By these violent and arbitrary means was passed on the 4th July, 1776, the famous Declaration of Independence. The original motion for such a Declaration, on the 8th of June, had been supported by a bare majority of seven States to six; and now the whole thirteen States were said to have assented, though it is perfectly well known that several signatures were not supplied till months afterwards by newly chosen delegates. The Declaration contained the following assertions of freedom:1. That all men are born equally free, possessing certain natural rights, of which they cannot, by any compact, deprive their posterity; 2. That all power is vested in the people, from whom it is derived [but it was voted in Congress that the blacks made no part of the people]; 3. That they have an inalienable, indefeasible right to reform, alter, or abolish their form of government at pleasure; 4. That the idea of an hereditary first magistrate is unnatural and absurd.Marriage is one of the fundamental principles of the social system. The law of marriage, therefore, ought to be plain and simple, intelligible to all, and guarded in every possible way against fraud and abuse. Yet the marriage laws of the United Kingdom were long in the most confused, unintelligible, and unsettled state, leading often to ruinous and almost endless litigation. A new Marriage Act was passed in the Session now under review, which, like many Acts of the kind, originated in personal interests affecting the aristocracy. It was said to have mainly arisen out of the marriage of the Marquis of Donegal with Miss May, who was the daughter of a gentleman celebrated for assisting persons of fashion with loans of money. The brother of the marquis sought to set this marriage aside, and to render the children illegitimate, in order that he might himself, should the marquis die without lawful issue, be heir to his title and estates. In law the marriage was invalid; but it was now protected by a retrospective clause in the new Act. By the Marriage Act of 1754 all marriages of minors certified without the assent of certain specified persons were declared null. A Bill was passed by the Commons giving validity to marriages which, according to the existing law, were null, and providing that the marriages of minors, celebrated without due notice, should not be void, but merely voidable, and liable to be annulled only during the minority[226] of the parties, and at the suit of the parents or guardians.
ONE:In the midst of these cabals died the Regent, and Townshend, acting with Walpole, sent over Walpole's brother Horace to watch their interests at Paris. Carteret, on the other hand, ordered Sir Luke Schaub to make every exertion for the grant of the dukedom. On the arrival of Horace Walpole, Bolingbroke, obeying the impulses of the courtier and not of the man, immediately waited on him, and placed all his influence at the French Court at his service; but Walpole, who had an invincible repugnance to Bolingbroke, whilst he availed himself of the advantages offered by Bolingbroke, still kept him at a great and stately distance. Undeterred by this conduct, however, Bolingbroke swallowed his mortification, and continued to keep his eye and his hope on the Walpole Ministry. Unassisted by Bolingbroke, the dukedom could not be obtained; but George reconciled Madame Platen to the match by giving her daughter a portion of ten thousand pounds. Horace Walpole, at the same time, succeeded in getting Schaub recalled, and himself installed in his office of Ambassador at Parisa decided victory over Carteret; indeed, so decided, that Carteret was removed from the Secretaryship to the Lord-Lieutenancy of Ireland.
TWO:
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ONE:Following his words by acts, he set off himself, attended only by a few score sepoys, for Benares. Cheyte Sing came out as far as Buxar to meet the offended Governor, and paid him the utmost homage. He continued his journey with the Rajah in his train, and entered the Rajah's capital, the great Mecca of India, the famed city of Benares, on the 14th of August, 1781. He then made more enormous demands than before; and the compliance of the Rajah not being immediate, he ordered Mr. Markham, his own-appointed resident at Benares, to arrest the Rajah in his palace. Cheyte Sing was a timid man, yet the act of arresting him in the midst of his own subjects, and in a place so sacred, and crowded with pilgrims from every part