He had also the powerful sagacity which insures confidence; and no man doubted that, when Nelson commanded, he was leading to victory. He was, besides, a master of his profession—all his battles were the finest lessons of the tactician. He was never outmanœuvred; he was never surprised; he was never even thrown into any difficulty, for which he had not a ready resource. The "Nelson touch" became proverbial; and the variety, completeness, and brilliancy of his plans for action sometimes excited the most extraordinary emotion, even to tears, among his officers. Something of this kind is said to have occurred on the final summoning of his captains into the cabin of the Victory, and laying before them his plan for the battle of Trafalgar.
Nelson had also the power, perhaps the most characteristic of genius, of throwing his thought into those shapes of vividness which penetrate at once to the understanding. When, on steering down for the French line at Aboukir, some one observed to him that the enemy were anchored too near the shore, for the British to pass within them;—"Where a French ship can swing, a British ship can anchor," was his decisive reply; and he instantly rushed in, and placed the French line between two fires. Another of those noble maxims was—"The captain cannot be wrong, who lays his ship alongside the enemy." It contains the whole theory of British battle. His "I can see no signal," when he was told that Admiral Parker had made the signal for retiring at Copenhagen, would have been immortalised, with the act which accompanied it, among the most brilliant "sayings and doings" of ancient Greece. But his last and well-known signal at Trafalgar surpassed all the rest, as much as the triumph surpassed these triumphs. The addresses of Napoleon to his armies were unquestionably fine performances. They spoke to the Frenchman by his feelings, his recollections, his personal pride, and his national renown. But, with the animation of the trumpet, they had its sternness and harshness. They were invocations to the French idol, that was to be worshipped only with perpetual blood. But the signal at Trafalgar recalled the Englishman only to the feelings of home. The voice of war never spoke a language more capable of being combined with all the purposes of peace. "England expects every man to do his duty" was fitted to bring before the Englishman the memory of his country, his home, his wife and children, all who might feel concerned in his conduct and character in the proud transactions of that great day. We think it the noblest appeal to national feeling ever made by a warrior to warriors.
Yet, what was the especial secret of that supreme rank which Nelson held over all the naval leaders of his time? Others may have been as intelligent, and indefatigable, and, it is to be hoped, all were as brave. The secret was—that Nelson was never satisfied with what he had done, and that he neverhalf didanything. There was no "drawn battle," amonghisrecollections. This is the more remarkable, as, for fifty years before, nearly all our naval battles had been drawn battles. Rodney's defeat of de Grasse was the great exception. British admirals, who were afraid of nothing else, were afraid of losing their masts! and were content with knocking down those of the enemy. Great fleets met each other, passed in parallel lines, fired their broadsides as they passed, one to the north and the other to the south. They might as well have been firing salutes. The wind soon carriedthem out of sight of each other; the admirals sat down in their cabins to write their respective histories of "the battle," which would have been only too much honoured by being called abrush; and the fleets went by mutual consent into harbour. In this sort ofWar! the French were as clever as we; and the Suffreins, di Guichens, d'Estaings, and Villeneuves, made their fame on this system of cannonading a mile off, and getting out of the way as quickly as possible.
Rodney first spoiled the etiquette of those affairs, by driving straight forward through the enemy's line, changing the easy parallel for the fighting perpendicular, and compelling at least one-half of the Frenchmen to come to close quarters. This was the method of Jervis, when his captain told him, that the fleet on which he was bearing down in the morning twilight were at least twenty. "If they were fifty," said the brave sailor, "I'lldrive through them." He drove through them accordingly, and beat the Spaniards, with half their numbers.
Wellington observed, in the Peninsula, that the generals commanding under him were afraid of nothing but responsibility. This fear arose from the ignorant insolence, with which the loungers of the legislature were in the habit of fighting campaigns over their coffee-cups. It is to be hoped that the fashion has since changed. But Wellington demurred to the authority, and Nelson seemed not to have thought of its existence. They both supplied the sufficient answer to thehomecampaigners, by beating the enemy wherever they met him.
We find a striking evidence of the hatred of "doing well enough" in one of Nelson's letters to his wife, on Hotham's battle with the French, under Martin, off Genoa, in 1795. Hotham was one of the old school, and though, in two awkward engagements, he had taken two of the French line, while a third had been burned, Nelson was indignant that the whole French fleet had not been captured. He had urged the admiral to leave the disabled ships in charge of the frigates, and chase the French.
"But," says the letter, "he, much cooler than myself, said, 'we must be contented—we had done very well.'" Nelson's evidently disgusted remark on this species of contentment is—"Had we taken ten sail, and suffered the eleventh to escape, when we could have got at her, I couldneverhave called itwell done." In another part he says, "I wish to be an admiral, and in command of the British fleet. I should very soon do much, or be ruined. My disposition cannot bear tame and slow measures.Sure I am, that, had I commanded our fleet on the 14th, the whole French fleet would have graced our triumph, or I should have been in a confounded scrape." This was the language which, like the impulse of a powerful instinct, predicted the days of Aboukir, Copenhagen, and Trafalgar.
But the drag-chain on the progress of British intrepidity was at length to be taken of. Hotham was succeeded by Jervis. This eminent officer instantly reformed the whole condition of the Mediterranean fleet. He had evidently adopted the same conception of naval merit, which Nelson had so long kept before his eye. In selecting him for the command of the squadron sent to the Nile, Jervis wrote to the admiralty: "Nelson is an officer, who, whatever you bid him do, is sureto do more." And, in this spirit, Nelson was not content with running to Alexandria, and returning to say, that he found no one there; his resolve was, to find the French wherever they were, and fight them wherever they were found.
One word still for gallant old Jervis, the man who first confirmed the discipline of the navy. His firmness was the secret. When the Irish conspirators on board the Channel fleet had spread the spirit of mutiny in 1797, Jervis was warned from the admiralty that his fleet was in danger. It was suggested to him by some of his officers, to stop the letters from home: "No," said he, "the precaution is useless: I will answer for it that the commander-in-chief ofthisfleet will know how to maintain his authority, if it is threatened."
But he left nothing to chance: he prohibited communication between the ships—he sent for the captains of marines, and ordered that their men should mess and sleep separately fromthe sailors; that the sailors should not be suffered to converse in Irish, and that the officers should be on the alert. He hanged the detected mutineers without delay. Forgiveness was out of the question. To Captain Pellew, who had interceded in favour of a mutineer, whose conduct had previously been irreproachable, he replied, "We have, we think, punished only the worthless. It is time, that our men should learn, that no past conduct can redeem an act of treason."
Nothing could be more rational, or even more necessary, than this determination; for treason is the most comprehensive of all crimes. The mere robber, or murderer, commits his single act of guilt—but the guilt of the traitor may cost the lives of thousands. The traitor is never to be regarded as a solitary criminal, and this maxim was never more necessary than at this moment. If laws are to be turned into sentimentality, and conspiracy is to be dealt with like the tricks of children, there must be an end of all security tohonest men. If the villains who have been lately inflaming the Irish mind into madness, had been hanged by the sentence of the drum-head, within half an hour after their seizure, there would have been no necessity, at this moment, for keeping up a garrison of 45,000 men in Ireland. Martial law is theonlylaw fit for the ruffians of the torch and pike, and the gibbet is the only moral which they will ever comprehend. To suppose that the Irish conspirators had even entertained the expectation of forming an established government, or of being suffered by England to raise a republic—or that any man out of Bedlam could have dreamt of the possibility of waging a successful war against England, while her fleets might starve Ireland in a week, and nothing but English alms even now enables her to live—would be absolute folly. The true object of Irish conspiracy was, and is, and will always be, robbery and revenge; a short burst of rapine and blood, followed by again running away, again begging pardon, again living on alms, and again laughing at the weak indulgence and insulted clemency of England.
