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charge of 6,000 grenadiers through the fire across the bridge to seize the twenty guns. He fully succeeded, capturing the cannon before the infantry could be brought up against them, and thus secured a brilliant victory, the first which showed his wonderful genius. The Austrian generals, bred up in the regular school of tactics of Turenne and Condé, were puzzled and confused by the young Corsican's dashing measures. Milan was lost. Most of the Italian states bought peace of the French by heavy fines, and by giving up their finest works of art. A new Austrian army was beaten by Bonaparte at Rivoli and the Brenta, and twice at Arcola; and in the spring of 1797 he defeated the archduke Charles. But in Germany the French had been defeated, so Bonaparte was commanded to conclude a peace, and he did so on his own terms. The whole Austrian Netherlands were given up to France. Venice, with the remainder of its Italian and Dalmatian territories, were to be made over to Austria, while the Ionian Islands were taken by France. La Fayette was to be set at liberty. French troops entered Venice to secure it for the emperor Francis, and the bronze horses which Dandolo had taken from Constantinople fell to Bonaparte. In October, 1797, the treaty with Austria was signed at Campo Formio.

On Bonaparte's return he was greeted and followed as a hero, and he was as eager to take command of a fresh army as the Directory could be to get rid of one whom they already began to fear. The special hatred of France was directed against England, since George III. had from the first refused to acknowledge the republic. An invasion of England was the favorite scheme of the Directory. But Bonaparte persuaded the Directors to send him on an expedition to Egypt, with vague promises of winning India from England, and marching on Vienna by way of Constantinople. He sailed from Toulon on the 19th of May, 1798, with 40,000 troops and a magnificent fleet, including L'Orient, a hundred and twenty gun ship. He was followed at some distance by the English commander, Nelson, with a fleet equal in numbers, but inferior in the size of his ships. On his way Bonaparte obtained the surrender of Malta, where the knights of St. John had grown too weak to avail themselves of their splendid defences. Leaving a garrison at Valetta, Bonaparte proceeded to land at Alexandria,

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he did his best to gain the hearts of the Turks and Arabs, by pretending that the pure belief proclaimed by the French agreed with their own, and almost appearing disposed to become a Mahometan. Meanwhile he sent home the most exaggerated reports of his proceedings to the French papers, such as might most exalt him in the eyes of the Parisians. But a crushing blow was struck to his plans by the utter destruction of his fleet in the bay of Aboukir by Nelson. The French admiral, Brueys, was killed, his flag-ship L'Orient was blown up, and of the whole fleet only two escaped to bear home the tidings. Thus the army of Egypt was entirely cut off from home, unable even to obtain news, for Nelson had full command of the Mediterranean, and blockaded Malta. There the French garrison held out for a whole year, but as no succor could reach them, were forced to surrender at last. Moreover, Sultan Selim II., instead of thanking Bonaparte for freeing Egypt from the dominion of the Mamelukes, allied himself with the English, and began to fit out an army in Syria. Against this Bonaparte marched, and entering Palestine laid siege to Jaffa, which was taken by assault. A frightful butchery followed, including the slaughter of 2,000 soldiers, who had been promised their lives by his step-son Eugene Beauharnais, but whom Bonaparte could neither guard nor send back to Cairo, and therefore shot down on the sea-shore. This deed inspired the garrison of St. John D'Acre to hold out desperately, and they were directed by Philippeaux, a French emigrant engineer, and an English naval officer, Sir Sidney Smith who had sailed into their harbor with two ships.

For sixty days the French attacked in vain, and then had to fight a great battle with the Syrian army at Mount Tabor, in which they were victorious. Returning to the siege, Bonaparte ordered a general assault, but was beaten off with fearful loss, and, as the plague had broken out in his army, he was forced to raise the siege. It was his first check,

and overthrew all his eastern schemes. He ascribed it to Smith, and long after was wont to say "That man made me miss my destiny." The army had a miserable march back to Egypt through the desert, many dropping on the way to die of the plague, and in the meantime, the English ships brought to Egypt 9,000 Janizaries, and an equal number of other troops, commanded by Mustapha Pasha. Over these Bonaparte gained one of his most splendid victories at Aboukir, in good part owing to the great cavalry charge of Joachim Murat, known as "le beau Sabreur.". There was afterwards an exchange of prisoners, and with his flag of truce Sir Sidney Smith sent a file of newspapers, the first tidings Bonaparte had received since the Battle of the Nile. They made him decide at once upon returning home, and, contriving to elude the English fleet, he left the army of Egypt to Kleber, in September, 1799, with large promises of reinforcements; but these he was never able to send, and in 1801 an English army coming out under Sir Ralph Abercomby totally defeated the French under the walls of Alexandria, which they then besieged and obtained the surrender, undertaking to carry the remnant of the army back to France.

