TWO:After a visit to Paris, Dumouriez arrived at[407] Valenciennes on the 27th of October, and prepared to follow the Austrian commander, Saxe-Teschen, who had been in vain bombarding Lille. On the 5th of November he overtook Saxe-Teschen at Jemappes. The Austrians were strongly posted, but were only about fifteen thousand men opposed to the sixty thousand French; yet they made a vigorous resistance. The battle raged from early in the morning till two in the afternoon, when the Austrians gave way. They retired, however, in good order; and Dumouriez, who had led his forces into the field singing the Marseillaise hymn, did not make much pursuit. Upwards of two thousand men are said to have fallen on each side. The battle placed all Flanders at the mercy of the French; Tournay opened its gates to Labourdonnais, and Courtrai, Menin, and Bruges sent deputies to welcome Dumouriez. Other towns rapidly followed their example. The country had been already Jacobinised, and now fancied it was going to enjoy liberty and equality in alliance with the French. The people were soon undeceived. The French had no intention of anything but, under those pretences, of subduing and preying on the surrounding nations. Flanders had speedy proofs of what every country where the French came had to expect. Jacobin Commissioners arrived from the Convention to levy contributions for the maintenance of the army, as if they were a conquered people. Dumouriez issued an order on entering Mons for the clergy to advance one year's income for the same purpose. Saxe-Teschen and old Marshal Bender evacuated Brussels, and on the 14th Dumouriez entered and took up his headquarters there. He there made heavy forced loans, and soon after arrived what was styled a Committee of Purchases from Paris, headed by Bidermann, the banker, and partner of Clavire, Minister of Finance. This Committee, on which were several Jews, made all the bargains for the army, and paid for themnot in gold but in the worthless assignats of France. The Belgians remonstrated and resisted, but in vain. Dumouriez advanced to Mechlin, having dispatched Labourdonnais to lay siege to Antwerp and Valence, and to reduce Namur. At Mechlin he found a great store of arms and ammunition, which enabled him to equip whole flocks of volunteers who came after him from France. On the 22nd, at Tirlemont, he again overtook Saxe-Teschen, who made another stout resistance, and then retired to Lige, where the Austrians made another stand on the 27th. They were repulsed, but with heavy loss on both sides; and soon afterwards, Antwerp and Valence having surrendered, all the Austrian Netherlands, except Luxembourg, were in the hands of France within a single month. Dumouriez sent forward Miranda, a Peruvian, who had superseded Labourdonnais at Antwerp, to reduce Roermond, and to enter Holland by the seizure of Maestricht; but the Convention were not yet prepared for this invasion of Holland, and Dumouriez pushed on to Aix-la-Chapelle, where he again defeated the Austrians on the 7th of December, and levying heavy contributions there, took up his winter quarters in the ancient city of Charlemagne, and within little more than a day's march of the Rhine.
ONE:The only matters of interest debated in Parliament during this year, except that of the discontent in the country, were a long debate on Catholic emancipation, in the month of May, which was negatived by a majority of only twenty-four, showing that that question was progressing towards its goal; and a motion of Lord Castlereagh for the gradual abolition of sinecures. This intimated some slight impression of the necessity to do something to abate the public dissatisfaction, but it was an impression only on the surface. This Ministry was too much determined to maintain the scale of war expenditure to which they had been accustomed to make any real retrenchment. A committee appointed to consider the scheme recommended the abolition of sinecures to the amount of fifty-four thousand pounds per annum, but neutralised the benefit by recommending instead a pension-list of forty-two thousand pounds per annum. The country received the amendment with disgust and derision.