Jervis, instead of listening to the cant of men of blood whining about their wives and children, hanged them; and, by thus ridding his fleet of a nest of villains, saved it from destruction, and perhaps, with it, saved not merely the lives of thousands of brave men, whom their impunity might have debauched into conspiracy, but saved the honour of our naval name, and restored the enfeebled hopes of his country.
We here quote with pleasure from the Frenchman:—"Jervis, in the face of those symptoms, which threatened the British navy with disaffection, sternly devoted himself to the establishment ofimplicit obedience. The efficient organisation of the fleet was the labour of his life, and occupied his latest thoughts. Never rash himself, he nevertheless opened the way for the most daring deeds. Nelson rushed into the arena, and, with the rapidity of lightning, showed the latent results of the change. The governing principle witnessed, rather than decreed the change. Its source, in fact, wasnotin the Admiralty, but in those floating camps, wherein the triumphs which astonish us are gradually elaborated. Official power is but the inertcruciblewhich transmutes the subsidies of Parliament into ships. But a quickening principle is wanting to those immense fleets, and the admirals supply it. Jervis and Nelson rapidly transmitted the creative spark, and bequeathed a certain sort of sovereignty under the distrustful eye of the English Admiralty—a kind of dynasty arose—'the mayors of the palace took the sceptre from the do-nothing kings.'"
All this is comparatively just. But the Frenchman peeps out under the panegyrist, after all. Can it be conceived that any other human being, at the end of nearly half a century, would quote, with the slightest degree of approval, the report of Decrès, the French minister of the marine to Napoleon, in 1805, after all Nelson's victories, and just preceding the most illustrious of them all—Trafalgar?
"The boasting of Nelson," writes Decrès, "equals his silliness, (ineptie)—I use the proper word. But he has one eminent quality—namely, that of aiming among his captainsonlyat a character for bravery and good fortune. This makes himaccessibleto counsel, and consequently, in difficult circumstances, if he commands nominally,others direct really."
We have no doubt that, after scribbling this supremeineptie, Decrès considered himself to have settled the whole question, and to have convicted Nelson of being simply a bold blockhead—Nelson, the man of the hundred fights—the prince of tacticians—the admiral who had never been beaten, and from whom, at the battle of Aboukir, Decrès himself was rejoiced to make his escape, after having seen the ruin of the French fleet.
We find a good deal of the same sort of petulant perversion, in the narrative of Nelson's conduct at Naples. M. Gravière suddenly becomes moral, and tells us the ten-times-told story of Lady Hamilton. But what is all this to the naval war? Englishmen are not bound to defend the character of Lady Hamilton; and if Nelson was actually culpable in their intercourse, (a matter which actually has never yet beenproved,) Englishmen, who have some morality,—not Frenchmen, who make a point of laughing at all morality—may upbraid his conduct. But a French stoic is simply ridiculous. There are perhaps not fifty men in all France, who would not have done, and are not doing every day, where they have the opportunity, all that this moralist charges Nelson with having done. Even if he were criminal in his private life, so much the worse for himself in that solemn account which all must render; but he was not the less the conqueror of Copenhagen, Aboukir, and Trafalgar.
The hanging of Caraccioli also figures among the charges. We regret that this traitor was not left to die of remorse, or by the course of nature, at the age of eighty. We regret, too, that he could allege even the shadow of a capitulation for his security. We equally regret the execution of Ney under a similar shadow. But Caraccioli had been anadmiralin the Neapolitan service, had joined the rebellion by which rapine and slaughter overspread the country, and had driven the King into exile. No man more deserved to be hanged, by the order of his insulted, and apparently ruined King;—hewashanged, andallrebels ought thus to suffer. They are made for the scaffold.
The men who plunge a kingdom in blood, whose success must be purchased by havoc, and whose triumph makes the misery of thousands or millions, ought to make the small expiation which can be made by their public punishment; and no countrycanbe safe in which it is not the custom to hang traitors. Still, those acts, even if they were of an order which might shock the sensibility of a Frenchman to breach of treaty, or the sight of blood, have no reference to the talents and the triumphs of Nelson.
But these volumes suddenly deviate from the history of the great admiral, into remarks on the great living soldier of England. There, too, we must follow them; and our task is no reluctant one; for it enables us at once to enlighten intelligent inquiry, and to offer our tribute to pre-eminent fame. But, in this instance, we argue with our accomplished neighbours on different principles. The Frenchman loves glory—the Englishman its fruits. The Frenchman loves the excitement of war; the Englishman hates it, as mischievous and miserable, and to be palliated only by the stern necessity of self-defence. He honours intrepidity, but it only when displayed in a cause worthy of human feeling. No man more exults in the talent of the field; but it is only when it brings back security to the fireside. The noblest trophy of Wellington, in the eyes of his country, is the thirty years of peace won by his sword!
It has become the fashion of the French to speak of this illustrious personage with something of a sneer at what they pronounce his "want of enterprise." Every thing that he has done is by "phlegm!" Phlegm must be a most valuable quality, in that case, for it enabled him to defeat every officer to whom he had been opposed; and there was scarcely any man of repute in the French army to whom he had not been opposed. It is in no spirit of rational taunt, or of that hostility which, we will hope, has died away between England and France, that we give the list of theFrench marshals whom Wellington has fought, andalwaysbeaten, and several of themseveral times:—Junot at Vimeira, Soult at Oporto and the Pyrenees, Victor and Sebastiani at Talavera, Massena at Busaco, Marmont at Salamanca, Jourdan at Vitoria, and a whole group of the chief generals of France, with Ney, Soult, and Napoleon himself, at their head, at Waterloo.
But have the British military authors ever doubted the talent, or disparaged the gallantry, of those distinguished soldiers? Certainly not; they have given them every acknowledgment which ability and bravery could demand. Let the French nation read the eloquent pages of Alison, and see the character given by the historian to the leaders in the Italian, German, and Spanish campaigns. Let them read the spirited pages of Napier, and see them decorated almost with the colours of romance. Does either of these popular and powerful authors stigmatise the French generals with "ineptie," or characterise their victories, as the mere results of inability either to attack or to run away? Let them be the example of the future French military writers, and let those writers learn that there is a European tribunal, as well as a Parisian one.
But the French altogether mistake the question. Men like Wellington are not the growth of any military school, of any especial army, or of any peculiar nation. Without offering this great soldier any personal panegyric, he was a militarygenius. Since Marlborough, England had produced no such commander of an army, and may not produce another such for a century to come. Nelson was similarly agenius: he sprang at once to the first rank of sea-officers; and England, fertile as she is in first-rate sailors and brave men, may never produce another Nelson. Napoleon was agenius, and almost as palpably superior to the crowd of brave and intelligent generals round him, as if he had been of another species. The conduct of men of this exclusive capacity is no more a rule for other men, than their successes are to be depreciated to the common scale of military good fortune. The campaigns of Napoleon in Italy; the sea campaign in which Nelson pursued the French fleet half-round the globe, to extinguish it at Trafalgar; the seven years' continued campaign of Wellington in the Peninsula, finished by the most splendid march in European history, from the frontier of Portugal into the heart of France, have had no example in the past, and can be no example to the future. The principle, the power, and the success, lie equally beyond the limits of ordinary calculation. The evident fact is, that there is an occasional rank of faculty, which puts all calculation out of sight, which is found to produce effects of a new magnitude, and which overpasses all difficulties, by the use of an intellectual element, but occasionally, and but for especial purpose, communicated to man.
