FRANCE AND ENGLAND IN ARMS[27]
[Footnote 27: In addition to the authorities already given,
see Rose's Napoleon and Napoleonic studies; Philippon in the
Revue Historique for March, 1901; Bourgeois, Manuel de
Politique Etrangere; Castlereagh's Letters and Despatches;
Mahan's Sea Power and Life of Nelson; Pellew's Life of Lord
Sidmouth; and the Memoirs of the Earl of St. Vincent.]
A Debatable Question -- The Attack on English Commerce --
Bonaparte Abandons his Colonial System -- The Neighbors of France
-- The Feint against England -- The Army at Boulogne -- England
Aroused -- Enthusiasm in France.
The much debated question as to whether or not Bonaparte was victor in
the diplomatic struggle, desired the rupture as it occurred and wanted
war, is, in the light of the fullest information, apparently
unanswerable. If he were a profound philosopher and constructive
statesman disposed to abandon the struggle for mastery on the high
seas and confine the expansion of France to the Continent, he was
ready and his wishes were fulfilled; if, on the other hand, he
intended to confront England by sea and her allies by land, he was
unready, for he had no fighting navy and he had not expected war so
soon. There were the beginnings of colonial empire in Australia,
Decaen was on his way to Reunion with a squadron to establish a base
of action against British India, the Cape of Good Hope was French,
there was every prospect of a powerful Mahratta-French alliance in
India itself. There were high hopes in the Ionian Isles, in Greece,
and for Egypt. Malta might be wrested from England, and so forth. Ten
of his battle-ships were far away, the remaining thirty-three were
just available and no more; there were orders out for building
twenty-three new ones, and a visit to Normandy convinced him that all
sixty-six could be manned by splendid crews from western France. He
indulged in much bravado about possibilities. But the hard fact is
that in May, 1803, the French naval power was negligible, while the
French land power was in the highest state of efficiency. Pitt had his
enormous fleets and his possible coalition in hand, Bonaparte his army
and his incomparable military genius.
Hostilities began by the seizure of many French merchantmen which were
constructively in English harbors, though in many cases really at sea.
The reply of the First Consul to this conduct was equally high-handed:
every Englishman between the ages of eighteen and sixty within the
borders of France was seized and thrown into confinement. For twelve
long years these unfortunate persons were held as prisoners of war.
The French embargo on hostile ships antedated England's by three days,
and simultaneously with its publication Clarke was instructed to drive
English ships from the harbors of Tuscany. In the last days of May an
army under Mortier occupied Hanover, and, closing both Bremen and
Hamburg to British commerce, exacted large contributions of money from
them. In June another force under Saint-Cyr entered Naples, which in
strict observance of the treaty of Amiens had been evacuated, and laid
a similar embargo on the ports of Taranto, Brindisi, and Otranto. In
the case of Hanover, France utterly disregarded the fine point in
international law which had so far distinguished between George III as
King of England and the German Elector whose patrimony was Hanover; in
that of Naples she displayed a disregard for treaty obligations not
entirely consistent with Bonaparte's maledictions on those who did
not observe them.
Finally, in July the famous "Continental System" was instituted by the
decree which absolutely forbade the importation of all English wares
into France or the sphere of her influence. In order to cut his enemy
off from another quarter of the globe, to strengthen a maritime power
hostile to England, and to secure new resources, Bonaparte had already
extended the hand of friendship to the United States, having sold to
them in April the immense territory then known by the name of
Louisiana. The event was second in importance to no other in their
history; for it gave them immediate control of the entire
intercontinental river-system and later that of the Pacific coast,
while indirectly it prepared the way for the conflict of 1812, which
finally secured their commercial independence. Thenceforward Bonaparte
concentrated his energies for the control of Europe. His financial
condition was acute, for Barbe-Marbois had failed in his efforts to
negotiate a loan of forty million francs from the Dutch bankers. It
was possibly a conversation between Bonaparte and Ralph Izard of South
Carolina which turned the attention of the First Consul to Louisiana
as a quick asset. The United States easily secured the cash where the
French had failed, in Amsterdam by the intermediation of Stephen
Girard. With sixty million francs in hand as security, Bonaparte
raised as much more on credit, and the purchasing power of this
hundred and twenty million francs was fully equal to that of four
times the sum to-day. With it he refitted his little fleet, and
purchased two hundred and fifty thousand muskets, a hundred thousand
cavalry pistols, thirty thousand sabers, and a hundred batteries of
field artillery, all arms of improved quality and pattern, the arms
used at Austerlitz, and to which, as he told Latour-Maubourg, he owed
that signal victory. The West Indies and Louisiana in one hemisphere,
in the other the Cape of Good Hope, Egypt, and a portion of India,
with St. Helena and Malta as ports of call--of this he had dreamed;
but the failure to secure San Domingo, and England's evident intention
to keep Malta, combined to topple the whole cloud castle into ruins.
