THREE:On the 18th of November Lord Cornwallis crossed the North River with six thousand men, and, landing on the Jersey side, began to attack Fort Lee, standing nearly opposite Fort Washington. The garrison fled, leaving behind all its tents standing, all its provisions and artillery. Washington was compelled by this to fall back from his position on the Croton, thence to Brunswick, Princeton, Trenton, and finally to the Pennsylvanian side of the Delaware. Lord Cornwallis followed at his heels. Cornwallis penetrated to the remotest parts of east and west Jersey, and everywhere the inhabitants received him as a friend and deliverer. On the 24th of November Lord Cornwallis was approaching Brunswick, when he received orders to halt. By this means, Washington was allowed to escape across the Delaware. It was not till the evening of the 16th of December that Cornwallis received[232] orders to proceed, and, though he made all haste, he was too late. The rear of the American army quitted Princeton as the van of the English army entered it. Washington, in headlong haste, fled to Trenton, and began ferrying his troops over the Delaware. When Cornwallis reached Trenton, at nine o'clock the next morning, he beheld the last boats of Washington crossing the river. Once over the water, the remains of the American troops lost all appearance of an army. They were a mere dirty, worn-out, ragged, and dispirited mob. Washington had taken the advantage of the halt of Cornwallis to collect all the boats from Delaware for the distance of seventy miles, so that the English could not cross after them. Cornwallis, being thus brought to a stand, put his army into winter quarters between the Delaware and the Hackensack.The Catholic and Apostolic Church, founded by the Rev. Edward Irving, had at the time of the census of 1851 about 30 congregations, comprising nearly 6,000 communicants, and the number was said to be gradually increasing. Mr. Irving (who in 1819 assisted Dr. Chalmers at Glasgow) was the minister of the Scottish Church, Regent Square, London, very eloquent, and very eccentric; and towards the close of 1829 it was asserted that several miraculous gifts of healing and prophecy, and of speaking with strange tongues, were displayed in his congregation. Having been excluded from the Scottish Church, a chapel was erected for him, in 1832, in Newman Street. In the course of a few years other churches were erected in different places. The Apostolic Church was established on the model of the Jewish Tabernacle, with twelve apostles, a new order of prophets, etc. In 1836 they delivered their testimony to the Archbishop of Canterbury, to most of the bishops, and to many ministers in different denominations. They also resolved to deliver their testimony to the king in person, and "to as many Privy Councillors as could be found, or would receive it." In 1837 a "Catholic testimony" was addressed to the patriarchs, bishops, and sovereigns of Christendom, and was subsequently delivered to Cardinal Acton for the Pope, to Prince Metternich for the Emperor of Austria, and to other bishops and kings throughout Europe.
FORE:In the meantime, General Lake had made a march on Delhi, continuing, as he went, his correspondence with M. Perron. As General Lake approached the fortress of Allyghur, the stronghold of Perron, the Frenchman came out with fifteen thousand men, but again retreated into the fortress. This was on the 29th of August. Perron made a strong resistance, and held out till the 4th of September, when the place was stormed by a party headed by Colonel Monson and Major Macleod. The success was somewhat clouded by the surprise[492] and surrender of five companies of General Lake's sepoys, who had been left behind to guard an important position, but with only one gun. This accident, however, was far more than counterbalanced by the withdrawal of Perron from the service of the Mahrattas. He had found so much insubordination amongst his French officers, and saw so clearly that there was no chance of competing with the British, that he had at length closed with General Lake's offers, and, abandoning his command, had obtained a passport for himself, family, suite, and effects, and retired to Lucknow. This being accomplished, General Lake continued his march on Delhi, in order to release Shah Allum, the Mogul, and drew near it on the 11th of September. He there found that the army previously commanded by Perron, but now by Louis Bourquien, nineteen thousand strong, had crossed the Jumna and was posted between him and the city. Bourquien had posted his army on a rising ground, flanked on both sides by swamps, and defended in front by strong entrenchments and about seventy pieces of cannon. As Lake had only four thousand five hundred men, to attack them in that position appeared madness. The British were briskly assailed before they could pitch their tents, and General Lake, feigning a retreat, succeeded in drawing the enemy down from their commanding situation and out of their entrenchments; he then suddenly wheeled, fired a destructive volley into the incautious foe, and followed this rapidly by a charge with the bayonet. The enemy fled, and endeavoured to regain their guns and entrenchments; but Lake did not leave them timeanother volley and another bayonet charge completely disorganised them, and they fled for the Jumna and the road by which they had come. The troops of Scindiah, which had held the Mogul prisoner, evacuated the city, and on the 16th General Lake made a visit of state to the aged Shah Allum, who expressed himself as delighted at being delivered from his oppressors and received under the protection of the British.
