand men. But what was worse than the paucity of numbers was the
disunion amongst the commanders. Lord Harrowby was sent to Berlin,
to endeavour to induce Prussia to join this coalition, but Prussia
was well aware of the want of unity in the Allied Army, and, weighing
probabilities, she could not be moved. The King of Sweden was so
incensed at the cold, shuffling conduct of the King of Prussia, that
he wrote him some very indignant and undiplomatic letters, which only
furnished him with a further excuse for holding aloof. Gustavus,
seeing no good likely to be done, resigned his command of the Allied
Army, where, indeed, he had enjoyed no real command at all, and
retired with his forces to Stralsund. This was a fatal exposition of
want of unity, and it was not till three weeks were gone that the
breach was healed. By this time it was the middle of November. Ulm
had surrendered, Napoleon was master of Vienna, and Prussia was still
watching what would be the fate of the coming battle between Napoleon
and the Emperors of Austria and Russia. The union of the Allies came
too late; the force was altogether too small to turn the scale of the
campaign. Had Gustavus marched into Hanover a month earlier, with sixty
thousand men, he might have rendered Austerlitz a nonentity; as it was,
he had only time to invest Hameln, where Bernadotte had left a strong
garrison, when the news of Austerlitz arrived, and caused the Allies to
break up the campaign, and each to hurry off to his own country.

The consequence of the ill-advised despatch of a miserable force
of British and Russians to Naples was equally as abortive and as
mischievous to the King of Naples as the Northern expedition had
proved to the King of Sweden. On the 27th of September of this year,
only, a convention had been entered into in Paris between Napoleon
and Ferdinand IV., King of Naples, which was ratified by Ferdinand
on the 8th of October. By this the French engaged to withdraw their
forces from the kingdom of Naples, and Ferdinand to preserve a strict
neutrality. The French did, indeed, withdraw, under St. Cyr, to assist
Massena in the north of Italy against Austria; and no sooner was this
the case than Ferdinand raised his army to the war strength, and the
British and Russians came to his support with their united army of
twenty thousand men. But the news of the decisive victory of Buonaparte
at Austerlitz, which had squandered the Northern coalition, had the
same effect here. The Russians and British withdrew, and St. Cyr was
ordered by Napoleon to march back into Naples, and punish severely the
perfidy of the Court of Naples. He was particularly bitter against
the Queen of Naples, to whom he attributed the movement and the total
guidance of the king. He declared that she should be precipitated
from the throne, should it cost another Thirty Years' War. He sent
his brother, Joseph Buonaparte, to take the command of the army, and
to assume the government of the country. The king and queen fled,
abdicating in favour of their son, the prince royal; but this did not
stop the march of the French, who were only too glad of such a plea for
possessing themselves of the kingdom of Naples. Pescara, Naples itself,
rapidly surrendered to the French. Gaëta alone, which the governor,
the Prince of Hesse Philippsthal, refused to surrender, stood out till
the following July. When summoned by the French to yield the fortress,
he replied that Gaëta was not Ulm, nor was he General Mack. But the
defence of Gaëta had no influence on the general fate of Naples, and
only precipitated that of its brave defender, who died suddenly, as was
asserted, of poison.

We have now to turn from the feeble and ill-directed efforts of Britain
to counteract the plans of Napoleon on land to the successful ones on
her really protecting element--the sea. All Napoleon's endeavours to
cross the Channel with his Grand Army he had seen to be impossible.
Nelson was riding there in his glory, and the French fleets were
only safe while they were in port. The impatience of this restraint
caused Napoleon to urge on his admirals a greater daring; and these
incitements to a rash hazard brought, eventually, that which must have
occurred sooner, had the admirals listened to his suggestions rather
than their own knowledge of the truth--the utter destruction of the
French navy. Under such stimulants from the Emperor, Villeneuve seized
the opportunity, when the weather had driven back the blockading
British fleet, to steal out of Toulon on the 18th of January, 1805,
and another fleet of ten vessels escaped out of Rochefort on the 11th
of the same month. These squadrons stood away for the West Indies,
and managed to get home again without meeting with a British fleet.
Thus encouraged, Villeneuve made another venture. Nelson, who was
watching Villeneuve off Toulon, in order to tempt him out, bore away
along the Spanish coast as far as Barcelona. Villeneuve put out to
sea on the 31st of March, with ten ships of the line, seven frigates,
and two brigs. Nelson had gone a little too far, and it was not till
the 7th of April that he heard of their issue from port. Before he
could prevent it, they had passed the Strait of Gibraltar, and struck
once more across the Atlantic. He was joined by the Spanish admiral,
Gravina, from Cadiz, with six Spanish ships of the line, and two other
French ships of the line. This combined fleet now amounted to eighteen
sail of the line, six forty-four gun ships, and a number of smaller
craft. Nelson did not hesitate to pursue them with his ten ships of
the line and three frigates; but contrary winds withheld him, and it
was the 7th of May before he could get out of the Strait of Gibraltar.
His ships were, most of them, in very bad condition, one of them, the
_Superb_, not having been in a home port for four years. Villeneuve
had upwards of a month's start of Nelson, and his orders were to bear
away to Martinique with five thousand one hundred troops, which he
had on board, to capture St. Lucia, and strengthen the garrisons of
Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Dominica. He was afterwards to wait and see
if Gautheaume could get out of Brest and join him with twenty-one more
sail of the line, when they were to do all possible mischief amongst
our islands and merchantmen. But the chief scheme was, by this means,
to draw the British fleet after them, and then, hurrying back, enable
Buonaparte to cross the Channel for England. Villeneuve did nothing
but take the Diamond Rock, a fortification of the British, lying
opposite to Fort Royal Bay, into which he had entered. He then sailed
to Guadeloupe, where he was joined by two seventy-four gun ships; and
an American having apprised him of a homeward-bound British convoy,
he went after it, and succeeded, off Antigua, in capturing fifteen
merchantmen. His success was, however, spoiled in the possession of
it, for one of the prisoners informed him that Nelson was already in
the West Indies in quest of him. Terrified at this news, he burnt all
his prizes, and made all sail homewards. Nelson, in the meantime, was
misled by some of the Yankee skippers abounding in those seas, and
sent on a false scent after Villeneuve towards Venezuela and the mouth
of the Orinoco. Not finding him, he was satisfied that he had sailed
for Europe, and he made after him. Nelson sighted Cape St. Vincent on
the 17th of July, after a run of more than three thousand two hundred
miles. The next day he fell in with Admiral Collingwood, who was
watching Cadiz, but who had no news of Villeneuve, but informed him
that Sir Robert Calder was blockading Ferrol. On the 19th he anchored
in the Bay of Gibraltar, and went on shore for the first time for two
years, short only of two days. Hearing that Villeneuve was still out
in the Atlantic, he bore away westward again to intercept him, but in
vain; and, on returning to Ushant, where Collingwood was cruising, he
learned that Sir Robert Calder had met with and attacked him at the
very time Nelson was off Gibraltar, namely, on the 22nd of July.

[Illustration: LORD COLLINGWOOD.]

Calder had been sent after Nelson, with the hope that, if he missed
Villeneuve and Gravina, he (Calder) might fall in with and intercept
them. Scarcely was he under sail, when he discovered this fleet,
on the 22nd of July, about thirty-nine leagues north-west of Cape
Finisterre. Villeneuve and Gravina were congratulating themselves on
having made their voyage in safety, when this British squadron stood
in their way. They were twenty sail of the line, seven frigates, and
two brigs; and Calder had only fifteen sail of the line, two frigates,
and two smaller craft. The Spanish and French admirals endeavoured
to give them the slip, and get into Ferrol; but Calder would not
permit this. He compelled them to fight, and the battle lasted from
half-past four in the afternoon till half-past nine in the evening.
Calder captured two sail of the line, and killed and wounded between
five hundred and six hundred men. He himself lost thirty-nine killed,
and he had a hundred and fifty-nine wounded, and his ships, some of
them, had suffered much damage. A thick fog parted the combatants for
the night, and at daybreak the hostile fleets were distant from each
other about seventeen miles. Villeneuve had the wind, and made as if
he would renew the battle, but did not; and the same happened on the
following day, when he sheered off, and Calder turned homewards without
pursuing them. This action, though a victory, was regarded, both in
France and England, as inferior to what was expected of British naval
commanders. The French claimed a success; the English public murmured
at Calder's conduct. They said, "What would Nelson have done had he
been there?" Such was the popular discontent, that Sir Robert Calder
demanded that his conduct should be submitted to a court-martial, and
the verdict of the court confirmed the outcry:--"This court," it said,
"are of opinion that on the part of Admiral Sir Robert Calder there
was no cowardice or disaffection, but error in judgment, for which
he deserves to be severely reprimanded, and he is hereby severely
reprimanded accordingly." Buonaparte, however, was greatly exasperated
at the result, and at Villeneuve putting into Ferrol instead of getting
into Brest, where Napoleon wanted him to join the rest of the fleet.
After this, endeavouring to obey the Emperor's positive orders to
reach Brest, he put to sea, but was glad to run for Cadiz instead, on
account of the union of Admiral Collingwood with Calder's fleet. In
that harbour now lay five-and-thirty sail of the line, and Collingwood
kept watch over them. Indeed, being soon reinforced, he kept a blockade
on all the Spanish ports between Cadiz and Algeciras, in the Strait of
Gibraltar. It was at this juncture that Napoleon came to the conclusion
that it was hopeless to attempt the invasion of England.

Nelson, who had returned to England, by the 15th of September was on
board of his old flagship, the _Victory_, and immediately sailed for
Cadiz, accompanied only by three other ships of war. On the 29th he
arrived off Cadiz, and was received by the fleet with enthusiastic
acclamation. It was his birthday. He posted himself about twenty
leagues to the west of Cadiz, in hope that the French fleet would come
out. He knew that it was in great distress for provisions, because
Napoleon, intending the fleet to assemble at Brest, had laid in the
necessary stores there, and could not convey them, in any reasonable
time, to Cadiz. Still more, it was believed that Napoleon refused to
send any supplies there, having given Villeneuve imperative orders to
make his way to Brest. But it is also asserted, by French authorities,
that Napoleon had ordered the Minister of Marine to take the command
from Villeneuve, and that the admiral was piqued to show the Emperor,
by a daring exploit, that he had done him injustice. Under these or
similar motives, Villeneuve determined to sail out, and encounter the
British fleet. Nelson was watching for him behind Cape St. Mary, like
a cat watching a mouse, as he said in a letter to the Abbé Campbell,
of Naples, a friend of his and of Lady Hamilton's. On the 9th of
October, certain that the enemy would soon come out, Nelson sent to
Lord Collingwood his plan of the battle. It was to advance in two
lines of sixteen ships each, with an advanced squadron of eight of
the fastest-sailing two-decked ships. They were thus to break the
enemy's line in three places at once. Nelson was to aim at the centre;
Collingwood, leading the second line, to break through at about the
twelfth ship from the rear; and the light squadron, at three or four
ships from the centre--Nelson's point of attack. "I look," wrote
Nelson, "with confidence to a victory before the van of the enemy can
succour their rear; and then the British fleet will, most of them, be
ready to receive their twenty sail of the line, or to pursue them,
should they endeavour to make off. If the van of the enemy tack, the
captured ships must run to the leeward of the British fleet; if the
enemy wear, the British must place themselves between them and the
captured and disabled British ships, and, should the enemy close,
I have no fear for the result. The second in command will, in all
possible things, direct the movements of his line by keeping them as
compact as the nature of the circumstances will admit. Captains are
to look to their particular line as their rallying-point; but, in
case signals cannot be clearly seen or understood, _no captain can do
very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of the enemy_!" Such
were Nelson's general orders, and they were entirely approved by Lord
Collingwood.

On the 19th Collingwood signalled Nelson that the French fleet was
coming out of Cadiz. On the morning of the 21st, when the British fleet
lay about seven leagues north-west of Cape Trafalgar, the hostile fleet
was discovered about seven miles to the eastward. Nelson ordered the
fleet to bear down on the enemy. As Villeneuve approached, he veered
so as to bring Cadiz under his lee, and thus secure a retreat into it.
This compelled Nelson to shift his course a little more northward.
Villeneuve had preconcerted a plan of action which he boasted would
prevent Nelson from cutting his line, as was his custom. He determined
to advance in two lines, with each alternate ship about a cable's
length to the windward of her second ahead and astern, so that his
fleet would represent the chequers of a draft-board. This plan,
however, did not succeed. Nelson found now the shoals of San Pedro and
Trafalgar under the lee of both fleets, and, dreading that he might
be carried upon them at the end of the battle, he signalled, from the
_Victory_, for the fleet to anchor at the close of the day. He then
told Blackwood that he should not be satisfied unless he took twenty of
the enemy's ships, and asked him whether he thought a general signal of
action were not wanting. Blackwood replied that he thought the fleet
all understood what they were about. But Nelson hoisted on his mizen
top-mast his last signal--"ENGLAND EXPECTS EVERY MAN TO DO HIS DUTY."
It was seen, and responded to with loud hurrahs.

[Illustration: THE "VICTORY" TOWED INTO GIBRALTAR AFTER TRAFALGAR.

AFTER THE PICTURE BY CLARKSON STANFIELD, R.A.]

As the wind was light, the British vessels set their studding-sails,
and bore down steadily on the enemy. There were of the British
twenty-seven sail of the line, four frigates, one schooner, and one
cutter. Of the French and Spaniards there were thirty-three sail of the
line, five frigates, and two brigs; but the French vessels were in far
superior condition to the old weather-worn ones of Nelson. The French
had two thousand six hundred and twenty-six guns, Nelson two thousand
one hundred and forty-eight. Collingwood's line first came into contact
with the enemy in the _Royal Sovereign_, and was speedily in the midst
of a desperate conflict. It was some time before Nelson's line got up,
and Collingwood, amid the din of cannon and the crash of spars, turned
to his captain, and said, "Rotherham, what would not Nelson give to
be here?" It was just past twelve o'clock at noon as Collingwood's
vessel came to close quarters with the Spanish flagship, _Santa Anna_,
and it was more than a quarter of an hour before Nelson's ship came
close up to the stupendous four-decker Spaniard, the _Santissima
Trinidad_. He was soon in a terrible contest not only with this great
ship, but with the _Bucentaure_, of eighty guns, the _Neptune_, of
eighty guns, and the _Redoubtable_, of seventy-four guns. The _Victory_
and _Redoubtable_ were fast entangled together by their hooks and
boom-irons, and kept up the most destructive fire into each other with
double-shotted cannon. Both ships took fire; that in the _Victory_ was
extinguished, but the _Redoubtable_ finally went down. But it was from
the mizen top-mast of this vessel that one of the riflemen marked out
Nelson by his stars, and shot him down. He fell on the deck, on the
spot where his secretary, John Scott, had fallen dead just before.
Captain Hardy, to whom Nelson had shortly before said, "Hardy, this
is too warm work to last long," stooped, and observed that he hoped
that he was not severely wounded. He replied, "Yes, they have done
for me at last, Hardy." Hardy said he hoped not. "Yes," he answered;
"my back-bone is shot through." He was carried down to the cock-pit,
amongst the wounded and the dying, and laid in a midshipman's berth.
The ball was found to have entered the left shoulder and to have lodged
in the spine; the wound was mortal. For an hour the battle went on in
its terrible fury, as the dying hero lay amid those expiring or wounded
around him. He often inquired for Captain Hardy, but Hardy found it
impossible, in the midst of one of the fiercest and most mortal strifes
that ever was waged--the incessant cannonades sweeping away men, masts,
tackle at every moment--to go down. When he was able to do it, Nelson
asked how the battle went. Hardy replied, "Well, fourteen or fifteen
vessels had struck." "That is well," said Nelson; "but I bargained
for twenty." He then told Hardy to anchor, foreseeing that a gale was
coming on; and Hardy observed that Admiral Collingwood would now take
the command. At this the old commander blazed forth in the dying man
for a moment. He endeavoured to raise himself in the bed, saying, "Not
while I live, Hardy! No, do you anchor!" And he bade Hardy signal to
the fleet this order. His last words were again to recommend Lady
Hamilton and his daughter to his country, and to repeat several times,
"Thank God, I have done my duty!"

Nelson fell about the middle of the action, and for hours it continued
with terrible fury. Whole masses of ships lay jammed together, pouring
into one another the most tremendous broadsides. When all was over,
the vessels on both sides appeared mere ruins. Nineteen ships of the
line were taken, but some of them were so battered that they were
useless, and incapable of moving. Six or seven of the enemy's ships
immediately went down or were burnt. The Spanish admiral, Gravina,
was mortally wounded; the rear-admiral, Cisneros, was taken, and the
French admiral, Villeneuve. The French and Spaniards, in the few ships
which had escaped into Cadiz, seeing the helpless condition of many of
the British vessels, made a sortie, and re-captured two of the prizes,
and carried them into port. The _Algeciras_, another of the captured
ships, was also rescued, and carried into Cadiz by her crew, who rose
the next morning on the English lieutenant and prize party in charge
of her during a gale, the English having taken off the hatches to give
the Spaniards a chance for their lives, should she drive on shore. In
the end, the prizes were found so riddled by shot that they were burnt;
so that, with some of them running on shore in the gale, only four of
the whole--three Spanish and one French--were saved, and brought to
England as trophies. But the French and Spanish navies might be said
to be annihilated; and, whatever might happen on the Continent, for
the remainder of Napoleon's career England was for ever put beyond his
reach. Nelson had indeed finished his mission. He had revived all the
maritime glory of the days of Drake and Blake, and shown that, with a
man like him at the head of her fleet, Britain might sit on her ocean
throne, and smile at the hostile efforts of a world combined to crush
her.

[Illustration: SAILING INTO ACTION AT TRAFALGAR.]

A new and vigorous campaign was this year carried on in India by
General, now Lord, Lake, against the Mahrattas. Holkar had refused to
enter into amicable arrangements with the British at the same time
as Scindiah and the Rajah of Berar, but had continued to strengthen
his army, and now assumed so menacing an attitude, that Lord Lake and
General Frazer were sent to bring him to terms or to action. They
found him strongly posted near the fortress of Deeg, in the midst of
bogs, tanks, and topes, and formidably defended by artillery. On the
13th of November, 1804, General Frazer attacked them, notwithstanding,
and defeated them, but was killed himself in the action, and had six
hundred and forty-three men killed and wounded; for the fire of round,
grape, and chain shot by the Mahrattas was tremendous. On the 17th
Lord Lake fell on Holkar's cavalry near Ferruckabad, commanded by
Holkar himself, and thoroughly routed it, very nearly making capture of
Holkar. He retreated into the Bhurtpore territory, the Rajah of that
district having joined him. Lord Lake determined to follow him, and
drove him thence, reducing the forts in that country. He had first,
however, to make himself master of the fortress of Deeg, and this
proved a desperate affair. Still the garrison, consisting of troops
partly belonging to Holkar and partly to the Rajah of Bhurtpore,
evacuated it on Christmas Day, leaving behind them a great quantity
of cannon and ammunition. On the 1st of January, 1805, Lord Lake,
accompanied by Colonel Monson, marched into the territory of Bhurtpore,
and on the 3rd sat down before its fortress, one of the strongest
places in India. On the 18th of January Major-General Smith arrived
from Agra with three battalions of Sepoys and a hundred Europeans. But
these advantages were counterbalanced by Meer Khan arriving with a
strong force from Bundelcund to assist Holkar.

[Illustration: THE "VICTORY" AT PORTSMOUTH.]

On the 21st of January another great breach was made, and another
attempt to carry the place by assault; but it was repelled with
terrible slaughter, upwards of six hundred men being killed or wounded.
At the same time, Meer Khan, with eight thousand horse, endeavoured to
cut off a great train of camels and bullocks bringing up provisions,
but was defeated, as were the united forces of Meer Khan, Holkar,
and the Rajah of Bhurtpore, in a similar attempt to intercept another
provision train on its way from Agra. In order to compel Lake to raise
the siege of Bhurtpore, Meer Khan made an incursion with his own
cavalry, and a powerful reinforcement of Pindarrees, into the Doab, the
Company's territory. But Lord Lake was not to be drawn away from the
fort. He despatched Major-General Smith with a body of horse and the
horse artillery, who followed the track of Meer Khan, marked by burning
villages and desolated fields, and coming up with him, on the 1st of
March, near Afzulgur, he routed him with great slaughter, dispersing
and almost annihilating his force. During this expedition, which lasted
a month, and in which the British crossed and re-crossed the Ganges and
the Jumna several times, they gave a splendid example of the effective
condition of our troops in India.

During the absence of Major-General Smith Lord Lake maintained the
bombardment of the fortress of Bhurtpore. As Holkar continued to
hover near with a large body of cavalry, Lord Lake went in quest of
him, and coming up with him, now again joined by Meer Khan and some
bands of Pindarrees, he gave him a most crushing defeat on the 2nd of
April, and drove him across the Chumbul river. On this, the Rajah of
Bhurtpore consented to treat; and, on the 2nd of April, he agreed to
surrender the fort of Deeg to the British till such time as they were
satisfied of his fidelity; to renounce all connection with the enemies
of Britain; to pay by instalments twenty lacs of Ferruckabad rupees; to
surrender a portion of his territory, and deliver one of his sons as a
hostage for the fulfilment of his engagements. This was settled on the
10th of April, and on the 21st Lord Lake went in quest of Scindiah and
Holkar, who had united their forces. At his approach they retreated
towards Ajmere. As the rainy season was approaching, Lord Lake
returned, and quartered his troops at Agra, Muttra, and neighbouring
towns. Lord Wellesley was now superseded in the government of India by
Lord Cornwallis, who was averse from the system of extensive annexation
which Lord Wellesley had pursued. But his own health was failing, and
as he ascended the country in order to confer with Lord Lake on his
future policy, he died at Ghazee-pure, near Benares, having returned
to India only three months. Sir George Barlow assumed the direction of
affairs till the appointment of a new Governor General; and as Lord
Lake was of opinion that there could be no security till Holkar and
Scindiah were driven over the Indus, it was resolved to carry out that
object. Scindiah, however, came in and made peace, and Holkar went
northward, boasting that he would cross the Indus, and then return
with a new avalanche of Sikhs and Afghans, and sweep away the British
forces. But the Sikhs, who wished both him and us away, refused all
aid to Holkar, except to mediate for him. Even then he hung back, and
made great difficulties about the conditions; but Lord Lake at last
informed him that unless the treaty were signed by a certain day, he
would cross the Sutlej and advance to attack him. This brought him
to, and on the 7th of January, 1806, the treaty was duly signed by
him. By it Holkar renounced all claims on Poonah and Bundelcund, and,
indeed, on any territory on the northern bank of the Chumbul, as well
as all claims on the British Government and its allies. On her part,
Britain agreed to restore to him, eighteen months after the treaty,
Chandore, Galnauh, and other forts and districts south of the Taptee
and Godavery, provided he fulfilled his engagements, remained peaceful,
and did not molest the territories of the Company and its allies. By
the treaty with Scindiah, which was completed on the 23rd of November,
that of Surjee Anjengaum, made by General Wellesley, was confirmed:
to restore to him Gwalior and Gohud, with the right to resume them in
case he violated the treaty. The river Chumbul was made his boundary.
In exchange for certain jaghires, amounting to fifteen lacs of rupees
annually, which had been granted to some of his officers by the
former treaty, he received an annual pension of four lacs of rupees
for himself, a jaghire, worth two lacs of rupees, for his wife, and
another, worth one lac, for his daughter. As for his father-in-law,
Surjee-Row-Gautka--a man most hostile to the British, and who was
supposed to have stimulated both Scindiah and Holkar to their late
war--he was bound, like Holkar, not to admit him again to his counsels
or service. No interference was made with his conquests between the
rivers Chumbul and Taptee, nor with his arrangements with his tributary
chiefs in Mewar and Marwar; but, on the other hand, he was required not
to take into his service any Europeans, without consent of the British.
French officers, indeed, who had served under M. Perron, were found to
have directed the defence of the hill forts in this campaign, greatly
to our damage.

These treaties were regarded by Lord Lake, Sir John Malcolm--who had
to negotiate them--and many men of eminence in Indian affairs, as
based on a policy which could not last; that there could be no quiet
in Hindostan so long as the restless Mahrattas and Pindarrees were
not broken up, nor till the Indus was made the boundary of our Indian
empire towards the north-west. We shall see that a few more years
justified their foresight. These treaties, however, having, for the
present, restored peace to the north, Lord Lake, after giving a grand
review of the army on the banks of the Hyphasis, to impress the Sikhs
with a sense of our military superiority, commenced his march back
to Delhi, and in February, 1807, quitted his command in India, few
commanders having rendered more brilliant services in that part of our
empire, or left behind them more sincere esteem and admiration.

Parliament opened gloomily on the 21st of January, 1806. The total
failure of Pitt's new Continental coalition, the surrender of Ulm, the
battle of Austerlitz, the retreat of Austria into peace with Napoleon,
and of Russia into her northern snows, Germany, Italy, Switzerland,
Holland, and Belgium nearly all prostrate at the feet of Buonaparte,
were killing Pitt. He had sought for renovation in the autumn at
Bath; but its salutary waters and atmosphere had failed to restore
his spirit, or to remove what Fox called the "Austerlitz look" from
his face. He was dying at Putney as the House met, and the king was
not in a condition to open the Session personally. The Royal Speech,
read by a Commissioner, referred, with just pride, to the great
victory of Trafalgar, and had but little to say on the defeat of all
our endeavours on the Continent. The Opposition determined to move an
amendment to the Address; but this was prevented by the announcement
of the death of Pitt on the 23rd, two days after the opening of
Parliament. Mr. Lascelles gave notice of a motion for a public funeral
in Westminster Abbey. Fox moved that this question should be postponed
till after the discussion on the Address, which was considered by
Pitt's friends as a great want of generosity in Fox. The amendment was,
of course, overruled, and it was voted, on the 27th of January, by a
majority of two hundred and fifty-eight against eighty-nine, that Pitt
should be buried in Westminster Abbey; which accordingly took place,
the royal dukes, the Archbishop of Canterbury, eight bishops, a great
number of peers, and about a hundred members of the House of Commons
attending.

A second question regarding the late Minister became immediately
necessary. He had died deeply in debt. It was one of the fine qualities
of Pitt that he never had a love of money, or an ambition to create a
great estate at the expense of the country, like too many statesmen. At
an early period of Pitt's ministerial career, though a bachelor, he was
so hopelessly in debt, that his friend, Robert Smith, afterwards Baron
Carrington, had looked into his affairs, and declared that, of all
scenes of domestic robbery by servants, and wild charges by tradesmen,
he had never witnessed anything to compare with it. The financial
management of his own income and that of the nation were just on a par
in Pitt's case. He let his own money go like water, and he would have
flung any quantity of the nation's property away on his quixotic scheme
of propping up the thoroughly rotten and hopeless condition of the
Continental governments. A strong effort was now made by such of Pitt's
creditors as had advanced money to him, to be repaid by the nation.
In this endeavour none were more eager than his great friends and
relatives, who had been enabled by him to draw a hundredfold from the
nation what they had lent him. Wilberforce, however, proposed that they
should not only forego their individual claims, but should contribute
each a moderate sum towards the raising of forty thousand pounds, which
would pay his tradesmen; but here the great relatives and friends
became dumb and motionless. Spencer Perceval offered a thousand pounds,
and one or two others made some offers; but the appeal was in vain, and
a motion was proposed by Mr. Cartwright, on the 3rd of February, that
the nation should pay this sum. This was carried at once.

Though the genius and services of Pitt to his country have been
overrated, he was a man of great and persevering energies, of
remarkable talent and conspicuous oratory; but his temperament was
cold, proud, self-glorifying, and imperious, without either the deep
insight or the comprehensive grasp of genius.




CHAPTER XIX.

THE REIGN OF GEORGE III. (_continued_).

    The Ministry of "All the Talents"--Fox informs Napoleon of a
    supposed Scheme for his Assassination--Futile Negotiations for
    Peace--Windham's Army Bills--Resolutions against the Slave Trade
    passed--Inquiry into the Conduct of the Princess of Wales--British
    Expeditions: Stuart in Calabria--Battle of Maida--Continued
    Resistance of the Neapolitans--Recapture of the Cape of Good
    Hope--Expedition to Buenos Ayres--Naval Successes: Victories of
    Duckworth, Warren, and Hood--Cochrane's Daredevilry--Napoleon's
    subject Kingdoms--Prussia makes Complaints--Napoleon prepares
    for War--Murder of Palm--Isolation of Prussia--Imbecility of
    their Plan of Campaign--Battle of Jena--Napoleon in Berlin--He
    seizes Brunswick--Complete Subjugation of Germany--Settlement of
    Germany--The Berlin Decrees--Napoleon rouses the Poles--Campaign
    against Benningsen--Death of Fox--Ministerial Changes--Votes
    in Supply--An Administrative Scandal--Abolition of the Slave
    Trade--Measures of Roman Catholic Relief--Dismissal of the
    Grenville Ministry--The Duke of Portland's Cabinet--Hostile Motions
    in Parliament--The General Election--Irish Coercion Bills--Failure
    of the Expeditions planned by the late Ministry: Buenos Ayres--The
    Expedition to the Dardanelles--Expedition to Alexandria--Attack
    on Rosetta--Withdrawal of the Expedition--War between Russia and
    Turkey--Secret Articles of the Treaty of Tilsit--Bombardment
    of Copenhagen and Capture of the Danish Fleet--Seizure of
    Heligoland--The Campaign in Europe--Battle of Eylau--Benningsen's
    Retreat--Napoleon on the Vistula--Fall of Dantzic--Battle of
    Friedland--Alexander resolves to make Peace--The Meeting on the
    Niemen--Treaty of Tilsit.


Pitt dead, there remained a difficulty of no ordinary kind in the
construction of a new Cabinet. Various persons were applied to to fill
the arduous post of prime minister, who all declined, knowing the
powerful opposition which would be arrayed against them by coalescing
parties. Amongst these were Lord Hawkesbury, Sidmouth, and the Marquis
Wellesley, who had just returned from India. There was nothing for
it, then, but to endeavour to diminish the opposition of all parties
by bringing in some of all parties, and hence the construction of the
Ministry of "All the Talents." Grenville assumed the helm as First Lord
of the Treasury, and, of course, brought in Fox, notwithstanding the
repugnance of the king. Fox became Secretary for Foreign Affairs--Fox,
who had so long and so vehemently condemned the whole of Pitt's
foreign policy. Sidmouth, though refusing the responsibility of the
Premiership, accepted the office of Privy Seal; Lord Fitzwilliam became
Lord President of the Council; Grey, now Lord Howick, First Lord of the
Admiralty; Lord Moira, Master-General of the Ordnance; Lord Spencer,
Secretary of State for the Home Department; Windham, Secretary for the
Colonies; Lord Henry Petty, Chancellor of the Exchequer; Erskine, Lord
Chancellor; and Sir Gilbert Elliot, now made Lord Minto, President of
the Board of Control. Sheridan was not placed in the Cabinet, because
he had not been found staunch to any party, and because, in his daily
drunken fits, he was likely to disclose State secrets--as if, said
he, there were any secrets to be disclosed. Lord Auckland was made
President of the Board of Trade, and Lord Temple Vice-President.
Temple, also, was made joint Paymaster of the Forces with Lord John
Townshend, and General Fitzpatrick Secretary at War. In the law
departments, Lord Ellenborough, the Chief Justice of the King's Bench,
had, though quite out of rule, a seat in the Cabinet; Pigott became
Attorney-General, Sir Samuel Romilly Solicitor-General. The Duke of
Bedford was enabled to gratify his dependents by being appointed
Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. Such was the Ministry of "All the Talents,"
amongst whom, however, did not appear Canning, who had more talent than
three-fourths of them. It was clear that such a Ministry could not long
hold together. There were scarcely two of them who did not cherish
the most irreconcilable views. Fox, at the instigation of Francis,
was desirous to call in question the proceedings of Lord Wellesley
in India, and Lord Grenville was as resolute against it. Windham,
Grenville, Fox, and Sidmouth held, every one of them, different notions
of foreign policy. Fox and some others were advocates of Catholic
emancipation; Sidmouth was utterly averse from it. Then, how were so
many heads to find comfortable berths for their followers?

Fox had now to attempt that accommodation with Buonaparte which, he
had so long contended, was by no means difficult. An opportunity was
immediately offered him for opening communications with the French
Government. A Frenchman, calling himself Guillet de la Gevrillière,
made his way secretly into England, and solicited an interview with Fox
on a matter of high importance. Fox granted it, and was indignant at
discovering that it was a proposal to assassinate Napoleon. Fox ordered
the man to be detained, and wrote at once to Talleyrand, informing
him of the fact, and expressing his abhorrence of it. Talleyrand
replied, complimenting Fox on the nobleness of his principles, and
expressing the admiration of the Emperor of it. "Tell him," said
Buonaparte, as reported by Talleyrand, "that in this act I recognise
the principles of honour and virtue in Mr. Fox;" and he added that
the Emperor desired him to say, that whatever turn affairs might now
take, whether this useless war, as he termed it, might be put an end
to or not, he was perfectly confident that there was a new spirit in
the British Cabinet, and that Fox would alone follow principles of
beauty and true greatness. These empty compliments made no way towards
such a negotiation as a real burst of gratitude might have introduced,
especially when accompanied by such confidence as Buonaparte avowed in
Fox's sentiments; and shrewd men suspected that Gevrillière had most
likely been dispatched by Napoleon himself, through Fouché, to test
the reality of Fox's formerly asserted indignation that Pitt, or any
British Minister, could be suspected of plans of assassination against
the French Emperor.

[Illustration: TALLEYRAND. (_After the Portrait by Gerard._)]

Still, Fox took the opportunity to sound the French Government as to
the possibility of peace. In a correspondence with Talleyrand he said
that Britain would be willing to treat on reasonable terms, the first
condition of which was that the Emperor Alexander should be admitted
to the treaty. This was at once refused; yet Fox did not give up the
attempt, and at length the French Government proposed that a British
ambassador should go to Paris, to endeavour to arrange the principles
of an agreement. Fox complied. Before a British plenipotentiary was
permitted to proceed to Paris, the great points of the negotiation
should have been brought forward, and it should have been seen whether
there was a probability of agreeing. It should have been understood
whether Buonaparte was disposed to surrender Naples again, which
Britain demanded; to require the retirement of the Prussians from
Hanover, even if nothing was said of Holland and Switzerland. To send a
plenipotentiary without having ascertained these points was simply to
enable Buonaparte to boast that he had sought to conciliate, and that
British rapacity and ambition rendered all his overtures useless. This
was exactly what occurred. Lord Yarmouth, late Marquis of Hertford,
who had been residing for years in France as one of Buonaparte's
_détenus_ at the Peace of Amiens, was first sent. Lord Yarmouth arrived
in Paris towards the end of May, and though it had been settled that
the negotiations should, for the present, remain secret, the French
had taken care to make every Court in Europe well acquainted with the
fact. Then one of the very first demands--having got the ambassador
there--was for the recognition, not only of Buonaparte as emperor,
but also of all his family as princes and princesses of the blood.
Next they came to the surrender of Naples, but Talleyrand assured Lord
Yarmouth that the Emperor, so far from giving up Naples, or any part
of Italy, must have Sicily, which was in possession of the British,
because Joseph Buonaparte, now made King of Naples, declared that
it could not be held without Sicily. France, Talleyrand said, would
consent to Britain holding Malta, the Cape of Good Hope, which we
had taken again, and would not only restore Hanover to us, but also
allow us to seize on the Hanse Towns and Hamburg! We were in fact,
to be permitted to set up for marauders, like themselves, and invade
neutral States, and appropriate them; but, as for Naples or Sicily
being restored, that was impossible. Lord Yarmouth also demanded
that Dalmatia, Istria, and Albania should be restored, the last to
the Turks, whose empire should regain its entirety. These points
were equally resisted. Meanwhile, Prussia had taken the alarm about
Hanover, and Russia, fearful of our treating without her, sent to Paris
Count d'Oubril. Talleyrand managed to excite jealousies between the
British and Russian envoys, to such a degree, that d'Oubril quitted
Paris hastily, and returned to St. Petersburg. Instead of peace, the
elements of new heartburnings and wars every day developed themselves.
Finding that Lord Yarmouth did not succeed. Fox sent over the Earl
of Lauderdale, but he got on no better. Buonaparte insisted that
Sicily should be given up to Naples, and a little mock monarchy should
be created for Ferdinand, the ex-king, in the Balearic Isles, which
were to be taken unceremoniously from Spain. Lord Lauderdale, after a
month's waste of words, demanded his passports, and returned; and Fox
had now had ample proof that no peace was to be effected with Napoleon,
except upon the terms of leaving the Continent to his dictation.

In Parliament, business was brought almost to a stand by the
neutralising influences of the partisans of "All the Talents."
Excepting on one or two points, no great majority could be obtained on
any question. There was an attempt to censure the introduction of Lord
Ellenborough, as Chief Justice of the King's Bench, into the Cabinet.
It was contended that it was contrary to the principle, if not the
letter, of the Constitution; that, besides a judge having enough to do
on the Bench, he would have to sit as a judge on such appeals to the
Privy Council which might be made thither against his own decisions;
that, moreover, Lord Ellenborough had suddenly changed the whole
principles of his life for the sake of advancement, and in the practice
of his court had, by the most rude and insolent language, never
hesitated to carry causes in favour of the Government and against the
popular liberties. On the part of Government it was argued that, both
in Queen Anne's reign and in that of George II., the Chief Justices had
had a place in the Cabinet; and the subject was evaded by carrying the
previous question.

Windham, on the 3rd of April, proposed his plan for the improvement
of the army. Till this time enlistments had been for life, which gave
men a strong aversion to enter it, and made it the resort chiefly of
such as were entrapped in drink, or were the offscouring of society,
who became soldiers to enjoy an idle life and often to escape hanging
for their desperate crimes. He said that we could not have recourse to
conscription in this country, and to get men, and especially a better
class of men, we must limit the term of service and increase the pay.
To prepare the way for his contemplated regulations, he first moved
for the repeal of Pitt's Additional Force Bill. This was strongly
opposed by Castlereagh and Canning, who contended that nothing could
be better or more flourishing than the condition of the army; and
that the repeal of Pitt's Bill was only meant to cast a slur on his
memory. Notwithstanding this, the Bill was repealed by a majority,
in the Commons, of two hundred and thirty-five against one hundred
and nineteen, and in the Lords by a majority of ninety-seven against
forty. Windham then moved for a clause in the annual Mutiny Bill, on
the 30th of May, for limiting the terms of service. In the infantry,
these terms were divided into three, of seven years each; and in
the cavalry and artillery three also, the first of ten, the second
of six, and the third of five years. At the end of any one of these
terms, the soldier could demand his discharge, but his privileges and
pensions were to be increased according to the length of his service.
Notwithstanding active opposition, the clause was adopted and inserted.
He then followed this success by a series of Bills: one for training
a certain number of persons liable to be drawn from the militia, not
exceeding two hundred thousand; a Bill suspending the ballot for the
militia for England for two years, except so far as should be necessary
to supply vacancies in any corps fallen below its quota; a Bill, called
the Chelsea Hospital Bill, to secure to disabled or discharged soldiers
their rightful pensions; a Bill for augmenting the pay of infantry
officers of the regular line; and one for settling the relative rank
of officers of troops of the line, militia, and yeomanry. To these
Bills, which were all passed, was added a vote for the increased pay of
sergeants, corporals, and privates of the line, and an augmentation of
the Chelsea pensions, and the pensions of officers' widows. Lord Howick
moved that the same benefits should be extended to the officers, petty
officers, and seamen of the navy, and to the Greenwich pensioners,
which was carried. These were, undoubtedly, most substantial measures
of justice to the two services; and the results of them soon became
apparent enough in their beneficial effects on the condition of the
army and navy.

The best feature of "All the Talents" was the sincerity with which
they went into the endeavours to suppress the Slave Trade. Pitt had
always stood by Wilberforce and the abolitionists, to a certain degree,
and had made some of his ablest speeches on this topic; but beyond
speaking, he had done little practically to bring his supporters to the
necessary tone on the subject. The present Ministry, though comprising
several members decidedly hostile to abolition, and other mere lukewarm
friends, went with much more spirit into the question, and Lord Henry
Petty had canvassed the University of Cambridge, and made many friends
of the measure there. The Royal Family were decided opponents to the
abolition of the Slave Trade. The Ministry, therefore, deserved praise
for their support of Wilberforce and the abolitionists. Clarkson and
the Society of Friends had been working indefatigably out of doors to
great purpose, and it was now deemed possible to make a preparatory
assault on the trade. On the 1st of January the Attorney-General
brought in a Bill to prohibit the exportation of slaves from any of
the British colonies. This, though it permitted the direct transport
of slaves from Africa to those colonies, or to foreign colonies, cut
off the convenience of making our islands depôts for this trade; and
Pitt had already, by an Order in Council, prevented the introduction of
slaves into the colonies conquered by us during the war. Wilberforce
was so elated by the carrying of the Attorney-General's Bill that he
wanted to follow it up by one prohibiting the trade altogether; but
Fox and Grenville declared that this was not yet practicable. But on
the 10th of April they permitted Wilberforce to move an address to
the king, requesting him to use his influence with Foreign Powers for
putting down this traffic; and this being carried, Fox moved, in the
Commons, a resolution that the House considered the African Slave
Trade to be contrary to the principles of justice, humanity, and sound
policy, and would, with all practicable expedition, proceed to take
effectual measures for its abolition, in such manner and at such period
as should seem advisable. This, too, was carried by a hundred and
fifteen against fourteen. This was a great step, for it pledged the
House of Commons to the declaration that the trade was indefensible,
and ought to be put an end to. Still more, to prevent that rush for
securing slaves which the fear of the suppression of the trade, at no
distant date, might occasion, a Bill was also passed, prohibiting the
employment of any vessel in that trade which had not trafficked in it
previous to the 1st of August, 1806, or been contracted for before June
10th, 1806. This Act was limited to two years, and, in spite of its
benevolent intention, had one serious drawback--that of causing the
vessels employed to be still more crowded, and therefore more fatal to
the slaves.

The Ministry were now involved in a transaction which produced them
a plentiful crop of unpopularity. The country was already highly
disappointed by the character of the financial measures, and now saw
them engaged in an attempt to gratify the domestic resentments of
the Prince of Wales. We have already alluded to the disreputable
circumstances attending his marriage with the Princess Caroline
of Brunswick. After little more than a year's cohabitation they
separated, but not before a daughter was born. So long as the Pitt
Administration continued, all offensive measures of a public nature
were warded from the unfortunate princess. The king had always been
her decided protector; but now the Whigs came in, who had ever been
in alliance with the Prince of Wales, and that exemplary gentleman
conceived hopes that he might rid himself of her. The public had been
for some time scandalised by disputes between the prince and princess
as to a proper separate allowance for her, and concerning the prince's
endeavours to deprive her of the company of her own child; but, as
he had not succeeded in taking away the infant, rumours were soon
industriously spread that the princess, at Blackheath, was leading
a very disreputable life. All that they could gather up or construe
to the princess's disadvantage was duly communicated to the Duke of
Sussex, and by the duke to his brother, the prince. In 1805 they had
supplied their employer or employers with a most startling story of the
princess's having been delivered of a son, whom she was openly keeping
in her house, under pretence that it was the child of a poor woman of
the name of Austin, which she had adopted. Immediate steps were taken
privately to get up a case. On the 24th of May Lord Chancellor Erskine
read the written statements to the king, who decided that a private
inquiry should take place; that the house of Lord Grenville should
be selected as the proper scene, and that Lords Erskine, Spencer,
Grenville, and Ellenborough should undertake the inquiry and report
to him upon it. This meeting and inquiry took place, accordingly, on
the 1st of June. Romilly attended. The servants were examined, and
appear, according to Romilly's diary, to have uniformly given the most
favourable testimony to the conduct of the princess. Further: the
reputed mother of the child, Sophia Austin, was examined, and proved
that the child was veritably her own; had been born at the Brownlow
Street Hospital on the 11th of July, 1802, and had been taken to the
princess's house on the 15th of November, adopted by her, and had
remained there ever since. "The result," says Romilly, "was a perfect
conviction on my mind, and, I believe, on the minds of the four
lords, that the child was the child of Sophia Austin." This affair
of the Princess of Wales was not terminated till the end of January,
1807. When the report was laid before the king, he referred it to
the Cabinet, and they advised him to send a written message to the
princess, acquitting her of the main charge, but observing that he saw
in the depositions of the witnesses, and even in her own letter to him,
defending her conduct, evidence of a deportment unbecoming her station.
The odium excited against the Ministry by these un-English proceedings
was intense, especially amongst women, all over the country.

The British during this year were engaged in a variety of enterprises,
and in very different and distant parts of the world, with a success
as various. The most remarkable undertaking was the defence of Lower
Calabria, which showed what might be effected by British soldiers, if
employed in sufficient numbers, and under able commanders. We have
already sketched the attempt by a small Russian army and a smaller
British one to support Ferdinand of Naples in his kingdom against the
French. As General St. Cyr came back upon them, followed by Massena,
with altogether sixty thousand men, the seven thousand of British and
Russians were obliged to retreat, the Russians embarking for Corfu, and
the British crossing over into Sicily, whither the Neapolitan Court had
fled, taking up its residence at Palermo.

In Calabria, the two sons of Ferdinand of Naples, Prince Francis and
Prince Leopold, in conjunction with General Damas, held a force of
fourteen thousand men, and endeavoured to arouse the mountaineers, and
repel the advance of the French; but Regnier was dispatched against
them, with a force of ten thousand, and soon defeated and dispersed the
Neapolitans, making himself master of all the country, except the towns
and fortresses of Maratea, Amantea, and Scylla. After three days of a
bloody contest, Regnier took Maratea, and gave it up to the soldiery.
These atrocities aroused the mountaineers to such fury, that they beset
and harassed the French on their march to Amantea like so many demons.
Their progress was arrested: Amantea stoutly resisted; Scylla, though
taken, was invested by enraged Neapolitans and peasantry, and Reggio
was again wrested from them. At this crisis arrived Sir John Stuart in
Sicily, to reinforce and take the command of the British troops, and,
at the earnest entreaty of the queen, Sir John crossed into Calabria.

[Illustration: _By permission of the Corporation of Liverpool._

    _Reproduced by Andre & Sleigh, La., Bushey. Herts._

THE DEATH OF NELSON, 1805.

FROM THE PICTURE BY DANIEL MACLISE R.A., IN THE WALKER ART GALLERY.]

Sir John landed in Calabria on the 1st of July, in the Gulf of Santa
Euphemia, not far from Nicastro, and advanced to seek Regnier. He had
not quite five thousand troops with him, all infantry, and a third
of these Corsicans, Sicilians, and other foreigners in British pay.
Regnier had started for Naples with ten thousand men, but some of these
were lost, and others stationed to occupy different posts. On the 3rd
of July Sir John Stuart learned that Regnier was near Maida, about ten
miles from Sir John's landing-place. Leaving a detachment to guard the
stores, Sir John, on the 4th, marched forward, under a burning sun,
to come up with him. He found Regnier drawn up in a strong position
on a woody slope below the village of Maida, flanked by a thick,
scrubby wood on each hand, and having in front the river Amato, at this
season of the year perfectly fordable. The position was formidable,
and, had Regnier kept it, it must have tried the British severely to
dislodge him, especially as they had no cavalry; but Regnier, probably
honestly of opinion that the British need only be encountered to be
beaten, descended from his vantage ground into the plain. One reason
might be, that his cavalry could better avail him there; another,
that, after his boasts, Lebrun, the Commissioner of Buonaparte, who
always, in the old Jacobin style, had such a person in the field to
watch the conduct of his generals, would be ready to condemn him if
he showed any delay when engaged with so despised an enemy. The two
armies approached each other about nine o'clock in the morning. They
fired two or three rounds at each other, and then advanced with fixed
bayonets. The officer commanding the British advance column, seeing
that the men were oppressed by the blankets which they carried at
their backs in that sultry weather, commanded a halt a little before
they closed, and ordered them to let their blankets go. The French,
seeing this momentary halt, were confirmed in their general's opinion
of the cowardice of the British, and rushed on with loud cheers.
They were bronzed and bearded veterans; the British, who composed
the advance column, were chiefly young and beardless youths; and an
officer present informed Sir Walter Scott, that, as he glanced first
on the grim-looking French, and then at the smooth, young faces of
the British, he could not help feeling a momentary anxiety. But no
sooner were the British freed from their blankets than they dashed
forward with loud hurrahs; and the French, who, since the battle of
Austerlitz, had boasted that no soldiers in Europe could stand against
them in a charge of bayonets, were, in their turn, staggered. Some
few stood firmly to cross bayonets with the foe, but the greater part
fell back. The French officers rushed along their lines to encourage
their men, but in vain; nothing could urge them to the points of the
British bayonets. The hills around were crowded with the Calabrians,
anxious spectators of the fight. When the British halted, they raised
loud exclamations of dismay, believing they were about to fly, but
the next moment they saw them springing forward with shouts and the
French waver, turn, and fly. The First Light Infantry--a crack French
regiment--were the first to break and run for the hills. But it was
too late; the British were at their backs, and pursued them with a
terrible slaughter. Regnier's left thus routed by our right, he rode
furiously about, bringing all the force he could muster on our left,
but there the result was just the same: the French scarcely stayed to
feel the bayonets, but fled in headlong confusion. The British took all
the forts along the coasts, and drove the French into Upper Calabria,
where they were joined, near Cassano, by Massena, with a powerful army.
But the British force was not strong enough to do more than it had
done. Malaria also began to decimate his troops, and Sir John Stuart
returned, in August, to Sicily, carrying with him a great quantity of
stores and artillery, which the French had prepared for the reduction
of Calabria. The chief benefit of the battle of Maida was to show
that the British troops, in proper quantities, were able to drive the
French before them, but that, in the small numbers usually sent on
expeditions, they were merely wasted. The battle of Alexandria, and now
that of Maida, demonstrated that, if Britain would continue to fight on
the Continent, she must prepare to do it with a sufficient force; and
the after campaigns of Portugal and Spain, and the conclusive battle
of Waterloo, were the results of this public conviction. At the same
time, the brilliant episode of Maida had wonderfully encouraged the
Neapolitans and Calabrians. Joseph Buonaparte, the French intruded
king, was once or twice on the very point of flying to the army in
Upper Calabria, and many of his counsellors strongly advised it.
Massena advised Joseph to remain, and assured him that he would soon
reduce the whole kingdom to obedience to him. But, in fact, it took
Massena and his successors five years to accomplish the subjugation,
with the sacrifice of one hundred thousand men.

