CHAPTER THE FIFTH. GEORGE THE SECOND.
WHILE George the First was alive, he and the Prince of Wales were always having high words in low Dutch to the discredit of themselves and the disgust of the bewildered courtiers. To such a pitch had the animosity between father and son been carried, that young Master George, the heir apparent to the throne, had been forbidden the palace, and he had frequently held long conversations through the fan-light with the hall porter, who could only show his face above the door-way, and exclaim, "Very sorry, your royal highness, but it's the governor's orders, and I can't let you in." Which of these two unnatural relatives may have been most to blame we are not in a condition to determine, but the father who shuts his doors against a son, and drives him from home, is, prime facie, a brute, and George the First's conduct to his wife affords collateral evidence of his being devoid of feeling towards those who were nearly allied to him. It may be generally taken for granted that sons are only indifferent towards parents who are bad, and if young George failed in respect or affection towards old George, it was because old George had done nothing to inspire in young George the sentiments which should have been entertained by a son for his father.
Sir Robert Walpole, the minister, had endeavoured to bring the precious couple together on friendly terms, but they would often quarrel in his presence, and appeal to Sir Robert, until the frequency with which they invoked the support of their referee, by loud exclamations of "So help me Bob!" turned the phrase into a proverb, which is to this day prevalent among the lower and more energetio classes of the community. When George the Second came to the throne, he expressed his desire to "keep on" Sir Robert Walpole as minister, if the situation continued to suit that individual, whose acknowledgment that he was "very comfortable." concluded the arrangement for the continuance of the existing Government.
Walpole was one of the most dishonest ministers that ever lived, and it was his policy to resort to corruption of the grossest kind to ensure success; "for," as he would sometimes say, "the manure must not be spared, if you wish for an abundant harvest." He accordingly laid it on so extravagantly thick, that the expenses of the cultivation of his political connections was prodigious, and the national resources were frequently dipped into, for the purpose of serving the personal objects of the minister. The sinking fund had a tremendous hole made in it, where—to steal a figure from the plumber's art—a waste-pipe was inserted, and laid on to the pocket of the premier, who, collecting the floating capital into a private reservoir of his own, turned it on among his creatures with great prodigality. To meet the drain that was going on, new taxes were imposed, or in other words, the people were treated as if they had been an Artesian well, and were bored to the most frightful extent for the sort of currency by which a liquidation of the liabilities of the State was to be effected.
The nation, recognising a swindling spirit in its rulers, gave symptoms of the imitative mania which invariably causes the vices of the great to be copied by the little. Speculations of the wildest and most dishonest nature were set on foot among every class, from the highest to the lowest, and there is no question that the Rogue's March would have been the most appropriate National Anthem for the period. From quiet fraud, the country soon fell into downright robbery, and the people got into the habit of plundering each other in the thoroughfares, without going through the formality—common in our own days of issuing a prospectus, and advertising a project. The first advertisement generally came upon the victim in the shape of a blow upon the head in the public streets; the preliminary deposit was extorted from him in the shape of the first article of value that could be easily snatched away, and the calls were exacted in rapid succession by a demand upon every one of his pockets. There was no hope of protection from the police, for the members of the force were too busy in robbing on their own account to bother themselves about the robberies that were being committed by others. It was, in fact, a case of Every Man his Own Pickpocket; and protection, being everybody's business, was soon considered nobody's business, until the whole kingdom was exposed to a sort of daily scramble, in the course of which Shakespeare's description of Iago's purse, "'Twas mine, 'tis his," was every hour realised. Things were, of course, in a most unsettled state, for nobody thought of settling anything—not even a washing bill—during the existence of the universal plunder system, and a riot every other day was the ordinary average of popular turbulence. Even the Scotch grew warm, and becoming conscientiously opposed to the legal infliction of death, they attended the execution of a smuggler to make a great moral demonstration against capital punishment. In the excess of their philanthropic sympathy with the convict, they began pelting the authorities, who were on the point of being murdered, when John Porteus, the captain of the guard, interfered to save the lives of his comrades. Some time afterwards, the philanthropists, to prove their consistent abhorrence of the punishment of death, seized upon Porteus, who had officiated in keeping the peace at the execution, and hanged him at the Salt Market.
In the year 1737 the queen died, and the king sent up a piteous howl, though he had ill-used her majesty on many occasions; but it was well remarked by a philosopher of the period, that by the sincerity with which George the Second wept her dead, he almost teaches us to forget the severity with which he wapt her living.
The year 1740 was rendered remarkable by a severe frost, which confined Father Thames to his bed with a dreadful cold, until the 17th of February, from the 26th of December previous. A fair was held on the ice, but amid these rejoicings the watermen were dissatisfied at being deprived of their ordinary fare, and the fishermen complained that they had been able to net nothing during the frost's continuance.
