THREE:While this was going on, the town of San Sebastian was stormed by the British. Sir Thomas Graham conducted the assault, which was led on by the brigade of General Robinson, bravely supported by a detachment of Portuguese under Major Snodgrass. The place was captured; the French were driven through it to the castle standing on a height, in which they found refuge. Seven hundred prisoners were taken. The British lost two thousand men in the assaulta loss which would have been far greater had a mine, containing one thousand two hundred pounds of gunpowder, exploded, but which was fortunately prevented by the falling in of a saucisson. Many less would have fallen, however, had General Graham allowed shells to be thrown into the town, which he would not, on account of the inhabitants. But the French had not only prepared this great mine, but exploded various other appliances for setting the town on fire. In fact they showed no care for the people or the town. When driven to the castle, after a murderous street fightin which they picked off our men from behind walls and windows, killing Sir Richard Fletcher, the commanding engineer, and wounding Generals Robinson, Leith, and Oswald, besides slaughtering heaps of our menthey continued to fire down the streets, killing great numbers of the inhabitants besides our soldiers. Yet, after all, they charged Lord Wellington with not only throwing shells into the town, but with[61] setting it on fire, and plundering it. His lordship indignantly repelled these accusations in his letter to his brother, Sir Henry Wellesley. He declares that he himself had been obliged to hasten to his headquarters at Lezaco, on the morning of the 31st of August, but that he saw the town on fire in various places before our soldiers entered it; in fact, the French had set it on fire in six different places, and had their mine exploded scarcely a fragment of the town would have been left, or a single inhabitant alive. The lenity shown to the town by Wellington and Graham, who acted for him, was not used towards their calumniators in the castle. It was stoutly bombarded, and being soon almost battered to pieces about the ears of the defenders, the French surrendered on the 8th of September, two thousand five hundred in number; but the siege of both town and fort had cost the allies four thousand men in killed and wounded. Had the town been, as the French represented, bombarded like the castle, some thousands of English and Portuguese lives would have been spared, but at the expense of the inhabitants.
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THREE:The British Ministry was at length becoming aware of the mischief of allowing the Empress of Russia to make continual inroads on the Turkish Empire. The British Ambassador, Mr. Fawkener, had been instructed to inform Catherine that Britain could not quietly acquiesce in these usurpations, which were seriously disturbing the balance of power in Europe. Catherine replied, haughtily, that she did not recognise the right of Britain to interfere, and that she should keep possession of Oczakoff, and all her conquests between the Bug and the Dniester. On the 28th of March Pitt communicated this answer to the House, in a message from his Majesty, and that he had deemed it necessary to come to an understanding with his allies, Prussia and Austria, on the subject, and to maintain the fleet in its augmented condition. He moved, the next day, an address to his Majesty, thanking him for his care in these respects. The Whigs, almost to a man, condemned this policy. Coke of Norfolk, Lord Wycombe, Mr. Lambton, afterwards Earl of Durham, and others, stoutly opposed it. Fox treated the idea of Russia having become a power formidable to the peace of Europe as ludicrous. Both he and Burke contended that there was nothing in the aggressions of Russia to occasion any alarm; that Turkey was a decaying nation, which it was useless to attempt to support; and that to bolster it up was only to maintain a barbarous people in domination over Christian populations. Fox upbraided the Government with their folly and inconsistency, if such were their fears of Russia, in having till recently encouraged her in her plan of aggressions in that direction. He reminded them that, twenty years ago, Great Britain, on war breaking out between Russia and the Porte, had aided Catherine in sending a fleet to the Mediterranean, and had thus enabled her to acquire a maritime force in the Black Sea. The truth, however, was that it was not the present Ministry that had committed this folly, but a Whig Ministry, of which Fox was one. He confessed to this, and also to the fact that in 1782, when Catherine seized more completely on the Crimea and Kuban Tartary, France and Spain had urged us to unite with them in preventing this, but that we had declined, and these countries had become permanently united to Russia. Now all this was, in truth, a simple confession of the incapacity of the Whigs, and of Fox himself included, to see the dangerous tendency of the Russian policy, and the only circumstance on which he could justly condemn the Ministry of Pitt was for not strenuously supporting Turkey and Sweden, the ally of Turkey against Russia, when they did see this tendency. By mean and parsimonious conduct they had allowed Sweden to be driven out of her territories on the eastern shore of the Baltic by Russia, when, had they given her but moderate support, that Power would have become a permanent check on the aggressive spirit of Russia. The motion of Pitt was carried by a large majority. A few days afterwards Mr. Grey renewed the subject in a series of resolutions, condemning all interference on behalf of Turkey, and contending that Russia was only weakening instead of strengthening herself by extending her dominions. But Pitt, in reply, showed the very obvious facts that the retention of Oczakoff opened the way to Constantinople, and that the possession of Constantinople prepared the way for the seizure of Egypt, and the supremacy of the Mediterranean, with the most formidable consequences to our commerce. The resolutions of Grey were negatived; but twice again during the session the Whigs returned to the chargeon the 15th of April and on the 25th of May,but with no better success. The armament was maintained, but the isolated threats of England had little effect on Catherine. Pitt was accordingly compelled to change his policy, and acquiesce in a peace by which she retained the territory between the Bug and the Dniester, and the fortress of Oczakoff.The condition of Washington was inconceivably depressing. The time for the serving of the greater part of the troops was fast expiring; and numbers of them, despite the circumstances of the country, went off. Whilst Washington was, therefore, exerting himself to prevail on them to continue, he was compelled to weaken his persuasions by enforcing the strictest restraint on both soldiers and officers, who would plunder the inhabitants around them on the plea that they were Tories. Sickness was in his camp; and his suffering men, for want of hospitals, were obliged to lie about in barns, stables, sheds, and even under the fences and bushes. He wrote again to Congress in a condition of despair. He called on them to place their army on a permanent footing; to give the officers such pay as should enable them to live as gentlemen, and not as mean plunderers. He recommended that not only a good bounty should be given to every non-commissioned officer and soldier, but also the reward of a hundred or a hundred and fifty acres of land, a suit of clothes, and a blanket. Though Congress was loth to comply with these terms, it soon found that it must do so, or soldiers would go over to the royal army.
