Chapter XXXV.

George II (1727-1760).

It is the honor and the good fortune of free countries to be often served, and at times gloriously governed, without display and without the personal grandeur of the sovereign called to the throne by the law of heredity. Already slowly undermined by the misdeeds and misfortunes of King Louis XIV.'s last years, absolute power was enfeebled and dishonored in France, in the indolent and corrupt hands of Louis XV. In Europe, in Asia, in America, war was about to deal it a mortal blow, by despoiling our country of that military glory which had for long been our appanage, despite the crimes and errors of our home government. Honest and well disposed toward his counsellors and his people, without cunning and without breadth of view, constantly pre-occupied with the German interests of his Electorate, George II. was about to assure to England a long period of security and prosperity, sometimes brilliant, always fatal to his enemies at home and to his rivals abroad, to the house of Stuart as to France.

It was to the natural development and to the regular play of parliamentary government that England owed this repose, often laborious and difficult, solidly founded on the firmest bases during the long reign of the second Hanoverian monarch. Four notable ministries were to succeed each other round the throne of George II., the first and the last in the hands of men eminent in various ways, Robert Walpole and Lord Chatham: 1727-1741-1756-1760; directed from 1742 till 1744 by Lord Carteret, soon afterwards Lord Granville, and from 1744 till 1756 by the Duke of Newcastle and his brother Henry Pelham.

[Image] George II.

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All called to face serious difficulties, great internal and external shocks, the ministers of George II., eloquent or commonplace, remained faithful to the king whom they served, and never afforded that example of treason and deplorable weaknesses which had shamefully marked the life of so many Statesmen during the last three reigns. There was conspiracy yet, but the conspirators no longer hid themselves in the royal palaces, at the head of armies or of public affairs. It was on the field of battle that the Stuarts were to play and lose their last game. At the death of George I. the fate of the new dynasty and of the protestant succession might, to superficial observation, have appeared uncertain and precarious. At the death of George II. the work had been accomplished; thenceforth revolutions were to be for England only a remembrance at once glorious and sad, without possible recurrence and without bitter traces. National victories would efface the last remnant of intestine strifes.

By the side of George II., on the throne still occupied by a half-foreign monarch, who spoke the language of his people with a pronounced accent, who was of slender appearance, and more brave in person than royal in tastes and habits, was seated a clever, moderate, wise and learned princess, with a semblance of pedantry, who was skilful, and very soon dominant in the government, without ever giving evidence of any presumption. Princess Caroline d'Anspach had often had to lament the infidelities of her husband; he remained attached to her, nevertheless, and her influence was constantly first with him. Robert Walpole had known how to anticipate this influence. He never omitted, for the benefit of the prince's favorite, the deference that he had displayed to the Princess of Wales. The queen did not forget it.

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The first moment of the new reign had not been propitious to the powerful minister of George I. When he presented himself at the palace, in order to announce to the new monarch the death of the king his father, George II., scarcely awakened from his customary siesta, had brusquely replied to the minister's question, "Whom does your Majesty charge with the communications to the Privy Council?"--"Compton," said the king. In retiring to convey the royal command to his rival, thus designated as his successor, Walpole lost neither his coolness nor his firm resolution to govern his country for the longest possible period. "I am about to fall," he had just said to Sir William Young, "but I advise you not to throw yourself into a violent opposition, for I shall not be slow to rise again."

As a matter of fact, Walpole was not to fall. It was only the breath of royal disfavor that was to pass over him. Sir Spencer Compton, soon afterwards Lord Wilmington, an honest and capable man, but of dull wit and without facility of speech, as without ministerial experience, modestly requested Walpole to compose for him the communication with which the king had charged him. Walpole did so. The secret leaked out. At the same time the minister, momentarily superseded, proposed to the queen an increase of revenue for the king and a dowry for herself, which he believed himself sure of having voted by Parliament. Already well-disposed toward Walpole, Caroline knew how to cleverly prove to her husband the danger that he would find, at the commencement of his reign, in losing a powerful and popular minister by throwing him into opposition. Already the courtiers had abandoned Walpole, and crowded around Sir Spencer Compton. {181} At the ceremony of hand-kissing, Lady Walpole "could scarcely force a passage between the disdainful backs and elbows of those who had flattered her the day before," writes her son Horace, in his Souvenirs. When the queen, perceiving her in the last ranks, exclaimed, "Ah! I see a friend down there," the crowd opened right and left. "In coming back," said Lady Walpole, "I might have walked over their heads, if I had desired." During thirteen years more Walpole was to exercise that authority of which he was secretly so jealous. "Sir Robert was moderate in the exercise of power," said Hume; "he was not just in seizing the whole of it." Walpole had already alienated Pulteney and Carteret; he was about to embroil himself with Townshend. The divisions of the Whig party were the work of his jealous contrivings. It had for long been draining its strength; its debility and downfall were one day to follow.

The attack especially directed against the foreign policy, soon began, and was hotly sustained in the House of Commons by Pulteney, for the time being at one with the Tories and with Sir William Wyndham; in the press and in the depths of parliamentary intrigues by Lord Bolingbroke, ever the implacable enemy of Walpole, who was obstinate in refusing him re-entrance into the House of Lords. The Treaty of Seville had just put an end to the dissensions with Spain (November, 1729). It was then, on the accomplishment of the Treaty of Utrecht, that the attacks of the _patriots_,--a name adopted by the Whigs who had gone into opposition--were brought to bear. The ministry was reproached with not having guarded against the demolition of Dunkerque, "I went the day before yesterday to Parliament," wrote Montesquieu in his "_Notes on England_," to the lower House. {182} "The Dunkerque affair was under discussion there. I have never seen such a blaze. The sitting lasting from one o'clock in the afternoon till three o'clock after midnight. There, the French were well abused. I noticed how far the frightful jealousy goes which exists between the two nations. M. Walpole attacked Bolingbroke in the most savage manner, and said that he had conducted the whole intrigue. Chevalier Wyndham defended him. M. Walpole related in reference to Bolingbroke, the story of a farmer, who, passing under a tree with his wife, found that a man who had been hanged there, still breathed. He cut him down and took him to his house and he revived. They discovered that this man had on the day before stolen their forks. So they said, 'The course of justice must not be opposed; he must be carried back whence we have taken him.'"

It was only in 1734, and under the threat which perhaps qualms of conscience made him fear, that Bolingbroke once again voluntarily exiled himself. Walpole had conceived a great financial scheme for the increase of indirect taxation or excise. The opposition violently pounced upon this unpopular project. The rumor spread that the excise would be general. "I declare," said Walpole, "that I never had the thought, and that no man to my knowledge has ever had the thought of proposing a general application of the excise. I have never dreamed of any duties except those on wines and tobacco, and that in consequence of the frequent complaints I have received from merchants themselves about the frauds which are daily committed in these two branches of commerce."

Public discontent and irritation were too vehement to be calmed by the moderation of Walpole: the minister prudently let the discussion drop. The queen had constantly supported Walpole. She had summoned one of the king's personal friends, Lord Scarborough, in order to consult him. "I answer for my regiment against the Pretender," said he, "but not against those who insist upon the excise." Tears came into the eyes of the princess. "Then," said she, "it must be renounced."

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Emboldened by this negative victory, the chiefs of the opposition took up the question of septennial Parliaments. The duration of the legislature was approaching its termination. The attack was directed by Wyndham, who was covertly backed and instructed by Bolingbroke. It was against this cloaked and absent foe that Walpole rose with all the eloquence, temperate in form, impressive and haughty in effect, with which, on occasion, he so well knew how to overwhelm his adversaries. "Much has been said here of ministers arrogantly hurling defiances, of ministers destitute of all sense of virtue and honor: it appears to me, gentlemen, that with equal right, and more justly, I think, we may speak of anti-ministers and mock patriots, who never had either virtue or honor, and who are actuated only by envy or resentment. Let me suppose an anti-minister who regards himself as a man of such consequence, and endowed with such extensive parts, that he alone in the State is equal to the conduct of public affairs; and who stigmatizes as blunderers all those who have the honor to be engaged therein. Suppose that this personage has been lucky enough to enrol among his party men truly distinguished, wealthy, and of ancient family, as well as others of extreme views, arising from disappointed and envenomed hearts. Suppose all these men to be moved by him solely in respect to their political behavior, without real attachment for this chief whom they so blindly follow, and who is detested by the rest of humanity. We see this anti-minister in a country where he ought not to be, where he could not be without the exercise of an excessive clemency, yet employing all his efforts to destroy the source whence this mercy flowed. {184} Let us suppose him in that country, continually occupied in contracting intimacies with the ambassadors of princes who are most hostile to his own; and if there should be a secret, the divulgence of which would be prejudicial to his country, disclosing it without hesitation to the foreign ministers who have applied to him to discover it. Finally, let us suppose that this anti-minister has travelled, and that at every court where he has been placed as minister, he has betrayed every confidence, as well as all the secrets of the countries through which he has passed; destitute as he is of faith and honor, and betraying every master whom he has served."

I have desired to give an idea of the violence of parliamentary discussion under George II., as well as of the deep-rooted animosity which existed between Walpole and Bolingbroke. The latter did not dare to face any revelations or more definite accusations. He soon quitted England, not to return as long as Walpole was in power. When he came back, in 1742, at the moment of his father's death, it was to establish himself in the country, in the house at Battersea, where he was born, and where he finally died, on the 17th of December, 1751, after the most stormy life, sadly devoted to unfortunate or disastrous enterprises, which were unscrupulously pursued with the resources of a rare and fruitful genius. "God, who has placed me here below," said he to Lord Chesterfield, in bidding him farewell, "will make of me what he will, after this; and he knows what is the best thing to do." All the irregularities of his life and all the inveterate doubts of his mind had never availed to snatch from the depths of the dying Bolingbroke's soul the hereditary faith in God which he had learned as a child at the knees of his mother, who had been piously attached to the principles of the old Dissenters.

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The prolonged power of Walpole was menaced, and his authority seriously shaken. Troubles had broken out in Scotland. The escape of one smuggler and the punishment of another had aroused the populace of the capital, and caused that riot against Captain Porteous which forms one of the principal episodes of the Prison of Edinburgh.

Discord reigned in the royal family between King George II. and his eldest son, Frederick, Prince of Wales, as it had previously reigned between King George I. and his son. The queen shared the annoyance of her consort, and refused to see the prince, when, in the month of November, 1737, she was on her death-bed. "I hope that you will never desert the king," said she to Walpole. "It is to you that I commend him. Continue to serve with your accustomed fidelity." Walpole's regrets were bitter and sincere. He was losing an ally as certain as she was efficacious, at the moment when the violence of the attacks against him was increasing.

The Convention of Madrid, which ended with the close of the year 1738, had excited great discontent among the English merchants. The wise endeavors of the minister for the maintenance of peace with Spain were regarded as cowardice. Sixty members of the opposition, with Wyndham at their head, had declared their resolve of no longer taking part in the deliberations of a corrupt Parliament. The government majority grew smaller daily. Walpole, always obstinately attached to power, determined to bend before the storm and to lend his aid to a war which he deplored, and the result of which he doubted. On the 19th of October, 1739, as the city bells were sounding with all their peals in honor of the declaration of war, "Ring the cords of all your bells to-day," muttered Walpole; "it will not be long before you are wringing your hands."

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The prudent sagacity and experience of Walpole had not deceived him. England entered upon a restless and stormy period, the beginnings of which were not happy. The first expeditions had been directed against the Spanish colonies of South America. By dint of courage and address, Commodore Anson, who was charged with the attack on Peru, opposed by wind and tide, succeeded in saving only one of his ships, with which he accomplished the tour of the world, whilst Admiral Vernon, at first victorious before Porto-Bello, and lauded to the skies by the opposition, to which party he belonged, failed sadly before Cartagena and Santiago. The patriots attributed the checks suffered by English armies to Walpole. "For nearly twenty years he has demonstrated that he possesses neither wisdom nor prudence," exclaimed Lord Carteret; "there is still left him a little of the cunning common to Smithfield cattle-dealers or to French valets under indulgent masters; but his whole conduct proves that he has no true sagacity. Our allies know and deplore it; our foes know it and are glad of it." Yet once again, Walpole triumphed in the Houses; his strength was being spent in repeated struggles.

Parliament had just been dissolved; the electoral prospects were threatening. Europe was agitated by the gravest anxieties. The Emperor Charles VI. had just died, on the 20th of October, 1740. All the powers had agreed to the Pragmatic Sanction, which assured the rights of the Archduchess Maria-Theresa. Scarcely had her father been laid in the grave, than the majority of the great sovereigns were already dividing the spoils. The competitors were numerous and their titles were various. The young Queen of Hungary found opposed to her a rival and an enemy. {187} The elector of Bavaria reclaimed the domains of the House of Austria by virtue of a will of Ferdinand I., father of Charles V. He was supported by France, despite the peaceful inclinations of Cardinal Fleury, grown old, and instigated by the Marshal Belle-Isle. Spain laid claim to the sovereignty of Hungary and of Bohemia, which had long been dependants of her crown. She united her forces with those of France and Bavaria against Maria-Theresa. The new King of Prussia, Frederick II., on obsolete or imaginary rights, marched boldly to the conquests of which he was ambitious. From the time when he came to the throne, in the month of August, 1740, preceded by the reputation for a cultivated and liberal mind, and amenable to generous sentiments, Frederick, who had long been kept away from state affairs by the brutal jealousy of his father, had been silently preparing his means of attack. On leaving a masqued ball, he had set out post haste for the Silesian frontier, where he had collected thirty thousand troops. Without preliminary notice, without a declaration of war, he entered the Austrian territory, which was inadequately or badly defended. Before the end of January, 1741, he was master of Silesia. At his departure, Frederick had said to the French ambassador: "I believe I am going to play your game; if the aces come to me we will divide."

