- THREE:The Duke of Wellington had some difficulty in producing due subordination among the members of his Government at the outset. At Liverpool, Mr. Huskisson, in addressing his constituents, by way of apology for serving under a Tory chief, said that in taking office he had obtained guarantees for the future Liberal course of the Government. The Duke resented this assertion, and in the House of Lords, on the 11th of February, with some warmth, contradicted the statement, and declared that pledges had neither been asked nor given, and that if they had been asked, they would have been indignantly refused. Mr. Huskisson explained, in the Commons, that by guarantees he had meant only that the past conduct and character of his colleagues furnished pledges for the future course of the Ministry. Another cause of misunderstanding arose, on the 19th of the same month, with reference to the disfranchisement of East Retford. A Bill had been brought in for that purpose. A portion of the Cabinet were for the enlargement of the constituency by taking in the neighbouring hundred of Bassetlaw; but the constituency had obtained permission to be heard by counsel before the Lords, and they produced such an impression that the Duke of Wellington hesitated about the propriety of the measure. Another party were for transferring the members to Birmingham. The course Mr. Huskisson is represented to have taken on this question seems so tortuous that it is not easy to account for it. The Duke of Wellington and Mr. Peel were understood to have advocated in the Cabinet the disfranchisement of East Retford, and the transference of its members to Birmingham. Mr. Huskisson, conceiving that he was in honour bound to adhere to an arrangement that Mr. Canning had made, voted for throwing open the franchise, and carried his point. They produced their Bill accordingly, and were met, as in the kindred case of Penryn, with a counter-proposal for transferring the members to Birmingham. Against this Mr. Huskisson argued, as tending to weaken too much and too suddenly the agricultural interest. The second reading was proposed on the 19th of May, and an animated debate ensued, in which the chief speakers on the Ministerial side were Mr. Peel and Mr. Huskisson. Nobody appeared to suspect that Mr. Huskisson did not intend to support with his vote the measure which as a speaker he had recommended. Such, however, proved to be the fact. A division took place, and Mr. Huskisson and Lord Palmerston, very much to the astonishment of all parties, went into the lobby against the Ministerial proposal. At two o'clock that night Mr. Huskisson wrote a letter to the Duke, which his Grace received at ten in the morning, in which he said, "I owe it to you, as the head of the Administration, and to Mr. Peel, as leader of the House of Commons, to lose no time in affording you an opportunity of placing my office in other hands." The Duke very naturally took this as a resignation, but Mr. Huskisson denied that it was so meant. An irritating correspondence ensued, and Mr. Huskisson left the Cabinet, as he affirmed, against his will. All the followers of Mr. Canning went with himnamely, Lord Dudley from the Foreign Office, Lord Palmerston from the War Office, and Mr. C. Grant from the Board of Control. They were succeeded by Lord Aberdeen as Foreign Secretary, Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald at the Board of Control, and Sir Henry Hardinge as Secretary at War. Such was the constitution of the Government, with all its Liberalism thus expurgated,[264] which repealed the Test and Corporation Acts, and carried Catholic Emancipation. The king was particularly anxious to have a strong Government. He was still firm in his resistance to Catholic Emancipation. The very mention of the subject by his Ministers produced a degree of excitement and irritation which made their intercourse with him occasionally unpleasant. The Duke of Wellington seemed, of all men, the least likely to give way on the subject. In the debate on the Test and Corporation Acts, he said, "There is no person in this House whose feelings and sentiments, after long consideration, are more decided than mine are with respect to the Roman Catholic claims; and I must say that, until I see a great change in that question, I must oppose it."Mr. Canning, who had been on terms of intimacy with her Majesty, declined to take any part in the proceedings, declaring that nothing would induce him to do anything calculated to reflect upon the honour and virtue of the queen. The queen intimated to the Lord Chancellor that she meant to come in person to the House of Lords when her case should next be discussed there. He answered that he would not permit her to enter without the authority of the House, for which she must previously apply. She then desired that he would deliver a message to the House in her name, which he declined, stating that "the House did not receive messages from anybody but the king, unless they were sent as answers to Addresses from the House." The petition was presented by Lord Dacre, on which occasion the Lord Chancellor declared that he had no objection to its being submitted to the consideration of the House, adding that "he would sooner suffer death than admit any abatement of the principle that a person accused is not therefore to