In a series of world wars extending over more than sixty years British seamen had been engaged in thwarting every conceivable combination of hostile navies. The task had become second nature to them, and there was scarcely a senior officer who had not mastered every move of the game. Such men were not likely to forget their business merely because an amateur of genius took to mapping out the sea in his cabinet at St. Cloud as though it were the Lombardy Plain. On August 24th the Admiralty issued instructions adapting the classic strategy of Britain—the "matured tradition" of more than two centuries—to the needs of the hour. The Brest fleet, Cornwallis was warned, sailing without troops, might try to enter the Channel and cover the passage of the Grand Army to Kent. If it evaded him, he was to fall back on the Lizard ready to follow it in any direction. Since it would be suicide for Ganteaume to enter the Channel with an undefeated fleet in his rear, it seemed more likely that his destination would be Ireland or Sicily. Any large embarkation of troops would suggest one or other of these, and a smaller the West Indies. Cornwallis was therefore to be ready to detach a division in pursuit, while keeping sufficient force in the Bay to meet any attempt of the enemy to double back on the Channel.1
Possibly Napoleon had already divined something of the plan, though he refused to admit it to his Admirals and the world. For while he endangered the lives of his soldiers by showy exercises
outside Boulogne roadstead, he failed to complete the final arrangements for their passage to Kent. As late as September, 1804, less than three-quarters of the 131,000 troops scheduled to cross had
assembled at the embarkation points and only eleven hundred barges had reached the Straits. The ports, neglected since the spring, had begun to choke again with drifting sand, and no one knew how many tides it would take to get the flotilla to sea. Yet on such details, if success was possible at all, success depended. Gambler though he was, Napoleon usually gambled on probabilities.
He felt happier, in fact, on land. In the very month that Latouche-Treville was to have appeared in the Straits, the Emperor left Boulogne for a tour of the Rhineland. Having reaffirmed his faith in his destiny before Charlemagne's tomb at Aix, he drew up a new plan against the English. Realising that they might make the task of his scattered squadrons progressively harder as they neared their destination, he sought instead to lure them away from the entrance to the Channel. Sailing at the end of October for diversionary raids on the West Indies and South Atlantic trade routes, the Toulon and Rochefort squadrons were to present the greedy islanders with the alternative of losing their wealth or uncovering their heart. Having drawn half their Fleet away on wild-goose . chases, the two Admirals were to double back to support Ganteaume, who was to escape from Brest in November, land 18,000 shock troops in Ireland and, running up Channel or rounding Cape Wrath according to the wind, convoy either Marmont's 25,000 from the Texel to Ireland or the Grand Army from Boulogne to Kent. In either case the war would then be won.
For Napoleon treated the Admiralty as though it were the Aulic Council. He chose to see the English as puppets who could be made to dance to any tune he piped. He overlooked the fact that they were as much masters in their own element as he in his. He forgot that because of their blockade his officers and crews were unpractised and his ships ill-equipped for manoeuvring in Atlantic gales. He forgot that there were not 18,000 troops waiting to embark at Brest but less than 7000. He even forgot that the Irish Legion did not exist.
1 Corbett, 13-15.
Meanwhile the enemy whom Napoleon so despised was secretly preparing to attack him.. All that summer and autumn Pitt wrestled with the task of creating a Third Coalition. By November his efforts were beginning to bear fruit. His new ambassador to St. Petersburg, the handsome Lord Granville Leveson-Gower, proved almost as popular with Slav statesmen as with English ladies. On the 16th a confidential agent of the Czar arrived in London to formulate a treaty. An armed League to enforce peace, led by Russia and financed by Britain, was to insist on a French withdrawal from Italy, north Germany and Holland and—in deference to Alexander's wishes— establish an international order to preserve peace and "the sacred rights of humanity." Many old mutual suspicions—of Russian designs in the Orient and British ambitions in the Mediterranean —still remained to be exorcised, and the other Continental Powers, Nelson's "set of dirty fellows," were still shy of committing themselves.1 But Napoleon's hot-headed arrogance continued to bring the allies together. In the middle of October his armed agents pounced on a British diplomat on German soil and bore him off to Paris. A fortnight later an alarmed Austria signed a defensive alliance with Russia to take effect on the next French aggression in Germany or Italy. For even the most timid saw that, unless they exerted themselves, the whole Continent would soon be ruled by Napoleon's secret police.
