A.D. 1806. by cannon or musketry, but by the bayonet. Paul Louis Courier wrote The news of the battle of Maida reached London on the 2nd of September. On the 13th arrived the news of the taking of Buenos Ayres by sir Home Popham, who had commanded the naval force at the taking of the Dutch settlement of the Cape of Good Hope in January. What did it matter to the eager hopes of commercial men that this great adventure had been accomplished without orders from home? Cargoes of goods were sent out in 1806 by excited speculators, but when the cargoes arrived Buenos Under the command of a French Ayres had again changed masters. colonel in the Spanish service, an attack was made on the British troops in the city; and after a sanguinary conflict they surrendered as prisoners of war. CHAPTER LVII. On the night of the 25th of September, Napoleon, accompanied by the empress, and by Talleyrand, left Paris, and proceeded with his usual rapidity to Wurtzbourg, where German potentates and German generals came to bow before his greatness. Around him was his army of a hundred and fifty thousand men, divided into nine corps. There were three Prussian armies, of which the principal army of fifty-five thousand men was commanded by the king in person, with his nephew, the duke of Brunswick, as his lieutenant-general. The Prussian armies were posted on the Saale, in the vicinity of Erfurt, Gotha, and Eisenach. Battles of separate divisions had been fought, as the Prussians advanced to meet their antagonists. On the morning of the 14th of October, Napoleon attacked that portion of the Prussian army which, under the command of the prince of Hohenlohe at Jena, was unprepared for an immediate assault. The main body was at Auerstadt; and was attacked by Davoust. In that double battle, in which two hundred and fifty thousand men were engaged, with seven hundred pieces of cannon, twenty thousand Prussians were killed or wounded, and above thirty thousand were taken prisoners. The king fled from the field; the duke of Brunswick received a shot in his eye, of which wound he died on the 10th of November. All the principal fortified towns surrendered to the French, without resistance. In the northern provinces the Prussian generals, Blücher and Lestocq, kept some regiments together. All the rest of the great force that was on the banks of the Saale in October was broken. On the 25th the French, under the command of Davoust, entered Berlin. Napoleon made his triumphal entry on the following day. On the 20th of November he issued from the palace of the House of Brandenburg the celebrated decree against the commerce of England, known as the Berlin Decree, by which he attempted to put England into a condition of isolation with the rest of Europe. This decree not only prohibited all commerce and correspondence with the British islands, but it declared every English subject to be a prisoner of war who was found in a country occupied by the troops of France or of her allies. It declared all property belonging to an English subject to be lawful prize. It prohibited all trade in British manufactured goods. It declared all merchandize coming from Great Britain or her colonies to be lawful prize. It shut out every vessel that had touched at any port of Britain or her colonies. After the death of Mr. Fox, the ministry of lord Grenville feeling itself weak in Parliament, a dissolution was resolved upon. The result was favourable to the administration; and they had a considerable majority when the new Parliament met on the 15th of December. The great work of this Session was the abolition of the slave-trade. On the 23rd of February, 1807, the House of Commons decided by the vast majority of 283 to 16, that the House should go into Committee on the Slave-Trade Bill, the second reading having been previously carried, as it had been carried in the Lords. The bill was read a third time on the 18th of March; was passed, with some trifling amendments, in the Lords; and received the royal assent on the 25th of March. On that day the Grenville ministry delivered up the seals of office. On the 5th of March, lord Howick had moved for leave to bring in a bill for allowing Roman Catholics to enlist. The king had declared against the measure, and the ministers had consented to withdraw it. The king then required of them "a written and positive engagement never, under any circumstances, to propose in the Closet any measure of concession to the Catholics, or even connected with the question."* The ministers refused to give the pledge required; and the king very quickly formed a new administration, of which the duke of Portland was the nominal head, Mr. Perceval, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, being the real leader. Lord Eldon was enrolled as Chancellor, Mr. Canning as Foreign Secretary, lord Hawkesbury as Home Secretary, and lord Castlereagh as War and Colonial Secretary. The duke of Richmond was Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, and sir Arthur Wellesley, Chief Secretary. The holders of office had now a majority over those whom the king had turned out. The alarmists of the Church took part with the king; and the ministers, knowing the value of the old popular cry of "No Popery," dissolved the Parliament at the end of its first session. In February, the Prussian and Russian forces made a determined stand at Eylau. The remnant of the Prussian army had been enabled to form a junction with the main Russian army under general Benningsen. The French, at the end of November, had entered Warsaw; where the prospect Lord Colchester's "Diary," vol. ii., p. 103. A.D. 1807. DISASTERS IN SOUTH AMERICA. 