CHAPTER V

ENGLAND AND NAPOLEON

1801-1815

[Sidenote: The New Europe.]

The treaty of Luneville was of far greater import than the treaties

which had ended the struggle of the first coalition. It was in effect

the close of the attack which revolutionary France had directed against

the Continental powers. With it expired the outer energy of the

Revolution, as its inner energy expired with the elevation of Buonaparte

to the First Consulate. The change that the French onset had wrought in

the aspect of Europe had no doubt been great. In the nine years which

had passed since the earlier league of the powers against her, France

had won all and more than all that the ambition of her older statesmen

had ever aimed at. She had absorbed the Netherlands. She was practically

mistress of Holland, Switzerland, and Piedmont, whose dependent

republics covered her frontier; while she had revived that union with

Spain which had fallen for a time with the Family Compact of the House

of Bourbon. But in spite of this growth the dread of French aggression

was far less keenly felt by her neighbour states than in the early years

of the war. What they had dreaded then was not so much the political

reconstruction of Europe as the revolutionary enthusiasm which would

have pushed this political reconstruction into a social revolution. But

at the opening of the nineteenth century the enthusiasm of France had

faded away. She was again Christian. She was again practically

monarchical. What her neighbours saw in her after all these years of

change was little more than the old France with a wider frontier; and

now that they could look upon those years as a whole, it was clear that

much of this widening of her borders was only a fair counterbalance for

the widened borders of the states around her. If France had grown great,

other powers had grown in greatness too. If France had pushed her

frontier to the Rhine and established dependencies across the Rhone and

the Alps, Russia during the same period had annexed the bulk of Poland,

and the two great German powers had enlarged themselves both to the east

and the west. The Empire had practically ceased to be; but its ruin had

given fresh extension and compactness to the states which had profited

by it. The cessions of Prussia had been small beside her gains. The

losses of Austria had been more than counterbalanced in Italy by her

acquisition of Venice, and far more than counterbalanced by

secularizations and annexations within Germany itself.

[Illustration: EUROPE after the PEACE OF LUNEVILLE, 1801]

[Sidenote: France and Britain.]

Although therefore the old Europe and its balance of power had passed

away, the new Europe which had taken its place presented a balance of

power which might be regarded as even more effective; and the peace of

Luneville was in reality the recognition on both sides of a European

settlement on the basis of such a balance. But in the mind of Buonaparte

it was far more than this. It was the first step in an entire reversal

of the policy which Revolutionary France had pursued in her dealings

with the world. It was a return to the older policy of the French

monarchy. Under the guidance of the revolutionists France had striven

for supremacy among the states of Europe. But for such a supremacy the

First Consul cared comparatively little. What he cared for was what

Choiseul and the statesmen who followed him cared for, the supremacy of

the world. And he saw that with every year of war on the Continent such

a supremacy grew more distant than ever. The very victories of France

indeed were playing into the hands of England. Amidst all the triumphs

of the revolutionary war the growth of the British Empire had been

steady and ceaseless. She was more than ever mistress of the sea. The

mastery of Holland by the French had only ended in the removal of one of

the obstacles to such a mastery by the ruin of the Dutch navy, and the

transfer of the rich Dutch colonies to the British crown. The winning of

Egypt had but spurred her to crush the only Mussulman power that could

avert her rule over southern India. But her growth was more than a

merely territorial growth. She was turning her command of the seas to a

practical account. Not only was she monopolizing the carrying trade of

the European nations, but the sudden uprush of her industries was making

her the workshop as well as the market of the world. From the first the

mind of Buonaparte had been set on a struggle with this growing

world-power. Even amidst his earliest victories he had dreamed of

wresting from England her dominion in the East; and if his Egyptian

expedition had done nothing for India, it had secured in Egypt itself a

stepping-stone for further efforts. But now that France was wholly at

his disposal, the First Consul resolved to free his hands from the

strife with the Continent, and to enter on that struggle with Britain

which was henceforth to be the task of his life.

[Sidenote: Pitt's position.]

The significance then of the Peace of Luneville lay in this, not only

that it was the close of the earlier revolutionary struggle for

supremacy in Europe, the abandonment by France of her effort to

"liberate the peoples," to force new institutions on the nations about

her by sheer dint of arms; but that it marked the concentration of all

her energies on a struggle with Britain for the supremacy of the world.

For England herself the event which accompanied it, the sudden

withdrawal of William Pitt from office which took place in the very

month of the treaty, was hardly less significant. To men of our day the

later position of William Pitt seems one of almost tragic irony. An

economist heaping up millions of debt, a Peace Minister dragged into the

costliest of wars, he is the very type of the baffled statesman; and the

passionate loyalty with which England clung to him through the

revolutionary struggle is one of the least intelligible passages of our

history. But if England clung to Pitt through these years of gloom, it

was because then more than ever she saw in him her own representative.

His strength had lain throughout in his reflection of public opinion:

and public opinion saw itself reflected in him still. At the outset of

his career the set of opinion had been towards a larger and more popular

policy than of old. New facilities of communication, new industrial

energy, and a quick accumulation of wealth, as well as the social

changes which followed hard on these economical changes, all pointed

forward to political progress, to an adaptation of our institutions to

the varied conditions of the time. The nation was quivering with a new

sense of life; and it faced eagerly questions of religion, of

philanthropy, of education, of trade, as one after another they

presented themselves before it. Above all it clung to the young minister

whose ideas were its own, who, alien as his temper seemed from that of

an innovator, came boldly to the front with projects for a new

Parliament, a new finance, a new international policy, a new imperial

policy, a new humanitarian policy. It was this oneness of Pitt's temper

with the temper of the men he ruled that made him sympathize, in spite

of the alarm of the court, with the first movements of the revolution in

France, and deal fairly, if coldly, with its after-course. It was this

that gave him strength to hold out so long against a struggle with it.

[Sidenote: Pitt and the War.]

But as the alarm deepened, as the nation saw its social, political, and

religious traditions alike threatened, the bulk of Englishmen swung

round into an attitude of fierce resistance. The craving for

self-preservation hushed all other cravings. What men looked for in Pitt

now was not the economist or the reformer, but the son of Chatham, the

heir of his father's courage, of his father's faith in the greatness of

England. And what they looked for they found. Pitt was no born War

Minister; he had none of the genius that commands victory, or of the

passionate enthusiasm that rouses a nation to great deeds of arms. But

he had faith in England. Even when she stood alone against the world he

never despaired. Reading him, as we read him now, we see the sickness

and the gloom of his inner soul; but no sign betrayed it to the world.

As the tempest gathered about them, men looked with trust that deepened

into awe on the stately figure that embodied their faith in England's

fortunes, and huddled in the darkness round "the pilot that weathered

the storm." But there were deeper and less conscious grounds for their

trust in him. Pitt reflected far more than the nation's resolve. He

reflected the waverings and inconsistencies of its political temper in a

way that no other man did. In the general swing round to an attitude of

resistance, the impulse of progress had come utterly to an end. Men

doubted of the truth of principles that seemed to have brought about the

horrors of the Revolution. They listened to Burke as he built up his

theory of political immobility on the basis of an absolute perfection in

the constitution of things as they were. But even in this moment of

reaction they still clung unconsciously to a belief in something better,

to a trust that progress would again be possible, and to the man who

reflected their trust. Like them, Pitt could understand little of the

scene about him, that seething ocean of European change where states

vanished like dreams, and the very elements of social life seemed to

melt in a mist; his mind, like theirs, was baffled with doubt and

darkness, with the seeming suicide of freedom, the seeming triumph of

violence and wrong. But, baffled and bewildered as he was, he never

ceased to believe in liberty, or to hope that the work of reform which

he had begun might yet be carried into effect.

It was as the representative of this temper of the people at large, of

its mingled mood of terror at the new developements of freedom and yet

of faith in freedom itself, of its dread of progress and yet its hope of

a time when a larger national life should again become possible, that

Pitt had gathered the nation round him from the opening of the war. Much

indeed of the seeming weakness and uncertainty of his statesmanship

throughout the struggle sprang from the fidelity with which he reflected

this double aspect of national opinion. He has been blamed for fighting

the French Revolution at all, as he has been blamed for not entering on

an anti-revolutionary crusade. But his temper was that of the nation as

a whole. He shrank from the fanaticism of Burke as he shrank from the

fanaticism of Tom Paine: his aim was not to crush France or the

Revolution, but to bring the struggle with them to such an end as might

enable England to return in safety to the work of progress which the

struggle had interrupted. And it was this that gave significance to his

fall. It was a sign that the time had come when the national union which

Pitt embodied must dissolve with the disappearance of the force that

created it; when resistance had done its work, and the arrest of all

national movement had come to an end with the attitude of mere

resistance from which it sprang; when in face of a new France and a new

French policy England could again return to her normal political life,

and the impulses towards progress which had received so severe a check

in 1792 could again flow in their older channels. In such a return Pitt

himself took the lead; and his proposal of Catholic emancipation was as

significant of a new era of English life as the Peace of Luneville was

significant of a new settlement of Europe.

[Sidenote: Catholic Emancipation.]