We have no doubt whatever of the truth of this solution, and are consequently convinced, that it would have been much wiser in M. Gravière to have attempted to describe the career of Wellington, than to pronounce on the principles of his science; and, above all, than to account for his victories by the very last means of victory—the mere brutishness of standing still, the simple immobility of passive force, the mere unintelligent and insensate working of a machine.
"What a contrast," exclaims the Frenchman, "between these passionate traits (of Nelson) and theimpassive bearingof Wellington, thatcool and methodicalleader, whomaintainedhis ground in the Peninsula by thesheer force of order and prudence! Do they belong to the same nation? Did they command the same men? The admiral, full of enthusiasm, and devoured by the love of distinction, and the general, sophlegmaticandimmovable, who, intrenched behind his lines at Torres Vedras, or re-forming, withoutemotion, hisbrokensquares on the field of Waterloo—(where not a single British square was broken)—seems rather to aim atwearying out his enemythan atconquering him, and triumphsonlyby his patient and unconquerable firmness."
Must it not be asked, Why did the French suffer him to exhibit thisfirmness? why did they not beat him at once? Do generals win battlesmerely by waiting, until their antagonists are tired of crushing them?
But the Frenchman still has a resource—he accounts for it all by the design of a higher power! "It wasthus, nevertheless, that the designs of Providence were to be accomplished. It gave to the general, destined to meetincontestably superiortroops(!!), whosefirstefforts wereirresistible, thatsystematicandtemporisingcharacter, which was towear outthe ardour of our soldiers." Having thus accounted for the French perpetuity of defeat on land, by a man of stupidity and stone; he accounts, with equal satisfaction, for the perpetuity of defeat at sea by a man of activity and animation. "To the admiral who was to meet squadrons fresh out of harbour, and easily disconcerted by a sudden attack, Providence gave that fiery courage and audacity which alone could bring about those great disasters, that wouldnothave been inflicted under the rules of the old school of tactics."
The Frenchman, in his eagerness to disparage Wellington as dull, and Nelson as rash, forgets that he forces his reader to the conclusion, that tardiness and precipitancy are equally fit to beat the French. Or if they areincontestablysuperior troops, and their first onset isirresistible, how is it that they are beaten at the last, or are ever beaten at all? We also find the curious and rather unexpected acknowledgment, that Providence was always against them, and that it had determined on theirdefeat, whether their enemy were swift or slow.
We are afraid that we have been premature in giving M. de la Gravière credit for getting rid of his prejudices. But we shall set him a better example. We shall not deny that the French make excellent soldiers; that they have even a sort of national fitness for soldiership; that they form active, bold, and highly effective troops: though, for them, as sailors, we certainly cannot say as much. Henry IV. remarked "that he never knew a French king lucky at sea;" and Henry spoke the truth. And the wisest thing which France could do, would be to give up all attempts to be a "naval power,"—which she never has been, and never can be—and expend her money and her time on the comforts, the condition, and the spirit of her people, both citizens and soldiery.
But, we must assist the French judgment on the character of Wellington: and a slight detail will prove him to be the mostenterprisingleader of troops in the history of modern Europe. Let us first settle the meaning of the word enterprise. It is not a foolish restlessness, a giddy fondness for the flourish of Bulletins, or a precipitate habit of rushing into projects unconsidered and ineffective. It is activity, guided by intelligence; a daring effort to attain a probable success. The French generals, in the commencement of the revolutionary war, dashed at every thing, and yet were not entitled to the praise of enterprise. They fought under the consciousness that, unless they attracted Parisian notice by their battles, they must pay the penalty with their heads. Thus nearly all the principal generals of the early Republic were guillotined. Thelevée-en-massegave them immense multitudes, whomustfight, or starve. The Republic hadfourteenarmies at once in the field, whomustbe fed; commissioners from Paris were in the camps; and the general who declined to fight on all occasions, was stripped of his epaulets, and sent to the "Place de Grève."
But enterprise, in the style which distinguishes a master of strategy, is among the rarest military qualities. Marlborough was almost the only officer, in the last century, remarkable for enterprise, and its chief example was his march from Flanders to attack the French and Bavarian army, which he routed in the magnificent triumph of Blenheim. Wolfe's attack on the heights of Abraham was a capital instance of enterprise, for it showed at once sagacity and daring, and both in pursuit of a probable object,—the surprise of the enemy, and the power of bringing him to an engagement on fair ground.
But enterprise has been thechiefcharacteristic of the whole military career of Wellington.
His first great Indian victory, Assaye, (23d September 1802,) was an "enterprise," by which, in defiance of all difficulties, and with but5000 men, he beat the army of Scindiah and the rajah of Berar, consisting of 50,000, of which 30,000 were cavalry. There, instead ofphlegm, he was accused of rashness; but his answer was, thenecessityof stopping the enemy's march; and, more emphatic still, a most consummate victory.
On his landing in Portugal, at the head of only 10,000 men, (August 5, 1808,) this man of phlegm instantly broke up the whole plan of Junot. He first dashed at Laborde, commanding a division of 6000 men, as the advanced guard of the main army; drove him from the mountain position of Roliça; marched instantly to meet Junot, whom he defeated at Vimeira; and, on the 15th of September, the British troops were in possession of Lisbon. The French soon embarked by a convention, and Portugal was free! This was the work of asix-weeks'campaign by this passive soldier.
The convention of Cintra excited displeasure in England, as the capture of the whole army had been expected, from the high public opinion of the British commander; and the opinion would not have been disappointed, if he had continued in the command. The testimony of Colonel Torrens, (afterwards military secretary to the Duke of York,) on the court of inquiry, was, "That, on the defeat of the French at Vimeira, Sir Arthur rode up to Sir Harry Burrard and said—'Now, Sir Harry, is your time to advance upon the enemy; they are completely broken, and we may be in Lisbon inthree days.' Sir Harry's answer was, 'that he thought a great deal had been done.'" The army was halted, and the French, who felt that their cause was hopeless, sent to propose the convention.
On the 22d of April 1809, Sir Arthur again landed in Portugal, to take the command of the army, consisting of but 16,000 men, with 24 guns. His plan was to drive Soult out of Oporto, fight the French, wherever he found them; and then return and attack Victor on the Tagus. Such was the project of the man of phlegm! He made a forced march of 80 miles, in three days and a-half, from Coimbra, crossed the Douro, drove Soult out of Oporto, ate the dinner which had been prepared for the Frenchman, and hunted him into the mountains, with the loss of all his guns and baggage. The French army was ruined for the campaign. This was the work ofthree weeksfrom his landing at Lisbon!
Sir Arthur's next enterprise was an advance into Spain. The kingdom was held by a French force of upwards of 200,000 men, with all the principal fortresses in their possession, the Pyrenees open, and the whole force of France ready to repair their losses. The Spanish armies were ill commanded, ill provided, and in all pitched battles regularly beaten. The French force sent to stop him at Talavera, on his road to Madrid, amounted to 60,000 men, under Jourdan, Victor, and Sebastiani, with King Joseph at the head of the whole. The battle began on the 27th of July, and, after a desperate struggle of two days, with a force of nearly three times the number of the British, ended by the rapid retreat of the French in the night, with the loss of 20 pieces of cannon and four standards. The Spanish army under Cuesta did good service on this occasion, but it was chiefly by guarding a flank. Their position was strong, and they were but little assailed. The British lost a fourth of their number in killed and wounded; the French, 10,000 men.
