Blakeney and Garrison stood to their guns in a manful manner, for above a month longer; day after day, week after week, looking over the horizon for some Byng or some relief appearing, to no purpose!
JUNE 14th, there are three available breaches; the walls, however, are very sheer (a Fortress hewn in the rock): Richelieu scanning them dubiously, and battering his best, for about a fortnight more, is ineffectual on Blakeney.
JUNE 27th, Richelieu, taking his measures well, tickling French honor well, has determined on storm. Richelieu, giving order of the day, "Whosoever of you is found drunk shall NOT be of the storm-party" (which produced such a teetotalism as nothing else had done),--storms, that night, with extreme audacity. The Place has to capitulate: glorious victory; honorable defence: and Minorca gone.
And England is risen to a mere smoky whirlwind, of rage, sorrow and darkness, against Byng and others. Smoky darkness, getting streaked with dangerous fire. "Tried?" said his Grace of Newcastle to the City Deputation: "Oh indeed he shall be tried immediately; he shall be hanged directly!"--assure yourselves of that. [Walpole, ii. 231:
Details of the Siege, ib. 218-225; in Gentleman's Magazine, xxvi. 256, 312-313, 358; in Adelung, vii.; &c. &c.]
And Byng's effigy was burnt all over England. And mobs attempt to burn his Seat and Park; and satires and caricatures and firebrands are coming out: and the poor Constitutional Country is bent on applying surgery, if it but know how. Surgery to such indisputable abominations was certainly desirable. The new Relief Squadron, which had been despatched by Majesty's Ministry, was too late for Blakeney, but did bring home a superseded Byng.
SPITHEAD, TUESDAY, 27th JULY, The superseded Byng arrives; is punctually arrested, on arriving: "Him we will hang directly:--is there anything else we can try [except, perhaps, it were hanging of ourselves, and our fine methods of procedure], by way of remedying you?"--War against France, now a pretty plain thing, had been "declared," 17th May (French counter-declaring, 9th June):
and, under a Duke of Newcastle and a Hero of Culloden, not even pulling one way, but two ways; and a Talking-Apparatus full of discords at this time, and pulling who shall say how many ways,--the prospects of carrying on said War are none of the best.
Lord Loudon, a General without skill, and commanding, as Pitt declares, "a scroll of Paper hitherto" (a good few thousands marked on it, and perhaps their Colonels even named), is about going for America; by no means yet gone, a long way from gone: and, if the Laws of Nature be suspended--Enough of all that!
KING PRIEDRICH'S ENIGMA GETS MORE AND MORE STRINGENT.
Friedrich's situation, in those fatefully questionable months and for many past (especially from January 16th to July),--readers must imagine it, for there is no description possible. In many intricacies Friedrich has been; but never, I reckon, in any equal to this. Himself certain what the Two Imperial Women have vowed against him; self and Winterfeld certain of that sad truth; and all other mortals ready to deny it, and fly delirious on hint of it, should he venture to act in consequence! Friedrich's situation is not unimaginable, when (as can now be done by candid inquirers who will take trouble enough) the one or two internal facts of it are disengaged from the roaring ocean of clamorous delusions which then enveloped them to everybody, and are held steadily in view, said ocean being well run off to the home of it very deep underground.
Lies do fall silent; truth waits to be recognized, not always in vain. No reader ever will conceive the strangling perplexity of that situation, now so remote and extinct to us. All I can do is, to set down what features of it have become indisputable; and leave them as detached traceries, as fractions of an outline, to coalesce into something of image where they can.
Winterfeld's opinion was, for some time past, distinct:
"Attack them; since it is certain they only wait to attack us!"But Friedrich would by no means listen to that. "We must not be the aggressor, my friend; that would spoil all. Perhaps the English will pacify the Russian CATIN for me; tie her, with packthreads, bribes and intrigues, from stirring? Wait, watch!" Fiery Winterfeld, who hates the French, who despises the Austrians, and thinks the Prussian Army a considerable Fact in Politics, has great schemes: far too great for a practical Friedrich. "Plunge into the Austrians with a will: Prussian Soldiery,--can Austrians resist it?
Ruin them, since they are bent on ruining us. Stir up the Hungarian Protestants; try all things. Home upon our implacable enemies, sword drawn, scabbard flung away! And the French,--what are the French? Our King should be Kaiser of Teutschland; and he can, and he may:--the French would then be quieter!" These things Winterfeld carried in his head; and comrades have heard them from him over wine. [Retzow, i. 43, &c.] To all which Friedrich, if any whisper of them ever got to Friedrich, would answer one can guess how.
