THREE:The consternation of the city may be imagined. The inhabitants, who had, at first, treated the rumour of the Young Pretender's landing with ridicule, now passed to the extreme of terror. On Sunday night the Highlanders lay between Linlithgow and the city, and on Monday morning Charles sent forward a detachment, which, on coming in sight of the pickets, discharged their pistols. The dragoon pickets did not wait to return the fire, but rode off towards Coltbridge, nearer to Edinburgh, where Gardiner lay with the main body of horse. No sooner, however, did this commander perceive the advancing Highlanders, than he also gave the order to retreat, and the order was so well obeyed, that from a foot's-pace the march quickened into a trot and presently into a gallop, and the inhabitants of Edinburgh saw the whole force going helter-skelter towards Leith, where they drew bit. The valiant troops mounted again, and galloped to Preston, six miles farther, some of them, it was said, not stopping till they reached Dunbar. This "Canter of Coltbridge," as it was called in derision, left the city at the mercy of the Highlanders, except for about six or seven hundred men mustered from the City Guard, the volunteer corps, and some armed gentlemen from Dalkeith and Musselburgh, who took post at the gates.
THREE:On the 30th of March the British cast anchor before Copenhagen, between it and the island of Huen. On reconnoitring, the defences of the place were found to be very formidable. Nelson was appointed to make the attack with twelve line-of-battle ships, and some smaller craft. He had asked for ten. The next morningthe 2nd of Aprilthe wind was favourable, and Nelson weighed and drew nearer to the townSir Hyde Parker on the outside threatening the batteries and vessels at the mouth of the harbour. At ten o'clock the firing commenced, and at eleven it was general. Three of the British vesselsthe Agamemnon, the Bellona, and the Russellstuck fast on the shoal. For three hours the battle raged fiercely, for the Danes fought with their well-known valour. It was necessary for Nelson to silence or destroy the floating batteries and gunboats before he could come at the ships of the line and the great land batteries. He had ordered five hundred seamen, under the Hon. Colonel Stuart and Captain Freemantle to storm the Kroner Battery as soon as it was silenced; but at this moment Sir Hyde Parker, seeing the signals of distress flying at the mast-heads of the three vessels aground, and that three others, which he had sent forward as a reinforcement, were making but slow way to the front, signalled for the fleet to draw off, and cease the engagement. But Nelson took no notice of the signal: he continued to walk the deck, and asked if his signal for close action was still hoisted, and, being told it was, said:"Mind you keep it so." About half-past one o'clock the fire of the Danes slackened, and by two it had nearly ceased. But the vessels that had struck their flags recommenced firing on our boats sent to take possession of them, and the fire of the batteries on land and on Amager Island struck these surrendered vessels on one side, and that of our ships on the other. To prevent the destruction of the unhappy Danes placed in this fatal situation, Nelson sent on shore[482] Sir Frederick Thesiger with a flag of truce, and a letter to the Crown Prince, entreating him to put an end to a contest that was uselessly wasting the lives of the brave Danes. Within half an hour after Thesiger's departure, the firing from the Kroner Battery ceased, and Adjutant-General Lindholm came on board to learn the precise object of Nelson's note. Nelson replied that his object was humanity. He demanded that the action should cease, and that the wounded Danes should be taken on shore; that then he would burn or carry away the surrendered vessels, as he should think fit. It was agreed that the combat should cease for twenty-four hours, during which negotiations should be entered into. After five days' arduous discussion, an armistice was concluded for fourteen weeks, during which the treaty of armed neutrality with Russia was to be suspended. Nelson was to have full liberty to purchase any necessaries for his fleet, in Copenhagen or along the coast, and in case of renewal of hostilities all the Danish prisoners were to be again surrendered.Frederick of Prussia, meanwhile, had been beset by Austrians, Russians, and French, and had never been able to retire to winter quarters. He had continued to blockade Schweidnitz amid frost and snow, and having reduced it, at the very first symptoms of spring he suddenly burst into Moravia, and invested Olmütz, its capital. There he had to contend with the able and cautious Marshal Daun and General Laudohn, nearly as efficient. Laudohn managed to seize three thousand waggons, bringing from Silesia supplies for Frederick; and whilst the king was in this state of destitution for food even for his army, a hundred thousand Russians, under General Fermor, were marching steadily on Berlin. They had taken K?nigsberg, laid waste the whole country beyond the Vistula, and then pushed on for the Oder. They had arrived before Küstrin, only a few marches from Berlin, when Frederick, leaving his brother, Prince Henry, to keep Daun and Laudohn in check before Olmütz, marched against them. A