of the East, was a most daring deed. The effect was instantaneous. The people rose in fury, and pouring headlong to the palace with arms in their hands, they cut to pieces Markham and his sepoys. Had Cheyte Sing had the spirit of his people in him, Hastings and his little party would have been butchered in half an hour. But Cheyte Sing only thought of his own safety. He got across the Ganges, and whole troops of his subjects flocked after him. Thence he sent protestations of his innocence of the meute, and of his readiness to make any conditions. Hastings, though surrounded and besieged in his quarters by a furious mob, deigned no answer to the suppliant Rajah, but busied himself in collecting all the sepoys in the place. But the situation of Hastings was at every turn becoming more critical. The sepoys, sent to seize Cheyte Sing in the palace of Ramnuggur, were repulsed, and many of them, with their commander, killed. The multitude were now more excited than ever, and that night would probably have seen the last of Warren Hastings, had he not contrived to escape from Benares, and to reach the strong fortress of Chunar, situated on a rock several hundred feet above the Ganges, and about seventeen miles below Benares. Cheyte Sing, for a moment, encouraged by the flight of Hastings, put himself at the head of the enraged people, and, appealing to the neighbouring princes as to his treatment, declared he would drive the English out of the country. But troops and money were speedily sent to Hastings from Lucknow, others marched to Chunar from their cantonments, and he found himself safe amid a sufficient force commanded by the brave Major Popham, the conqueror of Gwalior, to defy the thirty thousand undisciplined followers of Cheyte Sing. From the 29th of August to the 20th of September there were different engagements between the British and the forces of Cheyte Sing; but on every occasion, though the Indians fought bravely they were worsted, and on the last-named day, utterly routed at Pateeta. Cheyte Sing did not wait for the arrival of the British troops; he fled into Bundelcund, and never returned again to Benares. Hastings restored order, and set up another puppet Rajah, a nephew of Cheyte Sing, but raised the annual tribute to forty lacs of rupees, or four hundred thousand pounds a year, and placed the mint and the entire jurisdiction of the province in the hands of his own officers.
TWO:"Father clammed[3] thrice a week,Lord Edward Fitzgerald and Mr. Arthur O'Connor, nephew of Lord Longueville, went over to Paris to arrange the invasion. In London, Fitzgerald, his French wife, who accompanied him, and O'Connor, were entertained by members of the Opposition, and dined at the house of a peer in company with Fox, Sheridan, and several other leading Whigs; and Thomas Moore, in his Life of Fitzgerald, more than hints that he made no secret to these patriots of the object of his journey, for he was of a very free-talking and open Irish temperament. The friends of Fox have been inclined to doubt this discreditable fact, but no one was more likely than Moore to be well informed about it; and when Fitzgerald and O'Connor were on their trial, not only Fox, but Sheridan, Lord John Russell, the Dukes of Suffolk and Norfolk, Lords Thanet and Oxford came forward, and gave them both the highest character as excellent, honourable men. These emissaries reached Basle, by way of Hamburg, in the spring of 1797, and there, through Barthlemy, negotiated with the Directory. The Directory objected to receive Lord Edward Fitzgerald at Paris, on account of his connection with the Orlans family through his wife, lest the people should imagine that it was with some design on the Orlans estate; he therefore returned again to Hamburg, and O'Connor proceeded to Paris and arranged for the expedition under General Hoche, whose disastrous voyage we have already related. Fitzgerald and O'Connor did not reach Ireland again without the British Government being made fully aware of their journey and its object, from a lady fellow-traveller with Fitzgerald to Hamburg, to whom, with a weak and, as it concerned the fate of thousands, unpardonable garrulity, he had disclosed the whole. Almost simultaneously the arrest of the revolutionary committee of the North disclosed a systematic and well-organised conspiracy. In March, 1797, General Lake proceeded to disarm the revolutionaries in Ulster, and accomplished his task with ruthless severity.
