THREE:FREE TRADE HALL, MANCHESTER. (From a Photograph by Frith and Co., Reigate.)
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THREE:RICHARD COBDEN. (From a Photograph by Messrs. W. and D. Downey.)The year 1812 opened, in England, by the assembling of Parliament on the 7th of January. The speech of the Regent was again delivered by commission. The great topic was the success of the war in Spain under Lord Wellington, whose military talents were highly praised. There was a reference also to the disagreements with America, and the difficulty of coming to any amicable arrangement with the United States. Lords Grey and Grenville, in the Peers, pronounced sweeping censures on the continuance of the war with France, and on the policy of Ministers towards America, from which source they prognosticated many disasters. In the Commons, the Opposition used similar language; and Sir Francis Burdett took a very gloomy view of our relations both with France and North America, and declared that we could anticipate no better policy until we had reformed our representative system.
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THREE:In June Massena advanced, and laid siege to Ciudad Rodrigo. This was almost within sight of Wellington's lines. The town was defended by a Spanish garrison, and Wellington was called upon to co-operate by attacking the besiegers. This he offered to do if Romana would undertake to prevent the march of Regnier from Estremadura on his rear the while; but Romana would not undertake to maintain himself against Regnier if the British force under General Hill crossed the Tagus. Wellington, whose object was to defend Portugal and not Spain, therefore lay still; and the Spaniards, after a brave defence, were compelled to capitulate on the 10th of July. Then there was a wild cry of indignation raised against Wellington by the Spaniards, and even by his own officers, that he should see a place taken from our allies, under his very eyes, and not attempt to relieve it. The French taunted him with it in the Moniteur, and regarded it as a great sign of his weakness. But none of these things moved Wellington. He knew what he had to dowhich was to defend Portugaland he had made his plans for doing it; but this was not by exposing his small army in any situation to which the Spanish chose to call him, while, at the same time, they declined to co-operate with him. He soon had the division of Marshal Ney upon his outposts, where he fell in with our light division under General Craufurd. Wellington had ordered that, on attack, Craufurd should retire on the main body in order, because he did not wish to reduce his small numbers in skirmishes, but to reserve them for favourable occasions; but Craufurd, being hotly pursued, turned and gave the French a severe rebuff, killing and wounding above one thousand of Massena's men. Craufurd, having driven the French back three times, made a masterly passage, by a bridge, over the Coa, and joined the main army.
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THREE:While this was going on, the town of San Sebastian was stormed by the British. Sir Thomas Graham conducted the assault, which was led on by the brigade of General Robinson, bravely supported by a detachment of Portuguese under Major Snodgrass. The place was captured; the French were driven through it to the castle standing on a height, in which they found refuge. Seven hundred prisoners were taken. The British lost two thousand men in the assaulta loss which would have been far greater had a mine, containing one thousand two hundred pounds of gunpowder, exploded, but which was fortunately prevented by the falling in of a saucisson. Many less would have fallen, however, had General Graham allowed shells to be thrown into the town, which he would not, on account of the inhabitants. But the French had not only prepared this great mine, but exploded various other appliances for setting the town on fire. In fact they showed no care for the people or the town. When driven to the castle, after a murderous street fightin which they picked off our men from behind walls and windows, killing Sir Richard Fletcher, the commanding engineer, and wounding Generals Robinson, Leith, and Oswald, besides slaughtering heaps of our menthey continued to fire down the streets, killing great numbers of the inhabitants besides our soldiers. Yet, after all, they charged Lord Wellington with not only throwing shells into the town, but with[61] setting it on fire, and plundering it. His lordship indignantly repelled these accusations in his letter to his brother, Sir Henry Wellesley. He declares that he himself had been obliged to hasten to his headquarters at Lezaco, on the morning of the 31st of August, but that he saw the town on fire in various places before our soldiers entered it; in fact, the French had set it on fire in six different places, and had their mine exploded scarcely a fragment of the town would have been left, or a single inhabitant alive. The lenity shown to the town by Wellington and Graham, who acted for him, was not used towards their calumniators in the castle. It was stoutly bombarded, and being soon almost battered to pieces about the ears of the defenders, the French surrendered on the 8th of September, two thousand five hundred in number; but the siege of both town and fort had cost the allies four thousand men in killed and wounded. Had the town been, as the French represented, bombarded like the castle, some thousands of English and Portuguese lives would have been spared, but at the expense of the inhabitants.Buonaparte very speedily matured his plans for the seizure of Spain, and he began to put them into execution. From Italy, where he was violating the territories of the Pope, and compelling the reluctant Queen of Etruria to give up her kingdom, he wrote to the King of Spain, her father, that he consented to a marriage between the Prince of Asturias and a lady of his family. Whilst he thus gave assurance of his friendship, he ordered his army, lying at Bayonne, to enter Spain at different points, and possess themselves of the strong positions along its frontier. By this means the French were received as friends by the people, and neither the king nor Godoy complained of this gross breach of the Treaty of Fontainebleau. The impudent tricks by which the great fortresses were secured, each of which might have detained an army for years, have scarcely any parallel in history. At Pamplona, on the 9th of February, 1808, the French troops commenced a game of snowballing each other on the esplanade of the citadel, when suddenly they occupied the drawbridge, entered the fortress gate, and admitted a body of their countrymen, who had been placed in readiness, and the fortress was secured. At Barcelona the French gave out that they were about to march. Duchesne, the General, drew up his men before the citadel, on pretence of speaking with the French guard, near the citadel gate, passed suddenly in, followed by an Italian regiment, and the place was their own. St. Sebastian was captured by a number of French being admitted into the hospital, who let in their fellows, and Mountjoy was taken by a like ruse.
