FORE:While this was going on, the town of San Sebastian was stormed by the British. Sir Thomas Graham conducted the assault, which was led on by the brigade of General Robinson, bravely supported by a detachment of Portuguese under Major Snodgrass. The place was captured; the French were driven through it to the castle standing on a height, in which they found refuge. Seven hundred prisoners were taken. The British lost two thousand men in the assaulta loss which would have been far greater had a mine, containing one thousand two hundred pounds of gunpowder, exploded, but which was fortunately prevented by the falling in of a saucisson. Many less would have fallen, however, had General Graham allowed shells to be thrown into the town, which he would not, on account of the inhabitants. But the French had not only prepared this great mine, but exploded various other appliances for setting the town on fire. In fact they showed no care for the people or the town. When driven to the castle, after a murderous street fightin which they picked off our men from behind walls and windows, killing Sir Richard Fletcher, the commanding engineer, and wounding Generals Robinson, Leith, and Oswald, besides slaughtering heaps of our menthey continued to fire down the streets, killing great numbers of the inhabitants besides our soldiers. Yet, after all, they charged Lord Wellington with not only throwing shells into the town, but with[61] setting it on fire, and plundering it. His lordship indignantly repelled these accusations in his letter to his brother, Sir Henry Wellesley. He declares that he himself had been obliged to hasten to his headquarters at Lezaco, on the morning of the 31st of August, but that he saw the town on fire in various places before our soldiers entered it; in fact, the French had set it on fire in six different places, and had their mine exploded scarcely a fragment of the town would have been left, or a single inhabitant alive. The lenity shown to the town by Wellington and Graham, who acted for him, was not used towards their calumniators in the castle. It was stoutly bombarded, and being soon almost battered to pieces about the ears of the defenders, the French surrendered on the 8th of September, two thousand five hundred in number; but the siege of both town and fort had cost the allies four thousand men in killed and wounded. Had the town been, as the French represented, bombarded like the castle, some thousands of English and Portuguese lives would have been spared, but at the expense of the inhabitants.
Cras consequat iaculis lorem, id vehicula erat mattis quis. Vivamus laoreet velit justo, in ven e natis purus.
FORE:[269]
Cras consequat iaculis lorem, id vehicula erat mattis quis. Vivamus laoreet velit justo, in ven e natis purus.
FORE:[See larger version]In the meantime, petitions, memorials, and remonstrances were presented from New York and other places, and from the British inhabitants of Canada, but all were rejected. On the 26th of May George III. prorogued Parliament, and expressed his perfect satisfaction in its proceedings; so utterly unconscious was this king that he was alienating a great empire, and which, indeed, was already virtually gone from him; for during the very time that Parliament had been protesting against even the contemptible crumbs of concession offered by Ministers, war had broken out, blood had flowed, and the Americans had triumphed!
Cras consequat iaculis lorem, id vehicula erat mattis quis. Vivamus laoreet velit justo, in ven e natis purus.
FORE:When the subsidy to Hesse-Cassel was sent home to receive the signatures of the Cabinet, it was found to amount to an annual payment by England of one hundred and fifty thousand crowns, besides eighty crowns to every horseman, and thirty crowns to every foot soldier, when they were really called out to service. That to Russia was immensely greater; then came in prospective that to Saxony, to Bavaria, etc. These latter States had been fed all through the last few years for doing nothing, and now demanded vastly higher terms. Yet when the Hessian Treaty was laid on the Council table by the compliant Newcastle, Ministers signed it without reading it. Pitt and Fox, however, protested against it; and when the Treasury warrants for carrying the treaty into execution were sent down to Legge, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, he refused to sign them.
Cras consequat iaculis lorem, id vehicula erat mattis quis. Vivamus laoreet velit justo, in ven e natis purus.
FORE:The Bills were highly necessary, and, on the whole, well calculated to nip in the bud those ever-growing abuses of India and its hundred millions of people which, some seventy years later, compelled Government to take the control out of the hands of a mere trading company, whose only object was to coin as much money as possible out of the country and the folk. But it needed no sagacity to see that the means of defeat lay on the very surface of these Bills. Those whose sordid interests were attacked had only to point to the fact that Parliament, and not the Crown, was to be the governing party under these Bills, in order to secure their rejection. This was quickly done through a most ready agent. Thurlow had been removed by the Ministry from the Woolsack, where he had remained as a steady opponent of all the measures of his colleagues; and it required but a hint from the India House, and he was at the ear of the king. Nothing was easier than for Thurlow to inspire George III. with a deep jealousy of the measure, as aiming at putting the whole government of India into the hands of Parliament and of Ministers, and the effect was soon seen.[See larger version]
FORE:On the 14th of July, when Barclay de Tolly was close pressed by Napoleon, he learned that though Bagration had been repulsed at Mohilev, he was now advancing on Smolensk; he therefore himself again retreated before the French towards Vitebsk. At that town he had a partial engagement with the French; but he quitted it in good order. Here Murat and most of the other general officers entreated Napoleon to close the campaign for this year; but he refused. The soldiers were dispirited by this continual pursuit without result; Murat himself was heartily sick of endeavouring to get a dash at the enemy and being as constantly foiled; King Jerome had been disgraced and sent back to his Westphalian dominions, on the charge of having let Bagration escape by want of sufficient energy; and Wittgenstein had, to the great disgust of Napoleon, on the 2nd of July, crossed the river, surprised Sebastiani's vanguard of cavalry in Drissa, and completely routed them. These things had embittered Buonaparte; and if he ever intended to encamp for the winter at Vitebsk, he now abandoned the idea with indignation. It was still midsummer; the enemy had so far eluded him; he had not been able to strike one of his usual great blows and send terror before him. He was impatient of a pause. "Surrounded," says Sgur, "by disapproving countenances, and opinions contrary to his own, he was moody and irritable. All the officers of his household opposed him, some with arguments, some with entreaties, someas Berthiereven with tears; but he exclaimed, 'Did they think he was come so far only to conquer a parcel of wretched huts? that he had enriched his generals too much; that all to which they now aspired was to follow the pleasures of the chase, and to display their splendid equipages in Paris. We must,' he said, 'advance upon Moscow, and strike a blow, in order to obtain peace, or winter-quarters and supplies.'"
