ONE:That would be great! Larry declared. Then he became more serious, adding. Finishing up my course would be fine, but if it means that Id have to do anything against Mr. Everdails wishes, after he told us
FORE:The slowness with which the Government became aware of these proceedings is something astonishing in these days of telegraphs and railroads. Though Charles sailed on the 2nd of July, it was not till the 30th of the same month that Lord Tweeddale, the Scottish Secretary of State in London, was informed even that he had left Nantes. Sir John Cope was the commander of the forces in Scotland, and he immediately gave orders for drawing[94] together such troops as he had to Stirling. These were extraordinarily few. There were two regiments of dragoons, Gardiner's and Hamilton's, but both recent in the service; and the whole force at his disposal, exclusive of garrisons, did not amount to three thousand men. Cope was eager enough to march into the Highlands, even with such forces as he had, and crush the insurrection at once. He proposed this apparently active and judicious scheme to the Lords Justices in England, George II. himself being at Hanover, and they warmly approved of it, and issued their positive orders for its execution. It was, in truth, however, the most fatal scheme which could be conceived. The spirit of rebellion was fermenting in every glen and on every hill, and to march regular troops into these rugged fastnesses was only to have them shot down by invisible marksmen on all hands, and reduced to the extremity of the two companies already captured. The plan was to have secured all the passes into the Lowlands, to have drawn his forces to the foot of the mountains wherever a descent could be made, and blockade the rebels in their own hills till they should be reduced by gradual approaches and overwhelming numbers. Famine, indeed, would soon have tamed any large body of men in those sterile regions.
FORE:The jinx has got us.But the matters most important, and in which the Rockingham Ministry succeeded the best, were those of attempting to accomplish the peace with America, and with the Continental nations, on which they had so long and so loudly insisted. Fox first tried his diplomatic genius with the Dutch, whom he could, as he boasted, soon conciliate; but, to his infinite chagrin, that calculating people were so elated by the recent ill success of the English, and relied so completely on the powerful fleets of France and Spain to protect their trade and islands, that they returned a contemptuous answer, declaring that they could not treat without their allies. Still more mortifying was his repulse by the Americans. His offers of negotiations for peace were received with a haughty indifference by Congress, and he was[292] again referred to France. Fox now had recourse to the mediations of Russia and Prussia. But Frederick the Great declined to intervene, and the Czarina Catherine coupled her offers of alliance with conditions which the king and the majority of the Cabinet refused to accept, though Fox thought they were reasonable.
