ENGLAND AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
1789-1802.
[Sidenote: =The meeting of the States General.=]
In the year 1789, when Pitt was in the zenith of his power, strong in
the confidence of the nation and the king, signs of trouble began to
appear across the British Channel, which attracted the attention of all
intelligent men. The great French Revolution was commencing:--in May,
1789, King Lewis XVI. summoned the States General of France to meet
at Versailles, in order to consult with him on measures for averting
the impending bankruptcy of the realm. It was nearly two centuries
since the last States General had assembled, and nothing but dire
necessity drove the king to call into being the assembly which his
despotic ancestors had so carefully prevented from meeting. But France
was in a desperate condition: the greedy and autolatrous Lewis XIV.
and the vicious spendthrift Lewis XV. had piled up a mountain of debts
which the nation could no longer support. The existing king, though
personally he was mild and unenterprising, had been drawn into the war
of American independence, and wasted on it many millions more. The only
way out of the difficulty was to persuade the nation to submit to new
imposts, and most especially to induce the nobles to surrender their
old feudal privilege of exemption from taxation.
[Sidenote: =France under the Ancien Régime.=]
The king and his ministers were only thinking of the financial trouble;
but by summoning the States General they gave the power of speech to
discontented France, and found themselves confronted by a much larger
problem. The realm had been grossly misgoverned for the last century
by a close ring of royal ministers, who constituted a bureaucracy
of the most narrow-minded sort. Lewis XIV. had crushed out all local
institutions and liberties, in order to impose his royal will on every
man. The lesser kings who followed had allowed the power to slip from
their own hands into those of the close oligarchy of bureaucrats whom
the _Grand Monarque_ had organized. France under the _Ancien Régime_
was suffering all the evils that result from over-centralization and
"red tape." The smallest provincial affairs had to be referred to the
ministers at Paris, who tried to settle everything, but only succeeded
in meddling, and delaying all local improvements. The most hopeless
feature of the time was that the nobility and gentry were excluded
from all political power by the Parisian bureaucrats, though suffered
to retain all their old feudal privileges and exemptions. Thus they
were objects of jealousy to the other classes, yet had no share in
the governance of the realm, or opportunity to temper the despotism
of the royal ministers. Two old mediaeval abuses survived, to make the
situation of the country yet more unbearable: offices of all kinds were
openly bought and sold, while taxation was not raised directly by the
state, but leased out to greedy tax-farmers, who mulcted the public of
far more than they paid into the national treasury.
[Sidenote: =Growth of discontent.--Voltaire and Rousseau.=]
While the government was in this deplorable condition, public opinion
had of late been growing more and more restive. All the educated
classes of France were permeated with deep discontent. Ideals of
constitutional government, borrowed originally from English political
writers, were in the air. The recent alliance with America had
familiarized many Frenchmen with republican institutions and notions
of self-government. The opposition was headed by the chief literary
men of the age. The stinging sarcasms of Voltaire were aimed against
all ancient shams and delusions. Nothing was safe from his criticism,
and most of all did he ridicule the corrupt Gallican Church, with
its hierarchy of luxurious and worldly prelates and its bigoted
and superstitious lower clergy. While Voltaire was decrying old
institutions and teaching men to be sceptical of all ancient beliefs,
his younger contemporary, the sentimental and visionary Rousseau, was
advocating a return to the "state of nature." He taught that man was
originally virtuous and happy, and that all evil was the result of
over-government, the work of priests and kings. He dreamed of a renewal
of the Golden Age, and the abolition of laws and states. All men were
to be brothers, and to live free and equal without lord or master.
Smarting under the narrow and stupid rule of the _Ancien Régime_, many
Frenchmen took these Utopian ideas seriously, and talked of setting up
the reign of reason and humanity. Hence it came that all the claims
and aspirations of the French Revolution were inspired by vague and
visionary ideas of the rights of man, and demanded the destruction of
old institutions, unlike our English agitations for reform, which from
Magna Carta downwards have always claimed a restoration of ancient
liberties, not the setting up of a new constitution.
[Sidenote: =The National Assembly.=]
When the dull but well-intentioned Lewis XVI. had once summoned the
States General of 1789, he soon found that he had given himself a
master. For the deputies of the _Tiers Etat_, or Commons, instead of
proceeding to vote new taxes, began to clamour for the redress of
grievances of all kinds. When the king, like Charles I., threatened
to dissolve them, their spokesman answered, "We are here by the will
of the people of France, and nothing but the force of bayonets shall
disperse us." King Lewis was too weak and slow to send the bayonets. He
drew back, and allowed the States General to organize themselves into a
National Assembly, and to claim to represent the French nation.
[Sidenote: =Storming of the Bastille.=]
The obvious weakness of the king encouraged the friends of revolution
all over France to assert themselves. On July 14, 1789, the mob of
Paris stormed the Bastille--the old state prison of the capital--and
massacred the garrison. The king made no attempt to resent this riot
and murder. Then followed a rapid series of constitutional decrees, by
which the Assembly, backed by the pikes of the Parisian mob, abolished
all the ancient despotic and feudal customs of the realm. It seemed for
a moment as if a solid constitutional monarchy might be established.
But the king was too feeble, and the reformers too rash and wild. The
taint of riot and murder hung about all their doings, and they were
constantly calling in the mob to their aid. Foreseeing a catastrophe,
the greater part of the French royal family and noblesse fled the
realm. Ere long the king became little better than a prisoner in his
own palace.
[Sidenote: =English sympathy with the Revolution.=]
These doings across the Channel keenly interested England. At first
they met with general approval. It looked as if France was about to
become a limited monarchy; and as the personal and dynastic ambition of
the Bourbons had always been the cause of our wars with them, English
public opinion looked with favour on the substitution of the power of
the National Assembly for that of the king. It was thought that France,
under a constitutional government founded on English models, could not
fail to become the friend of England. Pitt expressed in a guarded way
his approbation of the earlier stages of the Revolution. Fox became
its vehement admirer and panegyrist; he exclaimed that the storming
of the Bastille was the greatest and best event in modern history,
conveniently ignoring the cold-blooded massacre of its garrison which
had followed. The greater part of the Whig party followed their
chief, and expressed unqualified praise for the doings of the French.
