seats to
the opposition.[65] The ministry was strengthened in January, 1819, by
the appointment of Wellington to be master-general of the ordnance, in
succession to Mulgrave, who remained in the cabinet without office.

[Pageheading: _THE "MANCHESTER MASSACRE"._]

Before the end of the year 1818, a strike of Manchester cotton-spinners
was attended by the usual incidents of brutal violence towards workmen
who refused to join in it, but a few shots from the soldiers, one of
which killed a rioter, proved effectual in quelling lawlessness.
Manchester, however, remained the centre of agitation, and during the
summer of 1819 a series of reform meetings held in other great towns
culminated in a monster meeting originally convened for August 9, but
postponed until the 16th. The history of this meeting ending in the
so-called "Manchester" or "Peterloo massacre," has been strongly
coloured by party spirit and sympathy with the victims of reckless
demagogy no less than of blundering officialism. It is certain that
drilling had been going on for some time among the multitudes invited to
attend the meeting of the 9th; that its avowed object was to choose a
"legislatorial representative," as Birmingham had already done, and
that, on its being declared illegal by the municipal authorities, who
declined to summon it on their own initiative, its organisers
deliberately resolved to hold it a week later, whether it were legal or
not.

The contingents, which poured in by thousands from neighbouring towns,
seem to have carried no arms but sticks, and to have conducted
themselves peaceably when they arrived at St. Peter's Fields, where
Orator Hunt, puffed up with silly vanity, was voted into the chair on a
hustings. Unfortunately, instead of attempting to prevent the meeting,
the county magistrates decided to let the great masses of people
assemble, and then to arrest the leaders in the midst of them. They had
at their disposal several companies of infantry, six troops of the 15th
hussars, and a body of yeomanry, besides special constables. The chief
constable, being ordered to arrest Hunt and his colleagues, declared
that he could not do so without military aid, whereupon a small force of
yeomanry advanced but soon became wedged up and enclosed by the densely
packed crowd. One of the magistrates, fancying the yeomanry to be in
imminent danger, of which there is no proof, called upon Colonel
L'Estrange, who was in command of the soldiers