CHAPTER XI.

General Murray beaten at Quebec--Retreat of the French from that city--General Amherst takes Montreal--Our successes in the East Indies--Campaign in Germany--Prussians defeated--King of Prussia invests Dresden--Is obliged to retreat--Defeats Laudohn--Daun compelled to raise the Siege of Schweidnitz--The Allies take Berlin--Subsequently abandon it--The King of Prussia defeats Daun at Torgal--Prince Ferdinand’s Campaign--Earl of Clanricarde challenges the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland--Character of George II.--His death--His Will--Anecdote respecting the Will of George I.

Those prodigious efforts were crowned, though not with universal, yet with most important success. In Germany, the campaign was far from decisive; but in America the war was concluded. After the loss of Quebec, the French retired into the heart of Canada. General Murray,[110] a brave and adventurous officer, with a garrison of about seven thousand men, and with the terror our arms had inspired, was left to defend the ruins of Quebec. The frost had obliged the Fleet to retire. Monsieur Levi, who had succeeded Montcalm, seized that last opportunity of struggling to recover their empire. Assembling a body of French, Canadians, and Indians, to the amount of ten thousand and upwards, he marched in April to besiege the capital. General Murray, impatient to be cooped within walls into which the English had entered so impetuously, disdained to await a regular siege, and, with far more intrepidity than policy, marched out with inferior force, attacked the French, and was defeated. He lost his cannon, but was sufficiently fortunate in not being cut off, as he was near being, from his retreat to the City. Levi soon prepared to form the siege by land and sea, having brought up six frigates; against which we had not a single vessel. The place must have fallen into the hands of its old masters, if, on the 9th of May, Lord Colville, with two frigates, outsailing the British squadron, had not entered the river and demolished the French armament. Levi, from the heights on the other side, was witness to that defeat; and, judging rightly that the rest of our naval force approached, broke up his camp in haste and confusion, and retreated, leaving his Artillery behind him.

One resource still remained--Montreal. There Monsieur de Vaudreuil, the General Governor, fixed his stand, and collected the whole force of the province. But he had to deal with a man, who, as brave as Wolfe or as Murray, and as circumspect as Vaudreuil was insidious, possessed the whole system of war. Provident, methodic, conciliating, and cool, Amherst disposed his plans, adapted his measures, reconciled jarring interests, and pursued his operations with steadiness; neither precipitating nor delaying beyond the due point, and comprehending the whole under an authority which he knew how to assume, and to temper from giving disgust.[111] A character so composed could not shine on a sudden: it required penetration to admire him; but the finer the details, the more astonishing was the result.

Amherst had determined, by one collective arrangement, to overwhelm the last hopes of France in Canada; an object sufficiently important to justify the exertion of superabundant resources. Colonel Haviland was ordered to sail from Crown Point, and proceed directly to Montreal: General Murray was commanded to bring up all the force he could spare from Quebec. Amherst himself, with a body of ten thousand men, and reinforced by a thousand savages under Sir William Johnson, embarked on Lake Ontario for the river St. Laurence; a spectacle that recalled the expeditions of ancient story, when the rudeness and novelty of naval armaments raised the first adventurers to the rank of demigods. That vast lake was to be traversed in open galleys laden with artillery, not with arrows and javelins. Wolfe, with all the formidable apparatus of modern war, had almost failed before Quebec: Amherst with barks and boats invaded Montreal, and achieved the conquest, though, what would have daunted the heroes of antiquity, he had the cataracts to pass. He surmounted that danger with inconsiderable loss, and appeared before Montreal on the very same day with General Murray. Too many obstacles, to which Monsieur de Vaudreuil had trusted, were conquered. The place itself was little tenable. The Governor took the only part that remained, that of surrendering his garrison prisoners of war. Thus was the French empire in Canada annihilated without effusion of blood. Amherst’s glory was completed by pardoning Vaudreuil’s perfidy and cruelties, and by preserving the vanquished from insult and injury.

The power of France drew as near to a period in the East Indies. Colonel Coote, Major Brereton, who fell in the contest, Major Monson, and others, carried on the war triumphantly. Lally, who left no valour unexerted, no stratagem unattempted, was constantly defeated. Sir George Pococke entirely dispersed their Navy in those seas after three repeated engagements.

