Pitt's scheme for uniting England and Ireland.
The Great Rebellion of 1798 led to the legislative union of England and Ireland. Pitt and his lieutenant, Cornwallis, thought, rightly enough, that the rising had come from the fact that the large majority of the Irish were handed over, without representation or political rights, to be governed by the minority. They devised two schemes for bettering the state of the land—the Romanists were to receive "Emancipation," that is, the same rights as their neighbours of the Church of Ireland—and at the same time an end was to be put to the Dublin Parliament, and the Irish members incorporated in the Parliament of Great Britain. For Emancipation without union would have given the Romanists a majority in the Dublin Parliament and led to a bitter struggle between them and their old masters, which must have ended in a second civil war.
The Act of Union passed.
The process of persuading or bribing the Anglo-Irish Protestant aristocracy to give up their national Parliament took two years. They bitterly disliked the idea, and were only induced to yield by a liberal shower of titles and pensions, and a goodly compensation in cash distributed among the chief borough owners and peers. It was not till February 18, 1800, twenty months after the rebellion had been crushed, that the Irish Houses voted their own destruction. For the future Ireland was represented by thirty-two peers and one hundred commoners in the Parliament of the "United Kingdom."
After completing the Union, Pitt began to take in hand his scheme of Catholic Emancipation. But he was not destined to carry it through—a fact which was in a short time to have a widely felt influence on English politics.
Bonaparte in Egypt.
Meanwhile the French war was still raging. Having failed to win command of the seas, and having been equally disappointed in their plans for causing rebellion in Ireland, the French Directory tried another scheme for injuring England. Napoleon Bonaparte, the young general who had conquered Italy in 1796-7, was now the first man in France. He had lately formed a grandiose scheme for erecting a great empire in the Levant. From thence he intended to strike a blow at the English dominions in India, which he regarded as the chief source of our wealth. The venal and incapable members of the Directory feared Bonaparte, and were glad to get him out of France. They at once fell in with his plan, and gave him the Toulon fleet and an army of 30,000 men. Keeping his destination a profound secret, Bonaparte sailed from Toulon in May, 1798. He piratically seized Malta from the Knights of St. John as he passed, to make it a half-way house to his intended goal. Then, pushing on eastwards, he landed at Alexandria, and in a few weeks overran the whole of Egypt, though France had never declared war on the Sultan of Turkey, the ruler of that land. Once seated there, he began to develop a gigantic scheme for the conquest of the whole East, vowing that he would build up an Oriental empire and "attack Europe from the rear." His first care was to send emissaries to Tippoo Sultan, the son of our old Indian enemy Haider Ali, bidding him to attack the English in India with the assurance of French support.
Battle of the Nile.
Soon after Bonaparte had taken Cairo, he heard that the ships which had brought him to Egypt had been destroyed. Admiral Nelson, the commander of the English Mediterranean fleet, had arrived too late to prevent the French army from disembarking. But, finding their squadron lying in Aboukir Bay, he determined to destroy it. The enemy lay moored in shallow water, close to the land, but Nelson resolved to follow them into their anchorage. Sending half his ships to slip in between the enemy and the shore, he led the other half to attack them on the side of the open sea. This difficult manœuvre was carried out with perfect success; first the van, then the centre, then the rear of the French fleet was beset on two sides. The squadrons were exactly equal in numbers, each counting thirteen line-of-battle ships. But so great was the superiority of the English seamanship and gunnery, that eleven out of the thirteen French vessels were sunk or taken in a few hours. This brilliant feat of naval tactics had the important result of cutting off Bonaparte's power to return to France. He was penned up in Egypt as in an island, with no way of egress save by the desert route to Syria. Nor could any further reinforcements reach him from France, since the victory of the Nile gave Nelson complete command of the Mediterranean. But Bonaparte did not at first show any dismay; he was firmly established in Egypt, and had resolved to persevere in his attempt to conquer the whole East with his own army.
Siege of Acre.