FORE:
FORE:In the House of Commons, on the same evening (the 30th of June), Sir Robert Peel moved an answer to the Address to the same effect. Lord Althorp, acting in concert with Lord Grey, moved the adjournment of the House for twenty-four hours to allow time for consideration. The discussion in the Commons, however, was not without interest, as it touched upon constitutional questions of vital importance. Mr. Brougham did his part with admirable tact. He dwelt upon the danger of allowing the people to learn that Government could go on, and every exigency of the common weal be provided for, without a king. The Act which had appointed the late Prince Regent had been passed without the Royal sanction, the king being insane, and no provision having been made to meet the calamity that occurred. The Act of Parliament was called a law, but it was no law; it had not even the semblance of a law; and the power which it conveyed was in those days called the phantom of royal authority. The fact, indeed, was that the tendency of that Act of Parliament, more than any other Act that had ever been passed by the legislature, was to inflict a blow on the royal authority; to diminish its influence and weight; to bring it into disrepute with, and to lessen it in the estimation of, the people at large; and that fact was in itself a sufficient comment upon the propriety of doing an act of legislation without having the Crown to sanction it. That, he said, was his first great and principal reason for proceeding with this question at once. He showed that one of the greatest advantages connected with the monarchical form of government was the certainty of the succession, and the facile[314] and quiet transmission of power from one hand to another, thus avoiding the inconveniences and dangers of an interregnum. The question was rendered more difficult and delicate by the fact that the Duke of Cumberland, the most unpopular man in the country, was the eldest of the remaining brothers of the king, in the event of whose death he would be Heir Apparent to the Throne of Great Britain, and King of Hanover. In the case supposed, the question would arise whether the next heir to the Throne was of right regent, should the Sovereign be incompetent, from infancy, insanity, or any other cause. If that right were established, then the regent, during the minority of the Princess Victoria, would be a foreign monarch, and one who was utterly detested by the mass of the people of Britain. Such a question, arising at a moment when the spirit of revolution was abroad, might agitate the public mind to a degree that would be perilous to the Constitution. The contingencies were sufficiently serious, therefore, to justify the efforts of Lord Grey and Mr. Brougham to have the regency question settled before the dissolution. They may not have been sorry to have a good popular case against the Government, but their conduct was not fairly liable to the imputation of faction or mere personal ambition. "Can we," asked Mr. Brougham, "promise ourselves a calm discussion of the subject when there should be an actual accession of the Duke of Cumberland to the Throne of Hanover, and Parliament is suddenly called upon to decide upon his election to the regency, to the supreme rule in this country, to which, according to the principle of Mr. Pitt, he has a paramount claim, although he has not a strict legal right?" The motion for adjournment was lost by a majority of 46the numbers being, for it, 139; against it, 185. After this debate, on the motion for adjournment, Lord Althorp moved the amendment to the Address, almost in the words of Lord Grey in the other House. Sir Robert Peel stated that he meant no disrespect by abstaining from further discussion, which would be wasting the time of the House, by repeating the arguments he had already employed. Mr. Brougham, however, took the opportunity of launching out against the Ministry in a strain of bitter invective, of sarcasm vehement even to fierceness.
FORE:Chatham, undeterred by the fate of his motion, determined to make one more effort, and bring in a Bill for the pacification of the colonies, and he called upon Franklin to assist in framing it. On the following Tuesday, Franklin hurried down to Hayes with the draft of the Bill left with him, and with his full approbation of it, having, he says, only added one word, that of "constitutions" after "charters." The next day (Wednesday), the 1st of February, Chatham appeared in the House of Lords with his Bill. He declared that it was a[215] Bill not merely of concession, but of assertion, and he called on the Lords to entertain it cordially, to correct its crudenesses, and pass it for the peace of the whole empire. The Bill first explicitly asserted our supreme power over the colonies; it declared that all that related to the disposing of the army belonged to the prerogative of the Crown, but that no armed force could be lawfully employed against the rights and liberties of the inhabitants; that no tax, or tollage, or other charge for the revenue, should be levied without the consent of the provincial Assemblies. The Acts of Parliament relating to America passed since 1764 were wholly repealed; the judges were made permanent during their good behaviour, and the Charters and constitutions of the several provinces were not to be infringed or set aside, unless upon some valid ground of forfeiture. All these concessions were, of course, made conditional on the recognition by the colonies of the supreme authority of Parliament.