The purpose of these pages is, not to give a history of the illustrious Duke's exploits, but to show the utter absurdity of the French notion, that he gained all his battles by standing still, until the enemy grew tired of beating him. There is scarcely an instance in all his battles, in which he did notseekthe enemy, and there isno instancein which he did not beat them! This is a sufficient answer to the French theory.
The ruin of the Spanish armies, and the immense numerical superiority of the French, commanded by Massena, compelled the British general, in 1810, to limit himself to the defence of Portugal. Massena followed him at the head of nearly 90,000 men. The British general might have marched, without a contest, to the lines of Torres Vedras; but the man ofphlegmresolved to fight by the way. He fought at Busaco, (September 27.)
Massena, proverbially the most dashing of the French generals—the "Enfant gâté de la Victoire," as Napoleon styled him—could not believe that any officer would be so daring as to stop him on his road. On being told that the English would fight, and on reconnoitring their position, he said, "I cannot persuade myself that Lord Wellington will risk the loss of his reputation; but, if he does,I shall have him."
Napoleon, at Waterloo, was yet to utter the same words, and make the same mistake. "Ah! je les tiens, ces Anglais."—"To-morrow," said Massena, "we shall reconquer Portugal, and in a few days I shall drive the leopards into the sea." The day of Busaco finished this boast, with a loss to the French of 2000 killed, 6000 wounded, and with the loss, which Massena, perhaps, felt still more, of his military reputation for life.
But the lines of Torres Vedras must not be forgotten in any memorial, however brief, to the genius of Wellington. The great problem of all strategists, at that period, was "the defence of Portugal against an overwhelming force." Dumouriez and Moore had looked only to the frontier, and justly declared that, from its extent and broken nature, it was indefensible. Wellington, with a finercoup d'œil, looked to the half-circle of rising grounds stretching from the Tagus to the sea, and enclosing the capital. He fortified them with such admirable secrecy, that the French had scarcely heard of their existence; and with such incomparable skill, that, when they saw them at last, they utterly despaired of an attack. They were on the largest scale of fortified lines ever constructed, their external circle occupying forty miles. The defences consisted of 10 separate fortifications, mounting 444 guns, and manned by 28,000 men. They formed two lines, the exterior mounting 100 guns, the interior (about eight miles within) mounting 200; the remaining guns being mounted on redoubts along the shore and the river. The whole force, British and Portuguese, within the lines, and keeping up the communication to Lisbon, was nearly 80,000 men.
The contrast without and within the lines was of the most striking kind, and formed a new triumph for the feelings of the British general. Without, all was famine, ferocity, and despair; within, all was plenty, animation, and certainty of triumph. Massena, after gazing on those noble works for a mouth, broke up his hopeless bivouac; retired to Santarem; saved the remnant of his unfortunate army only by a retreat in the night; was hunted to the frontier; fought a useless and despairing battle at Fuentes d'Onore; was beaten, returned into France, and resigned his command. He was thenceforth forgotten, probably died of the loss of his laurels, and is now known only by his tomb in the Cemetery of Paris.
In October of the year 1811, though the British army had gone into winter quarters, the man of "passivecourage" gave the enemy another example of "enterprise." The fifth French corps, under Gerard, had begun to ravage Estremadura. General Hill, by the order of Lord Wellington, moved against the Frenchman; took him by surprise at Aroyo de Molinos; fought him through the town, and out of the town; captured his staff, his whole baggage, commissariat, guns, 30 captains, and 1000 men. He drove the rest up the mountains, and, in short, destroyed the whole division—Gerard escaping with but 300 men.
The French field-marshal here amply acknowledged the effect of enterprise. In his despatch to Berthier from Seville, Soult says,—"This event is so disgraceful, that I know not how to qualify it. General Gerard had choice troops with him, yet shamefully suffered himself to besurprised, from excessive presumption and confidence. The officers and soldiers were in the houses, as in the midst of peace. I shall order an inquiry, and a severe example."
The next year began with the two most splendid sieges of the war. A siege is proverbially the most difficult of all military operations, requiring the most costly preparations, and taking up the longest time. Its difficulty is obviously enhanced by the nearness of a hostile force. Wellington was watched by two French armies, commanded by Soult andMarmont, either of them of nearly equal force with his own, and, combined, numbering 80,000 men. Ciudad Rodrigo was one of the strongest fortresses of the Peninsula; Marmont was on his march to succour it. Wellington rushed on it, and captured it by storm, (January 19.) Marmont, finding that he was too late, retired. Badajoz was the next prize, a still larger and more important fortress. Soult was moving from the south to its succour. He had left Seville on the 1st of April; Wellington rushed on it, as he had done on Ciudad Rodrigo, and took it by one of the most daring assaults on record, (April 7.)
This was again the man who conquered "by standing still." The letter of General Lery, chief engineer of the army of the south, gives the most unequivocal character of this latter enterprise. "The conquest of Badajoz cost me eight engineers. Never was there a place in a better state, or better provided with the requisite number of troops. I see in that event a markedfatality. Wellington, with his Anglo-Portuguese army, has taken the place, as it were, in the presence of two armies. In short, I think the capture of Badajoz avery extraordinaryevent. I should be much at a loss to account for it in any manner consistent with probability." The language of this chief engineer seems, as if he would have brought all concerned to a court-martial.
The conqueror, after those magnificent exploits, which realised to M. Lery's eye something supernatural—the work of a destiny determined on smiting France—might have indulged hispassiveness, without much fear even of French blame. He had baffled the two favourite marshals of France—he had torn the two chief fortresses of Spain out of French hands. There was now no enemy in the field. Soult had halted, chagrined at the fall of Badajoz. Marmont had retired to the Tormes. Wellington determined to continue their sense of defeat, by cutting off the possibility of their future communication. The bridge of Almarez was the only passage over the Tagus in that quarter. It was strongly fortified and garrisoned. On this expedition he despatched his second in command, General Hill, an officer who never failed, and whose name is still held in merited honour by the British army. Thetête-du-pont, a strong fortification, was taken by escalade. The garrison were made prisoners; the forts were destroyed, (May 19.) The action was sharp, and cost, in killed and wounded, nearly 200 officers and men.
Wellington now advanced to Salamanca, the headquarters of Marmont during the winter; and pursued him out of it, to the Arapeiles, on the 22d of July. In this battle Marmont was outmanœuvred and totally defeated, with the loss of 6000 killed and wounded, 7000 prisoners, 20 guns, and several eagles and ammunition waggons. The British army now moved on Madrid. King Joseph fled; Madrid surrendered, with 181 guns; and the government of Ferdinand and the Cortes was restored.
But a still more striking enterprise was to come, the march to Vitoria,—the brilliant commencement of the campaign of 1813. Wellington had now determined to drive the French out of Spain. They still had a force of 160,000 men, including the army of Suchet, 35,000. Joseph, with Jourdan, fearing to be outflanked, moved with 70,000 men towards the Pyrenees. On the 16th of May, Wellington crossed the Douro. On the 21st of June he fought the battle of Vittoria, with the loss of 6000 to the enemy, 150 guns, all their baggage, and the plunder of Madrid. For this great victory Wellington was appointed field-marshal.