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ONE:At the time that Tippoo heard of the death of his father, he was, assisted by the French, eagerly pressing on the most inferior force of Colonel Mackenzie, not very far from Seringapatam. Mackenzie being obliged to retire, was suddenly set upon, before daylight, near Paniany, about thirty-five miles from Calicut, by the whole force; but he repulsed them with great slaughter. Tippoo then fell back and made the best of his way to his capital to secure his throne and the treasures of Hyder Ali. He found himself at the age of thirty master of the throne, of an army of nearly one hundred thousand men, and of immense wealth. With these advantages, and the alliance of the French, Tippoo did not doubt of being able to drive the British out of all the south of India. Yet, with his vast army, accompanied by nine hundred French, two thousand Sepoys, and nearly three hundred Kafirs, Tippoo retreated, or appeared to be retreating, before General Stuart, with a force of only fourteen thousand men, of whom three thousand alone were British. He was, in fact, however, hastening to defend the north-west districts of Mysore from another British force on the coast of Canara. This force was that of Colonel Mackenzie, joined by another from Bombay, under General Matthews, who took the chief command in that quarter.Whilst the Court had been conspiring, the people had conspired too. The electors at the H?tel de Ville listened with avidity to a suggestion of Mirabeau, thrown out in the National Assembly, which passed at the time without much notice. This was for organising the citizens into a City Guard. The plan had originated with Dumont and his countryman, Duroverai, both Genevese. Mirabeau had adopted and promulgated it. Fallen unnoticed in the Assembly, on the 10th of July Carra revived it at the H?tel de Ville. He declared that the right of the Commune to take means for the defence of the city was older than the Monarchy itself. The Parisian people seconded, in an immense multitude, this daring proposition, and desired nothing more than a direct order to arm themselves and to maintain their own safety. Thus encouraged, Mirabeau renewed his motion in the National Assembly. He demanded that the troops should be withdrawn from the neighbourhood of Versailles and Paris, and a burgher guard substituted. He also moved that the "discussion on the Constitution should be suspended till the security of the capital and the Assembly were effected." He moved for an address to the king, praying him to dismiss the[363] troops, and rely on the affections of his people. The motion was carried, and a committee appointed to draw up the address. The address was presented by a deputation of twenty-four members. The king replied that the troops had been assembled to preserve public tranquillity and to protect the National Assembly; but that if the Assembly felt any apprehension, he would send away the troops to Noyon or Soissons and would go himself to Compigne. This answer was anything but satisfactory, for this would be to withdraw the Assembly much farther from Paris, and the movement would thus weaken the influence of the Assembly, and at the same time place the king between two powerful armiesthe one under Broglie, at Soissons, and another which lay on the river Oise, under the Marquis de Bouill, a most determined Royalist. The Assembly was greatly disconcerted when this reply was reported.
TWO:Mr. Villiers renewed his motion on the 26th of May, 1840, after the presentation of petitions in support of his views bearing a quarter of a million of signatures. These signs of the growth of public opinion had no effect upon the House. There was a fixed determination to give neither Mr. Villiers nor the petitioners a fair hearing. He was assailed with a volley of every kind of uncouth sounds. The Speaker's calls to order were utterly disregarded, and it was not until, losing patience, he commanded the bar to be cleared, and members to take their seats, that the advocate of Free Trade could be heard by the reporters. It was useless to carry on the discussion amid this deafening clamour. Lord John Russell weakly demanded what the Government could do when a majority of the House was against any alteration in the law, and said he would vote for the motion, but not with a view to total repeal, as his own opinion was in favour of a moderate fixed duty. The House again divided, when 300 members voted for the landlords' monopoly, against only 177 in favour of inquiry.
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TWO:He had, however, lost something of his old self-confidence, and the opposition which he had met with from the State, and the alienation of the people, were not exhilarating. Napoleon saw that he must conciliate the French by concessions, but neither his temperament nor his necessities permitted him to do this liberally. He gave nominal freedom to the press, but he bought up the majority of the editors and proprietors; yet, not being able to do this wholly, the opposition spoke bitter things to him and of him, and damaged his cause seriously. He called on Siys, Carnot, and Fouch to assist in framing his constitution; and he gave peerages to Carnot and Siys, and those once stern Republicans accepted them. But, even with their aid, he could not bring himself to grant a free constitution. Nobody believed him to be sincere even in what he did give. The police were as strict as ever, and yet every night the walls of Paris were covered with proclamations of Louis XVIII., forbidding the payment of taxes, and announcing the approach of one million two hundred thousand men.These defeats, which were gradually hemming Napoleon round by his enemies in Dresden, were the direct result of the active aid of Great Britain to the Allies. Sir Charles Stewart, the brother of Lord Castlereagh, had been dispatched to the headquarters of the Allies. By means of the abundant supplies of arms and money, the population of Hanover was raised; Bernadotte was kept firm to his support of the Coalition; and, by Sir Charles, he was also urged to march on Leipsic, and be present at the final conflict. Brigadier-General Lyon was sent to head the troops in Hanover; and the Duke of Cambridge to conduct the civil government of the country. Money was supplied in abundance, in addition to military stores. Two millions were advanced to the Crown Prince of Sweden for his army, two millions more to the Russians and Prussians, and another half million to Russia to equip its fleet in the Baltic. Without these vast supplies the combined armies could not have kept their ground.
FORE:THE ATTACK ON THE "VILLE DE PARIS." (See p. 292.)THE LANDING OF PRINCE CHARLIE. (See p. 92.)
