4th Oct.-4th Nov. 1759. (went that day week),—that this glorious bit of news reached England. It was only three days after that other, bad and almost hopeless news, from the same quarter; news of poor Wolfe's Repulse, on the other or eastern side of Quebec, July 31st, known to us already, not known in England till October 14th. Heightened by such contrast, the news filled all men with a strange mixture of emotions. 'The incidents of Dra'matic Fiction,' says one who was sharer in it, 'could not have 'been conducted with more address to lead an audience from despondency to sudden exultation, than Accident had here 'prepared to excite the passions of a whole People. They despaired; they triumphed; and they wept,—for Wolfe had fallen in the hour of victory! Joy, grief, curiosity, astonish'ment, were painted in every countenance: the more they 'inquired, the higher their admiration rose. Not an incident 'but was heroic and affecting.'33 America ours; but the noble Wolfe now not!

What Pitt himself said of these things, we do not much hear. On the meeting of his Parliament, about a month hence, his Speech, somebody having risen to congratulate and eulogise him, is still recognisably of royal quality, if we evoke it from the Walpole Notes. Very modest, very noble, true; and with fine pieties and magnanimities delicately audible in it: "Not a week all Summer but has been a "crisis, in which I have not known whether I should not "be torn to pieces, instead of being commended, as now by "the Honourable Member. The hand of Divine Providence; "the more a man is versed in business, the more he every"where traces that!" . . . "Success has given us unanimity, "not unanimity success. For my own poor share, I could "not have dared as I have done, except in these times. "Other Ministers have hoped as well, but have not been so "circumstanced to dare so much." "I think the stone "almost rolled to the top of the hill; but let us have a care; "it may rebound, and hideously drag us down with it again."34

་་

The essential truth, moreover, is, Pitt has become King of England; so lucky has poor England, in its hour of crisis, again been. And the difference between an England guided by some kind of Friedrich (temporary Friedrich, absolute, though of insecure tenure), and by a Newcastle and the

33 Walpole, iii. 219

34 Ib. iii. 225; Thackeray, i. 446.

4th Oct.-4th Nov. 1759. Clack of Tongues, is very great! But for Pitt, there had been no Wolfe, no Amherst; Duke Ferdinand had been the Royal Highness of Cumberland,—and all things going round him in St. Vitus, at their old rate. This man is a King, for the time being,-King really of the Friedrich type;-and rules Friedrich himself not more despotically, where need is. Pitt's War Offices, Admiralties, were not of themselves quick-going entities; but Pitt made them go. Slow-paced Lords in Office have remonstrated, on more than one occasion: "Impossible, Sir; these things cannot be got ready at the time you order!" "My Lord, they indispensably must," Pitt would answer (a man always reverent of coming facts, knowing how inexorable they are); and if the Negative continued obstinate in argument, he has been known to add: " My Lord, to the King's service, it is a fixed necessity of time. Unless the time is kept, I will impeach your Lordship!" Your Lordship's head will come to lie at your Lordship's feet! Figure a poor Duke of Newcastle, listening to such a thing;-and knowing that Pitt will do it; and that he can, such is his favour with universal England;-and trembling and obeying. War-requisites for land and for sea are got ready with a Prussian punctuality,-at.what multiple of the Prussian expense, is a smaller question for Pitt.

It is about eighteen months ago that Pownal, Governor of New England, a kind of half-military person, not without sound sense, though sadly intricate of utterance,—of whom Pitt, just entering on Office, has, I suppose, asked an opinion on America, as men do of Learned Counsel on an impending Lawsuit of magnitude,—had answered, in his long-winded, intertwisted, nearly inextricable way, to the effect, Sir, I incline to fear, on the whole, that the Action will not lie,-that, on the whole, the French will eat America from us in spite of our teeth."35 January 15th, 1758, that is the Pownal Opinion-of-Counsel;-and on September 13th, 1759, this is what we have practically come to. And on September 7th, 1760, within twelve months more,—Amherst, descending the Rapids from Ticonderago side, and two other little Armies, ascending from Quebec and Louisburg, to meet him at Montreal, have proved punctual almost to an hour; and are in

35 In Thackeray, ii. 421-452, Pownal's intricate Report (his "Discourse," or whatever he calls it, on the Defence of the Inland Frontiers," his &c. &c.), of date 15th January 1758.'

4th Oct.-4th Nov. 1759. condition to extinguish, by triple pressure (or what we call noosing), the French Governor-General in Montreal, a Monsieur de Vaudreuil, and his Montreal and his Canada altogether; and send the French bodily home out of those Continents.3 Which may dispense us from speaking farther on the subject.

36

From the Madras region, too, from India and outrageous Lally, the news are good. Early in Spring last, poor Lally, —a man of endless talent and courage, but of dreadfully emphatic loose tongue, in fact of a blazing ungoverned Irish turn of mind,—had instantly, on sight of some small Succours from Pitt, to raise his siege of Madras, retire to Pondichery; and, in fact, go plunging and tumbling downhill, he and his India with him, at an ever-faster rate, till they also had got to the Abyss. "My policy is in these five words, No Englishman in this Peninsula," wrote he, a year ago, on landing in India; and now it is to be No Frenchman, and there is one word in the five to be altered!-Of poor Lally, zealous and furious over-much, and nearly the most unfortunate and worstused “man of genius” I ever read of, whose lion-like struggles against French Official people, and against Pitt's Captains and their sea-fights and siegings, would deserve a volume to themselves, we have said, and can here say, as good as nothing, except that they all ended, for Lally and French India, in total surrender, 16th January 1761; and that Lally, some years afterwards, for toils undergone and for services done, got, when accounts came to be liquidated, death on the scaffold. Dates I give below.37 "Gained Fontenoy for us," said many persons;-undoubtedly gained various things for us,

36 Capitulation between Amherst and Vaudreuil (Montreal, 8th September 1760'), in 55 Articles: in Beatson, iii. 274-283.

37 28th April 1758, Lands at Pondichery; instantly proceeds upon Fort St. David. 2d June 1758, Takes it: meant to have gone now on Madras; but finds he has no money;-goes extorting money from Black Potentates about, Rajah of Travancore, &c., in a violent and extraordinary style; and can get little. Nevertheless, 14th December 1758, Lays Siege to Madras.

