1756.

PUBLIC CLAMOURS IN ENGLAND.

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doubt with the nation seemed to be whether he was in truth a traitor or a coward. In all the great towns the Admiral was burned in effigy. In Hertfordshire his house and park were attacked by the mob, and saved with difficulty. In London the streets and shops swarmed with contumelious ballads and caricatures. The general scarcity, and consequent excessive price, of corn at this period, was another element in the popular discontent. Addresses to the King came crowding in from many cities, - as London, Bristol, and Chester; from many counties, as Dorset, Huntingdon, Buckingham, Bedford, Suffolk, Shropshire, Surrey, Somerset, and Lancaster, all praying for an inquiry into the loss of Minorca, and for justice on the guilty. Instructions of a like nature were sent from the same places to their Members; not without a distant hint of stopping the supplies. Sir John Barnard, who attempted to stem the impulse in the City, grew almost as unpopular as Byng himself.* Vengeance! Vengeance! was now the universal cry. Never since the days of the Excise and South Sea was such a flame remembered.

The Prime Minister at this time, the Duke of Newcastle, by no means endeavoured to divert this flame of popular resentment from Byng; on the contrary, he applied himself to feed and sustain it. He was most willing to sacrifice any of his Admirals, any of his Generals, or even any of his Cabinet colleagues, as a scapegoat for himself. One day, when a deputation from the City waited upon him with some representations against Byng, he blurted out, with an unfeeling precipitation which his folly ought not to excuse: "Oh, indeed, he shall be tried "immediately; he shall be hanged directly!"† On the same principle he attempted to cajole Fox into assuming the main responsibility. On all possible points was the popular impulse flattered and complied with. No sooner had General Blakeney landed with his garrison at Portsmouth than he was created an Irish Baron. General Fowke, on the contrary, was brought to trial for dis

* H. Walpole to Sir H. Mann, August 29. 1756.

+ Lord Orford's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 70.

Dodington's Diary, May 17. 1756.

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obedience of orders, and being found guilty was dismissed the service. But previously and chiefly, Admiral Sir Edward Hawke was sent out to assume the command of the Mediterranean fleet, with orders to arrest Byng and West, and bring them prisoners to England. In July accordingly both were landed as prisoners. On full accounts, however, of the engagement on the 20th of May, West was soon honourably distinguished from his chief; he was carried by Lord Anson to Court, where the King said to him: "I am glad to hear you have done your duty so well; I wish every body else had!" Byng, strictly guarded, was transferred for the present to safe custody at Greenwich. His younger brother, who had gone to meet him on his landing, was so affected with the first sight of the unhappy Admiral, and with the abuse of him which he found wherever he passed, that he fell ill, and died the next day in convulsions. Even before the loss of Minorca, almost as soon as the French descent upon the island became known in London, on the 18th of May, a Declaration of War had been issued against France. That war was now on the verge of becoming general in Europe. -But here let me pause for some detail of the position, and the prospects of the greater Powers.

No two Sovereigns could be less friendly or well disposed towards each other than George and Frederick the Second. For several years the Prussian monarch had taken every opportunity of thwarting by his measures, and ridiculing by his conversation, his Royal uncle in England. He had resisted the payment of a just debt known by the name of the Silesian Loan. He had long withstood and at length successfully baffled the muchdesired election of a King of the Romans. He had given every encouragement to the exiled partisans of the House of Stuart, hoping, it would seem, to take advantage of a revolution in England, and to seize for himself the Electorate of Hanover. To such lengths had he gone in this course, that we find in 1753 the Duke of Newcastle write of him, as "" now avowedly the principal if not the sole support of the Pretender."* Nevertheless the force of

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*To Lord Hardwicke, September 21. 1753. See also a note to the third volume of this History, p. 349.

1756.

DANGER OF THE KING OF PRUSSIA.

73

circumstances, - -a necessity stronger than affection, brought at this juncture the two monarchs into a close, nay cordial alliance.

A formidable confederacy of other powers was indeed now forming against the King of Prussia,—a confederacy provoked in part by his unprincipled ambition, but still more perhaps by his wanton wit.- The Empress Queen had never forgotten or forgiven the conquest of Silesia, nor the perfidy and treachery by which its conquest was achieved. Her high spirit panted to recover that lost jewel of her Crown. Her piety impelled her to wrest that Catholic province from heretic hands. For succour towards these cherished hopes she had looked in the first instance to her ancient ally the Court of England, but found that Power ill-disposed to plunge into another war for merely Austrian objects. She therefore next turned her views towards her ancient enemy, France, yielding in this respect to the persuasion of Count afterwards Prince Kaunitz, her trusted and ruling Minister during the whole remainder of her reign.* He had been recently Ambassador at Paris, was a warm partisan of the idea of French alliance, and knew how to render it most attractive to his sovereign, by holding it forth as a religious combination of the great Catholic against the great Protestant Powers.

