1760.

PRINCE FERDINAND'S CAMPAIGN.

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vered. In the north the Swedes had, as usual, done little more than nibble at the frontier of Pomerania; and though a powerful Russian fleet had come to the siege of Colberg, it had met with a most resolute resistance, and after a month's attack was compelled to sail away.

Compared to this campaign of King Frederick, observes a modern historian, Prince Ferdinand's appears little more than child's play.* Yet Ferdinand deserves high praise for stemming the progress of a far superior enemy. During the winter the French armies on the Rhine and Mayn, under the Duke de Broglie, had been reinforced, till they amounted to at least 100,000 men, and during the summer they pushed forward into Hesse. On the 10th of July the Hereditary Prince attacked their vanguard at Corbach, but was worsted and wounded; a few days afterwards, however, he gained the advantage in another skirmish at Emsdorf. A more important action was fought near Warburg by Ferdinand himself, when the enemy lost ten pieces of artillery and 1,500 men; the day being decided against them mainly by a charge of Lord Granby and the British horse. Indeed throughout this campaign Lord Granby showed himself. a most active and spirited officer, and the troops he commanded in all respects worthy our military fame. They were constantly put forward by Prince Ferdinand in the posts of greatest honour, that is, of danger,-—and their loss in killed and wounded was, therefore, much greater in proportion than the other divisions of his army sustained.

The French, notwithstanding their check at Warburg, had obtained possession both of Göttingen and Cassel. De Broglie fixed his head-quarters at the latter, and attempted to fortify the former, remaining for some time otherwise inactive. A few weeks later Ferdinand detached the Hereditary Prince to make a diversion beyond the Rhine, and undertake the siege of Wesel. On the other part, the Marquis de Castries, with 25,000 men, was sent to the same quarter. These troops it became the object of the Hereditary Prince to surprise and overpower in a night attack.—It was before the dawn of the

* Sismondi, Histoire des Français, vol. xxix. p. 213.

- Α ΜΟΙ

16th of October, and near the Closter (or Convent) of Campen; the allies marching silently on, shrouded by the double darkness of the night and of the woods. They were already close upon the enemy, when they, at a sudden turn, came upon the Chevalier d'Assas, a young officer of the regiment of Auvergne, who commanded an outpost, and had rambled a little in advance of it. In an instant a hundred bayonets were levelled at his breast, with a threat of immediate death if he gave the least alarm. But the high-minded Frenchman did not hesitate. Collecting all his voice for one loud cry, AUVERGNE, VOILA LES ENNEMIS! - the next moment he fell back, pierced through with mortal wounds. This heroic act, worthy the Decii of another age,-saved the French army from surprise, and, probably, destruction. The Hereditary Prince was repulsed with a loss of 1,200 men, and compelled to raise the siege of Wesel. Such (except an unsuccessful siege of Göttingen by Prince Ferdinand) was the last remarkable incident of this campaign; and at its close the French took up their quarters in Hesse, around the city of Cassel.

On the 25th of October,—only two days before the news arrived of the surrender of Berlin, and the defeat of Closter Campen, -King George the Second expired.His health had for a long period continued uniformly good. In 1758, being then seventy-five years of age, he had a serious illness, which ended, however, in a wholesome fit of the gout, and which is only memorable as connected with a strange superstition. Lord Chesterfield writes at the time: "It was generally thought His Majesty would have died, and for a very good reason; for the oldest lion in the Tower, much about the King's age, died a fortnight ago. This extravagancy, "I can assure you, was believed by many above the common people." So difficult is it for human imagination to assign any bounds, however remote, to human credulity!

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During the last two years the monarch's sight and hearing had begun gradually to fail. He complained that every body's face seemed to have a black crape over

* Letter to his son, November 21. 1758.

1760.

DEATH OF GEORGE THE SECOND.

