
FORE:The Spaniards had so crowded their ships with soldiers, and made such wretched provision for their accommodation, that the most destructive and contagious fever was raging amongst them. This was quickly communicated to the French vessels; the mortality was more than that of a great battle, and the combined fleet hastened to Martinique, where they landed their soldiers and part of their seamen to recruit. They remained at Fort Royal till the 5th of July, only to disagree and quarrel more and more. Proceeding thence to St. Domingo, they parted, De Guichen returning to Europe, as convoy of the French homebound merchantmen; and Solano sailing to Havana, to co-operate with his countrymen in their designs on Florida.

FORE:[288]

FORE:The Wesleyan Methodists were next in number to the members of the Established Church. The progress of this society was very rapid after 1820. In that year the number of its ministers was 718, and of its members or communicants in Great Britain, 191,000. In 1830 the numbers were respectively 824 and 248,000; and so largely did they increase in the next ten years, that in 1840 the ministers were 1,167, and the members 323,000. The 1851 census returns showed 6,579 chapels belonging to this connexion in England and Wales, containing accommodation for 1,447,580 persons. The Society of Friends, on the other hand, was declining. The Roman Catholics made considerable progress in England during the last two reigns. In 1829 they had 394 chapels, which[428] in 1840 had increased to 463, and in 1852 they reached 600. They had at the same time 11 colleges, 88 religious houses, and 875 priests. Their chapels at the time of the census furnished accommodation for 186,000, and the number of attendants on the morning of census Sunday of 1851 was 252,983.

FORE:THE CORONATION OF NAPOLEON IN NOTRE DAME. (See p. 499.)Perceiving the fatal separation of the Prussians from each other, and from their supplies at Naumburg, he determined to cut their army in two, and then to cut off and seize their magazines at this place. He therefore ordered the French right wing, under Soult and Ney, to march upon Hof, while the centre, under Bernadotte and Davoust, with the guard commanded by Murat, advanced on Saalburg and Schleitz. The left wing, under Augereau, proceeded towards Saalfeld and Coburg. Naumburg was seized, and its magazines committed to the flames, and this, at the same moment that it ruined their resources, apprised them that the French were in their rear; and, still worse, were between them and Magdeburg, which should have been their rallying-point. To endeavour to make some reparation of their error, and to recover Naumburg, the Duke of Brunswick marched in that direction, but too late. Davoust was in possession of the place, and had given the magazine to the flames, and he then marched out against Brunswick, who was coming with sixty thousand men, though he had only about half that number. Brunswick, by activity, might have seized the strong defile of Koesen; but he was so slow that Davoust forced it open and occupied it. On the evening of the 13th of October the duke was posted on the heights of Auerstadt, and might have retained that strong position, but he did not know that Davoust was so near; for the scout department seemed as much neglected as other precautions. Accordingly, the next morning, descending from the heights to pursue his march, his advanced line suddenly came upon that of Davoust in the midst of a thick fog, near the village of Hassen-Haussen. The battle continued from eight in the morning till eleven, when the Duke of Brunswick was struck in the face by a grape-shot, and blinded of both eyes. This, and the severe slaughter suffered by the Prussians, now made them give way. The King of Prussia, obliged to assume the command himself, at this moment received the discouraging news that General Hohenlohe was engaged at Jena on the same day (October 14) with the main army, against Buonaparte himself. Resolving to make one great effort to retrieve his fortunes, he ordered a general charge to be made along the whole[527] French line. It failed; the Prussians were beaten off, and there was a total rout. The Prussians fled towards Weimar, where were the headquarters of their army, only to meet the fugitives of Hohenlohe, whose forces at the battle of Jena were very inferior to those of the French, and whose defeat there was a foregone conclusion.

FORE:The Ministry had, as a matter of course, been much weakened by the retirement of Lord Grey; but, having got through the Session, it might have survived to the next meeting of Parliament but for the death of Earl Spencer, which occurred on the 10th of Novemberan event which removed Lord Althorp to the House of Peers. It was supposed that this would lead only to a fresh modification of the Cabinet, by a redistribution of places. For example, Lord John Russell was to succeed Lord Althorp as the leader of the House of Commons. Lord Melbourne's Administration seemed to be quietly acquiesced in, as sufficient for a time; the nation evidently assuming that, in any case, a Liberal Government was the necessary consequence of a reformed Parliament. The public were therefore startled when it was announced on the 15th that the king had dismissed his Ministers. It appeared that Lord Melbourne had waited upon his Majesty at Brighton, on the 14th, to take his commands as to the new arrangements he was about to make. But the king said he considered that Government dissolved by the removal of Lord Althorp; that he did not approve of the intended construction of the Cabinet; that Lord John Russell would make "a wretched figure" as leader of the House, and that Abercromby and Spring-Rice were worse than Russell; that he[378] did not approve of their intended measure with regard to the Irish Church; and concluded by informing Lord Melbourne that he would not impose upon him the task of completing the Ministerial arrangements, but would send for the Duke of Wellington.After the Painting by BIRKET FOSTER, R.W.S.

