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nected with them, the brave assailants were exposed to the whole fire of the fort, and partly to that of the city, without the least power of defending themselves, or of annoying the Spaniards. A mere carnage ensued; and although a retreat was soon judged necessary, colonel Grant, who commanded the grenadiers, and six hundred of the flower of the English army was left dead on the field.

The besiegers were so much discouraged by this unpropitious and ill-directed effort, that they gave up all hopes of being able to reduce the place. And the rainy season set in with such violence, as rendered it impossible for the troops to live on shore. They were therefore reimbarked, and the enterprise was relinquished, after the admiral had made a feeble attempt to bombard the town, in order to convince the general of its impracticability; though that consequence was by no means the result of this impertinent experiment. On the contrary, it was affirmed, that the continuance of such a mode of attack, properly conducted, would have reduced the city to heaps of ruins; that a floating battery, which had been prepared, did not lie in the proper place for annoying the enemy; that the water was there indeed too shallow, to admit large ships near enough to batter the town with any prospect of success, but that a little toward the left, the harbour was sufficiently deep, and that four or five ships of the line might have been moored within pistol-shot of the walls31.

After the reimbarkation of the troops, the distempers peculiar to the climate and season began to rage with redoubled fury. Nothing was heard from ship to ship, but complaints and execrations; the groans of the dying, and the service for the dead! Nothing was seen but objects of woe or images of dejection; and the commanders, who had agreed in nothing else, were unanimous in pleading the expediency of a retreat from this scene of misery and dis

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grace. The fortifications of the harbour of Carthagena were accordingly demolished, and the English fleet sailed for Jamaica, to the astonishment and confusion of the mother country, as well as of the colonies. The people were depressed in proportion to that exuberant joy with which they had been elevated; nor was any thing afterward done by the conductors of this unfortunate enterprise, to retrieve the honour of the British arms. Though Vernon was reinforced with several ships of the line, and Wentworth with three thousand soldiers from England; and although they successively threatened St. Jago de Cuba, and Panama, they returned home, without effecting any thing of consequence, notwithstanding the loss of nearly twenty thousand men32.

The expedition under Anson was not more fortunate in the beginning; and, but for accident, it would have terminated in equal disgrace. Being attacked by a furious storm in passing Cape Horn, two of his ships were obliged to return in distress: one was lost; another was so much damaged as to be abandoned soon after; and the greater part of his people died of the sea-scurvy, before he reached the island of Juan Fernandez, which had been appointed as the place of rendezvous. In this delightful abode the remainder of his crew recovered their health and spirits; and the Centurion, his own ship, being still in pretty good repair, he soon put to sea, took several prizes off the coast of Chili, and plundered the town of Patta, on the coast of Peru, where he found a booty of silver to the amount of about thirty thousand pounds sterling. From his prisoners he learned, that, notwithstanding his reduced force, he had nothing to fear in those latitudes; as Don Joseph Pizarro, who commanded a Spanish squadron destined to oppose him, had been obliged to return to Rio de la Plata, after having lost two ships and two thousand men in attempting to double Cape Horn.

But that consolatory intelligence was balanced by information of a less agreeable kind. Anson also learned, from

32. Smollett's Hist. Eng. vol. xi. Univ. Hist. ubi sup.

some

some papers found on board his prizes, that the English expedition against Carthagena had miscarried. This discouraging news made him sensible of the impropriety of attempting to execute that part of his instructions, which regarded an attack upon Panama, in consequence of a supposed co-operation with the British troops, across the isthmus of Darien. He therefore bore away for Acapulco, in hopes of intercepting the Manilla galleon, which he understood was then at sea. Happily for the Spaniards, she had reached that port before his arrival. He endea A. D. 1742. voured to intercept her in her return, but without effect. At last finding himself destitute of every necessary, he sailed for the river Canton, in China, where he arrived after a long and distressing voyage. Having refitted his ship, and taken in a supply of provisions, he again launched into the Pacific Ocean; and after cruising there some time, he fortunately met with and took the annual ship from Acapulco, on the coast of Mexico, to Manilla, in the island of Luconia, laden with treasure, to the amount of about three hundred thousand pounds sterling, and other valuable commodities 33.