Another successful expedition this year was one against the Cape of
Good Hope. This settlement, so desirable for Britain, with her Indian
possessions, had been yielded up by the Addington Administration, at
the Peace of Amiens, most imprudently. A body of five thousand men
was dispatched for its recovery, under Sir David Baird, in a fleet
commanded by Sir Home Popham. They arrived in January, and the Dutch
soldiers fled at the first attack. Retiring into the interior, General
Beresford was dispatched after them, whereupon they surrendered, on
condition that they should be sent to Holland without being deemed
prisoners of war.

Had Sir Home Popham been satisfied with this well-executed piece
of service, he would have merited honour; but, this being done, he
suggested to Sir David Baird that an expedition might be made with
advantage against the Spanish colonies in South America. It was
reported--not truly, as it turned out--that these colonies were as
poorly defended as they were wealthy. Sir David was weak enough to fall
into the scheme, and, without any authority from home, as it would
appear, for so important a proceeding, he permitted General Beresford
to sail in Sir Home's squadron with a part of his forces. The fleet
touched at St. Helena, and took in a few more soldiers, but the whole
body did not then amount to more than sixteen hundred. With this
contemptible handful of men, the British squadron entered the river La
Plata, and landed the troops, on the 24th of June, at a short distance
from Buenos Ayres. The few Spanish troops in the city were easily
routed, and the place capitulated on the 27th, and Beresford entered
and took up his quarters there. But he was not long left at peace.
The Spaniards discovering, as a matter of course, the insignificance
of the force which had thus rashly surprised the city, collected in
sufficient numbers to make prisoners of them all. A French officer
in the Spanish service, M. Liniers, landed with a thousand men from
Monte Video and Sacramento, and, being joined by the troops of the
neighbourhood which had been repulsed by Beresford, appeared before
the city on the 10th of July, and summoned the British to surrender.
This was the signal for the inhabitants to rise _en masse_ and fall on
them. They were prevented from escaping to their ships by the badness
of the weather, and were assailed from the windows and doors, and
exposed to a general attack in the great square, and were compelled to
yield, on condition of being allowed to re-embark; but no sooner had
they laid down their arms, than Liniers, who probably looked on them
as no better than filibusters, treated them as such, and marched them
up the country, where they were rigorously treated. Four hundred of
them had perished in this mad attempt. Meanwhile, Sir Home Popham had
sent home upwards of a million of dollars, reserving two hundred and
five thousand for the pay of the army. There were great rejoicings in
London at the news, and at the receipt of the specie. Popham, in his
despatches, represented himself as having conquered a great colony,
and opened up a wonderful mart for our manufactures; and the Ministry,
delighted at the receipt of the dollars, though they had, on first
hearing of the scheme, sent out orders to stop the squadron, now, on
the 20th of September, issued an Order in Council declaring Buenos
Ayres and its dependencies open to our trade. Long before this order
could have reached America the whole scene was reversed. Sir Home
Popham had, indeed, blockaded the river La Plata, and had attempted
to bombard Monte Video, but his ships could not get near enough. In
October reinforcements arrived from the Cape and from England, but
not in sufficient strength to enable him to do anything decisive. He
therefore contented himself with landing troops at Maldonado, and drove
the Spaniards from the isle of Gorriti, where he lay to, and waited for
greater reinforcements.

During this year Buonaparte made another attempt to recover the mastery
of St. Domingo. Dessalines was now emperor, having a court full of
black nobles and marshals, an exact parody of Napoleon's. A French
squadron, under Admiral Lessigues, consisting of five ships of the
line, two frigates, and a corvette, managed to escape the British
fleets, and, on the 20th of January, to anchor in the road of St.
Domingo. They had just landed a body of troops, when Sir John Duckworth
made his appearance with seven sail-of-the-line and four frigates.
Lessigues slipped his cables, and endeavoured to get out to sea, but
the wind did not favour him; Sir John Duckworth came up with him, and,
on the 6th of February, attacked and defeated him. Though Sir John had
the superiority in number of vessels, the French vessels were, some
of them, much larger ones; and one, the _Imperial_, was reckoned the
largest and finest ship of their navy--a huge three-decker, of three
thousand three hundred tons, and a hundred and thirty guns. Yet, in
three hours, Sir John had captured three of the French line of battle
ships; the other two ran on the rocks, and were wrecked. One of these
was the gigantic _Imperial_. Nearly the whole of her crew perished,
five hundred being killed and wounded before she struck. One of these
frigates which escaped was afterwards captured by a British sloop of
war in a very battered condition from a storm, in addition to the
fight.

Another French fleet, under Admiral Willaumez, left Brest at the same
time with that of Lessigues, bound for the Cape of Good Hope, to assist
the Dutch troops in defending it. The British, however, having taken
it before his arrival, he went cruising about and picking up such
stray British merchantmen as he could meet with between the continents
of Africa and South America. He then stood away for the West Indies,
hoping to be able to destroy the British shipping in the ports of
Barbadoes. Failing in that, he made for Martinique, which was still in
the possession of the French. Willaumez had but six sail of the line,
and the English admirals, Sir John Borlase Warren, who had the same
number and a frigate, and Sir Richard Strachan, who had seven sail
of the line and two frigates, were in eager quest of him. Meanwhile,
Willaumez was attacked by a terrible tempest, and then chased by
Strachan in the _Chesapeake_. Of his six ships of the line he took home
only two, and was obliged to burn the British merchantmen that he had
taken.

Another admiral was still less fortunate. This was Linois, who had been
beaten off in his attack on a British fleet of India merchantmen, in
the Straits of Malacca, some time before, and who had been cruising
far and wide in pursuit of British prizes, whilst a number of English
commanders were eagerly hunting after him. He was now returning home,
when, in sight of the port of Brest, with only two of his ships
remaining, Sir John Warren stood in his way, and compelled him to
surrender both of them.

In September Commodore Sir Samuel Hood captured five frigates, which
issued from Rochefort, laden with troops, stores, arms, and ammunition
for the French forts in the West Indies. But the most daring feats
of bravery were performed by Captain Lord Cochrane, afterwards Lord
Dundonald. Early in this year he sent a number of boats up the Gironde,
not far from Bordeaux, to endeavour to seize two large brig corvettes,
the nearest of which lay twenty miles up the river, protected by two
heavy land batteries. The sailors successfully brought away the first
vessel, having only three men wounded in the affair; the other corvette
lay much higher up the river, but, hearing the firing, it fell down
to the assistance of its companion vessel; but the British seamen
beat it back, and carried away their prize in the face of crowds of
armed militia, and greater crowds of people along the shores. Whilst
this daring action was in progress Lord Cochrane was not idle. He
attacked with his single frigate one sixteen-gun and two twenty-gun
corvettes, and drove them on shore. He then proceeded to Aix, to
reconnoitre a strong fleet anchored in the roads, under cover of
strong batteries. His little frigate, the _Pallas_, a twelve-pounder
of thirty-two guns, was attacked by a forty-four-gun frigate and three
big corvettes, but they were compelled to retire without driving him
from his station. He then landed part of the crew of the _Pallas_, who
destroyed some signal-posts which gave notice of all the movements of
the British cruisers. One of these signal-posts was defended, but in
vain, by a hundred French militia. He next attacked a battery of three
thirty-six pounders, and a garrison of fifty men, spiked the guns,
blew up the magazine, and flung the shot and shells into the sea. The
frigate _Minerva_, of forty-four guns, and three corvettes, then ran
out of harbour with studding-sails and royals set, and commenced a
simultaneous attack on the _Pallas_; but Cochrane soon reduced the
_Minerva_ almost to a wreck, and was on the point of boarding her when
two other frigates hastened to her aid, and the _Pallas_, considerably
damaged herself, was obliged to haul off. Such were the audacious
doings of the British men-of-war in every quarter of the world, and
in these Lord Cochrane stood always conspicuous for his unparalleled
daring and adroitness.

The victory of Napoleon over Austria had wonderfully increased his
influence with those German States which formed the Confederation of
the Rhine. Bavaria, Würtemberg, Hesse-Darmstadt, and other of the
small princes, especially those on the right bank of that river, were
more than ever bound to him, and were prepared to follow him in any
wars that he might make against other countries, or even their own
fatherland. Whilst some of them received crowns for their unnatural
subserviency, several smaller princes were sunk into the condition
of mere nobles. The military contingents which he exacted from them
amounted to sixty thousand men, and these he soon had in a state of
discipline and efficiency very different to that which they exhibited
under the old German federation. Under Napoleon they behaved as well as
any of his troops, showing that they needed only leaders of activity
and talent to make good soldiers of them. Thus France superseded
Austria in its influence over all the south-west of Germany. Nor did
he stop here. He had created dukes and princes, and resolved also to
create kings. These were to be his brothers, who were to be placed on
half the thrones of Europe, and set there as vassal monarchs doing
homage and service to him, the great emperor of France. He expected
them to be the obedient servants of France, or, rather, of himself,
and not of the countries they were ostensibly set to govern. He began
by making his brother Joseph King of Naples in March, and in June he
made his brother Louis King of Holland. He told them that they must
never forget that their first duty was to France and to himself. He
intended to make his brother Jerome King of Westphalia; but Jerome had
married a Miss Paterson, the daughter of an American merchant, and he
must have this marriage broken, and a royal one arranged, before he
could admit him to this regal honour: he must also wrest part of this
territory from Prussia. His sister Pauline, widow of General Leclerc,
who perished in St. Domingo, he had now married to the Roman Prince
Borghese, and he gave her the Italian duchy of Guastalla. Murat, who
had married another sister, he made Grand Duke of Berg and Cleve,
and Marshal Berthier he made Prince of Neuchâtel. These territories,
taken from Prussia, Bavaria, and Switzerland, he conferred, with all
their rights and privileges, on these generals. The duchy of Parma he
conferred on Cambacérès, and Piacenza on General Lebrun.

Prussia, which had remained inactive whilst Buonaparte was winning over
Bavaria and Würtemberg to his interests, and while he was crushing
Austria, now that she stood alone took the alarm, and complained that
the French troops on the Rhine and in the Hanse Towns, which, by
the Treaty of Pressburg, ought to have been withdrawn from Germany,
remained. The Queen of Prussia and Prince Louis, the king's cousin,
were extremely anti-Gallic. They had long tried to arouse the king to
resist the French influence in Germany, to coalesce with Austria while
it was time, and to remove Haugwitz from the Ministry, who was greatly
inclined towards France. The Emperor Alexander professed himself ready
to unite in this resistance to France, and Frederick William began now
to listen to these counsels. He withdrew his minister, Lucchesini,
from Paris, and sent General Knobelsdorff in his place. On the 1st of
October Knobelsdorff presented to Talleyrand a long memorial, demanding
that the French troops should re-cross the Rhine immediately, in
compliance with the Treaty of Pressburg; that France should desist from
throwing obstacles in the way of the promotion of a league in North
Germany, comprehending all the States not included in the Confederation
of the Rhine; and that the fortress of Wesel and those abbeys which
Murat, since becoming Grand Duke of Berg and Cleve, had seized and
attached to his territory, should be restored.

Such language was certain to irritate, in no ordinary degree, the
full-blown pride of Buonaparte. It is probable that he was only
too desirous of finding a cause of quarrel with Prussia. He longed
to avenge himself on her for keeping him in a state of tantalising
uncertainty during his Austrian campaign; and he wished to bring the
whole of Germany under his dominion. He replied, through Talleyrand,
that Prussia had no right to demand from him that he should withdraw
his troops from friendly States, and that they should remain there as
long as he pleased. In fact, he was already watching the movements of
Prussia. He was well aware of the negotiations with Russia, he had full
information of the manœuvring of troops, and that the Queen of Prussia,
in the uniform of the regiment called by her name, had been at reviews
of the army, encouraging the soldiers by her words. He had, weeks
before, assembled his principal marshals--Soult, Murat, Augereau, and
Bernadotte--in Paris, and, with them, sketched the plan of the campaign
against Prussia. Four days before Knobelsdorff presented the King of
Prussia's letter to Talleyrand Napoleon had quitted Paris, and was on
the Rhine, directing the march of his forces there, and calling for
the contingents from the princes of the Rhenish Confederation; nay, so
forward were his measures, that his army in Germany, under Berthier,
stretched from Baden to Düsseldorf, and from Frankfort-on-the-Main to
Nuremberg. At the same time he commenced a series of the bitterest
attacks on Prussia in the _Moniteur_ and other papers under his
control, and of the vilest and most unmanly attacks on the character of
the Queen of Prussia, a most interesting and amiable woman, whose only
crime was her patriotism.

But Buonaparte did not content himself with stabs at the reputation of
his enemies--he resorted to his old practices of assassination. The
booksellers of Germany, ignoring the dominance of Buonaparte in their
country, though he had completely silenced the press in France, dared
to publish pamphlets and articles against the French invasion and
French rule in Germany. Buonaparte ordered Berthier to seize a number
of these publishers, and try them by court-martial, on the plea that
they excited the inhabitants to rise and massacre his soldiers. Amongst
the booksellers thus arrested was John Philip Palm, of Nuremberg. The
charge against him was that he had published a pamphlet entitled,
"_L'Allemagne dans_ _son profond abaissement._" This production was
attributed to M. Gentz, a writer who was most damaging to the influence
of Buonaparte, and Palm was offered his pardon if he would give up the
author. He refused. Nuremberg, though occupied by French soldiers, was
under the protection of Prussia, which was, just now, no protection at
all. Palm was carried off to Braunau, in Austria. This place was still
occupied by Buonaparte, in direct violation of the Treaty of Pressburg;
so that Buonaparte, in the seizure and trial of Palm, was guilty of
the breach of almost every international and civil law; for, had Palm
been the citizen of a French city, his offence being a mere libel did
not make him responsible to a military tribunal. The French colonels
condemned him to be shot, and the sentence was immediately executed
on the 26th of August. The indignation and odium which this atrocious
act excited, not only throughout Germany, but throughout the civilised
world, caused Buonaparte, with his usual disregard of truth, to say
that the officers had done all this without any orders from him, but
out of their own too officious zeal.

[Illustration: THE QUEEN OF PRUSSIA REVIEWING THE ARMY. (_See p._ 524.)]

On the 9th of October the King of Prussia issued a manifesto from his
headquarters at Erfurt, calling attention to the continual aggressions
of France--those aggressions which Prussia had so long watched in
profound apathy, and which, by timely union with Austria and Russia,
might have been checked. But Prussia had, by her mean conduct, now
stripped herself of all sympathy and all co-operation. She would have
been very glad indeed of the money of Great Britain, but she had so far
favoured the very aggressions of Buonaparte of which she now complained
as to receive Hanover from him, and could not even now find it in
her heart to surrender it, and make a powerful friend by that act of
justice. The Emperor of Russia was willing to co-operate, but Prussia
had made her hostile manifestations before Alexander could approach
with his army. In reply to the intimations of Prussia, that she would
be glad of the support of Britain, Lord Morpeth was sent to Berlin; but
the language of the Prussian Ministry was still of the most selfish
and impolitic character, and Lucchesini told Lord Morpeth that the
fate of Hanover must depend on the event of the coming war. With such
a Power no union could take place, and in this isolated and pitiable
condition Prussia was left to try her strength with Napoleon. As for
that ambitious soldier, he desired nothing so much as this encounter
with Prussia; he saw in it the only obstacle to his complete dominion
over Germany, and he was confident that he should scatter her armies at
the first shock.

The Prussian people, however, on their part, were clamorous for war;
they still prided themselves on the victories of Frederick, called the
Great, and the students and the young nobles were full of bravado. But,
unfortunately, they had not generals like Frederick to place at the
head of their armies, and their military system was entirely obsolete.
The Duke of Brunswick, who, in his youth, had shown much bravery in the
Seven Years' War, but who had been most unfortunate in his invasion of
France, in 1792, was now, in his seventy-second year, placed in chief
command, to compete with Napoleon. Nothing could exceed the folly of
his plan of the campaign. The whole force of Prussia, including its
auxiliaries, amounted only to about one hundred and fifty thousand men.
Of these the Saxons, who had reluctantly united with Prussia, and had
only been forced into co-operation by the Prussians marching into their
country, and, in a manner, compelling them, were worse than lukewarm in
the cause; they were ready at any moment to join the French. Besides
these, and the troops of Hesse-Cassel, they had not an ally except
the distant Russians. On the other hand, Napoleon had a considerably
superior army of his own in advance, and he had immense forces behind
the Rhine, for he had anticipated a whole year's conscription. He had,
moreover, his flanks protected by his friendly confederates of the
Rhine, ready to come forward, if necessary. In these circumstances,
Prussia's policy ought to have been to delay action, by negotiation
or otherwise, till the Russians could come up, and then to have
concentrated her troops so as to resist, by their momentum, the onset
of the confident and battle-practised French. But, so far from taking
these precautions, the Duke of Brunswick rushed forward at once into
Franconia, into the very face of Buonaparte, and long before he could
have the assistance of Russia. Instead of concentrating his forces,
Brunswick had stretched them out over a line of ninety miles in length.
He and the king had their headquarters at Weimar; their left, under
Prince Hohenlohe, was at Schleitz, and their right extended as far as
Mühlhausen. The Prussians, in fact, appeared rather to be occupying
cantonments than drawn into military position for a great contest.
Besides they had in front of them the Thuringian Forest, behind which
Napoleon could manœuvre as he pleased.

Perceiving the fatal separation of the Prussians from each other, and
from their supplies at Naumburg, he determined to cut their army in
two, and then to cut off and seize their magazines at this place. He
therefore ordered the French right wing, under Soult and Ney, to march
upon Hof, while the centre, under Bernadotte and Davoust, with the
guard commanded by Murat, advanced on Saalburg and Schleitz. The left
wing, under Augereau, proceeded towards Saalfeld and Coburg. Naumburg
was seized, and its magazines committed to the flames, and this, at
the same moment that it ruined their resources, apprised them that the
French were in their rear; and, still worse, were between them and
Magdeburg, which should have been their rallying-point. To endeavour
to make some reparation of their error, and to recover Naumburg, the
Duke of Brunswick marched in that direction, but too late. Davoust was
in possession of the place, and had given the magazine to the flames,
and he then marched out against Brunswick, who was coming with sixty
thousand men, though he had only about half that number. Brunswick, by
activity, might have seized the strong defile of Koesen; but he was so
slow that Davoust forced it open and occupied it. On the evening of
the 13th of October the duke was posted on the heights of Auerstadt,
and might have retained that strong position, but he did not know that
Davoust was so near; for the scout department seemed as much neglected
as other precautions. Accordingly, the next morning, descending from
the heights to pursue his march, his advanced line suddenly came
upon that of Davoust in the midst of a thick fog, near the village
of Hassen-Haussen. The battle continued from eight in the morning
till eleven, when the Duke of Brunswick was struck in the face by a
grape-shot, and blinded of both eyes. This, and the severe slaughter
suffered by the Prussians, now made them give way. The King of Prussia,
obliged to assume the command himself, at this moment received the
discouraging news that General Hohenlohe was engaged at Jena on the
same day (October 14) with the main army, against Buonaparte himself.
Resolving to make one great effort to retrieve his fortunes, he
ordered a general charge to be made along the whole French line. It
failed; the Prussians were beaten off, and there was a total rout. The
Prussians fled towards Weimar, where were the headquarters of their
army, only to meet the fugitives of Hohenlohe, whose forces at the
battle of Jena were very inferior to those of the French, and whose
defeat there was a foregone conclusion.

Napoleon marched triumphantly forwards towards Berlin. In Leipzic he
confiscated British merchandise to the value of about three millions
sterling. He entered Berlin on the 27th of October. As he traversed
the field of Rossbach, where Frederick the Great had annihilated a
French army, he ordered his soldiers to destroy the small column that
commemorated that event. He took up his residence in the palace of the
King of Prussia at Berlin. The wounded and blind Duke of Brunswick
entreated of the conqueror that his hereditary State of Brunswick might
be left him, but Buonaparte refused in harsh and insulting terms.
Moreover, he ordered his troops to march on that territory and town,
and the dying duke was compelled to be carried away on a litter by men
hired for the purpose, for all his officers and domestics had deserted
him. Buonaparte had a particular pleasure in persecuting this unhappy
man, because he was brother-in-law to George III. and father-in-law to
the heir to the British Crown; but he also wanted his dukedom to add
to the kingdom of Westphalia, which he was planning for his brother
Jerome. The duke's son requested of Buonaparte leave to lay his body
in the tomb of his ancestors, but the ruthless tyrant refused this
petition with the same savage bluntness, and the young duke vowed
eternal vengeance, and, if he did not quite live to discharge his oath,
his black Brunswickers did it at Waterloo.

The strong towns and fortresses of Prussia were all surrendered with as
much rapidity as the army had been dispersed. They were, for the most
part, commanded by imbecile or cowardly old villains; nay, there is
every reason to believe that, in many instances, they sold the places
to the French, and were paid their traitor fees out of the military
chests of the respective fortresses. Whilst these events were so
rapidly progressing, Louis Buonaparte, the new King of Holland, with an
army of French and Dutch, had overrun, with scarcely any opposition,
Westphalia, Hanover, Emden, and East Friesland. The unfortunate King
of Prussia, who had seen his kingdom vanish like a dream, had fled to
Königsberg, where he was defended by the gallant Lestog, and awaited
the hoped-for junction of the Russians marching to his aid. Gustavus
Adolphus, of Sweden, forgetting the slighted advice which he had
offered to Prussia to unite with Austria, opened Stralsund and Riga to
the fugitive Prussians.

Having put Prussia under his feet, Buonaparte proceeded to settle the
fate of her allies, Saxony and Hesse-Cassel. Saxony, which had been
forced into hostilities against France by Prussia, was at once admitted
by Buonaparte to his alliance. He raised the prince to the dignity of
king, and introduced him as a member of the Confederacy of the Rhine.
The small states of Saxe-Weimar and Saxe-Gotha were admitted to his
alliance on the same terms of vassalage; but Hesse-Cassel was wanted
to make part of the new kingdom of Westphalia, and, though it had not
taken up arms at all, Buonaparte declared that it had been secretly
hostile to France, and that the house of Hesse-Cassel had ceased to
reign. Louis Buonaparte had seized it, made it over to the keeping
of General Mortier, and then marched back to Holland. Mortier then
proceeded to re-occupy Hanover, which he did in the middle of November,
and then marched to Hamburg. He was in hopes of seizing a large
quantity of British goods, as he had done at Leipzic, but in this he
was disappointed, for the Hamburg merchants, being warned by the fate
of Leipzic, had made haste, disposed of all their British articles, and
ordered no fresh ones. Buonaparte, in his vexation, ordered Mortier to
seize the money in the banks; but Bourrienne wrote to him, showing him
the folly of such a step, and he refrained.

But his great measure, at this period, was the blow aimed at the
commerce of Britain, and comprised in his celebrated Berlin Decrees,
promulgated on the 21st of November. He had subjugated nearly the
whole of the European Continent. Spain, Portugal, Italy to the south
of France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, and Prussia to the north, with
nearly the whole seaboard of Europe, were under his hand and his
armies. He had found that he could not invade England; her fleet had
risen triumphant, his own fleet had disappeared like a vapour at
Trafalgar. As, therefore, he could not reach her soil, he determined
to destroy her by destroying her commerce, on which he imagined not
merely her prosperity but her very existence depended. As he was master
of nearly all Continental Europe, he supposed it as easy for him to
exclude by his fiat the merchandise of Britain, as to put down old
dynasties and set up new ones. He had yet to learn that commerce has a
conquering power greater than that either of martial genius or of arms.

[Illustration: NAPOLEON AT ROSSBACH. (_See p._ 527.)]

These were his first decrees:--I. The British Isles were declared in a
state of blockade. II. All commerce and correspondence with Britain was
forbidden. All British letters were to be seized in the post-houses.
III. Every Englishman, of whatever rank or quality, found in France,
or the countries allied with her, was declared a prisoner of war. IV.
All merchandise or property of any kind belonging to British subjects
was declared lawful prize. V. All articles of British manufacture,
and articles produced in her colonies, were, in like manner, declared
contraband and lawful prize. VI. Half of the produce of the above
confiscations was to be employed in the relief of those merchants whose
vessels had been captured by British cruisers. VII. All vessels coming
from Britain or British colonies were to be refused admission into any
harbour in or connected with France. These decrees were to be binding
wherever French power extended, but they had no effect in checking the
commerce of Britain; the distress to Continental merchants, however,
and the exasperation of the people deprived of British manufactures,
grew immediately acute. Bourrienne says that the fiscal tyranny thus
created became intolerable. At the same time, the desire of revenue
induced Buonaparte to allow his decrees to be infringed by the payment
of exorbitant licences for the import of British goods. French goods,
also, were lauded with incredible impudence, though they were bought
only to be thrown into the sea. Hamburg, Bordeaux, Nantes, and other
Continental ports solicited, by petitions and deputations, some
relaxation of the system, to prevent universal ruin. They declared that
general bankruptcy must ensue if it were continued. "Be it so," replied
Buonaparte, arrogantly; "the more insolvency on the Continent, the
more ruin in England." As they could not bend Buonaparte, merchants,
douaniers, magistrates, prefects, generals, all combined in one system
of fraudulent papers, bills of lading or certificates, by which British
goods were admitted and circulated under other names for sufficient
bribes. The only mischief which his embargo did was to the nations of
the Continent, especially Holland, Belgium, Germany, and to himself;
for his rigour in this respect was one of the things which drove the
whole of Europe to abominate his tyranny, and rejoice in his eventual
fall.

[Illustration:

    _Reproduced by André & Sleigh, Ld., Bushey, Herts._

CRIPPLED BUT UNCONQUERED, 1805.

FROM THE PICTURE BY W. L. WYLLIE, R.A.

    BREAKING INTO THE MIDST OF THE ENEMY'S LINES, THE "BELLEISLE"
    WAS SURROUNDED ON ALL SIDES.... RAKED FORE AND AFT AND THUNDERED
    AT FROM ALL QUARTERS, EVERY MAST AND SPAR OF THE GALLANT
    "SEVENTY-FOUR" WAS SHOT AWAY, HER HULL KNOCKED ALMOST TO PIECES,
    AND THE DECKS CUMBERED WITH DEAD AND DYING. STILL THE UNEQUAL
    FIGHT WENT ON, TILL AT LAST THE "SWIFTSURE," BURSTING THROUGH THE
    MÊLÉE, PASSED CLOSE UNDER THE STERN OF THE BATTERED WRECK, GIVING
    THREE HEARTY CHEERS WHEN A UNION JACK WAS WAVED FROM A PIKE TO SHOW
    THAT, THOUGH CRIPPLED THE "BELLEISLE" WAS STILL UNCONQUERED.--_An
    Incident at Trafalgar._
]

[Illustration: MURAT (KING OF NAPLES). (_After the Portrait by
Gerard._)]

The Emperor of Russia was now fast advancing towards the Vistula in
support of Prussia, and the contest appeared likely to take place
in Poland; and Buonaparte, with his usual hollow adroitness, held
out delusive hopes to the Poles of his restoring their unity and
independence, in order to call them into universal action against
Russia and Prussia. Amongst the most distinguished of these was the
General Dombrowski. Buonaparte sent for him to headquarters, and
employed him to raise regiments of his countrymen. By such lures he
obtained a considerable number of such men; but his grand scheme was to
obtain the presence and the sanction of the great and popular patriot,
Kosciusko. If he were to appear and call to arms, all Poland would
believe in its destinies, and rise. Kosciusko was living in honourable
poverty near Fontainebleau, and Buonaparte had made many attempts to
engage him in his service, as he had done Dombrowski; but Kosciusko saw
too thoroughly the character of the man. He pleaded the state of his
wounds and of his health as incapacitating him for the fatigues of war,
but he privately made no secret amongst his friends that he regarded
Napoleon as a mere selfish conqueror, who would only use Poland as a
tool to enslave other nations, never to enfranchise herself. In vain
did Buonaparte now urge him to come forward and fight for his country;
he steadfastly declined; but Buonaparte resolved to have the influence
of his name, by means true or false. He sent him a proclamation to the
Poles, requesting him to put his name to it. The patriot refused, at
the risk of being driven from France; but Buonaparte, without ceremony,
fixed his name to the address, and published it on the 1st of November.
It declared that Kosciusko was coming himself to lead his countrymen
to freedom. The effect was instantaneous; all Poland was on fire, and,
before the cheat could be discovered, Dombrowski had organised four
good Polish regiments.

Napoleon now called up his auxiliary forces from Saxony, Würtemberg,
Bavaria, and from all the Confederation of the Rhine, as well as new
battalions from France, and advanced against the Russians. In the first
place, the French, who had completed the subjugation of the Prussian
states east of the Oder, pushed forward towards Poland, to attack the
Russian general, Benningsen, who advanced to Warsaw, and occupied
it in conjunction with the Prussians. Benningsen, however, finding
the Prussians few and dispirited, fell back beyond the Vistula, and
Murat, at the head of the French vanguard, entered Warsaw on the 28th
of November. He was soon after joined there by Buonaparte, and Warsaw
being put into a state of defence, the French army advanced to the
Vistula and the Bug, in spite of the lateness of the season. Benningsen
again retreated behind the Wkra, where he united his forces with
those of Generals Buxhowden and Kaminskoi. Kaminskoi took the supreme
command. When Napoleon arrived at the Wkra on the 23rd of December, he
formed his army into three divisions, and forced the passages of the
river. Kaminskoi fell back behind the Niemen, and the French pursued
him, committing some injury on him. This trifling advantage Napoleon
converted, in his bulletins to Paris, into the rout and general defeat
of the Russians. It was true that the Russians were destitute of
stores, having applied to Britain for money, and obtained only eighty
thousand pounds. They fought, therefore, under great disadvantages,
against an army furnished with everything. Notwithstanding, Benningsen,
who was by far the most vigorous of their generals--for Kaminskoi was
fast falling into lunacy--posted himself strongly behind Pultusk, his
right led by Barclay de Tolly, and his left by Ostermann. Kaminskoi
ordered Benningsen to retreat, but he refused, and stood his ground.
At first Tolly was driven back by Lannes and Davoust, but Benningsen
converted this disadvantage into a _ruse_, ordering Tolly to continue
his retreat, till the French were drawn on, so that he could bring down
his left wing on them. This he did with such effect that he killed
and wounded nearly eight thousand of them, having, however, himself
five thousand killed and wounded. Lannes and five other generals were
amongst the wounded. The French seized the opportunity of darkness to
retreat with such speed, that the next morning not a trace of them
could be seen near Pultusk. Prince Galitzin fought another division
of the French the same day at Golynim, and with the same success. Had
Benningsen had the chief command, and brought down the whole united
Russian army on Napoleon, the victory must have been most decisive;
as it was, it taught the French that they had different troops to
Prussians or Austrians to contend with. They drew off, and went into
winter quarters at Warsaw and the towns to the eastward. The chief
command of the Russian army was now conferred on Benningsen, and so far
from Buonaparte having, as he boasted, brought the war to a close with
the year, we shall find Benningsen, at the head of ninety thousand men,
soon forcing him into a winter campaign.

On the 13th of September Charles James Fox died at Chiswick House, the
residence of the Duke of Devonshire. He had been for a considerable
time suffering from dropsy, and had got as far as Chiswick, in the hope
of gathering strength enough to reach St. Anne's Hill, near Chertsey,
his own house. But his days were numbered. He was only fifty-eight
years of age. During his illness his colleagues and so-called friends,
with that strange coldness and selfishness which always distinguished
the Whigs, with very few exceptions, never went near him. Those
honourable exceptions were the Duke of Devonshire, who had offered him
his house, the Prince of Wales, his nephew, Lord Holland, his niece,
Miss Fox, and his old friend, General Fitzpatrick. Still, Fox was not
deserted by humbler and less known friends. Lords Grenville and Howick,
his colleagues, rarely went near him, and all the Ministry were too
busy anticipating and preparing for the changes which his decease must
make. When this event took place there was a great shifting about, but
only one new member of the Cabinet was admitted, Lord Holland, and only
one resigned, the Earl Fitzwilliam. Lord Howick took Fox's department,
that of Foreign Affairs; Lord Holland became Privy Seal; Grenville,
First Lord of the Admiralty; and Tierney, President of the Board of
Control. Sidmouth, afterwards so prominent in Tory Cabinets, still sat
in this medley one as President of the Council, and Lord Minto was
gratified by the Governor-Generalship of India. As Parliament was not
sitting at the time of Fox's death, Ministers ordered his interment in
Westminster Abbey, and he was carried thither on the 10th of October,
the twenty-sixth anniversary of his election for Westminster, and laid
almost close to the monument of Chatham, and within a few inches of the
grave of his old rival, Pitt.

Parliament was suddenly dissolved by the All the Talents Ministry,
in the hope of acquiring a better majority, but this hope was not
brilliantly realised. The new Parliament assembled on the 19th of
December, and, as all now saw that war must go on, both Houses prepared
themselves for large votes of supply. According to Windham's statement,
we had 125,631 regulars in the army, of whom 79,158 were employed
in defending our West India Islands, 25,000 in India, and upwards
of 21,000 foreigners in our pay. Besides this, for home defence we
had 94,000 militia and fencibles, and 200,000 volunteers; so that
altogether we had 419,000 men under arms. It was, therefore, contended,
and with reason, that as we had so deeply engaged ourselves in fighting
for our Allies on the Continent, with such a force we might have sent
20,000, with good effect, to unite with Alexander of Russia against
Buonaparte, and not have let him be repulsed for want of both men and
money. This, indeed, was the disgrace of All the Talents, that they
put the country to the expense of an enormous war establishment, and
did no real service with it. The supplies, however, were freely voted.
There were granted, for the navy, £17,400,337; for the regular army,
£11,305,387; for militia, fencibles, volunteers, etc., £4,203,327;
ordnance, £3,321,216. The number of sailors, including 32,000 marines,
was fixed at 130,000.

The manner in which a great deal of these vast sums, so freely
voted, was spent, was, at this very moment, staring the public
most fully in the face, through the military inquiry set on foot
under the administration of Pitt, and continued under the present
Ministry. It appeared that one Davison, being made Treasurer of the
Ordnance by Pitt, had been in the habit of drawing large sums from
the Treasury long before they were wanted, and had generally from
three million to four million pounds of the national funds in his
hands to trade with, of which the country lost the interest! Nor was
this all: there had been an understanding between himself, Delauny,
the Barrackmaster-General, and Greenwood, the army agent. All these
gentlemen helped themselves largely to the public money, and their
accounts were full of misstatements and overcharges. Those of Delauny
were yet only partly gone through, but there was a charge of ninety
thousand pounds already against him for fraudulent entries and
impositions. As for Davison, there was found to be an arrangement
between him and Delauny, by which, as a contractor, he was to receive
of Delauny two-and-a-half per cent. on beds, sheets, blankets, towels,
candles, beer, forage, etc., which he furnished for barrack use.
Besides this, he was to supply the coals as a merchant. Having always
several millions of the country's money in hand, he bought up the
articles, got his profit, and then his commission, without any outlay
of his own. Lord Archibald Hamilton gave notice of a motion for the
prosecution of Davison at common law, but Ministers said they had put
the matter into the proper hands, and that Davison had been summoned to
deliver up all his accounts that they might be examined, and measures
taken to recover any amount due by him to the Treasury. But Lord Henry
Petty talked as though it was not certain that there were sufficient
proofs of his guilt to convict him. The Attorney-General, however, was
ordered to prosecute in the Court of King's Bench, but the decision
did not take place till April, 1809, more than two years afterwards,
and then only the miserable sum of eighteen thousand one hundred and
eighty-three pounds had been recovered, and Davison was condemned to
twenty-one months' imprisonment in Newgate.

But the great glory of this session was not the exposure of Davison
and his fellow thieves, but the stop put to the operations of a much
larger class of rascals. The death of Fox had been a sad blow to
Wilberforce and the abolitionists, who had calculated on his carrying
the prohibition of the slave trade; but Lord Grenville and his Cabinet
seemed to have made up their minds to have the fame of achieving the
grand object of so many years' exertion for the suppression of the
African slave trade. Wilberforce, to his inconceivable joy, discovered
that Spencer Perceval, the leader of the Opposition, and his party
were willing to co-operate for this purpose. The king and royal family
alone remained as adverse to the abolition of slavery as they were to
the emancipation of the Catholics. The abolitionists, however, had so
imbued the country with the sense of the barbarity and iniquity of
the traffic, that royal prejudice could no longer swamp the measure,
nor aristocratic apathy delay it. Lord Grenville brought in a Bill
for the purpose into the Peers on the 2nd of January, 1807: the 12th
was fixed for the second reading. Before this took place, counsel was
heard at the bar of the House against the measure, who repeated all the
terrible prognostics of ruin to the West Indies and to Britain from the
abolition, with which the planters and proprietors of the West Indies,
the merchants and slave captains of Liverpool and Bristol, had so often
endeavoured to alarm the nation. The emptiness of these bugbears had,
however, been now too fully exposed to the people by the lectures,
speeches, and pamphlets of the Abolition Society, and Wilberforce had
all along merely to use the arguments in Parliament with which they
had abundantly furnished him. Lord Grenville now introduced the second
reading by an elaborate speech, in which he condensed and summed up
these arguments. He was warmly supported by the Duke of Gloucester--a
liberal exception to his family--by Lords King, Selkirk, Rosslyn,
Northesk, Holland, Suffolk, Moira, and the Bishops of Durham, London,
and others. The Dukes of Clarence and Sussex as zealously opposed
him, as well as Lords Sidmouth, Eldon, Ellenborough, Hawkesbury,
St. Vincent, and many others. The second reading was carried, after
a debate which continued till five o'clock in the morning, by one
hundred against thirty-six. The third reading was also carried with
equal ease, and the Bill was brought down to the Commons on the 10th
of February. Lord Howick proposed its reading in an eloquent speech,
and it was opposed, with the usual prediction of ruin, by Mr. George
Hibbert, Captain Herbert, and General Gascoyne, who said the nation was
carried away by sentimental cant, the result of an enormous agitation
by the Quakers and Saints. The first reading, however, passed without
a division, and the second on the 24th of February, by two hundred and
eighty-three against sixteen. The House gave three cheers. Seeing the
large majority, and that the Bill was safe, Lord Grenville recommended
Wilberforce to strengthen it by inserting the penalties, which he did;
but they left a great advantage to the slave merchants by allowing them
to clear out their vessels from Great Britain by the 1st of May, and
gave them time to deliver their human cargoes in the West Indies till
the 1st of January, 1808--a liberty which was sure to create a great
sending out of vessels for the last occasion, and a fearful crowding
of them. However, the accursed trade was now doomed, as far as British
merchants could go, though it was soon found that it was not so easy to
suppress it. When it was seen that the Bill must pass, Lords Eldon,
Hawkesbury, and Castlereagh, who had hitherto opposed it, declared
themselves in favour of it. It was carried in both Houses by large
majorities, and received the royal sanction on the 25th of March. So
easily was the Bill passed, at last, that Lord Percy, the day after
it had left the Commons, moved in that House for leave to bring in a
Bill for the gradual emancipation of the slaves; but this being deemed
premature, and calculated to injure the operation of the Bill for the
abolition of the trade, and to create dangerous excitement in the West
Indies, the motion was discouraged, and so was dropped.

The Grenville Ministry was approaching its extinction. It had done a
great work in the abolition of the Slave Trade, but there was another
species of abolition which they were disposed to further which was
not quite so acceptable. They had supported Wilberforce and his party
in their measure for the negroes, but Wilberforce and his friends
were by no means willing to support them in liberating the Catholics
from their disabilities. Grenville and Fox had made no particular
stipulation, on taking office, to prosecute the Catholic claims, but
they were deeply pledged to this by their speeches of many years. It
was, therefore, highly honourable of them, though very impolitic, to
endeavour to do something, at least, to show their sincerity. Though
the king was obstinately opposed to any relaxation of the restraints
on this class of his subjects, yet the Fox and Grenville Ministry
had introduced a milder and more generous treatment of the Catholics
in Ireland. The Duke of Bedford, as Lord-Lieutenant, had discouraged
the rampant spirit of Orangeism, and admitted Catholics to peace and
patronage. He had abandoned the dragooning system, and had managed to
settle some disturbances which broke out in the autumn of 1806, without
even proclaiming martial law. These measures had won the cordial
attachment of the Catholics both in Ireland and England, but, in the
same proportion, had exasperated the Church and War party against them
in both countries. Their adding another three-and-a-half per cent.
to the income and property taxes had still further embittered these
parties, and the antagonism to them was every day becoming stronger.
Yet they resolved, in spite of all this, to make an attempt to do some
justice to the Catholics. They managed to carry an additional grant
to the College of Maynooth, and on the 4th of March, when this grant
was debated, Wilberforce, though wanting the support of Ministers for
his Slave Trade Bill, made a violent speech against all concessions to
the Catholics. He declared the Protestant Church the only true one,
and, therefore, the only one which ought to be supported. "He did not
profess," he said, "to entertain large and liberal views on religious
subjects; he was not, like Buonaparte, an honorary member of all
religions." Undeterred by these tokens of resistance, Lord Howick, the
very next day, moved for leave to bring in a Bill to enable Catholics
to hold commissions in the army and navy on taking a particular oath.
He said that it was a strange anomaly that Catholics in Ireland could
hold such commissions since 1793, and attain to any rank except that of
Commander-in-Chief, of Master-General of the Ordnance, or of General
of the Staff, yet, should these regiments be ordered to this country,
they were, by law, disqualified for service. A clause had already been
added to the Mutiny Bill to remove the anomaly. He proposed to do away
with this extraordinary state of things, and enable his Majesty, at his
pleasure--for it only amounted to that, after all--to open the ranks
of the army and navy to all subjects, without distinction, in Great
Britain as well as Ireland.

[Illustration: CHARING CROSS, LONDON, IN 1795.]

No sooner was this motion made than Spencer Perceval rose to oppose
it. Sidmouth worked upon the king's feelings by sending in his
resignation, and the Duke of Portland had offered to form a Ministry
in accordance with the king's feelings. The Bill was, notwithstanding,
brought in, read a first time, and the second reading fixed for the
12th of March. But now it was found that the king, who had previously
received the Ministerial proposal without any comment, seeing his way
clear with another Ministry, refused even his qualified consent to the
prosecution of the measure. The Ministers postponed the second reading
to the 18th, promising an after-statement of their reasons. But their
reasons were already well known in both Houses of Parliament through
the private communications of the embryo Cabinet. On the 25th of March
there were motions made in both Houses for an adjournment: this was
to allow the new Ministry to be announced in the interval. In the
Lords, Earl Grenville seized the opportunity to make some observations
in defence of the conduct of his Cabinet during its possession of
office. He said they had entered it with the determination to carry
these important measures, if possible: the Sinking Fund, the abolition
of the Slave Trade, and the relief of the Catholics. He was happy
to say that they had carried two of them; and though they had found
the resistance in a certain quarter too strong for them to carry the
third, they conceived that never did the circumstances of the times
point out more clearly the sound policy of granting it. France had
wonderfully extended her power on the Continent; peace between her
and the nations she had subdued would probably lead Buonaparte to
concentrate his warlike efforts on this country. What so wise, then, as
to have Ireland attached to us by benefits? With these views, the king,
he said, had been induced to allow Ministers to make communications
to the Catholics of Ireland through the Lord-Lieutenant, which he had
seemed to approve; yet when these communications as to the intended
concessions had been made, his Majesty had been induced to retract his
assent to them. Ministers had then endeavoured to modify the Bill so
as to meet his Majesty's views; but, not succeeding, they had dropped
the Bill altogether, reserving only, in self-justification, a right to
make a minute on the private proceedings of the Cabinet, expressing
their liberty to bring this subject again to the royal notice, as
circumstances might seem to require; but now his Majesty had called
upon them to enter into a written obligation never again to introduce
the subject to his notice, or to bring forward a measure of that kind.
This, he said, was more than could be expected of any Ministers of any
independence whatever. The point was, of course, of some constitutional
importance, but there was much truth in Sheridan's remark: "I have
often heard of people knocking out their brains against a wall, but
never before knew of anyone building a wall expressly for the purpose."

The king now announced to Ministers his fixed resolve to call in
another Cabinet, though the Whigs had endeavoured to keep office by
dropping the Bill, and on the 25th of March they delivered to the
king their seals of office. Erskine alone retained his for a week,
that he might pronounce his decrees on the Chancery suits which had
been heard by him; and two days before he parted with the Seal, he
took the opportunity to make his son-in-law, Edmund Morris, a Master
in Chancery. This was regarded as a most singular act, Erskine being
no longer _bonâ fide_ Chancellor, but only holding the Seal for a few
days after the resignation of his colleagues, to complete necessary
business. The House adjourned to the 8th of April, and before this
day arrived the new appointments were announced. They were--the Duke
of Portland, First Lord of the Treasury; Lord Hawkesbury, Secretary
of the Home Department; Canning, Secretary for Foreign Affairs;
Lord Castlereagh, Secretary for War and the Colonies; the Earl of
Chatham, Master of the Ordnance; Spencer Perceval, Chancellor and
Under-Treasurer of the Exchequer; Lord Camden, Lord President of the
Council; Lord Bathurst, President of the Board of Trade, with George
Rose as Vice-President; the Earl of Westmoreland, Keeper of the
Privy Seal; Lord Eldon, Lord Chancellor; and the Duke of Richmond,
Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. As the Duke of Portland's health was bad,
the real Prime Minister was Mr. Perceval.

Before the re-assembling of Parliament the new Ministers had done all
in their power to arouse a "No Popery!" cry in the country, because
they intended to advise a dissolution of Parliament--although this had
only sat four months--in order to bring in a more anti-Catholic and
anti-Reform body. On the 9th of April, the day following the meeting
of Parliament, Mr. Brand moved a resolution, that it was contrary
to the first duties of the confidential advisers of the Crown to
bind themselves by any pledge to refrain from offering the king such
counsel as might seem necessary to the welfare of the kingdom. The
new Ministers, who had entered office without any such pledge being
demanded, for their sentiments were too well known to the king, yet,
seeing that this resolution was the first of a series intended to end
in a vote of want of confidence in them, at once opposed it, and threw
it out by two hundred and fifty-eight to two hundred and twenty-six.
The Marquis of Stafford made a similar motion in the Lords, and
Sidmouth now spoke and voted against his late colleagues, to whom he
must have been throughout opposed on all points; but the strangest
thing must have been to hear Erskine, whilst supporting the motion,
avowing his great repugnance to the Catholics, as people holding a
gross superstition, the result of the darkness of former ages, and
declaring that he never thought of encouraging them, but rather that
they might feel inconvenience, though suffering no injustice; as if
this were possible; for if they suffer no injustice they could feel
no inconvenience. And this, after assuring the king that he would
never again enjoy peace if he dismissed his Ministers for desiring
to encourage them! The Marquis of Stafford's motion was rejected by a
hundred and seventy-one against ninety.

Parliament was prorogued on the 27th of April, for the avowed purpose
of a dissolution; and in the speech by commission, Ministers stated
that it was necessary the people should be appealed to as soon as
possible, whilst the effect of "the late unfortunate and uncalled-for
agitation was on their minds." Immediate preparations were made for a
most determined contest. Money was spent on both sides most prodigally,
but the new Ministers had the greater command of it--their opponents
said, out of the king's privy purse. But whether that were so or not,
on the system then in vogue, of Ministers in different departments
drawing even millions from the Treasury long before they were
legitimately wanted, they could have no lack of means of corruption;
and this corruption, in bribery and in purchasing of seats, never had
been carried further than on this occasion. It was calculated that it
would cost Wilberforce eighteen thousand pounds to get in again, and
this sum was at once subscribed by his friends. Tierney offered ten
thousand pounds for two seats, and could not get them. Romilly, who
was utterly averse from this corruption, was compelled to give two
thousand pounds for a seat for the borough of Horsham, and then only
obtained it through favour of the Duke of Norfolk. Seats, Romilly says,
might have been expected to be cheap after a Parliament of only four
months' duration, but quite the contrary; never had they reached such
a price before. Five and six thousand pounds was a common sum given,
without any stipulation as to the chance of a short Parliament. The
animus which was excited in the public mind against the Catholics
by the incoming Ministers, for party purposes, was terrible. The
Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge and other religious
associations took the lead in the outcry. The Catholics of England,
alarmed at the violence of the sensation stirred up against them, and
fearing a repetition of the Gordon riots, published an address to their
fellow-countrymen, protesting their entire loyalty to the Crown and
Constitution. Henry Erskine, Lord Erskine's brother, wittily said, that
if Lord George Gordon were but alive, instead of being in Newgate he
would be in the Cabinet. The Ministers found that they had obtained a
powerful majority by these means, and when Parliament met, on the 22nd
of June, they were enabled to reject an amendment to the Address by
a hundred and sixty against sixty-seven in the Lords, and by three
hundred and fifty against a hundred and fifty-five in the Commons.
One of the very first things which the Ministers did was to reverse
the mild system of the late Cabinet in Ireland, and to restore the
old _régime_ of coercion. A Bill was brought into the Commons by Sir
Arthur Wellesley, now again Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant, giving
authority to the latter functionary to proclaim counties in a state of
insurrection, and to prohibit any person from being out of his house
between sunset and sunrise, under severe penalties. Then followed
another Bill, compelling all persons to register what arms they had,
and authorising, on the part of the magistracy, domiciliary visits in
search of arms. Education of the people, both there and in England,
was discouraged. A Bill for establishing a school in every parish in
England, introduced by Whitbread, was allowed to pass the Commons, but
was thrown out in the Lords. Parliament was then prorogued on the 14th
of August.

