398 the British. TREATY OF GHENT. [Book II. It was not till the 18th of January that General Lambert Retreat of moved off. The retreat was well managed and orderly ; and the Americans did not interfere with it. Many British soldiers, worn beyond endurance, deserted; and ten pieces of cannon were left behind disabled. The broken and mortified expedition got back to the ships, off the mouth of the Mississippi, indisposed for further enterprise; and the delighted citizens of New Orleans celebrated the fame of General Jackson, as "the Conqueror of the conquerors of Napoleon." In a little while arrived the news that peace had been agreed upon before the young planter had so hastily left his dinner. When the tidings reached the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, the garrison of Fort Mobile had surrendered to Admiral Cochrane and General Lambert. They considered it a good basis for operations on the Mississippi; but the British had now nothing more to do with the great river but to trade upon it. Ghent. The treaty of Ghent left almost everything where it was beTreaty of fore the war. The mutual concessions of parties, both eager for peace, amounted to little more than postponing the most difficult questions for future settlement. This was the case with regard to the supremely important point of the boundaries. Commissioners were to negotiate this hereafter. The Indians were to possess the territories and privileges they had before the war, and to remain unmolested by the whites on both sides. Both parties were to use every effort for the abolition of the Slave-trade. Nothing was gained, on either side, in regard to the ostensible objects of the war;1 and a senator from New York declared, in Congress, that the Treaty of Ghent was less favorable to his country than that, negotiated by Pinckney and Monroe in 1808, which Jefferson thought unworthy of being even laid before Congress. Yet, so glad was New York of even this peace, that the Englishman who carried out the ratification was borne in triumph, and amidst a tumult of welcome, through the streets of the city. The President was relieved from a most embarrassing position; the State was suddenly relieved from a threatening political quarrel; the commerce of the Eastern States was relieved from the restrictions and perils of war; and the agriculture of the south and west, from a ruinous burden of taxation. The English were enabled to declare themselves at peace with all the world; and it only remained for all to wish that the folly and crime had never been committed, and that from among the records of History could be torn that page which must contain the narrative of the bootless war of 1812-15. 1 Bradford's History of Massachusetts, p. 413. CHAP. VIII.] THE REGENT AND HIS FAMILY. 399 CHAPTER VIII. family. IN proportion as the King's recovery became more hopeless, public attention was fixed on the family of the Regent. It was not an agreeable spectacle the proceedings of that The Regent unhappy family; but the only child, the young Prin- and his cess who was to be our Queen, was an object of hope and of strong popular affection. Her mother was showing a boldness which we now know to have been nothing short of audacity. She was perpetually calling for the production of papers, recording an inquiry made into her conduct in 1806. We know, from Sir S. Romilly's Diary,' that the production of those papers would have ruined her reputation with the people of England. She was, no doubt, well aware that the Ministers dared not, for their own sakes, produce these papers. The fact was so; her boldness naturally and properly won confidence; her cause rose with every debate in parliament on her affairs; and on her husband rested the entire censure called forth by her case. Censurable as his conduct towards her had been, he now suffered under more blame than was just. He was very unhappy. In 1811, we find him growing "serious; " reading the Bible daily with Lady Hertford. But his occasional fits of religion did not improve his temper or his habits. He was as selfish and as vindictive in the midst of them as before. After Lords Grenville and Grey had refused office, in February, 1812, the Regent spoke against them in such violent terms at table, on occasion of giving a dinner to his daughter, that the Princess shed tears.2 From table she went to the Opera, and, seeing Lord Grey, kissed her hand to him, and smiled upon him very graciously. It was a bitter mortification to her when, in June, her friends, on the very verge of office, were turned back for the sake of the Hertfords and the Yarmouths who were in the Household. It should be mentioned that the fault, in this case, did not rest with the Hertfords and the Yarmouths, or any other members of the Household; nor yet with Lord Moira, the representative of the Regent; and much less, with Lords Grenville and Grey. It was Sheridan, now battered and broken by dissipation, and sink1 Memoirs, iii. p. 86. 2 Memoirs of Ward, i. p. 432. 400 THE PRINCESS CHARLOTTE. [BOOK II. ing under habits of intoxication, who had it in his power to do this great mischief — of keeping out Lords Grey and Grenville. He did it by a trick, the meanness of which he was wholly unable to explain away. Lord Yarmouth formally commissioned Sheridan to convey to Lords Grey and Grenville the intention of the Household to resign. Sheridan first strove to change this purpose;1 then suppressed the intelligence of it; and lastly, when questioned by Mr. Tierney on the subject, offered to bet five hundred guineas that nobody in the Household thought of resigning. It was well understood that he acted in this manner to please the Regent; but this is no excuse, and merely implicates another person in the dishonor. When the new Parliament met, after the change of Ministry, the Regent went to open it, and the Princess Charlotte to witness the ceremony. The father was received, in the streets," "with the deepest and most humiliating silence ;” the daughter with loud and repeated huzzas. 