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ONE:It met on the 29th of November. The king, in his speech, alluded to the determined resistance to the imperial authority of the American colonists, and pre-eminently of those of Massachusetts Bay. He called upon Parliament to support him in his endeavours to restore order. There was strong opposition to the addresses in both Houses, demands being made for a full production of all papers and correspondence on this great subject, but the battle did not begin until January, 1775, when Chatham moved the repeal of the legislation of the previous year, and the withdrawal of the troops from Boston.It was no wonder that Spain, feeling the serious effects of this state of things, should resist it; and when she did so, and exerted an unusual degree of vigilance, then the most terrible outcries were raised, and wonderful stories were circulated of Spanish cruelties to our people beyond the Atlantic. At this time the Opposition got hold of one of these, and made the House of Commons and the nation resound with it. It was, that one Captain Robert Jenkins, who had been master of a sloop trading from Jamaica, had been boarded and searched by a Coastguard, and treated in a most barbarous manner, though they could detect no proof of smuggling in his vessel. He said that the Spanish captain had cut off one of his ears, bidding him carry it to his king, and tell his Majesty that if he were present he would treat him in the same manner. This story was now seven years old, but it was not the less warmly received on that account. It excited the utmost horror, and Jenkins was ordered to appear at the bar of the House of Commons on the 16th of March, to give an account of the outrage himself; and it would appear that both he and other witnesses were examined the same day. Jenkins carried his ear about with him wrapped in cotton, to show to those to whom he related the fact, and the indignation was intense. He was asked by a member how he felt when he found himself in the hands of such barbarians, and he replied, "I recommended my soul to God, and my cause to my country." The worthy skipper had probably been crammed with this dramatic sentiment by some of his clever Parliamentary introducers; but its effect was all the same as if it had been a genuine and involuntary expression of his own mind. Researches made at the Admiralty in 1889 proved that he really had lost an ear. TWO:At the very moment that these negotiations on the part of Britain were going on, Buonaparte, who had been appointed to the command of the army of Italy, was achieving there victory after victory. Genoa had shut her ports against our ships, Naples had concluded peace with France, Spain had been induced to proclaim war against us, and Hoche had sailed for Ireland with twenty-five thousand troops. On the 19th of December Lord Malmesbury received a message to quit Paris within forty-eight hours, with the additional assurance, that whenever Great Britain was prepared to accept the terms of France, an ordinary courier would answer the same purpose as well as[451] a lord. The blame of continuing the war thus lay entirely with the French.
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ONE:Chatham, on rising, severely blamed Ministers for the course which they had pursued, and which had driven the colonies to the verge of rebellion. "Resistance to your Acts," he said, "was necessary as it was just; and your vain declarations of the omnipotence of Parliament, and your imperious doctrines of the necessity of submission, will be found equally incompetent to convince or to enslave your fellow-subjects in America, who feel that tyranny, whether attempted by an individual part of the Legislature, or the bodies who compose it, is equally intolerable to British subjects." He eulogised the conduct of the Congress, and remarked that it was obvious that all attempts to impose servitude on such men, to establish despotism over such a mighty continental nation, must be vain, must be fatal. "We shall be forced," he said, "ultimately, to retract; let us retract while we cannot when we must. I say we must necessarily undo these violently oppressive Acts; they must be repealed. You will repeal them; I pledge myself for it that you will, in the end, repeal them. I stake my reputation on it. I will consent to be taken for an idiot if they are not finally repealed. Avoid, then, this humiliating, this disgraceful necessity." He declared that the cause of America and England was one; that it was the glorious spirit of Whiggism which animated the colonists. "It is liberty to liberty engaged. In this great cause they are immovably allied; it is the alliance of God and natureimmutable, eternalfixed as the firmament of heaven. You cannot force them, united as they are, to your unworthy terms of submission. It is impossible." Lords Shelburne, Camden, and Rockingham, and the Duke of Richmond, zealously supported the views of Chatham, but the Ministerial party opposed the motion as obstinately as ever; and it was rejected by sixty-eight votes against eighteen.George and his soldiers, however, lost no atom of heart; they determined to cut a way through the enemy or die on the ground; and luckily at this moment the enemy committed almost as great an error as Stair had done. Noailles quitted his post in front of the king's army, and crossed the Main bridge to give some further orders on that side; and no sooner did he depart than his nephew, De Gramont, eager to seize the glory of defeating the English, and not aware that the whole British army was at that moment about to bear down upon him, ordered his troops to cross the ravine in their front, and assault the English on their own side. The order was executed, and had instantly the unforeseen effect of silencing their own batteries on the other side of the river, for, by this movement, the French came directly between their fire and the English, which it had been till that moment mercilessly mowing down. TWO:[See larger version]Wurmser advanced down the valley of Trent with fifty thousand men, whose number was increased, by the remains of the army of Beaulieu, to sixty thousand. With such a force well conducted, the Austrians might have worsted Buonaparte, whose troops were not more than forty-five thousand, and already greatly harassed by rapid marches. But there was no comparison between the genius of the commanders. The conduct of the Austrians was a series of fatal blunders. Had the Archduke Charles been there it might have been different; but the first thing which Wurmser did was to weaken himself by dividing his forces, and sending one detachment under Quasdanowich along the western shore of the Lake of Garda, and marching along the eastern bank himself with the other. The quick eye of Buonaparte instantly saw his advantage; neither of the divisions was now equal to his own, and he beat them both in detail. He raised the blockade of Mantua, defeated Quasdanowich at Lonato, chased him back into the mountains, and then engaged and routed him twice near Castiglione, on the 3rd and 5th of August. Wurmser had to make a hasty retreat into the mountains, leaving behind his artillery and many thousand men slain. Buonaparte pursued him into the very gorges of the Tyrol, and inflicted fresh losses upon him. The sturdy but not very bright old Austrian, however, made a detour in the hills, and again issued on the plains[454] from the valley of the Brenta. With remarkable address and agility for him, he made his way to Mantua, and threw himself into the fortress with the wretched remains of his army, about eighteen thousand men.
