ONE:WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM.THE MARQUIS OF ANGLESEY. (After the Portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence.)
TWO:Having thus accomplished their mission, the two armies returned in triumph to India. Lord Ellenborough was delighted, though he only thwarted his generals. He was now at Simla, in the very house whence his predecessor had issued his proclamation for the restoration of Shah Sujah, which had been the cause of all our disasters. On the 1st of October, the anniversary of the day when, two years before, he had reversed the policy of Lord Auckland, he issued a proclamation from the same room. It is a well-written State paper, ably reviewing the situation of Indian affairs and clearly announcing the future policy of our Indian Government. It is historically important, and deserves to be permanently recorded in the history of England:"The Government of India directed its army to pass the Indus, in order to expel from Afghanistan a chief believed to be hostile to British interests, and to replace upon his throne a Sovereign represented to be friendly to those interests and popular with his former subjects. The chief believed to be hostile became a prisoner, and the Sovereign represented to be popular was replaced upon his throne; but after events which brought into question his fidelity to the Government by which he was restored, he lost by the hands of an assassin the throne he had only held[504] amidst insurrections, and his death was preceded and followed by still existing anarchy.[4] Disasters unparalleled in their extent, unless by the errors in which they originated, and by the treachery by which they were completed, have in one short campaign been avenged upon every scene of past misfortune; and repeated victories in the field, and the capture of the cities and citadels of Ghuznee and Cabul, have again attached the opinion of invincibility to the British arms. The British armies in possession of Afghanistan will now be withdrawn to the Sutlej. The Governor-General will leave it to the Afghans themselves to create a government, amidst the anarchy which is the consequence of their crimes. To force the Sovereign upon a reluctant people would be as inconsistent with the policy as it is with the principles of the British Government, tending to place the arms and resources of that people at the disposal of the first invader, and to impose the burden of supporting a Sovereign without the prospect of benefit from his alliance. The Governor-General will willingly recognise any Government approved by the Afghans themselves, which shall appear desirous and capable of maintaining friendly relations with neighbouring States. Content with the limits Nature appears to have assigned to its empire, the Government of India will devote all its efforts to the establishment and maintenance of general peace, to the protection of the sovereigns and chiefs, its allies, and to the prosperity and happiness of its own faithful subjects."
ONE:These words, indiscreet as they were, and calculated to embarrass the Ministers, were regarded as in the highest degree precious by the bishops and clergy, and the whole Tory party. With the utmost despatch they were circulated far and wide, with the design of bringing public feeling to bear against Mr. Ward's motion. In the meantime, great efforts were made by the Government to be able to evade the motion. Its position at this time appeared far from enviable, and there was a general impression that it could not long survive. The new appointments did not give satisfaction. The Cabinet was said to be only patched up in order to wear through the Session. It was in these discouraging circumstances that Lord Althorp had to meet Mr. Ward's motion on Monday, the 2nd of June. In order to avoid a dissolution and a general election, the results of which might turn upon the existence of the Irish Church, it was necessary that Mr. Ward's motion should be defeated. He refused to withdraw it, because he apprehended the speedy dissolution of the Ministry, and he wished the decision of the House of Commons on the Irish Church question to be recorded, that it might stand in the way of a less liberal Administration. The anticipated contest in the Commons that evening excited extraordinary interest. The House was surrounded by a crowd anxious to obtain admittance or to hear the result, while within it was so thronged with members that the Ministers found it difficult to get to their seats. Rarely has there been so full a House, the number of members being 516. When Mr. Ward had spoken in favour of his motion, Lord Althorp rose to reply. He announced that a special commission of inquiry had been already issued, composed of laymen, who were to visit every parish in Ireland, and were to report on the means of religious instruction for the people; and that, pending this inquiry, he saw no necessity for the House being called upon to affirm the principles of Mr. Ward's motion. He would, therefore, content himself by moving the previous question. This was carried by an overwhelming majority, the numbers being 396 to 120.
