THE STRUGGLE AGAINST THE CONTINENTAL SYSTEM.
Relieved as they were by recent events from all apprehension about the
conduct of the Falmouth Packets, my Lords the Postmaster General yet
found themselves involved in anxieties and difficulties, which were
daily growing more acute. It was the growth of the Continental System,
the blockade of all intercourse with the ports of Europe which give rise
to these difficulties; and to follow plainly the efforts made to cope
with this new situation of affairs, it will be necessary to revert once
more to the outbreak of hostilities in 1803.
The inhuman decree issued by Napoleon at the commencement of the war,
ordering the seizure and detention of all English subjects between the
ages of 18 and 60 who, for whatever reason, were present on territory
subject to French control at the moment when war was declared, has no
defenders now. That barbarous seizure of peaceful travellers, both men
and women, of merchants following their lawful callings, and of
Government servants, who had not yet been ordered to quit their posts,
stands universally condemned as the act of a savage rather than of a
civilized enemy. “It was an act,” says M. de Bourrienne, “which no
consideration can justify”; and in face of this emphatic condemnation of
Napoleon’s private Secretary, it might not have been necessary to refer
to the matter had not the decree struck the Packet Service with peculiar
force.
The war broke out suddenly, and almost without warning. At Helvoetsluis
the business of the Packet Station was in full progress. Four Packets
lay in the roadstead; the commanders were on shore, the agent was
transacting business in his office. No hint or rumour of danger to
themselves had reached them. They knew that the negotiations between
their own Government and that of France had reached a critical stage;
but they believed that timely notice would be given of any rupture, and
they continued their peaceful avocations in reliance on the good faith
which regulates the intercourse of nations.
So strong was the confidence in this good faith that not one of the
Packets was armed. Their guns were lying in store at home, as was the
practice in time of peace; for to make show of readiness of war would
not only have been unnecessary but insulting, and might well have
precipitated a catastrophe. Thus, when a small force of French soldiers
marched suddenly into Helvoetsluis, no apprehension was felt at first;
and no other feeling than incredulity was excited by the intimation of
the officer in command that the English must consider themselves
prisoners, and their ships prizes of war.
Remonstrance was utterly useless. The agent, the commanders, the seamen,
even the British envoy, Mr. Leston, whose character as a diplomatist
should have rendered his person sacred, all were seized, and thrown into
the common prison of the Brill. The unfortunate men did not yet doubt
that the French commander had exceeded his authority, and would be
promptly disavowed by his Government; and as more and more prisoners
were continually added to their number, they kept up their spirits by
the confident anticipation of a speedy release.
Somewhat earlier on this memorable day, two messengers, Mr. East and Mr.
Wagstaff, had left the Hague charged with despatches of great
importance. They found themselves in some danger of arrest while they
were still within the city; but having gained the open country, they did
not doubt that in some one of the Packets which were lying at
Helvoetsluis they would be able to get a passage home. They had not
travelled far when the news of what had happened at Helvoetsluis was
given them by some country people. Mr. East did not believe it; and,
being directly connected with the Diplomatic Service, he felt confident
of his personal safety even if the intelligence were correct.
Mr. Wagstaff was in a different position; and was inclined to attach
more credence to the story. It was decided that the two travellers
should separate; Mr. Wagstaff making for Scheveningen, in charge of the
despatches, while Mr. East, who was acquainted with their tenor,
continued his journey to Helvoetsluis, where he was promptly arrested,
despite his protestations, and sent to join his countrymen in the Brill
prison.
Mr. Wagstaff, travelling on foot through the night, managed, after
several narrow escapes, to reach the seashore, along which he proceeded
to Scheveningen, sheltering himself among the sandhills which line that
coast.
Scheveningen, though within two miles of the Hague, where French
soldiers already swarmed, proved to be unguarded. The town was then, as
it is still in these days, no more than a small fishing village,
possessing neither pier nor harbour, but only an open shore, on which
the fishing luggers beach themselves on returning from a voyage. Perhaps
the French thought the place too insignificant to need a guard; but,
however that may be, Mr. Wagstaff found a fisherman willing to take him
across the channel, and landed safely in England on May 26th, 1803.
It may be that the kidnapping of the unlucky prisoners at Helvoetsluis,
and many another town in Holland and France, was a symptom rather than a
cause of the peculiar exasperation with which the coming war was fought,
but it certainly added vastly to the hatred with which Napoleon was
regarded in this country; and when it was found that the release even of
the diplomatists could be obtained only with the greatest difficulty,
while all the remaining prisoners were reserved for a confinement of
indefinite length, the general indignation knew no bounds.