The foreign expeditions planned by the Grenville Ministry were, this
year, attended by disgraceful results, and the news of their failure
arrived in time to enable the new Ministry to throw additional odium
upon their foes. The news of the seizure of Buenos Ayres by Sir Home
Popham and General Beresford had induced the late Cabinet to overlook
the irregular manner in which their enterprise had been undertaken.
They sent out Admiral Sir C. Stirling to supersede Sir Home Popham, who
was to be brought before a court-martial, but he took out with him a
fresh body of troops, under General Auchmuty. These troops landed at
Monte Video on the 18th of January, and, after a sharp contest against
six thousand Spaniards, and the loss of five hundred and sixty British
killed and wounded, the place was taken on the 2nd of February. Soon
afterwards General Whitelocke arrived with orders to assume supreme
command and to recapture Buenos Ayres, which the inhabitants had
succeeded in recovering. Whitelocke reached Monte Video towards the end
of May, and found the British army, with what he brought, amounting to
nearly twelve thousand men, in fine condition. With such a force Buenos
Ayres would have soon been reduced by a man of tolerable military
ability. But Whitelocke seems to have taken no measures to enable his
troops to carry the place by a sudden and brilliant assault. It was not
till the 3rd of July that he managed to join Major-General Gore, who
had taken possession of a commanding elevation overlooking the city.
The hope of success lay in the rapidity with which the assault was
made: all this was now lost. The rain poured in torrents, and the men
had no shelter, and were half starved. All this time the Spaniards had
been putting the city into a state of defence. Still, on the morning
of the 5th of July the order was issued to storm. The troops advanced
in three columns from different sides of the town, headed severally by
Generals Auchmuty, Lumley, and Craufurd. Whitelocke said that it could
be of no use to delay the advance towards the centre of the town by
attacking the enemy under cover of their houses; it could only occasion
the greater slaughter. The command, therefore, was to dash forward
with unloaded muskets, trusting alone to the bayonet. Much blame was
cast on Whitelocke for this order, but there seems strong reason in
it, considering the wholly uncovered condition of the troops against
a covered enemy, and that the only chance was for each division to
force its way as rapidly as possible to certain buildings where they
could ensconce themselves, and from whence they could direct an attack
of shot and shells on the Spaniards. General Auchmuty, accordingly,
rushed on against every obstacle to the great square--Plaza de Toros,
or Square of Bulls--took thirty-two cannon, a large quantity of
ammunition, and six hundred prisoners. Other regiments of his division
succeeded in getting possession of the church and convent of Santa
Catalina, and of the residencia, a commanding post; Lumley and Craufurd
were not so fortunate. The 88th was compelled to yield; and the 36th,
greatly reduced, and joined by the 5th--which had taken the convent of
Santa Catalina--made their way to Sir Samuel Auchmuty's position in
the Plaza de Toros, dispersing a body of eight hundred Spaniards on
their way and taking two guns. Craufurd's division capitulated at four
o'clock in the afternoon. In the evening Whitelocke resolved to come
to terms. The conditions of the treaty were--that General Whitelocke's
army, with its arms, equipage, and stores, was to be conveyed across
the La Plata to Monte Video; his troops were to be supplied with food;
and that at the end of two months the British were to surrender Monte
Video, and retire from the country. Such was the humiliating result
of the attempt on Buenos Ayres. Nothing could exceed the fury of all
classes at home against Whitelocke on the arrival of the news of this
disgraceful defeat. It was reported that he had made the men take
their flints out of their guns before sending them into the murderous
streets of Buenos Ayres; and had he arrived with his despatches, his
life would not have been safe for an hour. There was a general belief
that the Court was protecting him from punishment; and, in truth, the
delays interposed between him and a court-martial appeared to warrant
this. It was not till the 28th of January, 1808, that he was brought
before such a court at Chelsea Hospital, when he was condemned to be
cashiered, as wholly unfit and unworthy to serve his Majesty in any
military capacity whatever.

[Illustration: THE BRITISH FLEET PASSING THROUGH THE DARDANELLES. (_See
p._ 538.)]

Another expedition, planned by the Grenville Ministry, produced no
favourable result. This was to Constantinople. Buonaparte had sent
thither the artful Sebastiani, and General Andreossi, to destroy
British influence, and to engage the Sultan in war with Russia, so as
to act as a most effectual diversion of the Russian forces, whilst he
himself was occupied with the Czar in the North. The French agents
had completely succeeded in their plans against Russia. The Sultan
assumed an attitude which compelled Alexander to keep a strong army
on the Lower Danube, thus weakening his force against Napoleon, and
distracting his attention. There appeared every probability that
British influence would be equally swamped in Turkey by the French, and
it was determined to send a naval squadron to Constantinople to overawe
the Sultan Selim, and to compel the removal of the French intriguants.
Had this expedition been committed to such a man as Sir Sidney Smith,
there is little doubt but that it would have been entirely successful;
but it was altogether most miserably mismanaged, and therefore
failed. To have been effectual it should have been sudden. There
should have been no previous negotiation about it; the ships should
have appeared off Constantinople, and then and there the ambassador
should have stated his terms and have insisted on them. Instead of
this, our ambassador, Mr. Arbuthnot, commenced his negotiations for
the strengthening of the British alliance in conjunction with Russia,
and for the restriction of the French influence. But, excepting
Britain, Russia had no advocates with the Porte, which had already
declared war. The victories of Buonaparte now in Austria and Prussia
gave the French great _éclat_ with the Turks, and Sebastiani made the
utmost of this advantage. He was zealously supported by Spain and
Holland. In the midst of these negotiations, Admiral Louis appeared
off Constantinople with one ship of the line and one frigate. Had it
been a whole fleet, the effect would have been decisive. As it was,
there was immediately a rumour that a great British fleet was on the
way, and accordingly the Turks were in a hurry to strengthen their
fortifications, and make every arrangement for defence. They were ably
assisted in these measures by Sebastiani, Andreossi, and a number of
French engineer officers. On the 10th of February Sir John Duckworth
appeared off the Dardanelles, and, joining his squadron with that of
Admiral Louis, the British fleet now consisted of eight line-of-battle
ships, two frigates, and two bombs. But on the 14th the _Ajax_, one
of the men-of-war, took fire, and blew up, killing two hundred and
fifty of the people on board. They had then to wait till the 19th for
a breeze that would carry them through the strait. The British ships
passed the batteries under a brisk fire, without replying, and on
the 20th of February Sir John Duckworth came to anchor off Prince's
Islands, opposite to Constantinople, and at about ten miles' distance.
Now was the time to have struck an effectual terror by demanding the
immediate dismissal of the French, and to have begun storming the town
unless the demand was at once complied with. The whole population was
in an astounding panic, expecting every moment the commencement of the
bombardment; and the Sultan sent Ismail Bey to request Sebastiani and
his suite to quit Constantinople without delay. But Sebastiani replied
that there was no cause of alarm from the British, he was perfectly
indifferent to their presence, and that, as he was under the protection
of the Porte, he should not quit Constantinople without an express
order from the Sultan. Had Sir Sidney Smith been in command, Sebastiani
would soon have received this order, for he would have quickened the
Sultan's movements by some shot and shells sent into the Seraglio;
but Duckworth was made of much more phlegmatic stuff. The wind on the
21st was fair, and the whole fleet expected the order to put across
and commence bombarding the city. Instead of that, however, Sir John
sent a fresh message and menace. As this received no answer, and yet
was followed by no prompt action, the Turks at once took heart, went
on fortifying and planting batteries, and continued to amuse Sir John
from day to day with hopes of treating, employing the time only to make
their defences, under the supervision of Sebastiani and the French
engineers, the more perfect. It is almost impossible to imagine a
British admiral so besotted as to continue this course for ten days;
yet this was precisely what Sir John Duckworth did, and that in spite
of the orders of Admiral Collingwood. By this time every possible point
of defence had its batteries, soldiers had poured into Constantinople,
and every male inhabitant was armed, and foaming with fury at the
British. On the morning of the 1st of March Sir John weighed anchor
to return from his ignominious, abortive mission. The wind was fair
for him, but his return was now not so easy a matter. Whilst he had
been wasting his time before Constantinople, Turkish engineers, who
had studied under the French, had been sent down to the Dardanelles
with two hundred well-trained cannoneers. Numbers of troops had been
collected on each side of the strait, and the batteries were supplied
with enormous cannons, capable of carrying granite balls of seven or
eight hundred pounds' weight. Towards nightfall he dropped down towards
the strait, and the next day cast anchor before passing the castles and
batteries, that he might sail through by daylight, when the enemy could
best see him. On the morning of the 3rd he accordingly sailed through
the strait, and was sharply assailed by the cannon of the forts and
batteries, the stone shot doing some of his ships damage, and the loss
of men being twenty-nine killed and a hundred and forty wounded. The
object of the expedition failed, and the only resource was to keep the
Turkish fleet blockaded.

But Sir John Duckworth was to play a leading part in a still more
abortive enterprise. There was a rumour that Buonaparte had promised
the Grand Turk to aid him in recovering the provinces which Russia
had reft from Turkey on the Danube, in the Crimea, and around the
Black Sea, on condition that Egypt was given up to him. To prevent
this, an expedition was fitted out to seize on this country. Between
four and five thousand men were sent from our army in Sicily, under
Major-General Mackenzie Frazer. They embarked on the 5th of May, and
anchored off Alexandria on the 16th. The following morning General
Frazer summoned the town to surrender, but the governor of the Viceroy
Mehemet Ali replied that he would defend the place to the last man.
On that day and the following a thousand soldiers and about sixty
sailors were landed, and, moving forward, carried the advanced works
with trifling loss. Some of the transports which had parted company
on the voyage now arrived, the rest of the troops were landed; and,
having secured the castle of Aboukir, Frazer marched on Alexandria,
taking the forts of Caffarelli and Cretin on the way. On the 22nd Sir
John Duckworth arrived with his squadron; the British army expected to
hear that he had taken Constantinople, and his ill news created a just
gloom amongst both officers and men. The people of Alexandria appeared
friendly; but the place was, or seemed to be, destitute of provisions;
and the transports had been so badly supplied that the men were nearly
starved before they got there. The Alexandrians assured General Frazer
that, in order to obtain provisions, he must take possession of Rosetta
and Rahmanieh. Frazer, therefore, with the concurrence of Sir John
Duckworth, dispatched Major-General Wauchope and Brigadier-General
Mead to Rosetta, with one thousand two hundred men. The troops were
entangled in the streets and shot down. A subsequent effort was made
to besiege Rosetta in form. The troops reached Rosetta on the 9th of
April, and posted themselves on the heights above it. They summoned the
town formally to surrender, and received an answer of defiance. Instead
of proceeding to bombard the town at once, Major-General Stewart waited
for the arrival of a body of Mamelukes. The Mamelukes had been in
deadly civil strife with Mehemet Ali, and had promised to co-operate
with the British; and this was one of the causes which led the British
Government to imagine that they could make themselves masters of Egypt
with so minute a force. But the Mamelukes did not appear. Whilst
waiting for them, Colonel Macleod was sent to occupy the village of El
Hammed, to keep open the way for the expected succour; but Mehemet Ali
had mustered a great force at Cairo, which kept back the Mamelukes;
and, at the same time, he was reinforcing both Rosetta, and Rahmanieh.
Instead of the Mamelukes, therefore, on the morning of the 22nd of
April a fleet of vessels was seen descending the Nile, carrying a
strong Egyptian force. Orders were sent to recall Colonel Macleod from
El Hammed; but too late; his detachment was surrounded and completely
cut off. The besieging force--scattered over a wide area, instead of
being in a compact body--were attacked by overwhelming numbers; and,
having no entrenched camp, were compelled to fight their way back to
Alexandria as well as they could. When Stewart arrived there he had
lost one half of his men. Mehemet Ali, in proportion as he saw the
British force diminished, augmented his own. He collected and posted a
vast army between Cairo and Alexandria, and then the Alexandrians threw
off the mask and joined their countrymen in cutting off the supplies
of the British, and murdering them on every possible occasion at their
outposts. Frazer held out, in the vain hope of aid from the Mamelukes
or from home, till the 22nd of August, when, surrounded by the swarming
hosts of Mehemet Ali, and his supplies all exhausted, he sent out a
flag of truce, offering to retire on condition that all the British
prisoners taken at Rosetta, at El Hammed, and elsewhere, should be
delivered up to him. This was accepted, and on the 23rd of September
the ill-fated remains of this army were re-embarked and returned to
Sicily.

Thus was destroyed in Egypt all the prestige of the battles of
Alexandria and Aboukir Bay. The consequence of these two badly-planned
and worse-executed expeditions was the declaration of war against
Britain by the Porte, the seizure of all British property in the
Turkish dominions, and the formation of a close alliance between Turkey
and France. But the triumph over the British had not relieved the Turks
of the Russians. Admiral Siniavin still blockaded the Dardanelles, and
another Russian squadron, issuing from the Black Sea, blockaded the
mouth of the Bosphorus. The Turks came boldly out of the Dardanelles
and attacked Siniavin on the 22nd of May and on the 22nd of June; but
on both occasions they lost several ships, and were expecting heavier
inflictions from the Russians, when they were suddenly relieved of
their presence by the news of the Treaty of Tilsit, which had been
contracted between Alexander of Russia and Buonaparte. Alexander, by
this, ceased to be the ally, and became the enemy of Britain. It was
necessary, therefore, for Siniavin to make all speed for the Baltic
before war could be declared between the two nations, after which his
return would be hopeless. The Russian admiral, however, before quitting
the Mediterranean, had the pleasure of taking possession of Corfu,
which Buonaparte had made over to Alexander.

One of the events of the early part of this year was the capture of
the Dutch island of Curaçoa, by a squadron under Captain Brisbane;
but by far the most prominent naval transaction of the year was
the seizure of the Danish fleet off Copenhagen--a proceeding which
occasioned severe censures on Britain by Buonaparte and the Continental
nations under his domination. The Opposition at home were equally
violent in the outcry against this act, as in open violation of the
laws of nations, Denmark then being nominally at peace with us. But,
though nominally at peace, Denmark was at heart greatly embittered
against us by our bombardment of its capital in 1801, and it was quite
disposed to fall in with and obey the views of Napoleon, who was now
master of all Germany, at peace with Russia through the Treaty of
Tilsit, and, therefore, able any day to overrun Denmark. Buonaparte
was enforcing his system of the exclusion of Britain from all the
ports of the Continent, and it was inevitable that he would compel
Denmark to comply with this system. But there was another matter.
Denmark had a considerable fleet and admirable seamen, and he might
employ the fleet greatly to our damage, probably in endeavouring to
realise his long-cherished scheme of the invasion of England; at the
least, in interrupting her commerce and capturing her merchantmen. The
British Ministers were privately informed that Buonaparte intended
to make himself master of this fleet, and they knew that there were
private articles in the Treaty of Tilsit between Russia and France,
by which he contemplated great changes in the North, in which Denmark
was believed to be involved. Upon these grounds alone the British
Government was justified, by the clearest expressions of international
law, in taking time by the forelock, and possessing themselves of the
fleet to be turned against them; not to appropriate it, but to hold
it in pledge till peace. Grotius is decisive on this point:--"I may,
without considering whether it is manifest or not, take possession of
that which belongs to another man, if I have reason to apprehend any
evil to myself from his holding it. I cannot make myself master or
proprietor of it, the property having nothing to do with the end which
I propose; but I can keep possession of the thing seized till my safety
be sufficiently provided for." This view would fully have justified
the British Government, had nothing further ever become known. But
subsequent research in the Foreign Office of France has placed these
matters in their true light. The Treaty of Tilsit contains secret
articles by which Alexander was permitted by Napoleon to appropriate
Finland, and Napoleon was authorised by Alexander to enter Denmark,
and take possession of the Danish fleet, to employ against us at sea.
These secret articles were revealed to the British Government. No
man at this time was so indignant as Alexander of Russia at our thus
assailing a power not actually at war. He issued a manifesto against
Britain, denouncing the transaction as one which, for infamy, had no
parallel in history, he himself being in the act of doing the same
thing on a far larger scale, and without that sufficient cause which
Britain could show, and without any intention of making restitution.
We only seized a fleet that was on the point of being used against
us, and which was to be returned at the end of the war; the horrified
Czar invaded Sweden, while at peace, and, without any declaration of
war, usurped a whole country--Finland, larger than Great Britain.
Russia, in fact, had brought Denmark into this destructive dilemma by
its insidious policy; but, having seized Finland, in five years more
it committed a still greater robbery on Denmark than it had done on
Sweden, by contracting with Bernadotte to wrest Norway from Denmark,
and give it to Sweden.

[Illustration: DEPARTURE OF THE BRITISH TROOPS FROM ALEXANDRIA. (_See
p._ 539.)]

For the reasons here stated, early in the summer a powerful fleet
was fitted out with the utmost dispatch and secrecy by the new
Ministry, and sent to the Baltic. The fleet consisted of twenty-five
sail of the line, more than forty frigates, sloops, bomb-vessels,
and gun-brigs, with three hundred and seventy-seven transports to
convey over twenty-seven thousand troops from Stralsund, a great
part of which were Germans in British pay. Admiral Gambier commanded
the fleet, and Lord Cathcart the army, having second in command Sir
Arthur Wellesley. On the 1st of August the British fleet was off the
entrance of Gothenburg, and Admiral Gambier sent Commodore Keats into
the Great Belt to cut off any passage from Holstein for the defence
of Copenhagen. Admiral Gambier himself entered the Sound, passed the
castles without any attack from them, and anchored in Elsinore Roads.
By the 9th of August the whole fleet and the transports were collected
there, and Mr. Jackson, who had been many years British envoy in the
north of Germany, and knew most of the Danish Ministers, was dispatched
to Kiel, in Holstein, where the Crown Prince lay with an army of from
twenty thousand to thirty thousand men, to endeavour to induce him to
enter into an alliance with Great Britain, and to deliver the fleet
to its keeping till the peace, stating the necessity that the British
commanders would otherwise be under of taking possession of it by
force. The Crown Prince, though the British had made it impossible
to cross over and defend the fleet, received the overture with the
utmost indignation. Mr. Jackson returned to Admiral Gambier, and the
Crown Prince sent a messenger to order Copenhagen to be put into a
state of defence. But there was scarcely a gun upon the walls, and the
population only numbered, excluding the sailors, some thirteen thousand
men, inclusive of five thousand five hundred volunteers and militia.
On the 17th several Danish gunboats came out of the harbour, fired at
some of our transports coming from Stralsund, burnt an English vessel,
and attacked the pickets of Lord Cathcart's army. These vessels were
driven back again by bombshells, and that evening Admiral Gambier took
up a nearer station north-east of the Crown battery, the Trekroner.
He then proceeded to surround the whole of the island of Zealand, on
which Copenhagen stands, with our vessels. The division of the army
landed at Wedbeck having now marched up, was joined by other divisions,
and proceeded to entrench themselves in the suburbs of Copenhagen.
They were attacked by the gunboats, but, on the 27th, they had covered
themselves by a good battery, and they then turned their cannon on the
gunboats, and soon compelled them to draw off. On the 29th Sir Arthur
Wellesley marched to Kiöge, against a body of Danish troops that had
strongly fortified themselves there in order to assail the besiegers,
and he quickly routed them. The Danish troops then made several dashing
sorties from Copenhagen, while their gunboats and floating batteries
attacked our advanced vessels, and managed, by a ball from the
Trekroner, to blow up one of our transports. The French had now arrived
at Stralsund, and Keats was sent to blockade that port, to hinder them
from crossing over into Zealand; nothing but the extreme rapidity of
the movements of the British prevented a powerful army of French from
being already in Copenhagen for its defence.

[Illustration: HELIGOLAND.]

On the 1st of September the British commander made a formal demand
for the surrender of the fleet. The Danish General requested time to
communicate this demand to the Crown Prince, but the vicinity of the
French would not permit this, and the next day, the land batteries on
one side, and our bomb-vessels on the other, began to fling shells
into the town. The wooden buildings were soon in flames, but the Danes
replied with their accustomed bravery to our fire, and the conflict
became terrible. The bombardment of the British continued without
cessation all day and all night till the morning of the 3rd. It was
then stopped for an interval, to give an opportunity for a proposal of
surrender; but, none coming, the bombardment was renewed with terrible
fury. In all directions the city was in a blaze; the steeple of the
chief church, which was of wood, was a column of fire, and in this
condition was knocked to pieces by the tempest of shot and shells, its
fragments being scattered, as the means of fresh ignition, far around.
A huge timber-yard taking fire added greatly to the conflagration.
The fire-engines, which the Danes had plied bravely, were all knocked
to pieces, and, to prevent the utter destruction of the city, on the
evening of the 5th the Danish governor issued a flag of truce, and
requested an armistice of twenty-four hours. Lord Cathcart replied
that, in the circumstances, no delay could be permitted, and that
therefore no armistice could take place, except accompanied by the
surrender of the fleet. This was then complied with, and Sir Arthur
Wellesley, Sir Home Popham, and Lieutenant-Colonel George Murray went
on shore to settle the terms of the capitulation. This was completed by
the morning of the 7th, signed, and ratified. The British were to be
put at once in possession of the citadel and all the ships and maritime
stores, and, within six weeks, or as much earlier as possible, they
were to remove these and evacuate the citadel and the isle of Zealand.
All other property was to be respected, and everything done in order
and harmony; prisoners were to be mutually exchanged, and Britons
seized in consequence of the proclamation to be restored. The whole of
these measures were completed within the time specified, and seventeen
ships of the line, eleven frigates, and twenty-five gunboats became the
prize of the British.

On the 21st of October the British fleet sailed from Copenhagen
Roads; at Helsingfors the fleet was saluted by the King of Sweden,
who invited the admirals to breakfast; and, by the end of the month,
was anchored in Yarmouth Roads safely, with all its captives. Fresh
offers of alliance with Denmark were made before leaving, accompanied
with promises of restoration, but were indignantly refused by the
Crown Prince; and no sooner were the British gone, than the Danes
converted their trading-vessels into armed ones, and commenced a raid
amongst the British merchants, now in the Baltic, for the protection
of which some men-of-war ought to have been left. The Crown Prince,
now thrown completely into the arms of the French, made a declaration
of war against Britain, and the British Government issued an order for
reprisals on the ships, colonies, and property of the Danes. They also
seized on the island of Heligoland, a mere desolate rock, but, lying
at the mouth of the Elbe, and only twenty-five miles from the mouths
of the Weser and the Eider, it was of the greatest importance, during
the war, as a safe rendezvous for our men-of-war, and as a depôt for
our merchandise, ready to slip into any of the neighbouring rivers, and
thus, by smugglers, to be circulated all over the Continent, in spite
of Buonaparte's embargo. It served also to remind the people of those
regions, that, though Buonaparte ruled paramount on land, there was a
power on the sea that yet set him and all his endeavours at defiance.

The military transactions of the Continent this year had been of the
most remarkable kind. Buonaparte, after his repulse at Pultusk, had
retired to Warsaw, which he entered on the first day of the year
1807. He calculated on remaining there till the return of spring. But
Benningsen, the Russian general, was determined to interrupt this
pleasant sojourn. He had an army of eighty thousand or ninety thousand
men, with a very bad commissariat, and equally badly defended from
the severity of the winter. The King of Prussia was cooped up in
Königsberg, with an army of a very few thousand men, and his situation
was every day rendered more critical by the approach of the divisions
of Ney and Bernadotte, whom the treacherous surrender of the Prussian
fortresses by their commanders had set at liberty. But Benningsen
hastened to relieve the King of Prussia at Königsberg; his Cossacks
spread themselves over the country with great adroitness, surprising
the French convoys of provisions. More Cossacks were streaming down to
their support out of the wintry wilds of Russia, and the French were
forced from their pleasant quarters in Warsaw, to preserve the means
of their existence. Buonaparte, alarmed at these advances, determined
to turn out and force the Russians eastward, towards the Vistula, as he
had forced the Prussians at Jena with their rear turned to the Rhine.
To take the Russians thus in the rear, he ordered Bernadotte to engage
the attention of Benningsen on the right whilst he made this manœuvre
on the left. But Benningsen, fortunately, learned their stratagem, by
the seizure of the young French officer who was carrying Buonaparte's
dispatches to Bernadotte. Benningsen was therefore enabled to defeat
Buonaparte's object. He concentrated his troops on Preuss-Eylau, where
he determined to risk a battle. But he was not allowed to occupy this
position without several brisk encounters, in which the Russians lost
upwards of three thousand men. The battle of Eylau took place on the
7th of February. It was such a check as Buonaparte had never yet
experienced. He had been beaten at every point; Augereau's division was
nearly destroyed; that of Davoust, nearly twenty thousand in number,
had been repulsed by a much inferior body of Prussians. Fifty thousand
men are said to have been killed and wounded, of whom thirty thousand
were French. Twelve eagles had been captured, and remained trophies in
the hands of the Russians.

Had Benningsen had a good commissariat, the doom of the French was
certain. The army, famishing and in rags, was still eager to push their
advantage the next day, and the French, if compelled to retreat, as
there was every prospect, must have fallen into utter demoralisation,
and the war would have been soon at an end. But Benningsen, sensible
that there was an utter lack of provision for his army, and that his
ammunition was nearly exhausted, hesitated to proceed to a second
action with an army reduced twenty thousand in number, and thus to
risk being cut off from Königsberg, endangering the person of the
King of Prussia; and so the extreme caution, or rather, perhaps, the
necessities of the Russian general, were the rescue of Buonaparte.
Benningsen resolved to retreat upon Königsberg.

The Russians began their retreat, but some of them not till daylight,
and then marched close past Eylau, in the very face of the French,
who were, probably, as much astonished as pleased at the spectacle.
Benningsen could scarcely have known the extent of the French losses,
when he decided to retire. But Buonaparte, notwithstanding that he
claimed the victory, was glad now to offer a suspension of hostilities
to the King of Prussia, with a view to a separate peace, hinting
that he might be induced to waive most of the advantages derived
from the fields of Jena and Auerstädt, and restore the bulk of his
dominions. Frederick William, however great the temptation, refused
to treat independently of his ally, the Czar. On this, Buonaparte, so
far from pursuing the Russians, as he would have done had he been in
a capacity for it, remained eight days inactive at Eylau, and then
retreated on the Vistula, followed and harassed all the way by swarms
of Cossacks. On this Benningsen advanced, and occupied the country
as fast as the French evacuated it. The Emperor Alexander could soon
have raised another host of men, but he was destitute of money and
arms. He therefore applied to Britain for a loan, which the Talents
thought fit to decline. This, at such a crisis, was unwise. It is
certain that it filled Alexander with disgust and resentment, and led
to his negotiations with Buonaparte at Tilsit. Soon after this the
Conservative or Portland Ministry came in, and supplies of muskets and
five hundred thousand pounds were sent, but these were, in fact, thrown
away, for they did not arrive till the Czar had made up his mind to
treat with Napoleon.

On his return to the Vistula, Buonaparte displayed an unusual caution.
He seemed to feel that his advance into Poland had been premature,
whilst Prussia was in possession of Dantzic, whence, as soon as the
thaw set in, he was open to dangerous operations in his rear, from the
arrival of a British army. He therefore determined to have possession
of that post before undertaking further designs. The place was invested
by General Lefebvre, and capitulated at the end of May. Buonaparte all
this time was marching up fresh troops to fill up the ravages made in
his army. The Russians, after a drawn battle near Heilsberg on the 10th
of June, then crossed the Aller, and placed that as a barrier between
them and the French, in order that they might avoid the arrival of a
reinforcement of thirty thousand men who were on the march.

Thus occupying the right bank of the Aller, and the French the left, or
western side, the Russians advanced to Friedland, not many miles from
Eylau. At Friedland was a long wooden bridge crossing the Aller, and
there, on the 13th of June, Buonaparte, by a stratagem, succeeded in
drawing part of the Russians over the bridge by showing only Oudinot's
division, which had been severely handled at the battle of Heilsberg.
The temptation was too great. Benningsen forgot his usual caution, and
allowed a division of his army to cross and attack Oudinot. Oudinot
retired fighting, and thus induced more of the Russians to follow,
till, finding his troops hotly pressed, Benningsen marched his whole
force over, and then Napoleon showed his entire army. Benningsen saw
that he was entrapped, and must fight, under great disadvantages, with
an enfeebled army, and in an open space, where they were surrounded
by a dense host of French, who could cover themselves amid woods and
hills, and pour in a tempest of cannon-balls on the exposed Russians.
It was the anniversary of the battle of Marengo, and Buonaparte
believed the day one of his fortunate ones. Benningsen was obliged
to reduce his number by sending six thousand men to defend and keep
open the bridge of Allerburg, some miles lower down the Aller, and
which kept open his chance of union with L'Estocq and his Prussians.
Notwithstanding all these disadvantages, Benningsen fought desperately.
The battle continued from ten o'clock in the morning till four o'clock
in the afternoon, when Buonaparte brought up his full force in person
for one of those terrible and overwhelming shocks by which he generally
terminated a doubtful contest. There was such a simultaneous roar of
musketry and cavalry as seemed enough to sweep away the Russians like
chaff. The batteries poured down upon them a rain of no less than three
thousand ball and five hundred grape-shot charges; yet the Russians
did not flinch till they had at least twelve thousand killed and
wounded. It was then determined to retreat across the river, and, two
fords having been found, the Czar's Imperial Guard charged the troops
of Ney with the bayonet, and kept them at bay till the army was over.
The transit was marvellous in its success. All their cannon, except
seventeen, were saved, and all their baggage.

As at Eylau, so at Friedland, Napoleon made no attempt to follow
the Russians. But the battle, nevertheless, produced important
consequences. The King of Prussia did not think himself safe at
Königsberg, and he evacuated it; and the unhappy queen prepared,
with her children, to fly to Riga. The Russians retreated to Tilsit,
and there Alexander made up his mind to negotiate with Napoleon. He
was far from being in a condition to despair; Gustavus, the King of
Sweden, was at the head of a considerable army at Stralsund; a British
expedition was daily expected in the Baltic; the spirit of resistance
was reawakening in Prussia; Schill, the gallant partisan leader, was
again on horseback, with a numerous body of men, gathered in various
quarters; and Hesse, Hanover, Brunswick, and other German provinces
were prompt for revolt on the least occasion of encouragement.
Buonaparte felt the peril of crossing the Niemen, and advancing into
the vast deserts of Russia, with these dangerous elements in his rear.
Besides, his presence was necessary in France. He had been absent from
it nearly a year; he had drawn heavily on its resources, and a too
long-continued strain without his personal influence might produce
fatal consequences. To leave his army in the North was to leave it
to certain defeat, and with the danger of having all Germany again
in arms. These circumstances, well weighed by a man of genius and
determination, would have induced him to make a resolute stand, and to
draw his enemy into those wilds where he afterwards ruined himself, or
to wear him out by delay. Alexander, however, had not the necessary
qualities for such a policy of procrastination. He was now depressed by
the sufferings of his army, and indignant against Britain.

Accordingly, Benningsen communicated Alexander's willingness for peace,
on the 21st of June, and the armistice was ratified on the 23rd.
Buonaparte determined then, as on most occasions, to settle the treaty,
not by diplomatists, but personally, with the Czar. A raft was prepared
and anchored in the middle of the Niemen, and on the morning of the
25th of June, 1807, the two Emperors met on that raft, and embraced,
amid the shouts of the two armies arranged on each bank. The two
Emperors retired to a seat placed for them on the raft, and remained in
conversation two hours, during which time their attendants remained at
a distance. The town of Tilsit was declared neutral ground, and became
a scene of festivities, in which the Russian, French, and even Prussian
officers, who had been so long drenching the northern snows with each
other's blood, vied in courtesies towards each other. Amongst them
the two Emperors appeared as sworn brothers, relaxing into gaiety and
airs of gallantry, like two young fashionables. On the 28th the King
of Prussia arrived, and was treated with a marked difference. He was
bluntly informed, that whatever part of his territories were restored
would be solely at the solicitation of the Emperor of Russia.

[Illustration: THE TREATY OF TILSIT. (_See p._ 544.)]

By the terms of the Treaty of Tilsit, Prussian Poland was taken away,
but not to be incorporated with a restored Poland, as Buonaparte
had delusively allowed the Poles to hope. No; a restored Poland was
incompatible with a treaty of peace with Russia, or the continuance
of it with Austria. It was handed over to the Duke of Saxony, now
elevated to the title of the King of Saxony and Duke of the Grand
Duchy of Warsaw--the name which Prussian Poland assumed. The duped
Polish patriots cursed Buonaparte bitterly in secret. Alexander, with
all his assumed sympathy for his fallen cousins of Prussia, came in
for a slice of the spoil, nominally to cover the expenses of the war.
Dantzic, with a certain surrounding district, was recognised as a
free city, under the protection of Prussia and Saxony; but Buonaparte
took care to stipulate for the retention of a garrison there till the
conclusion of a general peace, so as to stop out any British armament
or influence. To oblige the Emperor of Russia, he allowed the Dukes
of Saxe-Coburg, Oldenburg, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, who were the Czar's
relations, to retain possession of their territories; but he returned
to Prussia only about one-half of the provinces which he had seized,
reducing her very much to the limits in which Frederick the Great had
found her before his usurpations. She surrendered her provinces between
the Rhine and the Elbe, which, together with Hesse, Brunswick, and
part of Hanover, were formed into the kingdom of Westphalia and given
to Jerome Buonaparte. She was saddled by a crushing war indemnity,
and had to leave Berlin and the chief fortresses in the hands of the
French until the debt was paid. In the articles of the Treaty which
were made public, Alexander paid a nominal courtesy to his ally, Great
Britain, by offering to mediate between her and France, if the offer
were accepted within a month; but amongst the secret articles of the
Treaty was one binding the Czar to shut his ports against all British
vessels, if this offer were rejected. This was a sacrifice demanded
of Alexander, as Great Britain was Russia's best customer, taking
nearly all her raw or exported produce. In return for this, and for
Alexander's connivance at, or assistance in, Buonaparte's intention of
seizing on Spain and Portugal, for the taking of Malta and Gibraltar,
and the expulsion of the British from the Mediterranean, Alexander was
to invade and annex Finland, the territory of Sweden, and, giving up
his designs on Moldavia and Wallachia, for which he was now waging an
unprovoked war, he was to be allowed to conquer the rest of Turkey,
the ally of Napoleon, and establish himself in the long-coveted
Constantinople. Thus these two august robbers shared kingdoms at their
own sweet will and pleasure. Turkey and Finland they regarded as
properly Russian provinces, and Spain, Portugal, Malta, Gibraltar, and,
eventually, Britain, as provinces of France.




CHAPTER XX.

REIGN OF GEORGE III. (_continued_).

    Napoleon's Designs on Spain--The Continental System--Treaty
    of Fontainebleau--Junot marches on Portugal--Flight of the
    Royal Family--The Milan Decree--The Pope imprisoned in the
    Quirinal--Imbecility of the Spanish Government--Quarrels of the
    Spanish Royal Family--Occupation of the Spanish Fortresses--The
    King's Preparations for Flight--Rests at Madrid--Abdication of
    Charles IV.--Murat occupies Madrid--The Meeting at Bayonne--Joseph
    becomes King of Spain--Insurrection in Spain--The Junta
    communicates with England--Ferocity of the War--Operations
    of Bessières, Duchesne, and Moncey--Dupont surrenders to
    Castaños--Joseph evacuates Madrid--Siege of Saragossa--Napoleon's
    Designs on Portugal--Insurrection throughout the Country--Sir
    A. Wellesley touches at Corunna--He lands at Figueras--Battle
    of Roliça--Wellesley is superseded by Burrard--Battle of
    Vimiera--Arrival of Dalrymple--Convention of Cintra--Inquiry
    into the Convention--Occupation of Lisbon--Napoleon's
    Preparations against Spain--Wellesley is passed over in favour of
    Moore--Moore's Advance--Difficulties of the March--Incompetency
    of Hookham Frere--Napoleon's Position in Europe--The Meeting
    at Erfurth--Napoleon at Vittoria--Destruction of the Spanish
    Armies--Napoleon enters Madrid--Moore is at last undeceived--The
    Retreat--Napoleon leaves Spain--Moore retires before Soult--Arrival
    at Corunna--The Battle--Death of Sir John Moore--The Ministry
    determine to continue the War--Scandal of the Duke of York--His
    Resignation--Charges against Lord Castlereagh--Wellesley arrives in
    Portugal--He drives Soult from Portugal into Spain--His Junction
    with Cuesta--Position of the French Armies--Folly of Cuesta--Battle
    of Talavera--State of the Commissariat--Wellesley's Retreat--French
    Victories--The Lines of Torres Vedras--The Walcheren
    Expedition--Flushing taken--The Troops die from Malaria--Disastrous
    Termination of the Expedition--Sir John Stuart in Italy and the
    Ionian Islands--War between Russia and Turkey--Collingwood's last
    Exploits--Attempt of Gambier and Cochrane on La Rochelle.


The restless spirit of Buonaparte did not allow him any repose,
even after his subjugation of the greater part of the north of
Europe. Whilst he had been contending with the Russians, he had been
planning fresh campaigns--fresh conquests at the opposite extremity
of the Continent. Godoy, the favourite of the King of Spain, and the
paramour of his dissolute queen, who had professed great admiration
of Buonaparte, seeing him so deeply engaged in Germany, had suddenly
called out a considerable army, and addressed it in a vaunting but
mysterious way. The news of this reached Buonaparte on the field
of Jena, and, discovering by this means the real sentiments of the
Spanish favourite towards him, he vowed vengeance on Spain. It was by
no means the first time that he had contemplated the conquest of Spain
and Portugal, but this circumstance inspired him with a new impulse
in that direction, and a plausible excuse. In his interviews with
Alexander of Russia, these views had been avowed; and now, no sooner
had he returned to Paris than he commenced his operations for that
purpose. He blended this scheme, at the same time, with his great one
of shutting out the British trade from the whole Continent. Russia had,
by the Treaty of Tilsit, entered into a compact to enforce his system
in her ports. Holland was compelled to submit to it. The kingdom of
Westphalia was now in the hands of his brother Jerome, who had been
forced to separate from his American wife, Elizabeth Paterson, and
had been married to a daughter of the King of Würtemberg, so that the
territories now comprised in the new kingdom of Westphalia were under
the same law of exclusion. He had extended it to the Prussian ports
since his conquest of that country, and to the Hanseatic towns. Denmark
was ready to comply, and the treaty with Russia extended his embargo
ostensibly to the whole western shores of the Baltic. Sweden refused to
accept it, and the foolhardy King Christian IV. declared war on Russia,
and invaded Norway. He promptly lost Finland and Pomerania. Sir John
Moore, with an army of 10,000 men, was sent to his assistance, but
found him so unreasonable that he thought it better to return without
landing the troops. Christian was soon afterwards deposed, and his
uncle established in his place, who accepted the Continental system.
But Alexander was as little faithful in this part of the Treaty as in
other parts. In fact, he dared not strictly enforce the exclusion of
British trade, were he so disposed. Nearly the whole heavy produce
of Russia--hemp, iron, timber, wax, pitch, and naval stores, which
constituted the chief revenues of the Russian nobles--was taken by
the British, and paid for in their manufactures. To have cut off his
trade would have made the life of Alexander as little secure as that
of his father, Paul, had been. The Russian and British trade therefore
continued, under certain devices, and notwithstanding the decrees of
the Czar to the contrary. Buonaparte knew it, but was not prepared to
open up a new war with Russia on that account--at least, at present. He
was now turning his attention to the south.

Spain and Portugal--still nominally existing under their native
princes, but very much under the influence of Buonaparte--admitted
British goods to a great extent. Buonaparte himself had winked at
the introduction of them into Portugal, because that country had
paid him large sums to permit it. But now he determined to enforce
a rigid exclusion, and to make the breach of his dictated orders a
plea for seizure of the country. In fact, he had long resolved to
seize both Spain and Portugal, but to employ Spain first in reducing
her neighbour, and by that very act to introduce his troops into
Spain herself. He complained, therefore, that Portugal had refused to
enforce the Berlin decree; and he entered into a treaty with Spain
at Fontainebleau, which was signed on the 29th of October. By this
infamous treaty, Spain agreed to assist France in seizing Portugal,
which should be divided into three parts. The province of Entre Minho y
Douro, with the town of Oporto, was to be given to the King of Etruria,
the grandson of the King of Spain, instead of Etruria itself, which
Buonaparte wanted to annex to France, and this was to be called the
kingdom of Northern Lusitania. The next part, to consist of Alemtejo
and Algarve, was to be given to Godoy, who was to take the title of
Prince of Algarve. The third was to remain in the hands of the French
till the end of the war, who would thus be at hand to protect the
whole. In fact, it never was the intention of Buonaparte that either
Godoy or the King of Etruria should ever be more than a temporary
puppet; but that the whole of Spain and Portugal should become
provinces of France under a nominal French king.

No sooner was this treaty signed than Junot was ordered to cross the
Bidassoa with thirty thousand men, and march through Spain for the
Portuguese frontier. Two additional armies, partly of French and
partly of Spaniards, supported him, and another army of forty thousand
was stationed at Bayonne, intended, it was said, to act as an army
of reserve, in case the British should land and attempt to defend
Portugal, but in reality it was intended for the subjugation of Spain
itself. Junot, who had formerly been Buonaparte's ambassador at the
Court of Lisbon, made rapid marches through Spain. The Prince Regent
of Portugal, knowing that resistance was in vain, sent the Marquis
of Marialva to state to the Courts of France and Spain that he had
complied with the whole of their demands, as regarded the admission of
British goods, and demanded the arrest of the march of the invading
army. But no notice was taken of this, and Junot pushed on with such
speed as to exhaust his troops with fatigue. He was anxious to seize
the persons of the royal family, and therefore this haste, accompanied
by the most solemn professions of his coming as the friend and ally of
Portugal--as the protector of the people from the yoke of the British,
the maritime tyrants of Europe.

But the royal family put no faith in these professions; they resolved
not to wait the arrival of the French, but to muster all the money
and valuables that they could, and escape to their South American
possessions. Whilst these preparations were being made in haste, the
British traders collected their property and conveyed it on board
British vessels. The inhabitants of the British factory, so long
established in Lisbon, had quitted it on the 18th of October, amid the
universal regret of the people. The ambassador, Lord Strangford, took
down the British arms, and went on board the squadron of Sir Sidney
Smith, lying in the Tagus. On the 27th of November the royal family,
amid the cries and tears of the people, went on board their fleet,
attended by a great number of Portuguese nobility; in all, about one
thousand eight hundred Portuguese thus emigrating. The Prince Regent
accompanied them, sensible that his presence could be of no service
any longer. The fleet of the royal emigrants was still in the Tagus,
under the safe protection of Sir Sidney Smith's men-of-war, when Junot
and his footsore troops entered Lisbon, on the 1st of December. He was
transported with rage when he saw their departing sails, for he had
received the most imperative injunctions to secure the person of the
Prince Regent, from whom Napoleon hoped to extort the cession of the
Portuguese American colonies. Junot declared that the Prince Regent and
royal family, having abandoned the country, had ceased to reign, and
that the Emperor Napoleon willed that it should henceforth be governed,
in his name, by the General-in-chief of his army. This proclamation of
the 2nd of February set aside at once the conditions of the Treaty of
Fontainebleau; the imaginary princedom of Godoy was no more heard of,
and the kingdom erected for the King of Etruria remained a mere phantom
at the will of Buonaparte. The property of the royal family, and of all
who had followed them, was confiscated; a contribution of four million
five hundred thousand pounds sterling was laid on a people of less than
three millions, and as there was not specie enough to pay it, plate and
every kind of movable property was seized in lieu of it, without much
regard to excess of quantity. The officers became money-brokers and
jobbers in this property, much of which was sent to Paris for sale, and
the whole unhappy country was a scene of the most ruthless rapine and
insult.

[Illustration: FLIGHT OF THE ROYAL FAMILY OF PORTUGAL. (_See p._ 547.)]

Whilst these abominations were being done in Portugal, Buonaparte had
proceeded to Italy to prosecute other parts of his one great design.
He determined, in the first place, to shut the trade of Britain out of
all the Italian ports, as he had now, in imagination, done in nearly
all the other ports of Europe. Accordingly, at Milan, on the 17th of
December, he issued his celebrated decree, which took its name from
that city, as his Northern decrees had taken their name from Berlin.
Henceforward the Berlin and Milan decrees acquired great notoriety.
To counteract the ordinances of the Berlin decrees, which forbade
any ship of any nation to be admitted into Continental ports without
certificates of origin--that is, without certificates showing that no
part of their cargo was of British produce--various Orders in Council
had been issued by Britain, permitting all neutral vessels to trade to
any country at peace with Great Britain, provided that they touched at
a British port, and paid the British duties. Thus, neutrals were placed
between Scylla and Charybdis. Ii they neglected to take out British
certificates they were captured at sea by the British cruisers; if
they did take them, they were confiscated on entering any Continental
port where there were French agents. This led to an enormous system of
bribery and fraud. The prohibited goods were still admitted by false
papers, with respect to which the French officers, men of the highest
rank, were well paid to shut their eyes. All the ports of Italy were
now subjected to this system, and Buonaparte immediately seized a
great number of American vessels, on the ground that they had complied
with the British Orders in Council. It might be thought that America
would so far resent this as to declare war on France, but Buonaparte
calculated on the strength of American prejudices against Britain and
for France at that time, that the United States would rather declare
war against Britain, which, by its Orders in Council, brought them into
this dilemma. The ports of the Pope alone now remained open, and these
Buonaparte determined forthwith to shut.

But, in the first place, he announced to the Queen of Etruria, whom
he had hitherto allowed to retain her Italian territory in right of
her infant son, that she must give that up and accept the kingdom of
Northern Lusitania in Portugal. This princess had an ominous persuasion
that her son would never possess, or, if he possessed, would never
retain this Northern Lusitania; but she had no alternative and, in
the month of June following, the kingdom of Etruria was converted
into three new departments of France. This having been arranged, this
setter-up and puller-down of kingdoms proceeded to compel the Pope to
adopt his system. Pius VII. did not seem disposed to comply. He had
no quarrel with Britain; had no advantage, but much the contrary, in
depriving his subjects of articles of British manufacture; besides
that, amongst the numerous adherents of the Church in Ireland he would
create great prejudice. But all these reasons had no more weight with
the haughty egotism of Buonaparte than so much air. He forced his
troops into the Papal territories; threw a strong body into Ancona
on the Adriatic, and another into Civita Vecchia, and at the mouth
of the Tiber. The Pope protested against the violent invasion of his
principality, but in vain; Buonaparte insisted that he should declare
war against Britain. Pius then consented to close his ports, but this
did not satisfy Napoleon; he demanded that war should be declared,
pronouncing himself the heir of Charlemagne, and therefore suzerain of
the Pope, and he demanded compliance. On the Pope continuing obstinate,
Buonaparte forced more troops into his States, and sent General Miollis
to take possession of Rome. This accordingly was done in February,
1808. The Pope shut himself up in the Quirinal palace, and the French
surrounded him with troops and cannon, and held him prisoner to compel
him to comply. The Pope, though shut up in the Quirinal and deprived of
his cardinals, remained unshaken, and protested solemnly against this
violent usage and robbery by the man whom he had consented to crown
and to make a concordat with. When the magistrates and priests of the
Marches were called on to take the oath of allegiance to Napoleon, they
refused almost unanimously, and were driven out of the States, or shut
up in prisons and fortresses in the Alps and Apennines.

The Government of Spain was sunk into the very deepest degradation and
imbecility. Charles IV. was one of the weakest of Bourbon kings. He was
ruled by his licentious wife, Maria Luiza, and she by Manuel de Godoy,
a young and handsome man, who, about the year 1784, had attracted her
eye as a private in the Royal Guards. By her means he was rapidly
promoted, and at the age of twenty-four was already a general. He was
soon created a Grandee of Spain, and the queen married him to a niece
of the king. He was made Generalissimo of all the Spanish Forces, and,
in fact, became the sole ruling power in the country. He was styled
the Prince of the Peace--a title acquired by his having effected
the pacification of Basle, which terminated the Revolutionary War
between France and Spain. By the subsequent Treaty of St. Ildefonso he
established an offensive and defensive alliance with France, which, in
truth, made Spain entirely subservient to Napoleon.