A. D. 1743.

and

A. D. 1744.

Anson went a second time to Canton, where he asserted the honour of the British flag in a very spirited manner, returned to England by the Cape of Good-Hope in 1744, to the great joy of his countrymen, who had heard of his disasters, and concluded that he and all his crew were lost. The Spanish treasure was carried to the tower with much parade; and an expedition, which, all things considered, ought rather to have been deemed unfortunate, was magnified beyond measure. Anson's perseverance, however, deserved praise, and the success of a

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33. Anson's Voyage, by Walter. The treasure consisted of one million three hundred and thirteen thousand eight hundred and forty dollars or pesos, with uncoined silver equal in value to forty-three thousand six huadred and eleven dollars.

single

single ship seemed to point out what might be performed by a stout squadron on the coasts of the South-Sea; but the failure of the formidable enterprise against Carthagena was still so fresh in the memory of the nation, that no farther attempt was made during the war to distress the Spanish settlements in America.

I shall here, my dear Philip, close this letter; as the naval transactions in the European seas, though seemingly connected with the subject, will enter with more propriety into the general narration. The war, occasioned by the death of the emperor Charles VI. must now engage our attention.

LETTER XXVIII.

THE

THE GENERAL VIEW OF THE AFFAIRS OF EUROPE, FROM DEATH OF THE EMPEROR CHARLES VI. IN 1740, TO THE TREATY OF DRESDEN, IN 1745, AND THE CONFIRMATION OF THE TREATY OF BRESLAW.

THE death of the emperor Charles VI. the last prince of the ancient house of Austria, without male issue, awakened the ambition of many potentates, the adjusting of whose pretensions threw all Europe into a ferA. D. 1740. ment. By virtue of the pragmatic sanction, as well as the rights of blood, the succession to the whole Austrian dominions belonged to the archduchess MariaTheresa, the late emperor's eldest daughter, married to Francis of Lorrain, grand-duke of Tuscany. The kingdoms of Hungary and Bohemia, the province of Silesia, Austrian Swabia, Upper and Lower Austria, Stiria, Carinthia, Carniola, the four Forest Towns, Burgaw, Brisgaw, the Low Countries, Friuli, Tirol, the duchy of Milan, and the duchies of Parma and Placentia, formed that immense inheritance.

Almost all the European powers had guaranteed the pragmatic sanction; but, as prince Eugene judiciously re

marked, "an hundred thousand men would have guaran"teed it better than an hundred thousand treaties !" Selfish avidity and lawless ambition can only be restrained by force. Charles Albert, elector of Bavaria, laid claim to the kingdom of Bohemia, on the strength of an article in the will of the emperor Ferdinand I. brother to Charles V. Augustus III. king of Poland, and elector of Saxony, exhibited pretensions to the whole Austrian succession, in virtue of the rights of his wife, eldest daughter of the emperor Joseph, elder brother of Charles VI. The catholic king deduced similar pretensions from the rights of the daughter of the emperor Maximilian II. wife of Philip II. of Spain, from whom he was descended by females; and the king of Sardinia revived an obsolete claim to the duchy of Milan. The king of France had also his pretensions, and to the whole disputed succession, as being descended in a right line from the eldest male branch of the house of Austria, by two princesses, married to his ancestors, Lewis. XIII. and Lewis XIV. But, conscious that such a claim would excite the jealousy of all Europe, he did not appear as a competitor; though he was not without hopes of aggrandizing himself, and of dismembering the Austrian dominions, by abetting the claims of another.

NOV. 7.

In the meantime Maria-Theresa took quiet possession of that vast inheritance, which was secured to her by the pragmatic sanction. She received the homage of the states of Austria at Vienna; and the kingdoms of Hungary and Bohemia swore allegiance to her by their deputies, as did the Italian provinces. Possessed of a popular affability, which her predecessors had seldom put in practice, she gained the hearts of her subjects, without diminishing her dignity. But above all, she ingratiated herself with the Hungarians; in voluntarily accepting the ancient oath of their soverigns; by which the subjects, should their privileges be invaded, are allowed to defend themselves, without being treated as rebels.

As

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