Yet before any alliance could become effective Pitt had to secure his communications with the Mediterranean. His readiness to send troops to that sea was the touchstone of Russian confidence.2 And across his path lay Spain. His transports had not only to pass the French naval ports in the Bay of Biscay but the Spanish coast from Finisterre to Cartagena. At Ferrol were the five French battleships from the West Indies, now nearly ready for sea. Farther south, enfilading the entrance to the Mediterranean, were the great naval arsenals of Cartagena and Cadiz. All three held powerful Spanish squadrons. "We should be short-sighted, indeed," wrote the First Lord of the Admiralty, " if we did not look on the fleet of Spain as added to that of our other enemies at any moment it suits the interests of France to call upon it."
For though few Spaniards wished to engage in another war with
1 " Would to God these great Powers reflected that the boldest measures are the safest." —Nicolas, VI, 290.
2 Third Coalition, 45, 76-7, 79; Corbett, 10.
Britain, their dictator, Godoy, was bound hand and foot to France. So long as there was any chance of preserving peace the British were ready to overlook Spanish breaches of neutrality. But by the autumn of 1804 it was equally plain that Napoleon was about to demand the active aid of the Spanish fleet and that the Spaniards were preparing to give it. Early in September it became known in London that 1500'French troops were marching across Spain from Bayonne to man the French warships at Ferrol.
Pitt could no longer afford to have an undeclared enemy on his flank. To safeguard his communications he decided to force Spain's hand. He instructed his Ambassador, Hookham Frere, to demand an immediate explanation from Madrid and the demobilisation of the Spanish fleet. Failing this l^e was to ask for his passports. Simultaneously Cornwallis was ordered to detach four frigates to intercept the homecoming Mexican treasure fleet off Cadiz. The Cabinet's idea was that, by temporarily impounding the silver needed to equip the Spanish Fleet, it would incapacitate and so free Spain from aiding France. Unfortunately it failed to reckon with Spanish pride. The Dons refused to surrender to so small a force, and in the ensuing fight their flagship blew up with a loss of three hundred lives, including the family of the Captain-General of Peru.1 Before news of this high-handed action reached Madrid, the British Ambassador had already left. The formal Spanish declaration of war followed on December 12th.
While Pitt was forcing the issue to secure his offensive, Napoleon was becoming aware of the net which Downing Street was spinning round him. At the very moment that he was symbolising his triumph over the old Europe by crowning himself Emperor of the Franks in the presence of a trembling Pope, the Czar's emissary was closeted with the British Prime Minister. Behind her watery barriers perfidious Albion was employing her ancient wiles and bribes to rally the armies of the corrupt ancien regime in the new Charlemagne's rear. On December 3rd, the day after his coronation, she signed a secret convention with Sweden securing, for £80,000, the use of the Baltic island of Riigen and the fortress of Stralsund for an Anglo-Russian landing on the Pomeranian mainland. Three weeks later her Ambassador at St. Petersburg reported that Austria, heartened by the promise o'f British gold and Russian armies, was ready to coll
aborate in imposing a reasonable peace on France.
There was only one possible response from Napoleon.
1 The British Government subsequently refunded his fortune.—Wheeler and Broadley, II,.
In the opening days of the New Year he sent an ultimatum to Vienna demanding an immediate explanation of Austria's intentions and a cessation of military activity. Simultaneously he addressed a note to London, proposing—in the name of humanity—an end to a useless war. Though still unaware of how dangerous his enemy was, he saw that so long as Pitt retained power, he would continue to be thwarted at every turn. By offering peace he would divide the English either from their Prime Minister or their allies. If Pitt refused to treat they would repudiate him as a war-monger, while if he did so the Russians would lose faith in him.
