CHAPTER XXI.

REIGN OF GEORGE III. (_continued_).

Austria gets ready for War--Napoleon's Preparations--Invasion

of Bavaria by Austria--The Archduke Charles driven from

Bavaria--Occupation of Vienna--Battle of Aspern--The Spirit

of Revolt in Germany; Schill and Brunswick--Battle of

Wagram--Peace of Vienna--Victories of the Tyrolese--Death

of Hofer--The Betrayal of Poland and Italy--Deposition of

the Pope--Ministerial Dissensions--Death of Portland, and

Reconstruction of the Ministry--Inquiry into the Walcheren

Expedition--Imprisonment of Gale Jones--Burdett committed to the

Tower--The Piccadilly Riots--Arrest of Burdett--Debates in the

House of Commons--Agitation for Parliamentary Reform--Liberation

of Burdett--Remaining Events of the Session--Condition of

Spain--Soult's victorious Progress--He fails at Cadiz--The

Guerilla War--Massena sent against Wellington--Capture of

Ciudad Rodrigo--Capitulation of Almeida--Battle of Busaco--The

Lines of Torres Vedras--Massena baffled--Condition of the rival

Armies--Victories in the East and West Indies--The War in Sicily.

The difficulty which Buonaparte had created for himself by the

usurpation of the thrones of Spain and Portugal, had the direct result

which his wisest counsellors foresaw. Austria immediately began to

watch the progress of the Peninsular struggle, and the resistance of

the Spanish people; and the stepping of Great Britain into that field

induced her to believe that the opportunity was come for throwing off

the French yoke, and avenging her past injuries and humiliations.

She had made arrangements by which she could call out an immense

population, and convert them into soldiers. But in determining to

declare open war against Buonaparte, Austria displayed a woful want

of sagacity. To compete with a general like Buonaparte, and a power

like France, it needed not only that her armies should be numerous

but thoroughly disciplined. Nothing could have been lost by a little

delay, but much might be gained. If Buonaparte succeeded in putting

down the insurrection in Spain, he would then fall on Austria with all

his victorious forces; if he did not succeed, but his difficulties

increased, then every day that Austria waited was a day of strength to

her. Russia, which was nominally at peace with Buonaparte, but which

at heart was already determined on breaking the connection, saw, with

just alarm, this precipitate movement of Austria. If she rose at once,

Alexander was bound by treaty to co-operate in putting her down; if

she deferred her enterprise for awhile, there was every probability

that they could issue forth together against the common disturber. If

Austria made a rash blow and were prostrated, Russia would then be left

alone; and Alexander knew well, notwithstanding Napoleon's professions,

that he would lose little time in demanding some concession from him.

But Austria had not the prudence to guide herself by these

considerations. Her ablest statesman, Metternich, and the ablest

statesman of France, Talleyrand, had many private conferences with the

Russian ambassador, Romanzoff, to endeavour to concert some scheme

by which this war could be prevented, but in vain. Austria believed

that the time for regaining her position in Germany, Italy, and the

Tyrol, was come; and Talleyrand knew that Buonaparte would make no

concession to avoid the threatened collision, because it would argue

at once a decline of his power. All that he could do, he did, which

was on his hasty return to Paris from Spain: he opened communications

with Austria, intended to defer the declaration of war for a few months

whilst he made his preparations. He had little fear of crushing Austria

summarily. He believed that Soult, having driven Sir John Moore out

of Spain, would prevent the British from sending another army there;

and he was confident that his generals there could speedily reduce the

Spaniards to submission. On the other hand, Austria, he knew, could

have no assistance from Russia, Prussia, or the other Northern Powers.

All he wanted, therefore, was a little time to collect his armies.

Austria had made gigantic exertions, and had now on foot a greater

host than she had ever brought into the field before. It was said to

comprehend half a million of men, two hundred thousand of whom were

under the command of the Emperor's brother, the Archduke Charles,

and posted in Austria to defend the main body of the empire. Another

large army was, under the command of the Archduke John, in Carinthia

and Carniola, ready to descend on the north of Italy; and a third was

posted in Galicia, under the Archduke Ferdinand, to defend Poland. John

was to co-operate with Charles through the defiles of the Tyrol, which,

having been given over, by the pressure of Buonaparte at the Treaty

of Pressburg, to Bavaria, was ready to rise and renew its ancient and

devoted union with Austria.

Buonaparte had not a sufficient French force in Germany under Davoust

and Oudinot, but he called on the Confederacy of the Rhine to furnish

their stipulated quotas to fight for the subjugation of their common

fatherland. Bavaria, Würtemberg, Saxony, and the smaller States were

summoned to this unholy work. His numbers, after all, were far inferior

to those of the enemy, and, besides the renegade Germans, consisted of

a medley of other tributary nations--Italians, Poles, Dutch, Belgians,

and others. It is amazing how, in all his later wars, he used the

nations he had conquered to put down the rest. Even in his fatal

campaign in Russia--yet to come--a vast part of his army consisted of

the troops of these subjugated nations.

On the 9th of April, 1809, the Archduke Charles crossed the Inn, and

invaded Bavaria, the ally of France. He issued a manifesto declaring

that the cause of Austria was that of the general independence of

Germany, and called on those States which had been compelled to bear

the yoke of France to throw it off, and stand boldly for the common

liberty. The serious discontent of the people of Germany encouraged

him to hope that his call would be responded to; but Germany was not

yet ripe for an effective reaction. Simultaneously, the Archduke

John had descended from the Alps into Italy, and driven the troops

of the viceroy, Eugene Beauharnais, before him. He had advanced as

far as the Tagliamento, and laid siege to the fortresses of Orobo

and Palma Nuova. The Archduke Ferdinand had also marched into Poland,

defeated Poniatowski, Buonaparte's general, and taken possession of

Warsaw. All so far looked cheering; for the great actor was not yet on

the scene. But he quitted Paris on the 11th of April, two days only

after the Archduke Charles entered Bavaria, and in a few days was

with his army at Donauwörth. He expressed the utmost contempt for the

Austrian troops, saying, in a letter to Massena, that six thousand

French ought to beat twelve thousand or fifteen thousand of "those

_canaille_." He greatly disapproved of the manner in which Berthier had

disposed of his forces, for he had extended them in a long line from

Augsburg to Ratisbon, with a very weak centre. He ordered Davoust and

Massena, who commanded the opposite wings, to draw nearer together.

That being done, on the 20th of April he made a sudden attack on the

Austrians at Abensberg, and defeated them. The next day he renewed

the attack at Landshut, and took from them thirty pieces of cannon,

nine thousand prisoners, and a great quantity of ammunition and

baggage. The following day he advanced against the main position of the

Archduke Charles, at Eckmühl, where, by the most skilful manœuvres,

he turned all the enemy's positions, and defeated one division after

another with all the art and regularity of a game of chess. Charles

was thoroughly defeated, and had twenty thousand men taken prisoners,

with a loss of fifteen stand of colours, and the greater part of his

artillery. The next day the Austrians made a stand to defend the town

of Ratisbon. They fought bravely; but, a breach being made in the wall,

Marshal Lannes seized a scaling-ladder, and, whilst hundreds of French

were falling under the fire of the Austrians, he planted it against

the breach, saying, "I will show you that your general is still a

grenadier!" The wall was scaled, and a desperate battle ensued in the

streets of the town. At one moment, a number of tumbrils loaded with

powder were in danger of exploding, and destroying the combatants on

both sides; but the Austrians warned the French of the danger, and

they mutually combined to remove them. That over, they recommenced the

struggle, and the Austrians were driven out of the town, leaving again

cannon, much ammunition, and many prisoners in the hands of the French.

Whilst watching the _mêlée_, Buonaparte was struck on the toe by a

spent musket-ball; but he had the wound dressed, and again remounted

his horse, and watched with unfailing vigilance the progress of the

battle.

[Illustration: MARSHAL LANNES AT RATISBON. (_See p._ 587.)]

In five days he had snatched the most damaging victories. The Archduke

Charles retreated in haste towards Bohemia, to secure himself in the

defiles of its mountains; and Buonaparte employed the 23rd and 24th of

April in reviewing his troops and distributing rewards. General Hiller,

who, with the Archduke Louis, had been defeated at Landshut, had united

himself to a considerable body of reserve, and placed himself on the

way, as determined to defend the capital. He retreated upon Ebersberg,

where the sole bridge over the Traun gave access to the place, the

banks of the river being steep and rocky. He had thirty thousand men

to defend this bridge, and trusted to detain the French there till the

Archduke Charles should come up again with reinforcements, when they

might jointly engage them. But Massena made a desperate onset on the

bridge, and, after a very bloody encounter, carried it. Hiller then

retreated to the Danube, which he crossed by the bridge of Mautern,

and, destroying it after him, continued his march to join the Archduke

Charles. This left the road open to Vienna, and Buonaparte steadily

advanced upon it. The Archduke Charles, becoming aware of this

circumstance, returned upon his track, hoping to reach Vienna before

him, in which case he might have made a long defence. But Buonaparte

was too nimble for him: he appeared before the walls of the city,

and summoned it to surrender. The Archduke Maximilian kept the place

with a garrison of fifteen thousand men, and he held out for three

or four days. Buonaparte then commenced flinging bombs into the most

thickly populated parts of the city, and warned the inhabitants of the

horrors they must suffer from a siege. All the royal family had gone

except Maximilian and the young archduchess, Maria Louisa, who was

ill. This was notified to Buonaparte, and he ordered the palace to be

exempted from the attack. This was the young lady destined very soon to

supersede the Empress Josephine in the imperial honours of France. The

city capitulated on the 12th of May, the French took possession of it,

and Napoleon resumed his residence at the palace of Schönbrunn, on the

outskirts.

