Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third Volume II Part 33

On the whole, the situation is, to be sure, very much improved within these few weeks, but there is still enough for serious alarm. The Directory has sent us the most insolent answer that can be conceived; but as the substance of it is in some degree ambiguous with respect to the main question of granting or refusing the pa.s.sport, it has been thought better not to leave a loop-hole or pretence to them, or their adherents here, to lay upon us the breaking the business off. Another note is therefore to be sent to-day, by a flag of truce from Dover, in which the demand of the pa.s.sport is renewed in such terms as seem most likely to bring that point to a distinct issue, ay or no. In other times, this last step would have been not only superfluous, but humiliating; in the present moment, the object of unanimity here in the great body of the country, with respect to the large sacrifices they will be called upon to make, is paramount to every other consideration.

I am extremely anxious to find that the plan in question may appear practicable. The advantages of it would be infinite.

Ever most affectionately yours, G.

The nature of the efforts which were making in England to sustain the war may be partially inferred from the following letter. Lord Grenville, it will be seen, notes with a mark of admiration a subscription of 100,000 from the Duke of Bedford. The circ.u.mstance was singular and significant, the Duke of Bedford having all along taken a leading part in the House of Lords in opposition to hostilities, and in calling for votes of censure and opprobrium upon the Ministry. He had been the chief mover of all those resolutions that protested against the expenditure to which the country had been put for the maintenance of the war, and now he was one of the largest of the voluntary subscribers to a fund for its continuance.

LORD GRENVILLE TO THE MARQUIS OF BUCKINGHAM.

Dropmore, Dec. 2nd, 1796.

MY DEAREST BROTHER,

I have been followed here to-night by a letter, to mention that above twelve millions are already subscribed to the loan, and that it may very probably be full to-morrow, so that I had no time to lose in doing what of course the public will expect from me. I have therefore desired that 10,000 may be subscribed to-morrow in my name; and I imagine that by getting Coutts to advance the two first payments, and transferring the stock, at whatever loss, the moment it is transferable, I shall be able _me tirer d'affaire_, better than I had hoped. It was my intention to have written to you to-morrow, to let you know what other persons in your sort of situation and cla.s.s had done; but what I have now heard, makes me think that I ought to send to you without delay, in order that you may know how the thing stands, and of course afterwards judge for yourself whether to do anything, and what.

The only names that have been mentioned to me, except among my colleagues, are the Duke of Bridgewater and the Duke of Bedford!

each 100,000, and Lord Romney and Lord Carrington each 40,000, besides 100,000, which the house of Smith and Co. subscribe as bankers.

Lord Spencer, Lord Liverpool, Pitt and Dundas, subscribe 10,000, as I have done; the two last will, I believe, have still more difficulty in finding it than I shall.

You will, of course, not imagine that by sending to you in this manner, I have the least idea of saying or suggesting to you to do anything but what may have occurred to yourself, but I thought you would naturally expect to hear these particulars from me.

Other news I have none. There was a report yesterday that Kehl was surprised by the Austrians, but I could not trace it to any certain source.

G.o.d bless you, my dear brother.

The time had now arrived when the English Cabinet believed that an attempt might be made to negotiate for peace, without compromising its honour. In the preceding March, the amba.s.sador to the Helvetic States had been authorized to inquire of the Government of France, through the medium of their representative, whether they were disposed to entertain such a negotiation. The answer was so unsatisfactory, laying down as a peremptory condition the retention of all those conquests which, during the course of the war, had been annexed to the republic, that nothing more was then done in the matter. The subject was resumed in September, and, the Directory having signified their readiness to grant pa.s.sports to any persons who should be furnished with full powers and official papers, Lord Malmesbury was appointed as plenipotentiary on the part of His Britannic Majesty to treat for peace with the French Republic. On the 22nd of October his Lordship announced to M. de la Croix, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, his arrival in Paris in that capacity. The negotiations occupied nearly two months, and the main point of difficulty turned upon the Netherlands, Lord Malmesbury, who acted strictly on his instructions, making the restoration of the Netherlands a _sine qua non_, and M. de la Croix repeatedly stating that this difficulty was one which could not be overcome. The negotiations had arrived at that stage which made this insuperable difficulty perfectly clear and unmistakeable on both sides, when Mr. Talbot, a gentleman connected with Lord Malmesbury's emba.s.sy, addressed the following letter to Lord Buckingham. No allusion will be found in it to the pending negotiations, which were of too delicate and important a nature to be touched upon in a private letter; but it is very curious and interesting, as presenting a picture of the state of France at that period.

