Among the other distinguished Irishmen who worked at home or in France—sometimes at home and sometimes in France—to promote the rebellion were Arthur O'Connor and Thomas Addis Emmet. Arthur O'Connor came of a great Irish family; Thomas Addis Emmet, after the failure of the rebellious movement, escaped to the United States and made a great position for himself as an advocate in New York. A younger brother of Thomas Emmet also took part in the organization of "Ninety-Eight," but the fate of Robert Emmet will have a place to itself in this chapter of our history.

One fact has to be mentioned, and must be kept constantly in mind when we are studying the grim story of "Ninety-Eight." Every step taken by the rebel leaders {314} was almost instantly made known to the English Government. The spy, the hired informer, was then, as he has always been, in the very thick of the Irish national movement. Some of the informers in "Ninety-Eight" were of a different class from that of the ordinary police spy; and it has been made quite certain by subsequent discoveries that Wolfe Tone and Fitzgerald, Arthur O'Connor and the Emmets were in the closest friendly association with men whom they believed to be as genuine Irish patriots as themselves, but who were all the time in the pay of Pitt, and were keeping him well informed of every plan and project and movement of their leaders. As political morals were then and are perhaps even now, it would be absurd to find fault with Pitt because he made use of the services of spies and informers to get at the plans of a number of men who proposed to invite a foreign enemy of England to invade the Irish shores, and were doing all they could to secure by armed rebellion the independence of Ireland. The wonder that will now occur to every reasonable mind is that the Irish leaders should have failed to guess that whatever money would do would be done by the English Government, as it would have been done by any other Government under similar conditions, to get at a knowledge of their designs and to counteract them. At all events, it is quite certain that while Tone and Fitzgerald and their comrades were playing their gallant, desperate game, the British Minister was quietly looking over their shoulders and studying their cards.

[Sidenote: 1797—A French fleet in Bantry Bay]

Napoleon Bonaparte, meanwhile, seems to have been but half-hearted about the scheme for the invasion of Ireland. He had many other schemes in his mind, some of which probably appeared more easy of accomplishment, and at all events promised a more immediate result than the proposed flank attack on the power of England. It is certain that Wolfe Tone had long intervals of depression and despondency, against which it needed all the buoyancy of his temperament to sustain him. At last a naval expedition was resolved on and despatched. In the late December of 1796 a small French fleet, with about 14,000 troops {315} on board, under the command of General Hoche, made for the southwestern shores of Ireland. Tone was on board one of the war vessels in his capacity as a French officer serving under General Hoche. The weather proved utterly unfavorable to the expedition. The war vessels were constantly parting company. The admiral's vessel, together with several others, was lost to sight on the very first night, and the heart of Tone grew sick as he saw that with every fresh outburst of the tempest the chances even of effecting a landing grew less and less. Most of the vessels entered Bantry Bay and lay helplessly at anchor there, but there was no landing. Tone's despondency and powerless rage as he foresaw the failure of his project might have been still deeper if he could have known how utterly unprepared the authorities of Dublin Castle were for any sort of invasion. Tone had observed already, as the expedition made its way from Brest, that they had not seen a single English vessel of war anywhere on the sea or around the Irish coasts. But he could have had no idea of the manner in which the British Government had intrusted the keeping of the island to the protection of the winds and of the fates. A letter written from Dublin by Elizabeth Moira Hastings, widow of the first Earl of Moira, throws a curious light on the state of things which existed among the governing authorities at the time of the invasion, and amazingly illustrates the odd rumors and wild conjectures which were floating about at the time. Writing to a friend in a different part of Ireland on January 19, 1797, Lady Moira says:

"Our escape has been miraculous: the French fleet left Brest . . . mistook the Durseys for Mizen Head, and therefore did not make their entrance into Bantry Bay till the 24th, on which very day the storm arose and prevented the greater part of their fleet getting into the Bay, driving the greatest part of them out to sea. You will observe that it was on the 19th Lord Malmesbury had orders to quit Paris. He undoubtedly had purchased intelligence at a high price, being duped in that inquiry by the manoeuvres of the Directory, and gave false information {316} to England. Had the French landed on the 18th or 19th, which they might have done, had they not mistaken the Durseys, we should have had the French now governing in this metropolis. All agree that there never was an expedition so completely planned, and in some points so curiously furnished—the most beautiful ladies of easy virtue from Paris were collected and made a part of the freight. Hoche's mistress accompanied him, and his carriage was on board 'La Ville d'Orient,' taken by the 'Druid.' The hussars taken on board that vessel were those who guarded the scaffold at the execution of the unfortunate Lewis—they are clothed in scarlet jackets trimmed with gold and fur, and wear each the butcher's steel, on which they whet their knives, to whet their swords with. It is reported that Hoche and Reilly (one of the admirals) are gone off to America with seven hundred thousand pounds in specie that was on board their vessel to pay the troops. Others think the vessel has sunk, for neither of these personages or the frigate 'La Fraternite,' which they were on board, has been seen since they quitted Brest by any of the French vessels. What a fortunate person Mr. Pitt is! and what a benefit is good luck to its possessor! The troops are all marching back to their old quarters; Cork and its environs indignant at Government for leaving them again to the entire care of Providence. . . . It is a general belief among all parties that the French will revisit Ireland, and at no distant period—probably the next dark nights. If the storms now prevented them they have learned how possible the attempt is, and how can such a coast be guarded? There has been much show of spirit and loyalty, and yet I thank God they did not land!"

The words of Wolfe Tone, taken from his journal, may be accepted as the epitaph of the first French expedition. "It was hard," says Tone, "after having forced my way thus far, to be obliged to turn back; but it is my fate, and I must submit. . . . Well, England has not had such an escape since the Spanish Armada; and that expedition, like ours, was defeated by the weather; the elements fight against us, and courage is of no avail."

{317}

[Sidenote: 1797—The French and Dutch to aid Ireland]

The French did return, as Lady Moira had predicted. They returned more than once, but there was a long interval between the first and the second visitation, and there were negotiations between the French and the Dutch Republic—the Batavian Republic, as it was called—which had been forming an alliance with France. Neither the French Republic nor the Batavian felt any particular interest in the Irish movement, or cared very much whether Ireland obtained her national independence or had to live without it. France, of course, was willing to make use of Ireland as a vantage-ground from which to harass Great Britain, and the Batavian Republic, which had for some time been lapsing out of European notice, was eager to distinguish herself and to play a conspicuous political part once again. The idea at first was that Holland should furnish the naval expedition and France contribute the troops—5000 Frenchmen, under the command of General Hoche, who were to land in Ireland and form the centre and rallying point for the United Irishmen. The Batavian Republic, however, did not seem anxious to give all the military glory of the affair to France, and some excuses were made on the ground that the discipline of the Dutch navy was somewhat too severe for the soldiers of France to put up with. General Hoche seems to have acted with great disinterestedness and moderation under trying conditions. He saw that the Dutch were anxious to make a name for themselves once more, and he feared that if he were to press for the embarkation of the French soldiers it might lead to the abandonment of the whole expedition. Longing as he was for the chance to distinguish himself in any attack upon England, he controlled his eagerness and consented that the Dutch should have the undertaking all to themselves. Poor Wolfe Tone had to wait and look on all this time, eating his own heart, according to the Homeric phrase. He has left us in his journal a description of his feelings as he saw the days go by without any movement being made to harass the English enemy, and of his own emotions when what might have seemed the heaven-sent chance of the mutiny at the {318} Nore broke out in the English fleet and no advantage could be taken of it to forward the chances of the expedition from the Texel. For now again the skies and the winds had come to the defence of England, and the Dutch fleet was kept to its anchorage in its own waters. Various plans of warfare were schemed out by the Batavian Republic, with the hope of putting the English naval authorities on a wrong scent, but all these schemes were suddenly defeated by the orders given to the Dutch admiral to put to sea at once. He did put to sea, and was encountered by Admiral Duncan, and the result was the great victory of Camperdown, won by the English over the Dutch after splendid fighting on both sides. Admiral Duncan thereby became Lord Camperdown and the Batavian Republic dropped all ideas of a naval expedition against England. Meanwhile the gallant General Hoche had died, and Wolfe Tone lost a true friend, with whom, from the beginning of their acquaintance, he had been in thorough sympathy.

[Sidenote: 1798—The brink of an Irish rebellion]

All this time the condition of things in Ireland was becoming desperate. After the appearance of the fleet in Bantry Bay, and the hopes which it created on the one side and the alarms on the other, the ruling powers in Dublin Castle, and indeed at Westminster, had no other idea but that of crushing out the rebellious spirit of the Irish people by Coercion Acts and by military law. The national sentiment of Ireland counted for nothing with them. It may be safely laid down as an axiom in political history that the men who are not able to take account of the force of what they would call a mere national sentiment in public affairs are not and never can be fit to carry on the great work of government. Ireland was overrun by militia regiments, sent over from England and Scotland, who had no sympathy whatever with the Irish people, and regarded them simply as revolted slaves to be scourged back into submission or shot down if they persevered in refusing to submit. Other forces representing law and order were found in the yeomanry, who were chiefly Orangemen and officered by Orangemen, and who regarded the Catholic peasantry as their born enemies. A state of tumult raged {319} through the greater part of the unhappy island, and there cannot be the slightest doubt that the floggings, hangings, and shootings inflicted by the militia and by the yeomen were in many cases done not so much in punishment as in anticipation of rebellious movements on the part of the Catholics. In the mean time preparations were unquestionably going on in many Irish counties, more especially in Ulster, for an outbreak of rebellion. The organization of United Irishmen was adding to its numbers of sworn-in members every day, and the making of pikes was a busy manufacture all over many of the counties. Grattan and some of his friends made many efforts in the Irish House of Commons to induce the Government to devise some means for the pacification of Ireland other than Coercion Acts, the scourge, the bullet, and the gallows. Finding their efforts wholly in vain, Grattan, Arthur O'Connor, Lord Edward Fitzgerald and his brother, and many other men of high character and position withdrew from the Dublin Parliament altogether, and left to the Government the whole responsibility for the results of its policy. It is always to be regretted that a man like Grattan should ever recede from his position as a constitutional patriot in the assembly where alone his counsels can have any practical weight; but of Lord Edward Fitzgerald and Arthur O'Connor the same is not to be said, for these men and many of their friends had made up their minds that the time had come when only in armed rebellion there remained any hope for Ireland. In the English Parliament some efforts were made by Charles James Fox and by Whitbread to obtain an inquiry into the real cause of the troubles in Ireland, but the attempts were ineffectual, and the authorities at Dublin Castle were allowed to carry out their own peculiar policy without control or check of any kind.

