ONE:Buonaparte endeavoured to man?uvre so as to get into Kutusoff's rear, and thus to have the way into the fertile provinces beyond him open. He sent forward Delzon to occupy Maloi-Jaroslavitz, a very strong position; but Kutusoff penetrated his design, made a rapid march, and encountered Delzon in the very streets of Maloi-Jaroslavitz. A severe battle took place, and the French finally recovered Maloi-Jaroslavitz, but only to find it, like Moscow, in flames, and to lose Delzon and his brother, as well as some thousands of men. Beyond the burning town they also saw Kutusoff and one hundred thousand men drawn up in a position which the French generals declared impregnable. Buonaparte received this information with expressions of consternation unusual to him. He determined the next morning to examine this position for himself, and in so doing was very nearly captured by a band of Cossack cavalry. A council of war was held in a wretched weaver's hut, and he reluctantly concluded to forego this route, and take that by Vereiva and Viasma, the same by which he had advanced on Moscow. This was, in fact, to doom his army to perdition; for all the way by Borodino, Smolensk, and Vitebsk, the country had been ravaged and desolated in coming; there was nothing in it to keep alive an army. Had he waited only a few hours, he would have found[50] Kutusoff himself retreating from his strong defiles from fear of being outflanked by the French, and their making their way beyond him to the fertile provinces. Thus the two armies were each in retreat at the same moment, but Buonaparte's was a retreat upon death and horror.An attempt was again made on the part of Grey and Grenville to form a Ministry, but without effect. Overtures were then made to Lord Wellesley and Canning, who declined to join the Cabinet, alleging differences of opinion on the Catholic claims and on the scale for carrying on the war in[25] the Peninsula. In the House of Commons, on the 21st of May, Mr. Stuart Wortley, afterwards Lord Wharncliffe, moved and carried a resolution for an address to the Regent, praying him to endeavour to form a Coalition Ministry. During a whole week such endeavours were made, and various audiences had by Lords Moira, Wellesley, Eldon, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, etc., and Moira was authorised to make proposals to Wellesley and Canning, to Grey and Grenville. But all these negotiations fell through. Grey and Grenville refused to come in unless they could have the rearrangement of the Royal Household. This demand was yielded by the Regent, but Sheridan, who hated them, did not deliver the message, and so the attempt failed. But at the same time, apart altogether from this matter, they could not have pursued any effectual policy. It was therefore much better that they should not come in at all.
TWO:During the passage of the Bill through committee three important proposals were madethe first by Lord Chandos, that tenants paying fifty pounds per annum for their holdings should have a vote in the counties. This was known as "the Chandos clause" of the Reform Bill, which was carried on the 18th of August by a majority of 84, the numbers being 232 and 148. Mr. Hume proposed that the colonies should be represented in the House of Commons; but the motion was negatived without a division. Mr. Hunt, the celebrated Radical Reformer, moved that all house-holders paying rates and taxes should have votes; but, strange to say, household suffrage had in the committee but a single supporter, Mr. Hunt himself, who upon a division constituted the minority. Mr. Hume asked only nineteen members to represent 100,000,000 of inhabitants, including our Indian empire, to which he would give four representatives. It was certainly a small demand, but as a representation of our colonies and dependencies it was ludicrously inadequate.
ONE:On the 22nd of January, 1801, the first Imperial Parliament met, and Addington was re-elected Speaker. The king did not meet this Parliament till the whole of its members had been sworn; his opening of it for business took place on the 2nd of February, and his speech had no cheering topics to give spirit to its first proceedings; on the Continent there had been nothing but defeat on the part of the Allies, of triumph on that of France. Our late ally, Paul, had not only seized our merchant vessels in the ports of the Baltic, and the property of our merchants in the Russian towns, but he had entered into a league with Sweden and Denmark to close the Baltic altogether to us, and to compel us to relinquish the right of search. This confederacy, by stopping the supplies of corn from the North, threatened us with great aggravation of the distresses at home; and some members advocated the surrender of the right of search, or the acceptance of the principles of an armed neutrality, such as Catherine of Russia had endeavoured to establish. But Pitt plainly showed that to allow neutral vessels to carry arms, ammunition, and commodities of life into the ports of our enemies would render all blockades of their forts useless, and enormously increase our difficulties during war. Orders were immediately issued to send a powerful fleet into the Baltic to chastise the insane Czar.As a means of popularity, they insisted on the standing army being abolished in time of peace, on the strict limitation of placemen in Parliament, and on the return to triennial Parliaments. These were hard topics for the patriots now in power to digest. But the depression of trade continued, and no one could suggest a remedy but that of reducing taxation at the very time that all parties were zealous for the prosecution of the war. Finding no other solution to their difficulties, the public turned again to the demand of an inquiry into the administration of Walpole, hoping to lay bare in that the causes of their sufferings. Accordingly Lord Limerick, on the 23rd of March, rose and proposed a committee to inquire into the administration of Walpole, not for twenty, but for the last ten years. Pulteney not only voted, but spoke in favour of this motion, and it was carried by a majority of seven. Lord Limerick was chosen chairman, and such was the partial and vindictive spirit in which they went to work in examining papers and witnesses, that the honourable-minded Sir John Barnard, though so staunch an opponent of Walpole when in power, declared that he would no longer take part in the labours of a committee which displayed so little regard to the general inquiry, but concentrated all their efforts on the ruin of one individual.