The German war was far from drawing to a conclusion. It was next to a miracle, considering how gloomily the last campaign had terminated for the King of Prussia, that the present did not complete his ruin. The Empress Queen’s hatred and resources were by no means exhausted. She contrived, too, to keep up to the same mark the implacability of the Czarina, who, having less both to hope and to fear, may well be believed to have been actuated by bribes and pensions to her Ministers. Immersed in pleasure and cool to ambition, gentle, too, to her subjects, it is not credible that the Armies she poured on the King of Prussia’s dominions were dispatched by feelings of her own. The danger was not the less pressing to the King. The Russians again threatened him; advanced again. The desultory Swedes still hovered over him. The Austrian force was complete and numerous; and, if Daun was too cautious, Laudohn promised to repair by activity the Marshal’s circumspection.

The Court of Vienna seemed to applaud Laudohn’s vigour, whether to animate Daun by giving him a rival, or really wishing for an opportunity to fling the command into hands more alert. The Marshal, who preferred the interests of his mistress to his own glory, was not to be provoked out of his prudence. Inferior forces, he seemed to think, might be justified in rashness: superior strength, that could command time, could also ensure success; and, as his conduct had already brought the King of Prussia to the verge of ruin, he saw no cause to precipitate measures which had and did tend so naturally to complete the work. The King, whom experience had successively taught to be brave, to be desperate, to be circumspect, was not impatient to advance his fate. His whole conduct in this campaign evidenced that he looked on his situation as little less than hopeless; firm, however, to find an issue, if art or industry could furnish one. He entrenched himself strongly between the Elbe and the Multa, covering Saxony. Prince Henry defended Silesia; General Fouquet, preserving a communication with the latter, was posted near Glatz. Daun watched the King in a camp no less strong; while Laudohn, with a light army, shifted his quarters, and by turns threatened Silesia and Berlin--sometimes hovered over the strong places in Silesia, at others made a feint of attacking Prince Henry. The storm, however, at length seemed levelled against Schweidnitz. General Fouquet was the dupe of that _mouvement_; and, marching to cover the town, was drawn into an engagement by Laudohn near Landshut, in which the Prussians were not only totally defeated, but Fouquet himself, with two other Generals, four Colonels, two hundred and thirteen officers, and seven thousand men, were obliged to lay down their arms and surrender themselves prisoners.

Laudohn, eager to improve his victory, besieged Glatz and took it. He was of a nature not to stop in the career of success. The King trembled for Silesia; while, at the same time, he was kept in check by Daun’s superior force. He had no longer leisure to temporize. By a secret and rapid march he crossed the Elbe before the Marshal had notice of his departure. But Daun, however wary, was not dilatory. He followed the King with an expedition which, being assisted by having a shorter cut to make, soon gave him the start of his Majesty. This was the point at which the King had pushed. When he found that the Marshal was advanced before him by a march of two days, the King turned suddenly back, and, while he was supposed on the borders of Silesia, appeared before the walls of Dresden. He commenced the siege with ardour; for it would admit of no delay. The glory of outwitting Daun was all the fruit reaped by this stratagem; and, unless the King flattered himself with a prospect of carrying Dresden by surprise or storm, his manœuvre was, in his circumstances, a puerile stratagem, a game of generalship not adequate to the crisis of his fortune. It seemed one of those vainglorious littlenesses which too often entered into his composition. The same mistaken appetite of applause tempted him in this very campaign to publish his poems; a superficial medley, ungrateful to the Deity that had given him such talents, and who had not given him a genius for poetry. Achilles was a subject for Pindar’s lyre, but could not strike it like Pindar.