Whilst the French were seizing on Portugal, the Spanish royal family
was convulsed by quarrels. Ferdinand, the Prince of Asturias, and heir
to the throne, hated Godoy, as usurping the power which he himself
ought to enjoy, and, stimulated by his friends, who shared in his
exclusion, appealed to Napoleon for his protection, and to win his
favour requested him to choose a wife for him out of his own family.
This at one time would have been a subject of the highest pride to
Buonaparte, that a member of the Bourbon family, and future King of
Spain, should solicit a personal alliance with his; but that day was
gone by. Buonaparte had determined to make himself master of Spain, and
he left the request of the Prince without any answer. Urged on by his
party, the Prince seems to have determined to do without Buonaparte,
and to depose his father, but the plot was discovered, and the person
of the Prince secured. The imbecile king, instead of contenting
himself by the exercise of his own authority, appealed to Napoleon;
and at the same time, to make the disgrace of his family as public as
possible, he appealed to the Spanish people, by a proclamation against
the conduct of his son, and informing them that he had put the Prince
under arrest. But the appeal to Buonaparte did not succeed; for his own
purposes, the French Emperor appeared to take part with the Prince,
and caused his Ambassador, Beauharnais, to remonstrate with the king
on his severity towards him. Charles IV. wrote again to Napoleon, and
ventured to mention the Prince's private application to him for a wife,
hoping, the king said, that the Emperor would not permit the Prince to
shelter himself under an alliance with the Imperial family. Buonaparte
professed to feel greatly insulted by such allusions to his family, and
the poor king then wrote very humbly, declaring that he desired nothing
so much as such an alliance for his son. Ferdinand, through this
powerful support, was immediately liberated. But these mutual appeals
had greatly forwarded Buonaparte's plans of interference in Spain.
He levied a new conscription, and avowed to Talleyrand and Fouché
that he had determined to set aside the royal family of Spain, and to
unite that country to France. Both those astute diplomatists at once
disapproved, and endeavoured to dissuade him from the enterprise. They
reminded him of the pride of the Spanish character, and that he might
rouse the people to a temper of most stubborn resistance, which would
divide his attention and his forces, would be pretty certain to bring
Britain into the field for their support, and unite Britain again with
Russia, thus placing himself between two fires. Talleyrand, seeing that
Buonaparte was resolutely bent on the scheme, dropped his opposition,
and assisted Napoleon in planning its progress; thus enabling the
Emperor afterwards to charge Talleyrand with the responsibility of this
usurpation, as he had before charged him with counselling the death
of the Duke d'Enghien. In after years, Napoleon used to denounce his
own folly in meddling with Spain, calling it "that miserable war" and
describing it as the origin of his ruin.

Buonaparte very speedily matured his plans for the seizure of Spain,
and he began to put them into execution. From Italy, where he was
violating the territories of the Pope, and compelling the reluctant
Queen of Etruria to give up her kingdom, he wrote to the King of Spain,
her father, that he consented to a marriage between the Prince of
Asturias and a lady of his family. Whilst he thus gave assurance of his
friendship, he ordered his army, lying at Bayonne, to enter Spain at
different points, and possess themselves of the strong positions along
its frontier. By this means the French were received as friends by the
people, and neither the king nor Godoy complained of this gross breach
of the Treaty of Fontainebleau. The impudent tricks by which the great
fortresses were secured, each of which might have detained an army for
years, have scarcely any parallel in history. At Pamplona, on the 9th
of February, 1808, the French troops commenced a game of snowballing
each other on the esplanade of the citadel, when suddenly they occupied
the drawbridge, entered the fortress gate, and admitted a body of
their countrymen, who had been placed in readiness, and the fortress
was secured. At Barcelona the French gave out that they were about to
march. Duchesne, the General, drew up his men before the citadel, on
pretence of speaking with the French guard, near the citadel gate,
passed suddenly in, followed by an Italian regiment, and the place
was their own. St. Sebastian was captured by a number of French being
admitted into the hospital, who let in their fellows, and Mountjoy was
taken by a like _ruse_.

[Illustration:

    _Reproduced by André & Sleigh, Ltd., Bushey, Herts._

NAPLES, FROM THE MERGELLINA.

AFTER THE PAINTING BY BIRKET FOSTER, R.W.S.]

Nothing could exceed the consternation and indignation of the Spanish
people when they found their great strongholds guarding the entrances
from France into the country thus in the hands of the French. Had there
been a king of any ability in Spain, an appeal to the nation would,
on this outrage, have roused it to a man, and the plans of Buonaparte
might have been defeated. But Godoy, knowing himself to be the object
of national detestation, and dreading nothing so much as a rising of
the people, by whom he would most certainly be sacrificed, advised the
royal family to follow the example of the Court of Portugal, and escape
to their trans-Atlantic dominions; which advice could only have been
given by a miscreant, and adopted by an idiot. To surrender a kingdom
and a people like those of Spain, without a blow, was the extreme
of cowardice. But, as if to urge the feeble king to this issue, at
this moment came a letter from Buonaparte, upbraiding him with having
received his acceptance of the match between their houses coldly.
Charles, terrified in the extreme, wrote to declare that nothing lay
so near his heart, and at the same time made preparations to be gone.
The intention was kept as secret as possible, but the public soon
became aware of the Court's proposed removal from Madrid to Cadiz, in
order then to be able to embark for America. The Prince of Asturias
and his brother protested against the project; the Council of Castile
remonstrated; the populace were in a most tumultuous state, regarding
the plan as originating with Godoy, and surrounded the palace with
cries and gestures of dissatisfaction. The king was in a continual
state of terror and irresolution, but Godoy pressed on matters for the
flight.

On the 17th of March a proclamation was placarded at the gates of the
palace, announcing that the king was resolved to remain and share
the fate of his people. Great were the acclamations and rejoicings;
but, towards evening, the crowds that still lingered around the royal
residence saw unmistakable signs of departure: there was an active
movement amongst the Guards; carriages and baggage were becoming
apparent, and the agitation of the people grew intense. The Prince
of Asturias and his brother protested against the departure; bodies
of soldiers, in open revolt, began to assemble, and the people cried
that they would have the head of the traitor, Godoy. From angry words
the populace and revolted soldiers came to blows with the Household
Troops. Godoy's brother led up a regiment against the rioters, but the
men seized him, and joined the people. Whilst one crowd surrounded the
Palace of Aranjuez, another rushed to the house of Godoy to seize and
kill him. They ran all over his house, but could not discover him.
The tumult continued all night, but was somewhat appeased the next
morning by a Royal proclamation, which announced that the king had
dismissed him from his offices. This did not, however, prevent the
people continuing the search for Godoy, who was at length discovered
by a Life-Guardsman in a garret of his own house, where he had been
concealed between two mattresses. Compelled to come forth by heat and
thirst, he was dragged into the street, soundly beaten, and would soon
have been put to death, had not the Prince of Asturias, at the urgent
entreaty of the king and queen, interceded, declaring that he should
be tried for his crimes, and duly punished. Godoy was committed to
custody, in the Castle of Villaviciosa: his property was confiscated;
and, on the 19th, the king, terrified at the still hostile aspect of
the people, proclaimed his own resignation in favour of Ferdinand,
their favourite; in truth, as little deserving of their favour, by any
moral or intellectual quality, as the king himself. The abdication was
formally communicated by letter to Napoleon, whose troops, under Murat,
were, during these tumults, now rapidly advancing on Madrid.

On the 23rd, only four days after the abdication of the king, Murat
entered Madrid with a numerous body of infantry and cuirassiers,
attended by a splendid train of artillery. Ferdinand entered the
city the same day. He had formed an administration wholly opposed to
Godoy and his policy. The Ambassadors of the other Powers presented
themselves to offer their congratulations; but Beauharnais, the
French Ambassador, preserved a profound silence. Murat, also, though
he professed himself friendly to Ferdinand, said not a word implying
recognition of his title. Still more ominous, the news arrived that
Buonaparte himself was on the way with another powerful army. Murat
took up his residence in the Palace of the Prince of the Peace, and
greatly alarmed Ferdinand and his courtiers by addressing him, not as
"your Majesty," but merely as "your Royal Highness." He counselled him
to wait, and do nothing till he could advise with Napoleon, and, in
the meantime, to send his brother, Don Carlos, to greet the Emperor on
his entrance into Spain. To this Ferdinand consented; but when Murat
recommended him also to go, and show this mark of respect to his ally,
Ferdinand demurred, and by the advice of Cevallos, one of his wisest
counsellors, he declined the suggestion. To complicate matters, Murat
opened communication with the king and queen, and, not content with
that, with Godoy also, assuring him that his only hope of safety lay
in the friendship of the Emperor. By this means Murat learned all the
accusations that each party could make against the other, so that these
things might serve Buonaparte to base his measures, or, at least, his
pretences upon. Encouraged by this, Charles wrote to Napoleon to
declare his abdication entirely forced, and to leave everything to the
decision of his good friend, the Emperor.

[Illustration: CAPTURE OF GODOY. (_See p._ 551.)]

The suggestions of Murat had failed to induce Ferdinand to leave his
capital and go to meet Napoleon; but a more adroit agent now presented
himself in the person of Savary, the delegated murderer of the Duke
d'Enghien. Savary paid decided court to Ferdinand. He listened to
all his statements of the revolution of Aranjuez and the abdication
of the king. He told him that he felt sure Napoleon would see these
circumstances in the same favourable light as he did, and persuaded him
to go and meet the Emperor at Burgos, and hear him salute him Ferdinand
VII., King of Spain and of the Indies.

Savary accompanied Ferdinand to conduct him safely into the snare. He
spoke positively of meeting Napoleon at Burgos; but when they arrived
there, they received the information that Napoleon was only yet at
Bordeaux, about to proceed to Bayonne. Savary seemed so sure of his
victim, that he ventured to leave Ferdinand at Vittoria, and went on
to see Napoleon and report progress; probably, also, to receive fresh
instructions. The opportunity was not lost by some faithful Spaniards
to warn Ferdinand to make his escape during Savary's absence, and
to get into one of his distant provinces, where he could, at least,
negotiate with Napoleon independently. Ferdinand was astounded, but
persuaded himself that Napoleon could not contemplate such treachery.
Although the people opposed the Prince's going, Savary prevailed, and
on they went.

When Buonaparte heard that Ferdinand had arrived, he is said to have
exclaimed--"What! is the fool really come?" He received him, however,
with courtesy, invited him to dinner, and treated him with all the
deference of a crowned head; but the same evening he sent Savary to
inform him that he had determined that the Bourbons should cease to
reign, and the crown should be transferred to his own family. Possessed
of the Prince of Asturias, Buonaparte proceeded to complete his
kidnapping, and make himself master of the king and queen. He was sure
that if he brought Godoy to Bayonne he should draw the infatuated queen
after him, and that she would bring the king with her. He therefore
ordered Murat to send on Godoy under a strong guard. This was executed
with such rapidity that he was conveyed from Aranjuez to the banks of
the Bidassoa in a couple of days. Buonaparte received Godoy in the
most flattering manner, told him that he regarded the abdication of
Charles as most unjustifiable, and that he would be glad to see the
king and queen at Bayonne, to arrange the best mode of securing them
on the throne. Godoy communicated this intelligence with alacrity,
and Napoleon very soon had the two remaining royal fools in his safe
keeping. On the 30th of April a train of old, lumbering carriages, the
first drawn by eight Biscayan mules, was seen crossing the drawbridge
at Bayonne. The arrival consisted of the King and Queen of Spain, with
three or four unimportant grandees. Godoy welcomed Charles and his
queen, and assured them of the friendly disposition and intentions of
Buonaparte. Having the family in his clutches, Napoleon had little
difficulty in compelling Ferdinand to restore the crown to his father,
who abdicated a second time, and placed his crown in the hands of the
Emperor.

Having now kidnapped and disposed of the whole dynasty of Spain,
Buonaparte had to inaugurate the new one by the appointment of a
king. For this purpose he pitched on his brother Lucien, who, next to
himself, was the ablest of the family, and who had rendered him signal
services in the expulsion of the Council of Five Hundred from St.
Cloud. But Lucien was of too independent a character to become a mere
puppet of the great man, like the rest of his brothers. As Napoleon
grew haughty and imperious in the progress of his success, Lucien
had dared to express disapprobation of his conduct. He declared that
Napoleon's every word and action proceeded, not from principle, but
from mere political considerations, and that the foundation of his
whole system and career was egotism. He had married a private person to
please himself, and would not abandon his wife to receive a princess
and a crown, like Jerome. Lucien had, moreover, literary tastes, was
fond of collecting works of art, and had a fortune ample enough for
these purposes. When, therefore, Napoleon sent for him to assume the
crown of Spain, he declined the honour. Napoleon then resolved to
take Joseph from Naples, and confer on him the throne of Spain and
the Indies. Joseph, who was indolent and self-indulgent, and who at
Naples could not exempt himself from continual fears of daggers and
assassination, received with consternation the summons to assume the
crown of Spain, as ominous of no ordinary troubles. He declared that it
was too weighty for his head, and showed no alacrity in setting out.
Napoleon was obliged to summon him several times, and at length to
dispatch one of his most active and trusted aides-de-camp to hasten his
movements.

And truly the prospects of the reign before him were such as might
have daunted a much bolder and wiser man than Joseph. The people of
Madrid had watched with increasing resentment the spiriting away of the
different members of the royal family to Bayonne. They were wrathful
that Godoy had been carried beyond the reach of their vengeance, and
every day they were on the look-out for news from Bayonne as to the
cause of Ferdinand, and this news grew even more unfavourable. On
the evening of the 30th of April the populace had retired in gloomy
discontent, because no courier had arrived bringing intelligence of
Buonaparte's intentions towards Ferdinand. On the morning of the 1st
of May numbers of men assembled about the gate of the inn and the
post-office, with dark looks, and having, as was supposed, arms under
their long cloaks. The French mustered strongly in the streets, and the
day passed over quietly. But the next morning, the 2nd of May, the same
ominous-looking crowds, as they assembled, were agitated by reports
that the only remaining members of the royal family, the widowed Queen
of Etruria and her children, and the youngest son of King Charles, Don
Francisco, were about to be sent off also to Bayonne. They presently
saw these royal personages conducted to their carriages; Don Francisco,
a youth of only fourteen, weeping bitterly, and the sight roused the
people to instant fury. They fell on the French, chiefly with their
long knives, massacred seven hundred soldiers of the line, and wounded
upwards of twenty of the Imperial Guard. The French, in return, fired
on the people, and killed a hundred and twenty of them. Murat poured
in troops to suppress the riot, but could not disperse them till
after several volleys of grape-shot and repeated charges of cavalry.
Unprepared as the country was, the people felt by no means daunted.
The Alcalde of Mostoles, about ten miles south of Madrid, hearing the
firing, and understanding the cause, sent a bulletin to the south in
these words, "The country is in danger: Madrid is perishing through the
perfidy of the French: all Spaniards come to deliver it!" That was all
that was necessary. The fact of being in possession of Madrid was a
very different thing to being in possession of Paris, Spain consisting
of various provinces, having their separate capitals, and everywhere
was a martial people, just as ready and able to maintain a struggle
against an invader as if Madrid were free. At Valencia, the populace,
headed by a priest, fell on the French, and massacred two hundred of
them. Solano, the governor of Cadiz, suspected of favouring the French,
was dragged out of his house and murdered. Even before the insurrection
at Madrid there had been one at Toledo, and the French had been menaced
with destruction.

Amid these popular outbursts the great body of the Spaniards were
calmly organising the country for defence. A junta or select
committee was elected in each district, and these juntas established
communications with each other all over the land. They called on the
inhabitants to furnish contributions, the clergy to send in their
church plate to the mint, and the common people to enrol themselves as
soldiers and to labour at the fortifications. The Spanish soldiers,
to a man, went over to the popular side, and in a few days the whole
nation was in arms. The crisis of which Buonaparte had warned Murat was
come at once, and the fight in Madrid on the 2nd of May was but the
beginning of a war which was to topple the invader from his now dizzy
height. This made Buonaparte convene a mock national junta, or Assembly
of Notables, to sanction the abdication, and the appointment of Joseph
Buonaparte as the new monarch. Joseph entered Madrid on the 6th of
June, and proclaimed a new constitution.

No sooner had the insurrection of Aranjuez taken place, and Ferdinand
been proclaimed king, than, so early as April the 8th, General Castaños
informed Sir Hew Dalrymple, the governor of Gibraltar, that there was
an end of the policy of Godoy, which had made Spain the slave of France
and the foe of Britain. Sir Hew sent a prompt dispatch to England with
the news, and, till he could receive instructions from the British
Government, he maintained friendly relations with the Spaniards.
When the junta of Seville was formed, and there was every reason to
believe that Spain would make a determined resistance, on his own
responsibility he encouraged the merchants of Gibraltar to make a loan
of forty thousand dollars to the junta without premium; and Captain
Whittingham, an officer well acquainted with Spain, went to Seville to
assist in planning the best means of preventing the French from passing
the Sierra Morena. On the 8th of June Sir Hew received a dispatch
from Lord Castlereagh, informing him that the British Government had
determined to send ten thousand men immediately to the assistance of
the Spanish patriots. But this was preceded four days by a proclamation
which had outstripped Lord Castlereagh's dispatch, stating that his
Majesty had ordered all hostilities towards Spain to cease, and all
Spanish ships at sea to be unmolested. Admiral Collingwood took the
command of the whole British fleet on the coast of Spain, ready to
co-operate. He landed Mr. Cox to proceed to Seville as confidential
agent, and about the middle of June General Spencer arrived at Cadiz
with five thousand British soldiers. About the same time, the junta of
Seville declared themselves at peace with Great Britain, and sent four
commissioners to England to settle diplomatic relations between the
countries.

Meanwhile the French generals, though they saw insurrections rising in
every quarter, and though they themselves were located in different
parts of the country, distant from each other, entertained no fear but
that the steady discipline of their troops, and their own experience,
would easily put them down. Murat had quitted Spain to proceed to his
kingdom of Naples, which he had received on the 15th of July, and
Savary was left at Madrid as Commander-in-Chief, and he found himself
in a most arduous and embarrassing post, with so many points to watch
and to strengthen for the suppression of the insurrection. The Spanish
junta recommended their country, very prudently, to avoid regular
engagements, with their yet raw forces, against the veteran armies of
France, but to carry on a guerilla warfare, waylaying the enemy in
mountains and defiles, cutting off their supplies, and harassing their
rear, their outposts, and their foraging parties. The ardour and pride
of the Spaniards only too much tempted the men to despise this advice,
and whenever they did they severely paid for it. The relentless spirit
of the people against the lawless invaders, on the other hand, incited
the French to equal ferocity. They treated the Spaniards as rebels in
arms against their king; the villages were given up to the plunder
and licentiousness of the soldiers. This again fired the Spaniards to
retaliation, and they put to death sick and wounded when they fell
into their hands. The war thus commenced with features of peculiar
horror. The character of the country rendered the conflict the more
desperate to the invaders; the fertile regions were separated from
each other by vast desert heaths and barren mountains, so that Henry
IV. had said truly, if a general invaded Spain with a small army he
would be defeated; if with a large one, he would be starved. To collect
provisions, the French had to disperse themselves over wide tracts,
and thus exposed themselves to the ambuscades and surprises of the
Spaniards, every peasant carrying his gun.

At first victory seemed to attend the French. Lefebvre defeated the
Spaniards in Aragon, on the 9th of June, and General Bessières beat
the insurgents, in several partial actions, in Navarre and Biscay. But
his great success was over the united forces of Generals Cuesta and
Blake, on the 14th of June, at Medina de Rio Seco, a few leagues from
the city of Valladolid. Duchesne thought he should be able to send
reinforcements to assist in reducing Valencia and Aragon; but he soon
found that he had enough to do in his own district. Marshal Moncey, all
this time expecting the co-operation of Duchesne, had advanced into
Valencia. For a time the country seemed deserted; but as he advanced
he found the hills and rocks swarming with armed people, and he had to
force his march by continual fighting. There were Swiss troops mingled
amongst the Spanish ones opposed to him, and whilst they attacked
him in front, the Spaniards assaulted his flanks and rear. When he
arrived before the city of Valencia, on the 27th of June, he found
the place well defended. On the 29th Moncey retired from before the
walls, despairing of the arrival of Duchesne. Moncey, like Bessières,
now found himself called to Madrid to defend the new king, who, it
was clear, could not long remain there; and already the British were
landing on the shores of the Peninsula, to bring formidable aid to the
exasperated inhabitants.

But the most important operations were at this moment taking place
in the south between Dupont and Castaños. Castaños was quartered at
Utrera with twenty thousand men. Dupont had been ordered by Murat to
march from Madrid into the south-west, and make himself master of the
important post of Cadiz. After a countermand, he again advanced in
that direction, and had crossed the Sierra Morena, so celebrated in
the romance of "Don Quixote," and reached the ancient city of Cordova.
There he received the news that Cadiz had risen against the French,
and had seized the French squadron lying in the bay, and, at the same
time, that Seville was in the highest state of insurrection. Whilst
pausing in uncertainty of what course to pursue, Castaños advanced
from Utrera towards the higher part of the Guadalquivir. If Dupont
had rushed forward to attack Castaños at Utrera, he would have done
it under great disadvantages. He was cut off from the main French
army by the Sierra Morena, and these mountains being occupied by the
insurgent inhabitants, he would have no chance of falling back in case
of disaster. He now advanced to Andujar, which he reached on the 18th
of June, having had to fight his way through bands of fiery patriots.

On the evening of the 16th of July Castaños appeared on the Argonilla,
directly opposite to Andujar; the river was fordable in many places
from the drought, and the different divisions of the Spaniards crossed
in the night. Vedel, seeing the critical situation of the French army,
made a rapid movement to regain and keep open the mountainous defile
by which he had arrived, but Dupont remained at Andujar till the
night of the 18th. Vedel remaining at the pass for Dupont, the latter
found himself intercepted at Baylen by the Swiss General, Reding,
and whilst engaging him his own Swiss troops went over to Reding. He
sent expresses to Vedel to return to his aid, but before this could
be accomplished he was defeated, and compelled to surrender. He was
enormously encumbered by baggage; for the French, as usual, utterly
regardless of the necessity of keeping on good terms with a people over
whom they wished to rule, had been pillaging churches and houses of all
plate and valuables that they could find. In endeavouring to defend the
baggage, Dupont had weakened his front, and occasioned his repulse.
Castaños had not perceived the march of the French; but, by the time
his van came up with Reding, he found the French army prisoners. The
terms proposed by the French were that they should be allowed to retire
upon Madrid with all their arms and baggage. But Castaños was too well
acquainted with the necessities of the French through the intercepted
letter to Savary. He insisted that they should pile their arms, give
up the greater part of their spoil, and be sent down to San Lucar
and Rota, where they should be embarked for France. Whilst Dupont
was hesitating on these conditions, he received a note from Vedel,
proposing that they should make a simultaneous attack on the Spaniards,
and thus have a fresh chance of turning the scale in their own favour.
But Dupont saw that this was hopeless; and, moreover, it is said that
Castaños insisted that if Vedel himself did not immediately lay down
his arms, he would shoot Dupont. Vedel, who now saw little hope of
cutting his way through the mountains, was compelled to obey. The
French piled their arms on the 22nd of July, the prisoners amounting to
between eighteen and nineteen thousand. They gave up also thirty pieces
of cannon.

The news of this great victory, which at once freed from the French
armies the rich province of Andalusia and the cities of Cadiz and
Seville, spread joy and exultation over Spain, and filled Buonaparte,
who received it at Bordeaux, with the deepest anxiety, but the
Spaniards were led into a confidence which brought its subsequent
chastisement. The news no sooner reached Madrid than the king ceased to
feel himself safe there. He determined to retire to Vittoria, which was
at a convenient distance from the French frontier. On the 3rd of July
he quitted the city by night, and, guarded by French troops, took the
road to Vittoria, leaving Grouchy and Marshal Bessières to cut off any
pursuit of the Spaniards. Grouchy then despatched a letter requiring
Castaños to send an officer to take charge of the city, and to protect
the French invalids in the hospitals. He sent General Moreno, and
himself arrived to hold the city on the 23rd of August. Such of the
Spanish grandees as had encouraged the French fled, with Joseph, for
safety, and obtained the name of "Josepinos," or "Infrancsados;" the
rest joined the Spanish cause.

But the event which, far more than the battle of Baylen, showed
Buonaparte and the world the sort of war he had provoked, was the siege
of Saragossa. This ancient city, the capital of Aragon, stands on the
right bank of the Ebro, with a suburb on the left bank connected with
it by a bridge. Another river, a small one, called the Cozo, flowed
into the Ebro, close under the city walls. The immediate neighbourhood
of Saragossa is flat, and, on one side of the river, marshy; its walls
were of brick, about ten feet high, old and ruinous, but in places they
were only of mud. It might seem that no strong defence of such a place
could be made against an army of thirteen thousand men--veterans who
had served in Germany and Poland, and who were furnished with battering
trains and every means of assault. But the streets of the city were
narrow and crooked, the houses strong and lofty, the rooms being almost
all vaulted, and therefore almost impervious to shell. The inhabitants
were sixty thousand. Saragossa raised the flag of resistance the
moment that Murat issued his proclamation on the 20th of May, informing
the Spanish people of the abdication of Charles and Ferdinand, and
calling on the Spaniards to submit to the new government. On the
16th of June General Lefebvre commenced the attack by driving in the
outposts of Palafox, the Spanish General, and establishing strong
guards before the gates, but the Spaniards fought him street by street.
As fast as they knocked down the walls and scattered the sandbags,
they were repaired again by the Spaniards. At this stage of the
siege, Augustina, "the Maid of Saragossa," a handsome woman of the
lower class, of about twenty-two years of age, arrived on one of the
batteries with refreshments, and found every man who had defended it
lying slain. The fire was so tremendous that the citizens hesitated to
re-man the guns. Augustina sprang forward over the bodies of the dead
and dying, snatched a match from the hand of a dead artilleryman, and
fired off a six-and-twenty-pounder. She then jumped upon the gun, and
vowed never to quit it alive during the siege. Such an example added
new courage to the defenders; and the siege proceeded with incessant
fury. At this juncture Buonaparte withdrew a part of the troops,
ordering Lefebvre to join Bessières with them, and Verdier was left
to continue the siege with about ten thousand men. The Saragossans,
encouraged by this, and assisted by some regular troops, not only
defended the town more vigorously than ever, but sent out detachments
to cut off Verdier's supplies. After several determined assaults he
raised the siege on the 13th of August.

The success of the revolt against the French in Spain was certain to
become contagious in Portugal. Junot was holding the country with an
army of thirty thousand men, amongst whom there was a considerable
number of Spanish troops, who were sure to desert on the first
opportunity after the news from Spain. What Buonaparte intended really
to do with Portugal did not yet appear. The conditions of the Treaty
of Fontainebleau remained a dead letter. He had established neither
the Queen of Etruria nor the Prince of the Peace in their kingdoms
there. The likelihood was that, as soon as Spain was secure, he would
incorporate Portugal with it. This seemed very probably his intention,
from words that he let fall at an Assembly of Portuguese Notables,
whom he had summoned to meet him at Bayonne. The Count de Lima, the
president of the Assembly, opened it with an address to Napoleon, who
listened with great _nonchalance_, and then said, "I hardly know what
to make of you, gentlemen; it must depend on the events in Spain.
And, then, are you of consequence sufficient to constitute a separate
people? Have you enough of size to do so? What is the population of
Portugal? Two millions, is it?" "More than three, sire," replied the
Count. "Ah, I did not know that. And Lisbon--are there a hundred and
fifty thousand inhabitants?" "More than double that number, sire." "Ah,
I was not aware of that. Now, what do you wish to be, you Portuguese?
Do you desire to become Spaniards?" "No!" said the Count de Lima,
bluntly, and drawing himself up to his full height. Then Buonaparte
broke up the conference.

[Illustration: HEROISM OF THE MAID OF SARAGOSSA. (_See p._ 556.)]

The Spanish junta sent an officer to Lisbon to consult with General
Caraffa, the commander of the Spanish auxiliaries, on the best means of
withdrawing the troops from that city. Caraffa, who was an Italian, did
not seem to fall into the proposal; but this was of less consequence,
for his men took the liberty of deserting, first in small numbers and
secretly, but soon by a whole regiment at a time, and openly. Junot
sent out six hundred men to stop them; but they attacked, killed, and
wounded nearly half the detachment, and pursued their march. General
Bellesta, who commanded the Spanish troops at Oporto, seized the French
general, Quesnel, who had but a small number of men, and marched away
for Corunna, carrying Quesnel and his few soldiers prisoners with him.
No sooner were the Spaniards gone, however, than the cowardly governor
of Oporto put down the rising and declared for the French. But the fire
of revolt was flying too fast all over the kingdom for this to succeed.
In a few days the people rose again, seized on the arsenal, and armed
themselves. They were encouraged by the monks, who rang their bells to
call the people out, and by the bishops, who blessed the banners, and
offered up public prayers for the enfranchisement of the country in
the cathedrals. There was a similarly successful outbreak at Braganza.
From one end of the country to the other the rising was complete and
enthusiastic. Deputies were dispatched to England to solicit assistance
and arms. For a time Junot managed to keep down the population of
Lisbon by collecting troops into it, seizing, altogether, four thousand
five hundred of the Spaniards, and making them prisoners. Alarmed,
however, at his position, and fearing to move any of his forces from
the capital, he ordered Loison, who lay at the fortress of Almeida, on
the frontiers, to march to Oporto, and suppress the revolt; but General
Silviera, a Portuguese nobleman, put himself at the head of the armed
population, and successfully defended Oporto. At Beja, Leiria, Evora,
and other places, the French managed to put down the insurgents, but
not without much bloodshed and severe military executions. But the hour
of retribution was fast approaching. Spanish as well as Portuguese
deputies appeared in London soliciting aid. They did not ask for men;
for, in the pride of their temporary success, they imagined themselves
amply able to drive out the French; but they asked for arms, clothes,
and ammunition; and they prayed that an army might be sent to Portugal,
which would act as a powerful diversion in their favour.

Both the Government and people of Britain responded to these demands
with enthusiasm. War with Spain was declared to be at an end; all the
Spanish prisoners were freed from confinement, and were sent home in
well-provided vessels. The Ministers, and Canning especially, avowed
their conviction that the time was come to make an effectual blow at
the arrogant power of Buonaparte. Sir Arthur Wellesley was selected
to command a force of nine thousand infantry and one regiment of
cavalry, which was to sail immediately to the Peninsula, and to act
as circumstances should determine. This force sailed from Cork on
the 12th of July, and was to be followed by another of ten thousand
men. Sir Arthur reached Corunna on the 20th of the same month, and
immediately put himself in communication with the junta of Galicia. All
was confidence amongst the Spaniards. They assured him, as the deputies
in London had assured the Ministers, that they wanted no assistance
from foreign troops; that they had men to any amount, full of bravery;
they only wanted arms and money. He furnished them with a considerable
sum of money, but his experienced mind foresaw that they needed more
than they imagined to contend with the troops of Buonaparte. They
wanted efficient officers, and thorough discipline, and he felt
confident that they must, in their overweening assurance, suffer
severe reverses. He warned the junta that Buonaparte, if he met with
obstructions in reaching them by land, would endeavour to cross into
Asturias by sea, and he advised them to fit out the Spanish ships lying
at Ferrol to prevent this; but they replied that they could not divert
their attention from their resistance by land, and must leave the
protection of their coasts to their British allies. Sir Arthur then
sailed directly for Oporto, where he found the Portuguese right glad to
have the assistance of a British force, and most willing to co-operate
with it, and to have their raw levies trained by British officers. On
the 24th of July he opened his communication with the town. The bishop
was heading the insurrection, and three thousand men were in drill,
but badly armed and equipped. A thousand muskets had been furnished
by the British fleet, but many men had no arms except fowling-pieces.
Wellesley made arrangements for horses and mules to drag his cannon,
and convey his baggage, and then he sailed as far as the Tagus, to
ascertain the number and condition of the French forces about Lisbon.
Satisfied on this head, he returned, and landed his troops, on the 1st
of August, at Figueras, in Mondego Bay. This little place had been
taken by the Portuguese insurgents, and was now held by three hundred
mariners from British ships. Higher up the river lay five thousand
Portuguese regulars, at Coimbra. On the 5th he was joined by General
Spencer, from Cadiz, with four thousand men; thus raising his force to
thirteen thousand foot and about five hundred cavalry. The greatest
rejoicing was at the moment taking place amongst the Portuguese from
the news of General Dupont's surrender to Castaños.

Junot had from sixteen to eighteen thousand men in Portugal, but a
considerable number of them were scattered into different garrisons;
his hope of reinforcements from Spain was likewise cut off by the
surrender of Dupont, and by the fact of the Spaniards being in
possession of Andalusia, Estremadura, and Galicia. Thus the numbers
of the two armies which could be brought into the field against each
other were pretty equal, except that Junot had a fine body of cavalry,
of which arm the British were nearly destitute. On the 9th of August
General Wellesley commenced his march southward, in the direction of
Lisbon, to encounter Junot. On the 16th Wellesley came in contact
with the van of Junot's army. On the landing of the British, Junot
had called in his different garrisons, and concentrated his troops
about Lisbon. He also dispatched General Laborde to check Wellesley's
march, and ordered Loison to support him. But before Loison could
reach Laborde, Wellesley was upon him, and drove in his outpost at
the village of Obidos, and forced him back on Roliça. At that place
Laborde had a very strong position, and there he determined to stand.
He was located on a range of rocky hills, the ravines between which
were thickly grown with underwood and briars. Up these the British
must force their way, if they attacked, and must suffer severely from
the riflemen placed in the thickets and on the brows of the hills. But
Wellesley knew that Loison with his detachment was hourly expected, and
he determined to beat Laborde before he came up. He therefore placed
his Portuguese division on his right to meet Laborde, and ordered his
left to ascend the steep hills, and be prepared for the appearance of
Loison's force, which was coming in that direction. His middle column
had to make its way up the steepest heights, in front of Laborde's
centre. All three columns executed their movements, however, with equal
valour and spirit. The centre suffered most of all, both from the
nature of the ground, and from a rifle ambuscade placed in a copse of
myrtle and arbutus, which mowed our soldiers down in heaps, with their
gallant colonel, the son of Lord Lake, of Indian fame, at their head.
Notwithstanding all difficulties, our soldiers scaled the heights,
formed there, and the centre charged Laborde's centre with the bayonet
and drove them back. As the French had been taught that the British
soldiers were of no account, and their general only a "Sepoy general,"
they returned several times to the attack, but on every occasion found
themselves repulsed as by an immovable wall. Then, seeing the right and
left wings bearing down upon them, they gave way, and ran for it. They
were equally astonished at the terrible charges with the bayonet, at
the rapidity and precision of the firing, and the general arrangement
of the battle, and the exactitude with which it was carried out.

The French left six hundred killed and wounded on the field; the
British had four hundred and eighty killed or disabled. Laborde
retreated amongst the hills to the village of Azambugueira, and thence
to Torres Vedras, where he looked for the junction of Loison, and where
that general really appeared. Still the British force was equal, if not
superior, in numbers to the French, and Sir Arthur Wellesley advanced
along the sea-coast to Vimiera, where he was joined by Generals
Anstruther and Acland. Unfortunately, at this moment arrived Sir
Harry Burrard, whom the Ministry had ordered to supersede Sir Arthur
Wellesley in the chief command till the arrival of Sir Hew Dalrymple,
who was to be the General-in-Chief; Burrard, second in command; and
Wellesley, Sir John Moore, Lord Paget, Sir John Hope, and Macdonald
Frazer, to command different divisions. Thus, by the old system of
routine, the real military genius was reduced from the first to the
fourth in command. Sir Arthur went on board Sir Harry Burrard's vessel
on the evening of his arrival, the 20th of August, and explained to him
the positions of the armies, and his plan of advancing along the coast
to Mafra, thus turning the flank of Laborde and Loison, and compelling
them to fight or retreat on Lisbon. This was clearly the view of every
one of the officers, who were eager to press on; but Sir Harry, old
and cautious, was of opinion that nothing more should be risked till
Sir John Moore arrived with his reinforcements. Sir Arthur must have
returned under a sense of deep disappointment, but, fortunately for
him, the enemy did not allow of his waiting for Sir John Moore. At
midnight he received a hasty message that the French were in motion,
and coming in one dense mass of twenty thousand men to surprise and
rout him. Sir Arthur was strongly posted in the village of Vimiera and
on the hills around it. He sent out patrols, and ordered the pickets
to be on the alert, and he then called out his troops, and had them
in good fighting order by the dawn of day. At about seven o'clock the
advance of the enemy was perceived by the clouds of dust that rose into
the air, and soon they were seen coming on in columns of infantry,
preceded by cavalry. By ten o'clock the French were close at hand, and
made an impetuous attack on the British centre and left, to drive them
into the sea, according to a favourite French phrase, the sea actually
rolling close to their rear. The first troops which came into collision
with them were the 50th regiment, commanded by Colonel Walker. Seeing
that the intention of the French, who were led by Laborde himself, was
to break his line by their old method of pushing on a dense column
by a momentum from behind, which drove in the van like a wedge, in
spite of itself, Colonel Walker instantly changed the position of his
regiment so as, instead of a parallel line, to present an oblique one
to the assailing column. This was, therefore, driven on by the immense
rear, and, instead of breaking the British line, was actually taken
in flank by it, and the musketry and grape-shot mowed down the French
in a terrible manner. This was at once succeeded by a rapid charge
with the bayonet; and so astonishing was the effect of this unexpected
movement, that the French were thrown into irretrievable confusion,
and broke on every side. Whilst this was the effect on the centre and
left, General Sir Ronald Fergusson was attacked with equal impetuosity
by Loison: bayonets were crossed, and the same result as took place
at Maida occurred--the French fell back and fled. Nothing was wanted
but a good body of cavalry to follow up the flying foe, and completely
reduce them to surrender. The small body of horse, commanded by Colonel
Taylor, fought with an ardour that led them too far into the centre of
Margaron's powerful cavalry, and Colonel Taylor was killed, and half
of his little troop with him. Kellermann, to stop the pursuit, posted
a strong reserve in a pine wood, on the line of retreat, but they were
driven out at the point of the bayonet. Had the orders of General
Wellesley now been carried out, the French would have been cut off from
much further retreat. General Hill was commanded to take a short cut,
and interpose between the French and the strong position of Torres
Vedras, and General Fergusson was directed to follow sharply in their
rear. In all probability they must have capitulated at once; but here
the evil genius of Sir Harry Burrard again interfered to save them. He
appeared on the field and thought sufficient had been done till Sir
John Moore arrived. It was not enough for him that the French had now
been twice put to rout within a few days, and were in full flight,
and that they were found not to be twenty thousand, but only eighteen
thousand strong. He ordered the pursuit to cease, and the army to sit
down at Vimiera till the arrival of Moore. To the great astonishment of
the French, and the equal mortification of the British, the retreating
enemy was thus allowed to collect their forces and take possession of
the heights of Torres Vedras.

The next day, the 21st, Sir Hew Dalrymple arrived from Gibraltar, and
superseded Sir Harry Burrard. But the mischief was done; the enemy
had gained the strong position from which Wellesley would have cut
them off. What would have been the effect of Sir Arthur's unobstructed
orders was clearly seen by what did take place; for, notwithstanding
the possession of the strong post of Torres Vedras, Junot saw that he
could not maintain the conflict against the British, and on the 22nd he
sent General Kellermann with a flag of truce to propose an armistice,
preparatory to a convention for the evacuation of Portugal by the
French.

The terms which Junot required were that the French should not be
considered as prisoners of war, but should be conveyed to France by
sea, with all their baggage; that nothing should be detained. These
would, in fact, have allowed them to carry off all the plunder of
churches and houses, and to this Sir Arthur objected. He said that
some means must be found to make the French disgorge the church plate.
But the Convention was signed, subject to the consent of the British
admiral, Sir Charles Cotton, a condition of importance, seeing that
Junot had stipulated that the Russian fleet in the Tagus, commanded
by Admiral Siniavin, should not be molested or stopped when it wished
to go away. Admiral Cotton objected to these terms, and it was agreed
that the Russian fleet should be made over to Britain till six months
after the conclusion of a general peace. Commissioners were appointed
to examine the French spoil, who recovered the property of the Museum
and Royal Library, and some of the church plate; but the French were
allowed to carry off far too much of their booty. The definitive treaty
was signed at Cintra on the 30th of August, much to the disgust of Sir
Arthur Wellesley, who, however, signed it as a matter of form. He then
wrote to Lord Castlereagh, to say that he desired to quit the army;
that matters were not prospering, and that he had been too successful
to allow him to serve in it in any subordinate situation. Indeed, he
saw that, left to himself, he could carry victory with the British
standard, but that it was impossible to do any good under incompetent
men.

[Illustration: SIR JOHN MOORE.]

The indignation of all parties in England was unbounded. They were
persuaded that Junot might have been compelled to surrender with all
his army as prisoners of war; that his arms and booty ought to have
been given up entirely, as well as the Russian fleet; and the army
prevented from taking any part in the after war, except upon a proper
exchange. And no doubt this might have been the case had Wellesley
been permitted to follow his own judgment. A court of inquiry was
appointed to sit in the great hall of Chelsea College, which opened on
the 14th of November and closed on the 27th of December. Yet matters
were so managed that scarcely any blame was cast on Sir Harry Burrard,
and all the generals were declared free from blame. Sir Harry was,
indeed, included in the praise bestowed by the committee--that Sir Hew
Dalrymple, Sir Harry himself, and Sir Arthur Wellesley, as well as the
rest of the officers and men, had displayed an ardour and gallantry on
every occasion during the expedition that reflected the highest lustre
on his Majesty's troops. But the public was not at all mystified by
this strange sentence.

The Convention being ratified, the British took possession of all the
forts on the Tagus on the 2nd of September, and the port of Lisbon was
opened to our shipping. On the 8th and 9th the British army entered
Lisbon in triumph, amid the acclamations of the people. Transports
were collected and the embarkation of the French army commenced, and
before the end of the month they were all shipped off, except the last
division, which was detained by an order from England. The colours of
the House of Braganza were hoisted on all the forts which we had taken
possession of, and a council of government was established, which ruled
in the name of the Prince Regent of Portugal.

The system of Buonaparte, by which he endeavoured to prevent the
knowledge of these events in Spain and Portugal from spreading through
France, was one of unscrupulous lying. He took all sorts of false
means to depress the spirits of the insurgents by mere inventions,
which he had inserted in the Spanish and Portuguese Gazettes under
his influence. At one time it was that George III. was dead, and that
George IV. was intending to make peace with Napoleon. But whatever
effect he might produce by such stories for a time in the Peninsula,
the truth continued to grow and spread over France. It became known
that Junot and his army were driven from Lisbon; that Dupont was
defeated and had surrendered in the south of Spain; then that King
Joseph had fled from Madrid; and that all the coasts of the Peninsula
were in possession of the British, who were received by the Spaniards
and Portuguese as friends and allies. Compelled to speak out at
length, on the 4th of September a statement appeared in the _Moniteur_
mentioning some of these events, but mentioning only to distort them.
It could not be concealed that Britain was active in these countries,
but it was declared that the Emperor would take ample vengeance
on them. In order to silence the murmurs at the folly as well as
the injustice of seizing on Spain, which was already producing its
retributive fruits, he procured from his slavish Senate a declaration
that the war with Spain was politic, just, and necessary. Buonaparte
then determined to put forth all his strength and drive the British
from the Peninsula; but there were causes of anxiety pressing on him
in the North. Austria and Russia wore an ominous aspect, and a spirit
of resistance showed itself more and more in the press of Germany,
and these things painfully divided his attention. His burden was fast
becoming more than he could bear.

Meanwhile Ministers had not yet perceived the military genius of Sir
Arthur Wellesley, notwithstanding his services in India, at Copenhagen,
and his brilliant victories at Roliça and Vimiera. Instead of making
him at once commander-in-chief of the forces destined to co-operate in
Spain--for they now resolved to make a decided movement in favour of
the Spanish patriots--they gave that post to Sir John Moore. Sir Arthur
had assured Ministers that he was far better qualified for the chief
command than any of the superior officers then in the Peninsula. He had
now displayed the qualities necessary for a great general: prudence
as well as daring, and the sagacious vision which foresees not only
difficulties, but the means of surmounting them. Sir Arthur had carried
victory with him everywhere, a circumstance one would have thought
sufficient to satisfy the dullest diplomatist that he was the man for
the occasion. But there was one thing which demanded attention, without
which the successful operation of our armies was impossible--the
thorough reform of the Commissariat Department. This department was
at that time in a condition of the most deplorable inefficiency. The
commissariat officers had no experience; there was no system to guide
and stimulate them. Sir Arthur had learned the necessity, in India, of
the most complete machinery of supply; that it was of no use attempting
to advance into a hostile country without knowing how and whence your
troops were to be provisioned, and to have always ammunition in plenty,
and tents for shelter. This machinery all wanted organising--the
absolute necessity of its perfect action impressing itself on every
individual concerned in it. Until this were done, Sir Arthur would
never have advanced into the heart of Spain as Sir John Moore did.
Considering the state of the roads, and the want of mules, horses, and
waggons to convey the baggage, he would not have proceeded till he
had first brought these into existence. Still more, Sir Arthur would
not have marched far without securing, by one means or other, correct
information of the real state and localities of the Spanish armies. On
all these things depended success, and no man was more alive to the
knowledge of this than Sir Arthur Wellesley. He had already pressed
these matters earnestly on the attention of Government, and had they
had the penetration to have at once selected him for the command, they
would have spared the country the disasters which followed.

On the 6th of October Sir John Moore received instructions from
Lord Castlereagh that his army was to advance into Spain, and
co-operate with the Spanish armies for the expulsion of the French.
He was informed that his twenty-five thousand men would receive a
reinforcement of ten thousand men under Sir David Baird, who was on
his voyage to Corunna. When Sir John prepared to march, the most
serious difficulties presented themselves. Even at Lisbon it was
found impossible to procure conveyance for the necessary baggage,
and therefore the supplies of provisions and stores were cut down
extremely--a great mistake. There was one species of baggage--women
and children--who, according to the wretched practice of the time,
were allowed to accompany the troops, and would not be left behind,
though the army was going into immediate active service against the
enemy. Sir John directed the commanding officers to order that as many
as possible of these should stay behind, especially such women as had
very young children, or infants at the breast, as there would not be
found sufficient carts for them; and in the mountainous tracks at that
season, and the horrible roads, they must suffer the most exhausting
fatigues and hardships. But Sir John had not the commanding firmness
of Wellesley, and his orders in this respect were, for the most part,
neglected. Very proper orders were also issued by Sir John regarding
the behaviour of the soldiers towards the natives. They were informed
that the Spaniards were a grave and very proud people, readily offended
by any disrespect towards their religion or customs; and the soldiers
were desired to behave courteously, and to wear the cockade of King
Ferdinand VII. as well as their own.

The army set out in successive divisions, and by different routes,
in consequence of the exhausted state of the country, which had been
stripped by the French as by an army of locusts. The roads were
intolerable, and the weather was vile. Wading through mud, and dragging
their artillery through bogs and sloughs, they struggled on to Castello
Branco, which the first division reached on the 4th of December. By the
11th Sir John had crossed the Portuguese frontier, and entered Ciudad
Rodrigo. There he was received with great demonstrations of joy; and
on the 13th he arrived at Salamanca. Here he had to remain for the
coming up of his artillery, which, under a guard of three thousand
foot and one thousand horse, had been conducted, by Sir John Hope,
round by Elvas, as the only road, according to the Portuguese, by which
heavy cannon could be conveyed. This was a proof of the great need of
those arrangements so strongly urged by Sir Arthur Wellesley. Proper
inquiries, through proper officers, would have ascertained beforehand
the actual state of the roads and passes. Here Sir John, too, had to
wait for Sir David Baird's detachment, which had arrived at Corunna on
the 13th of October, but had found the greatest difficulty in being
allowed to land and proceed. This was refused by the junta of Galicia,
out of that ignorant and inflated pride of the Spaniards, which
persuaded them that, because they had compelled Dupont to surrender,
they could drive the French out of their country without any assistance
of the British, whom they regarded not as saviours, but as intruders.
Whilst application was made to the Central Junta, at Madrid, for the
troops to land, they had to remain for a fortnight cooped up in the
transports. There was still another hindrance, which the sound sense
and foresight of Wellesley would not have permitted. Though the British
Government had forwarded to Spain two hundred thousand muskets, with
all requisite ammunition, and sixteen millions of hard dollars, Sir
John Moore was entrusted with only twenty-five thousand pounds of it,
and Sir David Baird with none at all. When, therefore, permission was
obtained, from Madrid, for the Allies, who were bringing them all the
arms and all the material of war, to land, Baird had no money to pay
his way on the march with ten thousand men, and Sir John Moore had to
remit him eight thousand pounds. This was sufficiently bad management,
but this was far from the worst. Sir John Moore, in the most critical
circumstances, was left without the necessary information regarding
the real strength of the enemy, and without the influence which the
British Ambassador should have exerted to have the army supplied with
the necessary means of conveyance for its baggage, ammunition, and
artillery. The Spaniards obstructed rather than helped the British
army. They did not know themselves that the French were pouring
reinforcements through the Pyrenees to the amount of seventy thousand
men, soon to be followed by Buonaparte himself. The British Ambassador,
at such a time, ought to have taken measures for knowing the truth; but
the Ambassador was, just at this moment, the most unfit person that
could possibly have been pitched upon. Sir Charles Stewart, who had
been for some time Ambassador at Madrid, was well acquainted with the
Spaniards, and had energy and intelligence enough to have operated upon
them. But as, with new changes of Ministry, everything must be changed
by the British Government, even if it be for the worse, so here, not
only had the generals been changed three times in four-and-twenty
hours, but the active and well-informed Minister was withdrawn, and
a most indolent and useless man sent in his place. This was Mr. John
Hookham Frere, great in the _Quarterly Review_, and connected with
Canning and his party. He either sent Sir John no information as to the
state and position of the Spanish armies or of the advance and numbers
of the French, or he sent him erroneous intelligence. Lord William
Bentinck, who was in Spain, exerted himself to rouse the Spanish Junta
to a proper sense of their real position, and of the necessity for
affording the British army, which had come to assist them, all the
information and support that they could; and he himself sent word that
the French were crossing not merely the Pyrenees, but the Ebro. At
length, a dispatch to Marshal Jourdain, being accidentally intercepted
by a guerilla party on the frontiers, startled the Junta with the news
that immense bodies of French were advancing into Spain; and they began
to appreciate the value of their British allies, but would do nothing
to facilitate their march, or to direct them to the quarter where they
would be most useful; and Frere, who should have stimulated them to a
sense of their duty, did just nothing at all.