A few of the Packets’ men, headed by Captain Flynn, managed to burst out
of the Brill prison on the last evening of their sojourn there. They
succeeded in reaching the beach, seized an open boat, and after many
hours of great danger, were picked up by an English ship. The rest of
the prisoners were taken to Verdun, where they appear to have been not
ill-treated. Mr. Sevright, the Post-Office agent at Helvoetsluis,
retained during the whole period of his captivity, which lasted for nine
years, the authority with which he had been invested, keeping up some
sort of discipline, and constituting himself the protector of the
sailors. He received and distributed the allowance of six sous a day
which the English Government granted to each captive sailor; and, being
gifted with strong sense and discretion, was able to intervene with good
effect whenever his men came into conflict, as restless seamen will,
with the Commissary or his subordinates; to secure justice for them, and
in many ways to mitigate the hardships of their unfortunate position.
Before leaving these men in their dreary captivity, it may not be out of
place to refer to the extraordinary courage and endurance shown by some
of the prisoners who attempted to escape.
John Carne, a native of Penryn, had been captured on one of the Falmouth
Packets. He lay in prison for fifteen months; until one night he found
an opportunity of climbing the prison wall. The wall was forty feet
high; but Carne took the chance and leapt down. He fell upon his head
and shoulders, broke his collar bone, and bruised himself very severely;
but fortunately he was still able to walk, and, injured as he was, got
clear away from pursuit. Travelling always by night, through bye roads
and over hedges, half-crippled with his broken bone which remained
unset, he lay by day concealed under bridges, or among reeds in river
beds; and so, toiling on doggedly, he reached the coast at last, and in
some way managed to cross to his own country.
Bourrienne in his memoirs tells on good authority a still more
extraordinary story. Two English sailors in the year 1804 made good
their escape from Verdun, and arrived at Boulogne without having been
discovered, though all the roads were watched with great care. When
these men reached the sea-coast, whence England was in sight, they were
still as far from liberty as at Verdun. Napoleon was at Boulogne,
supervising the collection of the flotilla which was to convey his
armies into England. Every craft for miles along the coast was
registered and watched. The two seamen had no money, and lay in hiding,
desperate and almost hopeless.
At last they determined to construct a boat, and began gathering such
scraps of wood as they could find. They had no tools except their
knives, but with these the ingenious fellows fashioned a boat at last,
though it was no more than three or four feet wide, and a trifle more in
length. They covered it with a piece of sailcloth. It was so light that
a man could easily carry it on his shoulders; and in this frail
cock-boat they determined to cross the channel.
An English frigate one day lay off the coast, reconnoitring, and the two
sailors made a bold effort to reach her. They pushed off in their skiff,
but not unobserved; for they had made only a few hundred yards when they
were pursued and brought back by the Custom-house officers. They then
ran an excellent chance of being shot as spies, but their story reached
Napoleon’s ears. He sent for them, and questioned them. Their boat was
brought with them.
“Is it really true,” he asked, “that you thought of crossing the sea in
this thing?”
“Sire!” they answered, “if you doubt it, give us leave to go, and you
shall see us depart.”
Napoleon could not but admire their audacity, and, acting on a generous
impulse, gave the men their liberty, and caused them to be placed on
board an English ship. The incident was never forgotten by him; and even
in his last days at St. Helena he referred to it with admiration.
One more incident of the same nature is worth recording. A number of
sailors of the Packet Service were in confinement at Amboise on the
Loire. The gaol was densely crowded, the food was bad and insufficient;
fever broke out, and the havoc among the unhappy sailors was immense.
To relieve the congestion in the prison some of the men were allowed a
certain amount of liberty, and permitted to earn a few sous by ferrying
persons across the river. One day they escaped, and after long
wanderings reached the town of Nantes, where they were at once arrested,
and brought before the prefect. They declared themselves to be
Americans, but the prefect was incredulous and questioned them in a very
searching manner. The men however had some knowledge of New York, and
answered his inquiries well enough. The prefect was thrown back by the
accuracy of their replies, but still not satisfied. At last a final test
occurred to him.
“You say you were in New York in the year 17—,” he observed, and the men
assented.
“Do you remember anything of particular interest which occurred in that
year?”
“Certainly,” the spokesman of the party answered readily. “A large
vessel lying at the pierhead foundered suddenly and unaccountably.”