Once again the fates were suddenly unpropitious to the Irish national movement. The force which was intended for Ireland was suddenly ordered to form a part of the expedition which Bonaparte was leading against Egypt. Thereupon the chiefs of the United Irishmen began to see {320} that there was not much hope to be founded on any help to come from France, and it was decided that Ireland should enter into open armed rebellion under the command of Lord Edward Fitzgerald. It was confidently believed that all but a small number of the Irish counties would rise to arms at once under such leadership, and the Irish leaders little knew how completely the Government was supplied with the knowledge of all the Irish national plans and movements. Indeed, there seems only too much reason to believe that the policy of Pitt had long been to force the Irish into premature rebellion by the persistent application of the system of coercion, represented by what were called "free quarters"—in other words, the billeting of soldiers indiscriminately among the houses of the peasantry, thereby leaving the wives and daughters of Irish Catholics at the mercy of a hostile soldiery—by the burning of houses, the shooting down of almost defenceless crowds, and the flogging and hanging of men and women. Certain it is that many of the British officers high in command protested loudly against such a policy, and that some of them positively refused to carry it out, and preferred to incur any rebuke rather than be the instruments of such indiscriminate oppression. Pitt and the authorities at Dublin Castle probably reasoned with themselves that since the rebellion was certain to come it was better to press it on prematurely, so that it might be easily crushed, rather than leave it to take its own time and put its plans into execution when they should have arrived at a formidable maturity.

[Sidenote: 1798—Father John Murphy and Miles Byrne]

The rebellion broke out in the early part of 1798. It had some brilliant temporary successes in Wexford County and in other counties. In one part of Wexford the movement was literally forced upon the people by the outrageous conduct of the militia and the yeomanry. One of the local Irish priests, Father John Murphy, had used all his efforts up to the last in the cause of order, and had been most energetic in persuading the people to give up their pikes and other weapons to the local authorities. After the people had surrendered their arms the scourging, {321} shooting, and hanging went on just the same as before, and Father John Murphy and numbers of his parishioners were forced to take refuge in the woods. Then for the first time Father Murphy became a rebel. More than that, he became all at once an insurgent general. He put himself at the head of the despairing peasantry, and he suddenly developed a decided talent for the work of an insurgent chief. His people were armed for the most part only with pitchforks and with spades. Their pikes had nearly all been surrendered; only some few of the farming class had guns; and there was, of course, no sort of heavy artillery. Father Murphy showed his people how to barricade with carts the road through which a body of cavalry were expected to pass, and at the right moment, just when the cavalry found themselves unexpectedly obstructed, the insurgents suddenly attacked them with pitchforks and spades, won a complete victory, and utterly routed their opponents. By this success the rebels became possessed of a considerable number of carbines, and were put in heart for further enterprises. Father John Murphy won several other victories, and for the hour was master of a large part of Wexford. One of those who took service under him was a young man, Miles Byrne, scarcely eighteen years of age, who afterwards rose to high distinction in the French army under Napoleon, and maintained his position and repute under the Restoration, and might have been seen up to the year 1863, a white-headed, white-bearded veteran, sunning himself in the gardens of the Tuileries. Father Murphy, however, was not able long to hold out. The want of weapons, the want of money and of all other resources, and no doubt the want of military experience, put him and his men at a hopeless disadvantage, and he was defeated in the end, and was executed in the early summer of 1798.

While the rebellion lasted there were, no doubt, many excesses on both sides. The rebels sometimes could not be prevented by their leaders from fearful retaliations on those at whose hands they had seen their kindred suffer. The gallant Miles Byrne himself has told us in his memoirs {322} how in certain instances he found it impossible to check the rage of his followers until their fury had found some satisfaction in what they believed to be the wild justice of revenge. No one, however, who has studied the history of the times even as it is told by loyalist narrators will feel surprised that the policy which had forced on the outbreak of the rebellion should have driven the rebels into retaliation on the few occasions when they had the upper hand and found their enemies at their mercy. It has never been denied that the excesses committed by the rebels were but the spasmodic outbreaks of the passion of retaliation, and that the Irish leaders everywhere did all they could to keep their followers within the bounds of legitimate warfare. It is not necessary to follow out in detail the story of the rebellion. With no material help from abroad there could have been but one end to it, and the end soon came. A peasantry armed with pikes could hardly hold their own for very long even against the militia imported from Great Britain, the Orange yeomanry, and the Hessian troops hired from Germany, to say nothing of the regular English soldiers, who were armed and trained to war. Even the militiamen and the yeomanry had better weapons than the pikemen who followed their Irish leaders to the death. Before the rebellion was wholly crushed Lord Edward Fitzgerald was dead. The plans arranged by the leaders of the movement had appointed a certain day for the rising to begin; the outbreak in Wexford, as has already been shown, was entirely unpremeditated, and merely forced on by events; and, as might have been expected, the plans were betrayed to the authorities of Dublin Castle. Some of the leaders were instantly arrested, and Lord Edward had to fly and conceal himself. His hiding-place was soon discovered, and he was arrested in Thomas Street, Dublin, on May 19, 1798. Lord Edward at first refused to surrender, and fought desperately for his life. He wounded some of his assailants, and received himself a bullet in his body. He was then carried to prison, where he died sixteen days after. "Fitly might the stranger lingering here," as Byron says of another hero, {323} "pray for that gallant spirit's bright repose." Even George the Third himself might have felt some regret for the state of laws which had turned Edward Fitzgerald into an enemy.

[Sidenote: 1798—Ireland invaded by General Humbert]

Suddenly another attempt to help Ireland and harass England was made from the French side of the English Channel. Bonaparte was away on his Egyptian expedition, and the Directory in his absence did not wish to forego all idea of sending a force to Ireland, but were evidently not very strong on the subject and did not seem quite to know how to set about such a business. For awhile they kept two or three small bodies of troops ready at certain ports within easy reach of the English shores, and a number of vessels at each port waiting for sudden orders. General Humbert, an adventurous soldier of fortune, who had courage enough but not much wisdom, grew impatient at the long delay of the Directory, and thought he could not do better to force the hand of the Directory than to start an expedition himself. Accordingly he took command of a force of about a thousand men in number which had been placed at his disposal for an undefined date, and with three or four ships to convey his men he made for the Irish shores. He landed at Killala Bay, in the province of Connaught, and he made his way inland as far as the county of Longford. The Irish peasantry rallied round him in considerable numbers, and were received by him as part of the army and invested with the French uniform. He began his march with a sudden and complete victory over a body of English troops considerably outnumbering his own force, but whom he managed cleverly to surprise, and among whom a regular panic seems to have set in. Humbert's scheme was, however, hopeless. The part of the country through which he was marching was thinly populated, and large bodies of English troops, under experienced commanders, were approaching him from all sides. By the time he had reached the county of Longford he found himself faced, or indeed all but surrounded, by the royal troops under the command of Lord Cornwallis. There was nothing for Humbert but to {324} surrender, and he and his French followers were treated as prisoners of war after a final and brilliant fight and sent back to France. The Irish insurgents who had fought under his leadership dispersed and fled after the surrender, well knowing that they would not be included in its terms and treated as prisoners of war, and they were pursued by the royal troops and most of them were killed. Matthew Tone, a brother of Wolfe Tone, was one of those who had fought under Humbert. He was made prisoner, taken to Dublin, and executed there within a few days. Thus ended the second expedition from France for the relief of Ireland.

Wolfe Tone meanwhile was waiting in France, hoping against hope. He had as yet known nothing of the fortunes and failure of Humbert's expedition. Some extracts from a letter written to his wife about this time have a melancholy interest.

"Touching money matters, I have not yet received a sou, and last night I was obliged to give my last five guineas to my countrymen here. I can shift better than they can. I hope to receive a month's pay to-day, but it will not be possible to remit you any part of it; you must therefore carry on the war as best you can for three or four months, and before that is out we will see further. . . . I am mortified at not being able to send you a remittance, but you know it is not my fault.

"We embark about 3000 men, with 13 pieces of artillery, and I judge about 20,000 stand of arms. We are enough, I trust, to do the business, if we arrive safe.

"With regard to myself, I have had every reason to be satisfied; I stand fair with the General and my camarades; I am in excellent health and spirits; I have great confidence in the success of our enterprise; and, come what may, at least I will do what is right. The time is so short that I must finish this; I will, if possible, write to you again, but if we should unexpectedly sail my next will be, I hope, from Ireland."

[Sidenote: 1798—The capture of Wolfe Tone]

The embarking to which Tone referred was that of an expedition which the Directory had at last resolved to {325} despatch from Brest for the Irish shore. By a somewhat touching coincidence Tone found himself on board a war-vessel called the "Hoche," which was under the command of the admiral of the little fleet. This expedition consisted of one sail of the line and eight frigates, with 3000 French soldiers. It sailed on September 30, 1798; but the destinies were against it, as they had been against its predecessors, and contrary winds compelled the admiral to make a wide sweep out of what would otherwise have been its natural course. It was not until October 10 that the little fleet, then reduced to four vessels—the others had been scattered—reached the shore of Lough Swilly, on the northwest coast of Ireland, and was there encountered by a fleet of six English sail of the line and two frigates. The admiral of the French fleet saw that there was no chance whatever of his fighting his way through such an opposition, and he made up his mind to offer the best resistance he could for the honor of the French flag. He promptly gave signals for the lighter vessels, which would have been of little practical service in such a struggle, to make the safest retreat they could, and with his own vessel resolved rather perhaps to do and die than to do or die. A boat came from one of the frigates to take his final instructions, and he and all the French officers, naval and military, who were on board the "Hoche" strongly urged Wolfe Tone to go to the frigate in the boat and thus save his life. They pointed out to him that if they were captured they must be treated as prisoners of war, but that no mercy would be shown to him, a subject of King George, taken in French uniform. Wolfe Tone peremptorily declined to accept the General's advice. It should never be said of him, he declared, that he saved his life and left Frenchmen to fight and die in the cause of his country. A fierce naval battle took place, and the French admiral fought until he was overpowered, and had no course left to him but to surrender. The French officers who had survived the fight were all taken to Letterkenny, Tone among the number. Tone was in French uniform, and might have passed unrecognized as a French officer but that {326} an Ulster magnate, Sir George Hill, who had known him in earlier days, became at once aware of his identity, and addressed him by name. Tone calmly and civilly replied to the greeting, and courteously asked after the health of the wife of his discoverer. Then all was over so far as Tone was concerned. He was conveyed to Dublin and tried by court-martial as a rebel and a traitor to George the Third. He defended himself in a speech of remarkable eloquence—that is, if he can be said to have defended himself when his whole speech was a frank avowal of his purpose to fight for the independence of Ireland. He declared that he thoroughly understood the consequences of his failure, and was prepared to abide by them. "Washington," he said, "succeeded, and Kosciusko failed;" and he only insisted that in his case, as in that of Kosciusko, failure brought with it no dishonor. The one sole appeal which he made was that he might be allowed to die a soldier's death—that he might be shot and not hanged. Tone was found guilty, of course; there was no choice left to the court-martial on that question, and his appeal as to the mode of his death was refused by the Lord-Lieutenant. John Philpot Curran, the great advocate, made a motion in the King's Bench to the effect that Tone should be removed from the custody of the Provost-Marshal and tried before a civil tribunal, on the ground that Tone was not in the English army, and that, as the civil courts were sitting, there was no warrant for the interference of martial law. The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Kilwarden, a man whose public spirit and whose devotion to law and justice would have done honor to any bench, ruled in favor of Curran's appeal, and ordered that Tone be removed from the custody of the Provost-Marshal. When the Provost-Marshal declined to obey the order the Chief Justice directed that the Provost-Marshal be taken into custody, and that he, along with Tone, be brought before the Court. The decision came too late so far as Tone was concerned. Bather than endure the ignominy of a public execution by the gallows, which he believed to be awaiting him, he had found means to open a vein in his throat. {327} "You see I am but a poor anatomist," he said with a quiet smile to the surgeon who was brought to his bedside. He lingered in a half-unconscious state for a few days and then died. His death was the closing event of the Irish insurrection of 1798.