Daun soon compensated for his error, and reached Dresden in six days after the siege was formed. He flung sixteen battalions into the town; and in three days more the King abandoned the siege. He had astonished Europe--and he was satisfied. His brother’s glory was more solid. Laudohn had invested Breslau, and expected to be joined by seventy thousand Russians. The town in the meantime was battered with incredible fury. The Russians did not appear--but Prince Henry did. He had marched from Glogau with surprising expedition, and arrived in time to save the place. Laudohn thought fit to decamp without risking a battle; but he blocked up Neisse and Schweidnitz; and the Russians at last advanced. Three bodies of Austrians also joined, commanded by Daun, Laudohn, and Lacy. The King by large strides hastened to the defence of Silesia, and encamped at Lignitz. His own superiority of force, and the approach of the Russians, appeared to Marshal Daun the favourable moment for determining the contest. He disposed his plan for attacking the King in different quarters with all the three Armies; and, to leave as little as possible to chance, he meant to surprise him in the night. Measures so wisely taken were frustrated by the vivacity of the King. He had learned the approach of a body of Russians, and saw himself in a net. In vain had he already attempted to divide the Austrian Armies; but what his stratagems could not effect, their own disposition offered to him. Meaning to surround him, they necessarily were to act in detached bodies. He seized the lucky hour with vigour and sagacity; and, on the evening before the destined general attack, he silently quitted his position, and seized a post through which Laudohn was to pass. Daun had begun to move, when, to his inexpressible surprise, he found no enemy to encounter. The astonishment of Laudohn was not less, when, at three in the morning, he found himself opposed to the whole force of the King of Prussia. He was fallen into the snare, and it was too late to retreat. For three hours he sustained the redoubled onsets of the Prussian; but the King, who fought to avoid a battle, as well as to gain one, exerted such desperate heroism, that at length he totally routed the Austrians. They fled, leaving the Monarch in possession of every mark of victory, but expecting each moment to have it ravished from him.

Here, if ever, Marshal Daun seems to have hesitated unwisely. The Prussians were flushed with success; but such a victory was not gained without fatigue. Daun suspended his blow, and never recovered the opportunity: he lost it by waiting to ensure it. Never trusting to chance, while additional strength was in view, he detached a strong corps to meet the Russians and press them to advance. Great as the reinforcement was, it did not counterbalance the panic with which they were struck by Laudohn’s defeat. They repassed the Oder with precipitation, and left the King at liberty to join Prince Henry. Marshal Daun, who was more lessened by his competitor’s defeat than he could have been by any triumph of Laudohn, descended from the lofty hopes he had so reasonably entertained, and blockaded Schweidnitz. But the honour of forming a single siege was soon ravished from him by Frederick, who, having surprised and vanquished a corps under General Beck, obliged the Marshal to raise the blockade and retreat precipitately to the mountains.

Still dangers crowded on the King as fast as he dispersed them. While he was defending Silesia, the Russians, seeing Brandenburg open, turned their invasion towards that province. Count Czernichew led on a considerable body; Daun sent them 15,000 Austrians, and the Imperial Army in Saxony was ordered to meet them at the gates of Berlin. Count Halsen had upheld the sinking fortune of the King in Saxony: he was now commanded to make an effort for saving Berlin; but when he had assembled all possible force, it amounted but to 15,000 men. With such scanty means, he could only be witness to the reduction of the capital, which immediately capitulated. The Allied Army laid the town under heavy contribution; but the Russians, who had not distinguished themselves in that war by lenity, blushed to see themselves surpassed by the excesses of the Austrians; so much did animosity surpass barbarism. Even the Swedes had hoped to come in for share of the plunder of Berlin, and were stretching thither.

The King, whose fortune sunk wherever he was not in person to sustain it, marched to relieve his capital. The plunderers did not await him, but, after wasting the country, retired; the Imperialists, to profit of the King’s absence, and to seize Saxony, which lay at their mercy; the Russians, to form the siege of Colberg, which, however, they abandoned, and retreated. Laudohn had no better success before Cosel: and before the end of the campaign, the Swedes, too, were driven back by the alertness of General Werner.

Still Marshal Daun’s Army remained entire, and superior to the King’s. He had followed and watched every motion of that Prince, and both passed the Elbe on the same day. The two Armies encamped near Torgau; the Marshal with every advantage of position. The King’s situation was tremendous. The enemy was not to be forced from a post so judiciously chosen. Winter advanced; and Frederic had nothing but a ruined country to receive him, if defeated. The King saw the gulph that surrounded him. He saw the fruitlessness of disguising their danger to his Army. He determined to fight, and told his troops that he was resolved to conquer or die. Under the awfulness of despair, they attacked the enemy. The onset and the reception became the renown of such Armies and such Commanders. Fury animated the Prussians; intrepidity sustained the Austrians. The King’s valour was correspondent to his declaration. The Marshal showed that his fire had been restrained by wisdom alone--not by want of heroism. The event was long in suspense, and fluctuated alternately, each side being often repulsed, and returning to the charge with fresh alacrity. The Prussians at last threw the enemy into disorder; and the Marshal himself receiving a dangerous wound in the thigh, and being borne from the field, Count O’Donnel, who succeeded to the command, found it vain to dispute the field any longer. It was nine at night in the month of November; the battle had lasted from two in the afternoon. A retreat was sounded, and made in good order by the Austrians.