MR. TALBOT TO THE MARQUIS OF BUCKINGHAM.

Paris, Dec. 18th, 1796.

MY LORD,

Your Lordship, I trust, is aware of my motives for not having written to you since I left England; I shall, therefore, make no apologies for my neglect; but I must beg leave to a.s.sure your Lordship that I am, notwithstanding the urgency of my reasons, so much ashamed of the omission, that I now feel much embarra.s.sed in taking up my pen.

The only letters I have hitherto sent to England have been to Lord Grenville, in answer to those he has done me the honour to write; and to Mr. B. Taylor, his secretary, for some articles which I stood in need of.

Your Lordship has without doubt received much better accounts of the appearance and state of things in this country than it is in my power to communicate; however, I will attempt a description of what has struck me as worthy of notice, and rely upon your kind indulgence for my errors.

Our first entrance into France was certainly not attended with the reception which might have been expected, under the particular circ.u.mstances in which we came. It is true a good many people of all sorts were upon the quay at Calais when we arrived, but they showed no signs of joy or any other feeling more than the arrival of an indifferent vessel would have occasioned; and very shortly after we had landed, and gone to the inn, the crowd was dispersed, and everything seemed as silent as if nothing had happened. Indeed, all those we conversed with expressed their happiness at seeing us, and wished success to the negotiation; and all the princ.i.p.al officers of the Government stationed there waited upon Lord Malmesbury with the utmost civility; but the bulk of the inhabitants--whether they were ignorant of the arrival of an envoy to propose peace, or whether they were afraid to express their satisfaction in any public manner, I cannot say--manifested not the least sign of rejoicing.

Nothing very material occurred between this place and Paris. The aubergistes and post-masters were almost the only persons with whom we had any conversation, and their language uniformly was that France was most anxiously desirous for the restoration of peace; that their sufferings had been more than they could describe, but that latterly their situation was much mended by the diminution in the price of provisions. But I was not inclined to give much credit to them, imagining that this language was intended to flatter us, and coming from those who had suffered more than any of their description in France, from the intercourse between the two countries being stopped. It must, however, be allowed that a general gloom seemed to prevail; and very little of that gaiety for which this nation was formerly remarkable was to be observed. At Amiens, I remember, the people of the inn where we supped entered more fully and with less reserve into the detail of their calamities. There had been a considerable manufacture of woollen cloths in this town, in which at this time no more than two hundred people were employed.

I profited of the opportunity which the changing horses afforded me to see the Chateau of Chantilly. I found it totally stripped of its furniture, and every decoration that bore the smallest reference to armorial bearings was defaced; but otherwise the building has not suffered much injury. The statue of the great Conde on the princ.i.p.al staircase remains, but the head is cut off. The barbarians were not content with beheading the statues of men, but they have likewise done so to all the busts of stags placed over the stalls in the stables. The chateau was used as a prison in the time of Robespierre, and almost all the apartments continue still divided into small s.p.a.ces for that purpose. The gardens are totally destroyed, but the park has met with no injury further than the almost total destruction of the game. There is a keeper appointed by the nation for the protection of the wood. The timber on the opposite side of the river is chiefly cut down, the land having been sold.

The adjacent chateau of the Duc d'Angouleme, his son, as far as the walls, remains perfect; I had not time to see the inside of it. The care of the chateau has lately been given in charge to one of the former servants of the Prince de Conde.

The roads were in general in excellent condition, and the post-horses tolerably good; but we were in several places kept some time waiting for them. This is not to be wondered at, if we consider how little they have been accustomed to travellers for some years past.

A great number of the best houses by the roadside and in the towns were shut up, and seemed to be abandoned. Very few of the churches appeared to be open, many of them were pulled down, and none that were not considerably damaged; but the country was throughout in a state of high cultivation, although there was apparently a scarcity of men at work. This is to be accounted for by the encouragement which the late dearness of bread has given to the farmers, who are become, by a variety of circ.u.mstances, extremely wealthy. They are one of the very few descriptions of people who have profited by the Revolution. Very many of them have purchased lands, and this they were enabled to do almost for nothing by the depreciation of a.s.signats, for an enormous nominal value of which they sold the produce of their farms; and this paper was received from them for the sum it represented, in payment for the estates of the _ci-devant_ seigneurs and other confiscated property. I am told there have been repeated instances of the basest ingrat.i.tude on their part, in denouncing their landlords; and, on the contrary, that many of them have given proofs of the strongest attachment to them.

