forward into Styria, meaning to await the renewal of hostilities on the part of Austria, and from thence attack the enemy in the rear.

The court of Austria had originally instigated the Tyrolese to rise in arms, and, after the armistice, had encouraged them to continue the war. When it had sacrificed its own honour irrecoverably by consenting to the union with Buonaparte, it left the Tyrolese to their fate; stipulating only, for the sake of decency, in the terms of peace, that they should be pardoned, instead of insisting that they should be included in the peace, as men who, having done their duty, were not to be insulted with the language of pardon. But the Tyrolese could now no longer be serviceable to Austria; and Austria neither informed them of the probability of peace, nor even acquainted them with it when it was concluded, so that, when they had no suspicion of any such danger, and were looking daily for the promised re-appearance of their allies, the troops of Buonaparte and his vassals, having now no other object, poured in upon them from all sides. The patriots posted at Muhleg and Wegschaide were surrounded; 200, with the commandant, Speckbacher at their head, cut their way through the enemy; 400 were taken. Among them was Speckbacher's son, a boy only twelve years of age, but of the right Tyrolese spirit, and master of the weapon, in the use of which his countrymen are so peculiarly excellent. His father ordered him to follow him on the retreat; the boy waited for a shot at the Bavarian general, and brought him down, but this delay cost him his liberty. The men into whose hands he fell were not so brutal as their comrades; they admired his extreme, youth, his beau

VOL. II. PART I.

ty, and his excellent courage, and some of them presented him to the king of Bavaria. Maximilian Joseph, incapable of understanding any noble feeling, asked him whether he would, shoot any more Bavarians, as if either fear or favour could have perverted a heart like his. "Yes," the boy answered with indignation, "and you too, if you come into the Tyrol !"

In one of these actions, the Countess of Sternbach was taken prisoner, fighting in the ranks of the patriots. According to the French account, she was the daughter of a butcher, and the count had married her for her singular beauty. They were about to carry her to Strasburg, when the patriots captured the wives of two staff officers, and exchanged them for her. The tide of success was now turned by an immense superiority of numbers. Lefebvre again advanced to Inspruck. Peyri with one Italian army entered Trent, Rusca with another forced the entrenchments at Muhlbach. At this time, three weeks after the peace had been signed, one of the deputies whom they sent to the Austrian head-quarters brought them the first authentic notification of it in the following words, written by the emperor himself: "Tyrolese, I wish you to be tranquil. I have been obliged to make peace, partly on account of the disunion of my brothers, and partly because Russia took the field against me." This was all, Not a word of gratitude for their loyalty, not an expression of praise for their exertions and heroism, nor of regret for their sufferings. Hofer could now no longer doubt that peace had indeed been made, and the Tyrolese abandoned to their detested enemies. If there had been only Bavaria to contend with, they could have beaten the Bavarians as they had

2 T

repeatedly done; but to withstand the whole force of the confederacy, Italy and France, ready to pour in upon them army after army, while they themselves had no ally from whom it was possible to receive succour of any kind, was manifestly hopeless. Hofer, therefore, apprizing his countrymen of the information which he had received from the emperor, for whom he had taken arms, exhorted them to submit to their fate, resigned the command, informed the enemy's generals of his resolution, and demanded a cessation of hostilities, that the Tyrolese might return unmolested to their homes.

Nov. 7.

At this time, the Bavarians had advanced to Zirl, and they set fire to that large village, just when the Tyrolese, in utter hopelessness, were about to disperse and submit to their evil fate. This wanton act of mischief kindled their fury anew; it was impossible for brave men to live under the yoke of enemies like these. Headed by Hierler, commandant of the Upper Innthal, they rushed upon the Bavarians, and obtained one day more of victory and vengeance. 9000 of the hostile army were killed and wounded, and 16 pieces of cannon and two chests of money fell into the hands of the conquerors. This success, glorious as it was, was now of no avail; armies advanced against them from all sides, they were surrounded, and two days afterwards their last effort of despair was made near Brixen. In this memorable action the wife fought by her husband, the sister by her brother, the maiden by the side of her father, or of her betrothed. 320 women, fighting resolutely to the last gasp, were cut down by the Italian cavalry, a great number of men perished, and about 500 of both sexes

were wounded. They took ample vengeance for themselves, by the far greater slaughter which they made of the enemy, but they were overpowered by infinitely superior numbers, This was their last collective effort, and the wrongs that this noble people were yet to endure remain hitherto unrevenged.

