The Reign of George III. - (Continued.) page 2

Dumouriez arrived in London in June, but was immediately ordered to quit the country, the government not knowing how completely he had broken with the mob government of France. He then retired to Hamburg, where he wrote his memoirs, having a small pension allowed him by the landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, and having a price of three hundred thousand livres set upon his head by the convention. In 1804 he was allowed to come to England, where he employed himself in completing his memoirs, and in other literary pursuits. He was on intimate terms with the duke of Kent. He lived at Turyille Park, near Henley- on-Thames, and died there in 1823.

The duke of Chartres, afterwards Louis Philippe, took the road to Switzerland. He had before sent thither his sister and madame Genlis. He made a good part of the journey on foot, and arrived almost penniless. Dampierre, who had been appointed by the convention to supersede Dumouriez, took the command of the army, and established himself in the camp at Famars, which covered Valenciennes. He was there attacked, on the 8th of May, by the combined armies of Austrians, Prussians, English, and Dutch, under Clairfayt, the duke of Saxe-Coburg, and the duke of York.

He was defeated with terrible slaughter, four thousand men being killed and wounded, whilst the allies stated their loss at only eight hundred men. Dampierre himself lost a leg, and died the next day. Lamarque, who succeeded him, might have easily been made to retreat, for the French were in great disorder; but the allies had resolved to advance no further till Mayence should be retaken. Lamarque, there - fore, fortified himself in his camp at Famars, and remained unmolested till the 23rd of the month. He was then attacked, and again beaten, but was allowed to retire and encamp again betwixt Valenciennes and Bouchain. The allies, instead of pushing their advantages, waited the advance of the king of Prussia upon Mayence. Custine, who was put in command of the Rhine, from the Vosges and the Moselle to Huninguen, was enabled to keep back the prince of Hohenlohe, who had but an inconsiderable force, the king of Prussia having been compelled to send a large force to Poland, instead of forwarding it, according to engagement, to the Rhine.

In fact, whilst these events had been transpiring on the frontiers of France, Russia, Prussia, and Austria had been dividing Poland amongst them. Whilst expressing their horror at the French immorality, they had been giving one of the most infamous examples of royal robbery and rapacity ever witnessed. The king of Prussia, when contemplating his participation in this vile business, issued a proclamation assigning the most virtuous reasons for it. It was to check the speed of French principles in Poland, which had compelled himself and his amiable allies, the empress of Russia and the emperor of Germany, to invade Poland. Had this been the true reason, nothing more would have been necessary for these righteous powers than to enter the country with their troops, expel the French emissaries, and purge the nation of French principles. This done, a few garrisons here and there, to aid the Polish government in keeping order till the effervescence was over, would have not only been all that was required, but would have earned for these three powers the praises of all Europe, and the thanks of all good men. But these pretences were merely a cloak for a shameless robbery. Poland abutted on Prussia with the desirable ports of Thorn and Dantzic, and therefore Great Poland was especially revolutionary in the eyes of Frederick William of Prussia. The Polish diet exposed the hollow ness of these pretences in a counter-manifesto. This produced a manifesto from Francis of Austria, who declared that the love of peace and good neighbourhood would not allow him to oppose the intentions of Prussia, or permit any other power to interfere with the efforts of Russia and Prussia to pacify Poland; in fact, that his love of peace would not allow him to discountenance an aggressive war, but his love of good neighbourhood would allow him to permit the most flagrant breach of good neighbourhood. As for the empress of Russia, she had a long catalogue of ingratitudes against the Poles, in addition to their jacobinical principles, and for these very convenient reasons she had now taken possession of certain portions of that empire, and called on all the inhabitants of these districts to swear allegiance to her immediately. The empress having thus broken the ice of her real motives, the king of Prussia no longer pretended to conceal his, but called on all the inhabitants of Great Poland to swear allegiance to him forthwith. The Russian ambassador at Grodno (De Sievers) commanded the Poles to carry these Orders of Russia and Prussia into effect by a circular dated the 9th of April. In this document he informed them that the king of Prussia and his mistress, the empress of Russia, had graciously left to Poland as much territory as best befitted an intermediate power, and which would enable the Poles to carry out those principles of moderation, tranquillity, and just government, which these pious and disinterested monarchs so eminently patronised.