[Sidenote: 1778-1803—Robert Emmet]

There was, however, a sort of afterbirth of the struggle of "Ninety-Eight" in the attempt hazarded by Robert Emmet, to which we have already made anticipatory allusion. Robert Emmet, the brother of Thomas Addis Emmet, was a young Irishman of great abilities and of generous, unselfish, imprudent enthusiasm. He could not bring himself to believe that the hopes of Irish independence were buried even in the graves of Lord Edward Fitzgerald and Wolfe Tone. He had no trust whatever in any assistance to be given from France, but he set himself to organize a movement which should be Irish only and should find its whole organization and its battle-field on the soil of Ireland. He found numbers of brave and ardent young men to assist him, and he planned out another rising, which was to begin with a seizure of Dublin Castle and a holding of the capital as a centre and a citadel of the new movement for Irish independence. Emmet's passion for national independence had been strengthened by the passing of the Act of Union. The Act of Union had long been a project in the mind of Pitt, and indeed it was the opinion of many observers then, and of some historical students from that time to the present, that Pitt had forced on the Irish rebellion in order to give an excuse for the absolute extinction of the Irish Parliament and the centralization of the system of government in the Parliament sitting at Westminster. It is, at all events, quite certain that Pitt accomplished his scheme for a legislative union between Great Britain and Ireland by a wholesale system of bribery, the bribery taking the form of peerages, of high-salaried appointments, of liberal pensions, and even of sums of ready money. All that was really national in the Irish Parliament fought to the last against Pitt's Act of Union, but the Act was carried, and it came into operation on January 1, 1801. The Act itself and the methods by which {328} it was passed only gave to Robert Emmet a fresh stimulus to prepare his plans for the independence of Ireland. We need not follow in detail the story of these plans and the attempt to put them into execution. Robert Emmet's projects were, no doubt, all well known to the authorities of Dublin Castle before any attempt could be made to carry them out. In any case their chances of success seem to have depended very much upon the simultaneous action of a great number of persons in a great number of different places, and the history of every secret revolutionary movement tells us of the almost insuperable difficulty there is in getting all the actors of such a drama to appear upon the stage at the same moment and at the right moment. Emmet's plan broke down, and it ended not even in a general rising of the nationalists of Dublin, but in a mere street riot, the most sad and shocking event in which was the murder of the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Kilwarden. While Emmet, in another part of the city, was vainly striving to retrieve the disorder into which the excesses of some of his followers had broken up the plan of attack, Lord Kilwarden's carriage was stopped by a body of undisciplined and infuriated rioters, and one man thrust a pike into Kilwarden's body. Emmet himself came too late upon the scene to rescue the Chief Justice, and from that moment he gave up all hope of anything like orderly action on the part of the insurgents, and indeed his whole effort was to get his followers to disperse and to stop any rising in the adjacent counties. Kilwarden died soon after he had received his wound, but not before he had uttered the noble injunction that no man should suffer for his death without full and lawful trial. Seldom has even the assassin's hand stricken a worse blow than that which killed Lord Kilwarden. In an age when corrupt judges and partial judges were not uncommon, Kilwarden was upright, honorable and just. The fiercest nationalist of the day lamented his death. He had again and again stood before the Crown officials and interposed the shield of law between them and the victims whom they strove by any process to bring to death. Emmet made his way into Wicklow with {329} the main purpose of stopping the intended outbreak of insurrection there, as he saw now that no such attempts could, under the conditions, end in anything but useless bloodshed. His friends urged him to make his escape to France, and he might easily have escaped but that he went back to Dublin with the hope of seeing once again Sarah Curran, the youngest daughter of the great advocate, with whom he was devotedly in love. He was recognized, arrested, and sent to trial before Lord Norbury, a judge who bore a very different sort of reputation from that which honored Lord Kilwarden. Emmet made a brilliant and touching speech, not in defence of himself against the charge of trying to create a rebellion, for he avowed his purpose and glorified it, but in vindication of his cause and in utter denial of the accusation commonly brought against him that he intended to make his country the subject of France. [Sidenote: 1803—The execution of Robert Emmet] He was found guilty, sentenced to death, and executed on the morning after his trial. Thomas Moore, the Irish poet, who was a college friend of Emmet's, has embalmed his memory in three beautiful songs, "She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps," she being of course Sarah Curran, to whom Emmet addressed his last written words; "Oh, breathe not his name," and "When he who adores thee," an appeal to Ireland to remember him who had at least "the pride of thus dying for thee." Washington Irving, the American author, devoted a touching essay, called "The Broken Heart," to the story of Robert Emmet and his blighted passion. The lovers of romance may be somewhat disconcerted to hear that Sarah Curran married after her young hero's death; but she remained single many years, and there is no reason to suppose that she ever forgot or disclaimed her affection for Robert Emmet. Wolfe Tone's wife married again some sixteen years after the husband of her youth had passed away. Her grave is to be seen in a cemetery close to Washington, in the United States, the land in which Wolfe Tone's widow passed all the later years of her life.

With the failure and the death of Robert Emmet closed the last rebellious rising in Ireland which belongs to the {330} history of the Georges. Pitt's Act of Union is still in force, but it would be idle to say that it is anything more than in force. The union between England and Scotland, to which Pitt's supporters so often triumphantly appealed, was made under conditions and on terms totally different from those which had to do with the union between England and Ireland.



{331}

CHAPTER LXII.

NAPOLEON BONAPARTE.

[Sidenote: 1793-1815—The genius of the great Bonaparte]

Nothing in the history of the world is quite as wonderful as the history of the first Napoleon. No other man ever rose from so little to so much, ever played a greater part in the eyes of the civilized world, was more monstrous in his triumphs or more tragic in his fall. Everything connected with his strange career was distorted, exaggerated, seemingly out of all proportion to the familiarities, the conventionalities, and even the possibilities of existence. As the ancient Greeks, in their sculpture, for the delineation of their gods permitted themselves the use of the heroic size and made their immortals and their demi-gods more than common tall, and more than common comely, so might the modern historian seem privileged in the use of a superlative style in dealing with a life so phenomenal, so unbounded by the average horizon, so ungoverned by the ordinary laws. And yet no more is needed than the cold statement of the stages in that great story, of the steps which conducted to the summit of the pyramid only to be descended on the other side. Such a statement is itself the sermon on an earthly glory that was almost unearthly in the vastness of its aims and of its gains, and on a humiliation that restored humanity to reason and reaffirmed the inexorable lesson. As the mere names of battles on the commemorative arch appeal to the memories, the ambitions, and the passions of a military race with a monumental emphasis that is not to be rivalled by the painter or writer, so a few simple words serve to contrast with a simplicity that is in itself a pomp the crowns and the catastrophes of that amazing visitation. "Corsica," "St. Helena," "Brumaire," "Moscow," "Toulon," {332} "Waterloo." The chronicle of the great conqueror is written in little in the names of two islands, two battles, and two towns.

[Sidenote: 1803-15—England's fear of Napoleon]

To Frenchmen, even to the Frenchmen who are most opposed to him, Napoleon must always be an object for gratitude and for admiration. The most passionate champion of the Bourbon lilies and the doctrine of the divine right of kings cannot refuse to recognize that Napoleon Bonaparte gave to France a greater military glory than she had ever known or ever dreamed of before. The most devout disciple of the principles of '89, the fieriest apostle of the Revolution that went down into the dust before the cunning of Barras and the cannon of the Corsican adventurer, is obliged to admit the splendid services that Napoleon Bonaparte rendered to his adopted country. The one antagonist confesses that the Napoleonic eagles flew with the length of flight and the strength of wing of the Roman eagles. The other antagonist sees with approval the Code Napoleon and the Order of the Legion of Honor, the Simplon Road and the Canal of St. Quentin, the encouragement given to arts, to letters, and to commerce, the reorganization of finance and the reconstitution of the army. But to the average Englishman of that time, and for long afterwards, Napoleon was first and last and always the implacable enemy of Great Britain. From the day of Toulon to the day of Waterloo, Bonaparte was the Big Bogey of England; always either fighting against her openly or plotting against her secretly, always guided by one purpose, always haunted by one hope—the conquest of a country that had learned to look upon herself as unconquerable. Pitt, who hated war, was destined to play the uncongenial part of a War Minister, with one short interval, for the rest of his life, and to devote his genius and his energy to a life-and-death struggle with the soldier of fortune who was yesterday the hero of Italy, to-day First Consul, to-morrow to be Emperor of the French. The story of Pitt's life, for the rest of Pitt's life, is the story of a struggle against Napoleon, a struggle maintained under difficulties and disadvantages that might well have {333} broken a strong man's heart, and that seemed to end in disaster when the strong man's heart was broken.

It looked for long enough as if nothing could withstand the military genius or sate the ambition of Napoleon. On his sword sat laurel victory, and smooth success was strewn before his feet. He overran Egypt, and dreamed of rivalling the Eastern conquests of Alexander. The Kingdoms of Europe crumpled up before him. On land he seemed to be little less than invincible. England was only safe from him because England held the supremacy of the sea. When the war with France began England was blessed with an effective navy, and England's fleet was England's fortune in the days when the conqueror of a continent was the nightmare of an island. A monstrous regiment of caricaturists were painting themselves into fame by fantastic and ferocious presentations of the man who was so fiercely hated because he was so greatly dreaded. Some of these caricatures are pitifully ignoble, some in their kind are masterpieces; all are animated by a great fury that is partly the outcome of a great fear. For years that fear was always present; for years it was always well within the bounds of possibility that the fear might be realized in a great national catastrophe. In every coast town of England men volunteered and drilled and manned defences, and scanned with anxious eyes the horizon for the sails that were to fulfil a menace more terrible than the menace of the Armada. England's military fame had dwindled on the battle-fields of Europe; England's strength at home was as nothing compared to the strength that France could employ against her if once France could obtain a landing on her shores. Napoleon had declared scornfully that the country with the few millions of men must give way to the country with many millions of men. All that he needed to reduce England, as he had reduced so many other of the kingdoms of the earth, was to place his armed majority where it could act with overwhelming force against an armed minority. Only one thing lay between him and his purpose, but that one thing was the navy of England. Napoleon knew that if he had but {334} command of the Channel for a very few hours the landing of which he had dreamed, and for which he had schemed so long, would be a reality, and a march on London as easy as a march on Vienna. But he never got those few hours' command of the sea. Perhaps no greater monument of human vanity exists than the medal which Napoleon, madly prophesying, caused to be struck in commemoration of the conquest of England. Perhaps no pages of all the pages of history are more splendid than those which record the triumphs and the glories of the English fleet in the mortal struggle with France. When the great war began it was well for England that her navy was in effective condition; it was perhaps better still that the traditions of her navy were rich with heroic deeds, examples splendid to emulate, hard to surpass, but which, however, the sailors of King George the Third were destined to surpass.