Dearly did the Prussians buy their victory; but in such a crisis what was too dear a price for Frederic to pay? His loss was computed at 13,000 men. The Austrians had not suffered less; in prisoners abundantly. Four Generals, 216 officers, and 8000 private men taken, with possession of the field, were decisive in favour of the Prussians. The recovery of all Saxony, but Dresden, made the victory indisputable.

Prince Ferdinand’s campaign was not alike resplendent in action or variety. His army had been reinforced, but was still inferior to the French commanded by Marshal Broglio. A separate corps was under the orders of Count St. Germain, an officer of reputation, but between whom and Broglio an enmity subsisted, which made it thought unadvisable to let them act together. That they should even act in concert was little to be expected--nor did they. Prince Ferdinand reaped security from their dissensions rather than laurels. Their animosities ran so high, that Broglio ordering St. Germain to join his force with the Grand Army, contrary to the compact which the latter had made of commanding a distinct body, St. Germain, who was also an older officer, threw up his commission, and quitted the service of his country.

The Hereditary Prince, ever alert, had attacked a post, been beaten, and been wounded. He soon compensated for that disgrace by surprising another detachment, in which he made the General who commanded it, and 3000 men, prisoners. That success was followed by a more considerable action at Warbourg, in which the French were again worsted by Prince Ferdinand and his heroic nephew: yet so little advantage was reaped by that achievement, that the French soon overran Hesse, seized Göttingen and Munden, and were at the eve of possessing Hanover.

The Hereditary Prince continued his eccentric enterprises with advantage. His ardour was well seconded by the bravery of the English troops: yet those flying rencounters rather kept off than forwarded any decisive blow. Prince Ferdinand made other detachments with like prosperity; and gained at least the glory of diverting Broglio, with very superior force, from accomplishing any point of importance. A more unaccountable expedition, on which Prince Ferdinand suddenly dispatched his nephew, at the head of a considerable force, towards the frontiers of Holland, occasioned much solicitude in England, as the main Army, already unequal to that of France, was thus rendered much weaker. King George felt it with anxiety; and though not productive of the disasters apprehended, it was far, whatever were the object of its destination, from turning to account. Cleves, indeed, fell into our hands, and the siege of Wesel was undertaken; but the French not thinking fit to leave the Hereditary Prince undisturbed in his progress, sent Monsieur de Castries, with a powerful detachment, to interrupt the siege. The Prince, whose characteristic was quickness, did not wait to be compelled to raise the siege. He attempted to surprise the enemy, but was repulsed with loss, and received another wound.

In that action fell Lord Downe,[112] a gallant young man, adorned with every amiable quality. Intrepid, generous, and good-natured, he had abandoned the enjoyment of an ample fortune for the pursuit of arms, to which he had an ungovernable impulse. He had parts to have distinguished him in a safer scene; and a peculiarity of humour that ornamented even his virtues. He received three wounds, and languished some weeks in torment, which he supported with indifference to everything but the impatience of returning to his profession--but his wounds were mortal. The Prince rejoined the Army, which soon after went into winter-quarters.

While the theatre of war was thus open to men so formed to shine on it, another hero, who had been excluded from the scene, was in a melancholy condition. The Duke of Cumberland in the summer had a stroke of palsy. He soon recovered both his speech and limbs; but the grossness of his constitution, and other disorders, made his friends apprehend he would not long survive it. Himself treated it with indifference, and with the same philosophy with which his high spirit had supported misfortunes to him more sensible.