In Pitt's mind the Union which he brought about in 1800 was more than a

mere measure for the security of the one island; it was a first step in

the regeneration of the other. The legislative connexion of the two

countries was only part of the plan which he had conceived for the

conciliation of Ireland. With the conclusion of the Union indeed, his

projects of free trade between the two countries, projects which had

been defeated a few years back by the folly of the Irish Parliament,

came quietly into play; and in spite of insufficient capital and social

disturbance the growth of the trade, shipping, and manufactures of

Ireland has gone on without a check from that time to this. The change

which brought Ireland directly under the common Parliament was followed

too by a gradual revision of its oppressive laws and an amendment in

their administration; while taxation was lightened, and a faint

beginning made of public instruction. But in Pitt's mind the great means

of conciliation was the concession of religious equality. In proposing

to the English Parliament the union of the two countries he pointed out

that when thus joined to a Protestant country like England all danger of

a Catholic supremacy in Ireland, even should Catholic disabilities be

removed, would be practically at an end. In such a case, he suggested

that "an effectual and adequate provision for the Catholic clergy" would

be a security for their loyalty. His words gave strength to the hopes of

"Catholic emancipation," as the removal of what remained of the civil

disabilities of Catholics was called, which were held out by his agent,

Lord Castlereagh, in Ireland itself as a means of hindering any

opposition to the project of Union on the part of the Catholics. It was

agreed on all sides that their opposition would have secured its defeat;

and the absence of such a Catholic opposition showed the new trust in

Pitt which was awakened by the hints of Lord Castlereagh. The trust had

good grounds to go on. After the passing of the bill Pitt prepared to

lay before his Cabinet a measure which would have raised not only the

Irish Catholic but the Irish Dissenter to a perfect equality of civil

rights. He proposed to remove all religious tests which limited the

exercise of the franchise, or which were required for admission to

Parliament, the magistracy, the bar, municipal offices, or posts in the

army or the service of the State. An oath of allegiance and of fidelity

to the Constitution was substituted for the Sacramental test; while the

loyalty of the Catholic and Dissenting clergy was secured by a grant of

some provision to both on the part of the State. To win over the

Episcopal Church to such an equality measures were added for

strengthening its modes of discipline, as well as for increasing the

stipends of its poorer ministers, while a commutation of tithes was

planned as a means of removing a constant source of quarrel between the

Protestant clergy and the Irish people.

[Sidenote: Pitt's resignation.]

But the scheme was too large and statesmanlike to secure the immediate

assent of the Cabinet; and before that assent could be won or the plan

laid with full ministerial sanction before the king, it was communicated

through the treachery of the Chancellor, Lord Loughborough, to George

the Third. "I count any man my personal enemy," George broke out angrily

to Dundas, "who proposes any such measure." Pitt answered this outburst

by submitting his whole plan to the king. "The political circumstances

under which the exclusive laws originated," he wrote, "arising either

from the conflicting power of hostile and nearly balanced sects, from

the apprehension of a Popish queen as successor, a disputed succession

and a foreign pretender, a division in Europe between Catholic and

Protestant Powers, are no longer applicable to the present state of

things." But argument was wasted upon George the Third. In spite of the

decision of the lawyers whom he consulted, the king declared himself

bound by his Coronation Oath to maintain the tests; and his obstinacy

was only strengthened by a knowledge that such a refusal must drive Pitt

from office. George was weary of his minister's supremacy. He was

longing for servants who would leave him more than a show of power, and

he chose his ground for a struggle with all the cunning of his earlier

years. It was by his command of public opinion that Pitt had been able

to force his measures on the king. But in the question of Catholic

Emancipation George knew that opinion was not with his minister, but

with himself. On this point his bigotry was at one with the bigotry of

the bulk of his subjects, as well as with their political distrust of

Catholics and Irishmen. He persisted therefore in his refusal; and it

was followed by the event he foresaw. In February 1801, at the moment of

the Peace of Luneville, William Pitt resigned his office into the hands

of the king.

[Sidenote: The Addington Ministry.]

It was with a sense of relief that George found himself freed from the

great minister whose temper was so alien from his own. But it was with a

yet greater sense of relief that he saw him followed into retirement not

only by Lord Grenville, but by nearly all the more liberal section of

the ministry, by men like Windham and Lord Spencer, the representatives

of the "Old Whigs" who had joined Pitt on the disruption of their party

through the French Revolution. Such a union indeed could hardly have

lasted much longer. The terror which had so long held these Whigs in

their alliance with the Tories who formed the bulk of the administration

was now at an end; and we have already seen their pressure for a more

liberal policy in the action of Lord Fitzwilliam as Lord-Lieutenant of

Ireland. But the question of Emancipation finally brought about a

restoration of the natural position of parties; and from this moment the

old Whigs, who accepted Lord Grenville as their head, fell into alliance

with the more revolutionary Whigs who had remained faithful to Fox. The

Whig party thus became again a powerful element in English politics,

while in face of the reunited Whigs stood the Tories, relieved like

themselves from the burthen of an alliance which grew hourly more

distasteful. The bulk of the old Ministry returned in a few days to

office with Mr. Addington at their head, and his administration received

the support of the whole Tory party in Parliament.

Without the walls of Parliament however the nation looked on such a

change with dismay. Addington was regarded as a weak and narrow-minded

man; and the favour with which the king welcomed him was clue to a

consciousness of their common bigotry. Of Lord Hawkesbury, who succeeded

Lord Grenville in the conduct of foreign affairs, nothing was known

outside the House of Commons. It was with anxiety that England found

itself guided by men like these at a time when every hour brought darker

news. The scarcity of bread was mounting to a famine. Taxes were raised

anew, and yet the loan for the year amounted to five-and-twenty

millions. The country stood utterly alone; while the peace of Luneville

secured France from all hostility on the Continent. And it was soon

plain that this peace was only the first step in a new policy on the

part of the First Consul. What he had done was to free his hands for a

decisive conflict with Britain itself, both as a world-power and as a

centre of wealth. England was at once the carrier of European commerce

and the workshop of European manufactures. While her mines, her looms,

her steam-engines, were giving her almost a monopoly of industrial

production, her merchant ships sufficed not only to spread her own

products through the world, but to carry to every part of it the

products of other countries. Though the war had already told on both

these sources of wealth, it was far from having told fatally. It had

long closed France indeed to English exports, while the waste of wealth

in so wide a strife had lessened the buying power of Europe at large.

But in Europe the loss was to some extent made up for the moment by the

artificial demand for supplies which war creates; the home market still

sufficed to absorb a vast quantity of manufactures; and America, which

was fast growing into the most important of English customers, remained

unaffected by the struggle. Industry had thus suffered but little loss,

while commerce believed itself to have greatly gained. All rivals save

one had in fact been swept from the sea; the carrying trade of France

and Holland alike had been transferred to the British flag, and the

conquest of their wealthier settlements had thrown into British hands

the whole colonial trade of the world.

[Illustration: EUROPE after the PEACE OF TILSIT, 1807]

[Sidenote: League of Neutrals.]

To strike at England's wealth had been among the projects of the

Directory: it was now the dream of the First Consul. It was in vain for

England to produce, if he shut her out of every market. Her carrying

trade must be annihilated if he closed every port against her ships. It

was this gigantic project of a "Continental System" that revealed itself

as soon as Buonaparte became finally master of France. From France

itself and its dependencies in Holland and the Netherlands English trade

was already excluded. But Italy also was shut against her after the

Peace of Luneville, and Spain not only closed her own ports but forced

Portugal to break with her English ally. In the Baltic Buonaparte was

more active than even in the Mediterranean. In a treaty with America,

which was destined to bring this power also in the end into his great

attack, he had formally recognized the rights of neutral vessels which

England was hourly disputing; and in her disregard of them he not only

saw the means of bringing the northern powers into his system of

exclusion, but of drawing on their resources for a yet more decisive

blow. He was set upon challenging not only England's wealth but her

world-empire; and his failure in Egypt had taught him that the first

condition of success in such an enterprise was to wrest from her her

command of the seas. The only means of doing this lay in a combination

of naval powers; and the earlier efforts of France had left but one

naval combination for Buonaparte to try. The Directory had been able to

assail England at sea by the joint action of the French fleet with those

of Holland and of Spain. But the Spanish navy had been crippled by the

battle of Cape St. Vincent, and the Dutch fleet destroyed in the victory

of Camperdown. The only powers which now possessed naval resources were

the powers of the North. The fleets of Denmark, Sweden, and Russia

numbered forty sail of the line, and they had been untouched by the

strife. Both the Scandinavian states resented the severity with which

Britain enforced that right of search which had brought about their

armed neutrality at the close of the American war; while Denmark was

besides an old ally of France, and her sympathies were still believed to

be French. The First Consul therefore had little trouble in enlisting

them in a league of neutrals, which was in effect a declaration of war

against England, and which Prussia as before showed herself ready to

join.

[Sidenote: Russia's designs.]

Russia indeed seemed harder to gain. Since Paul's accession she had been

the moving spirit in the confederacy which had only been broken up by

the victory of Marengo. But the spirit of revolutionary aggression which

had nominally roused Paul to action, had, as the Czar believed, been

again hushed by the First Consul. Buonaparte had yielded to his

remonstrances in preserving the independence of Naples and Sardinia; and

with Italian subtlety he now turned the faith in French moderation which

these concessions created in the mind of Paul into a dread of the

ambition of England and a jealousy of her sovereignty of the seas. But

his efforts would have been in vain had they not fallen in with the

general current of Russian policy. From the first outbreak of the

Revolutionary struggle Russia, as we have seen, had taken advantage of

the strife among the Western nations to push forward her own projects in

the East. Catharine had aimed at absorbing Poland, and at becoming the

mistress of European Turkey. In the first she had been successful, but

the second still remained unaccomplished when her empire passed to her

son. For a time Paul had been diverted from the task by the turn of

affairs in Western Europe, where the victories of the French Republic

threatened an utter overthrow of the powers opposed to it, which would

have foiled the plans of Russia by bringing about a European union that

must have paralysed her advance. The Czar therefore acted strictly in

the spirit of Catharine's policy when he stepped in again to feed the

strife by raising the combatants to a new equality, and when he withdrew

his armies at the very moment that this was done. But successful as his

diversion had been, Paul saw that one obstacle remained in the way of

his projects upon Turkey. Pitt had never hidden his opposition to the

Russian plans. His whole policy at the outbreak of the Revolution had

been guided by a desperate hope of binding the powers again together to

prevent the ruin of Poland, or of hindering it by a league of England

and France alone. Foiled as he had been in these efforts, he was even

more resolute to check the advance of Russia on Constantinople. Already

her growing empire in India was telling on the European policy of

England; and the security of Egypt, of Syria, of Turkey at large, was

getting deemed to be essential to the maintenance of her communication

with her great dependency. The French descent on Egypt, the attack on

Syria, had bound Britain and Turkey together; and Paul saw that an

attack on the one would bring him a fresh opponent in the other.

