General Blighe, the passive tool in this Quixotism, was the only sufferer after their return. He was so ill received, that he found it necessary to resign his regiment and government, and saw himself undone by being sent, when a veteran officer of Horse, to command a naval expedition. He had been actuated, during the course of these enterprises, by a young Lord Fitz-morrice and the adventurer Clarke, who diverted himself from the ships with the difficulties his comrades found in re-embarking. But he was on the point of falling under the punishment due to his arrogance: depending on his interest in the General, he had broken the arrest under which he had been put, for some misdemeanour, by Cunningham, his commanding officer; the same Cunningham, whose handsome behaviour at Minorca I have mentioned: at his return from thence he had been preferred by the Duke, who told him he had been misinformed of his character, and was sorry he had not sooner known his merit. At their return from St. Cas, Cunningham insisted on bringing Clarke before a Court-Martial. The Princess unwisely countenanced the latter, who had made himself odious to the Army, and who escaped; Cunningham being suddenly ordered on the expedition to Martinico and Guadaloupe, at the latter of which places he unfortunately died, when his services were in the fairest train of being rewarded.
We left the King of Prussia in apprehension of seeing his own dominions become the theatre of war. To detail his actions would destroy the idea of their rapidity. He had flown from the siege of Olmutz to invade Bohemia, attacking his enemies everywhere, while his Generals could scarce preserve themselves on the defensive. Dohna was watching the Russians rather than opposing them: Manteuffel could scarce make a firmer stand even against the Swedes. Prince Henry was threatened as he covered Dresden. The King, always present where the nearest danger pressed, appeared before the ruined walls of Custrin, gave battle to the Russians, and after a bloody contention from nine in the morning till seven at night, obliged that savage and undaunted people to retire. Above twenty thousand had fallen,[26] yet slaughter seemed to inspire them with fierceness rather than with dismay; when obliged at last to avoid a butchery which they had tempted rather than repelled, they retired in good order, and even claimed the honour of the day. The trifling loss suffered by the King’s troops, and the consequences of the victory, which delivered him from those barbarians for that campaign, contented a Prince who had been forced into a hero, and who knew that many such successes were necessary before he could lay aside the sword. He left Dohna to adjust the controversy of victory, and marched to the relief of his brother. He accomplished it by joining him, and Daun retired. The Swedes marched back with precipitation on the defeat of the Muscovites.
About this time we were on the point of a rupture with Holland. That country was sunk in power and reputation, laboured with debts and factions, was influenced by no genius, and had lost all military spirit. In such a situation, no wonder they were not desirous of again beholding the Armies of their neighbour King on the frontiers of Flanders; the only spot where those universal aspirers, the French, know how to shine. Animated by no zeal of a common cause, the Dutch, who were determined not to engage on our side, thought the second step of prudence was to profit of our calamities. The States winked commercially at supplies furnished by their merchants to the French colonies, and a little more than commercially, transported,[27] not only their commodities, but military stores. Our privateers, as apt to infringe treaties as the wisest Burgomaster, and who distinguished between friendship and enmity by no rule but that which constituted contraband goods, made very free with the ships of our friends employed by our enemies. Those friends complained with as little modesty as if they had acted like friends: we replied with firmness, and advised them to avoid giving provocation. They grew more violent, without growing more impartial. Their ships were condemned as legal captures. Their merchants presented remonstrance after remonstrance to the Princess Gouvernante, pressing her to proceed to more open declarations. She, who knew that clamour was not power but in its own country, told them she would not declare, unless they would augment their forces.
The Dutch endeavoured to draw Spain and Denmark, who had suffered in the same manner from the same causes, though in a less degree, into an association against what they called our piracies. The Princess was dying: it was apprehended that her death would let loose all the interested fury of the Dutch traders. The Duke of Newcastle ordered Mr. Yorke to make strong promises of satisfaction to Holland: this was without communicating with Mr. Pitt; who receiving duplicates of complaints, empowered Mr. Yorke to give assurances of much fainter complexion. Mr. Yorke answered, that was now too late; he had been commissioned to give, and had accordingly given encouragement to hope for fuller redress. Pitt, with becoming warmth, expostulated with Newcastle, and bade him get out of the scrape as he could. More of this dispute will appear hereafter.
