When the French saw that Ormonde could not induce the mercenary troops to move, they refused to surrender Dunkirk, and an English detachment which arrived there to take possession found the gates shut in their faces. At this insult the British troops burst out into a fury of indignation. The officers as well as the men were beside themselves with shame, and shed tears of mortification, remembering the glorious times under Marlborough. Ormonde himself, thus disgraced, thus helplessfor he had not the satisfaction, even, of being able to avenge himself on the French,thus deserted by the auxiliaries, and made a laughing-stock to all Europe by the crooked and base policy of his Government, retired from before the walls of Dunkirk, and directed his course towards Douay. The Dutch shut their gates against him, and he finally retired in ignominy to England.
ONE:Bute made overtures to France through the neutral Court of Sardinia. Louis XV. and his Ministers caught at the very first whisper of such a thing with the eagerness of drowning men; a sufficient intimation to an able and cautious minister, that he might safely name his own terms. The ambassadors, however, soon found that the real business of the treaty was transacted between Bute, on the part of Britain, and the Duke de Choiseul, on that of France; and that not through ambassadors, but through Sardinian envoys.
THREE:On the 8th of February Lord John Russell brought forward the paragraph of the Speech relating to agricultural distress, and moved for a select committee to inquire into the causes of the depression of the agricultural interest, although he confessed that he did not anticipate any satisfactory result from the investigation. In this the noble lord did not miscalculate, for after sitting for eight months the committee could not agree to any report, and all the benefit they conferred upon the public was an outline of the evidence which was laid before the House at the end of the Session. On the 9th and the 12th the same Minister submitted three measures to the House, which were passed into law this Sessionnamely, a Bill for the Commutation of Tithes in England; a Bill for a General Registration of Marriages, Births, and Deaths; and another for the amendment of the Law of Marriage. On the 16th of this month Mr. Hardy brought before the House of Commons the case of Mr. O'Connell and Mr. Raphael. The latter gentleman was one of the sheriffs of London, and he wished to represent an Irish constituency. Mr. O'Connell thought it was possible to get him in for the borough of Carlow; but he warned him that the expenses would be 2,000, and that this sum should be deposited in a bank as a preliminary, "say 2,000." It was alleged that this was a corrupt bargain, and Mr.[401] O'Connell was accused of selling a Parliamentary seat. Mr. Hardy, therefore, moved for a select committee to investigate the transaction. The committee was obtained, and the result was a complete acquittal of Mr. O'Connell. So strong, however, was the feeling against him that no less than sixty members of Brooks's Club resigned, having failed to procure his expulsion.
THREE:The Ministry, as reconstructed, consisted of Lord North, First Lord of the Treasury; the Great Seal was in commission; Granby's places, the Ordnance and Commander of the Forces, were still unsupplied; so was the Duke of Manchester's old post of Lord of the Bed-Chamber. The Earl of Halifax became Lord Privy Seal; the Earl of Pembroke became a Lord of the Bed-Chamber; the Earl of Waldegrave, Master of the Horse to the queen; Sir Gilbert Elliot, Treasurer of the Navy; Charles James Fox became a junior Lord of the Admiralty; Admiral Holborne another; Mr. Welbore Ellis became one of the Vice-Treasurers of Ireland; and Thurlow was appointed Solicitor-General, in place of Dunning.
