ONE:The first place that reeled under the electric shock of the French Revolution was Glasgow. On the 5th of March, in the afternoon, a body of 5,000 men suddenly assembled on the Green in that city, tore up the iron railings for weapons, and thus formidably armed, they commenced an attack on the principal shops, chiefly those of gunsmiths and jewellers. The police, apprehending no outbreak of the kind, were scattered on their beats, and could afford no protection until forty shops had been pillaged and gutted, and property to the value of 10,000 carried off or destroyed. Next morning about 10,000 persons assembled on the Green, armed with muskets, swords, crowbars, and iron rails, and unanimously resolved"To march immediately to the neighbouring suburb of Calton, and turn out all the workers in the mills there, who, it was expected, would join them; to go from thence to the gas manufactory, and cut the pipes, so as to lay the city at night in darkness; to march next to the gaols and liberate all the prisoners; and to break open the shops, set fire to and plunder the city." They immediately set out for the Calton mills, meeting on their way fourteen pensioners in charge of a prisoner. These they attempted to disarm, but the veterans fired, and two men fell dead. Instantly the rioters raised the cry, "Blood for blood!" and were wresting the muskets from the soldiers, when a squadron of cavalry galloped up with drawn swords. The people fell back, and the riot was suppressed. It afterwards transpired that the Chartists in all the manufacturing towns of the west of Scotland only awaited the signal of success from Glasgow to break out in rebellion. The prompt suppression of the movement was therefore a matter of great importance.
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ONE:This most bloody of battles took place on the 7th of September. There were about one hundred and twenty thousand men engaged on each side, and the guns on each side are said to have amounted to one thousand. Before the battle, the priests passed along the ranks of the Russians, reminding them of the wrongs they had suffered, and promising paradise to all that fell. Buonaparte, on his side, issued this proclamation:"Soldiers! here is the battle you have longed for! It is necessary, for it brings us plenty, good winter-quarters, and a safe return to France. Behave yourselves so that posterity may say of you'He was in that great battle under the walls of Moscow.'" It was rather a damping circumstance that the day before the battle Buonaparte received the news of Wellington's victory at Salamanca. The battle commenced at seven o'clock in the morning, and continued the greater part of the day, the Russians, even to the newest levies, fighting with the most immovable courage. Buonaparte demanded of Caulaincourt whether the Russians were determined to conquer or die? He replied that they had been fanaticised by their leaders, and would be killed rather than surrender. Buonaparte then ordered up every possible gun, on his plan of battering an army as he would batter a fortress. Still the Russians fought on furiously, and Berthier urged him to call up his "young Guard." But he replied, "And if there is another battle to-morrow, where is my army?"
FORE:The chief governor of Ireland, at that time, was no timid civilian. He was a brave and distinguished soldiera man of chivalrous honour himself, and therefore not prone to entertain doubts injurious to the honour of the profession of which he was an ornament. But Lord Anglesey was also capable of estimating the force of popular contagious influences on military discipline and fidelity in an extraordinary national crisis; and he was so alarmed at the state of things developed by the Clare election, that he wrote confidentially to Mr. Peel, cautioning him against supposing that Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald, from vexation and disappointment, should exaggerate the danger of the crisis, and telling him that he would send Major Warburton on a secret mission, known only to his private secretary, to explain to the Government in London the state of affairs. Major Warburton, a very intelligent and trustworthy officer, was at the head of the constabulary, and commanded the force at Clare during the election. He testified, as the result of his observation there, that, even in the constabulary and the army, the sympathies of a common cause, political and religious, could not be altogether repressed, and that implicit reliance could not long be placed on the effect of discipline and the duty of obedience. On the 20th of July Lord Anglesey wrote as follows:"We hear occasionally of the Catholic soldiers being ill-disposed, and entirely under the influence of the priests. One regiment of infantry is said to be divided into Orange and Catholic factions. It is certain that, on the 12th of July, the guard at the Castle had Orange lilies about them." On the 26th of July the Viceroy wrote another letter, from which the following is an extract:"The priests are using very inflammatory language, and are certainly working upon the Catholics of the army. I think it important that the dep?ts of Irish recruits should be gradually removed, under the appearance of being required to join their regiments, and that whatever regiments are sent here should be those of Scotland,[279] or, at all events, of men not recruited from the south of Ireland. I desired Sir John Byng to convey this opinion to Lord Hill."Mr. O'Connell's avowed principle of action was "moral force." He was in the constant habit of asserting that "the man who commits a crime gives strength to the enemy;" and that no political advantages, however great, should be obtained at the expense of "one drop of Christian blood." Nevertheless, the letters which he was in the habit of addressing to "the people of Ireland,"[286] and which were remarkable for their clearness, force, and emphatic tautology, had always prefixed to them, as a standing motto, Byron's couplet
