TWO:General Evans had taken the command of the Spanish Legion, which throughout the whole of the campaign was encompassed with difficulties and pursued by disasters, without any military success sufficiently brilliant to gild the clouds with glory. Within a fortnight after the debate on Lord Mahon's motion came the news of its utter defeat before Hernani. This defeat encouraged the opponents of Lord Palmerston's policy to renew their attacks. Accordingly, immediately after the recess, Sir Henry Hardinge brought forward a motion on the subject. He complained that no adequate provision was made for the support of those who were in the Legion. At Vittoria they were placed for four months in uninhabited convents, without bedding, fuel, or supplies of any kind. Not less than 40 officers and 700 men fell victims to their privations. The worst consequence was, however, the total demoralisation of the troops. Theirs was not honourable war, it was butchery. They were massacring a fine and independent people, who had committed no offence against Britain. Ill treatment, want of food and of clothing, habits of insubordination and mutiny, and want of confidence in their officers, had produced their natural effects. Let them palliate the disaster as they would, there was no doubt, he said, of the fact that a large body of Britons had suffered a defeat such as he believed no British soldiers had undergone in the course of the last five or six hundred years. The motion was defeated by 70 votes to 62, but as the Legion was dissolved in the following year, 1838, the object of the Opposition was gained.
FORE:The Duke of Leinster, in pursuance of his intention to oppose the Bill in all its stages, moved that the order of the day be rescinded. The motion was negatived by a majority of two hundred and sixty to forty-one; the number of peers present being three hundred and one. Lord Carnarvon denounced the Bill of Pains and Penalties as a measure unnecessary and unconstitutional. It was a species of ex post facto and illegitimate mode of proceeding against an individual, an unprecedented anomaly in the law. In one of the cases which they had adduced as the best precedent, the sentence passed on the criminal was that he should be boiled to death! Far better to have drawn a veil over the transactions, than to have searched the Alps, the Apennines, and the ocean for evidence against the queen. The measure had excited the disgust of every honest man in the kingdom.
FORE:Regardless of all advice, Buonaparte hastened to precipitate matters with Russia. He seized and confiscated fifty Swedish merchantmen, and further to express his determination to punish Bernadotte for his refusal to be his slavehe boasted before his courtiers that he would have him seized in Sweden, and brought to the castle of Vincennes, and he is said to have planned doing itin January of this year he ordered Davoust to enter Swedish Pomerania and take possession of it. Buonaparte followed up this act of war by marching vast bodies of troops northwards, overrunning Prussia, Pomerania, and the Duchy of Warsaw with them. They were now on the very frontiers of Russia, and Alexander was in the utmost terror. He saw already four hundred thousand men ready to burst into his dominions, and as many more following. He had only one hundred and forty thousand to oppose them; he had no generals of mark or experience; confusion reigned everywhere. In the utmost consternation he demanded an interview with Bernadotte, now the sole hope of Europe, at Abo; and Bernadotte, who had his objects to gain, took his time. When the Russian Ambassador, in great trepidation, said to him that the Emperor waited for him, he rose, laid his hand on his sword, and said, theatrically, "The Emperor waits! Good! He who knows how to win battles may regard himself as the equal of kings!"[See larger version]
FORE:From the 24th of September till the commencement of October Buonaparte continued to maintain himself at Dresden, though the Allies were fast gathering round him. Occasionally he made a rush from the city, and on one occasion pursued Blucher as far as Nollendorf, beyond Kulm; but these expeditions only served to exhaust his troops, without producing any effect on the enemy. As he chased one body on one side, others were closing up on other sides. Seeing that he could not remain long at Dresden, and that Bernadotte and Bülow had quitted the neighbourhood of Berlin, he suddenly conceived the design of marching rapidly on that city, and taking up his headquarters there; but this scheme met with universal disapprobation from his officers, and he was compelled to abandon it. He then continued for days, and even weeks, in a state of listless apathy, for hours together mechanically making large letters on sheets of paper, or debating some new schemes with his generals; but the only scheme to which they would listen was that of retreating to the left bank of the Rhine. In fact, they and the army were completely worn out and dispirited.
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TWO:The English now began to contemplate taking the Cape of Good Hope from the Dutch. General Johnstone was dispatched in April with five ships of the line, some frigates, and smaller vessels, having on board General Medows and three regiments for this purpose; but encountering Admiral Suffren in the way, after an indecisive action, Johnstone fell in with and took a Dutch East Indiaman of great value, and learned through it that Suffren had managed to reach the Cape and give the alarm, and that the Cape was put into strong defence. Johnstone, therefore, made for Saldanha Bay, where he learned that a number of other Dutch East Indiamen were lying. Four of these he secured; the rest were run ashore by their commanders and burnt. During the autumn both Dutch and French suffered much from the British on the coasts of Coromandel and the island of Sumatra. They also took from the Dutch Negapatam, Penang, and other places.