At length General Pollock found himself in a position to advance for the relief of the garrison, and marched his force to Jumrood. On the 4th of April he issued orders for the guidance of his officers. The army started at twilight, without sound of bugle or beat of drum. The heights on each side of the Khyber Pass were covered with the enemy, but so completely were they taken by surprise that our flankers had achieved a considerable ascent before the Khyberese were aware of their approach. The enemy had thrown across the mouth of the Pass a formidable barrier, composed of large stones, mud, and heavy branches of trees. In the meantime the light infantry were stealing round the hills, climbing up precipitous cliffs, and getting possession of commanding peaks, from which they poured down a destructive fire upon the Khyberese, who were confounded by the unexpected nature of the attack. The confidence which arose from their intimate knowledge of the nature of the ground now forsook them, and they were seen in their white dresses flying in every direction across the hills. The centre column, which had quietly awaited the result of the outflanking movements by the brave and active light infantry, now moved on, determined to enter the Pass, at the mouth of which a large number of the enemy had been posted; but finding themselves outflanked, these gradually retreated. The way was cleared, and the long train of baggage, containing ammunition and provisions for the relief of Jelalabad, entered the formidable defile. The heat being intense, the troops suffered greatly from thirst; but the sepoys behaved admirably, were in excellent spirits, and had a thorough contempt for the enemy. It was now discovered that their mutinous spirit arose from the conviction that they had been sacrificed by bad generalship. Ali Musjid, from which the British garrison had made such a disastrous and ignominious retreat, was soon triumphantly reoccupied. Leaving a Sikh force to occupy the Pass, General Pollock pushed on to Jelalabad. Writing to a friend, he said, "We found the fort strong, the garrison healthy, and, except for wine and beer, better off than we are. They were, of course, delighted to see us; we gave three cheers as we passed the colours, and the band of each regiment played as it came up. It was a sight worth seeing; all appeared happy. The band of the 13th had gone out to play them in, and the relieving force marched the last few miles to the tune, 'Oh, but you've been long a-coming!'"Napoleon also exerted himself to excite a rebellion in Ireland. He was the more bent on this, because he saw that it was hopeless to make a direct descent on England itself. He had collected a great fleet in the harbours of Boulogne, Dieppe, Havre, Dunkirk, Ostend, and other smaller ports, many of them capable only of receiving the gunboats in which he proposed to transport his soldiers. He had assembled a very fine army on the heights above Boulogne, called the Army of England, and there continually exercised it, under the inspection of Soult, Ney, Davoust, and Victormen, the pride of his army; but he saw such powerful fleets crowding the Channel, blockading his very ports, cutting out, every now and then, some of his gunboats under the very batteries, and the war-ships of Britain even standing in and firing at him and his suite as they made observations from the cliffs, that, combined with the information that England was almost all one camp, he abandoned the project, for the present, in despair. But Ireland he deemed vulnerable, from the treason of her own children. He assembled all the Irish refugees in Paris, formed the Irish Brigade into the Irish Legion, and sent over active agents to arouse their countrymen in Ireland. Amongst these were Quigley and Robert Emmett, who had been engaged in the Rebellion of 1798. Quigley had been outlawed, and Emmett had been so deeply implicated in that Rebellion with his brother Thomas, who was banished, that he had found it necessary to quit the country. These emissaries soon collected around them, in Dublin, disaffected associates, amongst them being Dowdall, Redmond, and Russell. They formed a central committee, and corresponded with others in different towns, and especially with one Dwyer, who had also been in the former Rebellion, and had ever since maintained himself and a knot of desperate followers in the mountains of Wicklow. The Government received, from time to time, information of the proceedings of these foolish menEmmett being a rash youth of only twenty-two or twenty-three years of agebut they took no precautions; and when, on the 23rd of July, the eve of the Festival of St. James, these desperadoes rushed, at evening, into the streets of Dublin, armed with pikes, old guns, and blunderbusses, the authorities were taken entirely by surprise. There were from two thousand to three thousand soldiers in the Castle, but neither police, soldier, nor officer appeared till the mob had murdered Colonel Brown, who was hastening to the Castle to arouse the troops, and Lord Kilwarden, the Chief Justice, whom they dragged from his carriage as it passed, and killed, along with his nephew, but, at the same time, they allowed the Chief Justice's daughter, who was with them, to depart. Soon after thisbut not before the insurgents had severely wounded a Mr. Clarke, a manufacturer, who was riding to alarm the Castlethe soldiers appeared, and the mob fled at their very sight. The same day Russell had turned out at Belfast, and Quigley at Kildare, but with as little success. Emmett had escaped to the Wicklow mountains to join Dwyer; but having assumed the fatal disguise of French officers, the country people, who hated the French since their appearance under General Humbert, when they had ridiculed the Catholic religion, drove him and twelve of his companions back. In a short time, Emmett, Russell, Redmond, and others were all secured and executed. Dowdall escaped, with Allen and others, out of Ireland; Quigley and Stafford, one of his companions, were admitted as king's evidence, and thus escaped. The project of Napoleon had thus entirely failed, with the sacrifice of some of his leading agents.
Director
From the Painting by E. M. Ward. R.A.[See larger version]On the 29th of November Flood moved for leave to bring in a Bill for the more equal representation of the people. This was the scheme of the Volunteer Parliament, and all the delegates to the Convention who were members of the House, or had procured admittance as spectators, appeared in uniform. The tempest that arose is described as something terrific. The orders of the House, the rules of debate, the very rules of ordinary conduct amongst gentlemen, were utterly disregarded. The fury on both sides was uncontrollable. The motion was indignantly rejected by one hundred and fifty-seven votes against seventy-seven; and the House immediately voted a cordial Address to his Majesty, declaring their perfect satisfaction with the blessings enjoyed[311] under his auspicious reign, and the present happy Constitution, and their determination to support him with their lives and fortunes. On the 13th of March Mr. Flood introduced his Bill once more, for equalising the representation of the people in Parliament. It proposed to abolish the right of boroughs altogether to send members, and to place the franchise in the people at large. Sir John Fitzgibbon, the Attorney-General, stoutly opposed it; Grattan dissented from it, and it was thrown out on the motion to commit it.On the 14th of September the Russian army filed through the streets of their beloved but doomed city, with sad looks, furled banners, and silent drums, and went out at the Kolomna gate. The population followed them. Rostopschin had encouraged vast numbers already to transplant all their wealth and stores from the place, and, as his last act, he called up two prisonersa Russian traitor, and a Frenchman who had dropped hostile expressions. The Russian he ordered, with the consent of the culprit's own father, to be put to death; the Frenchman he set at liberty, telling him to go to Buonaparte and say that but one traitor had been found in Russia, and him he had seen cut to pieces. Rostopschin then mounted his horse and rode after his countrymen, having first[47] ordered all the gaols to be set open, and their wretched inhabitants to be allowed to make their escape.