Provisions are in abundance, and at a very moderate price. Common bread is little more than two sous, and butchers' meat from five to eight sous the pound.

I have not observed any want of specie in circulation; never yet have I found any difficulty in getting change upon the purchase of any article, nor any such thing as paper money produced in such transactions. The exhausted state and the degree of distress which I could discover in this country, I must confess, fell short of the expectation which the various species of plunder, exaction, and cruelty, which it has for several years submitted to, had impressed upon my mind.

Between Calais and Paris, scarcely any troops were to be met with.

The scene being so perfectly new to me, and having little or no intercourse with any one here, except our own society, I was some time in Paris before I could form any opinion of the state of affairs, and the sentiments of the people. The streets seemed crowded, the shops tolerably well supplied, the theatres well attended, some private and a great number of public carriages to be met with; all this brought to my reflection how very difficult a matter it must be to destroy a great country, considering that all the pains which have been taken to ruin this have left so much undone. But the first fortnight we lived in the most populous part of the town, near the Palais Royal, and therefore the last place where distress would be evident.

There are few parts of Paris I have not since been in, and I find in many of them, the outlets particularly, the greatest wretchedness to prevail, and to be very thin of inhabitants. A great part of the Faubourg St. Germain, near the Boulevards, is in a great measure deserted; but this quarter was formerly inhabited princ.i.p.ally by the n.o.blesse. There is scarcely a street in Paris where there are not several houses written upon, _Propriete nationale a vendre_, and sometimes in addition, _ou a louer_; and in many places a great part of the street is in the same manner advertised for sale.

The names of many of the streets are, as your Lordship must know, entirely changed; but where they are not, and began with _Saint_, that word is invariably defaced, and the remainder of the name is left untouched. But, notwithstanding that, most places are commonly called as formerly; and this practice is becoming more general every day.

The hotels of many of the _ci-devant_ n.o.blesse are inhabited by the Ministers and other members of the Government. Many of them are converted into public offices and others of them into _hotels garnis_, &c.; besides, a prodigious number of them remain unoccupied, and offered for sale by the nation.

The Luxembourg is divided into five separate habitations for the Directory, besides the apartments that are used for their sittings, audiences, and other public business.

The Council of Ancients hold their sittings in the Palace of the Tuileries, and the Council of Five Hundred meet in what was formerly the riding-house of the King; but this is considered as merely a temporary chamber for this last body, until the Palais Bourbon, which is now undergoing great alterations and additions, is ready for their reception. This building is in the Faubourg St.

Germain, in front of the new bridge called Pont de la Revolution. I shall take an opportunity hereafter of giving your Lordship a description of the interior of these several places.

The scene of any great revolutionary event continues still decorated with the national flag and other emblems of their _glorious_ Revolution, accompanied with an inscription; that where the Bastille stood is, _14 Juillet 1789, la Bastille detruite, et elle ne se relevera jamais_; and that in the Place du Carrousel, opposite the Tuileries, is, _10 Aout 1792, La Royaute francaise est abolie, et elle ne se relevera jamais_. There are several marks of cannon-b.a.l.l.s, but they have made but little impression on this front of the Tuileries; and under each of them is written, _10 Aout 1792_.

The garden of the Tuileries is, I am told, kept as well as ever it was; some of the largest trees in it, however, have been cut down since our arrival, but they were chiefly decayed. Of the Bastille nothing remains, except a very small part of the foundations; and near it is a newly-erected powder magazine, and much of the remainder of the s.p.a.ce is a depot for firewood.

