THREE: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 Pichegru, who had lost the favour of the Directory, was superseded by Moreau, and that general and Jourdain were sent to the Rhine.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[452] 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 Donauw?rth, 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. Moreauleft 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 baggagemade 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.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 questionthe 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[68] 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 fourbeing 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 majorityone hundred and three to forty.
THREE:In this battle the Allies lost in killed and wounded ten thousand men, the French not less than fifteen thousand. The French generals Bruyres, Kirchner, and Duroc were amongst the killed. Duroc had long been one of the most intimate friends and attendants of Buonaparte, who was so much cut up by his loss that for the first time in all his terrible campaigns he became unable to attend to further details, but answered every call for orders with "Everything tomorrow!" When he came to find that not a gun, not a prisoner was left behind by the Germans and Russians, Napoleon seemed to comprehend the stern spirit in which they were now contending, and exclaimed, "How! no result after such a massacre? No prisoners? They leave me not even a nail!" He advanced to Breslau, various slight conflicts taking place on the way, and on the 1st of June he entered that city, the princesses of Prussia removing thence into Bohemia.
THREE: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 footsturdy, 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 la Mode,"[163] "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.
TWO:THE SOUTH SEA BUBBLE. (After the Picture by E. M. Ward, R.A., in the National Gallery, London.)In a little time the Americans, recovering their spirits, returned to their guns, and plied them so well that they soon knocked the breastworks of sugar and treacle casks to pieces. As nothing[112] would tempt the Americans to show themselves from behind their cotton bales and embankments, after maintaining this murderous position for two whole nights and days, Pakenham drew back his men, sacrificing some of his guns, and formed a scheme of sending a detachment across the river to turn the batteries and then play them upon the enemy. But for this purpose it was necessary to cut a canal across the tongue of land on which the army stood, in order to bring up the boats required to carry the troops over the river. Major-General Lambert had arrived with reinforcements, so that against the American twenty thousand Pakenham had now about eight thousand men. All worked at the canal, and it was finished on the 6th of January. Colonel Thornton was to carry across the river one thousand four hundred men, and surprise the great flanking battery of eighteen or twenty guns, whilst Sir Edward Pakenham advanced against the lines in front. A rocket was to be thrown up by Pakenham when he commenced his assault, and Thornton was at that instant to make a rush on the battery and turn it on the enemy. But they had not sufficiently calculated on the treacherous soil through which they cut their canal. Thornton found it already so sludged up that he could only get boats through it sufficient to carry over three hundred and fifty men, and this with so much delay that, when Pakenham's rocket went up, he was still three miles from the batteryand that in broad daylightwhich he ought already to have taken. Unaware of this, Pakenham advanced against the chain of forts and ramparts. He had ordered ladders and fascines to be in readiness for crossing the canal, but by some gross neglect it was found that they were not there, and thus the whole of the British troops were exposed to the deadly fire of the American batteries and musketry. No valour was of any use in such circumstances; but Sir Edward cheered on the few but brave-hearted troops till the ladders and fascines could arrive; but ere this happened, Pakenham was killed. Generals Gibbs and Keane took the place of the fallen commander, and still cheered on their men; but it was only to unavailing slaughter: the American marksmen, under cover, and with their rifles on rest, picked off the British soldiers at their pleasure. Gibbs was soon killed and Keane disabled by a wound. In such circumstances the troops gave way and retired, a strong reserve protecting the rear; but out of gun-shot there was no further danger, for the Americans were much too cunning to show their heads beyond the protection of their defences.
TWO:After the Painting by SEYMOUR LUCAS, R.A., in the National Gallery of British Art