FORE:After a visit to Paris, Dumouriez arrived at[407] Valenciennes on the 27th of October, and prepared to follow the Austrian commander, Saxe-Teschen, who had been in vain bombarding Lille. On the 5th of November he overtook Saxe-Teschen at Jemappes. The Austrians were strongly posted, but were only about fifteen thousand men opposed to the sixty thousand French; yet they made a vigorous resistance. The battle raged from early in the morning till two in the afternoon, when the Austrians gave way. They retired, however, in good order; and Dumouriez, who had led his forces into the field singing the Marseillaise hymn, did not make much pursuit. Upwards of two thousand men are said to have fallen on each side. The battle placed all Flanders at the mercy of the French; Tournay opened its gates to Labourdonnais, and Courtrai, Menin, and Bruges sent deputies to welcome Dumouriez. Other towns rapidly followed their example. The country had been already Jacobinised, and now fancied it was going to enjoy liberty and equality in alliance with the French. The people were soon undeceived. The French had no intention of anything but, under those pretences, of subduing and preying on the surrounding nations. Flanders had speedy proofs of what every country where the French came had to expect. Jacobin Commissioners arrived from the Convention to levy contributions for the maintenance of the army, as if they were a conquered people. Dumouriez issued an order on entering Mons for the clergy to advance one year's income for the same purpose. Saxe-Teschen and old Marshal Bender evacuated Brussels, and on the 14th Dumouriez entered and took up his headquarters there. He there made heavy forced loans, and soon after arrived what was styled a Committee of Purchases from Paris, headed by Bidermann, the banker, and partner of Clavire, Minister of Finance. This Committee, on which were several Jews, made all the bargains for the army, and paid for themnot in gold but in the worthless assignats of France. The Belgians remonstrated and resisted, but in vain. Dumouriez advanced to Mechlin, having dispatched Labourdonnais to lay siege to Antwerp and Valence, and to reduce Namur. At Mechlin he found a great store of arms and ammunition, which enabled him to equip whole flocks of volunteers who came after him from France. On the 22nd, at Tirlemont, he again overtook Saxe-Teschen, who made another stout resistance, and then retired to Lige, where the Austrians made another stand on the 27th. They were repulsed, but with heavy loss on both sides; and soon afterwards, Antwerp and Valence having surrendered, all the Austrian Netherlands, except Luxembourg, were in the hands of France within a single month. Dumouriez sent forward Miranda, a Peruvian, who had superseded Labourdonnais at Antwerp, to reduce Roermond, and to enter Holland by the seizure of Maestricht; but the Convention were not yet prepared for this invasion of Holland, and Dumouriez pushed on to Aix-la-Chapelle, where he again defeated the Austrians on the 7th of December, and levying heavy contributions there, took up his winter quarters in the ancient city of Charlemagne, and within little more than a day's march of the Rhine.But these were by no means the total of the royal troubles at this period. The youngest and most beloved of George III.'s sisters, Caroline Matilda, had been married to Christian VII. of Denmark. This young man was little better than an idiot, and the poor princess was married to him at the age of sixteen. The marriage of this young couple, and their ascent to the throne, were nearly simultaneous; and, contrary to the usual custom of a monarch, it was deemed advisable that he should travel. In his tour he fell in with the celebrated Struensee, a young physician of Altona. Christian VII., like all weak monarchs, must have favourites. Struensee speedily became the perfect master of Christian's mind and actions, and on their return to Copenhagen he was raised to the rank of count, and soon after was made Prime Minister. His enemies were of course numerous, and scandal soon connected his name with that of the queen. All this especially favoured the plans of the base queen dowager, who, in league with the hostile nobles, feigned a plot against the king; obtained from him, in his bed at midnight, an order for the arrest of the queen, Struensee, and others. The queen was seized half dressed. Struensee was executed with especial barbarities; but the King of England interfered to save his sister, and to procure the succession to her son. The unhappy young queen, however, was separated for ever from her two children, and conveyed to Zell, in Hanoverthe same castle or prison where the unhappy wife of George I. had pined away her life. There she died after a few years, protesting her innocence, though Struensee had confessed his guilt.
