The quiet which had for some years reigned in Europe was broken in 1789, by what soon became the all-absorbing subject of interest, the Revolution in France. The history of the remainder of the reign is chiefly that of the share borne by England in the wars which grew out of that great convulsion. Whatever may have been the inclina tion.of the court, there can be no doubt that Mr. Pitt was reluctantly drawn into the war with France. The demand however that the country should take up arias was loudly made by the largo section of the Whig body, which, with Mr. Burke for its soul, went over to tho ministry in 1792 and 1793; and this was also decidedly the general voice of the country. In point of fact, war was at last declared, not by England, but by France, on the 1st of February 1793, a few days after the execution of the French king.
The general course of the war, almost from its commencement to its close, has already been sketched in the article BONAPARTE-NAPO LEON I. We shall here merely enumerate in thoir chronological order the principal events more immediately belonging to English history.
Conventions were, immediately on tho declaration of war, made for carrying on operations against France with Naples, Sardinia, Prussia, the Emperor, Hesse-Cassel, Baden, Hesse-Darmstadt, Brunswick, and by George III. with himself in his capacity of Elector of Hanover. A treaty of mutual alliance with Holland already subsisted. Spain and Portugal also immediately became parties to the war. Finally Russia still professed to adhere to tho combination against France, though the real object of the Empress Catharine was merely the partition of Poland, which she soon after effected in association with Austria and Prussia. The first military measure of the British government was to send a force to Holland under the command of the Duke of York. In the campaign of 1793 the French were expelled from Flanders by the Austrian.; and the allied army under the l'rinee of Saxe-Coburg and the Duke of York took Valenciennes and Cond6. The duke how ever was afterwards repulsed with great lose in an attempt upon Dun kirk. Tonlon was taken possession of by Lord Hood, but speedily recovered by the French. In 1794 the French fleet was signally defeated by Lord Howe in the Channel on theist of June ; the English also became masters of Corsica. In 1795 the islands of Martinique, St. Lucia, and Guadeloupe in the West Indies, were taken from the French ; Guadaloupa however was soon after retaken. The people of Holland now drove out the etadtholdcr, and with the assistance of the ) French established what was called the Batavian Republic; on this the Cape of Good Hope, Ceylon, and other Dutch possessions in the East Indies were seized by England. Peace was made with France by
Prussia April 5th, and by Spain July 22nd. In 1796 the English were compelled to withdraw from Corsica; on the 5th of October Spain declared war against England; in the latter part of the same month an ineffective attempt was made to open negociations for peace by the mission of Lord Malmesbury to Paris ; in December an attempt of the French to make a descent upon Ireland was defeated by a storm which dispersed the invading fleet, having a force of 15,000 men on board, only two ships reaching the neighbourhood of Bantry Bay, which they left in a few days. The military events in which the British arms were concerned in 1797 were—the defeat of the Spanish fleet off Cape St. Vincent by Sir John Jervis, 14th of February ; the capture from tho Spaniards of Trinidad, Porto Rico, and Teneriffe ; and the great victory obtained by Lord Duncan over the Dutch fleet off Camperdown, 11th of October. Peace with France having been made by Austria iu April, another attempt at negociation was made by the English government in the course of the following summer, Lord Malmesbury having been sent to meet the French plenipotentiaries at Lisle, but it ended in nothing. This was also the year of the suspension of cash-payments by the Batik of England, on the 27th of February, and of the mutiny in the fleet at Spithead in April, and at the Nora in June. The great domestic event of 1793 was the rebellion in Ireland, organised by the society of United Irishmen, which broke out in the end of May, and was not finally suppressed till the end of September. A small French force landed at Killala on the 22nd of August, and penetrated a con siderable way into Connaught, but surrendered after a sharp contest to a detachment of the army of Lord Cornwallis, on the 11th of September. On the 1st of August this year Nelson gained his great victory of the Nile. In 1799 a new confederacy having been formed against France, to which Austria, Russia, Naples, and Turkey were parties, an English army was sent to the Netherlands under the com mand of the Duke of York, but it was soon compelled to evacuate the country. On the 4th of May, Tippoo Saib, the sultan of Mysore, who had entered into alliance with the French, was defeated and killed, and his capital of Seringapatam taken by Sir David Baird, on which the greater part of his dominions was added to the English territory. In August Surinam was taken from the Dutch, whose ships of war also in the course of this year almost all fell into the hands of the English. Minorca and Malta were taken by the English in the course of the year 1800.