Reign of George III. (Continued.) page 10

On the 8th of May ministers moved for more money for the insatiable landgrave of Hesse, whose troops were at this very time exhibiting the most scandalous state of defiance of discipline, of consequent inefficiency, and of plunder of the inhabitants of America. This grant was violently opposed, but carried, but only by a majority of eight. All parties now began to denounce the shameless rapacity of these German princes. On the very next day, the 9th of May, the friends of the royal dukes of Cumberland and Gloucester called for an augmentation of their allowances. They represented that the king had since his accession, besides his eight hundred thousand pounds a-year, had now had one million one hundred thousand pounds to discharge his debts. He had just now received a grant of an additional one hundred thousand pounds a-year, and yet he left his brothers, because they had offended him by their marriages, in a condition of comparative poverty. Very severe comments were made on the eternal quarrels and enmities of the royal family, continuing from reign to reign. The court party, however, mustered against this motion, made by Sir James Lowther, and it was rejected. The same court party then made a determined attack on the speaker, Sir Fletcher Norton, for his honest speaking to the king, but they were soon compelled to lower their tone. Such was the notoriously scandalous management of the royal household, at once shabby and extravagant; such the notorious corruption, embezzlements, and abominable contracts by which the whole management of the government was disgraced, that it was thought best to get rid of these questions as fast as possible. Numbers of rubicund gentlemen who sat in the house of commons, and always voted for ministers, had obtained contracts for victualling the army and navy, which they had executed in such a manner as to be most profitable to themselves, but most deadly to our poor soldiers and sailors, who had to eat their meagre, sapless beef, their carrion pork, and their mouldy, worm-eaten biscuits. These comfortable gentlemen were declared to be the real destroyers of more of our soldiers and sailors than all the arms of the Americans, or the inclemencies of the climate and the exposures in the field. So far from driving the speaker from the chair, the house found it necessary to vote him its thanks, and the city of London voted that his speech to the king should be entered on their journals; that the freedom of the city should be presented to him in a gold box valued at fifty pounds.

Nor did Chatham, ill as he was, allow the session to pass without making one more energetic protest against the continuance of the war with America. On the 30th of May he moved an address to his majesty for the immediate cessation of hostilities. Notwithstanding all that had been said on our successes over the Americans, Chatham contended as positively as ever that we could never conquer them. " You have," he said, " ransacked every corner of Lower Saxony, but forty thousand German boors never can conquer ten times the number of British freemen. You may ravage, you cannot conquer - it is impossible - you cannot conquer America. You talk of your numerous funds to annihilate the congress, and your powerful forces to disperse their army; I might as well talk of driving them before me with my crutch 1 But what would you conquer?

The map of America? I am ready to meet any general officer on the subject" (looking at lord Amherst) - " What will you do out of the protection of your fleet? In the winter, if together, they are starved; and if dispersed, they are taken off in detail. I am experienced in spring hopes and vernal promises. I know what ministers throw out; but at last will come your equinoxial disappointment. You have got nothing in America but stations. You have been three years teaching them the art of war. They are apt scholars; and I will venture to tell your lordships that the American gentry will make officers enough fit to command the troops of all the European powers."

Events in America at this very moment were justifying every one of these words. Chatham assured them that they were, whatever France might say, or the king and his ministers might believe, on the very edge of a war with that country. Why, she was secretly helping the Americans, and receiving their trade in return. But, at the same time, he prophesied what came true with terrible reality - that France, by helping to snatch America from us, was commit - ting suicide herself - at least, on all her old institutions and maxims of administration. On the full meaning of Chatham being doubted by lord Weymouth, he repeated that he meant repeal of every oppressive act passed since 1763. He would have the Americans placed on the same footing as before that period; and he concluded by saying that if it were asked why we should concede to the Americans, who conceded nothing, he would say that we ought to concede, because we had been the aggressors from the beginning.

But lord Lyttleton replied that there was "nothing to make us doubt of reducing the rebellion of the Americans; that anarchy was universally prevalent there; that treachery, cruelty, and oppression were perpetrated by the republicans on the royalists; that every law was trampled under foot by ambitious faction; every prison filled with those who would not join in the scheme of congress; and other loyal Americans were driven into exile and despoiled of their property. This could not last: this state of anarchy would swallow up those who made it." Chatham's motion was rejected by ninety-nine votes against twenty-eight.

The affairs of the East Indies occupied a prominent part of the attention of the present session, which we reserve to our general notice of India, and parliament was prorogued by the king on the 6th of June, in a speech, in which he indulged the fallacious hope that the American insurrection would be terminated in the present campaign. But Chatham's prognostics were at the very time realising themselves. Had the Howes had the necessary qualities of commanders in such an important cause - had they pursued and dispersed the American army, as they ought to have done on defeating it, and as they might readily have done; and had the English government instantly, whilst in this favourable position, repealed all the obnoxious statutes, they would have thrown the congress and Washington so completely into the wrong, that it would have been impossible for them to have made head again. But neither the generals nor the government of that day had the capacity for such strategic and statesmanlike policy. The generals went comfortably into winter quarters, leaving the embers of war to rekindle and spread; and the government, deaf to the warnings of Chatham, still stolidly refused justice whilst rigorously enforcing their injustice. And, indeed, when Chatham gave his last Cassandra-like remonstrance, it was already too late. We had already taught the Americans the art of war. Washington was no longer contented to stand on the defensive; happy if he could preserve his soldiers from running off without fighting at all. His circumstances were desperate, and the energy which springs from despair now urged him to measures of daring and wakefulness just as the English generals, like northern bears, were entering on their winter's sleep. Benedict Arnold had paid him a visit in his wretched camp beyond the Delaware, and probably from their united counsels sprang a new style of movement, which confounded his unsuspecting enemies.

The army of lord Cornwallis, which had so triumphantly pursued Washington through the Jerseys, supposing the Americans now put beyond all possibility of action, if not wholly dispersed, lay carelessly in their cantonments on the left bank of the Delaware. The two main outposts, Trenton and Bordentown, were intrusted to bodies of Hessians. At Trenton lay colonel Rahl, and at Bordentown count Donop. As Christmas was approaching (which the Germans keep to an entire abandonment of all every-day concerns, and spend in much feasting and carousing), they had especially abandoned all discipline. The British officers, too, had quitted, for the most part, their regiments, and had gone to enjoy the Christmas at New York, where general Howe was keeping up great hospitality, imagining the war to be fast drawing to a close

But if the English paid no attention to Washington, he was paying every attention to them. General Lee, who had, from his enormous conceit, always been a thorn in Washington's side, had recently shown him the necessity of vigilance - that self-sufficient officer, who had never ceased to contend with Washington for equality or even superiority, nor to criticise his conduct to congress, being taken by surprise. When Washington was compelled to fall back from New York, and retreat into the Jerseys, he had sent dispatch after dispatch to general Lee, who was slowly on his march from the Hudson to the Delaware, to join him with all speed. Lee, so far from quickening his movements, had retired three miles out of his camp - though he was within twenty miles of the enemy - to pass the night, and was actually writing to congress to censure the movements of Washington, when colonel Harcourt, afterwards lord Harcourt. informed of the fact, rode suddenly up with a party of dragoons, and made him prisoner.

Washington was as watchful as Lee and the English army were remiss. Instead of his army having gone to pieces, it had now received considerable reinforcements. Lee's division, now under command of general Sullivan, had joined him at once. General Heath had marched another body of troops from Peek's Kill, and the united exertions of civil and military officers had raised his force to about seven thousand men. With these he determined t6 take advantage of the carelessness of the English and German commanders, for the preservation of Philadelphia, and the recovery of the Jerseys, by sweeping, at one stroke, all the British cantonments from the Delaware. His plans arranged, he set out on the evening of Christmas-day, and crossed the river at Mackonkey's Ferry, nine miles above Trenton, to attack that fort. The river was so encumbered with ice that he found it a most arduous undertaking, but he accomplished it with the division immediately under his command - two thousand four hundred in number. Irvine was to cross at Trenton Ferry, to secure the bridge below the town, and prevent the retreat of the enemy that way; and general Cadwallader to pass at Bristol Ferry, and attack the fort at Burlington. But these two generals could not get across for the ice, and that part of the scheme entirely failed.

But Washington, through a snow storm, continued his march through the night on Trenton, and reached it at about eight o'clock in the morning. A trusty spy had informed him, over night, that he had seen the soldiers, both British and Hessians, asleep, steeped in drink. The Hessians had been, from the first of their encampment there, more busy plundering the people and insulting the women than paying much attention to discipline, by which they had wonderfully revolted the minds of the people. When lie arrived, the soldiers still lay sunk in their Christmas debauch; and it was only by the first crash of the cannon that they were roused. When they ran to arms Washington had already invested the town. The brave general Rahl, in his endeavour to form his drunken troops, and lead them on, was mortally wounded by an American rifle, almost at the first discharge. The light horse and a portion of the infantry, who fled on the first alarm, escaped to Borden town. The main body attempted to retreat by the Princetown Road, but found it already occupied by colonel Hand and his regiment of Pennsylvanian riflemen. Thus cut off, ignorant of the force opposed to them, and without enthusiasm for the cause, they threw down their arms and surrendered. About a thousand prisoners and six cannon were taken. The Americans had two killed, two frozen to death, and a few wounded, in assaulting the artillery - amongst them James Monroe, then a lieutenant, and afterwards president of the United States. Had the Hessians, who surrendered, not been confounded, they might have taken the same road to Bordentown; and had not count Donop, who commanded them, been led away by a false alarm, they might have easily, by a march of only six miles, have been at Trenton, and recovered the prisoners, driving Washington into the Delaware, to the total loss of his men. But Washington had engaged his attention by sending, the day before, all the boys and vagabonds that he could collect down the banks of the Delaware, opposite to Bordentown, and Donop, imagining them a body of the enemy, was gone in quest of them, and was eighteen miles from Trenton.

Washington did not wait for the return of Donop, especially as general Leslie lay at Princetown, about fifteen miles above Trenton, with a strong force. As soon as he had refreshed his men, he re-crossed the Delaware, carrying with him his prisoners, the stores he had taken, and the six field pieces that he brought with him.

This spirited and successful action had a wonderful effect on the American mind. It revived the courage of their troops, which had sunk very low after so many defeats. lb inspired them and the public at large with confidence in the talents and daring of their commander-in-chief, who was now eulogised as another Fabius. To make the most of their success, Washington sent his prisoners to Philadelphia, where they were paraded through the streets in a kind of triumph. Many of Washington's troops were now at the end of their term, but he kept them with him by a bounty of ten dollars per man.

Such was the confidence inspired, even in himself, by this success, that, being immediately joined by three thousand six hundred Pennsylvanian militia, he determined to cross the Delaware, as it was now strongly frozen over. He sent over Irvine, Cadwallader, and Mifflin, with nearly four thousand men, and following them on the last day of the year 1776, he took post at Trenton, which had not yet been re-entered by the British. But general Grant had already joined general Leslie at Princetown, with a strong body of British and Hessian troops; and general Howe, on the news of the new life in the American army, had detained lord Cornwallis, who was on the point of leaving for England. He hastened to Princetown, and took the command of the whole force, concentrating all the troops on the Delaware shore.

On the 2nd of January he marched from Princetown for Trenton, drove in the enemy's outposts, and reached Trenton by five o'clock the same afternoon. Washington retired as he approached across the Assumpinck, a creek, as the Americans call it, that is, a small rivulet, which runs through the town. The British, on arriving at the fort and bridge of the Assumpinck, found both guarded by artillery, and Washington posted on some high ground beyond. Cornwallis cannonaded the bridge and forts, and his fire was briskly returned. He then encamped for the night there, intending to force the creek the next morning; but Washington did not wait for him. With his raw militia only a few days in camp, he had no chance of resisting Cornwallis's army, and yet - a thaw having taken place - it was impossible to cross the Delaware. He called a council of war, and it was concluded that, from the great force of Cornwallis in front, the rear could not be very strong. It was therefore determined to make an attempt to gain the rear, beat up the enemy's quarters at Princetown, now, as they supposed, nearly deserted, and, if they could succeed, fall on the British stores and baggage at Brunswick. Their own baggage was, accordingly, sent quickly down the river to Burlington, the camp-fires were replenished, and small parties being left to deceive the enemy by throwing up entrenchments, Washington, about midnight, silently decamped by a circuitous route towards Princetown.