In his impatience to reach his beloved Hanover, the king had out-travelled his Minister and the mistress, and reached Delden on the 8th late at night. The next morning he proceeded again so early as four o'clock, and was pressing onward, when in the forenoon he was seized with a fit of apoplexy in his coach, and on arriving at Ippenburen he was observed to be quite comatosehis eyes fixed, his hands motionless, and his tongue hanging from his mouth. His attendants wished to remain at Ippenburen to procure medical assistance; but this seemed to rouse him, and he managed to articulate, "Osnabrück! Osnabrück!" The only chance for his life, if there was any, depended on instant surgical aid; they went in obedience to his command, and on arriving at Osnabrück he was found quite dead on the 9th of June, 1727.
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The foreign expeditions planned by the Grenville Ministry were, this year, attended by disgraceful results, and the news of their failure arrived in time to enable the new Ministry to throw additional odium upon their foes. The news of the seizure of Buenos Ayres by Sir Home Popham and General Beresford had induced the late Cabinet to overlook the irregular manner in which their enterprise had been undertaken. They sent out Admiral Sir C. Stirling to supersede Sir Home Popham, who was to be brought before a court-martial, but he took out with him a fresh body of troops, under General Auchmuty. These troops landed at Monte Video on the 18th of January, and, after a sharp contest against six thousand Spaniards, and the loss of five hundred and sixty British killed and wounded, the place was taken on the 2nd of February. Soon afterwards General Whitelocke arrived with orders to assume supreme command and to recapture Buenos Ayres, which the inhabitants had succeeded in recovering. Whitelocke reached Monte Video towards the end of May, and found the British army, with what he brought, amounting to nearly twelve thousand men, in fine condition. With such a force Buenos Ayres would have soon been reduced by a man of tolerable military ability. But Whitelocke seems to have taken no measures to enable his troops to carry the place by a sudden and brilliant assault. It was not till the 3rd of July that he managed to join Major-General Gore, who had taken possession of a commanding elevation[536] overlooking the city. The hope of success lay in the rapidity with which the assault was made: all this was now lost. The rain poured in torrents, and the men had no shelter, and were half starved. All this time the Spaniards had been putting the city into a state of defence. Still, on the morning of the 5th of July the order was issued to storm. The troops advanced in three columns from different sides of the town, headed severally by Generals Auchmuty, Lumley, and Craufurd. Whitelocke said that it could be of no use to delay the advance towards the centre of the town by attacking the enemy under cover of their houses; it could only occasion the greater slaughter. The command, therefore, was to dash forward with unloaded muskets, trusting alone to the bayonet. Much blame was cast on Whitelocke for this order, but there seems strong reason in it, considering the wholly uncovered condition of the troops against a covered enemy, and that the only chance was for each division to force its way as rapidly as possible to certain buildings where they could ensconce themselves, and from whence they could direct an attack of shot and shells on the Spaniards. General Auchmuty, accordingly, rushed on against every obstacle to the great squarePlaza de Toros, or Square of Bullstook thirty-two cannon, a large quantity of ammunition, and six hundred prisoners. Other regiments of his division succeeded in getting possession of the church and convent of Santa Catalina, and of the residencia, a commanding post; Lumley and Craufurd were not so fortunate. The 88th was compelled to yield; and the 36th, greatly reduced, and joined by the 5thwhich had taken the convent of Santa Catalinamade their way to Sir Samuel Auchmuty's position in the Plaza de Toros, dispersing a body of eight hundred Spaniards on their way and taking two guns. Craufurd's division capitulated at four o'clock in the afternoon. In the evening Whitelocke resolved to come to terms. The conditions of the treaty werethat General Whitelocke's army, with its arms, equipage, and stores, was to be conveyed across the La Plata to Monte Video; his troops were to be supplied with food; and that at the end of two months the British were to surrender Monte Video, and retire from the country. Such was the humiliating result of the attempt on Buenos Ayres. Nothing could exceed the fury of all classes at home against Whitelocke on the arrival of the news of this disgraceful defeat. It was reported that he had made the men take their flints out of their guns before sending them into the murderous streets of Buenos Ayres; and had he arrived with his despatches, his life would not have been safe for an hour. There was a general belief that the Court was protecting him from punishment; and, in truth, the delays interposed between him and a court-martial appeared to warrant this. It was not till the 28th of January, 1808, that he was brought before such a court at Chelsea Hospital, when he was condemned to be cashiered, as wholly unfit and unworthy to serve his Majesty in any military capacity whatever.ELBA.From economical and colonial, Ministers proceeded to Parliamentary reform. Sir Harbord Harbord had introduced, before their accession to office, a Bill to disfranchise the rotten borough of Cricklade, in Wiltshire, as Shoreham had already been disfranchised. The new Ministry supported it, with the exception of their strange colleague, Thurlow, whom they ought to have insisted on being dismissed. Cricklade was a thoroughly venal borough, regularly sold to some East Indian nabob; and Mr. Frederick Montagu, in the debate, quoted Lord Chatham's remark on Shoreham, which had also been the purchased lair of Indian corruptionists, that he "was glad to find the borough of Shoreham likely to be removed from Bengal to its ancient situation in the county of Sussex."After violent debates on the subject of Catholic emancipation, but with the usual negative result, Parliament was prorogued on the 24th of July. Ministers proceeded to prosecute the war in the Peninsula with increased vigour. Lord Wellington needed all the support they could give him. Notwithstanding his success and the millions of money that Great Britain was sending to Portugal, the Portuguese Government continued to annoy him, and showed itself as ignorant, as meddling and as unthankful as the Spaniards had done. Though he and his army were the sole defence of the country, which would at once have been overrun by the French were he not there, and though he was fighting their battles and defending their persons at the expense of England, they appeared to have not the slightest sense of these obligations, but continued to pester him on every possible occasion. They endeavoured to compel him to maintain the Portuguese army, too, by themselves neglecting to furnish it with pay and provisions. They demanded to have the expenditure of the very money remitted for the needs of the British forces. They raised a vast clamour because the soldiers cut down timber for firewood. To all these disgraceful annoyances Lord Wellington replied with a wonderful command of temper, but with firmness and plain-spokenness. His dispatches abound with complaints of the scurvy treatment of the Portuguese authorities. The aspect of things in Spain was worse. There the Spaniards continued to lose every force that they raised, but nevertheless to criticise all the movements of Wellington as if they knew, or had shown, that they understood the management of campaigns better than he did. In fact, if the interests of Spain and Portugal alone had been concerned, the best thing would have been to have quietly withdrawn, and have left the French to trample on them, as a proper punishment for their stupid and ignorant pride. But the attention which Wellington compelled Buonaparte to give to the Peninsula, and the constant drain which this war was to him of men and money, were enabling Russia, and Sweden, and the north of Germany to prepare for another and decisive struggle with the oppressor.
