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At no time did General Townshend's force number more than four brigades, which, under the circumstances, was wholly inadequate to accomplish the conquest of Bagdad. General Townshend being thrown on his own resources proceeded to act with extreme caution, for the whole fate of the British Expeditionary Force hung in the balance.
To Townshend had been carried upon the very day of the capitulation a letter written by Montcalm only a few hours before his death, the feeble penmanship of which showed well how difficult it had been to him to indite it. In effect it was the last thing he ever wrote, and the signature was nothing but a faint initial, as though the failing fingers refused the task before them.
On his death it devolved on Thomas, Lord Sydney, and has since remained in the possession of the Townshend family. Walpole has given a description of the place in the days when he used to visit it. Bigland, "History of Gloucestershire," vol. ii. p. 200.
Windham had gone down to Norfolk, in consequence of a proposed meeting in that county, under the auspices of Lord Townshend, for the purpose of raising a subscription in aid of government, to be applied towards carrying on the war with the American colonies. In about three weeks after the date of this letter, the meeting was held, and Mr.
Townshend, a brilliant but shallow rhetorician whom Pitt had been driven reluctantly to make his Chancellor of the Exchequer, after angering the House of Commons by proposals for an increase of the land-tax, strove to win back popularity among the squires by undertaking to raise a revenue from America.
The correspondence henceforth becomes altogether lively: but in the Britannic Archives there is nothing of it, Dubourgay having received warning from my Lord Townshend to be altogether ignorant of the matter henceforth, and let the Hanover Officials manage it. His Prussian Majesty returns home in the most tempestuous condition.
Yet all these were fully offset by the audacious Charles Townshend, the originator and great apostle of the scheme of colonial taxation, whom Pitt, much against his will, had been obliged to place in the perilous post of chancellor of the exchequer.
Walpole, who had been sent to the Tower for a piece of bribery proved upon him, was called a confessor to the cause. But he had another piece of good luck that yet more contributed to his advancement, he had a very handsome sister, whose folly had lost her reputation in London; but the yet greater folly of Lord Townshend, who happened to be a neighbour in Norfolk to Mr.
If Lord Chatham, in February, 1767, could go so far as to say that the colonies had "drunk deep of the baneful cup of infatuation," Mr. Townshend, having voted for the Stamp Act and for its repeal, might well think, in May, that the time was ripe for a return to rigorous measures. On May 13, in a speech which charmed the House, Mr. Townshend opened his plan for settling the colonial question.
The one notable event of this "slight day" was occasioned by a remark of Charles Townshend, who asked with some asperity whether "these American children, planted by our care, nourished up by our indulgence to a degree of strength and opulence, and protected by our arms," would now be so unfilial as to "grudge to contribute their mite to relieve us from the heavy burden under which we lie?"
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