[Sidenote: The League broken up.]

It was to check the action of Britain in the East that the Czar now

turned to the French Consul, and seconded his efforts for the formation

of a naval confederacy in the North, while his minister, Rostopchin,

planned a division of the Turkish Empire in Europe between Russia and

her allies. Austria was to be satisfied with the western provinces of

the Balkan peninsula; Russia gained Moldavia, Bulgaria, and Roumelia as

far as Constantinople; while Greece fell to the lot of France, whose

troops were already on the Italian shores, at a day's sail from the

Illyrian coast. A squabble over Malta, which had been blockaded since

its capture by Buonaparte, and which surrendered at last to a British

fleet, but whose possession the Czar claimed as his own on the ground of

an alleged election as Grand Master of the Order of St. John, served as

a pretext for a quarrel with England; and at the close of 1800 Paul

openly prepared for hostilities. In October he announced an armed

neutrality; in December he seized three hundred English vessels in his

ports, and sequestrated all English goods found in his Empire. The

Danes, who throughout the year had been struggling to evade the British

right of search, at once joined this neutral league, and were followed

by Sweden in their course. It was plain that, as soon as the spring of

1801 opened the Baltic, the fleets of the three Powers would act in

practical union with those of France and Spain. But the command of the

seas which such a union threatened was a matter for England of life and

death, for at this very moment the Peace of Luneville left Buonaparte

without a foe on the Continent, and able to deal as he would with the

whole military resources of France. Once master of the Channel he could

throw a force on the southern coast of England which she had no means of

meeting in the field. But dexterous as the combination was, it was

shattered at a blow. On the first of April 1801 a British fleet of

eighteen men-of-war forced the passage of the Belt, appeared before

Copenhagen, and at once attacked the city and its fleet. In spite of a

brave resistance from the Danish batteries and gunboats six Danish ships

were taken, and the Crown Prince was forced to conclude an armistice

which enabled the English ships to enter the Baltic, where the Russian

fleet was still detained by the ice. But their work was really over. The

seizure of English goods and the declaration of war had bitterly

irritated the Russian nobles, whose sole outlet for the sale of the

produce of their vast estates was thus closed to them; and on the

twenty-fourth of March, nine days before the battle of Copenhagen, Paul

fell in a midnight attack by conspirators in his own palace. With Paul

fell the Confederacy of the North. The policy of his successor, the Czar

Alexander, was far more in unison with the general feeling of his

subjects; in June a Convention between England and Russia settled the

vexed questions of the right of search and contraband of war, and this

Convention was accepted by Sweden and Denmark.

[Sidenote: French lose Egypt.]

The First Consul's disappointment was keen; but he saw clearly that with

this dissolution of the Northern alliance the war came virtually to an

end. He no longer had any means of attacking Britain save by the efforts

of France itself, and even with the aid of Holland and Spain France was

at this moment helpless before the supremacy of England at sea. On the

other hand the continuance of the struggle would give triumph after

triumph to his foes. One such blow had already fallen. Even in the midst

of his immense schemes against Britain at home, Buonaparte had not

abandoned the hope of attacking her in India. Egypt was needful to such

a scheme; and from the first moment of his power he strained every nerve

to retain Egypt in the hands of France. Menou, who commanded there, was

ordered to hold the country; an expedition was fitted out in the Spanish

ports for its relief; and light vessels were hurried from the Italian

coast with arms and supplies. But at the very moment of the attack on

Copenhagen, a stroke as effective wrecked his projects in the East.

England had not forgotten the danger to her dependency; ever since

Buonaparte's expedition her fleet had blockaded Malta, the island

fortress whose possession gave France a first stepping-stone in any

enterprise against it; and the surrender of Malta left her unquestioned

mistress of the Mediterranean. From Malta she now turned to Egypt

itself. Triumphant as England had been at sea since the opening of the

war, her soldiers had proved no match for the French on land. Two

expeditions had been sent against Holland, and each had ended in a

disastrous retreat. But at this moment England reappeared as a military

power. In March 1801 a force of 15,000 men under General Abercromby

anchored in Aboukir Bay. Deserted as they were by Buonaparte, the French

had firmly maintained their hold on Egypt. They had suppressed a revolt

at Cairo, driven back Turkish invaders in a fresh victory, and by native

levies and reinforcements raised the number of their troops to 30,000

men. But their army was foolishly scattered, and Abercromby was able to

force a landing five days after his arrival on the coast. The French

however rapidly concentrated; and on the 21st of March their general

attacked the English army on the ground it had won with a force equal to

its own. The battle was a stubborn one, and Abercromby fell mortally

wounded ere its close; but after six hours' fighting the French drew off

with heavy loss; and their retreat was followed by the investment of

Alexandria and Cairo, into which Menou had withdrawn his army. All hope

however was over. Five thousand Turks, with a fresh division from

England and India, reinforced the besiegers; and at the close of June

the capitulation of the 13,000 soldiers who remained closed the French

rule over Egypt.

[Sidenote: The Peace of Amiens.]

Bitter as was the anger with which the First Consul received the news of

this surrender, it only strengthened his resolve to suspend a war of

which Britain only could now reap the fruits, and whose continuance

might in the present temper of Russia and its Czar disturb that peace of

the Continent on which all his plans against England rested. It was to

give time for such an organization of France and its resources as might

enable him to reopen the struggle with other chances of success that the

First Consul opened negotiations for peace at the close of 1801. His

offers were at once met by the English Government. In the actual

settlement of the Continent indeed England saw only an imperfect balance

to the power of France, but it had no means of disputing the settlement,

as France had no means of disturbing its supremacy at sea. If Buonaparte

wished to husband his resources for a new attack all but the wilder

Tories were willing to husband the resources of England for the more

favourable opportunity of renewing it which would come with a revival of

European energy. With such a temper on both sides the conclusion of

peace became easy; and the negotiations which went on through the winter

between England and the three allied Powers of France, Spain, and the

Dutch, brought about in March 1802 the Peace of Amiens. The terms of the

Peace were necessarily simple; for as England had no claim to interfere

with the settlement of the Continent, which had been brought about by

the treaties of its powers with the French Republic, all that remained

for her was to provide that the settlement should be a substantial one

by a pledge on the part of France to withdraw its forces from Southern

Italy, and to leave to themselves the republics it had set up along its

border in Holland, Switzerland, and Piedmont. In exchange for this

pledge England recognized the French government, restored all the

colonies which they had lost, save Ceylon and Trinidad, to France and

its allies, acknowledged the Ionian Islands as a free republic, and

engaged to restore Malta within three months to its old masters, the

Knights of St. John.

[Sidenote: Buonaparte.]

There was a general sense of relief at the close of so long a struggle;

and for a moment the bitter hatred which England had cherished against

France seemed to give place to more friendly feelings. The new French

ambassador was drawn in triumph on his arrival through the streets of

London; and thousands of Englishmen crossed the Channel to visit a

country which had conquered the world, and to gaze on the young general

who after wonderful victories had given a yet more wonderful peace to

Europe. But amidst all the glare of success, shrewd observers saw the

dangers that lay in the temper of the First Consul. Whatever had been

the errors of the French Revolutionists, even their worst attacks on the

independence of the nations around them had been veiled by a vague

notion of freeing the peoples whom they invaded from the yoke of their

rulers. But the aim of Buonaparte was simply that of a vulgar conqueror.

He was resolute to be master of the Western world, and no notions of

popular freedom or sense of national right interfered with his resolve.

The means at his command for carrying out such a design were immense.

The political life of the Revolution had been cut short by his military

despotism, but the new social vigour which the Revolution had given to

France through the abolition of privileges and the creation of a new

middle class on the ruins of the clergy and the nobles still lived on;

and while the dissensions which tore the country asunder were hushed by

the policy of the First Consul, by his restoration of the Church as a

religious power, his recall of the exiles, and the economy and wise

administration that distinguished his rule, the centralised system of

government that had been bequeathed by the Monarchy to the Revolution

and by the Revolution to Buonaparte enabled him easily to seize this

national vigour for the profit of his own despotism. On the other hand,

the exhaustion of the brilliant hopes raised by the Revolution, the

craving for public order, the military enthusiasm and the impulse of a

new glory given by the wonderful victories France had won, made a

Tyranny possible; and in the hands of Buonaparte this tyranny was

supported by a secret police, by the suppression of the press and of all

freedom of opinion, and above all by the iron will and immense ability

of the First Consul himself.

[Sidenote: His designs.]

Once chosen Consul for life, he felt himself secure at home, and turned

restlessly to the work of outer aggression. The pledges given at Amiens

were set aside. The republics established on the borders of France were

brought into mere dependence on his will. Piedmont and Parma were

actually annexed to France; and a French army occupied Switzerland. The

temperate protests of the English Government were answered by demands

for the expulsion of the French exiles who had been living in England

ever since the Revolution, and for its surrender of Malta, which was

retained till some security could be devised against a fresh seizure of

the island by the French fleet. Meanwhile huge armaments were preparing

in the French ports; and a new activity was seen in those of Spain. Not

for a moment indeed had Buonaparte relinquished his design of attacking

Britain. He had made peace because peace would serve his purpose, both

in strengthening the tranquillity of the Continent, which was essential

to his success in any campaign across the Channel, and in giving him

time to replace by a new combination the maritime schemes which had

broken down. Beaten as it had been, the Spanish fleet was still

powerful; and a union with the French fleet which the First Consul was

forming might still enable it to dispute the command of the sea. All

that he wished for was time; and time was what the Peace gave him. But

delay was as dangerous to England, now that it discerned his plans, as

it was profitable to France; and in May 1803 the British Government

anticipated his attack by a declaration of war.