THREE:Hunt, and about a dozen of his friends, were seized on the platform. Bamford and some others, who had escaped, were afterwards taken. The streets were then cleared by the infantry. Such was the celebrated Manchester massacre, in which the actual wounds inflicted by the soldiers do not appear to have been many. About seventy people were carried to the infirmaries, or went there, to have their wounds dresseda considerable number for severe cuts and fractured limbs; and six lives were lost, including a special constable run over by the cavalry, and a Manchester Yeoman, who was struck from his horse by a brickbat, aimed by a man whom he was pursuing.The next person to attempt the impossible in the vain endeavour to keep the vessel of the old French monarchy afloat with all its leaks and rottenness, was the Archbishop of Toulouse, Lomnie de Brienne. He had vigorously opposed Calonne; but there was no way of raising the necessary revenue but to adopt some of the very proposals of Calonne, and tax the privileged classes, or to attempt to draw something still from the exhausted people. As the less difficult experiment of the two, he was compelled to cast his eyes towards the property of the nobles and the Church; but he found the nobles and the clergy as ready to sacrifice him as they had been to sacrifice Calonne. When one or two of the more pliant or more enlightened members of those classes ventured to remark on the vast amount of untaxed property, and particularly of tithes, there was an actual tempest of fury raised. Tithes were declared to be the voluntary offerings of the piety of the faithful, and therefore not to be touched. As further loans were out of the question, some one ventured to assert that the only means of solving the difficulty was to assemble the States General. "You would convoke the States General?" said the Minister in consternation. "Yes," replied Lafayette, who was bent on revolutionising France, as he had helped to revolutionise America"yes, and something more than that!" These words were taken down as most exceptionable and dangerous. All that the Assembly of Notables could be brought to do was to confirm the abolition of the corve, and to pass a stamp act. They would not move a step further, and they were dismissed by the king on the 25th of May, 1787. The Parliament, or Chief Court of Justice, adopted a similar course, and it also was dismissed. The king then promulgated a new constitution, but it fell hopelessly to the ground.
THREE:Stood waiting too, for whom? Lord Chatham."
THREE:
TWO:
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TWO:The king, in the first instance, applied to Lord Shelburne to form a Ministry; but he was bound by engagements to Wentworth House, and honourably refused to take the lead. George then tried Lord Gower as ineffectually, and so was compelled to send for Lord Rockingham, who accepted office, on the condition that peace should be made with America, including the acknowledgment of its independence, if unavoidable; administrative reform, on the basis of Mr. Burke's three Bills; and the expulsion of contractors from Parliament, and revenue officers from the exercise of the elective franchise. The king stood strongly on the retention of Lord Chancellor Thurlow and Lord Stormont in their offices. Rockingham, with reluctance, conceded the retention of Thurlow, but refused that of Stormont. The choice of Lord Rockingham was such as could only have been made where family influence and party cliques had more weight than the proper object of a Ministerthe able management of national affairs. Rockingham, though a very honourable man, was never a man of any ability, and though now only[288] fifty-two, his health and faculties, such as they were, were fast failing. Besides this, there was a violent jealousy between him and Lord Shelburne, who became his colleague, and brought in half of the Cabinet. The shape which the Ministry eventually assumed was this:Lord Rockingham became First Lord of the Treasury and Premier; the Earl of Shelburne and Charles Fox, Secretaries of State; Thurlow, Lord Chancellor; Camden, notwithstanding his age, President of the Council; Duke of Grafton, Privy Seal; Lord John Cavendish, Chancellor of the Exchequer; Keppelmade a viscountFirst Lord of the Admiralty; General Conway, Commander of the Forces; the Duke of Richmond, Master-General of Ordnance; Dunningas Lord AshburtonChancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Burke was not admitted to the Cabinet, for the Whigs were too great sticklers for birth and family; but his indispensable ability insured him the Paymastership of the Forcesby far the most lucrative office in the hands of Government, but the salary of which he was pledged to reduce by his Bill. Pitt was offered a place as Lord of the Treasury; but he had already declared, on the 8th of March, on the debate on Lord John Cavendish's motion, that he would never accept a subordinate situation. Dundas remained in office, as Lord Advocate, and John Lee was made Solicitor-General. Such was the new Administration: it embraced, as leaders, five Rockinghamites and five Shelburnites. The eleventh member of the Cabinet, Thurlow, belonged to neither side, but was the king's man. Fox saw himself in office with him with great repugnance, and Burke felt the slight put upon him in excluding him from the Cabinet.
