Anonymous

“ A sudden fit of generosity seemed to seize the nobles in the Assembly—which, in fact, was a fit of terror—for they had come to the conclusion that no protection was to be expected from the Assembly against the fury and cupidity of the people. They saw that the Assembly was the slave of the people; that the army had fraternised with the people; and that they were at the mercy of the merciless populace. The Viscount de Noailles and the Duke d'Aiguillon declared that it would be wicked and absurd to employ force to quiet the people. ”

“ That huge vessel, the pride of the French navy, towering over all far and near, attracted the ambition of Captain Cornwallis, of the Canada, the brother of Lord Cornwallis, to whose surrender De Grasse had so largely contributed. Captain Cornwallis, as if determined on a noble revenge, attacked the Ville de Paris with fury, hugely as it towered above him, and so well did he ply his guns that he soon reduced the monster almost to a wreck. De Grasse fought desperately, but Hood coming up in the Barfleur, about sunset, to the assistance of Cornwallis, De Grasse was compelled to strike his flag. ”

“ The brilliant successes of this campaign had clearly been the result of Pitt's plans before quitting office. Bute and his colleagues had no capacity for such masterly policy, and as little perception of the immense advantages which these conquests gave them in making peace. Peace they were impatient for—less on the great grounds that peace was the noblest of national blessings, than because the people grumbled at the amount of taxation—and because, by peace, they diminished, or hoped to diminish, the prestige of the great Minister, who had won such vast accessions to the national territory. ”

“ Shall this great kingdom, which has survived whole and entire the Danish depredations the Scotch inroads, and the Norman conquest—that has stood the threatened invasion of the Spanish Armada, now fall prostrate before the House of Bourbon? Surely, my lords, this nation is no longer what it was! Shall a people that fifteen years ago were the terror of the world now stoop so low as to tell this ancient, inveterate enemy—'Take all we have, only give us peace'? It is impossible! I wage war with no man or set of men ”

“ Don Francisco, a youth of only fourteen, weeping bitterly, and the sight roused the people to instant fury. They fell on the French, chiefly with their long knives, massacred seven hundred soldiers of the line, and wounded upwards of twenty of the Imperial Guard. The French, in return, fired on the people, and killed a hundred and twenty of them. Murat poured in troops to suppress the riot, but could not disperse them till after several volleys of grape-shot and repeated charges of cavalry. Unprepared as the country was, the people felt by no means daunted. ”

“ He had subjugated nearly the whole of the European Continent. Spain, Portugal, Italy to the south of France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, and Prussia to the north, with nearly the whole seaboard of Europe, were under his hand and his armies. He had found that he could not invade England; her fleet had risen triumphant, his own fleet had disappeared like a vapour at Trafalgar. As, therefore, he could not reach her soil, he determined to destroy her by destroying her commerce, on which he imagined not merely her prosperity but her very existence depended. ”

“ James's Palace, and his erection of Marlborough House are by no means calculated to do him high honour, whilst all lovers of architecture must deplore the removal of a great part of Wolsey's palace at Hampton Court to make way for Wren's structure. A glorious view, if old drawings are to be believed, must all that vast and picturesque variety of towers, battlements, tall mullioned windows, cupolas, and pinnacles, have made, as they stood under the clear heaven glittering in the sun. The writers who saw it in its glory describe it in its entireness as the most splendid palace in Europe. ”

“ On the last day of December, 1808, Buonaparte was pressing close on the British rear in the vicinity of Astorga, and thus closed the year on the fortunes of the Spaniards and their British Allies. The boastful Spanish armies, too proud to think at first that they needed assistance, too unskilful, when they did see the need of it, to co-operate with it, and who had afforded nothing but indifference and false intelligence to their benefactors, were dispersed like so many clouds, and their Allies were flying from an overwhelming foe. ”

“ But, unfortunately, Poland was in no condition to cope with the might of Russia. No pains had been taken to organise the army in years past on any scale capable of defending the nation; the new rights conferred on the people were too new to have given them yet any interest in them. Poland, therefore, in all haste, made solicitations for help to Prussia, Austria, Britain, Sweden, and Denmark; but in vain. Sweden and Denmark had, now that Gustavus was dead, determined to have no concern in wars resulting in any way from the French Revolution. ”

“ The moment that the mob of Paris comes under a new leader, mature deliberations are reversed, the most solemn engagements are retracted, or free will is altogether controlled by force. All the crimes which disgrace history have occurred in one country, in a space so short, and with circumstances so aggravated, as to outrun thought and exceed imagination." In fact, to have made an alliance with France at that moment, and for long afterwards, would have been to sanction her crimes, and to share the infamy of her violence and lawlessness abroad. ”