The march itself was a memorable instance of "enterprise." It was a movement of four hundred miles, through one of the most difficult portions of the Peninsula, by a route never before attempted by an army, and which, probably, no other general in Europe would have attempted. Its conduct was so admirable, that it was scarcely suspected by the French; its movement was so rapid, that it outstripped them; and its direction was so skilful, that King Joseph and his marshal had scarcely encamped, and thought themselves out of the reach of attack, when they saw the English columns overtopping the heights surrounding the valley of the Zadora.
In his last Spanish battle, the victory of the Pyrenees, where he had to defend a frontier of sixty miles, he drove Soult over the mountains, and was the first of all the generals engaged in Continental hostilities, to plant his columns on French ground!
Those are the facts ofseven yearsof the most perilous war, against the most powerful monarch whom Europe had seen for a thousand years. The French army in the Peninsula had varied from 150,000 to 300,000 men. It was constantly recruited from a national force of 600,000. It was under the authority of a great military sovereign, wholly irresponsible, and commanding the entire resources of the most populous, warlike, and powerful of Continental states. The British general, on the other hand, was exposed to every difficulty which could embarrass the highest military skill. He had to guide the councils of the two most self-willed nations in existence. He had to train native armies, which scoffed at English discipline; he had the scarcely less difficult task of contending with the fluctuating opinions of public men in England: yet he never shrank; he never was shaken in council, and he never was defeated in the field.
But by what means were all this succession of unbroken victories achieved? Who can listen to the French babbling, which tells us that it was done, simply bystanding still to be beaten? The very nature of the war, with an army composed of the raw battalions of England, which had not seen a shot fired since the invasion of Holland in 1794, a period of fourteen years; his political anxieties from his position with the suspicious governments of Spain and Portugal, and not less with his own fluctuating Legislature; his encounters with a force quadruple his own, commanded by the most practised generals in Europe, and under the supreme direction of the conqueror of the Continent—A condition of things so new, perplexing, and exposed to perpetual hazard, in itself impliesenterprise, a character of sleepless activity, unwearied resource, and unhesitating intrepidity—all the very reverse of passiveness.
That this illustrious warrior did not plunge into conflict on every fruitless caprice; that he was not for ever fighting for the Gazette; that he valued the lives of his brave men; that he never made a march without a rational object, nor ever fought a battle without a rational calculation of victory—all this is only to say, that he fulfilled the duties of a great officer, and deserved the character of a great man. But, that he made more difficult campaigns, fought against a greater inequality of force, held out against more defective means, and accomplished more decisive successes, than any general on record, is mere matter of history.
His last and greatest triumph was Waterloo,—a victory less over an army than an empire,—a triumph gained less for England than for Europe,—the glorious termination of a contest for the welfare of mankind. Waterloo was a defensive battle. But it was not the rule, but the exception. The object of the enemy was Brussels: "To-night you shall sleep in Brussels," was the address of the French Emperor to his troops. Wellington's was but the wing of a great army spread over leagues to meet the march of the French to Brussels. His force consisted of scarcely more than 40,000 British and Hanoverians, chiefly new troops; the rest were foreigners, who could scarcely be relied on. The enemy in front of him were 80,000 veterans, commanded by Napoleon in person. The left wing of the Allied force—the Prussians—could not arrive till seven in the evening; after the battle had continued eight hours. The British general, under those circumstances, could not move; but he was not to be beaten. If he had 80,000 British troops, he would have finished the battle in an hour. On seeing the Prussian troops in a position to follow up success, he gave the order to advance; and in a single charge swept the French army, the Emperor, and his fortunes, from the field! Thus closed the 18th of June 1815.
Withinthree days, this "man of passiveness" crossed the French frontier, (June 21,) took every town in his way, (and all the French towns on that route are fortified,) and, on the 30th, the English and Prussians invested Paris. On the 3d of July, the capitulation of Paris, garrisoned by50,000 regular troops and the national guard, was signed at St Cloud, and the French army was marched to the Loire, where it was disbanded.
We have now given the answer which common sense gives, and which history will always give, to the childishness of accounting for Wellington's unrivalled successes by his "doing nothing" until the "invincible" French chose to grow weary of being invincible. The historic fact is, that their generals met a superior general; that their troops met Englishmen, commanded by an officer worthy of such a command; and that "enterprise" of the most daring, sagacious, and brilliant order, was the especial, peculiar, and unequalled character of Wellington.
The volumes of M. Gravière are interesting; but he must unlearn his prejudices; or, if that be nationally impossible, he must palliate them into something like probability. He must do this even in consideration of the national passion for "glory." To be beaten by eminent military qualities softens the shame of defeat; but to be beaten by merepassiveness,—to be driven from a scene of possession byphlegm, and to be stript of laurels by the hand of indolence and inaptitude,—must be the last aggravation of military misfortune.
Yet, this stain they must owe to the pen of men who subscribe to the doctrine, that the great soldier of England conquered simply by hisincapacity for action!
We think differently of the French people and of the French soldiery. The people are intelligent and ingenious; the soldiery are faithful and brave. England hasnoprejudices against either. Willing to do justice to the merits of all, she rejoices in making allies of nations, whom she has never feared asenemies. She wants no conquest, she desires no victories.Herglory is the peace of mankind.
But, she will not suffer the tombs of her great men to be defaced, nor their names to be taken down from the temple consecrated to the renown of their country.
"Danube, Danube! wherefore comest thouRed and raging to my caves?Wherefore leap thy swollen watersMadly through the broken waves?Wherefore is thy tide so sulliedWith a hue unknown to me?Wherefore dost thou bring pollutionTo the old and sacred sea?""Ha! rejoice, old Father Euxine!I am brimming full and red;Noble tidings do I carryFrom my distant channel bed.I have been a Christian riverDull and slow this many a year,Rolling down my torpid watersThrough a silence morne and drear;Have not felt the tread of armiesTrampling on my reedy shore;Have not heard the trumpet calling,Or the cannon's gladsome roar;Only listened to the laughterFrom the village and the town,And the church-bells, ever jangling,As the weary day went down.And I lay and sorely ponderedOn the days long since gone by,When my old primæval forestsEchoed to the war-man's cry;When the race of Thor and OdinHeld their battles by my side,And the blood of man was minglingWarmly with my chilly tide.Father Euxine! thou rememb'restHow I brought thee tribute then—Swollen corpses, gash'd and gory,Heads and limbs of slaughter'd men!Father Euxine! be thou joyful!I am running red once more—Not with heathen blood, as early,But with gallant Christian gore!For the old times are returning,And the Cross is broken down,And I hear the tocsin soundingIn the village and the town;And the glare of burning citiesSoon shall light me on my way—Ha! my heart is big and jocundWith the draught I drank to-day.Ha! I feel my strength awaken'd,And my brethren shout to me;Each is leaping red and joyousTo his own awaiting sea.Rhine and Elbe are plunging downwardThrough their wild anarchic land,Every where are Christians fallingBy their brother Christians' hand!Yea, the old times are returning,And the olden gods are here!Take my tribute, Father Euxine,To thy waters dark and drear.Therefore come I with my torrents,Shaking castle, crag, and town;Therefore, with the shout of thunder,Sweep I herd and herdsman down;Therefore leap I to thy bosom,With a loud, triumphal roar—Greet me, greet me, Father Euxine—I am Christian stream no more!"
"Danube, Danube! wherefore comest thouRed and raging to my caves?Wherefore leap thy swollen watersMadly through the broken waves?Wherefore is thy tide so sulliedWith a hue unknown to me?Wherefore dost thou bring pollutionTo the old and sacred sea?"
