ONE:On the 17th of March a proclamation was placarded at the gates of the palace, announcing that the king was resolved to remain and share the fate of his people. Great were the acclamations and rejoicings; but, towards evening, the crowds that still lingered around the royal residence saw unmistakable signs of departure: there was an active movement amongst the Guards; carriages and baggage were becoming apparent, and the agitation of the people grew intense. The Prince of Asturias and his brother protested against the departure; bodies of soldiers, in open revolt, began to assemble, and the people cried that they would have the head of the traitor, Godoy. From angry words the populace and revolted soldiers came to blows with the Household Troops. Godoy's brother led up a regiment against the rioters, but the men seized him, and joined the people. Whilst one crowd surrounded the Palace of Aranjuez, another rushed to the house of Godoy to seize and kill him. They ran all over his house, but could not discover him. The tumult continued all night, but was somewhat appeased the next morning by a Royal proclamation, which announced that the king had dismissed him from his offices. This did not, however, prevent the people continuing the search for Godoy, who was at length discovered by a Life-Guardsman in a garret of his own house, where he had been concealed between two mattresses. Compelled to come forth by heat and thirst, he was dragged into the street, soundly beaten, and would soon have been put to death, had not the Prince of Asturias, at the urgent entreaty of the king and queen, interceded, declaring that he should be tried for his crimes, and duly punished. Godoy was committed to custody, in the Castle of Villaviciosa: his property was confiscated; and, on the 19th, the king, terrified at the still hostile aspect of the people, proclaimed his own resignation in favour of Ferdinand, their favourite; in truth, as little deserving of their favour, by any moral or intellectual quality, as the king himself. The abdication was formally communicated by letter to Napoleon, whose troops, under Murat, were, during these tumults, now rapidly advancing on Madrid.We come now to the rebellion of 1715. The succession of the House of Hanover had raised the Pretender and his Jacobite faction in England to a pitch of excitement which made them ready to rush upon the most desperate measures. In England the destruction of the Tory Ministry, the welcome given to the new Protestant king, and the vigour with which the Whigs and all the supporters of the principles of the Revolution had shown the majority which they were able to return to the new Parliament, were all indications that the spirit of the nation was more firmly than ever rooted in Protestantism and the love of constitutional liberty, and that any endeavours to overturn the new dynasty must be supported by an overwhelming power from without. Without such force the event was certain failure; yet, under existing auspices, it was determined to try the venture. Bolingbroke, on his arrival in France, saw that all was rashness, impatience, and want of preparation in the party on both sides of the Channel. The Highlanders were all eagerness for the Chevalier's arrival, lest he should land in England, and the English should snatch the glory of the restoration from them. From England came the letters of Ormonde, who was down in the West, and sent most glowing representations of the spirit of the people there; that out of every ten persons nine were against King George, and that he had distributed money amongst the disbanded officers, to engage them in the cause of King James. But all these fine words terminated with the damping intelligence that nobody would stir until they saw the Chevalier with a good army at his back. Such an army there was not the smallest hope of obtaining from France. All that Louis would or could do, without engaging in a new war with England, was to prevail on his grandson, Philip of Spain, to[28] advance four hundred thousand crowns for the expedition, and besides this, the Pretender had been able privately to borrow another hundred thousand, and purchase ten thousand stand of arms. At this juncture came two fatal eventsthe flight of Ormonde and the death of Louis XIV. on September 1st.
THREE:FROM THE PAINTING BY P. JAZET.At this juncture, while daily desertions thinned Mar's army at Perth, arrived the Pretender. He landed at Peterhead on the 22nd of December. On the 6th of January, 1716, he made his public entry into Dundee, at the head of his cavalcade, the Earl of Mar riding on his right hand, and the Earl Marshal on his left, and about three hundred gentlemen following. His reception was enthusiastic. The people flocked round him to kiss his hands; and to gratify this loyal desire he remained an hour in the market-place. On the 8th he arrived at Scone, and took up his residence in the ancient palace of his ancestors. There he was only two miles from the army, and having established a council, and issued six proclamations, ordering a public thanksgiving for the "miraculous providence" of his safe arrival, for prayers in the church, for the currency of foreign coin, for a meeting of the Convention of Estates, for all fencible men from sixteen to sixty to repair to his standard, and for his coronation on the 23rd of January, he presented himself before the army. But here the scene was changed. Instead of enthusiasm there was disappointmentdisappointment on both sides. The soldiers, who expected to see a royal-looking, active-looking man, likely to encourage them and lead them on their career, beheld a tall, thin, pale, and dejected sort of person, who evidently took no great interest in them. That the Pretender should not exhibit much vivacity was no wonder. He had been assured by Mar that his army had swelled to sixteen thousand men; that the whole North was in his favour; and that he had only to appear to carry everything before him. On inquiring into the force, it turned out to be so miserably small, that the only desire was to keep it out of sight. The spirits of the Pretender fell, and though not destitute of ability, as is manifest by his letters, he had by no means that strength of resolution demanded by such an enterprise.
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THREE:But far above all rose, at this period, the already popular romantic poet, Walter Scott. Before him, in Scotland, Henry Mackenzie had occupied for a long time the foreground as a writer of fiction, in "The Man of Feeling," "Julia de Roubign," etc., but in a very different class of invention. As Walter Scott (b. 1771; d. 1832) had opened up the romance of the Scottish Highlands in his poems, so he now burst forth, on the same ground, in historic romance, with a vigour, splendour, and wonderful fertility of imagination and resource of knowledge which far exceeded everything in the history of literature since the days of Shakespeare. We need not attempt to characterise the voluminous series of what are called the "Waverley Novels," which, in their ample range, occupied almost every country of Europe and every climate, from the bleak rocks of Orkney to the glowing plains of Syria and India; they are familiar to all readers, and closed this period with a splendour from the mingled blaze of invention, poetry, and science, which no succeeding age is likely to surpass.