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THREE:But the Government was, at that juncture, very far from being a wise Government. Parliament was called together on the 23rd of November, and opened by the Prince Regent in person. In his Speech he spoke of the unsettled state of the country, and recommended measures of repression. The Addresses were in the same tone, and they were commented upon with great warmth by the Opposition, and amendments moved. Zealous debates took place in both Houses, especially in the Commons, where the discussion continued two evenings, and till five o'clock on the third morning. The Addresses, however, were carried in the Lords by one hundred and fifty-nine to thirty-four, and in the Commons by three hundred and eighty-one to one hundred and fifty. The Prince Regent sent down a mass of papers to both Houses relating to the condition of the disturbed districts, and a host of Bills, founded on these, were introduced. In the Lords, on the 29th of November, the Lord Chancellor Eldon introduced one in keeping with his alarms, namely, "An Act to prevent delay in the administration of justice in cases of misdemeanour." This was followed by three others, introduced by Lord Sidmouth; one to prevent the training of persons to the use of arms, and to the practice of military evolutions and exercises, another to prevent and punish blasphemous and pernicious libels. Amongst others, Hone was again at work, and ridiculing the despotically-spirited Ministers in his "Political House that Jack Built." The third was to authorise justices of the peace, in certain disturbed counties, to seize and detain arms collected and kept for purposes dangerous to the public peace. These were to continue in force till 1822. Not thinking he had yet done enough, on the 17th of December Lord Sidmouth brought into the Peers another Bill more effectually to prevent seditious meetings and assemblies, which he proposed should continue in force five years. In the Commons, in addition to all this, on the 3rd, Lord Castlereagh had introduced a Bill for imposing stamp duties and other regulations on newspapers, to prevent blasphemous and seditious libels, as if Sidmouth's Bill on that[153] subject had not fettered the press sufficiently. All these Bills were passed, notwithstanding the strongest remonstrances by the Opposition as so many infringements of the Constitution, and they became known as Sidmouth's and Castlereagh's Six Acts.
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THREE:Amongst the earliest of the prose writers may be mentioned the theological authors. Cumberland was the author of a Latin treatise, "De Legibus Natur?," in which he successfully combated the infidelity of Hobbes. Bull, who, as well as Cumberland, became a bishop, distinguished himself before the Revolution by his "Harmonia Apostolica," an anti-Calvinistic work, and by his "Defensio Fidei Nicen?." In 1694 he published his "Judicium Ecclesi? Catholic?." John Norris, of the school of Cudworth and Henry More, and nearly the last of that school called the English Platonists, published, besides many other works, his "Essay on the Ideal World" in 1701 and 1702. He also wrote some religious poetry of no particular mark.
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ONE:THE CATHEDRAL OF MILAN.MARSHAL SOULT. (From the Portrait by Rouillard.)
ONE:(After the Portrait by Dance, in Greenwich Hospital.)The motion of Fox was negatived by a large majority, and on the 21st of June the king prorogued Parliament.
ONE:In this utter desertion, the king prevailed on Lord North, who was already Chancellor of the Exchequer, to accept Grafton's post of First Lord of the Treasury, with the Premiership. Lord North, eldest son of the Earl of Guildford, was a man of a remarkably mild and pleasant temper, of sound sense, and highly honourable character. He was ungainly in his person and plain of countenance, but he was well versed in the business of Parliament, and particularly dexterous in tagging to motions of the Opposition some paragraph or other which neutralised the whole, or turned it even against them. He was exceedingly near-sighted, so much so, that he once carried off the wig of the old Secretary of the Navy, who sat near him in the House. For the rest, he was of so somnolent a nature that he was frequently seen nodding in the House when Opposition members were pouring out all the vials of their wrath on his head. He thought himself a Whig, but if we are to class him by his principles and his acts of administration, we must pronounce him a Tory.
