ONE:"My lords," he said, "I rejoice that the grave has not closed upon me; that I am still alive to lift up my voice against the dismemberment of this ancient and most noble monarchy. Pressed down as I am by the hand of infirmity, I am little able to assist my country in this most perilous conjuncture; but, my lords, whilst I have sense and memory, I will never consent to deprive the royal offspring of the House of Brunswick, the heirs of" here he faltered for some moments, whilst striving to recall the name"of the Princess Sophia, of their fairest inheritance. My lords, his Majesty succeeded to an empire as great in extent as its reputation was unsullied. Shall we tarnish the lustre of that empire by an ignominious surrender of its rights and fairest possessions? Shall this great kingdom, which has survived whole and entire the Danish depredations the Scotch inroads, and the Norman conquestthat has stood the threatened invasion of the Spanish Armada, now fall prostrate before the House of Bourbon? Surely, my lords, this nation is no longer what it was! Shall a people that fifteen years ago were the terror of the world now stoop so low as to tell this ancient, inveterate enemy'Take all we have, only give us peace'? It is impossible! I wage war with no man or set of men; I wish for none of their employments; nor would I co-operate with men who persist in unretracted errorwho, instead of acting on a firm, decisive line of conduct, halt between two opinions where there is no middle path. In God's name, if it is absolutely necessary to declare either for peace or war, and the former cannot be preserved with honour, why is not the latter commenced without hesitation? I am not, I confess, well informed of the resources of this kingdom; but I trust it has still sufficient to maintain its just rights, though I know them not. But, my lords, any state is better than despair. Let us, at least, make one effort, and if we must fall, let us fall like men!"Whilst our armies were barely holding their own in Spain, our fleets were the masters of all seas. In the north, though Sweden was nominally at war with us, in compliance with the arrogant demands of Buonaparte, Bernadotte, the elected Crown Prince, was too politic to carry out his embargo literally. The very existence of Sweden depended on its trade, and it was in the power of the British blockading fleet to prevent a single Swedish vessel from proceeding to sea. But in spite of the angry threats of Napoleon, who still thought that Bernadotte, though become the prince and monarch elect of an independent country, should remain a Frenchman, and, above all, the servile slave of his will, that able man soon let it be understood that he was inclined to amicable relations with Great Britain; and Sir James de Saumarez, admiral of our Baltic fleet, not only permitted the Swedish merchantmen to pass unmolested, but on various occasions gave them protection. Thus the embargo system was really at an end, both in Sweden and in Russia; for Alexander also refused to ruin Russia for the benefit of Buonaparte, and both of these princes, as we have seen, were in a secret league to support one another. Denmark, or, rather, its sovereign, though the nephew of the King of Great Britain, remained hostile to us, remembering not only the severe chastisements our fleets had given Copenhagen, but also the facility with which Napoleon could, from the north of Germany, overrun Denmark and add it to his now enormous empire. In March of this year the Danes endeavoured to recover the small island of Anholt, in the Cattegat, which we held; but they were beaten off with severe loss, leaving three or four hundred men prisoners of war.
THREE:On the morning of the next day, Sunday, the 12th of July, the news was all over Paris that Necker was dismissed. The alarm was intense. Paris was in an uproar. The Palais Royal was choked with people in a frenzy of excitement. All at once a young man leaped upon a table and shouted, "To arms! to arms! Whilst we are talking, foreign troops are gathering round us to massacre us!" This orator, whose loud voice and dramatic action stopped in a moment the buzz of tongues and the voices of lesser orators, mounted on chairs and tables, was Benoit Camille Desmoulins, already a favourite orator of the people on this spot. This fanatic revolutionist now held up a brace of pistols; and, snatching a green twig from a tree, stuck it into his hat as a cockade. There was an instantaneous imitation of the act by the whole mass of people. The trees were all stripped, and a woman brought out a great roll of green ribbon, and cut off cockades for the patriots as far as it would go. The mob, armed with pistols, clubs, swords, and axes, continued their procession along the Rue Richelieu; then turning on the Boulevard, along the Rues St. Martin, St. Denis, St. Honor, to the Place Vend?me. There a German squadron was drawn up before the hotel of the farmers of the taxes, and attacked the crowd, destroyed the busts, and killed a soldier of the French Guard who stood his ground. The commandant, Besenval, remained inactive in the cole Militaire; he was without orders from Broglie; and, besides, dared not trust the French Guard, but kept them close in their barracks. But he had three foreign regiments at his disposal, one of Swiss and two of German cavalry. Towards afternoon, seeing the disorder increase, he sent the Swiss into the Champs Elyses with four pieces of cannon, and the German cavalry into the Place Louis Quinze, adjoining. As Prince Lambesc, with the Germans, was marching along the Chausse d'Antin, he was met by a body of the French Guard, who had escaped from their barracks to avenge their slain comrade. They fired on him and killed three of the German cavalry, and