Some of the more enthusiastic members of the party visited France
and corresponded with the leaders of the Revolution; others formed
political clubs to encourage and support the reformers across the
Channel.
[Sidenote: =The reaction.--Criticisms of Burke.=]
But the mood of generous admiration and universal approval could
not last for long. As the Revolution went on developing, while the
outbursts of mob violence in France grew more frequent, and the
National Assembly plunged into all manner of violence and arbitrary
legislation, there began to be a schism in English public opinion. Fox
and the more vehement Whigs still persisted in finding nothing to blame
across the Channel, explaining the violent deeds of the Parisians as
mere effervescence of the mercurial French temperament. But, curiously
enough, it was a Whig, and one who never tired of singing the praises
of our own Revolution of 1688, who was the first prophet of evil for
the French movement. Edmund Burke, Fox's old colleague and ally, was an
exponent of that view of constitutional liberty which looked on mob-law
as even worse than the despotism of kings. He fixed his eyes on the
murderous riots in Paris and the spectacle of the humiliation of Lewis
XVI., not on the fair promises of a golden age made by the milder
French reformers. The prospect of anarchy shocked him, and he used his
unrivalled eloquence to warn the English nation to have nothing to
do with a people of assassins and atheists. "When a separation once
appears between liberty and law, neither is safe" was his cry. And,
unlikely as it appeared at first, Burke was entirely in the right.
Nothing which he predicted of the French Revolution could exceed the
realities which ere long came to pass.
[Sidenote: =Attempted flight of Lewis XVI.=]
The consciousness of their own uncontrolled power was turning the brain
of the French Assembly, and maddening the Parisian populace. They were
irritated, but not checked, by the weak resistance and futile evasions
of Lewis XVI. At last they persuaded themselves that the king and
the nobility were conspiring to take away their newly won liberties,
while in reality Lewis and his nobles alike were paralyzed with dread,
and only thinking of saving themselves. In the summer of 1791 the
unfortunate king took the fatal step of trying to escape by stealth
from Paris. He stole away in disguise with his wife and children,
and had got half-way to the eastern frontier before his absence was
discovered. A chance caused his stoppage and discovery at Varennes; he
was seized and sent back to Paris, where he was for the future treated
as a prisoner, not as a king.
[Sidenote: =Intervention of Austria and Prussia.=]
From this moment it was the fixed belief in France that Lewis had been
about to fly to Germany, in order to incite the despotic monarchs of
Austria and Prussia against his country. In the Assembly the wilder
party began to come to the front, preaching republicanism, and crying
that France could not be saved by constitutional reforms, but required
blood-letting. Ere long the symptoms of violence and anarchy, which
had frightened Burke in England, exercised a still stronger effect on
the rulers of the continent. Francis of Austria and Frederic William
II. of Prussia, alarmed as to the republican propaganda in France,
and warned by the fate of their fellow-king, began to concentrate
their armies on the Rhine, and to concert measures for putting down
the Revolution. On learning their plans, the French Assembly declared
war on them in April, 1792. But at first their raw levies fared ill
against the Germans; defeat--as always in France--was followed by the
cry of treason, and on the 10th of August the Parisian mob stormed the
Tuileries, slew the king's guards, and called for his deposition.
[Sidenote: =A Republic proclaimed.--The September massacres.=]
The democratic National Convention, which now superseded the Assembly,
proclaimed a Republic, after the populace had massacred many hundreds
of persons who were rightly or wrongly supposed to be the king's
friends (September 2, 1792). The Convention gave its tacit sanction
to these atrocities, in which some of its more violent members were
personally implicated.
[Sidenote: =Attitude of Pitt.=]
The news of the September massacres and the proclamation of the
Republic cleared up for ever the doubts of the English people as to the
character of the French Revolution. Pitt's judicial attitude towards
the movement had at last changed. In 1790 he had doubted whether it
were good or bad; by 1792 he was convinced that it was dangerous,
anarchic, and detestable, but still hoped to avoid coming into actual
conflict with it. He was in his heart a peace-minister, and it was
circumstances, not his own will, which were to make him the fomenter of
leagues and confederacies against France for nine long years of war.
When Austria and Prussia invited him to join them in their attack,
he had at first refused. But he was much disturbed by the bombastic
"Edict of Fraternity," which the Convention published, appealing to
all the nations of Europe. "All governments are our enemies, all
peoples our friends," said this document, and the multitude in every
land were invited to overthrow kings and ministers, and receive the
aid which France would give. Pitt looked upon this as an appeal to
anarchy addressed to the discontented classes in England, and was much
disturbed when he found that it was welcomed by some of the Whigs of
the more popular and democratic section. A small but compact body of
these extreme politicians were doing their best to frighten England
into a frenzy of reaction by their unwise and unpatriotic conduct. Two
clubs called the Corresponding Society and the Constitutional Society
were founded in London for the propagation of revolutionary doctrines.
They were composed of men of no weight or importance, visionary
politicians with a craze for republicanism, men of disappointed
ambitions who longed for a political crisis to bring them into notice,
mob-orators, and such like. These bodies deserved contempt rather than
notice, but in view of the doings over seas, they attracted attention,
and their noisy declamations in favour of the wilder doctrines of the
French Revolution frightened the public. Especially was an outcry
raised by the books and pamphlets of the celebrated free-thinker
and republican writer, Tom Paine, the most blatant apologist of the
atrocities in Paris.
