_Renewal of the War--England lays an Embargo on French
Vessels--Napoleon retaliates by detaining British Subjects--Effects
of this unprecedented Measure--Hanover and other places occupied by
the French--Scheme of Invasion renewed--Napoleon's
Preparations--Defensive Measures of England._
The bloody war which succeeded the short peace of Amiens, originated, to
use the words of the satirist, in high words, jealousies, and fears.
There was no special or determinate cause of quarrel, which could be
removed by explanation, apology, or concession.
The English nation were jealous, and from the strides which Buonaparte
had made towards universal power, not jealous without reason, of the
farther purposes of the French ruler, and demanded guarantees against
the encroachments which they apprehended; and such guarantees he deemed
it beneath his dignity to grant. The discussion of these adverse claims
had been unusually violent and intemperate; and as Buonaparte conceived
the English nation to be his personal enemies, so they, on the other
hand, began to regard his power as totally incompatible with the peace
of Europe, and independence of Britain. To Napoleon, the English people,
tradesmen and shopkeepers as he chose to qualify them, seemed assuming a
consequence in Europe, which was, he conceived, far beyond their due. He
was affected by feelings similar to those with which Haman beheld
Mordecai sitting at the King's gate;--all things availing him nothing,
while Britain held such a high rank among the nations, without deigning
to do him reverence or worship. The English people, on the other hand,
regarded him as the haughty and proud oppressor who had the will at
least, if not the power, to root Britain out from among the nations, and
reduce them to a state of ignominy and bondage.
When, therefore, the two nations again arose to the contest, it was like
combatants whose anger against each other has been previously raised to
the highest pitch by mutual invective. Each had recourse to the measures
by which their enemy could be most prejudiced.
England had at her command the large means of annoyance arising out of
her immense naval superiority, and took her measures with the decision
which the emergency required. Instant orders were despatched to prevent
the cession of such colonies as yet remained to be given up, according
to the treaty of Amiens, and to seize by a _coup-de-main_ such of the
French settlements as had been ceded, or were yet occupied by her.
France, on the other hand, in consequence of her equally great
superiority by land, assembled upon her extensive line of sea-coast a
very numerous army, with which she appeared disposed to make good her
ruler's threats of invasion. At the same time, Buonaparte occupied
without ceremony the territory of Naples, Holland, and such other states
as Britain must have seen in his hands with feelings of keen
apprehension, and thus made good the previous menaces of Talleyrand in
his celebrated Note.[36]
But besides carrying to the utmost extent all the means of annoyance
which the ordinary rules of hostility afford, Napoleon, going beyond
these, had recourse to strange and unaccustomed reprisals, unknown as
yet to the code of civilized nature, and tending only to gratify his
own resentment, and extend the evils of war, already sufficiently
numerous.
[Sidenote: EMBARGO ON FRENCH VESSELS--DÉTENUS.]
The English had, as is the universal custom, laid an embargo on all
French vessels in their ports, at the instant the war was proclaimed,
and the loss to France was of course considerable. Buonaparte took a
singular mode of retaliating, by seizing on the persons of the English
of every description, who chanced to be at Paris, or travelling in the
dominions of France, who, trusting to the laws of good faith hitherto
observed by all civilized nations, expected nothing less than an attack
upon their personal freedom. The absurd excuse at first set up for this
extraordinary violation of humanity, at once, and of justice, was, that
some of these individuals might be liable to serve in the English
militia, and were therefore to be considered as prisoners of war. But
this flimsy pretext could not have excused the seizing on the English of
all ranks, conditions, and ages. The measure was adopted without the
participation of the first consul's ministers; at least we must presume
so, since Talleyrand himself encouraged some individuals to remain after
the British ambassador had left Paris, with an assurance of safety which
he had it not in his power to make good. It was the vengeful start of a
haughty temper, rendered irritable, as we have often stated, by
uninterrupted prosperity, and of consequence, opposing itself to all
resistance, and contradiction, with an acuteness of feeling approaching
to frenzy.
The individuals who suffered under this capricious and tyrannical act of
arbitrary power, were treated in all respects like prisoners of war, and
confined to prison as such, unless they gave their parole to abide in
certain towns assigned them, and keep within particular limits.
