FORE:Parliament reassembled, according to the Minister's plan, at the unusually early date of the 22nd of January, 1846. The Queen's Speech, read by her Majesty in person, thus alluded to the topic most prominent in the public mind:The success with Cricklade encouraged William Pitt to bring forward a motion for a general reform of Parliament. This he did on the 7th of May, and was seconded by Wilkes's old ally, Alderman Sawbridge. Pitt did not venture to talk of a Bill, but only to propose a Committee to consider the subject. This was granted; but it was soon apparent that nothing would be done. The Ministers were at variance on the subjectsome went one length, and some another; many of them were as determined against all Parliamentary reform as any Tories. Rockingham, the Prime Minister, especially, held much borough influence. He was utterly opposed, in secret, to all such reforms. Pitt himself would hear nothing of repealing the Septennial Act; but he was for sweeping away rotten boroughs and transferring their votes to the counties; he went for equalising the whole representation, for destroying the influence of the Treasury and the hereditary right assumed by the aristocracy, and, by disfranchising the rotten boroughs, for sweeping the House of the creatures of the India House. He was zealously supported by Fox, Sheridan, Sir George Savile; and the Duke of Richmond, in the Lords, warmly commended the movement; but the motion had the fate that might have been expectedit was negatived, though only by twenty votes.
8.00 - 10.00 | JUN 09,2014
Pellentesque ut urna eu mauris scele risque auctor volutpat et massa pers piciis iste natus scele risque auctor volutpat et massa.
FORE:On the 23rd, the day fixed for the rising, the insurgents turned out in many places, notwithstanding the arrest of their leaders. They did not succeed at Carlow, Naas, and Kilcullen. But, on the 25th, fourteen thousand of them, under one Father Murphy, attacked Wexford, defeated the garrison which came out to meet them, took a considerable number of prisoners, whom they put to death, and frightened the town into a surrender on the 30th. They treated such Protestants as remained in the place with the utmost barbarity. They took Enniscorthy and, seizing some cannon, encamped on Vinegar Hill. On the 31st they were attacked by General Lake, who drove them from their camp, made a great slaughter of them, and then retook Wexford and Enniscorthy. General Johnson attacked another party which was plundering the town of New Ross, killing and wounding two thousand six hundred of them. On this news reaching Scullabogue, the insurgents there massacred about one hundred Protestant prisoners in cold blood. These massacres of the Protestants, and the Presbyterians in the north having been too cautious to rise, after the betrayal of the plot, caused the whole to assume the old character of a Popish rebellion. Against this the leading Catholics protested, and promptly offered their aid to Government to suppress it. Of the leaders, MacCann, Byrne, two brothers named Sheares, the sons of a banker at Cork, were executed. The success of the soldiers was marked by worse cruelty than that of the rebels; for instance, at Carlow about 200 persons were hanged or shot. Arthur O'Connor, Emmet, MacNevin, Sampson, and a number of others, were banished. Lord Cornwallis was appointed Lord-Lieutenant in place of Lord Camden, and pardons were assured to those who made their submission. All now seemed over, when in August there appeared at Killala three French frigates, which landed nine hundred men, who were commanded by General Humbert. Why the French should send such a mere handful of men into Ireland, who must inevitably be sacrificed or made prisoners, can perhaps only be accounted for by the assurances of the disaffected Irish, that the whole mass of the people, at least of the Catholics, were ready to rise and join them. But if that were trueif, as Wolfe Tone assured them, there were three hundred thousand men already disciplined, and only in need of arms, it would have been sufficient to have sent them over arms. But then Tone, who had grown as utterly reckless as any sansculotte Frenchman, described the riches of Ireland, which were to repay the invaders, as something prodigious. In his memorial to the Directory he declared that the French were to go shares with[464] the nation whom they went to liberate, in all the church, college, and chapter lands, in the property of the absentee landlords, which he estimated at one million pounds per annum, in that of all Englishmen, and in the income of Government, which he calculated at two millions of pounds per annum. General Humbert, who had been in the late expedition, and nearly lost his life in the Droits de l'Homme, no doubt expected to see all the Catholic population flocking around him, eager to put down their oppressors; but, so far from this, all classes avoided him, except a few of the most wretched Catholic peasants. At Castlebar he was met by General Lake, with a force much superior in numbers, but chiefly yeomanry and militia. Humbert readily dispersed thesethe speed of their flight gaining for the battle the name of the Castlebar Racesand marched on through Connaught, calling on the people to rise, but calling in vain. He had made this fruitless advance for about seventeen days when he was met by Lord Cornwallis with a body of regular troops, and defeated. Finding his retreat cut off, he surrendered on the 8th of September, and he and his followers became prisoners of war. But the madness or delusion of the French Government had not yet reached its height; a month after this surrender Sir John Warren fell in with a French line-of-battle ship and eight frigates, bearing troops and ammunition to Ireland. He captured the ship of the line and three of the frigates, and on board of the man-of-war was discovered the notorious Wolfe Tone, the chief instigator of these insane incursions, and who, before sailing, had recorded in his diary, as a matter of boast, that every day his heart was growing harder, that he would take a most dreadful vengeance on the Irish aristocracy. He was condemned to be hanged, but he managed to cut his throat in prison (November 19, 1798). And thus terminated these worse than foolish attempts of France on Ireland, for they were productive of great miseries, both at sea and on land, and never were conducted on a scale or with a force capable of producing any permanent result.