The martial temper of the age called forth a champion of dissimilar complexion. There was in Ireland an Earl of Clanrickard, who, even in this country, where singular characters are not uncommon, had been reckoned more than ordinarily extravagant. The Duke of Bedford had refused to let him raise a regiment. To prove his valour, he challenged the Lord-Lieutenant, who contemning so improper an adversary, the Earl printed in the public papers a letter to the Duke, reproaching him with rejecting the challenge, and reflecting both on his Grace and his secretary, whose bones he threatened to break. Such an insult on the chief governor of a kingdom was atrocious. The Privy Council of England ordered the Attorney-General to commence a prosecution against the Earl. Mr. Rigby, whose spirit was more questionless than the Earl’s, returned a challenge for himself; but the Earl thought it safest to confine his prowess to the master, and forbore coming to England. Three years afterwards, when Rigby went to Ireland to qualify for a place, the Privy Council of that kingdom obliged Lord Clanrickard to give security for his good behaviour; and the matter was compromised.

* * * * *

These were the last events in the long and memorable reign of George the Second--a reign that had produced as great statesmen, orators, and heroes as dignify the annals of whatever country. His thirteen first years were stamped with every blessing of peace, but unanimity--if disagreement is an evil to a free country, to which jealousy is perhaps essential. A Rebellion and two wars called forth all our resources: the disgrace that attended the Councils and prosecution of the first war served but to illustrate the abilities of the nation, which, reviving from its ignominy and calamities, carried the glory of our arms and measures to a height unknown in our story. The Prince himself was neither accessary to the one or the other. His greatest merit was bearing either fortune with calmness. Triumphant as Elizabeth and Anne, he neither presumed on the zeal of his subjects like the first, nor was so like the last as to concur in or behold an ignominious peace, that tarnished such conspicuous victories, and squandered such irrecoverable advantages. Full of years and glory, he died without a pang, and without a reverse. He left his family firmly established on a long-disputed Throne, and was taken away in the moment that approaching extinction of sight and hearing made loss of life the only blessing that remained desirable.

On the 25th of October he rose as usual at six, and drank his chocolate; for all his actions were invariably methodic. A quarter after seven he went into a little closet. His German _valet de chambre_ in waiting, heard a noise, and running in, found the King dead on the floor. In falling, he had cut his face against the corner of a bureau. He was laid on a bed and blooded, but not a drop followed: the ventricle of his heart had burst. Princess Amelie was called, and told the King wanted her. She went immediately, and thought him in a fit. Being deaf herself, she saw nothing in the chamber that indicated his being dead; and putting her face close to his, to hear if he spoke to her, she then first perceived he was lifeless.

The character of this Prince has been so amply displayed in the course of this work, that it were tautology to recapitulate it. His faults were more the blemishes of a private man than of a King. The affection and tenderness he invariably showed to a people over whom he had unbounded rule, forbid our wondering that he used circumscribed power with moderation. Often situated in humiliating circumstances, his resentments seldom operated when the power of revenge returned. He bore the ascendant of his Ministers, who seldom were his favourites, with more patience than he suffered any encroachment on his will from his mistresses. Content to bargain for the gratification of his two predominant passions, Hanover and money, he was almost indifferent to the rest of his royal authority, provided exterior observance was not wanting; for he comforted himself if he did not perceive the diminution of Majesty, though it was notorious to all the rest of the world. Yet he was not so totally careless of the affection and interests of this country as his father had been. George the First possessed a sounder understanding and a better temper: yet George the Second gained more by being compared with his eldest son, than he lost if paralleled with his father. His treatment of his second son, to whose valour he was indebted for the preservation of his Crown, and to the silence and tenderness of whose duty he owed the preservation of his honour, was punished by the ingratitude of the Princess of Wales.

Bookish men have censured his neglect of literature--a reflection that at least is evidence that public utility is not the sole purport of their labours. But the advantages resulting to their country from authors must be better ascertained, before the imputation becomes a grave one. Had he pensioned half a dozen poets, and reaped their incense, the world had heard of nothing but his liberality. Let Kings prefer a Tillotson or a Seneca, nay, a Bacon or a Newton--if Bacon or Seneca will not forget their philosophy. Let them enrich such angelic men, when there are such angelic men, as Dr. Hales:[113] but money is as well hoarded as squandered on Boileaus and Benserades, on Atterburys and Drydens. In truth, I believe King George would have preferred a guinea to a composition as perfect as Alexander’s Feast. He certainly did not spare rewards to those who served their country. The profusion of favours which he suffered the Duke of Newcastle to shower on the University of Cambridge ought to disculpate the King from the charge of neglecting literature--it was the fault of that body if they were not learned.