England was excited by the war. King George II. was more excited than England. Hanover was menaced; he crossed to Germany to raise troops. A subsidy was voted in favor of the Queen of Hungary; certain English envoys arrived at the camp of the belligerents. Lord Hyndford sought to excite some generous scruples in the mind of Frederick. "Do not speak to me of magnanimity, my lord," exclaimed the king; "a prince should consult only his interest. I have no objection to peace, but I require four duchies, and I will have them." {188} The proposals transmitted by Mr. Robinson in the name of the Queen of Hungary seemed hard to that princess. "I hope, with all my heart, that he will reject them," she had said, with tears in her eyes. "Always subterfuges," exclaimed Frederick; "if you have nothing to say to me in regard to Silesia, negotiations are useless. My ancestors would rise out of their tombs to reproach me with the abandonment of their just rights."

France had concluded an alliance with the King of Prussia, assuring him the possession of lower Silesia. Marshal Maillebois was closely pressing Hanover; King George II. was alarmed, and signed a treaty of neutrality for one year, engaging not to furnish any assistance to the Queen of Hungary and to refrain from voting as elector for her husband, Francis of Lorraine, who aspired to the imperial dignity. On the 26th of November, 1741, the Elector of Bavaria was proclaimed King of Bohemia. On the 14th of February, 1742, he was crowned emperor, under the name of Charles VII. The allied armies had menaced Vienna, and Queen Maria-Theresa, flying from town to town before her triumphant enemies, had only found refuge and support in Hungary, amid the palatines and magnates assembled at Presbourg. _Moriamur pro rege nostro, Maria-Theresa!_ they had shouted, with a unanimous voice, drawing their swords. All the horrors of war were desolating Germany. Everywhere irregular troops scoured the country, pillaging, massacring, burning. The hereditary domains of the new emperor were in turn menaced. "He remains at Frankfort," wrote the lawyer Barbier, in his journal, "and it would be difficult for him to go elsewhere safely."

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The neutrality of Hanover had been received in England with anger; public feeling had been against the minister since the opening of the session, and a contested election brought the fact to light. The most devoted friends of Walpole pressed him to resign. He still hesitated, being passionately attached, after twenty years of its exercise, to that power which he had obstinately defended against so many enemies. He decided, at last, renouncing together with authority, the thorough dominance which he had so long maintained in the House of Commons. He received from the king every pledge of affection and of the most sincere regret, and the title of Earl of Orford. Some months later, Pulteney, in his turn, was elevated to the House of Lords, under the name of Lord Bath. Walpole, still influential with George II., had contributed with all his power to this annihilatory elevation. He approached his ancient antagonist with a smile. "Well, my lord," said he, "behold us become the two most insignificant personages in England."

Walpole did not long survive his downfall. In spite of his withdrawal to Houghton, he never became, because he could not be, insignificant. He had governed for twenty years with consummate skill, employing indifferently good and evil means, oratorical eloquence as well as parliamentary corruption; anxious to serve his friends rather than to conciliate his enemies, without ever giving to his country the pleasure of glory or the spectacle of political and moral greatness; contributing nevertheless to the happiness and prosperity of England by assuring to her, in the midst of serious external and internal troubles, long years of peace. His great rival in the art of governance was already rising to view; and amid the ranks of the patriot Whigs observing foresight had distinguished young William Pitt, destined to rule, as a master, the country and the Parliament that Walpole, like a skilful pilot, had long guided. "Between Sir Robert Walpole and Lord Chatham," as Lord Macaulay has wittily remarked, "there was all the distance between success and glory."

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The new cabinet had just been formed, under the direction of Lord Carteret, soon afterwards, in right of his mother, Lord Granville. Pulteney had declined all office. "I have too often protested my disinterestedness to occupy any place," he had said. When he perceived that influence as well as power had escaped him, it was too late to retrace his steps. The ministry as formed was already discussed in Parliament, as well as throughout the country, and was experiencing an opposition which would ere long become formidable. Carteret was intelligent, brilliant and amiable, unequal and uncertain. He allowed himself to be led, at times, even as far as debauchery: he always remained eloquent and adroit in diplomatic maneuvres. He had concentrated all his efforts on the maintenance of the king's favor, often neglecting his partisans, and relying on corruption to rally his friends. "What do the judges and bishops matter to me?" said he, contemptuously; "my concern is to make kings and emperors, and to preserve the European balance." "Very well," replied the office-seeker, so cavalierly denied; "those who do care for judges and bishops will be appealed to."

Thus began already the power of the Pelhams, who were more careful than Carteret to use such means of influence as the exercise of high offices placed in the hands of ministers or their friends.

The war was still being waged in Germany. With the fall of Walpole, England's neutrality had ended. Already a body of troops had taken the road for Flanders. Women of distinction, with the Duchess of Marlborough at their head, had collected by subscription the sum of one hundred thousand pounds sterling, which they successfully offered to the haughty Maria-Theresa. The king had taken into his pay six thousand Hessian soldiers. The cabinet proposed to raise in Hanover a body of sixteen thousand at England's expense. {191} The opposition violently inveighed against this measure. "It is too evident," said Pitt, "that this great kingdom, which is powerful and formidable, is regarded as a province of a pitiful Electorate, and that troops are only raised in pursuance of a design long matured, in order to swallow up all the resources of our unhappy country." The proposal passed, however, and the king put himself at the head of the forces he had collected in Germany. The States-General of Holland had united their troops with his. The fortune of war had changed. Charles VII., a fugitive in his turn, driven from his hereditary States, which Marshal Broglie had evacuated, had no longer any hope, save in the aid of France. She alone sustained all the burden of the war, which she had not yet officially declared. In England they laughed at the state of matters in Europe. "Our situation is absurd," said Horace Walpole, the intelligent son of the great minister, who was constantly dabbling in politics, as in literature. "We have declared war on Spain without making it, and we make war on France without having declared it."

King George II., as well as his second son, the Duke of Cumberland, gave proof of striking bravery on the 17th of July, 1743, at the battle Dettingen, which was disastrous to France, despite the able preparations of Marshal Noailles. An imprudence of his nephew, the Duke de Grammont, decided the fate of the day. But the jealousy which existed between the English and German generals hindered the course of operations. A treaty concluded at Worms, on the 13th of September, between England, Austria and Sardinia, was badly received by Parliament, which, with good reason, deemed it more favorable to the interests of Hanover than to those of England. {192} The name Hanoverian began to be used as an insult, and was applied at times to the king himself. All the influence that Walpole had preserved in Parliament, and his speech in the House of Lords, were necessary to obtain the maintenance of the foreign troops. Lord Wilmington had just died, and at this time it was by the advice of Walpole that Henry Pelham was called to fill his place at the head of the Treasury. One year later, in the month of November, 1744, a division occurred in the cabinet. In spite of the personal favor of the king, Carteret, then Lord Granville, yielded to the influence of Henry Pelham and his brother-in-law, the Duke of Newcastle. War was at length officially declared between France and England. The new ministers lately raised to power in the name of English interests, as against the German proclivities of the king, continued to hire Hanoverian troops. At the opening of the campaign of 1745, the Duke of Cumberland found himself at the head of the allies.

The Emperor Charles VII. had just died, and his son had treated with the Queen of Hungary. Already for two years Frederick II., being master of Silesia, had quitted the field of battle, and observed with curious and cool interest the struggles which were drenching Europe in blood, and serving to weaken his rivals. Uneasy at the progress which Maria Theresa was making, he re-entered the lists, however. King Louis XV. had taken the lead of his army. He had just arrived before Tournay, with the dauphin, who had recently been married to the daughter of the King of Spain. On the 9th of May, 1745, at the break of day, the hostile forces met near the little village of Fontenoy. The relation of this victory belongs to the history of France. Marshal Saxe, a foreigner, and a Protestant, was henceforth to maintain alone the glory and the high tradition of Louis Fourteenth's marshals. {193} He was sick, and believed to be dying, but he caused himself to be borne on a litter at the head of the army. "The question is not to live, but to proceed," he had replied to Voltaire, who was astonished at sight of his preparations. The Austrians were few in number. The veteran general Königseck commanded a corps of eight thousand men. An attack directed by the English on the forest of Lane, which the French troops occupied, had been repulsed. General Ingoldsby had fallen back on the main body of the army, commanded by the Duke of Cumberland. "March straight before you, your highness," said Königseck to the prince. "The ravine in front of Fontenoy must be gained." The movements of the Dutch were slow and undecisive; the English gave way. They formed a deep and serried column, preceded and flanked by cannons. The French batteries thundered right and left; entire ranks fell in their tracks; they were soon replaced; cannons, dragged by hand opposite Fontenoy, and redoubts answered the French artillery. It was in vain that the French guards sought to capture the enemy's cannon. The two armies were at last face to face.

Frequent mention has been made of the interchange of courtesies, which took place between French and English officers, on both sides of the ravine. The English officers had saluted; Count Chabannes and the Duke de Biron, who were in advance, uncovered in their turn. "Gentlemen of the French guard, withdraw," cried Lord Charles Hay. "Withdraw yourselves, gentlemen of England," retorted Count d'Auteroche; "we are never the first to retreat." The English fusillade was mortal to the French guard. Their colonel, the Duke de Grammont, had been slain at the beginning of the battle. The soldiers yielded. The English crossed the ravine which protected Fontenoy. {194} They advanced as though on parade; the majors each having a small cane in his hand, rested it lightly on the muskets of the soldiers, in order to regulate their fire. One after another the French regiments broke against this immovable column. The Duke of Cumberland had ceased to advance, but, impassive and victorious, through the calm bravery of his soldiers, he occupied the field of battle. Königseck sent him his felicitations.

Marshal Saxe had begged Louis XV. to retreat. "I know that he will do what he ought," replied the monarch, "but I stay where I am." The marshal had just concentrated his troops, in order to make a final effort. The Irish brigade in the French service, which was almost entirely composed of Jacobite exiles, headed the regiments which charged at once on the English. The Dutch had effected their retreat. The English column found itself overwhelmed. It finally gave way without disorder, and preserved to the end its bold front. The Duke of Cumberland, the last to retreat, as he had been the first to attack, recalled to his soldiers the glorious memories of Blenheim and Ramillies; he blew out the brains of an officer who took to flight. The military skill of the English generals had not equalled their heroism. The battle of Fontenoy gave the result of the campaign to France, but Queen Maria Theresa had just accomplished her great aim. Her husband had been raised to empire on the 13th of September, 1745. She had made a treaty with the King of Prussia. Louis XV. stood alone against Germany, which had become neutral, or which rallied round the reinstated empire. Great internal struggles henceforth absorbed the thoughts and efforts of England.

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An attractive young man, bold and frivolous, Prince Charles Edward Stuart, the eldest son of the Chevalier St. George, had for a long time cherished the hope of recovering the throne of his fathers. Since the beginning of 1744, he had left Rome, where he was living with his father, attracted to Paris by the rumor of an invasion of England, which the ministers of Louis XV. desired to attempt. He was provided with letters patent, declaring him regent of the three kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland, the _alter ego_ of the king, his father, charged, [in] his absence, with the exercise of royal authority. The projected attempt did not eventuate: the ships collected at Dunkirk were dispersed, as Prince Charles Edward had not been able to obtain an audience with Louis XV. For some time he maintained the strictest incognito. "I have taken a house a league from Paris, and I live there like a hermit," he wrote to his father. "This becomes however, the secret of the comedy." The repulse of the English at Fontenoy seemed a favorable opportunity to the young prince. "I have always had at heart," said he, "the re-establishment of my father's throne, but only with the aid of his own subjects." He was encouraged in his project by Cardinal de Tencin, who had lately obtained his hat by the influence of the dethroned monarch. "Why do you not try to cross in a ship to the north of Scotland?" he had said to the prince; "your presence can form a party and an army for you. France will be compelled to give you aid."

Charles Edward had kept his secret from the ministers of Louis XV. as he had kept it from King James. It was only on the 12th of June, 1745, that he wrote to his father, from the Chateau de Navarre, near Ivry: "Your Majesty would not desire me to have followed his example. You acted in 1715 as I do to-day, under very different circumstances; those which now present themselves are more encouraging. This will only transpire after the embarkation. The lot is cast. I have determined either to conquer or die, resolved that I am not to yield a foot so long as I shall have a man with me."

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The young prince's jewels had been pledged; he had purchased arms and supplies. On the 13th of July he set sail, accompanied by a freight vessel, the Elizabeth, which was soon followed by a French vessel. The little brig that carried him touched on the Scotch coast. A large eagle hovered over the Isle of Erisca, when the ship touched land. "Behold the king of the air come to salute your royal highness," exclaimed Lord Tullibardine. Gladdened by this happy augury, the bold exiles disembarked fearlessly. The prince was disguised, and the crew did not even yet know his name.

In Scotland they were better informed. The Jacobites had for some time been cognizant of the prince's intentions. They were uneasy, and secretly disturbed. The most eminent had even declared to Murray, the prince's agent, that it would be impossible for them to effect a rising without the landing of a body of regular troops. Charles Edward came alone. When he summoned the Macdonalds--the chiefs of the small cluster of islands where he landed--the old Macdonald of Boisdale presented himself in the name of his absent nephew, and refused to pledge his support to the undertaking. "A word will be sufficient to bring Sir Alexander Macdonald and McLeod of McLeod here," exclaimed the prince. "Your highness is mistaken," replied Boisdale; "I have seen them both a few days ago, and they have told me of their determination to risk nothing without external aid." The prince was silent, being more annoyed than dejected. When he cast his eyes on a young highlander who had come on board his ship with Boisdale, and who fixed his gleaming glance on him; "You, at least, you will come to my assistance," said he, quickly turning to the young man. "Even to death, if I should be alone to draw the sword," cried Ranald. {197} "I did not know him yet, and I felt my heart in my mouth when I looked at him in his abbe's habit," said another witness of the first interview. Enthusiasm is a contagious power; the chiefs of the Macdonalds were conquered. They promised to sacrifice everything, life and property, in the cause of their legitimate sovereign.

