188 NEAPOLITAN MOVEMENTS. [BOOK I. glorya carrying out in act of the aims and aspirations of forty years of political service. During the few months of his recent official life, he had rather lost than gained, they were aware, in reputation as a statesman: but they believed this to be owing to accidental clouds and temporary difficulties; they believed his time was coming, and gloried already in the hope of seeing him achieve whatever he had advocated, and justify all the enthusiasm he had ever excited. And when the opportunity was opening, the grave yawned in the way, and he was gone. Whether it would have been so if he had lived, can never be known, and may well be doubted; but it is impossible not to feel sympathy, even now, with the disappointed — seeing, as we do, what was before them; and, as for the grief of the personal bereavement, there was no one, amidst the bitterest of his adversaries, who could affect to make light of it. Though he died too soon for those who had known him best and longest, "he lived long enough,”1 as even Lord Malmesbury declared, "to be regretted by all." "No country," wrote the same old friend of Pitt, “"within the short space of six [eight] months ever lost two such able statesmen as Pitt and Fox, or ever at a more important moment; a loss less felt at the instant than it will be some time hence. They left no equal in their line; and after such superiority, the nation will not be contented with moderate abilities." It was an imporThe nation had been thinking for State of the tant moment. war. some time now that our way of being at war was a rather curious one. It seemed as if nothing had been done since the battle of Trafalgar. The war-minister, Mr. Windham, held a very stern tone about the discipline of the soldiery, and always spoke very slightingly of volunteers; but it did not appear that our forces were doing anything effectual. In the preceding Neapolitan winter, just when the Grenville Ministry was coming movements. in, there had been some disaster in the south of Italy. A small force of English and another of Russians had landed in the Neapolitan territory, compelling the King of Naples thus to answer to Napoleon for a breach of the neutrality he had promised. Napoleon sent a large force down from the north of Italy, where it was no longer wanted; and in a trice the Russians were sailing away from the one coast, and the British from the other; and Napoleon's brother Joseph was living at the palace, as King of Naples. The poor King and Queen, whom Napoleon hated especially on account of their friendship for Nelson, had reached Palermo; and there they lived, guarded by the small British force, which had escaped from the mainland, and two or three ships sent by Lord Collingwood, on their petition. The new King went into Calabria, to visit his territo1 Diaries, iv. p. 362. CHAP. VIII.] BATTLE OF MAIDA. 189 ries there; and as soon as he had turned his back upon Naples, the British and Sicilians took Capri, and some other islands opposite the coast, and the maritime fortress of Gaeta. The Calabrians did not like their new masters; and they rose in insurrection on every side. The warfare was horrible, and far from successful on the side of the French. The British in Sicily having been, to a small extent, reinforced from home, and placed under the command of Sir John Stuart, took the opportunity to cross over into Calabria, and help to damage the French. They landed on the 1st of July, not far from Nicastro; the whole force, including artillery, not exceeding 5000 men, and one third of that number being foreigners in English pay. Sir Sidney Smith arrived in the bay immediately after; and so disposed his ships and gunboats as to facilitate the escape of the little army, in case of need. Finding that the French General, Regnier, was coming down to attack him in the space (five miles in width) between the mountains and the sea, Sir John Stuart marched to meet him, over ground cut up by watercourses, and encumbered by thickets of myrtle. It was on the 4th of July that the British found the French posted most advantageously near Maida, from Battle of which place the battle took its name.1 Regnier im- Maida. prudently left his position on a rising ground, where he had swamps and thickets on either hand, and a broad river in front; and came down to meet the British in the plain. Probably the compact little force looked very contemptible in Regnier's eyes, as it advanced across the plain; he was in a hurry to come down, with his 6300 men, to beat the Sir John Stuart who had beaten him in Egypt. Since the Austerlitz battle, the French boast had been that no troops in Europe could stand their bayonetcharge. The British were now to answer this boast. They threw down the blankets they had carried at their backs; levelled their bayonets, and rushed on with a hurrah, to meet French veterans and their bayonet-charge for the first time; for the English troops were somewhat raw. The French gave way at every point, and were presently completely routed. They had sustained, as their own newspapers said, no such defeat since their revolution. They admitted that they left 1500 killed and wounded on the field, while of the British only 45 were killed, and 82 wounded. The French retreated, amidst a hostile peasantry, beyond the Apennines; and Stuart had the pleasure of sending home the news of the victory of Maida. It availed only to retard the aggressions of the French, whose operations were certainly thrown back by it for a year. Sir John Stuart's force was too small to drive out the French from Calabria; and it was presently so reduced by the fevers of the re1 Despatch, Annual Register, 1806, p. 591. 190 SEIZURE OF BUENOS AYRES. [Воок І. gion that its remains had to be carried over to Sicily. Before July was out, Gaeta surrendered to the French; and the battle of Maida remained our single success in Italy. The quality of our soldiers had been proved, and the French had been impeded and mortified: this was all; and it was not enough to raise the spirits of the English nation about the war. Fox smiled upon the news from his dying bed. He did not know of the gloom which was presently to ensue. The Cape was regained, and the mortification of its relinquishThe Cape ment by the Addington Administration was wiped out. regained. Sir David Baird took it from the Dutch with ease.1 One more adventure of our arms seemed at first to be successful, but ended in humiliation. Admiral Sir Home Popham took it into his head, without any authority from home, to attack the Spanish colonies in South America; and he induced Sir David Baird to let him have a portion of the force which had recovered the Cape. With these, he took Buenos Ayres, and sent home 1,000,000 dollars, with a circular manifesto to our Buenos Ayres. merchants, inviting them to turn their attention to the land of gold he had opened to them. The Cabinet had endeavored to recall Sir Home Popham before he had committed the country and himself to this strange scheme; but, as their orders