The Continent must be his sphere of action.
At once the states bordering on France were made to feel their
position. Holland agreed to furnish five ships of the line, a hundred
gunboats, eleven thousand men, and subsistence for a French army of
eighteen thousand. For this France guaranteed her territorial
integrity with the return of all her colonies, not even excepting
Ceylon. Switzerland was to furnish half of her little army in any
case, and nearly the whole of it if France were attacked. The sale of
Louisiana spread consternation throughout Spain, which had always
hoped to recover it, and with that end in view had included in her
treaty with France a clause retaining the right of redemption for
herself. Deriding her exasperation, Bonaparte despatched an army to
the frontier, and demanded in place of the twenty-five ships and
twenty-eight thousand men agreed upon in the treaty of 1796 a subsidy
of no less than six million francs a month. Godoy, the "Prince of the
Peace," who had been made chief minister of Spain, first thought of
war, but his masterful opponent threatened the weak king, Charles IV,
with a public exposure of the scandalous relation between his queen
and that minister, and before the end of the year the demand was
granted. Portugal purchased neutrality by a contribution of one
million francs a month, and Genoa agreed to furnish six thousand
sailors for the French fleets. In consequence England began to prey on
Spanish commerce.
The second preparation for war was the much discussed equipment of an
expedition to invade England. It is a commonplace of history that the
British empire has ever been fortified in the separation of the
kingdom from the continent of Europe by a narrow but stormy estuary.
There had been repeated invasions from the days of the Anglo-Saxons
themselves down to the expedition of William of Orange; but growing
wealth had furnished ever increasing armaments, and made access to
England's shores so much more difficult with every year that, finally,
successful invasion had come to be regarded by her enemies as
impossible. On the other hand, the English remained skeptical, and
fell into periodic panics on the question. Even now a clever fiction
like the "Battle of Dorking," or a revival of the project for
tunneling below the Channel, can awaken such anxiety as to insure the
passage of any grant for strengthening the navy. This distrust was
well known to the French. For years the project of a descent on
England had been the standard pretext of the Convention and of the
Directory to extort money from office-holders and patriots. This
inheritance was exploited by the First Consul to its full value. In
general his preparation was doubtless a feint, but there were probably
times when the scheme commended itself as an alternative. He told
Whitworth that there was but one chance in a hundred of its success;
he never seriously tried to execute it; and in the undiplomatic but
apparently sincere effusion of October twenty-third, to Otto, the
whole stress of his argument is laid on the chances of continental
conquest.
Nevertheless he made enormous outlays of money. Boulogne was the spot
nearest to England which was available for the gathering and drill of
a mighty force. Thither were summoned to form an Army of England the
flower of the troops, a hundred and fifty thousand veterans and
recruits, commanded by Soult, Ney, Davout, and Victor. For the first
time Bonaparte could work his will in the construction of a
fighting-machine. The result was the best machine so far constructed.
Tactics were improved, the system of organization was reformed,
equipment was simplified, discipline was strengthened, and enthusiasm
was awakened to the highest pitch. Moreover, the soldiers were trained
in the management of great flatboats, from which they were taught to
disembark with precision and skill, both in stormy weather and in the
face of opposition. Some were also instructed in the duties of the
sailor in order that their services might be available if needed
aboard men-of-war. In a letter to Decres, minister of marine, dated
September thirteenth, 1805, the First Consul admitted that his success
in these respects had not been striking: he found that his great
floats were nearly unmanageable in the currents and tides of the
Channel, and that a three days' calm would be necessary for crossing.
