TWO:With these superb demonstrations on the part of England terminated the war. Her enemies discovered that her hoped-for fall was yet far off, and were much more inclined to listen to overtures of peace, of which they were now all in great need. These negotiations had been begun by Fox immediately on the accession of the Rockingham Ministry to office. Unfortunately the division of work between two Secretaries of State entailed a double negotiation. To Fox as Secretary of Foreign Affairs fell the arrangements for peace with France and Spain and Holland, to Lord Shelburne as Colonial Secretary fell all arrangements connected with the colonies, that is, with the United States. It was most important that the two Ministers should be in close accord. Unfortunately their views differed widely. Fox was for the immediate recognition of the independence of America; Shelburne urged that to give independence at once was to throw away a trump card. Further, Mr. Oswald, Shelburne's agent, was duped by Franklin into accepting from him a paper, in which the surrender of Canada was laid down as a basis of peace. This paper Shelburne probably showed to the king, but, with great duplicity, refrained from mentioning its existence to his colleagues. On the 8th of May Mr. Thomas Grenville, Fox's agent, arrived at Paris, and negotiations were begun in real earnest. But the na?ve confession of Oswald that peace was absolutely necessary to England greatly hampered his efforts, and in a conversation with Lord Shelburne's envoy the existence of the Canada paper leaked out. Fox was naturally furious, but the majority of the Cabinet were opposed to him, and voted against his demand for the immediate recognition of American independence. He only refrained from resigning because he would not embitter Lord Rockingham's last moments in the world. Lord Shelburne became Premier in July.The Georges conspiracy, as it is commonly[498] called, was followed by a still more startling act of violence. As the Bourbons still continued to watch for the overthrow of his power, Buonaparte determined to take a deep revenge on the persons of any of that family whom he could by any means get into his hands. Could he have inveigled the Count d'Artois and the Duke of Berry, as he attempted, to leave London and land in Brittany, he would have seized them and put them to death without ceremony or mercy. But there was another member of the family, though the farthest off from succession to the throne, who was living on the French frontiers, within a tempting reach of his soldiers in Alsace, and him he determined to kidnap and kill. This proposed victim of a most lawless and wicked vengeance was Antoine-Henri de Bourbon, Duke d'Enghien, the son of the Prince of Cond. The project was so odious, so certain to cover both Napoleon and France with inextinguishable infamy, that it startled the not very sensitive mind of Talleyrand, who, it is said, gave the duke secret warning of his danger, and advised him to remove farther from the Rhine. In consequence, the duke applied to Sir Charles Stuart to get him a passport from the Austrian Minister, to enable him to cross the Austrian territory to rejoin his grandfather, then at Warsaw with Louis XVIII. Sir Charles Stuart applied to M. de Cobenzl for this purpose, and had the Austrian Court been quicker in its movements, the duke would have been safe enough from the myrmidons of Buonaparte; but, whilst lingering at Ettenheim in Baden for the necessary passport, the duke had so little suspicion of the prompt and deadly nature of the usurper's design against him, that he took no means to conceal himself, or he might still have escaped. But in the middle of the night of the 14th of March he was aroused by the sound of horses' hoofs, and, looking out, saw that the chateau was surrounded by a troop of French cavalry. Buonaparte had despatched his aide-de-camp, Caulaincourt, to Strasburg to effect this capture, and he had sent on Colonel Ordenner to bring the duke away from the heart of a neutral territory. The duke was summarily tried by a military tribunal and shot (March 21, 1804) at Vincennes. The news of this most audacious crime soon transpired, and filled Europe with horror and execration against its perpetrators.
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TWO:This Act, as disgraceful as any which ever dishonoured the statute-book in the reigns of the Tudors or Stuarts, was introduced into the Commons, on the 12th of May, by Sir William Wyndham, and was resolutely opposed by the Whigs, amongst whom Sir Peter King, Sir Joseph Jekyll, Mr. Hampden, Robert Walpole, and General Stanhope distinguished themselves. They did not convince the majority, which amounted to no less than two hundred and thirty-seven to one hundred and twenty-six. In the Lords, Bolingbroke himself moved the second reading, and it was ably opposed by the Lords Cowper, Wharton, Halifax, Townshend, Nottingham, and others. The greatest curiosity was displayed regarding the part which Oxford would take, as it was known that in the Council he had endeavoured to soften the rigorous clauses; but in the House he followed his usual shuffling habit, declaring that he had not yet considered the question; and, having induced the Opposition to let the second reading pass without a division, he absented himself from the final voting, and thus disgusted both parties and hastened his own fall.