did not reach him in time,2 and as all seemed to turn out well, they acquiesced well pleased to see the nation in good. spirits once more. But the British were almost immediately driven out from their new conquest; and by the time that Fox was laid in the grave, our force on the South American coast, with all the strength it had been able to draw from the Cape and from home, was able only to secure itself at a post on the shore, till further reinforcements should arrive. It was not only that England had gained and done so little, during all this time: a worse consideration was, that France had done and gained so much. During this gloomy autumn, it appeared as if Napoleon was really destined to be master of Europe. Hanover. The vacillating conduct of Prussia, up to the time of Prussia about the battle of Austerlitz, has been seen. After that battle, Haugwitz, who had hovered in the neighborhood, concluded a treaty with Napoleon, by one clause of which the Hanoverian dominions of George III. were to be given to Prussia. There was shame enough left among some of the best men in the Court of Berlin to make them suggest that Hanover should not be taken possession of till the end of the war; and then only with the consent of our King. In England the excitement was great, some joining with the royal family in vow 1 Despatch, Annual Register, 1806, p. 582. CHAP. VIII.] HUMILIATION OF PRUSSIA. 191 ing that England should contend for the retention of Hanover to the last of her blood and treasure, and others thinking that, as Hanover was already in Napoleon's hands, our blood and treasure might be better spent in other objects. The question was soon settled, as far as Prussia was concerned. It was on the 1st of April that the Prussian monarch issued his patent of annexation of the Hanoverian dominions to Prussia,1 declaring them to have belonged to Napoleon " by Humiliation right of conquest," and to have been transferred to of Prussia. Prussia" in consideration of the cession of three of her provinces to France." Prussia brought upon herself by this act not only the wrath of England, but the hostility of Sweden; and at the same time she found that France was encroaching on her at various points, instead of observing the boundary of the Rhine, and actually treating with Mr. Fox, during the negotiations of the summer, for the restitution of Hanover to George III. Presently after she learned from St. Petersburg, that Napoleon had hinted to the Russian Emperor that any part of Polish Prussia that he might wish for should be at his service. Again, a formidable French force was closing round the Prussian frontier: the dwellers on the frontier made grievous complaints of the burden of their compulsory support of the French troops; and, at the same time, one of those outrages towards individual liberty and life was perpetrated which often rouse nations to war more suddenly and fiercely than aggressions of a wider scope. A bookseller of Nuremburg, named Palm, was seized, on an accusation of issuing a libel against Napoleon in the form of a pamphlet on German politics, carried to Braunau (which ought to have been quitted by the French before this time, according to treaty), and tried and executed by a court-martial. A general cry arose throughout the Prussian dominions for a change of government; for that the alliance with France formed by the present government was a mere mockery, and not to be endured. While the change was preparing, matters grew worse and worse. Scarcely a day passed without some new discovery of the treachery of the strong ally, and the helplessness of the weak one; and the finishing stroke to the discouragement of Prussia was given by the discovery of the real objects of the Confederacy of the Rhine, made public on the 1st of August. The confederates were small potentates whose dominions lay along the river. The confederacy had been first thought of when Napoleon was on friendly terms with Prussia; but it now appeared that it had become his object to secure a footing in Germany which would enable him to hold his ground against Austria and Russia, without relying on Prussia. As soon as this Confederacy had de 1 Annual Register, 1806, p. 676. 192 RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CABINET. [Book I. On the 7th clared its secession, under the protection of Napoleon, from the German empire, and Francis had exchanged his title of Emperor of Germany for that of Emperor of Austria, Prussia discovered how helplessly she stood in the midst of these arrangements, ignominiously exposed to the mere rapacity of France. The members of the Prussian government saw at length that nothing but war was before them; and they thought that they might as well carry it on as a new set of men. The King is said to have been the last man in the government to be convinced of the necessity of war with France: but he saw it at last; and during the month of August, warlike preparations were observed to be going on. A scene of singular duplicity followed. of September, an honest man, who greatly admired Napoleon, was sent to Paris, to treat for peace. He, Knobelsdorff, was in earnest: but his King sent him merely to gain time to levy forces; and Napoleon knew this.1 When Napoleon set forth on his campaign, the innocent Prussian proposed to go with him not having any idea why the Emperor was going, and thinking that they might carry on their negotiation by the way. It was the end of September before Prussia let Russia know what was about to happen; and it must be another month therefore before she could have aid. In the mean time, she must meet France single-handed. She wished, however, for money from England; and she humbled herself therefore to intimate that she was willing to make peace. The opportunity for recovering Hanover was seized. Lord Morpeth set out for the Prussian head-quarters on the 1st of October, and arrived there, at Weimar, on the 12th. The Prussian Ministers did not think he could have been so quick; and they would rather he had not arrived till after the battle about to be fought, which they thought could hardly place them in a worse position as to credit, while a victory might enable them still to keep Hanover. They actually did not see Lord Morpeth till after the result of the battle of Auerstadt, fought on the 14th, was known. That battle, and every other, was gained by the French. The King of Prussia was presently a fugitive beyond the Oder, and Napoleon was sending out his orders from the palace at Berlin, as he had done, less than a year before, from that of Vienna. In a few weeks, the Prussian power was annihilated; and the forces of Napoleon had swept over the whole of the north of Germany. New arrange While Fox was breathing his last, the Tower guns were firing for the capture of Buenos Ayres. From that time, ments in the bad news poured in so fast as to shed embarrassment Cabinet. and gloom over the consultations of the Cabinet as to how to reconstitute itself. What the difficulties were in the 1 Annual Register, 1806, p. 168. |