The disputes of the Continent furnished occupation, as usual, for English troops and English money, nor was it long before a difference between the Elector of Bavaria and Maria Theresa caused the Earl of Stair to be sent to keep his eyes open, with sixteen thousand men, in the lady's interest. Stair, after staring at sixty thousand Frenchmen face to face for some time, began to think he had a very poor look out, though joined by the king himself, and his son, the Duke of Cumberland. The whole three of them got beaten like so many old sacks by Marshal Saxe at the battle of Fontenoy. Cumberland, who had put his best leg forward, got it badly wounded. George rode along the lines—at the back, we believe—urging on the soldiers to fight for their king, while Stair seems to have been lost sight of, or perhaps to have run away, though we must admit that this flight of Stairs must be considered apocryphal.
While these disasters were going on abroad, a correspondence was being kept up between the Pretender, James Stuart, and his British friends, who promised that if he or his son Charles Edward would effect a landing in Scotland, there should be a good supply of horses and carriages; but one would imagine his friends were a parcel of jobmasters, by the quality of the aid they tendered, and indeed a job was their object, for all but the most unprincipled of the party were for abandoning the hopeless project.
Though James himself was a bird far too venerable to be attracted by Caledonian chaff, his son was sanguine enough to hope that by coming over to be met by a few glass coaches and hackney chariots, his cause would be aided. He wrote to say when he might be expected, and without waiting for an answer, he put to sea in a small frigate. He was joined by the Elizabeth, a sixty-gun ship, when an English liner, called the Lion, appeared on the foaming main, and an engagement commenced, which rendered it necessary for the Elizabeth to go into Brest harbour for refuge. At the end of eighteen days he reached the Hebrides, but the prospect was so wretched that the few adherents who met him recommended him very strongly to be off again as speedily as possible. Charles Edward was, however, obstinate, and on the 11th of August, 1745, he took out of his portmanteau and unfurled the banner of the Stuarts in the pass of Glenfinnan. Attempts were made to obtain recruits, but they poured, or rather dribbled in so slowly, that the whole insurrection might have been broken up had it been nipped in the bud; but while Sir John Cope, the commander of the king's forces, was capering about the hills, and dragging his army of flats across the mountains, the young Charles Edward gained time enough to add to the strength of his company. Cope not coming up to cope with the rebels, they pushed on to Perth and Stirling, but they soon made an acquisition of still more sterling value, by taking possession of Edinburgh. Here the young prince, who had landed only with seven adherents, found himself at the head of four thousand men, most of whom had neither arms nor discipline, but brimming over with the froth of enthusiasm, they presented to their chief a refreshing aspect.
Sir John Cope, having fumbled his way out of the hills, had got to Preston among the pans, where he was seized with a panic, and being set upon by the Scotch, was utterly routed. Returning to Edinburgh after his success Prince Charles Edward had King James proclaimed in the usual form; and the King of France, who had stood aloof while the result was doubtful, sent over a small parcel of arms and a few packets of powder, by way of encouragement. He promised also that a French army should soon follow the arms, for Charles Edward had no soldiers to match the matchless matchlocks that had arrived from the French sovereign. Trusting to the word of his Gallic majesty, the young Pretender ventured to cross the border in a blue bonnet, attended by a large body of adherents in the same interesting coiffure, and on the 29th of November, 1745, he fixed his headquarters at Manchester.
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The alarm excited in London was something utterly indescribable. People who lived in the town rushed into the country to be out of the way, and the inhabitants of the provinces poured into the metropolis as the best place for avoiding danger. The householders took up arms, and formed themselves into squares, crescents, lanes, streets, alleys, or anything. Some bolted their doors, others bolted themselves, and all gave unspeakable symptoms of terror and confusion. A camp was ordered to be formed in the suburbs, and after getting a large force together it was at first resolved to turn 'em out at Turaham Green, but Finchley was at length decided upon as the place of rendezvous.
George, who had been summoned from Germany, came blustering over to England, and began immediately to boast, in bad grammar and wretched pronunciation, that he would "vite vor his Binglish bossessions," and would "meet the Bretender how or where he bleased." His personal valour was not put to the test, for Charles Edward, who had expected instalments of friends to continue meeting him at every large town, had the mortification to find that the more he kept looking for them the more they kept on not coming; and eventually, by the unanimous voice of his officers, he was compelled to retreat. When he first heard their decision, he observed that the messenger must be joking, and his features wore a faint smile, but when the porter who brought the intelligence shook his head, as much as to say, "It's no joke, your honour," the features of the young Pretender fell, and those who watched him narrowly for the rest of his life, declare that he was never afterwards seen to smile again.
It is impossible to recite the misfortunes of Charles Edward without a feeling of grave sympathy at the failure of the many noble qualities with which he was endowed. In April, 1746, he advanced to Culloden, intending to astonish the English, but he and his followers, like the individual named in the song who had resolved to "astonish the Browns," finished by astonishing no one but themselves.