[Illustration: THE ROYAL PALACE, MADRID. (_From a Photograph by Frith &
Co._)]

Sir John Moore entered Spain under the impression that several brave
and victorious Spanish armies were to co-operate with him; but he
looked in vain for any such armies. Nay, on the very day of his
arrival at Salamanca he heard of the defeat of the Count de Belvedere,
near Burgos; and only two days afterwards that general had also been
defeated at Espinosa, on the frontiers of the province of Biscay. He
demanded from the Junta to know with whom he was to co-operate for the
conduct of the campaign, and he was referred to Castaños. But Castaños
had already lost the confidence of the proud and ignorant Junta, and
had little information to give. On the 15th of November the governor
of the province announced to him that the French had taken possession
of Valladolid, only twenty leagues from Salamanca; from the dormant
Mr. Frere he heard nothing. This was startling intelligence; for he
had only a small portion of his army yet with him. Sir David Baird was
still struggling with the obstructive junta at Corunna, and Sir John
Hope was wandering near Madrid with the artillery. Moore began to have
a very gloomy idea of the situation, not only of Spain, but of his
situation in it. He wrote that there was no unity of action; no care
of the juntas to promote it, or to furnish arms and clothing to the
soldiers; that he was in no correspondence with the generals of the
other armies, and knew neither their plans nor those of the Government.
He declared that the provinces around him were not armed; and as for
the national enthusiasm of which so much had been said, that he saw not
a trace of it; that, in short, the British had no business there; but
he would still try to do something, if possible, for the country, since
he was there.

Meanwhile, Buonaparte was preparing to descend like an avalanche on
this absurdly inflated nation. To set himself at ease with the North,
whilst thus engaged in the Peninsula, he deemed it first necessary,
however, to have an interview with the Emperor of Russia in Germany.
The spirit of the Germans was again rising; and notwithstanding
the spies and troops of Buonaparte, his paid literati--like
Johannes Müller,--and his paid princes--like those of the Rhenish
Confederation, Bavaria, Baden, and Würtemberg,--the Germans were
beginning to blush at their humiliation, and to lament the causes of
it, their effeminacy, and their division into so many States, with
all the consequent prejudices and intestine feuds. Prussia, which
had suffered so severely for its selfish policy, and had been so cut
down in territory and insulted in its honour by Napoleon, began to
cherish the hope of yet redeeming itself, by a more manly spirit and
a more cordial co-operation with the rest of Germany. In this work
of regeneration--which is sure to take place sooner or later, when
nations have been well beaten and humiliated, and which then, in their
renewed manhood, require no foreign aid for the accomplishment of
their freedom--all classes laboured. The king, under the inspiration
of his patriotic Minister, Von Stein, began most essential reforms.
He abolished the feudal servitude and forced labour under which the
peasantry groaned; he made a thorough moral re-organisation of the
army, admitting of promotion from the ranks; he allowed any man that
had the money to purchase baronial estates; and he deprived the higher
nobility of the exclusive right of possessing landed property, and
of appointment to the higher civil and military posts. Von Stein,
too, commenced the work of inspiring the mass of the people with a
new soul of patriotism. He established a secret society, called the
Tugend Bund, or Union of Virtue, which was to unite nobles, statesmen,
officers, and literati in one common confederation for the rescue
of the country. Amongst those who entered the most enthusiastically
were Colonel Schill, who had headed with great effect his troop of
volunteer cavalry, Jahn, a professor at Berlin, and Moritz Arndt, a
professor of Bonn, the author of the famous national song, "_Was ist
der Deutschen Vaterland?_" in which he maintained that it was not
Prussia, nor Austria, nor any other particular State, but all Germany,
so far as the language extended. Scharnhorst, the commander of the
Prussian army, though restricted to the prescribed number of troops,
created a new army by continually exchanging trained soldiers for
raw recruits, and secretly purchased an immense quantity of arms, so
that, on emergency, a large body of men could be speedily assembled.
He had also all the brass battery guns converted into field-pieces,
and replaced by iron guns. But Napoleon's spies were everywhere.
They discovered the existence of the Tugend Bund, and of the secret
societies of the students, which they carried on under the old name of
the Burschenschaft, or association of the students. Though Napoleon
pretended to ridicule these movements, calling it mere ideology,
he took every means to suppress them. The Minister, Von Stein, in
consequence of the contents of an intercepted letter, was outlawed;
Scharnhorst, and Grüner, the head of the police, were dismissed from
their offices; but it was all in vain--the tide of public feeling had
now set in the right way. The same spirit was alive in Austria. Abuses
were reformed; a more perfect discipline was introduced. John Philip
von Stadion, the head of the Ministry, encouraged these measures; the
views of the Archduke Charles were carried out on a far wider basis. A
completely new institution, that of the Landwehr, or armed citizens,
was set on foot. The Austrian armies were increased greatly. In 1807
the Hungarian Diet voted twelve thousand recruits; in 1808, eighty
thousand; while eighty thousand organised soldiers, of whom thirty
thousand were cavalry, constituted the armed reserve of this warlike
nation. Napoleon remonstrated, and received very pacific answers, but
the movement went on. Von Stein, now a refugee in Austria, fanned the
flame there, and he and Count Münster, first Hanoverian Ambassador,
and afterwards British Ambassador at St. Petersburg, were in constant
correspondence with each other and with the Government of Great Britain.

Before Buonaparte, therefore, could proceed to Spain, he determined to
meet the Czar at Erfurth, in Germany, by their open union to overawe
that country, and to bind Alexander more firmly to his interest by
granting him ampler consent to his designs on Turkey and on Finland.
The meeting took place on the 27th of September, and terminated on the
17th of October. Both Emperors returned in appearance more friendly and
united than ever, but each in secret distrusting his ally. Buonaparte,
who was now intending in earnest to divorce Josephine, and marry a
daughter of a royal house, by whom he might have issue, and thus league
himself with the old dynasties, made a proposal for one of the Russian
archduchesses, which was evaded by Alexander, on the plea of the
difference of religion. Such a plea did not deceive the keen sagacity
of Buonaparte; he felt it to result from a contempt of his plebeian
origin, and a belief in the instability of his giddy elevation; and
he did not forget it. To impress on Europe, however, the idea of the
intimate union of the Czar and Buonaparte, they addressed, before
leaving Erfurth, a joint letter to the King of Great Britain, proposing
a general peace. To this letter Canning answered to the Ministers of
Russia and France, that Sweden--against whom the Czar had commenced his
war of usurpation--Spain, Portugal, and Sicily, must be included in
any negotiations. The French and Russian Ministers, on the contrary,
proposed a peace on the principle of every one retaining what they had
got. This, Canning replied, would never be consented to; and the two
emperors knew that very well, but the letter had served Buonaparte's
purpose. It enabled him to tell France and the world how much he was
disposed to peace, and how obstinate was Britain; it served to make
the world believe in the close intimacy of the Czar and himself. He
now hurried back to France, and, opening the session of the _Corps
Législatif_, on the 25th of October, he announced that he was going
to Spain to drive the "English leopards"--for such he always absurdly
persisted in calling the lions in the royal arms of Great Britain--out
of both Spain and Portugal. On the 27th he set out.

Buonaparte determined to overwhelm both Spanish and British by numbers.
He had poured above a hundred thousand men across the Pyrenees, and
had supplied their places in France by two enormous conscriptions of
eighty thousand men each. He now followed them with the rapidity of
lightning. From Bayonne to Vittoria he made the journey on horseback in
two days. He was already at Vittoria a week before the British army,
under Sir John Moore, had commenced its march from Lisbon. It was
his aim to destroy the Spanish armies before the British could come
up--and he accomplished it. The Spanish generals had no concert between
themselves, yet they had all been advancing northward to attack the
French on different parts of the Ebro, or in the country beyond it.
It was the first object of Napoleon to annihilate the army of Blake,
which occupied the right of the French army in the provinces of Biscay
and Guipuzcoa. Blake was attacked by General Lefebvre on the last of
October, on ground very favourable to the Spaniards, being mountainous,
and thus not allowing the French to use much artillery; but, after a
short fight of three hours, he was compelled to fall back, and for nine
days he continued his retreat through the rugged mountains of Biscay,
with his army suffering incredibly from cold, hunger, drenching rains,
and fatigue. There was said to be scarcely a shoe or a greatcoat in the
whole force. Having reached Espinosa de los Monteros, he hoped to rest
and recruit his troops, but Lefebvre was upon him, and he was again
defeated. He next made for Reynosa, a strong position, where he hoped
to recollect his scattered army; but there he received the news of the
defeat of Belvedere, from whom he hoped for support. The French were
again upon and surrounding him, and he was compelled to order his army
to save themselves by dispersing amongst the mountains of Asturias,
whilst himself and some of his officers escaped, and got on board a
British vessel.

Buonaparte had arrived at Vittoria on the 8th of November, between
the defeat of Blake at Espinosa and his dispersion at Reynosa, and he
immediately dispatched Soult to attack Belvedere. This self-confident
commander of two-and-twenty--surrounded by as self-confident students
from Salamanca and Leon--instead of falling back, and forming a
junction with Castaños, stood his ground in an open plain in front of
Burgos, and was scattered to the winds. Between three and four thousand
of his men were killed, wounded, or taken prisoners, and all his cannon
and baggage captured. Buonaparte had now only to beat Castaños, and
there was an end to the whole Spanish force. That general was much more
cautious and prudent than the rest, and he fell back on the approach
of Marshal Lannes, at the head of thirty thousand men, to Tudela.
But Buonaparte had sent numerous bodies of troops to intercept his
course in the direction of Madrid, and, unfortunately for Castaños,
he was joined by Palafox, who had made so successful a stand against
the French at Saragossa. Castaños was for retreating still, to avoid
Lannes in front, and Ney and Victor, who were getting into his rear;
but Palafox, and others of his generals, strongly recommended his
fighting, and a commissioner sent from the Junta in Madrid, in the
French fashion, to see that he did his duty, joined in the persuasion,
by hinting that to retreat would give suspicion of cowardice and
treachery. Against his better judgment, Castaños, therefore, gave
battle on the 22nd of November, at Tudela, and was completely routed.
Palafox hastened back to Saragossa, which was destined to surrender
after another frightful siege. The road was now left open to Madrid,
and the French troops had orders to advance and reduce it; and they did
this with a fiendish ferocity, burning the towns and villages as they
proceeded, and shooting every Spaniard that they found in arms.

As the French approached Madrid, whither Buonaparte was coming in
person, the Junta, which had taken no measures to render it defensible
while they had time, were now all hurry and confusion. They began
to collect provisions; the stones were torn up to form barricades.
A desperate resistance might have been made, as there had been
at Saragossa, but there was treachery in the city. The wealthy
inhabitants, merchants and shopkeepers, as well as the aristocracy,
were far more anxious to save their property than their country;
the cowardly Junta having issued orders, lost heart, and fled for
Badajos. On the 2nd of December, the anniversary of his coronation,
Buonaparte arrived before Madrid, and summoned it to surrender; and
this being unheeded, he prepared to storm it the next morning. Had
Palafox been there, there would have been, probably, a brave defence.
The next morning the storming commenced, and the French forced their
way as far as the palace of the Duke de Medina Celi, the key of the
whole city. The place was then summoned afresh, and the governor now
proposed a surrender. The fact was, that he had already settled in his
mind to go over to the French, as the strongest party, and he gave no
encouragement or assistance to the citizens, who still continued from
behind their walls and barricades to fire on the French. On the 4th
he declared that the city must surrender; and the French marched in.
Many of the people fled and the rest were disarmed; but Buonaparte, who
wanted to keep Madrid uninjured and in good temper for King Joseph,
gave strict orders that the city should not be plundered, nor the
people treated with rudeness. He fixed his residence about four miles
from Madrid, and issued thence imperial decrees and a proclamation,
informing the Spaniards that all further resistance was useless;
that he wanted his brother to reign in quiet, but that if this were
not permitted, he would come and reign there himself, and compel
submission; for God had given him the power and inclination to surmount
all obstacles. He then set out to drive the "English leopards" from the
Peninsula--a task that was to try him to the uttermost.

Sir John Moore was left in a most critical situation. All those fine
armies, which were to have enfranchised Spain without his assistance,
were scattered as so much mist; but this he only knew partly. He knew
enough, however, to induce him to determine on a retreat into Portugal,
and there to endeavour to make a stand against the French. He wrote
to Sir David Baird and Sir John Hope--both of them still at a great
distance--to retreat too: Sir David, with his division, to fall back on
Corunna, and then sail to Lisbon to meet him; Sir John to await him at
Ciudad Rodrigo. Had Moore carried out this plan whilst Buonaparte and
his troops were engaged with the army of Castaños, and with Madrid,
his fate might have been very different. But here again he was the
victim of false information. Mr. Frere, who seems to have really known
nothing of what was going on, and to have believed anything, wrote to
him from Aranjuez, on the 30th of November, protesting against his
retreat, and assuring him that he had nothing to do but to advance to
Madrid, and save Spain. He expressed his most unbounded faith in the
valour and success of the Spaniards. He talked to Moore of repulsing
the French before they collected their reinforcements. On reflecting on
the statements of Mr. Frere, Sir John concluded that Madrid was still
holding out, and thought it his duty to proceed to its rescue. He was
joined, on the 6th of December, by Hope and the artillery, and he wrote
again to Sir David Baird to countermand his retreat, and order him to
come up with dispatch. Thus precious time was lost, and it was not till
the 9th that he was undeceived. He had sent Colonel Graham to Madrid
with a reply to Morla, and to procure intelligence of the real state of
affairs. Graham now came back with the alarming and astonishing truth
that the French were in Madrid; that it had held out only one day. It
is strange that Sir John did not instantly commence his retreat; but
he was still misled by false accounts of the strength of the French,
and actually resolved to proceed to Madrid. On the 11th he sent forward
his cavalry, under General Stewart, when they came upon the advanced
post of the enemy occupying the village of Rueda. It was but about
eighty men, infantry and cavalry. They were quickly surrounded by the
British dragoons, and the whole killed or taken prisoners. On the 14th,
an intercepted letter of Berthier to Soult fell into Moore's hands, by
which he learned that various French divisions were moving down upon
him, and that Soult was in advance. He thought that he might meet and
beat Soult before the other divisions arrived, and he therefore, after
sending a dispatch to General Baird to warn him of Soult's approach,
crossed the Tordesillas, and continued his march as far as Mayorga,
where he was joined by Sir David Baird and Sir John Hope, so that his
army now amounted to twenty-three thousand five hundred and eighty on
the spot. He had other regiments in Portugal and on the road, making up
his total to thirty-five thousand.

On the 23rd Moore was obliged to halt for the coming of his supplies;
and whilst doing so, he received the intelligence that no fewer than
seventy thousand men were in full march after him, or taking a route so
as to cut off his rear at Benevento, and that Buonaparte himself headed
this latter division. There was no further thought of advancing, but
of retreat, before the army was completely surrounded. By the 26th the
whole army was beyond Astorga, but the French were now close behind
them. Buonaparte, indeed, hoped to have rushed on by the Guadarama, and
to have cut off his retreat at Tordesillas, but he was twelve hours
too late. On the last day of December, 1808, Buonaparte was pressing
close on the British rear in the vicinity of Astorga, and thus closed
the year on the fortunes of the Spaniards and their British Allies.
The boastful Spanish armies, too proud to think at first that they
needed assistance, too unskilful, when they did see the need of it, to
co-operate with it, and who had afforded nothing but indifference and
false intelligence to their benefactors, were dispersed like so many
clouds, and their Allies were flying from an overwhelming foe.

But the year 1809 opened with one auspicious circumstance. There was
no relief from the necessity of continuing the flight; but the proud
Corsican, who hoped to annihilate the "English leopards," was suddenly
arrested in his pursuit, and called away to contend with other foes.
On the 1st of January he was in Astorga, and from the heights above
it could see the straggling rear of the British army. Nothing but the
most imperative urgency prevented him from following, and seeking a
triumph over the hated British--but that urgency was upon him. Pressing
dispatches from France informed him that the North was in ferment, and
that Austria was taking the field. The intelligence was too serious
to admit of a moment's delay; but he made sure that Soult could now
conquer the British, and on the 2nd he turned his face northward, and
travelled to Paris with a speed equal to that with which he had reached
Spain.

Soult, indeed, had sixty thousand men and ninety-one guns to deal with
the flying and now greatly disorganised army of the British. At first
the retreat had been made with much discipline and order, but the
miserable weather, the torrents of rain, and heavy falls of snow, the
roads rough with rocks, or deep with mud, tried the patience of the
men. So long as they were advancing towards the enemy they could bear
all this with cheerfulness, but the British are never good-humoured or
patient under retreat. Sullen and murmuring, they struggled along in
the retreat, suffering not only from the weather, but from want of
provisions, and the disgraceful indifference of the people to those who
had come to fight their battles. Whenever a halt was made, and an order
given to turn and charge the enemy, they instantly cheered up, forgot
all their troubles, and were full of life and spirit. But their gloom
returned with the retreat; and, not being voluntarily aided by the
Spaniards, they broke the ranks, and helped themselves to food and wine
wherever they could find them. Such was now the state of the weather
and the roads, that many of the sick, and the women and children, who,
in spite of orders, had been allowed to follow the army, perished. The
French pressed more and more fiercely on the rear of the British, and
several times Sir John was compelled to stop and repel them. On one of
these occasions the French general, Colbert, was killed, and the six
or eight squadrons of horse led by him were, for the most part, cut to
pieces. At Lugo, on the 5th of January, Sir E. Paget beat back a very
superior force. Again, on the 7th, Sir John Moore halted, and repulsed
the advanced line of Soult, killing four or five hundred of the French.
The next morning the armies met again in line of battle, but Soult did
not attack; and as soon as it was dark Sir John quietly pursued his
march, leaving his fires burning to deceive the enemy.

[Illustration: BURIAL OF SIR JOHN MOORE. (_See p._ 570.)]

On the 10th of January the army came in sight of Corunna and the sea,
but no transports could be seen in the bay. They were detained by
contrary winds at Vigo, and the last hope of safety seemed cut off.
Sir John, however, quartered his troops in Corunna, and determined to
defend it manfully till the transports could get up. But great was his
chagrin at the proofs of the miserable management of the Commissariat
Department. On a hill above the town were four thousand barrels of
gunpowder, which had been sent from England, and had been lying there
many months, and the town was a great magazine of arms. Sir John
replaced the weather-worn muskets of his troops with new ones, supplied
them with fresh, good powder, and, after removing as many barrels of
powder into the town as the time would allow, he blew up the rest,
producing a concussion that shook the place like an earthquake.

On the morning of the 14th the transports, to their great relief, hove
in sight, and Sir John hastened to get on board the sick, the horses,
and the dismounted cavalry, and to prepare for a fight, for Soult was
now close upon the town; the hills were crowded with his troops, and
they were already skirmishing with his outposts. In these skirmishes
Colonel Mackenzie was killed in endeavouring to seize some of the
French cannon, planted on the same spot where the powder had just
been blown up. The morning of the 16th passed without any attack from
Soult, and Sir John proceeded with his arrangements for embarkation;
but about noon the battle began. Soult had erected a powerful battery
on some rocks at the extremity of his left, and commanding the village
of Elvina, occupied by our troops. Sir David Baird was posted on the
British right, opposite to the battery, and at no great distance from
the village. The French made a dash at the village, under cover of the
battery, and drove our men from it. The fight then became general.
Soult had twenty thousand men, Sir John about fourteen thousand five
hundred; but Soult had far more and heavier cannon, for Sir John had
shipped all his artillery except twelve light guns. It was soon seen
that the French cannon did vastly more execution than ours; and as the
whole line was engaged, Sir John sent Sir E. Paget, with the whole
of his reserve, to turn the left of a column that was outflanking
Baird on the right, and to silence the battery, if possible. Another
division, under General Frazer, was sent to support Paget, and the
battle now raged furiously on the right, and about the village of
Elvina, which was lost and taken once or twice. In this conflict Sir
David Baird had his arm shattered by a cannon-ball, and was taken off
the field. Major Stanhope was killed, and Major, afterwards General Sir
Charles, Napier was wounded. But Paget drew back on the British right,
and Sir John, seeing the 42nd Highlanders engaged, rode up to them
and shouted, "Highlanders! remember Egypt!" and they rushed forward,
driving all before them, till they were stopped by a stone wall. The
battle, however, still raging, and the French bringing up reserves,
the furious contest was renewed around the village of Elvina. Sir John
then dispatched Captain, afterwards Lord, Hardinge, to bring up the
Guards to support the 42nd Highlanders. Whilst awaiting their arrival,
a cannon-ball, which had struck the ground, glanced forward again, and
wounded Sir John on the right shoulder and breast. He was dashed from
his horse, and was supposed to be killed; but the force of the ball
having been partly spent, before Captain Hardinge could reach him he
had raised himself, and was gazing earnestly after the 42nd and the
other troops engaged. When he had seen his soldiers driving the French
before them, he consented to be borne to the rear. He was carried away
by a Highland sergeant and three soldiers, in a blanket, his wound
bleeding very much, and himself satisfied that his hurt was mortal. As
he went, however, he repeatedly made the soldiers halt, that he might
have another view of the battle. By night the French were beaten back
in every direction; but the British general was dead, having lived
only to receive the tidings of victory. During the night the troops
were, most of them, got on board, and at midnight Sir John's remains
were committed to the ground--as he had always wished them to be,
should he be killed in battle--on the ramparts in the old citadel of
Corunna. No coffin was to be procured, for coffins were not a Spanish
fashion; but he was buried dressed as he was, and wrapt in his military
cloak, literally as described in Wolfe's popular poem on his death.
The chaplain read the burial service, and there his officers "left him
alone with his glory," to make their own embarkation.

The prospects of the European war at this juncture, as observed from
England, were gloomy in the extreme. The dispersion of the armies of
Spain, the retreat and death of Sir John Moore, leaving the whole of
the Spanish and Portuguese Peninsula under the feet of Buonaparte,
disposed many to believe the power of the conqueror unassailable.
The Whig Opposition made every use of this feeling to damage and, if
possible, drive their rivals from office. That the Whigs, in power,
would have refrained from Continental war any more than the Tories
is not to be believed. They had always, when in office--except, in
the case of Fox, for a short interval--been as ready to fight; but
they had generally conducted their campaigns with much less ability.
Now, their great organ, the _Edinburgh Review_, indulged in the most
vehement censures on the Cabinet; charged all the adverse circumstances
of the Spanish and Portuguese war to its bad management; and intimated
that it was the most wicked and idiotic folly to hope to contend with
Buonaparte at all. But if ever there was a time when the continuance of
the war was excusable, and perhaps necessary, it was now. Great Britain
had gone fully and freely into the conflict to assist the Continental
nations. She had pledged herself solemnly to Spain and Portugal, and
to have withdrawn at this crisis would have been equally treacherous
to our allies and pusillanimous as regarded the enemy. It would have
been, in fact, to proclaim to the world that we had been completely
beaten out of the field, that we could not do what we had promised to
our allies, and that Napoleon must be left the master of Europe, and
the dictator to Britain. Such a confession would have destroyed for
ever the _prestige_ of Great Britain, and justly. Ministers felt this,
and never were more resolved to persevere to the end. To show that they
did not for a moment despair, they signed a treaty of peace and amity
with Spain only five days after the arrival of the news of the retreat
and death of Sir John Moore, binding themselves never to acknowledge
the authority of Buonaparte over Spain, or of any family but of
Ferdinand VII. and his lineal successors. That they were supported in
their views by Parliament was soon made evident by the rejection, by a
majority of two hundred and eight against one hundred and fifty-eight,
of a motion of Lord Henry Petty censuring the Convention of Cintra,
and, by a majority of two hundred and twenty against one hundred and
twenty-seven, of a motion of Mr. Ponsonby for inquiry into the conduct
of the late campaign in Spain. Ministers had at length satisfied
themselves that they had in Sir Arthur Wellesley a man capable of
contending against the haughty tyrant of Europe. The most liberal votes
were made for the prosecution of the war. The total of supplies for
the year amounted to fifty-three million eight hundred and sixty-two
thousand pounds, including a loan of eleven million pounds. For the
army twenty-seven million pounds was voted, and for the navy nineteen
million pounds. Between twenty and thirty thousand men were drafted
from the militia into the regulars, and thus the army was augmented
to that amount by soldiers already well trained. The loan was freely
taken at a lower interest than any hitherto borrowed--the Opposition
asserted, because trade was deranged, and capitalists were at a loss
how to invest their money; but the Ministers contended, on the other
hand, that it was solely because the war was popular with the nation.
Before, however, entering into its arduous and bloody details, we must
narrate some disgraceful affairs at home.

On the 27th of January Colonel Wardle, a militia officer, rose in his
place in the House of Commons and made some startling charges against
the Duke of York, as Commander-in-Chief of the army. Wardle had
been a zealous Conservative, but had now changed his politics, and
was acting with the party of extreme Reformers headed by Sir Francis
Burdett, Lord Folkestone, and others. His charge was that the Duke of
York was keeping a mistress, named Mary Ann Clarke, a married woman,
to the great scandal of the nation, and was allowing her to traffic in
commissions and promotions in the army. Nor was this all; he asserted
that, not in the army alone, but in the Church, this public adulteress
was conferring promotions, through her influence with the Duke, and
that she had quite a levee of clergy, who were soliciting and bribing
her to procure livings and even bishoprics. These were sufficiently
exciting statements, and the Colonel demanded a Committee of Inquiry
to enable him to prove his assertions. Sir Francis Burdett seconded
the motion; and the proposal was not met--as it should have been
by Ministers or the Duke's friends--by a denial, but, in general,
by a eulogium on the Duke's excellent discharge of his duties as
Commander-in-Chief. The House determined that, wherever the infamy was
to fall, it should have the full airing of a committee of the whole
House, which was appointed to commence its inquiries on Wednesday, the
1st of February, the Duke intimating, through his friends, that he
was, on his part, desirous of the fullest investigation of the matter.
From the evidence of Mrs. Clarke it appeared very clear that the Duke
had permitted her to traffic in the sale of commissions, and both Mrs.
Clarke and Mary Ann Taylor, whose brother was married to Mrs. Clarke's
sister, asserted that the Duke had received part of the money for some
of these bargains. Sums of one thousand pounds, of five hundred pounds,
and two hundred pounds had been paid to her for such services.

Unfortunately, however, for the continuance of the popularity of
Mrs. Clarke, it appeared that she was now actually living in the
keeping of this virtuous Colonel Wardle, who was thus chastising royal
peccadilloes. The whole of the circumstances did not come out whilst
the question was before the House of Commons, but enough to injure the
credit irreparably of Colonel Wardle, and make Mrs. Clarke's evidence
more than ever suspicious. The full information was brought out by a
trial instituted by a Mr. Wright, an upholsterer, in Rathbone Place,
for furnishing a new house for her in Westbourne Place. She had now
quarrelled with Colonel Wardle, and he refused to pay the bill. Wardle,
it appeared, had done his best to stop the coming on of the trial,
but in vain; Mrs. Clarke appeared against him, and not only deposed
that he had gone with her to order the goods, but told her it was in
return for her aid in prosecuting the Duke of York's case. Wardle was
cast on the trial, with costs, having about two thousand pounds to pay,
and losing all the popularity that he had gained by the investigation.
He had been publicly thanked by public meetings, both in the City and
the country, and now came this rueful exposé. But it was too late now
to save the Duke's reputation. The House of Commons had concluded its
examination in March. It acquitted the Duke of any participation with
his artful mistress in the vile profits on the sale of commissions, but
that she had made such there was no question. The Duke did not await
the decision of the Commons, but resigned his office. Lord Althorp,
in moving that, as the Duke had resigned, the proceedings should go
no further, said that the Duke had lost the confidence of the country
for ever, and therefore there was no chance of his returning to that
situation. This was the conclusion to which the House came on the 21st
of March, and soon afterwards Sir David Dundas was appointed to succeed
the Duke as Commander-in-chief, much to the chagrin of the army, and
equally to its detriment. The Duke, though, like some of his brothers,
very profligate, and, like them--according to a statement made during
the debates on his case--capable, as a youth, of learning either Greek
or arithmetic, but not the value of money, seems to have discharged his
duty to the army extremely well, of which old General Dundas was wholly
incapable.

The corruptions connected with the Duke of York and his mistress
were but a small fragment of the wide and universal system which was
existing. The exposures, however, made by this inquiry induced the
Chancellor of the Exchequer to bring in a Bill to prevent such abuses.
He referred to the sale of commissions which had been brought to light,
and which had been carried on by means of improper influence over a man
in high office. His Bill, therefore, went to make it penal to demand
money for the appointment to office, or to issue advertisements to that
effect. The Bill was passed.

But fresh light continued to break on the all-pervading corruption. The
Commissioners of Naval Inquiry presented a fresh report, abounding with
proofs of the villainies that had been going on in that department.
The Military Commissioners had a like frightful exposure to make of
frauds and peculations which had been going on wholesale, especially
in the West Indies. The same result followed the investigations of
the committee that inquired into the appointment of cadets to the
East India Service. There was abundance of proofs of the sale of
such places, and even Lord Castlereagh was implicated. It was found
that as President of the Board of Control--the Minister, in fact,
for Indian Affairs--he had presented a writership to his friend,
Lord Clancarty, which Clancarty had bartered with a Mr. Reding for
a seat in Parliament, and which Reding immediately sold for three
thousand pounds. Lord Archibald Hamilton immediately moved that Lord
Castlereagh had been guilty of an abuse of his authority as President
of the Board of Control. Castlereagh replied that, when he presented
his friend, Lord Clancarty, with the writership, he had no notion that
Reding was a regular broker in parliamentary seats, though he did not
deny that Reding had told him that he meant to make over the place
to a Member of Parliament who had a nephew whom he wished to send to
India, and that this Member of Parliament would vote accordingly. The
virtuous Wilberforce seemed to hold this easy-going morality, for he
voted for Lord Castlereagh, and, in spite of the denunciations of Sir
Francis Burdett, Mr. W. Smith, and others, Lord Archibald Hamilton's
motion was rejected by two hundred and sixteen against a hundred and
sixty-seven--and Lord Castlereagh walked away scathless. There was
immediately another charge brought against him, in company with the
Honourable Henry Wellesley, the brother of General Wellesley, and late
Secretary of the Treasury, for corrupt practices in the election of
members of Parliament; but the ministerial majority outvoted Mr. Madox,
the mover. About the same time Mr. Curwen brought in a Bill to prevent
such practices, and to obtain purity of Parliament by extinguishing
bribery, and this was suffered to pass when all vitality had been taken
out of it. On the 15th of June Sir Francis Burdett also made a motion
for extensive parliamentary Reform; but the greater part of the members
of Parliament had already left town, and the motion was rejected by
seventy-four against fifteen. On the 21st the Session was closed with a
speech which took a hopeful view of the war in Spain, and also of that
which Austria had again commenced. We may now return to the details of
these great contests on the Continent.

[Illustration: SIR DAVID BAIRD.]

We have stated that the spirit rising again in Germany called
Buonaparte suddenly from Spain, even before Soult had pursued Sir John
Moore to Corunna. At Valladolid he met the Abbé de Pradt, who had risen
high in Buonaparte's favour. To De Pradt, he said he began to suspect
that he had made his brother Joseph a grander present in Spain than
he was aware of. "I did not know," he said, "what Spain was; it is a
finer country than I imagined. But you will see that, by-and-by, the
Spaniards will commit some folly which will place their country once
more at my disposal. I will then take care to keep it to myself, and
divide it into five great viceroyships." Such were the soaring notions
of Napoleon at the very moment that the man was ready who was to drive
the French from Spain for ever. In England, at last, almost every one
had now awoke to the consciousness that Sir Arthur Wellesley was the
only man to cope with the French in the Peninsula. There were a few
individuals, like Lord Folkestone, who were blinded enough by party
to oppose this general conviction; but before the close of March Sir
Arthur was selected by the Government for this command. On the 15th of
April he sailed from Portsmouth, and on the 22nd he arrived safely at
Lisbon. Some regiments of both horse and foot soon followed him, and
he assumed the command of the British army in Portugal, which had been
some time in the hands of General Sir J. Cradock. The command of the
Portuguese troops had been placed in the hands of General Beresford,
who had been actively drilling them; and thus General Sir Arthur
Wellesley found himself at the head of an effective army of British
and Portuguese numbering twenty-five thousand men.

Soult, on the retreat of Sir John Moore, had taken possession of
Ferrol, Bilbao, and the other principal towns in the north of Spain.
He had then entered Portugal, and had marched to Oporto, which he took
after a resistance of only two days; and Sir J. Cradock had retired to
Lisbon. Soult was prevented from advancing farther by the rising of
the Spaniards behind him in Galicia, who retook Vigo and other places;
whilst Silviera, the Portuguese general, interposed between him and
Galicia, and formed a junction with the Spaniards. Wellesley determined
to expel Soult from Oporto, and did not hesitate to say that the French
general could not long remain in Portugal. Leaving a division in
Lisbon to guard the eastern frontiers of Portugal against the forces
of Victor, who lay in Spanish Estremadura, Sir Arthur advanced towards
Oporto with a celerity that astonished the French. He quitted Lisbon
on the 28th of April, reached Coimbra, driving the French before him,
and on the 9th of May he was advancing from that city on Oporto. By
the 11th he was occupying the southern bank of the Douro, opposite to
that city. Soult had broken down the bridges and sent away the boats,
so that he might be able to retire at leisure into Galicia; but Sir
Arthur managed to send across General Murray with a brigade, a few
miles above Oporto, and a brigade of Guards also passed at the suburb
of Villanova, and he discovered sufficient boats to carry over his main
army just above the town. The French commenced a fierce attack on the
British forces as they landed; but the first battalion, the Buffs, got
possession of a large building called the Seminario, and held it till
the other troops arrived. Major-General Hill soon brought up the 48th
and 66th regiments; General Sherbrooke, who crossed the river below
the town with the brigade of Guards and the 29th regiment, entered the
town amid the acclamations of the people, and charged the French in the
rear; and General Murray, about the same time, showed himself on the
French left, above the town. Soult fled, leaving behind him his sick
and wounded, and many prisoners, besides much artillery and ammunition.
This taking of Oporto, in the face of a French force of ten thousand
men, coupled with his having to cross the broad Douro, and that with
very defective means of transit, was a most brilliant affair; and the
most astonishing thing was, that Wellesley lost only twenty-three
killed and ninety-eight wounded, whilst Soult's troops suffered
severely.

Sir Arthur determined to give Soult as sharp a chase as he had given
Sir John Moore. He wrote to General Beresford to hold Villa Real, if
possible, whilst he pressed on the heels of Soult. On the 16th of May
he came up with Soult's rear, near Salamonde, defeated the rear-guard,
killed and wounded a great number of men, and Sir Arthur wrote that,
had they had half an hour's more daylight, he should have taken the
whole of his rear-guard. He added: "I shall follow him to-morrow. He
has lost everything--cannon, ammunition, baggage, military chest--and
his retreat is in every respect, even in weather, a pendant for the
retreat to Corunna." In truth, had Sir John Moore sent a Nemesis to
avenge himself, it could not have executed a more complete retribution.
All the horrors of Sir John's retreat, and far worse, were repeated.
The French had exasperated the population here, as everywhere, by
their reckless cruelties and rapacity, and they surrounded the
flying army, and killed every man that they could find straggling,
or who was left exhausted on the road. On the other hand, the French
tracked their retrograde path with equal fury. "Their route," says
Sir Arthur, "could be traced by the smoke of the villages that they
set on fire." Sir Arthur, in his dispatches, also says that, during
their abode in Portugal, the French had murdered people merely because
they did not like their seizure of their country; and that he saw men
hanging on trees by the roadside, whom they had executed for no other
reason. So the scene of Soult's retreat was now one long picture of
Pandemonium--the whole way strewn with dead men, horses, and mules;
a wasted country, and an infuriated peasantry seeking to wreak their
vengeance. Sir Arthur stopped his pursuit near the frontiers of Spain.
He could not overtake Soult, who fled flinging away every impediment,
whilst he was compelled to carry his supplies and artillery along with
him. Besides, the French, since the defeat of the Spaniards at Tudela,
had entered Andalusia in great force, where there was no army to oppose
them except the ill-equipped one of the proud and unmanageable General
Cuesta; and Marshal Victor, who commanded in Estremadura, might readily
have made a descent on Lisbon, had Wellesley gone far into Spain. He
therefore resolved to return to Oporto, to make necessary inquiries
as to the roads into Spain; to improve his commissariat; and then,
forming a junction with Cuesta, to advance against Marshal Victor.
Whilst at Oporto he had the satisfaction to learn that Frere was
superseded by his own brother, Lord Wellesley, as ambassador for Spain,
a circumstance of immense importance to the cause.

Towards the end of May Wellesley commenced his march over the Spanish
frontiers; his force being about twenty thousand infantry and three
thousand cavalry. He fell in with the old Spanish general, Cuesta, at
Oropesa, on the 20th of July, who was at the head of thirty thousand
men, but miserably equipped, discouraged by repeated defeats, and
nearly famished. Sir Arthur was woefully disappointed by this first
view of a Spanish army in the field, and here, indeed, all his
difficulties began. The general was a regular Spanish hidalgo--proud,
ignorant, and pig-headed. He received Wellesley with immense stiffness
and ceremony, as if somebody immeasurably his inferior; and though he
knew no English, nor Sir Arthur any Spanish, he would not condescend
to speak French with him. His army collected supplies from all the
country round; and though the British were come to fight for them, the
Spaniards expected them to provide for themselves, and there was the
greatest difficulty in inducing the people to sell the British anything
except for fabulous prices. Still worse, Sir Arthur found it impossible
to get Cuesta to co-operate in anything. He fancied that he knew a
great deal more about military affairs than the "Sepoy general," as
Wellesley was termed, and that he ought to direct in everything, though
he had done nothing but get well beaten on every occasion. And yet, if
we take a glance at the French forces now in Spain, against whom they
had to make head, the utmost harmony and co-operation was necessary.

The French army in Spain numbered more than two hundred thousand men,
and of these more than one hundred and thirty thousand lay in the
provinces bordering on Portugal, or between it and Madrid. Victor
had thirty-five thousand in Estremadura; and close behind him, in La
Mancha, Sebastiani had twenty thousand more. Northward, in Old Castile,
Leon, and Asturias, Kellermann and Bonnet had ten thousand. Soult, in
Galicia, was joined by Ney and Mortier, making his army again upwards
of fifty thousand, with whom he contemplated returning into Portugal.
General Dessolles had fifteen thousand men at Madrid to protect
the intrusive King Joseph; and Suchet and Augereau, in Aragon and
Catalonia, commanded fifty thousand. Almost all the strong fortresses
in the country were in their hands. The only circumstances favourable
to the Allies were that the French generals were at variance amongst
themselves; that none of them paid any deference to the commands of
King Joseph, who was nominally generalissimo; and that the Spaniards
were, everywhere where woods and mountains favoured them, harassing the
French in a manner that made them very sick of the country, and that
often reduced them to a state of severe privation.

Sir Arthur was anxious to engage and defeat Victor before he was
joined by the forces of Joseph from Madrid, and of Sebastiani from La
Mancha. He therefore dispatched Sir Robert Wilson, at the head of a
considerable body of Spanish and Portuguese troops, on the way towards
Madrid; and Sir Robert executed this duty with so much promptitude and
address that he threw himself into the rear of Victor at Escalona, only
eight leagues from the capital. On the 22nd of July the united armies
of Britain and Portugal attacked Victor's outposts at Talavera, and
drove them in. The stupid old Cuesta was nowhere to be seen; and the
next day, the 23rd, when the British were again in position, ready to
attack the French, the day was lost, because Cuesta said he would not
fight on a Sunday. This tried Sir Arthur's patience past endurance,
for every moment was precious, and he wrote on the occasion--"I find
General Cuesta more and more impracticable every day. It is impossible
to do business with him, and very uncertain that any operation will
succeed in which he has any concern. He has quarrelled with some of his
principal officers, and I understand they are all dissatisfied with
him." The opportunity of beating Victor was thus lost. At midnight he
quitted Talavera, and retreated to Santa Olalla, and thence towards
Torrijos, to form a junction with Sebastiani. The next morning
Wellesley took possession of Talavera, but he could not pursue the
enemy, for he says, "he found it impossible to procure a single mule
or a cart in Spain." Neither could he procure food for his army. He
says his troops had actually been two days in want of provisions,
though Cuesta's camp abounded with them. He declared that, under
such treatment by those that he had come to save, he would return to
Portugal before his army was ruined. On this, Cuesta became as wildly
and madly active as he had been before stubbornly passive. He dashed
forward after Victor alone, never stopping till he ran against the rear
of the united army of Victor and Sebastiani, at Torrijos. Wellesley
was quite sure what the result would be, and in a few days Cuesta came
flying back with a confused mass of men, bullocks, flocks of sheep,
baggage waggons, and artillery, beaten and pursued by the enemy.

[Illustration: MAP OF SPAIN AND PORTUGAL TO ILLUSTRATE THE PENINSULAR
WAR.]

Sir Arthur knew that at least one hundred thousand French were on the
march to take him at once in flank and front; that Soult was advancing
from Salamanca, Mortier from Valladolid; and, besides--which he did
not know--Ney was _en route_ from Astorga. He must, therefore, retreat
at once or fight, and the enemy saved him the trouble of deciding.
King Joseph, afraid of Sir Robert Wilson being joined by General
Venegas, who had shown himself on the road towards Aranjuez, and of
then falling on Madrid, ordered Victor to attack Wellesley at once,
without waiting for any further reinforcements. Accordingly, Sir Arthur
was attacked by Victor in front of Talavera. He had placed Cuesta
and his Spaniards on his right, abutting on the Tagus, and protected
by old enclosure walls and olive gardens; and his own troops on the
left, on the open plain. The attack began on the evening of the 27th
of July, on the outposts, which gradually fell back, and the battle
was renewed the next day. The position of the Spaniards being found
unapproachable, the whole fury of the French fell on the British, and
the contest was kept up till it was pitch dark. About midnight there
was a tremendous firing on the Spanish side, and Sir Arthur rode there
to ascertain the cause. No cause was visible, but the Spaniards were
flying in great haste, and it was with difficulty that he and Cuesta
could stop the rout. Next day the British line was attacked on all
points by the troops of both Victor and Sebastiani, but they were
repelled, and driven down the hills at the point of the bayonet. At
one time the British centre was driven in, but it was re-established
by the 48th, while the 23rd Dragoons, by a reckless charge, paralysed
a whole division of the French army. In the words of Sir Arthur, the
British everywhere maintained their positions gloriously, and gave the
French a terrible beating. Out of the fifty thousand pitched against
the less than twenty thousand British--for the Spanish were scarcely
engaged at all--they lost in killed and wounded seven thousand men.
General Lapisse was killed, and many prisoners were taken, besides
seventeen pieces of artillery, with tumbrils and ammunition complete.
The British lost eight hundred and fifty-seven killed, and had three
thousand nine hundred and thirteen wounded. Major-General Mackenzie and
Brigadier-General Langworth were killed.

[Illustration: THE BAYONET CHARGE AT TALAVERA. (_See p._ 577.)]

The next morning, by daybreak, the French were in full retreat over
the river Alberche, and Sir Arthur employed the two following days
in getting his wounded into hospital in Talavera, and in procuring
provisions for his victorious but starving army. Sir Arthur complains
that, though he had thus repulsed the French for them, neither the
Spanish authorities nor the Spanish people did anything to assist
him in this respect. They were very willing that the British should
fight their battles, but they must provide for themselves, or starve.
The state of our own Commissariat aggravated this evil. It had long
been a Department of the most corrupt kind, the duties of which were
neglected, and little was thought of by its officers but the enriching
of themselves at the expense of our Government and our soldiers. These
swindlers, long after this, continued to pay the contractors and
muleteers in notes payable at Lisbon, or at headquarters; these the
receivers had often to get changed into coin at a monstrous discount,
and Jews and jobbers flocked after the army for this purpose. To add to
the mischief, some of these villains introduced loads of counterfeit
dollars, merely copper-plated, so that, after losing enormously on the
exchange of the paper, the receivers found themselves utterly defrauded
of their payment. It was no wonder that the trading part of the Spanish
population should feel shy of supplying us, more especially as Sir
John Moore--from the money which should have been in his chest having
been, by Mr. Frere, carelessly handed over to the Spanish Junta--had
had to pay in paper which the British Government had not yet redeemed.
The reform of such abuses as these was one of the great things which
Wellesley did for the British army, but at present he was suffering the
extremest difficulties from them. He wrote sternly to Mr. Frere, who
had not yet been superseded by the arrival of Lord Wellesley, that he
(Sir Arthur) was blamed by the Junta for not doing more, whilst they
were allowing his army, which had beaten twice their own number in
the service of Spain, to starve. "It is positively a fact," he wrote,
"that during the last seven days the British army have not received
one-third of their provisions; that, at this moment, there are nearly
four thousand wounded soldiers dying in the hospitals in this town from
want of common assistance and necessaries, which any other country in
the world would have given even to its enemies; and that I can get no
assistance of any description from this country. I cannot prevail on
them to even bury the dead carcases in the neighbourhood, the stench
of which will destroy themselves as well as us." All this while, he
added, Don Martin de Garay was urging him to push on, and drive the
French over the Pyrenees; "but," added Sir Arthur, "I positively will
not move; nay, more, I will disperse my army till I am supplied with
provisions and means of transport as I ought to be."

And, in fact, circumstances rendered it advisable to retreat. Joseph
Buonaparte, with the reinforcements of Sebastiani, had joined Victor,
and that general felt ready to advance. At the same time Wellesley
learned that Soult had arrived in Palencia, in the British rear. He
desired Cuesta to guard the pass of Puerto de Baños, but this he did
so ineffectually that both Soult and Mortier marched through it.
Ney also reached Palencia, and thus fifty-three thousand men were
threatening to cut off Sir Arthur's route to Portugal. He determined
to fall back on Oropesa, leaving Cuesta to defend Talavera, and
protect the two thousand British wounded in the hospitals; but Cuesta
speedily abandoned the place, leaving one thousand five hundred of the
wounded behind, whom Victor, to his honour, treated in the most humane
manner. With the road of the enemy thus left open in his rear in two
directions, Sir Arthur, at the same time, learned that Soult's division
had got between him and the bridge of Alvarez, in the direct line of
his march into Portugal. His situation, thus hemmed in by overwhelming
forces, was most critical, and he informed Cuesta that he must file
off for Badajos. He reached Badajos safely on the 2nd of September,
carrying the one thousand five hundred wounded with him. These he sent
to the strongly fortified town of Elvas, in Portuguese territory,
which now became the great hospital of the army. Sir Arthur, on the
7th of September, was informed of the arrival of Sir Robert Wilson
at Castello Branco. He had conducted his little force almost to the
gates of Madrid, and had made a powerful diversion in favour of the
main army, by keeping King Joseph and the French General in constant
fear of his joining Venegas and attacking the capital. On his return,
by order of Wellesley, he had gallantly fought his way against vastly
superior forces, always contriving to make the enemy believe that
his strength was double what it was. His conduct of this expedition
elicited the most cordial praises from the Commander-in-Chief. At this
juncture Napoleon sent a dispatch, ordering the army in Spain to cease
further offensive operations till the conclusion of the Austrian war
enabled him to send fresh reinforcements into Spain. This was a proof
that Buonaparte no longer hoped to beat the British army by any but
the most preponderating masses. He had in Spain ten times the forces
of the British, yet he could not hope for victory from this vast
disproportion. Wellesley, at this very time, in one of his dispatches,
had observed this great fact. "I conceive," he said, "that the French
are dangerous only in large masses." The British army was therefore
quartered on the line of the Guadarama, to protect Portugal from Soult,
and remained undisturbed till the following May. Whilst the hostile
forces were thus resting, the news reached Sir Arthur that he had been
created Baron Douro of Wellesley, and Viscount Wellington of Talavera.
This honour had been conferred upon him on the 4th of September, as
soon as possible after the arrival of the news of his brilliant and
memorable victory at Talavera.