[Sidenote: 1797—Mutinies in the British Navy]

Yet the conditions of life under which the English sailor lived were scarcely of a kind to foster the serene, austere virtues of patriotism and heroism. The English sailor was often snared into the active service of his country sorely against his will by means of the odious instrument for recruiting known as the press-gang. His existence on board the mighty and beautiful men-of-war was a life that at its best was a life of the severest hardship, and that at its worst was hard indeed to endure. He and his fellows were herded together under conditions of indescribable filth, squalor, and discomfort, often foolishly ill-fed, often cruelly ill-treated, often the victims of intolerable tyranny from brutal superiors. It is sometimes little short of marvellous that the sailors on whose faith the safety of England depended should have proved so faithful, so cheerful, so desperately brave. There was, indeed, a moment when the faith of some of them failed, and when the safety of England was in greater jeopardy than it had been in since the crescent of the Armada was reported off Plymouth or the Dutch ships lay in the Medway. While the war with France was still in its gloomy dawn the unwisdom of treating British sailors worse than beasts of burden came near to wrecking the kingdom. In 1797 the crews {335} of very many of the King's ships were exasperated by ill-treatments and injustices of many kinds, exasperated most of all by the fatal folly of long arrears of pay—a folly which in France, but eight years earlier, had been one of the most powerful factors in aiding the spread of the Revolution. There came a point when the sense of injury seemed too hard to bear, and England was startled by the news of a mutiny at Spithead. But the mutiny, if alarming, was kept within moderate bounds and under control by the mutineers; it was temperately met and temperately dealt with by Lord Howe, and it soon came to an end. It was immediately followed by a far more alarming mutiny which broke out among the ships at the Nore. This mutiny, headed by a seaman named Parker, who proved himself a bold and daring spirit, swelled swiftly to serious proportions. Londoners saw the mouth of their river blockaded by the war-ships of England, saw their capital city fortified against the menaces of the men they relied upon as their saviors. Admiral Duncan, busily engaged in keeping a Dutch fleet cooped up in the river Texel, suddenly beheld almost the whole of his squadron desert him and sail away to join Parker and his fellow-mutineers at the Nore. It was one of the gravest crises in English history, one of the greatest perils that England had to face during the whole of the French war. But the danger was weathered, the peril overcome. The Government faced the dangers of mutiny as firmly as they had faced the dangers of the war. Whatever the provocation, mutiny at such a moment was a national crime. It flickered out as tamely as it blazed up fiercely. Parker and some of his fellow-conspirators were hanged, strong men dying unhappily, and once again England had only her foreign foes to reckon with. Over away by the Texel stout-hearted Duncan, with only his flagship and two frigates to represent the sea power of England, met the difficulty with a shiftiness worthy of Ulysses. Through all his long hours of loneliness he kept on gallantly signalling away to an imaginary fleet, and the Dutchmen in the Texel little dreamed that they were held in check by a deserted admiral {336} upon a desolate sea. When at last they emerged, Duncan's danger was over; his faithless vessels had returned to their faith, and the crushing victory of Camperdown consoled one of the bravest of the brave for an agony unrivalled in the story of the sea.

[Sidenote: 1758-1805—Nelson]

The British admirals are the heroes of the dying eighteenth century. "Admirals all, they said their say, the echoes are rising still"—in the words of Henry Newbolt's gallant song. "Admirals all, they went their way to the haven under the hill." Dundonald was called, and finely called, the last of the sea-kings; but they were all true kinsmen of the Vikings, the admirals who were famous figures in Dundonald's fiery youth and famous memories in Dundonald's noble age. And as the admirals were, so were the captains, so were the men. Fearney sticking the surrendered swords in a sheaf under his arm; Walton calmly informing his superior that "we have taken or destroyed all the Spanish ships on this coast: number as per margin," are typical figures in a tradition of a courage so superlative that Admiral Sir Robert Calder, who fought very gallantly and took two ships, was tried by court-martial and severely reprimanded for not having destroyed the French fleet. The age of George the Third would be memorable, if it were memorable for nothing else, for the deeds and the glories of the great sea fights and the great sea fighters who saved England from invasion, knocking the tall ships of France to pieces, taking monstrous odds with alacrity, eager to engage in all weathers and under all conditions, cheerfully converting what seemed an impossible task into not merely a feasible but an easy piece of business. There are some sea battles of that time, fought out in storm and darkness, which read in the tamest statement with the pomp and beauty of the most majestic music. The names of the great admirals must always be dear to English ears, must always sound sweet on English lips. St. Vincent, Collingwood, Howe, Duncan, the noble list proceeds, each name illuminated with its only splendid story of desperate enterprise and deathless honor, till the proudest name of all is reached, {337} and praise itself seems to falter and fall off before the lonely grandeur of Nelson. Never was a little life filled with greater achievements; never was a little body more compact of the virtues that make great captains and brave men. The life that began in the September of 1758 and that ended in the October of 1805 holds in the compass of its forty-seven years the epitome of what England meant for Englishmen in the days of its greatest peril and its greatest glory. Magnificent, magniloquent, turbulent, it is starred with glowing phrases as thickly as with glowing deeds. "Fear! I never saw fear: what is it?" "A peerage, or Westminster Abbey;" the immortal signal; the famous saying off Copenhagen: "It is warm work; this day will be the last to many of us, but I would not be elsewhere for thousands;" the pathos of the dying lover: "Let my dear Lady Hamilton have my hair;" and the pride of the dying hero: "Thank God, I have done my duty"—all these things are the splendid ornaments of a splendid career; they gleam on his story as his stars and orders gleamed upon his breast when the "Victory" renewed her name. With the battle of Trafalgar and the destruction of the allied French and Spanish fleets Napoleon's dream of England's conquest came to an end. The result was bought at a great price, the price of Nelson's life. But Nelson had done his work, and done it well. He saved his country; he had deserved well of his countrymen; he summed in himself all the qualities that made the English sailor the idol of his people and the terror of his foes.

While Nelson still lived and conquered, there came a check to the troubled supremacy of Pitt. In 1801—when the memories of the battle of the Nile and the defence of Acre were still fresh in men's thoughts, and Napoleon had been for a year First Consul—Pitt, baffled by circumstances, surrendered to mediocrity and Addington was Prime Minister in his place. For three disastrous years Addington was permitted to prove his incompetency, till in 1804 Pitt, as the only possible man, came back to power to face a Napoleon more menacing than ever, a Napoleon now, in that same year, crowned and triumphant as {338} Emperor of the French. England was Mistress of the Seas, but Napoleon was Master of Europe. Pitt's health was fading swiftly; he watched with despair the progress of his enemy. Ulm came, and Austerlitz, and Austerlitz struck Pitt at the heart.

The closing hours of Pitt's career were as troubled and as gloomy as its dawn had been radiant and serene. It may have cost him little to be reconciled with the pompous mediocrity of Addington, and thereby to placate the King. His nature could afford to be magnanimous to the ungrateful incompetency that was able only in betrayal. It need not have given a pang to that proud and lonely spirit to welcome into the Cabinet the Earl of Buckinghamshire, who had wedded the one fair woman whose heart Pitt had won and lost. But the anguish of his soul was wrung into expression by the fall of Dundas. He had loved Dundas, who was now Lord Melville, long and well. Lord Melville's conduct as Treasurer to the Navy provoked from the Opposition a series of condemnatory resolutions. In spite of all that Pitt could do, the resolutions were supported by many of his followers, by many of his friends, by one friend conspicuous among all, by Wilberforce. The division was neck and neck, 216 to 216; the Speaker, "white as a sheet," gave the casting vote against Dundas which stabbed Pitt to the core. Whether it were or no, as Wilberforce maintained, a "false principle of honor" which led the great minister to support Melville, Pitt felt the blow as he had felt nothing before and was to feel but one thing again. Pitt pulled his little cocked hat over his forehead to hide his tears. One brutal adversary, Sir Thomas Mostyn, raised the wild yell of triumph that denotes to huntsmen the death of the fox. Another savage, Colonel Wardle, urged his friends to come and see "how Billy looked after it." But the young Tory gentlemen rallied around their hero. They made a circle of locked arms, and with looks and words that meant swords they kept the aggressors off. In their midst Pitt moved unconsciously out of the House—a broken-hearted man.

[Sidenote: 1806—Death of Pitt]

The heart of Pitt was allowed to feel one pulse of pride {339} and pleasure before it ceased to beat. Pitt shared in the triumph of Trafalgar; he made his best and noblest appearance in public; made his last most splendid speech: "Europe is not to be saved by any single man," he said to those who saluted him at the Guildhall as the savior of Europe. "England has saved herself by her exertions, and will, I trust, save Europe by her example." A few weeks later, in the December of 1805, Pitt was at Bath, when a courier brought him the news of the battle of Austerlitz. The news practically killed him. He had long been ailing grievously. Sir Walter Farquhar's account of Pitt's health, lately made public by Lord Rosebery, proves that the body which cased that great spirit was indeed a ruined body. Grief and anxiety had stamped lines of care and sorrow upon his face, which gave it what Wilberforce afterwards called "the Austerlitz look." The phrase is famous and admirable, if not exactly accurate as used by Wilberforce, for Lord Stanhope shows that Wilberforce never saw Pitt after the battle of Austerlitz was fought. With the Austerlitz look on his face, Pitt travelled to London, to the villa now known as Bowling Green House at Putney. With the Austerlitz look on his face he surrendered himself to the care of his niece, Lady Hester Stanhope, who afterwards lived eccentric and died lonely in the East, a kind of desert queen. With the Austerlitz look on his face he bade that niece roll up the map of Europe: "It will not be wanted these ten years." With the Austerlitz look on his face he died on January 23, 1806.

England, that had lost in three months Nelson and Pitt, was to lose a third great man in only eight months more. Pitt's body lay in Westminster; Pitt's Ministry was dissipated into air; Pitt's great opponent was called to the office for the last time, and for a very short time. Fox, as we are told by his biographer, Lord Russell, never felt personal enmity to Pitt. He said, with generous truth, that he never gave a vote with more satisfaction than his vote in support of the motion to pay Pitt's debts and to settle pensions on his nieces. He could not and did not indorse the proposal to confer honor on the memory of Mr. Pitt {340} as an "excellent statesman." He was ready to take office in the Ministry of All the Talents that Lord Grenville gathered together. He became Foreign Secretary and Leader of the House of Commons.

Fox, in office as out of office, had three great questions closely at heart: the treatment of Catholics, peace with France, and the Slave Trade. But Fox in office was obliged to face and recognize the difficulties, the solution of these questions. He admitted, reluctantly, the inadvisability of pressing the Catholic claims at a time when such pressure would prove destructive alike to the claims and to the Ministry that maintained them. He admitted, reluctantly, that the prospect of peace with France was very far from hopeful. He still dreamed of a speedy abolition of the Slave Trade, and to this end he attended Parliament too persistently in defiance of the warnings of his failing health. He was tapped for dropsy; his condition grew worse; in the evening of September 13, 1806, he died. He was the greatest liberal of his age; the greatest friend of liberty. The Irish poet bade the Irish banshee wail for him on whose burning tongue, truth, peace, and freedom hung.