Eight days had not elapsed before the greater part of the highland gentlemen had followed their example. Vainly had the chief of the Camerons, young Lochiel, for a time resisted the contagion. "Do not go to see the prince," his brother had said to him; "when you are in his presence he will make you do what he wishes." Lochiel had followed this course. Charles Edward pressed him in vain. "I am resolved to run the chance of it," at last exclaimed the adventurous young man. "In a few days I shall raise the royal standard and proclaim to the people of Great Britain that Charles Stuart is come to reclaim the crown of his ancestors, prepared to perish if he should fail. Lochiel can remain at home. My father had often instanced him as the staunchest of our friends. He will learn from the papers the fate of his prince." It was too much. "No," replied the chief, "I shall share the fate of your highness, whatever it may be, and I shall involve in my fortune all those whom birth or chance has placed under my authority."

The Cameron clan was the first and most numerous at the rendezvous fixed by Charles Edward at Glennin. About fifteen hundred men assisted there at the unfurling of the royal banner of the Stuarts, so often and so cruelly disastrous to Scotland and the Scotch. Some weeks later, profiting by the uneasiness which the wild mountain defiles had inspired in Sir John Cope, who was commanding the troops of King George in Scotland, the young prince pressed quickly forward. {198} Received everywhere with acclamations, he entered Perth on the 4th of September, where he organized his army, which was constantly enlarged by new recruits. He chose Lord George Murray, brother of the Duke of Athol, who had served with distinction on the continent, for lieutenant-general. Sterling, Falkirk, Linlithgow, either opened their gates to him or were obliged to surrender. On the 17th, Charles Edward, from the heights of Certesphine, viewed the noble city of Edinburgh seated like a queen between the mountains and the sea. Already the young prince had put a price on the capture of "George, elector of Hanover." "If any harm happen to him," said the proclamation, "the blame will recoil on those who have first set this infamous example."

After having effected a movement in advance, which had eventuated in a retreat without fighting, General Cope was drawing near the rebels by sea. The weather was contrary. The guardianship of the capital was intrusted to a regiment of militia and a volunteer corps supported by two regiments. The latter had been charged with the defence of the heights. The terror was extreme, and the feeling vainly concealed itself beneath a noisy display of courage. When they learned of the highlanders' approach, and that the troops were summoned to arms, a handful of volunteers, speedily diminished still farther by the entreaties of wives and mothers, appeared on parade. The militia corps was not any braver. The dragoons took flight, crossed the town at a gallop, and only paused at the borders of Berwick. The prince sent summons after summons to the provost. "My proclamation and the declarations of the king my father are a sufficient protection for the security of all the towns of the kingdom," said Charles Edward. "If I enter peaceably within your walls you will suffer no harm; if you resist, you will be placed under martial law."

[Image] Charles Edward.

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The municipal magistrates still hesitated; the prince refused to receive their deputies, for the second time. As the carriages were re-entering the town, and as the gate opened to give them passage, eight hundred Camerons, commanded by Lochiel, flung themselves on the guards and easily effected an entrance into the city. In an instant they had command of every gate. At the break of day, Charles Edward, who had immediately been informed, set out with his little army. Avoiding the fusillade from the castle, which was occupied by Lord Guest, he entered the capital at midday, without striking a blow. The Scotch heralds, incontinently brought to the Square were forced to proclaim King James VIII., and to read in a loud voice the proclamations of the king and his son. The Jacobite ladies crowded to the windows, saluting the prince with their applause. James Hepburn, of Keith, carrying his drawn sword before the young regent, introduced him into the palace of his ancestors. Holyrood resounded with shouts of joy. A crowd of noble lords pressed round the young prince. "To-morrow, gentlemen, we will march to meet General Cope," said he, as he parted from his guests. Acclamations from all sides answered him. On leaving the town, at daybreak, Charles Edward drew his sword and brandished it above his head, exclaiming, "Gentlemen, I have thrown away the scabbard."

General Cope, having landed at Dunbar, had rallied his fugitive dragoons, and was advancing with all speed on Edinburgh. On the 20th of September, the two armies found themselves face to face on the plain of Prestonpans. It was late: the prince was urged to make the attack, but marsh separated him from the foe. A council was held. Charles Edward lay down on a bundle of straw in the midst of his soldiers. {200} In the night he was awakened by one of his aides-de-camp. The proprietor of the piece of ground occupied by the troops, Mr. Wilson, of Whitbough, had remembered an indirect passage which enabled them to avoid the dangerous parts of the marsh. He communicated his plan to the prince. At sunrise the highlanders had surmounted the obstacle, and already threatened the royal troops. A moment of meditation, with uncovered head, on the part of all the soldiers, preceded the shrill summons of the bagpipes and the shouts of the mountaineers. Before the English soldiers could draw, the highlanders had turned aside, with blows of their daggers, the barrels of the muskets, striking with their claymores the foremost ranks, who fell back dying. The cannon had been discarded from the first.

Like the Vendean peasants, the Scotch mountaineers dreaded artillery, and their impetuous bravery was constantly bent on hindering its ravages. Like the former, also, they dragged after them an old field-piece, which they called 'the mother of muskets,'--a worthy predecessor of the illustrious _Marie Jeanne_ of the army of Lescure and under Laroche-jacquelin.

The dragoons had, as on the day before, taken flight, in spite of the efforts of the brave and pious Colonel Gardener, slain soon afterward himself, as he was encouraging the resistance of a little platoon of troops. The infantry held its ground well, but every effort of the highlanders was now concentrated against it. The axes of Lochabar felled heads and lopped limbs. Before this savage valor the English soldiers at length gave way. James MacGregor, son of the celebrated Rob Roy, himself pierced with five wounds, shouted to his companions, "I am not dead, my men; I look to you to do your duty." Everywhere the chiefs were in the fray, at the head of their men. {201} "Do you think that our men are fit to resist the regular troops?" the prince had asked of MacDonald of Keppoch, who had served long in France "I know nothing about it," replied the highlander; "it is long since our clans have been defeated; but what I know well is that the chieftains will be in front, and that the soldiers will not leave them long alone." The attack and the victory only lasted for some moments. General Cope followed his dragoons and brought the news of his defeat to Berwick. "You are the first general who has ever himself announced his own defeat," said Lord Mark Kerr, ironically to him. The fugitives had not been pursued: the highlanders were absorbed in the division of spoils. The prince had carefully protected the wounded. "If I had gained the victory over foreigners, my joy would be complete," he wrote on the morrow to the king his father, "but the idea that it is over the English has mingled in it more bitterness than I thought possible. I learn that six thousand Dutch troops have arrived, and that ten battalions of English have been sent. I wish that they were all Dutch, so that I should not have the sorrow of shedding English blood. I hope I shall soon oblige the elector to send the rest, which at all events will be a service done to England, by making her renounce a foreign war, which is ruinous to her. Unhappily the victory brings embarrassments. I am charged with taking care of my friends and of my enemies; those who ought to bury the dead, as if that did not concern them. My highlanders consider themselves above doing it, and the peasants have withdrawn. I am equally much embarrassed on account of my wounded prisoners. If I make a hospital of a church, people will cry out against this great profanation, and will repeat what I said in my proclamation, by which I was pledged not to violate any propriety. Let come what may, I am resolved not to leave the poor wounded fellows in the street. If I cannot do better, I shall convert the palace into a hospital, and give it to them."

{202}

King George II. had just returned to England, recalled by the anxieties of his cabinet. The Marquis of Tweedale, charged with Scotch affairs, being himself undecided and perplexed, complained of being neither seconded nor obeyed. The inhabitants of the Lowlands possessed no arms, the Whig clans of the Highlands delivered up their muskets after the rebellion of 1715 and 1719. Public spirit was not yet excited in England. Either the fears there were shameful, or the indifference excessive. "England will belong to the one who arrives first," wrote Henry Fox, afterwards Lord Holland, and himself a member of the government, to one of his friends. "If you can tell me which will be here most quickly, the six thousand Dutch and the ten English battalions that we are receiving from Flanders, or the five thousand French and Spanish that are announced, you would be made certain of our lot."

Patriotic sentiment, even when it is tardy of awakening, is more powerful than politicians are sometimes led to believe. The prudent indifference of Louis the XV.th's ministers was not deceived. In spite of the ardor of his warlike zeal, Charles Edward felt how precarious was success, and how necessary was external aid. He had several times renewed his representations to the Court of Versailles. Some convoys of arms and money had been sent him; it was even proposed to place the young Duke of York at the head of the Irish brigade; but the ordinary slowness of a weak government interfered with its operations. The assistance so often promised by Spain, as by France, was, up till then, confined to the personal expeditions of some brave adventurers. {203} The Duke of Rochelieu ought to place himself at the head, it was said. "As for the landing at Dunkirk which was spoken of," wrote the eminent Barbier, at the end of the year 1745, "there is much anxiety about it, for we are at the end of December and it is not yet accomplished, which permits every one to invent news according to his fancy. This uncertainty discourages the French, who publish that our expedition will not take place, or at least that it will not assemble."

The expedition did not sail. The prince was ardently desirous of marching upon London, being, like his predecessors in the Scottish insurrection, fatally drawn on to seek, in the very centre of Great Britain, that support and success which always failed them. The Scottish chiefs protested, being violently opposed to the abandonment of Scotland. The prince was ill-inclined to bear contradiction, and promptly flew into a passion in the council. "I perceive, gentlemen," he cried, "that you are determined to remain in Scotland and defend your country. I am not less determined to try my fortune in England. I will go, though I should be alone."

The highlanders yielded with reluctance, and without confidence. "We have undertaken to re-establish the kingdom as well as the King of Scotland," they had often said, and Charles Edward had solemnly announced that his father would never ratify the union. He had even thought of convoking a parliament at Edinburgh. The practical difficulties of the project had deterred him from it. Before turning his steps into England, the prince published an appeal to his subjects of the three kingdoms, as clever as it was impassioned. "It has been sought to frighten you concerning the dangers that your religion and liberty might run. You have been spoken to of arbitrary power; of the tyranny of France and Spain. Give ear to the simple truth. I have at my own expense hired a vessel. {204} Provided but ill with money, arms, or friends, I have come to Scotland with seven persons. I have published the declaration of the king my father, and I have proclaimed his rights, with pardon in one hand and liberty of conscience in the other. As for the reproaches lately addressed to the royal family, the wrongs which might have called them forth have been sufficiently expiated. During the fifty-seven years that our house has lived in exile, has the nation been more happy and more prosperous for it? Are you right, as fathers of Great Britain and Ireland, to love those who have governed you? Have you found more humanity among those whom their birth did not call to the throne than among my royal ancestors? Do you owe them other benefits than the crushing burden of an enormous debt? If it be not so, whence come so many complaints and such continual reproaches in your meetings? I have come here without the aid of France or Spain. But when I see my enemies rallying against me--Dutch, Danes, Hessians, Swiss--and that the Elector of Hanover summons his allies to protect him against the subjects of the king, it seems to me that the king my father is also, in his turn, warranted in accepting some assistance. I am ready, however. If my enemies desire to put it to the proof, let them send back their foreign mercenaries; let them trust to the lot of battles. I shall run my chance with the subjects of my father alone."

The prince's army amounted at most to six thousand men. Many of the great lords and Scotch gentlemen had remained neutral. Some, like Lord Lovat, the chief of the Fraser clan, being scandalously perfidious and corrupt, had secretly authorized their sons to join the prince, reserving to themselves the right of repudiating, if necessary. {205} "There is a singular mixture of gray-beards and beardless boys," wrote a spy who had been sent from England about the middle of October. "There are old men ready to descend into their graves, and youngsters who are not much higher than their swords, and who have not strength to wield them. There are perhaps a good four or five thousand courageous and determined men. The remnant are ill-looking bands, more intent on pillage than on their prince, on a few shillings than on the crown."

It was with these forces, uncertain and irregular, in despite of their devotion, that Charles Edward crossed the frontier on the 8th of November, 1745. The soldiers, as well as the highland chiefs, left their country with regret. A certain number of desertions had already occurred. At the moment when they put their foot on English soil, the highlanders, uttering loud cries, drew their swords. Lochiel wounded himself in the hand with his weapon, and the sight of blood troubled his followers. It was under the influence of this vexatious omen that the Scots laid siege to Carlisle. The direction of operations had been intrusted to the Duke of Perth. The prince, with Lord George Murray, had conceived a movement on Kelso which should deceive, and which in fact did deceive. General Wade, who found himself at Newcastle with the royal troops. When the English general perceived his error, Carlisle was in the hands of the Jacobites. Charles Edward made his entry there solemnly on the 17th of November, being anxious to appease the germs of discord which the success of the Duke of Perth had just planted among the chiefs of his little army. Lord George Murray was maintained in his important functions. {206} From Carlisle to Preston, from Preston to Wigan and Manchester, the Scotch advanced without striking a blow, but uneasy, and suspicious of enemies who did not show themselves or give them occasion to display their valor on the field of battle, and discontented with the English Jacobites, who remained inert and did not in any way second their efforts. A little body of volunteers was formed at Manchester under the orders of Colonel Townley, who belonged to an old Catholic Lancashire family. On the banks of the Mersey, among the gentlemen assembled to receive him, the prince perceived a very old woman who had formerly assisted at Dover, in 1660, at the landing of King Charles II. Since the revolution of 1688, Mrs. Skyring had constantly divided her income into two parts, sending half of it to the royal exiles. At the news of Charles Edward's arrival, she had collected her plate and her jewels, in order to lay everything at the feet of the young prince. Her prayers were heard, she said, like Simeon of old: "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation." Tradition relates that the old Jacobite did actually die some days after the departure of the adventurous young man whose success she so ardently desired.