767 of national independence, to which Napoleon had given an equivocal encouragement, ensured them a welcome reception. The Russian general attacked Bernadotte on the 26th of December; and in the battle of Pultusk the French found that their emperor had undervalued the enemy with whom he had to deal. Benningsen then retired to Preussisch Eylau. Here he was followed by Napoleon. On the 8th of February, the emperor was surprised by a detachment of Russians, from whose hands he was only rescued by the devotion of his guard. The battle soon became general; and the dreadful struggle went on till ten o'clock at night. For hours the advantage on either side was very doubtful. When darkness fell upon the combatants there was still no victory. Thousands of dead and dying were lying amidst frozen ponds and drifts of snow, whilst burning hamlets and farms added to the horror of the scene. Had there been a vigorous war-ministry in England, some great result might have been obtained from the resistance which Napoleon had encountered at Eylau. The emperor of Russia asked for a loan of six millions from the English government. A subsidy of 500,000l. was granted-a very petty and therefore very useless aid. Great Britain had other modes of employing her money and her arms than in carrying on war upon a great scale. Whether her government were Whig or Tory, there was the same passion for little expeditions. Sir Samuel Auchmuty, after the unfortunate result of Popham's attempt upon Buenos Ayres, had been sent out with a reinforcement of 3000 men. He found that he could do nothing at Buenos Ayres; and had attacked Monte Video. He took this fortified seaport by assault, with a severe loss. The government, knowing nothing of the success of Auchmuty, sent out general Whitelock to take the command. Whitelock, on the 28th of June, landed with 7800 men about thirty miles to the east of Buenos Ayres. They were before the city, which was nearly invested, on the morning of the 5th of July, when an attack was ordered. The troops were to advance with unloaded muskets, two corporals marching at the head of each column with tools to break open the doors of the barricaded houses. A terrible fire mowed down the advancing soldiers. Trenches had been dug in the streets; and cannon planted there swept away hundreds with grape shot. Auchmuty made himself master of the Plaza de Toros, a strong post; and another place of strength had been taken, when the action was ended at nightfall. Two thousand five hundred British had been killed and wounded, or were prisoners. General Linieres, the commander in the city, addressed a letter next morning to general Whitelock, offering to give up the prisoners, and those made in the previous year, if he would desist from further attack, and withdraw the British forces from La Plata. Monte Video was of course to be surrendered. Whitelock agreed to these degrading terms; returned home, was tried by court-martial, and was declared "totally unfit and unworthy to serve his majesty in any military capacity whatever." Another unfortunate expedition was sent to the Dardanelles, under the command of vice-admiral sir John Thomas Duckworth, to co-operate with our ally, the emperor of Russia, against whom the Porte had declared war. Duckworth, with seven sail of the line, and smaller vessels, forced the passage of the Dardanelles, having received little damage from the fire of the castles at the mouth of that strait. The Turkish fortifications along the Dardanelles were dilapidated. When the fleet appeared before Constantinople the Sultan was alarmed, and would gladly have yielded. But the French ambassador, general Sebastiani, exhorted him to gain time by negotiation. Duckworth fell into the snare, and meanwhile the skilful Sebastiani taught the Turks how to defend their shores. Cannon were mounted upon works at which the whole population laboured day and night. Troops lined the coast. All the passage down the Dardanelles assumed a very different aspect from that which the British saw as they passed up. The longer the fleet stayed before Constantinople the greater would be the danger; and on the 1st of March, during the course of thirty miles, the gauntlet was run through a constant fire. The actual loss in this ill-fated expedition was about three hundred men killed and wounded. Other expeditions against the Ottoman power had been sent forth by the government of lord Grenville. On the 20th of March, Alexandria capitulated to a force of 5000 men embarked at Messina. General Frazer, with 1500 men, then marched into Rosetta, and was soon driven back with great loss, having been received with a heavy fire from the houses and windows of the inhabitants. Another British force of 2500 men was sent under general Stewart; and that little army had to retreat with a loss of a third of its number. The affair of Alexandria ended by the evacuation of Egypt by general Frazer, on condition that the British prisoners should be surrendered. After the great battle of Eylau