[Sidenote: =Panic in England.--Repressive legislation.=]
The average Englishman was sufficiently disgusted by the language of
these home-grown revolutionaries from the first, but when more and more
blood was shed in France, a measure of alarm was mixed with his dislike
of the noisy clubs. Men began to remember the permanent existence in
London of a large body of the dangerous classes; it was easy to assume
a connection between the French government, the English revolutionary
societies, and the dregs of the London streets. And indeed a few wild
spirits do seem to have talked to French agents of foolish plans for
starting riots, setting fire to the capital, and seizing the Tower
arsenal, in order to arm the mobs who, as they thought, would follow
them. But the thousands of rioters and anarchists had no existence save
in the brains of the French government and the alarmed and indignant
English Tories. Their supposed designs, however, led to an unhappy
panic in English legislation; the _Habeas Corpus_ Act was suspended,
the right of free meeting restricted, even free speech in a measure
fettered, by a wholly unnecessary series of Government measures,
which were in reality directed against a few hundred silly but noisy
fanatics. It was like using a sledge-hammer to crush a wasp.
[Sidenote: =The moderate Whigs join Pitt.=]
Unfortunately, the ultimate effects of this scare were destined to
endure throughout the twenty-two years of the coming war, and even
after its end. The atrocities committed by the French revolutionists,
and the foolish talk of their English admirers, were the cause of
the cessation of liberal legislation in England for a quarter of a
century. Pitt himself, who had hitherto led the party of reform, felt
the revulsion. His long series of wise and enlightened bills ceases
in 1791, and his name becomes, unhappily, connected with stern and
repressive laws of unnecessary severity. But it was not to be wondered
at that he should act so, when we find that the larger half of the
Whigs, the professors of an exaggerated zeal for liberty and popular
government, now joined the Tories. After a continuous existence of a
century, the Whig party suffered complete shipwreck. The majority of
its members followed Burke in concluding an alliance with Pitt. Only a
minority remained in opposition with Fox. In a party division, taken
before the actual commencement of the French war, Fox was followed by
only 50 of his own party when he attempted to oppose a warlike address
to the Crown. It may be worth noting that this wave of revulsion
against the French revolution is reflected in the English literature
of the times. The younger authors of the day, such as Wordsworth and
Southey, are liberal, and even republican, when they begin to write;
but after the worse side of the French movement developed, they rapidly
slide into enthusiastic patriotism, and denunciations of French anarchy
and wickedness.
[Sidenote: =Lewis XVI. executed.--France declares war on England.=]
When this was the state of English public feeling, two events conspired
to urge the nation into the war for which men had gradually been
preparing themselves. The first was the trial and execution of the
unfortunate king of France. The "Jacobin" party, the followers of
the bloodthirsty Marat, the blatant Danton, and the coldly ferocious
Robespierre, were now swaying the Convention. They impeached Lewis,
not so much for any definite acts of his, as to show that they were
determined to be rid of monarchy. "The coalized kings of Europe
threaten us," said Danton; "let us hurl at their feet as a gage the
head of a king." Lewis was sent to the guillotine on the most empty and
frivolous charges (January 21, 1793). His unfortunate wife, Queen Marie
Antoinette, followed him thither a few months after. Pitt immediately
withdrew the English ambassador from Paris, and began to prepare for
war. But the actual _casus belli_ was the determination of the French,
who had now overrun Belgium, to open the Scheldt, and make Antwerp a
great naval arsenal. When Pitt protested, the Convention declared war
on George III., under the vain belief that the English people would
take their side, and overturn Pitt and his master. "The king and his
Parliament mean to make war on us," wrote a French minister, "but the
Republicans of England will not permit it. Already these freemen show
their discontent, and refuse to bear arms against their brethren. We
will fly to their succour. We will lodge 50,000 caps of liberty in
England; and when we stretch out our arm to these Republicans, the
tyranny of their monarchy will be overthrown."
So, on February 8, 1793, began the great war, which was to last, with
two short intervals, till July 7, 1815. If England and France alone had
been engaged in the struggle, the famous saying about the impossibility
of a duel between the whale and the elephant might have been
applicable. France, with her new levies just rushing into the field,
had an army of something like 500,000 men. The English regular troops,
available for war over-seas, were, in 1792, about 30,000 strong. On the
other hand, the English fleet had 153 line-of-battle ships, the French
only 86. The one nation was almost as superior by sea as the other by
land. It was evident that we could only attack the French by land if
we had continental allies, while France could not harm us by sea until
she had secured assistance from other powers to increase her navy.
But if with our limited army we could not hope to equal in the field
the legions of France, we had one means of attacking her on land--the
use of our power as the richest nation in Europe. Austria, Prussia,
and the German states had large armies, but little money; England had
much money, if few men. Accordingly, it was by liberal subsidies to
the military powers of the continent that we from first to last fought
France on land. History records nine separate coalitions which Pitt and
his successors drew together and cemented with English gold, in order
to stay the progress, first of the French Republic, then of the great
man who inherited its position.
[Sidenote: =English naval supremacy.--Lord Howe's victory.=]
The moment that the war began, the naval supremacy of England enabled
her to seize most of the outlying French colonies. At the same time
our fleets moved down to blockade the great naval arsenals of Brest,
Toulon, and Rochefort, where the French navy was cooped up. So
thoroughly were the hostile fleets held in restraint, that there was
only one important sea-fight in the first three years of the war. In
the summer of 1794 the Brest squadron came out to convoy a merchant
fleet, and was caught and completely beaten by Lord Howe on "the
glorious First of June."
[Sidenote: =Vigorous government of the Convention.--The Reign of
Terror.=]
The years 1793-1794 were the hardest part of the war for the French.