The prince was advancing towards Derby, that fatal limit of Scotch expeditions into England. Three armies were formed around and against him. General Wade was at last moving across the county of York; the Duke of Cumberland, recalled from Germany, had gathered at Litchfield a body of from seven to eight thousand men. Considerable forces were assembled at Finchley for the defence of London. Charles Edward alone was still joyous. The road to the capital of Great Britain was open to him; a quick march had left behind him the Duke of Cumberland as well as General Wade. When he established himself at Derby, on the 4th of December, his whole preoccupation was to know whether he should enter London on foot or on horseback; dressed simply as an English gentlemen, or in the highland costume which he had worn since his arrival in Scotland.

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The views of his adherents were different and their preoccupations more serious. Scarcely had they arrived at Derby, when the chiefs repaired in a body to the prince, representing to him the extreme danger they ran, surrounded as they were by hostile armies, in a hostile or indifferent country, without assistance from the Jacobites, and far distant from the forces which had remained in Scotland under the command of Lord Strathallan. A victory at the gates of London, the only chance of glory and success, would leave them still isolated and exposed to the vengeance and anger of the Elector. The latter had thirty thousand men at his disposal; their army did not number more than five thousand fighting men. All counselled retreat, whilst there was yet time, while the roads were not cut off, and reinforcements awaited them in Scotland.

The prince bore himself violently. "I would rather be twenty feet under the ground than retreat," he exclaimed. He multiplied reasons, arguments, and hopes, both groundless and chimerical; promising a landing of French troops in the county of Kent, expatiating justly on the terror into which their approach had thrown London, where the day of entrance into Derby long bore the name of Black Friday. The Scots remained immovable. Their soldiers were preparing to march into the capital, sharpening their swords or piously prostrating themselves in the churches; but the chiefs were resolved not to run any new risk. On the evening of the 5th of December the prince finally yielded. {208} "You desire it," he said to the members of his council; "I consent to the retreat; but henceforth I will consult no one. I am responsible for my actions only to God and to my father. I shall no longer ask nor accept your advice."

In spite of the liberal protestations of Charles Edward, he had sucked in with his milk the maxims and haughtiness of absolute power; but bad fortune had more than once compelled the Stuarts to bend before the firm resolution of their faithful friends. The anger of the soldiers equalled that of the prince. "If we had been beaten, we would not have been more sad," said one of them. The discontent of the troops displayed itself by a new growth of irregularity. A long line of stragglers pillaged the cottages; some set fire to the villages which resisted them. The prince did not exercise any oversight. He no longer looked on himself as chief of the army, and he had abandoned his position in the advance guard. The Duke of Cumberland had raised his camp and was following the retreating army. Already at Clifton Moor, an advance detachment had thought to surprise Lord George Murray's corps. The lieutenant-general was on his guard. In the shade he perceived the dragoons who had descended from horseback, and who were gliding under the shelter of the walls. "Claymore!" cried the Scottish chief, and his soldiers instantly started in pursuit of the enemy, and soon put them to rout. Lord George had lost his cap and fought bareheaded.

The rebel army entered Scotland without another battle. Scarcely had it left Carlisle when the place was invested by the royal troops. The Manchester regiment which occupied it for the young Pretender was forced to capitulate "under the good pleasure of his Majesty." The good pleasure of George II. was to be, for the larger part of the officers, condemnation to death.

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The royal authority had been re-established at Edinburgh since the prince had taken the road to England. General Hawley, who occupied it for George II., advanced towards Stirling. Charles Edward had just arrived there. He had blockaded the citadel, but on learning the movement of the English general he immediately marched to meet him. The prince had rallied all his forces; his army amounted to about eight or nine thousand men, a figure nearly equal to that of the royal troops. The English were encamped on the plain of Falkirk. On the 17th of January, 1746, when the rumor spread that the highlanders were approaching, the general was absent, being detained at Cullender House by the hospitality of the Countess of Kilmarnock, whose husband had taken part with the rebel army. The soldiers were preparing their dinner; confusion reigned among all the regiments. Hawley, who had come hatless in hot haste at a hard gallop, immediately hurried his dragoons along with him, ordering the infantry to follow him, so as to cut off the road to the mountaineers. Rain was driving in the face of the soldiers. The highlanders already occupied the acclivity when the royal troops arrived to meet them. Hardly had they formed their lines when the mountaineers dashed on them, having dispersed the cavalry, who suffered the disadvantage of the position. Only three regiments of the right wing stood the impetuous attack of the highlanders. On this juncture the Scotch brigade that Sir John Drummond had brought from France belied the reputation that it had achieved at Fontenoy. According to custom, the mountaineers, certain of victory, no longer thought of anything but plunder, and did not pursue the fugitives. {210} Hawley and his dragoons, drenched almost to the skin by torrents of rain, beaten by a furious wind, ashamed and humiliated, reentered Linlithgow at a gallop, in order to take refuge immediately after in Edinburgh. The fugitive foot-soldiers joined them there, and bore all the rage of their terrible chief. The gibbets that he had prepared for the punishment of the rebels were loaded with his coward soldiers. The Duke of Cumberland alone, who was coming by forced marches to measure himself with the Pretender, put an end to these punishments. On the 30th of January he slept at Holyrood, in the same room and in the same bed that his rival had lately occupied. Yet once more the future of Great Britain seemed destined to be played for on the field of battle between two princely adversaries, both representing the most opposite principles, both young and brave, having at command forces the same to outward view, but in reality very different. To clear-sighted observers, even though prejudiced, Charles Edward's cause was lost.

It was the opinion of his most faithful adherents, absolutely devoted, as before Derby, to a cause the weakness of which they appreciated, and which they were resolved to defend to the very end. After his victory at Falkirk, the prince wished to again undertake the siege of Stirling Castle, without other counsel than that of a French engineer, M. de Mirabelle, and some subordinates. The chiefs were gloomy; they presented a remonstrance to the prince; desertions were becoming every day more numerous in the face of foes who were each day more threatening. "We are humbly of opinion," said the highland chiefs, "that the only means of snatching the army from an imminent peril is to withdraw to the highlands, and we can easily occupy the winter in getting possession of the northern fortresses. {211} We are thus certain of retaining sufficient men to deter the enemy from following us into the mountains at this season of the year. In the spring a new army of ten thousand men will be ready to accompany your Royal Highness where it may seem good to you." On this occasion again the determined will of the men who had risked everything in his cause overcame the young prince's obstinacy. In his rage he dashed his head against the wall. "Good God! have I lived long enough to see this?" he cried. But the siege of Stirling Castle was abandoned, and the retreat toward the mountains began without any order or method. In his bad humor Charles Edward had neglected to give his orders. The rebels without difficulty invested Inverness, the castle of which yielded at the end of some days. The convoys of arms and supplies coming from France had almost all been intercepted by English cruisers. The coffers of the army needed money; the troops were receiving their pay in flour; dissatisfaction was on the increase; the French and Spanish adventurers were tired of the war; they ran no danger, and they reaped neither glory nor profit. The Duke of Cumberland pursued the retreating army. On the 2nd of February he had entered Stirling; on the 25th he took up quarters at Aberdeen, being himself irritated and gloomy. "All the inhabitants of the country are Jacobites," he wrote; "gentleness would be quite out of place; there would be no end if I should enumerate the villains and the villainies which abound here." The hour of vengeance was approaching, rendered more cruel by the natural harshness of the conqueror, as well as by the passionate obstinacy of those of the rebels who should become his victims. {212} Already the march of the royal army was marked by gibbets. The duke's advance was for a time hindered by the departure of the Dutch troops. Scarcely had Lord John Drummond set foot in Scotland than he had communicated to the troops of the States-General his commission from Louis XV. As prisoners of war who had capitulated at Tournay and at Dendermonde, the Dutch regiments were pledged not to bear arms against France. They had just been replaced by Hessians, when the Duke of Cumberland, crossing the Spey in spite of the highlanders' efforts, advanced as far as Nairn, where he established his camp. About seven leagues separated the two armies; plenty reigned among the English. On the 15th of April, the Duke of Cumberland's birthday, an extraordinary distribution of provisions was made among the troops. When the highlanders were called to arms in the night they had scarcely had a biscuit to appease their hunger. The prince and Lord George Murray had conceived the hope of effecting a surprise. The body of troops was inconsiderable, but the night was dark, the road bad, and the English made drowsy by copious drinking. The mountaineers set out on the march; they were enfeebled, and they advanced slowly. Day was beginning to break when they found themselves in sight of the English camp. Charles Edward was disposed to push forward. "A little light will be advantageous to us in wielding the two-edged sword," said Hepburn; but Lord George, ever prudent, and stationed at the head of the advance guard, had already ordered the retreat. The men, fatigued and discouraged, resumed their position in the plain of Culloden, at the foot of the castle which the prince occupied, and which belonged to the great Judge Duncan Forbes, one of his most decided as well as most intelligent and reasonable adversaries. {213} It was there that the Duke of Cumberland came in his turn to offer battle to the Pretender. The army of the latter was small in number; several clans, disaffected on different points, did not respond to the call. Charles Edward refused to hear the wary counsels which his friends threw away on him, among others the Marquis d'Equilles, who had lately come from France with a letter from King Louis XV., and who pompously assumed the title of ambassador. The die was cast; the two armies drew up for battle in the plain. It was about eleven o'clock in the morning. On the 18th of April, 1746, before close of day, the Jacobite army had ceased to exist.

The courage of Charles Edward and his conduct at the battle of Culloden have often been questioned. Standing motionless on the hill at the head of a squadron of cavalry, he took no part in the action, and when he perceived the disorder of the troops he made no effort to rally them and to die in their midst. He was displeased and gloomy, affected perhaps by the fatalistic superstition that seemed to have impressed several of the clans. The Macdonalds had been placed at the left wing, whereas they had occupied the right at Prestonpans and at Falkirk. This change had seemed to them a bad augury. Lochiel had been severely wounded; two of his followers had carried him bleeding far from the field of battle. The courtiers who surrounded the prince took fright when they saw the fortune of battle declare itself against them, and withdrew, ignoring the fate reserved for them and what intellectual and moral degradation should attach to that man who had started in life by an undertaking so adventurous and brilliant that it had for a time placed him in the estimation of Europe among heroes. {214} The Duke of Cumberland was constantly borne to the front rank. "I have just given the orders of the day, that fugitives will be shot," he had said to his troops at the beginning of the battle. "I tell you this, that those who do not feel their courage very certain, should retire. I prefer to fight with one thousand resolute men behind me than to have ten thousand among whom are cowards." The regiments had responded by the cry of "Flanders! Flanders!" a just and noble souvenir of their attitude at Fontenoy. The battle was finished and the victory complete when the duke wrote to London, "I thank God for having been the instrument of this success, the glory of which belongs solely to the English troops, who have cleansed themselves of the little check at Falkirk without the help of the Hessians. They would have been well able to spare us the trouble, and have not been useless in spite of their inaction."

The highlanders had for the most part fought valiantly; their losses were great, and few of the prisoners were to see their families again. The rigors of triumphant vengeance already were commencing to spend themselves on them. The Duke of Cumberland and General Hawley did not feel the sentiments which had formerly affected Charles Edward after the battle of Prestonpans. The prisoners and the wounded suffered hunger and thirst. A certain number of the fugitives were burned in the cottages where they had concealed themselves. "It is necessary to draw a little of this country's blood," said the Duke of Cumberland. "We weaken this folly, but we do not cure it. Even if we have destroyed them, the soil is so impregnated by this rebellion that it will crop out again." Already the prince's agents were scouring the country seeking fugitives of note, searching houses, and leaving traces of their passage by fire and sword. "I think it will not be long before I lay my hand on old Lovat," wrote the duke. "I have several detachments on the way to search for him, and papers which suffice to convict him of high treason."

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It was at the house of Lord Lovat, the most perfidious of all his secret adherents, that Charles Edward had sought refuge after leaving the battle-field of Culloden. The cruel old man, grown hoary in intrigues, had refused to join him personally, whilst sending him his son. He was henceforward determined to sacrifice all his possessions in order to save his life. He coldly received the unfortunate prince, who would not sleep under his roof, and who pursued his way as far as the abandoned castle of Invergary. A fisherman of the neighborhood brought two salmon that he had just caught in the little river. The prince and his companions were worn out with fatigue, discouraged, and convinced with reason that the check was definite and the cause lost. Lord George Murray had rallied twelve hundred men at Ruthven. Prudent in the moment of success, dauntless in the hour of reverse, he advised the prince to maintain the struggle at every risk. "We can hold out in the mountains so long as there is a cow and a measure of meal in Scotland," said he. A message from the prince thanked his faithful adherents for their zeal, asking of them, as a last favor, to think of their personal safety. All were gravely compromised; danger was imminent; they scattered, and the rebellion of 1745-1746 was over.