“Pass them on,” said the prefect, “their story is true, I was there
myself, and saw the vessel founder.”
When it was no longer possible to forward mails to Calais or to
Helvoetsluis, the administrators of the Post-Office turned their
attention to the Hamburg route, as in former years. But Napoleon was
already pressing his great policy of excluding English trade from the
Continent, and one of his first measures was to station a considerable
force at Cuxhaven for the express purpose of stopping all commerce with
this country. The independence of Hamburg was not yet violated, and the
Senate of the ancient Hanse town was quite ready to receive in secret
any mails which could be smuggled into the city. To manage this was not
impossible, though very difficult, and throughout the year 1804 a
considerable number of letters appear to have filtered through.
For their greater convenience in plying this dangerous system, the North
Sea Packets frequently made Heligoland their station; but as mails alone
could be disembarked upon that island, while all passengers must find a
safer route, the normal passage was to Gothenburg.
The voyage to Gothenburg was long and stormy, and it became advisable to
select a point nearer Hamburg. Husum in Holstein was admirably situated
for the purpose; and throughout 1805 and the early months of 1806 the
mails were sent thither. There does not appear to have been any
insuperable difficulty in forwarding them from Husum to Hamburg. There
was still a British agent in the latter city, and the Danish Government
which controlled the former was as yet neutral, if not friendly to
England.
It was by no means in accordance with Napoleon’s purposes, however, that
the Hamburg gates should remain ajar to English commerce and
correspondence. Closely occupied as he was throughout the year 1805, he
found time to advance his great design for striking at England through
her commercial supremacy. “Go to Hamburg,” he said to Bourrienne in
March, “it is there I will give a mortal blow at England.”
And so the power of France grew steadily in Hamburg, while the ancient
Syndic of the city saw its independence gradually sapped. Already
violent outrages were committed by the French agents upon messengers
carrying English letters. A courier on his way from Vienna to England
was seized in a forest, robbed of his despatches, and left bound to a
tree, where he would certainly have perished, had he not been released
by a woman who was accidentally passing through the forest. Such were
the risks confronted by the English messengers; but despite all such
dangers the Postal Service was maintained, irregularly indeed, and with
delays and interruptions which caused wide-spreading losses. The wonder
is not that the Service was imperfect, but that it was maintained at
all.
The difficulties grew as the months went by. The decrees of March, 1806,
which Prussia was forced to issue, excluding British ships from all the
ports of Prussia and Hanover, added little to the difficulties of the
Post-Office, for neither Denmark nor Hamburg was concerned in it. But a
darker cloud was rising fast. The French began to menace actively the
independence of Hamburg. In October it was notified by the Hamburg
Post-Office that the situation of affairs no longer admitted of the
receipt of mails for Prussia, Russia, or Germany, and for many days
after the receipt of this gloomy notification no news whatever reached
London from the Elbe.
Late in November a few bags of letters filtered through, giving a more
hopeful account of the situation, but even while these letters were
being read, the French had entered Hamburg, and the revenues of the
Post-Office, the ancient property of the House of Tour and Taxis, had
been appropriated by the agent of Murat.
Quickly on the heels of the messengers who carried this intelligence
followed others bringing the notorious Berlin decrees, of which the
paragraph affecting the Post-Office was short and simple. “All trade and
correspondence with the British Islands are prohibited. In consequence,
all letters and packets addressed to England, or to an Englishman, or
written in English, shall not be transmitted by the Post-Office, but
shall be seized....” Napoleon had struck his “mortal blow,” and the
clang of the Custom-House doors closing against British goods along the
whole coast of Europe, north, west, and south simultaneously, save only
in Portugal and Denmark, sounded in his eager ears the knell of
England’s power.
Thus was created the most serious situation which had ever confronted
the General Post-Office, the most serious, one might say, if it is ever
safe to forecast the complications of international affairs, with which
it can possibly have to deal. The public looked to the Postmaster
General to carry their correspondence, commercial and private; the
Government called on them for the safe delivery of despatches. My Lords
took down the map of Europe and found that from the Elbe to Dalmatia
their Packets could land in Portugal alone, a country whence mails must
be forwarded not only through a hostile territory, but across lofty
mountain passes, and through provinces so wild and unsettled that it
appeared hopeless to think of organizing mail routes from Lisbon for
Germany or Austria.
The chances of smuggling letters into Hamburg was the only one worth
consideration, and the thoughts of the officials in Lombard Street
remained fixed on Northern Europe.