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it *- On the morning of the 25th of October the King rose at his wonted hour of six, drank his chocolate, and inquired about the wind, as anxious for the arrival of the foreign mails. Shortly afterwards his attendants in the ante-chamber were alarmed at the sound of a heavy fall and a stifled groan. Rushing in, they found on the floor the King, who in falling had cut the right side of his face against a bureau, and who after a gasp expired. It was discovered, on subsequent examination, that the right ventricle of the heart had burst. He was laid on his bed, and Lady Yarmouth was called; she, in her turn, sent for the Princess Amelia; but the messenger did not inform the Princess of the fatal event, and Her Highness, who was purblind and very deaf, hurried down into the room without perceiving it. She fancied that the King spoke to her, though she could not hear him, and she put her face close to his, to catch his words.—It was not till that moment she discovered that her father was dead.†

* H. Walpole to Sir H. Mann, November, 16. 1759.

† Ibid., October 28. 1760 (the last letter of the first series), and Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 454.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

THE young Prince of Wales, henceforth King George the Third,—was riding with Lord Bute in the neighbourhood of Kew, when a groom first brought him the hasty tidings of his grandfather's decease. Ere long the groom was followed by Pitt as Secretary of State. His Majesty, after returning to Kew, proceeded to Carlton House, the residence of the Princess Dowager, to meet the Privy Council, and, according to ancient form, read to them a short Address, which he had directed Bute to prepare. Next morning he was proclaimed in London with the usual solemnities. On these and the ensuing days the demeanour of the young monarch was generally and justly extolled. He seemed neither elated, nor yet abashed and perplexed, by his sudden accession; all he said or did was calm and equable, full of graciousness and goodness. The Address to his Council was well and feelingly delivered, and he dismissed the guards on himself to wait on his grandfather's body. "He has behaved throughout," says Horace Walpole, a critic of no courtly temper, "with the greatest propriety, dignity, and decency."*

George the Third-whose reign, including the years of Regency, proved to be the longest and the most eventful in the English annals-was, at the time of his accession, twenty-two years of age. His figure was tall and strongly built; his countenance open and engaging. A heartfelt and unaffected Christian piety formed the foundation of his character. In the private and domestic virtues few men, and certainly no monarch, ever excelled him. His education having been neglected by his mother and mis

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To Sir H. Mann, October 28. 1760. In like manner Lady Hervey writes: "So much unaffected good-nature and propriety appears in all our young King does or says that it cannot but en"dear him to all." To Mr. Morris, October 30. 1760, Letters, p. 271. ed. 1821.

1760.

GEORGE THE THIRD.

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managed by his governors, his range of reading was not extensive, nor his taste within that range always happy. "Was there ever," cried he to Miss Burney, "such stuff as great part of Shakespeare?-only one must not say "so! What! is there not sad stuff?-What?-what?"* But his manner in conversation did great injustice to his endowments. His rapid utterance and frequent reiteration of trivial phrases,-his unceasing, "What! what!" and "Hey! hey!"-gave him an aspect of shallowness to mere superficial observers, and obscured (literary subjects apart) the clear good sense, the sterling judg ment within. Thus also his own style in writing was not always strictly grammatical, but always earnest, plain, and to the point. To the exalted duties of his station he devoted himself with conscientious and constant attention. The more the private papers of his reign come to light the more it will appear how closely, during fifty years, he superintended all the movements of the great political machine. At all times, and under all vicissitudes, — whether in victory or in disaster, whether counselled by Ministers of his own choice, or in the hands of a party he abhorred, he was most truly and emphatically an honest man. Though none of my Ministers "stand by me, I will not truckle," *—was his saying on one occasion, and his sentiment on all. I shall not deny that his prepossessions for or against any statesman were mostly too strong and difficult to conquer, nor that his firmness sometimes hardened into obstinacy. The earlier years of his reign were not free from errors of conduct or intervals of consequent unpopularity; but the longer he lived, and the better he was understood, the more his subjects felt how closely his general views and principles, his tastes and habits, were in accordance with their own. And thus, in the latter half at least of his reign, after he had shaken off the sway of the northern Favourite,—the report of that sway which so long survived its reality,the taint of the factions which Junius adorned and envenomed, and the odium of the North American contest,

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* Madame D'Arblay's Diary, December 19. 1785. (vol. ii. p. 398.) To the Earl of Chatham, May 30. 1767. Chatham Correspondence, vol. iii. p. 261.