Ten thousand prisoners whom they had taken were now set at liberty; the people dispersed, and Hofer concealed himself, intending, according to circumstances, either to take up arms again in the spring, or to escape into the Austrian dominions. The enemy meantime continued to burn and destroy all before them; and Le"febvre, with an unrelenting barbarity worthy of the master whom he ser ved, hunted down all who had distinguished themselves during the war. He demolished their houses, confiscated their property, and threw their families into confinement. They them selves, when they fell into his hands, were delivered over to his military tribunals, and executed with all the insolent mockery of law. A few only of the many brave and excellent men who were thus murdered have had their names preserved. Sieg. mund, the rector of Virgen, and Unterkerchen, his curate, were shot at Lienz. Fradle was shot before the church of Virgen; Obersummer and Webber suffered the same death; and a rascally priest was employed to calumniate them after death, by decla ring from the pulpit that they had expressed the utmost contrition for their rebellion. Taxis of Tofferecken, and Groder of Kels, were put to death before their own houses. 25 were shot between Lienz and Bennecken, others were hanged. The French of the present day speak with horror of the revolutionary murders

committed by Lebon and Carrier and Collot d'Herbois, but they acted up on the same system in the Tyrol. Eager, if possible, to root out the love of liberty from the earth, they took every means to prevent the patriots from escaping into the adjoining countries. All the inhabitants of a parish were made responsible with their lives and property for every attack made upon a French or Bavarian soldier; and any parish harbour ing a person who had not delivered in his arms, or delaying to deliver him up to the nearest military post, was to be considered as aiding and abetting rebellion, and punished accordingly. The cowardly malice of these vile slaves extended to the dead as well as the living. They dug up the patriots, who, having fallen in the war, had been buried with national honours, destroyed the inscriptions which had been cut in wood over their graves, and turned their bodies into holes dug in the highway, treating them like thieves and malefactors. Hofer meantime concealed himself in a hut which he had built in a remote part of the mountains, and where, during the winter, while the country was covered with snow, he must have been safe, if, even in the Tyrol, a wretch had not been found base enough to betray him. This shame of his country was a priest, by name How Donay, and he, for a bribe of 200

Feb. 24.

1810.

louis d'ors, guided the French to his hiding place. Hofer was led with his family barefoot through the snow to Botzen, under an escort of 700 men, and exposed to every kind of ill treatment. Such, however, was the indignation of the Tyrolese, that the ruffians, who were determined upon the murder of this heroic chieftain, dared not perpetrate it in his own country. They assured the people that his life would be spared, conveyed him to Mantua, and there by the sentence of a military tribunal he was shot. He refused to let his eyes be covered when he was led to execution, and died as became a martyr, rejoicing that he had done his duty. The mean and rancorous Corsican committed a new act of baseness towards his memory; he printed a letter in Hofer's name, addressed to the Tyrolese, in which he was represented as exhorting them to the most loyal submission to their new master, and feeling the utmost repentance for his own guilt in rising in rebellion. The imposition was too gross to be successful. Another falsehood which the French circulated of the same nature was, that the son of Hofer, detesting his father's example, had entered the Bavarian service; whereas, in truth, this brave and unfortunate boy died of the ill treatment which he endured in his captivity.

