TWO:On the evening of the 16th of July Casta?os 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. Casta?os 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 Casta?os 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 Casta?os insisted that if Vedel himself did not immediately[556] 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.
TWO: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."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 Gibraltara silence amounting to a renunciation of its demand by Spain; and that Philip regarded it as such was evidenced by his[60] beginning to construct the strong lines of San Roque, and thus to cut off all communication with the obnoxious fortress by land.