TWO:43 Elizabeth, c. 2 {89 parishes (including theWhile these changes were being made in Italy, the British, with their new allies, the Russians, made an abortive attempt to drive the French from Holland. An army of seventeen thousand Russians and thirteen thousand British was assembled on the coast of Kent, and Sir Ralph Abercromby, who was destined to fall on a more memorable field, taking the command of a division of twelve thousand men, Admiral Mitchell put them across to the coast of Holland. Abercromby landed, and took the fort of the Helder, and our fleet, occupying the Texel, compelled the Dutch fleet to surrender and mount the Orange flag. So long as Abercromby commanded, he repelled all the attacks of the French general, Brune, with a force more than double in number; but on the 13th of September the Duke of York arrived with the remainder of the Anglo-Russian army and took the chief command. From that moment all went wrong. The old want of success followed the royal duke, who, whatever his courage, certainly possessed no abilities as a general. By the 17th of October, notwithstanding the bravery of his troops, he was glad to sign a convention by which he was allowed to withdraw his army, on condition of the liberation of eight thousand French and Dutch prisoners of war in England. In Switzerland, too, Massena defeated Korsakoff at Zurich, and Suvaroff, believing himself to have been betrayed by the Austrians, effected a brilliant retreat over the mountains.
ONE:IRISH TRAMPS.
TWO:The ruinous expenditure of the war, and the continual difficulties into which the Civil List had fallen, now roused throughout the country a strong demand for economical reform. The Duke of Richmond introduced the subject into the Upper House by moving, on the 7th of December, that an Address be conveyed to his Majesty representing the distress of the country, the heavy demands upon it for the complicated war, and recommending a reduction of all useless expenses; it also set out that profusion, so far from being strength, was weakness; that it behoved all classes of officials to consent to a curtailment of the lavish salaries; and that it would be a noble example in the Crown to take the lead, which could not fail of enhancing the love of the people, and diffusing an excellent influence throughout every department of the State. His grace represented that the vast military establishment by sea and land could not include less than three hundred thousand men; that, since the beginning of the American war the expenditure had added sixty-three millions of pounds to the Debt, and its interest, eight millions, to our annual payments. The interest of the Debt had now become of itself equal to the whole of our expenditure in years of peace before. He laid much stress on the belief that the example of the king would induce all orders of men to make equal sacrifices to the needs of their country. Richmond declared that he had no wish to curtail the pensions of those who had wasted their fortunes in the service of their country, as the Pelhams, for the Duke of Newcastle was said to have sunk five hundred thousand pounds during the years that he so fondly adhered to office. He gave the Ministers and the aristocracy credit for a disinterestedness which they did not possess. They admitted the vastness of the expenditure, and that there was wastefulness, and that they were desirous of economy; but they could not believe that any reduction of the Civil List would be sensibly felt, whilst it would reflect dishonour on the country, as if it were incapable of maintaining the Crown in due credit. Lord Chancellor Thurlow affected not to believe in the distress, or that any case of public extravagance had been made out. The Duke of Richmond's motion was negatived by seventy-seven votes against thirty-six.Mlas, who had been besieging Genoa, had left part of his army to reduce that city, defended by a strong French division under Massena and Soult, and advanced to Nice, which he had entered, and was contemplating his descent on Provence, when the news of Buonaparte's entrance of Piedmont reached him. He directed his march now to meet him. In the meantime, Massena and Soult, worn out by famine, the fort being blockaded by Admiral Lord Keith, had surrendered Genoa to General Otto, whom Mlas had ordered to raise the siege and join him. Mlas summoned his scattered forces to make head against Buonaparte, and was himself pursued from the neighbourhood of Nice by Suchet. Buonaparte deceived Mlas by false movements, making him imagine that his object was Turin, and so entered Milan in triumph on the 2nd of June. After various encounters and man?uvres between Buonaparte and Mlas, the First Consul crossed the Po at Piacenza, drove back the advanced guard of the Austrians, and took up a position on the plains of Marengo, on the right bank of the little stream, the Bormida, and opposite to Alessandria, where Mlas was lying. The next daythe 14th of JuneMlas drew out his forces, and attacked the French with great spirit. The Austrians amounted to about forty thousand, including a fine body of cavalry, for which the ground was highly[477] favourable; the French were not more than thirty thousand, posted strongly in and around the village of Marengo, in three divisions, each stationed about a quarter of a mile behind the other. After two or three attempts the Austrians drove the French out of the village of Marengo, threw the second division, commanded by Lannes, into confusion, and put to rout the left wing of Buonaparte's own division, threw his centre into disorder, and compelled him to retreat as far as St. Juliano. The whole tide of battle was running against Buonaparte, and a short time must have completed his rout, when the strength of the old general, Mlasmore than eighty years of agegave way, for he had been many hours on horseback. He retired from the field quite secure of the victory, and left General Zach to finish it. But, at this moment, General Desaix, who had lately arrived from Egypt, and had been sent by Buonaparte to make a diversion at Rivolta, came back with his detachment of twenty thousand men. Kellermann, also, who was posted in the rear with a body of reserve, marched up at the same time. A new and desperate charge was made on the fatigued Austrians, and they were broken and put to the rout. They retreated across the Bormida, towards Alessandria, in a panic, the horse galloping over the infantry. Mlas, dispirited by his defeat, but more by his age, gave up the struggle and on the 16th of June concluded an armistice, resigning not only Alessandria, where he might have stood a longer siege, but Genoa, which had just surrendered to the Austrians, and all the Genoese territory, agreeing to retire behind the line of Mantua and the Mincio, and leaving to the French all Lombardy as far as the Oglio. The French themselves could scarcely believe the reality of such a surrender.