very considerable defence, both the forts were carried by storm. As the soldiers were much irritated, as well by the fatigue they had undergone, and the opposition they met, as by the loss of some brave and favourite officers, the slaughter of the enemy was considerable.

Upon the loss of the forts, the rebels set fire to two fine new frigates, and to some other vessels, which, with their artillery and stores, were all consumed. Another fort, called Constitution, was, in a day or two after, upon the approach of the combined land and naval force, precipitately set on fire and abandoned. General Tryon also, at the head of a detachment, destroyed a new and thriving settlement, called Continental Village, which contained barracks for 1500 men, with considerable stores. The artillery taken in the three forts, amounted to sixty-seven pieces of different sizes. A large quantity of artillery and other stores, with ammunition, and provisions, were also taken. A large boom and chain, the making of which was supposed to have cost 70,000l. and the construction of which was considered as an extraordinary proof of American labour, industry, and skill, was in part destroyed, and in part carried away. Upon the whole, the American loss in value, was probably greater than upon any other occasion since the commencement of the war. Their strength and attention were drawn away to the northward, and other things must have been neglected, whilst they applied both to the principal object.

Our loss in killed and wounded was not great, as to number,

but some distinguished and muchlamented officers fell. Of these, besides Lieutenant Colonel Campbell, who commanded the attack on Fort Montgomery, Major Still was, from the general esteem he had acquired, through his many excellent qualities, universally regretted.-Major Grant, of the New York volunteers, and Count Grabouski, a Polish nobleman, and Aid de Camp to General Clinton, were also slain in the assaults on these forts.

The expedition did not end with this, success: Sir James Wallace, with a flying squadron of light frigates, and General Vaughan, with a considerable detachment of troops, continued, for several days, their excursion up the river, carrying terror and destruction where ever they went. At the very time that General Burgoyne was receiving the most favourable conditions for himself and a ruined army, the fine village or town of Esopus, at no very great distance, was reduced to ashes, and not a house left standing. The extraordinary devastation which attended every part of this expedition, of the necessity of which we are not judges, was productive of a pathetic but severe letter, from General Gates, then in the height of victory, to General Vaughan.

On the approach of Gates, the troops and vessels retired to New York, having dismantled the forts, and for a time at least, having left the river defenceless. But that enterprize, though conducted with spirit and ability, was of little moment in the general account.

Such was the unfortunate issue of the northern campaign. The event of an expedition which was undertaken

hopes, and for some time pursued, with very flattering appearances of success. It was supposed the principal means for the immediate reduction of the colonies; but it has only served, in conjunction with other operations which, in the first instance, have succeeded better, to demonstrate the difficulties attending the subjugation of a numerous people, at a great distance, in an extensive country, marked with strong lines, and abounding in strong natural defences, if the resources of war are not exceedingly deficient, and that the spirit of the people is in any degree proportioned to their situation. It may now, whatever it was in the beginning, be a matter of doubt, whether any superiority of power, of wealth, and of discipline, will be found to over-balance such difficulties.

as many things necessary to be known have not yet been fully explained, and improper, as the whole is still a subject of public investigation, to attempt forming any judgment upon the general plan or system of this campaign. The general conduct of the war this year, has already undergone much censure; and undoubtedly the sending of the grand army at such a distance to the southward, whilst the inferior was left struggling with insurmountable difficulties in the north, when it would seem that their junction or co-operation would have rendered them greatly superior to any force which could have been possibly brought to oppose their progress, seems, in this view of things, not to be easily accounted for. It is, however, a subject, upon which no conclusive opinion can yet be formed.

CHAP.

prince of Beira, in pursuance of the mode of marriage, which seems in a manner established in that court, and which already approaches closely to that antiently practised in the royal house of the Ptolemies, was married just before the king's death, to his mother's youngest sister, the princess Maria Benedicta, she being then in her 31st year, and the prince in his sixteenth.