But in February the long-expected armament from France arrived on the Coromandel coast. Suffren, the admiral, was one of the ablest sea-commanders of France. On his way he had secured the Cape of Good Hope against the English, and he now landed at Porto Novo two thousand French soldiers to join the army of Hyder Ali. Tippoo, flushed with the recent capture of Colonel Braithwaite, invited the French to join him in an attack on Cuddalore, an important town between Porto Novo and Pondicherry. This was done, and Cuddalore was wrested from the English in April. Whilst these events were taking place on land, repeated engagements occurred with the British fleets on the coasts. That of Admiral Hughes was reinforced by fresh ships from England, and between February, 1782, and June, 1783, the British and French fleets fought five pitched battles with varied success. In none of these was any man-of-war captured by either side, nor any great number of men lost; but, eventually, Suffren succeeded in retaking Trincomalee, in Ceylon, from the British.Colonel Gardiner endeavoured to charge the advancing enemy with his dragoons; but it was in vain that he attempted to animate their craven souls by word and exampleat the first volley of the Highlanders they wheeled and fled. The same disgraceful scene took place on the left, at nearly the same moment. Hamilton's regiment of horse dispersed at the first charge of the Macdonalds, leaving the centre exposed on both its flanks. The infantry made a better stand than the cavalry; it discharged a steady and well-directed volley on the advancing Highlanders, and killed some of their best men, amongst others, a son of the famous Rob Roy. But the Highlanders did not give them time for a second volley; they were up with them, dashed aside their bayonets with their targets, burst through their ranks in numerous places, so that the whole, not being able to give way on account of the park wall of Preston, were thrown into confusion, and at the mercy of the foe. Never was a battle so instantly decidedit is said not to have lasted more than five or six minutes; never was a defeat more absolute. Sir John Cope, or Johnnie Cope, as he will be styled in Scotland to the end of time, by the assistance of the Earls of Loudon and Home, collected about four hundred and fifty of the recreant dragoons, and fled to Coldstream that night. There not feeling secure, they continued their flight till they reached Berwick, where Sir Mark Kerr received Cope with the[97] sarcastic but cruelly true remark that he believed that he was the first general on record who had carried the news of his own defeat.Commodore Hotham, with only five ships of the line, a bomb-vessel, and some frigates, conveyed Major-General Grant and this force to the West Indies, being nearly the whole way within a short sail of D'Estaing and his much superior fleet, without knowing it. Grant's destination was to protect Dominica; but, before his arrival, Marshal de Bouill, Governor-General of Martinique, had landed with two thousand men, and had compelled Lieutenant-Governor Stewart, who had only about one hundred regular troops and some indifferent militia for its defence, to surrender. Grant being too late to save Dominica, turned his attention to St. Lucia, being conveyed thither by the joint fleet of Hotham and Barrington. They had scarcely made a good footing on the island when D'Estaing's fleet hove in sight. He had twelve sail-of-the-line, numerous frigates and transports, and ten thousand men on board, and the English would have had little chance could he have landed. But the British fleet resolutely attacked him, and, after several days' struggle, prevented his landing more than half his troops. These were so gallantly repulsed by Brigadier Medows, who was at the head of only one thousand five hundred men, that, on the 28th December, D'Estaing again embarked his troops, and quitted the island. The original French force under Chevalier de Michaud then surrendered, and St. Lucia was won, though Dominica was lost.In Europe, Pitt was still bent on those attacks on the coast of France which long experience had shown were of little use as means of successful war, but highly objectionable, as fraught with excessive inhumanity to the innocent people of the seaboard. This, his second expedition, was aimed at St. Malo. A fleet of eighteen ships of the line, thirteen frigates, with sloops, fire-ships, and bomb-ketches, was put under the command of Lord Howe; but as Sir Edward Hawke, his senior, struck his flag, and refused to serve as second, Lord Anson, to get rid of the difficulty, put himself nominally at the head of the squadron. The command of the troops was given to the Duke of Marlborough, a brave man, but destitute of the genius of his father, and Lord George Sackville and Lord Granby were under him. There were fourteen thousand troops of the line and six thousand marines. With these went a number of aristocratic volunteers, amongst them Lord Downe, Sir John Armitage, and Sir John Lowther, the possessor of fourteen thousand pounds a-year. On the 5th of June, 1758, the transports anchored in Cancale Bay, and next day the troops were landed and led against St. Malo. This town, built on one of a cluster of granite rocks which rise out of the sea on that iron-bound coast, they found too strongly fortified to storm, but they burnt a hundred and thirty privateers and a great quantity of small craft in the harbour, and then returned to their ships. They then sailed for Le Havre, but were prevented by the wind from doing the same damage, and so continued their voyage to Granville and Cherbourg, whence they were driven by storm; and thereupon coasting a considerable way farther, but to no purpose, the fleet returned to Portsmouth, the main result being a heavy expense. Fox and the Opposition in the Commons called it breaking windows with guineas; and the old king, who had expressed his dislike of this sort of warfare, said we should brag of having burnt the French ships, and the French of having driven us away.
