was to hold a Council of War next day, in order to settle the distribution of their future booty*; or, according to the fable, sell the skin of the living bear! Perceiving that the high surf made it impracticable to batter Carthagena from the sea, they determined to force the entrance of the harbour, and direct their attack from thence. Accordingly, they opened their fire upon the castle of Boca Chica, landing some troops and artillery, and raising batteries against it. They were met by a resolute resistance, and did not prevail till after the loss of fifteen days and 400 men. It is also certain that the engineers were utterly unskilled, the General far from able; and that Vernon was not wholly without reason for complaining, as he did, of "the soldiers' laziness." Having gained possession of the Boca Chica, and entered the harbour, the enemy immediately confined themselves to Carthagena, and relinquished Castillo Grande without a blow, while the Admiral, in great exultation, sent home a ship to announce his approaching victory. "The "wonderful success," says he, "of this evening and night "is so astonishing, that one cannot but cry out with the 66 Psalmist, 'It is the Lord's doing and seems marvellous ""in our eyes. God make us truly thankful for it!"† So confident was his language, and so ready the belief it found in England, that, as is asserted, a medal was immediately struck in London to celebrate the taking of Carthagena, bearing on one side the head of Vernon, with an inscription as "The avenger of his country."+ Admiral Vernon to the Duke of Newcastle, April 1. 1741. His letters and despatches at this period were afterwards published by himself as a pamphlet. (London, 1744.) †To the Duke of Newcastle, April 1. 1741. Voltaire, Siècle de Louis XV. ch. viii. He adds, "Il y a beaucoup d'examples de ces médailles prématurées qui tromperaient la postérité, si l'Histoire plus fidèle et plus exacte ne prévenait pas de "telles erreurs."-Perhaps the most remarkable of all these médailles prématurées is that struck by Napoleon for his intended conquest of England; his head on one side, on the other Hercules struggling with a monster; the words DESCENTE EN ANGLETERRE, and beneath FRAPPÉ À LONDRES, MDCCCIV. I am informed that the die having been broken, only two of the original medals are preserved, the one in the Royal Cabinet at Paris, the other purchased by an English gentleman for 50l., but there is a fac simile made at Birmingham. 1741. THE ENGLISH REPULSED. 63 The event did not quite confirm these golden dreams. The English sailors, indeed, by dint of labour, cleared a way through the sunk wrecks in front of Castillo Grande, and began to bombard the city from the inner harbour, while the soldiers and artillery, being set on shore, invested it from the land side. But at this period, an animosity that had long smouldered, between the Admiral and the General, burst forth into open flame. Vernon would bear no colleague, and Wentworth no master. The latter complained of the slowness in landing the tents, stores, and artillery of the troops, by which they were prevented from making an immediate attack, and exposed for three nights to all the inclemency of the climate. On the other hand, Vernon declared that the General had remained inactive longer than he should, and had committed an unpardonable error in not cutting off the communication between the town and the adjacent country, by which the garrison was daily supplied with provisions. Each had some reason for his imputations; but each overlooked in the other, while he loudly pleaded for himself, the difficulties of the situation and the service. In the midst of these untoward dissensions, Wentworth, with the advice of a council of officers, attempted to storm Fort San Lazaro, which served as an outwork to the city. Twelve hundred men, headed by General Guise, cheerfully marched to the attack. There was no breach in the wall: the signal for the night attack (for such had been designed) was protracted till nearly broad day; and the deserters who undertook to act as guides were afterwards found, either through ignorance or ill intention, to have led them to the very strongest part of the fortification. Nay, more, on reaching the works, it was discovered, that from the neglect of the officers, the scaling ladders were partly too short, and partly left behind. The Spaniards. also, commanded by Eslava in person, were prepared for vigorous resistance. Yet in spite of all these shameful disadvantages, the soldiers fought with stubborn intrepidity; whole ranks were mowed down by the enemy's cannon without dispiriting the rest; and one party had actually attained the summit of a rampart, when their leader, Colonel Grant, received a death wound, and the men a repulse. Still, however, the survivors remained undaunted under the murderous fire of the fort, until half their number had fallen*, and until their officers, perceiving valour to be useless, and success impossible, sullenly gave the signal to withdraw. The conduct of Vernon in this affair has been severely -perhaps too severely, judged.