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While the Duke of Cumberland established himself in Fort Augustus, exercising to the full all those cruelties which made him deserve the name of butcher, while the most fortunate of his enemies escaped with great difficulty, Prince Charles Edward, as his grand-uncle, King Charles II., had formerly done after the battle of Worcester, wandered from hiding-place to hiding-place, exhausted, dying of hunger, a hundred times recognized, forced to trust to the poorest people, to the most powerless of his friends, yet everywhere served, assisted, defended, with a devotion which was proof against everything. He had taken refuge in the little archipelago which bears the name of Long Island. The English vessels cruised along the coasts; houses were incessantly searched; peasants were arrested; the danger was increasing every day. A young girl, Miss Flora Macdonald, who was on a visit in the Isle of Wight succeeded in procuring herself a passport for the Isle of Skye. She disguised the prince, and, taking him in her suite as a lady's maid, went for refuge to the house of her cousin, Sir Alexander Macdonald, who had been constantly adverse to Charles Edward's attempt, and had ended by actively opposing it. His wife, Lady Margaret, seconded Flora's efforts. The castle was filled with militia officers, but she succeeded in effecting the prince's escape. Some days later he crossed to the Isle of Rosay, almost at the moment when his deliverer, Flora Macdonald, was arrested and conducted to London, where her detention lasted about a year. Some people found fault with Lady Margaret's conduct, the Princess of Wales being of the number. "In such a case would you not have done as much?" said her husband, turning quickly upon her. "I hope so; I am sure of it." The persevering fidelity of the Jacobites endowed Flora Macdonald. After five months of perils and sufferings courageously endured, the fugitive prince at last set foot in France. He embarked on the 20th of September at Lochmanagh, almost at the same place where he had formerly landed full of the most joyous and brilliant hopes. {217} "Nothing troubled him, neither fatigues nor privations," said one of the temporary companions of his flight. "He alone should suffer," he said; but when he thought of all those who were in peril for his sake, his heart was strained and on the verge of losing courage. His name long dwelt in the popular songs of the highlands, which remained persistently faithful to the remembrance of common efforts and dangers.

"I have had sons; I no longer have any. I have brought them up with difficulty, but I would be willing to bear them all again and to lose them for love of Charles."

Whilst the prince, the object of a devotion so passionately disinterested, was receiving at the court of Louis XV. a welcome as impressive as it was vain, his illustrious partisans thronged the prisons and scaffolds, while their lands were laid waste by the English soldiers. In vain did Duncan Forbes claim the application of laws. "Laws!" replied the conqueror; "I will make laws with a brigade." Colonel Townley and his companions had already endured their horrible sentence at Kennington Common in sight of an eager and terrified crowd. Lord Cromarty, Lord Kilmarnock, and Lord Balmerino were confined in the Tower. When they were brought before the Court of Peers the first two pleaded guilty. Lord Cromarty implored the compassion of his judges for his wife and eight children. Lord Balmerino pleaded not guilty. "I wish to be judged by God and my peers," said he proudly. All three were condemned to the punishment of traitors; Lord Cromarty alone obtained pardon. "I do not consider him worthy of life who is not ready to die," said Lord Balmerino when his sentence was confirmed. {218} As the sheriff pronounced the customary formula, "God save King George," Kilmarnock uttered an "Amen." Balmerino raised his head. "So God save King James," exclaimed he; "if I had a thousand lives I would give them all for this cause." He knelt down on the scaffold. "My God, reward my friends, forgive my enemies, bless King James, and receive my soul," he uttered in a loud voice. The agitated executioner had scarcely strength to cut his head off.

Last of all, Lord Lovat had suffered the punishment merited by his entire life rather than by his part in the Jacobite rebellion. A coward and a suppliant as long as he believed pardon possible, he recovered on the day before his death the theatrical pride of his best days, and even on the scaffold he murmured the line of Horace: "_Dulce et decorum est pro patriâ mori._" Legal measures had followed these bloody executions; the highlanders were disarmed; hereditary jurisdictions were abolished; their national costume was forbidden to the mountaineers. Along with the power of the Jacobites the feudal spirit was slowly extinguished in Scotland. Keppoch had sorrowfully said on the battle-field of Culloden, when he saw the Macdonalds quietly retire without fighting, "Have I lived long enough to see myself deserted by the children of my people?" Death had seconded fatigue and private grudges. "It is to the Duke of Cumberland that we owe this peace," was what was written on the monument of Culloden battle-field.

{219}

The anger and harshness of the English government in regard to the Jacobites multiplied the checks that the coalition had encountered everywhere on the continent, with the exception of Italy. At the moment when the Duke of Cumberland was defeating Charles Edward at Culloden, Antwerp surrendered to Louis XV. in person. Mons, Namur, and Charleroi were not long in yielding. The victory of Raucoux in 1746, and that of Lawfelt in 1747, had carried the glory of Marshal Saxe to its height. Originally a foreigner like him, like him serving France gloriously, the Count Lowendall hard pressed the Dutch, who were against their inclination engaged in the struggle. He had already taken Ecluse and Sas de Gand; Berg-op-Zoom was besieged. As in 1672, the French invasion had given rise to a political revolution in Holland. The aristocratic _bourgeoisie_, which had regained power, yielded to the efforts of the popular party, directed by the House of Nassau and sustained by England. "The republic needs a chief to oppose an ambitious and perfidious neighbor who makes game of the faith of treaties," said a deputy of the States-General on the day when the stadtholdership was proclaimed, which was re-established in favor of William IV., grand-nephew of the great William III. and son-in-law of George II. King of England. The young prince immediately took command of the Dutch troops, but a good understanding did not long exist between him and the Duke of Cumberland. "Our two young heroes scarcely understand one another," wrote Mr. Pelham on the 14th of August, 1747. "Ours is open, frank, resolute, and a little hot-headed; the other is presumptuous, pedantic, argumentative, and obstinate; in what a situation do we find ourselves? We must ask God to come to our aid, for we can direct nothing. There is nothing to be done but appease quarrels and obtain time to breathe. Perhaps somebody will recover common sense."

{220}

Marshal Saxe had said to Louis XV., "Sire, peace is in Mæstricht." The place was invested on the 9th of April, 1748, before the thirty-five thousand Russians promised to England by the Czarina Elizabeth had time to arrive. The Dutch were alarmed, and vigorously insisted on peace. Philip V. was dead. His successor, Ferdinand VI., who was less faithful to the House of Bourbon, made overtures to England. For a long time the prime minister, Henry Pelham, was disposed to peace. His brother, the Duke of Newcastle, opposed it out of servile deference to the king. Lord Chesterfield, lately become a member of the cabinet, and who was intelligent and sagacious in spite of his worldly unconcern, being dissatisfied with the conduct of the court towards him, had just given in his resignation. Notwithstanding her successes, France was, like her adversaries, weary. Marshal Saxe himself made pacific proposals. The preliminaries of the peace were signed on the 30th of April. Austria and Spain were not slow in giving their adhesion to it. On the 18th of October the final treaty was concluded at Aix-la-Chapelle. After so much blood spilt and treasure squandered, France gained from the war no other advantage than the guarantee of the duchies of Parma and Plaisance to the infant Don Philip, son-in-law of Louis XV. England yielded to France Cape Breton and the colony of Louisburg, the only territory that she had preserved after her numerous expeditions against our colonies, and the immense injury she had done our commerce. This clause excited much ill-feeling among the English people. Hostages had been promised. Prince Charles Edward was in Paris when they arrived. He was seized with an access of patriotic anger. "If ever I remount the throne of my fathers," he exclaimed, "Europe will witness my constant endeavors to oblige France in turn to send hostages to England."

{221}

Prince Charles Edward was himself an inconvenient and compromising hostage whom France engaged in expelling from her territory. Vainly, since his return from Scotland, the young Pretender had obstinately sought to rekindle a flame which was forever extinguished. "If I had received only half of the money that your Majesty sent me," he wrote to Louis XV. on the 10th of November, 1746, "I would have fought the Duke of Cumberland with equal numbers, and I would have certainly defeated him, since with four thousand men against twelve thousand I held victory in the balance for a long time. These disasters can yet be repaired if your Majesty is willing to intrust me with a body of from eighteen to twenty thousand men. The number of warlike subjects has never failed me in Scotland. I have needed at once money, provisions, and a handful of regular troops. With one of these three aids alone I would still be to-day master of Scotland, and probably of all England." Louis XV. had remained deaf to this appeal, which no longer found an echo in Spain. The Duke of York, second son of the Chevalier de St. George, had just taken orders. The Court of Rome had forthwith made him a cardinal, to the violent indignation of his brother. The treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle removed from the unfortunate Stuarts that asylum which France had with so much pomp lately offered them. Charles Edward refused to understand the notice which the ministers of Louis XV. had conveyed to him. "The king is bound to my cause by his honor, which is worth all treaties," said he. In vain had his father counselled him to yield to necessity and not to provoke a monarch who could be useful to him. The prince was determined to remain in France, and at Paris. {222} On the 11th of December, as he arrived at the opera, his carriage was surrounded by police agents. M. de Vaudreuil, major in the guards, presented himself before the prince. "I arrest you in the name of the king, my master," said he. "The manner is a little cavalier," coolly replied the young man. When the major asked for his arms, "Let them take them," said he, freeing himself from the hands of the police officers. They bound his hands with silken cords, the last sign of respect accorded to the heir of a house forever fallen, and he was conducted from stage to stage as far as the frontier. He would never see France again. Twice he reappeared secretly in England: in 1753, on the occasion of a projected surprise on the person of George II., which he himself deemed impossible; and in 1761, amid the festivities at the coronation of George III. Twice the kings of the House of Hanover were not ignorant of the presence of their enemy in the capital; they made no effort to seize him, and wisely allowed him to set out again for an exile, the long weariness of which had mortally affected his mind as well as his heart. Deprived by his faults of the pure joys of family life, he had lowered himself so far as to seek forgetfulness in drunkenness. He was old and almost forgotten when he died at Rome in 1788. Only the inscription on a tomb recalls the name of the last three Stuarts, and it was King George IV. who caused it to be engraved as a souvenir of extinct passions: "To James III., son of James II., King of England; to Charles Edward, and to Henry, Cardinal of York, last scion of the House of Stuart, 1819."

[Image] Arrest Of Charles Edward.

{223}

The peace of Aix-la-Chapelle had, with good reason, excited more discontent in France than in England. We alone had gained brilliant victories and made great conquests. We alone preserved no increase of territory. The great Frederick kept Silesia, and the King of Sardinia the domains already ceded by Austria. Humorous lampoons were sung in the streets of Paris, and "_Bête comme le paix_," was a customary expression.

The peace of Aix-la-Chapelle had a graver defect than that of barrenness; it was not and could not be lasting. England had proved her power on the sea. She had battled against our ruined navy, and against enfeebled Spain. Holland, her ally after having been her rival, could no longer dispute the sovereign empire with her. She became daily more eager for the conquest of the distant colonies that we did not know how to defend. The peace had left in suspense disputed points which would soon serve as a pretext for new aggressions. In proportion as the ancient influence of Richelieu and Louis XIV. on European politics grew weaker, English influence, based on the growing power of a free country and government, was strengthening. Without any other allies than Spain, who was herself shaken in her fidelity, we stood exposed to the enterprises of England, henceforth freed from the phantom of the Stuarts. "The peace concluded between England and France in 1748 was only a truce," said Lord Macaulay; "it was not even a truce on other parts of the globe." It was there that the two nations were about to measure themselves, and that the burden of its government's shortcomings would cause France to lose that empire of the Indies and those Canadian colonies which had been founded and so long sustained by eminent men, one after another, victims to their patriotic devotion which was as hopeless as it was without results.

{224}

Frederick, Prince of Wales, died on the 20th of March, 1751. Having caught a slight cold, without being alarmed at his illness, he soon felt seriously affected. "I feel death," he had said. The dispute which reigned in the royal family did not cease at the grave; the project of the Regency law had occasioned some bitter passages between the dowager princess, mother of the new Prince of Wales, and the Duke of Cumberland. The prince was not popular. "I do not know why," said King George II. "This nation is capricious. The Scotch and the Jacobites think ill of him; and the English do not like discipline." On the 6th of March, 1754, Henry Pelham unexpectedly died. His administration had been just and intelligent, without vigor, but without disturbance. "I shall have no more peace," exclaimed the old king when he learned of his minister's death. As clever in court finesse as he was incapable of directing with grandeur general policy, the Duke of Newcastle knew how to seize the high rank that escaped the dying hands of his brother. William Pitt bided his time.

It was in the midst of this administrative weakness and intellectual stagnation that a religious movement had begun, and was spreading, which was destined to reanimate moral life in England, to purify manners, and to give it strength to resist the fatal impulse of the French Revolution. Under the influence of examples which originated in the court of Charles II., and which since then had been fostered by numerous scandals, English society was gradually corrupted in high places, and the contagion of moral evil was beginning to make itself felt even in the most remote provinces. Religious faith, enfeebled by the indifference of the clergy as well as by the theories of philosophers, was struggling faintly against the depravity of manners. The Anglican Church had fallen into a respectable languor; the old dissenting sects, having escaped from the tight bonds of persecution, had lost their ancient fervor.

[Image] William Pitt--Lord Chatham.

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The religious sentiment yet existed in a latent condition among the lower and middle classes. Here it was that it awakened with an unexpected ardor at the eloquent voice of John Wesley and George Whitefield. Both students of Oxford, both destined to embrace the holy ministry, both consecrated in the Anglican Church, they undertook with enthusiasm a sacred crusade for the salvation of souls and the destruction of moral evil. Whitefield, who was more ardently eloquent, less contained, and of a less tolerant spirit than Wesley, now travelled over the country, preaching to the miners, who came out of their gloomy retreats in thousands in order to hear his fervent exhortations, and now assembled at the house of the Countess of Huntington the _élite_ of the worldly society of London. Strong workingmen sobbed and groaned under his pathetic appeals; peasants fell to the earth as though stricken with inward convulsions; philosophers tranquilly admired an eloquence of which they recognized the power as well as the sincerity. "All appeared moved to some extent," said Whitefield in writing of a piously worldly assembly. "Lord Chesterfield thanked me, saying, 'Sir, I will not say to you, what I say of you to others, how much I commend you.' Lord Bolingbroke assisted at the meeting. He was seated like an archbishop, and did me the honor to say that in my discourse I had done justice to the divine attributes." Some years later the eloquence of Whitefield was to draw from the economical hands of Franklin the whole contents of his purse. But already the ardor of his zeal had closed to him the pulpits of the Anglican Church. He had sought sympathy for his cause even in America. {226} On his return to England some difference of opinion had separated him from Wesley. Henceforth each worked for his reward in the vast field of unbelief, indifference, and moral corruption. Both, however, pursued the same work, following the bent of natural disposition, which was more ardent and dissenting with Whitefield and the Methodist sects born under his inspiration, more moderate and conservative with Wesley as with the innumerable adherents who yet do themselves the honor of bearing his name.