If there wanted anything to prove the truth of Lord Wellington's
warnings to the Spanish authorities of the undisciplined condition
of their armies, and the incompetency of their generals, it came
quickly. Whilst they continued to treat him more like an enemy than a
friend, and had issued orders throughout the province where he lay,
forbidding the sale of provisions and forage for his army, their
own armies were again annihilated. The army of Venegas, which had
retreated, on the advance of Sebastiani towards Madrid, into the Sierra
Morena, had been taken from him, and given to a young, inexperienced
man, General Areizaga. Cuesta, also, had been set aside for one still
more incapable, a General Eguia, of whom Lord Wellington had already
pronounced that he was a fool. Areizaga, instead of maintaining his
strong post in the hills, being joined by the greater part of the army
of Estremadura, now commanded by Eguia, imagined that he could beat the
united forces of Mortier and Sebastiani, and drive them out of Madrid.
With fifty thousand men and sixty pieces of artillery he descended from
his hills into the open plains of Ocaña, where he was beaten on the
20th of November, with the loss of all his artillery but five guns, his
baggage, military chest, provisions, and everything. There was immense
slaughter of his soldiers, and the rest fled into the mountains. The
Duke del Parque, who was placed for the protection of the line of the
Tagus with another large army, was marching to support this intended
conquest of Madrid, when, in the month of October, being strongly
posted on the heights of Tamames, he encountered General Marchand, and
defeated him. Elated by this success, he no longer trusted to hills and
strong positions, but, like Areizaga, advanced boldly into the plains,
and on the 28th of November he encountered Kellermann at Alba de
Tormes, and received a most thorough defeat. His men, both cavalry and
infantry, scarcely stayed to cross swords or bayonets with the French,
but, flinging down their arms, and leaving all their baggage and
artillery behind them, they fled in every direction. Kellerman pursued
and cut them down without mercy--according to his own account, killing
three thousand men and making three hundred prisoners.

Lord Wellington, notwithstanding that the destruction of these armies,
on which the defence of Andalusia and the provinces of the south
depended, completely proved the justice of his statements to the Junta,
was deeply chagrined by the circumstance. "I lament," he said, in his
despatches, "that a cause which promised so well a few weeks ago,
should have been so completely lost by the ignorance, presumption, and
mismanagement of those to whose direction it was entrusted. I declare
that, if they had preserved their two armies, or even one of them, the
cause was safe. The French could have sent no reinforcements which
could have been of any use; time would have been gained; the state of
affairs would have daily improved; all the chances were in our favour;
and, in the first moment of weakness, occasioned by any diversion on
the Continent, or by the growing discontent of the French themselves
with the war, the French armies must have been driven out of Spain."
Lord Wellington's position was, by the destruction of these armies,
left totally open, and he had for some time resolved to retire wholly
into Portugal, and had been planning that system of defence which
afterwards proved so astonishing to the French. Though he was left
with about twenty thousand men to maintain himself against the whole
French host in Spain, he never for a moment contemplated quitting the
Peninsula, nor despaired of the final result. The experienced eye of
Lord Wellington, after the battle of Vimiera, had, at a glance, seen
the admirable capability of the mountain ranges of Torres Vedras for
the construction of impregnable lines of defence for Lisbon. So far
from holding any notion of being driven to his ships, like Sir John
Moore, he was satisfied that, by fortifying the defiles through these
hills, and keeping our ships on the Tagus and on the coast, he could
defy all the armies of France. He proceeded now to Lisbon, where he
arrived on the 10th of October, reconnoitred the hills, and, having
done so, left with Colonel Fletcher, of the Engineers, a clearly
written statement of all that he desired to be done, so as to make the
double line of defences complete: to erect batteries on each side of
the defiles through which the necessary roads ran, to erect breastworks
and entrenchments where required, and to break down the bridges in
front of them. He ascertained the precise time it would require to
accomplish all this, and, ordering all to be carried on with the utmost
quickness, he returned to Badajos, and next proceeded to Seville, to
join his brother in urging on the Spanish Government the necessary
measures for the defence of the country. After visiting Cadiz with
his brother, he returned to his headquarters, where he had scarcely
arrived on the 17th of November, when he received the news of the
total overthrow of the Spaniards at Ocaña. He then made a deliberate
and orderly retreat from Spain, crossing the Tagus at Abrantes, where
he left General Hill with his division, supported by General Fane's
brigade of heavy horse, and marched to Almeida, and quartered his
army there in a more healthy situation. His troops were now also well
supplied with provisions. During the long interval of repose--that
is, till the following May--Wellington actively employed himself in
putting life and order into the commissariat, baggage, and conveyance
departments; and General Beresford, to whom the important function of
disciplining the Portuguese troops was assigned, laboured in that with
such effect, that he produced at the next campaign troops which, led by
British officers, and mixed with British regiments, fought admirably.
The Portuguese were wise enough to allow the British commander full
control, and by this means they avoided those defeats and calamities
which fell long and heavily on the Spaniards.

Whilst these events had been taking place in Spain and Portugal, Great
Britain had been sending money and troops to oppose Buonaparte in
other quarters. Early in the spring Austria was in the field; in July
a powerful fleet, carrying an army, sailed from the Downs, to create a
diversion on the coast of the Netherlands, and other operations were
commenced in the south of Italy. The army destined for the Netherlands
amounted to forty thousand men, attended by a fleet of thirty-five sail
of the line and twenty frigates, to assist where they might be needed.
Buonaparte had contemplated making a great port of Antwerp, and had
expended much money and labour in docks and fortifications there; but
finding that the port of Antwerp was not deep enough for first-rate
ships of war, he undertook to render Flushing capable of receiving and
protecting a large fleet. He still contemplated, by the co-operation
of Denmark and Russia, the sending forth a fleet, some day, which
might cope with the British navy, or enable him to invade England.
For this purpose he was building ships at Antwerp and Flushing; and
it was, no doubt, these circumstances which determined the British to
direct their attack on Flushing and Antwerp. Captain, afterwards Sir
George Cockburn, was of opinion that these preparations of Napoleon
could never affect England; that no possession of Zealand, or any
part of it, could be kept by England, from its extreme unhealthiness
to foreigners, and even to Dutchmen; and that it was much better for
Britain to let Buonaparte build ships, and take them whenever they came
out to sea, than to sacrifice the lives of our troops for no permanent
benefit in this region of bogs, stagnant water, and malaria. Had these
forty thousand troops been sent to support Wellington, and half the
money that this fatal expedition cost, they would have enabled him
to drive the French triumphantly out of Spain, and create the most
magnificent diversion for Austria, as well as the most honourable to
England.

But the surprise of Antwerp and the destruction of the docks of
Flushing were determined upon; and Lord Chatham, rather for his name
than for any military talent that he possessed, was appointed the
commander of the forces. Lord Chatham was so notorious for his sluggish
and procrastinating nature, that he had long been nicknamed the _late_
Lord Chatham; the justice of this epithet had been too obvious in all
the offices that he had hitherto held; and yet this expedition which
demanded the utmost promptness and active skill, was entrusted to him.
At the head of the fleet was placed Sir Richard Strachan, a man of no
energy. The commander of the ships on such an occasion should have
been Lord Cochrane, for Sir Sidney Smith was already engaged on the
coast of Italy. The orders for each commander were extremely loose and
indefinite thereby leaving every chance of disputes and consequent
delays and mishaps; and, to complete the disgraceful management of
the Government, no inquiries had been made as to the healthiness or
unhealthiness of the district where the army would have to encamp.
Though the island of Walcheren had been occupied by our troops under
William III., no record was to be found, or, indeed, was sought for, as
to the cost of life to our men on that occasion from the climate. The
whole plan was laid in ignorance and carried out with carelessness, and
it was no wonder, therefore, that it ended in misery and disgrace.

[Illustration: THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON. (_After the Portrait by Sir
Thomas Lawrence._)]

The fleet sailed from the Downs on the 28th of July, 1809, and on
the 30th it touched at the islands of South Beveland and Walcheren.
The orders of the Government were, "the capture or destruction of
the enemy's ships, building or afloat at Antwerp and Flushing; the
destruction of the arsenals at Antwerp, Terneuse, and Flushing; the
reduction of the island of Walcheren, and, if possible, the rendering
of the Scheldt no longer navigable for ships." Nelson, who had
contemplated this enterprise, had calculated that it would require
four or five thousand men, and could be accomplished in a week. But
now Buonaparte had rendered the task more difficult, and there was no
Nelson to do it. The most sagacious of the officers pointed out that
the first rush should be for Antwerp, as the extreme point of the
expedition, so as to destroy or capture the vessels there before the
French could come to the rescue. The places nearer to the sea could
be taken in returning. Had the troops landed at Blankenberg, they
could have made a rapid march along a paved road through Bruges and
Ghent, and captured Antwerp, only forty-five miles distant, whilst
the fleet ascended the Scheldt to receive them on their return; but
no such common-sense ideas found acceptance with the commanders.
They determined to reduce Flushing first, and the other forts on the
Scheldt, as Lillo and Liefkenshoek, in succession, by which time it was
certain that the French would appear at Antwerp in numbers sufficient
to protect it. Flushing was attacked on the 1st of August, and did not
surrender till the 16th. Had this been the reduction of Antwerp, the
rest of the objects of the expedition would have followed of course;
but Lord Chatham and Rear-Admiral Strachan were in no hurry. They
remained signing the capitulation, securing six thousand prisoners that
they had taken, and reducing two small islands to the north of the
eastern Scheldt, till the 21st (three whole weeks virtually wasted!),
and on the 23rd they landed at Ter Goes, on the neighbouring island of
South Beveland. Here, again, they delayed another precious fortnight,
whilst the French were planting batteries at every turn of the river
between them and Antwerp; had drawn a boom-chain across the channel
between Lillo and Liefkenshoek; and had sunk vessels to obstruct the
narrowest part of the channel beyond. They still talked of forcing
their way to Antwerp; but according to a satiric rhyme of the time--

    "The Earl of Chatham, with his sword drawn,
    Stood waiting for Sir Richard Strachan;
    Sir Richard, eager to be at 'em,
    Stood waiting too, for whom? Lord Chatham."

Meantime Cambacérès and Fouché had dispatched couriers to Louis
Buonaparte, in Holland, to march down troops to the defence of Antwerp;
and he had not only done that, but had opened the sluices on the
borders of the Scheldt, and laid the country under water, to prevent
the march of the British. He also had ordered the erection of numerous
batteries, and Bernadotte arrived in about a fortnight, by orders of
Napoleon, to resist the advance of the British. From forty to fifty
thousand troops were assembled in and around Antwerp, and hosts of
Dutch and Belgian militia swarmed over the country. This was certain
to be the case if any time was allowed, and it was now agreed, in a
council of war, that it was not possible to proceed further. In fact,
they were no longer allowed to remain where they were. Their provisions
were rapidly being exhausted, sickness was spreading amongst the
troops, and the fire of the enemy's batteries from both sides of the
river compelled them to fall down the stream. That was the end of the
campaign; the rest was a foolish and murderous delay in the island
of Walcheren, without any conceivable purpose. There was no use in
retaining the island, for we could at any time blockade the mouths
of the Scheldt, and our men on board the ships were comparatively
healthy; but in this swamp of death the soldiers continued dying
like rotten sheep. The island of Walcheren, to which they were now
confined, is a spongy swamp, below the level of the sea at high water.
The wet oozes through the banks, and stagnates in the dykes, and is
only capable of being pumped out by windmills. The ground is covered
often with mud and slime, and the inhabitants are sickly and sallow in
aspect, and of loose and flaccid muscles. Yet, in this den of fever
and death, the commanders seemed determined to retain the army till
it perished entirely. The Earl of Chatham himself returned to London
on the 14th of September, with as many of the sick as he could take.
At this time he left eleven thousand, out of the seventeen thousand
quartered on the island of Walcheren, on the sick-list, and rapidly
dying; yet neither he nor Sir Eyre Coote, who succeeded him, seems to
have felt the necessity of saving the army by retiring from the place.
They attributed the unhealthiness to the dykes being cut, and the
surrounding country being flooded in the hot season. No matter what was
the cause, the army was perishing, and ought to have been removed; but,
so far from this, the Ministers seemed determined to keep possession
of this useless and pestilential swamp at any cost. As it was imagined
that the drinking of the water was the cause of the fever, Thames water
was carried over for the troops, five hundred tons per week being
required. But it was not the drinking it only that caused disease and
death, but the standing and working in it, as many of them did, up
to the middle for many hours together, and the malaria arising from
the oozy soil. As the roofs in Flushing were knocked to pieces by the
storming of the town, British workmen, with bricks, mortar, tiles, and
tools, were sent over to repair them, so as to protect the sick in the
hospitals, though plenty of workmen and materials might have been had
in the country.

As it was necessary that some doctors of note and experience should be
sent over to examine the nature of the illness and the condition of
the men, the Surgeon-General was ordered to proceed to the spot and
make the necessary inquiries; but he replied that it was not in his
department, but in that of the Physician-General, Sir Lucas Pepys.
Sir Lucas excused himself on account of his age, and recommended
some other physicians to be sent out. Both gentlemen were content to
receive the country's money easily at home, but although a whole army
was perishing, they would not risk their own precious lives. They were
dismissed, and their conduct showed the necessity of a thorough reform
of the medical establishment of the army. Sir Richard Strachan, though
he saw the continuous destruction of the soldiers, strongly recommended
Government to retain possession of Walcheren, as a very important
naval station, and the Ministry were besotted enough to contemplate
fortifying it on an extensive scale, and more men and materials were
sent over for that purpose. But, fortunately for the remains of our
army there, the Emperor of Austria had now made peace with Buonaparte,
and our diversion in his favour here was useless, so, on the 13th of
November, orders were sent to Lieutenant-General Don, who had succeeded
Sir Eyre Coote, to destroy the docks and fortifications of Flushing,
and come away. Thus ended this most fatal expedition, which cost Great
Britain twenty millions of money, and many thousands of lives. Of those
who survived, thousands had their constitutions broken for ever; and
even such as appeared to get over the lingering and insidious Walcheren
fever, on being sent to the war in the Peninsula, proved so liable to
its return on exposure to wet or cold, that often one-third of these
troops were not fit for service. So far from wishing to remove us from
Walcheren, Buonaparte wrote to the Minister of War, saying: "We are
rejoiced to see that the English have packed themselves in the morasses
of Zealand. Let them be only kept in check, and the bad air and fevers
peculiar to the country will soon destroy their army." The fatal
results of this expedition introduced dissensions into the Cabinet, and
soon after occasioned the resignation of Canning.

Our forces on the Italian coast were met by the active spirit of the
new King of Naples, Joachim Murat. Sir John Stuart, who had won the
splendid victory of Maida, embarked, on the 13th of June, fifteen
thousand British troops in Sicily, and proceeded to menace Naples, and
create alarm in various quarters, so as to draw the French from Upper
Italy, and thus relieve the Austrians. With part of these forces siege
was laid to Scylla; with the other Sir John anchored off Cape Miseno,
close to Baiæ and Puzzuoli, and directly across the bay, about a dozen
miles from Naples. The greatest alarm was excited, and nothing would
have been easier for Sir John than to have battered the town about
the ears of the intruder king; but this the interests of the old king
did not permit, especially as Ferdinand's second son, Don Leopold,
was present as nominal commander, but he was of no use really, being
a most effeminate and incapable person. Sir John then sailed to the
islands of Procida and Ischia, compelled the garrisons to capitulate,
dismantled the fortifications, and then abandoned these islands. During
all this time our warships were scouring the whole of the coasts of
Southern Italy, capturing every vessel that ventured out, and keeping
the French generals on shore in constant agitation. In the encounters
with the enemy's vessels on these coasts many brilliant exploits were
performed by our captains, and by none more than by Captain Staines, of
the _Cyane_ frigate, who, on the 27th of June, stood a stout but most
unequal fight with a Neapolitan frigate and corvette, under the very
batteries of Naples. The siege of Scylla was raised by a strong French
force, and Sir John Stuart returned to Sicily. Scylla was, however,
shortly after abandoned again by the French, and its guns and stores,
which appeared to have been left in some panic, fell into the hands of
the British.

Sir John Stuart did not long remain idle at Palermo. At the suggestion
of Lord Collingwood, he sent out an expedition to seize on a number of
the Ionian Isles, which had been taken possession of by the French,
who were calculating on further conquests in that direction--namely,
in continental Greece itself. The _Warrior_, commanded by Captain
Spranger, attended by other vessels, carried over one thousand six
hundred troops, under command of Brigadier-General Oswald. The troops
were half of them British, and half Corsicans, Sicilians, Calabrians,
and other foreigners in British pay. They carried with them Signor
Foresti and an Ionian Greek as interpreters and agents with their
countrymen, many of whom, they were aware, had an indignant hatred
of the French domination. They arrived off Cephalonia on the 28th of
September, and on the 1st of October, being joined by their transports
and gunboats, they anchored in the bay of Zante, and the following
morning commenced a landing, under the cover of a brisk fire from some
of the ships and gunboats. The land-batteries were soon silenced, and
before night the French commander had not only surrendered the castle,
but the islands of Zante, Cephalonia, Ithaca, and Cerigo. Two of the
seven islands remained for the time in the hands of the French--Santa
Maura and Corfu. But Santa Maura, after a sharp contest, was carried,
in the following April, by General Oswald, most brilliantly supported
by Lieutenant-Colonel Hudson Lowe, Major Church, and other officers.
General Camus, the French commandant, surrendered with his garrison
of one thousand men. There remained only Corfu, but this, the most
important island of the group, would have required a much stronger
force to reduce it; and as it was completely useless to the French,
being cut off from all communication with France by our ships, it
remained under France till 1814, when, at the Congress of Paris, it was
made over by Louis XVIII., and the whole seven islands were declared a
republic, under the protection of Great Britain. Such was the origin
of our connection with the Ionian Islands, where we maintained a
Commissioner and a body of troops, much to the discontent of a party in
the islands, who desired to join the kingdom of Greece.

At the opening of 1810 a peace was contracted with Turkey; but not
with the Sultan Selim, with whom we had been at war, nor with his
successor, Mahmoud. Whilst the throne of Turkey was occupied by a mere
boy, and whilst his regular troops were dispersed, Alexander of Russia,
famed for his piety, thought it a fine opportunity to seize on his
neighbour's lands. His Ministers, at the commencement of 1809, at the
Congress of Jassy, demanded, as a condition of peace, the cession of
the Turkish provinces on the left bank of the Danube. The Turks, of
course, refused to thus dismember their empire for the aggrandisement
of Russia; and Alexander, who was resolved to have those provinces by
hook or by crook, immediately declared war on Turkey, on the shameless
plea that it had made peace with Britain. The Russians were supported
by the Greeks, and other inhabitants of Moldavia and Wallachia; but
on crossing the Danube and pushing forward into Bulgaria they were
beaten on every occasion. On the 22nd of October, 1809, a desperate
conflict took place between them under the walls of Silistria, which
continued from morning till night, in which the Russians were driven
back, and, in a second engagement, routed with such slaughter that
they retired from Bulgaria, and went into winter-quarters in Moldavia
and Wallachia. In this campaign it was found that the guns were served
by French officers, though Buonaparte professed to be willing that
Alexander should possess himself of Constantinople. By the peace with
Turkey, the trading ports of that empire were again opened to us, and
our manufactures, entering there, spread over all the Continent, and
were sold and worn in Hamburg, Bremen, and other towns where they were
strictly excluded by sea.

The naval transactions of 1810 were almost wholly confined to watching
the French, Spanish, and Italian coasts, to thwart the French, who, on
their part, were continually on the watch for any of our blockading
ships being driven by the weather, or called to some other station, in
order to run out and convey men and stores into Spain. The last action
of Lord Collingwood took place in this service. Though his health
was fast failing, and he had repeatedly entreated the Admiralty to
allow him to give up the command and go home to his family--the only
chance of his long survival--they always refused. His complaint was
declared by the faculty to be owing to his long confinement on board
ships, and he had now scarcely set foot on shore for three years. But
notwithstanding all this, with a singular selfishness the Admiralty
kept him on board, and he was too high-minded to resign his commission
whilst he could be of service to his country. In this state of health
he was lying off Toulon, blockading that port, when he was driven to
Minorca by a gale of wind. He had regained the coast of Catalonia,
when he heard that the French fleet had issued from Toulon, and were
making for Barcelona. The whole British fleet were in exultation;
but on sighting this supposed fleet it was found to consist only of
three sail of the line, two frigates, and about twenty other vessels,
carrying provisions to the French army at Barcelona. They no sooner
caught view of the British fleet than they made off in all haste, and
the British gave chase. Admiral Martin was the first to come up with
them in the Gulf of Lyons, where two of the ships of the line ran
ashore, and were set fire to by the French admiral, Baudin. Two others
ran into the harbour of Cette; and eleven of the store-ships ran into
the Bay of Rooas, and took refuge under the powerful batteries; but
Lord Collingwood, in spite of the batteries, sent in the ships' boats,
and in the face of the batteries, and of boarding nets, set fire to and
destroyed them. Five other store-ships were captured. This was the last
exploit of the brave and worthy Collingwood. His health gave way so
fast, that, having in vain endeavoured again to induce the Admiralty to
relieve him of his command, expressly assuring them that he was quite
worn out, on the 3rd of March he surrendered his post to Rear-Admiral
Martin, and set sail in the _Ville de Paris_ for England. But it was
too late; he died at sea on the 7th of March, 1810. Very few admirals
have done more signal service, or have displayed a more sterling
English character than Lord Collingwood; and perhaps none were ever
more grudgingly rewarded or so unfeelingly treated by the Admiralty,
who, in fact, killed him by a selfish retention of his services, when
they could be continued only at the cost of his life.

[Illustration: THE "MEDIATOR" BREAKING THE BOOM AT LA ROCHELLE. (_See
p._ 585.)]

Another attempt was to burn a portion of the Brest fleet, which was
found lying off La Rochelle, in the Basque Roads. Lord Gambier, on the
11th of March, wrote to the Admiralty proposing to send fire-ships
amongst them and destroy them. The Admiralty seized on the idea;
but instead of leaving Lord Gambier to work out his own plan, they
appointed Lord Cochrane to that service, under Gambier. This was sure
to create jealousies, not only in the mind of Gambier--to whom the
Admiralty had written on the 19th, approving his design, and ordering
him to execute it according to his own ideas--but also in the minds
of other officers in Gambier's fleet. Lord Cochrane proceeded to the
Basque Roads in a frigate, arriving there on the 3rd of April, and
presenting Gambier with a letter informing him of the change of plan
by the Admiralty. Mr. Congreve, with a supply of his rockets, was to
accompany the fire-ships from England; and on the 11th, these having
arrived, and being joined by several large transports which Lord
Gambier had converted into fire-ships, the attack was made. The French
squadron was lying between the isle of Aix and the town of La Rochelle,
in a narrow passage, commanded by powerful batteries both on the land
and on the island of Aix. Besides this, numbers of gunboats were
placed so as to defend the approach to the vessels; but still more, a
very strong boom was stretched across the passage, formed of enormous
cables, secured by equally enormous anchors, and supported by buoys.
None of the officers, not even Gambier or Cochrane, seem to have been
aware of this boom till some of the foremost fire-ships ran against it;
and several of the ships, whilst thus detained, exploded, being too far
off to do any harm. But Captain Woolridge, in the _Mediator_, burst the
boom asunder, and the fire-ships sailed up towards the French ships in
the dark, and exploded, one after another, with a terrible uproar--one
fire-ship alone containing fifteen hundred barrels of gunpowder,
besides three or four hundred shells and three or four thousand
hand-grenades. But the only mischief done was to cause the French to
cut their cables, and run their ships ashore. There, the next morning,
they were seen; and Lord Cochrane signalled to Lord Gambier to stand in
and destroy them before the rising of the tide should float them, and
enable them to run up the river Charente. No ships, however, arriving,
Cochrane again more urgently signalled that all the fleet was aground,
except two vessels, and might easily be destroyed. Lord Gambier paid no
attention to these signals, and, as the tide rose, the vessels floated
and escaped up the river, except four, which still stuck fast, and were
destroyed by Cochrane. Those which escaped were all greatly damaged.
Had Gambier stood in with his vessels promptly, no doubt the whole
squadron would have been destroyed.

On his return Lord Cochrane received the honour of the red riband
of the Bath; but he could not conceal his dissatisfaction at Lord
Gambier's conduct, and declared that he would oppose any vote of thanks
to him in Parliament. On this, Gambier demanded a court-martial, which
was held, and acquitted him of all blame. Cochrane complained that the
court was strongly biassed in favour of Gambier, and against himself,
and the public was very much of his opinion.




CHAPTER XXI.

REIGN OF GEORGE III. (_continued_).

    Austria gets ready for War--Napoleon's Preparations--Invasion
    of Bavaria by Austria--The Archduke Charles driven from
    Bavaria--Occupation of Vienna--Battle of Aspern--The Spirit
    of Revolt in Germany; Schill and Brunswick--Battle of
    Wagram--Peace of Vienna--Victories of the Tyrolese--Death
    of Hofer--The Betrayal of Poland and Italy--Deposition of
    the Pope--Ministerial Dissensions--Death of Portland, and
    Reconstruction of the Ministry--Inquiry into the Walcheren
    Expedition--Imprisonment of Gale Jones--Burdett committed to the
    Tower--The Piccadilly Riots--Arrest of Burdett--Debates in the
    House of Commons--Agitation for Parliamentary Reform--Liberation
    of Burdett--Remaining Events of the Session--Condition of
    Spain--Soult's victorious Progress--He fails at Cadiz--The
    Guerilla War--Massena sent against Wellington--Capture of
    Ciudad Rodrigo--Capitulation of Almeida--Battle of Busaco--The
    Lines of Torres Vedras--Massena baffled--Condition of the rival
    Armies--Victories in the East and West Indies--The War in Sicily.


The difficulty which Buonaparte had created for himself by the
usurpation of the thrones of Spain and Portugal, had the direct result
which his wisest counsellors foresaw. Austria immediately began to
watch the progress of the Peninsular struggle, and the resistance of
the Spanish people; and the stepping of Great Britain into that field
induced her to believe that the opportunity was come for throwing off
the French yoke, and avenging her past injuries and humiliations.
She had made arrangements by which she could call out an immense
population, and convert them into soldiers. But in determining to
declare open war against Buonaparte, Austria displayed a woful want
of sagacity. To compete with a general like Buonaparte, and a power
like France, it needed not only that her armies should be numerous
but thoroughly disciplined. Nothing could have been lost by a little
delay, but much might be gained. If Buonaparte succeeded in putting
down the insurrection in Spain, he would then fall on Austria with all
his victorious forces; if he did not succeed, but his difficulties
increased, then every day that Austria waited was a day of strength to
her. Russia, which was nominally at peace with Buonaparte, but which
at heart was already determined on breaking the connection, saw, with
just alarm, this precipitate movement of Austria. If she rose at once,
Alexander was bound by treaty to co-operate in putting her down; if
she deferred her enterprise for awhile, there was every probability
that they could issue forth together against the common disturber. If
Austria made a rash blow and were prostrated, Russia would then be left
alone; and Alexander knew well, notwithstanding Napoleon's professions,
that he would lose little time in demanding some concession from him.

But Austria had not the prudence to guide herself by these
considerations. Her ablest statesman, Metternich, and the ablest
statesman of France, Talleyrand, had many private conferences with the
Russian ambassador, Romanzoff, to endeavour to concert some scheme
by which this war could be prevented, but in vain. Austria believed
that the time for regaining her position in Germany, Italy, and the
Tyrol, was come; and Talleyrand knew that Buonaparte would make no
concession to avoid the threatened collision, because it would argue
at once a decline of his power. All that he could do, he did, which
was on his hasty return to Paris from Spain: he opened communications
with Austria, intended to defer the declaration of war for a few months
whilst he made his preparations. He had little fear of crushing Austria
summarily. He believed that Soult, having driven Sir John Moore out
of Spain, would prevent the British from sending another army there;
and he was confident that his generals there could speedily reduce the
Spaniards to submission. On the other hand, Austria, he knew, could
have no assistance from Russia, Prussia, or the other Northern Powers.
All he wanted, therefore, was a little time to collect his armies.
Austria had made gigantic exertions, and had now on foot a greater
host than she had ever brought into the field before. It was said to
comprehend half a million of men, two hundred thousand of whom were
under the command of the Emperor's brother, the Archduke Charles,
and posted in Austria to defend the main body of the empire. Another
large army was, under the command of the Archduke John, in Carinthia
and Carniola, ready to descend on the north of Italy; and a third was
posted in Galicia, under the Archduke Ferdinand, to defend Poland. John
was to co-operate with Charles through the defiles of the Tyrol, which,
having been given over, by the pressure of Buonaparte at the Treaty
of Pressburg, to Bavaria, was ready to rise and renew its ancient and
devoted union with Austria.

Buonaparte had not a sufficient French force in Germany under Davoust
and Oudinot, but he called on the Confederacy of the Rhine to furnish
their stipulated quotas to fight for the subjugation of their common
fatherland. Bavaria, Würtemberg, Saxony, and the smaller States were
summoned to this unholy work. His numbers, after all, were far inferior
to those of the enemy, and, besides the renegade Germans, consisted of
a medley of other tributary nations--Italians, Poles, Dutch, Belgians,
and others. It is amazing how, in all his later wars, he used the
nations he had conquered to put down the rest. Even in his fatal
campaign in Russia--yet to come--a vast part of his army consisted of
the troops of these subjugated nations.

On the 9th of April, 1809, the Archduke Charles crossed the Inn, and
invaded Bavaria, the ally of France. He issued a manifesto declaring
that the cause of Austria was that of the general independence of
Germany, and called on those States which had been compelled to bear
the yoke of France to throw it off, and stand boldly for the common
liberty. The serious discontent of the people of Germany encouraged
him to hope that his call would be responded to; but Germany was not
yet ripe for an effective reaction. Simultaneously, the Archduke
John had descended from the Alps into Italy, and driven the troops
of the viceroy, Eugene Beauharnais, before him. He had advanced as
far as the Tagliamento, and laid siege to the fortresses of Orobo
and Palma Nuova. The Archduke Ferdinand had also marched into Poland,
defeated Poniatowski, Buonaparte's general, and taken possession of
Warsaw. All so far looked cheering; for the great actor was not yet on
the scene. But he quitted Paris on the 11th of April, two days only
after the Archduke Charles entered Bavaria, and in a few days was
with his army at Donauwörth. He expressed the utmost contempt for the
Austrian troops, saying, in a letter to Massena, that six thousand
French ought to beat twelve thousand or fifteen thousand of "those
_canaille_." He greatly disapproved of the manner in which Berthier had
disposed of his forces, for he had extended them in a long line from
Augsburg to Ratisbon, with a very weak centre. He ordered Davoust and
Massena, who commanded the opposite wings, to draw nearer together.
That being done, on the 20th of April he made a sudden attack on the
Austrians at Abensberg, and defeated them. The next day he renewed
the attack at Landshut, and took from them thirty pieces of cannon,
nine thousand prisoners, and a great quantity of ammunition and
baggage. The following day he advanced against the main position of the
Archduke Charles, at Eckmühl, where, by the most skilful manœuvres,
he turned all the enemy's positions, and defeated one division after
another with all the art and regularity of a game of chess. Charles
was thoroughly defeated, and had twenty thousand men taken prisoners,
with a loss of fifteen stand of colours, and the greater part of his
artillery. The next day the Austrians made a stand to defend the town
of Ratisbon. They fought bravely; but, a breach being made in the wall,
Marshal Lannes seized a scaling-ladder, and, whilst hundreds of French
were falling under the fire of the Austrians, he planted it against
the breach, saying, "I will show you that your general is still a
grenadier!" The wall was scaled, and a desperate battle ensued in the
streets of the town. At one moment, a number of tumbrils loaded with
powder were in danger of exploding, and destroying the combatants on
both sides; but the Austrians warned the French of the danger, and
they mutually combined to remove them. That over, they recommenced the
struggle, and the Austrians were driven out of the town, leaving again
cannon, much ammunition, and many prisoners in the hands of the French.
Whilst watching the _mêlée_, Buonaparte was struck on the toe by a
spent musket-ball; but he had the wound dressed, and again remounted
his horse, and watched with unfailing vigilance the progress of the
battle.

[Illustration: MARSHAL LANNES AT RATISBON. (_See p._ 587.)]

In five days he had snatched the most damaging victories. The Archduke
Charles retreated in haste towards Bohemia, to secure himself in the
defiles of its mountains; and Buonaparte employed the 23rd and 24th of
April in reviewing his troops and distributing rewards. General Hiller,
who, with the Archduke Louis, had been defeated at Landshut, had united
himself to a considerable body of reserve, and placed himself on the
way, as determined to defend the capital. He retreated upon Ebersberg,
where the sole bridge over the Traun gave access to the place, the
banks of the river being steep and rocky. He had thirty thousand men
to defend this bridge, and trusted to detain the French there till the
Archduke Charles should come up again with reinforcements, when they
might jointly engage them. But Massena made a desperate onset on the
bridge, and, after a very bloody encounter, carried it. Hiller then
retreated to the Danube, which he crossed by the bridge of Mautern,
and, destroying it after him, continued his march to join the Archduke
Charles. This left the road open to Vienna, and Buonaparte steadily
advanced upon it. The Archduke Charles, becoming aware of this
circumstance, returned upon his track, hoping to reach Vienna before
him, in which case he might have made a long defence. But Buonaparte
was too nimble for him: he appeared before the walls of the city,
and summoned it to surrender. The Archduke Maximilian kept the place
with a garrison of fifteen thousand men, and he held out for three
or four days. Buonaparte then commenced flinging bombs into the most
thickly populated parts of the city, and warned the inhabitants of the
horrors they must suffer from a siege. All the royal family had gone
except Maximilian and the young archduchess, Maria Louisa, who was
ill. This was notified to Buonaparte, and he ordered the palace to be
exempted from the attack. This was the young lady destined very soon to
supersede the Empress Josephine in the imperial honours of France. The
city capitulated on the 12th of May, the French took possession of it,
and Napoleon resumed his residence at the palace of Schönbrunn, on the
outskirts.

Buonaparte's army now occupied the city and the right bank of the
Danube. The archduke arrived, and posted himself on the left bank. The
river was swollen with the spring rains and the melting of the snow in
the mountains. All the bridges had been broken down by which Buonaparte
might cross to attack the Austrians before they were joined by their
other armies. Buonaparte endeavoured to throw one over at Nussdorf,
about a league above Vienna, but the Austrians drove away his men. He
therefore made a fresh attempt at Ebersdorf, opposite to which the
Danube was divided into five channels, flowing amongst islands, the
largest of which was one called Lobau. Here he succeeded, the Archduke
Charles seeming unaware of what he was doing, or taking no care to
prevent it. On the 20th of May the French began to cross, and deployed
on a plain between the villages of Aspern and Esslingen. Thirty
thousand infantry had crossed before the next morning, and six thousand
horse, and they were attacked by the Austrians, near the village
of Aspern, about four in the afternoon. The battle was desperately
contested on both sides. The villages of Aspern and Esslingen were
taken and retaken several times. The struggle went on with great fury,
amid farm-yards, gardens, and enclosures, and waggons, carts, harrows,
and ploughs were collected and used as barricades. Night closed upon
the scene, leaving the combatants on both sides in possession of some
part or other of these villages. On the following morning, the 22nd,
the fight was renewed, and, after a terrible carnage, the French were
driven back on the river. At this moment news came that the bridge
connecting the right bank with the islands was broken down, and the
communication of the French army was in danger of being altogether cut
off. Buonaparte, to prevent this, retreated into the island of Lobau
with the whole of the combating force, and broke down the bridge which
connected the islands with the left bank behind them. The Austrians
followed keenly upon them in their retreat, and inflicted a dreadful
slaughter upon them. Marshal Lannes had both his legs shattered by
a cannon-ball, and was carried into the island in the midst of the
_mêlée_; General St. Hilaire also was killed. The loss in killed and
wounded on both sides amounted to upwards of forty thousand. For two
days Napoleon remained on the island, with his defeated troops, without
provisions, and expecting hourly to be cut to pieces. General Hiller
earnestly pressed the Archduke Charles to allow him to pass the
Danube, by open force, opposite to the isle of Enzersdorf, where it
might be done under cover of cannon, pledging himself to compel the
surrender of Buonaparte and his army. But the archduke appeared under a
spell from the moment that the fighting was over. Having his enemy thus
cooped up, it was in his power to cut off all his supplies. By crossing
the river higher or lower, he could have kept possession of both banks,
and at once have cut off Buonaparte's magazines at Ebersdorf, under
Davoust, from which he was separated by the inundation. By any other
general, the other armies under his brother would have been ordered up
by express; every soldier and every cannon that Austria could muster
within any tolerable distance would have been summoned to surround and
secure the enemy, taken at such disadvantage. In no other country but
Austria could Napoleon have ever left that island but as a prisoner
with a surrendered army.

And all this time the spirit of revolt against Napoleon's domination
was growing rapidly in Germany; and had the Austrians only made the
slightest use of their present opportunity, the whole of the country
would have been in arms and the French completely driven out. Though
Prussia was still too much depressed to dare to rise and join Austria,
there was a fast-growing spirit of indignation amongst its population,
which the Tugend Bund had tended greatly to increase. The brave Major
Schill, without waiting for any sanction from the King of Prussia,
led forth his band of hussars, amounting to about five thousand, and
prepared to join with Colonel Dörnberg, an officer of Jerome, the King
of Westphalia's guard, to raise an insurrection in that State, and
drive out Jerome and the French. The design was betrayed to Jerome by
a traitorous friend of Dörnberg, and he was compelled to fly. Letters
found amongst Dörnberg's papers showed the participation of Schill in
the scheme. Jerome, of course, complained to the King of Prussia, and
the unhappy monarch was obliged to disavow and denounce the conduct of
Schill. The brave partisan made his way to Wittenberg and Halberstadt,
and was pursued by the forces of Westphalia and Holland northwards to
Weimar, and finally to Stralsund, which he prepared to defend. The
place was stormed by the Dutch and Westphalians, and Schill was killed
fighting in the streets of Stralsund, after having split the head of
the Dutch general, Carteret, with his sword. Thus fell the gallant
Schill, true to his motto--"Better a terrible end than endless terror."

Dörnberg escaped to Great Britain. Katt, another patriot, assembled a
number of veterans at Stendal, and advanced as far as Magdeburg, but
was compelled to fly to the Brunswickers in Bohemia. Had the Archduke
Charles marched through Franconia at the opening of the campaign, as
he proposed, all these isolated bodies might have been encouraged,
and knit into a formidable army. But the most powerful of all these
independent leaders, the Duke of Brunswick, was too late to join
Schill, Katt, and Dörnberg. The son of the Duke of Brunswick who had
been so barbarously treated by Buonaparte had vowed an eternal revenge.
But the French were in possession of his sole patrimony, Oels, and
he went to Bohemia, where he raised a band of two thousand hussars,
which he equipped and maintained by the aid of England, the home of
his sister Caroline, the Princess of Wales. He clothed his hussars in
black, in memory of his father's death, with the lace disposed like the
ribs of a skeleton, and their caps and helmets bearing a death's-head
in front--whence they were called the Black Brunswickers. He advanced
at their head through Saxony, Franconia, Hesse, and Hanover, calling
on the populations to rise and assert their liberties. He defeated
Junot at Berneck, and the Saxons at Zittau, but it was the middle of
May before he entered Germany, and by that time the enemy had widely
separated Schill and the other insurgents. He managed, however, to
surprise Leipsic, and thus furnish himself with ammunition and stores.
But the Dutch, Saxons, and Westphalians were all bearing down on him.
He defeated them at Halberstadt and in Brunswick, but was finally
overpowered by numbers of these Dutch and Germans disgracefully
fighting against their own country, and he retreated to Elsfleth, and
thence sailed for England.

All this time, too, the brave Tyrolese were in open revolt, so that the
success of Austria would have instantly produced a universal rising
of the country. But for six weeks the Austrians continued to allow
Napoleon to keep open his communication with Vienna, whence he procured
every material for building, not one bridge, but three; timber,
cordage, iron, and forty engines to drive the piles, were procured
from its ample magazines. Besides building the bridges, Buonaparte had
quickly fortified the island, and placed batteries so as to prevent
any successful attack upon him, whilst he was now furnished with the
means of issuing from the island almost at pleasure. Since their being
cooped up on Lobau, the French had received numerous reinforcements;
and though the Archduke John was marching to join the Archduke Charles,
Eugene Beauharnais was close at his heels, continually harassing him
and compelling him to fight. On the frontiers of Hungary, the town of
Raab ought to have enabled John to resist and retard Beauharnais, and
have allowed the Archduke Regnier, who was organising another army
in Hungary, to come up; but Raab only stood out eight days, and John
was obliged to cross the Danube at Pressburg, to endeavour to advance
and make a junction with the Archduke Charles. But Eugene Beauharnais
managed to join Buonaparte still earlier, and the Emperor did not then
allow John to unite with Charles; for, on the night of the 5th of July,
he began to fire on the Austrians, on the left bank of the Danube,
from gunboats; and whilst they were replying to this, he quietly put
his forces across the river. At daylight the next morning the Archduke
Charles was astonished to find the French army on the open land; they
had turned his whole position, had taken the villages of Esslingen
and Enzersdorf, and were already assailing him in flank and rear.
The archduke retired upon Wagram, which was lost and taken several
times during the day. Buonaparte attempted to break the centre of the
Austrian line by a concentrated fire of grape-shot, but the Austrians
replied vigorously with their artillery. The French were held in
check, if not repulsed. The Saxons and other German troops displayed a
disposition to break, and go over to the Austrians. Buonaparte spoke
sharply to Bernadotte of the conduct of the Saxons, and the marshal
replied that they had no longer such soldiers as they brought from the
camp of Boulogne. When night closed the French were in confusion, and,
in reality, worsted. The next morning, the 6th of July, the archduke
renewed the attack on all the French lines, but is said to have left
his centre too weak. Buonaparte again endeavoured to break it, but
failed. Bernadotte, Massena, and Davoust were all in turn driven from
their positions. Buonaparte, in a state of desperation, cried, "The
Austrian centre must be battered with artillery like a fortress." He
ordered Davoust to make a desperate charge on the left wing, and called
on Drouet, the general of his artillery, to bring up all the artillery
of the Guard, and support Davoust. Davoust directed the whole of his
force on the left wing, which was broken, and then Buonaparte, forming
a dense and deep column of all his best troops, old and new Guards, and
his celebrated _Grenadiers à cheval_, under Macdonald and Beauharnais,
drove against the centre with a fury that shattered it, and the battle
was decided. But at what a price! The Austrians had twenty-six or
twenty-seven thousand killed and wounded, and the French upwards of
thirty thousand. Buonaparte lost three generals, and had twenty-one
wounded. The Austrians had thirteen generals killed or wounded; but
they had taken many more prisoners than they had lost. Whilst the
battle was raging, the Archduke John was approaching from Pressburg;
but Austrian slowness, or, as it is said, conflicting orders from his
brother and the Aulic Council, did not permit him to come up in time,
or he would assuredly have turned the day.

Still there was no need to despair. The archduke had yet a great
force; there were the divisions of the Archdukes John, Ferdinand,
and Regnier, and the Tyrolese were all in active operation in their
mountains. But the Emperor, on learning the fate of the battle, lost
heart, made offers of peace, which were accepted, and an armistice was
signed by Francis at Znaim, in Moravia. The armistice took place on
the 11th of July, but the treaty of peace was not signed till the 14th
of October, at the palace of Schönbrunn. The long delay in completing
this treaty was occasioned by the exactions which Buonaparte made on
Austria of cessions of territory, and the means he took to terrify
Francis into submission to his terms. He even addressed a proclamation
to the Hungarians, exhorting them to separate from Austria and form
an independent kingdom, telling them that they formed the finest part
of the Austrian empire, and yet had received nothing from Austria but
oppression and misfortunes. By such means, and by constantly exerting
himself to sow the germs of discontent through all the Austrian
provinces, he at last succeeded in concluding peace on condition of
the cession of various territories to his partisans of the Confederacy
of the Rhine, and of Trieste, the only Austrian port, to France, thus
shutting up Austria, as he hoped, from communication with England. In
all, Austria sacrificed forty-five thousand square miles and nearly
four millions of subjects to this shameful peace. Neither were his
allies, the King of Saxony and the Emperor of Russia, forgotten; each
obtained a slice of Austria.

The news of the Treaty of Schönbrunn was a death-blow to the hopes and
exertions of the Tyrolese. At this moment they had driven the French
out of their mountains, and the beautiful Tyrol was free from end to
end. Francis II. had been weak enough to give this brave country over
again to Bavaria, at the command of Napoleon, and sent the patriotic
Tyrolese word to lay down their arms. To understand the chagrin of the
people we must recollect the strong attachment of the Tyrolese to the
house of Austria and their brilliant actions during this war. It was
decided to ignore the message and raise the Tyrol. On the 9th of April
the concerted signal was given by planks, bearing little red flags,
floating down the Inn, and by sawdust thrown on the lesser streams. On
the 10th the whole country was in arms. The Bavarians, under Colonel
Wrede, proceeded to blow up the bridges in the Pusterthal, to prevent
the approach of the Austrians; but his sappers, sent for the purpose,
found themselves picked off by invisible foes, and took to flight.
Under Andrew Hofer, an innkeeper of the valley of Passeyr, the Tyrolese
defeated the Bavarians in engagement after engagement. After the battle
of Aspern, Francis II. sent word that his faithful Tyrolese should be
united to Austria for ever, and that he would never conclude a peace
in which they were not indissolubly united to his monarchy. But Wagram
followed, Francis forgot his promise, and the Tyrol, as we have seen,
was again handed over to the French, to clear it for the Bavarians.
Lefebvre marched into it with forty thousand men, and an army of
Saxons, who had to bear the brunt of the fighting. Hofer and his
comrades, Spechbacher, Joachim Haspinger, and Schenk, the host of the
"Krug" or "Jug," again roused the country, and destroyed or drove back
the Saxons; and when Lefebvre himself appeared near Botzen with all his
concentrated forces, they compelled him also to retire from the Tyrol
with terrible loss. The French and Saxons were pursued to Salzburg,
many prisoners being taken by the way. Hofer was then appointed
governor of the Tyrol. He received his credentials at Innsbruck from an
emissary of the Archduke, his friends Spechbacher, Mayer, and Haspinger
being present on the occasion, and also the priest Douay by whom the
patriot was subsequently betrayed.

[Illustration: THE DUKE OF BRUNSWICK AND HIS HUSSARS (THE BLACK
BRUNSWICKERS). (_See p._ 590.)]

But the Peace of Vienna was now concluded, and, on the 30th of October,
Baron Lichtenthurm appeared in the camp of the Tyrolese, and delivered
a letter to the leaders from the Archduke John, requesting them
peaceably to disperse, and surrender the country to the Bavarians. This
was a terrible blow to these brave men. They appeared prostrated by
the news, and Hofer announced to Spechbacher, who was still fighting
with the Bavarians, that peace was made with France, and that the Tyrol
was forgotten! Hofer returned to his native vale of Passeyr, and still
held out against the French, and the Italian mercenaries under Rusca,
whom he defeated with great slaughter. But traitors were amongst them,
who guided the French to their rear. Hofer escaped into the higher
Alps, but thirty of the other leaders were taken and shot without
mercy. Another traitor guided the French to Hofer's retreat in the high
wintry Alps. He had been earnestly implored to quit the country, but
he refused. As the French surrounded his hut, on the 17th of February,
1810, he came out calmly and submitted. He was carried to the fortress
of Mantua, and Napoleon sent an order that he should be shot within
four-and-twenty hours. He would not suffer himself to be blindfolded,
nor would he kneel, but exclaimed--"I stand before my Creator, and,
standing, I will restore to Him the spirit He gave!" Thus died, on the
20th of February, 1810, the brave Hofer--another murdered man, another
victim of the sanguinary vengeance of Buonaparte against whatever was
patriotic and independent.

[Illustration: ANDREW HOFER APPOINTED GOVERNOR OF THE TYROL. (_See p._
591.)

(_From the Picture by Franz Defregger._)]

The arbitrary crushing of the freedom of the Tyrol, and the handing
of it over to the Bavarians as a gift, was not the only oppression of
this period of Napoleon's career, which the Germans call his supremacy.
He seemed to have put down all opposition on the Continent, except in
Spain, and he dictated to all nations according to the arrogance of his
will. His general in Poland, Poniatowski, himself a Pole, was employed
to crush his countrymen. Poniatowski fell on the Austrians with forty
thousand men, and made himself master of Warsaw, whilst the Archduke
Ferdinand was besieging Thorn. He then advanced against the archduke,
beat him in two battles fought in April and May, and eventually drove
the Austrians out of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw. Buonaparte then divided
Galicia, giving one portion to the Emperor of Russia, and adding the
other to the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, which was restored to the King of
Saxony. Thus the Poles saw an end of all the high hopes with which
Buonaparte had artfully succeeded in inspiring them, in order to induce
them to fight his battles for the subjugation of other peoples.

The Archduke John, whilst advancing victoriously into Italy, driving
the viceroy, Eugene Beauharnais, before him, when he had reached
almost to Venice was recalled by the news of the unfortunate battle
of Eckmühl, and the orders of the Aulic Council. The Italians had
received him with unconcealed joy; for, harsh as the rule of Austria
in Italy had been, it was found to be easy in comparison with the
yoke of Buonaparte. In common with other peoples, the Italians found
that Buonaparte's domination, introduced with lofty pretences of
restoring liberty and crushing all old tyrannies, was infinitely more
intolerable than the worst of these old tyrannies. It was one enormous
drain of military demand. The lifeblood of the nation was drawn as
by some infernal and insatiable vampire, to be poured out in all the
other lands of Europe for their oppression and curse. Trade vanished,
agriculture declined under the baleful incubus; public robbery was
added to private wrong; the works of art--the national pride--were
stripped from their ancient places, without any regard to public or
individual right, and there remained only an incessant pressure of
taxation, enforced with insult, and often with violence.

