men
to defend the island of Walcheren. This advice was adopted, but the
garrison left in Walcheren suffered most severely from fever in that
swampy island. Eventually, on December 24, Walcheren was abandoned, the
works and naval basins of Flushing having been previously destroyed. The
destruction of Flushing was the sole result of this expedition.

The failure of the British to make any serious impression on the French
either in the Low Countries or in Spain induced Austria to consent to
peace with France. By the peace of Vienna, signed on October 14, she
ceded Salzburg and a part of Upper Austria to Bavaria, West Galicia to
the duchy of Warsaw, and a part of Carinthia with Trieste and the
Illyrian provinces to France. A small strip of Galicia was ceded to the
Russian tsar, who had rendered France some very half-hearted assistance
and was further alienated by the extension of the duchy of Warsaw.
Austria was enslaved to the will of Napoleon. She had abandoned the
Tyrolese peasants whose loyal insurrection against the Bavarians was the
most heroic incident in the war, and she now joined the other nations of
the continent in excluding the commerce of Great Britain, which had made
a powerful diversion in Spain and an imposing though futile diversion on
the Scheldt to save her from national annihilation.

While the Walcheren expedition was preparing, two additions were made to
the cabinet. Lord Granville Leveson-Gower, brother of the Marquis of
Stafford, was admitted in June as secretary at war, and in July
Harrowby, who was created an earl, became president of the board of
control with a seat in the cabinet. After the fate of the expedition
became known, though before its final withdrawal, a serious quarrel took
place between Canning and Castlereagh. Personal jealousies had long
existed between these two statesmen, both half-Irish, half-English, and
of approximately the same age, yet widely different in character.
Canning was the most brilliant orator of his day, and no less persuasive
in private conversation than in public orations, gifted with an agile
brain that leaped readily from one idea or one project to another, but
cursed with a bitter wit which lightly aroused enduring enmities, and
which, coupled with an excessive vanity, rendered him unpopular with his
colleagues, and made it difficult for any one to take him seriously;
while his rival, not less able, and much more steady and trustworthy, a
skilful manager of