ONE:Whilst this extirpation of the Pindarrees had been going on, the cholera broke out at Jessore, in the low lands of the Delta of the Ganges. This fatal disease has been supposed by medical men to receive its force, if not its origin, from the want of salt in this unhealthy district. Salt being one of the monopolies of the East India Company, it was not permitted, though abundant in Madras, to be carried into Bengal except on payment of a duty of two hundred per cent. The natives, therefore, who subsisted on a rice diet, not being able to procure this necessary antiseptic, frequently fell victims to the terrible scourge of cholera. From this centre, where it may fairly be said to have raged in perpetuity, it now spread rapidly up the course of the Ganges, the Jumna, and their confluent rivers, and if the British impost on salt had anything to do with the prevalence of the epidemic, a severe retribution now fell upon those who profited by it. The Marquis of Hastings, the Governor-General, was posted in Bundelcund with his army, when it appeared there and swept away thousands. The very men attending on the Governor-General at dinner dropped down behind his chair and died. To seek a healthier region, he marched eastward, but all the way the pest pursued him, and when he reached the healthy station of Erich, on the right bank of the Betwah river, towards the end of November, one-tenth of the force had fallen under its ravages. The scourge did not stop there, but for a number of years continued to spread at an amazing speed, and eventually overspread Europe with its horrors.[77]
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FORE:But amid the discouragements of monetary legislation, which showed that it would require a determined contest to compel Ministers to retrench, there were symptoms of a spirit of legal and social reform amongst Parliamentary men generally which augured the approach of better times. Mr. Sturges Bourne obtained the passing of his long-advocated Poor Law Bill; but Bills for regulating settlements, and for preventing the misapplication of the poor rates, were thrown out. A Bill was passed to regulate the treatment of children in cotton factories, and to limit the hours of their employment. Mr. Brougham's Act for inquiry into the charitable foundations of England was extended, with the support of Government, so as to apply to educational as well as to all kinds of charities, except such as had special visitors, or were maintained by private subscriptions. Sir James Mackintosh also took up the humane track of labour occupied so nobly by the late Sir Samuel Romilly. On the 2nd of March he moved for the appointment of a select committee to take into consideration the subject of capital punishment as regarded felonies. This was eminently needed, for the penal laws during the reign of George III. were truly Draconian. Notwithstanding a strong opposition by Ministers, the motion was carried, amid much cheering, and on the 6th of July Sir James Mackintosh introduced the report, which[146] was ordered to be printed. Government, as if to wipe out their disgrace in resisting so humane a measure, now proposed an inquiry into the condition of gaols and other places of confinement, and into the best method of employing and reforming delinquents during their imprisonment. Some reforms were made in Scottish law. The old rights of trial by battle, and of appeals of murder, felony, or mayhem, were abolished as rendered unnecessary by the full exercise of the institution of jury, and as belonging only to a barbarous age. The severity of the Scottish law against duels was mitigated, that law pronouncing forfeiture of all movable property, and banishment against all persons sending, or even carrying, a challenge to fight a duel. The principle of that law was sound, but its severity was its own defeat. A more questionable Bill was one carried, after much opposition, called the Foreign Enlistment Bill, which was intended to check the aid of Englishmen in assisting the Spanish South American colonists in throwing off the oppressive government of the mother country. Numbers of Englishmen were engaged on the side of independence, and this Bill was vainly intended to put an end to that generous aid.Sir Henry Clinton had for some time been aware of the real destination of the united forces of Washington and Rochambeau. He must have seen that there was a determined resolve to crush, by the most powerful combination of American and French forces, the army in the south, and every exertion should have been made by him, with fleet and army, to release Cornwallis from his peril. But, instead of sending direct reinforcements to Cornwallis, and ordering the fleet to engage the enemy's attention, and, if possible, defeat De Grasse in the Chesapeake, he concocted a diversion in Connecticut with Arnold, which he fondly hoped would recall Washington. Sir Henry Clinton contemplated further expeditionsfirst against the Rhode Island fleet, and next against Philadelphia; but these never came off, and matters were now every day assuming such an aspect as should have stimulated him to some direct assistance to Cornwallis.
