ONE:The Emperor Francis determined to remain at Aube, with the division under General Ducca, not[80] thinking it becoming him to join in the attack on the French capital where his daughter ruled as empress-regent; and a body of ten thousand cavalry, under command of Winzengerode and Czernicheff, was ordered to watch the motions of Napoleon and intercept his communications with Paris, whilst the Russian and Prussian light troops scoured the roads in advance, stopping all couriers. Blucher, at the same time, having thrown open the gates of Rheims, was moving on Chalons and Vitry, to form a junction with the army of Schwarzenberg. The flying parties captured, near Sommepuix, a convoy of artillery and ammunition; and, on another occasion, they fell in with a courier bearing a budget of the most melancholy intelligence to the Emperorthat the British had made a descent on Italy; that the Austrians had defeated Augereau, and were in possession of Lyons; that Bordeaux had declared for Louis XVIII.; and that Wellington was at Toulouse. These tidings gave immense confidence to the Allies. Near Fre-Champenoise the Allies met, finding Blucher in the act of stopping a body of infantry, five thousand in number, which was bearing provisions and ammunition to the army of Napoleon. The column consisted of young conscripts and National Guards, who had never been in action, but they bravely defended their charge till they were surrounded by the mingling forces of the two armies, and compelled to surrender.
It Is very likely that your best photograph has not yet been captured
- imperdiet doming
THREE:As the French approached Madrid, whither Buonaparte was coming in person, the Junta, which had taken no measures to render it defensible while they had time, were now all hurry and confusion. They began to collect provisions; the stones were torn up to form barricades. A desperate resistance might have been made, as there had been at Saragossa, but there was treachery in the city. The wealthy inhabitants, merchants and shopkeepers, as well as the aristocracy, were far more anxious to save their property than their country; the cowardly Junta having issued orders, lost heart, and fled for Badajos. On the 2nd of December, the anniversary of his coronation, Buonaparte arrived before Madrid, and summoned it to surrender; and this being unheeded, he prepared to storm it the next morning. Had Palafox been there, there would have been, probably, a brave defence. The next morning the storming commenced, and the French forced their way as far as the palace of the Duke de Medina Celi, the key of the whole city. The place was then summoned afresh, and the governor now proposed a surrender. The fact was, that he had already settled in his mind to go over to the French, as the strongest party, and he gave no encouragement or assistance to the citizens, who still continued from behind their walls and barricades to fire on the French. On the 4th he declared that the city must surrender; and the French marched in. Many of the people fled and the rest were disarmed; but Buonaparte, who wanted to keep Madrid uninjured and in good temper for King Joseph, gave strict orders that the city should not be plundered, nor the people treated with rudeness. He fixed his residence about four miles from Madrid, and issued thence imperial decrees and a proclamation, informing the Spaniards that all further resistance was useless; that he wanted his brother to reign in quiet, but that if this were not permitted, he would come and reign there himself, and compel submission; for God had given him the power and inclination to surmount all obstacles. He then set out to drive the "English leopards" from the Peninsulaa task that was to try him to the uttermost.
THREE:Bolingbroke was now Prime Minister, and he hastened to arrange his Cabinet entirely on Jacobite principles. So far as he was concerned, the country was to be handed over to the Pretender and popery on the queen's death. He would not run the risk of a new antagonist in the shape of a Lord Treasurer, but put the Treasury in commission, with Sir William Wyndham at its head. The Privy Seal was given to Atterbury; Bromley was continued as the other Secretary of State; and the Earl of Mar, the rankest of Jacobites, was made Secretary of State for Scotland. Ormonde, long engaged in the Pretender's plot, was made Commander-in-Chiefa most significant appointment; Buckingham was made Lord President, and Harcourt Lord Chancellor. As for the inferior posts, he found great difficulty in filling them up. "The sterility of good men," wrote Erasmus Lewis to Swift, "is incredible." Good men, according to the unprincipled Bolingbroke's notions, were not to be found in a hurry. There were plenty of candidates ready, but it may give an impressive notion of the state of that party, that there was scarcely a man beyond those already appointed whom Bolingbroke could trust. The Cabinet never was completed. What his own notions of moral or political honesty were, may be imagined from the fact that he did not hesitate to attempt a coalition with the Whigs. He gave a dinner-party at his house in Golden Square to Stanhope, Walpole, Craggs, General Cadogan, and other leaders; but though Walpole, when Minister himself, boasted that every man had his price, Bolingbroke had not yet discovered Walpole's price nor that of his colleagues. They to a man demanded, as a sine qua non, that the Pretender should be compelled to remove to Rome, or to some place much farther off than Lorraine, and Bolingbroke assured them that the queen would never consent to such a banishment of her brother. Nothing but the lowest opinion of men's principles could have led Bolingbroke to expect any other result from these Whig leaders. Perhaps he only meant to sound their real views; perhaps only to divert public attention from his real designs, which the very names of his coadjutors in the Ministry must have made patent enough to all men of any penetration. The very same day that he thus gave this Whig dinner he assured Gualtier that his sentiments towards "the king" were just the same as ever, provided his Majesty took such measures as would suit the people of England. Time only was wanting for this traitor-Minister to betray the country to its old despotisms and troubles; but such time was not in the plans of Providence. The end of Anne was approaching faster than was visible to human eyes; but the shrewd and selfish Marlborough had a pretty strong instinct of it, and was drawing nearer and nearer to the scene of action, ready to secure himself whichever way[22] the balance inclined. He was at Ostend, prepared to pass over at an hour's notice, and to the last moment keeping up his correspondence with the two Courts of Hanover and Bar-le-duc. Both despised and suspected him, but feared him at the same time. Such was still his influence, especially with the army, that whichever party he adopted was considered pretty sure to succeed. That it was likely to succeed was equally certain before Marlborough did adopt it. Lockhart of Carnwath, one of the most active and sagacious Jacobites, and likely to be in the secrets of the Jacobite party, says that the Pretender, to test the sincerity of Marlborough, asked the loan of one hundred thousand pounds from him, as a proof of his fidelity. He did not abide the test, but soon afterwards offered twenty thousand pounds to the Electoral Prince, to enable him to come over to England. The moment that Marlborough was prepared, with his deep-rooted love of money, to do that, it might be certainly pronounced that he was confident of the success of the Hanoverians.Other English artists of this period were John Riley, an excellent and original painter, who died in 1691; Murray, a Scotsman; Charles Jervas, the friend of Pope, a man much overrated by his acquaintance; and Jonathan Richardson, a much superior artist to Jervas, and author of the valuable "Essay on the Art of Criticism, as it relates to Painting." Thomas Hudson, a pupil of Richardson, and his son-in-law, was an admirable painter of heads, and had the honour of being the instructor of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Henry Cook, like Thornhill, was a decorator, and painted the choir of New College Chapel, at Oxford, and the ceiling of a large room at the New River head. Among other artists of repute there may be named Luke Cradock, a flower and fruit painter; John Wootton, an animal painter; Francis Hayman, an historical painter and designer for book-platesthose for "Don Quixote" being his best; and George Lambert, one of the first English landscape painters of any mark.
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