The mass of individual evil occasioned by this cruel measure was
incalculably great. Twelve years, a large proportion of human life, were
cut from that of each of these _Détenus_, as they were called, so far as
regarded settled plan, or active exertion. Upon many, the interruption
fell with fatal influence, blighting all their hopes and prospects;
others learned to live only for the passing day, and were thus deterred
from habitual study or useful industry. The most tender bonds of
affection were broken asunder by this despotic sentence of imprisonment;
the most fatal inroads were made on family feelings and affections by
this long separation between children, and husbands, and wives--all the
nearest and dearest domestic relations. In short, if it was Buonaparte's
desire to inflict the highest degree of pain on a certain number of
persons, only because they were born in Britain, he certainly attained
his end. If he hoped to gain any thing farther, he was completely
baffled; and when he hypocritically imputes the sufferings of the
_détenus_ to the obstinacy of the English Ministry,[37] his reasoning is
the same with that of a captain of Italian banditti, who murders his
prisoner, and throws the blame of the crime on the friends of the
deceased, who failed to send the ransom at which he had rated his life.
Neither is his vindication more reasonable, when he pretends to say that
the measure was taken in order to prevent England, on future occasions,
from seizing, according to ancient usage, on the shipping in her ports.
This outrage must therefore be recorded as one of those acts of wanton
wilfulness in which Buonaparte indulged his passion at the expense of
his honour, and, if rightly understood, of his real interest.
The detention of civilians, unoffending and defenceless, was a breach of
those courtesies which ought to be sacred, as mitigating the horrors of
war. The occupation of Hanover was made in violation of the Germanic
Constitution. This patrimony of our kings had in former wars been
admitted to the benefit of neutrality; a reasonable distinction being
taken betwixt the Elector of Hanover, as one of the grand feudatories of
the empire, and the same person in his character of King of Great
Britain; in which latter capacity only he was at war with France. But
Buonaparte was not disposed to recognise these metaphysical
distinctions; nor were any of the powers of Germany in a condition to
incur his displeasure, by asserting the constitution and immunities of
the empire. Austria had paid too deep a price for her former attempts to
withstand the power of France, to permit her to extend her opposition
beyond a feeble remonstrance; and Prussia had too long pursued a
temporizing and truckling line of politics, to allow her to break short
with Napoleon by endeavouring to merit the title her monarch once
claimed,--of Protector of the North of Germany.
[Sidenote: HANOVER SEIZED.]
Every thing in Germany being thus favourable to the views of France,
Mortier, who had already assembled an army in Holland, and on the
frontiers of Germany, moved forward on Hanover. A considerable force was
collected for resistance under his Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge
and General Walmoden. It soon appeared, however, that, left to their own
resources, and absolutely unsupported either by England or the forces of
the empire, the electorate was incapable of resistance; and that any
attempt at an ineffectual defence would only serve to aggravate the
distresses of the country, by subjecting the inhabitants to the
extremities of war. In compassion, therefore, to the Hanoverians, the
Duke of Cambridge was induced to leave the hereditary dominions of his
father's house; and General Walmoden had the mortification to find
himself obliged to enter into a convention, by which the capital of the
electorate, and all its strongholds, were to be delivered up to the
French, and the Hanoverian army were to retire behind the Elbe, on
condition not to serve against France and her allies till previously
exchanged.[38]
The British government having refused to ratify this convention of
Suhlingen, as it was termed, the Hanoverian army were summoned to
surrender as prisoners of war;--hard terms, which, upon the determined
resistance of Walmoden, were only thus far softened, that these tried
and faithful troops were to be disbanded, and deliver up their arms,
artillery, horses, and military stores. In a letter to the first consul,
Mortier declares that he granted these mitigated terms from respect to
the misfortunes of a brave enemy; and mentions, in a tone of creditable
feeling, the distress of General Walmoden, and the despair of the fine
regiment of Hanoverian guards, when dismounting from their horses to
surrender them up to the French.
At the same time that they occupied Hanover, the French failed not to
make a further use of their invasion of Germany, by laying forced loans
on the Hanseatic towns, and by other encroachments.
The Prince Royal of Denmark was the only sovereign who showed an
honourable sense of these outrages, by assembling in Holstein an army of
thirty thousand men; but being unsupported by any other power, he was
soon glad to lay aside the attitude which he had assumed. Austria
accepted, as current payment, the declaration of France, that by her
occupation of Hanover she did not intend any act of conquest, or
annexation of territory, but merely proposed to retain the electorate as
a pledge for the isle of Malta, which the English, contrary, as was
alleged, to the faith of treaties, refused to surrender. Prussia,
naturally dissatisfied at seeing the aggressions of France extend to the
neighbourhood of her own territories, was nevertheless obliged to rest
contented with the same excuse.
The French ruler did not confine himself to the occupation of Hanover.
Tarentum, and other seaports of the King of Naples's dominions, were
seized upon, under the same pretext of their being a pledge for the
restoration of Malta. In fact, by thus quartering his troops upon
neutral territories, by whom he took care that they should be paid and
clothed, Napoleon made the war support itself, and spared France the
burden of maintaining a great proportion of his immense army; while
large exactions, not only on the commercial towns, but on Spain,
Portugal, and Naples, and other neutral countries, in the name of loans,
filled his treasury, and enabled him to carry on the expensive plans
which he meditated.
Any one of the separate manœuvres which we have mentioned, would,
before this eventful war, have been considered as a sufficient object
for a long campaign. But the whole united was regarded by Buonaparte
only as side-blows, affecting Britain indirectly through the occupation
of her monarch's family dominions, the embarrassment offered to her
commerce, and the destruction of such independence as had been left to
the continental powers. His great and decisive game remained to be
played--that scheme of invasion to which he had so strongly pledged
himself in his angry dialogue with Lord Whitworth. Here, perhaps, if
ever in his life, Buonaparte, from considerations of prudence, suffered
the period to elapse which would have afforded the best chance for
execution of his venturous project.
It must be in the memory of most who recollect the period, that the
kingdom of Great Britain was seldom less provided against invasion than
at the commencement of this second war; and that an embarkation from the
ports of Holland, if undertaken instantly after the war had broken out,
might have escaped our blockading squadrons, and have at least shown
what a French army could have done on British ground, at a moment when
the alarm was general, and the country in an unprepared state. But it is
probable that Buonaparte himself was as much unprovided as England for
the sudden breach of the treaty of Amiens--an event brought about more
by the influence of passion than of policy; so that its consequences
were as unexpected in his calculations as in those of Great Britain.
Besides, he had not diminished to himself the dangers of the
undertaking, by which he must have staked his military renown, his
power, which he held chiefly as the consequence of his reputation,
perhaps his life, upon a desperate game, which, though he had already
twice contemplated it, he had not yet found hardihood enough seriously
to enter upon.
He now, however, at length bent himself, with the whole strength of his
mind, and the whole force of his empire, to prepare for this final and
decisive undertaking. The gun-boats in the bay of Gibraltar, where calms
are frequent, had sometimes in the course of the former war been able to
do considerable damage to the English vessels of war, when they could
not use their sails. Such small craft, therefore, were supposed the
proper force for covering the intended descent. They were built in
different harbours, and brought together by crawling along the French
shore, and keeping under the protection of the batteries, which were now
established on every cape, almost as if the sea-coast of the Channel on
the French side had been the lines of a besieged city, no one point of
which could with prudence be left undefended by cannon. Boulogne was
pitched upon as the centre port, from which the expedition was to sail.
By incredible exertions, Buonaparte had rendered its harbour and roads
capable of containing two thousand vessels of various descriptions. The
smaller seaports of Vimereux, Ambleteuse, and Etaples, Dieppe, Havre,
St. Valeri, Caen, Gravelines, and Dunkirk, were likewise filled with
shipping. Flushing and Ostend were occupied by a separate flotilla.
Brest, Toulon, and Rochefort, were each the station of as strong a naval
squadron as France had still the means to send to sea.
[Sidenote: ARMY OF ENGLAND.]
A land army was assembled of the most formidable description, whether we
regard the high military character of the troops, the extent and
perfection of their appointments, or their numerical strength. The
coast, from the mouth of the Seine to the Texel, was covered with
forces; and Soult, Ney, Davoust, and Victor, names that were then the
pride and the dread of war, were appointed to command the army of
England, (for that menacing title was once more assumed,) and execute
those manœuvres, planned and superintended by Buonaparte, the issue
of which was to be the blotting out of Britain from the rank of
independent nations.