"Ha! rejoice, old Father Euxine!I am brimming full and red;Noble tidings do I carryFrom my distant channel bed.I have been a Christian riverDull and slow this many a year,Rolling down my torpid watersThrough a silence morne and drear;Have not felt the tread of armiesTrampling on my reedy shore;Have not heard the trumpet calling,Or the cannon's gladsome roar;Only listened to the laughterFrom the village and the town,And the church-bells, ever jangling,As the weary day went down.And I lay and sorely ponderedOn the days long since gone by,When my old primæval forestsEchoed to the war-man's cry;When the race of Thor and OdinHeld their battles by my side,And the blood of man was minglingWarmly with my chilly tide.Father Euxine! thou rememb'restHow I brought thee tribute then—Swollen corpses, gash'd and gory,Heads and limbs of slaughter'd men!Father Euxine! be thou joyful!I am running red once more—Not with heathen blood, as early,But with gallant Christian gore!For the old times are returning,And the Cross is broken down,And I hear the tocsin soundingIn the village and the town;And the glare of burning citiesSoon shall light me on my way—Ha! my heart is big and jocundWith the draught I drank to-day.Ha! I feel my strength awaken'd,And my brethren shout to me;Each is leaping red and joyousTo his own awaiting sea.Rhine and Elbe are plunging downwardThrough their wild anarchic land,Every where are Christians fallingBy their brother Christians' hand!Yea, the old times are returning,And the olden gods are here!Take my tribute, Father Euxine,To thy waters dark and drear.Therefore come I with my torrents,Shaking castle, crag, and town;Therefore, with the shout of thunder,Sweep I herd and herdsman down;Therefore leap I to thy bosom,With a loud, triumphal roar—Greet me, greet me, Father Euxine—I am Christian stream no more!"
In the absence of any real history of Ireland, the memoirs of its distinguished persons are of the first importance. They are the landmarks within which the broad and general track of historic narrative must be led. They fix character—the most necessary aid to the larger views of the historian. They disclose to us those secret springs which regulate the great social machinery; and by an especial faculty, more valuable than all, they bring us face to face with minds of acknowledged eminence, teach us the course which the known conquerors of difficulties have pursued, and exhibit the training by which the championship of nations is to be sustained. As the old lawgiver commanded that beautiful statues should be placed before the Spartan wives, to impress their infants with beauty of countenance and stateliness of form, the study of greatness has a tendency to elevate our nature; and though camps and councils may be above our course, yet the light shed from those higher spheres may guide our steps through the tangled paths of our humbler world.
The present memoir gives evidence of an additional merit in biography: it assists justice; it offers the power of clearing character, which might have been refused to the living; it brings forward means of justification, which the dignity of the injured, his contempt of calumny, or the circumstances of his time, might have locked up in his bosom. It is an appeal from the passion of the hour to the soberness of years. It has the sincerity and the sanctity of a voice from the world of the future.
The Stewarts, ancestors of the Marquis of Londonderry, came originally from Scotland, and, settling in Ireland in the reign of James I., obtained large possessions among the forfeited lands in Ulster. The family were Protestants, and distinguished themselves by Protestant loyalty in the troubled times of Ireland—a country where trouble seems to be indigenous. One of those loyalists was Colonel William Stewart, who, during the Irish war, under James II., raised a troop of horse at his own expense, and skirmished vigorously against the Popish enemy at the siege of Londonderry. For this good service he was attainted, with all the chief gentry of the kingdom, in the confiscating parliament of James. But the confiscation was not carried into effect, and the estate remained to a long line of successors.
The father of the late Marquis of Londonderry was the first of the family who was ennobled. He was an active, intelligent, and successful man. Representing his county in two parliaments, and, acting with the government, he partook of that golden shower which naturally falls from the treasury. He became in succession the possessor of office and the possessor of title—baron, viscount, earl, and marquis—and wisely allied himself with English nobility, marrying, first, a daughter of the Earl of Hertford, and, secondly, a sister of Lord Camden. The subject of this memoir was a son of the first marriage, and was born in Ireland on the 18th of June 1769. From boyhood he was remarkable for coolness and intrepidity, and was said to have exhibited both qualities in saving a young companion in the lake of Strangford. At the age of seventeen he was entered of St John's College, Cambridge, where he seems to have applied himself actively to the general studies of the place—elementary mathematics, classics, logic, and moral philosophy. This sufficiently answers the subsequent taunts at the narrowness of his education.
As his father had been a politician, his son and heir was naturally intended for political life. The first step of his ambition was a costly one. County elections in those days were formidable affairs. The Hillsboroughfamily had formerly monopolised the county. Young Stewart was put forward, according to custom, as "the champion of independence." He gained but half the day, for the Hillsboroughs still retained one nominee. The young candidate became a member of parliament, but this step cost £60,000.
The sacrifice was enormous, and perhaps, in our day, might startle the proudest rent-roll in England: but, seventy years ago, and in Ireland, the real expenditure was probably equivalent to £100,000 in our day. And it must have been still more distressing to the family, from the circumstance, that the sum had been accumulated to build a mansion; that the expense of the election also required the sale of a fine old collection of family portraits; and that the old lord was forced to spend the remainder of his life in what the biographer states to be an old barn, with a few rooms added. But his son was now launched on public life—that stream in which so many dashing swimmers sink, but in which talent, guided by caution, seldom fails to float along, until nature or weariness finishes the effort, and the man disappears, like all who went before.
The young member, fresh from college, and flushed with triumph over "parliamentary monopoly," was, of course, a Whig.Plutarch's Lives, and the history of the classic commonwealths, make every boy at school a Whig. It is only when they emerge from the cloudy imaginations of republicanism, and the fabulous feats of Greek championship, that they acquire common sense, and act according to the realities of things. The future statesman commenced his career by the ultra-patriotism of giving a "written pledge," on the hustings, to the support of "parliamentary reform."
With this act of boyishness he was, of course, taunted in after-life by the Whigs. But his answer was natural and just: it was in substance, that he had been, in 1790, an advocate for Irish reform; and if the Irish parliament had continued under the same circumstances, he would be an advocate for its reform still. But in 1793 a measure had been carried, which made all change perilous: the Popish peasantry had been suffered to obtain the right of voting; and thenceforward he should not aid parliamentary reform.
It is to be observed, that this language was not used under the temptation of office, for he did not possess any share in administration until four years afterwards, in 1797.
The forty-shilling franchise was the monster evil of Ireland. Every measure of corruption, of conspiracy, and of public convulsion, originated in that most mischievous, factious, and false step. It put the whole parliamentary power of the country into the hands of faction; made public counsel the dictation of the populace; turned every thing into a job; and finally, by the pampering of the rabble, inflamed them into civil war, and, by swamping the constituency, rendered the extinction of the parliament a matter of necessity to the existence of the constitution.
To this measure—at once weak and ruinous, at once the triumph of faction and the deathblow of Irish tranquillity; at once paralysing all the powers of the legislature for good, and sinking the peasantry into deeper degradation—we must give a few words.
