It is said that when Johnson called on Goldsmith to see what could be done to raise money to pay the latter's landlady, who threatened him with imprisonment, Goldsmith handed the doctor the MS. of a new novel that might be worth something! This was the "Vicar of Wakefield." Johnson recognised its merits instantly, and at once sold it to a bookseller for 60, with which Goldsmith's rent was paid.Amongst the prose writers of this period a lady stands prominent, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (b. 1690; d. 1762), the daughter of the Duke of Kingston, and mother of Lady Bute, the wife of the Earl of Bute, the celebrated Minister of George III. Lady Mary derives her chief fame from her Letters, which were not published till after her death. They are as remarkable for their wit, brilliancy, and clear, thorough sense, as any of the writings of the age. In these we have a most graphic picture of life in the East, as she had lived some years at Constantinople with her husband. She thence conferred one of the greatest boons on her country, by the introduction of inoculation for the smallpox. Lady Mary translated the "Enchiridion of Epictetus," and wrote many verses, including satirical ones, called "Town Eclogues;" but her fame must always rest upon her clear and sparkling letters. She was celebrated for her wit and beauty, and was a leading figure in the fashionable as well as the literary world. Pope and she were long great friends, but quarrelled irreconcilably.[See larger version]
FORE:Leaving Mlas to complete the subjection of Italy, Suvaroff then turned his army towards Switzerland, where Massena had effectually opposed the Austrians under Bellegarde and Hotze, and defeated a Russian force under Korsakoff, sent to reinforce them. But Suvaroff found himself unable to unite with Korsakoff till after much fighting with Massena; and the two Russian generals retreated to Augsburg, leaving Massena master of Switzerland.
FORE: Sir R. Musgrove, made receiver of customs, with 1,200 a year.In September Commodore Sir Samuel Hood captured five frigates, which issued from Rochefort, laden with troops, stores, arms, and ammunition for the French forts in the West Indies. But the most daring feats of bravery were performed by Captain Lord Cochrane, afterwards Lord Dundonald. Early in this year he sent a number of boats up the Gironde, not far from Bordeaux, to endeavour to seize two large brig corvettes, the nearest of which lay twenty miles up the river, protected by two heavy land batteries. The sailors successfully brought away the first vessel, having only three men wounded in the affair; the other corvette lay much higher up the river, but, hearing the firing, it fell down to the assistance of its companion vessel; but the British seamen beat it back, and carried away their prize in the face of crowds of armed militia, and greater crowds of people along the shores. Whilst this daring action was in progress Lord Cochrane was not idle. He attacked with his single frigate one sixteen-gun and two twenty-gun corvettes, and drove them on shore. He then proceeded to Aix, to reconnoitre a strong fleet anchored in the roads, under cover of strong batteries. His little frigate, the Pallas, a twelve-pounder of thirty-two guns, was attacked by a forty-four-gun frigate and three big corvettes, but they were compelled to retire without driving him from his station. He then landed part of the crew of the Pallas, who destroyed some signal-posts which gave notice of all the movements of the British cruisers. One of these signal-posts was defended, but in vain, by a hundred French militia. He next attacked a battery of three thirty-six pounders, and a garrison of fifty men, spiked the guns, blew up the magazine, and flung the shot and shells into the sea. The frigate Minerva, of forty-four guns, and three corvettes, then ran out of harbour with studding-sails and royals set, and commenced a simultaneous attack on the Pallas; but Cochrane soon reduced the Minerva almost to a wreck, and was on the point of boarding her when two other frigates hastened to her aid, and the Pallas, considerably damaged herself, was obliged to haul off. Such were the audacious doings of the British men-of-war in every quarter of the world, and in these Lord Cochrane stood always conspicuous for his unparalleled daring and adroitness.
FORE:By these endeavours Walpole managed to array a considerable body of the Commons against it. It was introduced on the 8th of December, and Sir John Pakington, Sir Richard Steele, Smith, Methuen, and others joined him in attacking it. Steele made a very powerful speech against it, but the grand assault was that of Walpole. He put out all his strength, and delivered a harangue such as he had never achieved till that day. He did not spare the motives of the king, though handling them with much tact, and was unsparingly severe on the Scottish clauses, and on the notorious subserviency of the Scottish representative peers. He declared that the sixteen elective Scottish peers were already a dead weight on the country; and he asked what they would be when made twenty-five, and hereditary? He declared that such a Bill would make the lords masters of the king, and shut up the door of honour to the rest of the nation. Amongst the Romans, he said, the way to the Temple of Fame was through the Temple of Virtue; but if this Bill passed, such would never be the case in this country. There would be no arriving at honours but through the winding-sheet of an old, decrepit lord, or the tomb of an extinct noble family. Craggs, Lechmere, Aislabie, Hampton, and other Ministerial Whigs supported the Bill; but, in the words of Speaker Onslow, the declamation of Walpole had borne down everything before it, and the measure was defeated by a majority of two hundred and sixty-nine to one hundred and seventy-seven.