Far from being alarmed at this formidable demonstration of force,
England prepared for her resistance with an energy becoming her ancient
rank in Europe, and far surpassing in its efforts any extent of military
preparation before heard of in her history. To nearly one hundred
thousand troops of the line, were added eighty thousand and upwards of
militia, which scarce yielded to the regulars in point of discipline.
The volunteer force, by which every citizen was permitted and invited to
add his efforts to the defence of the country, was far more numerous
than during the last war, was better officered also, and rendered every
way more effective. It was computed to amount to three hundred and fifty
thousand men, who, if we regard the shortness of the time and the nature
of the service, had attained considerable practice in the use and
management of their arms. Other classes of men were embodied, and
destined to act as pioneers, drivers of waggons, and in the like
services. On a sudden, the land seemed converted to an immense camp, the
whole nation into soldiers, and the good old King himself into a
general-in-chief. All peaceful considerations appeared for a time to be
thrown aside; and the voice, calling the nation to defend their dearest
rights, sounded not only in Parliament, and in meetings convoked to
second the measures of defence, but was heard in the places of public
amusement, and mingled even with the voice of devotion--not unbecomingly
surely, since to defend our country is to defend our religion.
Beacons were erected in conspicuous points, corresponding with each
other, all around and all through the island; and morning and evening,
one might have said, every eye was turned towards them to watch for the
fatal and momentous signal. Partial alarms were given in different
places from the mistakes to which such arrangements must necessarily be
liable; and the ready spirit which animated every species of troops
where such signals called to arms, was of the most satisfactory
description, and afforded the most perfect assurance, that the heart of
every man was in the cause of his country.
Amidst her preparations by land, England did not neglect or relax her
precautions on the element she calls her own. She covered the ocean with
five hundred and seventy ships of war of various descriptions.
Divisions of her fleet blocked up every French port in the Channel; and
the army destined to invade our shores, might see the British flag
flying in every direction on the horizon, waiting for their issuing from
the harbour, as birds of prey may be seen floating in the air above the
animal which they design to pounce upon. Sometimes the British frigates
and sloops of war stood in, and cannonaded or threw shells into Havre,
Dieppe, Granville, and Boulogne itself. Sometimes the seamen and marines
landed, cut out vessels, destroyed signal-posts, and dismantled
batteries. Such events were trifling, and it was to be regretted that
they cost the lives of gallant men; but although they produced no direct
results of consequence, yet they had their use in encouraging the
spirits of our sailors, and damping the confidence of the enemy, who
must at length have looked forward with more doubt than hope to the
invasion of the English coast, when the utmost vigilance could not
prevent their experiencing insults upon their own.
During this period of menaced attack and arranged defence, Buonaparte
visited Boulogne, and seemed active in preparing his soldiers for the
grand effort. He reviewed them in an unusual manner, teaching them to
execute several manœuvres by night; and experiments were also made
upon the best mode of arranging the soldiers in the flat-bottomed boats,
and of embarking and disembarking them with celerity. Omens were
resorted to for keeping up the enthusiasm which the presence of the
first consul naturally inspired. A Roman battle-axe was said to be found
when they removed the earth to pitch Buonaparte's tent or barrack; and
medals of William the Conqueror were produced, as having been dug up
upon the same honoured spot. These were pleasant bodings, yet perhaps
did not altogether, in the minds of the soldiers, counterbalance the
sense of insecurity impressed on them by the prospect of being packed
together in these miserable chaloupes, and exposed to the fire of an
enemy so superior at sea, that during the chief consul's review of the
fortifications, their frigates stood in shore with composure, and fired
at him and his suite as at a mark. The men who had braved the perils of
the Alps and of the Egyptian deserts, might yet be allowed to feel alarm
at a species of danger which seemed so inevitable, and which they had no
adequate means of repelling by force of arms.
[Sidenote: BOULOGNE FLOTILLA.]
A circumstance which seemed to render the expedition in a great measure
hopeless, was the ease with which the English could maintain a constant
watch upon their operations within the port of Boulogne. The least
appearance of stir or preparation, to embark troops, or get ready for
sea, was promptly sent by signal to the English coast, and the numerous
British cruisers were instantly on the alert to attend their motions.