Buonaparte's army now occupied the city and the right bank of the

Danube. The archduke arrived, and posted himself on the left bank. The

river was swollen with the spring rains and the melting of the snow in

the mountains. All the bridges had been broken down by which Buonaparte

might cross to attack the Austrians before they were joined by their

other armies. Buonaparte endeavoured to throw one over at Nussdorf,

about a league above Vienna, but the Austrians drove away his men. He

therefore made a fresh attempt at Ebersdorf, opposite to which the

Danube was divided into five channels, flowing amongst islands, the

largest of which was one called Lobau. Here he succeeded, the Archduke

Charles seeming unaware of what he was doing, or taking no care to

prevent it. On the 20th of May the French began to cross, and deployed

on a plain between the villages of Aspern and Esslingen. Thirty

thousand infantry had crossed before the next morning, and six thousand

horse, and they were attacked by the Austrians, near the village

of Aspern, about four in the afternoon. The battle was desperately

contested on both sides. The villages of Aspern and Esslingen were

taken and retaken several times. The struggle went on with great fury,

amid farm-yards, gardens, and enclosures, and waggons, carts, harrows,

and ploughs were collected and used as barricades. Night closed upon

the scene, leaving the combatants on both sides in possession of some

part or other of these villages. On the following morning, the 22nd,

the fight was renewed, and, after a terrible carnage, the French were

driven back on the river. At this moment news came that the bridge

connecting the right bank with the islands was broken down, and the

communication of the French army was in danger of being altogether cut

off. Buonaparte, to prevent this, retreated into the island of Lobau

with the whole of the combating force, and broke down the bridge which

connected the islands with the left bank behind them. The Austrians

followed keenly upon them in their retreat, and inflicted a dreadful

slaughter upon them. Marshal Lannes had both his legs shattered by

a cannon-ball, and was carried into the island in the midst of the

_mêlée_; General St. Hilaire also was killed. The loss in killed and

wounded on both sides amounted to upwards of forty thousand. For two

days Napoleon remained on the island, with his defeated troops, without

provisions, and expecting hourly to be cut to pieces. General Hiller

earnestly pressed the Archduke Charles to allow him to pass the

Danube, by open force, opposite to the isle of Enzersdorf, where it

might be done under cover of cannon, pledging himself to compel the

surrender of Buonaparte and his army. But the archduke appeared under a

spell from the moment that the fighting was over. Having his enemy thus

cooped up, it was in his power to cut off all his supplies. By crossing

the river higher or lower, he could have kept possession of both banks,

and at once have cut off Buonaparte's magazines at Ebersdorf, under

Davoust, from which he was separated by the inundation. By any other

general, the other armies under his brother would have been ordered up

by express; every soldier and every cannon that Austria could muster

within any tolerable distance would have been summoned to surround and

secure the enemy, taken at such disadvantage. In no other country but

Austria could Napoleon have ever left that island but as a prisoner

with a surrendered army.

And all this time the spirit of revolt against Napoleon's domination

was growing rapidly in Germany; and had the Austrians only made the

slightest use of their present opportunity, the whole of the country

would have been in arms and the French completely driven out. Though

Prussia was still too much depressed to dare to rise and join Austria,

there was a fast-growing spirit of indignation amongst its population,

which the Tugend Bund had tended greatly to increase. The brave Major

Schill, without waiting for any sanction from the King of Prussia,

led forth his band of hussars, amounting to about five thousand, and

prepared to join with Colonel Dörnberg, an officer of Jerome, the King

of Westphalia's guard, to raise an insurrection in that State, and

drive out Jerome and the French. The design was betrayed to Jerome by

a traitorous friend of Dörnberg, and he was compelled to fly. Letters

found amongst Dörnberg's papers showed the participation of Schill in

the scheme. Jerome, of course, complained to the King of Prussia, and

the unhappy monarch was obliged to disavow and denounce the conduct of

Schill. The brave partisan made his way to Wittenberg and Halberstadt,

and was pursued by the forces of Westphalia and Holland northwards to

Weimar, and finally to Stralsund, which he prepared to defend. The

place was stormed by the Dutch and Westphalians, and Schill was killed

fighting in the streets of Stralsund, after having split the head of

the Dutch general, Carteret, with his sword. Thus fell the gallant

Schill, true to his motto--"Better a terrible end than endless terror."

Dörnberg escaped to Great Britain. Katt, another patriot, assembled a

number of veterans at Stendal, and advanced as far as Magdeburg, but

was compelled to fly to the Brunswickers in Bohemia. Had the Archduke

Charles marched through Franconia at the opening of the campaign, as

he proposed, all these isolated bodies might have been encouraged,

and knit into a formidable army. But the most powerful of all these

independent leaders, the Duke of Brunswick, was too late to join

Schill, Katt, and Dörnberg. The son of the Duke of Brunswick who had

been so barbarously treated by Buonaparte had vowed an eternal revenge.

But the French were in possession of his sole patrimony, Oels, and

he went to Bohemia, where he raised a band of two thousand hussars,

which he equipped and maintained by the aid of England, the home of

his sister Caroline, the Princess of Wales. He clothed his hussars in

black, in memory of his father's death, with the lace disposed like the

ribs of a skeleton, and their caps and helmets bearing a death's-head

in front--whence they were called the Black Brunswickers. He advanced

at their head through Saxony, Franconia, Hesse, and Hanover, calling

on the populations to rise and assert their liberties. He defeated

Junot at Berneck, and the Saxons at Zittau, but it was the middle of

May before he entered Germany, and by that time the enemy had widely

separated Schill and the other insurgents. He managed, however, to

surprise Leipsic, and thus furnish himself with ammunition and stores.

But the Dutch, Saxons, and Westphalians were all bearing down on him.

He defeated them at Halberstadt and in Brunswick, but was finally

overpowered by numbers of these Dutch and Germans disgracefully

fighting against their own country, and he retreated to Elsfleth, and

thence sailed for England.

All this time, too, the brave Tyrolese were in open revolt, so that the

success of Austria would have instantly produced a universal rising

of the country. But for six weeks the Austrians continued to allow

Napoleon to keep open his communication with Vienna, whence he procured

every material for building, not one bridge, but three; timber,

cordage, iron, and forty engines to drive the piles, were procured

from its ample magazines. Besides building the bridges, Buonaparte had

quickly fortified the island, and placed batteries so as to prevent

any successful attack upon him, whilst he was now furnished with the

means of issuing from the island almost at pleasure. Since their being

cooped up on Lobau, the French had received numerous reinforcements;

and though the Archduke John was marching to join the Archduke Charles,

Eugene Beauharnais was close at his heels, continually harassing him

and compelling him to fight. On the frontiers of Hungary, the town of

Raab ought to have enabled John to resist and retard Beauharnais, and

have allowed the Archduke Regnier, who was organising another army

in Hungary, to come up; but Raab only stood out eight days, and John

was obliged to cross the Danube at Pressburg, to endeavour to advance

and make a junction with the Archduke Charles. But Eugene Beauharnais

managed to join Buonaparte still earlier, and the Emperor did not then

allow John to unite with Charles; for, on the night of the 5th of July,

he began to fire on the Austrians, on the left bank of the Danube,

from gunboats; and whilst they were replying to this, he quietly put

his forces across the river. At daylight the next morning the Archduke

Charles was astonished to find the French army on the open land; they

had turned his whole position, had taken the villages of Esslingen

and Enzersdorf, and were already assailing him in flank and rear.

The archduke retired upon Wagram, which was lost and taken several

times during the day. Buonaparte attempted to break the centre of the

Austrian line by a concentrated fire of grape-shot, but the Austrians

replied vigorously with their artillery. The French were held in

check, if not repulsed. The Saxons and other German troops displayed a

disposition to break, and go over to the Austrians. Buonaparte spoke

sharply to Bernadotte of the conduct of the Saxons, and the marshal

replied that they had no longer such soldiers as they brought from the

camp of Boulogne. When night closed the French were in confusion, and,

in reality, worsted. The next morning, the 6th of July, the archduke

renewed the attack on all the French lines, but is said to have left

his centre too weak. Buonaparte again endeavoured to break it, but

failed. Bernadotte, Massena, and Davoust were all in turn driven from

their positions. Buonaparte, in a state of desperation, cried, "The

Austrian centre must be battered with artillery like a fortress." He

ordered Davoust to make a desperate charge on the left wing, and called

on Drouet, the general of his artillery, to bring up all the artillery

of the Guard, and support Davoust. Davoust directed the whole of his

force on the left wing, which was broken, and then Buonaparte, forming

a dense and deep column of all his best troops, old and new Guards, and

his celebrated _Grenadiers à cheval_, under Macdonald and Beauharnais,

drove against the centre with a fury that shattered it, and the battle

was decided. But at what a price! The Austrians had twenty-six or

twenty-seven thousand killed and wounded, and the French upwards of

thirty thousand. Buonaparte lost three generals, and had twenty-one

wounded. The Austrians had thirteen generals killed or wounded; but

they had taken many more prisoners than they had lost. Whilst the

battle was raging, the Archduke John was approaching from Pressburg;

but Austrian slowness, or, as it is said, conflicting orders from his

brother and the Aulic Council, did not permit him to come up in time,

or he would assuredly have turned the day.