If dying but moderately rich were as good a proof that he had not been avaricious, one of the greatest stains of his character would be effaced. By his will he gave fifty thousand pounds between his three surviving children, the Duke, Princess Amelia, and Mary, Princess of Hesse: a strong box, not to be opened, to Lady Yarmouth. The rest of his private fortune he had given by a deed, executed soon after the battle of Culloden, and unrevoked, to the Duke of Cumberland; who thence became heir to his jewels (sold afterwards to the successor for about fifty thousand pounds), and to his mortgages in Germany, amounting to about an hundred and fourscore thousand more:--a scanty pittance, if compared with what he must have amassed in a reign of three and thirty years. For part of that term he had received yearly to his own use an hundred thousand pounds from the civil list, and never less than fifty thousand; relinquishing the rest to the disposal of his Ministers for necessary services! At his accession he was worth three hundred thousand pounds. The revenues of Hanover exceeded five hundred thousand pounds a year; a sum he by no means expended. Reduce his savings to the lowest, discount his purchases, and swell Lady Yarmouth’s legacy, which was given out to be ten thousand pounds, to four times that sum; and allow two millions, which his last war is said to have cost him in defence of Hanover; it will still be difficult to believe that he did not die worth three hundred and fifty thousand pounds--what became of the rest, or how concealed if there was more, I pretend not to determine, nor even to guess.

The King himself had stated his late expense for Hanover still higher than I have set down. Mr. Onslow, the Speaker, showed me a remarkable paper, which had been brought to him at the King’s command, in the year 1758, by Baron Munchausen,[114] with whom Mr. Onslow had no acquaintance. In that memorandum, the King declared that he had then expended on the war 2,500,000_l._, the savings of thirty years; that he had borrowed above 200,000_l._ here in England, as much more in Germany, and that the Hanoverian Chancery of war owed 200,000 rix dollars. “The King,” concluded the paper, “can do no more himself towards the war.”--If he did more in the two following years, and it has never been pretended that he stopped his hand in 1758, his remaining ability to go on induces a suspicion that there was as little exactness observed in stating the rest of the account. On the envelope of Munchausen’s paper Mr. Onslow had written, “I could send no answer to this.”

The morning after the King’s death, the Duke of Cumberland sent for Lord Waldegrave, and told him, that if, as Lady Yarmouth believed, no new will had been made since that in Princess Amelie’s hands, his father had done greatly for him--not, however, so largely as he had once purposed: he had said to the Duke, “William, I see you will never marry; it is in vain to think of making a great establishment of a new branch through you: I shall do well for you for your life; yet not so large as I should have done in that case.” This certainly intimated a project of leaving his purchased Principalities in Germany to the Duke.

Lord Waldegrave in return showed his Royal Highness an _extraordinary_ piece; it was endorsed, _very private paper_, and was a letter from the Duke of Newcastle to the first Earl of Waldegrave; in which his Grace informed the Earl,[115] that he had received by the messenger the copy of the will and codicil of George the First; that he had delivered it to his Majesty, who put it into the fire without opening it--“so,” adds the Duke, “we do not know whether it confirms the other or not:” and he proceeds to say, “I dispatch a messenger to the Duke of Wolfenbuttle with the treaty, in which is granted all he desires; and we expect by the return of the messenger the original will from him.” George the First had left two wills; one in the hands of Dr. Wake, Archbishop of Canterbury, the other with the Duke of Wolfenbuttle. The Archbishop, on news of the King’s death, carried his copy to the Privy Council, and, without the precaution of opening it before them, which the poor man could not apprehend would be so necessary as it proved, gave it into the new King’s hands, who, to the Prelate’s great surprise, carried it from Council _unopened_.[116] The letter I have quoted above shows what was the fate of the other copy: the honest Duke of Wolfenbuttle sold it for a subsidy! George the First had been in the right to take those precautions: he himself had burned his wife’s testament,[117] and her father’s, the Duke of Zelle, both of whom had made George the Second their heir--a palliative of the latter’s obliquity, if justice would allow of any violation.