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THREE:Catherine of Russia, thus rid of the only two monarchs who were likely to trouble her with scruples, hastened her grand design of absorbing Poland. She professed to be much scandalised and alarmed at the proceedings of the king, who had attended a dinner given by the municipality of Warsaw on the anniversary of the passing of their new Constitution, at which he had not only responded to the toast of his health by drinking to the nation and the municipality, thus sanctioning them as great powers, as the French had done, but had sat complacently amid the loud cries of "Long live Liberty! Long live the nation, and our citizen king, the friend of the Rights of Man!" The Poles had certainly become enthusiastic imitators of the French; they had[397] established clubs in imitation of the clubs of Paris, had sent a deputation to congratulate the French on their Revolution, and had passed various decrees of a Jacobin character. Neither did she lack a sanction from the Poles themselves. There had always been violent parties in that kingdom; and at this time a number of nobles, who opposed the new Constitution, sent a deputation with a memorial to the Empress, at St. Petersburg, inviting her to assist them in restoring the old Constitution. Catherine gave them a ready promise, and, on the 14th of May, Felix Potocki, Branicki, Rzewinski, and eleven other nobles, met at Targowica, and entered into a confederacy for this purpose. This confederacy was followed, only four days after its signing, by a protest issued by Bulgakoff, the Russian Minister, at Warsaw, against the whole of the new institutions and decrees. On the 18th of May, the same day that this proclamation was issued at Warsaw, a hundred thousand Russian troops marched over the Polish frontiers, attended by some of the pro-Russian confederates, and assumed the appearance of an army of occupation.
THREE:Sir John Malcolm and Captain Grant pursued the fugitives along the banks of the Seepra, killing numbers, and seizing immense booty, including elephants and numerous camels. He left them no time to reassemble, but advanced rapidly on the capital of Holkar, joined by reinforcements from the Bombay army under Major-General Sir William Keir. Alarmed at this vigorous action, the Holkar Mahrattas hastily concluded peace, gave up all their forts, and placed their territories under British protection. Some Pathan chiefs attempted to resist, trusting to the defences of Rampoora; but General Brown soon stormed that place, and the whole country of the Holkar Mahrattas was reduced to obedience. No respite was granted to the Pindarrees. Cheetoo was followed from place to place by the Gujerat army under Sir William Keir, and sought refuge in vain amongst the hills and jungles of Malwa and along the Nerbudda. At length, in January, 1818, Cheetoo's last camp was surprised and cut to pieces. After seeking refuge amongst various tribes, Cheetoo was ultimately found in the jungle near the fort of Aseerghur, torn to pieces by a tiger, his horse grazing not far off, safe, and a bag on his saddle containing his remaining jewels and two hundred and fifty rupees. And thus ended the existence of the long formidable hosts of the Pindarrees.Prussia, it might be supposed, would escape the invasion of Revolutionary principles in 1848. Great hopes had been excited on the accession of Frederick William IV. to his father's throne. Yet it was evident to close observers of the signs of the times that a spirit of sullen discontent was brooding over the population. There was a feeling that their amiable and accomplished Sovereign had disappointed them. He proved to be excessively sensitive to the slightest infringement of his prerogative, and he abhorred the idea of representative bodies, who might oppose constitutional barriers to his own absolute will. Hence, there grew up sensibly a mutual feeling of distrust between him and the people, and the natural effect on his part was a change from the leniency and liberality of his earlier years to a more austere temper, while a tedious, inactive, and undecided course of policy wore out the patience of those who expected a more constitutional system. Consequently, although the administration of the country was free from any taint of corruption, and was, on the whole, moderate and just, the revolutionary earthquake of 1848 shook the kingdom of Prussia to its very foundations.