Switzerland was invaded and Geneva incorporated with France. In 1798 Joseph Bonaparte was sent as ambassador to Rome with instructions from the Directory to stir up insurrection against the pope. French troops accordingly marched into the city, proclaimed a Tiberine Republic, seized Pope Pius VI., at eighty years old, and dragged him to France, where he died at Valence on August 29, 1799. A revolution was excited in Turin, and, on an accusation of correspondence with Vienna, Charles Emmanuel was stripped of his old hereditary states of Savoy and Piedmont, and forced to retire to Sardinia. However, the victory of the English at the Nile seemed to waken a fresh spirit in Europe, and the emperor Francis, and Paul, emperor of Russia, entered into an alliance, and raised troops for the recovery of Italy, thus encouraging the king and queen of the Two Sicilies to renounce their alliance with France. This, however, only brought on them an attack from the

French troops at Rome, which forced them to take refuge in Sicily, under the protection of the English fleet. Naples was turned into a Parthenopean Republic by the French, helped by its own citizens, while the Lazzaroni or mob of Naples tried to withstand them. In the meantime England had supplied means to the czar Paul to equip an army. which joined the Austrians, entered Italy, drove the French back on the Alps, where Marshal Suvaroff had gained a great victory at Novi. The war between France and Russia also went on in Switzerland, where Massena won the battle of Zürich. There had also been defeat and loss on the Rhine, but an attempt of the Russians and English on Holland came to nothing. Altogether the year 1799 was the most disastrous in war that the republic had known.

FALL OF THE DIRECTORY.

Meanwhile at home there had been various changes of Directors, and each set had shown themselves unable to manage these many wars, or to keep down the Paris mob. The Directors were partly persuaded, partly compelled, to resign, and the two councils were persuaded to sit at St. Cloud, while Bonaparte received the military command of Paris. On the 19th of December, 1799, the 19th Brumaire of the year VI., as the French called it, followed by five grenadiers, he came before the Council of the Elders, and told them that their constitution was good for nothing, and that France, which he had left flourishing, had been beaten at all points. The five hundred dispersed in utter confusion, and in the evening about fifty of them got together and placed the executive power for ten years in three consuls, Bonaparte being first consul. The senate was to be appointed for life, the legislative assembly was a body of one hundred tribunes. This new constitution was put to a vote of the whole people and was accepted. Bonaparte took up his residence at the Tuileries with his wife Josephine de la Pagerie, the widow of a Viscount Beauharnais who had been executed in the Reign of Terror. There was now once more a court, with state carriages, liveries, rich dresses and military display.

ENGLAND

HEN George III., 1760-1789, son of the late Frederick, prince of Wales, ascended the throne, the people rejoiced in having at length a native king; and he inserted with his own hand in his first speech to Parlia

His

ment the words that "he gloried in the name of Briton." He was twenty-two years old, having been born on June 4, 1738. His person was tall and strong, his countenance open and engaging. intentions were pure, his habits simple and laborious; and the active part he took in state business was a new element of power for the crown. But the obstinacy with which he clung to his private opinions and personal predilections had fatal consequences for his country. His frequent letters to his ministers prove his clear perceptions, his strong will, and his imperfect education. He married the Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Sept. 8, 1761. She was insignificant in person, and of a narrow understanding. But she shared her husband's sincere piety and simple tastes; and, for the first time since the reign of Charles I., the court gave the example of a pure and happy home.

The power behind the throne was the Earl of Bute, who had long been the favorite counsellor of the king's mother, and who was made secretary of state without Pitt's being consulted, 1761. Meanwhile the English fleets had taken Belleisle, on the coast of Brittany, and Dominica in the West Indies. Pitt seemed in a position to dictate terms of peace, and was resolved to have Minorca. But the negotiations were broken off in consequence of the Family Compact, formed by Louis XV. with Charles III. (who had succeeded his brother Ferdinand VI. as king of Spain in 1759) and with his son Ferdi