THREE: William Handcock, an extraordinary instance. He made and sang songs against the union, in 1799, at a public dinner, and made and sang songs for it in 1800; for which he was made Lord Castlemaine.
FORE:The Assembly had, on this memorable night of the 4th of August, decreed nothing less thanthe abolition of all serfdom; the right of compounding for the seignorial dues, and the abolition of seignorial jurisdictions; the suppression of exclusive rights of hunting, shooting, keeping warrens, dovecotes, etc.; the abolition of tithes; the equality of taxes; the admission of all citizens to civil and military employments; the abolition of the sale of offices; the suppression of all the privileges of towns and provinces; the reformation of wardenships; and the suppression of pensions obtained without just claims. The Assembly then continued the work of the constitution.
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THREE:Argyll, who received the news of the retreat about four in the afternoon of that day, occupied Perth with Dutch and English troops by ten o'clock the next morning. They had quitted Stirling on the 29th, and that night they encamped on the snow amid the burnt remains of the village of Auchterarder. Argyll and Cadogan followed the advanced guard and entered Perth on[32] the evening of the 1st of February; but the remainder of the troops did not arrive till late at night, owing to the state of the roads and the weather. Some few of the rebels, who had got drunk and were left behind, were secured. The next day Argyll and Cadogan, with eight hundred light foot and six squadrons of dragoons, followed along the Carse of Gowrie to Dundee. Cadogan, in a letter to Marlborough, complained of the evident reluctance of Argyll to press on the rebels. When he arrived at Dundee on the 3rd, the rebel army was already gone. He and Cadogan then separated, taking different routes towards Montrose. Cadogan, whose heart was in the business, pushed on ahead, and on the 5th, at noon, reached Arbroath, where he received the news that the Pretender had embarked at Montrose and gone to France. In this manner did the descendant of a race of kings and the claimant of the Crown of Great Britain steal away and leave his unhappy followers to a sense of his perfidious and cruel desertion. His flight, no doubt, was necessary, but the manner of it was at once most humiliating and unfeeling. The consternation and wrath of the army on the discovery were indescribable. They were wholly broken up when Argyll reached Aberdeen on the 8th of February.
FORE:The South Sea Company had immediately on the passing of the Bill proposed a subscription of one million, and this was so eagerly seized on that, instead of one, two millions were subscribed. To stimulate this already too feverish spirit in the public, the Company adopted the most false and unjustifiable means. They had eight millions and a half to pay over to Government as a douceur for granting them the management of the Funds; and, therefore, to bring this in rapidly, they propagated the most lying rumours. It was industriously circulated that Lord Stanhope had received overtures at Paris to exchange Gibraltar and Port Mahon for invaluable gold lands in Peru! The South Sea trade was vaunted as a source of boundless wealth in itself. In August the stock had risen from the one hundred and thirty of the last winter to one thousand! Men sold houses and land to become shareholders; merchants of eminence neglected their affairs and crippled their resources to reap imaginary profits. The Company flattered the delusion to the utmost. They opened a third, and even a fourth subscription, larger than the former, and passed a resolution that from next Christmas their yearly dividend should not be less than fifty per cent.! In labouring to increase the public delusion they seem to have caught the contagion themselves, for they began to act, not like men who were blowing a bubble which they knew must speedily burst, but like persons who had mounted permanently into the very highest seat of prosperous power. They assumed the most arrogant and overbearing manner, even towards men of the highest station and influence. "We have made them kings," said a member of Parliament, "and they deal with everybody as such."