When the French entered Hamburg, Mr. Thornton, the British Consul,
retired to Husum. He saw no prospect whatever of forwarding the mails
which arrived from England, and being somewhat uncertain how long his
position in Holstein might be secure, he thought it well to send the
bags back to London. This was in November; and in the following July
those mails were lying still at the General Post-Office, waiting for
some chance of conveyance to their destination. It needs but a small
effort of the imagination to realize what widespread mischief might
result from the detention of a mail for seven months. Such a fact, more
than pages of description, brings home to our minds how hard and heavy
was the burden which our grandfathers bore in the days of the great war.
The scope of the present work, concerned as it is solely with the
difficulties and successes of Postal administration, does not demand any
relation of the various measures and counter-measures taken by one or
the other of the parties in the struggle for supremacy. It is enough to
observe that the great system proved scarcely more successful than any
other attempt to fetter the natural impulses of nations by any
artificial restriction. Licenses to import English goods were granted in
great numbers by Napoleon himself, as a source of revenue. His officers
in many places, seeing that the chief burden of the system fell on the
German merchants not on the English, evaded their instructions. “I
received orders,” says Count Rapp, “to commit all articles of English
merchandise to the flames. This measure would have been most disastrous.
I evaded it ... and Dantzig lost no more than what amounted to 200
francs, and Koenigsberg still less.” A gigantic system of smuggling grew
up, and on this contraband trade Count Rapp also looked benevolently. “I
frankly confess,” he writes, “that I did not watch the coast of the
Baltic with the vigilance that was prescribed to me.” And thus it
happened that what with licenses, a convenient blindness of the
executive, and a bold and daring trade by smuggling, the great barrier
erected against England proved to be rather a trellis than a barricade,
and was penetrable at many different points.
Of course it was more difficult to introduce letters than goods into
Germany. Mail-bags must be consigned to some responsible person. They
betrayed their origin moreover, and were thus a certain source of
trouble in case of discovery at any point of the route by which they
travelled. All letters addressed in English or bearing English
post-marks were opened and read by the French officials before being
destroyed. If they contained any reference to property, that property
was liable to be seized and burnt as being English or of English origin.
These risks were avoided for the present by sending all letters from
England to correspondents in Altona, who enclosed them in fresh covers
and re-posted them to Hamburg or to places beyond.
The following extract is from a letter written to the Secretary of the
General Post-Office by Mr. Nicholas, British Consul at Altona, to whose
judgment and knowledge of the various changes in the situation of
affairs the Department was very frequently indebted.
“I am sorry to tell you,” Mr. Nicholas writes, under date of May 30th,
1807, “that we this moment receive the intelligence of Dantzig being in
possession of the French on the 26th inst.... Such letters for that
place as I may receive from you before this letter reaches you, I shall
keep in my office until I receive your directions, as the French will at
first look after all letters to discover British property.... I have
made many inquiries how English letters sent under cover to merchants of
this town addressed to Austria and Italy have gone. A banker of this
place, Messrs. Israel and Dehn, assures me that they forward at least 50
to 200 a week, which he receives under cover from England, and that he
has as yet never known one miscarry, nor heard of their being opened. I
readily believe this, as to judge from the general conduct of the
persons employed, their only object is to make money.... I am convinced
that the mercantile correspondence is not interrupted in the least, and
that the revenue alone suffers, as from what I saw in Husum, the
practice of the merchants is to write on a very thin paper and put their
letters under one cover. I observed some instances of this nature where
certainly 30 or 40 letters were enclosed, and the postage charged was
not the amount which ought to have been paid for five single letters.”
Mr. Nicholas was firmly persuaded that the patriotism of the Duke of
Berg’s (Murat’s) agents in Hamburg was so far qualified by respect for
the Post-Office revenues which they had seized as to leave them open to
a bargain. He accordingly approached them secretly, and found them quite
disposed to treat. The Duke’s Postmaster pledged himself that the
letters should go safely; that they never had been, and never would be,
opened; while Mr. Nicholas, who strongly urged the conclusion of this
bargain, was persuaded that the greed of the Berg officials was an
excellent pledge of their good faith.
Bourrienne, who, in addition to his other functions, was the Duke of
Berg’s agent in Hamburg, has nothing to say about this negotiation, so
strangely opposite to the policy of Napoleon that one might call it
traitorous if one did not acknowledge that the base motive of pecuniary
interest may have been mingled with a more honourable desire to avoid
the total commercial ruin of the countries which the Continental System
was crushing into bankruptcy.