The coalition against them now comprised England, Austria, Prussia,
Spain, Holland, and Sardinia. Assailed on every frontier by foreign
enemies, they had also to face a formidable royalist rising in La
Vendée and Brittany. Yet the Convention made head against all its
foes. The Jacobin faction, headed by the ruthless Robespierre, put a
fearful energy into its generals, by the summary method of sending
every officer who failed to the guillotine. The sanguinary despotism
which they exercised was a thing of which the most tyrannical monarch
would never have dreamed. They had impeached and slain the Girondists,
or moderate Republicans, in the summer of 1793. Six months later,
Robespierre, determined to be supreme, had seized and executed his
colleague and rival Danton, and all his faction. The "Reign of Terror"
made Paris a perfect shambles: 1400 prisoners were guillotined in six
weeks, and Robespierre called for yet more blood.
[Sidenote: =Military success of the French.=]
But these horrors within were accompanied by vigour without. Quickened
by the axe hanging over their necks, the generals did their best, and
finally succeeded in beating back the allies, whose motley armies
failed to co-operate with each other, and had no one commander who
could direct the whole course of the war to a single end.
[Sidenote: =English reverses in Flanders and at Toulon.=]
England's part in these early years of the war was neither important
nor glorious. The Duke of York, the second son of George III., was sent
with 20,000 men to aid the Austrians in Flanders. But he was a very
incapable commander, got beaten by the French at Hondeschoote near
Dunkirk, and was forced back into Holland, and at last chased as far
as Hanover (1793-94). Another failure was seen at Toulon in the same
year. The royalist inhabitants of that town called in the English to
their aid, and surrendered its arsenal and fleet. But the place was
indifferently defended by General O'Hara, and fell back into the hands
of the Republicans after a short siege, mainly owing to the ability
displayed by a young artillery officer named Napoleon Bonaparte. The
only compensating advantage was that, before evacuating the place, the
English were able to burn the French fleet and arsenal.
[Sidenote: =Fall of Robespierre.--The Directory.=]
Pitt had said that when all Europe united against a nation of wild
beasts and madmen, two campaigns would settle the business. But at the
end of 1794 things seemed further from a settlement than ever. For
the coalition against France, after faring ill in the field, both in
Flanders and on the Rhine, began to show signs of breaking up. That
this was possible came from the fact that the "Reign of Terror" and the
domination of the implacable Robespierre were at last ended. The time
had come when he and his associates, having guillotined all available
Royalists and Moderates, were reduced to preying upon their own party,
in their insane desire to find imaginary conspirators against the
Republic. Robespierre fell at the hands of the rank and file of the
Jacobins, who found the rule of the dictator intolerable, when it
began to imperil their own necks. Having long shared in his misdoings,
they sent him to the guillotine, when he began to terrify them (July,
1794). Tallien, Barrère, Barras, and the other leaders in Robespierre's
overthrow were, if less ferocious than their master, full of vices of
which he could never be accused, profligate, venal, and corrupt. But,
however bad they were, they yet reversed Robespierre's policy. The
executions and massacres ceased, and the reign of the guillotine came
to an end. The Convention dissolved itself in 1795, and gave place to
the government of the "Directory," a committee of five ministers, of
whom Barras was chief.
[Sidenote: =Prussia and Spain acknowledge the Republic.=]
This "Directory," though venal and greedy, was a settled government,
with which foreign powers could treat, not a gang of bloodthirsty
madmen like Robespierre and his crew. When the Jacobin propaganda of
murder and massacre was ended, several of the powers of the coalition
determined to make peace with France. Prussia and Spain had drawn no
profit from the war, and had lost men and money in it. Accordingly
they withdrew their armies and acknowledged the Republic. Holland had
been overrun by the French in 1794, after the Duke of York's defeat,
and forced to become the ally of her conqueror. Hence the strong and
well-equipped Dutch fleet is found for the rest of the war on the side
of France.
[Sidenote: =Policy of the Directory.--Alliance with Spain.=]
Thus England, Austria, and Sardinia alone remained of the original
confederates, and the war began to grow more like the old struggles
in the early years of the century. It ceased to be a war of opinion
between England as representing constitutional monarchy, and France
as representing rampant and militant democracy. We find the Directory
taking up the old policy of the Bourbons, claiming the frontier of the
Rhine on land, and aiming at breaking the strength of England at sea,
in order to seize our colonies and ruin our commerce. For the future,
the French government was not set on stirring up the London mob, and
deposing George III., but on fomenting war in India, and rebellion in
Ireland, so as to break our national strength. The likeness of the
struggle to the old times of the "Family Compact" became still more
notable when, in 1796, Spain, from reasons of old commercial jealousy,
was induced to declare war on England, and join France. We had now
to face the united fleets of France, Holland, and Spain, a much more
formidable task than had hitherto been our lot.
[Sidenote: =Bonaparte in Italy.--Treaty of Campo Formio.=]
Things seemed almost desperate for England in 1797, when we lost our
last continental allies. The Directory had made Napoleon Bonaparte
commander of the army of Italy in 1796. In two campaigns that
marvellous general overran the Austrian and Sardinian dominions in the
valley of the Po, and then pushing on, crossed the Alps and invaded
Austria from the south. When he was less than a hundred miles from
Vienna, the emperor asked for peace, and obtained it from Bonaparte by
the Treaty of Campo Formio, at the price of surrendering Belgium and
Lombardy (October, 1797).
[Sidenote: =England threatened with invasion.=]
Thus England was left alone to face France, Holland, and Spain, whose
fleets, if united, outnumbered our own. For the next three years
the safety of England hung on the power of our admirals to keep the
junction from taking place. Six English fleets were always at sea,
facing the six great naval ports of the allies, the Texel, Brest,
Ferrol, Cadiz, Cartagena, and Toulon. It was clear that if one or
more of the blockaded fleets got away and joined another, the English
would be outnumbered at the critical point and if once beaten could
not prevent an invasion of England. If only the command of the Channel
were lost, there was nothing to prevent the victorious armies that had
overrun Germany, Holland, and Italy, from coming ashore in Kent or
Sussex.