[Sidenote: The Camp at Boulogne.]

The breach only quickened Buonaparte's resolve to attack his enemy at

home. The difficulties in his way he set contemptuously aside; "Fifteen

millions of people," he said, in allusion to the disproportion between

the population of England and France, "must give way to forty millions";

and the invasion was planned on a gigantic scale. A camp of one hundred

thousand men was formed at Boulogne, and a host of flat-bottomed boats

gathered for their conveyance across the Channel. The peril of the

nation forced Addington from office and recalled Pitt to power. His

health was broken, and as the days went by his appearance became so

haggard and depressed that it was plain death was drawing near. But

dying as he really was, the nation clung to him with all its old faith.

He was still the representative of national union; and he proposed to

include Fox and the leading Whigs in his new ministry, but he was foiled

by the bigotry of the king; and the refusal of Lord Grenville and of

Windham to take office without Fox, as well as the loss of his post at a

later time by his ablest supporter, Dundas, left him almost alone. But

lonely as he was, he faced difficulty and danger with the same courage

as of old. The invasion seemed imminent when Buonaparte, who now assumed

the title of the Emperor Napoleon, appeared in the camp at Boulogne. A

slight experience however showed him the futility of his scheme for

crossing the Channel in open boats in the teeth of English men-of-war;

and he turned to fresh plans of securing its passage. "Let us be masters

of the Channel for six hours," he is reported to have said, "and we are

masters of the world." A skilfully-combined plan, by which the British

fleet would have been divided while the whole French navy was

concentrated in the Channel, was delayed by the death of the admiral

destined to execute it. But the alliance with Spain placed the Spanish

fleet at Napoleon's disposal, and in 1805 he planned its union with that

of France, the crushing of the squadron which blocked the ports of the

Channel before the English ships which were watching the Spanish

armament could come to its support, and a crossing of the vast armament

thus protected to the English shore.

[Sidenote: Trafalgar.]

Though three hundred thousand volunteers mustered in England to meet the

coming attack, such a force would have offered but small hindrance to

the veterans of the Grand Army, had they once crossed the Channel. But

Pitt had already found them work elsewhere. It was not merely the danger

of Britain, and the sense that without this counterpoise they would be

helpless before the new French Empire, that roused the alarm of the

Continental powers. They had been scared by Napoleon's course of

aggression since the settlement at Luneville, and his annexation of

Genoa brought their alarm to a head. Pitt's offer of subsidies removed

the last obstacle in the way of a league; and Russia, Austria, and

Sweden joined in an alliance to wrest Italy and the Low Countries from

the grasp of the French Emperor. Napoleon meanwhile swept the sea in

vain for a glimpse of the great armament whose assembly in the Channel

he had so skilfully planned. Admiral Villeneuve, uniting the Spanish

ships with his own squadron from Toulon, drew Nelson in pursuit to the

West Indies, and then suddenly returning to Cadiz, hastened to form a

junction with the French squadron at Brest and to crush the English

fleet in the Channel. But a headlong pursuit brought Nelson up with him

ere the manoeuvre was complete, and the two fleets met on the 21st of

October 1805 off Cape Trafalgar. "England" ran Nelson's famous signal,

"expects every man to do his duty"; and though he fell himself in the

hour of victory, twenty French sail had struck their flag ere the day

was done. The French and Spanish navies were in fact annihilated. From

this hour the supremacy of England at sea remained unquestioned; and the

danger of any invasion of England rolled away like a dream.

[Sidenote: The Peace of Tilsit.]

Her allies were less fortunate. "England has saved herself by her

courage," Pitt said in what were destined to be his last public words:

"she will save Europe by her example!" But even before the victory of

Trafalgar Napoleon had abandoned the dream of invading England to meet

the coalition in his rear; and swinging round his forces on the Danube,

he forced an Austrian army to capitulation in Ulm three days before his

naval defeat. From Ulm he marched on Vienna, and at the close of

November he crushed the combined armies of Austria and Russia in the

battle of Austerlitz. "Austerlitz," Wilberforce wrote in his diary,

"killed Pitt." Though he was still but forty-seven, the hollow voice and

wasted frame of the great Minister had long told that death was near;

and the blow to his hopes proved fatal. "Roll up that map," he said,

pointing to a map of Europe which hung upon the wall; "it will not be

wanted these ten years!" Once only he rallied from stupor; and those

who bent over him caught a faint murmur of "My country! How I leave my

country!" On the twenty-third of January 1806 he breathed his last; and

was laid in Westminster Abbey in the grave of Chatham. "What grave,"

exclaimed Lord Wellesley, "contains such a father and such a son! What

sepulchre embosoms the remains of so much human excellence and glory!"

So great was felt to be the loss that nothing but the union of parties,

which Pitt had in vain desired during his lifetime, could fill up the

gap left by his death. In the new ministry Fox, with the small body of

popular Whigs who were bent on peace and internal reform, united with

the aristocratic Whigs under Lord Grenville and with the Tories under

Lord Sidmouth. All home questions, in fact, were subordinated to the

need of saving Europe from the ambition of France, and in the resolve to

save Europe Fox was as resolute as Pitt himself. His hopes of peace

indeed were stronger; but they were foiled by the evasive answer which

Napoleon gave to his overtures, and by a new war which he undertook

against Prussia, the one power which seemed able to resist his arms. On

the 14th of October 1806 a decisive victory at Jena laid North Germany

at the Emperor's feet. From Berlin Napoleon marched into the heart of

Poland to bring to terms the last opponent now left him on the

Continent; and though checked in the winter by the stubborn defence of

the Russian forces on the field of Eylau, in the summer of 1807 a

decisive victory at Friedland brought the Czar to consent to the Peace

of Tilsit.

[Sidenote: The Continental System.]

The Peace of Tilsit marked an overthrow for the time of that European

settlement and balance of power which had been established five years

before by the Peace of Luneville. The change in his policy had been to a

great extent forced on Napoleon; for the league of 1805 had shown that

his plan of such a Continental peace as would suffer him to concentrate

his whole strength on an invasion of Britain was certain to be foiled by

the fears of the Continental states; and that an unquestioned supremacy

over Europe was a first condition in the struggle with his great rival.

Even with such a supremacy, indeed, his plans for a descent on Britain

itself, or for winning the command of the sea which was the necessary

preliminary to such a descent, still remained impracticable. The battle

of Trafalgar had settled the question of an invasion of England; and a

thousand victories on land would not make him master, even for "six

hours," of the "silver streak" of sea that barred his path. But Napoleon

was far from abandoning his struggle against Britain; on the contrary,

he saw in his mastery of Europe the means of giving fresh force and

effectiveness to his attack in a quarter where his foe was still

vulnerable. It was her wealth that had raised up that European coalition

against him which had forced him to break up his camp at Boulogne; and

in his mastery of Europe he saw the means of striking at her wealth. His

earlier attempt at the enforcement of a "Continental System" had broken

down with the failure of the Northern League; but he now saw a yet more

effective means of realising his dream. It was this gigantic project

which revealed itself as soon as Jena had laid Prussia at his feet.

Napoleon was able to find a pretext for his new attack in England's own

action. By a violent stretch of her rights as a combatant she had

declared the whole coast occupied by France and its allies, from Dantzig

to Trieste, to be in a state of blockade. It was impossible to enforce

such an order as this, even with the immense force at her disposal; but

it was ostensibly to meet this "paper blockade" that Napoleon issued

from Berlin, on the twenty-first of November 1806, a decree

which--without a single ship to carry it out--placed the British Islands

in a state of blockade. All commerce or communication with them was

prohibited; all English goods or manufactures found in the territory of

France or its allies were declared liable to confiscation; and their

harbours were closed, not only against vessels coming from Britain, but

against all who had touched at her ports. An army of inspectors spread

along the coasts to carry out this decree.

[Sidenote: Its results.]

But it was almost impossible to enforce such a system. It was foiled by

the rise of a widespread contraband trade, by the reluctance of Holland

to aid in its own ruin, by the connivance of officials along the

Prussian and Russian shores, and by the pressure of facts. It was

impossible even for Napoleon himself to do without the goods he

pretended to exclude; an immense system of licences soon neutralized his

decree; and the French army which marched to Eylau was clad in

greatcoats made at Leeds, and shod with shoes made at Northampton.

Vexatious therefore as the system might be at once to England and to

Europe, it told on British industry mainly by heightening the price of

its products, and so far by restricting the market for them. But it told

far more fatally on British commerce. Trade at once began to move from

English vessels, which were subject to instant confiscation, and to

shelter itself under neutral flags, where goods had at least to be

proved to be British before they could be seized. America profited most

by this transfer. She was now entering on that commercial career which

was to make her England's chief trading rival; and she rapidly availed

herself of the Berlin decree to widen her carrying trade. But the

British Government at once felt the pressure of the merchant class. As

yet this class had profited above all others by the war and by the

monopoly which war placed in its hands; and now that not only its

monopoly but its very existence was threatened, it called on the

Government to protect it. It was to this appeal that the administration

of Lord Grenville replied, in January 1807, by an Order in Council which

declared all the ports of the coast of France and her allies under

blockade, and any neutral vessels trading between them to be good prize.

[Sidenote: Fall of the Grenville Ministry.]