For the English Government the question of good faith was not the only
one to be considered. It was a strange proposal that a friendly treaty
should be made with the agents of a hostile nation. The whole situation
was extraordinary; but even if natural scruples could be set aside, even
if honour permitted such a negotiation, it was clear that the ancient
friendship of the Hamburg office would be jeopardized by concluding it.
The French occupation would pass away, and the lawful owners of the
Hamburg revenues would resume them in happier times. Nothing must be
done which could be construed into a recognition by the British office
of the violent usurpation of the French. And so the provisional
agreement concluded by Mr. Nicholas was set aside, much to the
disappointment of the Duke of Berg’s officials, who renewed their
proposals more than once, but always with the same result. Probably this
termination of the matter was lamented also by the English merchants, if
indeed they knew of the negotiations; but they had more ground for
complaint a few weeks later.
The device of forwarding letters under cover to Altona had, as Mr.
Nicholas showed, proved successful; but the time was at hand when this
channel was to be blocked. Holstein was already threatened by the
French. Writing on the 29th July, an old correspondent of the British
Post-Office warned the Secretary that in another fortnight Holstein
would be beset. The crisis was more serious than the writer of the
friendly warning knew. The treaty of Tilsit had been signed. The
movement on Holstein was preparatory to a seizure of the Danish fleet,
to be used against this country. The English Government struck hard and
quickly, and within the period named a British fleet was working into
position before Copenhagen.
What followed is well known; but the measures of the English were taken
so secretly that the general public by no means understood what was
going on, and two Packets arriving early in August at Tonningen, which
for some time had been their station, were greatly perplexed on finding
an English gun brig stationed at the mouth of the river Eyder, giving
orders for no British vessels to pass.
Such orders did not in the opinion of the commanders justify them in
carrying their mails back to England. Their vessels might be stopped,
but boats were allowed to come and go as before; and the two commanders
consequently went up the river in their boats, taking the mails with
them.
When they approached the town they were hailed from the Danish
quarantine cutter, with orders that unless the Packets came up to their
usual anchorage, which happened to be exactly under the guns of the
battery, the mails should not be landed. The captains insisted; the
Danish officer grew furious, and actually proposed to flog the Danish
pilots, who had accompanied the captains, for leaving the Packets
outside the bar of the river.
In the end, the dispute was arranged and the mails were landed; but
events were occurring which could not fail to sting the Danes into the
bitterest enmity against us; and most of our countrymen in Denmark were
indeed already applying for their passports. The English brig at the
mouth of the Eyder seems to have been removed after a few days; and the
Packets came up the river as before.
On August 15th, the “Lord Nelson,” Captain Stewart, arrived at Tonningen
with mails from Harwich. The bags were landed without interruption, and
were being taken through the town to the agent’s office, when the wagon
in which they were carried was suddenly surrounded by a throng of Danish
officers and soldiers who, on looking into it and seeing that it
contained mails, compelled the driver to proceed not to the office of
the British Post-Office agent, but to the Danish Post-Office. “Upon
this,” wrote the agent in reporting the circumstances to London,
“Captain Stewart endeavoured to conceal the bag for the agent containing
the despatches and letters for His Majesty’s Ministers on the Continent;
but this bag was also taken from the steward, who had placed it under
his coat, and everything was delivered at the Danish Post-Office.
Captain Stewart immediately repaired to me, informed me of the
circumstance, and also told me that another Packet boat was in sight. I
therefore despatched a message to the captain of the second Packet
ordering him not on any account to land his mails or despatches, and to
keep, if possible, out of range of the batteries.
“I then wrote to the Danish Postmaster requesting he would immediately
deliver to the gentleman bearing my note those bags ticketed “the agent
at Tonningen.” Mr. Schultz who carried this note found sentinels at the
door of the Post-Office, and had some difficulty in presenting my note.
Ultimately he brought me a verbal answer, refusing the delivery of the
bags. The Postmaster told Mr. Schultz he was authorized in what he had
done, but refused to name the source of his authority.