Still there was no need to despair. The archduke had yet a great

force; there were the divisions of the Archdukes John, Ferdinand,

and Regnier, and the Tyrolese were all in active operation in their

mountains. But the Emperor, on learning the fate of the battle, lost

heart, made offers of peace, which were accepted, and an armistice was

signed by Francis at Znaim, in Moravia. The armistice took place on

the 11th of July, but the treaty of peace was not signed till the 14th

of October, at the palace of Schönbrunn. The long delay in completing

this treaty was occasioned by the exactions which Buonaparte made on

Austria of cessions of territory, and the means he took to terrify

Francis into submission to his terms. He even addressed a proclamation

to the Hungarians, exhorting them to separate from Austria and form

an independent kingdom, telling them that they formed the finest part

of the Austrian empire, and yet had received nothing from Austria but

oppression and misfortunes. By such means, and by constantly exerting

himself to sow the germs of discontent through all the Austrian

provinces, he at last succeeded in concluding peace on condition of

the cession of various territories to his partisans of the Confederacy

of the Rhine, and of Trieste, the only Austrian port, to France, thus

shutting up Austria, as he hoped, from communication with England. In

all, Austria sacrificed forty-five thousand square miles and nearly

four millions of subjects to this shameful peace. Neither were his

allies, the King of Saxony and the Emperor of Russia, forgotten; each

obtained a slice of Austria.

The news of the Treaty of Schönbrunn was a death-blow to the hopes and

exertions of the Tyrolese. At this moment they had driven the French

out of their mountains, and the beautiful Tyrol was free from end to

end. Francis II. had been weak enough to give this brave country over

again to Bavaria, at the command of Napoleon, and sent the patriotic

Tyrolese word to lay down their arms. To understand the chagrin of the

people we must recollect the strong attachment of the Tyrolese to the

house of Austria and their brilliant actions during this war. It was

decided to ignore the message and raise the Tyrol. On the 9th of April

the concerted signal was given by planks, bearing little red flags,

floating down the Inn, and by sawdust thrown on the lesser streams. On

the 10th the whole country was in arms. The Bavarians, under Colonel

Wrede, proceeded to blow up the bridges in the Pusterthal, to prevent

the approach of the Austrians; but his sappers, sent for the purpose,

found themselves picked off by invisible foes, and took to flight.

Under Andrew Hofer, an innkeeper of the valley of Passeyr, the Tyrolese

defeated the Bavarians in engagement after engagement. After the battle

of Aspern, Francis II. sent word that his faithful Tyrolese should be

united to Austria for ever, and that he would never conclude a peace

in which they were not indissolubly united to his monarchy. But Wagram

followed, Francis forgot his promise, and the Tyrol, as we have seen,

was again handed over to the French, to clear it for the Bavarians.

Lefebvre marched into it with forty thousand men, and an army of

Saxons, who had to bear the brunt of the fighting. Hofer and his

comrades, Spechbacher, Joachim Haspinger, and Schenk, the host of the

"Krug" or "Jug," again roused the country, and destroyed or drove back

the Saxons; and when Lefebvre himself appeared near Botzen with all his

concentrated forces, they compelled him also to retire from the Tyrol

with terrible loss. The French and Saxons were pursued to Salzburg,

many prisoners being taken by the way. Hofer was then appointed

governor of the Tyrol. He received his credentials at Innsbruck from an

emissary of the Archduke, his friends Spechbacher, Mayer, and Haspinger

being present on the occasion, and also the priest Douay by whom the

patriot was subsequently betrayed.

[Illustration: THE DUKE OF BRUNSWICK AND HIS HUSSARS (THE BLACK

BRUNSWICKERS). (_See p._ 590.)]

But the Peace of Vienna was now concluded, and, on the 30th of October,

Baron Lichtenthurm appeared in the camp of the Tyrolese, and delivered

a letter to the leaders from the Archduke John, requesting them

peaceably to disperse, and surrender the country to the Bavarians. This

was a terrible blow to these brave men. They appeared prostrated by

the news, and Hofer announced to Spechbacher, who was still fighting

with the Bavarians, that peace was made with France, and that the Tyrol

was forgotten! Hofer returned to his native vale of Passeyr, and still

held out against the French, and the Italian mercenaries under Rusca,

whom he defeated with great slaughter. But traitors were amongst them,

who guided the French to their rear. Hofer escaped into the higher

Alps, but thirty of the other leaders were taken and shot without

mercy. Another traitor guided the French to Hofer's retreat in the high

wintry Alps. He had been earnestly implored to quit the country, but

he refused. As the French surrounded his hut, on the 17th of February,

1810, he came out calmly and submitted. He was carried to the fortress

of Mantua, and Napoleon sent an order that he should be shot within

four-and-twenty hours. He would not suffer himself to be blindfolded,

nor would he kneel, but exclaimed--"I stand before my Creator, and,

standing, I will restore to Him the spirit He gave!" Thus died, on the

20th of February, 1810, the brave Hofer--another murdered man, another

victim of the sanguinary vengeance of Buonaparte against whatever was

patriotic and independent.

[Illustration: ANDREW HOFER APPOINTED GOVERNOR OF THE TYROL. (_See p._

591.)

(_From the Picture by Franz Defregger._)]

The arbitrary crushing of the freedom of the Tyrol, and the handing

of it over to the Bavarians as a gift, was not the only oppression of

this period of Napoleon's career, which the Germans call his supremacy.

He seemed to have put down all opposition on the Continent, except in

Spain, and he dictated to all nations according to the arrogance of his

will. His general in Poland, Poniatowski, himself a Pole, was employed

to crush his countrymen. Poniatowski fell on the Austrians with forty

thousand men, and made himself master of Warsaw, whilst the Archduke

Ferdinand was besieging Thorn. He then advanced against the archduke,

beat him in two battles fought in April and May, and eventually drove

the Austrians out of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw. Buonaparte then divided

Galicia, giving one portion to the Emperor of Russia, and adding the

other to the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, which was restored to the King of

Saxony. Thus the Poles saw an end of all the high hopes with which

Buonaparte had artfully succeeded in inspiring them, in order to induce

them to fight his battles for the subjugation of other peoples.

The Archduke John, whilst advancing victoriously into Italy, driving

the viceroy, Eugene Beauharnais, before him, when he had reached

almost to Venice was recalled by the news of the unfortunate battle

of Eckmühl, and the orders of the Aulic Council. The Italians had

received him with unconcealed joy; for, harsh as the rule of Austria

in Italy had been, it was found to be easy in comparison with the

yoke of Buonaparte. In common with other peoples, the Italians found

that Buonaparte's domination, introduced with lofty pretences of

restoring liberty and crushing all old tyrannies, was infinitely more

intolerable than the worst of these old tyrannies. It was one enormous

drain of military demand. The lifeblood of the nation was drawn as

by some infernal and insatiable vampire, to be poured out in all the

other lands of Europe for their oppression and curse. Trade vanished,

agriculture declined under the baleful incubus; public robbery was

added to private wrong; the works of art--the national pride--were

stripped from their ancient places, without any regard to public or

individual right, and there remained only an incessant pressure of

taxation, enforced with insult, and often with violence.

The Austrians being again expelled from Italy, Buonaparte, in his

all-absorbing cupidity, determined to turn adrift the Pope, and add

his little vineyard to his now cumbrously overgrown Ahab's domains.

He had begun this spoliation in 1808, seizing on the greater part of

the Pontiff's territories; sending away his cardinals, and reducing

him to little better than a solitary prisoner in his own palace. This

was an ungrateful return to the poor old Pope for making the long

journey into France to crown him, and thus to give a sacred sanction

to his usurpation of the imperial crown--a sanction of immense effect

throughout the Catholic world. Pius VII. had given Buonaparte great

offence by refusing to declare war on Great Britain, and thus keeping

up a breach in his system of exclusion of British commerce. He had,

therefore, already taken military possession of Civita Vecchia and

Ancona, but he now resolved to take the whole temporal dominion

from the Pope, and abrogate, by virtue of his assumed heirship of

Charlemagne's realm, the gift of Charlemagne to the Church. On the

2nd of February, 1809, General Miollis, by order of Buonaparte, took

possession of Rome, disarmed and disbanded the Pope's guard, and

marched his other soldiers to the north, telling them they should no

longer remain under the effeminate rule of a priest. Miollis then gave

the Pontiff the alternative to join the French league, offensive and

defensive, or to be deposed. The Pope firmly refused to concede his

rights to anything but absolute force. On the 17th of May, therefore,

Napoleon's decree for the deposition of the Pope from his temporal

power was proclaimed. It assumed the heirship of Charlemagne to be in

Buonaparte; declared the union of the spiritual and temporal powers to

be the source of all scandals and discords in the Catholic Church; that

they were, therefore, at an end--the Roman State for ever united to the

French Empire. On the 10th of June Pius issued a bull excommunicating

Buonaparte and all who aided him in his sacrilegious usurpation of the

patrimony of St. Peter; and this was followed, on the 6th of July, by

General Radet forcing the gates of the Vatican, taking possession of

it with his troops, entering the presence of the Pope, who was amid

his priests, and clad in his pontificals, and demanding that he should

instantly sign a renunciation of all the temporal estates attached to

the see of Rome. Pius declared that he neither could nor would perform

any such sacrilegious act. He was then informed that he must quit

Rome. Pius was detained at Savona three years, and was then removed to

Fontainebleau.

In England the Ministry was thrown into the utmost chaos and discord

by the disastrous progress of the war on the Continent, and especially

by the miserable result of the Walcheren expedition. One member of the

Cabinet endeavoured to throw the blame on another, and the feud between

Canning, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, and Lord Castlereagh, the

Minister at War, grew deadly. Each accused the other of interfering

and thwarting action, and so producing the lamentable consequences

that ensued. A hot correspondence followed, in which Castlereagh

charged Canning with privately insinuating to the other Ministers

that Castlereagh should be dismissed, and Canning denied it. Between

them, Lord Camden came into difficulty; for, though Canning had told

Lord Camden, as Lord Castlereagh's relative, that one or other of

them must resign, he declared that he did not mean this communication

as secret, but as one that he expected Lord Camden would communicate

to Lord Castlereagh. Castlereagh resigned, and then challenged

Canning. Canning also resigned; and the duel was fought on the 22nd

of September, on Putney Heath, and Canning was wounded. The Duke of

Portland, who was near his end--hastened probably by these agitations

and embarrassments--also resigned, and died a few days afterwards.