FORE:The campaign in Flanders opened in April. The British faithfully furnished their stipulated number of men (twenty-eight thousand), but both Austria and Holland had most disgracefully failed. Holland was to send fifty thousand into the field, and keep the other ten thousand in her garrisons; but she had sent less than half that number, and Austria only eight squadrons. The French had a fine army of seventy-five thousand men under the able general, Marshal Saxe; and the King of France and the Dauphin had come to witness the conflict, which gave a wonderful degree of spirit to their troops. On the part of the Allies, the Duke of Cumberland was chief in command, but, from his youth, he was not able to set himself free from the assumptions of the Austrian general, old Marshal K?nigsegg, and the Dutch general, the Prince of Waldeck. As it was, to march against the French before Tournay was to rush into a certain contest with the whole French army of nearly eighty thousand men, whilst the Allies could have only about fifty thousand. Saxe made the ablest arrangements for the coming fight. He left fifteen thousand infantry to blockade Tournay, drew up his army in a very strong position a few miles in advance, and strengthened it by various works.Reproduced by Andr & Sleigh, Ltd., Bushey, Herts.
FORE:[267]On the 9th of January, a month after their arrival, Lord Derwentwater was impeached of high treason by Mr. Lechmere in a bitter speech in the Commons. Other members, with equal acrimony, followed with impeachments against the Lords Widdrington, Nithsdale, Wintoun, Carnwath, Kenmure, and Nairn. The impeachments were carried up to the House of Lords on the same day, and on the 19th the accused noblemen were brought before the Peers, where they knelt at the bar until they were desired to rise by the Lord Chancellor, when, with the exception of Lord Wintoun, they confessed their guilt, and threw themselves on the mercy of the king. Sentence of death was immediately pronounced on those who had pleaded guilty; and Lord Wintoun was condemned after trial, but several months later he effected his escape from the Tower. Every effort was made to save the prisoners, and they were all reprieved, with the exception of Derwentwater, Kenmure, and Nithsdale. The first two were executed; but the Countess of Nithsdale, being about to take her leave of her husband, contrived, by introducing some friends, to secure his escape in female attire.
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FORE:[See larger version]In the Peninsula, altogether, the French had upwards of two hundred thousand men, but the force which Massena led against Wellington did not amount to more than sixty thousand, Drouet remaining, for the present, in Spain with eighteen thousand men, and Regnier lying in Estremadura[603] with ten or twelve thousand more. To contend against Massena's sixty thousand veterans, Lord Wellington had only twenty-four thousand British on whom he could rely. He had thirty thousand Portuguese regulars, who had been drilled by General Beresford, and had received many British officers. Wellington had great expectation that these troops, mixed judiciously with the British ones, would turn out well; but that had yet to be tried. Besides these, there were numerous bodies of Portuguese militia, who were employed in defending the fortresses in Alemtejo and Algarve, thus protecting the flanks of Wellington's army.
TWO:But if Lucien, who had rendered Napoleon such essential services in enabling him to put down the French Revolution, could not escape this meddling domination as a private man, much less could his puppet-kings, whether brothers or brothers-in-law. He was beginning to have violent quarrels with Murat and his sister Caroline, king and queen of[4] Naples; nor could the mild and amiable temper of Louis, king of Holland, protect him from the insults and the pressure of this spoiled child of fortune.During this brilliant campaign in Italy, Moreau, in Germany, had beaten General Kray in several engagements, advanced to Ulm, and there, crossing the Danube, had overrun a great part of Bavaria, and had made himself master of Munich and menaced Vienna. On hearing of the armistice in Italy, the Emperor demanded one for Austria, to continue till September; and Buonaparte, seeing that the Czar Paul had ceased to support Austria, recommended the Emperor to make peace with[478] France. The Emperor required that Britain should be included in it. But Napoleon demanded a separate negotiation, which Austria was afraid to grant. No sooner was this answer received in Paris than Buonaparte gave the word for renewed and vigorous action, both in Italy and Germany. Moreau advanced by Salzburg towards Vienna, whilst Brune drove the Austrians from the Mincio, and over the Adige and the Brenta to the very vicinity of Venice, whilst Macdonald occupied the passes of the Tyrol, ready to march to the support of the army either in Italy or Germany. The Archduke John met Moreau near Haag, and for a moment worsted him; but on the 2nd of December the two armies came to a general engagement at Hohenlinden, between the rivers Iser and Inn, in which the Austrians were routed, with a loss of ten thousand men. Moreau advanced and occupied Salzburg, and trembling for the safety of Vienna itself, the Emperor hastened to make peace. An armistice was signed on the 25th of December, and the treaty was concluded at Lunville on the 9th of February, 1801. By this treaty all the conditions of the Treaty of Campo Formio were renewed, and the frontier of the Rhine was again ceded to France.
