THREE:WELLINGTON'S RETREAT FROM COIMBRA. (See p. 604.)
THREE:WELLINGTON'S RETREAT FROM COIMBRA. (See p. 604.)
THREE:An attempt was again made on the part of Grey and Grenville to form a Ministry, but without effect. Overtures were then made to Lord Wellesley and Canning, who declined to join the Cabinet, alleging differences of opinion on the Catholic claims and on the scale for carrying on the war in[25] the Peninsula. In the House of Commons, on the 21st of May, Mr. Stuart Wortley, afterwards Lord Wharncliffe, moved and carried a resolution for an address to the Regent, praying him to endeavour to form a Coalition Ministry. During a whole week such endeavours were made, and various audiences had by Lords Moira, Wellesley, Eldon, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, etc., and Moira was authorised to make proposals to Wellesley and Canning, to Grey and Grenville. But all these negotiations fell through. Grey and Grenville refused to come in unless they could have the rearrangement of the Royal Household. This demand was yielded by the Regent, but Sheridan, who hated them, did not deliver the message, and so the attempt failed. But at the same time, apart altogether from this matter, they could not have pursued any effectual policy. It was therefore much better that they should not come in at all.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.
THREE:It was time, if they were to avoid a battle. Cumberland was already on the march from Edinburgh. He quitted Holyrood on the 31st of January, and the insurgents only commenced their retreat the next morning, the 1st of February, after spiking their guns. With this force the prince continued his march towards Inverness, a fleet accompanying him along the coast with supplies and ammunition. On nearing Inverness, he found it rudely fortified by a ditch and palisade, and held by Lord Loudon with two thousand men. Charles took up his residence at Moray Castle, the seat of the chief of the Macintoshes. The chief was in the king's army with Lord Loudon, but Lady Macintosh espoused the cause of the prince zealously, raised the clan, and led them out as their commander, riding at their head with a man's bonnet on her head, and pistols at her saddle-bow. Charles, the next morning, the 17th of February, called together his men, and on the 18th marched on Inverness. Lord Loudon did not wait for his arrival, but got across the Moray Firth with his soldiers, and accompanied by the Lord-President Forbes, into Cromarty. He was hotly pursued by the Earl of Cromarty and several Highland regiments, and was compelled to retreat into Sutherland. Charles entered Inverness, and began to attack the British forts. Fort George surrendered in a few days, and in it they obtained sixteen pieces of cannon and a considerable stock of ammunition and provisions.THE SOUTH SEA BUBBLE. (After the Picture by E. M. Ward, R.A., in the National Gallery, London.)
THREE:
THREE:We have now to turn from the feeble and ill-directed efforts of Britain to counteract the plans of Napoleon on land to the successful ones on her really protecting elementthe sea. All Napoleon's endeavours to cross the Channel with his Grand Army he had seen to be impossible. Nelson was riding there in his glory, and the French fleets were only safe while they were in port. The impatience of this restraint caused Napoleon to urge on his admirals a greater daring; and these incitements to a rash hazard brought, eventually, that which must have occurred sooner, had the admirals listened to his suggestions rather than their own knowledge of the truththe utter destruction of the French navy. Under such stimulants from the Emperor, Villeneuve seized the opportunity, when the weather had driven back the blockading British fleet, to steal out of Toulon on the 18th of January, 1805, and another fleet of ten vessels escaped out of Rochefort on the 11th of the same month. These squadrons stood away for the West Indies, and managed to get home again without meeting with a British fleet. Thus encouraged, Villeneuve made another venture. Nelson, who was watching Villeneuve off Toulon, in order to tempt him out, bore away along the Spanish coast as far as Barcelona. Villeneuve put out to sea on the 31st of March, with ten ships of the line, seven frigates, and two brigs. Nelson had gone a little too far, and it was not till the 7th of April that he heard of their issue from port. Before he could prevent it, they had passed the Strait of Gibraltar, and struck once more across the Atlantic. He was joined by the Spanish admiral, Gravina, from Cadiz, with six Spanish ships of the line, and two other French ships of the line. This combined fleet now amounted to eighteen sail of the line, six forty-four gun ships, and a number of smaller craft. Nelson did not hesitate to pursue them with his ten ships of the line and three frigates; but contrary winds withheld him, and it was the 7th of May before he could get out of the Strait of Gibraltar. His ships were, most of them, in very bad condition, one of them, the Superb, not having been in a home port for four years. Villeneuve had upwards of a month's start of Nelson, and his orders were to bear away to Martinique with five thousand one hundred troops, which he had on board, to capture St. Lucia, and strengthen the garrisons of Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Dominica. He was afterwards to wait and see if Gautheaume could get out of Brest and join him with twenty-one more sail of the line, when they were to do all possible mischief amongst our islands and merchantmen. But the chief scheme was, by this means, to draw the British fleet after them, and then, hurrying back, enable Buonaparte to cross the Channel for England. Villeneuve did nothing but take the Diamond Rock, a fortification of the British, lying opposite to Fort Royal Bay, into which he had entered. He then sailed to Guadeloupe, where he was joined by two seventy-four gun ships; and an American having apprised him of a homeward-bound British convoy, he went after it, and succeeded, off Antigua, in capturing fifteen merchantmen. His success was, however, spoiled in the possession of it, for one of the prisoners informed him that Nelson was already in the West Indies in quest of him. Terrified at this news, he burnt all his prizes, and made all sail homewards. Nelson, in the meantime, was misled by some of the Yankee skippers abounding in those seas, and sent on a false scent after Villeneuve towards Venezuela and the mouth of the Orinoco. Not finding him, he was satisfied that he had sailed for Europe, and he made after him. Nelson sighted Cape St. Vincent on the 17th of July, after a run of more than three thousand two hundred miles. The next day he fell in with Admiral Collingwood, who was watching Cadiz, but who had no news of Villeneuve, but informed him that Sir Robert Calder was blockading Ferrol. On the 19th he anchored in the Bay of Gibraltar, and went on shore for the first time for two years, short only of two days. Hearing that Villeneuve was still out in the Atlantic, he bore away westward again to intercept him, but in vain; and, on returning to Ushant, where Collingwood was cruising, he learned that Sir Robert Calder had met with and attacked him at the very time Nelson was off Gibraltar, namely, on the 22nd of July.[509]ABBOTSFORD AND THE EILDON HILLS. (From a Photograph by Valentine & Sons, Dundee.)