While Europe was attending to the scenes of blood exhibited by most of its formidable powers, its attention was called off by an event very foreign to those struggles. An attempt of assassination was made on the person of the King of Portugal. One night, as he was returning in his chaise, with very few attendants, from an affair of gallantry, he was attacked and shot through the arm: the assassins thought their work completed. The King was not wounded mortally, and recovered in a few weeks. The Court’s ignorance of the murderers, and of the cause of the blow, prompted them to endeavour to conceal the fact. Their Ministers in foreign Courts were ordered to give out that the King had had a fall in his palace, had hurt his arm, and that during his incapacity of signing papers, the Queen would assume the reins of Government. A tale too ill-concerted, not to divulge the secret, supposing the assassination of a King could have remained a secret. Yet the notoriety of the fact led the public to no light into it. Revenge was undoubtedly the groundwork: but whether the revenge of an injured husband, of a dishonoured house, or of more holy murderers, all the curiosity of the public could not ascertain.
The lady, supposed in question, was of illustrious blood—yet, jealous and vindictive as Portuguese and Spaniards are, they seldom carry their delicacy of honour so high as to think the wound irreparable, if given by their Sovereign. But there was another order of men, on whose ideas the generality reasoned differently: an order not so scrupulous about receiving affronts, or of returning injuries, where more essential interests than their honour is concerned. These were the Jesuits: they had long assumed dominion over Paraguay, and had established an economy of government there, which, while it ensured their authority by endearing them to the governed, almost made amends, by the felicity they established among the people of that province, for the numberless mischiefs they have brought on other countries. In short, the Jesuits alone indemnified the Americans of that region for the loss of their liberty, and atoned for some of the cruelties exercised by European conquerors. But the good fathers were not content with dispensing blessings as proxies for others: the Paraguayans must own their sceptre as well as their beneficence.
I do not pretend to pierce the mysterious veil thrown over the transactions of that country, nor to assert the tale of their actually crowning one of their order. It is sufficient to say that the Court of Lisbon had entertained the strongest jealousy of their proceedings; had determined to break the charm by which they excluded their own Sovereign from interfering in his own domain; and had actually engaged that upright Pontiff, Benedict XIV., to discountenance their ambitious proceedings. The fathers even apprehended severe decrees from the Vatican. At that crisis the life of the King of Portugal was attempted—no wonder the Jesuits were suspected.
The Court of Lisbon, which in its confusion had formed so improbable a story to account for the disappearance of the King, did not act by any means, in its subsequent proceedings, with equal inconsideration. The consequences of this affair ran into the following year; but being totally unconnected with every transaction that I propose to relate, I shall throw the whole of this Portuguese history into this place. The first Minister was Carvalho,[28] a bold, politic man, who hated the Jesuits. For some months the Court observed a total silence: nobody was apprehended, no suspicion discovered. Till Carvalho had got a clue that led to the darkest recesses of the mystery, it was affected to forget or treat the whole as an accident of a private nature. How he wound himself into the secret I do not pretend to say: there were many accounts, probably mere conjectures: it is an anecdote never likely to be known. The first notification to the public that the conspiracy was discovered, was made by seizing at the same instant, at a ball, the whole families of Tavora and Aveiro, houses of the first rank and noblest birth in Portugal, and the chiefs of which were possessed of the greatest posts and employments about the King. To them, till assembled in the snare, the King wore a face of the most unsuspecting favour.
The Marchioness of Tavora was a woman of fierce and lofty spirit; one of the married young ladies, the person beloved by the King. And hence the whole dark plot was unravelled; and the two different conjectures of the public on the cause of the assassination appeared to have been both true, for they were combined together. The Jesuits had worked on the pride and jealousy of the injured husband and his house, till those rash noblemen thought to revenge themselves, while they only acted the revenge of the Jesuits. Enough was confessed to establish the guilt of both the one and the other. How far the plot was spread, and how far its views extended, perhaps the conspirators themselves knew not: whatever they discovered beyond their actual guilt, and the participation of the Jesuits, was locked up in the penetralia of the palace. The public learned enough in knowing the latter; perhaps too much in seeing the dreadful executions of several of the principal conspirators, and in not seeing some justice done on the most guilty, the instigators of the crime. The old Marchioness was beheaded, and died with as heroic spirit as if she suffered for her country. Her husband and son-in-law suffered the most exquisite torments. A hapless youth, her son, shared her fate, with others of his house. One of the actual assassins, a hired bravo, or servant, was put to extreme torture. All the Jesuits and their effects were seized, and their persons imprisoned, while leave was demanded from Rome to punish them in a more exemplary manner. But there the strong sense of Benedict was no longer on the throne—and an absolute Prince, wounded by the practices of priests, did not dare to proceed to extremities. The dress of religion guarded men, the more guilty for violating the duties of their profession. As the Pope’s permission to inflict capital punishments could not be obtained, the Court of Lisbon took upon itself to embark the whole order of Jesuits, and sent them to Rome to the patron of their crimes; reserving only a few of the most guilty, whose fate is still a secret.[29]