FOOTNOTES:

[110] The same person who, when Governor of Minorca, was forced to surrender it to the Spaniards in 1782.

[111] Jeffery Amherst, afterwards made Knight of the Bath, a Baron of England, and Commander-in-Chief of the Forces of Great Britain, from which post he was removed in 1782, was one of those men who, in particular circumstances, in one period of their life have performed not only great actions, but have conducted them with consummate sense and address, and who in the rest of their lives have been able to display no symptoms of genius. Amherst, who terminated the war in America with so much ability, being afterwards raised to the command of the Army at home, was discovered and universally allowed to be a man of incapacity, or neglectful of the most common details of his office. Whether conscious of his own defects, and of being incompetent to converse with men whom he knew enlightened, he seemed determined to bury his deficiency in obstinate silence; or else his pride and vanity, of which he had a tolerable share, made him disdain to communicate his paucity of ideas. No satisfaction could be extorted from him on whatever business he was consulted; nor was it much easier to obtain from him the necessary orders in his department. In 1779, when the French Fleet arrived off Plymouth, he could not have given more absurd directions had he meant to betray the place; and, when every part of the coast was open to expected invasion, he was nowhere prepared with the common necessaries for taking the field. When reproached in Parliament with his negligence and insufficiency, he confirmed them by the sullen and inadequate brevity of his reply. When at last he was removed by the preponderance of the Opposition in 1782, he fell as unregretted as he had remained in place despised.

General Monk had been another of those temporary brilliants. All the depths of refined policy had seemed to have conducted and ensured his success. After the Restoration, not a gleam of genius appeared, though he proved just the reverse of Amherst. Monk had observed the most profound secrecy and dissimulation in conducting the re-establishment of the King. He seems to have thrown off all disguise in the rest of his life; though his activity remained, whenever called out. Amherst assumed reserve when he had nothing to conceal, and laid aside industry when it would have sufficed to communicate vigour to others. When men shine but once, it is probable that fortune has the chief merit in their success; and that others impute to their foresight the lucky combinations of chance in their favour.

In different parts of these Memoirs I am well aware that I have given very different characters of some of the principal actors. The reason is, that, having observed them well for a long series of years, I have seen cause to change my opinions--perhaps the persons themselves altered, for who is consistent? I choose to leave the portraits with their variations; I think they were just at each period in which they were drawn--the reader must judge from the conduct of the persons; for he will observe, that, if I vary my accounts, I produce the instances in which the actors appear different from themselves. Lord Chatham I have described in all the lights in which he appeared--sometimes a capital statesman, and sometimes an empiric. The Duke of Cumberland I have shown to have become a most wise, philosophic, and respectable, from a haughty and insolent Prince. Lord George Sackville I have spoken of with admiration of his parts, with great indecision on his spirit, with scorn of his want of judgment, and of his want of abilities in the latter part of his time. Lord Amherst was allowed for many years to have deserved the encomiums I have given to his conduct in America. The contempt conceived for him afterwards was so general, that, even while he retained his power, he had not an advocate.--A.

The author’s notes were generally written many years after the text. The above unfavourable portrait of Lord Amherst was probably annexed to the MS. at the close of the American war, when political animosities obscured every impartial view of living characters. The panegyric in text was composed in 1763, Horace Walpole being then more than ever disposed to magnify the events and extol the tactics of the seven-years’ war. Allowance must be made for these circumstances. We may abate something of the warmth of encomium in the text, but we must also mitigate the bitterness which forms so large an ingredient in the note.--E.

[112] Henry Pleydell Dawney, Viscount Downe of Ireland.

[113] Dr. Stephen Hales, parson of Teddington, Chaplain to Augusta, Princess of Wales, author of several most humane and philosophic works.

[114] The Minister for Hanover in England.

[115] Then ambassador in France.

[116] It was believed that George the First had bequeathed a large sum to his daughter, the Queen of Prussia, and another to his mistress, or rather left-handed wife, the Duchess of Kendal. Frederic the Second, King of Prussia, was said to have often claimed his mother’s legacy; and the Earl of Chesterfield, who married the Countess of Walsingham, niece and heiress of the Duchess of Kendal, commenced or threatened a suit for the Duchess’s legacy, and was supposed to be quieted by a sum of twenty thousand pounds. Lady Walsingham was believed to be the King’s daughter by the Duchess of Kendal.