nand, to whom Charles had resigned the kingdom of Naples, in accordance with the Treaty of Vienna. These three branches of the House of Bourbon agreed to guarantee each other's dominions, and to regard each other's enemies as their own. Spain engaged to join France against England, on May 1, 1762, if the war still lasted, in which case France would restore Minorca to Spain, Aug. 15, 1761. Pitt felt that the compact demanded instant decisive hostilities with Spain; but his counsel was rejected, and he resigned. He refused several offers of the royal favor, but accepted for his wife the title of Baroness Chatham, with a pension of £3,000 a year for her life, his own, and their eldest son's. As Pitt had foreseen, Spain only awaited the safe return of her West India fleet to declare war, Jan. 4, 1762. The Seven Years' War was ended by the Peace of Paris, Feb. 10, 1763. Minorca was restored to England in exchange for Belleisle. Havana and the Philippines were given back to Spain, for Florida and Porto Rico. The West India islands of Guadaloupe, Martinico, and St. Lucia were restored, but England retained Tobago, Dominica, St. Vincent, and Grenada. The national debt had risen to £122,600,000 ($613,000,000). During the last year of the war Sweden had become neutral, and Russia had been converted from an enemy into an ally by the death of the empress Elizabeth and the accession of Peter III., a devoted admirer of Frederick the Great. But the new czar soon fell a victim to a court revolution, and was succeeded by his wife, a princess of Anhalt-Zest, who has gained "bad eminence" under the title of Catherine II., 1762.

The peace was opposed by Pitt and was disliked by the people, who vented their feelings on Lord

Bute, already odious on other grounds. In many places he was burned in the effigy of a boot-jack. (John, earl of Bute). He was frightened into a resignation, April 8, 1763, and was succeeded by George Grenville. Henry Fox was called to the Upper House by the title of Lord Holland.

The new ministry was soon in trouble. John Wilkes, a demagogue of great talent, but the most profligate character, who had contributed to the fall of Bute by scurrilous attacks in his paper, the North Briton, wrote an article against the peace in reply to the king's speech. His return for Middlesex in 1768 renewed the conflict with the ministry and the House; and Wilkes became a popular idol. At length he took his seat in the House, 1774, and, as an alderman of London, he distinguished himself by his courage in suppressing the Gordon riots, 1780.

A far more serious imprudence was committed by George Grenville, in extending the Stamp Act to the North American colonies. Those settlements now consisted of thirteen states; namely, the four "New England" colonies of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Rhode Island; New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia. Each colony had a governor and a council appointed by the crown, and a house of assembly elected by the people. They had all made rapid progress in wealth, and they had a population of about two millions of whites, and half a million of colored people. They were not unwilling to contribute to the expenses of the mother country; but they had special objections to a stamp-duty, and they adopted the broad principle of no taxation. without representation. The alternative which they suggested was that a demand for contributions should be laid in the king's name before the several houses of assembly, who would probably have voted annually at least as much as the £10,000 ($50,000) expected from the Stamp Act. The measure was, however, passed in 1765; and even Benjamin Franklin, who was in England as agent for Pennsylvania, had no expectation of the fierce opposition it excited in America. The ministry of the Marquis of Rockingham, which replaced that of Grenville in 1765, following the advice of Pitt, repealed the Stamp Act, but declared the supreme power of Parliament over the colonies, and quiet was restored for a time, 1766.

The Rockingham ministry soon fell from internal weakness, and was succeeded by Pitt's second administration. Pitt himself was made lord privy seal, and raised to the peerage as Earl of Chatham, July 29, 1766. His removal from the House of Commons was followed by his almost complete retirement, in consequence of the prostration of his health by repeated attacks of gout. The chief direction of affairs fell to the chancellor of the exchequer, Charles Townshend, against whom the opposition carried a bill to reduce the land-tax. To raise the petty sum of £40,000 ($200,000) towards repairing this loss, Townshend imposed taxes on tea, glass, paper, and painter's colors, in America, 1767. The scenes of 1765 were renewed. Riots broke out in Boston. The Assembly of Massachusetts was dissolved for its opposition, July 1, 1768; and associations were formed to forbid the use of the taxed articles. Again the government gave way; but, in an evil hour, the tea-duty was retained when the others were repealed; and new irritation was roused by the harsh tone in which Lord Hillsborough, the colonial secretary, announced the concession, 1769. Meanwhile the ministry had been greatly changed. Charles Townshend died in September, 1767, and was succeeded by Frederick Lord North, eldest son of the Earl of Guildford, who became prime minister on the resignation of the Duke of Grafton, in 1770. At the beginning of that year Chatham, who had resigned in October, 1768, appeared in new health, as a violent opponent of the government, January, 1770. It was during these years that those celebrated attacks upon the ministers and the king appeared in the Public Advertiser, the name of whose author is still concealed under the appellation of Junius, 1769-1772.

