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TWO:THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO. (See p. 99.)Meantime Cambacrs and Fouch had dispatched couriers to Louis Buonaparte, in Holland, to march down troops to the defence of Antwerp; and he had not only done that, but had opened the sluices on the borders of the Scheldt, and laid the country under water, to prevent the march of the British. He also had ordered the erection of numerous batteries, and Bernadotte arrived in about a fortnight, by orders of Napoleon, to resist the advance of the British. From forty to fifty thousand troops were assembled in and around Antwerp, and hosts of Dutch and Belgian militia swarmed over the country. This was certain to be the case if any time was allowed, and it was now agreed, in a council of war, that it was not possible to proceed further. In fact, they were no longer allowed to remain where they were. Their provisions were rapidly being exhausted, sickness was spreading amongst the troops, and the fire of the enemy's batteries from both sides of the river compelled them to fall down the stream. That was the end of the campaign; the rest was a foolish and murderous delay in the island of Walcheren, without any conceivable purpose. There was no use in retaining the island, for we could at any time blockade the mouths of the Scheldt, and our men on board the ships were comparatively healthy; but in this swamp of death the soldiers continued dying like rotten sheep. The island of Walcheren, to which they were now confined, is a spongy swamp, below the level of the sea at high water. The wet oozes through the banks, and stagnates in the dykes, and is only capable of being pumped out by windmills. The ground is covered often with mud and slime, and the inhabitants are sickly and sallow in aspect, and of loose and flaccid muscles. Yet, in this den of fever and death, the commanders seemed determined to retain the army till it perished entirely. The Earl of Chatham himself returned to London on the 14th of September, with as many of the sick as he could take. At this time he left eleven thousand, out of the seventeen thousand quartered on the island of Walcheren, on the sick-list, and rapidly dying; yet neither he nor Sir Eyre Coote, who succeeded him, seems to have felt the necessity of saving the army by retiring from the place. They attributed the unhealthiness to the dykes being cut, and the surrounding country being flooded in the hot season. No matter what was the cause, the army was perishing, and ought to have been removed; but, so far from this, the Ministers seemed determined to keep possession of this useless and pestilential swamp at any cost. As it was imagined that the drinking of the water was the cause of the fever, Thames water was carried over for the troops, five hundred tons per week being required. But it was not the drinking it only that caused disease and death, but the standing and working in it, as many of them did, up to the middle for many hours together, and the malaria arising from the oozy soil. As the roofs in Flushing were knocked to pieces by the storming of the town, British workmen, with bricks, mortar, tiles, and tools, were sent over to repair them, so as to protect the sick in the hospitals, though plenty of workmen and materials might have been had in the country.
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TWO:Whilst these events had been taking place in Spain and Portugal, Great Britain had been sending money and troops to oppose Buonaparte in other quarters. Early in the spring Austria was in the field; in July a powerful fleet, carrying an army, sailed from the Downs, to create a diversion on the coast of the Netherlands, and other operations were commenced in the south of Italy. The army destined for the Netherlands amounted to forty thousand men, attended by a fleet of thirty-five sail of the line and twenty frigates, to assist where they might be needed. Buonaparte had contemplated making a great port of Antwerp, and had expended much money and labour in docks and fortifications there; but finding that the port of Antwerp was not deep enough for first-rate ships of war, he undertook to render Flushing capable of receiving and protecting a large fleet. He still contemplated, by the co-operation of Denmark and Russia, the sending forth a fleet, some day, which might cope with the British navy, or enable him to invade England. For this purpose he was building ships at Antwerp and Flushing; and it was, no doubt, these circumstances which determined the British to direct their attack on Flushing and Antwerp. Captain, afterwards Sir George Cockburn, was of opinion that these preparations of Napoleon could never affect England; that no possession of Zealand, or any part of it, could be kept by England, from its extreme unhealthiness to foreigners, and even to Dutchmen; and that it was much better for Britain to let Buonaparte build ships, and take them whenever they came out to sea, than to sacrifice the lives of our troops for no permanent benefit in this region of bogs, stagnant water, and malaria. Had these forty thousand troops been sent to support Wellington, and half the money that this fatal expedition cost, they would have enabled him to drive the French triumphantly out of Spain, and create the most magnificent diversion for Austria, as well as the most honourable to England.
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TWO:The Conservative party had got the impression that the commercial interest in the House of Commons would swamp the landed interest, in consequence of the preponderance of the representatives of cities and boroughs. But that impression was shown to be a delusion by many votes. The number who supported a motion of Lord Chandos on the 27th of April, 1836, was, considering its nature, remarkable:"That in the application of any surplus revenue towards the relief of the burdens of the country, either by remission of taxation or otherwise, due regard should be had to the necessity of a portion thereof being applied to the relief of the agricultural interest." That interest had been relieved to a considerable extent in a variety of ways during the recent progress of legislation, and especially by the Poor Law Amendment Act, which had been an immense boon to both landlords and tenants. The policy of the motion of Lord Chandos was so unsound that Sir Robert Peel, Lord Stanley, and Sir James Graham felt constrained to vote with Ministers[407] for its rejection. The motion was defeated by 211 votes to 150.VIEW IN DRESDEN.
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