FORE:THE CHARGE OF THE CAVALRY AT MEEANEE. (See p. 592.)During this summer the island of Corsica fell into our hands, and that by conduct as brilliant on the part of Nelson and the troops and seamen under him, as was at the time the formal inefficiency of our generals there. The Corsicans soon experienced the insolence and rapacity of the godless French Republicans, and rose in general insurrection. The patriot Paoli was the first to advise them to renounce all connection with such a race of fiends, and was, in consequence, proscribed by the Convention, but at the same time appointed General-in-Chief and President of the Council of Government by his own people. As he well knew that little Corsica was no match for France, he applied to the British for assistance. Lord Hood was then engaged in the defence of Toulon, but he sent a few ships and troops during the summer and autumn to Paoli's aid, and by this assistance the French were driven out of every part of the island except San Fiorenzo, Calvi, and Bastia. The mother of Buonaparte, and part of the family, who were living at Ajaccio, fled to France, imploring the aid of the Convention for her native island. Lord Hood, however, having evacuated Toulon, made haste to be beforehand with them. By the 7th of February, 1794, he had blockaded the three ports still in the hands of the French, and had landed five regiments, under the command of General Dundas, at San Fiorenzo. The French were soon compelled to evacuate the place, but they retreated to Bastia, without almost any attempt on the part of Dundas to injure or molest them. Lord Hood now urged the immediate reduction of Bastia, but Dundas, an incompetent officer, and tied up by all the old formal rules of warfare, declared that he could not attempt to carry the town till the arrival of two thousand fresh troops from Gibraltar. But there was a man of very different metal and notions serving there, namely, Nelson, who was indignant at this timid conduct. He declared that if he had five hundred men and the Agamemnon ship-of-war, he could take the place. Lord Hood was resolved that he should try, whilst he himself blockaded the harbour. Nelson, who declared his own seamen of the Agamemnon were of the right sort, and cared no more for bullets than for peas, had one thousand one hundred and eighty-three soldiers, artillerymen, and marines, with two hundred and fifty sailors, put under his command, with the title of brigadier. They landed on the 4th of April, dragged their cannon up to the tops of the rocks overhanging Bastia, to the astonishment of French, Corsicans, and the timid Dundas. On the 10th Nelson was aloft with his whole force, and with all his cannon in position. A body of Corsicans rather kept guard than gave any active assistance on another side of the town; for they had no cannon, or could not drag them up precipices like British seamen. On the 11th Lord Hood summoned the town to surrender; but the French commander and Commissioner, Lacombe-Saint-Michel, replied that he had red-hot shot for the ships and bayonets for the British soldiers, and should not think of yielding till he had two-thirds of his garrison killed. But Nelson, ably seconded by Colonel Vilettes, plied his artillery to such purpose, that, on the 10th of May, Lacombe-Saint-Michel made offer of surrender, and on the 19th the capitulation was completed. The French forces and the Corsicans in their interest were shipped off to Toulon, after the signing of the capitulation on the 21st; and now General D'Aubant, who had succeeded General Dundas, but who had continued lying at San Fiorenzo instead of assisting at the siege, came up with his troops and took possession of Bastia. The whole loss of the British in this brilliant affair was only fourteen men killed and thirty-four wounded. Calvi, the most strongly-situated and fortified[432] place, still remained to be taken. By the middle of June it was thoroughly invested, both by sea and land, and Nelson again serving on shore, assisted by Captains Hallowell and Serecold, was pouring shells and red-hot shot into the fort. Captain Serecold was killed at the very outset; but Nelson and Hallowell, chiefly with the sailors and marines, continued the bombardment through the terrible heat of the dog-days, and the enervating effects of malaria from stagnant ponds in the hills, and compelled the surrender on the 10th of August, but not before one-half of the two thousand men engaged were prostrated by sickness. The island was now, by the advice of Paoli, offered to the British Crown and by it accepted; but a gross blunder was made in not appointing Paoli Governor, as was expected both by himself and his compatriots. Instead of this most proper and conciliatory measure, Sir Gilbert Elliot was appointed Governor, to the disappointment and disgust of the Corsicans. Sir Gilbert attempted to gratify the islanders by framing a new Constitution for them, and granting them trial by jury; but neither of these institutions was adapted to their ideas, and both failed to heal the wound which the ignominious treatment of their great patriot occasioned.
FORE:But Napoleon would not listen to the transfer of Norway; that was the territory of his firm ally, Denmark: Finland he might have, but not Norway. In October of the same year an English agent landed at Gothenburg, eluded the French spies, traversed, by night, woods, bogs, and hills, and, in a small village of the interior of Sweden, met a Swedish agent, where the terms of a treaty were settled, in which Russia and Turkey, Britain and Sweden, were the contracting powers;[8] by which Sweden was to receive Norway, and renounce for ever Finland; and Alexander and Bernadotte were to unite all their talents, powers, and experience against France. In the following January the sudden invasion of Swedish Pomerania by the French showed that the crisis was come, and that henceforth Napoleon and Bernadotte were irreconcilable opponents. From that time offers of alliance and aid poured in from all quarters. Prussia sent secret messages, and concerted common measures with Russia. The insurgents of Spain and Portugal, where Wellington was in active operationeven the old Bourbon dynastypaid court to him. Moreau returned from America to fight under his banners, and emigrants flocked from all quarters to combine their efforts against the universal foeNapoleon.
FORE:Buonaparte now prepared for his coronation. Whilst at Mayence, on the Rhinewhere the German princes flocked to pay abject homage to him as their protector, no nations, except Great Britain, Russia, and Sweden, keeping aloofhe despatched one of his aides-de-camp, General Caffarelli, an Italian, to invite the Pope to go to Paris to crown the new emperor and empress. Pius VII. had already been compelled to submit to the terms of the Concordat, which had made such inroads into the ancient power of the Church; and he knew very well that to refuse this request would bring down upon him fresh humiliations. Buonaparte, who affected to imitate Charlemagne as the founder of the French nation, passing over all the kings of France as unworthy of notice, determined to inaugurate the Second Empire by a still bolder stretch of authority than Charlemagne himself. That monarch had condescended to make the journey to Italy to receive the privilege of coronation from Pope Leo; but Buonaparte resolved that poor old Pope Pius VII. should come to him in France. His desire was carried out to the letter, and Pius arrived at Fontainebleau on the 25th of November. The 2nd of December having been fixed for the coronation, the Cathedral of Notre Dame was gorgeously decorated for the occasion, and the ceremony was performed amidst the utmost pomp and magnificence, Napoleon himself putting the crown on his head and then placing the Empress's diadem on the head of the kneeling Josephine. During the whole proceedings the Pope was made to play a secondary part. He simply "assisted" at the function. The ceremony was followed by a profuse creation of marshals and nobles.
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