be considered guilty." Mr. Brougham and Mr. Denman were then called in to support the petition, which prayed that their lordships would not prosecute a secret inquiry against her. The powerful pleading of these two orators had an immense effect upon the public mind. On the following day Lord Grey moved that the order for the appointment of a secret committee should be discharged. His motion was negatived by a majority of one hundred and two to forty-seven. This was the first division on the proceedings against the queen, and so large a majority naturally gave great confidence to the Government. The secret committee accordingly set to work, opened the green bag, and examined the charges. On the 4th of July they brought in their report, which stated "that allegations supported by the concurrent testimony of a great number of persons in various situations of life, and residing in different parts of Europe, appeared to be calculated so deeply to affect the character of the queen, the dignity of the Crown, and the moral feeling and honour of the country, that it was indispensable that they should become the subject of a solemn inquiry, which would best be effected in the course of a legislative proceeding." On the 5th Lord Liverpool introduced the Bill of Pains and Penalties against her Majesty, which, having recited in the preamble that she carried on an adulterous intercourse with Bergami, her menial servant, enacted "that she should be degraded from her station and title of queen, and that her marriage with the king should be dissolved." Counsel were again heard against that mode of proceeding, a second reading was set down for the 17th of August, when the preamble was to be proved, and the trial to begin. ONE: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,[434] Cond, 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.[See larger version] GET AWESOME FEATURE LIST
- THREE: ONE:TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN. (From a Photograph by Poulton and Son, Lee.)There was one object, however, to be gained which was deeply interesting to every true Briton in India as well as to the public at home, without which no victories however glorious, and no infliction of punishment however terrible, upon the enemy, would have been considered satisfactorynamely, the deliverance of the captives that were still held as hostages by Akbar Khan. On this subject the two generals, Pollock and Nott, held a consultation. Nott declared that the Government had thrown the prisoners overboard, and protested against taking any measures for their recovery. But Pollock was determined that the effort should be made, and took upon himself the responsibility of telling Nott to ignore his orders. Ellenborough, half-persuaded, sanctioned Pollock's remaining at Jelalabad until October, but commanded Nott to retire either by Quetta or Cabul. Nott and Pollock, however, disregarded these absurd orders, and the advance was continued. The duty of rescuing the prisoners was undertaken by Sale, whose own heroic wife was among them. He started in pursuit, taking with him a brigade from the army at Jelalabad. The captives had been hurried on towards the inhospitable regions of the Indian Caucasus, not suffered to sleep at night, and were stared at as objects of curiosity by the inhabitants of the villages through which they passed. They reached their destination, Maimene, on the 3rd of September, and there, in a short time, before Sale's brigade arrived, they had providentially effected their own ransom. The commander of their escort was Saleh Mahomed, a soldier of fortune, who had been at one time a soubahdar in Captain Hopkins's regiment of infantry, and had deserted with his men to Dost Mahomed. Between this man and Captain Johnson an intimacy sprang up, which the latter turned to account by throwing out hints that Saleh Mahomed would be amply rewarded, if, instead of carrying off his prisoners, he would conduct them in safety to the British camp. Days passed away without anything being done, till after their arrival at Maimene, when, on the 11th of September, Saleh Mahomed sent for Johnson, Pottinger, and Lawrence, and in a private room which had been appropriated to Lady Sale, he produced a letter which he had just received from Akbar Khan, directing him to convey the prisoners to a more distant prison-house. This seemed to be a sentence of hopeless captivity, but the officers' minds were soon relieved by another piece of intelligencenamely, a message from General Pollock that if Saleh Mahomed released the prisoners he should receive a present of 20,000 rupees, and a life pension of 1,000 rupees a month. Saleh said to them, "I know nothing of General Pollock, but if you three gentlemen will swear by your Saviour to make good to me what Synd Moortega Shah states that he is authorised to offer, I will deliver you over to your own people." The offer was gladly accepted; and an agreement was drawn up, in pursuance of which Saleh Mahomed and his European allies proclaimed their revolt to the people of Maimene and the surrounding country. They deposed the governor of the place, and appointed a more friendly chief in his stead. They supplied themselves with funds by seizing upon the property of a party of merchants who were passing that way. Major Pottinger assumed the functions of