The great Polish confederation, which had invited the interference of Russia in order to carry out their own party views, were greatly confounded by these announcements of their friends. They reminded the marauders of the engagements entered into by Russia, Prussia, and Austria, at the time of the former partition, to guarantee the integrity of the remainder. But this was merely parleying with assassins with the knife at their throats. The aggressive powers by force of arms compelled poor king Poniatowski and the nobles to assemble a diet, and draw up and sign an instrument for the alienation of the required territories. By this forced cession a territory, containing a population of more than three millions and a half, was made over to Russia; and another territory to Prussia, containing a million and a half of inhabitants, together with the navigation of the Vistula, with the port of Thorn on that great river, and of Dantzic on the Baltic, so long coveted. As for the small remainder of what once had been Poland, which was left to that shadow-king, Poniatowski, it was bound down under all the old oppressive regulations, and had Russian garrisons at Warsaw and other towns. But all these powers were compelled to maintain large garrisons in their several sections of the appropriated country.

By this means the king of Prussia, with hands full of aggression, did not appear on the Rhine, to chastise the aggressions of France, before the month of April. He brought with him about fifty thousand men, Prussians, Saxons, Hessians, and Bavarians. He was joined by fifteen thousand or twenty thousand Austrians, under Wurmser, and five thousand or six thousand French emigrants, under the prince of Condé. Bat the French had on the Rhine their one hundred and forty thousand men at least, of whom twenty thousand were within the walls of Mayence. The: Prussians laid siege to that city, and the Austrians and English to Valenciennes. On the 21st of July the French engaged to give up Mayence on condition that they should be allowed to march out with the honours of war, and this the king of Prussia was weak enough to comply with. They must, of necessity, have soon surrendered at discretion; now they were at liberty to join the rest of the army, and again resist the allies.

Valenciennes did not surrender until the 28th of July, and not till after a severe bombardment by the duke of York. Thus three months of the summer had been wasted before these two towns, all which time the French had been actively employed in drawing forces from all quarters to the frontiers of Belgium.

The duke of York was recalled from Valenciennes to Menin, to rescue the hereditary prince of Orange from an everwhelming French force, against which his half- jacobinised troops showed no disposition to act. Having effected his deliverance, the duke of York marched on Dunkirk, and began, towards the end of August, regularly to invest it; but he was left unsupported by the prince of Orange, whom he had saved, and who engaged to assist him, but who continued lying at Menin, and, equally neglected by the Austrians, he was compelled to raise the siege on the 7th of September. The prince of Orange was himself not long unassailed. Houchard drove him from Menin, and took Quesnoy from him, but was, in his turn, routed by the Austrian general, Beaulieu, and chased to the very walls of Lille. According to the recent decree of the convention, that any general surrounding a town or post should be put to death, Houchard was recalled to be guillotined.

There continued a desultory sort of warfare on the Belgian frontiers for the remainder of the campaign. On the 15th and 16th of October, Jourdan drove the duke of Coburg from the neighbourhood of Maubeuge across the Sambre, but the duke of York Coming up with fresh English forces, which had arrived at Ostend under Sir Charles Grey, the French were repulsed, and the Netherland frontiers maintained by the allies for the rest of the year.

On the Rhine, the war was carried on quite into the winter. The king of Prussia did not stay longer than to witness the surrender of Mayence; he then hurried away to look after his new Polish territory, and left the army under the command of the duke of Brunswick. Brunswick, in concert with Wurmser and his Austrians, attacked and drove the French from their lines at Weissemberg, took from them Lauter, and laid siege to Landau. Wurmser then advanced into Alsace, which the Germans claimed as their old rightful territory, and invested Strasburg. But the Convention commissioners, St. Just and Lebas, defended the place vigorously. They called forces from all quarters; they terrified the people into obedience by the guillotine) Lebas saying, with a little guillotine and plenty of terror he could do anything. He did not, however, neglect to send for the gallant young Hoche, and put him at the head of the army. Wurmser was compelled to fall back; Hoche marched through the defiles of the Vosges, and, taking Wurmser by surprise, defeated him, made many prisoners, and captured a great part of Wurmser's cannon. In con- junction with Pichegru, Dessaix, and Michaud, he made a desperate attack, on the 26th of December, on the Austrians in the fortified lines of Weissemberg, whence they had so lately driven the French; but the duke of Brunswick came to their aid, and enabled the Austrians to retire in order. Hoche again took possession of Weissemberg; the Austrians retreated across the Rhine, and the duke of Brunswick and his Prussians fell back on Mayence. Once there, dissatisfied with the Prussian officers, he resigned his command, he and Wurmser parting with much mutual recrimination. Wurmser was not able long to retain Mayence; and the French not only regained all their old positions, before they retired to winter quarters, but Hoche crossed the lines and wintered in the Palatinate, the scene of so many French devastations in past wars.