FORE:On the 18th of November Lord Cornwallis crossed the North River with six thousand men, and, landing on the Jersey side, began to attack Fort Lee, standing nearly opposite Fort Washington. The garrison fled, leaving behind all its tents standing, all its provisions and artillery. Washington was compelled by this to fall back from his position on the Croton, thence to Brunswick, Princeton, Trenton, and finally to the Pennsylvanian side of the Delaware. Lord Cornwallis followed at his heels. Cornwallis penetrated to the remotest parts of east and west Jersey, and everywhere the inhabitants received him as a friend and deliverer. On the 24th of November Lord Cornwallis was approaching Brunswick, when he received orders to halt. By this means, Washington was allowed to escape across the Delaware. It was not till the evening of the 16th of December that Cornwallis received[232] orders to proceed, and, though he made all haste, he was too late. The rear of the American army quitted Princeton as the van of the English army entered it. Washington, in headlong haste, fled to Trenton, and began ferrying his troops over the Delaware. When Cornwallis reached Trenton, at nine o'clock the next morning, he beheld the last boats of Washington crossing the river. Once over the water, the remains of the American troops lost all appearance of an army. They were a mere dirty, worn-out, ragged, and dispirited mob. Washington had taken the advantage of the halt of Cornwallis to collect all the boats from Delaware for the distance of seventy miles, so that the English could not cross after them. Cornwallis, being thus brought to a stand, put his army into winter quarters between the Delaware and the Hackensack.
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FORE:Next day the victorious general sent a message to Hyderabad, threatening to storm the city if it was not immediately surrendered. The walls were very strong, and might have been defended successfully; but the Ameers had lost heart, and six of them came out to the British camp, and laid their swords at the feet of the conqueror. But though the city was in his possession, conquest seemed only to increase his difficulties. He had to keep possession of a large hostile city, and to defend his own entrenched camp against 20,000 Beloochees, who were still in the field under Shere Mahommed, and to accomplish all this he had but 2,000 effective men under his command. Reinforcements, however, were quickly dispatched by Lord Ellenborough. They arrived safely and gave him an army of 5,000 veteran troops. In the meantime, Shere Mahommed had come within five miles of the British camp, and sent Sir Charles Napier a summons to surrender; he had an army of 20,000 men in an extremely strong position. Nothing daunted, Sir Charles Napier attacked the enemy. His plan of action was altered, on account of an unauthorised attack made by Colonel Stark with his cavalry, in consequence of the giving way of the centre before an onset of the Irish regiment. The cavalry charge, the result of a sudden inspiration, was brilliantly successful. The cavalry swept everything before them, and carried confusion and dismay into the rear of the enemy's centre. The British general instantly took advantage of this success, and, changing his plan, he led on the Irish infantry to storm the first nullah. After a fierce resistance, the scarp was mounted, and Lieutenant Coote fell wounded while in the act of waving the Beloochee standard in triumph on the summit. The Sepoys were equally successful in storming the second nullah, which was bravely defended, but ultimately carried with great loss to the enemy, who were routed in all directions, their retreating ranks being mowed down by the artillery, and pursued by the cavalry for a distance of several miles. The loss of the British in this great victory was only 270 men. Although the heat was then 110° in the shade, Sir Charles Napier rapidly pursued the enemy, so that his cavalry arrived at Meerpoor, a distance of forty miles, before Shere Mahommed could reach it. It was his capitalstrongly fortified, filled with stores of all kindsand it fell without resistance into the hands of the British general. Shere Mahommed had retreated to the stronghold of Omerkote, in the desert. Thither he was pursued by Captain Whitlie, at the head of the Light Horse. The Ameer fled with some horsemen into the desert. The garrison that remained, after a few shots, pulled down their colours, and, on the 4th of April, the British standard waved on the towers of Omerkote.
