Nelson's Lady Hamilton by Meynell, Esther (cheapest way to read ebooks .txt) 📗

and friend in the world. I live constantly with her, and have done intimately so for 2 years, and I never have in all that time seen anything but goodness and sincerity in her, and, if ever you hear any lyes about her, contradict them, and if you should see a cursed book written by a vile french dog with her character in it, don't believe one word. She lent it me last night, and I have by reading the infamous calumny put myself quite out of humour, that so good and virtus a princess shou'd be so infamously described/*

In a still later letter, when Sir William had been down again with another of his now frequent attacks of bilious fever, Emma wrote to Greville—

" My ever dear Queen as been like a mother to me, since Sir William as been ill. She writes to me four or five times a day, and offerd to come and assist me. This is friendship. . . . Send me some news, political and private; for, against my will, owing to my situation here, I am got into politicks, and I wish to have news for our dear much-loved Queen, whom I adore. Nor can I live without her, for she is to me . . . friend and

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everything. If you cou'd know her as I do, how you wou'd adore her! For she is the first woman in the world ; her talents are superior to every woman's in the world; and her heart is most excellent and strictly good and upright. But you'l say it is because we are such friends, that I am partial ; but ask anybody that knows her. She loves England and is attached to our Ministry, and wishes the continuation of the war as the only means to ruin that abominable French council."

But Lady Hamilton's "much-loved Queen" did not make herself thus friendly and gracious to the British Ambassador's wife simply for the sake of winning her affection. There can be little doubt that she found Emma's natural ardour and hearty simplicity refreshing in the strained and artificial atmosphere of her Court. There can be little doubt, also, that as time went on she came to lean considerably on Emma's devotion and capacity for dealing with men and events. But in the year 1793, when the intimacy between the two began, it was not so much an inclination for Lady Hamilton's society made the Queen so kind, but the state of her own kingdom and of Europe in general. She had, it will be remembered, expressed her hope in the efforts of the " generous nation" for avenging the death of Louis XVI. It was the hope of William Pitt, on the other hand, to save England from being drawn into

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the Continental cataclysm.He did all that was humanly possible, lonely and unsupported though ^he was, to save his country from the war to ! which he saw her plunging headlong.As J. R. ; Green says : " No hour of Pitt's life is so great as the hour when he stood alone in England, and refused to bow to the growing cry of the nation for war."But between the intense feeling of the English people, especially after the execution of ; Marie Antoinette, on the one hand, and the outrageous acts of the French on the other, the : position was not tenable.France was deter-: mined on war; in Danton's violent words : " The ; coalized Kings threaten us; we hurl at their feet, as gage of battle, the Head of a King."

Liberty—the new liberty which was to light the dark old world—as proclaimed by the fresh risen despots of France, was a liberty to commit crime without punishment, to impose arbitrary "systems" upon independent countries. "The general interest of restoring peace to Europe," said these new apostles of freedom and the brotherhood of mankind, "can be obtained only by the annihilation of the despots and their satellites. All conspires in inducing us to treat such a people according to the rigour of war and conquest."

In the name of Liberty, and Equality, and Fraternity, it was

" Cry—Havoc, and let slip the dogs of war."

On the shores of the Mediterranean the sister of the murdered queen, the high-hearted daughter of Maria Theresa, watched these events with an anguish and rage that may be imagined. Fear and revenge both drove her the same road. In a kind of paroxysm she herself became a tyrant in her fierce suppression of the disaffected and of those who had any traffickings with the French agents and spies who honeycombed her kingdom. By a secret tribunal and " Junta " she dealt out deportation and proscription. She dismissed the Jacobin representative of France, Citizen Mackau; but when a French squadron under La Touche Tr6ville dropped anchor in Naples Bay, and insisted that the minister should be taken back, she had perforce to submit under the threat of his guns, though her fury against France was naturally not lessened by this episode. The Kingdom of Naples was forced to retire from the first Coalition against the French, for, till England took part in the war, the French fleet was unchecked in the Mediterranean. But when Lord Hood and his ships came upon the scene, when Toulon was occupied by the British, " Naples," says Mr. David Hannay, " plucked up heart of grace to take part against France. Her ships cruised with the English, and her soldiers ran away at Toulon." But Maria Carolina was not responsible for the poor stuff her soldiers were made of, and her own passion against the French

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was undiminished. Unpopular with her people because of her