FORE:But the most important operations were at this moment taking place in the south between Dupont and Casta?os. Casta?os was quartered at Utrera with twenty thousand men. Dupont had been ordered by Murat to march from Madrid into the south-west, and make himself master of the important post of Cadiz. After a countermand, he again advanced in that direction, and had crossed the Sierra Morena, so celebrated in the romance of "Don Quixote," and reached the ancient city of Cordova. There he received the news that Cadiz had risen against the French, and had seized the French squadron lying in the bay, and, at the same time, that Seville was in the highest state of insurrection. Whilst pausing in uncertainty of what course to pursue, Casta?os advanced from Utrera towards the higher part of the Guadalquivir. If Dupont had rushed forward to attack Casta?os at Utrera, he would have done it under great disadvantages. He was cut off from the main French army by the Sierra Morena, and these mountains being occupied by the insurgent inhabitants, he would have no chance of falling back in case of disaster. He now advanced to Andujar, which he reached on the 18th of June, having had to fight his way through bands of fiery patriots.
FORE:In Calabria, the two sons of Ferdinand of Naples, Prince Francis and Prince Leopold, in conjunction with General Damas, held a force of fourteen thousand men, and endeavoured to arouse the mountaineers, and repel the advance of the French; but Regnier was dispatched against them, with a force of ten thousand, and soon defeated and dispersed the Neapolitans, making himself master of all the country, except the towns and fortresses of Maratea, Amantea, and Scylla. After three days of a bloody contest, Regnier took Maratea, and gave it up to the soldiery. These atrocities aroused the mountaineers to such fury, that they beset and harassed the French on their march to Amantea like so many demons. Their progress was arrested: Amantea stoutly resisted; Scylla, though taken, was invested by enraged Neapolitans and peasantry, and Reggio was again wrested from them. At this crisis arrived Sir John Stuart in Sicily, to reinforce and take the command of the British troops, and, at the earnest entreaty of the queen, Sir John crossed into Calabria.
FORE:It might have been supposed that Europe, or at least the southern portion of it, was likely to enjoy a considerable term of peace. France, under a minor and a Regent, appeared to require rest to recruit its population and finances more than any part of the Continent. The King of Spain was too imbecile to have any martial ambition; and though his wife was anxious to secure the succession to the French throne in case of the death of the infant Louis XV., yet Alberoni, the Prime Minister, was desirous to remain at peace. This able Churchman, who had risen from the lowest position, being the son of a working gardener, and had made his way to his present eminence partly by his abilities and partly by his readiness to forget the gravity of the clerical character for the pleasure of his patrons, was now zealously exerting himself to restore the condition of Spain. He was thus brought into collision with Austria and France, and eventually with this country to which at first he was well disposed. England was under engagement both to France and the Empire, which must, on the first rupture with either of those Powers and Spain, precipitate her into war. The treaty with the Emperoras it guaranteed the retention of the Italian provinces, which Spain beheld with unappeasable jealousy, in Austrian handswas the first thing to change the policy of Alberoni towards Britain. This change was still further accelerated by the news of the Triple Alliance, which equally guaranteed the status quo of France. The Spanish Minister displayed his anger by suspending the Treaty of Commerce, and by conniving at the petty vexations practised by the Spaniards on the English merchants in Spain, and by decidedly rejecting a proposal of the King of England to bring about an accommodation between the Emperor and the Court of Spain.