Such a step however, though it arbitrarily shut neutral vessels out from

the coasting trade of most of Europe, was far from satisfying the

British merchants, for it left the whole trade between Europe and other

countries, which virtually included the colonial trade, untouched; and

this passed as of old into American bottoms. But their appeal was no

longer to Lord Grenville. The work which his ministry had set itself to

do was to continue the double work of Pitt, his resolute maintenance of

English greatness, and his endeavour to carry on even amidst the stress

of the fight that course of philanthropic and political progress which

was struggling back into renewed vigour after its long arrest through

the French Revolution. But the forces of ignorance and bigotry which had

been too strong for Pitt were too strong for the Grenville ministry,

weakened as it was by the death of Fox at the close of the previous

year. Its greatest work, the abolition of the slave-trade, in February

1807, was done in the teeth of a vigorous opposition from the Tories and

the merchants of Liverpool; and in March the first indication of its

desire to open the question of religious equality by allowing Catholic

officers to serve in the army was met on the part of the king by the

demand of a pledge not to meddle with the question. On the refusal of

this pledge the Ministry was dismissed. Its fall was the final close of

that union of parties in face of the war with France which had brought

about the junction of the bulk of the Whig party with the Tories, and

which had been to some extent renewed after the temporary breach in

Pitt's last ministry by the junction of Lord Sidmouth and a large body

of the Tories with the Whigs. The union had been based on the actual

peril to England's existence, and on the suspension of all home

questions in face of the peril. But with the break-up of the camp at

Boulogne and the victory of Trafalgar the peril of invasion had

disappeared. England again broke into the party that called for progress

and the party that resisted it.

[Sidenote: The Portland Ministry.]

The last was still the stronger: for in the mass of the nation progress

was still confounded with the destruction of institutions, the passion

for war absorbed public attention, and the Tories showed themselves most

in earnest in the prosecution of the war. From this time therefore to

the end of the war England was wholly governed by the Tories. The

nominal head of the ministry which succeeded that of Lord Grenville was

the Duke of Portland; its guiding spirit was the Foreign Secretary,

George Canning, a young and devoted adherent of Pitt, whose brilliant

rhetoric gave him power over the House of Commons, while the vigour and

breadth of his mind gave a new energy and colour to the war. At no time

had opposition to Napoleon seemed so hopeless as at the moment of his

entry into power. From foes the two Emperors of Western and Eastern

Europe had become friends, and the hope of French aid in the conquest of

Turkey drew Alexander to a close alliance with Napoleon. Russia not only

enforced the Berlin decrees against British commerce, but forced Sweden,

the one ally that England still retained on the Continent, to renounce

her alliance. The Russian and Swedish fleets were thus placed at the

service of France; and the two Emperors counted on securing in addition

the fleet of Denmark, and again threatening by this union the maritime

supremacy which formed England's real defence. The hope was foiled by

the decision of the new ministers. In July 1807 an expedition was

promptly and secretly equipped by Canning, with a demand for the

surrender of the Danish fleet into the hands of England, on pledge of

its return at the close of the war. On the refusal of the Danes the

demand was enforced by a bombardment of Copenhagen; and the whole Danish

fleet, with a vast mass of naval stores, was carried into British

ports. It was in the same spirit of almost reckless decision that

Canning turned to meet Napoleon's Continental System. The cry of the

British merchant fell upon willing ears. Of trade or the laws of trade

Canning was utterly ignorant; nor could he see that the interests of the

country were not necessarily the interests of a class; but he was

resolute at any cost to hinder the transfer of commerce to neutral

flags; and he saw in the crisis a means of forcing the one great neutral

power, America, to join Britain in her strife with France. In November

1807, therefore, he issued fresh Orders in Council. By these France, and

every Continental state from which the British flag was excluded, were

put in a state of blockade, and all vessels bound for their harbours

were held subject to seizure unless they had touched at a British port.

The orders were at once met by another decree of Napoleon issued at

Milan in December, which declared every vessel, of whatever nation,

coming from or bound to Britain or any British colony, to have forfeited

its character as a neutral, and to be liable to seizure.

[Sidenote: The American Embargo.]

The policy of Napoleon was at any rate a consistent one in these

measures; for his sole aim was to annihilate the industry as well as the

commerce of Britain; and he had little to fear from the indignation of

America. But the aim of Britain was to find outlets for her

manufactures; and of these outlets America was now far the most

important. She took in fact ten millions of our exports every year, not

only for her own consumption, but for the illicit trade which she

managed to carry on with the Continent. To close such an outlet as this

was to play into Napoleon's hands. And yet the first result of Canning's

policy was to close it. In the long strife between France and England,

America had already borne much from both combatants, but above all from

Britain. Not only had the English Government exercised its right of

search, but it asserted a right of seizing English seamen found in

American vessels; and as there were few means of discriminating between

English seamen and American, the sailor of Maine or Massachusetts was

often impressed to serve in the British fleet. Galled however as was

America by outrages such as these, she was hindered from resenting them

by her strong disinclination to war, as well as by the profit which she

drew from the maintenance of her neutral position; and she believed in

the words of Jefferson, that "it will ever be in our power to keep so

even a stand between France and England, as to inspire a wish in neither

to throw us into the scale of his adversary." But the Orders in Council

and the Milan Decree forced her into action, and she at once answered

them by an embargo of trade with Europe.

Such a step was a menace of further action, for it was plain that

America could not long remain in utter isolation, and that if she left

it she must join one combatant or the other. But she had as yet shown no

military power outside her own bounds, either by land or sea; and

England looked with scorn on the threats of a state which possessed

neither army nor fleet. "America," Lord Sidmouth wrote at this time, "is

a bugbear: there is no terror in her threats!" Canning indeed saw in the

embargo only a carrying out of his policy by the very machinery of the

American Government. The commerce of America ceased to exist. Her seamen

were driven to seek employment under the British flag; and Britain again

absorbed the carrying-trade of the world. But what he really looked

forward to was something far beyond this. He saw that the embargo was

but a temporary expedient: and he believed that its failure would force

the United States into union with England in her war with France.

Nothing shows the world-wide nature of the struggle more than such a

policy as this; but for a while it seemed justified by its results.

After a year's trial America found it impossible to maintain the

embargo: and at the opening of 1809 she exchanged it for an Act of

Non-Intercourse with France and England alone. But this Act was as

ineffective as the embargo. The American Government was utterly without

means of enforcing it on its land frontier; and it had small means of

enforcing it at sea. Throughout 1809 indeed vessels sailed daily for

British ports. The Act was thus effective against France alone, and part

of Canning's end was gained. At last the very protest which it embodied

was given up, and in May 1810 the Non-Intercourse Act was repealed

altogether. All that America persisted in maintaining was an offer that

if either Power would repeal its edicts, it would prohibit American

commerce with the other.

[Sidenote: Napoleon and Spain.]

What the results of this offer were to be we shall see hereafter. But at

the moment the attitude of America was one of utter submission; and the

effect of the Continental system on Britain had thus been to drive it to

a policy of aggression upon neutral states, which seemed to be as

successful as it was aggressive. The effect of his system on Napoleon

himself was precisely the same. It was to maintain this material union

of Europe against Britain that he was driven to aggression after

aggression in North Germany, and to demands upon Russia which threatened

the league that had been formed at Tilsit. Above all, it was the hope of

more effectually crushing the world-power of Britain that drove him, at

the very moment when Canning was attacking America, to his worst

aggression, the aggression upon Spain. Spain was already his subservient

ally; but her alliance became every hour less useful. The country was

ruined by misgovernment: its treasury was empty: its fleet rotted in

its harbours. To seize the whole Spanish Peninsula, to develope its

resources by an active administration, to have at his command not only a

regenerated Spain and Portugal, but their mighty dominions in Southern

and Central America, to renew with these fresh forces the struggle with

Britain for her empire of the seas, these were the designs by which

Napoleon was driven to the most ruthless of his enterprises. He acted

with his usual subtlety. In October 1807 France and Spain agreed to

divide Portugal between them; and on the advance of their forces the

reigning House of Braganza fled helplessly from Lisbon to a refuge in

Brazil. But the seizure of Portugal was only a prelude to the seizure of

Spain. Charles the Fourth, whom a riot in his capital drove at this

moment to abdication, and his son and successor, Ferdinand the Seventh,

were alike drawn to Bayonne in May 1808, and forced to resign their

claims to the Spanish crown; while a French army entered Madrid, and

proclaimed Joseph Buonaparte as King of Spain.

[Sidenote: The Rising of Spain.]

High-handed as such an act was, it was in harmony with the general

system which Napoleon was pursuing elsewhere, and which had as yet

stirred no national resistance. Holland had been changed into a monarchy

by a simple decree of the French Emperor, and its crown bestowed on his

brother Louis. For another brother, Jerome, a kingdom of Westphalia had

been built up out of the Electorates of Hesse Cassel and Hanover.

Joseph himself had been set as king over Naples before his transfer to

Spain. But the spell of submission was now suddenly broken, and the new

king had hardly entered Madrid when Spain rose as one man against the

stranger. Desperate as the effort of its people seemed, the news of the

rising was welcomed throughout England with a burst of enthusiastic joy.

"Hitherto," cried Sheridan, a leader of the Whig opposition, "Buonaparte

has contended with princes without dignity, numbers without ardour, or

peoples without patriotism. He has yet to learn what it is to combat a

people who are animated by one spirit against him." Tory and Whig alike

held that "never had so happy an opportunity existed for Britain to

strike a bold stroke for the rescue of the world"; and Canning at once

resolved to change the system of desultory descents on colonies and

sugar islands for a vigorous warfare in the Peninsula. Supplies were

sent to the Spanish insurgents with reckless profusion, and two small

armies placed under the command of Sir John Moore and Sir Arthur

Wellesley for service in the Peninsula. In July 1808 the surrender at

Baylen of a French force which had invaded Andalusia gave the first

shock to the power of Napoleon, and the blow was followed by one almost

as severe. Landing at the Mondego with fifteen thousand men, Sir Arthur

Wellesley drove the French army of Portugal from the field of Vimiera,

and forced it to surrender in the Convention of Cintra on the 30th of

August. But the tide of success was soon roughly turned. Napoleon

appeared in Spain with an army of two hundred thousand men; and Moore,

who had advanced from Lisbon to Salamanca to support the Spanish armies,

found them crushed on the Ebro, and was driven to fall hastily back on

the coast. His force saved its honour in a battle before Corunna on the

16th of January 1809, which enabled it to embark in safety; but

elsewhere all seemed lost. The whole of northern and central Spain was

held by the French armies; and even Zaragoza, which had once heroically

repulsed them, submitted after a second equally desperate resistance.

[Sidenote: Wellesley in Portugal.]

The landing of the wreck of Moore's army and the news of the Spanish

defeats turned the temper of England from the wildest hope to the

deepest despair; but Canning remained unmoved. On the day of the

evacuation of Corunna he signed a treaty of alliance with the Junta

which governed Spain in the absence of its king; and the English force

at Lisbon, which had already prepared to leave Portugal, was reinforced

with thirteen thousand fresh troops and placed under the command of Sir

Arthur Wellesley. "Portugal," Wellesley wrote coolly, "may be defended

against any force which the French can bring against it." At this

critical moment the best of the French troops with the Emperor himself

were drawn from the Peninsula to the Danube; for the Spanish rising had

roused Austria as well as England to a renewal of the struggle. When

Marshal Soult therefore threatened Lisbon from the north, Wellesley

marched boldly against him, drove him from Oporto in a disastrous

retreat, and suddenly changing his line of operations, pushed with

twenty thousand men by Abrantes on Madrid. He was joined on the march by

a Spanish force of thirty thousand men; and a bloody action with a

French army of equal force at Talavera in July 1809 restored the renown

of English arms. The losses on both sides were enormous, and the French

fell back at the close of the struggle; but the fruits of the victory

were lost by a sudden appearance of Soult on the English line of

advance. Wellesley was forced to retreat hastily on Badajoz, and his

failure was embittered by heavier disasters elsewhere; for Austria was

driven to sue for peace by a decisive victory of Napoleon at Wagram,

while a force of forty thousand English soldiers which had been

despatched against Antwerp in July returned home baffled after losing

half its numbers in the marshes of Walcheren.

[Sidenote: The Perceval Ministry.]

The failure at Walcheren brought about the fall of the Portland

ministry. Canning attributed this disaster to the incompetence of Lord

Castlereagh, heir to an Irish peerage, who after taking the chief part

in bringing about the union between England and Ireland had been raised

by the Duke of Portland to the post of Secretary at War; and the quarrel

between the two Ministers ended in a duel and in their resignation of

their offices in September 1809. The Duke of Portland retired with

Canning; and a new ministry was formed out of the more Tory members of

the late administration under the guidance of Spencer Perceval, an

industrious mediocrity of the narrowest type; while the Marquis of

Wellesley, a brother of the English general in Spain, succeeded Canning

as Foreign Secretary. But if Perceval and his colleagues possessed few

of the higher qualities of statesmanship, they had one characteristic

which in the actual position of English affairs was beyond all price.

They were resolute to continue the war. In the nation at large the fit

of enthusiasm had been followed by a fit of despair; and the City of

London even petitioned for a withdrawal of the English forces from the

Peninsula, Napoleon seemed irresistible, and now that Austria was

crushed and England stood alone in opposition to him, the Emperor

determined to put an end to the strife by a vigorous prosecution of the

war in Spain. Andalusia, the one province which remained independent,

was invaded in the opening of 1810, and with the exception of Cadiz

reduced to submission; while Marshal Massena with a fine army of eighty

thousand men marched upon Lisbon. Even Perceval abandoned all hope of

preserving a hold on the Peninsula in face of these new efforts, and

threw on Wellesley, who had been raised to the peerage as Lord

Wellington after Talavera, the responsibility of resolving to remain

there.

[Sidenote: Torres Vedras.]

But the cool judgement and firm temper which distinguished Wellington

enabled him to face a responsibility from which weaker men would have

shrunk. "I conceive," he answered, "that the honour and interest of our

country require that we should hold our ground here as long as possible;

and, please God, I will maintain it as long as I can." By the addition

of Portuguese troops who had been trained under British officers, his

army was now raised to fifty thousand men; and though his inferiority in

force compelled him to look on while Massena reduced the frontier

fortresses of Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida, he inflicted on him a heavy

check at the heights of Busaco, and finally fell back in October 1810 on

three lines of defence which he had secretly constructed at Torres

Vedras, along a chain of mountain, heights crowned with redoubts and

bristling with cannon. The position was impregnable: and able and

stubborn as Massena was he found himself forced after a month's

fruitless efforts to fall back in a masterly retreat; but so terrible

were the privations of the French army in passing again through the

wasted country that it was only with forty thousand men that he reached

Ciudad Rodrigo in the spring of 1811. Reinforced by fresh troops,

Massena turned fiercely to the relief of Almeida, which Wellington had

besieged. Two days' bloody and obstinate fighting however, in May 1811,

failed to drive the English army from its position at Fuentes d'Onore,

and the Marshal fell back on Salamanca and relinquished his effort to

drive Wellington from Portugal. But great as was the effect of Torres

Vedras in restoring the spirit of the English people, and in reviving

throughout Europe the hope of resistance to the tyranny of Napoleon, its

immediate result was little save the deliverance of Portugal. If Massena

had failed, his colleagues had succeeded in their enterprises; the

French were now masters of all Spain save Cadiz and the eastern

provinces, and even the east coast was reduced in 1811 by the vigour of

General Suchet.

[Sidenote: The Quarrel with America.]

While England thus failed to rescue Spain from the aggression of

Napoleon, she was suddenly brought face to face with the result of her

own aggression in America. The repeal of the Non-Intercourse Act in 1810

had in effect been a triumph for Britain: but the triumph forced

Napoleon's hand. As yet all he had done by his attack on neutral rights

had been to drive the United States practically to join England against

him. To revenge himself by war with them would only play England's game

yet more; and with characteristic rapidity Napoleon passed from

hostility to friendship. He seized on the offer with which America had

closed her efforts against the two combatants, and after promising to

revoke his Berlin and Milan Decrees he called on America to redeem her

pledge. In February 1811, therefore, the United States announced that

all intercourse with Great Britain and her dependencies was at an end.

The effect of this step was seen in a reduction of English exports

during this year by a third of their whole amount. It was in vain that

Britain pleaded that the Emperor's promises remained unfulfilled, that

neither of the decrees was withdrawn, that Napoleon had failed to return

the American merchandise seized under them, and that the enforcement of

non-intercourse with England was thus an unjust act, and an act of

hostility. The pressure of the American policy, as well as news of the

warlike temper which had at last grown up in the United States, made

submission inevitable; for the industrial state of England was now so

critical that to expose it to fresh shocks was to court the very ruin

which Napoleon had planned.

[Sidenote: State of England.]

During the earlier years of the war indeed the increase of wealth had

been enormous. England was sole mistress of the seas. The war gave her

possession of the colonies of Spain, of Holland, and of France; and if

her trade was checked for a time by the Berlin Decree, the efforts of

Napoleon were soon rendered fruitless by the smuggling system which

sprang up along the southern coasts and the coast of North Germany.

English exports indeed had nearly doubled since the opening of the

century. Manufactures were profiting by the discoveries of Watt and

Arkwright; and the consumption of raw cotton in the mills of Lancashire

rose during the same period from fifty to a hundred million of pounds.

The vast accumulation of capital, as well as the vast increase of the

population at this time, told upon the land, and forced agriculture into

a feverish and unhealthy prosperity. Wheat rose to famine prices, and

the value of land rose in proportion with the price of wheat. Inclosures

went on with prodigious rapidity; the income of every landowner was

doubled, while the farmers were able to introduce improvements into the

processes of agriculture which changed the whole face of the country.

But if the increase of wealth was enormous, its distribution was

partial. During the fifteen years which preceded Waterloo, the number of

the population rose from ten to thirteen millions, and this rapid

increase kept down the rate of wages, which would naturally have

advanced in a corresponding degree with the increase in the national

wealth. Even manufactures, though destined in the long run to benefit

the labouring classes, seemed at first rather to depress them; for one

of the earliest results of the introduction of machinery was the ruin of

a number of small trades which were carried on at home and the

pauperization of families who relied on them for support. In the winter

of 1811 the terrible pressure of this transition from handicraft to

machinery was seen in the Luddite, or machine-breaking, riots which

broke out over the northern and midland counties; and which were only

suppressed by military force. While labour was thus thrown out of its

older grooves, and the rate of wages kept down at an artificially low

figure by the rapid increase of population, the rise in the price of

wheat, which brought wealth to the landowner and the farmer, brought

famine and death to the poor, for England was cut off by the war from

the vast corn-fields of the Continent or of America, which nowadays

redress from their abundance the results of a bad harvest. Scarcity was

followed by a terrible pauperization of the labouring classes. The

amount of the poor-rate rose fifty per cent; and with the increase of

poverty followed its inevitable result, the increase of crime.

[Sidenote: Political Progress.]

The natural relation of trade and commerce to the general wealth of the

people at large was thus disturbed by the peculiar circumstances of the

time. The war enriched the landowner, the farmer, the merchant, the

manufacturer; but it impoverished the poor. It is indeed from these

fatal years that we must date that war of classes, that social severance

between employers and employed, which still forms the main difficulty

of English politics. But it is from these too that we must date the

renewal of that progressive movement in politics which had been

suspended since the opening of the war. The publication of the

_Edinburgh Review_ in 1802 by a knot of young lawyers at Edinburgh

marked a revival of the policy of constitutional and administrative

progress which had been reluctantly abandoned by William Pitt. Jeremy

Bentham gave a new vigour to political speculation by his advocacy of

the doctrine of Utility, and his definition of "the greatest happiness

of the greatest number" as the aim of political action. In 1809 Sir

Francis Burdett revived the question of Parliamentary Reform. Only

fifteen members supported his motion; and a reference to the House of

Commons in a pamphlet which he subsequently published, as "a part of our

fellow-subjects collected together by means which it is not necessary to

describe," was met by his committal to the Tower, where he remained till

the prorogation of the Parliament. A far greater effect was produced by

the perseverance with which Canning pressed year by year the question of

Catholic Emancipation. So long as Perceval lived both efforts at Reform

were equally vain; but the advancing strength of a more liberal

sentiment in the nation was felt by the policy of "moderate concession"

which was adopted by his successors. Catholic Emancipation became an

open question in the Cabinet itself, and was adopted in 1812 by a

triumphant majority in the House of Commons, though it was still

rejected by the Lords.

[Sidenote: War with America.]

With social and political troubles thus awaking anew to life about them,

even Tory statesmen were not willing to face the terrible consequences

of a ruin of English industry such as might follow from the junction of

America with Napoleon. They were in fact preparing to withdraw the

Orders in Council, when their plans were arrested by the dissolution of

the Perceval ministry. Its position had from the first been a weak one.

A return of the king's madness made it necessary in the beginning of

1811 to confer the Regency on the Prince of Wales; and the Whig

sympathies of the Prince threatened for a while the Cabinet with

dismissal. Though this difficulty was surmounted their hold of power

remained insecure, and the insecurity of the ministry told on the

conduct of the war; for the apparent inactivity of Wellington during

1811 was really due to the hesitation and timidity of the Cabinet at

home. But in May 1812 the assassination of Perceval by a madman named

Bellingham brought about the dissolution of his ministry; and fresh

efforts were made by the Regent to install the Whigs in office. Mutual

distrust however again foiled his attempts; and the old ministry

returned to office under the headship of Lord Liverpool, a man of no

great abilities, but temperate, well informed, and endowed with a

remarkable skill in holding discordant colleagues together. The most

important of these colleagues was Lord Castlereagh, who became Secretary

for Foreign Affairs. Time has long ago rendered justice to the political

ability of Castlereagh, disguised as it was to men of his own day by a

curious infelicity of expression; and the instinctive good sense of

Englishmen never showed itself more remarkably than in their preference

at this crisis of his cool judgement, his high courage, his discernment,

and his will to the more showy brilliancy of Canning. His first work

indeed as a minister was to meet the danger in which Canning had

involved the country by his Orders in Council. On the 23rd of June, only

twelve days after the ministry had been formed, these Orders were

repealed. But, quick as was Castlereagh's action, events had moved even

more quickly. At the opening of the year America, in despair of redress,

had resolved on war; Congress had voted an increase of both army and

navy; and laid in April an embargo on all vessels in American harbours.

Actual hostilities might still have been averted by the repeal of the

Orders, on which the English Cabinet was resolved; but in the confusion

which followed the murder of Perceval, and the strife of parties for

office through the month that followed, the opportunity was lost. When

the news of the repeal reached America, it came six weeks too late. On

the 18th of June an Act of Congress had declared America at war with

Great Britain.

[Sidenote: Napoleon and Russia.]

Had Napoleon been able to reap the fruits of the strife which his policy

had thus forced on the two English peoples, it is hard to say how

Britain could have coped with him. Cut off from her markets alike in

east and west, her industries checked and disorganized, a financial

crisis added to her social embarrassment, it may be doubted whether she

must not have bowed in the end before the pressure of the Continental

System. But if that system had thrust her into aggression and ruin, it

was as inevitably thrusting the same aggression and ruin on her rival.

The moment when America entered into the great struggle was a critical

moment in the history of mankind. Six days after President Madison

issued his declaration of war, Napoleon crossed the Niemen on his march

to Moscow. Successful as his policy had been in stirring up war between

England and America, it had been no less successful in breaking the

alliance which he had made with the Czar at Tilsit and in forcing on a

contest with Russia. On the one hand, Napoleon was irritated by the

refusal of Russia to enforce strictly the suspension of all trade with

England, though such a suspension would have ruined the Russian

landowners. On the other, Alexander saw with growing anxiety the advance

of the French Empire which sprang from Napoleon's resolve to enforce his

system by a seizure of the northern coasts. In 1811 Holland, the

Hanseatic towns, part of Westphalia, and the Duchy of Oldenburg were

successively annexed, and the Duchy of Mecklenburg threatened with

seizure. A peremptory demand on the part of France for the entire

cessation of intercourse with England brought the quarrel to a head; and

preparations were made on both sides for a gigantic struggle.

[Sidenote: Salamanca.]

Even before it opened, this new enterprise gave fresh vigour to

Napoleon's foes. The best of the French soldiers were drawn from Spain

to the frontier of Poland; and Wellington, whose army had been raised to

a force of forty thousand Englishmen and twenty thousand Portuguese,

profited by the withdrawal to throw off his system of defence and to

assume an attitude of attack. Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz were taken by

storm during the spring of 1812; and at the close of June, three days

before Napoleon crossed the Niemen, in his march on Moscow, Wellington

crossed the Agueda in a march on Salamanca. After a series of masterly

movements on both sides, Marmont with the French army of the North

attacked the English on the hills in the neighbourhood of that town on

the twenty-second of July. While he was marching round the right of the

English position his left wing remained isolated; and with a sudden

exclamation of "Marmont is lost!" Wellington flung on it the bulk of

his force, crushed it, and drove the whole army from the field. The loss

on either side was nearly equal, but failure had demoralized the French

army; and its retreat forced Joseph to leave Madrid, and Soult to

evacuate Andalusia and to concentrate the southern army on the eastern

coast. While Napoleon was still pushing slowly over the vast plains of

Poland, Wellington made his entry into Madrid in August, and began the

siege of Burgos. The town however held out gallantly for a month, till

the advance of the two French armies, now concentrated in the north and

south of Spain, forced Wellington, in October, to a hasty retreat on the

Portuguese frontier.

[Sidenote: Ruin of Napoleon.]

If Wellington had shaken the rule of the French in Spain in this

campaign, his ultimate failure showed how firm a military hold they

still possessed there. But the disappointment was forgotten in the news

which followed it. At the moment when the English troops fell back from

Burgos began the retreat of the Grand Army from Moscow. Victorious in a

battle at Borodino, Napoleon had entered the older capital of Russia in

triumph, and waited impatiently to receive proposals of peace from the

Czar. But a fire kindled by its own inhabitants reduced the city to

ashes; Alexander still remained silent; and the gathering cold bent even

the stubborn will of Napoleon to own the need of retreat. The French

were forced to fall back amidst the horrors of a Russian winter; and of

the four hundred thousand combatants who formed the Grand Army at its

first outset, only a few thousands recrossed the Niemen in December. In

spite of the gigantic efforts which Napoleon made to repair his losses,

the spell which he had cast over Europe was broken. Prussia rose against

him as the Russians crossed the Niemen in the spring of 1813; and the

forces which held it were at once thrown back on the Elbe. In this

emergency the military genius of the French Emperor rose to its height.

With a fresh army of two hundred thousand men whom he had gathered at

Mainz he marched on the allied armies of Russia and Prussia in May,

cleared Saxony by a victory over them at Lutzen, and threw them back on

the Oder by a fresh victory at Bautzen. Disheartened by defeat, and by

the neutral attitude which Austria still preserved, the two powers

consented in June to an armistice, and negotiated for peace. But

Austria, though unwilling to utterly ruin France to the profit of her

great rival in the East, was as resolute as either of the allies to

wrest from Napoleon his supremacy over Europe; and at the moment when it

became clear that Napoleon was only bent on playing with her proposals,

she was stirred to action by news that his army was at last driven from

Spain. Wellington had left Portugal in May with an army which had now

risen to ninety thousand men; and overtaking the French forces in

retreat at Vitoria on the twenty-first of June he inflicted on them a

defeat which drove them in utter rout across the Pyrenees. Madrid was at

once evacuated; and Clausel fell back from Zaragoza into France. The

victory not only freed Spain from its invaders; it restored the spirit

of the Allies. The close of the armistice was followed by a union of

Austria with the forces of Prussia and the Czar; and in October a final

overthrow of Napoleon at Leipzig forced the French army to fall back in

rout across the Rhine.

[Sidenote: His Abdication.]

The war now hurried to its close. Though held at bay for a while by the

sieges of San Sebastian and Pampeluna, as well as by an obstinate

defence of the Pyrenees, Wellington succeeded in the very month of the

triumph at Leipzig in winning a victory on the Bidassoa, which enabled

him to enter France. He was soon followed by the Allies. On the last day

of 1813 their forces crossed the Rhine; and a third of France passed,

without opposition, into their hands. For two months more Napoleon

maintained a wonderful struggle with a handful of raw conscripts against

their overwhelming numbers; while in the south, Soult, forced from his

entrenched camp near Bayonne and defeated at Orthez, fell back before

Wellington on Toulouse. Here their two armies met in April in a stubborn

and indecisive engagement. But though neither leader knew it, the war

was even then at an end. The struggle of Napoleon himself had ended at

the close of March with the surrender of Paris; and the submission of

the capital was at once followed by the abdication of the Emperor and

the return of the Bourbons.

[Sidenote: The American War.]

