Volume VI Part 20 (1/2)

[Ill.u.s.tration: Suffren----413]

He sought them for three months without any decisive result; it was only on the 4th of July in the morning, at the moment when Hyder Ali was to attack Negapatam, that a serious engagement began between the hostile fleets. The two squadrons had already suffered severely; a change of wind had caused disorder in the lines: the English had several vessels dismantled; one single French vessel, the _Severe,_ had received serious damage; her captain, with cowardly want of spirit, ordered the flag to be hauled down. His lieutenants protested; the volunteers to whom he had appealed refused to execute his orders. By this time the report was spreading among the batteries that the captain, was giving the order to cease firing; the sailors were as indignant as the officers: a cry arose, ”The flag is down!” A complaisant subaltern had at last obeyed the captain's repeated orders. The officers jumped upon the quarter-deck.

”You are master of your flag,” fiercely cried an officer of the blue, Lieutenant Dien, ”but we are masters as to fighting, and the s.h.i.+p shall not surrender!” By this time a boat from the English s.h.i.+p, the _Sultan,_ had put off to board the Severe, which was supposed to have struck, when a fearful broadside from all the s.h.i.+p's port-holes struck the _Sultan,_ which found herself obliged to sheer off. Night came; without waiting for the admiral's orders, the English went and cast anchor under Negapatam.

M. de Suffren supposed that hostilities would be resumed; but, when the English did not appear, he at last prepared to set sail for Gondelour to refit his vessels, when a small boat of the enemy's hove in sight: it bore a flag of truce. Admiral Hughes claimed the _Severe,_ which had for an instant hauled down her flag. M. de Suffren had not heard anything about her captain's poltroonery; the flag had been immediately replaced; he answered that none of the French vessels had surrendered. ”However,”

he added with a smile, ”as this vessel belongs to Sir Edward Hughes, beg him from me to come for it himself.” Suffren arrived without hinderance at Gondelour (_Kaddalore_).

Scarcely was he there, when Hyder Ali expressed a desire to see him, and set out for that purpose without waiting for his answer. On the 26th of July, M. de Suffren landed with certain officers of his squadron; an escort of cavalry was in waiting to conduct him to the camp of the nabob, who came out to meet him. ”Heretofore I thought myself a great man and a great general,” said Hyder Ali to the admiral; ”but now I know that you alone are a great man.” Suffren informed the nabob that M. de Bussy- Castelnau, but lately the faithful lieutenant of Dupleix and the continuer of his victories, had just been sent to India with the t.i.tle of commander-in-chief; he was already at Ile de France, and was bringing some troops. ”Provided that you remain with us, all will go well,” said the nabob, detaching from his turban an aigrette of diamonds which he placed on M. de Suffren's hat. The nabob's tent was reached; Suffren was fat, he had great difficulty in sitting upon the carpets; Hyder Ali perceived this and ordered cus.h.i.+ons to be brought. ”Sit as you please,”

said he to the commander, ”etiquette was not made for such as you.” Next day, under the nabob's tent, all the courses of the banquet offered to M.

de Suffren were prepared in European style. The admiral proposed that Hyder Ali should go to the coast and see all the fleet dressed, but, ”I put myself out to see you only,” said the nabob, ”I will not go any farther.” The two great warriors were never to meet again.

The French vessels were ready; the commander had more than once put his own hand to the work in order to encourage the workmen's zeal.

Carpentry-wood was wanted; he had ransacked Gondelour (_Kaddalore_) for it, sometimes pulling down a house to get hold of a beam that suited him.

His officers urged him to go to Bourbon or Ile-de-France for the necessary supplies and for a good port to shelter his damaged s.h.i.+ps.

”Until I have conquered one in India, I will have no port but the sea,”

answered Suffren. He had re-taken Trincomalee before the English could come to its defence. The battle began. As had already happened more than once, a part of the French force showed weakness in the thick of the action either from cowardice or treason; a cabal had formed against the commander; he was fighting single-handed against five or six a.s.sailants: the main-mast and the flag of the _Heros,_ which he was on, fell beneath the enemy's cannon-b.a.l.l.s. Suffren, standing on the quarter-deck, shouted beside himself ”Flags! Set white flags all round the Heros!” The vessel, all bristling with flags, replied so valiantly to the English attacks, that the rest of the squadron had time to re-form around it; the English went and anch.o.r.ed before Madras.

Bussy had arrived, but aged, a victim to gout, quite a stranger amid those Indian intrigues with which he had but lately been so well acquainted. Hyder Ali had just died on the 7th of December, 1782, leaving to his son Tippoo Sahib affairs embroiled and allies enfeebled.

At this news the Mahrattas, in revolt against England, hastened to make peace; and Tippoo Sahib, who had just seized Tanjore, was obliged to abandon his conquest and go to the protection of Malabar. Ten thousand men only remained in the Carnatic to back the little corps of French.

