expired with the rejection of the bill. Byng
met his fate with undaunted intrepidity; his
heroism resembled and equalled that of Marshal
Ney, known in the armies of Imperial France as
"the bravest of the brave," in similar trying
moments. When the result of the resolutions was
being broken to him by degrees, he started:
"What! They have not put a slur upon me, have
they?" But, on being assured that they had not
imputed cowardice, his countenance at once
resumed its serenity, and he heard his doom
with calmness and composure. His
subsequent fate is thus described by the
contemporary authority of Horace Walpole, in a letter
of the 17th of March, 1757, to Sir Horace
Mann: "Admiral Byng's tragedy was
completed on Monday—a perfect tragedy, for there
were variety of incidents, villany, murder, and a
hero. His sufferings, persecutions, disturbances,
nay, the revolutions of his fate, had not in the
least unhinged his mind; his whole behaviour
was natural and firm. A few days before, one of
his friends standing by him said, 'Which of us is
tallest?' He replied, 'Why this ceremony? I
know what it means. Let the man come and
measure me for my coffin!' He said that being
acquitted of cowardice, and being persuaded on
the coolest reflection that he had acted for the
best, and should act so again, he was not
unwilling to suffer. He desired to be shot on the
quarter-deck, not where common malefactors are;
came out at twelve, sat down in a chair, for he
would not kneel, and refused to have his face
covered, that his countenance might show whether
he feared death; but being told that it might
frighten his executioners he submitted, gave the
signal at once, received one shot through the
head, another through the heart, and fell. Do
cowards live or die thus? Can that man want
spirit who only fears to terrify his executioners?"
One of the Lords of the Admiralty—Admiral
Forbes—had refused to sign the warrant for the
execution, which took place on board H.M.S.
Monarque, a prize taken from the French, at
Portsmouth. The spectators of the tragic scene,
in admiration of his fortitude, could not refrain
from tears. One rough seaman, as he gazed
with his arms folded on the blood-stained
deck, with visible emotion exclaimed, "There
lies the bravest and best officer in the navy!"
His remains repose in the family vault at South
Hill, in Bedfordshire, where a monumental tablet
presents to the visitor the following memorable
inscription, attributed to the pen of Samuel
Johnson:

    To the perpetual disgrace
    Of public justice,
    The Honourable John Byng,
    Admiral of the Blue,
    Fell a martyr to political
    Persecution,
    March 14, in the year 1757,
    When bravery and loyalty
    Were insufficient securities
    For the life and honour
    Of a Naval Officer.

In less than three years after the execution
of Byng, a memorable court-martial met at
Whitehall, for the trial of a British military
commander-in-chief. Lord George Sackville, a
younger son of the first, and father of the last
Duke of Dorset, like the most illustrious warrior
of our times, commenced his political career as
Chief Secretary for Ireland, when his father was
for the second time Viceroy, and afterwards
attained high military rank. Prince Ferdinand
of Brunswick, nephew of Frederick the Great,
was commander-in-chief of the allied army on
the Continent, destined for the protection of
Hanover; but the British troops of which it was
partly composed were under the command of
the high English aristocrat. Being unwilling to
sacrifice our insular interests to German
connexions, dissensions soon arose between him and
the foreign prince, who was his superior officer;
in the words of Walpole, "both liked to govern,
neither liked to be governed." At the battle of
Minden, on the 1st of August, 1759, when the
French infantry reeled before the British battalions,
Sackville was at the head of the Blues: a
regiment to which the couplet of Dryden may
be applied:

    Unchanged by fortune, to their sovereign true,
    For which their manly forms are decked with blue.

At the critical moment of confusion in the
enemies' ranks, he received orders to advance
with the English and Hanoverian cavalry, which
were separated from the infantry by a wood.
These orders he undoubtedly disobeyed. His
personal courage having been previously
suspected, he had preserved, and was proud of
exhibiting, the uniform he had worn at Fontenoy,
pierced by a musket-ball, which on that fatal day
wounded him in the breast. His disobedience
at Minden was attributed by his friends to the
orders being ambiguous and even contradictory,
while his enemies traced it to the effect of panic,
or to the impulse of unwarrantable pique and
wounded pride. He appeared after the battle,
at dinner in the tent of his victorious
commander, who remarked to the other officers
present, "Look at that man! As much at his
ease as if he had done wonders." The general
order of the prince contained a direct imputation;
it declared that if Lieutenant-General the
Marquis of Granby had had the good fortune to
have been at the head of the cavalry, his presence
would have greatly contributed to make the
decision of the day more complete and more
brilliant. Stung to the quick by this public
rebuke, feeling that the indignation which
pervaded the camp had spread through the
court and the country, he wrote for liberty to
resign his command, and returned to England
to brave a storm of obloquy which, after the
recent fate of Byng, was far more terrible to
a soldier than the worst perils of the battlefield.

On his arrival, he found himself summarily
dismissed from the colonelcy of his regiment,