FORE:Soult, indeed, had sixty thousand men and ninety-one guns to deal with the flying and now greatly disorganised army of the British. At first the retreat had been made with much discipline and order, but the miserable weather, the torrents of rain, and heavy falls of snow, the roads rough with rocks, or deep with mud, tried the patience of the men. So long as they were advancing towards the enemy they could bear all this with cheerfulness, but the British are never good-humoured or patient under retreat. Sullen and murmuring, they struggled along in the[569] retreat, suffering not only from the weather, but from want of provisions, and the disgraceful indifference of the people to those who had come to fight their battles. Whenever a halt was made, and an order given to turn and charge the enemy, they instantly cheered up, forgot all their troubles, and were full of life and spirit. But their gloom returned with the retreat; and, not being voluntarily aided by the Spaniards, they broke the ranks, and helped themselves to food and wine wherever they could find them. Such was now the state of the weather and the roads, that many of the sick, and the women and children, who, in spite of orders, had been allowed to follow the army, perished. The French pressed more and more fiercely on the rear of the British, and several times Sir John was compelled to stop and repel them. On one of these occasions the French general, Colbert, was killed, and the six or eight squadrons of horse led by him were, for the most part, cut to pieces. At Lugo, on the 5th of January, Sir E. Paget beat back a very superior force. Again, on the 7th, Sir John Moore halted, and repulsed the advanced line of Soult, killing four or five hundred of the French. The next morning the armies met again in line of battle, but Soult did not attack; and as soon as it was dark Sir John quietly pursued his march, leaving his fires burning to deceive the enemy.
8.00 - 10.00 | JUN 09,2014
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FORE:The remnant of the Mahratta army fled northwards, pursued and continually reduced by the British. At the same time the reduction of the towns and forts was steadily going on, and every day the fugitive Peishwa became more and more involved in the toils of his enemies. He endeavoured to escape into Nagpore, but on the banks of the Wurda he was met, on the 1st of April, by Colonel Scott and driven back, only to fall into the hands of Colonel Adams, who attacked him near Soonee with only one regiment of native cavalry and some horse artillery, and gave him a thorough defeat, taking five guns, three elephants, and two hundred camels. More than a thousand Mahrattas fell, and the Peishwa himself narrowly escaped, his palanquin, which he had abandoned, being found shot through. Bajee Rao now endeavoured to get to the north-east into Malwa, but he was stopped by General Sir Thomas Hislop, who was advancing from that quarter towards the Deccan. At length, his forces dispersed, his towns in possession of the British, his way on all sides cut off, the Peishwa came in and surrendered himself to Sir John Malcolm, on the 3rd of June, 1818, on promise of good treatment. Sir John granted him eight lacs of rupees per annum, on condition that he resigned the title of Peishwa for ever, and surrendered all his possessions. This was confirmed by the Supreme Government at Calcutta. Thus was the existence of the Pindarrees, and the power of the Mahrattas, broken up, and the Rajah of Satara restored. He was a minor, but on reaching the age of twenty-one, which was in the year 1821, he was invested with the government of his dominions. These included a district of about eleven thousand square miles, and produced a net revenue of fifteen million rupees. Out of this, however, three lacs per annum were reserved for chiefs who had become subjects of the Company, and three more lacs were alienated. As for Trimbukjee, whose crimes and murders had determined the British to secure him at any cost, he was discovered, after a long quest, in the neighbourhood of Nassick, by Captain Swanston, and carried to Tannah, the prison from which he had escaped. He was thence transferred to Calcutta, and finally to the rock of Chunar, near Benares. The last success of this war was the reduction of the fortress of Aseerghur, one of the most formidable strongholds in India, which had undergone some most arduous sieges.The ordinance was disallowed at home. Lord Brougham, who had never forgiven his former colleagues the constitution of the Cabinet without his forming a part of it, signalised himself by the extreme bitterness with which he headed the onslaught. The result was that, after protracted debates in both Houses of Parliament, which occupied the whole of the summer, and fill up nearly 500 pages of the Parliamentary Proceedings, the ordinance was annulled by Act of Parliament; but an Act was passed indemnifying Lord Durham and the Canadian authorities. The majority in the Commons was so large that the Opposition did not venture on a division; and in the Lords the disallowance was carried by a majority of 54 to 36. This result occurred on the 10th of August, and Lord Durham saw the news first in the American newspapers. Lords Melbourne and Glenelg softened the matter to him as well as they could; the former communicated the intelligence with the greatest regret and the deepest apprehension as to its consequences. Lord Durham betrayed his mortification unwisely in a proclamation which he immediately issued. As the banishment was an exception to the general amnesty he had published, he informed the prisoners at Bermuda that her Majesty being advised to refuse her assent to the exceptions, the amnesty existed without qualification, and added"No impediment, therefore, exists to the return of the persons who have made the most distinctive admission of guilt, or have been excluded by me from the province on account of the danger to which it would be exposed by their presence."
9.00 - 10.00 | FEB 15,2014
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FORE:Thus the whole country was torn by religious animosity; the nobles were insolent to the Crown, and the people were nothing. Such was the divided condition of Poland which led to its dismemberment. All nobility of mind was destroyed; pride and oppression were the inseparable consequences of such a system. There was no middle class, no popular class; it was a country of lords and slavesof one class domineering over the other. The Greek Catholics were the Dissidents, and the Dissidents sought aid from Russiawhich was also Greek in religionand, to insure this aid, condescended to the lowest arts of solicitation, to the practice of fawning, stooping, and cringing to the great barbarous power of Russia on one side, and to the equally barbarous power of Turkey on the other. The nobles could bring large bodies of cavalry into the field, as many, at times, as a hundred thousand; but as they had no free people, and dreaded to arm their slaves, they had little or no infantry, except such as they hired, and even this was in no condition to withstand the heavy masses of Russian infantry, much less such armies as Prussia or Austria might be tempted to bring against them.
11.00 - 10.00 | JUN 10,2014
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