The Austrians being again expelled from Italy, Buonaparte, in his
all-absorbing cupidity, determined to turn adrift the Pope, and add
his little vineyard to his now cumbrously overgrown Ahab's domains.
He had begun this spoliation in 1808, seizing on the greater part of
the Pontiff's territories; sending away his cardinals, and reducing
him to little better than a solitary prisoner in his own palace. This
was an ungrateful return to the poor old Pope for making the long
journey into France to crown him, and thus to give a sacred sanction
to his usurpation of the imperial crown--a sanction of immense effect
throughout the Catholic world. Pius VII. had given Buonaparte great
offence by refusing to declare war on Great Britain, and thus keeping
up a breach in his system of exclusion of British commerce. He had,
therefore, already taken military possession of Civita Vecchia and
Ancona, but he now resolved to take the whole temporal dominion
from the Pope, and abrogate, by virtue of his assumed heirship of
Charlemagne's realm, the gift of Charlemagne to the Church. On the
2nd of February, 1809, General Miollis, by order of Buonaparte, took
possession of Rome, disarmed and disbanded the Pope's guard, and
marched his other soldiers to the north, telling them they should no
longer remain under the effeminate rule of a priest. Miollis then gave
the Pontiff the alternative to join the French league, offensive and
defensive, or to be deposed. The Pope firmly refused to concede his
rights to anything but absolute force. On the 17th of May, therefore,
Napoleon's decree for the deposition of the Pope from his temporal
power was proclaimed. It assumed the heirship of Charlemagne to be in
Buonaparte; declared the union of the spiritual and temporal powers to
be the source of all scandals and discords in the Catholic Church; that
they were, therefore, at an end--the Roman State for ever united to the
French Empire. On the 10th of June Pius issued a bull excommunicating
Buonaparte and all who aided him in his sacrilegious usurpation of the
patrimony of St. Peter; and this was followed, on the 6th of July, by
General Radet forcing the gates of the Vatican, taking possession of
it with his troops, entering the presence of the Pope, who was amid
his priests, and clad in his pontificals, and demanding that he should
instantly sign a renunciation of all the temporal estates attached to
the see of Rome. Pius declared that he neither could nor would perform
any such sacrilegious act. He was then informed that he must quit
Rome. Pius was detained at Savona three years, and was then removed to
Fontainebleau.

In England the Ministry was thrown into the utmost chaos and discord
by the disastrous progress of the war on the Continent, and especially
by the miserable result of the Walcheren expedition. One member of the
Cabinet endeavoured to throw the blame on another, and the feud between
Canning, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, and Lord Castlereagh, the
Minister at War, grew deadly. Each accused the other of interfering
and thwarting action, and so producing the lamentable consequences
that ensued. A hot correspondence followed, in which Castlereagh
charged Canning with privately insinuating to the other Ministers
that Castlereagh should be dismissed, and Canning denied it. Between
them, Lord Camden came into difficulty; for, though Canning had told
Lord Camden, as Lord Castlereagh's relative, that one or other of
them must resign, he declared that he did not mean this communication
as secret, but as one that he expected Lord Camden would communicate
to Lord Castlereagh. Castlereagh resigned, and then challenged
Canning. Canning also resigned; and the duel was fought on the 22nd
of September, on Putney Heath, and Canning was wounded. The Duke of
Portland, who was near his end--hastened probably by these agitations
and embarrassments--also resigned, and died a few days afterwards.

The Tory Ministry was now in a most shattered condition, and it was
believed that it could not repair itself. On the 23rd of September
official letters were addressed to Lords Grey and Grenville to
endeavour to form a coalition with the Tories, but they declined. The
Tory Ministry was therefore readjusted by the introduction of Lord
Wellesley (who had been replaced in his embassy in Spain by his brother
Henry, afterwards Lord Cowley), who took the post of Canning in the
Foreign Office, Perceval taking the Premiership, which Portland had
only nominally held, as well as the Chancellorship of the Exchequer,
which he held before. Lord Palmerston also made his first appearance
in this Cabinet as Under-Secretary of State for the War Department, in
place of Sir James Pulteney. Lord Liverpool took Castlereagh's place
as Secretary at War; and the Hon. R. Ryder succeeded Lord Liverpool as
Secretary of State for the Home Department.

The year 1810 opened with violent debates on the conduct of the late
Ministry, and the miserable management of the Walcheren Expedition. The
King's Speech, read by commission, passed over the disasters in Belgium
entirely, and spoke only of Wellesley's glorious victory at Talavera.
But the Opposition did not pass over Walcheren; in both Houses the
whole business was strongly condemned by amendments which, however,
the Ministry managed to get negatived by considerable majorities. Both
Castlereagh and Canning defended their concern in the expedition. They
declared that the orders were to push forward and secure Antwerp,
and destroy the docks and shipping there, not to coop up the troops
in an unhealthy island swamp; and that they were not responsible for
the mismanagement of the affair. This threw the onus on Lord Chatham,
the commander, but did not exonerate Ministers for choosing such a
commander; and though they were able to defeat the amendments on the
Address, they were not able to prevent the appointment of a secret
committee to inquire into the conduct and policy of the expedition. The
committee was secret, because Buonaparte carefully read the English
newspapers, and Parliament was desirous of keeping from his knowledge
the wretched blunders of our commanders. This object, however, was not
achieved, for the evidence given before the committee oozed out and
appeared in our newspapers, and was duly set forth in the _Moniteur_
for the edification of France and the Continent. Notwithstanding the
frightful details laid before the committee, and the gross proof of
dilatoriness and neglect, Ministers succeeded in negativing every
condemnatory motion; and though General Craufurd actually carried
resolutions affirming the propriety of taking and keeping the island
of Walcheren, awfully fatal as it was, still Lord Chatham, though
exculpated by the Court and Parliament, was by no means acquitted
by the country, and he found it necessary to surrender his post of
Master-General of the Ordnance.

The motion of Mr. Yorke, afterwards First Lord of the Admiralty,
for the exclusion of strangers during the debate on the Walcheren
Expedition, gave great offence to the Reformers, who were now beginning
to co-operate in societies, and to keep a keen watch on the Ministerial
tendency to curb the liberty of the Press and carry things with a high
hand. At a debating society, called the British Forum, the president,
Mr. Gale Jones, delivered a strong oration against it, and proposed for
the discussion of the following evening the question, "Which was the
greater outrage upon public feeling: Mr. Yorke's enforcement of the
standing order, or Mr. Windham's attack on the liberty of the press on
the same occasion?" This proposal being agreed to, the intended debate
was made known by placards posted in the streets. Yorke complained of
this as a breach of the privileges of the House of Commons, and the
printer was immediately summoned before the House, when he gave the
name of the author, Mr. Gale Jones, who was thereupon, on the morrow,
the 21st of February, brought before the House, and committed to
Newgate.

This action was the height of imprudence. The true wisdom would have
been to have taken no notice of such a discussion by an obscure
association. On the 13th of March Sir Francis Burdett moved that Mr.
John Gale Jones should be discharged, questioning the legality of
his commitment, and declaring that, if the proceedings of Parliament
were not to be criticised like everything else, there was an end of
liberty of speech and of the press. This motion was rejected by one
hundred and fifty-three against fourteen. The speech of Sir Francis was
printed by Cobbett in his _Weekly Register_, a publication possessing
high influence with the people. It was also accompanied by a letter of
Sir Francis, commenting in strong language upon this arbitrary act,
and questioning the right of such a House to commit for breach of
privilege, seeing that it consisted of "a part of our fellow-subjects,
collected together by means which it is not necessary to describe."

This definition of the House of Commons at this time, and for long
afterwards, was too happy a definition to escape the wrath of that
body. Accordingly, on the 27th of March, Mr. Lethbridge, member for
Somersetshire, moved that Sir Francis Burdett should be committed
to the Tower for his attack on the House. After some discussion,
the question was adjourned to the 5th of April, when, by a majority
of thirty-eight, Sir Francis was ordered to be committed as guilty
of a libel against the House. But Sir Francis, justly regarding the
House as altogether illegally constituted, and as a usurpation by the
aristocracy of the functions of the people, determined not to submit
to its order. The next day he addressed a letter to the Speaker of the
House, declaring his contempt for it as then constituted; that he held
its order to be, on that ground, illegal; and that he would resist
it to the utmost. He ordered the doors and windows of his house in
Piccadilly to be closed, and prepared to yield only to force.

The excitement among the public, as this resolution became known, was
intense, and large crowds assembled in front of the baronet's house,
applauding, and shouting "Burdett for ever!" In their enthusiasm
they compelled all passengers to take off their hats, and shout too.
But they did not stop here. On such occasions a rabble of the lowest
kind unites itself to the real Reformers--and the mob began to insult
persons of opposite principles and to break the windows of their
houses. The Earl of Westmoreland, Lord Privy Seal, was recognised,
and, as well as others of the same political faith, pelted with
mud. The windows of Mr. Yorke, as the originator of the acts of the
Commons, were quickly broken, and, in rapid succession, those of Lord
Chatham, amid loud shouts of "Walcheren!" of Sir Robert Peel, the Duke
of Montrose, Lord Castlereagh, Lord Westmoreland, Lord Wellesley,
Mr. Wellesley Pole, Sir John Anstruther, and others. The Horse
Guards were called out, and dispersed the rioters. The next day the
serjeant-at-arms made his way into Sir Francis Burdett's house, and
presented the Speaker's warrant for his arrest; but Sir Francis put
the warrant in his pocket without looking at it, and a Mr. O'Connor,
who was present, led the serjeant-at-arms down stairs, and closed the
door on him. A troop of Life Guards and a company of Foot Guards were
then ordered to post themselves in front of Sir Francis's house, and
at night it was found necessary to read the Riot Act, and then the
Guards were ordered to clear the street, which they did. Whilst this
was doing, Sir Francis watched the proceeding from the windows, and was
repeatedly cheered by the mob. Whilst thus besieged, he was visited
by Lord Cochrane, the Earl of Thanet, Whitbread, Coke of Norfolk,
Lord Folkestone, Colonel Wardle, Major Cartwright, and other Radical
Reformers. Some of these gentlemen thought enough had been done to
establish a case for a trial of the right of the House of Commons, and
advised Sir Francis to yield to the Speaker's warrant. But Sir Francis
addressed a letter to the sheriffs of London, informing them that an
attack was made upon his liberty, by an instrument which he held to be
decidedly illegal, and calling upon them to protect both him and the
other inhabitants of the bailiwick from such violence. In this dilemma,
the Premier, Mr. Perceval, advised that the serjeant-at-arms should
lay the case before the Attorney-General, Sir Vicary Gibbs, which he
did; but the reply of Sir Vicary only created more embarrassment, for
he was doubtful whether, should any person be killed in enforcing the
Speaker's warrant, it would not be held to be murder, and whether if
the serjeant-at-arms were killed, a charge of murder would not issue
against the perpetrator. The sheriffs, who were themselves strong
Reformers, laid the letter of Sir Francis before the Speaker and before
Mr. Ryder, the new Home Secretary, who counselled them to give their
aid in enforcing the warrant. But these gentlemen proceeded to the
house of Sir Francis Burdett, and passed the night with him for his
protection.

During that evening and night there were serious contentions between
the mob and the soldiers still posted in front of Sir Francis's house,
and one man was shot by the military. Scarcely had the sheriffs quitted
the house of the besieged baronet on the Sunday morning, supposing no
attempt at capture would take place that day, when the serjeant-at-arms
presented himself with a party of police, and demanded entrance, but
in vain. All that day, and late into the night, the mob continued to
insult the soldiers who kept guard on the baronet's house, and an
order being given at night to clear the streets around, the mob broke
the lamps, and threw all into darkness. They then carried away the
scaffolding from a house under repair, and made a barricade across
Piccadilly, which was, however, removed by the soldiers; and the rain
falling in torrents, the mob dispersed.

[Illustration: GEORGE CANNING.]

On the following morning, being Monday, the Ministers came to the
resolution of entering the baronet's house by force; and, as he sat at
breakfast with a considerable company of friends, an attempt was made
by a man to enter by the window, which he broke in trying to raise the
sash. This man was secured; but a more successful party of officers
below dashed in a window on the ground floor, and soon appeared in
the drawing-room. Sir Francis was seized and, still struggling and
protesting, was conveyed to a carriage. Then, escorted by the military,
he was taken to the Tower, amid tremendous crowds, crying "Burdett for
ever!" A strong force had occupied the passage through the City, and
had drawn up before the Tower before the arrival of the party with the
prisoner, whom they had taken round by Pentonville and Islington. The
scene during the conveyance of Sir Francis into the old fortress was
indescribable for tumult and yelling. As the soldiers were returning
they were hooted and pelted with stones, and at last they lost patience
and fired, killing two persons and wounding several others.

The whole of London was thrown into great agitation, and Sir John
Anstruther that evening, in the House of Commons, was very severe on
the Ministers for not taking more decided measures for the protection
of the metropolis. The next day the letter of Sir Francis was taken
into consideration. Many severe strictures were made on his conduct,
and even Whitbread contended that the Speaker's warrant was perfectly
legal, and that Sir Francis had done a great injury to the cause of
Reform by stirring up a riot in the prosecution of a constitutional
question. There was a call for the expulsion of the Radical baronet
from the House; but as this would have produced a new election in
Westminster, by which he would certainly have been returned afresh,
that was prudently abandoned.

On the 13th of April the Speaker read to the House a notice which he
had received, that a bill would be filed against him, in the Court of
King's Bench, to try the validity of his warrant in this case, and the
House ordered the letter and the notice to be entered on the Journals.
On the 16th Sir Samuel Romilly moved for the discharge of Gale Jones;
but Windham observed that a meeting of the electors of Westminster was
announced for the morrow, to take into consideration the case of their
representative, and that to liberate Jones at that moment would be sure
to be attributed to fear on the part of the Commons. The motion was,
therefore, rejected.

The meeting of the Westminster electors the next day, held in Palace
Yard, under the very walls of Parliament, was attended by vast crowds,
and the tone of the speakers was most indignant. They justified the
letter of their representative to themselves; denounced the conduct of
the Commons as oppressive, arbitrary, and illegal, tending to destroy
the popular liberties; and they approved highly of the baronet's
spirited resistance to the forcing of his house. They called for his
liberation, and for that of the unjustly incarcerated Mr. Gale Jones.
They drew up a letter to Sir Francis to this effect, to be presented
to him in the Tower by the high bailiff of Westminster; and they
prepared a petition and remonstrance to the House of Commons in equally
spirited terms, which was presented the same evening by Lord Cochrane.
The Honourable J. W. Ward, afterwards Lord Dudley and Ward, opposed
the reception of the petition as highly indecorous, and as violating
the dignity of the House; but Whitbread defended it, and even Canning
and Perceval excused, in some degree, the tone of the petition in the
circumstances. It was ordered, therefore, to be laid on the table.

In the meantime, coroners' inquests had been held on the two men
who were shot by the military. In the one case the jury brought in
a verdict of "justifiable homicide;" but, in the other, of "wilful
murder" against the soldiers. On their part, the Government offered
a reward of five hundred pounds for the discovery of any one who
had been guilty of firing at the soldiers, and an additional one of
five hundred pounds for the discovery of the person who had fired at
and wounded Ensign Cowell, whilst on duty at the Tower, the night
after the committal of Sir Francis. The Reform party in the Commons
demanded whether the Government did not intend to offer a reward for
the discovery of the soldiers who had fired at and wounded several of
the people, and killed two of them. Whitbread moved that an inquiry
should be instituted into the justice of the verdict of "wilful
murder" against the soldiers, and in this he was seconded by William
Smith of Norwich; but Captain Agar, who had been on duty, declared
that the people had fired the first shot, and the Premier got rid of
the question by asserting that an inquiry was already going on into
the circumstances of the riot, and that it was not for Parliament to
anticipate it.

During the Easter recess, popular meetings were held condemning the
conduct of Ministers and calling for Parliamentary Reform. On the
meeting of the House again, a very strong petition, bearing rather
the character of a remonstrance, was presented from the electors of
Middlesex by Mr. George Byng, on the 2nd of May. The Ministerial
party declared that the petition was an insult to the House; but the
Reformers maintained that not only the language of the petition, but
the whole of the unhappy events which had taken place, were the direct
consequences of the corrupt character of the representation, and of the
House screening from due punishment such culprits as the Duke of York,
Lord Castlereagh, etc. The petition was rejected; but the very next day
a petition of equal vigour and plainness was voted by the Livery of
London, and was presented on the 8th, and rejected too. The House had
grown so old in corruption, that it felt itself strong enough to reject
the petitions of the people. A memorial was presented also on the same
subject from Major Cartwright, one of the most indefatigable apostles
of Reform, by Whitbread, and this was rejected too, for the major
pronounced the committal of Sir Francis a flagrantly illegal act.

As Sir Francis Burdett had commenced suits, not only against the
Speaker, but also against the Sergeant-at-arms, and against Lord Moira,
the Governor of the Tower, for his arrest and detention, the House of
Commons appointed a select committee to inquire into the proper mode
of defence, and it was determined that the Sergeant-at-arms should
appear and plead to these indictments, and that the Attorney-General
should be directed to defend them. Though these trials did not take
place till May and June of the following year, we may here note the
result, to close the subject. In the first two, verdicts were obtained
favourable to the Government, and in the third the jury, not agreeing,
were dismissed. These trials came off before Lord Ellenborough, one of
the most steady supporters of Government that ever sat on the judicial
bench; and the results probably drew their complexion from this cause,
for the feeling of the public continued to be exhibited strongly in
favour of the prisoner of the House of Commons. He continued to receive
deputations from various parts of the country, expressive of the
sympathy of public bodies, and of the necessity of a searching reform
of Parliament. Whatever irregularity might have marked the proceedings
of the radical baronet, there is no question that the discussions to
which they led all over the country produced a decided progress in the
cause of a renovation of our dilapidated representation.

The prorogation of Parliament, on the 21st of June, liberated both Sir
Francis and the unfortunate president of the debating society, Mr. John
Gale Jones. On the morning of this day vast crowds assembled before
the Tower to witness the enlargement of the popular baronet. There
was a great procession of Reformers with banners and mottoes, headed
by Major Cartwright, and attended by Mr. Sheriff Wood and Mr. Sheriff
Atkins; but as Sir Francis apprehended that there might be some fresh
and fatal collision between the military and the people, he prudently
resolved to leave the Tower quietly by water, which he effected, to the
deep disappointment of the populace. No such excitement as this had
taken place, on a question of right between the House of Commons and an
individual member, since the days of Wilkes.

The other measures of Parliament during this Session were these:--In
the House of Lords Lord Holland, and in the Commons Henry Brougham,
moved for addresses to his Majesty, exhorting him to persevere in his
efforts to induce the Governments of other nations to co-operate in the
abolition of the slave trade, and to take measures for putting a stop
to the clandestine practice of British subjects yet carrying on this
trade in a fraudulent manner, as well as to adopt plans for preventing
other evasions of Mr. Wilberforce's Act. Mr. Bankes introduced a motion
for rendering perpetual his Bill to prevent the grant of offices in
reversion, and such a Bill was passed in the Commons, but rejected in
the Lords.

A Bill for Parliamentary Reform was introduced by Mr. Brand, and
debated with unusual interest, owing to the events connected with Sir
Francis Burdett, but was, of course, rejected by a large majority.
The day for such a measure was yet far off. There was a motion made
by Mr. Parnell regarding tithes in Ireland; another by Grattan and
Lord Donoughmore for Catholic emancipation; and a third by Sir
Samuel Romilly for reform of our criminal code--all necessary, but
yet long-to-be-deferred measures. Lord Melville also introduced
a plan of great importance into the House of Peers, namely, to
substitute Government war vessels for the conveyance of troops to
their destinations abroad. He showed that not only was there immense
and flagrant jobbing going on between the Government Transport Board
and the merchants from whom they hired ships on such occasions, but
that these all tended to the misery and mortality of the soldiers;
that the transport vessels hired were often not only inconveniently
small, necessitating very uncomfortable and unhealthy crowding, but
they were also frequently crazy, unseaworthy craft, badly manned,
and ignorantly commanded by very ordinary skippers. He showed that a
great amount of the mortality attending the transport of our troops to
distant shores was owing to this cause, and that all might be avoided,
and a considerable pecuniary saving effected, by employing none but
Government vessels, roomy and clean, and commanded by officers duly
qualified. But no such necessary and humane scheme was likely to be
cordially supported by an unreformed Parliament. Mr. George Rose also
obtained leave to bring in a Bill for a more questionable object. It
was to augment our navy by bringing up the children of such people as
became chargeable to parishes at Government naval schools, and thus
regularly appropriating them as sailors. He estimated these children at
ninety thousand, and calculated that these schools would furnish seven
thousand sailor-boys per annum. It was a scheme for a press-gang system
commencing with the cradle.

The supplies for the present year were voted to the amount of fifty
million one hundred and eighty-five thousand pounds. No new taxes were
to be levied, but there was to be a loan of eight million pounds.
This money was distributed as follows: twenty-five million pounds to
the land service and ordnance, twenty million pounds to the navy, a
subsidy to Portugal of nine hundred and eighty-eight thousand pounds,
and to Sicily of four hundred thousand pounds.

[Illustration: ARREST OF SIR FRANCIS BURDETT. (_See p._ 597.)]

The aspect of affairs in Spain at the commencement of 1810 was gloomy
in the extreme. Scarcely a town, fortress, or army remained to the
Spaniards; yet, perhaps, never did Napoleon feel a deeper anxiety
concerning it. The spirit of the people had shown that it could not
be easily subdued. He might beat its regular troops, and compel the
surrender of cities, after long and severe sieges, but there still
remained a whole population hostile to him. Throughout all the mountain
districts the inhabitants might be said to be still in arms against
him, and there was a fire burning in the general Spanish heart that
might at any moment blaze up into a dangerous flame, or, if not, must
wear out his troops, his energies, and his resources. Napoleon had yet
to discover that it is impossible to subdue the people of a mountainous
country, so as to rule them in peace, if they are at heart opposed to
the ruler.

Yet, looking at Spain from a mere momentary point of view, its
condition was sad enough. Saragossa had undergone a second siege, in
which the inhabitants had again made a brilliant stand, and caused
the French much loss and suffering, though compelled at length to
surrender. The battle of Ocaña, in November of 1809, had been lost by
Areizaga, and left Spain without a single considerable army. During
the latter part of the same year, General Reding, the patriotic Swiss
general, had been defeated at Valls. Blake had sustained two heavy
defeats near Saragossa and Belchite, with the loss of the greater part
of his artillery and men. Gerona had withstood a desperate siege,
but was compelled to capitulate on the 10th of December. Tarragona
and Tortosa had suffered the same fate. In some of these towns the
Spaniards had not yielded till they had killed and eaten their horses
and mules.

Towards the end of the year Soult had been recalled to Madrid, to take
the place of Jourdain, who was remanded to Paris. Soult then determined
to make an expedition into the south, to subdue Seville and Cadiz--the
last places of consequence left to the Spaniards. He took King Joseph
with him, or rather, perhaps, King Joseph was afraid to be left in
the capital without his protection. The battle of Ocaña, and the
destruction of Areizaga's army, left the passes of the Sierra Morena
all open, and on the 21st of January Soult was at Baylen, where the
army of Dupont had surrendered. Thence he pushed forward for Seville,
sending other divisions of the army to traverse Malaga and Granada.
Nothing could be more favourable to the visit of Soult than the then
condition of Seville. The stupid, proud, ignorant Junta had refused all
proffers of aid from the British, and they had, at the same time, worn
out the patience of the people, who had risen upon them, and expelled
them from the place. They then fled to Cadiz, in the hope of renewing
their authority there; but they met with a still fiercer reception from
the people of Cadiz, and were compelled formally to resign. As for the
inhabitants of Seville, they talked of defending the city against the
French, but there was no order amongst them, no authority, and they did
nothing. Soult marched on from town to town, collecting a rich spoil
everywhere, which the Spaniards had left behind them. They seemed to
think of carrying away with them only their money, but a mass of other
wealth fell into the hands of the French, and amongst it, as usual,
great quantities of British cannon, muskets, and ammunition, which
assisted in enabling the French to fight with us. Soult entered Cordova
in triumph on the 17th of January, and Seville on the 1st of February,
and there King Joseph established his court for some time.

[Illustration: CADIZ.]

Soult sent on Marshal Victor, without delay, to surprise and seize
Cadiz. But the Duke of Albuquerque, with eight or ten thousand men,
had been called at the first alarm, and, making a rapid march of two
hundred and sixty English miles, reached the city just before him. The
garrison now consisted of twenty thousand men--British, Spanish, and
Portuguese--commanded chiefly by General Graham, an officer who had
distinguished himself at Toulon, at the same time that Buonaparte first
made his merit conspicuous. The British troops had been offered by Lord
Wellington, and, though insolently refused by the Junta before, were
now thankfully accepted. Some were hastened from Torres Vedras, under
command of the Hon. Major-General Stewart, and some from Gibraltar. The
British, independent of the Portuguese under their command, amounted
to six thousand. The Spanish authorities, having their eyes opened at
length to the value of the British alliance, now gave the command of
their little fleet to Admiral Purvis, who put the ships, twenty in
number, into tolerable order, and joined them to his own squadron. With
these moored across the harbour, he kept the sea open for all necessary
supplies; and though Soult, accompanied by King Joseph, arrived on the
25th of February, and sat down before the place, occupying the country
round from Rota to Chiclano, with twenty-five thousand men, he could
make no impression against Cadiz, and the siege was continued till the
12th of August, 1812, when the successes of Wellington warned them to
be moving. It was an essential advantage to Wellington's campaign that
twenty-eight thousand French should thus be kept lying before this
place.

In Andalusia, the French under Sebastiani held Malaga and Granada;
but more eastward, the Spanish made a very troublesome resistance. It
was in vain that Sebastiani marched into the mountains of Murcia to
disperse the forces that Blake was again collecting there. Beaten in
one place, they appeared in another. A strong force, under General
Lacey, surprised a body of six thousand French at Ronda, and put them
to flight, securing their arms and stores. In Catalonia, General
O'Donnell stood his ground well, the country not only being by nature
strong, but lying along the coast, where the British could support
them by their fleets. Rushing from their hills and mountain forts, the
Catalonian militia continually inflicted severe chastisement on the
French invaders, and then retired to their fortresses. Marshals Suchet,
Augereau, and Macdonald found it impossible to make permanent head
against O'Donnell and the Catalonians. In fact, though Spain might seem
to be conquered, having no great armies in the field, it was never less
so--and that Buonaparte felt. Wherever there were hills and forests,
they swarmed with sharpshooters. For this species of warfare--the
guerilla--the Spanish were peculiarly adapted. The mountaineers, headed
by the priest, the doctor, or the shepherd, men who, in spite of
their ordinary habits, had a genius for enterprise, were continually
on the watch to surprise and cut off the enemy. Other bodies of them
were led by men of high birth, or of military training, but who were
distinguished for their superior spirit and endurance of fatigue. These
leaders had the most perfect knowledge of the woods and passes of the
mountains, and had the most immediate information from the peasantry of
the movements of the French. They could, therefore, come upon them when
totally unlooked-for, and cut them off suddenly. If they were repulsed
they disappeared like shadows into the forests and deserts. Sometimes
they came several thousand strong; sometimes a little band of ten or
twenty men would dash forward from their concealment and effect some
startling deed. To chase them appeared hopeless, for they vanished
in a thousand ways, as water sinks into the earth and disappears. To
intimidate them, Soult published a proclamation that he would treat
them as bandits, and immediately shoot all that he captured; and the
commanders replied by another proclamation that for every Spaniard shot
they would execute three Frenchmen; and they so literally fulfilled
their threat that the French were compelled to return to the ordinary
rules of warfare.

Such was the state of Spain, though nominally conquered by the French.
It was only held by a vast force, and there was no prospect that this
force could ever be dispensed with. Joseph was so heartily tired of
his kingdom that, on going to Paris to attend Napoleon's marriage,
he declared that he would abdicate unless he were made generalissimo
of all the forces in Spain, the separate generals, in their own
provinces, paying but little regard to his commands, but each acting
as if viceroy of his own province. To Napoleon the state of things
was equally irksome. The drain of men and money was intolerable, and
appeared without prospect of any end. He resolved, therefore, to make a
gigantic effort to drive the British out of Portugal, when he hoped to
be able to subjugate Spain. He could not yet proceed thither himself,
but he sent heavy reinforcements under Drouet and Junot, and dispatched
Massena, who was reckoned the greatest general next to himself,
to drive Wellington into the sea. Massena had been so uniformly
victorious, that Buonaparte styled him "the dear child of victory," and
had made him Prince of Esslingen.

In the Peninsula, altogether, the French had upwards of two hundred
thousand men, but the force which Massena led against Wellington did
not amount to more than sixty thousand, Drouet remaining, for the
present, in Spain with eighteen thousand men, and Regnier lying in
Estremadura with ten or twelve thousand more. To contend against
Massena's sixty thousand veterans, Lord Wellington had only twenty-four
thousand British on whom he could rely. He had thirty thousand
Portuguese regulars, who had been drilled by General Beresford, and
had received many British officers. Wellington had great expectation
that these troops, mixed judiciously with the British ones, would turn
out well; but that had yet to be tried. Besides these, there were
numerous bodies of Portuguese militia, who were employed in defending
the fortresses in Alemtejo and Algarve, thus protecting the flanks of
Wellington's army.

In June Massena advanced, and laid siege to Ciudad Rodrigo. This was
almost within sight of Wellington's lines. The town was defended by
a Spanish garrison, and Wellington was called upon to co-operate
by attacking the besiegers. This he offered to do if Romana would
undertake to prevent the march of Regnier from Estremadura on his
rear the while; but Romana would not undertake to maintain himself
against Regnier if the British force under General Hill crossed the
Tagus. Wellington, whose object was to defend Portugal and not Spain,
therefore lay still; and the Spaniards, after a brave defence, were
compelled to capitulate on the 10th of July. Then there was a wild
cry of indignation raised against Wellington by the Spaniards, and
even by his own officers, that he should see a place taken from our
allies, under his very eyes, and not attempt to relieve it. The French
taunted him with it in the _Moniteur_, and regarded it as a great
sign of his weakness. But none of these things moved Wellington. He
knew what he had to do--which was to defend Portugal--and he had made
his plans for doing it; but this was not by exposing his small army
in any situation to which the Spanish chose to call him, while, at
the same time, they declined to co-operate with him. He soon had the
division of Marshal Ney upon his outposts, where he fell in with our
light division under General Craufurd. Wellington had ordered that, on
attack, Craufurd should retire on the main body in order, because he
did not wish to reduce his small numbers in skirmishes, but to reserve
them for favourable occasions; but Craufurd, being hotly pursued,
turned and gave the French a severe rebuff, killing and wounding above
one thousand of Massena's men. Craufurd, having driven the French back
three times, made a masterly passage, by a bridge, over the Coa, and
joined the main army.

When he entered Portugal Massena issued a proclamation, informing the
Portuguese that the British were the troublers and mischief-makers
of Europe, and that they were there only for their own objects of
ambition, and calling on the inhabitants to receive the French as their
friends and saviours. Lord Wellington issued a counter-proclamation,
remarking that the Portuguese had had too much occasion to learn what
sort of friends the French were; that they had learned it by the
robbery of their property, their brutality towards the women, and
oppression of all classes. He called on them, as the sole means of
rescue, to resist to the death; and he ordered them, as the British
army retired from Lisbon, to withdraw from their towns and villages,
carrying whatever they could with them, so that the enemy might find
no means of support. This was part of his great plan; and he assured
the Portuguese that those who stayed behind after their magistrates had
ordered them to withdraw should receive no assistance from him; and
that whoever was found holding any communication with the enemy should
be deemed a traitor, and treated accordingly.

On the 26th of August Massena arrived before Almeida, a strongly
fortified town not thirty miles from Ciudad Rodrigo. Wellington
hoped that it would detain him at least a month, for it had a good
Portuguese garrison, commanded by Colonel Cox, an English officer: and
he himself drew near, to be able to seize any opportunity of damaging
the besiegers. But in the night of the 27th there was a terrible
explosion of a powder magazine, which threw down part of the wall, and
made the place untenable. Treachery was immediately suspected, and what
followed was sufficient proof of it; for the Portuguese major, whom
Colonel Cox sent to settle the terms of the capitulation, went over to
the French, and was followed by a whole Portuguese regiment with the
exception of its British officers. This was a great disappointment to
Lord Wellington, whose plan was to detain Massena till the rainy season
set in, when he would at once find himself embarrassed by bridgeless
floods and in intolerable roads, and, as he hoped and had ordered, in a
country without people and without provisions.

But, undiscouraged, Lord Wellington ordered General Hill, who had
already crossed the Tagus, to hasten onward, and he then carefully
fell back, and took his position on the grim and naked ridges of
Busaco, a sierra extending from Mondego to the northward. Behind this
range of hills lay Coimbra, and three roads led through the defiles to
that city. These, and several lesser ravines used by the shepherds
and muleteers, he thoroughly fortified; and, posting himself on
these difficult heights, he calmly awaited the advance of Massena.
The ascents by which the French must reach them were precipitous and
exposed; and on the summit, in the centre of the range, Wellington took
up his headquarters at a Carmelite convent, whence he could survey the
whole scene, having upwards of thirty thousand men disposed along these
frowning eminences.

On the 26th of September the hostile host was seen in full
march--cavalry, infantry, and artillery, attended by a vast assemblage
of waggons and burden-bearing mules. The spectacle, as described by
eye-witnesses, was most imposing in its multitudes and its beautiful
order. At night, the whole country along the foot of the hills was
lit up by the enemy's camp fires, and towards morning the din of
preparation for the contest was plainly audible. Nothing but the
overweening confidence of Massena in his invincibility, and the urgent
commands of Napoleon, could have induced him to attack the Allied army
in such a position; but both he and Buonaparte held the Portuguese as
nothing, regarding them no more than as so many Spaniards, unaware
of the wonderful change made in them by British discipline. A letter
of Buonaparte to Massena had been intercepted, in which he said that
"it would be ridiculous to suppose that twenty-five thousand English
could withstand sixty thousand French, if the latter did not trifle,
but fell on boldly, after having well observed where the blow might
be struck." Ney, it is said, was of opinion that this was not such
a situation; that it was at too great odds to attack the Allies in
the face of such an approach. But Massena did not hesitate; early
on the morning of the 27th he sent forward several columns both to
the right and left of Wellington's position, to carry the heights.
These were met, on Wellington's right, by Picton's division, the 88th
regiment being commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Wallace, and the 45th
by Lieutenant-Colonel Meade. They were supported by the 8th Portuguese
regiment. The French rushed up boldly to the very heights; but were
hurled back at the point of the bayonet, the Portuguese making the
charge with as much courage and vigour as the British. Another attempt,
still farther to Wellington's right, was made, the French supposing
that they were then beyond the British lines, and should turn their
flank; but they were there met by General Leith's division, the
Royals, the 9th and the 38th regiments, and were forced down the
steeps with equal destruction. Both these sanguinary repulses were
given to the division of General Regnier. On the left of Wellington
the attack was made by Ney's division, which came in contact with
that of General Craufurd, especially with the 43rd, 52nd, and 95th
regiments of British, and the 3rd Portuguese Caçadores, and with the
same decisive and destructive result. There, too, the Portuguese fought
gallantly, and, where they had not room to kill with their bayonets,
they imitated the British soldiers, and knocked down the French with
the butt-ends of their guns. Everywhere the repulse was complete, and
Massena left two thousand slain on the field, and had between three
and four thousand wounded. One general was killed, three wounded, one
taken prisoner, besides many other officers. The Allies lost about
one thousand three hundred, of whom five hundred and seventy-eight
were Portuguese. Wellington was delighted with the proof that General
Beresford's drilling had answered the very highest expectations, and
that henceforth he could count confidently on his Portuguese troops,
and he wrote in the most cheering terms of this fact in his dispatches
home.

On the 28th Massena had discovered the pass of Boyalva through these
hills, to the north of Busaco, which Wellington had ordered Colonel
Trant to occupy. But Trant had missed his way, and did not reach the
pass in time. Wellington saw, therefore, his flank turned, and the
enemy on the highway to Oporto. He therefore quitted his position, and,
taking Coimbra in his way, compelled such of the inhabitants as had
not obeyed his order to march along with him. On the 1st of October
he was on his route southward, accompanied by this strange crowd. It
was a perfect exodus, and appeared to the poor inhabitants as a severe
measure, but to it they owed their after-salvation. Had they remained,
it would have been only to suffer the oppressions and insults of the
French, and to see them supporting themselves on their provisions. As
it was, the French, on entering Coimbra, found it, as they had done
Viseu, totally deserted, and the stacks of corn and provision that
could not be carried away, for the most part too adroitly buried to
be easily found. They were left to the starvation that the English
general designed for them. But what a scene on the road! The whole
country moving south with the cattle and sheep, and waggons laden with
their goods. "No power of description," said an eye-witness, "can
convey to the mind of any reader the afflicting scenes, the cheerless
desolation that we daily witnessed on our march from the Mondego to the
lines. Where-ever we moved, the mandate, which enjoined the wretched
inhabitants to forsake their homes and to remove or destroy their
little property, had gone before us. The villages were deserted; the
churches--retreats so often, yet so vainly confided in--were empty; the
mountain cottages stood open and untenanted; the mills in the valley,
but yesterday so busy, were motionless and silent. From Thomar the
flanks of our line of march were literally covered with the flying
population of the country. In Portugal there are at no time many
facilities for travelling, and those few the exigencies of the army
had very greatly diminished. Rich indeed were those who still retained
a cabriolet, and mules for its service. Those who had bullock-cars,
asses, or any mode of transporting their families and property, looked
contented and grateful; for respectable men and delicate women of the
second class might on every side be seen walking slowly and painfully
on foot, encumbered by heavy burdens of clothes, bedding, and food." It
was a whole country in emigration; quitting their cities, homes, and
fields to coop themselves up in the vicinity of Lisbon, for the stern
purpose of starving the detested enemy out of the land.

[Illustration: WELLINGTON'S RETREAT FROM COIMBRA. (_See p._ 604.)]

But, sorrowful as the sight itself was, the news of it in Great
Britain excited the strongest condemnation in the party which had
always doubted the power of Wellington to cope with the vast armies of
France. They declared that he was carrying on a system that was ruining
Portugal, and must make our name an opprobrium over the whole world,
at the same time that it could not enable us to keep a footing there;
that we must be driven out with terrible loss and infamy. But not so
thought Wellington. Before him were the heights of Torres Vedras, about
twenty-four miles from Lisbon. These, stretching in two ranges between
the sea and the Tagus, presented a barrier which he did not mean the
French to pass. He had already planned the whole scheme; he had already
had these heights, themselves naturally strong, made tenfold stronger
by military art; he had drawn the enemy after him into a country
stripped and destitute of everything, and there he meant to stop him,
and keep him exposed to famine and winter, till he should be glad to
retrace his steps. Neither should those steps be easy. Floods, and deep
muddy roads, and dearths should lie before him; and at his heels should
follow, keen as hornets, the Allied army, to avenge the miseries of
this invaded people.

By the 8th of October Wellington was safely encamped within these
impregnable lines, and the crowd of flying people sought refuge in
Lisbon, or in the country around it. The British did not arrive a
moment too soon, for Massena was close at their heels with his van;
but he halted at Sobral for three days to allow of the coming up of
his main body. This time was spent by the British in strengthening
their position, already most formidable. The two ranges of mountains
lying one behind the other were speedily occupied by the troops;
and they were set to work at more completely stopping up roads, and
constructing barriers, palisades, platforms, and wooden bridges leading
into the works. For this purpose fifty thousand trees were allowed
them, and all the space between Lisbon and these wonderful lines was
one swarming scene of people bringing in materials and supplies. The
right of the position was flanked by the Tagus, where the British
fleet lay anchored, attended by a flotilla of gunboats, and a body of
marines occupied the line of embarkation; Portuguese militia manned the
Castle of St. Julian and the forts on the Tagus, and Lisbon itself was
filled with armed bands of volunteers. There was no want of anything
within this busy and interesting enclosure, for the British fleet had
the command of the sea and all its means of supply. Seven thousand
Portuguese peasantry were employed in bringing in and preparing the
timber for the defences; and every soldier not positively on guard was
enthusiastic in helping the engineers and artillery in the labour of
making the lines impregnable.

It was one of the most interesting scenes in any warfare; and there
was not a man who did not enjoy the astonishment and disappointment of
the French when, on the 11th, they marched in wonder up to the foot of
these giant fortifications. Wellington had doubly obtained his wish;
for he was not only safely ensconced in his strong position, but the
rainy season which he was anticipating had set in in earnest. The main
body of the French had been detained by the bad roads and the floods,
and now, when the proud general, who expected so rapidly to drive the
British into the sea, surveyed the scarped cliffs bristling with cannon
and with bayonets far above him, his astonishment was evident. He rode
along the foot of the hills for several days reconnoitreing the whole
position, which seemed suddenly to have altered the situation of the
combatants, and not so much to have shut up Wellington and his army in
Lisbon, as to have shut him and his numerous one out to famine and the
wintry elements.

For more than four months the invincible Massena continued to watch the
lines of Torres Vedras without striking a single effective blow. In
fact, instead of attacking Wellington, Wellington attacked his advanced
posts near Sobral on the 14th, and drove them in with the bayonet. The
French then showed themselves in some force near Villa Franca, close to
the Tagus; but there the gunboats reached them, causing them rapidly
to retreat, and killing General St. Croix. After this, the French
made no further attempt on those mountain lines which struck Massena
with despair. After occupying his position for a month he fell back
to the town of Santarem, and there and in the neighbouring villages
quartered his troops for the winter. His great business was to collect
provisions, for he had brought none with him; and had the people
obeyed strictly the proclamation of Wellington and the Junta, he would
have found none at all, and must have instantly retreated. But the
Portuguese thought it hard to quit their homesteads and carry all their
provisions to Lisbon or into the mountains, and the miserable Junta
threw all the blame of the order on the British general. Not only,
therefore, was a considerable amount of provisions left in the country,
but boats were left at Santarem, on the Tagus, contrary to Wellington's
orders, by which provisions were brought over by the French from Spain.

Yet, during this winter, while Massena's army was in a constant state
of semi-starvation, badly clothed and badly lodged, and thus wasting
away by sickness and desertion, that of Wellington increased in
numbers, in physical condition, and in discipline. Whilst Massena's
army, originally seventy-one thousand men, was ere long reduced by the
battle of Busaco and the miserable quarters in the wet country near
Torres Vedras to fifty-five thousand, the forces of Wellington had
been augmented, by reinforcements from England, and by the addition of
Portuguese and Spanish troops, to fifty-eight thousand. When Massena
retreated to Santarem, Wellington followed him to Cartaxo, and there
fixed his headquarters, and ordered General Hill to post his division
opposite to Santarem, so as to check the enemy's foraging parties in
that direction. At the same time, Colonel Trant, who had surprised the
French rear as Massena's army was leaving Coimbra on his march after
Wellington to Torres Vedras, and had secured the sick and wounded
in the hospitals there to the amount of five thousand men, and who
retained possession of Coimbra, now joined Sir Robert Wilson and
Colonel Millar, who commanded the Portuguese militia, and their united
force appeared in Massena's rear, cutting off his communication with
the north and also with the Spanish frontier.

Such was Massena's situation, so early as the commencement of
November--having to maintain his army in a country reduced to a
foodless desert by the art of his masterly antagonist, and, instead
of being able to drive the British before him, finding them menacing
him on all sides, so that he dispatched General Foy to make his way
with a strong escort to Ciudad Rodrigo, and thence to proceed with all
speed to Paris, to explain to the Emperor the real state of affairs.
The state was that the whole of Portugal, except the very ground on
which Massena was encamped, was in possession of the British and the
Portuguese. There was no possibility of approaching Lisbon without
forcing these lines at Torres Vedras, and that, if done at all, must
be at the cost of as large an army as he possessed altogether. All
the rest of Portugal--Oporto, Coimbra, Abrantes--and all the forts
except Almeida were in the hands of the enemy. As to the destitution
of Massena's army, we have the description from his own statements in
letters to Napoleon, which were intercepted. From this information,
Lord Wellington wrote in his dispatches: "It is impossible to describe
the pecuniary and other distresses of the French army in the Peninsula.
All the troops are months in arrears of pay; they are, in general, very
badly clothed; they want horses, carriages, and equipments of every
description; their troops subsist solely upon plunder; they receive
no money, or scarcely any, from France, and they realise but little
from their pecuniary contributions from Spain. Indeed, I have lately
discovered that the expense of the pay and the hospitals alone of the
French army in the Peninsula amounts to more than the sum stated in the
financial _exposé_ as the whole expense of the entire French army."

Such were the advantages now possessed by the British over the French
commander, that both the Portuguese and people at home were impatient
that Wellington should at once attack and annihilate Massena's army.
But Wellington knew better. He knew that a great battle, or battles,
must vastly reduce his own as well as Massena's army. He knew that
France could readily march down eighty or a hundred thousand fresh men
into Portugal at extremity, but that Great Britain could not so readily
do that; and, should the Whigs come into power, as was probable, he
could not calculate on any support at all. The king now hopelessly
insane, the Prince of Wales must be soon appointed Regent, and then,
perhaps, would come in his friends the Whigs. There were many other
considerations which made Wellington refuse to accede to a general
attack on the French at present. He had, as it was, trouble enough with
the Junta; but, should any reverse occur, his situation then would be
intolerable. Just now the Portuguese troops were in good spirits for
fighting, but defeat would ruin all the progress yet made with them. He
knew that the winter would do for the French army all that he expected
without any cost to himself, and he waited for that, ready then to
follow up the advantages it would give him. It was his great plan of
operations which already reduced them to the dilemma in which they
were, and now came winter and did the rest, fully showing his superior
sagacity. In November the weather became and continued wretched in the
extreme. The country was flooded, cutting off the precarious supplies
of the French, but adding strength to the encampment of Torres Vedras.
The cross roads were impassable for artillery, and all but impassable
for waggons bringing provisions, which had to be hunted for far and
wide, with incredible hardships and little success. Leaving the hostile
armies in this position till the spring, we must notice other important
matters.

In the course of 1810 the French were expelled completely from the
East and West Indies, and the Indian Ocean. Guadeloupe, the last of
their West India Islands, was captured in February, by an expedition
conducted by General Beckford and Admiral Sir A. Cochrane. In July
an armament, sent out by Lord Minto from India, and headed by
Lieutenant-Colonel Keating, reduced the Isle of Bourbon; and, being
reinforced by a body of troops from the Cape of Good Hope, under
Major-General John Abercromby and Admiral Bertie, the Isle of France,
much the more important, and generally called Mauritius, surrendered
on the 3rd of December. Besides a vast quantity of stores and
merchandise, five frigates and about thirty merchantmen were taken; and
Mauritius became a permanent British colony. From this place a squadron
proceeded to destroy the French factories on the coast of Madagascar,
and finished by completely expelling them from those seas.

Our forces in Sicily had an encounter, in the autumn, with those of
Murat, King of Naples. Murat was ambitious of driving us out of Sicily,
and Ferdinand IV. and his court with us. From spring till September
he had an army lying at Scylla, Reggio, and in the hills overlooking
the Strait of Messina, but he did not attempt to put across till the
18th of September. Seizing then the opportunity, when our flotilla
of gunboats and our cruisers were off the station, he pushed across
a body of three thousand five hundred men, under General Cavaignac.
These troops were chiefly Neapolitans, but there were two battalions
of Corsicans, and they were furnished with an embroidered standard to
present to the Corsicans in our service, whom they hoped to induce to
desert to them. General Cavaignac managed to land about seven miles to
the south of Messina, and attacked the British right wing. Sir John
Stuart made haste to bring up other troops to the support of the right,
but before he could arrive, Colonel C. Campbell defeated the invaders,
taking prisoners a colonel, a lieutenant-colonel, and forty other
officers, with eight hundred men. There was a rapid retreat to their
boats by the intruders, but the British pursued and cut to pieces great
numbers of them, besides what were killed by the Sicilian peasantry.
One boat full of soldiers was sunk as it went off, and the Neapolitans
in another deserted to their old king.

Colonel Campbell did not lose a single man, and had but three wounded,
so that it is evident that the flight of the enemy must have been
instantaneous and universal. Murat made no further attempt to seize
Sicily, though he kept his camp on the heights behind Reggio and Scylla
for two years longer.




INDEX.


    Abercromby, General, Death of, 483.

    Acre, St. Jean d', Siege of, 471.

    Addington, Prime Minister, 479;
      Pitt's opposition to, 494;
      resigns, 495;
      becomes Viscount Sidmouth, 500.

    Addison, Joseph, 15, 38;
      as a writer, 148.

    Additional Force Bill, 496;
      repealed, 518.

    Aix-la-Chapelle, Peace of, 114.

    Albemarle, Earl of, 47.

    Alexandria, Battle of, 483.

    Algiers, Dey of, Strange treaty with, 444.

    Alien Bill, The, 411.

    "All the Talents" ministry, 516, 531.