THREE:INVASION OF CANADA: RED MEN ON THE WAR PATH. (See p. 35.)The army of Joseph dispersed at full speed, and as our cavalry could not pursue them across the hedges and ditches, they managed to escape, and made their way to Pampeluna in one wild, chaotic herd. On the field they profess to have left eight thousand men in killed and wounded, but their loss was far greater. They left, also, one hundred and fifty-one pieces of brass ordnance, four hundred and fifteen caissons, more than forty thousand rounds of ammunition, nearly two million musketball cartridges, forty thousand six hundred and sixty-eight pounds of gunpowder, fifty-six forage[59] waggons, and forty-four forge waggons. The allied army had killed, British, five hundred and one; Portuguese, one hundred and fifty; Spaniards, only eighty-nine: wounded, British, two thousand eight hundred and seven; Portuguese, eight hundred and ninety-nine; Spanish, four hundred and sixty-four. Lord Wellington reported the conduct of almost every officer engaged as admirable. King Joseph did not stop till he was safe, for a time, within the strong walls of Pampeluna, but the garrison there would not admit the rabble herd of fugitives, but sent them off like enemies; and they were forced to continue their flight into the Pyrenees.
THREE:Lord Auckland was then Governor-General of India, but the period of his tenure of office was drawing to a close. He hoped it would end brightly, that the war for the restoration of an imbecile and puppet king would have ended triumphantly, and that he would return to his native land bearing something of the reflected glory of the conquerors of Afghanistan. He had been cheered by the despatches of the too sanguine envoy in the month of October, who spoke only of the continued tranquillity of Cabul. November passed, however, without any intelligence, and all was anxiety and painful suspense. Intelligence at last came confirming the worst anticipations. Calcutta was astounded at the news that Afghanistan, believed to be prosperous and grateful for British intervention, was in arms against its deliverers. Suddenly the tranquillity of that doomed country was found to be a delusion. "Across the whole length and breadth of the land the history of that gigantic lie was written in characters of blood." Confounded and paralysed by the tidings of so great a failure, which he had not energy to retrieve, he thought only of abandoning the vicious policy of aggression that had ended so miserably, and given such a terrible blow to the prestige of British power in India, on which our dominion in the East so much depended. He had owed his appointment to the Whigs; and the Conservatives, who were now in office, had opposed the policy of the Government regarding the Afghan war. But no one seemed more sick of the policy of aggression than the Governor-General himself. He became thoroughly convinced of the folly of placing a detached force in a distant city which could be reached only through dangerous defiles occupied by an ever-watchful enemy, depending for supplies upon uncertain allies, and without any basis of operations. The expedition had proved enormously expensive, and had drained the Indian treasury of funds that should have been employed in developing the resources of our Indian possessions. When all this had ended in disastrous failure and national disgracewhen he recollected that the directors of the Company, as well as the Government, had expressed intense dissatisfaction at his policy, feeling conscious that their complaints were just, and that their worst forebodings had been realised, his spirit seems to have been completely broken; instead of any attempt at retrieving the[497] misfortunes of his Government, he thought only of saving, if possible, what remained of the forces that he had sent across the Indus. Writing to the Commander-in-Chief, Sir Jaspar Nicolls, who was then on a tour through the Upper Provinces of India, with reference to the sending forward of reinforcements, he said he did not see how the sending forward of a brigade could by any possibility have any influence on the events which it was supposed were then passing at Cabul, which they could not reach before April. In his opinion they were not to think of marching fresh armies to the reconquest of that which they were likely to lose. He feared that safety to the force at Cabul could only come from itself. The Commander-in-Chief himself had been always of opinion that the renewed efforts of the Government to support Shah Sujah on his throne, and to establish a permanent influence in Afghanistan, was a great mistake. However, owing to the energy of Mr. George Clarke, the Governor-General's agent on the north-west frontier, and his assistant, Captain, afterwards Sir, Henry Lawrence, forces were dispatched from that quarter, under the command of General Pollock, who had commanded the garrison of Agra, having been in the Indian service since 1803, and having distinguished himself under General Lake. This appointment gave the greatest satisfaction, as it was believed that he was selected solely for his merit, and not through aristocratic influence. While he was preparing to advance, Lord Auckland was recalled, and Lord Ellenborough, the new Governor-General, arrived at Calcutta.
THREE: