ONE:The year 1804 opened by an announcement that his Majesty was suffering under a return of his old malady. On the 14th of February an official bulletin was issued at St. James's Palace, informing the public of the royal indisposition; and the repetition of it from day to day, without specifying the nature of the illness, left no doubt of its real character. Still, on the 29th, Addington assured the House that there was no necessary suspension of the royal functions, and the bulletins grew more favourable; but it was well known that he was not really in a condition to transact business till the following September, though at times, as on the 9th, 10th, and 11th of May, he drove about in public, in company with the queen and princesses. Probably his advisers thought that the hearty cheers with which he was received might have a bracing effect on his mind, which had been cruelly harassed by the separation of the Prince of Wales from his wife, the king's niece, amid grave public scandals. Such a circumstance was exactly calculated to throw the royal mind off the balance; but besides this, the unsatisfactory state of his Cabinet and of parties in Parliament was such as greatly to aggravate his anxiety.De Tolly halted at Rudnia, half way between Vitebsk and Smolensk, and there was considerable man?uvring between the rival generals to surprise one another, but this resulted in[44] nothing but the loss of several days. On the 14th of August they arrived at the Dnieper, and Murat dashed across and attacked the rear-guard of the Russians on the opposite bank. Newerowskoi, the general in command, stood his ground well, and then made a good retreat to Smolensk. His retreat was reckoned an advantage on the part of the French; and as it happened to be Buonaparte's birthday, and the anniversary of the canonisation of St. Napoleonwhom Buonaparte had had made a saint,a hundred guns were fired in commemoration. On the 15th Buonaparte pressed after the Russians towards Smolensk. The united Russian army now amounted to one hundred and eighty thousand men, and Buonaparte had already lost one-third of his active force. Barclay de Tolly, therefore, appeared here to make a stand, much to the delight of Buonaparte, who cried out, exultingly, "Now I have them!"
TWO:The fall of Granville became the revolution of all parties. The Pelhams, in order to prevent his return to the Ministry through the partiality of the king, determined to construct a Cabinet on what was called a broad bottomthat is, including some of both sections of the Whigs, and even some of the Tories. They opened a communication with Chesterfield, Gower, and Pitt, and these violent oppositionists were ready enough to obtain place on condition of uniting against Granville and Bath. The difficulty was to reconcile the king to them. George was not well affected towards Chesterfield, and would not consent to admit him to any post near his person, but permitted him, after much reluctance, to be named Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. As for Pitt, he was even more repugnant to the king than Chesterfield, and Pitt, on his part, would accept nothing less than the post of Secretary at War. The Pelhams advised him to have patience and they would overcome the king's reluctance; but when they proposed that the Tory Sir John Hynde Cotton should have a place, George, in his anger, exclaimed, "Ministers are kings in this country!"and so they are for the time. After much negotiation and accommodating of interests and parties, the Ministry was ultimately arranged as follows:Lord Hardwicke remained Lord Chancellor; Pelham was First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer; the Duke of Newcastle became one Secretary of State, Lord Harrington the other; the Duke of Devonshire remained Steward of the Household; the Duke of Bedford was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty, with Lord Sandwich as Second Lord; Lord Gower was made Privy Seal; Lord Lyttelton became a member of the Treasury Board; Mr. Grenville was made a Junior Lord of the Admiralty; Sir John Hynde Cotton received the office of Treasurer of the Chamber in the Royal Household; and Bubb Doddington contrived to be included as Treasurer of the Navy. Lords Cobham and Hobart had also appointments; and the Duke of Dorset was made President of the Council.Wellington arrived early in the forenoon at Quatre Bras, and then rode to Brie, to consult with Blucher. It appeared as if it was the intention of Buonaparte to bear down with his whole force on Blucher; and though Bulow's division, stationed between Lige and Hainault, was too far off to arrive in time, Blucher resolved to stand battle; and it was agreed that Wellington should, if possible, march to his assistance, and vice versa, should the attack be on Wellington. Ney, with a division of forty-five thousand, attacked the British at Quatre Bras and Frasnes, whilst Napoleon directed the rest of his force on Blucher at Ligny, and General D'Erlon lay with ten thousand men near Marchiennes, to act in favour of either French