TWO:It remains only to notice the terminating scene of the once gay Murat, Buonaparte's gallant leader of cavalry in so many campaigns, and finally King of Naples. In consequence of plans that he had laid with Buonaparte in Elba, Murat rose on the 22nd of March of this year, and pushed forward with the intention of driving the Austrians out of Upper Italy. But Austria was well aware of what had been in progress, and, though Murat proclaimed the independence of Italy, the Italians fled from him rather than joined him. On the Po he was met by the Austrians, under General Fremont, fifty thousand strong, and defeated. He retreated rapidly towards Naples again, suffering other discomfitures, and at the same time receiving a notice from Lord William Bentinck that, as he had broken his convention with the European Powers, Britain was at war with him. To keep the Neapolitans in his interest, he drew up a liberal Constitution, on the 12th of May, amid the mountains of the Abruzzi, and sent it to Naples, where his queen, Caroline Buonaparte, proclaimed it. It was of no avail; the people, instead of assisting him, were ready to rise against him, and his soldiers every day rapidly deserted and went to their homes.
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TWO:When these arrangements became known, the Tory party grew dreadfully exasperated. But not the Tories onlythere were throngs of Whigs who had battled zealously for the same object, and with the same hope of personal benefit, and yet they were passed over, and Pulteney, Carteret, and their immediate coterie had quietly taken care of themselves, and thrown their coadjutors overboard. A meeting was appointed between Pulteney and the rest already in office, and the Duke of Argyll, Chesterfield, Cobham, Bathurst, and some others. The Prince of Wales was present, and the different claims were discussed. Argyll was satisfied by being made Master-General of the Ordnance, Colonel of His Majesty's Royal Regiment of Horse Guards, Field-Marshal and Commander-in-Chief of all the forces in South Britain. Chesterfield got nothing, professing to wait to see a more thorough change of men before he went amongst them; but Cobham was made a Field-Marshal, and restored to the command of the Grenadier Guards, but he could get nothing for his nephew, the fiery Oppositionist, Lyttelton. Lord Harrington was made an Earl and President of the Council. But what surprised the country most was that Pulteney, hitherto the head and soul of the party, should have been content to sacrifice himself for the sake of a title. He was made Earl of Bath and received a place in the Cabinet; but by this change, although he seemed to have a brilliant career before him, he forfeited the confidence of the country, which had always looked up to him as the most determined and disinterested of patriots. From this moment he sank into insignificance and contempt. Some others of the old officials remained in as well as Newcastle. Sir William Yonge and Pelham, brother of Newcastle, retained their posts, Yonge as Secretary of War, and Pelham as Paymaster of the Forces.