As we have said, had the Germans, the Spaniards, and Piedmontese acted in concert on différent sides of the country, nothing could have resisted them; but they were each attacking on their own side and in their own way, and, though they kept the French well employed, they produced no grand result. The Spaniards, at the foot of the Pyrenees, fought the French bravely, but to little effect. The French army there was divided into two, one of which guarded the eastern Pyrenees under Deflers, who had been with Dumouriez in Holland, and that of the western Pyrenees, under Servan, late Girondist minister. Deflers lay in a fortified camp at Mas d'Eu, in front of Perpignan. In the middle of May he was attacked and defeated by the Spanish general, Ricardos. The French fled in confusion into Perpignan, and instead of Ricardos following on the instant, he remained to capture the forts of Bellegarde and Les Bains, and thus gave the French opportunity to call in reinforcements and strengthen their defences, so that he did not deem himself strong enough to contend with them. It was autumn before Ricardos ventured to attack them again. He then once more defeated the united forces of Deflers, Davoust, and Dagobert, and remained encamped on the spot betwixt the borders of Catalonia and Perpignan. As for Servan, he was completely defeated by the Spanish general, Don Ventura Caro, and soon after gave up his command. By a plan of action as skilful as their conduct was brave, the Spaniards might have turned the whole tide of war against the convention in the south.

On the side of Sardinia, Vittorio Amadeo was furnished with a sum of money by England to enable him to keep his ground against the French. The convention sent agents, who, through a count Viretti, whom they won over, endeavoured to draw over Vittorio Amadeo by offering to give him up Genoa in exchange for the island of Sardinia, and to add to his territory any Italian states they might afterwards conquer. The king of Sardinia would not listen to these proposals, but prepared to drive Kellermann from Savoy and Nice, and to co-operate with the French royalists at Lyons and Toulon. If the republican armies could reduce Lyons, they must triumph in the south; and, on the other hand, if the people of Lyons could be supported, and could act in concert with the royalist3 of Toulon, and the English and Spaniards preparing to assist them in that port, the Convention would be at once driven out of the Alps and the greater part of the south of France. Vittorio Amadeo therefore ordered his son, the duke of Montferrat to cross Mont Cenis and the lesser St. Bernard, and to drive the French out of Savoy and the Tarentaise, whilst he himself cleared Nice of them. The duke of Montferrat soon drove the French out of all the upper Savoy, and of a good part of the lower country; but, instead of advancing briskly upon Chambery, which must have surrendered, he halted near Aigue-Belle. Whilst he was planning with too much deliberation the reduction of Conflans and Chambery, Kellermann pushed forward his forces to occupy those places. Other republican troops poured in from the country around Geneva, and from Annecy; and the Savoyards, who hated their former fellow-subjects the Piedmontese, joined them as a militia. Montferrat was compelled by superior numbers to abandon all his advantages, and retreat again across Mont Cenis and the lesser St. Bernard. Vittorio Amadeo, meantime, had driven the French from the greater part of Nice, but, on the 18th of October he was defeated by the republicans at the bridge of Giletta; and, at the same time, learning the retreat of his son, there was nothing for it but to retreat too, and to leave the faithful Nizzards to the vengeance of the French. The great fault of the campaign was the aiming at too much. Had the Piedmontese, instead of dividing their forces, poured them down the hills in one strong torrent, they might very well have reached Lyons, and have amalgamated with the royalists there, when they would have presented a formidable power to the convention. As it was, the failure of the enterprise destroyed the hopes of the Lyonnaise; they defended themselves bravely for a couple of months, and then surrendered to the republicans, thus cutting the tie which should have united them with the population of Toulon and the south.