The late king's reign was nei ther happy to himself, nor fortunate to his people. It was early marked by one of those awful caJamities, those tremendous strokes of providence, or convulsions of nature, which bring man to a sense of his condition, and lay his proudest works in the dust. The fatal earthquake in 1755, overwhelmed his capital, and shook his kingdom to the centre. His succeeding administration was not much distinguished by the affection it acquired at home, or the reputation which it sustained abroad. It was deeply stained with domestic blood; and rendered odious by an excessive and horrible cruelty. The first families of the kingdom were ruined, tortured, and nearly cut off from the face of the earth, without that clearness of evidence to the establishment of their guilt, or even that attention to the usual forms of justice and modes of enquiry, which so dreadful and exemplary an execution undoubtedly demanded. From that time, suspicion, or the will of a favourite, supplied the place of all evidence, until the numerous dungeons of the' kingdom seemed at length scarcely capable of affording room to the wretched bodies of those who had been its principal citizens. The

king himself had nearly perished disgracefully, by the hands of assassins, in some idle nocturnal excursion; and if it had not been for the powerful intervention of a great and faithful ally, he would probably have seen his kingdom over-run, if not finally subverted, by a foreign enemy.

It must, however, in justice to the memory of the late king be acknowledged, that he gave a striking instance both of firmness and virtue, in the constancy with which he supported his engagements and faith with Great Britain, during the trying circumstances, and surrounding dangers of the late war. Without wishing to detract in any degree from the merit of such a conduct, it must also with equal truth be acknowledged, that he could not, consistently with the character of a statesman and politician, have acted otherwise. That he had no other alternative than the part which he took, or to adopt that weak, desperate, and at all times to be considered most fatal measure, of resigning the keys, the strength, and the arms of his kingdom into the hands, and laying even his own person at the mercy of an envious and inveterate enemy, who had an old and never-forgotten claim upon the whole.

The expulsion of the jesuits from Portugal, which first opened the way to the dissolution and ruin of that celebrated and extraordinary order of men in every other part of the world, will for ever render the late reign distinguished. A great deal was also done, to diminish the excessive numbers and overgrown wealth and influence of all orders of the clergy, as well as to abate the rigours of the inquisition. In derogation

merit, that tribunal was still kept up as an engine of state tyranny, when it was enfeebled as an instrument of religious persecution.

Upon the death of the king, the princess of Brazil was immediately acknowledged as sovereign, and entered into the administration of public affairs. It was reported, but we cannot say with what fourdation, that a considerable party, who were supposed to be secretly supported by the prime minister, had some intention of placing the crown directly upon the head of the presumptive heir, the prince of Beira. If any such scheme was in agitation, it was not avowed, nor have any of those resentments appeared, which might have been expected from the knowledge of such a design.

One of the first acts of the new March 6th, government, was the removal from power of 1777. the Marquis de Pombal, who had for many years governed the kingdom with a most unbounded authority, and which his numerous enemies say, was directed to the most cruel and arbitrary purposes. This minister was let down from his high authority with great gentleness, for that country, and that species of government. He was informed by a note from the queen, that, in consideration of the great regard and esteem which the late king her father had for him, as well as of his own age and infirmities, he was permitted, at his own desire, to retire from the royal service to his estate in the country. In the same note the queen granted him a continuance of the appointments of his office as secretary of state, and bestowed on him

James.

No public blessing or advantage; neither the deliverance from a foreign enemy, nor a domestic tyranny, could have excited a greater or more universal joy, than the removal of this nobleman from power, and his subsequent asgrace, which became every day more apparent. Whether it proceeded from the boldness, wisdom, and rectitude of his measures, his opposing national vices, and popu lar prejudices, the despotism of his administration, or, more probably, from the mixed operation of all these causes, he had the fortune to incur the abhorrence and dread of every order of men in the state and kingdom. The ancient nobility considered him equally the destroyer of their order, and the exterminator of their race; the clergy anathematized him, as the enemy of religion in general, as well as the subvertor of their particular institutions, and the destroyer of their general and personal rights; the common people execrated him, as the scourge and curse of their country. To add to the weight of domestic enmity and clamour, he had continual disputes with the English merchants and factory, (who form a great body in that country) upon matters relative to trade, and to their real or supposed rights and immunities.

In such a state of public dislike and violent prejudice, it would not be an easy matter to obtain the real character of a minister, at a much nearer distance, and in a country where enquiry was much more open, and disquisitions of that nature better understood and more liberally conducted, than in [*M] 2 Portugal,