wounded numbers more. They then advanced with fixed bayonets to the Place Louis Quinze, where the Swiss Guard were posted. There they and the Swiss remained facing each other under arms all night, the people feasting and encouraging the French Guard; who, however, did not come to blows with the Swiss. Lambesc had continued his route to St. Cloud, leaving the city all night in the hands of the mob, who burnt the barriers at the different entrances, so as to allow free access to the people from the country; and broke open the gunsmiths' shops, and carried off the arms. During the whole of the next day the city was in the hands of the mob.The Austrians being again expelled from Italy, Buonaparte, in his all-absorbing cupidity, determined to turn adrift the Pope, and add his little vineyard to his now cumbrously overgrown Ahab's domains. He had begun this spoliation in 1808, seizing on the greater part of the Pontiff's territories; sending away his cardinals, and reducing him to little better than a solitary prisoner in his own palace. This was an ungrateful return to the poor old Pope for making the long journey into France to crown him, and thus to give a sacred sanction to his usurpation of the imperial crowna sanction of immense effect throughout the Catholic world. Pius VII. had given Buonaparte great offence by refusing to declare war on Great Britain, and thus keeping up a breach in his system of exclusion of British commerce. He had, therefore, already taken military possession of Civita Vecchia and Ancona, but he now resolved to take the whole temporal dominion from the Pope, and abrogate, by virtue of his assumed heirship of Charlemagne's realm, the gift of Charlemagne to the Church. On the 2nd of February, 1809, General Miollis, by order of Buonaparte, took possession of Rome, disarmed and disbanded the Pope's guard, and marched his other soldiers to the north, telling them they should no longer remain under the effeminate rule of a priest. Miollis then gave the Pontiff the alternative to join the French league, offensive and defensive, or to be deposed. The Pope firmly refused to concede his rights to anything but absolute force. On the 17th of May, therefore, Napoleon's decree for the deposition of the Pope from his temporal power was proclaimed. It assumed the heirship of Charlemagne to be in Buonaparte; declared the union of the spiritual and temporal powers to be the source of all scandals and discords in the Catholic Church; that they were, therefore, at an endthe Roman State for ever united to the French Empire. On the 10th of June Pius issued a bull excommunicating Buonaparte and all who aided him in his sacrilegious usurpation of the patrimony of St. Peter; and this was followed, on the 6th of July, by General Radet forcing the gates of the Vatican, taking possession of it with his troops, entering the presence of the Pope, who was amid his priests, and clad in his pontificals, and demanding that he should instantly sign a renunciation of all the temporal estates attached to the see of Rome. Pius declared that he neither could nor would perform any such sacrilegious act. He was then informed that he must quit Rome. Pius was detained at Savona three years, and was then removed to Fontainebleau.
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THREE:Even this example was not sufficient to protect her Majesty from the criminal attempts of miscreants of this class. Another was made on the 3rd of July following, as the Queen was going from Buckingham Palace to the Chapel Royal, accompanied by Prince Albert and the King of the Belgians. In the Mall, about half way between the palace and the stable-yard gate, a deformed youth was seen by a person named Bassett to present a pistol at the Queen's carriage. Bassett seized him and brought him to the police; but they refused to take him in charge, treating the matter as a hoax. Bassett himself was subsequently arrested, and examined by the Privy Council. When the facts of the case were ascertained, the police hastened to repair the error of the morning, and sent to all the police-stations a description of the real offender. This led to the apprehension of a boy called Bean, who was identified, examined, and committed to prison. His trial took place on the 25th of August, at the Central Criminal Court. The Attorney-General briefly related the facts of the case, and Lord Abinger, the presiding judge, having summed up, the jury returned a verdict of "Guilty," convicting the prisoner of presenting a pistol, loaded with powder and wadding, "in contempt of the Queen, and to the terror of divers liege subjects." The sentence of the court was"Imprisonment in Millbank Penitentiary for eighteen calendar months."
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THREE:Charles was, both in Scotlandon which his wild adventure had inflicted such miseriesand in France, a hero of romance; but his captured adherents had far other scenes to face than the lights and luxurious music of the opera. The prisons were crammed to such a degree with the[109] unfortunate Gaels, that Government was compelled to stow numbers away on board of men-of-war and transports, till fever broke out and swept them off by hundreds, sparing the labours of judges, juries, and hangmen. In Carlisle prison alone four hundred Scots were jammed in a space not properly sufficient for forty! The poor prisoners had been brought out of Scotland in open defiance of the Act of union and of the recognised rights of the Scottish courts; and now they were called on to cast lots for one in twenty to take their trials, with a certainty of being hanged, and the rest shipped off to the Plantations in America without any trial at all.
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