The rebels advanced in two columns; but the soldiers fell asleep, and we are not surprised at the fact, for any newspaper reader will admit that in the very idea of two columns there is something soporific in the extreme. The exhausted troops fell from fatigue; others lost their way; and the second column found it impossible to keep up with the first. This threw a damp upon the energies of even consternation on the boldest; and with a mental ejaculation of "Oh! it's no use," the very best of Charles Edward's adherents retired. Notwithstanding the valour of a corps consisting of picked men, there arose among them a feeling of dissatisfaction at standing unsupported, to be picked out by the artillery of the enemy; and though one gallant body withdrew, playing on their pipes, the pipes were very soon put out by a smart shower of bullets. Such was the upshot of one of the most spirited enterprises that ever was undertaken; and its chief, the unfortunate Charles Edward, became a pauper fugitive, with scarcely clothes to cover him, and there was quite as much necessity as nationality in the bareness of his legs, during the period of his wanderings.
One of these fogs which are so accommodating in romance, but very rarely present themselves opportunely in history, was obliging enough to make its appearance for that night only on an evening of September, 1746, and by its kind assistance in doing the heavy business on that occasion, Charles Edward was enabled to pass unobserved through an English squadron, and cross in a vessel to Morlaix in Brittany. The unfortunate Pretender seems to have taken his discomfiture so seriously to heart, that from a fine spirited young fellow, he lapsed into all sorts of excess, and having taken to drinking, he fell into a constant reel, which formed the sole remaining vestige of his once enthusiastic nationality. Sir Nathaniel Wraxall, walking about Florence in the year 1799, tumbled over an intoxicated individual, and raising him from the ground, had no sooner carried him towards a light, than he recognised the features of the young Pretender.
Matters might possibly have gone on very peaceably with England, for there was nothing to fight about at home, but a dispute arose with the French about the respective influence of the two nations in some of their distant colonies. A contest for the Nabobship between some of the native tribes in the Carnatic, became the subject of a desperate quarrel between the two great European powers; one of whom supported the claims of Anwar ad Dien, the other promoting the pretensions of Chunda Sahib, and both caring, in fact, not a button about either. A war was, nevertheless, entered upon with intense vehemence, and was carried on for some time, with alternating success; but, not having the bulletins of the day at hand, and the despatches being equally out of the way, we are unable to give the particulars of the various contests. The quarrelling, though at a great distance, made at the time sufficient noise to be disagreeably audible at home, and preparations were made in the two mother countries to send out large forces to thrash the children on both sided out of their turbulence.
Though all this bickering had been going on for some time in the colonies, war had not been formally declared; but whenever an English or a French vessel had a chance of worrying the other, each made the most of the opportunity. On one occasion, two French sail of the line got treated very unceremoniously, and eventually captured; when the Government of Paris began expressing a great deal of surprise and indignation, and professing utter ignorance of the fact that the two powers were quarrelling. It is absurd to suppose that France was sincere in this declaration, for it could not have been understood to be "only in fun," that the French and English were knocking each other about most unmercifully and energetically in America. The circumstance of the capture to which we have referred, caused an immediate understanding that both parties were henceforth in earnest; and there was a mutual calling-in of their outstanding ambassadors.
George, however, instead of thinking about the colonies, became solicitous only about his "little place" at Hanover, and while he neglected therefore the American war, which became a series of mishaps, he threw his whole strength into the defence of the wretched spot, that would not have been "had at a gift" even by the ambitious enemy.
Higher game was, in fact, in view; and the possession of the rock of Gibraltar and the island of Minorca by the English having long been envied, the French made up their minds to have a dish at one of them. Gibraltar was speedily pronounced impracticable, but Minorca seemed to be in a state of helplessness that tempted a resolute foe, and Fort St. Philip was suddenly invested. No preparations having been made for defence, the authorities ran about asking each other anxiously what was to be done, for most of the officers of the garrison were absent on leave; and General Blakeney, who was on the spot, though a very gallant fellow, was old and shaky. His spirit was consequently more effective as a fine piece of acting than for the purposes of actual war; and though the old fellow, tottering about in his dressing-gown and slippers, might have exclaimed "Aye, aye—let 'em come; I'm ready for them," and have relapsed with affecting feebleness into the sufferings of a gouty twinge, the spectacle, which might have been beautiful on the boards of a theatre, was, in the midst of a town threatened with a siege, most painfully ridiculous.
Relief was ordered from Gibraltar; but the governor, who was either very stupid or did not like the job, pretended to, or really did misunderstand the purport of the instructions sent out to him. At home, the same want of energy prevailed, for the acting representative of the Government picked out a few ill-manned vessels, which he dignified with the name of a squadron; and calling to him an admiral, since notorious but then unknown, observed to him, "Here, Byng; you had better take this force, and go and see what they want at Fort St. Philip." Admiral Byng did not at all like the job, and began to hesitate about undertaking it; but being told to call at Gibraltar for fresh troops, he plucked up sufficient pluck for the enterprise.
