BOOK sent annually across the Pacific Ocean to AcaXIII. pulco, on the coast of Mexico, laden with the 1762. spices, silks, and other precious products of India. On the 23d of September, 1762, the whole armament, having on board a land force, including lascars, sepoys, and other irregular troops, amounting to about two thousand five hundred men, anchored in the bay of Manilla, where they excited great and general alarm. After effecting a landing with little loss, the city was summoned to surrender; but the marquis de Villa Medina, the governor, returned a resolute refusal. The English were far from being in a condition to form a complete investment of the city, which was of great extent and strongly fortified. The quarter which the general determined to attack was defended by the bastions of St. Diego and St. Andrew, a ravelin, a wet fossé thirty yards in breadth, a covered way, and a glacis. At the beginning of October the weather grew very stormy and tempestuous; notwithstanding which the besiegers carried on their works with unintermitted ardor. A furious sally was on the 4th made from the town before day-break, in which the regular troops of the forts were reinforced by a strong body of the native Indians, armed only with bows and lances, who fought with astonishing perseverance, advancing to the very muzzles of the English mus

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quets, and with wild and savage ferocity biting BOOK the bayonets even in the agonies of death. They were finally repulsed with great loss; and, the 1762. works being by this time much damaged, a resolution was taken to storm the town.

Though no offer of capitulation had been made, the garrison seemed ill prepared to sustain an assault; and the English penetrated into the very centre of the city with little opposition. The governor retiring into the citadel, the town was exposed for some hours to all the horrors of a general pillage. At length, the citadel being in no condition of defence, the marquis de Villa Medina, the archbishop of Manilla, and the officers of the garrison, surrendered themselves prisoners of war; at the same time proposing a capitulation to save the city from total destruction. After some discussion, a ransom of four millions of dollars was offered, and accepted. The port and citadel of Cavite, with the islands and fortresses depending on the government of Manilla, being included in the capitulation, the whole force of the English scarcely sufficed to garrison their conquests.

Intelligence being received of the expected arrival of an Acapulco ship, the admiral sent the Panther and Argo ships of war in quest of her, who fell in with the Santa Trinidada, bound for Mexico, pierced for sixty guns, with merchandize

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1762.

BOOK on board to the amount of three millions of dollars. This was not the only register-ship taken in the course of this war from the Spaniards, the St. Hermione, from Lima to Cadiz, being captured by two British frigates cruizing off Cape St. Vincent. Her cargo was estimated at one million sterling, being supposed the richest prize ever brought into the harbours of Britain.

Amongst the military and naval achievements of the present year, it may be proper transiently to notice the recovery of the town and fort of St. John, in the island of Newfoundland (some months before surprized and surrendered to the French), by lord Colville and colonel Amherst, who, sailing from the harbour of Halifax, by their spirited exertions anticipated the effect of an armament fitted out expressly for this purpose at Portsmouth.

It will now be proper to resume the long neglected narration of the civil and domestic transactions of Great Britain. On the resignation of Mr. Pitt, the entire direction of affairs was vested in the earl of Bute, who enjoyed the favor, affection, and confidence of the sovereign, in a degree which no minister since the earl of Clarendon in the zenith of his power had possessed. He had not, however, as yet attained the summit of his ambition. The duke of Newcastle still held the high and pre-eminent office of first com

1

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missioner of the treasury; but this post the FA- BOOK VORITE now thought he might safely assume. The duke of Newcastle, therefore, at the latter end 1762. of May 1762, the session of parliament being Bute first nearly closed, received an intimation that his minister. resignation was expected. His grace in-Resigna

was

Earl of

duke of

the

formed, that the king purposed, in considera-Newcastle. tion of his past services, to grant him an amplė and adequate pension. But the duke, whose generosity bordered upon negligence and profusion, nobly replied, "that if he could no longer be permitted to serve his country, he was at least determined not to be a burden to it."

The dismission of this nobleman, who had been ever distinguished for the zeal and fidelity of his attachment to the house of Hanover, and who had impaired his fortune and devoted his life to the support of that cause in which he had been from his early youth engaged, excited extreme indignation in the breasts of the whole whig party, amongst whom his steadiness, affability and disinterestedness made him, notwithstanding the mediocrity of his talents, exceedingly popular. It was thought a complication of levity and ingratitude thus to discard an old and faithful servant, who in the course of nature could not be expected long to trouble any competitor; and it discovered such an impatience in the new minister to engross an absolute monopoly of power, as gave countenance to

BOOK suspicions of deep and dangerous designs. The XIII. duke, who had been treated with a flattering 1762. degree of personal attention, or at least with

a respectful decorum and civility, so long as his name was deemed necessary by the projectors of the new system, appeared himself highly to resent the rude and compulsive mode of his dismission; and he hesitated not again to connect himself with Mr. Pitt, for many years his alternate rival and associate; with whom he had never indeed entered into any very cordial alliance, but their mutual animosity against the earl of Bute now formed a new bond of amity and concord between them.

The duke of Devonshire, soon after the removal of the duke of Newcastle, unable to brook the marked and contemptuous neglect which he experienced, resigned indignantly his office of lord chamberlain, and was by the king's own hand struck out of the list of the privy council. The earl of Hardwicke retired in disgust; and the duke of Grafton, lord Ravensworth, and lord Ashburnham, with several other noblemen of high distinction, now ranged themselves on the side of the opposition. Lord Anson was succeeded at this period in the admiralty by the earl of Halifax, recently returned from the government of Ireland, in which he was succeeded by the duke of Northumberland; and Mr. George Grenville was advanced to the se