The original condition of the peasantry in Ireland was serfdom. A few hereditary chiefs, with the power of life and death, ruled the whole lower population, as the master of the herd rules his cattle. English law raised them from this condition, and gave them the rights of Englishmen. But no law of earth could give the Celt the industry, frugality, or perseverance of the Englishman. The result was, that the English artificer, husbandman, and trader, became men of property, while the Celt lingered out life in the idleness of his forefathers. Robbery was easier than work, and he robbed; rebellion was more tempting than loyalty, and he rebelled: the result was the frequent forfeiture of the lands of chiefs, who, prompted by their priests, excited by their passions, and urged by the hope of plunder, were continually rebelling, and necessarily punished for their rebellion. Portions of their lands were distributed as the pay of the soldierywho conquered them; portions were given to English colonists, transplanted for the express purpose of establishing English allegiance, arts, and feelings in Ireland; and portions devolved to the crown. But we are not to imagine that these were transfers of smiling landscapes and propitious harvests—that this was a renewal of the Goth and Vandal, invading flowery shores, and sacking the dwellings of native luxury. Ireland, in the 16th and 17th centuries, was a wilderness; the fertility of the soil wasted in swamps and thickets; no inns, no roads; the few towns, garrisons in the midst of vast solitudes; the native baron, a human brute, wallowing with his followers round a huge fire in the centre of a huge wigwam, passing from intoxication to marauding, and from beaten and broken marauding to intoxication again. A few of those barons had been educated abroad, but even they, on their return, brought back only the love of blood, the habit of political falsehood, and the hatred to the English name, taught in France and Spain. The wars of the League, the government of the Inquisition, the subtlety of the Italian courts, thus added their share of civilised atrocity, to the gross superstitions and rude revenge of Popish Ireland.
We must get rid of the tinsel which has been scattered by poetry over the past ages of Ireland. History shows, under the embroidered cloak, only squalidness. Common sense tells us whatmustbe the condition of a people without arts, commerce, or agriculture; perpetually nurturing a savage prejudice, and exhibiting it in the shape of a savage revenge; ground to the dust by poverty, yet abhorring exertion; suffering under hourly tyranny, yet incapable of enjoying the freedom offered to them; andlookingon the vigorous and growing prosperity of the English colonist, with only the feeling of malice, and the determination to ruin him. The insurrection of 1641, in which probably 50,000 Protestant lives were sacrificed, was only one of the broader scenes of a havoc which every age was exemplifying on a more obscure, but not less ferocious scale. The evidence of this indolent misery is given in the narrowness of the population, which, at the beginning of the last century, scarcely reckoned a million of souls: and this, too, in a country of remarkable fertility, free from all habitual disease, with a temperate climate, and a breadth of territory containing at this hour eight millions, and capable of supporting eight millions more.
The existing condition of Ireland, even with all the difficulties of its own creation, is opulence, peace, and security, compared with its wretchedness at the period of the English revolution.
The measure of giving votes for members of parliament to the Popish peasantry was the immediate offspring of faction, and, like all its offspring, exhibited the fallacy of faction. It failed in every form. It had been urged, as a means of raising the character of the peasantry—it instantly made perfidy aprofession. It had been urged, as giving the landlord a stronger interest in the comforts and conciliation of his tenantry—it instantly produced the splitting of farms for the multiplication of votes, and, consequently, all the hopeless poverty of struggling to live on patches of tillage inadequate for the decent support of life. It had been urged, as a natural means of attaching the peasantry to the constitution—it instantly exhibited its effects in increased disorder, in nightly drillings and daylight outbreaks; in the assassination of landlords and clergy, and in those more daring designs which grow out of pernicious ignorance, desperate poverty, and irreconcilable superstition. The populace—beginning to believe that concession had been the result of fear; that to receive they had only to terrify; and that they had discovered the secret of power in the pusillanimity of parliament—answered the gift of privilege by the pike; and the "forty-shilling freeholder" exhibited his new sense of right in the insurrection of 1798—an insurrection which the writer of these volumes—from his intelligence and opportunities a competent authority—calculates to have cost 30,000 lives, and not less than three millions sterling!
The forty-shilling franchise has since been abolished. Its practicalabominations had become too glaring for the endurance of a rational legislature, and it perished. Yet the "snake was scotched, not killed." The spirit of the measure remained in full action: it was felt in the force which it gave to Irish agitation, and in the insidiousness which it administered to English party. In Ireland it raised mobs; in England it divided cabinets. In Ireland it was felt in the erection of a rabble parliament; in England it was felt in the pernicious principle of "open questions;" until the leaders of the legislature, like all men who suffer themselves to tamper with temptation, gave way; and the second great stage of national hazard was reached, in the shape of the bill of 1829.
If the projected measure of "endowing the popery of Ireland"—in other words, of establishing the worship of images, and bowing down to the spiritual empire of the papacy—shall ever, in the fatuity of British rulers and the evil hour of England, become law; a third great stage will be reached, which may leave the country no farther room for either advance or retrogression.
In the year 1796, the father of the young member had been raised to the earldom of Londonderry, and his son became Viscount Castlereagh. In the next year his career as a statesman began; he was appointed by Lord Camden, (brother-in-law of the second Earl of Londonderry,) Keeper of the Privy Seal of Ireland.
The conduct of the Irish administration had long wanted the first quality for all governments, and the indispensable quality for the government of Ireland,—firmness. It has been said that the temper of the Irish is Oriental, and that they require an Oriental government. Their wild courage, their furious passion, their hatred of toil, and their love of luxury, certainly seem but little fitted to a country of uncertain skies and incessant labour. The Saracen, transported to the borders of the Atlantic, might have been the serf, and, instead of waving the Crescent over the diadems of Asia, might have been cowering over the turf-fire of the Celt, and been defrauded of the pomps of Bagdad and the spoils of Jerusalem. Thedecisionof one of the magnificent despotisms of the East in Ireland might have been the true principle of individual progress and national renown. The scimitar might have been the true talisman.
But the successive British administrations took the false and the fatal step of meeting the wild hostility of Ireland by the peaceful policy of England. Judging only from the habits of a country trained to the obedience of law, they transferred its quiet formalities into the midst of a population indignant at all law; and, above all, at the law which they thought of only as associated with the swords of the soldiers of William. The government, continually changing in the person of the Viceroy, fluctuated in its measures with the fluctuation of its instruments; conceded where it ought to have commanded; bartered power, where it ought to have enforced authority; attempted to conciliate, where its duty was to have crushed; and took refuge behind partisanship, where it ought to have denounced the disturbers of their country. The result was public irritation and cabinet incapacity—a continual rise in the terms of official barter, pressing on a continual helplessness to refuse. This could not last—the voice of the country was soon an uproar. The guilt, the folly, and the ruin, had become visible to all. The money-changers were masters of the temple, until judicial vengeance came, and swept away the traffickers, and consigned the temple to ruin.
When we now hear the cry for the return of the Irish legislature, we feel a just surprise that the memory of the old legislature should have ever been forgotten, or that it should ever be recorded without national shame. We should as soon expect to see the corpse of a criminal exhumed, and placed on the judgment-seat of the court from which he was sent to the scaffold.