Very strong hopes were entertained by the Liberal party from the Administration of Lord Wellesley, but it was his misfortune to be obliged to commence it with coercive measures, always the ready resource of the Irish Government. The new Viceroy would have removed, if possible, the causes of public disturbance; but, in the meantime, the peace must be preserved and sanguinary outrages must be repressed, and he did not shrink from the discharge of his duty in this respect on account of the popular odium which it was sure to bring upon his Government. Mr. Plunket, as Attorney-General, was as firm in the administration of justice as Mr. Saurin, his high Tory predecessor, could be. The measures of repression adopted by the legislature were certainly not wanting in severity. The disorders were agrarian, arising out of insecurity of land tenure, rack rents, and tithes levied by proctors upon tillage, and falling chiefly upon the Roman Catholic population, who disowned the ministrations of the Established Church. The remedies which the Government provided for disturbances thus originating were the Suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act and the renewal of the Insurrection Act. By the provisions of the latter the Lord-Lieutenant was empowered, on the representation of justices in session that a district was disturbed, to proclaim it in a state of insurrection, to interdict the inhabitants from leaving their homes between sunset and sunrise, and to subject them to visits by night, to ascertain their presence in their own dwellings. If absent, they were considered idle and disorderly, and liable to transportation for seven years! These measures encountered considerable opposition, but they were rapidly passed through both Houses, and received the Royal Assent a week after Parliament met. Under these Acts a number of Whiteboys and other offenders were tried and convicted, several hanged, and many transported. Lord Wellesley must have felt his position very disagreeable between the two excited parties. To be impartial and just was to incur the hostility of both. Possibly he became disgusted with the factions that surrounded him. Whether from this cause, or from an indolent temper, or from the feeling that he was hampered and restrained, and could not do for the country what he felt that its well-being required, or from ill health, it is certain that he became very inactive. A member of the Cabinet writes about him thus:"I find the Orange party are loud in their abuse of Lord Wellesley, for shutting himself up at the Ph?nix Park, lying in bed all day, seeing nobody, and only communicating with Secretary Gregory by letter. Indeed, I believe that the latter is more than he often favours Secretaries Peel and Goulburn with." In another letter, the same Minister, Mr. Wynn, complains of his total neglect of his correspondence with England. This, he said, was inexcusable, because those on whom the chief responsibility rested had a right to know his views upon the state of Ireland, in order to be able to meet the Opposition during the sitting of Parliament. This was written towards the end of April, and at that time the Government had not for a month heard a syllable from him on the agitated questions of tithes, magistracy, and police. The state of Ireland, indeed, became every day more perplexing and alarming. A revolutionary spirit was abroad, and all other social evils were aggravated by famine, which prevailed in extensive districts in the south and west. The potato crop, always precarious, was then almost a total failure in many counties, and left the dense population, whose existence depended upon it, totally destitute. The cry of distress reached England, and was responded to in the most generous spirit. Half a million[223] sterling was voted by Parliament, and placed at the disposal of Lord Wellesley, to be dispensed in charitable relief and expended on public works for the employment of the poor. In addition to this, the English people contributed from their private resources the sum of three hundred thousand pounds for the relief of Irish distress. On the 30th of May there was a ball given for the same object, in the King's Theatre, London, which produced three thousand five hundred pounds.Having now kidnapped and disposed of the whole dynasty of Spain, Buonaparte had to inaugurate the new one by the appointment of a king. For this purpose he pitched on his brother Lucien, who, next to himself, was the ablest of the family, and who had rendered him signal services in the expulsion of the Council of Five Hundred from St. Cloud. But Lucien was of too independent a character to become a mere puppet of the great man, like the rest of his brothers. As Napoleon grew haughty and imperious in the progress of his success, Lucien had dared to express disapprobation of his conduct. He declared that Napoleon's every word and action proceeded, not from principle, but from mere political considerations, and that the foundation of his whole system and career was egotism. He had married a private person to please himself, and would not abandon his wife to receive a princess and a crown, like Jerome. Lucien had, moreover, literary tastes, was fond of collecting works of art, and had a fortune ample enough for these purposes. When, therefore, Napoleon sent for him to assume the crown of Spain, he declined the honour. Napoleon then resolved to take Joseph from Naples, and confer on him the throne of Spain and the Indies. Joseph, who was indolent and self-indulgent, and who at Naples could not exempt himself from continual fears of daggers and assassination, received with consternation the summons to assume the crown of Spain, as ominous of no ordinary troubles. He declared that it was too weighty for his head, and showed no alacrity in setting out. Napoleon was obliged to summon him several times, and at length to dispatch one of his most active and trusted aides-de-camp to hasten his movements.Accordingly, the Duke found himself alone in his opposition to the plan of an armed intervention in Spain. It was at first proposed that all the Allies should unite in this; but it was ultimately agreed that a procs verbal should be jointly adopted, in which the King of Spain and his family should be declared to be under the protection of Europe, and Spain threatened with a terrible vengeance if any injury were done to them. This