FORE:The year 1800 opened in the British Parliament by a debate on an Address to the king, approving of the reply to an overture for peace by Buonaparte, as First Consul of France. The letter addressed directly to the king was a grave breach of diplomatic etiquette, and was answered by Lord Grenville, the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, in a caustic but dignified tone. A correspondence ensued between Lord Grenville and M. Talleyrand, as French Minister for Foreign Affairs; but it ended in nothing, as the British Minister distinctly declined to treat. If Buonaparte had been sincerely desirous of peace, he must have withdrawn the French army from Egypt, as it was there with the open declaration of an intention to make that country a stepping-stone to India. But, so far from this, Buonaparte was, at the same moment, preparing to make fresh and still more overwhelming invasions of Italy, Switzerland, and Germany, and the proposal was simply made to gain time.During these debates, Ministers detailed the proceedings which had for some time past taken place between the Governments of France and Britain, to show that the maintenance of peace was impossible. The chief of these transactions were briefly these:From the date of the conferences at Pillnitz in 1791, when Prussia and Austria resolved to embrace the cause of the French king, and invited the other Powers to support them, Britain declared, both to those Powers and to France, her intention of remaining neutral. It was no easy matter to maintain such neutrality. To the Jacobin leaders, every country with an orderly Government, and still more a monarchy, was an offence. Against Britain they displayed a particular animus, which the most friendly offices did not remove. When, towards the end of 1791, the Declaration of the Rights of Man having reached St. Domingo, the negroes rose in insurrection to claim these rights, Lord Effingham, the Governor of Jamaica, aided the French Colonial Government with arms and ammunition, and the fugitive white people with provisions and protection. When this was notified to the National Assembly, with the King of Britain's approval of it, by Lord Gower, the ambassador at Paris, a vote of thanks was passed, but only to the British nation, and on condition that not even Lord Effingham's name should be mentioned in it. Other transactions on the part of the French still more offensive took place from time to time, but Britain still maintained her neutrality. When war was declared by France against Austria, in April, 1792, Chauvelin announced the fact to the British Government, and requested that British subjects should be prohibited from serving in any foreign army against France. Government at once issued an order to that effect. In June the French Government, through Chauvelin, requested the good offices of Britain in making pacific proposals to Prussia and Austria; but find that France expected more than friendly mediationactual armed coalition with Francethe British Government declined this, as contrary to existing alliances with those Powers. The proclamations of the French Government were already such as breathed war to Europe; all thrones were menaced with annihilation. At this time Mr. Miles, who exerted himself to maintain a friendly feeling between the nations, records, in his correspondence with the French Minister Lebrun and others, that Roland declared to one of his friends that peace was out of the question; that France had three hundred thousand men in arms, and that the Ministers must make them march as far as ever their legs could carry them, or they would return and cut all their throats.
FORE:[413]Louis Philippe, King of the French, had been the subject of constant eulogy for the consummate ability and exquisite tact with which he had governed France for seventeen years. It was supposed that the "Citizen King" had at length taught his restless and impulsive subjects the blessings of constitutional government, and that they were perfectly contented with the free institutions under which it was now their happiness to live. Guizot, regarded as one of the greatest statesmen on the Continent, was at the head of affairs in 1847, and it was hoped that his profound wisdom and keen sagacity would enable him to guard the state against any dangers with which it might be threatened by the Legitimists on one side or the Democrats on the other. But the whole aspect of public affairs in France was deceptive, and the unconscious monarch occupied a throne which rested on a volcano. The representative government of which he boasted was nothing but a shama gross fraud upon the nation. The basis of the electoral constituency was extremely narrow, and majorities were secured in the Chambers by the gross abuse of enormous government patronage. The people, however, saw through the delusion, and were indignant at the artifices by which they were deceived. The king, who interfered with his Ministers in everything, and really directed the Government, was proud of his skill in "managing" his Ministry, his Parliament, and the nation. But the conviction gained ground everywhere, and with it arose a feeling of deep resentment, that he had broken faith with the nation, that he had utterly failed to fulfil his pledges to the people, who had erected the barricades, and placed him upon the throne in 1830. The friends of the monarchy were convinced that it could only be saved by speedy and effectual reform. But the very name of Reform was hateful to the king, and his aide-de-camp took care to make known to the members of the Chambers his opinions and feelings upon the subject. M. Odillon Barrot, however, originated a series of Reform banquets, which commenced in Paris, and were held in the principal provincial cities, at which the most eminent men in the country delivered strong speeches against political corruption and corrupters, and especially against the Minister who was regarded as their chief defenderGuizot.
FORE:[See larger version]With regard to the Turkish question, all possible measures were in the first instance to be tried, with a view to reconcile the differences between Russia and Turkey. These referred to the Russian protection of the Christian subjects of the Sultan, and the navigation of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus. When these matters were disposed of, then, and not till then, was the condition of Greece to be considered, and in dealing with this question the British plenipotentiary was to use great caution, to avoid committing England either to the recognition or subjugation of that country.
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