FORE:Lord Lovat was the last who was brought to the block for this rebellion, and we will conclude our account of it with his trial and execution, though they did not take place till March, 1747. Lovat had not appeared in arms, nor committed any overt act, and therefore it was difficult to[110] convict him. The cunning old sycophant hoped to elude the law, as he had done so often before, but Murray of Broughton, the brother of Murray, afterwards Lord Mansfield, to save his own life, turned king's evidence, and won eternal infamy by sacrificing his own friends. He not only produced letters and other documents which amply proved the guilt of Lovat, but threw broad daylight on the whole plan and progress of the insurrection from 1740 onwards. The conduct of Lovat on his trial was as extraordinary as his life had been. He alternately endeavoured to excite compassion, especially that of Cumberlandwho attended this, though he avoided the trials of the other insurgentsby representing how he had carried his Royal Highness in his arms about Kensington and Hampton Court Parks as a child, and then by the most amusing jests, laughter, execrations, and tricks, to puzzle or confuse the witnesses.Meanwhile, the American emissaries were both busy and successful at the Court of France. Though the Government still professed most amicable relations towards Great Britain, it winked at the constant sale of the prizes taken by American privateers, or those who passed for such, in their ports. The Government had, as we have seen, supplied the insurgents with money and arms. It was now arranged between Silas Deane and the French Minister, Vergennes, that the supplies of arms and ammunition should be sent by way of the West Indies, and that Congress should remit payment in tobacco and other produce. The French Government supplied the American agents with money for their purchases of arms and necessary articles for the troops, also to be repaid in tobacco. Two of the ships sent off with such supplies were captured by the British men-of-war; but a third, loaded with arms, arrived safely. To procure the money which they could not draw from Europe, Congress made fresh issues of paper money, though what was already out was fearfully depreciated. They voted a loan also of five millions of dollars, at four per cent. interest. They authorised a lottery to raise a like sum, the prizes to be payable in loan-office certificates. These measures only precipitated the depreciation of the Government paper; people refused to take it; and Washington, to prevent the absolute starvation of the army, was endowed with the extraordinary power of compelling the acceptance of it, and of arresting and imprisoning all maligners of the credit of Congress. Congress went further, and passed a resolution that their bills ought to pass[237] current in all payments, trade, and dealings, and be deemed equal in value to the same sum in Spanish dollars; and that all persons refusing to take them should be considered enemies to the United States; and the local authorities were called upon to inflict forfeitures and other penalties on all such persons. Still further: the New York convention having laid before Congress their scheme for regulating the price of labour, produce, manufactured articles, and imported goods, it was adopted. But these arbitrary and unscientific measures the traders set at defiance, and the attempts to enforce them only aggravated the public distress. Loans came in slowly, the treasury ran low, the loan offices were overdrawn, and the issue of bills of credit was reluctantly recommenced; ten additional millions were speedily authorised, and as the issue increased, the depreciation naturally kept pace with it. The Commissioners in France were instructed to borrow money there, but the instructions were more easily given than executed.

FORE:On the 26th of August Massena arrived before Almeida, a strongly fortified town not thirty miles from Ciudad Rodrigo. Wellington hoped that it would detain him at least a month, for it had a good Portuguese garrison, commanded by Colonel Cox, an English officer: and he himself drew near, to be able to seize any opportunity of damaging the besiegers. But in the night of the 27th there was a terrible explosion of a powder magazine, which threw down part of the wall, and made the place untenable. Treachery was immediately suspected, and what followed was sufficient proof of it; for the Portuguese major, whom Colonel Cox sent to settle the terms of the capitulation, went over to the French, and was followed by a whole Portuguese regiment with the exception of its British officers. This was a great disappointment to Lord Wellington, whose plan was to detain Massena till the rainy season set in, when he would at once find himself embarrassed by bridgeless floods and in intolerable roads, and, as he hoped and had ordered, in a country without people and without provisions.With Lord Eldon, however, he held different language, complaining bitterly of the difficulties in which the Ministers had involved him. He is represented as struggling desperately in meshes from which he found it impossible to extricate himself; and, as usual with weak minds, he threw all the blame of his misery on others. In reference to an interview, Lord Eldon remarks: "I was not sent for afterwards, but went on Thursday, the 9th of April, with more addresses. In the second interview, which began a little before two o'clock, the king repeatedlyand with some minutes intervening between his repeated declarations, musing in silence in the interimexpressed his anguish, pain, and misery that the measure had ever been thought of, and as often declared that he had been most harshly and cruelly treatedthat he had been treated as a man whose consent had been asked with a pistol pointed to his breast, or as obliged, if he did not give it, to leap down from a five-pair-of-stairs window. What could he do? What had he to fall back upon?" After relating much more in the same strain, Lord Eldon adds: "Little more passed, except occasional bursts of expression, 'What can I do? What can I now fall back upon? What can I fall back upon? I am miserable, wretched. My situation is dreadful; nobody about me to advise with. If I do give my consent, I will go to the baths after all, and from thence to Hanover. I'll return no more to England. I'll make no Roman Catholic peers; I will not do what this Bill will enable me to do. I'll return no more. Let them get a Catholic king in Clarence! [I think he also mentioned Sussex.] The people will see that I did not wish this.' There were the strongest appearances, certainly, of misery. He more than once stopped my leaving him. When the time came that I was to go, he threw his arms around my neck, and expressed great misery. I left him at about twenty minutes or a quarter before five. I certainly thought when I left him that he would express great difficulty, when the Bill was prepared for the Royal Assent, about giving it." The writer adds, sarcastically:"I fear that it seemed to be given as a matter of course." Next day, Lord Eldon wrote to his daughter: "The fatal Bill received the Royal Assent yesterday afternoon. After all I had heard in my visits, not a day's delay. God bless us and His Church." At Windsor, on the 13th of April, the king pronounced over the Bill that he so hated the words"Le Roy le veult."
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