Cassell's History of England, Vol. 5 (of 8): From the Peninsular War to the Death of Sir Robert PeelAnonymous
History
Cassell's History of England, Vol. 5 (of 8): From the Peninsular War to the Death of Sir Robert Peel
Anonymous
Great Britain -- History
The British Ministry adopted the advice most cordially. Lord Liverpool,
in the House of Lords, and Lord Castlereagh, in the Commons, on
the 6th of April, announced the astounding fact of the escape of
Buonaparte, and proposed addresses from both Houses to the Prince
Regent, recommending the most energetic measures of co-operation with
the Allies now finally to crush this lawless man. Whitbread vehemently
opposed this measure, declaring that it was not our business "to
commence a new crusade to determine who should fill the throne of
France." This was true enough; but it was a truth, in the then temper
of the Government or public, which was not likely to be attended to.
The addresses were carried in both Houses without any division, and
Lord Wellington was nominated to command the forces which should take
the field for Great Britain; and these were to amount to no fewer than
one hundred and fifty thousand, and to consist of a moderate number of
British soldiers, and the rest to be paid Hanoverians, Belgians, Dutch,
and Germans. Parliament immediately voted the enormous sum of ninety
million pounds for supplies, knowing the vast subsidies which would be
required by the Allied monarchs, besides the large sum necessary to pay
our own quota of troops.
On the 23rd of March the Allied sovereigns, including that of the
United Kingdom, signed, by their plenipotentiaries, a new treaty of
alliance offensive and defensive, on the same principles as the Treaty
of Chaumont, entered into in March, 1814. The Duke of Wellington then
hastened away to Belgium to muster his forces there--for Belgium, as
it had been so often before, was sure to become the battle-ground on
this occasion. So early as the 5th of April he announced that he had
placed thirteen thousand four hundred men in the fortresses of Belgium,
and had besides twenty-three thousand British and Hanoverian troops,
twenty thousand Dutch and Belgian, and sixty pieces of artillery.
Unfortunately, the bulk of his victorious army of the Peninsula had
been sent to the inglorious contest with America, where a good naval
blockade would have been the most effectual kind of warfare. But
he observed that Buonaparte would require some time to assemble a
strong force, and this time must be employed by Britain to collect
a correspondingly powerful army. The Duke, with accustomed energy,
not only applied himself with all his strength to this object, but
to stimulating, by letters, the Allied sovereigns to hasten up their
quotas, some of them notoriously the slowest nations in the world.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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