† Certain it is, however, that several parts of his behaviour seem not incompatible with a malicious pleasure in the defeat of any enterprise not directed by himself, and that it was not till he saw the attempt irretrievably ruined that he sent his boats, full of men, to the General's assistance. It may well be supposed that such suspicions, combined with the irritation of failure, still further widened the breach between the rival officers, and still more strongly displayed the evils of joint command. In many cases, as Napoleon acutely observes in his private correspondence, even a bad general is better than two good ones! ‡ An enemy still more dire than either discord or the Spaniards now began to assail the British ranks, a sickness, the effect of a tropical climate on European constitutions, and so rapid in its progress, that, as the General declares, he found, in less than two days, his effective force dwindle from 6600 to 3200 men. Under these combined disasters a council of officers, held on the 24th of April, decided to relinquish the enterprise and return to Jamaica, first, however, demolishing the fortifications they had taken. "I believe," writes Vernon, even the "Spaniards will give us a certificate, that we have effectually destroyed all their castles;" and this was the only fruit of an expedition that in England had cost such lavish sums and raised such high-wrought expectations, that had made Spain tremble for her Indies, that had drawn France in jealousy of our aggrandisement to the very brink of war.§ *In the Spanish account this loss is increased to 1500-more than the original number of assailants! Comentarios de Don Joseph del Campo Raso (vol. iv. p. 162.). Tindal's Hist. vol. viii. p. 508. Letter to Carnot, May 12. 1796. See also the Mémoires d'un Homme d'Etat, vol. iii. p. 349. § Some despatches intercepted near Carthagena prove that the Admiral of the French souadron had orders to attack, if he was strong 1741. ATTACK ON SANTIAGO DE CUBA. 65 Still less honourable was another expedition undertaken by Vernon and Wentworth in the ensuing July, partly in pursuance of orders from home, and partly in hope to retrieve their reputation. Their object was Santiago in the island of Cuba; their military force reduced to 3000 by sickness and disheartened by failure. A thousand negroes from Jamaica were their unpromising auxiliaries. They landed without opposition in the bay of Guantanamo, to which they gave the name of Cumberland, in honour of the Royal Duke. But this courtly compliment was their only exploit. On sending out parties to reconnaitre Santiago, they received such accounts of the difficulties of the ground and the strength of the place, that Wentworth and his officers judged it best to re-embark; the Admiral, after some angry remonstrances, was compelled to acquiesce, and the enterprise was thus abandoned before it had encountered any, even the slightest resistance. Vernon's own statement on the subject has, at least, the merit of extraordinary frank"Though I pretend to very little experience in military affairs by land, yet it is my belief that if the "sole command had been in me, both in the Carthagena "expedition and the Cuba one, His Majesty's forces "would have made themselves masters both of Carthagena and Santiago, and with the loss of much fewer 66 men than have died!"* ness: 66 66 66 66 66 enough. This is Vernon's account:-"One of our brave sailors, seeing a dead Spaniard lying upon an English ensign on shore, swore that Spanish dog should not lie upon English colours, and "went ashore to remove his quarters and fetch the colours, when he fortunately discovered wrapped up in those colours the packets of letters from the Spanish Admiral Rodrigo de Torres, . . . and the "French Secretary of State's orders to the Marquis d'Antin (the French Admiral), by which your Grace will see they had both "orders jointly or separately to fall on us." To the Duke of Newcastle, May 30. 1741. 66 66 * To the Duke of Newcastle, October 2. 1742. 66 CHAPTER XXIII. WHEN Parliament met in November 1740, the Opposition, mindful of the approaching elections, under the Septennial Act, strained every nerve to aggravate the difficulties and blacken the character of Walpole. No sooner had the King's Speech been read by the Lord Chancellor, than the Duke of Argyle suddenly started up, anticipating Lord Holderness, the intended mover of the Ministerial Address, and proposed an Address of his own; he arraigned the whole conduct of the war, and, instead of following the various topics of the Royal Speech, suggested merely a general assurance of support. On the same side Lord Carteret bitterly inveighed against a Minister who has for almost twenty years "been demonstrating to the world that he has neither "wisdom nor conduct. He may have a little low cunning, such as those have that buy cattle in Smithfield "market, or such as a French valet makes use of for ma"naging an indulgent master, but the whole tenour of "his conduct has shown that he has no true wisdom: "this our allies know and bemoan; this our enemies "know and rejoice in!" Still more invidiously did Chesterfield represent the Government, as "begging hard for a little incense, and endeavouring to have a motion re"jected with which even they themselves can find no 'fault, in order to make room for encomiums which "themselves have prepared!" However, the motion of Lord Holderness, being brought forward as an amendment, was carried by 66 votes against 38; and in the Commons as decisive a majority declared in favour of the original Address.* 66 66 In pursuance of this opening, the Opposition proceeded * Mr. Orlebar to the Rev. H. Etough, Nov. 22. 1740. Parl. Hist. vol. xi. p. 613–696. The account of the Commons' debate is extremely meagre, and no mention made of either Pitt or Lyttleton's speeches, except that Mr. Orlebar says they were "occasioned Sir Robert to be so too." 66 very warm, which |