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Bear witness for me, wheresoe'er ye be,
With what deep worship I have still adored
The spirit of divinest liberty.

"When France in wrath her giant limbs upreared,
And with that oath, which smote air, earth, and sea,
Stamped her strong foot, and said she would be free,
how I hoped and feared."

Bear witness for me,

A preacher in London, carried away with joy, after thanking God that he had lived to see it, exclaimed, "I could almost say, 'Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation.'" The statesmen of England felt a like thrill of generous sympathy. The more they gloried in their own constitution, and in the Revolution of 100 years before, which had secured it to them, the more they loved the liberty which was an Englishman's birthright, so much the more did they wish other countries to share in such blessings.

Pitt and

Fox.

18. Pitt, who was now the foremost man in England, hoped great things from the Revolution; he expected to see France stand forth" as one of the most brilliant of European powers." Of the few who could approach him in genius and eloquence, the most notable were Fox and Burke. Fox was one of the most generous, affectionate, and noble-hearted of men. His private life, in his young days at least, was full of faults, and yet everybody loved him. His whole soul overflowed with pity for human sorrow and hatred of cruelty and oppression. When the Revolution began he cried enthusiastically, "How much is it the greatest event that ever happened in the world, and how much the best!"

1792.

19. But after a year or two the French became so furious and committed such awful crimes that the English were horrified. The French king and queen, who in a vague way meant well, but were quite helpless in the face of a wild and raging nation, were dragged down the torrent and put to death. Innumerable people, many of them perfectly innocent, were massacred.

Burke.

20. Now England began to shrink back. Burke, whose name was known through all Europe as the champion of freedom and justice, was appalled. He at first gazed with astonishment at the French struggle, hardly knowing whether to praise or blame. But he drew back aghast before all this brutality and savagery. The fate of the queen stirred his whole heart. He had seen her years before, when she first came to France, a beautiful young girl. "I saw her," he wrote, "just

above the horizon, glittering like the morning star, full of life and splendour and joy. . . . I thought ten thousand swords would have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult." He saw in her fall the fall of "chivalry." In a sense he no doubt saw truly. That fatal flaw in chivalry which we noticed centuries ago in its palmy days, the sharp separation of classes, the honour to ladies and gentlemen," the scorn of the poor, had gone on widening and widening, till the great crash came. "Never, never more," said Burke, "shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive even in servitude the spirit of an exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise is gone. . . . Their liberty is not liberal. Their science is presumptuous ignorance. Their humanity is savage and brutal.”

21. Were those sad words true? Was chivalry really dead? or was it soon to begin a higher and a wider life? Reverence for rank and birth might be abating, but surely a nobler and more manly reverence was arising. If, as Burke complained, "on this scheme of things a king is but a man," the new chivalry would see something to honour in every man ; if “a queen is but a woman," the new chivalry would render homage to every woman. In every man and every woman, the poorest and the weakest, would be seen the trace of "the image of God."

22. Such hopes, or some such hopes, might have been in the minds of the French and of those who sympathized with them, but the terrible course which events took as the Revolution progressed soon smothered them all. Some of the lower and discontented people in England were still inclined to side with France, but they were put down and kept down by the strong hand. All the upper classes, all the middle classes, in fact, almost all England, were indignant and alarmed. The French Revolutionists, on their part, wanted to force their principles on all the world, and invited all nations to rise against their governments, and so England and France were soon at war again. Pitt hoped for peace to the last, but it could not be; the two countries were each longing for the combat, and though France actually declared war, England was only too eager to accept it.

1793. War

declared.

LECTURE LV.-THE LAST WAR WITH FRANCE.
Nelson. The Battle of Trafalgar. Napoleon
The Duke of Wellington. The Peninsular War.

The English sailors.

Bonaparte.
Waterloo.

1. PITT remained at the head of everything, but he did not know how to manage a war. Things went on very ill; the allies of England were not to be depended upon, and every one grew discontented. It was only at sea that England prospered. Our navy was, as it ever has been, the pride of the nation, and it was worthy of its old fame. The sailors indeed were very hardly treated. In those days men were pressed, or seized by force, to serve on the ships; but this custom has long been put an end to, and England is unlike the other countries of Europe in this, that no man is forced to be either soldier or sailor against his will. On board ship at that time the sailors had many grievances, and more than once they mutinied very seriously for better pay and better treatment.

Nelson.