FORE:This conviction of all Europe that the ambition of Buonaparte would swell till it burst in ruin, quickly received fresh confirmation. The trans-Rhenish provinces of Holland did not form a proper frontier for him. He immediately gave orders to form Oldenburg, Bremen, and all the line of coast between Hamburg and Lübeck, into additional Departments of France, which was completed by a Senatus Consultum of the 13th of December of this year. Thus the French empire now extended from Denmark to Sicily; for Naples, though it was the kingdom of Joachim Murat, was only nominally so; for the fate of the kingdom of Holland had dissipated the last delusion regarding the reality of any separate kingdom of Napoleon's erection. Italy, Jerome's kingdom of Westphalia, the Grand Duchy of Bergnow given to the infant son of Louisall the territories of the Confederation of the Rhine, and Austria itself were really subject to Buonaparte, and any day he could assert that dominion. More than eighty millions of people in Europe owned this quondam lieutenant of artillery as their lord and master, whose will disdained all control. No such empire had existed under one autocrat, or under one single sceptre, since the palmiest days of the Roman supremacy. Denmark retained its nominal independence only by humbly following the intimations of the great man's will. And now Sweden appeared to add another realm to his vast dominions; but, in reality, the surprising change which took place there created a final barrier to[6] his progress in the North, and became an immediate cause of his utter overthrow. The story is one of the most singular and romantic in all the wonderful events of the Napoleonic career.
FORE:When Parliament reassembled, Fox seized the very earliest moment to address the Chair and occupy the attention of the House. He rose at the unusually early hour of half-past two o'clock in the day, before the newly returned members had taken their oaths. Pitt himself was in this predicament, but, as soon as he had taken his oath, he rose to speak; but Fox contended that he was already in possession of the House, and, though Pitt announced that he had a message from the king, Fox persisted, and moved that the House should go into committee on the state of the nation. This allowed Pitt to speak, who declared that he had no objection to the committee; but he thought it more advisable to go into the question of India, on which subject he proposed to introduce a Bill. He then made some sharp remarks on the conduct of Fox in thus seizing, by artifice, a precedence in speaking, and on the petulance and clamour which the Opposition had displayed, and on the violent and unprecedented nature of their conduct, by which they hoped to inflame the spirit of the country and excite unnecessary jealousies. In truth, Fox and his party were now running a most unwise career. Possessed of a large majority, they were indignant that the king should have dismissed them, and thought that they could outvote the new Ministry, and drive them again from office. They had, no doubt, such a majority; but, at the same time, they had the king resolute against them. They had insulted him by their violent denunciations of his letter, and they had not, in their anger, the discernment to perceive that not only would this be made use of by their opponents to injure them, both in Parliament and out of it, but their proceeding with so much heat and violence was calculated to make them appear factiousmore concerned for their places than for the interests of the country. All this took place; the king and Ministry saw how all this would operate, and calmly awaited its effects. Fox and his party were, however, blind to the signs of the times, and carried no less than five resolutions against the Government.
Whilst the debate was proceeding, great crowds gathered round the House, and became even more numerous and more agitated. Walpole, irritated by the persuasion that these throngs were collected by the arts of the Opposition, threw out a remark which he afterwards deeply repented. He said gentlemen might call themselves what they liked, but he knew whom the law called "Sturdy Beggars." This phrase, carried out of doors, highly incensed the crowd, who considered that it was meant to cast contempt on the people at large. At two o'clock in the morning, and after thirteen hours' debate, on division there appeared two hundred and sixty-six for the measure, and two hundred and five against. The great increase of the minority struck Walpole with surprise and alarm.Amongst the novelists of the later period of the reign we may name Horace Smith, author of "Brambletye House," etc.; Leigh Hunt, the poet, author of "Sir Ralph Esher;" Peacock, author of "Headlong Hall;" Beckford, author of the wild Eastern tale of "Vathek;" Hamilton, author of "Cyril Thornton," etc.; Maturin, author of "Melmoth the Wanderer," etc.; Mrs. Brunton, author of "Discipline," "Self-Control," etc.; and Miss Ferrier, author of "Marriage" and other novels of a high order. Jane Austen (b. 1775; d. 1817), author of "Pride and Prejudice," "Mansfield Park," "Sense and Sensibility," etc., all distinguished by the nicest sense of character, was far above any of these, and ranks with the foremost of our writers of fiction.Meanwhile, the Russians had been occupied with the siege of Oczakoff, near the mouth of the Dnieper. There the Turks had endeavoured to burn their flotillas and flat-bottomed boats, in the[351] shallows, at the mouth of the river; but besides Potemkin, they had the able