The churches are many of them open, and have Divine service performed in them without restraint; but a great many more of them are shut, and some used as _casernes_, storehouses, &c.; but they have all been stripped of every internal decoration, and nothing suffered to remain but the bare walls. Sometimes, indeed--and it appears to be by an oversight--a piece of painting, or perhaps a little image, may have escaped injury; but such a thing is a curiosity, and to be found in a situation not readily to be observed, or difficult to be reached. The favourite mode of mutilating a statue seems to have been to break off the head. In the church of St. Sulpice there is a tolerably good statue of a Virgin and Child remaining, but of this the Child's head is taken off, and that of the Virgin seems to have met with the same fate, but to have been restored. It is wonderful the industry that has been used in the destruction of everything in the way of inscription, of sculpture, or coats of arms, which could possibly remind the people of the _ancien regime_; and I cannot help being much surprised that all this was done with so much care as to remove merely these particular objects of their enmity, without in the least damaging the adjacent parts. In defacing armorial bearings and things of this sort, the reformers have been at the trouble of cutting them away, so as to leave the shield quite plain, although they were carved in stone. I should have supposed that mischief done in the moment of frenzy would not have been so methodical.

Upon all the public buildings, the public offices, and many others, is written in large characters--_Unite indivisibilite de la republique, liberte, egalite, fraternite, ou la mort_; but in general the last word is rubbed out. The nation took it into their heads not to like death upon the downfall of Robespierre. Upon many of the churches is this inscription--_Le peuple francais reconnait l'etre supreme et l'immortalite de l'ame._ This was a decree of the Convention for the people at large, and your Lordship will allow that this must have a ridiculous effect upon the walls of a church entirely in ruins, as is often the case. Another modern inscription is--_Citoyens, respectez le bien d'autrui, c'est le fruit de son travail et de son industrie_; and perhaps close by it you may read _propriete nationale a vendre_, in direct violation of the other, offering to sell property of which some unfortunate person has been robbed by the very preachers of this doctrine.

I am obliged to break off suddenly, for reasons which will be very soon known to your Lordship.

I have the honour to be your Lordship's most obedient, faithful, humble servant,

JAMES TALBOT.

The last line of this letter is written in an agitated hand, which the circ.u.mstance that compelled Mr. Talbot to break off so abruptly sufficiently accounts for. At that moment a note had arrived at the emba.s.sy from M. de la Croix, giving Lord Malmesbury notice to depart from Paris in eight-and-forty hours, adding that if the British Cabinet were desirous of peace, the Executive Directory were ready to carry on the negotiations, on the basis they had already laid down, by the reciprocal channel of couriers.

1797.

DISCONTENTS IN ENGLAND--THE BREST SQUADRON--MOTION ON THE STATE OF IRELAND--AFFAIRS OF THE CONTINENT--LORD MALMESBURY'S MISSION TO LISLE.

The result of Lord Malmesbury's mission was communicated to Parliament as soon as it became known in London, by a message from the King, and addresses were moved approving of the conduct of Ministers. Amendments, condemning their policy, and demanding an investigation, were proposed in both Houses, and rejected by large majorities. In the House of Commons, notwithstanding an appeal of extraordinary eloquence and power from Mr. Fox, the address was carried by a majority of 212 to 37. Mr.

Pitt's position, perhaps, was never stronger than at this moment, although the affairs of the Bank of England, in consequence of repeated loans to Government, were reduced to the most desperate condition, and the lower cla.s.ses of the population, feeling heavily the burthens of the war, began to clamour against its prosecution. But the national spirit sustained the Government. Possessing the implicit confidence of the King, the two Houses of Parliament, the heads of the Church, the landed interest, and the monied and commercial cla.s.ses, Mr. Pitt persevered.

The greatest efforts were made out of doors to induce His Majesty to remove his Ministers. Public meetings were held in several places to get up pet.i.tions on the subject; and the energies of the Opposition were incessantly employed in spreading alarm and discontent through the country. Several unfortunate circ.u.mstances concurred to give effect to these movements. The war had reached its most disastrous point. England was left alone in the field to contend against the power of France, now grown haughty and formidable by a long course of successes. The credit of the country, under this pressure of events, was seriously affected.

The Bank had stopped payment. Two mutinies had broken out in the fleet, one at Spithead, and another at the Nore. An organization of malcontents had been formed in Ireland under the name of "the United Irishmen," and had carried their insurrectionary views so far as to send deputies to treat with the French for a.s.sistance to enable them to throw off the English yoke. The year opened with the most gloomy prospects on all sides; but the firmness of Ministers triumphed over all difficulties, and conducted them to its close with the happiest results.