THREE:But besides nascent war, the Anti-Slavery movement of Wilberforce, Pitt's friend, was decidedly adverse to the expected increase of income. The Abolitionists had now begun to abandon the use of slave-grown sugar, and they proposed to extend this to all the produce of the West India islands, till the slave trade should be extirpated. This alarmed Pitt, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, and he prevailed on Wilberforce to discourage this project for awhile. The Abolition cause received serious injury from the frightful insurrection which had broken out in St. Domingo, and from the outrages which the insurgent blacks had perpetrated on the whites. Such were held up by the friends of slavery as the natural consequences of novel doctrines of philanthropy. What made[391] the matter more serious was, that Brissot and the worst of the Jacobins were the authors of these bloody tragedies, by their violent advocacy of the universal adoption of the Rights of Man. All these men were enthusiastic applauders of the English Abolitionists. Paine was a prominent Abolitionist; and Clarkson, the right hand of Wilberforce, was an equal admirer of the French Revolution, and gave serious offence by attending a dinner at the "Crown and Anchor," to celebrate the taking of the Bastille. These circumstances had a great effect when Wilberforce, on the 2nd of April, brought in his annual motion for the immediate abolition of the slave trade. Fox and Pitt eloquently supported him; but Dundas, now become Secretary of State, prevailed to introduce into the motion the words "gradual abolition." The Wilberforce party managed to carry a motion in the Commons, for the abolition of the trade to the West Indies, on the 1st of January, 1796; but this was thrown out in the Lords, where it was opposed by the Duke of Clarence, who had been in the West Indies, and thought the descriptions of the condition of the slaves overdrawn. It was also opposed by Thurlow, by Horsley, Bishop of St. Davids, and a considerable majority.One Samuel Downie was next arraigned on the[440] same charges, on the 5th of September, as an accomplice of Watt. But it appeared that he had been rather the dupe of Watt and the spy-employing Government than anything else; and though the jury pronounced him guilty, they recommended him to mercy. He was respited and eventually pardoned; but Watt underwent his sentence, so far as being hanged and beheaded,a warning to spies how they trusted a Government equally faithless to the people and to the tools by which they sought to betray them.
THREE:
THREE:The feelings of the constituencies were undergoing a speedy change, and the fact was now being rapidly proved. For three months, whilst the Opposition in the House of Commons were exulting on their majority, the majority amongst the people was sliding from them; and, whilst they were straining every nerve to prevent the dissolution of Parliament, they were only more securely preparing their own fall, for Pitt and the Government had been zealously at work undermining them. The nation was pleased at his bravery, and at his disinterestedness in refusing the sinecure of the Clerkship of the Pells, though his private means were scarcely 300 a year.
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ONE:Whilst the Gironde was thus weakened by this implacable and incurable feud with the Jacobins, Austria was making unmistakable signs of preparations for that war which Leopold had often threatened, but never commenced. Francis received deputations from the Emigrant princes, ordered the concentration of troops in Flanders, and spoke in so firm a tone of restoring Louis and the old system of things, that the French ambassador at Vienna, M. De Noailles, sent in his resignation, stating that he despaired of inducing the Emperor to listen to the language which had been dictated to him. Two days afterwards, however, Noailles recalled his resignation, saying he had obtained the categorical answer demanded of the Court of Vienna. This was sent in a dispatch from Baron von Cobentzel, the Foreign Minister of Austria. In this document, which was tantamount to a declaration of war, the Court of Vienna declared that it would listen to no terms on behalf of the King of France, except his entire restoration to all the ancient rights of his throne, according to the royal declaration of the 23rd of June, 1789; and the restoration of the domains in Alsace, with all their feudal rights, to the princes of the Empire. Moreover, Prince Kaunitz, the chief Minister of Francis, announced his determination to hold no correspondence with the Government which had usurped authority in France.Next came the enactments regarding fasting. By 5 Elizabeth every person who ate flesh on a fish day was liable to a penalty of three pounds; and, in case of non-payment, to three months' imprisonment. It was added that this eating of fish was not from any superstitious notion, but to encourage the fisheries; but by the 2 and 3 Edward VI. the power of inflicting these fish and flesh penalties was invested in the two Archbishops, as though the offence of eating flesh on fish days was an ecclesiastical offence. Lord Stanhope showed that the powers and penalties of excommunication were still in full force; that whoever was excommunicated had no legal power of recovering any debt, or payment for anything that he might sell; that excommunication and its penalties were made valid by the 5 Elizabeth and the 29 Charles II.; that by the 30 Charles II. every peer, or member of the House of Peers, peer of Scotland, or Ireland, or member of the House of Commons, who should go to Court without having made the declaration against transubstantiation, and the invocation of saints therein contained, should be disabled from holding any office, civil or military, from making a proxy in the House of Lords, or from sueing or using any action in law or equity; from being guardian, trustee, or administrator of any will; and should be deemed "a Popish recusant convict." His Lordship observed that probably the whole Protestant bench of bishops were at that moment in this predicament, and that he had a right to clear the House of them, and proceed with his Bill in their absence. He next quoted the 1st of James I., which decreed that any woman, or any person whatever under twenty-one years of age, except sailors, ship-boys, or apprentices, or factors of merchants, who should go over sea without a licence from the king, or six of his Privy Council, should forfeit all his or her goods, lands, and moneys whatever; and whoever should send such person without such licence should forfeit one hundred pounds; and every officer of a port, and every shipowner, master of a ship, and all his mariners who should allow such person to go, or should take him or her, should forfeit everything they possessed, one half to the king, and the other half to the person sueing.