Suvaroff to contend with. This sagacious general drew the Russian flotilla under the forts of Kinburn, nearly opposite to Oczakoff, of which they were in possession. Thus safe himself, he swept the broad liman with his guns, destroyed many of the boats of the Turks, as they got entangled in the sands of the shallows, and compelled the admiral, who commanded, to withdraw his fleet. After several vain attempts, Oczakoff was stormed on St. Nicholas' Day, the 17th of November. But this success was only obtained at the last moment, in the very desperation of despair, and when the campaign had cost Russia twenty thousand men, of whom five thousand perished in the final assault.The first charge, however, was not so encouraging. The French made an impetuous onset, and threw the advanced guard of the English into confusion; but the king and his son, the Duke of Cumberland, who commanded on the left, and, like his father, took his stand in the front line, displayed the highest pluck, and inspired their troops with wonderful courage. The tide of battle was quickly turned, and Noailles, from the other side, saw with astonishment and alarm his troops in action contrary to his plans. He returned in all haste to give fresh support to his soldiers, but it was too late. Gallantly as the French fought, the presence of the king and prince on the other side made the English and Hanoverians irresistible. King, and prince, and army all showed an enthusiastic courage and steadiness which bore down everything before them. The dense column of infantry, led on by the king, broke the French ranks, and cut through them with terrible slaughter. Noailles, seeing the havoc, gave a command which completed the disaster. To shield his men, he ordered them to repass the Main; but a word of retreat, in all such cases, is a word of defeat. The retrograde movement produced dismay and disorder; the whole became a precipitate rout. The French were driven in confused masses against the bridges, the bridges were choked up with the struggling throng, and numbers were forced into the river, or jumped in for escape, and were drowned.(After the Portrait by Dance, in Greenwich Hospital.)Thus shamefully deserted on both hands, Cumberland still led forward his British and Hanoverians against the main body of the French army. The ruggedness of the ground in the[91] narrow valley between the wood of Barr and Fontenoy compelled them to leave the cavalry behind; but the infantry pushed on, dragging with them several pieces of artillery. Cumberland had the advantage of the advice and spirit of his military tutor, General Ligonier, and, in face of a most murderous fire, the young commander hastened on. The batteries right and left mowed them down, and before this comparative handful of men stood massed the vast French army, in a position pronounced by the French impregnable. The dense column of the English, compressed between the wood of Barr and Fontenoy, soon drove the French from their positions, and, still pushing on towards the rear of Fontenoy, threatened to cut off the bridge of Calonne, and with it the enemy's retreat across the river. Both French and English conceived that the battle was decided for the Allies. Marshal K?nigsegg congratulated Cumberland on their victory, and, on the other hand, Saxe warned Louis XV. that it was necessary to retreat. Louis, however, is said to have protested against giving way, and both French and English soon became aware that the Dutch had deserted their post, and that the right wing of the French army remained wholly unengaged. The British and Hanoverian conquerors on their right, when they mounted the French positions, looked out for their left wing, the Dutch, and, to their dismay, beheld them hanging with cowardly inactivity in the distance. The brave Marshal Saxe, at the same moment making the same discovery, called forward the Household Troops, which had been posted to receive the Dutch, and precipitated them on the flank of the British. Foremost in this charge was the Irish Brigade, in the pay of France, who fought like furies against their countrymen. Overwhelmed by numbers, and numbers perfectly fresh, and mowed down by additional artillery which the default of the Dutch had set at liberty, and unsupported by their own cavalry from the confined and rugged nature of the ground, the brave British and Hanoverians were compelled to give way. But they did it in such order and steadiness, disputing every inch of the ground, as excited the admiration of their opponents. The Duke of Cumberland was the last in the retreat, still regardless of his own danger, calling on his men to remember Blenheim and Ramillies; and seeing one of his officers turning to flee, he threatened to shoot him. Thus they gave way slowly, and still fighting, till they reached their horse, which then made a front to cover them, till they were out of the mle; their dastardly allies, the Dutch, then joined them, and they marched away in a body to Ath. Tournay, for which the battle was fought, might have detained the French a long time; but here, again, Dutch treachery did its work. Hertsall, the chief engineer in the Dutch service, betrayed the place to the French, fled to their camp, and then assisted them by his advice. Tournay surrendered in a fortnight, and the citadel the week after. Ghent, Bruges, Oudenarde, and Dendermond fell in rapid succession. Whilst the Allies were covering Antwerp and Brussels, the French attacked and took Ostend, again by the treachery of the governor, who refused to inundate the country.