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ONE: TWO:The people having collected in great crowds in the neighbourhood of the Council House, Dalton ordered out a company of soldiers, under a young[355] ensign, to patrol the streets, and overawe any attempts at demonstrations in support of the Council. The young ensign, having a stone flung at him, without further ceremony ordered his men to fire into the crowd, and six persons were killed, and numbers of others wounded. No sooner did Joseph hear of this rash and cruel act, than he wrote highly approving of it, and promoting the ensign. The people, greatly enraged, rose in the different towns, and were attacked by the Imperial troops, and blood was shed in various places. With his usual disregard of consequences, Joseph was at this moment endeavouring to raise a loan in the Netherlands, to enable him to carry on the war against Turkey. But this conduct completely quashed all hope of it; not a man of money would advance a stiver. Trautmansdorff continued to threaten the people, and Dalton was ready to execute his most harsh orders. It was determined to break up the University of Antwerp, and on the 4th of August, 1789, troops were drawn up, and cannon planted in the public square, to keep down the populace, whilst the professors were turned into the streets, and the college doors locked. Here there occurred an attack on the unarmed people, as wanton as that which took place at Brussels, and no less than thirty or forty persons were killed on the spot, and great numbers wounded. This Massacre of Antwerp, as it was called, roused the indignation of the whole Netherlands, and was heard with horror by all Europe. The monks and professors who had been turned out became objects of sympathy, even to those who regarded with wonder and contempt their bigotry and superstition. But Joseph, engaged in his miserable and disgraceful war against the Turks, sent to Dalton his warmest approval of what he called these vigorous measures.
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ONE: TWO:HEROISM OF THE MAID OF SARAGOSSA. (See p. 556.)
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ONE:Charles, on his part, had determined to occupy Corriarrick. For that purpose he had made a forced march, disencumbered himself of all possible encumbrances by burning his own baggage, and encouraging his followers to do the same. On the morning of the 27th he stood on the north side of Corriarrick, and, as he put on his brogues, he is said to have exclaimed, with exultation, "Before these are unloosed, I shall be up with Mr. Cope." To his great astonishment, however, when he reached the summit all was one wild solitudenot a man was visible. At length they discerned some soldiers ascending, whom they set down for part of Lord Loudon's regiment, forming the English vanguard. They turned out to be only some deserters, who informed them of the change in Cope's route.Here, had the Government been wise, they would have stopped; but they were not contented without experiencing a third defeat. The next morning, the 20th of December, they returned to the charge with an indictment against Mr. Hone for publishing a parody on the Athanasian Creed, called "The Sinecurist's Creed." The old Chief Justice was again on the bench, apparently as resolved as ever, and this time the defendant, on entering the court, appeared pale and exhausted, as he well might, for he had put forth exertions and powers of mind which had astonished the whole country and excited the deepest interest. The Attorney-General humanely offered to postpone the trial, but the defendant preferred to go on. He only begged for a few minutes' delay to enable him to put down a few notes on the Attorney-General's address after that was delivered; but the Chief Justice would not allow him this trifling favour, but said, if the defendant would make a formal request for the purpose, he would put off the trial for a day. This would have injured the cause of the defendant, by making it appear that he was in some degree worsted, and, fatigued as he was, he replied, promptly, "No! I make no such request." William Hone, on this third trial, once more seemed to forget his past fatigues, and rose with a strength that completely cowed the old and fiery judge. He did not desist till he had converted his dictatorial manner into a suppliant one. After quoting many eminent Churchmen as dissentients from the Athanasian Creed, and amongst them Warburton and Tillotson, he added, "Even his lordship's father, the Bishop of Carlisle, he believed, took a similar view of this creed." This was coming too near; and the judge said, "Whatever that opinion was, he has gone, many years ago, where he has had to account for his belief and his opinions. For common delicacy, forbear." "O, my lord," replied the satisfied defendant, "I shall certainly forbear." The judge had profited by the lesson to-day: he gave a much more temperate charge to the jury, and they required only twenty minutes to return the third and final victory of Not Guilty. Never had this arbitrary Government suffered so withering a defeat. The sensation throughout the country was immense. The very next day Lord Ellenborough sent in his announcement of retiring from[131] the bench, and in a very short time he retired from this world altogether (December 13, 1818), it being a settled conviction of the public mind that the mortification of such a putting-down, by a man whom he rose from his sick-bed to extinguish, tended materially to hasten that departure. TWO:But far above all rose, at this period, the already popular romantic poet, Walter Scott. Before him, in Scotland, Henry Mackenzie had occupied for a long time the foreground as a writer of fiction, in "The Man of Feeling," "Julia de Roubign," etc., but in a very different class of invention. As Walter Scott (b. 1771; d. 1832) had opened up the romance of the Scottish Highlands in his poems, so he now burst forth, on the same ground, in historic romance, with a vigour, splendour, and wonderful fertility of imagination and resource of knowledge which far exceeded everything in the history of literature since the days of Shakespeare. We need not attempt to characterise the voluminous series of what are called the "Waverley Novels," which, in their ample range, occupied almost every country of Europe and every climate, from the bleak rocks of Orkney to the glowing plains of Syria and India; they are familiar to all readers, and closed this period with a splendour from the mingled blaze of invention, poetry, and science, which no succeeding age is likely to surpass.
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