Nelson had, in fact, during the last war, declared the sailing of a
hostile armament from Boulogne to be a most forlorn undertaking, on
account of cross tides and other disadvantages, together with the
certainty of the flotilla being lost if there were the least wind
west-north-west. "As for rowing," he adds, "that is impossible.--It is
perfectly right to be prepared for a mad government," continued this
most incontestible judge of maritime possibilities; "but with the active
force which has been given me, I may pronounce it almost impracticable."
Buonaparte himself continued to the last to affirm that he was serious
in his attempts to invade Great Britain, and that the scheme was very
practicable. He did not, however, latterly, talk of forcing his way by
means of armed small craft and gun-boats, while the naval forces on each
side were in their present degree of comparative strength, the allowed
risk of miscarriage being as ten to one to that of success;--this
bravade, which he had uttered to Lord Whitworth, involved too much
uncertainty to be really acted upon. At times, long after, he talked
slightingly to his attendants of the causes which prevented his
accomplishing his project of invasion;[39] but when speaking seriously
and in detail, he shows plainly that his sole hope of effecting the
invasion was by assembling such a fleet as should give him the temporary
command of the Channel. This fleet was to consist of fifty vessels,
which, despatched from the various ports of France and Spain, were to
rendezvous at Martinico, and, returning from thence to the British
Channel, protect the flotilla, upon which were to embark one hundred and
fifty thousand men.[40] Napoleon was disappointed in his combinations
respecting the shipping; for as it happened, Admiral Cornwallis lay
before Brest; Pellew observed the harbours of Spain; Nelson watched
Toulon and Genoa; and it would have been necessary for the French and
Spanish navy to fight their way through these impediments, in order to
form a union at Martinico.
It is wonderful to observe how incapable the best understandings become
of forming a rational judgment, where their vanity and self-interest are
concerned, in slurring over the total failure of a favourite scheme.
While talking of the miscarriage of this plan of invasion, Napoleon
gravely exclaimed to Las Cases, "And yet the obstacles which made me
fail were not of human origin--they were the work of the elements. In
the south, the sea undid my plans; in the north, it was the
conflagration of Moscow, the snows and ice that destroyed me. Thus,
water, air, fire, all nature, in short, have been the enemies of a
universal regeneration, commanded by Nature herself. The problems of
Providence are inscrutable."[41]
Independent of the presumptuousness of expressions, by which an
individual being, of the first-rate talents doubtless, but yet born of a
woman, seems to raise himself above the rest of his species, and deem
himself unconquerable save by elementary resistance, the inaccuracy of
the reasoning is worth remarking. Was it the sea which prevented his
crossing to England, or was it the English ships and sailors? He might
as well have affirmed that the hill of Mount St. John, and the wood of
Soignies, and not the army of Wellington, were the obstacles which
prevented him from marching to Brussels.
Before quitting the subject, we may notice, that Buonaparte seems not to
have entertained the least doubts of success, could he have succeeded in
disembarking his army. A single general action was to decide the fate of
England. Five days were to bring Napoleon to London, where he was to
perform the part of William the Third; but with more generosity and
disinterestedness. He was to call a meeting of the inhabitants, restore
them what he calls their rights, and destroy the oligarchical faction. A
few months would not, according to his account, have elapsed, ere the
two nations, late such determined enemies, would have been identified by
their principles, their maxims, their interests. The full explanation of
this gibberish, (for it can be termed no better, even proceeding from
the lips of Napoleon,) is to be found elsewhere, when he spoke a
language more genuine than that of the _Moniteur_ and the bulletins.
"England," he said, "must have ended, by becoming an appendage to the
France of _my_ system. Nature has made it one of our islands, as well as
Oleron and Corsica."[42]
It is impossible not to pursue the train of reflections which Buonaparte
continued to pour forth to the companion of his exile, on the rock of
Saint Helena. When England was conquered, and identified with France in
maxims and principles, according to one form of expression, or rendered
an appendage and dependency, according to another phrase, the reader may
suppose that Buonaparte would have considered his mission as
accomplished. Alas! it was not much more than commenced. "I would have
departed from thence [from subjugated Britain] to carry the work of
European regeneration [that is, the extension of his own arbitrary
authority] from south to north, under the Republican colours, for I was
then chief consul, in the same manner which I was more lately on the
point of achieving it under the monarchical forms."[43] When we find
such ideas retaining hold of Napoleon's imagination, and arising to his
tongue after his irretrievable fall, it is impossible to avoid
exclaiming, Did ambition ever conceive so wild a dream, and had so wild
a vision ever a termination so disastrous and humiliating!