England's triumph over its enemy was dashed by the more doubtful

fortunes of the struggle across the Atlantic. The declaration of war by

America seemed an act of sheer madness; for its navy consisted of a few

frigates and sloops; its army was a mass of half-drilled and half-armed

recruits; while the States themselves were divided on the question of

the war, and Connecticut with Massachusetts refused to send either money

or men. Three attempts to penetrate into Canada during the summer and

autumn were repulsed with heavy loss. But these failures were more than

redeemed by unexpected successes at sea, where in two successive

engagements between English and American frigates, the former were

forced to strike their flag. The effect of these victories was out of

all proportion to their real importance; for they were the first heavy

blows which had been dealt at England's supremacy over the seas. In 1813

America followed up its naval triumphs by more vigorous efforts on land.

Its forces cleared Lake Ontario, captured Toronto, destroyed the British

flotilla on Lake Erie, and made themselves masters of Upper Canada. An

attack on Lower Canada, however, was successfully beaten back; and a

fresh advance of the British and Canadian forces in the heart of the

winter again recovered the Upper Province. The reverse gave fresh

strength to the party in the United States which had throughout been

opposed to the war, and whose opposition to it had been embittered by

the terrible distress brought about by the blockade and the ruin of

American commerce. Cries of secession began to be heard, and

Massachusetts took the bold step of appointing delegates to confer with

delegates from the other New England States "on the subject of their

grievances and common concerns."

[Sidenote: Peace in America.]

In 1814, however, the war was renewed with more vigour than ever; and

Upper Canada was again invaded. But the American army, after inflicting

a severe defeat on the British forces in the battle of Chippewa in July,

was itself defeated a few weeks after in an equally stubborn engagement,

and thrown back on its own frontier; while the fall of Napoleon enabled

the English Government to devote its whole strength to the struggle with

an enemy which it had ceased to despise. General Ross, with a force of

four thousand men, appeared in the Potomac, captured Washington, and

before evacuating the city burnt its public buildings to the ground. Few

more shameful acts are recorded in our history; and it was the more

shameful in that it was done under strict orders from the Government at

home. But the raid upon Washington was intended simply to strike terror

into the American people; and the real stress of the war was thrown on

two expeditions whose business was to penetrate into the States from the

north and from the south. Both proved utter failures. A force of nine

thousand Peninsular veterans which marched in September to the attack of

Plattsburg on Lake Champlain was forced to fall back by the defeat of

the English flotilla which accompanied it. A second force under General

Packenham appeared in December at the mouth of the Mississippi and

attacked New Orleans, but was repulsed by General Jackson with the loss

of half its numbers. Peace, however, had already been concluded. The

close of the French war, if it left untouched the grounds of the

struggle, made the United States sensible of the danger of pushing it

further; Britain herself was anxious for peace; and the warring claims,

both of England and America, were set aside in silence in the treaty of

1814.

[Sidenote: Return of Napoleon.]

The close of the war with the United States freed England's hands at a

moment when the reappearance of Napoleon at Paris called her to a new

and final struggle with France. By treaty with the Allied Powers

Napoleon had been suffered to retain a fragment of his former

empire--the island of Elba off the coast of Tuscany; and from Elba he

looked on at the quarrels which sprang up between his conquerors as soon

as they gathered at Vienna to complete the settlement of Europe. The

most formidable of these quarrels arose from a claim of Prussia to annex

Saxony and that of Russia to annex Poland; but their union for this

purpose was met by a counter-league of England and Austria with their

old enemy, France, whose ambassador, Talleyrand, laboured vigorously to

bring the question to an issue by force of arms. At the moment, however,

when a war between the two leagues seemed close at hand, Napoleon landed

on the coast near Cannes, and, followed only by a thousand of his

guards, marched over the mountains of Dauphine upon Grenoble and Lyons.

He counted, and counted justly, on the indifference of the country to

its new Bourbon rulers, on the longing of the army for a fresh struggle

which should restore its glory, and above all on the spell of his name

over soldiers whom he had so often led to victory. In twenty days from

his landing he reached the Tuileries unopposed, while Lewis the

Eighteenth fled helplessly to Ghent. But whatever hopes he had drawn

from the divisions of the Allied Powers were at once dispelled by their

resolute action on the news of his descent upon France. Their strife was

hushed and their old union restored by the consciousness of a common

danger. An engagement to supply a million of men for the purposes of the

war, and a recall of their armies to the Rhine, answered Napoleon's

efforts to open negotiations with the Powers.

England furnished subsidies to the amount of eleven millions, and

hastened to place an army on the frontier of the Netherlands. The best

troops of the force which had been employed in the Peninsula however

were still across the Atlantic; and of the eighty thousand men who

gathered round Wellington only about half were Englishmen, the rest

mainly raw levies from Belgium and Hanover. The Duke's plan was to unite

with the one hundred and fifty thousand Prussians under Marshal Bluecher

who were advancing on the Lower Rhine, and to enter France by Mons and

Namur while the forces of Austria and Russia closed in upon Paris by way

of Belfort and Elsass. But Napoleon had thrown aside all thought of a

merely defensive warfare. By amazing efforts he had raised an army of

two hundred and fifty thousand men in the few months since his arrival

in Paris; and in the opening of June 1815 one hundred and twenty

thousand Frenchmen were concentrated on the Sambre at Charleroi, while

Wellington's troops still lay in cantonments on the line of the Scheldt

from Ath to Nivelles, and Bluecher's on that of the Meuse from Nivelles

to Liege. Both the allied armies hastened to unite at Quatre Bras; but

their junction there was already impossible. Bluecher with eighty

thousand men was himself attacked by Napoleon at Ligny, and after a

desperate contest driven back with terrible loss upon Wavre. On the

same day Ney with twenty thousand men, and an equal force under D'Erlon

in reserve, appeared before Quatre Bras, where as yet only ten thousand

English and the same force of Belgian troops had been able to assemble.

The Belgians broke before the charges of the French horse; and only the

dogged resistance of the English infantry gave time for Wellington to

bring up corps after corps, till at the close of the day Ney saw himself

heavily outnumbered, and withdrew baffled from the field.

[Sidenote: Waterloo.]

About five thousand men had fallen on either side in this fierce

engagement: but, heavy as was Wellington's loss, the firmness of the

English army had already done much to foil Napoleon's effort at breaking

through the line of the Allies. Bluecher's retreat however left the

English flank uncovered; and on the following day, while the Prussians

were falling back on Wavre, Wellington, with nearly seventy thousand

men--for his army was now well in hand--withdrew in good order, followed

by the mass of the French forces under the Emperor himself. Napoleon had

detached thirty thousand men under Grouchy to hang upon the rear of the

beaten Prussians, while with a force of eighty thousand he resolved to

bring Wellington to battle. On the morning of the 18th of June the two

armies faced one another on the field of Waterloo in front of the Forest

of Soignies, on the high road to Brussels. Napoleon's one fear had been

that of a continued retreat. "I have them!" he cried, as he saw the

English line drawn up on a low rise of ground which stretched across the

high-road from the chateau of Hougomont on its right to the farm and

straggling village of La Haye Sainte on its left. He had some grounds

for his confidence of success. On either side the forces numbered

between seventy and eighty thousand men: but the French were superior in

guns and cavalry, and a large part of Wellington's force consisted of

Belgian levies who broke and fled at the outset of the fight. A fierce

attack upon Hougomont opened the battle at eleven; but it was not till

midday that the corps of D'Erlon advanced upon the centre near La Haye

Sainte, which from that time bore the main brunt of the struggle. Never

has greater courage, whether of attack or endurance, been shown on any

field than was shown by both combatants at Waterloo. The columns of

D'Erlon, repulsed by the English foot, were hurled back in disorder by a

charge of the Scots Greys; but the victorious horsemen were crushed in

their turn by the French cuirassiers, and the mass of the French

cavalry, twelve thousand strong, flung itself in charge after charge on

the English front, carrying the English guns and sweeping with desperate

bravery round the unbroken squares whose fire thinned their ranks. With

almost equal bravery the French columns of the centre again advanced,

wrested at last the farm of La Haye Sainte from their opponents, and

pushed on vigorously though in vain under Ney against the troops in its

rear.

But meanwhile every hour was telling against Napoleon. To win the battle

he must crush the English army before Bluecher joined it; and the English

army was still uncrushed. Terrible as was his loss, and many of his

regiments were reduced to a mere handful of men, Wellington stubbornly

held his ground while the Prussians, advancing from Wavre through deep

and miry forest roads, were slowly gathering to his support,

disregarding the attack on their rear by which Grouchy strove to hold

them back from the field. At half-past four their advanced guard

deployed at last from the woods; but the main body was far behind, and

Napoleon was still able to hold his ground against them till their

increasing masses forced him to stake all on a desperate effort against

the English front. The Imperial Guard--his only reserve, and which had

as yet taken no part in the battle--was drawn up at seven in two huge

columns of attack. The first, with Ney himself at its head, swept all

before it as it mounted the rise beside La Haye Sainte, on which the

thin English line still held its ground, and all but touched the English

front when its mass, torn by the terrible fire of musketry with which it

was received, gave way before a charge. The second, three thousand

strong, advanced with the same courage over the slope near Hougomont,

only to be repulsed and shattered in its turn. At the moment when these

masses fell slowly and doggedly back down the fatal rise, the Prussians

pushed forward on Napoleon's right, their guns swept the road to

Charleroi, and Wellington seized the moment for a general advance. From

that hour all was lost. Only the Guard stood firm in the wreck of the

French army; and though darkness and exhaustion checked the English in

their pursuit of the broken troops as they hurried from the field, the

Prussian horse continued the chase through the night. Only forty

thousand Frenchmen with some thirty guns recrossed the Sambre while

Napoleon himself fled hurriedly to Paris. His second abdication was

followed by a triumphant entry of the English and Prussian armies into

the French capital; and the long war ended with his exile to St. Helena,

and the return of Lewis the Eighteenth to the throne of the Bourbons.

* * * * *

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES

Reference to the Index has been removed from the

Table of Contents.

The word manoeuvre uses an oe ligature in the original.

Variations in spelling have been left as in the original.