government, and issued proclamations, and called upon the chiefs to come in and make their salaam. But they might come for a different purpose, and hence they began to fortify themselves, and prepare for a very vigorous defence. While thus employed, a horseman was seen rapidly approaching from the Cabul side of the valley, who proved to be the bearer of glad tidings. The Jugduluk Pass had been forced; Akbar Khan had been defeated by General Pollock at Tizeen, and had fled, no one knew whither. This was delightful news indeed. The power of the oppressor was now broken, and the captives were free. Early next morning they started for Cabul, sleeping the first night upon stony beds under the clear moonlight; they were awakened by the arrival of a friendly[503] chief, who brought a letter from Sir Richmond Shakespear, stating that he was on his way to Maimene with a party of horse. On the 17th of September Shakespear, with his cavalry, came up. Pushing on again, they were met by a large body of British cavalry and infantry, under the command of Sir Robert Sale. "In a little time the happy veteran had embraced his wife and daughter; and the men of the 13th had offered their delighted congratulations to the loved ones of their old commander. A royal salute was fired. The prisoners were safe in Sale's camp. The good Providence that had so long watched over the prisoners and the captives now crowned its mercies by delivering them into the hands of their friends. Dressed as they were in Afghan costume, their faces bronzed by much exposure, and rugged with beards and moustachios of many months' growth, it was not easy to recognise the liberated officers, who now came forward to receive the congratulations of their friends." GET AWESOME FEATURE LIST
- THREE: Luke Fox, made judge of Common Pleas.William IV. then sent for the veteran Grey, who formed a Ministry with unusual ease, chiefly of the Whig and Canningite elements. His chief difficulty was how to dispose of the volatile Brougham. The king had no objection to accept him as one of the Ministers, and Brougham himself wished to be Master of the Rolls, assuming that Sir John Leech was to become Lord Chancellor of Ireland, with a peerage, and that Mr. Plunket was to be Lord Chancellor of England. To this arrangement, however, the king and Lord Grey peremptorily objected. Brougham was then offered the Attorney-Generalship, which he calmly refused, upon which Lord Grey declared that his hopes of being able to form an Administration were at an end, and he waited on his Majesty for the purpose of communicating to him the failure of his negotiations. "Why so?" inquired the king. "Why not make him Chancellor? Have you thought of that?" The answer was, "No; your Majesty's objection to the one appointment seemed to preclude the other." "Not at all, not at all," replied the king; and the reasons for one appointment and against the other were very clearly stated by his Majesty, namely, that Brougham as Master of the Rolls and member for Yorkshire would be far too powerful. Mr. Brougham was left in the dark for some time about the intentions of Lord Grey, for on the 17th of November he said he had nothing to do with the Administration, except in the respect he bore them, and as a member of the House. On the 19th he presented petitions, and spoke on them in the Commons, without intimating any change of position. Hence it may easily be supposed that he surprised the world, as well as his friends, by suddenly appearing on November the 22nd in the House of Lords as Lord Chancellor of England. This was certainly a high office to which he was elevated, and for which the exigencies of party made him necessary; but, in accepting it, he sacrificed a great position which seemed to gratify all the desires of intellectual ambition; and, in order to induce his compliance, Lord Grey was obliged to appeal to his generous sympathies, his public spirit, and his devotion to his party. Lord Brougham and Vaux became, said a wag, "Vaux et praeterea nihil." ONE:But he went on to Smorgony, and there, the remains of the army having come up, he called a council of war on the 5th of December. He told his generals that he had ordered Ney to reorganise the army at Wilna, and had appointed Murat, King of Naples, generalissimo in his absence. He assumed a tone of great confidence, promised his army good winter-quarters beyond the Niemen, and assured them that he was hasting away to present himself directly at the head of one hundred and twenty thousand men to keep the Austrians and Prussians firm to their alliance, and thus to make those he left behind more secure than he could do by staying with them. He then passed through the crowd of his officers, who were drawn up in an avenue as he passed, bidding them adieu with forced and melancholy smiles. He then stepped into a sledge with Caulaincourt and shut themselves in, and Duroc and Lobau followed in another sledge; and thus the man who entered Russia with nearly half a million of men, stole away, leaving the miserable remnant of his vast army to the elements and the Russians! GET AWESOME FEATURE LIST
THREE:THE GREAT MOGUL ENTERING THE ENGLISH CAMP. (See p. 317.)MR. STANLEY (AFTERWARDS 14th EARL OF DERBY). [From a photograph by S. A. Walker, Regent Street, London.
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