Never was the author of a great and lasting popular movement further removed than Wesley from all revolutionary tendency. The spirit of government and organization, attachment to ancient and venerated forms, a lofty and calm judgment united to an ascetic nature, a slight leaning towards mysticism--such were the characteristic and necessary traits of a reformer and religious founder in the eighteenth century. Wesley was tenderly attached to the Anglican Church; he only separated himself from it with regret, constrained by the ecclesiastical dislike which closed the pulpits to him, and compelled, little by little, and against his inclination, to accept the vault of heaven for his temple, and the laity for his fellow laborers, as Whitefield had done since the beginning. During his long apostolate, which lasted from 1729 to 1791, from the prayer-meetings in his room at Oxford to the complete and strong organization of the sect he had founded, Wesley exercised an absolute authority over his numerous subjects. "If you mean by an arbitrary power, a power which I alone exercise," he said, with a tranquil simplicity, "it is certainly true; but I see no harm in it." However, in courageously accomplishing his work, Wesley did more than he intended; he had founded a religious society; he had not had the intention of founding a sect. {227} A minister of the Anglican Church, and a witness of its shortcomings, he had felt that in order to awaken the parish clergy it was necessary to create a kind of regular clergy; that in order to announce the Gospel to those who did not go to church, or who only heard these cold exhortations, it was necessary to organize an army of ardent missionaries; that in order to touch the heart of the masses it was necessary to seek them in the fields, the markets, and the byways, and to address them in their own common language. Wesley was forced to separate himself from the Anglican Church, but his disciples have constantly remained respectful to her, and as an intermediate body between her and dissenters, they have, from without, rendered her most important services. Wesley and Whitefield have reawakened religious life in England, and no religious society has profited by it so much as the Anglican Church herself. Movements of various kinds, all serious and sincere, have manifested themselves in her wide bosom. She has sufficed to foster much warmth, to satisfy minds and hearts widely dissimilar, but all beset by veritable religious needs; she has united herself to the most noble attempts of modern philanthropy, the worthy fruits of awakened and revived Christian faith. It is to the great religious movement created in the eighteenth century by Wesley and Whitefield that England has owed the glorious efforts of Clarkson and Wilberforce for the emancipation of slaves, and the prison reform of John Howard.

{228}

England had need of all her forces, ancient and new, moral, religious, and patriotic, for she was approaching an era of blended glory and danger, agitated and tempestuous even in victory. The war with France, long sustained on distant seas without preliminary declaration, and with enormous detriment to French commerce, which was everywhere interrupted and ruined, became at last patent and officially inevitable. In the Indies as well as in Canada, it had not ceased for a single day. In the month of March, 1755, the ministers asked Parliament for an increase of forces for the defence of the American possessions threatened by the French. The governor of Canada, the Marquis Duquesne, had erected a series of forts in the valley of the Ohio. M. de Contrecœur, who commanded in that region, learned that a body of English troops was marching upon him under the orders of young Colonel Washington. He immediately detailed M. de Jumonville along with thirty men, to call upon the English to retire and evacuate the French territory. At break of day on the 18th of May, 1754, Washington's corps surprised De Jumonville's little encampment. The attack was unforeseen; the French envoy was killed along with nine of his troop. The irritation caused by this event precipitated the commencement of hostilities. A band of Canadians, reinforced by some savages, marched against Washington, who had intrenched himself in the plain. It was necessary to attack him with cannon shot. In spite of his bravery, the future conqueror of American independence was forced to capitulate. The colonies were keenly excited; they formed a sort of confederation against the French power in America. They especially raised militia. In January, 1755, General Braddock was already in Virginia with regular troops. In the early part of May, Admiral Boscawen, after a desperate combat, captured several vessels which had been separated by bad weather from the squadron of Admiral Dubois de la Motte. Three hundred merchant vessels fell into the hands of the English navy. {229} War was finally declared, to the secret uneasiness of the two governments as well as of the two nations. "What is the use of having plenty of troops and money," wrote the lawyer Barbier, "if we only wage war with the English by sea? They will one after another take all our vessels, get hold of all our American settlements, and manage all the commerce. Some division in the English nation itself must be hoped for, because the king personally does not desire war."

King George II. was uneasy on account of Hanover--a point of attack naturally pointed out to the armies of King Louis XV. The English nation dreaded the landing so often and so vainly announced. "What I wish," exclaimed Pitt, "is to snatch this country from a state of enervation which makes it tremble before twenty thousand Frenchmen." Being a member of the administration, as well as paymaster-general of the forces, he violently attacked the treaties of subsidies and alliance, which the king had just concluded with Prussia and Hesse. For the first time, his eloquence swayed the House. "He has surpassed himself," wrote Horace Walpole. "Do I need to tell you that he has surpassed Demosthenes and Cicero? What figure would their solemn, elaborate, studied harangues have cut beside this manly vivacity and this impetuous eloquence which, all at once, at one o'clock in the morning, after eleven hours' session, pierced the stifling atmosphere." Legge, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, had, like Pitt, refused his assent to the treaties. Both were replaced, and Pitt was thrown into the opposition, which rallied round the princess dowager and the young Prince of Wales. "This day will, I hope, give the key-note to my life," he had rightly said in his great speech.

{230}

The weakness of the English government became more apparent every day. "I say it with regret on account of my friend Fox," wrote Horace Walpole, "but the year 1756 was, perhaps, that of the worst government I have ever seen in England: the incapacity of Newcastle had fair play." In spite of their inadequate resources the Canadians defended themselves heroically and not unsuccessfully against the efforts of the American colonies backed by the mother-country. Acadia, a strip of neutral country between the English and French territories, the inhabitants of which had constantly refused to take the oath of allegiance to England, was invaded by the American troops, the population swept off, and the houses pillaged. General Braddock encountered more resistance in the valley of the Ohio. He proposed to surprise Fort Duquesne, and forced the march of his little corps. "I never saw a finer sight than that of the English troops on the 9th of July, 1755," wrote Colonel Washington, who was commanding under the orders of Braddock. But soon the English advance-guard was stopped by a heavy discharge of artillery; the enemy did not appear; the foremost ranks were disordered and recoiled on the body of the army. The confusion became extreme; the regular troops, little used to this sort of fighting, refused to rally round the general, who would have wished them to manœuvre as on the plains of Flanders. The Virginia militia alone, being scattered in the woods, answered the fire of the French or Indian sharpshooters without showing themselves. General Braddock soon received a mortal wound; Colonel Washington, reserved by God for other destinies, sought in vain to rally the soldiers. {231} "I have been protected by the all-powerful intervention of Providence," he wrote to his brother after the action; "I received four bullets in my coat, and I have had two horses killed under me; however, I have got out of it safe and sound, while death swept off all our comrades around me. We have been beaten, shamefully beaten, by a handful of Frenchmen, who only anticipated hindering our march. A few moments before action we believed our forces almost equal to all those of Canada, and now, contrary to all probability, we have been completely defeated, and have lost everything." The little French corps, sent out from Fort Duquesne under the command of M. de Beaujeu, numbered but two hundred Canadians and six hundred Indians. It was only three years later, when Canada, exhausted and dying, succumbed beneath the burden of a war which it had sustained almost without aid, that Fort Duquesne, destroyed by its defenders themselves, fell into the hands of the English. They gave it the name of Pittsburg, in honor of the great minister who was in power--a name which a prosperous city bears even to-day.

While the Marquis de Montcalm was successfully sustaining the war against the English in America, Marshal Richelieu, a clever, prodigal, and corrupt courtier, had the good luck to achieve the only happy stroke of the Seven Years' War, the remembrance of which should remain firm in the mind of posterity. On the 17th of April, 1756; a French squadron under the command of M. de la Galissonière attacked the Island of Minorca, an important military point in the Mediterranean to which the English attached a high Value. Chased from Ciudadela and Port Mahon, the garrisons had taken refuge in Fort St. Philip. They relied on the help of the English fleet. The Admiral who commanded it attacked M. de la Galissonière on the 10th of May. {232} The English were repulsed and could not effect a landing. The ships had suffered a good deal, and the English forces were inferior to those of France. Byng feared defeat; he consulted his council of war and fell back on Gibraltar. General Blakeney, shut up in the fortress, sick, and without hope of aid, defended himself weakly against the impetuous assault of the French. Fort St. Philip was taken, and the Duke de Fronsac, eldest son of the Duke de Richelieu, hastened to Paris to convey the news to King Louis XV.

The rage and humiliation, like the joy and pride of France, exceeded the extent and importance of the success. Admiral Byng, peremptorily recalled, was with great difficulty brought safe and sound to London, so strong was the anger of the mob. The government made no effort to protect him. On the first representations being made to him against the admiral, who was honest and brave, but a blind slave of rule and badly provided alike with ships and sailors, the Duke of Newcastle hastily replied, "Oh! certainly, certainly; he will be judged immediately; he will be hanged immediately." In spite of the efforts made in his favor in the Houses, as well as by Marshal Richelieu and Voltaire, Byng expiated with his life the check he had sustained and the wounded pride of his country. The Duke of Newcastle was at last overcome by his notorious incapacity. William Pitt seized the reins of power for a short time, of which the aversion of the king was not long in depriving him. The great orator had refused to come to an understanding with Mr. Fox, who bitterly reproached him with afterwards sustaining the treaties of subsidies and alliances which he had lately attacked so passionately. {233} France had just entered into an alliance with Maria Theresa; the houses of Bourbon and Austria were making common cause; all the available forces of England were engaged in the struggle, and Pitt did not hesitate to recruit in the highlands. "Men are never wanting to a good cause," he said afterwards. "I have lately employed the very rebels in the service and defence of the country. Being thus brought back to us, they have fought for us, and have gladly shed their blood to protect those liberties which in the past they wished to destroy."

It was in vain that George II. still strove against the minister, who imposed the national will on him as the favor of heaven. In vain, making use of the royal prerogative against him, did he force him to yield up the seals of office from the beginning of April, and involve in his disgrace Lord Temple, his brother-in-law. In vain did he seek to form a new cabinet, with the insatiable thirst of the Duke of Newcastle for the nominal side of power, and the desire which Fox felt to actually govern. Parliament as well as the people demanded the powerful hand which could guide them through the bursting storm. On the 29th of June, 1757, Pitt was named secretary of state, and rallied around him some illustrious names, but he was the sole efficient master of the government, and was resolved to bear alone the whole burden of it. The most sagacious observers interchanged gloomy forebodings. "England has no longer any course but to cut her cables and set sail towards an unknown ocean," wrote Horace Walpole. "It matters little who may be in power," said Lord Chesterfield; "we are lost at home and abroad--at home by our debts and our growing expenses; abroad by our incapacity and bad luck. ... We are no longer even a nation."

{234}

It is sometimes the good fortune and glory of great men, under the hand of God, to baffle the doleful prognostications of their contemporaries. As a constitutional minister, the first William Pitt should occupy a lower position than the noble career of his son. He was overbearing, whimsical, personal, and theatrical. Abroad he could push national pride as far as the most impolitic insolence. He sacrificed his country's interests for the sake of humiliating her enemies. He made England feared, but he isolated her in Europe and in the world by a proud and obdurate policy, for which he was to pay cruelly later. At home he was unbalanced and violent, carried away by opposing and always extreme passions, without limit and without foresight. The greatness of his mind, ability, and character, however, overcame all his defects. He governed his country through a long and difficult war in stormy times which demanded painful sacrifices, making constant appeals to the most noble passions of the human soul by the prestige of eloquence, rectitude, patriotism, and glory. It is his honor to have re-established the fortune of England in the war; it is no less a service to have lifted hearts to the level of fortune in order to sustain a great cause.

Pitt's first warlike efforts were not happy. An expedition attempted against Rochefort was unsuccessful. The King of Prussia, lately victorious in Saxony, whence he had driven the elector, the King of Poland, found himself in turn closely pressed by the Austrian Marshal Daun, who had conquered him at Cologne. Marshal d'Estrèes, slowly occupying Westphalia, had entrapped the Duke of Cumberland on the Weser. On the morning of the 23d of July, 1757, the marshal summoned his lieutenant-generals. "Gentlemen," said he, "I do not assemble you to-day to ask you whether we must fight M. de Cumberland and invest Hameln. {235} The honor of the king's arms, his wish, his express orders, the interest of a common cause, bind us to take the firmest resolutions. I only seek, therefore, to profit by your light, and to concoct with you the best means of successful attack." The Duke of Cumberland's troops were of various races. He had not under his command any English regiment. His warlike spirit was not sufficient to compensate for the defects of his military organization. On the 26th of July Marshal d'Estrèes forced him into the intrenchment at Hastenbeck. He retreated, without being pursued, to the marshes at the mouth of the Elbe, under the protection of English vessels. Marshal d'Estrèes was recalled by a court intrigue. Marshal Richelieu and the Duke de Soubise divided the command. Richelieu systematically pillaged Hanover, Hesse-Cassel, and Brunswick. He threatened the position of the Duke of Cumberland, and the latter asked to capitulate. On the 8th of September, by the intervention of the Count de Lynar, the minister of the King of Denmark, who remained neutral between the belligerents, the Duke of Cumberland and Marshal Richelieu signed, at the advance posts of the French army, the famous capitulation of Closter-Severn. The troops of King Louis XV. occupied all the conquered country; those of Hesse, Brunswick, and Saxe-Gotha were to return to their quarters. The great Frederick had already recalled the Prussians; the Hanoverians were to remain fortified in the neighborhood of Stade. In his presumptuous levity the marshal had not even thought of exacting their disarming.