The Tory Ministry was now in a most shattered condition, and it was

believed that it could not repair itself. On the 23rd of September

official letters were addressed to Lords Grey and Grenville to

endeavour to form a coalition with the Tories, but they declined. The

Tory Ministry was therefore readjusted by the introduction of Lord

Wellesley (who had been replaced in his embassy in Spain by his brother

Henry, afterwards Lord Cowley), who took the post of Canning in the

Foreign Office, Perceval taking the Premiership, which Portland had

only nominally held, as well as the Chancellorship of the Exchequer,

which he held before. Lord Palmerston also made his first appearance

in this Cabinet as Under-Secretary of State for the War Department, in

place of Sir James Pulteney. Lord Liverpool took Castlereagh's place

as Secretary at War; and the Hon. R. Ryder succeeded Lord Liverpool as

Secretary of State for the Home Department.

The year 1810 opened with violent debates on the conduct of the late

Ministry, and the miserable management of the Walcheren Expedition. The

King's Speech, read by commission, passed over the disasters in Belgium

entirely, and spoke only of Wellesley's glorious victory at Talavera.

But the Opposition did not pass over Walcheren; in both Houses the

whole business was strongly condemned by amendments which, however,

the Ministry managed to get negatived by considerable majorities. Both

Castlereagh and Canning defended their concern in the expedition. They

declared that the orders were to push forward and secure Antwerp,

and destroy the docks and shipping there, not to coop up the troops

in an unhealthy island swamp; and that they were not responsible for

the mismanagement of the affair. This threw the onus on Lord Chatham,

the commander, but did not exonerate Ministers for choosing such a

commander; and though they were able to defeat the amendments on the

Address, they were not able to prevent the appointment of a secret

committee to inquire into the conduct and policy of the expedition. The

committee was secret, because Buonaparte carefully read the English

newspapers, and Parliament was desirous of keeping from his knowledge

the wretched blunders of our commanders. This object, however, was not

achieved, for the evidence given before the committee oozed out and

appeared in our newspapers, and was duly set forth in the _Moniteur_

for the edification of France and the Continent. Notwithstanding the

frightful details laid before the committee, and the gross proof of

dilatoriness and neglect, Ministers succeeded in negativing every

condemnatory motion; and though General Craufurd actually carried

resolutions affirming the propriety of taking and keeping the island

of Walcheren, awfully fatal as it was, still Lord Chatham, though

exculpated by the Court and Parliament, was by no means acquitted

by the country, and he found it necessary to surrender his post of

Master-General of the Ordnance.

The motion of Mr. Yorke, afterwards First Lord of the Admiralty,

for the exclusion of strangers during the debate on the Walcheren

Expedition, gave great offence to the Reformers, who were now beginning

to co-operate in societies, and to keep a keen watch on the Ministerial

tendency to curb the liberty of the Press and carry things with a high

hand. At a debating society, called the British Forum, the president,

Mr. Gale Jones, delivered a strong oration against it, and proposed for

the discussion of the following evening the question, "Which was the

greater outrage upon public feeling: Mr. Yorke's enforcement of the

standing order, or Mr. Windham's attack on the liberty of the press on

the same occasion?" This proposal being agreed to, the intended debate

was made known by placards posted in the streets. Yorke complained of

this as a breach of the privileges of the House of Commons, and the

printer was immediately summoned before the House, when he gave the

name of the author, Mr. Gale Jones, who was thereupon, on the morrow,

the 21st of February, brought before the House, and committed to

Newgate.

This action was the height of imprudence. The true wisdom would have

been to have taken no notice of such a discussion by an obscure

association. On the 13th of March Sir Francis Burdett moved that Mr.

John Gale Jones should be discharged, questioning the legality of

his commitment, and declaring that, if the proceedings of Parliament

were not to be criticised like everything else, there was an end of

liberty of speech and of the press. This motion was rejected by one

hundred and fifty-three against fourteen. The speech of Sir Francis was

printed by Cobbett in his _Weekly Register_, a publication possessing

high influence with the people. It was also accompanied by a letter of

Sir Francis, commenting in strong language upon this arbitrary act,

and questioning the right of such a House to commit for breach of

privilege, seeing that it consisted of "a part of our fellow-subjects,

collected together by means which it is not necessary to describe."

This definition of the House of Commons at this time, and for long

afterwards, was too happy a definition to escape the wrath of that

body. Accordingly, on the 27th of March, Mr. Lethbridge, member for

Somersetshire, moved that Sir Francis Burdett should be committed

to the Tower for his attack on the House. After some discussion,

the question was adjourned to the 5th of April, when, by a majority

of thirty-eight, Sir Francis was ordered to be committed as guilty

of a libel against the House. But Sir Francis, justly regarding the

House as altogether illegally constituted, and as a usurpation by the

aristocracy of the functions of the people, determined not to submit

to its order. The next day he addressed a letter to the Speaker of the

House, declaring his contempt for it as then constituted; that he held

its order to be, on that ground, illegal; and that he would resist

it to the utmost. He ordered the doors and windows of his house in

Piccadilly to be closed, and prepared to yield only to force.

The excitement among the public, as this resolution became known, was

intense, and large crowds assembled in front of the baronet's house,

applauding, and shouting "Burdett for ever!" In their enthusiasm

they compelled all passengers to take off their hats, and shout too.

But they did not stop here. On such occasions a rabble of the lowest

kind unites itself to the real Reformers--and the mob began to insult

persons of opposite principles and to break the windows of their

houses. The Earl of Westmoreland, Lord Privy Seal, was recognised,

and, as well as others of the same political faith, pelted with

mud. The windows of Mr. Yorke, as the originator of the acts of the

Commons, were quickly broken, and, in rapid succession, those of Lord

Chatham, amid loud shouts of "Walcheren!" of Sir Robert Peel, the Duke

of Montrose, Lord Castlereagh, Lord Westmoreland, Lord Wellesley,

Mr. Wellesley Pole, Sir John Anstruther, and others. The Horse

Guards were called out, and dispersed the rioters. The next day the

serjeant-at-arms made his way into Sir Francis Burdett's house, and

presented the Speaker's warrant for his arrest; but Sir Francis put

the warrant in his pocket without looking at it, and a Mr. O'Connor,

who was present, led the serjeant-at-arms down stairs, and closed the

door on him. A troop of Life Guards and a company of Foot Guards were

then ordered to post themselves in front of Sir Francis's house, and

at night it was found necessary to read the Riot Act, and then the

Guards were ordered to clear the street, which they did. Whilst this

was doing, Sir Francis watched the proceeding from the windows, and was

repeatedly cheered by the mob. Whilst thus besieged, he was visited

by Lord Cochrane, the Earl of Thanet, Whitbread, Coke of Norfolk,

Lord Folkestone, Colonel Wardle, Major Cartwright, and other Radical

Reformers. Some of these gentlemen thought enough had been done to

establish a case for a trial of the right of the House of Commons, and

advised Sir Francis to yield to the Speaker's warrant. But Sir Francis

addressed a letter to the sheriffs of London, informing them that an

attack was made upon his liberty, by an instrument which he held to be

decidedly illegal, and calling upon them to protect both him and the

other inhabitants of the bailiwick from such violence. In this dilemma,

the Premier, Mr. Perceval, advised that the serjeant-at-arms should

lay the case before the Attorney-General, Sir Vicary Gibbs, which he

did; but the reply of Sir Vicary only created more embarrassment, for

he was doubtful whether, should any person be killed in enforcing the

Speaker's warrant, it would not be held to be murder, and whether if

the serjeant-at-arms were killed, a charge of murder would not issue

against the perpetrator. The sheriffs, who were themselves strong

Reformers, laid the letter of Sir Francis before the Speaker and before

Mr. Ryder, the new Home Secretary, who counselled them to give their

aid in enforcing the warrant. But these gentlemen proceeded to the

house of Sir Francis Burdett, and passed the night with him for his

protection.

During that evening and night there were serious contentions between

the mob and the soldiers still posted in front of Sir Francis's house,

and one man was shot by the military. Scarcely had the sheriffs quitted

the house of the besieged baronet on the Sunday morning, supposing no

attempt at capture would take place that day, when the serjeant-at-arms

presented himself with a party of police, and demanded entrance, but

in vain. All that day, and late into the night, the mob continued to

insult the soldiers who kept guard on the baronet's house, and an

order being given at night to clear the streets around, the mob broke

the lamps, and threw all into darkness. They then carried away the

scaffolding from a house under repair, and made a barricade across

Piccadilly, which was, however, removed by the soldiers; and the rain

falling in torrents, the mob dispersed.

[Illustration: GEORGE CANNING.]

On the following morning, being Monday, the Ministers came to the

resolution of entering the baronet's house by force; and, as he sat at

breakfast with a considerable company of friends, an attempt was made

by a man to enter by the window, which he broke in trying to raise the

sash. This man was secured; but a more successful party of officers

below dashed in a window on the ground floor, and soon appeared in

the drawing-room. Sir Francis was seized and, still struggling and

protesting, was conveyed to a carriage. Then, escorted by the military,

he was taken to the Tower, amid tremendous crowds, crying "Burdett for

ever!" A strong force had occupied the passage through the City, and

had drawn up before the Tower before the arrival of the party with the

prisoner, whom they had taken round by Pentonville and Islington. The

scene during the conveyance of Sir Francis into the old fortress was

indescribable for tumult and yelling. As the soldiers were returning

they were hooted and pelted with stones, and at last they lost patience

and fired, killing two persons and wounding several others.

