FORE:From this episode of fire and fanaticism we recur to the general theme of the war with Spain, France, and America, in which England was every day becoming more deeply engaged. From the moment that Spain had joined France in the war against us, other Powers, trusting to our embarrassments with our colonies and those great European Powers, had found it a lucrative trade to supply, under neutral flags, warlike materials and other articles to the hostile nations; thus, whilst under a nominal alliance, they actually furnished the sinews of war against us. In this particular, Holland, the next great commercial country to Britain, took the lead. She furnished ammunition and stores to the Spaniards, who all this while were engaged in besieging Gibraltar. Spain had also made a treaty with the Barbary States, by which she cut off our supplies from those countries. To relieve Gibraltar, Admiral Sir George Rodney, who was now appointed to the command of our navy in the West Indies, was ordered to touch there on his way out. On the 8th of January 1780, when he had been a few days out at sea, he came in sight of a Spanish fleet, consisting of five armed vessels, convoying fifteen merchantmen, all of which he captured. These vessels were chiefly laden with wheat, flour, and other provisions, badly needed at Gibraltar, and which he carried in with him, sending the men-of-war to England. On the 16th he fell in with another fleet off Cape St. Vincent, of eleven ships of the line, under Don Juan de Langara, who had come out to intercept the provisions which England sent to Gibraltar. Rodney had a much superior fleet, and the Spanish admiral immediately attempted to regain his port. The weather was very tempestuous, and the coast near the shoal of St. Lucar very dangerous; he therefore stood in as close as possible to the shore, but Rodney boldly thrust his vessels between him and the perilous strand, and commenced a running fight. The engagement began about four o'clock in the evening, and it was, therefore, soon dark; but Rodney, despite the imminent danger of darkness, tempest, and a treacherous shore, continued the fight, and the Spaniards for a time defended themselves bravely. The battle continued till two o'clock in the morning; one ship, the San Domingo, of seventy guns, blew up with six hundred men early in the action; four ships of the line, including the admiral's, of eighty guns, struck, and were carried by Rodney safe into port; two seventy-gun ships ran on the shoal and were lost; and of all the Spanish fleet only four ships escaped to Cadiz.
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THREE:Parliament having been prorogued, the members retired to their respective counties and boroughs, many of them out of humour with themselves and with the Government which they had heretofore[307] supported, and meditating revenge. An endeavour was made in the course of the summer to renew the political connection between the Duke of Wellington and Mr. Huskisson. The friends of the existing Administration felt the weakness of their position, deprived of their natural support, and liable to be outvoted at any time. The Tories had become perfectly rabid in their indignation, vehemently charging the Duke with violation of public faith, with want of statesmanship, with indifference to the wishes and necessities of the people, and with a determination to govern the country as if he were commanding an army. Their feelings were so excited that they joined in the Whig cry of Parliamentary Reform, and spoke of turning the bishops out of the House of Lords. It was to enable the Premier to brave this storm that he was induced by his friends to receive Mr. Huskisson at his country house. The Duke was personally civil, and even kind, to his visitor; but his recollections of the past were too strong to permit of his going farther. In the following Session negotiations were made with the other Canningites, but without success, as they had thrown in their lot with the Whigs.
THREE:MARIE ANTOINETTE (1783.)Napoleon dispatched Murat with his cavalry, Junot, Ney, and Davoust, in pursuit of the Russians, whom they overtook at a place called Valoutina, where a desperate battle was fought, and many men were killed on both sides; but the Russians moved off again without the loss of guns, prisoners, or baggage. Buonaparte, on proceeding to the spot, blamed Junot, imputing to him want of activity in the action, and threatening to deprive him of his command. The whole road between Smolensk and Valoutina was strewn with the dead and wounded; and as he entered the city on his return, he met whole tumbrils of amputated limbs going to be thrown away at a distance. The scene is said to have overcome even his senses, so long hardened to human suffering. On the 24th of August he marched forward to Gjatsk, where his advanced guard had halted. There he learned, to his great satisfaction, from a Frenchman long resident in Russia, that the people and the new levies, impatient of continual retreat and the ravage of their country, had demanded that Barclay de Tolly, a German, whom they imagined not sufficiently careful of Russian property and interests, should be superseded by the old general, Kutusoff, and that they should stand and fight. This was precisely what Buonaparte wanted, and the prudent De Tolly knew to be little better than madness, as it must cause a fearful loss of life, and would not rid the country of the invader, who was better left to starvation and the elements. But Alexander, though of De Tolly's opinion, gave way, and the Russians entrenched themselves on the heights of Borodino, De Tolly most magnanimously continuing to serve under Kutusoff. There, after a march of two hundred and eighty versts in seventeen days, the French came up with them; and, after a halt of two days, they attacked the Russian lines.
THREE:To these, in 1785, the Rev. Dr. Edmund Cartwright introduced a loom for weaving by water or steam power, which soon superseded hand-loom weaving. In 1803 Mr. H. Horrocks greatly improved this, and from this germ has grown up the system of weaving cottons, silks, and woollens by machinery. Add to this the application of similar machinery to calico-printing, and the like to weaving of lace, invented by Robert Frost, of Nottingham, or by a working mechanic of that town named Holmes, which afterwards received many improvements, and we have the varied means by which the manufacturing power of England was raised far above that of all the world; and which, reaching other countries in spite of legislative impediments, soon established similar manufactures in France, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, and America. In Great Britain alone the importation of raw cotton was increased from 4,764,589 lbs. in 1771 to 151,000,000 lbs. in 1818; and such was the spread of trade of all kinds from the use of machinery, that our exports of manufactured goods in 1800, when the European nations were incapacitated for manufacturing by Napoleon's general embargo, amounted to 116,000,000.KIDNAPPING OF THE DUKE D'ENGHIEN. (See p. 498.)