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These were his first decrees:I. The British Isles were declared in a state of blockade. II. All commerce and correspondence with Britain was forbidden. All British letters were to be seized in the post-houses. III. Every Englishman, of whatever rank or quality, found in France, or the countries allied with her, was declared a prisoner of war. IV. All merchandise or property of any kind belonging to British subjects was declared lawful prize. V. All articles of British manufacture, and articles produced in her colonies, were, in like manner, declared contraband and lawful prize. VI. Half of the produce of the above confiscations was to be employed in the relief of those merchants whose vessels had been captured by British cruisers. VII. All vessels coming from Britain or British colonies were to be refused admission into any harbour in or connected with France. These decrees were to be binding wherever French power extended, but they had no effect in checking the commerce of Britain; the distress to Continental merchants, however, and the exasperation of the people deprived of British manufactures, grew immediately acute. Bourrienne says that the fiscal tyranny thus created became intolerable. At the same time, the desire of revenue induced Buonaparte to allow his decrees to be infringed by the payment of exorbitant licences for the import of British goods. French goods, also, were lauded with incredible impudence, though they were bought only to be thrown into the sea. Hamburg, Bordeaux, Nantes, and other Continental ports solicited, by petitions and deputations, some relaxation of the system, to prevent universal ruin. They declared that general bankruptcy must ensue if it were continued. "Be it so," replied Buonaparte, arrogantly; "the more insolvency on the Continent, the more ruin in England." As they could not bend Buonaparte, merchants, douaniers, magistrates, prefects, generals, all combined in one system of fraudulent papers, bills of lading or certificates, by which British goods were admitted and circulated under other names for sufficient bribes. The only mischief which his embargo did was to the nations of the Continent, especially Holland, Belgium, Germany, and to himself; for his rigour in this respect was one of the things which drove the whole of Europe to abominate his tyranny, and rejoice in his eventual fall.When the visitors entered a village, their first question was, "How many deaths?" "The hunger is upon us," was everywhere the cry; and involuntarily they found themselves regarding this hunger as they would an epidemic, looking upon starvation as a disease. In fact, as they passed along, their wonder was, not that the people died, but that they lived; and Mr. W. E. Forster, in his report, said, "I have no doubt whatever that in any other country the mortality would have been far greater; and that many lives have been[539] prolonged, perhaps saved, by the long apprenticeship to want in which the Irish peasant has been trained, and by that lovely, touching charity which prompts him to share his scanty meal with his starving neighbour. But the springs of this charity must be rapidly dried up. Like a scourge of locusts, the hunger daily sweeps over fresh districts, eating up all before it. One class after another is falling into the same abyss of ruin."The aggressive policy of the Holy Alliance, and the French invasion of Spain, despite England's remonstrances, provoked Mr. Canning to hasten the recognition of the revolted colonies in South America. It was in defending this policy that he uttered the memorable sentence so often quoted as a specimen of the sublime:"Contemplating Spain such as our ancestors had known her, I resolved that if France had Spain, it should not be Spain with the Indies. I called the New World into existence to redress the balance of the Old."Notwithstanding that Hyder had established his camp soon after in a strong position near the village of Pollilore, he was attacked on the 27th of August by Eyre Coote. On this occasion Sir Hector Munro warned Coote of the disadvantages of ground under which he was going to engage, and the inevitable sacrifice of life. Coote replied angrily, "You talk to me, sir, when you should be doing your duty!" His warning, however, was just. Coote did not succeed in driving Hyder from his post without severe loss. But again, on the 27th of September, another battle was fought between them in the pass of Sholinghur, near Bellore, in which Coote defeated Hyder with terrible loss. This battle relieved the English garrison in Bellore, and the rainy season put an end to operations, but the Carnatic was saved.