force, as might be required. Buonaparte did not attack Blucher till about three o'clock, and then he continued the battle with the utmost fury for two hours along his whole line. Buonaparte, finding that he could not break the Prussian line, sent for the division of D'Erlon, and then, contriving to get into the rear of Blucher's position at Ligny, threw the Prussians into disorder. Blucher made a desperate charge, at the head of his cavalry, to repel the French, but his horse was killed under him; and the French cuirassiers galloped over him, a Prussian officer having flung a cloak over him. He escaped with his life, and, remounting, led the retreat towards Tilly. The loss of the French in this battle is stated by General Gourgaud at seven thousand, but is supposed to exceed ten thousand. The Prussians admit the loss of as many, but the French declared that they lost fifteen thousand. It was, however, a severe blow for the Allies; and had Ney managed to defeat Wellington, the consequences would have been momentous. But Ney found that the British had evacuated Frasnes that morning, and lay across four roads at Quatre Brasone leading to St. Amand, the Prussian position. On another, leading from Charleroi to Brussels, was a wood, called the Bois de Bossu; and here the attack commenced on the Belgians. The wood was sharply contested, and about three o'clock the Belgians were driven out by the French, who, in their turn, were expelled by the British Guards. The battle then became general and severe, the 42nd Highlanders suffering greatly. Ney endeavoured to cut through the British by a furious charge of cavalry; but this was repelled by such a deadly fire as heaped the causeway with men and horses. Ney then sent for the division of D'Erlon, but that had been already summoned by Buonaparte. The battle was continued till it was dark, and the British remained on the field, hoping that the Prussians had also maintained their ground, and that they might form a junction in the morning. But the Prussians had retreated in the night to Wavre, about six leagues in the rear of Ligny, and had gone off in such silence that Napoleon was not even aware of it. But Wellington was aware of it, and, on the morning of the 17th, began a retreat also on Waterloo, where he and Blucher had concerted to form a junction and give battle. Blucher had made his retreat so artfully, that the French were at a loss to know which way he had taken. It appeared as if he had directed his march for Namur, and about three o'clock on the 17th Grouchy received orders to pursue Blucher, wherever he might have gone. This dispatch of Grouchy with thirty-two thousand men to deal with Blucher proved a serious mistake for Napoleon, who, not having Grouchy's division to support him at the battle of Waterloo, severely blamed him, and charged his own defeat upon him. But it was the ungenerous practice of Buonaparte, whenever he was defeated, to charge it upon some of his generals, even when they had been acting most meritoriously. This he did in Russia, and this he repeated in the retreat on Paris in 1814, and this we shall find him doing again in the battle of Waterloo, to the undaunted and indefatigable Ney. Grouchy has shown satisfactorily that he himself first brought to Napoleon the news of Blucher's retreat, and requested orders to pursue him with his cavalry, but that he could not obtain such order till noon on the 17th, and then the order was to follow him wherever he went. We shall soon see that Thielemann, by Blucher's orders, kept Grouchy well employed, and took care to prevent his return to Waterloo.
ONE:Parliament again met for a few days, but only to vote Addresses of condolence and congratulation, as a dissolution had been determined on. The Marquis of Lansdowne pointed out that there was not the usual reason for a dissolution which occurred upon a demise of the Crown; but Lord Eldon explained that, at common law, the Parliament died with the Sovereign in whose name it was called; and although, by the statute of William III., it could sit six months longer, it was liable to be dissolved sooner; and constitutionally it ought to be dissolved as soon as public business would allow; so that noble lords who started any business to delay the dissolution would be obstructing the due exercise of the Royal Prerogative. He, as Lord Commissioner, therefore, concluded the Session by delivering the Royal Speech, which deplored the loss of a Sovereign, the common father of all his people, and praised the prudence and firmness with which the Lords and Commons had counteracted the designs of the disaffected.So passed from a long possession of power a Minister who inaugurated a system of corruption, which was not so much abused by himself, as made a ready instrument of immeasurable mischief in the hands of his successors. Had Walpole used the power which he purchased with the country's money more arbitrarily and perniciously, the system must have come much sooner to an end. As it was, the evils which he introduced fell rather on posterity than on his own time.