“I then myself repaired to the Postmaster, who named the Commandant of
the port as having authorized the detention of the bags. I immediately
wrote in polite terms to the Commandant, requesting he would issue the
necessary orders for delivering to me that part of them which was
directed to the agent. To this letter I received a verbal message
stating he did not think it necessary to answer my letter, and that he
was much surprised that those gentlemen who had the day before taken out
their passports had not left Tonningen. I believe every person connected
in any way with the British Government had the preceding day taken out
passports to enable them to depart as circumstances should occur. During
these transactions the second Packet boat had arrived, and, the
messenger not having been able to deliver my orders, had landed her
mails. The captain endeavoured in vain to regain possession of them. He
himself with the mails and despatches, was escorted to the Danish
Post-Office. After many difficulties the two captains, some English
people, and myself got permission for a boat to convey us on board the
Packet boats; and while lying alongside the Danish guardship, waiting
for permission to pass her, a gentleman from the shore came on board the
boat to say that if I would return, the bags destined for me should be
put in my possession the following morning. I then proceeded on board
one of the Packets, both of which (from the circumstance of the Battery
at Vollonig having received a considerable addition of soldiers in the
course of the evening) had thought proper to drop down out of reach of
the guns. The following morning I repaired again to Tonningen and
received the bags destined for me, their seals perfectly unbroken. I
disposed of the contents of the bags according to directions received
from Mr. Thornton, and prepared to follow that gentleman, having
understood he had already left Altona.
“It being Post-day, I sent to the Danish Post-Office and received the
mail as usual for England. Captain Kentzinger and Mr. Agent Schultz, who
had disembarked again from the Packets, now waited upon the Commandant
to sign our passports again prior to our final departure, who
immediately expressed much surprise that we were not departed. We stated
that we had returned to execute the business of our different
departments, having received an intimation that we might do so in
perfect security. The Commandant expressed himself a perfect stranger to
any such indulgence or permission having been granted, and said the
measure of detaining the mails proceeded entirely from the hostile
measures of the English in putting Zealand into a state of blockade; and
conceiving this declaration demonstrative of the insecurity of any
despatches that might arrive in future, and Mr. Thornton’s instructions
recommending my departure, I left Tonningen with the Packet destined to
sail on Sunday, the 16th instant, first leaving instructions to the
captain of the Packet who brought the second mail to remain in the river
a few days to warn any other Packet that might arrive of the danger, and
to bring away any remaining English passengers who might not have had
sufficient notice of the necessity of immediately embarking.”
The Danes had shown themselves both honourable and forbearing in
allowing the Packets an opportunity of getting clear away, but to permit
one of them to remain hanging about the mouth of the Eyder, as the agent
had directed, was quite another matter. Accordingly, about 5 A.M. on the
17th August, Captain Deane, who had been left in the “Lady Nepean” upon
this service, descried a brig being towed down the river by several
boats. It was the guardship from Tonningen which was upon them; and as
she had evidently not left her anchorage without hostile intent, Captain
Deane thought it prudent to weigh anchor, and make ready for departure.
The sails were hoisted but it was unfortunately almost dead calm, and
though the Packetsmen got out their boat and towed, the Danish brig made
far quicker progress, and at 6 A.M. had come within musket shot. At that
moment, just in the nick of time, a little breeze sprang up from the
northward, and the “Lady Nepean,” receiving it first, forged ahead once
more.
Seeing what had occurred, the Danish boats dropped back alongside the
guardship, and Captain Deane could see that a number of muskets and
cutlasses were being handed in, while the crews of the boats were
increased to about 50 men. The situation was growing awkward. The breeze
was still light, and the “Lady Nepean” forged only slowly through the
water. The boats were fast coming on, the men cheering loudly. Captain
Deane hailed them, but received no answer, and thereupon, not choosing
to assume that they meant to attack him, ordered one or two muskets to
be fired in the air. Instantly the boats replied with a volley of small
arms, and at the same moment the brig opened fire. By this time,
however, the breeze was rising fast. A few well-directed shots caused
the boats to sheer off in some confusion. The fire from the brig did
little harm. Ere long the Packet was out of range, and she completed her
voyage to England without misadventure.
It is impossible to avoid drawing contrasts between the conduct of the
Danes at Tonningen and that of the French under the very similar
circumstances at Helvoetsluis. In both cases English ships were in port
and English officials engaged on shore, in reliance on their absolute
safety until due warning was given to them that they must leave. The
circumstances were, it is true, not exactly alike; for the French had no
greater cause for exasperation against us than must always exist between
hostile nations, whereas the Danes were smarting under an aggression
which was unprovoked and intolerably wounding to their pride. Whether it
is or is not possible to justify our seizure of the Danish fleet is a
question over which historians will wrangle till the end of time. But to
the Danes it could have seemed nothing but a gross and wanton outrage,
and though the events just described preceded the actual bombardment of
Copenhagen, the British expedition had already made such progress that
in looking at the self-control exhibited, one can only wonder and
admire.