“ Fox first tried his diplomatic genius with the Dutch, whom he could, as he boasted, soon conciliate; but, to his infinite chagrin, that calculating people were so elated by the recent ill success of the English, and relied so completely on the powerful fleets of France and Spain to protect their trade and islands, that they returned a contemptuous answer, declaring that they could not treat without their allies. Still more mortifying was his repulse by the Americans. ”

“ Such were the advantages now possessed by the British over the French commander, that both the Portuguese and people at home were impatient that Wellington should at once attack and annihilate Massena's army. But Wellington knew better. He knew that a great battle, or battles, must vastly reduce his own as well as Massena's army. He knew that France could readily march down eighty or a hundred thousand fresh men into Portugal at extremity, but that Great Britain could not so readily do that; and, should the Whigs come into power, as was probable, he could not calculate on any support at all. ”

“ You may swell every expense and every effort still more extravagantly; pile and accumulate every assistance that you can buy or borrow; traffic and barter with every little, pitiful German prince that sells and sends his subjects to the shambles of a foreign prince; your efforts are for ever vain and impotent—doubly so from this mercenary aid on which you rely; for it irritates to an incurable resentment the minds of your enemies, to overrun them with the mercenary sons of rapine and plunder, devoting them and their possessions to the rapacity of hireling cruelty! ”

“ On the morning of the next day, Sunday, the 12th of July, the news was all over Paris that Necker was dismissed. The alarm was intense. Paris was in an uproar. The Palais Royal was choked with people in a frenzy of excitement. All at once a young man leaped upon a table and shouted, "To arms! to arms! Whilst we are talking, foreign troops are gathering round us to massacre us!" ”

“ Let us suppose him domineering with insolence over all the men of ancient families, over all the men of sense, figure, or fortune in the nation; as he has no virtue of his own, ridiculing it in others, and endeavouring to destroy or corrupt it in all. With such a Minister and such a Parliament, let us suppose a case which I hope will never happen—a prince upon the throne, uninformed, ignorant, and unacquainted with the inclinations and true interests of his people ”

“ We only seized a fleet that was on the point of being used against us, and which was to be returned at the end of the war; the horrified Czar invaded Sweden, while at peace, and, without any declaration of war, usurped a whole country—Finland, larger than Great Britain. Russia, in fact, had brought Denmark into this destructive dilemma by its insidious policy; but, having seized Finland, in five years more it committed a still greater robbery on Denmark than it had done on Sweden, by contracting with Bernadotte to wrest Norway from Denmark, and give it to Sweden. ”

“ It must be confessed that it was impossible to keep peace with a nation determined to make war on the whole world. Perhaps on no occasion had the pride of the British people and their feelings of resentment been so daringly provoked. War was proclaimed against Britain, and it was necessary that she should put herself in a position to protect her own interests. The country was, moreover, bound to defend Holland if assaulted. But though bound by treaty to defend Holland, Great Britain was not bound to enter into the defence of all and every one of the Continental nations ”

“ No motion condemnatory of Russia's grasping schemes was made in Parliament; it seemed to Britain a matter of no moment that one of the chief nations of Europe should be torn in pieces by rapacious Powers, contrary to all moral and international law. The Whigs, those warm advocates of revolution and of popular freedom, were dumb. In fact, what could they say? Fox and his admirers had all along been lauding the Russian Empress as one of the greatest, ablest, and most innocent of monarchs, simply in opposition to Pitt and his endeavours to repress her schemes of aggrandisement. ”

“ It was all that Buonaparte could do to keep his troops in subordination. For fourteen days this melancholy march was continued, when they came at once in sight of the Pyramids, not far distant from Cairo, and of the army of the Mamelukes, drawn up across their way, headed by Murad Bey. This force consisted of five thousand cavalry—Mamelukes, mounted on the finest Arabian horses in the world, trained to obey the slightest touch of the rein, to advance, wheel, or fly with wonderful rapidity. ”

“ At the sight of him, the Grenadiers raised their caps on the points of their swords and bayonets, and there were cries of "Vive le Roi!" the last that saluted him in his hereditary palace. Even at this cry, numbers of the National Guard took alarm, imagining that they were to be surrendered to the knights of the dagger, and that they had been betrayed. The gunners, joining in the panic, turned their guns towards the palace, but the more faithful Guard drove them from the guns, disarmed them, and put them under watch. ”