Fox was not long dead when the Ministry of All the Talents found itself in direct collision with its royal master. It had ventured to suggest that it should be permitted to Catholics and to Dissenters to serve the King and the country in the Army and Navy. This small concession was too vast for the bigotry of George. He would have none of it, and the obsequious Ministry consented to abandon the measure. This was not enough for George. He wanted to extract from the Ministry a formal promise in writing that it would never submit to the sovereign any measure that involved, or was in any way connected with, concessions to the Catholics. The Ministry was not obsequious to that ignoble degree. It refused to bind itself by any such degrading pledge; and, in consequence, it was turned out of office, and the Duke of Portland and Mr. Perceval reigned in its stead. The Ministry of All the Talents had lived neither a long nor a useful life.

{341}

Spencer Perceval was an able lawyer, a dexterous debater, a skilful Parliamentarian. He was privately an excellent man, with an excellence that the irony of Sydney Smith has made immortal. He was not quite the man to sit in the Siege Perilous that had been occupied in turn by Pitt and Fox. He held his office under difficult conditions. In 1810 the King, whose ailing mind was unhinged by the death of his daughter Amelia, lost his reason irreparably. Perceval had to fight the question of the Regency with a brilliant Opposition and a bitterly hostile Prince of Wales. He succeeded, in the January of 1811, in carrying his Regency Bill on the lines of the measure proposed in 1788. In May, 1811, he was shot dead, in the Lobby of the House of Commons, by a madman named John Bellingham, who had some crazy grievance against the Government.

The years from the January of 1811 to the January of 1820 are technically the last nine years of the reign of George the Third; they are practically the first nine years of the reign of George the Fourth. The nine years of the Regency were momentous years in the history of England. The mighty figure of Napoleon, whose shadow, creeping over the map of Europe, had darkened and shortened the life of Pitt, was still an abiding menace to England when the Prince of Wales became Regent. But England, that had lost so much in her struggle with the Corsican conqueror, who had now no Nelson to oppose to him on the high seas, and no Pitt to oppose to him in the council chamber, found herself armed against his triumphs in the person of a great soldier.

[Sidenote: 1769-1852—Arthur Wellesley]

In the same year that saw the birth of Napoleon, and on a date as little certain as that of the conqueror of Europe, a child was born to Garret Wellesley, first Earl of Mornington, in Dublin. The child was a son, the third that Anne Hill, Lord Dungannon's eldest daughter, had borne to her music-loving husband; the child was christened Arthur. Dates as various as May 1, May 6, and April 29, 1769, are given by different authorities in that very year, and the place of birth is as unsettled as the date, Dangan Castle in Meath, and Mornington House, Merrion Street, {342} Dublin, being the alternatives offered. Very little is known about the childhood and early youth of Arthur Wellesley. His mother seems to have considered him stupid, and to have disliked him for his stupidity. He went from school to school—first at Chelsea, then at Eton, then at Brussels—without showing any special gifts, except a taste for music, inherited no doubt from the father, whose musical tastes had earned him the affection of George the Third. An unamiable mother decided that he was "food for powder and nothing more;" and when he was sixteen years old he was sent to the French Academy at Angers, where he was able to learn all the engineering that he wanted, at the very same time that the young Napoleon Bonaparte was being trained for a soldier in the military college at Brienne. Of the little that can be known of the first seventeen years of Arthur Wellesley's life the clearest facts are that his childhood was not happy, that he was believed by many to be a dull and backward boy, and that he himself thought that if circumstances had not made him a soldier he would probably have become distinguished in public life as a financier.

[Sidenote—1786-97—Wellesley's military training]

Circumstance made him a soldier. Through the patronage of his eldest brother, who became Earl of Mornington on his father's death, in 1781, the young Arthur Wellesley entered the Army as an ensign in the Seventy-third Foot. The same influence that had got him into the army aided him to rise in it. When he was little more than of age he was captain of the Eighteenth Light Dragoons, aide-de-camp to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, and member of the Irish Parliament for his brother's borough of Trim. In the Irish Parliament he supported Pitt's measure to enfranchise Roman Catholics. It was characteristic of the young man that, when once a career had been chosen for him, he devoted himself to it with a cold, persistent zeal that accomplished as much for him as the most passionate enthusiasm would have done for another. He set before himself the principle that having undertaken a profession he had better try to understand it, and understand it he did with a determined thoroughness {343} that was rare indeed, if not unknown, among the young officers of his day. We are told that soon after he got his first commission he had one of the privates of the Seventy-third weighed, first in his ordinary military clothes, and then in heavy marching order, in order to ascertain what was expected of a soldier on service. This kind of thoroughness, at once comprehensive and minute, distinguished the conduct of his whole career. One of the maxims that regulated his life was always to do the day's business in the day. Long years later he and a friend were driving together along a coaching road, and amusing themselves by guessing what kind of country lay behind each hill they approached. When the friend commented upon the surprising accuracy of his companion's guesses the man who had been Arthur Wellesley answered: "Why, all my life I have been trying to guess what lay on the other side of the hill;" a stimulating piece of wisdom, to which he himself supplied the no less stimulating comment: "All the business of war, and, indeed, all the business of life, is to endeavor to find out what you don't know from what you do." The youth who took soldiering in this iron spirit must have been more than a puzzle to many of his contemporaries, whose simple military creed it was that when an officer was not actually fighting he might best employ his time in drinking and gambling. Young Wellesley fell in love with Catherine Pakenham, Lord Longford's daughter, and she with him; but the means of neither permitted marriage then, and they did not marry until long years later. When the war with France was forced upon a reluctant minister, Wellesley went to the Continent under Lord Moira and saw some fighting. But his serious career began when he was sent to India with the Thirty-third Regiment in 1797.

It was in India that the young soldier was to learn those lessons in the art of war which were afterwards to prove so priceless to England, and to gain a fame which might well have seemed great enough to satisfy any ambition less exacting than his. But he had the generous greed of the great soldier, the restless, high-reaching spirit, to which {344} the success of yesterday is as nothing save as an experience that may serve for the success of to-morrow. No better field than India could have been found for a young and ambitious soldier who had devoted himself to his career almost by chance, but who was resolved to approve his choice by giving to the career of arms a zeal, a stubborn pertinacity, a very passion of patience, rare, indeed, at the time, and who was resolved to regard nothing as too great to attempt, or too trivial to notice, in the execution of his duty.

After a career of military honor and experience in India, Arthur Wellesley began his struggle with Napoleon on the battle-fields of the Spanish Peninsula, and ended it upon the battle-field of Waterloo. His was the hand that gave the final blow to the falling, failing Emperor. The career of so much glory and of so much gloom, of Corsican lieutenantship and Empire, of Brumaire and Bourbon Restoration, of Egyptian pyramids and Russian snows, of Tilsit and of Elba, and of the Hundred Days, ended in the Island of St. Helena. There exists among the documents that are preserved from Napoleon's youth a geographical list made out in his own boyish hand of names and places, with explanatory comments. The name of St. Helena is on the list, and the only words written opposite to it are "Little Island." The Preacher on Vanities never had a better text for a sermon. The "little island" that had then seemed so unimportant became in the end more momentous than the Eastern Empire of his dreams. The man who had made and unmade kingdoms, who had flung down the crowns of Europe for soldiers of fortune to scramble for as boys unto a muss, was now the unhonored captive of ungenerous opponents, the unhonored victim of the petty tyrannies of Sir Hudson Lowe.

[Sidenote: 1812-15—The War of 1812]

As the most disastrous event of the reign of George the Third prior to the Regency was a war with America, so the most disastrous event of the Regency was a war with America. Napoleon's fantastic decrees of commercial blockade levelled against England, and known as the Continental system, had embroiled the young republic and England, and differences inflamed by the unwisdom of {345} Perceval were not to be healed by the belated wisdom of Castlereagh. Two keen causes of quarrel were afforded by England's persistent assertion of the right to stop and search American vessels on the high seas for British subjects and England's no less persistent refusal to recognize that naturalization as an American citizen in any way affected the allegiance of a British subject to the British crown. Wise statesmanship might have averted war, but wise statesmanship was wanting. The death of Spencer Perceval caused the elevation to the premiership of a man as incapable as his predecessor of dealing skilfully with the American difficulty. Robert Banks Jenkinson, who had been Lord Hawkesbury and who was now Lord Liverpool, was a curiously narrow-minded, hidebound politician who had never recovered from the shock of the French Revolution, and who was chiefly conspicuous for his dogged opposition to every species of reform. He was five years old when the fight at Concord began the struggle that ended with American Independence, but the great event which overshadowed his childhood had no apparent effect upon his later judgment. This belated survival of the tradition of Hillsborough thought and said that America ought to look to England "as the guardian power to which she was indebted not only for her comforts, not only for her rank in the scale of civilization, but for her very existence." Folly such as this could only end in disaster. America, believing herself to be deeply wronged, declared war on Great Britain in the June of 1812. The war lasted more than two years with varying fortunes. Once again the scarlet coats of English soldiers were familiar, if detested, objects to many of the men who had made the Republic, and over bloody battle-fields fluttered that English flag which most of those who now opposed it had only seen as a trophy of their fathers' victories. Both sides fought under heavy disadvantages. If England was weakened by her struggle with Napoleon, America was hampered by internal dissensions, by a disorganized army and by a navy so small that it might almost have been regarded as not in existence. Yet it was this very navy which did most for {346} America in the struggle, and dealt England the most staggering blows inflicted upon her supremacy of the sea. The most shameful episode of the whole unhappy campaign was when the English General Ross captured Washington, and, in obedience to infamous orders from home, burned the Capitol and other public buildings. No more disgraceful act stains the history of the time. It proved as impossible for England to defend as for America to forget. The war ended at last, after the commerce of both countries had been gravely injured, in a grotesque treaty of peace, signed at Ghent, in which the principal cause of the war, the impressment of American sailors by English ships, was not even alluded to. But as the impressment was abandoned by England, the war had not been waged wholly in vain.

In the year that followed upon the Battle of Waterloo, Sheridan died. He had outlived by ten years his great contemporaries Pitt and Fox, by nearly twenty years his greatest contemporary Burke, and by more than thirty years his great contemporary Johnson. The pompous funeral that carried his remains to Westminster Abbey was the funeral not merely of a man but of an age. He was almost the last of the great heroic figures that made the eighteenth century famous. He had long outlived all the friends, heroes, rivals of his glorious prime: he could talk to the children of the dawning century of Johnson, and Goldsmith, and Sir Joshua Reynolds; of Burke, and Pitt, and Fox; of poets and painters, players, and politicians, who seemed to his listeners to belong to a departed Age of Gold. Two years later, in the November of 1818, England, and indeed the whole civilized world, received a sudden and painful shock by the death, under conditions peculiarly harrowing, of Sir Samuel Romilly, the great lawyer, social reformer, and philanthropist. Romilly had been deeply attached to his wife, and on her death in October of that year, it would seem that he must have lost his reason, for, in the following month, he committed suicide. Romilly was a man of the highest principles, and the most austere conscience, and although the loss of his much-loved wife must have made the world but a mere {347} ruin to him, it is not believed that, if his mind had not suddenly given away, he would have done himself to death with his own hand. To Napoleon, then fretting in exile in St. Helena, the deed appeared to be one curiously characteristic of the English people. "The English character is superior to ours. Conceive Romilly, one of the leaders of a great party, committing suicide at fifty because he had lost his wife. They are in everything more practical than we are; they emigrate, they marry, they kill themselves with less indecision than we display in going to the opera." Napoleon was wrong in his estimate of Romilly's age. Romilly was sixty-one when he died. He was one of the greatest legal and social reformers of his age. His father was a Huguenot watchmaker who had settled in London, and the young Samuel Romilly had only an imperfect education to begin with. By intense study he became possessed of wide and varied culture. He studied for the bar, became distinguished in Chancery practice, made his way in public life, sat in the House of Commons for several years, and finally represented Westminster. During successive visits to France he had made the acquaintance of Diderot and D'Alembert, and became the friend of Mirabeau. He won a noble fame by his persistent endeavors to mitigate the cruelties of the criminal laws, to introduce the principles of a free country into political prosecutions, to abolish the odious spy system, and to put an end to slavery at home and abroad. His name will be remembered forever in the history of political and social reform.

