TWO:The campaign in Flanders commenced with the highest expectation on the part of England. Cumberland had now obtained the great object of his ambitionthe command of the Allied army; and the conqueror of Culloden was confidently expected to show himself the conqueror of Marshal Saxe and of France. But Cumberland, who was no match for Marshal Saxe, found the Dutch and Austrians, as usual, vastly deficient in their stipulated quotas. The French, hoping to intimidate the sluggish and wavering Dutch, threatened to send twenty thousand men into Dutch Flanders, if the States did not choose to negotiate for a separate peace. The menace, however, had the effect of rousing Holland to some degree of action. When the vanguard of Saxe's army, under Count L?wendahl, burst into Dutch Flanders, and reduced the frontier forts of Sluys, Sas-van-Ghent, and Hulst, the Dutch rose against their dastardly governors, and once more placed a prince of the House of Nassau in the Stadtholdership. William of Nassau, who had married Anne, daughter of George II. of England, was, unfortunately, not only nominated Stadtholder, but Captain-General and Lord High Admiral; and, being equally desirous of martial glory with his brother-in-law, the Duke of Cumberland, he headed the Dutch army, and immediately began to contend with Cumberland for dictation as to the movements of the army. In these disastrous circumstances, the Allies came to blows with the French at the village of Laufeldt, before Maestricht. The Dutch in the centre gave way and fled; the Austrians on the right, under Marshal Batthyani, would not advance out of their fortified position; the brunt of the whole onset, therefore, fell upon the English. Cumberland found himself engaged with the whole French army, directed by the masterly mind of Saxe, and animated by the presence of Louis himself. The dispositions of Cumberland were bad, but the bravery of the British troops was never more remarkable. Though it was impossible for them to prevail against such overwhelming numbers, they did not retreat before they had, according to Saxe's own acknowledgment, killed or wounded nine thousand of the French.The French were driven again out of Naples by the end of July. Cardinal Ruffo brought down a wild army of Calabrians, and an army made up of Russians, Turks, Portuguese, and British, completed the expulsion of the Republicans and restored the king. In this restoration Nelson and his squadron took a most effective part; but unfortunately for his fame, he at this time became acquainted with Lady Hamilton, the wife of the British ambassador, and gave himself up entirely to her fascinations. Lady Hamilton was the friend of the Queen of Naples (a sister of the unfortunate Marie Antoinette), and she was said to have instigated Nelson to take a melancholy part in the savage retaliations of the court on the Neapolitan Republicans, but the charge has since been completely disproved. Nelson sent Commodore Trowbridge to Civita Vecchia to blockade it, and both that port and the castle of St. Angelo soon surrendered, and Captain Lewis rowed up the Tiber in his barge, hoisted the British colours on the Capitol, and acted as Governor of Rome till Pius VI., ejected by the French in the previous year, was nominally restored. The poor old man, however, never returned to his kingdom; he died at Valence, on the Rh?ne, on the 29th of August of this year. The election of the new Pope, Pius VII., did not take place till March, 1800. Before the end of the year, nearly all Italy, except Genoa, was cleared of the French.
