Page:Public School History of England and Canada (1892).djvu/171

 under her greatest naval commander.. Bonaparte, having humbled the Austrians, got permission to take a fleet and an army to Egypt. Admiral Horatio Nelson was sent with an English fleet to overtake him, but failed for some time to find his whereabouts. At length he got the necessary information, and sailed at once for Egypt, where he found Napoleon had landed, and had won a great victory over the Mamelukes, at the Battle of the Pyramids. But Napoleon’s fleet lay anchored in the Bay of Aboukir, and, though it was six o’clock in the evening, Nelson sent some of his ships between the French fleet and the shore, and began a battle which raged nearly all night. The morning found most of the French fleet destroyed, and Napoleon’s army without the means of return. The Battle of the Nile, which was fought August 1, 1798, brought great joy and relief to England, for France was now without a fleet. From Egypt, Bonaparte crossed over to Syria, besieged and took Jaffa, but was repulsed at Acre by the Turks and the English, and then returned to Egypt. Hearing that his interests could be best served by his return, he escaped in a vessel back to France, leaving his army behind him. He was now made First Consul, and once more led a French army against the Austrians in Italy, defeating them at Marengo in 1801. The same year his army in Egypt was defeated by Sir Ralph Abercromby, and his soldiers made prisoners.

6. Union of Great Britain and Ireland.—After the rebellion of 1798 in Ireland, Pitt saw that the only way to save the island from anarchy was to bring about a Union between Great Britain and Ireland. This he succeeded in carrying out in. 1800, by bribing the Irish members of Parliament, and by promising the Trish Catholics to repeal the laws which deprived them of their rights as citizens. So, on January Ist, 1801, the Irish Parliament ceased to exist, and Ireland became represented in the United Parliament at London, by one hundred members of the House of Commons, and by twenty-eight peers. But Pitt’s promise of civil and religious freedom for the Roman Catholics could not be carried out. When George III. heard that Pitt was preparing a Bill to give Roman Catholics their rights, he declared he would resign his crown rather than assent to it, and, Pitt who had pledged himself to this act of justice, felt it his duty to resgn in 1801.