[117] (_Vide_ Appendix.)

APPENDIX.

APPENDIX.

(_Vide page 309._)

I learned from Henrietta, Countess of Suffolk, mistress to George the Second, the fact mentioned in text, of George the First burning his wife’s testament. That Princess, the Electress of Hanover, liked the famous Count Konigsmark, while her husband was at the Army. The old Elector, father of George the First, ordered him away. The Electress, then Hereditary Princess, was persuaded to let him kiss her hand before his departure. She saw him in bed--he retired, and was never heard of more. When George the Second went first to Hanover after his father’s death, and made some alterations in the palace, the body of Konigsmark was found under the floor of the chamber next to the Electress’s chamber. He had been strangled immediately on leaving her, by the old Elector’s order, and buried under the floor. This fact _Queen Caroline related to my father_, Sir Robert Walpole. George the Second told it to his wife, but never to his mistress, Lady Suffolk, who had never heard it till I told it to her many years after. The Electress was separated from George I. on that amour, and was called Duchess of Halle; and he married the Duchess of Kendal with his left hand. When the French threatened Hanover in Queen Anne’s war, the Duchess of Halle was sent to her parents, the Duke and Duchess of Zelle, who doted on her their only child, and she stayed a year with them; but though they were most earnest to retain her, she was forced to return to her confinement, in which she died the year before her husband. Some French prophetess, as supposed hired by the Duke of Zelle, warned George I. to take care of his wife, for he would not long outlive her. As the Germans are very superstitious, he believed the prophecy; and when he took leave of his son and the Princess of Wales, Caroline, he told them he should never see them more. George II., who hated his father and was very fond of his mother, meant, if she had survived her husband, to bring her over, and declare her Queen Dowager. Lady Suffolk told me, that the morning after the news of the death of George I. arrived, when she went, as Woman of the Bed-chamber, to the new Queen, she found a whole and half-length portraits of the Electress hung up in the apartment; George II. had had them locked up, but had not dared to produce them. Princess Amelie has the half-length at her house in Cavendish-square. George I. told the Duchess of Kendal, that if he could, he would appear to her after his death. Soon after that event, a large bird, I forget of what sort, flew into her window. She believed it was the King’s soul, and took the utmost care of it. George II. was not less credulous; he believed in vampires. His son Frederic affected the same contradictory fondness for his grandfather, and erected the statue of George I. in Leicester-fields; and intended, if he had come to the crown, to place a monument to his memory in St. Paul’s.

George I., besides the Duchess of Kendal, had several other mistresses, particularly one whom he brought over and created Countess of Darlington; by whom he was father of Charlotte, Viscountess Howe, though she was not publicly avowed. In the last year or two of his life he had another mistress, Miss Anne Brett, daughter, by her second husband, Colonel Brett, of the famous divorced Countess of Macclesfield, mother of Savage, the poet. Miss Brett had an apartment given to her in the palace at St. James’s, and was to have been created a Countess, if the King had returned.

INDEX.

INDEX

OF THE

NAMES OF PERSONS MENTIONED IN THESE MEMOIRS.

Abercrombie, General, iii. 91, 134.

Adams, Judge, iii. 118.

Ailesbury, Earl of, ii. 272.

Albemarle, W. A. Van Keppel, Earl of, i. 82, 194, 422, 423; ii. 18; iii. 44, 155, 169, 267, 271.

Albemarle, Lady, i. 82; iii. 268.

Aldworth, Mr., i. 193.

Allen, Mr., iii. 5.

Amelie, Princess, i. 401, 451; ii. 39, 371; iii. 269, 303, 305, 307, 315.

Amherst, General, iii. 91, 133, 211, 218, 235, 285, 287, 288, 289.

Andrews, Dr., i. 367.

Andrié, M., i. 455.

Anhalt-Dessau, Prince of, ii. 411.

Anhalt, Prince of, iii. 195.

Ankram, Lord, i. 60.

Anson, Lord, i. 38, 68, 115, 187, 192, 194, 256, 304, 331, 345, 380;