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However incomplete as was this convention, which was severely judged by the Emperor Napoleon I. in his memoirs, it excited great anger in England as well as in Prussia. When the Duke of Cumberland presented himself before his father, the old king greeted him with this startling sentence: "There is my son who has dishonored himself whilst ruining me." Wounded and discouraged, the duke officially renounced his command and handed in his resignation of all his offices, to linger yet some years in obscurity, and finally die in 1765, at the age of forty-six years. Pitt alone of the ministers had defended him. When the king repeated that he had never authorized his son's conduct, the prince's constant antagonist replied in an honest spirit of justice: "It is true, Sire; but his powers were extensive, very extensive!"

The King of Prussia remained alone opposing the allies. Every day his force diminished, affected by desertion as much as by death. The Russian army had invaded the Prussian provinces and beaten General Schouvaloff near Memel; twenty-five thousand Swedes had just landed in Pomerania. For a moment Frederick II. thought of killing himself, but the indomitable strength of his soul, a strange mingling of corruption and heroism, constantly drew him back to battle with fresh efforts of ability and resolve. The favor of Madame de Pompadour had reserved for the Prince Soubise the honor of crushing the King of Prussia. The two armies met on the 5th of November, 1757, on the banks of the Saale, near Rosbach. That evening the French army, utterly defeated, fled to Erfurt. It left on the field of battle eight thousand prisoners and three thousand dead. A month later the Austrians were in turn vanquished at Lissa. The glory of the great Frederick, obscure for a time, shone forth anew in all its splendor; he became the national hero of Germany. The Protestant powers, lately engaged against him, made approaches to the conqueror. {237} In England enthusiasm was at its height; Pitt concluded a new agreement with Prussia. Parliament, without difficulty, voted a subsidy of sixty-seven thousand pounds sterling. King George II., as Elector of Hanover, had refused to ratify the capitulation of Cloister-Severn, and his troops were already renewing the campaign under the command of Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick. Being clever and honest, he had soon gained possession of the country of Luneberg, of Zell, of a part of Brunswick and of Bremen. In order to maintain the struggle in Germany, King Louis XV. and Madame de Pompadour had just put the Count de Clermont at the head of the French troops.

The Zaporogue Cossacks inundated Prussia, and Frederick II. had scarcely beaten the Russians on the bloody day of Zorndorff when he was himself conquered at Hochkirch by Marshal Daun and forced to evacuate Saxony. Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick had just won the important victory of Crevelt over the new French general. The Count de Clermont had given evidence of the most distressing incapacity; his army escaped every day more and more from under the yoke of discipline. It was discontented, humiliated, and without confidence in the chiefs who successively headed it, being exalted to the command by court intrigues or manœuvres. The Marquis de Contades had succeeded M. de Clermont. At Versailles the Count de Stainville, created Duke de Choiseul, had become Minister of Foreign Affairs in place of Cardinal de Bernis, who was always inclined to pacific counsels. The second treaty of Versailles had united France to Maria Theresa more firmly than ever. The English had on two occasions unsuccessfully attempted an attack on the coasts of Normandy and Brittany. {238} The Duke d'Aiguillon, governor of that province, had taken to himself the honor of having repulsed the invasion; a single unimportant battle had taken place, and this formed the pretext for a grand project of descent on the English coasts. The Prince de Soubise was recalled from Germany in order to direct the invading army. The expedition was ready, and only awaited the signal to issue from the port, but Admiral Hawke was cruising in front of Brest, Admiral Rodney had just bombarded Havre, and it was only in the month of November, 1759, that the Marquis de Conflaus, who commanded the fleet, was able to put to sea with twenty-one vessels of the line and four frigates. The English forces were superior to his, and immediately set out in pursuit. M. de Conflaus thought he would find refuge in the tortuous passages at the mouth of the Vilaine.

The English penetrated there after him. Sir Edward Hawke engaged the _Soleil Royal_, which was commanded by the French admiral. His pilot represented to him the danger of navigating. The brave seaman let him talk. "Very well," he answered; "you have done your duty, now you have only to obey me; manage so as to place me alongside the _Soleil Royal_." The battle thus waged in the various narrow passages became disastrous to the French vessels. The commander of the rear guard, M. Saint-André du Verger, let it be raked by the enemy's cannon in order to cover the retreat. The admiral ran aground in the Bay of Croisic, and himself burned his vessel. Seven French and two English ships remained engaged in the Vilaine. M. de Conflaus' day, as the sailors named the episode, dealt a fatal blow to the unfortunate remnant of the French navy. The English triumphed everywhere on the sea, and even in our own waters.

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They also triumphed at a distance in our colonies, entirely abandoned to their forces, which prolonged in a heroic struggle the throes of their agony. Pitt had determined to achieve the conquest of Canada. Already the outposts of Louisburg and Cape Breton had succumbed beneath the attacks of the English. The Anglo-American forces were increased during the campaign of 1758 to sixty thousand men. The entire population of Canada was not more numerous. In 1759, three armies invaded the French territory at once. On the 29th of June, a considerable fleet carried to the Island of Orleans, fronting Quebec, General Wolfe, a young officer of great promise who had distinguished himself at the siege of Louisburg. Pitt believed that he discerned in him the elements of superior merit. In spite of the blundering-- sometimes presuming, and again depressed--of Wolfe, he had resolved to confide to him the direction of the great expedition he contemplated. "If the Marquis de Montcalm succeeds again this year in deceiving our hopes," said the new general, "he can pass for a clever man: either the colony has resources that are unknown, or our generals are worse than ordinary."

Quebec occupied an advantageous position, but the fortifications were bad; the loss of the place involved that of Canada. "If the Marquis were shut up there," said Wolfe, "we should soon have triumphed; our artillery would have made short work of the walls." An intrenched camp stretched before Quebec. The Indian tribes, hitherto ardently attached to France by the habitual kindness of its commerce, were decimated by the war, or had silently withdrawn, gained over by the money as well as the success of England. The two great European nations did not hesitate to wage war by means of the cruel or perfidious proceedings of their Indian allies.

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For more than a month the town had borne the enemy's fire. The churches and convents were in ruins, and the French had not stirred from their camp of _l'Ange-Gardien._ Skirmishes were frequent. "Old men of seventy and children of fifteen years fire on our detachments," wrote Wolfe. "Our men are wounded at every border of the forest." The anger of the English soldiers had little by little reduced to a desert both banks of the St. Lawrence. In every direction villages and scattered dwellings were given to the flames.

Generals Amherst and Johnson, who had been charged with distant expeditions against Niagara and Ticonderoga, had succeeded in their enterprises, but had not rejoined Wolfe according to Pitt's plan. The latter bore on his shoulders all the responsibility of final success. Being repulsed before the French camp on the 31st of July, Wolfe fell sick from vexation and spite. "There only remains to me the choice of difficulties," he wrote to the English cabinet. "I have regained sufficient health to do my work, but my constitution is destroyed without my having the consolation of having rendered, or being able to render, considerable service to the state." Three days after the date of this letter. General Wolfe suddenly advanced on the banks of the St. Lawrence. On the night of the 12th of September he landed on the creek of the Foulon. The officers had responded in French to the "_Qui vive?_" of the sentinels, who believed that they beheld a long expected convoy of provisions passing. Twice did the boats, which were insufficient in number, silently cross the stream. Wolfe alone repeated in an undertone the poet Gray's "Elegy in a Country Churchyard." He was touching land, when he turned to say to his lieutenants, "I would prefer to be the author of that poem than to take Quebec."

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Day was scarcely breaking when the English army occupied the Heights of Abraham. A skirmish had sufficed to put to flight the French detachment charged with guarding them. The Marquis de Montcalm viewed his enemies from afar. "I see them plainly where they ought not to be," said he, "but if we fight with them I shall crush them." The English were already on the march; before the break of day the French were routed, Montcalm was dying, and Quebec was lost.

General Wolfe had murmured the last of Gray's lines--"The path of glory leads but to the grave." He had received three mortal wounds as he was encouraging his grenadiers to charge. Already his eyes were veiled by the eternal shadows, when an officer who was attending him exclaimed, "See, they fly!" "Who?" asked Wolfe, raising himself up painfully. "The enemy; they yield at all points." The hero let himself fall back on his couch. "God be praised," said he; "I die content." He was not yet thirty-four years of age.

Montcalm died also, eager even to the last moment to give his orders and arouse the courage of his soldiers. "All is not lost," he repeated. When the surgeons announced to him that he had only some hours to live, "So much the better," said he; "I shall not see the surrender of Quebec." He was buried in the hole scooped by a ball in the middle of the Ursuline church. It is there he still sleeps. On one of the squares of the town, which became English without the effacement of the tender memory of France, Lord Dalhousie had a marble obelisk erected bearing the names of Wolfe and Montcalm, with this inscription: "_Mortem virtus communem, famam historia, momumentum posteritas dedit_." Their courage has given them a common death; history, renown; posterity, a monument.

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Parliament decreed a magnificent tomb in Westminster Abbey to the great conqueror of Quebec. The whole of England wore mourning. With Quebec France had lost Canada. The impotent despair of M. de Vaudreuil and the Duke de Levis, who were incapable of defending Montreal, led them vainly to attempt to again seize the capital. For a second time the Heights of Abraham were witnesses of a bloody combat. The French troops blockaded the place. On both sides, the arrival of reinforcements asked from Europe was being awaited. The invincible hopefulness of our nation deluded the Canadians. The English vessels entered the river. On the night of the 16th to the 17th of May, the little French army raised the siege; on the 8th of September, Montreal, in its turn, fell into the hands of the conquerors.

At the same period, after long alternations of success and reverse, England achieved a conquest in India which assured to her forever the European empire of the East. An entire people, passionately attached to the mother-country, had struggled in Canada. In India, some eminent men had dreamed of establishing the French power on the most solid foundations. They had prosecuted their aims at the cost of all sacrifices, and one after another they had fallen victim to their devotion as well as to their reciprocal jealousy. Mahé de la Bourdonnais, governor of the Isle of France, a clever, enterprising, honest man, and the conqueror of Madras in 1746, had unfortunately engaged in a rivalry with Dupleix, then governor-general of Pondicherry, which had led both into grave errors.

[Image] Death Of Wolfe.

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The peace of Aix-la-Chapelle gave Madras to the English, but La Bourdonnais, destitute, suspected, and consigned to the Bastile, finally died of vexation, having used the last remnants of his energy to disseminate suspicions against Dupleix, which were soon to bear fruits fatal to that French greatness in India to which M. de la Bourdonnais had formerly consecrated his life.

Joseph Dupleix, born of a Gascon family, the son of the controller-general of Hainant, had settled in India from his youth. He had married there, and had learned to know all the tortuous policy of the Indian princes, whose language his wife, the princess Jeanne, as she was called, knew, and whose secrets she divined. Not over-scrupulous, ambitious and daring for his country's sake even more than his own, he had foreseen and prosecuted this European empire of India which was soon to fall into more fortunate if not more clever hands. In 1748 he had defended Pondicherry against Admiral Boscawen. The peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, while changing the name of the belligerents, had not put an end to hostilities. The two commercial companies, the French and the English, had continued the war hitherto sustained in the name of their sovereigns. Dupleix entered more and more into the internal intrigues of India. In the Dekhan he had supported Murzapha Jung against Nazir Jung, and in the Carnatic, Tchunda Sahib against Anaverdy Khan. His adroit patronage had brought good fortune to his proteges. In their solicitous gratitude they had conceded vast territories to France. A third of India was already obedient to Dupleix, and the Great Mogul, the invisible sovereign who silently granted degrees of investiture, had just recognized his supremacy. Dupleix thought that he had arrived at the goal of all his dreams. He had taken no account of the improvident weakness of the French government.

