ONE:Meantime Cambacrs and Fouch 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.When the Bourbons had entered Paris in 1814 they had shown the utmost liberality towards those who had driven them from France and had murdered those of their family on the throne and nearest to it. They did not imitate the summary vengeance of Napoleon, whose Government, in 1812, had put to death not only General Mallet, who had endeavoured to restore the Bourbons, but also thirteen of his accomplices, on the plain of Grenelle. When Louis XVIII. returned, there were numbers of the bloody Revolutionists who had voted for, and some who had acted in, the frightful atrocities of the Revolutionmany who had urged on the sufferings, the indignities, and the death of Louis XVI., Marie Antoinette, the Princess Elizabeth, the Princess Lamballe, and the worst form of death of the unhappy Dauphin. Yet no vengeance was taken, and numbers of these people were allowed to reside unharmed in Paris. Having been now again driven forth, and seen the readiness with which those who had sworn to maintain their Government had taken their oaths and betrayed them, it might have been expected that there would have been some severe punishments. But the natural mildness of Louis XVIII., and the wise counsels of Wellington and Talleyrand, produced a very different scene. Never, after such provocations, and especially to the sensitive natures of Frenchmen, was so much lenity shown. In the proclamation of Louis XVIII. of the 24th of July, nineteen persons only were ordered for trial, and thirty-eight were ordered to quit Paris, and to reside in particular parts of France, under the observation of the police, till their fate should be decided by the Chambers. Of the nineteen threatened with capital punishment, with trial before a military tribunal, only Ney and Labdoyre suffered; another, Lavalette, was condemned, but escaped by changing dresses with his wife in prison. It was also stated that such individuals as should be condemned to exile should be allowed to sell their property in France, and carry the proceeds with them. Yet more clamour was raised by the Buonapartists about the deaths of Ney and Labdoyre than had been made in any executions by the Imperial or the Revolutionary parties over whole hecatombs of innocent persons. As for Ney and Labdoyre, their treason had been so barefaced and outrageous that no reasonable person could expect anything but summary punishment for them. Ney had declared to Louis XVIII. that he would bring Buonaparte to him in a cage, and then carried over his whole army at once to the Emperor. Labdoyre had been equally perjured after the most generous forgiveness of his former treasons, and he had been particularly active in stimulating the Parisians to make a useless resistance to the Allies approaching Paris, by stating that the Bourbons were preparing a most sanguinary proscription. Both officers knew that they had no hope of life, no plea of protection, and they fled in disguise. Yet vehement reproaches were cast on the Duke of Wellington for having, as the Buonapartists asserted, broken the 12th article of the Convention of Paris, by which the city was surrendered to the Allied armies. Madame Ney, after the seizure and condemnation of her husband, went to the Duke, and demanded his interference on the Marshal's behalf, as a right on the ground of this article, which she interpreted as guaranteeing all the inhabitants, of whatever political creed or conduct, from prosecution by the restored Government. It was in vain that Wellington explained to her that this article, and indeed the whole Convention, related solely to the military surrender, and not to the political measures of the Government of Louis, with which the Duke had[115] publicly and repeatedly declared that he had no concern, and in which he would not interfere. When the Commissioners from the Provisional Government had waited on him, so early as the 2nd of July, at Estres, and claimed exemption for political offenders, he showed them the proclamation of Louis, dated Cambray, the 28th of June, making exceptions to the general amnesty, and distinctly told them that he had no orders to interfere with the measures of the Bourbon Government. To this the Commissioners had nothing to object, and they thus clearly understood that the British commander would not take any part in political, but merely in military measures. Nevertheless, when Ney was executed, the clamour was renewed that Wellington had betrayed him. We now anticipate, somewhat, to dispose of this calumny, for there never was a party so recklessly addicted to charging their enemies with breach of faith as that of Buonaparte and his followers. The foul charge was so industriously disseminated over Europe, that Wellington, at Paris, on the 19th of November, 1815, issued a memorial on the subject, which he first caused to be sent to all the Allied Powers and then to be published. In this most decisive document he stated that the Convention of Paris related exclusively to the military occupation of the place, and was never intended, and could not be intended, to prevent either the existing French Government, the Provisional, or any French Government that might succeed it, from acting towards political offenders as it might deem proper. He had refused before to enter into a question of settling the Government. To make this clear, he quoted the 11th article, providing for the non-interference of the Allied army with property; and the 12th:"Seront pareillement respectes les personnes et les proprits particulires; les habitants, et en gnral tous les individus qui se trouvent dans la capitale, continueront jouir de leur droits et liberts sans pouvoir tre inquits, ou recherchs en rein, relativement aux fonctions qu'ils occupent ou avaient occupes, leur conduite, et leur opinions politiques." Labdoyre was shot on the 19th of August, 1815, and Ney on the 7th of December.
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ONE:On the 22nd the Commons went into committee on this subject, and Mr. Tierney then proposed that both the establishment at Windsor and the salary to the Duke of York should be paid out of the Privy Purse or other private funds of the Crown. There was a private property belonging to the Crown of one hundred and forty thousand pounds a year, and surely this was sufficient to defray the charge of the necessary care of the king's person. He reminded the House also of the sums which had been voted for the royal family since 1811. Besides fifty thousand pounds a year set apart for the debts of the Prince Regent, he had a privy purse of sixty thousand pounds a year, besides an additional grant of ten thousand pounds a year made since. The king had also a privy purse of sixty thousand pounds a year, with an additional revenue of ten thousand pounds from the Duchy of Lancaster. Surely, out of all these sums, there must be ample means of taking care of the king's person. To all these second statements Mr. Peelafterwards the Sir Robert who began his political career in the ranks of high Toryismreplied that the Duke of York would accept no salary which came from the Privy Purse, and he quoted Sheridan and Adam, old friends of the Prince Regent, and staunch Whigs, who had zealously advocated the sacredness of the Privy Purse. When the vote was taken for the disposal of the sum for the Windsor establishment, it was carried by two hundred and eighty against one hundred and eighty-six, a sufficient proof that in the new Parliament the Government possessed a strong majority. On the 25th the proposal to confer on the Duke of York ten thousand pounds per annum, for this charge of his own father's person, was also carried by a still larger majoritytwo hundred and forty-seven against one hundred and thirty-seven. In the debate, Denman and Brougham opposed the vote, and Canning supported it. In the House of Peers Lords Grey, Lansdowne, and other Whig peers opposed the vote of the ten thousand pounds to the Duke of York. And truly, in private life, it would not have seemed very filial conduct for a man, already possessing a large income, to require a great annual payment for discharging the simple duty of seeing that his aged father, a gentleman also of ample means, was well looked after.
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