the allied armies and the French armies remained for several months inactive. Reinforcements were necessary to each. Napoleon had proposed peace to Alexander, but Alexander refused the proffered terms. He expected aid from England; but the succour did not come in time. Early in June, the Russians attacked the French lines, and were repelled. A great encounter then took place at Heilsberg; and on the 14th of June a general battle was fought at Friedland, which broke the Russian spirit, terminated the campaign, and made the two emperors, for a season, the dearest of friends. Eight days after the victory, an armistice was concluded, and, on the 25th of June, the two potentates met on a raft in the middle of the river Niemen, near the town of Tilsit, and there held a long conversation on matters of high import. By this Treaty of Tilsit whole provinces were taken away from Prussia. Out of these spoils was formed the kingdom of Westphalia, of which Jerome Bonaparte was to be king. The Prussian provinces of Poland were to be erected into the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, and bestowed upon the king of Saxony, with the exception of one province, which Russia coveted. King Louis and king Joseph were to be recognized by Russia, as well as all Napoleon's creations of new subject states, and his willing instrument, the Confedera tion of the Rhine. A Treaty of Alliance, offensive and defensive, was entered into between France and Russia, of which the conditions were to be inviolably secret. Amongst the articles of this Treaty, as given by Thiers, was an engagement to take arms against England if she did not şubscribe to the mediation of Russia to establish peace between herself and France; to make war against the Porte, if she did not subscribe to the mediation of France to establish peace between herself and Russia, and in case this mediation was refused, to rescue the European provinces from the vexatious authority of the Porte, except Constantinople and Roumelia. Moreover, the two powers agreed to summon, in common, Sweden, Denmark, Portugal, and Austria, to concur in the projects of France and of Russia: that is, to shut their ports against England, and to declare war against her. In the meantime the English ministers received the information from the regent of Portugal, whose fleet Bonaparte also wanted, that the Danish fleet was to be placed at the disposal of France, and that by the assistance of this fleet, Bonaparte intended to invade the north-east coast of England. Our Foreign Secretary immediately made preparations for anticipating the hostile submission of Denmark to the commands of Napoleon. After the Treaty of Tilsit was concluded, Mr. Canning obtained a knowledge of the Secret Articles. How he obtained that knowledge he never would disclose. On the 12th of August, Mr. Jackson, an envoy from England, arrived in Copenhagen, to demand the surrender of the Danish fleet, as a deposit to be restored at the close of the war. Lord Gambier, the British admiral, was in the Sound with twenty-seven sail of the line, and many smaller vessels, in company with a fleet of transports, conveying twenty-seven thousand land-troops. The Crown Prince of Denmark indignantly refused; and prepared for defence. The British land forces were commanded by lord Cathcart, the command of the reserve being entrusted to sir Arthur Wellesley. The troops were landed on Zealand, on the 16th. They were not opposed; and they closely invested Copenhagen on the land side, erecting powerful batteries. Numerous bombvessels were ready also to pour their fire from the sea upon the devoted city. After some vain attempts to force a capitulation, the bombardment was commenced with fatal vigour, and continued for four days. The Danish navy and arsenal were surrendered on the 8th of September. In the Royal Speech, delivered by Commissioners, on the opening of the Session of Parliament on the 21st of January, 1808, the view taken of our position with relation to the rest of the world was not cheering. Russia, Austria, and Prussia, had withdrawn their ministers from London. The machinations of France had prevented the war with Turkey being brought to a conclusion. The king of Sweden alone had resisted every attempt to induce him to abandon our alliance. The government of the United States had refused to ratify a treaty of amity and commerce agreed upon in 1806, and was making pretensions inconsistent with our maritime rights. His majesty had adopted a measure of mitigated retaliation to the Berlin Decree; but that being ineffectual, other measures of greater rigour had been resorted to by Orders in Council. By the Milan decree of December, 1807, the British dominions in all parts of the world had been declared to be in a state of blockade; and all countries were prohibited from trading with each other, in any articles produced or manufactured in the countries thus placed under interdict. The hatred of the people of many countries to the domination of Napoleon received an immense impulse from the tyrannical enforcement of these Decrees, which constituted what is called his Continental System. "If this interdict had been maintained some years, England would probably have been obliged to yield," says M. Thiers. 'Unhappily, the continental blockade was to add to the exasperation of 66 |