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THREE:On the 12th of February, 1823, the President of the Board of Trade said, in his place in Parliament:"The general exports of the country in the four years from 1815 to 1819 had decreased 14,000,000 in official value; and he took the official value in preference to the declared, because it was from the quantity of goods produced that the best measure was derived of the employment afforded to the different classes of the community. In the year from the 5th of January, 1819, to the 5th of January, 1820, the exports of the country fell off no less than 11,000,000; and in looking at that part of it which more completely embraced British or Irish manufacture, he found that the difference in four years was 8,414,711; and that in the year from the 5th of January, 1820, to the 5th of January, 1821, there was a decrease of 8,929,629. Nobody, therefore, could be surprised that, at that period, the industry of the country appeared to be in a state of the utmost depression; that our manufacturers were most of them unemployed; that our agriculturists were many of them embarrassed; and that the country, to use the phrase of a friend of his in presenting a petition from the merchants of London, 'exhibited all the appearances of a dying nation.' Though the condition of the agricultural interest was not as favourable as he could wish, still it was most satisfactory for him to state that not only did the exports of last year [1822] exceed those of all the years to which he had been alluding, but also those of the most flourishing year which had occurred during the continuance of the war. In all material articles there had been a considerable increase. The export of cotton had increased ten per cent., and hardware seventeen per cent.; of linens twelve per cent., and of woollens thirteen per cent.; and the aggregate exports of 1822 exceeded those of 1820 by twenty per cent., and of 1821 by seven per cent., notwithstanding a deduction was to be made from the exports of one great article, sugar, owing to a prohibitory decree of Russia, amounting to thirty-five per cent." The result of this prosperous state of things was that, in 1823, the new Chancellor of the Exchequer was enabled to present the best and most popular Budget that had been laid before Parliament for many years, remitting a large amount of taxes that had pressed most heavily on the springs of industry, and inflicted the greatest amount of inconvenience and privation upon the people. The revenue of the nation in that year was 57,000,000, and the expenditure was estimated at 49,672,999, leaving a surplus of upwards of 7,000,000. Of this surplus, 5,000,000 was set aside for the reduction of the National Debt, and the remainder for the remission of taxes. As the assessed taxes were most oppressive, they were reduced fifty per[239] cent., a reduction which was estimated on the window tax alone at 1,205,000. On the whole, the assessed taxes were reduced by 2,200,000. This included 100,000, the total amount of assessed taxes in Ireland. In England the whole of the window tax was removed from the ground floors of shops and warehouses.
FORE:As the French approached Madrid, whither Buonaparte was coming in person, the Junta, which had taken no measures to render it defensible while they had time, were now all hurry and confusion. They began to collect provisions; the stones were torn up to form barricades. A desperate resistance might have been made, as there had been at Saragossa, but there was treachery in the city. The wealthy inhabitants, merchants and shopkeepers, as well as the aristocracy, were far more anxious to save their property than their country; the cowardly Junta having issued orders, lost heart, and fled for Badajos. On the 2nd of December, the anniversary of his coronation, Buonaparte arrived before Madrid, and summoned it to surrender; and this being unheeded, he prepared to storm it the next morning. Had Palafox been there, there would have been, probably, a brave defence. The next morning the storming commenced, and the French forced their way as far as the palace of the Duke de Medina Celi, the key of the whole city. The place was then summoned afresh, and the governor now proposed a surrender. The fact was, that he had already settled in his mind to go over to the French, as the strongest party, and he gave no encouragement or assistance to the citizens, who still continued from behind their walls and barricades to fire on the French. On the 4th he declared that the city must surrender; and the French marched in. Many of the people fled and the rest were disarmed; but Buonaparte, who wanted to keep Madrid uninjured and in good temper for King Joseph, gave strict orders that the city should not be plundered, nor the people treated with rudeness. He fixed his residence about four miles from Madrid, and issued thence imperial decrees and a proclamation, informing the Spaniards that all further resistance was useless; that he wanted his brother to reign in quiet, but that if this were not permitted, he would come and reign there himself, and compel submission; for God had given him the power and inclination to surmount all obstacles. He then set out to drive the "English leopards" from the Peninsulaa task that was to try him to the uttermost.Retreat was now inevitable, and Burgoyne determined to attempt to reach Fort George, at the southern end of Lake George. He had but three days' provisions left, and his force was now reduced to three thousand five hundred men, and these had to make their way through a wilderness swarming with active and elate enemies. Gates, aware of the movement which Burgoyne was intending to make, sent troops up the river to occupy the banks of the Hudson, and to guard all[244] passages of escape. The distance to Saratoga was only six miles, but the rain fell in torrents, the roads were almost impassable, the bridges over the Fishkill were all broken down by the Americans. Burgoyne sent forward detachments of soldiers to repair the bridges and re-open the roads; but they found the woods swarming with riflemen, and that it was impossible to execute the task assigned them. On the 10th, when he arrived at the fords of the Fishkill, he found them obstructed by strong forces of Americans. He soon dispersed them with cannon, but they only retired to the Hudson, where still stronger bodies of troops were posted to oppose his crossing. He might, perhaps, have dispersed these too, but other bodies were seen already in line on the left bank, and to cross there appeared hopeless.
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