Napoleon counted on the weakness of Pitt's position. Since the failure of his plans for a national Government the Prime Minister had had to maintain himself with a weak Front Bench and the narrowest of parliamentary majorities. Against him were ranged his former allies, the Grenvilles—" the cousinhood" who, according to the King, were resolved to rule or ruin the State—and the Foxites who pinned their rising hopes on Carlton House and spoke of Pitt as "a rapacious, selfish, shabby villain surrounded by shabby partisans." He had only been able to retain a precarious majority by a humiliating reconciliation with Addington, who at Christmas had entered his Cabinet as Lord Sidmouth with a family following of Hobarts and Bathursts. Even his staunchest adherents were divided. A simple sailorman back from the Mediterranean was bewildered at finding White's, once the sacred rallying-ground of all Pittites, a hive of faction, while the needs of the country seemed forgotten in the clamour for offices and pensions.1 Meanwhile Society could talk of nothing but a theatrical prodigy of thirteen called Master Betty—the infant Roscius—who in the Christmastide of 1804 filled Drury Lane with hysterical peeresses and emotional statesmen and even changed the fashionable hour of dinner. " You would not suspect," wrote Lady Bessborough, " that Europe was in a state of warfare and bondage."2
Yet Napoleon's eminently reasonable exposition of the blessings of peace failed to achieve the results he expected. He made the mistake, in the first place, of sending it, not to the Foreign Office but to the King whom, with the natural vanity of a newly-crowned head, he addressed as royal brother.
1 Cornwallis-West, 419. "Such things are;" wrote Nelson, "politicians are not like other men."—Nicolas, VI, 123. Sec also Barham, III, 56.
2 Granville, I, 486, 489-90, 494-5; 11,38-40; Ashton, 325-6, 330; Barbauld, 105; Horner, I, 275, 298; Auckland, IV, 223; Farrington, II, 285; Brougnton, I, 136; Two Duchesses, 191-2, 195, 201, 207,.
This merely annoyed the old man and struck his subjects as an impertinence. And though, after two years of what General Moore called the " confinement without the occupation of war," the English badly wanted peace, they did not want it with Napoleon. They had tried that at Amiens. What they wanted was his death. For as long as he lived, they did not believe there could be peace.1
Napoleon's ruse, therefore, failed to overthrow the new Prime Minister. Nor did it cause a breach between England and Russia. Instead it gave Pitt a chance to convince the latter of his good faith. While the Foreign Office frigidly addressed " the head of the French Government," informing him that his Majesty would take counsel of his friends in Europe, a dispatch was sent to St. Petersburg accepting the Russian proposals and detailing the contribution Britain was ready to make to the common cause.
But the peace offensive was only one move in Napoleon's campaign to unhorse Pitt. Even as he launched it, he ordered the Toulon and Rochefort squadrons to open their attack on Britain's colonies and commerce. Nothing was more likely to shake Pitt's parliamentary power than a run of bad news from the sugar islands and trade routes. Already the winter had brought alarming intelligence from India, where Wellesley's first Mahratta War had been followed by a second—undertaken by the imperious Governor-General without the least reference to what he called "that loathsome den, the India Office," or even to the Government. The great chieftain, Holkar, declaring that his house was the saddle on his horse's back, had reverted to the predatory cavalry war of Hindustan and inflicted a disastrous reverse on a British column in the jungle. Even when better news arrived at Christmas public disquiet continued, partly on account of the cost of these repeated campaigns, partly on moral grounds. The little Irish proconsul's "system of conquest" made no appeal to the English imagination; Wilberforce was puzzled to distinguish between French aggression in Europe and British in India. "I do not delight much in East-Indian victories and extensions of the Empire," wrote Lord Sheffield. All this helped to discredit Pitt, who had first sent Wellesley to India. Seizing his opportunity, Napoleon on January 16th drafted a last-minute supplement to his grand project by which the Brest fleet, after embarking 15,000 troops, was to release the Ferrol squadron and sail for India to "make terrible war on England."