TWO:On the 13th of February the Opposition in the Commons brought on the question of the validity of general warrants. The debate continued all that day and the next night till seven o'clock in the morning. The motion was thrown out; but Sir William Meredith immediately made another, that a general warrant for apprehending the authors, printers, and publishers of a seditious libel is not warranted by law. The combat was renewed, and Pitt made a tremendous speech, declaring that if the House resisted Sir William Meredith's motion, they would be the disgrace of the present age, and the reproach of posterity. He upbraided Ministers with taking mean and petty vengeance on those who did not agree with them, by dismissing them from office. This charge Grenville had the effrontery to deny, though it was a notorious fact. As the debate approached its close, the Ministers called in every possible vote; "the sick, the lame were hurried into the House, so that," says Horace Walpole, "you would have thought they had sent a search warrant into every hospital for Members of Parliament." When the division came, which was only for the adjournment of Meredith's motion for a month, they only carried it by fourteen votes. In the City there was a confident anticipation of the defeat of Ministers, and materials had been got together for bonfires all over London, and for illuminating the Monument. Temple was said to have faggots ready for bonfires of his own.
ONE:On this day all Paris was astir. The drums were beating in all quarters; the National Guard were assembling at their different posts; the Insurrectional Committee had divided itself into three sections. One took its station in the Faubourg St. Marceau, with Fournier at its head; another in the Faubourg St. Antoine, headed by Westermann and Santerre; whilst Danton, Camille Desmoulins, and Carra, were at the Cordeliers. About twelve o'clock the tocsin began to ring out from the H?tel de Ville, and was quickly followed by the bells in every church tower in Paris. By one o'clock the palace was surrounded by vast throngs of armed people. They could be seen by the inmates of the palace through the old doors of the courts, and from the windows. Their artillery was visibly pointed at the palace, and the noise of their shouting, beating of drums, and singing of insurrectionary songs, was awful. The king had issued an order that the Swiss and Guards should not commence the attack, but should repel force by force. It was now recommended that the king also should go down, and by showing himself, and addressing a few words to them, should animate them in their duty. The queen, her eyes inflamed with weeping, and with an air of dignity, which was never forgotten by those who saw her, said also, "Sire, it is time to show yourself." She is said to have snatched a pistol from the belt of old General d'Affry, and to have presented it in an excitement that scarcely allowed her to remain behind. Could she have changed places, had she been queen in her own right, there would soon have been a change of scene. As for Louis, with that passive courage which he always possessed, and so uselessly, he went forward and presented himself to view upon the balcony. At the sight of him, the Grenadiers raised their caps on the points of their swords and bayonets, and there were cries of "Vive le Roi!" the last that saluted him in his hereditary palace. Even at this cry, numbers of the National Guard took alarm, imagining that they were to be surrendered to the knights of the dagger, and that they had been betrayed. The gunners, joining in the panic, turned their guns towards the palace, but the more faithful Guard drove them from the guns, disarmed them, and put them under watch.
TWO:As Blucher was, as usual, much ahead of the other divisions of the Allies, Buonaparte resolved to attack him before he could form a junction with Schwarzenberg. Blucher, informed of his purpose, concentrated his forces at Brienne, on the Aube, fourteen miles below Bar. Brienne is only a small village, having but two streets, one of them ascending to the chateauoccupied as a military academy, where Napoleon himself received his military educationthe other leading to Arcis-sur-Aube. Blucher had quartered himself in the chateau, and was at dinner with his staff, on the 27th of January, when he was astonished to find that Buonaparte was already upon him. The chateau being surrounded by a woody park, Napoleon had approached under cover of it, and suddenly driven in two thousand Russians posted there, and was rushing on to capture the general and all his staff. A most miserable look-out must have been kept by the Prussian outposts. Blucher and his generals, startled by the terrible uproar, had just time to escape by a postern, and by leading their horses down a flight of steps. Recovered, however, from their surprise, the Russians turned on the French, and were soon supported by the Prussians. The Cossacks galloped forward, and nearly succeeded in capturing Buonaparte at the head of his troops. One man was laying hands on the Man in the Grey Coat, when Gourgaud shot him with a pistol. Buonaparte gained possession of Brienne, but, like Moscow, it was burned over his head, and it was not till eleven o'clock at night that Blucher, who had only twenty thousand men engaged, retired, and took up a position at La Rothire. It could scarcely be styled a victory, yet Napoleon proclaimed it a brilliant one, asserting that he had taken fifteen thousand prisoners and forty pieces of cannon, when he had taken no cannon whatever, and only a hundred prisoners.