The Houses of Death and of Birth were busy for the royal family in the closing scenes of the King's tragedy. There had been very little happiness for George the Third in his long reign and his longer life. His childhood had been darkened by the shadow of a family feud that seemed traditional in his line. His marriage, indeed, fortunate if unromantic, the sequel of more than one unfortunate romance, gave him a companion whose tastes were as simple, and whose purposes were as upright as his own. But his private domesticity was not destined to be less troubled than his public fortunes. The grim tradition asserted {348} itself again for him whose childhood and manhood had been only too devoted to the influence of his mother. Few of his children were a cause of joy to him; some were a source of very poignant sorrow. He might have known content in a private station under conditions better fitted to strengthen his virtues and to lessen the force of his defects. If Farmer George had really been but Farmer George, his existence might tranquilly have followed the courses of the seasons through a prosperous manhood to a peaceable old age. But the curse of kingship was upon him very heavily, and his later years are very pitiful in their loneliness and their pain. Of the course of events about him he, in the awful visitation of his infirmities, had long been unconscious. Blind and deaf and mad, he seems to have been haunted by the ghastly fancy that he was already dead. "I must have a suit of black," he is reported to have said, "in memory of George the Third, for whom I know there is a general mourning." George the Third was dead in life, and about him those he loved were dying fast. On November 6, 1817, the Princess Charlotte died, the only child of the Prince Regent. She was very popular, was in the direct succession to the throne; she hoped to be queen, and many shared her hope. The prisoner of St. Helena believed that in her lay his best chance of liberation. She married Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg on May 2, 1816, and died after giving birth to a still-born child in the following year. She was not quite twenty-two years old. The news of her death greatly affected the old queen, her grandmother. Her health, that had long been weak, grew weaker, and she died on November 17, 1818. She had lived her simple, honest, narrow, upright life for seventy-four years. On May 24, 1819, a daughter was born to the Duchess of Kent, the wife of Edward, Duke of Kent, the fourth son of George the Third. On January 23, 1820, the Duke of Kent died. Six days later the King ceased to exist. He was in the eighty-second year of his age and the sixtieth year of his reign. The most devoted loyalist could not have wished for the unhappy King another hour of life. "Vex not his ghost O! Let {349} him pass; he hates him that would upon the rack of this rough world stretch him out longer."

[Sidenote: 1760-1820—Progress under George the Third]

The reign that had ended was certainly the longest and perhaps the most remarkable then known to English history. The King's granddaughter, the Princess Victoria, born so short a time before his death, was destined to a reign at once longer and more remarkable than the reign of George the Third. The England of 1820 was not nearly so far removed from the England of 1760 as the England of the last year of the nineteenth century was removed from 1837. But the changes that took place in England in the sixty years of the reign of the third George were changes of vast moment and vast importance. If England's political fortunes fell and rose in startling contrast, the progress of civilization was steady and significant. The social England of 1820 was widely different from the social England of 1760. The advance of population, the growth of great towns, the increase of means of intercourse between one part of the country and another by highways and waterways, the engineering triumphs that bridged rivers and cut canals, the marvels of industrial invention that facilitated labor, the patient pains of science on the edge of great discoveries, the slowly increasing spirit of toleration, pity, and humanity, the gradual spread of education, the widening realms of knowledge, the increasing appreciation of the decencies and amenities of life—all these things make the reign of George the Third the hopeful preface to the reign of greater length, greater glory, greater promise and greater fulfilment that was to dawn when two more sovereigns of the House of Hanover had ceased to reign over England. If George the Third had been a wiser man his reign would have been happier for the country he ruled; but the country at least was happy in this, that he was, as kings went, and according to his lights, a good man.



END OF THE THIRD VOLUME.



{350}

INDEX.

Abernethy, Dr., death, iv. 282. Act for better securing the Dependency of Ireland, i. 177. Act of Settlement, i. 4. Act of Union passed, iii. 327, 330. Acts of Trade, iii. 82, 84, 86, 105. Adams, John: Conduct towards Colonel Preston, iii. 152. Opposes dominion of England, iii. 85. Adams, Samuel, protests against Stamp Act, iii. 90. Addington, Henry, Viscount Sidmouth, Prime Minister, iii. 337. Addison, Joseph: M. P. for Malmesbury, i. 52. Secretary of State; circular letter to English Ministers, ii. 109. Sketch of, i. 37, 180. Address (1715), i. 102. Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, wife of William IV., iv. 97. Supposed attitude towards Reform, iv. 172. Agrarian crime, iv. 84, 106. Agriculture in Scotland (1714), i. 87, 89. Agriculture in 1721, i. 229. Aislabie, John: Chancellor of Exchequer, i. 188, 190. Committed to Tower, i. 199. Impeaches Lord Strafford, i. 109, 110. Treasurer of Navy, i. 105. Aix-la-Chapelle, Treaty of, ii. 260, 280. Akerman, Keeper of Newgate, attitude towards mob, iii. 203. Albany, Countess of, wife of Charles Stuart, ii. 233. Alberoni, Giulio: Policy, i. 159. Sketch of, i. 158. Ale-tax in Scotland, i. 249. Ali Vardi Khan, death of, ii. 265. Allan, killed in riot (1768), iii. 120. Allen, Ethan, iii. 179. Almanza, battle of, ii. 35. Althorp, Lord (see Spencer, John Charles, Earl). Amelia, daughter of George III., death of, iii. 341. Amelia, Princess (see Emily, Princess). American Colonies: Discontent in, iii. 147 seqq. Grievances, iii. 82. Proclaim their Independence, iii. 183. Report on, i. 310. Sketch of history, iii. 74. Systems of governing, i. 310. American Republic acknowledged, iii. 184. Influence on France, iii. 290, 292. American War of Independence, iii. 173 seqq. American War, Second, iii. 344. Amherst, Jeffrey, Baron: Commander-in-Chief, iii. 207. Commands troops in Canada, ii. 287. Amhurst, Nicholas (Caleb d'Anvers), edits Craftsman, i. 261. Anaverdi Khan, Nabob of Carnatic, ii. 201. Andre, Major, death as spy, iii. 184. Anglesey, Marquis of, Viceroy of Ireland, attitude towards Catholic Emancipation, iv. 73, 74. Anne, Princess of Orange, ii. 38. Illness, ii. 71, 76. Marriage, ii. 42. Anne, Queen: Character, i. 1, 13. Death, i. 47. Declining health, i. 1. Scheme to reduce expenses, i. 281. "Annual Register": Description of mob in London, iii. 205. Founded by Edmund Burke, iii. 99. Anti-Irish riots, ii. 45. "Anti-Jacobin," iv. 33. Arbuthnot, John: History of John Bull, i. 97. Sketch of, ii. 20. Arcot, Siege of, ii. 263. Arden, Richard Pepper, iii. 236. Argyll, John Campbell, Duke of, i. 42. Commander-in-Chief for Scotland, i. 98, 123. Sketch of, i. 44. Speech on Convention, ii. 166. Aristotle on administration, ii. 246. Arnold, Benedict, iii. 179. Treason, iii. 184. Ashe, Bishop of Clogher, ii. 293. Ashley, Lord (see Shaftesbury, Earl of). Association of United Irishmen, iii. 309, 313, 319. Atterbury, Francis, Bishop of Rochester, i. 48. Arrested and committed to Tower, i. 212. Banished, i. 222. Evidence against, i. 219, 220, 222. On condition of church, ii. 129. Opposes Septennial Act, i. 146. Sketch of, i. 214. Auditor, iii. 15, 55. Augusta, Princess of Saxe-Gotha, wife of Frederick, Prince of Wales, ii. 46, 47; iii. 6, 7. Birth of first child, ii. 104-107. Regency Bill and, iii. 73. Augustus, Elector of Saxony, ii. 23. Augustus II. of Poland, ii. 23. Aurungzebe, Empire on death of, ii. 257. Austerlitz, Battle of, iii. 338, 339. Austria in 1716, i. 154.