The Marquis of Buckingham, once a popular idol, and received as viceroy with acclamation, had no sooner dared to remonstrate with this imperious parliament, than he was overwhelmedwith national rebuke. The idol was plucked from its pedestal; and the Viceroy, pursued by a thousand libels, was glad to escape across the Channel. He was succeeded by the Earl of Westmoreland, a man of some talent for business, and of some determination, but by no means of the order that "rides the whirlwind, and directs the storm." He, too, was driven away. In this dilemma, the British cabinet adopted the most unfortunate of all courses—concession; and for this purpose selected the most unfitting of all conceders, the Earl Fitzwilliam—a man of no public weight, though of much private amiability; sincere, but simple; honest in his own intentions, but perfectly incapable of detecting the intentions of others. His lordship advanced to the Irish shore with conciliation embroidered on his flag. His first step was to take the chief members of Opposition into his councils; and the immediate consequence was an outrageousness of demand which startled even his simple lordship. The British cabinet were suddenly awakened to the hazard of giving away the constitution by wholesale, and recalled the Viceroy. He returned forthwith, made a valedictory complaint in parliament, to which no one responded; published an explanatory pamphlet, which explained nothing; and then sat down on the back benches of the peerage for life, and was heard of no more. The Earl was succeeded by Lord Camden, son of the celebrated chief-justice, but inheriting less of the law than the temperament of his father. Graceful in manner, and even aristocratic in person, his councils were as undecided as his mission was undefined. The aspect of the times had grown darker hour by hour, yet his lordship speculated upon perpetual serenity. Conspiracy was notorious throughout the land, yet he moved as tranquilly as if there were not a traitor in the earth; and on the very eve of a conflagration, of which the materials were already laid in every county of Ireland, he relied on the silent spell of the statute-book!
The secretary, Mr Pelham, afterwards Lord Chichester, wanted the meekness, or disdained the short-sightedness of his principal; and, on the first night of his official appearance in the House, he gave at once the strongest evidence of his own opinion, and the strongest condemnation of the past system; by boldly declaring that "concessions to the Catholics seemed only to increase their demands; that what they now sought was incompatible with the existence of a British constitution; that concession must stop somewhere; and that it had already reached its utmost limit, and could not be allowed to proceed. Here he would plant his foot, and never consent to recede an inch further."
The debate on this occasion continued during the night, and until eight in the morning. All that fury and folly, the bitterness of party and the keenness of personality, could combine with the passionate eloquence of the Irish mind, was exhibited in this memorable debate. The motion of the popish advocates was lost, but the rebellion was carried. The echo of that debate was heard in the clash of arms throughout Ireland; and Opposition, without actually putting the trumpet to their lips, and marshalling conspiracy, had the guilty honour of stimulating the people into frenzy, which the Irishman calls an appeal to the god of battles, but which, in the language of truth and feeling, is a summons to all the sanguinary resolves and satanic passions of the human mind.
The secretary, perhaps foreseeing the results of this night, and certainly indignant at the undisciplined state of the legislative council, suddenly returned to England; and Lord Castlereagh was appointed by his relative, the Viceroy, to fill the post of secretary daring his absence. The rebellion broke out on the night of the 23d of May 1798.
In the year 1757, a committee was first established for the relief of Roman Catholics from their disabilities by law. From this justifiable course more dangerous designs were suffered to follow. The success of republicanism in America, and the menaces of war with republican France, suggested the idea of overthrowing the authority of government in Ireland. In 1792, his Majesty's message directed the repeal of thewhole bodyof anti-Romaniststatutes, excepting those which prohibited admission into parliament, and into thirty great offices of state, directly connected with the confidential departments of administration. The Romish committee had already extended their views still farther. The well-known Theobald Wolfe Tone was their secretary, and he prepared an alliance with the republicanised Presbyterians of the north, who, in 1791, had organised in Belfast a club entitled "The United Irishmen."
The combination of the Romanist of the south and the dissenter of the north was rapidly effected. Their mutual hatreds were compromised, for the sake of their common hostility to Church and State. Upwards of 100,000 men in arms were promised by the north; millions, to be hereafter armed, were offered by the south; agents were despatched to urge French expeditions; correspondences were held with America for aid; the whole machinery of rebellion was in full employment, and a civil war was already contemplated by a group of villains, incapable of any one of the impulses of honourable men.
It is memorable that, in the subsequent convulsion, not one of those men of blood displayed the solitary virtue of the ruffian—courage. They lived in subterfuge, and they died in shame. Some of them perished by the rope, not one of them fell by the sword. The leaders begged their lives, betrayed their dupes, acknowledged their delinquencies, and finished their days beyond the Atlantic, inflaming the hostility of America, libelling the government by which their lives were spared, and exemplifying the notorious impossibility of reforming a rebel but by the scaffold.
Attempts have been made, of late years, to raise those men into the reputation of heroism; they might as justly have been raised into the reputation of loyalty. No sophistry can stand against the facts. Not one of them took the common hazards of the field: they left the wretched peasantry to fight, and satisfied themselves with harangues. Even the poetic painting of Moore cannot throw a halo round the head of Lord Edward Fitzgerald. This hero walked the country in woman's clothes, to be arrested in his bed, and perish in a prison. Tone cut his throat. Irishmen are naturally brave; but it is no dishonour to the nation to know that treason degrades the qualities of nature, and that conscience sinks the man of nerve into the poltroon.
It was among the singular instances of good fortune which saved Ireland in her crisis, that Lord Castlereagh assumed the duties of Irish Secretary. Uniting mildness of address with known determination, he was a favourite in the House of Commons, which in those days was proud of its character alike for manners and intrepidity. His indefatigable vigilance, and even the natural vigour of his time of life, rendered him adequate to services and labours which might have broken down the powers of an older man, and which must have been declined by the feeble health of his predecessor, Pelham, who still actually retained the office. Even his family connexion with the Viceroy may have given him a larger share than usual of the immediate confidence of government.
Under all circumstances, he was the fittest man for the time. He protected the country in the most difficult period of its existence. There was but one more service to secure Ireland against ruinous change—the rescue of her councils from the dominion of the mob; and it was his eminent fortune to effect it, by the Union.
There is the most ample evidence, that neither parliamentary reform nor Catholic emancipation were the true objects of the United Irishmen. The one was a lure to the malcontents of the north, the other to the malcontents of the south. But the secret council of the conspiracy—determined to dupe the one, as it despised the other—had resolved on a democracy, which, in its day of triumph, following the steps of France, would, in all probability, have declared itself infidel, and abolished all religion by acclamation. Party in the north pronounced its alliance with France, by commemorating, with French pageantry, the anniversary of the Revolution. The remnants of the oldvolunteer corps were collected at this menacing festival, which lasted for some days, and exhibited all the pomp and all the insolence of Paris. Emblematic figures were borne on carriages drawn by horses, with republican devices and inscriptions. On one of those carriages was a figure of Hibernia, with one hand and foot in shackles, and a volunteer presenting to her a figure of Liberty, with the motto, "The releasement of the prisoners from the Bastille." On another was the motto,—"Our Gallic brethren were born July 14th, 1789. Alas! we are still in embryo." Another inscription was—"Superstitious jealousy the cause of the Irish Bastille; let us unite and destroy it." The portrait of Franklin was exhibited among them, with this inscription,—"Where Liberty is, there is my country." Gunpowder and arms were put in store, pikes were forged, and treasonous addresses were privately distributed throughout the country.
It is to be observed, that those acts occurredbeforethe accession of Lord Castlereagh to office: their existence was the result of that most miserable of all policies—the sufferance of treason, in the hope that it may die of sufferance. If he had guided the Irish councils in 1792 instead of in 1794, the growing treason would have either shrunk from his energy, or been trampled out by his decision.
It has been the custom of party writers to charge the secretary with rashness, and even with insolence. The answer is in the fact, that, until the year in which the revolt became imminent, his conduct was limited to vigilant precaution—to sustaining the public spirit—to resisting the demands of faction in the House—and to giving the loyal that first and best creator of national courage—the proof that, if they did not betray themselves, they would not be betrayed by their government.