Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 3.djvu/210

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s. HI. MARCH 17, 1917.

To appreciate the political position of the we must realize that France was practically engaged in three civil wars at once : Bor- -deaux was fighting for the Girondins, Marseilles more feebly in the same cause, .and Toulon had declared for the legitimate king, Louis XVII. Lord Hood, in com- mand of a powerful fleet in the Mediter- ranean, and at the same time Civil Com- missioner, in alliance with the Spaniards, who were jealous of his authority, amid his multifarious and most conflicting duties, was issuing proclamations to the loyal Toulonese in terms worthy of Napoleon -at his best. Not only was he commanding a fleet of 30 British, 7 French (under a tur- bulent rear-admiral), and many Spanish ships ; but he had to conduct a punctual -correspondence in English, French, Spanish, and Italian, with the Secretary to the Admiralty and the Secretary of State, with the British ambassadors and consuls in Spain, Italy, Constantinople, States of Barbary, the sections of Toulon and Mar- seilles, the Austrian minister and generals, the Tuscan minister, the Kings of Sardinia and Naples and their various general* 'and admirals, the Pope and his Cardinal Secre- tary, the Senators of Genoa and Venice, the Grand Master of Malta, and the Corsican General Paoli. For the manner of his execution of this Gargantuan and polyglot -task until the evacuating of Toulon I must refer to the Lives of Lord Hood and Sir Sidney Smith, and the ' Toulon Papers,' published in vol. ii. of the Naval Chronicle (1799), a reference for which I am in- debted to Mr. Manwaring of the London Library.
 * South of France at the date of this letter,

General O'Hara (1740-1802), later the Lieutenant-Governor and Governor of Gib- raltar, had jnst been taken prisoner at 'Toulon some say by Citoyen Buonaparte's own hand. Previously, after being twice -wounded, he had surrendered at Yorktown to the American rebels, and in 1792 was sent ~to replace Lord Mulgrave at Toulon. For three years he was a prisoner in the Luxem- bourg, and on being exchanged proposed to many Horace Walpole's Miss Berry, who, though she remained a spinster, always spoke of him as " the most perfect specimen of a soldier and a courtier of the past age." As painted in the military novel of ' Cyril Thornton,' we see the specimen preserved as the "old Cock of the Rock," parading in his Kevenhiiller hat, jack boots, and double row of sausage curls in the style of Ligonier -and Granby (see ' D.N.B.').

Col. Mack (1752-1828) was the Austrian who, being preferred to the Archduke Charles as leader of the armies of the Third Coalition against Napoleon, dealt Pitt his death-blow. As General Mack he is con- temptuously referred to by Lord Rosebery in his ' Life of Pitt ' as "a strategist of un- alloyed incompetency and unvaried failure. In a few marches Napoleon cut off Mack from Austria, and surrounded him at Ulm," Oct. 19, 1805, thus opening the road to Vienna ; "and the first event in the history of the Third Coalition was the absolute surrender of thirty thousand of their choicest troops." Mack seems to have exhausted his nerve and energy in the Turkish War of 1788, when he was Chief of the Staff under Lacy and Loudon, and played an important part in the siege of Belgrade, and was always afterwards subject to severe head- aches at any crisis. In the autumn of 1792, in spite of his invalid state, he was made Adjutant-General of the Rhine army, under Field-Marshal the Prince of Coburg. In February, 1794, Mack went to London to arrange the new campaign, and was appointed to supersede the Duke of York in the supreme command of the Anglo-French troops. He arranged a subsidy for the Prussian Contingent, and was presented with a sword of honour by the Prince Regent. His failure at Ulm cost him two years of fortress imprisonment and the loss of all his military honours.

It was in 1793 that the establishment of the Board of Agriculture was determined on under the guidance of Lord Sheffield and Sir John Sinclair, the latter its first President. Young had long before (in 1771) begun his correspondence on agriculture with Lord Sheffield, then John Baker Holroyd, who had written to Young in March of that year asking him to forward some cabbage seed, and hoping that Young would introduce the culture of cabbages into Sussex. He adds, that, from a cause which must now appear singular, the very extraordinary scarcity of hands cramps him very much :

" All the lively able young men are employed in smuggling. They can have a guinea a week as riders and carriers without any risk ; therefore it is not to be expected that they will labour for eight shillings a week until some more effectual means are taken toprevent smuggling." Young's ' Autobiography,' 1898, p. 58.

In 1800 Mr. J. Symonds wrote to the Speaker of the House of Commons that Lord Sheffield's pamphlet on the ' Deficiency of Grain' (1799-1800) "had commanded much attention " ; and in 1800 Sheffield