It also became clear that the attempt could not succeed without the
cooeperation of a fleet. The chief advantage of the camp at Boulogne,
as Bonaparte then saw it, was that he could there keep from eighty to
a hundred thousand men in a wholesome situation, ready at a moment's
notice to be transferred to Germany.
But the effect in England at the inception of the enterprise was
electrical. Her standing army was already a hundred and thirty
thousand strong, the militia numbered seventy thousand, and the
reserve fifty thousand. In addition there was a body of volunteers
which eventually reached the number of three hundred and eighty
thousand in England and of over eighty thousand in Ireland. A system
of signals was arranged between vessels of observation in the Channel
and stations on the shore, beacons were ready on every hilltop, and
the whole land was turned into a camp. The navy was not less
strengthened: the number of men was raised from eighty to a hundred
and twenty thousand, and a hundred vessels of the line, a hundred or
more frigates, and several hundreds of smaller vessels, such as
cruisers and gunboats, were gathered to protect the coasts. Pitt
undermined the Addington ministry by calling for ever greater means of
defense, and appeared daily for a time at the head of three thousand
volunteers raised on or near his own estates. Even Fox laid aside his
French sympathies for a while. Parliament authorized a loan of twelve
millions sterling, which was promptly taken, and raised the taxes so
as to double the revenue. The "nation of traders," as the First Consul
sneeringly called them, again stood at ease ready to face her
hereditary foe, under a burden of expense which the people a year
before had believed would crush them. These were the "slight
derangements" which, as the exile of St. Helena told Las Cases, had
permanently thwarted the invasion, then represented in his bitterness
as having been a serious purpose. It is true that during the period of
extravagant preparation a medal was struck with Bonaparte's profile on
the reverse, and on the obverse Hercules strangling a Triton, and that
measures were discussed for administering the conquered island and for
stripping it of its art objects. But further evidence that the entire
movement was in the main a pretext for assembling and drilling a great
land force to be held in readiness against Austria and Russia will be
given in another connection, and on the whole it seems to outweigh
that which indicates a definite, uninterrupted intention to invade
England. In view of the stupendous land and sea forces assembled by
Great Britain, it is altogether conceivable that the First Consul
might have formed the notion of an invasion of the inverse sort, of an
English army landing on the eastern shores of the Channel, and an
offensive movement by English troops against the French armies. If so,
he kept it deep in his mind, but for that alternative he was likewise
in readiness by reason of the camp at Boulogne.
Although the Revolution had failed in giving the French their
political freedom, it culminated under Bonaparte in giving them civil
rights. In view of the hatred felt by the dynastic powers for a
movement which shook their thrones, it may easily be argued that to
protect this immense gain political centralization like that of the
Consulate was essential. On whichever side of this question lies the
truth, one thing is certain--that the nation as a whole felt as if
moderate republicanism had triumphed; and much as they suffered in
trade, industry, and agriculture by the renewal of war, they
nevertheless were enthusiastic in upholding their leader and his
measures. His bitterest enemies have admitted, and still admit, the
national character of the support which he had in 1803. The government
was popular, so much so that it even ventured to bestow a pension of
thirty dollars a month on Mlle. Robespierre. Addresses which promised
willing assistance were numerous. The masses, not yet free from the
old sense of security created by the leadership of a powerful man or
of a family trained in the management of public interests, were
comforted by the presence and the work of their chief magistrate. In
the tribunate a higher degree of the same spirit found expression in
the significant phrase "consular majesty," with which an orator
addressed the First Consul. There was no manifestation of discontent
with the censorship of the press, which was regarded as a necessary
war measure. Books could not be published until after the censors had
possessed a copy for seven days and had given their permission; the
newspapers could reprint no news from foreign journals, and were
mercilessly controlled in the contents of their columns. When the
"Moniteur" and its kindred poured contempt on English perfidy and
wrote of Punic faith, when they portrayed Albion as rushing madly on
her fate, the readers liked it and applauded.