[Sidenote: =Financial panic in England.=]
In return, Pitt called on England for a great effort; the war
expenditure was increased to £42,000,000 a year, and every nerve was
strained to keep up the fleet. This enormous outpouring of money
drained the exchequer to such a degree that public confidence began
to fail, and in February, 1797, there almost occurred the national
disaster of the bankruptcy of the Bank of England. A long and steady
demand for hard cash, by creditors who feared the worst, drained the
bank reserve till there was no more gold left. A crash was only staved
off by Pitt passing in a single night a bill for suspending payments
in gold, and for making bank-notes legal tender to any amount, so that
no one could demand as a right from the bank five guineas for his
five-guinea note. This state of things lasted till 1819, when cash
payments were renewed.
[Sidenote: =The Mutiny at the Nore.=]
But this trouble was nothing, compared to the awful danger three months
later, when the Channel and North Sea fleets burst out into mutiny
in April, 1797. These mutinies were early examples of the phenomena
which we know so well in our own days under the name of "strikes."
The sailors had suffered greatly from the long blockading service,
which kept them perpetually at sea, off the French and Dutch ports.
Their pay was low, their food bad, and their commanders in many cases
harsh and cruel. They had, therefore, much excuse for themselves,
when they demanded a better diet, higher pay, a fairer distribution
of prize-money, and the dismissal of certain tyrannous officers. But
the time they chose for their strike was inexcusable, for, while they
lay idle at the Nore and Spithead, the French and Dutch might have
sailed out, joined, and mastered the Channel. At first it was feared
that the navy had been corrupted by French principles, and was about
to declare for a republic, and join the enemy. But it was soon found
that with a few exceptions the men were loyal, and only wanted redress
of grievances. Pitt wisely granted their demands, and they returned
to duty, refusing to follow a few wild spirits who wished to begin
a political insurrection. Few or none protested when Parker, the
sailor-demagogue, was hanged, and the fleet, which had been in mutiny
in the summer, went out in the autumn to victory.
[Sidenote: =Battles of Camperdown and Cape St. Vincent.=]
Some weeks after their opportunity was passed, the Dutch fleet came
out of the Texel, hoping to find the North Sea still unguarded. But
Admiral Duncan absolutely annihilated his enemies at the hard-fought
battle of Camperdown (October, 1797). Some time earlier another
decisive victory had crushed the Spanish fleet. The Cadiz squadron of
twenty-seven line-of-battle ships had slipped out to sea. But Admiral
Jervis, well seconded by his great lieutenant Nelson, followed them,
and beat them off Cape St. Vincent, though he had only fourteen ships
with him. This was the most extraordinary victory in the whole war,
when the disparity of numbers is taken into consideration.
The victories of St. Vincent and Camperdown were the salvation of
England, for the naval crisis was tided over, and the union of the
hostile fleets prevented. During the remainder of the war the French
often threatened invasion, but were never able to get that command of
the Channel which they might have seized without trouble during the
mutiny at the Nore. The restored dominion of England at sea was all
the more important because of the danger in Ireland, which was now
impending.
[Sidenote: =Ireland under the Parliament of 1782.=]
Though Ireland had obtained her Home Rule Parliament in 1782, her
troubles were as far from an end as ever. The government of the island
was still in the hands of the Protestants of the Church of Ireland
alone, and the Romanists and Protestant dissenters were still excluded
from many political rights. Thus six-sevenths of the people had no
part in governing themselves, and the five-sevenths who were Romanists
were even yet subject to many of the repressive laws against their
religion, passed in the reign of William III.[52] Though in 1792 they
were at last granted freedom of public worship, and allowed to vote
for members of Parliament, they could not sit therein. The rule of the
Irish Tories was harsh and arbitrary. From the outbreak of the French
Revolution onward, they had suspected--and with justice--that the
French would endeavour to raise trouble in Ireland. For there alone
in the British Isles was to be found a discontented population, held
down by a minority which governed entirely in its own interests, and
took no heed of the desires of its subjects. There had always been
close communication between France and Ireland since the old Jacobite
days, and many Irish exiles were living beyond the seas. Hence it was
not strange that first the discontented Protestant dissenters and
afterwards the Roman Catholics put themselves into communication with
the French--the latter more reluctantly than the former, for they
were the most bigoted of Papists, and much disliked the atheists and
free-thinkers who guided the Revolution. From 1793 to 1798 Ireland was
being undermined with secret societies, much like the Fenians of our
own days, whose intrigues the Tory government strove in vain to detect
and frustrate.
[Sidenote: =The "United Irishmen."=]
The chief of these associations was called the "United Irishmen,"
because it worked for the combination of the Dissenters of the north
and the Romanists of the south in the common end of rebellion. The
original leaders in the conspiracy were all hot-headed Radical
politicians, who had been fired with the enthusiasm of the French
Revolution. Their chiefs were Lord Edward Fitzgerald, a young nobleman
of republican proclivities, Wolfe Tone, a violent party pamphleteer,
who had hitherto called himself a Whig, and Bond, a Dublin tradesman.
[Sidenote: =Hoche's attempt to invade Ireland.=]
These conspirators did not at first intend to rise without getting
aid from France, and till 1796 there was never much chance of their
friends over-sea being able to send them help. But when the fleets of
France, Spain, and Holland were united, it seemed possible to send
an expedition to Ireland. In December, 1796, the Brest squadron took
on board 16,000 men, under the young and vigorous General Hoche, and
made a dash for the coast of Munster. Slipping out while the English
blockading squadron was blown off by a storm, Hoche's fleet got safely
to sea. But the ships met with a hurricane, and were so beaten about
and dispersed that only half of them reached their rendezvous at Bantry
Bay in County Kerry. Hoche, their leader, never appeared, and Grouchy,
his lieutenant--the man who in later years was Napoleon's unlucky
marshal--shrank from landing with 7000 men in an unknown country where
he could detect no signs of the promised insurrection. He lost heart
and returned to Brest, without having been met or molested by the
English. If he had landed, there is no doubt that the whole south of
Ireland would have risen to join him. In the next year there was an
even greater peril of invasion while the English fleet was in mutiny.