In other words the logic of sea power was forcing Napoleon back on the policy of '98: of action not against England's heart but against the circumference from winch he imagined she drew her
1I ardently wish," wrote Nelson, "that it would please God to take him out of the world." Nicolas, V, 338, 479; VI, 205; Collingwood, 98-9; Ashton, 112-14; Colchester I, 535-6; Horner, 282.
strength.1 All over the world were British trading stations and richly laden merchantmen whose only protection was the thin wooden crust of the blockade along the western and southern seaboard of Europe. There was so much to defend that Britain's naval resources appeared insufficient for the task. Spain's entry into the war had further narrowed her dwindling margin of safety. By a treaty signed in Madrid on January 4th, 1805, Napoleon secured the promise of thirty-two Spanish ships of the line by the spring. Till they were ready Spain, with her position athwart England's trade routes, afforded a splendid springboard for diversionary raids into the western and southern Atlantic.
Already, spurred on by their master's orders and aided by winter gales, the commanders of the Rochefort and Toulon squadrons had sailed on their West Indian mission. Missiessy, with 3500 troops packed in his five battleships and attendant cruisers, escaped from Rochefort in-a snowstorm on January nth while Sir Thomas Graves's blockading division was watering in Quiberon Bay. Owing to a British frigate grounding on a reef he was able to get clean away, leaving the Admiralty guessing. A week later Latouche-Treville's successor, Villeneuve, put out of Toulon with eleven of the line and nine cruisers. Nelson, who had been praying for him to come out, was victualling in Maddalena Bay when his frigates brought the news. In three hours he was under way, leading his ships in a north-westerly gale- through the dangerous Biche Passage and standing along the eastern coast of Sardinia for Cagliari. With the wind hauling every minute more into the west, he had three main anxieties—Sardinia, the Two Sicilies, and Egypt, for he knew that the French had embarked troops. On the 26th, battered by the gale, he reached Cagliari to learn that no landing had been made. He at once sailed with the wind for Palermo to save Naples and Sicily.
For Nelson's duty was clear. Only by preventing the enemy from invading the neutral countries of the central and eastern Mediterranean could he maintain the command of the sea on which Pitt's plans for the offensive depended. "On this side," he had written a year before, " Bonaparte is the most vulnerable. It is from here that it would be most easy to mortify his pride and humble him."
From this strategic principle nothing could deflect him, not even his longing for glory and an early return to his mistress and daughter. Aching to meet the enemy, he continued to put first things first. "I would willingly have half of mine burnt to effect their destruction," he wrote on January 25th, "I am in a fever; God send I may find them!" But he refused to uncover the vital point that he had been sent to defend, and kept his eastward course for Sicily.
1"The French," wrote an American observer, "believe that the fountains of British wealth arc in India and China. They never appear to understand that the
most abundant source is her agriculture, her manufacturers and the foreign demand."—Mahan, II, 146. See Castlereagh, V, 413-15.
By the 30th Nelson knew that the island key to the central Mediterranean was safe. The French had made no attempt to attack Neapolitan territory. With the prevailing westerly gales they must have put back into Toulon or sailed ahead of him, as in '98, to Egypt or Greece. To secure the Turkish provinces and the overland route to Egypt, he therefore pressed on through the Straits of Messina towards the Morea and Alexandria. Here on February 7th, as he had predicted, he found the Turks unprepared, the fortifications unmanned and the garrison asleep. With a week's start, he told the Governor of Malta, the enemy could have made the place impregnable.
But the French were back in Toulon. Three days of storm and the thought of the victor of the Nile had been too much for Ville-neuve and his untrained crews. "These gentlemen," wrote Nelson, who in twenty-one months had never set foot on shore or lost a spar,1 " are not accustomed to a Gulf of Lyons gale. . . . Bonaparte has often made his boast that our fleet would be worn out by keeping the sea and that his was kept, in order and increasing by staying in port; but he now finds, I fancy, that his fleet suffers more in a night than ours in a year." At that moment Napoleon was raging over Villeneuve's complaints about his ships and sailors, the soldiers who littered the decks in sea-sick heaps, the broken yard-arms and rotten sails. "The great evil of our Navy," he declared, "is that the men who command it are unused to the risks of command. What is to be done with Admirals who allow their spirits to sink and resolve to be beaten home at the first damage they suffer?"
Years of Victory 1802 - 1812 Page 16
