Twelve officers, commanding the twelve military districts into which Cromwell divided England in 1655. They were given command of the militia, and their functions were to suppress any Royalist rising, and to supervise the collection of the 10 per cent. tax levied from Royalists. The plan was abandoned in 1651, Parliament refusing to vote the money for the militia.
The scene of the defeat of General Colley’s force by the Boers on February 27, 1881, which virtually closed the Boer War of that year. The surrender of the British Government to the Boer demands is generally known as the “Majuba Surrender,” and the bitter feeling thereby aroused caused “Remember Majuba” to be a sort of war-cry at the outbreak of the war of 1899-1902. The Paardeberg surrender on the anniversary of Majuba in 1900 was hailed as in some degree wiping out the disgrace attached to the word.
In 1578 the Walloon troops of the Netherlands, being irritated by the promulgation of the Religious Peace, and by their pay being in arrear, mutinied under the leadership of the Seigneur de Montigny. Attempts to appease them were fruitless, and eventually, with the support of the nobles of Hainault and Artois, the mutiny ended in the formation of a confederacy of the Walloon provinces, pledged to support the Pacification of Ghent, and owning allegiance to Philip II.
A plot contrived by General Malet and the Abbé Lafone, in 1812, to dethrone Napoleon. By means of forged papers Malet persuaded a section of the Paris garrison that Napoleon was dead, and that he was entrusted by the Senate with the command of the troops. He then proceeded to the police ministry, where he arrested Savary, the minister, and the prefect of police. Attempting, however, to dispose in the same way of General Hullin, the Commandant of Paris, he was overpowered by the General’s orderlies, and the plot came to an abortive end.
An additional tax of forty shillings the sack on the export of wool imposed by Edward III in 1337.
During the latter part of the Civil War and under the Commonwealth, those who had borne arms on the King’s side were so called by the Parliamentarians.
A company under the control of the French Government, formed about 1767 to keep up the price of breadstuffs. The company took advantage of the scarcity to make enormous profits, and it seems clear that Louis XV was pecuniarily interested in its transactions. About 1774 it became known as the Pacte de Famine.