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Already Dupleix's success had alarmed King Louis XV. and his ministers, who were more uneasy in respect of new embarrassments which might be created for them than solicitous for the greatness of France in India. England was irritated and perturbed. Her affairs had been for a long time badly managed in India, but she remained there vital, active, and sustained by the indomitable ardor of a free people. At Versailles Dupleix was refused the help he asked; the confirmation of his conquests was delayed. The man who was to establish for England the empire of India over the ruins of Dupleix's work, had just arisen. Robert Clive, born in 1725, of a family of small Shropshire landholders, had been placed while very young in the offices of the India Company. His nature was turbulent. The assiduous work of a copying clerk did not admit of any title for him: he was a born general, and already his counsels were listened to by the chiefs of the company. In the peril which menaced it in consequence of Dupleix's triumphs, young Clive was placed at the head of an expedition which he had planned against Arcatan, the capital of the Carnatic. Having become master of the place by a bold stroke in the month of September, 1751, he was soon attacked there by Tchunda Sahib. During fifty days he withstood in the fortress the efforts of the Indians and the French. Provisions gave out, the rations became more insufficient every day; but Clive knew how to inspire in those who surrounded him the heroic resolution which animated himself. "Give the rice to the English," the sepoys came and said to him; "we will content ourselves with the water in which it has been boiled." {245} A body of Mahrattas, allies of the English, caused the siege to be raised. Clive pursued the French in their retreat; he twice defeated Tchunda Sahib and razed the town and the monument that Dupleix had erected in remembrance of his victories. When he had effected his junction with Governor-General Lawrence he broke the blockades of Trichinapolis and delivered Mahomet Ali, the son and successor of Anaverdy Khan. Tchunda Sahib, for his part, being confined at Tcheringham, was given up to his rival by a chief of Tanjore to whom he had trusted himself His throat was cut. The French commandant, a nephew of Law, gave himself up to the English. Clive had destroyed two French corps and was pressing the third army hard. Bussy-Castelnau, the faithful lieutenant of Dupleix, was fighting on the Dekhan and could not come to its aid. In vain did the indomitable energy of the governor-general triumph over all obstacles. Dupleix had found troops and money, and was resisting Clive, whose health was shaken when the news of his dismissal arrived from Europe. His temporary reverses of fortune had achieved the work begun by the suspicions which M. de la Bourdonnais had sown; the ministers of Louis XV. had taken fright. M. Godehen, one of the directors of the company, had been accused of treating with the English. Dupleix re-entered France, sad and irritated, but filled even yet with dreams and hopes. Since the time of his landing from the East he was hailed by the acclamations of the crowd, but the government was opposed to him. He had embarked his entire personal fortune in the service of his great patriotic designs; his claims were not listened to; his wife died of vexation, and he finally, in poverty and despair, succumbed in 1763. {246} "I have sacrificed my youth, my fortune, my life," he exclaimed, with just bitterness; "I have wished to load my nation with honors and riches in Asia. Unfortunate friends, too confiding relatives, virtuous citizens, have consecrated their wealth to make my projects succeed; they are now in misery. ... I demand what is due me as the last of the creditors. My services are fables; my demands are ridiculous; I am treated as the vilest of men. The little property that remains to me is seized. I have been obliged to apply for writs of suspension, so as not to be dragged to prison." History has avenged Dupleix by doing justice to his services. He was the most illustrious victim of those mighty French ambitions in India, without being the last or the most tragical of them.

After being detained some time in England by the care of his health. Clive returned to India in 1755, strong in his past glory and freed henceforth from the indomitable energy and clever intrigues of Dupleix. He cast his glances at Bengal, the sovereign of which, Surajah Dowlah, was hostile to the English rule. The Indian prince had just taken the initiative in hostilities by attacking Fort William, which formed the defence of the rising town of Calcutta. The governor took fright, and the place fell into the hands of Surajah Dowlah, who shut up the English prisoners in the dungeon of the garrison;--a terrible "black hole," scarcely sufficient to contain two or three delinquents. One hundred and forty-six unfortunates were crammed there in a stifling heat. In the morning when the door was opened, the cries of suffering, the rending appeals, had ceased. Twenty-three survivors, panting and dying, had scarcely strength to drag themselves out of the horrible place, the witness of their punishment. {247} The nabob, indifferent and triumphant, gave Calcutta the name of Alinagore, or Port of God. He returned to his capital of Moorshedabad, occupied in torturing men, as in his childhood he had taken pleasure in torturing birds.

The anger of the English had placed Clive at the head of a little army. Surajah Dowlah called to his aid the French established at Chaudernagore. Dupleix was no longer there, busy to profit by all military or political complications. The French merchants refused to take part in the hostilities, although the Seven Years' War had just broken out in Europe. Everywhere the arms of France were opposed to those of England. Chaudernagore did not escape the common lot. The English seized it after Clive had repaired Calcutta and Fort William. The decadence of France in India was marching with rapid steps; the treaty concluded by Godehen had dealt a death-blow to its empire, and all the conquests of Dupleix had been abandoned.

Upright and sincere in his relations with Europeans, Clive had contracted the fatal habit of different morality in regard to the Hindoos. Treaties concluded and violated, conspiracies encouraged in all directions, shameful and flagrant perfidies, mark with a black stain, in the life of the great general, his relations with the cruel nabob of Bengal. The victory of Plassey, which he finally gained on the 23d of June, 1757, terminated brilliantly a campaign of mingled heroism and crimes. Henceforth Bengal belonged to England. Bussy, summoned too late by Surajah Dowlah, had not been able to arrest Clive's success. He revenged himself for it by sweeping off all the English factories on the coast of Orissa, and closing to them the road between the coast of Coromandel and Bengal.

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On the day after Clive's triumph in India, a bold and improvident soldier, of indomitable courage and will, passionately attached to France, which had received him and his cause--M. Lally-Tollendal, of Irish origin, and already known by his conduct, first in England and then in Scotland, during the expedition of Prince Charles Edward--proposed to the ministers of Louis XV. a new attempt to re-establish France's situation in the East. The directors of the India Company sustained his proposal. The king had promised troops. M. d'Argenson knew Lally's character, and hesitated. The representations of the company won him. When M. de Lally landed at Pondicherry in 1757, the treasury was empty, the arsenals unprovided with arms and munitions, and the English were pressing on the French possessions at all points. The ardor of the general sufficed to remove all obstacles. Lally marched on Gondalem, which he razed on the sixteenth day. Shortly afterward he invested Fort St. David, the most notable of the English fortresses in India. The first assault was repulsed. The count had neither cannons nor beasts of burden to bring them. He hastened to Pondicherry and attached the Hindoos to the trains of artillery, taking indiscriminately the men who came to hand, without troubling himself as to rank or caste, thus imprudently wounding the dearest prejudices of the country that he came to govern. Fort St. David was taken and razed. Devicotch, hardly besieged, opened its gates. Lally had been scarcely a month in India, and already he had chased the English from the south coast of Coromandel. "My whole policy is contained in these five words, but they are sacramental: 'No English in the peninsula,'" wrote the general. He had sent orders to Bussy to rejoin him at Madras.

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The ardent heroism of M. de Lally had for a time troubled the English by restoring courage to the remnants of the French colony. The grave defects of his character soon seconded the efforts of his adversaries by surrounding him with enemies, secret or declared, among his compatriots themselves. Being badly backed by M. d'Aché, who was in command of the French fleet, and who was twice beaten by the English, he attacked Madras in the month of September, 1758, with an undisciplined army, addicted to the most frightful debauchery, and commanded by chiefs who were either angry or discontented. Bussy could not console himself for having been obliged to abandon the Dekhan to the feeble hands of the Marquis de Conflaus. The black town had been stormed; the white town resisted valiantly. On the 18th of February, 1759, Lally was obliged to raise the siege; Colonel Coote had just taken possession of the fortress of Wandewash. The general wished to regain it. The battle which was fought on the 22d of January, 1760, was fatal to the French; M. de Bussy was made prisoner and immediately sent to Europe. "To him alone did the capacity belong to have continued the war for ten years," said the Hindoos. Karikal was in the hands of the English. They were marching on Pondicherry.

M. de Lally was shut up there, resolved to hold out to the last in a place which was badly defended, and where he was generally hated. The siege commenced in the month of March, 1760; on the 27th of November it was changed to a blockade. It was only on the 16th of January, 1761, that the directors of the French Company at last forced the hand of the general, indomitable in the midst of ruins. {250} "No person can have a higher opinion of General Lally than I," wrote Colonel Coote, who had just razed the ramparts and magazines of Pondicherry. "He has striven against obstacles that I believed insurmountable, and he has triumphed over them. There is not in India another man who could have kept on foot so long an army without pay and without resources on any hand." No aid had come from France to the last general who still defended her power and glory in the Indies; the cause was forever lost, and no one would ever more attempt to revive it. The fate of M. de la Bourdonnais and that of Dupleix remained as a gloomy proof of the ingratitude of corrupt and feeble governments; that of M. de Lally frightened the most courageous hearts and disgusted the most far-sighted spirits. Shut up in the Bastile of his own will at the end of the year 1763, he remained there nineteen months without being examined. When his trial finally began, the animosities which he had imprudently engendered in India rose up against him with an irresistible violence. Accused of treason in regard to the interest of the king and the company, he was condemned to death on the 6th of May, 1766. Three days later he expired on the scaffold in the _Placede Greve_, being gagged like the worst of criminals. At the same moment. Lord Clive, rich, powerful, and a brilliant member of Parliament, was returning to the Indies as Governor-General of Bengal, charged with reforming its entire administration. The contrast is sorrowful, and explains the frequent checks received by France in distant enterprises, which, grandly conceived and courageously pursued by the patriotic devotion of citizens, were yet through laxity and cowardice abandoned by the government.

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Success so great and so sustained beyond the bounds of Europe lent new force and zeal to the struggles of England on the continent. In Germany, the Duke de Broglie had successfully repulsed the attacks of Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick on his intrenchments at Bergher, on the 13th of April, 1759. The united armies under M. de Coutades had invaded Hesse and advanced on the Weser. They were occupying Minden when Prince Ferdinand attacked them on the 1st of August. The action of the two French generals was badly concerted, and the rout was complete. The English infantry played a glorious part in the victory. The cavalry was commanded by Lord George Sackville, son of the Duke, of Dorset. Prince Ferdinand gave him orders to advance. Some contradiction in the terms produced a momentary hesitation on the part of the English commander, and he resisted the representations of his aides-de-camp. "The orders are positive," said young Fitzroy; "the French are flying, and the opportunity is glorious." Lord Granby put himself in motion; the voice of his superior officer compelled him to stop. When the scruples of Lord George were finally satisfied, the battle was won, the enemy in retreat, and the reputation of the English commander so seriously compromised that he was obliged to resign from his rank and ask to undergo a court-martial. The sentence was, like public opinion, severe. Lord George Sackville was declared unworthy to serve in his Majesty's armies. He already belonged to the court opposition which was thronging around the heir to the throne, the princess dowager, and the Marquis of Bute, the acknowledged favorite of mother and son. King George II. intimated to his grandson that he had prohibited Lord George from presenting himself before him. The day was not far from dawning in which the memories of Minden, despite their abiding bitterness, could not impede the proud career of Lord George Sackville.

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Mr. Pitt was triumphant at home as abroad. In spite of the king's small predilection for his minister, the latter had obtained the garter for his brother-in-law, Lord Temple. Enormous subsidies were voted by the House without demur. "It is the wisest economy to spare nothing in the expenses of war," he had said, without circumlocution, when he was presenting the budget to Parliament. His animosity against France was on the increase. "Formerly I would have been content to see her on her knees," he said, in privacy; "to-day I wish to see her overturned in the dust." Notwithstanding the persistent bravery of the French nobles, who are always ready to die on the battle-field, the disorder of the troops and the inferiority of the generals who commanded in opposition to Frederick II. and Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, sadly subserved the hatred of the great English minister.

The victories of England in both worlds and the triumphant supremacy of Pitt in the Houses were not sufficient to assure the success of their allies on the continent. At one time the great Frederick thought he saw all Germany rallied round him. Now, defeated and fortified in Saxony during the winter of 1760, he sought alliances everywhere, and everywhere saw himself repelled. "There remain to me but two allies," said he; "valor and perseverance." Repeated victories, earned at the sword's point by dint of boldness and at extreme danger, could not even protect Berlin. The capital of Prussia saw itself compelled to open its gates to the foe, on the sole condition that the Cossacks should not go beyond its precincts. {253} When the regular troops withdrew, the generals had not been able to prevent the pillage of the town. The heroic efforts of the King of Prussia only ended in his keeping one foot still in Saxony. On the 10th of March he wrote to Count Algarotti, "It is certain that we have only experienced disasters during the last campaign, and that we have found ourselves nearly in the same situation as the Romans after Cannes. Unfortunately, toward the end I had an attack of gout. My left hand and my feet were disabled, and I could only let myself be carried from place to place, a witness to my own reverses. Happily, the speech of Barca to Hannibal can be applied to our enemies, 'You know how to conquer, but you do not know how to profit by victory.'" The cruel bombardment of Dresden in the month of August, 1760, was like an overflowing of the long pent-up rage of Frederick II. He had lately said, "Miserable fools that we are, we have only an instant to live, and we make that instant as sorrowful as we can. We take pleasure in destroying the masterpieces of art that time has spared us; we seemed resolved to leave behind us the odious memories of our ravages and of the calamities we have caused." The monuments and the palaces of Dresden fell beneath the fire of the Prussian cannon in the face of the flames which devoured the suburbs.

It is a relief in the midst of the horrors of war and the ferocious courage there displayed, to recall an act of disinterested bravery and a devotion which has no other recompense than glory. Marshall de Broglie, who had become general-in-chief of the French armies, had detailed M. de Castries to succor Wesel, which was besieged by the hereditary Prince of Brunswick. The French corps had just arrived, and was still in bivouac. {254} On the night between the 15th and 16th of October, the Chevalier d'Assas, captain in the regiment of Auvergne, was sent to reconnoitre. He was marching in front of his men when he just fell into the midst of a body of the enemy. The Prince of Brunswick was preparing to attack. All the guns were levelled on the young captain. "If you stir, you are a dead man," muttered threatening voices. Without answering, M. d'Assas collected all his energies. "_A moi Auvergne; voila les ennemis,_" he cried. He fell immediately, pierced by twenty bullets; but the action of Klostercamp, thus begun, was glorious for France. The hereditary prince was obliged to abandon the siege of Wesel and to recross the Rhine. The French corps maintained their positions.

The war still continued, bloody, monotonous, and fruitless; but a great event had just taken place, which was speedily to change the face of Europe. On the morning of the 25th of October, King George II. had risen as usual, being as regular and methodical at seventy-six as he had been in his youth. He asked for the foreign dispatches, when his servants heard the noise of a fall. They rushed in. The king was on the ground, and already breathing his last. When his daughter, the Princess Amelia, was summoned, she being deaf and very near-sighted bent towards her father in order to catch his last words. In alarm she started back. King George II. was dead.

[Image] George III.

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