Bussy allowed himself to be driven to bay by General Stuart beneath the walls of Gondelour; he had even been forced to shut himself up in the town. M. de Suffren went to his release. The action was hotly contested; when the victor landed, M. de Bussy was awaiting him on the sh.o.r.e. ”Here is our savior,” said the general to his troops, and the soldiers taking up in their arms M. de Suffren, who had been lately promoted by the grand master of the order of Malta to the rank of grand- cross (_bailli_), carried him in triumph into the town. ”He pressed M. de Bussy every day to attack us,” says Sir Thomas Munro, ”offering to land the greater part of his crews and to lead them himself to deliver the a.s.sault upon our camp.” Bussy had, in fact, resumed the offensive, and was preparing to make fresh sallies, when it was known at Calcutta that the preliminaries of peace had been signed at Paris on the 9th of February. The English immediately proposed an armistice. The _Surveillante_ shortly afterwards brought the same news, with orders for Suffren to return to France. India was definitively given up to the English, who restored to the French Pondicherry, Chandernuggur, Mahe, and Karikal, the last strips remaining of that French dominion which had for a while been triumphant throughout the peninsula. The feebleness and the vices of Louis XV.'s government weighed heavily upon the government of Louis XVI. in India as well as in France, and at Paris itself.

It is to the honor of mankind and their consolation under great reverses that political checks and the inutility of their efforts do not obscure the glory of great men. M. de Suffren had just arrived at Paris, he was in low spirits; M. de Castries took him to Versailles. There was a numerous and brilliant court. On entering the guards' hall, ”Gentlemen,”

said the minister to the officers on duty, ”this is M. de Suffren.”

Everybody rose, and the body-guards, forming an escort for the admiral, accompanied him to the king's chamber. His career was over; the last of the great sailors of the old regimen died on the 8th of December, 1788.

Whilst Hyder Ali and M. de Suffren were still disputing India with England, that power had just gained in Europe an important advantage in the eyes of public opinion as well as in respect of her supremacy at sea.

For close upon three years past a Spanish army had been investing by land the town and fortress of Gibraltar; a strong squadron was cruising out of cannon-shot of the place, incessantly engaged in barring the pa.s.sage against the English vessels. Twice already, in 1780 by Admiral Rodney, and in 1781 by Admiral Darby, the vigilance of the cruisers had been eluded and reinforcements of troops, provisions, and ammunition had been thrown into Gibraltar. In 1782 the town had been half destroyed by an incessantly renewed bombardment, the fortifications had not been touched.

Every morning, when he awoke, Charles III. would ask anxiously, ”Have we got Gibraltar?” and when ”No” was answered, ”We soon shall,” the monarch would rejoin imperturbably. The capture of Fort Philip had confirmed him in his hopes; he considered his object gained, when the Duke of Crillon with a corps of French troops came and joined the besiegers; the Count of Artois, brother to the king, as well as the Duke of Bourbon, had come with him. The camp of St. Roch was the scene of continual festivities, sometimes interrupted by the sallies of the besieged. The fights did not interfere with mutual good offices: in his proud distress, General Eliot still kept up an interchange of refreshments with the French princes and the Duke of Crillon; the Count of Artois had handed over to the English garrison the letters and correspondence which had been captured on the enemy's s.h.i.+ps, and which he had found addressed to them on his way through Madrid.

Preparations were being made for a grand a.s.sault. A French engineer, Chevalier d'Arcon, had invented some enormous floating batteries, fire-proof, as he believed; a hundred and fifty pieces of cannon were to batter the place all at once, near enough to facilitate the a.s.sault. On the 13th of September, at 9 A. M., the Spaniards opened fire: all the artillery in the fort replied at once; the surrounding mountains repeated the cannonade; the whole army covered the sh.o.r.e awaiting with anxiety the result of the enterprise. Already the fortifications seemed to be beginning to totter; the batteries had been firing for five hours; all at once the Prince of Na.s.sau, who commanded a detachment, thought he perceived flames mastering his heavy vessel; the fire spread rapidly; one after another, the floating batteries found themselves disarmed. ”At seven o'clock we had lost all hope,” said an Italian officer who had taken part in the a.s.sault; ”we fired no more, and our signals of distress remained unnoticed. The red-hot shot of the besieged rained down upon us; the crews were threatened from every point.” Timidly and by weak detachments, the boats of the two fleets crept up under cover of the batteries in hopes of saving some of the poor creatures that were like to perish; the flames which burst out on board the doomed s.h.i.+ps served to guide the fire of the English as surely as in broad daylight. At the head of a small squadron of gunboats Captain Curtis barred the pa.s.sage of the salvors; the conflagration became general, only the discharges from the fort replied to the hissing of the flames and to the Spaniard's cries of despair. The fire at last slackened; the English gunboats changed their part; at the peril of their lives the brave seamen on board of them approached the burning s.h.i.+ps, trying to save the unfortunate crews; four hundred men owed their preservation to those efforts. A month after this disastrous affair, Lord Howe, favored by the accidents of wind and weather, revictualled for the third time, and almost without any fighting, the fortress and the town under the very eyes of the allied fleets. Gibraltar remained impregnable.