The Dutch squadron, which was beaten at Camperdown, had been given
Ireland as its goal, and might have got there unopposed if it had
started six weeks earlier.
[Sidenote: =Harsh measures of the Irish Government.=]
Conscious of the danger which it was incurring, the Irish government
was stirred up to vigorous measures. All the loyalists of Ireland--the
Orangemen, as they were now called[53]--had already been embodied in
regiments of yeomanry, and were ready to move at the first alarm of
rebellion. Lord Lake, the commander-in-chief in Ireland, was directed
to disarm the whole Catholic population, and to search everywhere
for concealed arms. The order was carried out with more vigilance
than mercy, as the task of finding the weapons was entrusted to the
Orangemen of the yeomanry corps, who were determined to crush their
rebellious countrymen at any cost. They employed the roughest measures
to elicit information, flogging the suspected peasants and torturing
them with pitch-caps and pointed stakes, till they revealed the
hiding-place of their weapons. But, if cruel, Lake's measures were
completely successful. In Ulster, where the search began, no less than
50,000 muskets and 70,000 pikes were seized, and if the same energy
had been displayed in other parts of Ireland, the rebellion of 1798
would have been impossible. But the outcry caused in the Irish and
English Parliaments by the rough doings of the yeomanry prevented the
full execution of the disarmament, and the United Irishmen of the south
retained their concealed weapons, and waited for the signal of revolt.
[Sidenote: =Outbreak of the Rebellion.=]
The crisis came in the spring of 1798, when the government were at
last put by an informer on the track of the central committee of the
United Irishmen. The leaders and organizers who had so long eluded
them were at last caught and lodged in Dublin Castle, save Lord Edward
Fitzgerald, who fought with the police who came to arrest him, slew
two, and was himself killed in the struggle. The seizure of the chiefs,
instead of wrecking the conspiracy, caused it to burst out with sudden
violence, for the Irish thought that all was discovered, and that
rebellion was the only way to save their necks. An abortive rising in
Ulster was easily put down, but in the south-east of Ireland the whole
countryside rose in arms, and great bodies of insurgents attacked not
only the loyal yeomanry but every Protestant family in the district.
The rebels were under no central control, and were headed only by
village ruffians and ignorant and bigoted priests. Acts worthy of the
Parisian mob were perpetrated by the peasantry of Wexford, where the
rebellion was strongest. They shot the Bishop of Ferns, and many other
noncombatants, including women and children. On Wexford bridge they
put several scores of persons to death by tossing them in the air and
catching them on pikes. At Scullabogue they burnt alive a whole barnful
of prisoners.
[Sidenote: =Battle of Vinegar Hill.=]
For a fortnight there was sharp fighting in the south, for the rebels
showed as much courage as ferocity. But the Orange yeomanry were
stirred to frantic wrath by the atrocities of their enemies, and put
down the insurrection with little aid from the regular troops. The
decisive fight was at the fortified camp of Vinegar Hill, the chief
stronghold of the rebels. When it was stormed, and when Father Murphy,
the leader of the Wexford men, had fallen, the peasants dispersed. The
atrocities which they had committed were promptly avenged, and the
triumphant Orangemen hanged or shot hundreds of prisoners, with small
attentions to the forms of justice.
[Sidenote: =General Humbert's expedition.=]
Two months after the battle of Vinegar Hill, a small French expedition
succeeded in slipping out of Rochefort and landed in Connaught. But
the back of the rebellion was broken, and though General Humbert
routed some militia at Castlebar, he was soon surrounded and captured
by Lord Cornwallis, the Lord-Lieutenant, who beset him with a tenfold
superiority of numbers.
[Sidenote: =Pitt's scheme for uniting England and Ireland.=]
The Great Rebellion of 1798 led to the legislative union of England and
Ireland. Pitt and his lieutenant, Cornwallis, thought, rightly enough,
that the rising had come from the fact that the large majority of the
Irish were handed over, without representation or political rights, to
be governed by the minority. They devised two schemes for bettering the
state of the land--the Romanists were to receive "Emancipation," that
is, the same rights as their neighbours of the Church of Ireland--and
at the same time an end was to be put to the Dublin Parliament, and
the Irish members incorporated in the Parliament of Great Britain. For
Emancipation without union would have given the Romanists a majority
in the Dublin Parliament and led to a bitter struggle between them and
their old masters, which must have ended in a second civil war.
[Sidenote: =The Act of Union passed.=]
The process of persuading or bribing the Anglo-Irish Protestant
aristocracy to give up their national Parliament took two years. They
bitterly disliked the idea, and were only induced to yield by a liberal
shower of titles and pensions, and a goodly compensation in cash
distributed among the chief borough owners and peers. It was not till
February 18, 1800, twenty months after the rebellion had been crushed,
that the Irish Houses voted their own destruction. For the future
Ireland was represented by thirty-two peers and one hundred commoners
in the Parliament of the "United Kingdom."
After completing the Union, Pitt began to take in hand his scheme of
Catholic Emancipation. But he was not destined to carry it through--a
fact which was in a short time to have a widely felt influence on
English politics.
[Sidenote: =Bonaparte in Egypt.=]
Meanwhile the French war was still raging. Having failed to win
command of the seas, and having been equally disappointed in their
plans for causing rebellion in Ireland, the French Directory tried
another scheme for injuring England. Napoleon Bonaparte, the young
general who had conquered Italy in 1796-7, was now the first man in
France. He had lately formed a grandiose scheme for erecting a great
empire in the Levant. From thence he intended to strike a blow at the
English dominions in India, which he regarded as the chief source of
our wealth. The venal and incapable members of the Directory feared
Bonaparte, and were glad to get him out of France. They at once fell
in with his plan, and gave him the Toulon fleet and an army of 30,000
men. Keeping his destination a profound secret, Bonaparte sailed from
Toulon in May, 1798. He piratically seized Malta from the Knights of
St. John as he passed, to make it a half-way house to his intended
goal. Then, pushing on eastwards, he landed at Alexandria, and in a few
weeks overran the whole of Egypt, though France had never declared war
on the Sultan of Turkey, the ruler of that land. Once seated there, he
began to develop a gigantic scheme for the conquest of the whole East,
vowing that he would build up an Oriental empire and "attack Europe
from the rear." His first care was to send emissaries to Tippoo Sultan,
the son of our old Indian enemy Haider Ali, bidding him to attack the
English in India with the assurance of French support.
