Though thus thwarted in their designs, and deprived of their best leaders, the conspirators appeared in arms in various parts of the country. Parties attacked Naas and Carlow, but were repulsed with loss. A large party, under a priest named Murphy, appeared in the county of Wexford, and took the city of that name. Slight insurrections about the same time broke out in the northern counties of Antrim and Down, but were easily suppressed. In Wexford alone did the insurgents appear in formidable strength. Under a priest named Roche, a large party of them met and defeated a portion of the government troops; but on a second occasion, though they fought with resolution for four hours, they were compelled to retreat. Another defeat at New Ross exasperated them greatly, and some monstrous cruelties were consequently practised upon their prisoners. On the 20th of June, their whole force was collected upon Vinegar Hill, near Enniscorthy, where an army of 13,000 men, with a proportionate train of artillery, was brought against them by General Lake. They were completely overthrown and dispersed. From this time the rebellion languished, and in July it had so far ceased to be formidable, that an act of amnesty was passed in favor of all who had been engaged in it, except the leaders.
On the 22d of August, when the rebellion had been completely extinguished, 900 French, under General Humbert, were landed at Killala, in the opposite extremity of the country from that in which the insurgents had shown the greatest strength. Though too late to be of any decisive effect, they gave some trouble to the government. A much larger body of British troops, under General Lake, met them at Castlebar, but retreated in a panic. They then advanced to the centre of the country, while the lord-lieutenant confessed the formidable reputation which their countrymen had acquired, by concentrating an immensely disproportioned force against them. On the 8th of September, they were met at Carrick-on-Shannon by this large army, to which they yielded themselves prisoners of, war.
During the ensuing two years, the British ministers exerted themselves to bring about an incorporating union of Ireland with Great Britain; a measure to which the Irish were almost universally opposed, but which, by the use of bribes and government patronage liberally employed amongst the members of the Irish legislature, was at length effected. From the 1st of January 1801, the kingdom of Ireland formed an essential part of the empire, on which was now conferred the name of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The act of Union secured to the Irish most of the commercial privileges which they had so long sought. Upon a comparison of the aggregate exports and imports of the two countries, Ireland was to raise two parts of revenue for every fifteen raised by Great Britain, during the first twenty years of the Union, after which new regulations were to be made by Parliament. One hundred commoners were to be sent by Ireland to the British (now called the Imperial) Parliament; namely, two for each county, two for each of the cities of Dublin and Cork, one for the university, and one for each of the thirty-one most considerable towns. Four lord spiritual, by rotation of sessions, and twenty-eight lords temporal, elected for life by the Peers of Ireland, were to sit in the House of Lords.
The Union, though, upon the whole, effected in a spirit of fairness towards Ireland, increased the discontent of the people, which broke out in 1803 in a new insurrection. Under Robert Emmet and Thomas Russell, a conspiracy was formed for seizing the seat of the vice-government, and for this purpose a great multitude of peasantry from the county of Kildare assembled (July 23) in Dublin. Disappointed in their attempt upon the castle, they could only raise a tumult in the streets, in the course of which Lord Kilwarden, a judge, and his nephew, Mr. Wolfe, were dragged from a carriage and killed. The mob was dispersed by soldiery, and Emmett and Russell, being seized, were tried and executed.
CHANGE OF MINISTRY, AND PEACE OF AMIENS, 1801.
At the commencement of 1801, Britain had not only to lament this unexpected turn of fortune, but to reckon among her enemies the whole of the northern states of Europe, which had found it necessary to place themselves on a friendly footing with Bonaparte, and though they did not declare war against Britain, yet acted in such a manner as to render hostilities unavoidable. Nelson sailed in March with a large fleet for Copenhagen, and proved so successful against the Danish fleet, as to reduce that country to a state of neutrality. The death of the Russian Emperor Paul, which took place at the same time, and the accession of Alexander, who was friendly to Britain, completely broke up the northern confederacy. Yet the great achievements of France on the continent, joined to the distresses of a famine which at this time bore hard on the British people, produced a desire for that peace which, a year before, might have been gained upon better terms. With a view, apparently, to save the honor of Mr. Pitt and his friends, a new ministry was appointed under Mr. Addington, by whom a peace was at length, in the end of the year (1801), concluded with France, which was left in the state of aggrandizement which has just been described.
The war of the French Revolution placed Great Britain in possession of a considerable number of islands and colonies in the East and West Indies and elsewhere; and while only two war ships had been lost on her part, she had taken or destroyed 80 sail of the line, 181 frigates, and 224 smaller ships, belonging to the enemy, together with 743 privateers, 15 Dutch, and 76 Spanish ships. The triumphs of the British fleets were indeed numerous and splendid, and had the effect of keeping the national commerce almost inviolate during the whole of the war while that of France was nearly destroyed. There was, however, hardly the most trifling instance of success by land; and the expenses of the contest had been enormous. Previously to 1793, the supplies usually voted by the House of Commons were £14,000,000; but those for 1801 were £42,197,000—a sum about double the amount of the whole land-rent of the country.
WAR RENEWED WITH FRANCE, 1803—SUBSEQUENT EVENTS.
It was only one of the results of the war against French independence, that France was led by the course of events to place herself under the control of her chief military genius, Napoleon Bonaparte; a man singularly qualified for concentrating and directing the energies of a country in the existing condition of France, but animated more by personal ambition than by any extended views of the good of his species. It was soon manifested that Bonaparte did not relish peace. By taking undue advantage of several points left loose in the treaty, he provoked Great Britain to retaliate by retaining possession of Malta; and the war was accordingly recommenced in May 1803. Britain immediately employed her superior naval force to seize the French West India colonies; while France took possession of Hanover, and excluded British commerce from Hamburg. Bonaparte collected an immense flotilla at Boulogne, for the avowed purpose of invading England; but so vigorous were the preparations made by the whole British population, and so formidable the fleet under Lord Nelson, that he never found it possible to put his design in execution. In the year 1804, he was elevated to the dignity of Emperor of the French; and France once more exhibited the formalities of a court, though not of the kind which the European sovereigns were anxious to see established. In April of the same year, the Addington administration was exchanged for one constructed by Mr. Pitt, and of which he formed the leader.
In 1805, under the fostering influence of Great Britain, a new coalition of European powers, consisting of Russia, Sweden, Austria, and Naples, was formed against Napoleon. He, on the other hand, had drawn Spain upon his side, and was making great exertions for contesting with Britain the empire of the sea. A fleet of thirty-three sail, partly French and partly Spanish, met a British fleet of twenty-seven, under Nelson, off Cape Trafalgar, October 25, 1805, and was completely beaten, though at the expense of the life of the British commander. Britain thus fixed permanently her dominion over the seas and coasts of the civilized world. At this time, however, Napoleon was asserting with equal success his supremacy over continental Europe. By a sudden, rapid, and unexpected movement, he conducted an army into Germany, where the Austrians were already making aggressions upon neutral territory. On the 17th October, he took the fortress of Ulm, with its artillery, magazines, and garrison of 30,000 men; a month after, he entered Vienna without resistance. He then pursued the royal family, and the allied armies of Russia and Austria, into Moravia; and on the 2d of December 1805, he gained the decisive and celebrated victory of Austerlitz, which put an end to the coalition, and rendered him the dictator of the continent.