The whole of London was thrown into great agitation, and Sir John

Anstruther that evening, in the House of Commons, was very severe on

the Ministers for not taking more decided measures for the protection

of the metropolis. The next day the letter of Sir Francis was taken

into consideration. Many severe strictures were made on his conduct,

and even Whitbread contended that the Speaker's warrant was perfectly

legal, and that Sir Francis had done a great injury to the cause of

Reform by stirring up a riot in the prosecution of a constitutional

question. There was a call for the expulsion of the Radical baronet

from the House; but as this would have produced a new election in

Westminster, by which he would certainly have been returned afresh,

that was prudently abandoned.

On the 13th of April the Speaker read to the House a notice which he

had received, that a bill would be filed against him, in the Court of

King's Bench, to try the validity of his warrant in this case, and the

House ordered the letter and the notice to be entered on the Journals.

On the 16th Sir Samuel Romilly moved for the discharge of Gale Jones;

but Windham observed that a meeting of the electors of Westminster was

announced for the morrow, to take into consideration the case of their

representative, and that to liberate Jones at that moment would be sure

to be attributed to fear on the part of the Commons. The motion was,

therefore, rejected.

The meeting of the Westminster electors the next day, held in Palace

Yard, under the very walls of Parliament, was attended by vast crowds,

and the tone of the speakers was most indignant. They justified the

letter of their representative to themselves; denounced the conduct of

the Commons as oppressive, arbitrary, and illegal, tending to destroy

the popular liberties; and they approved highly of the baronet's

spirited resistance to the forcing of his house. They called for his

liberation, and for that of the unjustly incarcerated Mr. Gale Jones.

They drew up a letter to Sir Francis to this effect, to be presented

to him in the Tower by the high bailiff of Westminster; and they

prepared a petition and remonstrance to the House of Commons in equally

spirited terms, which was presented the same evening by Lord Cochrane.

The Honourable J. W. Ward, afterwards Lord Dudley and Ward, opposed

the reception of the petition as highly indecorous, and as violating

the dignity of the House; but Whitbread defended it, and even Canning

and Perceval excused, in some degree, the tone of the petition in the

circumstances. It was ordered, therefore, to be laid on the table.

In the meantime, coroners' inquests had been held on the two men

who were shot by the military. In the one case the jury brought in

a verdict of "justifiable homicide;" but, in the other, of "wilful

murder" against the soldiers. On their part, the Government offered

a reward of five hundred pounds for the discovery of any one who

had been guilty of firing at the soldiers, and an additional one of

five hundred pounds for the discovery of the person who had fired at

and wounded Ensign Cowell, whilst on duty at the Tower, the night

after the committal of Sir Francis. The Reform party in the Commons

demanded whether the Government did not intend to offer a reward for

the discovery of the soldiers who had fired at and wounded several of

the people, and killed two of them. Whitbread moved that an inquiry

should be instituted into the justice of the verdict of "wilful

murder" against the soldiers, and in this he was seconded by William

Smith of Norwich; but Captain Agar, who had been on duty, declared

that the people had fired the first shot, and the Premier got rid of

the question by asserting that an inquiry was already going on into

the circumstances of the riot, and that it was not for Parliament to

anticipate it.

During the Easter recess, popular meetings were held condemning the

conduct of Ministers and calling for Parliamentary Reform. On the

meeting of the House again, a very strong petition, bearing rather

the character of a remonstrance, was presented from the electors of

Middlesex by Mr. George Byng, on the 2nd of May. The Ministerial

party declared that the petition was an insult to the House; but the

Reformers maintained that not only the language of the petition, but

the whole of the unhappy events which had taken place, were the direct

consequences of the corrupt character of the representation, and of the

House screening from due punishment such culprits as the Duke of York,

Lord Castlereagh, etc. The petition was rejected; but the very next day

a petition of equal vigour and plainness was voted by the Livery of

London, and was presented on the 8th, and rejected too. The House had

grown so old in corruption, that it felt itself strong enough to reject

the petitions of the people. A memorial was presented also on the same

subject from Major Cartwright, one of the most indefatigable apostles

of Reform, by Whitbread, and this was rejected too, for the major

pronounced the committal of Sir Francis a flagrantly illegal act.

As Sir Francis Burdett had commenced suits, not only against the

Speaker, but also against the Sergeant-at-arms, and against Lord Moira,

the Governor of the Tower, for his arrest and detention, the House of

Commons appointed a select committee to inquire into the proper mode

of defence, and it was determined that the Sergeant-at-arms should

appear and plead to these indictments, and that the Attorney-General

should be directed to defend them. Though these trials did not take

place till May and June of the following year, we may here note the

result, to close the subject. In the first two, verdicts were obtained

favourable to the Government, and in the third the jury, not agreeing,

were dismissed. These trials came off before Lord Ellenborough, one of

the most steady supporters of Government that ever sat on the judicial

bench; and the results probably drew their complexion from this cause,

for the feeling of the public continued to be exhibited strongly in

favour of the prisoner of the House of Commons. He continued to receive

deputations from various parts of the country, expressive of the

sympathy of public bodies, and of the necessity of a searching reform

of Parliament. Whatever irregularity might have marked the proceedings

of the radical baronet, there is no question that the discussions to

which they led all over the country produced a decided progress in the

cause of a renovation of our dilapidated representation.

The prorogation of Parliament, on the 21st of June, liberated both Sir

Francis and the unfortunate president of the debating society, Mr. John

Gale Jones. On the morning of this day vast crowds assembled before

the Tower to witness the enlargement of the popular baronet. There

was a great procession of Reformers with banners and mottoes, headed

by Major Cartwright, and attended by Mr. Sheriff Wood and Mr. Sheriff

Atkins; but as Sir Francis apprehended that there might be some fresh

and fatal collision between the military and the people, he prudently

resolved to leave the Tower quietly by water, which he effected, to the

deep disappointment of the populace. No such excitement as this had

taken place, on a question of right between the House of Commons and an

individual member, since the days of Wilkes.

The other measures of Parliament during this Session were these:--In

the House of Lords Lord Holland, and in the Commons Henry Brougham,

moved for addresses to his Majesty, exhorting him to persevere in his

efforts to induce the Governments of other nations to co-operate in the

abolition of the slave trade, and to take measures for putting a stop

to the clandestine practice of British subjects yet carrying on this

trade in a fraudulent manner, as well as to adopt plans for preventing

other evasions of Mr. Wilberforce's Act. Mr. Bankes introduced a motion

for rendering perpetual his Bill to prevent the grant of offices in

reversion, and such a Bill was passed in the Commons, but rejected in

the Lords.

A Bill for Parliamentary Reform was introduced by Mr. Brand, and

debated with unusual interest, owing to the events connected with Sir

Francis Burdett, but was, of course, rejected by a large majority.

The day for such a measure was yet far off. There was a motion made

by Mr. Parnell regarding tithes in Ireland; another by Grattan and

Lord Donoughmore for Catholic emancipation; and a third by Sir

Samuel Romilly for reform of our criminal code--all necessary, but

yet long-to-be-deferred measures. Lord Melville also introduced

a plan of great importance into the House of Peers, namely, to

substitute Government war vessels for the conveyance of troops to

their destinations abroad. He showed that not only was there immense

and flagrant jobbing going on between the Government Transport Board

and the merchants from whom they hired ships on such occasions, but

that these all tended to the misery and mortality of the soldiers;

that the transport vessels hired were often not only inconveniently

small, necessitating very uncomfortable and unhealthy crowding, but

they were also frequently crazy, unseaworthy craft, badly manned,

and ignorantly commanded by very ordinary skippers. He showed that a

great amount of the mortality attending the transport of our troops to

distant shores was owing to this cause, and that all might be avoided,

and a considerable pecuniary saving effected, by employing none but

Government vessels, roomy and clean, and commanded by officers duly

qualified. But no such necessary and humane scheme was likely to be

cordially supported by an unreformed Parliament. Mr. George Rose also

obtained leave to bring in a Bill for a more questionable object. It

was to augment our navy by bringing up the children of such people as

became chargeable to parishes at Government naval schools, and thus

regularly appropriating them as sailors. He estimated these children at

ninety thousand, and calculated that these schools would furnish seven

thousand sailor-boys per annum. It was a scheme for a press-gang system

commencing with the cradle.

The supplies for the present year were voted to the amount of fifty

million one hundred and eighty-five thousand pounds. No new taxes were

to be levied, but there was to be a loan of eight million pounds.

This money was distributed as follows: twenty-five million pounds to

the land service and ordnance, twenty million pounds to the navy, a

subsidy to Portugal of nine hundred and eighty-eight thousand pounds,

and to Sicily of four hundred thousand pounds.

[Illustration: ARREST OF SIR FRANCIS BURDETT. (_See p._ 597.)]

The aspect of affairs in Spain at the commencement of 1810 was gloomy

in the extreme. Scarcely a town, fortress, or army remained to the

Spaniards; yet, perhaps, never did Napoleon feel a deeper anxiety

concerning it. The spirit of the people had shown that it could not

be easily subdued. He might beat its regular troops, and compel the

surrender of cities, after long and severe sieges, but there still

remained a whole population hostile to him. Throughout all the mountain

districts the inhabitants might be said to be still in arms against

him, and there was a fire burning in the general Spanish heart that

might at any moment blaze up into a dangerous flame, or, if not, must

wear out his troops, his energies, and his resources. Napoleon had yet

to discover that it is impossible to subdue the people of a mountainous

country, so as to rule them in peace, if they are at heart opposed to

the ruler.

Yet, looking at Spain from a mere momentary point of view, its

condition was sad enough. Saragossa had undergone a second siege, in

which the inhabitants had again made a brilliant stand, and caused

the French much loss and suffering, though compelled at length to

surrender. The battle of Ocaña, in November of 1809, had been lost by

Areizaga, and left Spain without a single considerable army. During

the latter part of the same year, General Reding, the patriotic Swiss

general, had been defeated at Valls. Blake had sustained two heavy

defeats near Saragossa and Belchite, with the loss of the greater part

of his artillery and men. Gerona had withstood a desperate siege,

but was compelled to capitulate on the 10th of December. Tarragona

and Tortosa had suffered the same fate. In some of these towns the

Spaniards had not yielded till they had killed and eaten their horses

and mules.

Towards the end of the year Soult had been recalled to Madrid, to take

the place of Jourdain, who was remanded to Paris. Soult then determined

to make an expedition into the south, to subdue Seville and Cadiz--the

last places of consequence left to the Spaniards. He took King Joseph

with him, or rather, perhaps, King Joseph was afraid to be left in

the capital without his protection. The battle of Ocaña, and the

destruction of Areizaga's army, left the passes of the Sierra Morena

all open, and on the 21st of January Soult was at Baylen, where the

army of Dupont had surrendered. Thence he pushed forward for Seville,

sending other divisions of the army to traverse Malaga and Granada.

Nothing could be more favourable to the visit of Soult than the then

condition of Seville. The stupid, proud, ignorant Junta had refused all

proffers of aid from the British, and they had, at the same time, worn

out the patience of the people, who had risen upon them, and expelled

them from the place. They then fled to Cadiz, in the hope of renewing

their authority there; but they met with a still fiercer reception from

the people of Cadiz, and were compelled formally to resign. As for the

inhabitants of Seville, they talked of defending the city against the

French, but there was no order amongst them, no authority, and they did

nothing. Soult marched on from town to town, collecting a rich spoil

everywhere, which the Spaniards had left behind them. They seemed to

think of carrying away with them only their money, but a mass of other

wealth fell into the hands of the French, and amongst it, as usual,

great quantities of British cannon, muskets, and ammunition, which

assisted in enabling the French to fight with us. Soult entered Cordova

in triumph on the 17th of January, and Seville on the 1st of February,

and there King Joseph established his court for some time.

[Illustration: CADIZ.]

Soult sent on Marshal Victor, without delay, to surprise and seize

Cadiz. But the Duke of Albuquerque, with eight or ten thousand men,

had been called at the first alarm, and, making a rapid march of two

hundred and sixty English miles, reached the city just before him. The

garrison now consisted of twenty thousand men--British, Spanish, and

Portuguese--commanded chiefly by General Graham, an officer who had

distinguished himself at Toulon, at the same time that Buonaparte first

made his merit conspicuous. The British troops had been offered by Lord

Wellington, and, though insolently refused by the Junta before, were

now thankfully accepted. Some were hastened from Torres Vedras, under

command of the Hon. Major-General Stewart, and some from Gibraltar. The

British, independent of the Portuguese under their command, amounted

to six thousand. The Spanish authorities, having their eyes opened at

length to the value of the British alliance, now gave the command of

their little fleet to Admiral Purvis, who put the ships, twenty in

number, into tolerable order, and joined them to his own squadron. With

these moored across the harbour, he kept the sea open for all necessary

supplies; and though Soult, accompanied by King Joseph, arrived on the

25th of February, and sat down before the place, occupying the country

round from Rota to Chiclano, with twenty-five thousand men, he could

make no impression against Cadiz, and the siege was continued till the

12th of August, 1812, when the successes of Wellington warned them to

be moving. It was an essential advantage to Wellington's campaign that

twenty-eight thousand French should thus be kept lying before this

place.

In Andalusia, the French under Sebastiani held Malaga and Granada;

but more eastward, the Spanish made a very troublesome resistance. It

was in vain that Sebastiani marched into the mountains of Murcia to

disperse the forces that Blake was again collecting there. Beaten in

one place, they appeared in another. A strong force, under General

Lacey, surprised a body of six thousand French at Ronda, and put them

to flight, securing their arms and stores. In Catalonia, General

O'Donnell stood his ground well, the country not only being by nature

strong, but lying along the coast, where the British could support

them by their fleets. Rushing from their hills and mountain forts, the

Catalonian militia continually inflicted severe chastisement on the

French invaders, and then retired to their fortresses. Marshals Suchet,

Augereau, and Macdonald found it impossible to make permanent head

against O'Donnell and the Catalonians. In fact, though Spain might seem

to be conquered, having no great armies in the field, it was never less

so--and that Buonaparte felt. Wherever there were hills and forests,

they swarmed with sharpshooters. For this species of warfare--the

guerilla--the Spanish were peculiarly adapted. The mountaineers, headed

by the priest, the doctor, or the shepherd, men who, in spite of

their ordinary habits, had a genius for enterprise, were continually

on the watch to surprise and cut off the enemy. Other bodies of them

were led by men of high birth, or of military training, but who were

distinguished for their superior spirit and endurance of fatigue. These

leaders had the most perfect knowledge of the woods and passes of the

mountains, and had the most immediate information from the peasantry of

the movements of the French. They could, therefore, come upon them when

totally unlooked-for, and cut them off suddenly. If they were repulsed

they disappeared like shadows into the forests and deserts. Sometimes

they came several thousand strong; sometimes a little band of ten or

twenty men would dash forward from their concealment and effect some

startling deed. To chase them appeared hopeless, for they vanished

in a thousand ways, as water sinks into the earth and disappears. To

intimidate them, Soult published a proclamation that he would treat

them as bandits, and immediately shoot all that he captured; and the

commanders replied by another proclamation that for every Spaniard shot

they would execute three Frenchmen; and they so literally fulfilled

their threat that the French were compelled to return to the ordinary

rules of warfare.

Such was the state of Spain, though nominally conquered by the French.

It was only held by a vast force, and there was no prospect that this

force could ever be dispensed with. Joseph was so heartily tired of

his kingdom that, on going to Paris to attend Napoleon's marriage,

he declared that he would abdicate unless he were made generalissimo

of all the forces in Spain, the separate generals, in their own

provinces, paying but little regard to his commands, but each acting

as if viceroy of his own province. To Napoleon the state of things

was equally irksome. The drain of men and money was intolerable, and

appeared without prospect of any end. He resolved, therefore, to make a

gigantic effort to drive the British out of Portugal, when he hoped to

be able to subjugate Spain. He could not yet proceed thither himself,

but he sent heavy reinforcements under Drouet and Junot, and dispatched

Massena, who was reckoned the greatest general next to himself,

to drive Wellington into the sea. Massena had been so uniformly

victorious, that Buonaparte styled him "the dear child of victory," and

had made him Prince of Esslingen.

In the Peninsula, altogether, the French had upwards of two hundred

thousand men, but the force which Massena led against Wellington did

not amount to more than sixty thousand, Drouet remaining, for the

present, in Spain with eighteen thousand men, and Regnier lying in

Estremadura with ten or twelve thousand more. To contend against

Massena's sixty thousand veterans, Lord Wellington had only twenty-four

thousand British on whom he could rely. He had thirty thousand

Portuguese regulars, who had been drilled by General Beresford, and

had received many British officers. Wellington had great expectation

that these troops, mixed judiciously with the British ones, would turn

out well; but that had yet to be tried. Besides these, there were

numerous bodies of Portuguese militia, who were employed in defending

the fortresses in Alemtejo and Algarve, thus protecting the flanks of

Wellington's army.

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 do--which was to defend Portugal--and 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.

When he entered Portugal Massena issued a proclamation, informing the

Portuguese that the British were the troublers and mischief-makers

of Europe, and that they were there only for their own objects of

ambition, and calling on the inhabitants to receive the French as their

friends and saviours. Lord Wellington issued a counter-proclamation,

remarking that the Portuguese had had too much occasion to learn what

sort of friends the French were; that they had learned it by the

robbery of their property, their brutality towards the women, and

oppression of all classes. He called on them, as the sole means of

rescue, to resist to the death; and he ordered them, as the British

army retired from Lisbon, to withdraw from their towns and villages,

carrying whatever they could with them, so that the enemy might find

no means of support. This was part of his great plan; and he assured

the Portuguese that those who stayed behind after their magistrates had

ordered them to withdraw should receive no assistance from him; and

that whoever was found holding any communication with the enemy should

be deemed a traitor, and treated accordingly.

On the 26th of August Massena arrived before Almeida, a strongly

fortified town not thirty miles from Ciudad Rodrigo. Wellington

hoped that it would detain him at least a month, for it had a good

Portuguese garrison, commanded by Colonel Cox, an English officer: and

he himself drew near, to be able to seize any opportunity of damaging

the besiegers. But in the night of the 27th there was a terrible

explosion of a powder magazine, which threw down part of the wall, and

made the place untenable. Treachery was immediately suspected, and what

followed was sufficient proof of it; for the Portuguese major, whom

Colonel Cox sent to settle the terms of the capitulation, went over to

the French, and was followed by a whole Portuguese regiment with the

exception of its British officers. This was a great disappointment to

Lord Wellington, whose plan was to detain Massena till the rainy season

set in, when he would at once find himself embarrassed by bridgeless

floods and in intolerable roads, and, as he hoped and had ordered, in a

country without people and without provisions.

But, undiscouraged, Lord Wellington ordered General Hill, who had

already crossed the Tagus, to hasten onward, and he then carefully

fell back, and took his position on the grim and naked ridges of

Busaco, a sierra extending from Mondego to the northward. Behind this

range of hills lay Coimbra, and three roads led through the defiles to

that city. These, and several lesser ravines used by the shepherds

and muleteers, he thoroughly fortified; and, posting himself on

these difficult heights, he calmly awaited the advance of Massena.

The ascents by which the French must reach them were precipitous and

exposed; and on the summit, in the centre of the range, Wellington took

up his headquarters at a Carmelite convent, whence he could survey the

whole scene, having upwards of thirty thousand men disposed along these

frowning eminences.

On the 26th of September the hostile host was seen in full

march--cavalry, infantry, and artillery, attended by a vast assemblage

of waggons and burden-bearing mules. The spectacle, as described by

eye-witnesses, was most imposing in its multitudes and its beautiful

order. At night, the whole country along the foot of the hills was

lit up by the enemy's camp fires, and towards morning the din of

preparation for the contest was plainly audible. Nothing but the

overweening confidence of Massena in his invincibility, and the urgent

commands of Napoleon, could have induced him to attack the Allied army

in such a position; but both he and Buonaparte held the Portuguese as

nothing, regarding them no more than as so many Spaniards, unaware

of the wonderful change made in them by British discipline. A letter

of Buonaparte to Massena had been intercepted, in which he said that

"it would be ridiculous to suppose that twenty-five thousand English

could withstand sixty thousand French, if the latter did not trifle,

but fell on boldly, after having well observed where the blow might

be struck." Ney, it is said, was of opinion that this was not such

a situation; that it was at too great odds to attack the Allies in

the face of such an approach. But Massena did not hesitate; early

on the morning of the 27th he sent forward several columns both to

the right and left of Wellington's position, to carry the heights.

These were met, on Wellington's right, by Picton's division, the 88th

regiment being commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Wallace, and the 45th

by Lieutenant-Colonel Meade. They were supported by the 8th Portuguese

regiment. The French rushed up boldly to the very heights; but were

hurled back at the point of the bayonet, the Portuguese making the

charge with as much courage and vigour as the British. Another attempt,

still farther to Wellington's right, was made, the French supposing

that they were then beyond the British lines, and should turn their

flank; but they were there met by General Leith's division, the

Royals, the 9th and the 38th regiments, and were forced down the

steeps with equal destruction. Both these sanguinary repulses were

given to the division of General Regnier. On the left of Wellington

the attack was made by Ney's division, which came in contact with

that of General Craufurd, especially with the 43rd, 52nd, and 95th

regiments of British, and the 3rd Portuguese Caçadores, and with the

same decisive and destructive result. There, too, the Portuguese fought

gallantly, and, where they had not room to kill with their bayonets,

they imitated the British soldiers, and knocked down the French with

the butt-ends of their guns. Everywhere the repulse was complete, and

Massena left two thousand slain on the field, and had between three

and four thousand wounded. One general was killed, three wounded, one

taken prisoner, besides many other officers. The Allies lost about

one thousand three hundred, of whom five hundred and seventy-eight

were Portuguese. Wellington was delighted with the proof that General

Beresford's drilling had answered the very highest expectations, and

that henceforth he could count confidently on his Portuguese troops,

and he wrote in the most cheering terms of this fact in his dispatches

home.

On the 28th Massena had discovered the pass of Boyalva through these

hills, to the north of Busaco, which Wellington had ordered Colonel

Trant to occupy. But Trant had missed his way, and did not reach the

pass in time. Wellington saw, therefore, his flank turned, and the

enemy on the highway to Oporto. He therefore quitted his position, and,

taking Coimbra in his way, compelled such of the inhabitants as had

not obeyed his order to march along with him. On the 1st of October

he was on his route southward, accompanied by this strange crowd. It

was a perfect exodus, and appeared to the poor inhabitants as a severe

measure, but to it they owed their after-salvation. Had they remained,

it would have been only to suffer the oppressions and insults of the

French, and to see them supporting themselves on their provisions. As

it was, the French, on entering Coimbra, found it, as they had done

Viseu, totally deserted, and the stacks of corn and provision that

could not be carried away, for the most part too adroitly buried to

be easily found. They were left to the starvation that the English

general designed for them. But what a scene on the road! The whole

country moving south with the cattle and sheep, and waggons laden with

their goods. "No power of description," said an eye-witness, "can

convey to the mind of any reader the afflicting scenes, the cheerless

desolation that we daily witnessed on our march from the Mondego to the

lines. Where-ever we moved, the mandate, which enjoined the wretched

inhabitants to forsake their homes and to remove or destroy their

little property, had gone before us. The villages were deserted; the

churches--retreats so often, yet so vainly confided in--were empty; the

mountain cottages stood open and untenanted; the mills in the valley,

but yesterday so busy, were motionless and silent. From Thomar the

flanks of our line of march were literally covered with the flying

population of the country. In Portugal there are at no time many

facilities for travelling, and those few the exigencies of the army

had very greatly diminished. Rich indeed were those who still retained

a cabriolet, and mules for its service. Those who had bullock-cars,

asses, or any mode of transporting their families and property, looked

contented and grateful; for respectable men and delicate women of the

second class might on every side be seen walking slowly and painfully

on foot, encumbered by heavy burdens of clothes, bedding, and food." It

was a whole country in emigration; quitting their cities, homes, and

fields to coop themselves up in the vicinity of Lisbon, for the stern

purpose of starving the detested enemy out of the land.

[Illustration: WELLINGTON'S RETREAT FROM COIMBRA. (_See p._ 604.)]

But, sorrowful as the sight itself was, the news of it in Great

Britain excited the strongest condemnation in the party which had

always doubted the power of Wellington to cope with the vast armies of

France. They declared that he was carrying on a system that was ruining

Portugal, and must make our name an opprobrium over the whole world,

at the same time that it could not enable us to keep a footing there;

that we must be driven out with terrible loss and infamy. But not so

thought Wellington. Before him were the heights of Torres Vedras, about

twenty-four miles from Lisbon. These, stretching in two ranges between

the sea and the Tagus, presented a barrier which he did not mean the

French to pass. He had already planned the whole scheme; he had already

had these heights, themselves naturally strong, made tenfold stronger

by military art; he had drawn the enemy after him into a country

stripped and destitute of everything, and there he meant to stop him,

and keep him exposed to famine and winter, till he should be glad to

retrace his steps. Neither should those steps be easy. Floods, and deep

muddy roads, and dearths should lie before him; and at his heels should

follow, keen as hornets, the Allied army, to avenge the miseries of

this invaded people.

By the 8th of October Wellington was safely encamped within these

impregnable lines, and the crowd of flying people sought refuge in

Lisbon, or in the country around it. The British did not arrive a

moment too soon, for Massena was close at their heels with his van;

but he halted at Sobral for three days to allow of the coming up of

his main body. This time was spent by the British in strengthening

their position, already most formidable. The two ranges of mountains

lying one behind the other were speedily occupied by the troops;

and they were set to work at more completely stopping up roads, and

constructing barriers, palisades, platforms, and wooden bridges leading

into the works. For this purpose fifty thousand trees were allowed

them, and all the space between Lisbon and these wonderful lines was

one swarming scene of people bringing in materials and supplies. The

right of the position was flanked by the Tagus, where the British

fleet lay anchored, attended by a flotilla of gunboats, and a body of

marines occupied the line of embarkation; Portuguese militia manned the

Castle of St. Julian and the forts on the Tagus, and Lisbon itself was

filled with armed bands of volunteers. There was no want of anything

within this busy and interesting enclosure, for the British fleet had

the command of the sea and all its means of supply. Seven thousand

Portuguese peasantry were employed in bringing in and preparing the

timber for the defences; and every soldier not positively on guard was

enthusiastic in helping the engineers and artillery in the labour of

making the lines impregnable.

It was one of the most interesting scenes in any warfare; and there

was not a man who did not enjoy the astonishment and disappointment of

the French when, on the 11th, they marched in wonder up to the foot of

these giant fortifications. Wellington had doubly obtained his wish;

for he was not only safely ensconced in his strong position, but the

rainy season which he was anticipating had set in in earnest. The main

body of the French had been detained by the bad roads and the floods,

and now, when the proud general, who expected so rapidly to drive the

British into the sea, surveyed the scarped cliffs bristling with cannon

and with bayonets far above him, his astonishment was evident. He rode

along the foot of the hills for several days reconnoitreing the whole

position, which seemed suddenly to have altered the situation of the

combatants, and not so much to have shut up Wellington and his army in

Lisbon, as to have shut him and his numerous one out to famine and the

wintry elements.

For more than four months the invincible Massena continued to watch the

lines of Torres Vedras without striking a single effective blow. In

fact, instead of attacking Wellington, Wellington attacked his advanced

posts near Sobral on the 14th, and drove them in with the bayonet. The

French then showed themselves in some force near Villa Franca, close to

the Tagus; but there the gunboats reached them, causing them rapidly

to retreat, and killing General St. Croix. After this, the French

made no further attempt on those mountain lines which struck Massena

with despair. After occupying his position for a month he fell back

to the town of Santarem, and there and in the neighbouring villages

quartered his troops for the winter. His great business was to collect

provisions, for he had brought none with him; and had the people

obeyed strictly the proclamation of Wellington and the Junta, he would

have found none at all, and must have instantly retreated. But the

Portuguese thought it hard to quit their homesteads and carry all their

provisions to Lisbon or into the mountains, and the miserable Junta

threw all the blame of the order on the British general. Not only,

therefore, was a considerable amount of provisions left in the country,

but boats were left at Santarem, on the Tagus, contrary to Wellington's

orders, by which provisions were brought over by the French from Spain.