Bailly, Mayor of Paris, iii. 298. Ballot system, iv. 131. Balmerino, Lord, trial, ii. 228. Bank of England: Attacked by rioters, iii. 207. Charter renewed, iv. 232. Imitates South Sea Company, i. 189. Barber, John: Letter to Swift, i. 48. On Arbuthnot, ii. 20. Barnard, Sir John: Abandons seceders, ii. 174. On Convention, ii. 162. On grievances against Spaniards, ii. 154, 157. On Walpole's Excise scheme, i. 315. Barre, Colonel, iii. 131, 133, 136. Barry, Richard, Lord Barrymore, iii. 244. Supports Young Pretender, ii. 221. Barry, Sir Charles, designs new Houses of Parliament, iv. 270, 272. Bartholomew Fair, i. 73. Barwell, Richard, iii. 260. Supports Hastings, iii. 260, 261, 264. Bastile captured, iii. 294. Bath in 1714, i. 79. Bathurst, Lord, demands prosecution of rioters, iii. 201. Beaconsfield, Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of: On Lord John Russell, iv. 126. Philippics against Sir Robert Peel, i. 287. Beaux and requisites, i. 76. Bedford, Duke of: Opposes Pitt, iii. 26. Patron of Rigby, iii. 37. Presents petition against Convention, ii. 164. Bellingham, John, shot Spencer Perceval, iii. 341. Benares annexed, iii. 258. Benares, Chait Singh, Rajah of, iii. 269. Bentham, Jeremy, theories of, iv. 281. Beranger, "King of Yvetot," iv. 119. Berkeley, George Bishop: Character, ii. 296. Lives in Rhode Island, ii. 295. Scheme of Settlement in Bermuda, ii. 294. Sketch of, ii. 292. Berkeley, Lord, of Stratton, describes duel between Colonel Chudleigh and Charles Aldworth, i. 58. Bermuda, Scheme for Settlement in, ii. 294. Bernard, Francis, Governor of Massachusetts, iii. 106, 148. Dissolves Massachusetts Legislature, iii. 150. Recalled, iii. 151. Berwick, James FitzJames, Duke of: Sketch of, ii. 34. Takes Kehl, ii. 24. Bill for Catholic Relief, iii. 190, 191. Bill for Princess Anne's dowry, ii. 43. Bill for strengthening Protestant interest, i. 171, 172. Bill of Rights, i. 3. Bill to adjust affairs of South Sea Company, i. 203, 205. Bill to suspend Habeas Corpus Act, i. 213. Birmingham, iv. 99. Bismarck, Prince, Peace policy, ii. 147. Black Hole of Calcutta, ii. 266, 267; iii. 249. Blackstone, Speech on Middlesex Election Petition, iii. 131. Bland-Burges Papers, ii. 217. Bland-Burges, Sir James, defends Warren Hastings, iii. 277, 278. Bloomfield, patronized by Duke of Grafton, iii. 35. Bolingbroke, Henry St. John, Viscount, i. 22, 115. Advises secession from Commons, ii. 172. Alliance with Pulteney, i. 260; ii. 17. At St. Germains, i. 116. Attitude towards restoration of Stuarts, i. 39, 48, 107. Character, i. 116; ii. 18, 279. Correspondence with James Stuart, ii. 18. Dismissed by James, i. 131. Dreams of Coalition Ministry, ii. 194. Flight, i. 103. Impeached of high treason, i. 108, 110. Inspires Craftsman, i. 290. Leaves England for France, ii. 17, 18. Letter to Swift, i. 47. Name erased from roll of peers, i. 114. On Duke of Berwick, ii. 34. On Duke of Shrewsbury, i. 42. On Wyndham's death, ii. 179. Petition to Lords, i. 258. Removed from Secretaryship of State, i. 101. Returns to England, i. 222, 258. Scheme of Opposition, i. 287. Sketch of, i. 26; later life, i. 133; ii. 278, 279. Style as speaker and writer, i. 27. Walpole's portrait of, ii. 15, 16. Bombay, dower of Catherine of Braganza, iii. 248. Boston: Evacuated, iii. 182. Hostile to British, iii. 151. Invested, iii. 175, 181. Life in 1765, iii. 77. Massacre, iii. 151. Protests against Stamp Act, iii. 90. Tea thrown into harbor, ii. 43; iii. 160. Boston, Lord, in hands of mob, iii. 197. Boston Port Bill, iii. 163; copies circulated, iii. 165. Boswell, James: Johnson and, iii. 44. On Alexander Wedderburn, iii. 158. Bourbon family: Aims of, ii. 28. Compacts, ii. 26. Bourne, Vincent, at Westminster School, iii. 53. Braddock, General, defeat and death, ii. 286; iii. 79, 180. Bradley on reform of Calendar, ii. 275. Breed Hill battle, iii. 176. Bremen ceded to Hanover, i. 160, 161. Brewster, Sir David: British Association and, iv. 262. On Newton, i. 273. Bright, John, doctrine of non-intervention, iv. 62. Bristol: Growth of, i. 78. Reform riot at, iv. 171. British Admirals of Eighteenth Century, iii. 336. British Association founded, iv. 262. British garrison proposed for America, iii. 84, 86. British sailor (1797), iii. 334. Briton, iii. 51, 55. "Broad-bottomed Ministry," ii. 245, 246. Bromley, William, motion on Septennial Act, ii. 10, 12. "Brothers" Club, i. 74. Brougham, Henry, Lord Brougham and Vaux: Advice to Queen Caroline, iv. 5. Attitude towards electoral reform, iv. 52. Attitude towards Poor Relief, iv. 223. Attitude towards West Indian Slavery, iv. 192, 193. British Association and, iv. 262. Character, iv. 251. Defends Queen Caroline, iv. 6, 8. Evidence in Cobbett's prosecution, iv. 156. Leader of Opposition, iv. 103. Lord Chancellor, iv. 124. Motion on Reform, iv. 104, 110, 111. Motions against Slavery, iv. 194, 195. Negotiates with King on creation of new peers, iv. 180. On Parliamentary Reform, iv. 85. Oratory, iv. 104, 174. "Penny Cyclopaedia" and, iv. 262. Persuades William IV. to dissolve Parliament, iv. 151. Power as Reformer, iv. 122, 125. Retires from Ministerial life, iv. 251. Scheme for national education, iv. 22. Speech on Catholic Emancipation, iv. 74. Brunswick family, i. 5. Buchanan, messenger of Young Pretender, ii. 205. Buckingham, Earl of, iii. 338. Buckingham House, i. 66. Buckingham Palace, iv. 93. Bunbury, Sir Thomas Charles, marries Lady Sarah Lennox, iii. 10. Burdett, Sir Francis, resolution on Catholic Emancipation, iv. 73. Burgoyne at Boston, iii. 175, 182. Burgoyne surrenders at Saratoga, iii. 183. Burke, Edmund: Alliance with Fox and North, iii. 226. Attitude on American Independence, iii. 87. Attitude towards French Revolution, iii. 285. Career, iii. 96 seqq. Character, iii. 227. Crusade against French Revolution, iii. 296, 298. Denunciation of French Revolution, i. 96. "Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful," iii. 98. Friend of Goldsmith, iii. 168. Impeaches Warren Hastings, iii. 281, 285. Indian policy, iii. 273. Influence on generation, iii. 96, 100. Maiden speech, iii. 100. Marriage, iii. 98. On Ballot system, iv. 131. Boston exploit, iii. 161. Chesterfield's rule in Ireland, ii. 251. Ministry and Wilkes's riots, iii. 121, 122. Townshend, iii. 111. Walpole's opposition to war party, ii. 181. War with Spain, ii. 184. Warren Hastings, iii. 258, 259. Wilkes's reception in London, iii. 116; in Middlesex, iii. 117. Opinion of George IV., iv. 90. Oratory, iii. 100. Passion for justice, iii. 272. Paymaster-General, iii. 224, 228. Praises of Pitt, iii. 223. Private Secretary to Lord Rockingham, iii. 99. Reproves Charles James Fox, iii. 141. Speech against American war, iii. 188. Speech on Middlesex Election Petition, iii. 132. Vindication of Natural Society, iii. 98. Burke, William, iii. 99. Burnet, Bishop, on: Condition of Church, ii. 129. Duke of Marlborough, i. 23. High and Low Church, i. 17. Queen Anne, i. 2. Burney, Miss, in Burke's arraignment of Hastings, iii. 286. Burns, Robert, on William IV. and Mrs. Jordan, iv. 97. Bury Street, price of lodgings in, in 1714, i. 70. Bute, Lord: Bribery under, iii. 28, 30. Cabals against Pitt, iii. 26. Character, iii. 7, 28. Foreign policy, iii. 28, 29. House besieged, iii. 117. Influence over Princess of Wales and her son, iii. 8. Prime Minister, iii. 28. Proposes cider tax, iii. 30, 32. Resigns office, iii. 32. Secretary of State, iii. 8. Sketch of, iii. 7. Unpopular, iii. 28, 32. Buxton, Fowell, West Indian slavery and, iv. 190, 191, 194, 195. Byng, Admiral: Fails to relieve Minorca, ii. 297. Tried and shot, ii. 298. Byrne, Miles: Career, iii. 321. Memoirs, iii. 321. Byron, Lord: Assists Greeks, iv. 48. Death at Missolonghi, iv. 50. On George IV., iii. 242. On Grattan, iii. 307. Scorn of O'Connell's loyalty, iv. 23, 27. Verses on Castlereagh's death, iv. 37.

