THREE:The king and his war cabinet were now compelled to sue to France for the peace which was so freely offered the year before. Newcastle wrote to Sandwich in April, that the impossibility of arresting the progress of the French army, the discordant pretensions of the Allies, and their gross neglect of their engagements, rendered it absolutely necessary to make peace. Sandwich was to communicate this necessity to the Plenipotentiaries of the Allies, and if they declined to assent to it, to sign the preliminaries without them. The Ministers of the Allies still refused to join; it suited them very well to receive vast subsidies to fight their own battles, and yet to leave England to fight them. On the other hand, Count St. Severin, the Plenipotentiary of France, now felt his vantage-ground, and offered far worse terms than before, and, to force their acceptance, threatened that if they were not agreed to without delay, the French would leave the fortifications of Ypres, Namur, and Bergen-op-Zoom, and march directly into Holland. The treaty was signed by England, France, and Holland on the 18th of April. The general conditions were a mutual restoration of conquests. All the nations were placed very much in statu quo, except that Prussia had got Silesia, and Sardinia had lost Placentia and Finale. As for England, she firmly established her maritime supremacy, which from that date has remained unchallenged. The Young Pretender was compelled to leave France, and thenceforward ceased to be of any political importance.
FORE:On the 8th of October Murat landed near Pizzo, on the Calabrian coasta coast more than any other in Italy fraught with fierce recollections of the French. His army now consisted of only twenty-eight men; yet, in his utter madness, he advanced at the head of this miserable knot of men, crying, "I am your king, Joachim!" and waving the Neapolitan flag. But the people of Pizzo, headed by an old Bourbon partisan, pursued him, not to join, but to seize him. When they began firing on him, he fled back to his vessels; but the commander, a man who had received the greatest benefits from him, deaf to his cries,[117] pushed out to sea, and left him. His pursuers were instantly upon him, fired at him, and wounded him; then rushing on him, they knocked him down and treated him most cruelly. Women, more like furies than anything else, struck their nails into his face and tore off his hair, and he was only saved from being torn to pieces by the old Bourbon and his soldiers, who beat off these female savages and conveyed him to the prison at Pizzo. The news of his capture was a great delight to Ferdinand. He entertained none of the magnanimity of the Allies, but sent at once officers to try by court-martial and, of course, to condemn him. Some of these officers had been in Murat's service, and had received from him numerous favours, but not the less readily did they sentence him to death; and on the 13th of October, 1815, he was shot in the courtyard of the prison at Pizzowith characteristic bravery refusing to have his eyes bound, and with characteristic vanity bidding the soldiers "save his face, and aim at his heart!"The progress in the manufacture of hardware is strikingly exhibited by the increase of the population of Birmingham. According to the census of 1821, it was 106,722; in 1831 it was 146,986; in 1841 it was 181,116, showing an increase of 80 per cent. in twenty years. The number of houses during the same period was nearly doubled. Mr. Babbage has given a table, extracted from the books of a highly respectable house in Birmingham, showing the reduction in the price of various articles made of iron between 1812 and 1832, which varied from 40 to 80 per cent. The exportation of cutlery from England amounted in 1820 to about 7,000 tons; in 1839 it was 21,000 tons. Since 1820 the annual value of the exportations of hardware and cutlery increased about 50 per cent. The town of Sheffield is another remarkable instance of the growth of population in consequence of the manufacture of cutlery. In 1821 the population was 65,275; in 1841 it was 111,000. The various manufacturers of cutlery and plated goods, and the conversion of iron into steel, employed in 1835 upwards of[420] 560 furnaces. The declared value of British-made plated ware, jewellery, and watches, exported from the United Kingdom in 1827 was 169,456; in 1839 it amounted to 258,076. The value of machinery shipped to foreign countries in 1831 was only 29,000; in 1836 it was 166,000; in 1837, 280,000; and in 1840, 374,000.
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