Yet, during this winter, while Massena's army was in a constant state

of semi-starvation, badly clothed and badly lodged, and thus wasting

away by sickness and desertion, that of Wellington increased in

numbers, in physical condition, and in discipline. Whilst Massena's

army, originally seventy-one thousand men, was ere long reduced by the

battle of Busaco and the miserable quarters in the wet country near

Torres Vedras to fifty-five thousand, the forces of Wellington had

been augmented, by reinforcements from England, and by the addition of

Portuguese and Spanish troops, to fifty-eight thousand. When Massena

retreated to Santarem, Wellington followed him to Cartaxo, and there

fixed his headquarters, and ordered General Hill to post his division

opposite to Santarem, so as to check the enemy's foraging parties in

that direction. At the same time, Colonel Trant, who had surprised the

French rear as Massena's army was leaving Coimbra on his march after

Wellington to Torres Vedras, and had secured the sick and wounded

in the hospitals there to the amount of five thousand men, and who

retained possession of Coimbra, now joined Sir Robert Wilson and

Colonel Millar, who commanded the Portuguese militia, and their united

force appeared in Massena's rear, cutting off his communication with

the north and also with the Spanish frontier.

Such was Massena's situation, so early as the commencement of

November--having to maintain his army in a country reduced to a

foodless desert by the art of his masterly antagonist, and, instead

of being able to drive the British before him, finding them menacing

him on all sides, so that he dispatched General Foy to make his way

with a strong escort to Ciudad Rodrigo, and thence to proceed with all

speed to Paris, to explain to the Emperor the real state of affairs.

The state was that the whole of Portugal, except the very ground on

which Massena was encamped, was in possession of the British and the

Portuguese. There was no possibility of approaching Lisbon without

forcing these lines at Torres Vedras, and that, if done at all, must

be at the cost of as large an army as he possessed altogether. All

the rest of Portugal--Oporto, Coimbra, Abrantes--and all the forts

except Almeida were in the hands of the enemy. As to the destitution

of Massena's army, we have the description from his own statements in

letters to Napoleon, which were intercepted. From this information,

Lord Wellington wrote in his dispatches: "It is impossible to describe

the pecuniary and other distresses of the French army in the Peninsula.

All the troops are months in arrears of pay; they are, in general, very

badly clothed; they want horses, carriages, and equipments of every

description; their troops subsist solely upon plunder; they receive

no money, or scarcely any, from France, and they realise but little

from their pecuniary contributions from Spain. Indeed, I have lately

discovered that the expense of the pay and the hospitals alone of the

French army in the Peninsula amounts to more than the sum stated in the

financial _exposé_ as the whole expense of the entire French army."

Such were the advantages now possessed by the British over the French

commander, that both the Portuguese and people at home were impatient

that Wellington should at once attack and annihilate Massena's army.

But Wellington knew better. He knew that a great battle, or battles,

must vastly reduce his own as well as Massena's army. He knew that

France could readily march down eighty or a hundred thousand fresh men

into Portugal at extremity, but that Great Britain could not so readily

do that; and, should the Whigs come into power, as was probable, he

could not calculate on any support at all. The king now hopelessly

insane, the Prince of Wales must be soon appointed Regent, and then,

perhaps, would come in his friends the Whigs. There were many other

considerations which made Wellington refuse to accede to a general

attack on the French at present. He had, as it was, trouble enough with

the Junta; but, should any reverse occur, his situation then would be

intolerable. Just now the Portuguese troops were in good spirits for

fighting, but defeat would ruin all the progress yet made with them. He

knew that the winter would do for the French army all that he expected

without any cost to himself, and he waited for that, ready then to

follow up the advantages it would give him. It was his great plan of

operations which already reduced them to the dilemma in which they

were, and now came winter and did the rest, fully showing his superior

sagacity. In November the weather became and continued wretched in the

extreme. The country was flooded, cutting off the precarious supplies

of the French, but adding strength to the encampment of Torres Vedras.

The cross roads were impassable for artillery, and all but impassable

for waggons bringing provisions, which had to be hunted for far and

wide, with incredible hardships and little success. Leaving the hostile

armies in this position till the spring, we must notice other important

matters.

In the course of 1810 the French were expelled completely from the

East and West Indies, and the Indian Ocean. Guadeloupe, the last of

their West India Islands, was captured in February, by an expedition

conducted by General Beckford and Admiral Sir A. Cochrane. In July

an armament, sent out by Lord Minto from India, and headed by

Lieutenant-Colonel Keating, reduced the Isle of Bourbon; and, being

reinforced by a body of troops from the Cape of Good Hope, under

Major-General John Abercromby and Admiral Bertie, the Isle of France,

much the more important, and generally called Mauritius, surrendered

on the 3rd of December. Besides a vast quantity of stores and

merchandise, five frigates and about thirty merchantmen were taken; and

Mauritius became a permanent British colony. From this place a squadron

proceeded to destroy the French factories on the coast of Madagascar,

and finished by completely expelling them from those seas.

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.

Colonel Campbell did not lose a single man, and had but three wounded,

so that it is evident that the flight of the enemy must have been

instantaneous and universal. Murat made no further attempt to seize

Sicily, though he kept his camp on the heights behind Reggio and Scylla

for two years longer.

INDEX.

Abercromby, General, Death of, 483.

Acre, St. Jean d', Siege of, 471.

Addington, Prime Minister, 479;

Pitt's opposition to, 494;

resigns, 495;

becomes Viscount Sidmouth, 500.

Addison, Joseph, 15, 38;

as a writer, 148.

Additional Force Bill, 496;

repealed, 518.

Aix-la-Chapelle, Peace of, 114.

Albemarle, Earl of, 47.

Alexandria, Battle of, 483.

Algiers, Dey of, Strange treaty with, 444.

Alien Bill, The, 411.

"All the Talents" ministry, 516, 531.

America, War with the colonies in:

Washington commands American forces, 218;

Bunker's Hill, 219;

condition of the American Army, 222, 230, 231, 235, 247;

Boston surrenders to Washington, 222, 223;

attack on Charleston, 224, 225;

Washington retreats from Long Island, 230;

Cornwallis in pursuit, 230, 231;

supineness of British generals, desperate state of Washington,

his victory at Trenton, 235;

battle of the Brandywine, Washington defeated at Germantown, his

camp at Valley Forge, 238;

Burgoyne defeats St. Clair, 240;

battle of Bemus's Heights, 242;

Burgoyne surrenders at Saratoga, 244;

conditions of surrender violated, 248;

failure of Lafayette's expedition to Canada, 255;

capture of Charleston, 273;

the war in Carolina, 274, 275;

French succours, 275;

Arnold's treachery, 276;

execution of Major André, 278;

Tarleton's defeat in North Carolina, Cornwallis defeats Greene at

Guildford, 280;

surrender of Cornwallis at York Town, 283;

British nation tired of the war, 286, 287;

overtures for peace, 291, 296;

peace signed, 297, 298;

Independence of United States acknowledged, 298.

American colonies, condition and trade, 183;

taxation, 184;

congress at New York to consider Stamp Act, 185;

riots in Boston, 187, 200, 201;

Massachusetts' petition, 194, 195;

dismissed, 211;

tea duties, 201, 202, 208;

destruction of tea at Boston, 210;

"minute men" enrolled, 214;

preparing for war, 217;

declaration of Independence, 226, 227;

articles of Confederation, Franklin's success in Paris, 232;

financial difficulties, 236;

France aids with a fleet, 256.

_See_ America, War with.

American incendiaries in England, 233.

Amiens, Treaty of, 485.

André, Major, 277;

execution of, 278.

Anne, Queen, her liking for the Pretender, 8, 10, 16, 19;

treaty of Utrecht, 10;

dislikes Electress Sophia and her son, 12, 16;

proposed visit of Elector of Hanover and Pretender to England,

16, 17;

letters to Elector and Electress of Hanover, proclamation

against Pretender, 19;

her last council, 29;

death, 23.

Architecture of the 18th century, 157-160.

Argyll, Duke of, 29;

at Sheriffmuir, 30;

disperses Pretender's army, 31.

Armed neutrality league, 272.

Army Commissariat, State of, 562.

Army, Commissions in, Traffic in sale of, 571;

Bill to prevent, 572.

Army, Improvement of, Windham's Bills for, 518, 519;

numerical strength, 531.

Army of England at Boulogne, 490, 498.

Arnold, General, expedition to Canada, 220;

his treachery, 276, 277;

ravages American towns, 279.

Arts and Manufactures, Society of, 166.

Aspern, Buonaparte defeated at, 589.

Assaye, Battle of, 491.

Astronomers of 18th century, 152, 153.

Atterbury's plot, 49,50;

death, 60.

Austerlitz, Battle of, 506.

Austria participates in first partition of Poland, 207;

campaign against the Turks, 350, 354;

France declares war against, 400;

Austrian successes on the Rhine, 444;

peace with France, 459;

Buonaparte drives from Italy, 506;

prepares for war with France, 586, 587;

defeats Buonaparte at Aspern, 589;

is defeated at Wagram, 590, 591;

treaty of Schönbrunn, 591.

Baird, Sir David, in Spain, 563.

Bastille, Storming of the, 364.

Beckford, Alderman, 178, 200.

Bemus's Heights, Battle of, 242.

Berlin decrees, The, 527, 546, 547.

Bhurtpore, Siege of fortress of, 513, 514.

Black Friday in London, 102.