[Sidenote: =Battle of the Nile.=]
Soon after Bonaparte had taken Cairo, he heard that the ships which had
brought him to Egypt had been destroyed. Admiral Nelson, the commander
of the English Mediterranean fleet, had arrived too late to prevent
the French army from disembarking. But, finding their squadron lying
in Aboukir Bay, he determined to destroy it. The enemy lay moored in
shallow water, close to the land, but Nelson resolved to follow them
into their anchorage. Sending half his ships to slip in between the
enemy and the shore, he led the other half to attack them on the side
of the open sea. This difficult manoeuvre was carried out with perfect
success; first the van, then the centre, then the rear of the French
fleet was beset on two sides. The squadrons were exactly equal in
numbers, each counting thirteen line-of-battle ships. But so great was
the superiority of the English seamanship and gunnery, that eleven out
of the thirteen French vessels were sunk or taken in a few hours. This
brilliant feat of naval tactics had the important result of cutting off
Bonaparte's power to return to France. He was penned up in Egypt as in
an island, with no way of egress save by the desert route to Syria.
Nor could any further reinforcements reach him from France, since the
victory of the Nile gave Nelson complete command of the Mediterranean.
But Bonaparte did not at first show any dismay; he was firmly
established in Egypt, and had resolved to persevere in his attempt to
conquer the whole East with his own army.
[Sidenote: =Siege of Acre.=]
In the winter of 1798-99 he crossed the desert and flung himself upon
Syria. He turned the Turks out of the southern part of the land, and
won a great victory over them at Mount Tabor. But before the walls of
the seaport of Acre he was brought to a standstill, not so much by
the gallantry of the Turkish garrison, as by the activity of a small
English squadron under Sir Sidney Smith, which harassed the besiegers,
threw supplies into the town, and landed men to assist the pasha when
the French tried to take the place by storm. Bonaparte used to say in
later days that but for Sidney Smith he might have died as Emperor of
the East. At last he was forced to raise the siege and to retreat on
Egypt, where he found startling news awaiting him [May, 1799].
[Sidenote: =Renewed coalition against France.=]
While he was absent in the East, Pitt had found means to start a
new coalition against France, in which both Russia and Austria were
engaged. The imbecile Directory was quite unable to keep these foes at
bay. An Austro-Russian army drove the French completely out of Italy,
and at the same time another Austrian army defeated them in Germany and
thrust them back to the Rhine, while an English force, under the Duke
of York, landed in Holland, to threaten the northern frontiers of the
Republic.
[Sidenote: =Return of Bonaparte.=]
Bonaparte had expected something of the kind, knowing the imbecility of
the Directory, and he was now ready to pose as the saviour of France,
and to make a bid for supreme power, for his ambition ran far beyond
that of being merely the chief of French generals. Leaving his army in
Egypt, he ran the gauntlet of the English fleet, and safely reached
France.
[Sidenote: =Bonaparte "First Consul."=]
The accusations of mismanagement which he brought against the Directory
were supported by French public opinion, especially by that of the
army. With small difficulty Bonaparte dethroned the Directory, and
dispersed by force of arms the "Council of Five Hundred" which
represented parliamentary government. He then instituted a new form of
constitution, which was in reality, though not in shape, a military
despotism. Under the title of "First Consul" he became the supreme
ruler of France (November, 1799).
[Sidenote: =Battles of Marengo and Hohenlinden.--Peace of Luneville.=]
The nation acquiesced in this change because Bonaparte had pledged
himself to save France from the coalition, if he was entrusted with a
dictatorship. He kept his word. Crossing the Alps by the pass of the
Great St. Bernard, where no large army had crossed before, he got into
the rear of the Austrians in Italy, and then beat them at the battle of
Marengo (June, 1800). Cut off from their retreat, the Austrians had to
surrender, and all Italy fell back into the hands of Bonaparte. Later
in the same year the French won an equally crushing victory in South
Germany, at Hohenlinden, where General Moreau annihilated the Austrian
army of the north. Russia had already withdrawn from the coalition,
for the eccentric Czar Paul had conceived a great admiration for
Bonaparte, and did not object to a despot though he hated a republic.
The Duke of York had been driven out of Holland long before, and France
was triumphant all along the line. Austria, threatened with invasion at
once on the west and the south, was forced to ask for peace, and by the
peace of Luneville recognized Napoleon as ruler of France (1801).
[Sidenote: =Lord Wellesley and Tippoo Sultan.--Southern India subdued.=]
Thus England was once more left alone, to fight out her old duel with
France, or rather with the vigorous and able despot who had made France
his own. But the struggle was no longer so dangerous as in 1797-98.
In every quarter of the globe the English held their own in the years
1799-1801. In India the intrigues of Bonaparte had caused Sultan Tippoo
of Mysore to attack the Madras Presidency. But he was opposed by a man
of great ability, Lord Wellesley, the new Governor-General of India,
the first statesman who boldly proposed to make the whole peninsula of
Hindustan subject or vassal to England. Wellesley dealt promptly and
sternly with the Sultan of Mysore. He was beaten in battle, chased back
to his capital of Seringapatam, and slain at the gate of his palace as
he strove to resist the English stormers. It was in this siege that
Wellesley's brother, Arthur Wellesley, the great Duke of Wellington
of a later day, first distinguished himself. On Tippoo's death, half
Mysore was annexed, the other half given back to the old Hindu rajahs
whom Tippoo's father had deposed (May, 1799). The complete subjection
of Southern India was shortly afterwards carried out by the annexation
of the Carnatic, where the descendants of our old ally Mohammed Ali
had fallen into utter effeteness; they had, moreover, been detected in
intrigues with Tippoo during the late war.