    America, War with the colonies in:
      Washington commands American forces, 218;
      Bunker's Hill, 219;
      condition of the American Army, 222, 230, 231, 235, 247;
      Boston surrenders to Washington, 222, 223;
      attack on Charleston, 224, 225;
      Washington retreats from Long Island, 230;
      Cornwallis in pursuit, 230, 231;
      supineness of British generals, desperate state of Washington,
        his victory at Trenton, 235;
      battle of the Brandywine, Washington defeated at Germantown, his
       camp at Valley Forge, 238;
      Burgoyne defeats St. Clair, 240;
      battle of Bemus's Heights, 242;
      Burgoyne surrenders at Saratoga, 244;
      conditions of surrender violated, 248;
      failure of Lafayette's expedition to Canada, 255;
      capture of Charleston, 273;
      the war in Carolina, 274, 275;
      French succours, 275;
      Arnold's treachery, 276;
      execution of Major André, 278;
      Tarleton's defeat in North Carolina, Cornwallis defeats Greene at
       Guildford, 280;
      surrender of Cornwallis at York Town, 283;
      British nation tired of the war, 286, 287;
      overtures for peace, 291, 296;
      peace signed, 297, 298;
      Independence of United States acknowledged, 298.

    American colonies, condition and trade, 183;
      taxation, 184;
      congress at New York to consider Stamp Act, 185;
      riots in Boston, 187, 200, 201;
      Massachusetts' petition, 194, 195;
      dismissed, 211;
      tea duties, 201, 202, 208;
      destruction of tea at Boston, 210;
      "minute men" enrolled, 214;
      preparing for war, 217;
      declaration of Independence, 226, 227;
      articles of Confederation, Franklin's success in Paris, 232;
      financial difficulties, 236;
      France aids with a fleet, 256.
      _See_ America, War with.

    American incendiaries in England, 233.

    Amiens, Treaty of, 485.

    André, Major, 277;
      execution of, 278.

    Anne, Queen, her liking for the Pretender, 8, 10, 16, 19;
      treaty of Utrecht, 10;
      dislikes Electress Sophia and her son, 12, 16;
      proposed visit of Elector of Hanover and Pretender to England,
       16, 17;
      letters to Elector and Electress of Hanover, proclamation
       against Pretender, 19;
      her last council, 29;
      death, 23.

    Architecture of the 18th century, 157-160.

    Argyll, Duke of, 29;
      at Sheriffmuir, 30;
      disperses Pretender's army, 31.

    Armed neutrality league, 272.

    Army Commissariat, State of, 562.

    Army, Commissions in, Traffic in sale of, 571;
      Bill to prevent, 572.

    Army, Improvement of, Windham's Bills for, 518, 519;
      numerical strength, 531.

    Army of England at Boulogne, 490, 498.

    Arnold, General, expedition to Canada, 220;
      his treachery, 276, 277;
      ravages American towns, 279.

    Arts and Manufactures, Society of, 166.

    Aspern, Buonaparte defeated at, 589.

    Assaye, Battle of, 491.

    Astronomers of 18th century, 152, 153.

    Atterbury's plot, 49,50;
      death, 60.

    Austerlitz, Battle of, 506.

    Austria participates in first partition of Poland, 207;
      campaign against the Turks, 350, 354;
      France declares war against, 400;
      Austrian successes on the Rhine, 444;
      peace with France, 459;
      Buonaparte drives from Italy, 506;
      prepares for war with France, 586, 587;
      defeats Buonaparte at Aspern, 589;
      is defeated at Wagram, 590, 591;
      treaty of Schönbrunn, 591.


    Baird, Sir David, in Spain, 563.

    Bastille, Storming of the, 364.

    Beckford, Alderman, 178, 200.

    Bemus's Heights, Battle of, 242.

    Berlin decrees, The, 527, 546, 547.

    Bhurtpore, Siege of fortress of, 513, 514.

    Black Friday in London, 102.

    Bolingbroke, Viscount, dealings with the Pretender, 8, 12, 14, 16,
        18, 19;
      becomes Prime Minister, 20;
      attainted of treason, 27;
      pardoned, 50;
      estates restored, 52;
      retires to France, 65;
      as writer, 148.

    Boroughs, Rotten, purchase of, 192;
      motions in Parliament for reform of, 391.

    Boston Riots, 187, 200;
      Boston Port Act, 211.

    Boulogne, Army of England at, 490, 498;
      attempt on French fleet at, 496.

    Braddock, General, in America, 119.

    Brandywine, Battle of the, 238.

    Bread Riots, 191, 478.

    Brest fleet, 458;
      attempt to destroy, 584.

    Breton, Cape, ceded to Britain, 174.

    Bribery and corruption in Parliament, under Walpole, 62;
      under Pelham, 112.

    British Museum founded, 116.

    Brittany, Rising of Royalists in, 445-447.

    Brunswick, Prince Ferdinand of, 131;
      success at Minden, 138;
      defeat at Cassel, 170.

    Buenos Ayres, Whitelocke's fiasco, 522, 535.

    Bunker's Hill, Battle of, 219.

    Buonaparte, Jerome, 546.

    Buonaparte, Joseph, King of Naples, 524;
      of Spain, 553, 554.

    Buonaparte, Louis, King of Holland, 524.

    Buonaparte, Lucien, 553.

    Buonaparte, Napoleon, 422;
      at Toulon, 423;
      suppresses insurrection in Paris, 448;
      in Italy 450, 453;
      against Austria, 451, 453;
      at Arcole, 454;
      contemplates invading England, 464;
      defeats Mamelukes at Cairo, 467;
      captures Joppa, defeats Turks at Alexandria, 471;
      becomes first consul, 472;
      Marengo, 476;
      defeats Austrians in Italy, 477;
      president of Cisalpine Republic, 484;
      his plans of conquest, 485;
      attitude towards Britain, 485, 487;
      seizes Hanover, 489;
      the army of England, 490, 498;
      the Georges conspiracy, 496-7;
      kidnaps Duke d'Enghien, 498;
      coronation, 499;
      invades Germany, 504;
      Austrians capitulate at Ulm, 505;
      cedes Hanover to Prussia, 507;
      alleged plan to assassinate, 516;
      provides thrones for brothers, sisters, and generals, 524;
      Auerstadt and Jena, 526;
      the Berlin decrees, 527;
      attempts to dupe Kosciusko, 529;
      in collision with the Russians, 530;
      intrigues with Turkey, 536;
      designs on Danish fleet, 539;
      continental campaign, 542-545;
      repulse at Eylau, 543;
      treaty of Tilsit, spoliation of Prussia, 544, 545;
      designs on Spain and Portugal, excludes British trade from the
        Continent, 546, 547;
      subjugates Portugal, 547, 548;
      Italy, Papal territories, 549;
      Spain, 550;
      prepares for a new campaign in Spain, 565;
      plottings against, in Germany, 565, 566;
      proposes to divorce Josephine, 566;
      captures Madrid, 567;
      projects with regard to Spain, 573;
      war with Austria, 587;
      captures Vienna, 588;
      defeated at Aspern, 589;
      defeats Austria at Wagram, 590, 591;
      treaty of Schönbrunn, 590;
      crushes Tyrolese rebellion, 591, 593;
      betrays the Poles, 593;
      and the Italians, deposes Pope Pius VII., 594;
      anxiety concerning Spain, 600.

    Burdett, Sir Francis, Motion for Parliamentary reform, 572;
      on reporting parliamentary proceedings, 595;
      riots in Piccadilly, 596, 597;
      is committed to the Tower, 597;
      release of, 599.

    Burgoyne at Ticonderoga, 240;
      Bemus's Heights, 242;
      surrenders, 244.

    Burke, Edmund, 188;
      defends East India Company, 207;
      on the American colonies, 215;
      relief of Ireland, 252;
      economic reforms, 262, 264;
      impeachment of Hastings, 338, 342;
      on the slave trade, 340;
      on Regency Bill, 345-6;
      denounces French Revolution, 370, 371;
      breach with Fox, 379;
      on French Revolution, 410;
      supports Alien Bill, 411, and French war, 412, 426;
      replies to Fox, 417.

    Busaco, Battle of, 604.

    Bute, Lord, 168, 169;
      Prime Minister, 171;
      his unpopularity, 178;
      resigns, 179.

    Byng, Admiral Sir George, destroys Spanish fleet, 41;
      Admiral John at Minorca, 122;
      tried, 124;
      shot, 126.

    Byron, Admiral, 257, 260.


    Cairo, Capture of, 467;
      massacre at, 468.

    Calabria, Defence of, by Sir John Stuart, 520;
      battle of Maida, 521.

    Camperdown, Battle of, 458.

    Canada, British expedition against, 132;
      storming of Quebec, 134, 135;
      ceded to Britain, 174;
      American expeditions against, 220, 255;
      divided into two provinces (Canada Bill), 378.

    Canning, 440;
      duel with Castlereagh, 594;
      Foreign Secretary, 534;
      resigns, 583.

    Cape of Good Hope, Cape Town captured, 445;
      Dutch attempt to recover, 451;
      expedition to, 521.

    Caroline Matilda, Princess, 206.

    Caroline, Princess of Brunswick, 442.

    Caroline, Queen, character, 57, 58;
      illness and death, 68.

    Carthagena, Vernon's failure at, 75.

    Castlereagh, Lord, 474, 503, 534, 572;
      quarrel and duel with Canning, 594.

    Catalonia, its defence by O'Donnell, 602.

    Catholic emancipation, 478, 479.

    Catholic Relief Bill produces riots in Scotland, 254.

    Catholics, Measures for relief of, 532, 533;
      fresh restrictions on, 535.

    Charles XII. of Sweden, 34;
      threatens to support Pretender, 36;
      death, 42.

    Charlotte, Queen of George III., character of, 169.

    Chatham, Earl of, forms great Northern Alliance, 190;
      speech on Wilkes and the American war, 198;
      on influence of favourites, 199;
      condemns treatment of American colonies, 214;
      his Bill of Pacification, 214, 215;
      protest against American war, 234, 246, 249;
      his last speech, 251;
      death, 252.

    China, Lord Macartney's mission to, 395.

    Church, The, after the Revolution of 1688, 141.

    Cider tax, 178.

    Cintra, Convention of, 561.

    Cisalpine republic, Buonaparte president of, 484.

    Clarkson, Thomas, and slave trade, 380.

    Clinton, Sir Henry, at Rhode Island, 232;
      commands forces in America, 250;
      captures Charleston, 273.

    Clive, Lord, his exploits in India, 128, 129, 176, 316;
      his policy, 318;
      reforms, 319;
      death of, 323.

    Cochrane, Lord, his naval deeds, 523.

    Coimbra, Wellington's retreat from, 604, 605.

    Collingwood, Lord, blockades French and Spanish fleets, 510;
      his last exploit, death of, 584.

    Colonies, British, Buonaparte's expedition of inquiry to, 485.

    Colonies, Growth of English, in 18th century, 164, 165.

    Commerce, British, Buonaparte's embargo on, 528.

    Commerce, State of, in 18th century, 164.

    Commercial crisis in England, 416, 417.

    Commercial distress in Ireland, 311, 312.

    Comprehension Bill, 142.

    Coote, Sir Eyre, his exploits in India, 136, 178, 330, 331.

    Copenhagen, Bombardment of, 480, 481;
      destruction of Danish fleet at, 539-542.

    Copper manufactures, 167.

    Cornwallis, Lord, in pursuit of Washington, 231, 232, 236;
      enters Philadelphia, 238;
      arrives at York Town, 280;
      surrounded by American forces, 281, 282;
      Siege of York Town, 282;
      surrender, 283;
      ends war in India, 394;
      Governor-General of India, death of, 514.

    Corresponding Society, 391, 394, 439.
    Corruption in the spending departments of Government, 531;
      and peculation in the army and navy, 571, 572, 577, 578.

    Crown influence, Dunning's motion on, 264.

    Culloden, Battle of, 106, 107.

    Cumberland, Duke of, operations against Young Pretender, 99, 104;
      Battle of Culloden, 106, 107;
      licentious life, 205.

    Curaçoa, Capture of, by British, 539.


    Dardanelles, Expedition to fails, 537, 538.

    Declaration of Rights, 226.

    Declaratory Act, 189.

    Dettingen, Battle of, 84.

    Domingo, St., Negro insurrection in, 375;
      massacre of French Royalists in, 431.

    Dominica, Capture of, by British, 170;
      retaken by the French, 258.

    Dramatists of 18th century, 151, 152.

    Duckworth, Sir John, naval engagement off St. Domingo, 522;
      at Constantinople, 537, 538.

    Duncan, Admiral, at Camperdown, 458.


    East India Company's affairs in Parliament, 207, 302-304;
      charter renewed, 416.

    Economic reforms, Agitation for, 262-264, 290, 291.

    Egypt, Departure of French fleet for, 465;
      capture of Alexandria, 466;
      capitulation of French in, 483;
      fruitless British expedition to, 538.

    Elliot, General, defends Gibraltar, 294.

    Emmett, Robert, rebellion, execution, 490.

    Enghien, Duke d', murder of, 498.

    Erskine on Catholic emancipation, 534.

    Eugene, Prince, 2, 6, 13.

    Excise duties, 62, 63, 315.


    Falkland Islands, 202, 203.

    Family compact, The, 171.

    Finisterre, Cape, naval battle off, 509.

    Fitzgerald, Lord, and the Irish Rebellion, 460, 462;
      arrest and death of, 463.

    Fitzherbert, Mrs., 338, 346, 441.

    Flanders, Campaign in, 90, 111, 112;
      treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, 114.

    Fleet marriages, 115.

    Flood's agitation, 290, 371.

    Fontainebleau, Peace of, 175;
      treaty of, 547.

    Fontenoy, Battle of, 90, 91.

    Fortification of Plymouth and Portsmouth, Bill for, 314.

    'Forty-five, The Rebellion of, 92;
      end of rebellion, 107;
      trials of the rebels, 109.

    Fox, Charles James, censures on American war, 222;
      attacks Lord North's ministry, 261, 286;
      Secretary of State, 288;
      coalition with Lord North, 299;
      his India Bill, 302;
      Westminster election, 308;
      as friend of Prince of Wales, 336;
      impeachment of Hastings, 336-342;
      the Regency, 344;
      applauds the French Revolution, 370, 410;
      breach with Burke, 379, 380;
      bills on law of libel, 382;
      relief of Nonconformists, 392, 393;
      condemns French war, 412;
      his efforts for peace, 415, 417;
      scheme for Buonaparte's assassination confided to, 516;
      death, 530.

    Fox, Henry, 119, 120.

    France threatens Hanover, 74;
      defeated at Dettingen, 84;
      declares war against England, 87;
      disasters in Italy, 112;
      disputes with England about Nova Scotia, 114-119, 127;
      captures Minorca, 122;
      favours rebellion of American colonies, 232, 236;
      treaty with America, 250;
      declares war against England, 255;
      sends a fleet to aid Americans, 256;
      attempt to invade England, 260;
      peace signed, 299;
      commercial treaty with, 315;
      at war with Austria, 400.
      _See_ Buonaparte, _and_ French Revolution.

    Francis, Philip, his intrigues against Hastings, 326;
      denounces the war against Tippoo Sahib, 376.

    Franking, Privilege of limited, 308.

    Franklin, Benjamin, 184;
      purloins Whately's letters, 208, 210, 211;
      successful negotiations in Paris, 232;
      conducts peace negotiations with Britain, 296-298.

    Frederick, Prince of Wales, marriage of, 67;
      birth of his son, afterwards George III., 68;
      death of, 115.

    Frederick the Great, schemes of conquest, 73;
      continental confederation against, the seven years' war, 124, 176;
      Battle of Rosbach, 128;
      alliance with Russia, 172.

    Freedom of Press, Attempt to crush, 426.

    Friends of the People, Society of, 391, 393.

    French fleet at Boulogne, Attempt on, 496.

    French possessions in North America, capture of, 134-136, 138, 139.

    French Revolution, The, 356, 360;
      storming of the Bastille, 364;
      famine and bankruptcy, 366;
      decrees against emigrants, 387;
      war against Austria, 400;
      insurrection in Paris, 402;
      massacre of Swiss guards, 403;
      establishment of Republic, 404;
      abolition of royalty, 408;
      Louis tried and condemned to death, 409, 410;
      war with Britain and Holland, 412, 418, 421;
      reign of terror, 423;
      sanguinary horrors, 436;
      insurrection in Paris suppressed by Buonaparte, 448;
      Directory's campaign against Austria, defeats in Germany, 451.
      _See_ Louis XVI. _and_ Buonaparte.

    French troops in Ireland, 463, 464;
      in Wales, 458.


    Gage, General, in America, 211, 212.

    Gale, Jones, and freedom of the Press, 595.

    Gates, General, captures Burgoyne's army,  242, 244;
      intrigues against Washington, 248, 255.

    George I., Accession of, 24;
      arrives in England, coronation, first parliament, 26;
      seeks new continental alliances, 34;
      disputes with Sweden and Russia, 34, 35;
      triple alliance between England, France, and Holland, 36;
      new Jacobite conspiracy, 36;
      complications with foreign powers, 53;
      death, 57.

    George II., Accession of, character of, 57;
      feud between and his son, 67;
      the Commons and the defence of Hanover, 76;
      Parliament and the Spanish war, 78;
      Walpole's farewell interview with, 79;
      resists inquiry into Walpole's administration, 81;
      Parliament and payment of Hanoverian troops, 82;
      at the Battle of Dettingen, 84;
      prepares to meet Young Pretender, 99;
      end of the 'Forty-five, 107;
      treaty with Spain, 114;
      flourishing state of commerce, 114, 115;
      death of Frederick, Prince of Wales, 115;
      subsidies for defence of Hanover, 119, 124, 128;
      brings Hanoverian troops to England, 120;
      fresh continental alliances, 123;
      death of, 140.

    George III., Accession of, 168;
      marriage, coronation, 169;
      illness, 185;
      Regency Bill, 186;
      prosecution of American war, 233;
      his dislike of Chatham, 250, 251;
      No Popery rioters, 270;
      end of Lord North's ministry, 287;
      extravagance of Prince of Wales, 301, 337, 338;
      letter to Lord Temple on India Bills, dismisses Coalition
        ministry, 303;
      attack of insanity, 343;
      debate on appointment of Regent, 343-347;
      recovery, 348;
      national thanksgiving, 348, 349;
      his opinion of French Revolution, 371;
      debate on foreign affairs, 388-390;
      marriage of Duke of York, allowance to Prince of Wales, 390;
      France declares war, 412;
      war spirit in England, 415;
      French proposals for peace, 416;
      successes against the French in the East and West Indies, 422;
      subsidising continental powers, 426;
      mismanagement of the war, 432;
      reforms in the army, profligacy of the King's sons, 441;
      disasters to the troops in Holland, 443;
      the King shot at, 448;
      measures for relief of Catholics in Ireland, 461;
      alliance with Russia against France, 468;
      receives letters from Buonaparte, 474, 499;
      union of Great Britain and Ireland, 474, 476;
      Pitt's proposals for Catholic emancipation, 478;
      illness and recovery, Addington Prime Minister, 479;
      negotiations for Pitt's return to power, war declared against
        France and Holland, 488;
      Buonaparte seizes Hanover, 489;
      rebellion in Ireland, 490;
      the King's illness, weakness of Addington's ministry, Pitt
        offers to form an administration, the defence of the kingdom,
        494;
      Addington resigns, 495;
      Additional Force Bill, war with Spain, 496;
      "All the talents" ministry, 516, 531;
      negotiations for peace with France, 518;
      abolition of slave trade, 532;
      opposes Catholic relief measures, Grenville ministry dismissed, 533;
      Duke of Portland's cabinet, 534;
      Irish Coercion Bills, 535;
      the Czar and Buonaparte
      propose peace, 566;
      Burdett riots, 596-598;
      petitions for parliamentary reform, 598;
      the King's insanity, 607.

    Georges conspiracy, The, 496, 497.

    Germany, death of Emperor Charles VII., 90;
      Prince of Tuscany elected emperor, 91;
      Buonaparte invades, 504;
      spirit of revolt against Buonaparte in, 589, 590.

    Gibraltar, Possession of, confirmed to England, 14;
      Spain attempts to capture, 55, 259;
      question of cession of, 59;
      Rodney relieves, 271;
      attack on, 279;
      General Elliot's defence of, 294.

    Gin Act, The, 66, 83.

    Godolphin, Earl of, death and character, 9.

    Gordon, Lord George, and Catholic Relief Bill, 254;
      riots, 266-271.

    Grafton, Duke of, 190, 195, 196, 198.

    Grattan, motions for legislative independence of Ireland, 288-290;
      for reform in Irish Parliament, 372, 474, 475.

    Granville ministry carries Abolition of Slave Trade, 532;
      fails with Catholic Relief Bill, 533;
      resignation, 534.

    Guadeloupe captured by the British, 607.

    Gustavus of Sweden invades Russia, 351, 352;
      assassination of, 396.


    Habeas Corpus Act suspended, 50, 429.

    Hanover, Electoral Prince of, 16, 18.

    Hanover, Treaty of, 54;
      sums voted for protection of, 119, 124, 128;
      seized by Buonaparte, 489;
      ceded to Prussia, 507.

    Hardy, Admiral, opposes French and Spanish fleets, 259, 260.

    Hastings, Warren, 315;
      Governor-General of India, 322;
      his administration in India, 323;
      Rohilla war, 325;
      execution of Nuncomar; Lord North determines to remove, 327;
      his spirited policy, 328;
      war with the Mahrattas, 328, 329;
      Cheyte Sing, 334;
      the Begums, 334;
      recalled to England, popularity, 335;
      impeachment, 336, 338;
      trial of, 342.

    Havana, Capture of, 174.

    Hawke, Sir Edward, in Quiberon Bay, 136.

    Heligoland, Capture of, by British, 542.

    Highland regiments raised, 124.

    Hofer, Andrew, governor of the Tyrol, 591;
      betrayal and death of, 593.

    Hohenlinden, Battle of, 478.

    Holland, War declared against, 278;
      Britain captures settlements in East and West Indies, 284;
      invaded by France, 418;
      battles at Neerwinden and Famars, 418, 419;
      becomes a Republic under French protection, colonies seized by
        Britain, 443.

    Hood, Lord, at Toulon, 422;
      at Corsica, 431.

    Hood, Sir Samuel, naval exploits, 523.

    Horne Tooke and Prince of Wales, 346;
      trial of, 439.

    Howe, Admiral, in America, 227, 228;
      receives a deputation from Congress, 231;
      chases D'Estaing's fleet, 256, 257;
      attacks French and Spanish fleets at Gibraltar, 295;
      naval victory, "glorious First of June," 430.

    Howe, General, at Bunker's Hill, 219;
      evacuates Boston, 223;
      at Staten Island, 228.

    Hyder Ali, 320, 330;
      defeated by Sir Eyre Coote, 331;
      death of, 332.


    Imperial Parliament, The first, 478.

    Income tax, The, 468.

    Independence, Declaration of American, 226, 227.

    India, Dutch defeated in, 177;
      fighting with French in the Carnatic, 177, 178;
      destruction of French power in, 178;
      abuses in, Parliamentary inquiry, 207;
      narrative of affairs in, 316;
      Bengal, Orissa, and Bahar granted to East India Company, 318;
      Clive's reforms, 319;
      rise of Hyder Ali, 320;
      inquiry into Company's affairs, 322;
      famine in Bengal, 322, 323;
      Lord North's Regulating Acts, administration of Warren Hastings,
        323;
      Rohilla war, 325;
      Mahratta war, 328, 329;
      Sir Eyre Coote defeats Hyder Ali, capture of Dutch possessions,
        Tippoo Sahib, 331, 332;
      death of Hyder Ali, 332;
      Hastings recalled to England, 335;
      war with Tippoo Sahib, 375;
      Lord Cornwallis ends the war, 394, 395;
      the Company's charter renewed, 416;
      Pondicherry taken from the French, 422;
      Mahratta war, 491-494;
      Sir Arthur Wellesley, battle of Assaye, 491;
      successes of General Lake, 491, 513;
      Battle of Laswaree, chase of Argaum, 493;
      fresh acquisitions of territory, 494;
      Lord Lake ends Mahratta war, 513, 515.
      _See_ Hastings, Warren.

    India Bill, Fox's, 302, 303;
      Pitt's, 304.

    Indies; East, British empire in, 166.

    Ionian Islands, 583.

    Ireland, Burke's measures for relief of, 252;
      commercial distress in, 259;
      Lord North's scheme for relief of, 262;
      Grattan's motions for legislative independence of, 288, 290;
      Flood's agitation, 290, 371;
      Flood's Reform Bill, 310;
      Pitt's proposals for relief of commercial distress, 311, 312;
      Grattan's motions for Reform, 372;
      insurrection in, 463, 464;
      union with Great Britain, 468, 474-476;
      first United Parliament, 478;
      rebellion in, execution of Emmett, 490.

    Ireland, Woollen manufactures in, 167.

    Irish House of Commons, 311;
      restrictions on Irish trade, 311, 312;
      sympathy with French Revolution, 460;
      intrigues with France, 462;
      corruption of the Parliament, 461, 475;
      Black and Red lists, 475.

    Iron, Manufactures of, 167.

    Italian music, Taste for in England, 155.

    Italy, British expedition to, and successes, 583;
      Austria attempts to drive French from, 469;
      Buonaparte's annexations in, 486.


    James VIII. proclaimed at Edinburgh, 95.

    Jena, Battle of, 526.

    Jersey, French attempt on, 278.

    Jervis, Sir John, at Cape St. Vincent, 458.

    Jews, Act for naturalisation of, 115.

    Junius, Letters of, 195, 197, 203.


    Kempenfeldt, Admiral, captures French merchantmen, 285.

    Keppel, Admiral, naval battle off Ushant, 255;
      court-martial on, 258.

    Kosciusko, defence of Poland, 398;
      successes against Russia, 438;
      Buonaparte tries to dupe, 529.


    Lafayette and French Revolution, 358, 366.

    Lake, Lord, in India, 491-493;
      campaign against the Mahrattas, 513, 515.

    La Roche-Jacquelein, 424.

    Laswaree, Battle of, 493.

    Lexington, Skirmish at, 217.

    Libel, Law of, Fox's Bills on, 382.

    Literary notabilities of 18th century, 142.

    Loans to foreign powers prohibited, 60.

    Lorraine, Acquisition of, by France, 66.

    Louis XVI. and threatened revolution, 357-361;
      assembles troops, 362;
      dismisses Necker, 363;
      revolution in Paris, 363, 364;
      receives a deputation from the people, 368;
      flight of, 386;
      tried, 408;
      executed, 410.

    Lovat, Lord, 98, 107;
      execution, 109.

    Lucia, St., Capture of by British, 258.

    Lunéville, Treaty of, 478.

    Lyons, Bombardment of, 423.


    Macclesfield, Earl of, impeachment of, 52.

    Macdonald, Flora, 108.

    Magistracy Bill, The, 391.

    Mahratta war, 491-494, 514, 515.

    Maida, Battle of, 521.

    Malta captured by French, 466;
      blockaded by Nelson, 468.

    Malt tax in Scotland, 52.

    Mansfield, Lord, 82, 117;
      his house destroyed by No Popery rioters, 268.

    Manufactures of 18th century, 166.

    Mar, Earl of, 20;
      raises the Highlands for Pretender, 28;
      defeat at Sheriffmuir, 30;
      attainted of treason, 32;
      death of, 60.

    Marengo, Battle of, 476, 477.

    Maria Theresa of Austria, 73, 74, 81;
      British troops and money in aid of, 83.

    Marie Antoinette, 359, 366, 369, 388;
      beheaded, 424.

    Marlborough, Duke of, corresponds with Elector of Hanover and the
        Pretender, 9, 22;
      reception by George I., 26.

    Marriages, Clandestine, 115, 116.

    Martinique, Capture by British, 174, 430.

    Masham, Lady, 14, 24.

    Massachusetts' petition, 194, 195;
      charter abolished, 211.

    Massena in Italy, 444;
      in Spain, 602, 603;
      defeated by Wellington at Busaco, 604;
      reaches Torres Vedras, 606.

    Mathematicians of 18th century, 153.

    Mauritius captured by the British, 607.

    Melville, Lord, 500;
      impeachment of, 503.

    Mercenaries, German, in American war, 222, 234.

    Merchandise, British, confiscated, 527.

    Metals, Working in, in 18th century, 167.

    Methodists, Rise of, 143.

    Metropolis and other towns, growth of, 167.

    Milan decree, Buonaparte's, 458.

    Militia remodelled, 124.

    Minden, Battle of, 138.

    Minorca, Capture of, 122, 284, 285, 465.

    "Minute Men," The, enrolled, 211.

    Mirabeau, 359, 362;
      death of, 386.

    Montcalm, General, 127;
      defence of Quebec, 134, 135;
      death of, 136.

    Moore, Sir John, in Egypt, 483;
      in Spain, 562, 563;
      obstructiveness of Spanish allies, 565;
      retreat to Corunna, 569;
      battle, death and burial of, 569, 570.

    Munitions of War, Exportation of prohibited, 412.

    Murat, King of Naples, 554;
      attempts to drive British from Sicily, 608.

    Music in England in 18th century, 154-157.

    Mutiny at Spithead, 455;
      at the Nore, 456, 458.


    Naples, Joseph Buonaparte King of, 524;
      Murat becomes king of, 554.

    National debt, Walpole's scheme for reduction of, 38;
      increase of, 450.

    Naval affairs, Commission of inquiry into, 500, 502.

    Navy, Improvement of, Bill for, 519;
      scheme for providing boys for the, 599.

    Necker, Louis XVI.'s minister, 358, 363, 366.

    Neerwinden, Battle of, 418.

    Nelson, Lord, in Corsica, 431;
      at Cape St. Vincent, 458;
      blockading Toulon, 465;
      blockading Malta, 468;
      Battle of the Nile, 467;
      at Copenhagen, 480, 481;
      attempt on Boulogne flotilla, 483;
      in chase of Villeneuve, 508;
      Battle of Trafalgar, 510, 511;
      last signal, 510;
      death, 511.

    Netherlands, War in the, 433-435.

    Newcastle, Duke of, 117, 118, 173.

    Newfoundland, French descent on, 451.

    Newgate destroyed by rioters, 268.

    Newspapers Taxed, 15.

    Nile, Battle of the, 467.

    Nootka Sound, 372, 373, 375.

    No Popery riots, 266-271.

    Nore, Mutiny at, 456, 458.

    Norris, Sir John, pursues Russian fleet, 44.

    _North Briton_, No. 45 of the, 179, 180.

    North, Lord, character, forms a ministry, 199;
      endeavours to conciliate American colonists, 200, 215, 250, 256;
      scheme for relief of Ireland, 262;
      Pitt censures, for conduct of American war, 286;
      resignation, 287.

    Northern Coalition, Failure of, 507.

    Nova Scotia, dispute with France concerning, 114;
      war breaks out, 118;
      war transferred to North America, 127, 134-136, 138, 139;
      ceded to Britain, 174.

    Novelists of early part of 18th century, 146, 147.


    O'Connor, an Irish revolutionary, 460;
      arrest and banishment of, 463.

    "Olive Branch" petition, The, 219.

    Orford, Earl of. _See_ Walpole, Sir Robert.

    Orleans, Duke of, regent of France, his policy towards England,
        28, 34;
      death of, 51.

    Ormonde, Duke of, succeeds Marlborough, 4;
      in office under Bolingbroke, 12, 20;
      flies to the Pretender, 27.

    Oxford, Earl of, favours the Pretender, 8;
      quarrels with Bolingbroke, 10, 18;
      intrigues with Elector of Hanover, 18;
      impeachment of, 27;
      acquitted, 39.


    Paine, Thomas, pamphlets, 226, 383, 392.

    Painters, Foreign, in 18th century, 160, 162;
      English, 18th century, 162.

    Painting, State of, in 18th century, 160.

    Palliser, Court-martial on, riots, 258.

    Palm of Nuremberg, Execution of, 525.

    Paoli, Corsican patriot, 431.

    Parker, Sir Hyde, 285;
      at Copenhagen, 480, 481;
      recalled from the Baltic, 482.

    Parliamentary elections, Bribery at, 535.

    Parliamentary proceedings, Reporting of, 111, 112, 203, 204, 595.

    Parliamentary reform, Pitt's motion for, 291;
      resolutions for, 300;
      Bill for, 312, 599;
      society for promoting, 391;
      petitions for, 416, 598.

    "Parthenopea, Respublica," The, 469.

    Patna, Massacre at, 316.

    Pelham, 88;
      death and character of, 116.

    Pension Bill, 60;
      revision of the list, 291.

    Perceval, Spencer, 534.

    Petersburg, Treaty of, 503.

    Philip, King of Spain, 8, 43;
      death of, 111.

    Pitt, William, 67, 86, 110;
      protests against foreign subsidies, 119, 120;
      Secretary of State, 123;
      useless expeditions against France, 130;
      determines on conquest of Canada, 132, 133;
      Bute intrigues against, 169;
      his Spanish policy, resigns, 171;
      condemns peace of Fontainebleau, 175;
      opposition to Bute, 178;
      speech on taxing the colonies, 188;
      becomes Earl of Chatham, 190.
      _See_ Chatham, Earl of.

    Pitt, William, on American war, 286;
      Parliamentary reform, 291, 300;
      India Bill, 304;
      Prime Minister, 303, 305;
      relief of Irish distress, 311;
      Bill for Parliamentary reform, administrative reforms, 312;
      sinking fund, 314;
      Excise Bill, 315;
      on impeachment of Hastings, 336, 339;
      Prince of Wales's debts, 337;
      slave trade, 340;
      the King's insanity, 343;
      Regency Bill, 344-347;
      his opinion of French Revolution, 371;
      his budget and new taxes, 376;
      subsidies to Continental powers, 426;
      antagonism to reform, 428;
      and reformers, 429;
      his budgets, 450, 454;
      suspends cash payments, 454;
      measures for relief of Catholics in Ireland, 461;
      resigns on question of Catholic emancipation, 479;
      forms a Tory ministry, 496;
      Additional Force Bill, 496;
      his failing health, 500;
      the attack on Melville, 502;
      forms a coalition against Buonaparte, 503;
      illness and death of, character, 515.

    Pius VII. at Buonaparte's coronation, 499;
      is a prisoner, 549;
      deposed, 594.

    Poets of the 18th century, 151, 152.

    Poland, Condition of, 206;
      first partition, 207;
      Russian aggressions, 396-399;
      second partition of, 419;
      final struggles, 438.

    Political meetings prohibited, 449.

    Popham, Sir Home, at Cape of Good Hope and Buenos Ayres, 521, 522.

    Popery scare in London, 99.

    Porteous riots, 66.

    Portland, Duke of, his ministry, 300, 534;
      death of, 595.

    Portobello, Capture of, 72.

    Portugal, Buonaparte's designs on, 546, 547;
      invasion of, 547;
      insurrection against the French, 557, 558;
      receives aid from Britain, 558.

    Pottery of 18th century, 167.

    Pragmatic Sanction, Repudiation of, 73.

    Press, The, activity of, tax on, 15;
      restrictions on freedom of, 111;
      proclamation against seditious publications, 392;
      Buonaparte complains of tone of the British, 486;
      freedom of the, 595.

    Pressburg, Treaty of, 506.

    Prestonpans, Battle of, 30, 96.

    Pretender, The Old, 8;
      Marlborough's advice to, 9;
      debates in Parliament on, 11, 16;
      refuses to change his religion, 14;
      his friends in England, 16, 17;
      sails for Scotland, 28;
      the Highlands declare for him, 29;
      disasters, returns to France, 32;
      fresh scheme of invasion, 36, 50;
      birth of a son, 49;
      activity of agents, 54.

    Pretender, The Young, 87, 92;
      lands in Scotland, 92;
      Edinburgh surprised, 95;
      battle of Prestonpans, 96;
      marches into England, 99, 100;
      captures Carlisle, 100;
      alarm in London, 102;
      besieges Stirling Castle, 103;
      victorious at Falkirk, 104;
      defeated at Culloden, 107;
      wanderings in Scotland, escapes, 108.

    Priestley, Dr., 383, 384;
      riots, 384.

    Prince Edward's Island, Capture of, 180.

    Prisons, Inquiry into state of, 62.

    Privilege of Parliament, debate, 180-182.

    Prussia, Selfish conduct of, 432;
      duplicity of, 503;
      alarm of, at her isolation, 524, 525;
      Buonaparte prepares to invade, 524;
      appeals to Britain, 525;
      defeated at Auerstadt and Jena, 526;
      revival of patriotism, army reorganised, 565.

    Puisaye and Breton insurrection, 445-447.

    Pulteney, William, 52;
      duel with Lord Hervey, 62;
      accedes to power, 79;
      becomes Earl of Bath, 80.

    Pyramids, Battle of the, 467.


    Quadruple alliance, 40, 41, 43.

    Quebec, Capture of, 136;
      attempted recovery, 138;
      Americans assault, 221.

    Quibéron Bay, Naval battle at, 136.


    Rawdon, Lord, in Carolina, 274-280.

    Rebellion of 1715, 27;
      defeats at Sheriffmuir and Prestonpans, 30;
      trials of rebels, 32;
      of 1745, 92;
      end of rebellion, 107;
      trials of rebels, 109.

    "Reflections on the French Revolution," Burke's, 382, 393;
      replies to it, 583.

    Reform demanded by the people, 426;
      the leaders prosecuted, 426-428.

    Reformers prosecuted in Scotland, 426-428;
      in England, 429;
      trials of, 439.

    Regency Bill, 186;
      debate on, 341-347.

    Reign of Terror at Toulon, Lyons, Paris, 423.

    Religion, State of, from 1688 to 1760, 142.

    "Respublica Parthenopea," The, 469.

    Revolutionary clubs in England, 370, 393, 394;
      and counter associations, 394.

    Riot Act made perpetual, 27.

    Robespierre, 404, 423;
      his ferocity, 423, 424;
      is guillotined, 436.

    Rockingham ministry, The, 187, 189, 288.

    Rodney, Admiral, captures Martinique, 174;
      relieves Gibraltar, 271;
      in the West Indies, 275, 276;
      captures Dutch settlements in West Indies, 284;
      defeats De Grasse in West Indies, is recalled, 291.

    Rohillas, Conquest of the, 325.

    Roland, Madame, 387;
      beheaded, 424.

    Roliça, Battle of, 559.

    Roman Catholics, Bill for relief of, 381.

    Rome, Buonaparte takes possession of, 549.

    Romilly, Sir Samuel, and criminal code, 599.

    Rossbach, Battle of, 128;
      Buonaparte destroys memorial column at, 527.

    Royal Marriage Act, 206.

    Royalist conspiracy against Buonaparte, 496, 497.

    Royalists, The American, 297, 298.

    Russia, designs against Turkey, 349;
      Gustavus of Sweden invades, 351;
      naval battles, 352, 354;
      continues war with Turkey, 374, 375;
      designs on Poland, 396;
      war with France, victory at Eylau, 543;
      treaty of Tilsit, 544.


    St. Paul's Cathedral, Building of, 158.

    St. Vincent, Cape, Battle of, 458.

    Saragossa, Siege of, 556;
      second siege, 600.

    Schism Bill, The, passed, 19;
      repealed, 42.

    Schönbrunn, Treaty of, 591.

    Science and art in 18th century, 152, 154.

    Scotland, Secretary of State for, office abolished, 110;
      prosecutions for sedition in, 426;
      trials of seditionists in, 439.

    Sculpture of the 18th century, 163, 164.

    Search, Right of, 71, 272.

    Secret service money, 59, 500, 502.

    Sedition, Prosecutions for, 426, 427, 428.

    Septennial Act, 64.

    Seringapatam, Tippoo Sahib defeated at, 395;
      storming of, 474.

    Settlement, Act of, and George I., 33.

    Seven Years' War begins, 124;
      ends, 176.

    Shaftesbury, the first Lord, 146.

    Sharp, Granville, and slave trade, 339.

    Sheridan and Prince of Wales, 336;
      impeachment of Hastings, 338;
      eulogises French Revolution, 371.

    Sierra Leone, Settlement of, 381.

    Silk manufactures in England, 166.

    Sinking fund, Germ of, 38;
      Dr. Price's scheme adopted by Pitt, 314.

    Slavery, Abolition of, Bill for proposed, 532.

    Slave Trade, Agitation for abolition of, 339;
      petitions, and discussions in Parliament, 340;
      an ameliorating Bill passed, 340;
      further motions for abolition, 380, 381, 496, 500;
      further steps toward suppression of, 519;
      Bill to abolish, passed, 532.

    Smith, Sir Sidney, at Toulon, 422;
      at St. Jean d'Acre, 471.

    Society of Friends of the People, 426, 427.

    Sophia, Electress of Hanover, death, 18.

    Soult, Marshal, in Portugal, 574.

    South Sea Bubble, 46.
      _See_ South Sea Company.

    South Sea Company incorporated, 46;
      the bubble bursts, 47;
      inquiry by Parliament,48;
      receives compensation from Spain, 114.

    Spain, Peace ratified with, 13;
      Gibraltar and Minorca confirmed to England, 14;
      at war with Austria, 39;
      England and France declare war against, 42;
      attempted invasion of England in favour of Pretender, 42, 43;
      England's contraband trade with her American colonies, 70;
      her alliance with France, 75;
      dispute about Falkland Islands, 202;
      attempts to capture Gibraltar, 259;
      peace with, 299;
      proclaims war against Britain, 450, 496;
      Buonaparte's designs on, 546, 547;
      Godoy, 549;
      capture of Spanish fortresses, 550;
      Buonaparte kidnaps the royal family, rioting in Madrid, 553;
      Joseph Buonaparte made king, 553, 554;
      insurrection throughout the country, 554-556;
      peace declared between and Britain, 554;
      Siege of Saragossa, 556;
      receives aid from Britain, 558;
      Buonaparte captures Madrid, 567;
      treaty between Great Britain and, 571.

    Spanish colonies, Expedition against, 522.

    Spanish succession, War of the, 3;
      Philip renounces crown of France, 8;
      end of war, 13.
      _See_ Utrecht, treaty of.

    Spies, Buonaparte's, in England and Ireland, 486.

    Spithead, Mutiny at, 455.

    Stamp Act, The, 184, 185.

    Steam engine, Invention of, and improvements in, 166.

    Steele, Sir Richard, expelled the House of Commons, 15;
      as a writer, 148.

    Stein, Von, Prussian minister, 565.

    Subsidies in men and money to foreign powers and German princes,
      73, 81, 83, 114, 119, 426, 432, 433, 435, 444, 580, 600.

    Swift, Dean, political pamphlets and influence, 15, 20, 52;
      as a writer, 147, 148.


    Talavera, Battle of, 576, 577.

    Tea duties and American colonists, 201, 202, 208;
      destruction of tea in Boston harbour, 210.

    Test and Corporation Acts, 371.

    Thanksgiving, Public, for George III.'s recovery, 348, 349.

    Tilsit, Treaty of, 544.

    Tippoo Sahib, 331;
      succeeds his father, Hyder Ali, makes peace with the British, 332;
      again at war, 375;
      makes overtures to Buonaparte, 472;
      death of, 474.

    Tobago captured by French, 284.

    Toleration, Act of, 142.

    Torres Vedras, The lines of, 579, 606.

    Toulon, French Royalists and British forces at, 422;
      evacuated by British, 423.

    Townshend, Lord, Prime Minister, 26;
      differences with the King, 35;
      Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, 36;
      quarrels with Walpole, 60.

    Triennial Act, The, 32.

    Triple alliance concluded, 36.

    Triumvirate, The, 179.

    Troops, Transport of, plan for, 599.

    Tugend Bund, The, 565.

    Tullibardine, Marquis of, 92, 94.

    Turgot, Minister of Louis XVI., his reforms, 357;
      retires, 358.

    Turkey, State of, and war with Austria, 350;
      and Russia, 350, 351;
      alliance with Sweden, 351;
      peace with Austria, 373;
      Russia continues the war, 374, 375;
      debate on, in British Parliament, 376, 378;
      declares war against Britain and makes treaty with France, 539;
      peace with Britain, Russian aggressions, 584.

    Turnips introduced into England, 60.

    Tyrolese, Revolt of, 590, 591;
      betrayal and death of leaders, and of Hofer, 593.


    United Irishmen, Society of, 428, 460.

    United States, Independence of, 298.

    Ushant, Naval battle off, 255.

    Utrecht, Treaty of, 3;
      debates in Parliament on, 4-6;
      terms of the treaty, 10;
      condemned by Parliament, 26.


    Valley Forge, Washington's camp at, 238.

    Vancouver's Island, 372.

    Vendée, La, The war in, 410;
      La Roche-Jaquelein leader of insurrection in, 424;
      tragic fate of Vendéans, 425;
      death of La Roche-Jaquelein, 444;
      peace with Convention, 445;
      end of war, 447.

    Venice ceded to Austria, 459.

    Vessels, Seizure of British, 480, 486.

    Vienna, Treaty of, 54;
      Definitive peace of, 65, 66;
      peace of, 590, 591.

    Vimiera, Battle of, 560.

    "Vindiciæ Gallicæ," Mackintosh's, 383.

    Vinegar Hill, Battle of, 463.


    Wagram, Battle of, 590, 591.

    Walcheren expedition, 580;
      debate on, 595.

    Wales, Prince of, his extravagant habits, 301, 337, 338, 441;
      his friends, Sheridan and Fox, 336;
      Mrs. Fitzherbert, 338;
      his right to the Regency, 343-346;
      receives deputation from Irish Parliament, 347;
      marriage, 442.

    Wales, Princess Dowager of, Bute's intimacy with, 178;
      and the Regency, 186.

    Wales, Princess of, inquiry into conduct of, 520.

    Walpole, Sir Robert, in Parliament, 15, 19, 26, 38;
      reduction of National Debt, 38;
      opposes South Sea Company's proposals, 46;
      his financial scheme, 48;
      secret service money, 59;
      his system of bribery, 62;
      the "patriots," 68;
      condemned for management of Spanish war, 74;
      unpopularity, 77;
      created Earl of Orford, 79;
      inquiry into his conduct, 81.

    Warrants, General, Validity of, 182.

    Washington, George, 118;
      commands American army, 218.
      _See_ America, war with the Colonies in.

    Wellesley, Sir Arthur, Battle of Assaye, 491;
      chase of Argaum, 493;
      in Denmark, 540;
      commands troops in Spanish Peninsula, 558;
      Battle of Roliça, 559;
      of Vimiera, 560;
      passage of the Douro, 574;
      meets General Cuesta, condition of Spanish and French armies, 575;
      Battle of Talavera, 576, 577;
      ingratitude of the Spaniards, 577;
      corruption and jobbery in the commissariat, 578;
      retreats to Badajos, 578;
      is created Viscount Wellington, 578;
      incompetency and obstinacy of Spanish generals, 579;
      plans the lines of Torres Vedras, 579;
      retreats from Spain, reorganises his army, 580;
      Massena advances against, his policy, 603;
      retires to Busaco, defeats Massena, 604;
      the retreat from Coimbra, 604, 605;
      entrenched at Torres Vedras, 606;
      his policy of waiting, 607.

    West Indies, Acquisitions from the French in, 422;
      British conquests in, 451;
      defeats of French fleets in, 523.

    Westminster election, Fox and, 308, 309.

    "Whigs, The Public Spirit of the," 15.

    Wilberforce and the slave trade, 339, 372, 380, 390, 496, 500,
        519, 531, 532.

    Wilkes, John, and the _North Briton_, 179, 180, 182;
      expelled the House, 182;
      returned for Middlesex, 192;
      fined and imprisoned, 193;
      expelled from Parliament, re-elected, 195, 196;
      sheriff of London, 205;
      defends Warren Hastings, 338.

    Wolfe, General, 128;
      storming of Quebec, 134, 135;
      death of, 136.

    Wolfe Tone and the Irish rebellion, 460, 462;
      capture and suicide of, 464.

    Wood's coinage, 51.

    Woollen manufactures in 18th century, 166.

    Worms, Treaty of, 86.


    York, Duke of, 419;
      invests Valenciennes and Dunkirk, 420;
      and Mrs. Clarke, parliamentary inquiry, 571;
      resigns, 572.

    York Town, surrender of Cornwallis at, 283.


PRINTED BY CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED, LA BELLE SAUVAGE, LONDON, E.C.

       *       *       *       *       *

    +--------------------------------------------------------------+
    |                   Transcriber Notes:                         |
    |                                                              |
    | P.xii. 'Governmen' changed to 'Government'.                  |
    | P.81. 'diclosures' changed to 'disclosures'.                 |
    | P.163. 'oxamples' changed to 'examples'.                     |
    | P.217. 'English' added, missing word--checked another volume.|
    | P.321. 'treat' changed to 'treaty'.                          |
    | P.328. 'Coompany' changed to 'Company'.                      |
    | P.368. 'massacreing' changed to 'massacring'.                |
    | P.439. 'trail' changed to 'trial'.                           |
    | P.469. 'manoevures' changed to 'manoeuvres'.                 |
    | P.507. 'Philipsthal' changed. to 'Philippsthal'.             |
    | P.511. 'Trinidada' changed to 'Trinidad'.                    |
    | P.550. 'Pampeluna' changed to 'Pamplona'.                    |
    | P.598. 'a_bitrary' 'changed to 'arbitrary'.                  |
    | Various: Added accent to Mélas.                              |
    | Fixed various punctuation.                                   |
    +--------------------------------------------------------------+