THREE:Besides these leading histories, this reign produced many others of great value. Amongst these[178] appeared, in 1763, a "History of England," by a lady, Catherine Macaulay, from James I. to the accession of the House of Hanover; which was followed by another series, from the Revolution to her own time. Mrs. Macaulay was a thorough-going Republican; had gone to America expressly to see and converse with Washington, and her history presented the very opposite opinions and phase of events to those of Hume. Lord Lyttelton wrote a "History of Henry II.," in by no means a popular style; and the book is now forgotten. In 1776 there was published the first volume of Lord Hailes's valuable "Annals of Scotland," of which Dr. Johnson entertained so high an opinion. Besides these may be named Macpherson's "History of Great Britain from the Restoration;" Stuart's "History of the Reformation in Scotland," and "History of Scotland from the Reformation to the Death of Queen Mary;" Whitaker's "History of Manchester;" Warner's "History of Ireland;" Leland's "History of Ireland;" Grainger's "Biographical History of England;" Ferguson's "History of the Progress and Termination of the Roman Republic;" Watson's "History of Philip II. of Spain;" Orme's "History of the British Nation in Hindostan;" Anderson's "Annals of Commerce." In 1784 Mitford published his "History of Ancient Greece," and two years later Gillies published another "History of Greece." In 1789 Pinkerton published a "History of the House of Stuart down to Queen Mary." In 1790 Boswell published his "Life of Johnson," the most interesting biography ever written; in 1796 Roscoe his "Life of Lorenzo de' Medici," and, in 1805, the "Life and Pontificate of Leo X."Holland rose in exultation on the news of the overthrow of Buonaparte at Leipsic. His dominion over that country had been a bitter thraldom. Its sons had been dragged yearly, by conscription, to his great slaughter-houses called battle-fields in distant regions. Their trade had been crushed by his Continental system; their colonies seized by Great Britain; their mercantile sources thus dried upin fact, he had squeezed the wealth and the life out of Holland as out of a sponge, and hordes of French officials maintained an insolent dominance all over the country. At news of the Russian disasters, the Dutch had risen to throw off this hateful and ruinous yoke; but the French forces in Holland had then been sufficient to put them down, and to severely punish them for the attempt. But the necessities in Germany had nearly drained Holland of French troops, and they now rose once more joyfully at Amsterdam, on the 15th of November, and at the Hague on the 16th. They received the most prompt assurances of assistance from Great Britain. A man-of-war was immediately put at the service of the Prince of Orange, and after a nineteen years' exile he embarked on the 25th, and entered Amsterdam on the 1st of December as King of Holland, amid the most enthusiastic acclamations. An army of twenty-five thousand men was soon enrolled; the Allies were at hand; the French authorities fled, after laying hands on all the booty they could carry off; and with the exception of the fortress of[73] Bergen-op-Zoom, the country was speedily cleared of them.
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FORE:THE AGENTS OF BRITAIN AND SWEDEN SIGNING THE TREATY AGAINST NAPOLEON. (See p. 7.)
THREE:On the return of the king and Carteret, Parliament was opened on the 1st of December. The first trial of the Opposition was on the Address, on which occasion its real strength was not called forth, and this was carried by two hundred and seventy-eight votes against one hundred and forty-nine. But the subject of Hanoverian troops and Hanoverian measures soon displayed its extent and virulence. There was a vehement feeling against everything relating to Hanover, and Pitt lost no time in denouncing Carteret and his measures in the most bitter terms. Pitt's thunder was echoed by others, and the scene in the Commons was described by a spectator as like nothing but a tumultuous Polish Diet. Such was the ferment amid which opened the year 1744, and it soon became evident that the existence of the country was at stake. Preparations had been making for the invasion of England for some time. Cardinal Tencin, the new French Minister, sent Murray of Broughton to James in Rome, to desire him to send his eldest son, Prince Charles, to France to be in readiness for the campaign[87] in England, and in due course the Young Pretender arrived at Gravelines.
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FORE:For a short time quiet prevailed, as if the nation, and Europe, too, were stunned by the news of the execution of the king. In spite of the loud talk of the Jacobins and sansculottes throughout France, there was a startled sense of terrora foreboding of calamity. In La Vende there was intense horror and indignation. Abroad, every monarchy seemed thrown into a new attitude by the death of Louis. Spain and England, which had maintained a careful neutrality, assumed a threatening aspect. Germany, which had not yet federally allied itself with the movements of Austria and Prussia, became agitated with resentment; and Holland, by the fear of suffering the fate of Belgium. The axe which severed the head of Louis from his body seemed to sever every international sympathy with France. In England, the sensation on the news of the execution was profound. People in general had not believed that the French would proceed to such an extremity with a monarch of so inoffensive a character. The crime seemed to verify all the predictions and the denunciations of Burke. There was, except amongst a certain class of almost frantic Republicans, a universal feeling of abhorrence and execration. There was a gloomy sense of approaching war; a gloomy sense, as if the catastrophe was a national rather than a foreign one. Pitt had hitherto maintained a position of neutrality. He had contrived to avoid giving any support to the royal family of France, which must have produced immediately hostile consequences, but he had not failed, from time to time, to point out in Parliament the atrocious conduct of the French revolutionists, which justified all the prophecies of Burke, and threw shame on the laudatory language of Fox.
THREE:But the Czarina, though mistress of Oczakoff, was far from the end of her designs. She contemplated nothing but the subjugation of the Turkish empire. For this purpose she determined to excite insurrection in all the tributary states of that empire. Her agents had excited the Montenegrins to an outbreak; they had prepared the Greeks for the same experiment, and the Mameluke Beys in Egypt. She determined to send a powerful fleet into the Mediterranean to co-operate with these insurgents, to seize on the island of Crete, to ravage the coasts of Thrace and Asia Minor, and to force the passage of the Dardanelles, or, if that were not practicable, to blockade them. Thus opening the communication between her forces in the Mediterranean and in the Black Sea, she considered that Turkey would lie helpless at her feet. To give the necessary ascendency to her fleet, she had long been encouraging English naval officers to take commands in it. At the famous battle of Chesm, it was the British Admirals Elphinstone, Greig, and others who had made Potemkin victorious. Greig was now at the head of the fleet that was being prepared at Cronstadt for this Mediterranean enterprise. She had also managed to engage eighteen British ships to serve as transports of troops, artillery, and stores.[See larger version]
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