2. But when they were in the face of the enemy they showed their gallant English hearts. The brave sailors had brave captains to lead them. The most famous of all was Lord Nelson, who won the two great battles of the Nile and Trafalgar. They say he had a bold, dauntless spirit from his infancy. When quite a young child he was lost in a thunder-storm; after he was found, and his friends asked him if he was not afraid, the little fellow answered, “Afraid! what does that mean?" He was as kind as he was brave. In the Battle of the Nile he was wounded, and carried off the deck to be attended to. The surgeon left a sailor whose wounds he was dressing, and turned to the admiral. But "No," said Nelson, "I will take my turn with my brave fellows." That was the sort of man sailors would live and die for.

1798. Battle of

the Nile.

3. His last great victory saved England from the fear of a French

invasion. They had planned to cross over the Straits, and had collected a great army of 100,000 men at Boulogne, within sight of our white cliffs. Three hundred thousand English volunteers sprang up to defend the native land, as they would spring up again to-morrow, if need were. And while the French were waiting for their fleet to come and protect the army 1805. as it crossed, Nelson pounced upon it at Trafalgar, Trafalgar. conquered it, destroyed the power of France on the sea, and put an end to all fear of invasion.

Battle of

4. One of Nelson's best officers, another English hero, was Collingwood; he too was gentle and generous as well as brave. "As one reads of him and his great comrade going into the victory with which their names are immortally connected," says Thackeray, "how the old English feeling comes up of what I should like to call Christian honour. What gentlemen they were! what great hearts they had! We can, my dear Coll,' writes Nelson to him, 'have no little jealousies; we have only one great object in view-that of meeting the enemy and getting a glorious peace for our country.' In the beginning of the battle, as Collingwood's ship was pressing alone into the midst of the enemy, Lord Nelson said to an officer near, 'See how that noble fellow Collingwood takes his ship into action; how I envy him!' The very same throb and impulse of heroic generosity was beating in Collingwood's honest bosom. As he led into the fight, he said, 'What would Nelson give to be here!'

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5. The second ship in Nelson's line was the "Fighting Temeraire." The glory and the fate of that ship have been written by Ruskin, and painted by Turner. When the fast-sailing "Victory," with Nelson on board, "drew upon herself all the enemy's fire," writes Ruskin, "the Temeraire tried to pass her, to take it in her stead, but Nelson himself hailed her to keep astern. The Temeraire cut away her studding sails, and held back, receiving the enemy's fire into her bows without returning a shot. Two hours later she lay with a French seventy-four gun ship on each side of her, both her prizes, one lashed to her mainmast and one to her anchor. Surely if ever anything without a soul deserved honour and affection we owed them here."

The greatest painter whom England has ever produced saw that stately and beautiful ship "tugged to her last berth," and on the walls of the National Gallery we may see her too, in one of the most perfect and pathetic pictures he ever painted.

6. It was Nelson's last battle. He had given in it his famous

signal, "England expects every man to do his duty." As he stood on deck doing his, watching, cheering, and directing, he fell mortally wounded, and the joy and pride of England were darkened by that great loss. This victory was the last bright gleam of happiness in Pitt's life. An alliance or coalition which

1806. Death of

he had formed with Austria and Russia had failed. The French had won two great victories at Ulm and Austerlitz, and Pitt's heart was broken. As he lay dying, the watcher by his bedside tells that suddenly, "with a much clearer voice than he spoke in before, and in a tone which I shall never forget, he exclaimed, 'Oh, my country! how I leave my country!' From that time he never spoke or moved." He died in the prime of his days, only forty-six years old.

Pitt.

7. Affairs in France had meanwhile altered very much. After the execution of the king a republic had been proclaimed, and it was decided that there should be no more kings or royal families in France. With royalty, religion, order, and everything else were swept away. One party after another came into power, each one putting its opponents, or even its lukewarm supporters, to death. For a time things were in so dreadful a condition that it was called the "Reign of Terror," at the head of which was Robespierre. This horrible rule, or misrule, could not last; and it happened in France somewhat as it had happened in England after the execution of Charles I., and as it often does happen when a tyrannical government is overthrown, and no one knows what to put in its place. It generally falls into the hands of some clever and fortunate soldier.

Napoleon Bonaparte.

8. The most distinguished soldier in France was now Napoleon Bonaparte, who had risen into note during some of the wars of the French republic, and who by his wonderful talents and successes soon became the head of the army. Though for a long time he was the idol of the French nation, he was not exactly a Frenchman, but an Italian from Corsica, an island which France had annexed. Some of the innumerable ballads and songs which were made in England in defiance of him, and in encouragement of England, taunt him as the "Proud Corsican."

9. From being head of the army he became head of the nation; first he was called first consul, in imitation of the Roman republic, and afterwards emperor. He soon put an end to the tumults, cruelties, and disorders, restored the Christian religion, and issued some very good laws founded on the old Roman

1804. He is called emperor.

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