TWO:On the very next day took place what Burke had foreseen. A deputation from the two Irish Houses of Parliament arrived in London, with an address to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, requesting him to assume the regency as his right. Though the English Bill was now certain to be abandoned, this address was presented on the 26th of February, the day after the arrival, and was received by the prince in a manner likely to mark his sense of his treatment by Pitt and his party. The deputies were entertained at a splendid banquet; the walls of the dining-room at Carlton House were adorned with Irish harps, the shamrock, and other Irish emblems; the arms of Ireland, encircled by a glory, blazed in the centre of the table, and the richest wines flowed in torrents. But these banquetings had not been confined to this more auspicious day. Whilst the great contest had been going on in Parliament, dinners had been given on the Saturdays and Sundays of every week at Carlton House, to which about thirty of the members of both Houses had been invited, and at which the prince and the Duke of York had presided. Besides these, the attractions and persuasive powers of the great ladies on both sides had been enthusiastically called into play. The fascinating Duchess of Devonshire, who, in 1784, had so successfully canvassed for Charles James Fox in Westminster, had now thrown open her house, and employed all her amiabilities to win supporters to the prince's party. On the other hand, the more bold and vigorous Duchess of Gordon had feasted, entreated, and almost commanded adherence to Pitt, through whom it was said her husband had obtained the Great Seal of Scotland, and his brother, Lord William Gordon, the sinecure Rangerships of St. James's and Hyde Parks. The rivalries of these parties had been carried on in the most public manner, by[348] caricatures, lampoons, ballads, and popular jests. Westminster was pre-eminently Whig; but London, which had formerly been so democratic, had become essentially loyal. The Coalition had given the first shock to the popularity of the Whigs in the City, and the sympathy for the calamity of the king, combined with disgust at the prince's levity and heartlessness, had produced a wonderful degree of loyalty there.
ONE:After the lapse of a week the House of Commons met again on the 13th of May, when Lord John Russell immediately rose and stated that since he had last addressed them Sir Robert Peel had received authority from her Majesty to form a new Administration; and the right hon. baronet having failed, her Majesty had been graciously pleased to permit that gentleman to state the circumstances which led to the failure. Sir Robert Peel then proceeded to detail all the facts necessary for the explanation of his position to the country. He had waited upon the Queen according to her desire, conveyed at the suggestion of the Duke of Wellington, who had been sent for by her Majesty in the first instance. The Queen candidly avowed to him that she had parted with her late Administration with great regret, as they had given her entire satisfaction. No one, he said, could have expressed feelings more natural and more becoming than her Majesty did on this[462] occasion, and at the same time principles more strictly constitutional with respect to the formation of a new Government. He stated his sense of the difficulties a new Government would have to encounter; but having been a party to the vote that led to those difficulties, nothing should prevent him from tendering to her Majesty every assistance in his power. He accordingly, the next day, submitted the following list for her approval in the formation of a new Ministry:The Duke of Wellington, Lord Lyndhurst, Earl of Aberdeen, Lord Ellenborough, Lord Stanley, Sir James Graham, Sir Henry Hardinge, and Mr. Goulburn. It was not until Thursday that any difficulty or misconception arose to lead to his relinquishing his attempt to form an Administration. His difficulty related to the Ladies of the Household. With reference to all the subordinate appointments below the rank of a Lady of the Bedchamber he proposed no change; and he had hoped that all above that rank would have relieved him of any difficulty by at once relinquishing their offices. This not having been done, he had a verbal communication with her Majesty on the subject, to which he received next day a written answer as follows:
TWO:The great maritime struggle of the year was at Toulon. The south of France was then in active combination against the Convention and the Jacobin faction. There was a determination in Toulon, Marseilles, and other places on the coast to support the Royalist party in Aix, Lyons, and other cities. For this purpose they invited the British to co-operate with them. Lord Hood, having obtained from the people of Toulon an engagement to surrender the fleet and town to him, to be held for Louis XVII., arrived before that port in July, with, however, only seven ships of the line, four frigates, and some smaller vessels. Nearly all the old Royalist naval officers were collected in Toulon, and were so eager for revenge on the Jacobin officers and sailorswho had not only superseded them, but had persecuted them with all the savage cruelty of their factionthat they were all for surrendering their fleet to Lord Hood, and putting him in possession of the forts and batteries. There was a firm opposition to this on the part of the Republicans, both in the fleet and the town, but it was carried against them. Besides the Royalist townsmen, there were ten thousand Proven?als in arms in the town and vicinity. As General Cartaux had defeated the Royalists at Marseilles, taken possession of the town, and, after executing severe measures on the Royalists there, was now in full march for Toulon, there was no time to be lost. Lord Hood landed a body of men under Captain Elphinstone, to whom the forts commanding the port were quietly surrendered. Lord Hood was thus at once put into possession of the best French port in the Mediterranean, and a great fleet, with all the stores and ammunition. But he knew very well that the place itself could not long be maintained against the whole force of Republican France. He resolved, however, to defend the inhabitants, who had placed themselves in so terrible a position with their merciless countrymen, to the utmost of his power. He therefore urged the Spaniards to come to his assistance, and they sent several vessels, and three thousand men. He received reinforcements of ships and men from Naplesthe queen of which was sister to Marie Antoinetteand from Sardinia. Fresh vessels and men also arrived from England. Lord Mulgrave arrived from Italy, and at Lord Hood's request assumed command, for the time, of the land forces.