procs verbal was addressed to the head of the Spanish Government, with an explanation of the reasons for its adoption. The Duke was disappointed and mortified at the obstinate self-will of the crowned despots. He had gone to Verona in the hope that they would at all events be open to arguments in favour of peace; he found them bent on such a course as would render its preservation impossible. When the Ministers reduced their ideas to a definite shape, the incidents which they agreed to accept as leading necessarily to war appeared to him fallacious in the extreme. They were these:First, an armed attack by Spain upon France[235]. Second, any personal outrage offered to Ferdinand VII., or to any member of the Spanish royal family. Third, an act of the Spanish legislature dethroning the king, or interfering in any way with the right of succession. Austria, Prussia, and Russia accepted the conditions readily, adhering, at the same time, to the substance of the notes which they had previously put in.Their general, Lescure, was killed, and most of their other leaders were severely wounded. Kleber triumphed over them by his weight of artillery, and they now fled to the Loire. Amongst a number of royalist nobles who had joined them from the army of the Prince of Cond on the Rhine, was Prince de Talmont, a Breton noble, formerly of vast property in Brittany, and now of much influence there. He advised them, for the present, to abandon their country, and take refuge amongst his countrymen, the Bretons. The whole of this miserable and miscellaneous population, nearly a hundred thousand in number, crowded to the edge of the Loire, impatient, from terror and despair, to cross. Behind were the smoke of burning villages and the thunder of the hostile artillery; before, was the broad Loire, divided by a low long island, also crowded with fugitives. La Roche-Jaquelein had the command of the Vendans at this trying moment; but the enemy, not having good information of their situation, did not come up till the whole wretched and famished multitude was over. On their way to Laval they were attacked both by Westermann and Lchelle; but being now joined by nearly seven thousand Bretons, they beat both those generals; and Lchelle, from mortification and terror of the guillotinenow the certain punisher of defeated generalsdied. The Vendans for a time, aided by the Bretons, appeared victorious. They had two courses open before them: one, to retire into the farthest part of Brittany, where there was a population strongly inspired by their own sentiments, having a country hilly and easy of defence, with the advantage of being open to the coast, and the assistance of the British; the other, to advance into Normandy, where they might open up communication with the English through the port of Cherbourg. They took the latter route, though their commander, La Roche-Jaquelein, was strongly opposed to it. Stofflet commanded under Jaquelein. The army marched on in great confusion, having the women and children and the waggons in the centre. They were extremely ill-informed of the condition of the towns which they approached. They might have taken Rennes and St. Malo, which would have greatly encouraged the Bretons; but they were informed that the Republican troops were overpowering there. They did not approach Cherbourg for the same cause, being told that it was well defended on the land side; they therefore proceeded by Dol and Avranches to Granville, where they arrived on the 14th of November. This place would have given them open communication with the English, and at the worst an easy escape to the Channel Islands; but they failed in their attempts to take it; and great suspicion now having seized the people that their officers only wanted to get into a seaport to desert them and escape to England, they one and all protested that they would return to the Loire. In vain did La Roche-Jaquelein demonstrate to them the fatality of such a proceeding, and how much better it would be to make themselves strong in[425] Normandy and Brittany for the present; only about a thousand men remained with him; the rest retraced their long and weary way towards the Loire, though the Republicans had now accumulated very numerous forces to bar their way. Fighting every now and then on the road, and seeing their wives and children daily drop from hunger and fatigue, they returned through Dol and Pontorson to Angers: there they were repulsed by the Republicans. They then retreated to Mons, where they again were attacked and defeated, many of their women, who had concealed themselves in the houses, being dragged out and shot down by whole platoons. At Ancenis, Stofflet managed to cross the Loire; but the Republicans got between him and his army, which, wedged in at Savenay, between the Loire, the Vilaine, and the sea, was attacked by Kleber and Westermann, and, after maintaining a desperate fight against overwhelming numbers and a terrible artillery, was literally, with the exception of a few hundred who effected their escape, cut to pieces, and the women and children all massacred by the merciless Jacobins. Carrier then proceeded to purge Nantes in the same style as Collot d'Herbois had purged Lyons.Though war had long been foreseen with France, when it took place we had no fleet in a proper condition to put to sea. It was not till the 14th of July that Lord Howe, who had taken the command of the Channel fleet, sailed from Spithead with fifteen ships of the line, three of which were first-rates, but none of them of that speed and equipment which they ought to have been. He soon obtained intelligence of a French fleet of seventeen sail of the line, seen westward of Belleisle. He sent into Plymouth, and had two third-rate vessels added to his squadron. On the 31st of July he caught sight of the French fleet, but never came up with them, the French ships being better sailers. After beating about in vain, he returned to port, anchoring in Torbay on the 4th of September. At the end of October Howe put to sea again with twenty-four sail of the line and several frigates, and several times came near the French fleet, but could never get to engage. He, however, protected our merchant vessels and disciplined his sailors. One French ship was taken off Barfleur by Captain Saumarez of the Crescent, and that was all.
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