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FORE:The claims of Ireland seeming, for the moment, to be happily satisfied, Ministers now proceeded to carry out those reforms for which they had loudly called during the many years that they had been in opposition. They adopted and introduced the Bills of Sir Philip Clerke and Mr. Carew for excluding contractors from the House of Commons, and revenue officers from voting at elections. The Bill against the contractors passed the Commons with little difficulty; but the Ministers immediately felt the mischief of allowing Lord Thurlow to retain his place of Chancellor. He opposed the measure vehemently, and divided the House upon it. Lord Mansfield gave it his cordial resistance, and the new Lord Ashburton, though created by the present Administration, tacked to it a clause exempting all gentlemen who merely contracted for the produce of their estates. The clause, however, was lopped away again on the return of the Bill to the Commons, and the Act passed without it. The Bill for disqualifying revenue officers was opposed with equal pertinacity by Thurlow and Mansfield; though Lord Rockingham stated that the elections in seventy boroughs depended chiefly on revenue officers, and that nearly twelve thousand of such officers created by the late Ministry had votes in other places. The Bill passed, after exempting all officers who held their posts for life, and therefore were charitably supposed to be beyond the reach of undue influence, as if no such thing as promotion had its effect.
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FORE:By the firmness of the Allies a peace which continued twelve years was given to Europe, and the storm which Alberoni had so fondly expected out of the North was as completely dissipated. The new Queen of Sweden had consented to yield absolutely to George I., as King of Hanover, the disputed possession of Bremen and Verden. Poland was induced to acknowledge Augustus of Saxony as king, and Prussia to be satisfied with the acquisition of Stettin and some other Swedish territory. But the Czar and the King of Denmark, seeing Sweden deprived of its military monarch, and exhausted by his wild campaigns, contemplated the actual dismemberment of Sweden. The Queen of Sweden threw herself for protection on the good offices of the King of England, and both England and France agreed to compel the Czar and the King of Denmark to desist from their attacks on Sweden if they would not listen to friendly mediation. Lord Carteret, a promising young statesman, was sent as ambassador to Stockholm, and Sir John Norris, with eleven sail of the line, was ordered to the Baltic. Russia and Denmark, however, continued to disregard the pacific overtures of England, trusting to there being no war with that Power. They ravaged the whole coast of Sweden, burning above a thousand villages, and the town of Nyk?ping, the third place in the kingdom. Seeing this, Lord Stanhope, who was still at Hanover with the king, sent orders to Admiral Norris to pay no regard to the fact of there being no declaration of war, but to treat the Russian and Danish fleet as[44] Byng had treated the Spanish one. Norris accordingly joined his squadron to the Swedish fleet at Carlscrona, and went in pursuit of the fleet of the Czar. Peter, seeing that the English were now in earnest, recalled his fleet with precipitation, and thereby, no doubt, saved it from complete destruction; but he still continued to refuse to make peace, and determined on the first opportunity to have a further slice of Swedish territory. Denmark, which was extremely poor, agreed to accept a sum of money in lieu of Marstrand, which it had seized; and thus all Europe, except the Czar, was brought to a condition of peace.This open breach of the Royal Family was quickly followed by the death of the queen. Besides the misery of seeing her son and husband so awfully at variance, she had long been struggling with a complaint which, out of false delicacy, she had carefully concealed. "The queen's great secret," says Horace Walpole, "was her own rupture, which, till her last illness, nobody knew but the king, her German nurse, Mrs. Mailborne, and one other person, Lady Sundon."
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FORE:Since the appearance of the Waverley Novels the poetry of Scott has been somewhat depreciated, but his metrical romances, if not of the highest class of poetry, are always fresh, from their buoyancy and the scenery in which they are laid. They are redolent of the mountain heather and summer dews; and the description of the sending of the "fiery cross" over the hills, and the battle in "Marmion," as well as other portions, are instinct with genuine poetic vigour. Campbell, who won an early reputation by his "Pleasures of Hope," is more esteemed now for his heroic ballads "Hohenlinden," "The Battle of the Baltic," and his "Mariners of England;" Moore, for his "Irish Melodies," than for his "Lalla Rookh;" Byron, for his "Childe Harold," rather than for his earlier love tales of the East, or his later dramatic poems. Amongst the very highest of the poets of that period stands Percy Bysshe Shelley (b. 1792; d. 1822), the real poet of spiritual music, of social reformation, and of the independence of man. Never did a soul inspired by a more ardent love of his fellow-creatures receive such a bitter portion of unkindness and repudiation. John Keats, of a still more delicate and shrinking temperament, also received, in return for strains of the purest harmony, a sharp judgment, in no degree, however, equal to the severity of that dealt out to Shelley. In his "Ode to a Grecian Urn," and his "Lamia," Keats left us examples of beauty of conception and felicity of expression not surpassed since the days of Shakespeare. In his "Hyperion" he gave equal proof of the strength and grandeur to which he would have attained.
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