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THREE:The result of these victories was that the Punjab was annexed to our Indian Empire, the reasons for this step being explained by the Governor-General in a proclamation, which announced favourable terms for the conquered people. Henry Lawrence, as is well known, was against the annexation, but his arguments were overridden by the strenuous Governor-General, and he became chief of the Commission, with his brother John as a member, for the administration of the Punjab. Moolraj was subsequently tried for the murder of Mr. Agnew and Mr. Anderson, and being found guilty, he was sentenced to death. The sentence was afterwards commuted to imprisonment for life.
THREE:But the Nabob of Oude held out new temptations of gain to Hastings. The Rohillas, a tribe of Afghans, had, earlier in the century, descended from their mountains and conquered the territory lying between the Ganges and the mountains to the west of Oude. They had given it the name of Rohilcund. These brave warriors would gladly have been allies of the British, and applied to Sujah Dowlah to bring about such an alliance. Dowlah made fair promises, but he had other views. He hoped, by the assistance of the British, to conquer Rohilcund and add it to Oude. He had no hope that his rabble of the plains could stand against this brave mountain race, and he now artfully stated to Hastings that the Mahrattas were at war with the Rohillas. If they conquered them, they would next attack Oude, and, succeeding there, would descend the Ganges and spread over all Bahar and Bengal. He therefore proposed that the British should assist him to conquer Rohilcund for himself, and add it to Oude. For this service he would pay all the expenses of the campaign, the British army would obtain a rich booty, and at the end he would pay the British Government besides the sum of forty lacs of rupees. Hastings had no cause of quarrel with the Rohillas, but for the proffered reward he at once acceded to the proposal. In April, 1774, an English brigade, under Colonel Champion, invaded Rohilcund, and in a hard-fought field defeated the Rohillas. In the whole of this campaign nothing could be more disgraceful in every way than the conduct of the troops of Oude. They took care to keep behind during the fighting, but to rush forward to the plunder. The Nabob and his troops committed such horrors in plundering and massacreing not only the Rohillas, but the native and peaceful Hindoos, that the British officers and soldiers denounced the proceedings with horror. It was now, however, in vain that Hastings called on the Nabob to restrain his soldiers, for, if he did not plunder, how was he to pay the stipulated forty lacs of rupees? and if he ruined and burnt out the natives, how were they, Hastings asked, to pay any taxes to him as his new subjects? All this was disgraceful enough, but this was not all. Shah Allum now appeared upon the scene, and produced a contract between[326] himself and the Nabob, which had been made unknown to Hastings, by which the Nabob of Oude stipulated that, on condition of the Mogul advancing against the Rohillas from the south of Delhi, he should receive a large share of the conquered territory and the plunder. The Nabob now refused to fulfil the agreement, on the plea that the Mogul ought to have come and fought, and Hastings sanctioned that view of the case, and returned to Calcutta with his ill-gotten booty.
THREE:If we were to believe figures, and the returns of exports and imports, and of duties paid, we must set down the opening of the year 1819 as considerably prosperous. This was the view which Ministers took of the condition of Great Britain when they met the new Parliament on the 14th of January. The speculations that had been carried on during 1818 had swelled the revenue, and given an impression of growing commerce, which unfortunately did not exist. The results of these speculations in imports of raw material, especially of cotton, and in extensive exports of manufactures to countries not yet sufficiently reinvigorated to purchase, had produced numerous and heavy failures during the latter part of the past year, and these still continued, in strange contrast to the self-congratulating language of Ministers. In nothing was the fall of price so great as in cotton, and those who had bought[142] largely suffered in proportion. These bankruptcies were not confined to Great Britain; they extended to New York, and to southern ports of the United States, where the same speculation had been going on largely.SAILING INTO ACTION AT TRAFALGAR.
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