Cabot, John and Sebastian, discover Canada, ii. 283. Calder, Admiral Sir Robert, iii. 336. Calendar, reform of, ii. 275. Campbell, John, Baron, on Lord Harcourt, i. 51. Campeachy logwood question, i. 294, 295; ii. 160. Camperdown, battle of, iii. 318, 336. Canada: French and English colonies in, ii. 283, 284. Sketch of history, ii. 283 seqq. "Canter of Coltbrigg," ii. 213-215. Canterbury, Archbishop of, attends Queen Caroline, ii. 121. Canning, George: Accepts Governor-Generalship of India, iv. 35. Attitude towards Free Trade and Parliamentary reform, iv. 52, 62. Character, iv. 60, 65. Death, iv. 61. Duel with Lord Castlereagh, iv. 34. Foreign Secretary, iv. 38. Funeral in Westminster Abbey, iv. 62. Monroe doctrine and, iv. 44. Opponents in House of Lords, iv. 59. Oratory, iv. 33, 34, 64. Policy, iv. 34, 38, 41, 42, 43, 52, 55. Summary of, iv. 62. Prime Minister, iv. 55, 58. Resigns office, iv. 7, 31, 34. Sketch of career, iv. 31 seqq., 62. Supports Queen Caroline, iv. 5, 7. Sympathy with Greece, iv. 49, 52. Canning, Stratford, iv. 32. "Canningites," iv. 65, 72. Carew, Sir George, builds Chichester House, Dublin, i. 80. Caricature in political controversy, i. 52. Caricatures during Hastings's trial, iii. 288. Caricatures of Napoleon Bonaparte, iii. 333. Carnwath, Earl of, a prisoner, i. 137, 138. Caroline, Amelia Elizabeth, Princess of Brunswick, wife of George IV., iii. 244. Character, iv. 11. Demands to be crowned, iv. 8, 10. Divorce bill, iv. 6; abandoned, iv. 8. Illness and death, iv. 10, 11. Italian witnesses against, iv. 7. Returns to England on accession of George IV., iv. 5, 6. Caroline, Princess, ii. 38, 71, 79, 105. Attends on Queen, ii. 118, 124. Dislikes Walpole, ii. 126. Caroline, Wilhelmina Dorothea, wife of George II., i. 303. Action towards Porteous, ii. 62, 66. Acts as Regent, ii. 49. Alarmed for King's safety, ii. 71, 72. Character, i. 276; ii. 77. Death-bed, ii. 114 seqq. Family, ii. 38. Godmother to her granddaughter, ii. 108. Hates Prince of Wales, ii. 40, 50, 71, 76, 118. Lampoons on, ii. 102. Carteret, John, Earl of Granville: Attacks Ministry and Convention, ii. 165. Character, ii. 240, 241; iii. 38. Death, iii. 38. Denounces Convention, ii. 163. Enmity to Walpole, ii. 159, 160, 185. Foreign Policy, ii. 177, 240, 241. Hatred of Pulteney, ii. 192. Knowledge of German, i. 235. Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, i. 239; iii. 38. Motion on Petition against Convention, ii. 164. Moves motion for removal of Walpole, ii. 185. Proclamation against "Drapier's Letters," i. 247. Proposes address on Prince of Wales's allowance, ii. 89. Resigns, ii. 244. Secretary of State, ii. 191. Sketch of career, i. 233. Speech on Salt Tax, i. 314. Cartier, Jacques, ascends St. Lawrence, ii. 283. Castlereagh, Viscount (Marquis of Londonderry): Character, iv. 36. Death, iv. 36. Duel with Canning, iv. 34. Policy, iv. 34, 39, 41. Catalans and Peace of Utrecht, i. 94. "Catholic" and "Protestant" Ministers, iv. 54. Catholic Association formed, iv. 21. Catholic disabilities, iii. 307. Catholic emancipation question, iv. 52, 67 seqq. Catholic Relief Bill passed, iv. 78. Catholics, feeling against, i. 143. Catholics, penalty against, i. 216. Cato Street Conspiracy, iv. 2, 15. Censorship for stage and press discussed, ii. 96 seqq. Chadwick, Sir Edwin, on Poor Law Commission, iv. 225, 227. Chait Singh, Rajah of Benares, and Warren Hastings, ii. 269. Chambord, Count de, i. 40. Charing Cross in 1714, i. 68. Charles II. of Spain: Character, i. 61. Will of, ii. 27. Charles VI., Emperor, ii. 23. Death, ii. 182. Denounces Walpole, ii. 25. Pragmatic sanction, i. 228. Charles X. deposed, iv. 98. Charles XII. of Sweden: Action in Poland, ii. 23. Sketch of, i. 160, 162. Charles River, English fleet in, iii. 173, 182. Charleston in 1765, iii. 77. Charleston, tea landed at, iii. 161. Charlotte, Princess: Death, iii. 348. Marries Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, iii. 348. Charlotte Sophia of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, wife of George III., iii. 10. Character and personal appearance, iii. 12, 14. Death, iii. 348. Chartists demand vote by ballot, iv. 131. Chaworth, Mary, Mrs. Musters, iv. 170. Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of: Administration in Ireland, ii. 249. Advice to Prince of Wales, ii. 78. Attitude on Penal Laws, ii. 249. Character, ii. 6. Conduct to Johnson, iii. 44. Enmity to Walpole, ii. 159, 160, 185. Irish policy, ii. 7. Moves address on Accession of George II., ii. 7. On Bolingbroke, i. 117. Bute's nationality, iii. 30. Carteret, i. 235. Lord Cowper, i. 98. Recalled from Ireland, ii. 252. Retires from public life, ii. 274. Secretary of State, ii. 252. Sketch of, ii. 4 seqq. Speech on Convention, ii. 164. Speech on Playhouse Bill, ii. 100. Speech on Reform of Calendar, ii. 275. Viceroy of Ireland, ii. 246, 247. Chichester, Sir Arthur, i. 80. China trade and East India Company, iv. 231. Chippenham election petition, ii. 189, 190. Chiswick, Mr., sends Warren Hastings to Calcutta, iii. 247. Cholmondeley, Earl of, moves address on Convention, ii. 164. Chudleigh, Colonel, quarrels with Charles Aldworth, i. 58. Chunar fortress, iii. 270. Chunda Sahib: Besieges Trichinopoly, ii. 262. Captured and put to death, ii. 264. Invades Carnatic, ii. 261. Church of England, condition in 1738, ii. 129, 132. Churchill, Charles: Character, iii. 52. Death, iii. 69. Denunciation of Hogarth, iii. 63. Flight, iii. 59. "Rosciad," iii. 54. Satires, iv. 69. Wilkes and, iii. 55. Cider tax proposed, iii. 30. Claimants to throne (1714), i. 3 seqq. Clare Election (1828), iv. 70, 78. Clarence, Duke of (see William IV.). Clarendon, Lord, bears tidings of Queen Anne's death to George, i. 56. Clarke, Adam, death, iv. 284. Clarke, George, killed in riot, iii. 129. Clarkson, Thomas, West Indian Slavery and, iv. 195, 200. Clavering, General Francis, iii. 260, 261. Death, iii. 264. Clement, Pope, interview with Charles Stuart, ii. 202. Clerk, Lord Justice, i. 130. Clerkenwell Prison broken open, iii. 203. Cleveland, Duchess of, i. 23. Clifton, engagement at, ii. 223. Clinton at Boston, iii. 175. Clive, Richard, ii. 254. Clive, Robert, ii. 253. Advances against Suraj ud Dowlah, ii. 268. Captures Arcot, ii. 262. Character, ii. 255. Discerns Warren Hastings's talent, iii. 250, 252. Escapes from Madras, ii. 260. Forges Admiral Watson's signature, ii. 270. Governor of Fort St. David, ii. 265. Marries, ii. 264. Negotiates with Suraj ud Dowlah, ii. 269. Protests against Indian Administration, iii. 251. Returns to England, ii. 264, 273. Returns to India, iii. 253. Sketch of career, ii. 256 seqq. Clonmel, State trials at, iv. 179. Clubs in 1714, i. 73. Coalition Ministry (1783), iii. 225, 229 Fall of, iii. 235, 237. Cobbett, William: Death, iv. 282. Prosecution, iv. 154. Sketch of career, iv. 155. Cobden, R., doctrine of non-intervention, iv. 62. Cochrane, Thomas, Earl of Dundonald, assists Greeks, iv. 48. "Cocoa Tree" coffee-house, i. 76. Code Napoleon, iii. 332. Codrington, Sir Edward, commands at Navarino, iv. 50, 96. Coffee-houses, i. 75, 76. Coke's description of Raleigh, iii. 286. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, death, iv. 283. Colonial Administration System (1765), iii. 80. Committee of Secrecy, i. 104, 168. Compton, Sir Spencer, Lord Wilmington, ii. 107, 189. Character, i. 275. Death, ii. 240. Prime Minister, ii. 191. Speaker of House of Commons, i. 212. Concord, battle and retreat from, iii. 174. Congress of Verona and Vienna (see Verona and Vienna Congress). Congreve, William, sketch of, i. 299. Coningsby, Lord, i. 105. Impeaches Oxford, i. 108. Convention between England and Spain (1739), ii. 161, 168. Petition against, ii. 163. Conway, Circular letter to governors of colonies, iii. 105. Cooke, George, Tory candidate for Middlesex, iii. 117. Death, iii. 124. Coote, Major Eyre, ii. 272. Cope, Sir John, Scottish Commander-in-Chief, ii. 210. Defeated at Preston Pans, ii. 214, 215. Copley, Sir John (see Lyndhurst, Baron). Cork Hill, Dublin, i. 82. Cork in 1714, i. 83. Cornwallis, Charles, Marquis: Commands royal troops in Ireland, iii. 323. Surrenders at Yorktown, iii. 184. Corporation Act repealed, iv. 52, 67. Corstorphine, Dragoons at, ii. 212. Cottenham, Lord Chancellor, iv. 252. Court Street Conspiracy, iii. 160. Covent Garden in 1714, i. 68. Cowper, Spencer, i. 105. Cowper, William, Earl, Lord Chancellor: Condemns South Sea Bill, i. 190. Evidence against, i. 219. Opposes taxing Catholics, i. 216. Sketch of, i. 98. Coxe, Archdeacon, on: Division on Prince of Wales's allowance, ii. 88. Duke of Newcastle, ii. 33. Crabbe, George: Account of taking of Newgate, iii. 203. Death, iv. 282. Craftsman: Objects of, i. 290, 291. On Walpole's excise scheme, i. 318. Picture of Walpole, ii. 14. "Sedition and defamation displayed," i. 306. Series of pamphlets, i. 286. Started, i. 260. Craggs, Father and Son, i. 197. Crawford, Earl of, on Princess Anne's dowry, ii. 44. Croix, Petit de la, Persian Tales, iii. 254. Croker, John Wilson, ii. 107. Obstructs Reform Bill, iv. 163. Cromarty, Lord, trial, ii. 228. Cromwell, Elizabeth, death, ii. 3. Cruden, Alexander, dislike to Wilkes, iii. 135. Culloden, Battle of, ii. 224. Prisoners, ii. 232. Cumberland, Ernest Augustus, Duke of: Orange Association and, iv. 276, 278. Supports Irish Church, iv. 219. Unpopularity, iv. 102. Cumberland, William Augustus, Duke of (Butcher), ii. 38. Army at Stafford, ii. 217. Character, ii. 223. Commands English troops at Lauffeld, ii. 239. Conduct after Culloden, ii. 226. Invites Pitt to return to office, iii. 73, 93. Queen Caroline's advice to, ii. 118. Curran, John Philpot: Appeal on behalf of Wolfe Tone, iii. 326. Description of Ireland, iv. 27. Curran, Sarah, and Robert Emmet, iii. 329.

"Daily Advertiser," iii. 128. Daily Post, iii. 128. Dalton, Sir Charles, Gentleman Usher of Black Rod, i. 278. Dashwood, Francis, Lord Le Despencer, iii. 33, 65. Chancellor of Exchequer, iii. 48. Founds brotherhood of Medmenham, iii. 46. Davy, Sir Humphry, iv. 93. Dawson, James, supports Young Pretender, ii. 221, 229. Dawson Street, Dublin, i. 81. Daylesford Manor, Worcestershire, iii. 245, 247. D'Espremesnil, Duval, Governor of Madras, ii. 261. De Launay decapitated, iii. 294. De Quincey, iii. 44. Deccan, Nizam of, sends diamond to George III., iii. 281. Declaration of Rights, Philadelphia, iii. 173. Declaratory Act, iii. 104, 105. Defoe, Daniel, "Robinson Crusoe," ii. 1. Demerara, "Insurrection" of slaves, iv. 193. Denman, Thomas, Lord Chief Justice: Defends Queen Caroline, iv. 6, 7, 8. Denmark, King of: Character, i. 3. Treaty with George I., i. 161. Treaty with George II., ii. 176. Derby, Edward Geoffrey Smith Stanley, Earl of: Letter to Peel declining office, iv. 238. Political principles, iv. 217. Secretary to Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, iv. 127. Speech on Emancipation of Slaves, iv. 196. Speech on Irish State Church, iv. 217, 246. Derby, Reform riot at, iv. 170. Derwentwater, Earl of, i. 137. Executed, i. 142. Dettingen, battle of, ii. 182. Devonshire, Duke of, Premier of Coalition Ministry, ii. 298. D'Iberville on Whigs, i. 18. Dickens, Charles, iv. 286. Dinner hour, changes in, iii. 18. Dinwiddie, Governor of Virginia, ii. 285. Disarmament of clans, ii. 208, 232. Disarming Act (1716), result of, ii. 209. Disraeli (see Beaconsfield, Lord). Divorce Bill (1820), iv. 6. Abandoned, iv. 8. Don Carlos: Compact to protect (1733), ii. 26. Heir to Parma and Placentia, ii. 28. Dorset, Duke of, English ambassador to France, iii. 295. Drake, Governor, in Fulta Island, iii. 249. Draper, Sir William, replies to letters of Junius, iii. 129. Drapier's letters, i. 240, 242. Drummond, Lord James, supports Young Pretender, ii. 221. Dublin coffee-houses, i. 82. Dublin in 1714, i. 80. Dubois, Abbe, Sketch of, i. 155. Duddington, Lieutenant, Commands "Gaspee," iii. 152. Dumouriez and Duke of Wellington, i. 129. Duncan, Admiral (Lord Camperdown): Deserted by squadron, iii. 335. Victory of Camperdown, iii. 318, 336. Duncannon, Lord, Commissioner of Woods and Forests, iv. 127. Dundas, Henry, Viscount Melville: Catholic Relief Bill for Scotland, iii. 195. Fall of, iii. 338. Sketch of, iii. 232. Dundonald, Admiral, last of sea-kings, iii. 336. Dunleary (see Kingstown). Dunoyer, dancing-master and spy, ii. 106. Dupleix, Governor of S. India, ii. 261. Dreams of French empire in India, ii. 258. Founds Chandernagor, ii. 258. Indian policy, iii. 249. Recalled to France, ii. 262. Refuses to ratify Convention and pillages Madras, ii. 259. Duplicity universal, i. 30. Durham, Earl of, iv. 291. Efforts for Parliamentary reform, iv. 22. Lord Privy Seal, iv. 127. Manners, iv. 121. Sketch of, iv. 127. Suggestions on Reform Bill, iv. 129. Dutch (Batavian) expedition to Ireland, iii. 317. Dymoke, King's champion, iii. 13.