3 In the next January, the Princess, having now completed her The Princess 17th year, was watched, at home and throughout the Charlotte. kingdom; her proceedings being no longer those of a child. Her father ordered new restrictions on her intercourse with her mother. The mother remonstrated in a letter; the letter was twice returned unopened through the repugnance of the Regent to hold any communication whatever with the person whose very handwriting vexed his eyes. When the letter appeared in the newspapers, and was read by everybody but himself, he was compelled to take some notice of it; and he summoned a Privy Council to advise him how to deal with it. There was no practical result, except upon the warm temper of the young Princess, who, having no great reason before to love her father, was now urged by all her best feelings to take part with her mother. Cautious and politic men, like the Chancellor, saw the mischief that was done, and would have no hand in the doing of it; and the consequence was that the Regent treated Lord Eldon with so much unkindness, that the unhappy courtier declared himself "too low, and too ill, to mix with the world," and in full expectation of having to resign his office. He had been near losing the Great Seal in a different way, a few weeks before. A fire breaking out in his country-house when he was there, the Chancellor's first thought was of the Great Seal; and he buried it with his own hands. After the confusion of the fire, he could not remember where he had buried it; and it was not till the whole household had dug and probed for some time that it was recovered. He did not lose the Chancellorship just now, however; and the Regent was friendly to him on all other 4 1 Life of Sheridan, ii. p. 426. 8 Hansard, xxiv. p. 1145. 2 Memoirs of Romilly, iii. p. 73. CHAP. VIII.] HER FLIGHT TO HER MOTHER. 401 Her suitors. subjects than that of the wife and daughter. At the end of the year, 1813, the young Princess was confirmed at Windsor. In the spring, it was universally believed that she was to be married. The King of Holland, in an address to his States,1 spoke of the approaching marriage of his heir, the The Prince Prince of Orange, with the heiress of the English throne. No reason was assigned for the rupture of the engagement; but incidents enough occurred in the early part of the summer to occasion abundant speculation. of Orange. mother. It was the summer of the Peace, when the allied Sovereigns visited London. The Queen held two drawing-rooms. An intimation reached her that the Princess of Wales intended to appear at one of them. As the Regent must be present, the Queen was compelled to intimate to the Princess that she could not be received. Once more, the Princess had the matter carried before the House of Commons, where there was a debate upon it.2 On the 12th of the next month, the Regent visited his daughter, accompanied by her tutor, the Bishop of Salisbury, and informed her, in a manner universally believed to have been startling and harsh, that her servants were dismissed, and that she must immediately go home with him to Carlton House. The Princess retired, not only from his presence, but Her flight from the house. With a little basket in her hand, to her she escaped by a back staircase, threw herself into a hackney-coach, and desired to be driven to Connaught House, her mother's present residence. Her mother, much embarrassed, drove down to the House of Commons, to ask her advisers what she ought to do. Mr. Brougham returned with her. It was three in the morning before the young Princess yielded to the advice of her uncles, the Dukes of York and Sussex, Mr. Brougham, and the Chancellor, and permitted herself to be conveyed to Carlton House. After a short residence there, she was removed to Cranbourne House, near Windsor, which was now considered her fixed residence. Her mother, harassed and mortified by the neglect with which she had been treated during this summer of fêtes and universal alliance, went abroad. She at first proposed merely a short visit to her brother, the Duke of Brunswick; but from his Court she proceeded to Italy; and when nothing was heard of any intention to return, the Regent began to hope that he was rid of her forever. The natural inference from what people saw, in the case of the Prince of Orange, was that the Princess Charlotte Prince Leowas attached elsewhere, or that the young people, on pold of Saxe meeting, did not like each other. If the Princess had Coburg. an attachment elsewhere, it was not, as yet, to her future hus1 Hansard, xxviii. p. 105. 2 Ibid. p. 131. 26 VOL. I. 402 PRINCE LEOPOLD. — IRISH AFFAIRS. [BOOK II. band, though they were married in less than two years from this time. Prince Leopold of Saxe Coburg was Aide-de-camp to the Grand Duke Constantine, and was in Paris with the conquerors of Napoleon in the spring of this year. He seems to have been always in love in those days; and he was now paying attentions to a young English lady in Paris.1 On the invitation of her relatives, he came over with the Sovereigns, saw the Princess Charlotte, and supposed himself distinguished by her. He offered, and was refused. He next fell in love with a lady at Vienna, during the session of Congress there in the autumn. A friend in London wrote to him to say that the Princess Charlotte was now free, and that he had better not be so open in his attentions to the German lady. He returned to London; proposed, and was this time accepted. The amiable Princess Mary was deeply interested in this affair. The Duke of Gloucester was understood to be necessarily reserved for the Princess Charlotte, in case of the heiress of the crown forming no other connection; but the Duke of Gloucester and the Princess Mary were believed to have been long attached. When, on Marriage. the evening of the 2d of May, 1815, the Princess Charlotte, just married, descended the grand staircase at Carlton House, she was met at the foot by the Princess Mary, who, with her face bathed in tears, opened her arms to the bride. The Duke of Gloucester and the Princess Mary were married on the 22d of July following. Irish affairs. The Irish Disturbances Bill of 1807 had been repealed in 1810, on the motion of the Irish Secretary, Mr. Wellesley Pole. The time was past for the construction of Cabinets on the principle of excluding the Catholics from political rights, while it had not come for giving them any clear hope of admission to the ordinary privileges of citizens. In order to be ready for any favorable contingency, the Catholic body formed themselves into an Association which the government in vain endeavored to put down, during the years 1811 and 1812. In 1813, a relief was obtained by the Catholics which nobody could object to; 2 and Lord Liverpool offered his ready acquiescence. It was simply provided that Catholic holders of any civil or military office in Ireland, who should have taken the oaths prescribed by Irish Acts, should be exempt elsewhere from penalties due in such places for not taking the oaths imposed after the Restora tion. The same exemption was to apply in case of a Catholic Irish officer in the army being promoted to a higher rank in England. As the war drew to a close, more information was brought to government of the treasonable combinations which were taking place, with a view to keep up a tacit political understanding 1 Alison's History, x. pp. 530, 531 2 Life of Lord Eldon, ii. p. 244. |