On his arrival at Gibraltar, the governor pretended not to know what Byng had come about; and when asked for troops, merely exclaimed, "Nonsense, nonsense; there's some mistake. I can't part with my troops, for I'm as nervous as an old aspen myself, with the very little protection that is left to me." Byng became more disheartened than ever by the refusal of the expected aid, and went grumbling away, muttering, "Well! they'll see; I know how it will end;" and giving vent to other ejaculations of a similarly un-seaman like character. He wrote to the Lords of the Admiralty, announcing the certainty of his making a mess of it; and in speaking of the refusal of troops at Gibraltar, he in vulgar but forcible language "gave it the governor." Having made up his mind to a failure, it was not very difficult to accomplish the object, and having gone to look at Fort St. Philip, he merely played, as it were, a game at stare-cap with the sentinel on the look-out, but did not perform a single operation with a view to its protection. In due course the French fleet hove in sight, and it was expected that a brilliant action would have taken place, for both squadrons immediately began manoeuvring most beautifully until each had got into the line of battle. A little harmless cannonading had commenced by way of overture to the anticipated work, when the French slowly retired, and the English slowly following, they disappeared together in the most harmless and indeed almost friendly manner, to the astonishment of poor old Blakeney, who watched them as long as the strength of his glasses would allow of his doing so. Nothing could have been more orderly than the retreat on both sides; and indeed it has been suggested by an old offender, who very naturally refuses to give his name—"That if the affair we have described deserves to be called a battle at all, the Battle of Co-runner"—mark the deceptive spelling in the last syllable—"would be a good name for it."
The rage of the English, whose boast it had been to rule the waves, and never, never, never to be slaves, may be conceived at the arrival of the intelligence of Byng's bungle. The Government was the first object of the popular fury; but the ministers were adroit enough to turn the indignation of the people against the unfortunate admiral. Byng was, no doubt, bad enough, though he was not the only guilty party; but his fellow-culprits, taking a lesson from the pickpockets, who were the first to raise after their accomplice the cry of "Stop thief!" began to denounce the nautical delinquent with excessive vehemence. They recalled him from his command, ordered him to Greenwich, and instead of allowing him to partake in the amusements of the place, they imprisoned him with the intimation that "None but the brave deserved the fair." The next step was to bring him before a court-martial on a charge of cowardice ana disobedience to orders, when, being found guilty, he was condemned to be shot, and underwent at Portsmouth, on the 14th of March, 1757, this rather redundant punishment. We are anxious to do what we can in the way of sympathy for poor Byng, particularly after the little we find that can be of any use to him in the pages of preceding historians. They seem disposed to join in the cruel shout of "Sarve him right!" which a vulgar and unthinking posterity has raised to hoot the memory of this unfortunate officer. We are induced to look at him as a gentleman who merely was unfit for the profession he had chosen, and as his was not an uncommon case, we think it hard to look upon it with uncommon severity. It is perhaps an odd coincidence, that an officer more eager for the fray than Byng had urged the latter to enter into the action with the French, when the dry observation "I'll be shot if I do," was the only reply of the admiral. It cannot fail to strike the philosophic observer at this distance of time, that Byng, when saying "I'll be shot if I do"—that is, if he ever said as much—might have been profitably given to understand that he would be shot if he didn't. It has been put forth as a consolatory reflection that the naval service in general profited by this melancholy execution of poor Byng; but though as a general rule, what is desirable for the goose is equally advantageous to the gander, we cannot in this instance agree that what was good for the men was at the same time good for the admiral.
The treatment of poor Byng presents a very humiliating picture of the want of firmness shown by the court-martial that tried, the ministers that abandoned, and the king that would not pardon him. Everybody affected a strong desire to see him saved, but nobody had the resolution to take the responsibility of saving him. His sometimes merciless majesty, the mob, formed in reality the executioners of poor Byng, for the authorities were all afraid of risking their popularity by being instrumental to his pardon. The members of the court-martial, by their verdict, expressly implored the Lords of the Admiralty to recommend him to the mercy of the crown, but there was a general feeling of "It's no business of mine," and to this heartless apathy poor Byng was eventually sacrificed. Never was there a better illustration of the hare with many friends, though not even a hair-breadth escape was permitted to the unfortunate admiral. Never was a gentleman killed under such an accumulation of kindness as Byng, and indeed he was, figuratively speaking, bowed out of existence with so many complimentary and sympathetic expressions, that but for the stubborn reality of the leaden bullets he might have fancied that the guns discharged at him were intended rather in the nature of a salute than as a capital punishment.