[Sidenote: =Capture of Malta.--The French expelled from Egypt.=]
The conquest of Mysore was not the only English success that resulted
from Bonaparte's expedition to Egypt. In 1800 we took Malta from the
garrison which he had left there. In 1801 the more important task
of reconquering Egypt itself was undertaken. Sir Ralph Abercrombie
landed at Aboukir with 20,000 men. He twice defeated the French in
front of Alexandria, but fell just as he had won the second battle.
He had, however, done his work so thoroughly that the hostile army
was compelled to capitulate, and to evacuate Egypt, which England then
restored to the Turks (March-August, 1801).
[Sidenote: =The "Armed Neutrality."--Battle of Copenhagen.=]
Bonaparte had still one card to play. He used the personal influence
which he had acquired over the eccentric autocrat of Russia, to
endeavour to stir up trouble for England in the north. At his
prompting, Czar Paul induced his smaller neighbours Denmark and Sweden
to form the "Armed Neutrality," with the object of excluding English
trade from the Baltic. England at once sent a great fleet to the north.
It moored before Copenhagen, the Danish capital, which commands the
main entrance to the Baltic, and summoned the Danes to abandon the
Armed Neutrality, and permit the English to pass. The Prince Regent
of Denmark refused, and the battle of Copenhagen followed. The slow
and pedantic admiral, Sir Hyde Parker, was proceeding to dilatory
tactics, but his hand was forced by his second in command, Nelson,
the victor of the Nile. Disregarding his superior's orders to hold
back, Nelson forced his way up the Strait to Copenhagen, sunk or took
nearly the whole Danish fleet, and silenced the shore-batteries. When
he threatened to bombard the city, the Prince Regent asked for an
armistice, and abandoned the Armed Neutrality (April, 1801).
[Sidenote: =Death of the Czar Paul.=]
Nelson now entered the Baltic, and would have attacked Russia, but
the death of Czar Paul saved him the trouble. The tyrant had so
maddened his nobles by his caprices and cruelty, that he was slain by
conspirators in his own bed-chamber. His son, Alexander I., promptly
came to terms with England, and abandoned his French alliance.
[Sidenote: =Pitt and Catholic Emancipation.=]
Just before the battle of Copenhagen had been fought, England lost the
minister who had guided her in peace and war for the last seventeen
years--"the pilot who weathered the storm," as a popular song of the
day called him. Pitt resigned his place on a point of honour. In the
spring of 1801 there met the first United Parliament of Great Britain
and Ireland, and before this new assembly the premier intended to
lay his promised bill for the relief of Roman Catholics from their
political disabilities. This measure was destined to cause the great
statesman's fall. The bigoted and stubborn old king whom he had served
so faithfully, had a stronger prejudice against justice for Catholics
than against any other reform that could be mooted. He imagined that
any measure giving them Emancipation would be against the terms of his
coronation oath, and openly said that he would never make himself a
perjurer by giving his royal assent to Pitt's bill. The prime minister
had an exaggerated view of the duty of loyalty, and a great personal
regard for his old master. On the other hand, he had solemnly pledged
himself to the Irish Romanists to back their cause as long as he was in
power. Under the circumstances he thought himself bound to resign his
office, and retired in March, 1801.
[Sidenote: =Addington succeeds Pitt.--Madness of the king.=]
George replaced his old servant by a man infinitely beneath him, Henry
Addington, a commonplace Tory, one of Pitt's least able lieutenants.
This vapid nonentity had the single merit of want of originality--he
went on with Pitt's policy because he could devise no other. But his
weakness and subservience to the crown might have induced George III.
to revert to some of his former unconstitutional habits, if the old
king had not gone mad soon after. He recovered his senses after some
months, but was never the same man again, and was liable to recurring
fits of insanity, which at last became permanent.
It was the feeble Addington who was fated to bring to an end the first
epoch of the great war with France, though he had not been concerned
in the labour of bearing its brunt. Bonaparte had failed in all his
schemes against England, alike in Egypt, India, and the Baltic. The
French navy was crushed; most of the French colonies were in English
hands. He was accordingly glad to make peace, partly in order to take
breath and build up a new naval power before assaulting England again,
partly in order to find leisure to carry out his plans for making
himself the permanent ruler of France; for he was set on becoming
something more than First Consul, and needed time to perfect his plan.
[Sidenote: =The Peace of Amiens.=]
England was not less desirous of peace. The long stress of the war
had wearied the nation, and the load of debt which had been piled up
since 1793 appalled the ministers. When Bonaparte offered to treat, his
proposals were eagerly accepted. Negotiations were begun in October,
1801, and peace was signed at Amiens on March 25, 1802, with France,
Spain, and Holland. It was not unprofitable. Bonaparte undertook to
withdraw the French armies from Naples, Rome, and Portugal, and to give
up any claims to Egypt. He made his allies, the Dutch and Spaniards,
surrender to us the rich islands of Ceylon and Trinidad. Malta, now in
English hands, was to be restored to the Knights of St. John. On the
other hand, England recognized Bonaparte as First Consul, and restored
to him all the French colonies which we had conquered, from Martinique
in the west to Pondicherry in the east. Considering the imminent danger
which we had passed through in the last nine years, the nation was glad
to obtain peace on these respectable if not brilliant terms. It was
hoped that our struggle with France was at last ended.
FOOTNOTES:
[52] See p. 452.
[53] From their having enrolled themselves in clubs named after their
hero, William of Orange.