Peace was at hand, however: all the belligerents were tired of the strife; the Marquis of Rockingham was dead; his ministry, after being broken up, had re-formed with less l.u.s.tre under the leaders.h.i.+p of Lord Shelburne. William Pitt, Lord Chatham's second son, at that time twenty-two years of age, had a seat in the cabinet. Already negotiations for a general peace had begun at Paris; but Was.h.i.+ngton, who eagerly desired the end of the war, did not yet feel any confidence. ”The old infatuation, the political duplicity and perfidy of England, render me, I confess, very suspicious, very doubtful,” he wrote; ”and her position seems to me to be perfectly summed up in the laconic saying of Dr.

Franklin 'They are incapable of continuing the war and too proud to make peace.' The pacific overtures made to the different belligerent nations have probably no other design than to detach some one of them from the coalition. At any rate, whatever be the enemy's intentions, our watchfulness and our efforts, so far from languis.h.i.+ng, should become more vigorous than ever. Too much trust and confidence would ruin everything.”

America was the first to make peace, without however detaching herself officially from the coalition which had been formed to maintain her quarrel and from which she had derived so many advantages. On the 30th of November, 1782, in disregard of the treaties but lately concluded between France and the revolted colonies, the American negotiators signed with stealthy precipitation the preliminary articles of a special peace, ”thus abandoning France to the dangers of being isolated in negotiations or in arms.” The votes of Congress, as well as the att.i.tude of Was.h.i.+ngton, did not justify this disloyal and ungrateful eagerness.

”The articles of the treaty between Great Britain and America,” wrote the general to Chevalier de La Luzerne, French minister at Philadelphia, ”are so far from conclusive as regards a general pacification, that we must preserve a hostile att.i.tude and remain ready for any contingency, for war as well as peace.”

On the 5th of December, at the opening of Parliament, George III.

announced in the speech from the throne that he had offered to recognize the independence of the American colonies. ”In thus admitting their separation from the crown of this kingdom, I have sacrificed all my desires to the wishes and opinion of my people,” said the king.

”I humbly pray Almighty G.o.d, that Great Britain may not feel the evils which may flow from so important a dismemberment of its empire, and that America may be a stranger to the calamities which have before now proved to the mother-country that monarchy is inseparable from the benefits of const.i.tutional liberty. Religion, language, interests, affections may still form a bond of union between the two countries, and I will spare no pains or attention to promote it.” ”I was the last man in England to consent to the Independence of America,” said the king to John Adams, who was the first to represent the new republic at the Court of St. James; ”I will be the last in the world to sanction any violation of it.” Honest and sincere in his concessions as he had been in his persistent obstinacy, the king supported his ministers against the violent attacks made upon them in Parliament. The preliminaries of general peace had been signed at Paris on the 20th of January, 1783.

To the exchange of conquests between France and England was added the cession to France of the island of Tobago and of the Senegal River with its dependencies. The territory of Pondicherry and Karikal received some augmentation. For the first time for more than a hundred years the English renounced the humiliating conditions so often demanded on the subject of the harbor of Dunkerque. Spain saw herself confirmed in her conquest of the Floridas and of the island of Minorca. Holland recovered all her possessions, except Negapatam.

Peace was made, a glorious and a sweet one for the United States, which, according to Was.h.i.+ngton's expression, ”saw opening before them a career that might lead them to become a great people, equally happy and respected.” Despite all the mistakes of the people and the defects every day more apparent in the form of its government, this n.o.ble and healthy ambition has always been present to the minds of the American nation as the ultimate aim of their hopes and their endeavors. More than eighty years after the war of independence, the indomitable energy of the fathers reappeared in the children, worthy of being called a great people even when the agonies of a civil war without example denied to them the happiness which had a while ago been hoped for by the glorious founder of their liberties as well as of their Const.i.tution.

France came out exhausted from the struggle, but relieved in her own eyes as well as those of Europe from the humiliation inflicted upon her by the disastrous Seven Years' War and by the treaty of 1763. She saw triumphant the cause she had upheld and her enemies sorrow-stricken at the dismemberment they had suffered. It was a triumph for her arms and for the generous impulse which had prompted her to support a legitimate but for a long while doubtful enterprise. A fresh element, however, had come to add itself to the germs of disturbance, already so fruitful, which were hatching within her. She had promoted the foundation of a Republic based upon principles of absolute right; the government had given way to the ardent sympathy of the nation for a people emanc.i.p.ated from a long yoke by its deliberate will and its indomitable energy.