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THREE: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. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.

THREE: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[222] 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 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[564] 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. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.

THREE: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.[See larger version] Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.

THREE: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. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.

THREE: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. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.