The Americans appeared to have acquiesced in the tea duty, when the discovery of some letters that had passed between Grenville's private secretary and the government of Massachusetts kindled a new flame, which burst forth on the arrival of some ships laden with tea, on which Lord North had allowed a special drawback for the advantage of the colonies as well as the East India Company. The teas were refused admission, and at Boston the ships were boarded and their cargoes thrown into the water, Dec. 16, 1773. The restriction of the charter of Boston completed the breach between the government and the colonies, whose cause was

supported in the English Parliament by Chatham, Edmund Burke, and Charles James Fox, second son of Lord Holland. In spite of their warnings measures of coercion were adopted, and the first blood was shed at Lexington, in a conflict of the Massachusetts militia with the troops of General Gage, who was soon after blockaded in Boston by 20,000 New Englanders.

On May 10, 1775, a Congress of the states met at Philadelphia, and appointed George Washington as their commander-in-chief. He took command of the army before Boston, where the English had now 10,000 men under generals Burgoyne, Howe, and Clinton, Gage being commander-in-chief. A few days after his arrival, a battle was fought at Bunker Hill, where the English only carried the American batteries after suffering enormous loss, June 17. A bloody war now spread over the whole seaboard, and even into Canada, where the Americans laid siege to Quebec. Boston was evacuated in March, 1776; and on the 4th of July in that year the members of Congress signed the Declaration of Independence of the United States of North America. Howe took New York, September, 1776, and Philadelphia, September, 1777; but the capitulation of General Burgoyne at Saratoga turned the tide of war in favor of the Americans, Oct. 17, 1777, and induced Louis XVI. to declare openly for their cause. Himself imbued with the theories of liberty which the French of all ranks learned from Voltaire and the Encyclopædists, the young king, who had succeeded his grandfather in 1774, had already permitted the Marquis of La Fayette and other young nobles to enter the American service, and now two treaties of commerce and alliance with the United States were signed at Paris, Feb. 6, 1778.

Lord North had already given way. He carried two bills renouncing the right of the British Parliament to tax America, and appointing commissioners to treat for peace on almost any terms short of independence. Just after they had received the royal assent, March 13, 1778, the French ambassador delivered an insulting note announcing the new alliance. North wrote to the king, urgently advising him to send for Chatham; but he could not overcome the resentment justly excited by the great orator's invectives. It was at this juncture that Chatham went down to the House to express the in

dignation against the dismemberment of the empire, which was as strong as his zeal for the rights of the colonies. On the 7th of April the Duke of Richmond moved an address to the crown for peace, even if independence must be granted. Chatham, who was so ill that he had been supported into the House by his second son William Pitt, and his sonin-law Lord Mahon, rose upon his crutches and opposed the motion in a speech faltering through weakness, but lighted by flashes of his former eloquence. The Duke of Richmond's reply provoked him to rise again to speak, but he fell back in a swoon, was carried out of the House, and, after lingering for a month at his favorite abode at Hayes, in Kent, he died on May 11, in the seventieth year of his age. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, and an annuity of £4,000 was settled on the earldom of Chatham for ever. The scene in the House of Lords was immortalized on canvas by John Singleton Copley, an American colonist, whose distinguished son, Lord Lyndhurst, having then already been born at Boston, May 21, 1772, a subject of George III., survived till October 12, 1863, having lived to see the fall of three monarchies, two republics, and an empire in France. Such are the strange vicissitudes that may occur in the space of a life protracted to more than ninety years!

In consequence of Chatham's death, Lord North retained office, entrusting the Great Seal to Lord Thurlow. The Americans refused overtures which came too late, and the war lasted another five years. Spain declared war in 1779; the French prepared for an invasion, and the coasts of Scotland were insulted, and two men-of-war taken by the renowned Paul Jones, a Scotchman by birth, but bearing an American commission. Out of this general war arose a new contest respecting the rights of neutrals. The northern powers, Russia, Sweden, and Denmark, formed an "armed neutrality," to enforce the principles, that free ships make free goods; that no goods are contraband of war, unless so declared by treaty, and that a blockade must be effective in order to be acknowledged. Holland had even gone so far as to plan an alliance with America, the discovery of which led to a declaration of war, Dec. 20, 1780.

On the continent of America the English gained great successes, but neither their forces nor their tactics were adequate to subdue a nation in arms for

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