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FORE:The news, when it reached England, produced a transport of exultation. Bells were rung, cannon fired, and great rejoicings made, anticipatory of fresh tidings of wonderful success. But very different was the reality. Wentworth called on Vernon to bombard Carthagena from the harbour, whilst he assailed it on land; but Vernon replied that he could not get near enough to attack the town effectually, and that Wentworth must attempt the reduction of the Fort San Lazaro, which commanded the town, and might be taken by escalade. This was[76] attempted, and while our men were thus standing under a murderous fire, they discovered, to their consternation, that their scaling ladders were too short. But the escalade was persisted in: they remained splicing their ladders, and a detachment of Grenadiers, under Colonel Grant, reached the top of a rampart; but Grant was instantly killed, and the Grenadiers hurled back over the wall. Still, the bull-dog spirit of the English made them persist in this desperate attempt, till six hundredthat is, half of them, lay dead, when they drew off.Fox did not suffer the Session to close without another powerful effort to avoid war with France. A petition had been handed to him for presentation to the Commons, drawn up by Mr. Gurney of Norwich, and signed by the Friends and other inhabitants of that city, praying that peace with France might be concluded. Fox not only agreed to present it and support its prayer, but he earnestly exhorted Mr. Gurney and his friends to promote the sending of petitions from other places for this object, as the only means of influencing the House, bent determinedly on war. On the 17th of June, only four days before the close of the Session, Fox moved an Address to the Crown, praying that, as the French had been driven out of Holland, peace should be made. In pursuance of his objecta great one, if attainablehe did not spare his former favourite, the Empress of Russia, and the other royal robbers of Poland. Burke replied that Fox knew very well that the defence of Holland was but a very partial motive for the war. The real obstacles to peace were the avowed principles of the Frenchthose of universal conquest, of annexation of the kingdoms conquered, as already Alsace, Savoy, and Belgium; their attempts on the Constitution of Great Britain by insidious means; the murder of their own monarch held up as an example to all other nations. To make peace with France, he said truly, was to declare war against the rest of Europe, which was threatened by France; and he asked with whom in France should we[418] negotiate for peace, if so disposed? Should it be with Lebrun, already in a dungeon, or with Clavire, who was hiding from those who were anxious to take his head? or with Egalit, who had been consigned to a dungeon at Marseilles? Burke declared that you might as well attempt to negotiate with a quicksand or a whirlwind as with the present ever-shifting and truculent factions which ruled in France.
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