It seemed no easy task to detach the French Court from the system of policy against the House of Austria, which it had steadily pursued ever since the days of Henri Quatre,-alike under Richelieu or Mazarin, under Louvois or Torcy. Yet there were not wanting strong arguments, both general and special, in behalf of a change. These long-contested and well-poised conflicts between the rival chief states had served only to exhaust and enfeeble themselves. One or other of the smaller powers alone had gathered the fruits of their exertions. The war of 1701 had profited most to the

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* Kaunitz is described by Baron Hormayer, as "un seigneur qui joignait à la légèreté d'un Français l'astuce d'un Italien et la pro"fondeur Autrichienne." (Taschenbuch für die vaterländische Geschichte, 1831.) For some curious instances of the légèreté, see Wraxall's Memoirs of the Courts of Berlin, &c. vol. ii. p. 458-468. ed. 1799.

House of Savoy, -the war of 1741 to the House of Brandenburg. And how had the head of this House of Brandenburg requited France for the efforts and the sacrifices that led to his possession of Silesia? — By the grossest treacheries and breaches of faith, — second only to those which he had practised on Maria Theresa. But let once the old monarchies combine, and how easily might they divide the spoils of this ungrateful upstart! How readily, if Austria were allowed to seize the Prussian provinces in Germany, would she concede to France an extension of frontier from her own province of Belgium!

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Such arguments, however specious, such offers, however tempting, would not probably have sufficed to turn the current of feeling which for nearly two centuries had flowed in the opposite channel. But besides the perfidy of the King of Prussia to France as a state, there were also personal, and far less pardonable, offences of Frederick against Louis the Fifteenth and his favourite mistress, Madame de Pompadour. Of Louis, Frederick always spoke and wrote with utter contempt as of a new Sardanapalus, and Louis was stirred to as much resentment as he was capable of feeling. Madame de Pompadour had at first professed high admiration for the Prussian hero, but found all her flattering messages receive only sarcastic replies. "When I," says Voltaire, was going to "Berlin, and took my leave of Madame de Pompadour, "she bid me present her respects to the King of Prussia. "It was impossible to give a commission more agreeable, or in a more graceful manner; she did it with the "greatest modesty imaginable, saying, 'If I might "venture,' and 'If the King of Prussia will forgive my "taking such a liberty.' I suppose that I must have "delivered this message amiss. For I, as a man filled "with respect for the Court of France, felt assured that "such compliments would be well received; but the "King answered me drily, 'I do not know her. This "is not the land for swains and shepherdesses.'-Never"theless I shall write to Madame de Pompadour, that "Mars has welcomed as he ought the compliments of "Venus."* Other such answers found more accurate

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* Letter of Voltaire to his niece, Madame Denis, Aug. 11, 1750.

1756.

MADAME DE POMPADOUR.

75

reporters. Frederick could not refrain from scoffing in the most public manner at a lady so frail, and a throne so degraded. A favourite lap-dog, his constant companion both by day and night*, received from him the nickname of "Pompadour," and he boasted that she did not cost him quite so much money as the other Pompadour did his brother at Versailles. He used to speak of Madame de Pompadour (not unjustly) as the true sovereign of France, and, in allusion to her predecessor, Madame de Chateauroux, called her's "the reign of Petti"coat the Second." Nay, more, while all the other ambassadors at Paris were vying for the notice of this haughty fair one, the Prussian alone, — the Baron de Knyphausen, by his master's positive directions, refused to visit her. As Frederick affected no peculiar austerity of principles, -as he sneered at the Christian faith, as his own morals were, to say the least, not beyond suspicion, we cannot vindicate these sallies on the plea of offended virtue. We can only wonder that a prince always so wary and politic in his conduct should have been thus reckless and unguarded in his conversation. Endowed by nature with splendid genius for war, and with brilliant powers of satire, these gifts appeared to counteract each other; it needed during seven most perilous years the utmost exertion of the first to repair and retrieve the ill effect of the second.

After such insults as Madame de Pompadour had received from Frederick, can the reader doubt, or need I describe, how fierce a thirst for vengeance arose in the heart of the slighted woman? On the other side the most delicate attentions were lavished upon her by the Empress Queen. Proud of her lofty lineage as seemed

* Frederick had always a favourite greyhound, which sate on a chair at his side by day, and slept in his bed by night. There were also three or four other dogs kept, but chiefly, as we are told, "zur gesellschaft des liebling's," for society to the favourite one. They had a footman appointed to their especial care, and were driven from Potsdam to Berlin in a coach and six, the dogs on the hind seat, and the footman on the front. As they died, they were buried on the terrace of Sans Souci, and Frederick desires in his will to be interred by their side. (Preuss, Lebens-Geschichte, vol. i. p. 414— 416.)