WHEN the news of the battle of Wagram, and the more fatal armistice which followed it, reached England, an expedition had long been preparing in favour of our continental allies, and was on the point of sailing. Great Britain had never on any occasion sent out so formidable a force. The number of troops employed were above 39,000, and the naval armament consisted of 35 sail of the line, 2 fifty gun ships, 3 of 44 guns, 18 frigates, and 179 smaller vessels, together with a large proportion of such craft as is employed in the dockyards. The military command was given to the Earl of Chatham, the naval to Sir Richard Strachan. The former appointment excited considerable wonder, for Lord Chatham was a man whose habits of indolence were notoriously inveterate, insomuch, that in the height of his bro ther's power it had been found necessary to remove him from the office of first lord of the Admiralty. His

manners were agreeable, and in conversation he displayed talents, which, as they never appeared on other oc

casions, seem only to have been exerted for conversational purposes, or only equal to them. Mr Pitt was known to have described him as a person of useless abilities. He had served on the continent during the anti-jacobin war, and was third in command at the disgraceful capitulation of the Helder. At this time he held the situation of master of the ordnance, and in that capacity possessed a seat in the cabinet. In the course of the expedition, and still more after its conclusion, some inconvenience was found to result from having thus invested a cabinet minister with command.

The objects proposed for this great armament to accomplish were, "thef capture or destruction of the enemy's ships, either building at Antwerp and Flushing, or afloat on the Scheldt; the destruction of the arsenals and dock-yards at Antwerp, Terneuse, and Flushing; the reduction of the island of Walcheren, and the rendering, if possible, the Scheldt no longer navigable for ships of war." It had been a favourite scheme of Mr Pitt's

to take Flushing by a coup-de-main; he consulted Dumouriez upon it, and that general gave it as his opinion that no attack upon Holland would be successful. In 1798, however, Sir Home Popham was ordered to form a plan for attacking this fortress, and Nelson in 1801 had fixed his eye upon the same point. He considered it as a week's expedition for four or five thousand men: upon this Sir John Moore was consulted, and he, who never looked hopefully upon any object, discovered so many obstacles and difficulties, that the design was abandoned. Buonaparte annexed the town and its port to France in 1807, his brother Louis being ordered to cede it with all the formalities of a treaty. This usurpation, though it added nothing to the actual means of annoyance which he possessed, called the attention of the English government anew to an object which it had already had in contemplation, and Lord Castlereagh spoke of Flushing in parliament as a point against which it be hoved us to be particularly and adequately prepared. The expedition was planned in March; but, though 15 or 16,000 men were then thought a sufficient force, the commander-inchief could not produce them, on account of the shattered condition of the army after the return of so large a portion of it from Spain. A larger army became necessary when Antwerp was made the ultimate point of attack. Here Buonaparte was carrying on naval works with all the vigour of a newly-established despotism. Fifteen hundred houses, the most ancient part of this great city, were demolished, and the whole space which they occupied was appropriated to slips for ship-building. Ten

80 gun ships were at that time on the stocks; there was room for building twenty at the same time, and the timber of the Black Forest, which might be floated down the Rhine, is inexhaustible. Mechanics for the work were chosen from among the conscripts, they were formed into military as well as working orders, a company under the superintendance of a captain to each ship, and every Sunday they were exercised as soldiers. Ministers had been informed that this part of the country was now so drained of its troops in consequence of the war with Austria, that a British army might penetrate to Antwerp without any serious resist

ance.

That short-sighted and selfish system which would direct the efforts of the country to what are called "purely British objects," miserably displayed itself upon this occasion. Had this army been sent to Spain, it would have exterminated the French from the peninsula; had it been sent to the Elbe, the north of Germany was ripe for revolt; Hanover would have joined us, and Prussia might not improbably have made one more struggle to avert its final destruction. Schill might have been saved, had we gone in the right time and to the right place; and the Duke of Brunswick, with an English force in the country, would have been at the head of an army instead of a handful of fugitives. But at Antwerp and at Flushing there were ships; and it was deemed a British object to destroy the naval resources of the enemy. In the very conception of such a project there was a demonstrable absurdity. Our fleet was already so triumphantly superior, that all com