[Sidenote: DEFENSIVE MEASURES OF ENGLAND.]
It may be expected that something should be here said, upon the chances
which Britain would have had of defending herself successfully against
the army of invaders. We are willing to acknowledge that the risk must
have been dreadful; and that Buonaparte, with his genius and his army,
must have inflicted severe calamities upon a country which had so long
enjoyed the blessings of peace. But the people were unanimous in their
purpose of defence, and their forces composed of materials to which
Buonaparte did more justice when he came to be better acquainted with
them. Of the three British nations, the English have since shown
themselves possessed of the same steady valour which won the fields of
Cressy and Agincourt, Blenheim and Minden--the Irish have not lost the
fiery enthusiasm which has distinguished them in all the countries of
Europe--nor have the Scots degenerated from the stubborn courage with
which their ancestors, for two thousand years, maintained their
independence against a superior enemy. Even if London had been lost, we
would not, under so great a calamity, have despaired of the freedom of
the country; for the war would, in all probability, have assumed that
popular and national character which, sooner or later, wears out an
invading army. Neither does the confidence with which Buonaparte affirms
the conviction of his winning the first battle, appear so certainly
well-founded. This, at least, we know, that the resolution of the
country was fully bent up to the hazard; and those who remember the
period will bear us witness, that the desire that the French would make
the attempt, was a general feeling through all classes, because they had
every reason to hope that the issue might be such as for ever to silence
the threat of invasion.[44]
FOOTNOTES:
[36] See _ante_, p. 13.
[37] "Your ministers made a great outcry about the English travellers
that I detained in France; although they themselves had set the example,
by seizing upon all the French vessels and persons on board of them,
upon whom they could lay their hands, before the declaration of war, and
before I had detained the English in France. I said then, if you detain
my travellers at sea, where you can do what you like, I will detain
yours at land, where I am equally powerful. But after this I offered to
release all the English I had seized in France before the declaration of
war, provided you would in like manner release the French and their
property which you had seized on board of the ships. Your ministers
would not."--NAPOLEON, _Voice_, &c., vol. i., p. 326.
[38] Annual Register, vol. xlv., p. 283.
[39] "On what trifles does the fate of empires depend! How petty and
insignificant are our revolutions in the grand organization of the
earth! If, instead of entering upon the Egyptian expedition, I had
invaded Ireland; if some slight derangement of my plans had not thrown
obstacles in the way of my Boulogne enterprise, what would England have
been to-day? What would have been the situation of the Continent, and
the whole political world?"--NAPOLEON, _Las Cases_, tom. iii., p. 330.
[40] See Montholon, tom. ii., p. 224. "The invasion of England," adds
Napoleon, "was always regarded as practicable; and, if once the descent
had been effected, London must infallibly have been taken. The French
being in possession of that capital, a very powerful party would have
arisen against the oligarchy. Did Hannibal look behind him when he
passed the Alps? or Cæsar when he landed in Epirus, or Africa? London is
situated only a few marches from Calais; and the English army, scattered
for the purpose of defending the coasts, could not have joined in time
to have covered that capital after once the descent had been actually
made."
[41] Las Cases, tom. ii., p. 263.
[42] Las Cases, tom. iii., p. 330.
[43] Las Cases, tom. ii., p. 263.
[44] "I commanded a brigade of the army of the coasts, united at this
period against England, and I remember that, when called upon to give my
opinion upon this expedition, I replied, that 'a maritime expedition,
unless it had the superiority at sea, appeared to me to be a
contradiction.' Nevertheless, let any one imagine a French army of
200,000 men, landing upon the English territory, and seizing upon the
immense city of London--would he deny that, even if the liberty of the
country had not been lost, England would have suffered an immense and
perhaps irreparable injury? It cannot be denied that the plan was well
conceived; that the combined fleets of France and Spain were sufficient
to sweep the Channel, and to command there during the time necessary to
seize upon London, and even to have conveyed the whole army back to
France."--LOUIS BUONAPARTE, p. 40.