terrible battle took place on the plain of Z?rndorf, near Custrin, in which neither Prussians nor Russians gave quarter, and which lasted from nine in the morning till seven at night. Twenty thousand Russians were left killed or wounded on the field, and eleven thousand Prussians. The Russians retired with reluctance, and did not wholly evacuate the Prussian territory till the end of October. But Frederick himself, long before that time, had been compelled to hurry back to the support of his brother Henry, whom Daun had driven back into Saxony. He fixed his camp at Hochkirch, near Bautzen, and close to the Bohemian lines. But a few mornings after, before daybreak, Daun and Laudohn burst into his camp by a combined movement, and threw the whole into confusion before the troops could muster. When Frederick awoke at the uproar and rushed from his tent, all around was one fearful scene of slaughter and flight. The news of this defeat of the generally victorious Prussians threw the court of Vienna into ecstacies, for they thought that Frederick was ruined; and so he might have been had Daun been as alert to follow him up as he had been successful in surprising him. But Daun was naturally slow; a very few days sufficed for Frederick to collect fresh forces around him, and he suddenly darted away into Silesia. There he raised the siege of Neisse, which was invested by another division of the Austrian army; then, falling back on Dresden, threatened by Daun, he drove him back, and, marching to Breslau, fixed there his winter quarters.
THREE:Great attention during this reign was devoted to the manufacturing of clocks and watches. To such eminence had the English manufacture of watches arrived, that in 1799 it was calculated that the value of watches and marine chronometers alone manufactured in and around London amounted to a million of money yearly. In 1762 John Harrison claimed the reward offered by Act of Parliament for a chronometer which would ascertain the longitude within sixty, forty, or thirty miles. For the least accurate of these the reward was ten thousand pounds, for the next more accurate fifteen thousand pounds, and for the best twenty thousand pounds. Harrison produced a chronometer which, after two voyages to the West Indies, entitled him to the highest prize, but a fresh Act of Parliament was passed, refusing him more than two thousand five hundred pounds until he had made known the principle of his invention, and assigned his chronometer for the public use. Even when these new terms were complied with he was only to receive ten thousand pounds, and the remainder on the correctness of the chronometer having been sufficiently tested. Harrison very justly complained of these new stipulations, and of the delays thus interposed; but in 1767, nine years before his decease, he obtained the full amount of the premium. In 1774 a premium of five thousand pounds was offered by Act of Parliament for a chronometer that should ascertain the longitude within one degree of a great circle, or sixty geographical miles; seven thousand five hundred pounds for one that would ascertain the longitude within two-thirds of that distance; and ten thousand pounds for one that would ascertain it within half a degree. This called out the efforts of various competitorsHarrison, Meadge, Kendal, Coombe, and numbers of others. In 1777 Meadge produced two, which were submitted to the test of the Astronomer-Royal, Dr. Maskelyne, and pronounced unfavourably upon; but Meadge petitioned Parliament against this decision, and, on the report of a committee on his chronometers, he was awarded a premium of two thousand five hundred pounds.
TWO:Leaving Mlas to complete the subjection of Italy, Suvaroff then turned his army towards Switzerland, where Massena had effectually opposed the Austrians under Bellegarde and Hotze, and defeated a Russian force under Korsakoff, sent to reinforce them. But Suvaroff found himself unable to unite with Korsakoff till after much fighting with Massena; and the two Russian generals retreated to Augsburg, leaving Massena master of Switzerland.
TWO:According to returns made by the bishops in 1807, the number of incumbents in the eleven thousand one hundred and sixty-four parishes of England and Wales was only four thousand four hundred and twelve, or little more than one in every third parish. In 1810 the matter had a little improved, for the whole number of residents was found to be five thousand nine hundred and twenty-five. The duty of the kingdom was chiefly done by curates, and how were these curates paid? Lord Harrowby stated in the House of Peers, in 1810, that the highest scale of salary paid by non-residents to their curates, who did all the work, was fifty, sixty, or at the most seventy pounds a year; but that a far more usual scale of payment was twenty pounds, or even ten pounds, per annum; that this was much less than the wages of day labourers, and that the worst feature of the case was that the non-residents and pluralists were amongst those who had the richest livings, so that men drawing eight hundred or even two thousand pounds a year from their livings were often totally unknown to their parishioners, and that often "all that they knew of the curate was the sound of his voice in the reading-desk, or pulpit, once a week, a fortnight, or a month."