9.00 - 10.00 | FEB 15,2014
Pellentesque ut urna eu mauris scele risque auctor volutpat et massa pers piciis iste natus scele risque auctor volutpat et massa.
FORE:Kutusoff had made a dexterous march and encamped at Taroutino, a strong position near Kaluga, between Moscow and Poland, so as to be able to cut off the retreat of the French into the fertile plains of Poland, and to cover Kaluga and Tula, the great Russian manufactory of arms and artillery. Buonaparte sent Murat with the cavalry to watch the camp of Kutusoff, and the King of Naples established himself in front of the Russian lines. Murat entered into a sort of armistice with Kutusoff whilst waiting for the reply from Alexander, in the hope that thus they should obtain supplies from the peasants; but neither food nor firing was obtainable except by fighting for it, nor was the armistice at all observed, except just in the centre, where Murat lay. From every quarter Cossacks continued to collect to the Russian armystrange, wild figures, on small, wild-looking horses with long manes and tails, evidently drawn from the very extremities of the empire. All Russia was assembling to the grand destruction of the invaders. Behind the camp the French could hear the continued platoon-firing, indicating the perpetual drilling of the peasantry that was going on. Other bodies of peasants formed themselves into troops of guerillas, under the chiefs of their neighbourhood. The whole of the Russian population since the burning of Moscow had become grimly embittered, and had taken arms to have a share in the mighty revenge that was coming. And now, as the sudden descent of winter was at hand, the same men who had pretended to admire the soldier-like figure and gallantry of Muratwho galloped about in all his military finery in front of the Russian campbegan to ask the officers if they had made a paction with winter. "Stay another fortnight," they said, "and your nails will drop off, and your fingers from your hands, like rotten boughs from a tree." Others asked if they had no food, nor water, nor wood, nor ground to bury them in France, that they had come so far?Our forces in Sicily had an encounter, in the autumn, with those of Murat, King of Naples. Murat was ambitious of driving us out of Sicily, and Ferdinand IV. and his court with us. From spring till September he had an army lying at Scylla, Reggio, and in the hills overlooking the Strait of Messina, but he did not attempt to put across till the 18th of September. Seizing then the opportunity, when our flotilla of gunboats and our cruisers were off the station, he pushed across a body of three thousand five hundred men, under General Cavaignac. These troops were chiefly Neapolitans, but there were two battalions of Corsicans, and they were furnished with an embroidered standard to present to the Corsicans in our service, whom they hoped to induce to desert to them. General Cavaignac managed to land about seven miles to the south of Messina, and attacked the British right wing. Sir John Stuart made haste to bring up other troops to the support of the right, but before he could arrive, Colonel C. Campbell defeated the invaders, taking prisoners a colonel, a lieutenant-colonel, and forty other officers, with eight hundred men. There was a rapid retreat to their boats by the intruders, but the British pursued and cut to pieces great numbers of them, besides what were killed by the Sicilian peasantry. One boat full of soldiers was sunk as it went off, and the Neapolitans in another deserted to their old king.
11.00 - 10.00 | JUN 10,2014
Pellentesque ut urna eu mauris scele risque auctor volutpat et massa pers piciis iste natus scele risque auctor volutpat et massa.
