If we read Volunteers for Militia, we shall see that Wellington’s plan of defence is nearly that contemplated in 1863.
Gustavus III. of Sweden.
In a paper contributed to the Royal Society of Literature, Dr. Hermann has traced the eventful history of the Swedish monarch with great skill, from the period when he ascended the throne, in 1771, to his assassination by Ankerström at the masked ball in 1792. Dr. Hermann shows that Gustavus united in his own person and character most of those qualities, intellectual and moral, which distinguished the latter half of the eighteenth century. Thus, like Catherine of Russia and Frederick the Great, though not to the same extent, he was a believer in those doctrines whose chief expositors were Voltaire and the Encyclopædists; while, in the government of his country, he was ever striving after a system of optimism, which, however beautiful in theory, is wholly impracticable. The reign of Gustavus is chiefly remarkable for the spirit with which he broke down a tyranny of certain noble families, which had long usurped nearly the whole of the royal prerogative, and had thrown the monarch into the background; for the zeal with which he carried out many reforms of the greatest benefit to the more indigent classes of his people; for the remarkable rashness with which, unsupported by a single other European power, he rushed madly into a war with the Russian Empress; and for the extraordinary victory in which, at the close of his second campaign, in July, 1791, he destroyed the entire Russian fleet, in the Bay of Swöborg, and captured no less than 1412 Russian cannon.
The assassin, Ankerström, was discovered and executed: in his character and in his last moments, a striking similarity may be traced to Bellingham, who assassinated Mr. Perceval in 1812: both expressed the same fanatical satisfaction at the perpetration of the crime, and the same presumptuous confidence of pardon from the Almighty.
Gustavus, in his parting moments, strictly forbad, for fifty years, the opening of the chests at Upsal, in which his papers were deposited; and the injunction was strictly obeyed. On March 30, 1842, the chests were opened, in the presence of many spectators; but in neither was found, as was expected, any clue to the conspiracy of which Ankerström was the agent; but the king’s autograph instructions do not refer to any papers later than 1788, when the bequest was made. The Swedish instructions, in Gustavus’s handwriting, prove that the king enjoyed the reputation of being a great author without even knowing how to spell.—See Curiosities of History, p. 107.
Fall of Louis-Philippe.
Sir John Herschel, in a paper on Humboldt’s Kosmos, in the Edinburgh Review, January, 1848, has the following sentence, which reads strangely now, for it was given to the public just before the catastrophe which overthrew the throne of Louis-Philippe, and led in a few months to the Italian and Hungarian wars. Herschel’s words are: “A great and wondrous attempt is making in civilized Europe at the present time—neither more nor less than to stave off, ad infinitum, the tremendous visitation of war.” The retrospect has been thus sketched:
Seventeen years Louis-Philippe sat on his elective throne: great increase of wealth and physical progress were the results of his reign at home, peace preserved abroad, and foreign policy alike successful; yet the King was not popular at home. He was hated alike by the Legitimist party, in whose eyes he was but a usurper, and by the revolutionists, who sighed for entire emancipation from kingly rule. Besides, there are deep and dark stains upon the reign of the “Napoleon of Peace,” as Louis-Philippe liked to be called. His reign was a period of corruption in high places, of jealousy and illiberal restriction towards his own subjects, of a fraudulent and heartless policy towards the allies of his country, whose good will he more especially forfeited by his over-reaching conduct in regard to the marriage of the Duc de Montpensier to a Spanish princess. His downfal was long predicted by the leading journalists of England, where public opinion is unfettered by arbitrary laws. In France, too, it was understood that Louis-Philippe was, in great measure, restrained in his views by his sister, Madame Adelaide, who died Dec. 30, 1847. “Then it came to pass that the heart of the nation became alienated from their king; and when a trifling disturbance in February, 1848, was aggravated into a popular riot through the audacity of a few ultra-republicans, Louis-Philippe felt that he stood alone and unsupported as a constitutional king, both at home and abroad, and that the soldiery were his only means of defence. He shrank from employing their bayonets against his people: he fell in consequence, and his house fell with him. The King fled in disguise from Paris to the coast of Normandy, and taking ship again found a safe refuge on the shores of England, to which his family had already made their escape. He landed at Newhaven, March 3rd, 1848. The Queen of England—who, in 1843, had enjoyed the hospitality of Louis-Philippe at the Château d’Eu, his royal residence near Dieppe, and who had entertained him in the following year at Windsor, and conferred on him the order of the Garter—immediately assigned Claremont, near Esher, as a residence for himself and his exiled family. From the time of his arrival in England, his health began visibly to decline: he died on the 26th of August, 1850, in the presence of Queen Amelie and his family, having dictated to them the conclusion of his memoirs, and having received the last rites and sacraments of the church at the hands of his chaplain. He was buried on the following 2nd of September at the Roman Catholic chapel at Weybridge, Surrey, and an inscription was placed upon his coffin, stating that his ashes remain there, Donec Deo adjuvante in patriam avitos inter cineres transferantur” (Saturday Review). They have not been removed!