16th February 1759, Is obliged to quit trenches at Madras, and retire dismally upon Pondichery, to mere indigence, mutiny ('ten mutinies'), Official conspiracy, and chaos come again.

22d January 1760, Makes outrush on Wandewash, and the English posted there; is beaten, driven back into Pondichery. April 1760, Is besieged in Pondichery. 16th January 1761, Is taken, Pondichery, French India and he;-to Madras he, lest the French Official party kill him, as they attempt to do.

23d September 1761, Arrives, prisoner, in England; thence, on parole, to France and Paris, 21st October. November 1762, To Bastille; waits trial nineteen months; trial lasts two years. 6th May 1766, To be beheaded,-9th May was. See Beatson, ii. 369-372, 96-110, &c.; Voltaire (Fragments sur l'Inde), in ŒŒuvres, xxix. 183-253; Biographie Universelle, § Lally.

13th Nov. 1759.

fought for us Berserkir-like on all occasions; hoped, in the end, to be Maréchal de France, and undertook a Championship of India, which issues in this way! America and India, it is written, are both to be Pitt's. Let both, if possible, remain silent to us henceforth.

As to the Invasion-of-England Scheme, Pitt says he does not expect the French will invade us; but if they do, he is ready.38

CHAPTER VII.

FRIEDRICH REAPPEARS ON THE FIELD, AND IN SEVEN DAYS AFTER COMES THE CATASTROPHE OF MAXEN.

NOVEMBER 6th-8th, Daun had gone to Meissen Country: fairly ebbing homeward; Henri following, with Hülsen joined, —not vehemently attacking the rhinoceros, but judiciously pricking him forward. Daun goes at his slowest step in many divisions, covering a wide circuit; sticking to all the strong posts, till his own time for quitting them: slow, sullenly cautious; like a man descending dangerous precipices back foremost, and will not be hurried. So it had lasted about a week; Daun for the last four days sitting restive, obstinate, but Henri pricking into him more and more, till the rhinoceros seemed actually about lifting himself,—when Friedrich in person arrived in his Brother's Camp.1

At the Schloss of Herschstein, a mile or two behind Lommatsch, which is Henri's headquarter (still to westward of Meissen; Daun hanging on, seven or eight miles to southeastward ahead; loath to go, but actually obliged),—it was there, Tuesday November 13th, that the King met his Brother again. A King free of his gout; in joyful spirits; and high of humour,—like a man risen indignant, once more got to his feet, after three-months oppressions and miseries from the unworthy. "Too high," mourns Retzow, in a gloomy tone, as others do in perhaps a more indulgent one. Beyond doubt, Friedrich's farther procedures in this grave and weighty Daun business were more or less imprudent; of a too rapid and rash nature; and turned out bitterly unlucky to him. 'Had he left the management to Henri !" sighed everybody, after the unlucky event.

38 Speech, 4th November, suprà

Tempelhof, iii. 301-305

13th Nov 1759.

Friedrich had not arrived above four-and-twenty hours, when news came in: "The Austrians in movement again; actually rolling off Dresden-ward again." smell me already!" laughed he: the Devil,"

Haha, do they

Well, I will send Daun to not adding, "if I can." And instantly ordered sharp pursuit, and sheer stabbing with the ox-goad, not soft and delicate pricking, as Henri's lately.2 Friedrich, in fact, was in a fiery condition against Daun: "You trampled on me, you heavy buffalo, these three months; but that is over now!”—and took personally the vanguard in this pursuit. And had a bit of hot fighting in the Village of Korbitz (scene of that Finck-Haddick 'Action,' 21st September last, and of poor Haddick's ruin, and retirement to the Waters) ;—where the Austrians now prove very fierce and obstinate; and will not go, till well slashed into, and torn out by sheer beating: —which was visibly a kind of comfort to the King's humour. "Our Prussians do still fight, then, much as formerly! And it was all a hideous Nightmare, all that, and Daylight and Fact are come, and Friedrich is himself again!"

They say Prince Henri took the liberty of counselling him, even of entreating him: "Leave well alone; why run risks?" said Henri. Daun, it was pretty apparent, had no outlook at the present but that of sauntering home to Böhmen; leaving Dresden to be an easy prey again, and his whole Campaign to fall futile, as the last had. Under Henri's gentle driving he would have gone slower; but how salutary, if he only went! These were Henri's views but Friedrich was not in the slow humour; impatient to be in Dresden; "will be quartered there in a week," writes he, and more at leisure than now.' "3 He is thinking of Leuthen, of Rossbach, of Campaign 1757, so gloriously restored after ruin; and, in the fire of his soul, is hoping to do something similar a second time. That is Retzow's notion: who knows but there may be truth in it? A proud Friedrich, got on his feet again after such usage; nay, who knows whether it was quite so unwise to be impressive on the slow rhinoceros, and try to fix some thorn in his snout, or say (figuratively), to hobble his hind-feet; which, I am told, would have been beautifully ruinous; and

2 Retzow, ii. 168; Tempelhof, iii. 306.

3 Wilsdruf, 17th November 1759, and still more 19th November,' Friedrich to Voltaire, in high spirits that way (Euvres de Frédéric, xxiii. 66).

VOL. VIII.

2