by Roger Knight
The sick and healthy being mixed together indiscriminately, it was no matter of wonder that the number of cases of fever landed in the last stages of typhus was great; in fact, it was enormous and it excited great alarm at Portsmouth and in the neighbouring country when an account of the mortality came to be noised abroad.120
In the Commons, only a week later, Hood was in his seat as MP for Bridport when the House expressed its thanks to the army and navy commanders for saving the country’s main field army. All was quiet until Hood rose to reply: then ‘the whole House burst into a roar of applause, so that he was quite delayed by it from beginning his speech.’121 Doubtless the loudest acclamation came from the front bench, since a disaster to the army at Corunna would most likely have brought down the government. The saving of that army, the ‘Dunkirk’ of its time, was critical to the continuation of the war in Spain, at that time a very unpopular policy. Hood was awarded a baronetcy two months later.
The last of the amphibious operations, late in 1809, to transport an army to Holland, was a disaster. Early plans merely to capture Walcheren, and that island’s port of Flushing, where Napoleon had five ships of the line building, developed into a much more ambitious plan of capturing and destroying the ships building in the heavily fortified and guarded dockyard at Antwerp. Its purpose was to destroy Antwerp Dockyard, sixty miles up the River Scheldt, which constituted a continuing threat to Britain because of its potential to build a great French fleet that might finally breach England’s invasion defences. Planning of the expedition was held up earlier in the year by the parliamentary enquiry into the duke of York’s alleged selling of promotions through his mistress: almost all the time of the House of Commons was taken up with this matter from late January until 18 March.122 The duke’s judgement and authority were sorely missed when he resigned. From the time of the first decision, taken in May – far too late in the year – by the duke of Portland’s bitterly divided cabinet, this expedition was headed for failure.
The whole operation was driven by the secretary of state for war, Lord Castlereagh, but he was influenced by Captain Sir Home Popham, who had by now thrown off the disgrace of the failed South American expedition of 1806 examined in the next chapter. The close cooperation between the services, which had ensured the success of the Corunna evacuation earlier in the year, was lacking. The naval commander was the hot-tempered Rear-Admiral Sir Richard Strachan, described by a fellow officer as ‘an irregular, impetuous fellow, possessing very quick parts’. During the action in the days after Trafalgar, for which Strachan is chiefly remembered, his impetuosity had led him to order his gunners to fire ‘two guns shotted’ at a British ship in order to encourage her captain to get into action with the enemy.123 The sailors called him ‘Mad Dick’ because of the stream of oaths that came with his orders. During the operation, Strachan disastrously delegated responsibility for liaising with the army to Popham.
The choice for commander of the army was Lord Chatham, elder brother of William Pitt, who had been a lethargic and distant first lord of the Admiralty in the first years of the war, and was now master-general of the Ordnance. Why Chatham was chosen is something of a mystery: possibly it was a gamble for military success by a member of the government to prop up the ailing Portland administration. Chatham had fought in the siege of Gibraltar in the American Revolutionary War, and had done well during the Den Helder expedition under the duke of York; but for most of the last twenty-five years he had been, in the words of a soldier, ‘accustomed to the routine of official duty, but without experience as a leader, and without the qualities necessary to the success of an enterprise which demanded decision of character and activity of mind and body’.124 Little inter-service confidence was generated by the appointment of someone now considered by many a Whitehall warrior. A young naval captain, Charles Boys, observed from the Scheldt when he arrived, ‘’tis really a deplorable thing … to send Lord Chatham and a tribe of generals whose names are scarcely known out of St James’s …’tis enough to make Mr Bull shake his head.’ One exasperated colonel told Boys, ‘Everything goes on at headquarters, as if they were at the Horse Guards; it did not signify what you wanted, you must call between certain hours, send up your name and wait your turn.’125
The expedition to Walcheren in 1809 was the largest to leave British shores in the French Wars, and it was late in sailing from the Downs. With transports still engaged in operations in Portugal, there were never enough available, and Rupert George, chairman of the Transport Board, suggested to Castlereagh that neutral ships should be requisitioned to make up the shortfall.126 Not until 24 June did troops start to march to the five ports of embarkation, Deal, Dover, Chatham, Harwich and Portsmouth.127 Easterly winds caused further delay.* Castlereagh travelled to the Downs, anxious to see the expedition off when it finally sailed on 28 July. Three days later he expressed early private doubts to his stepbrother, Charles Stewart:
Without having any reason to complain of want of Exertion in any Quarter, the assembly and sailing of our armament was delay’d for a week. It is now all off, and without an accident, which is more than Ever happen’d in so large a Fleet. Indeed I believe so large a Fleet never before was collected, they amounted of above 600 sail, 260 of which, including gun boats were Ships of War. The Embarkation Returns (all sick left behind) was 43,700 men and officers … With such a Force, I should suppose the reduction of Walcheren can only be a question of Time, but the further operations of the Army Towards Antwerp, on which the fate of the Enemy’s Fleet and arsenal depend, is much more questionable.128
Horses and the difficulty of loading them were, as ever, a problem. For the Walcheren expedition, as late as 14 August, there were still over 300 at Ramsgate waiting to be embarked, and some never even made the journey.129
Lack of decision on the part of the army and bad communication between the services marked the expedition from the start. Two of the three planned landings were initially successful – on the island of Walcheren itself and further up the Scheldt on South Beveland, with its small fort at Batz – bringing the foremost British forces within fifteen miles of Antwerp. The main effort was now to capture Flushing. One group of the transports under Popham took shelter in the Roompot, to the north of the Scheldt, when they were supposed to be in Flushing.* The third landing, on Cadsand, on the south bank of the river, was postponed because of bad weather and then abandoned. The army then lost valuable time in bringing batteries up to reduce Flushing, already defended by 5,000 troops, and soon reinforced by 3,000 others who slipped over the river from Cadsand, which the navy failed to prevent. Flushing was eventually bombarded and set on fire, surrendering on 16 August, at the cost of 4,000 British casualties, though 6,000 prisoners were taken. The five ships of the line building there were destroyed.
The time lost by the British was used well by the French, who rushed reinforcements to the Scheldt and strengthened Antwerp’s defences. The expedition advanced slowly to Batz, but with a lack of urgency that indicates that Chatham had early given up hope of gaining Antwerp. Before the end of August he and Strachan, with whom relations had deteriorated badly, decided that there was little chance of success.* Rampant marsh fever hit the troops at the same time.130 Chatham was still lethargic. One very critical naval officer wrote to an Opposition MP of what many had suspected: ‘Nothing could have been more weak or more absurd than delaying the evacuation of the Island [Walcheren] after the great object of the Expedition was given up … I cannot help thinking that Lord C. never had any intention of attempting any more than was done.’131
By 17 September, 8,200 soldiers had been struck down with the virulent disease of marsh fever: they died at the rate of 250 a week. The fever was a potent mix of malaria, typhus, typhoid and dysentery. When units of the Walcheren troops arrived home, their approach to some towns, including Canterbury, Chichester, Horsham, Chelmsford and Ipswich, caused many of the population to flee the area. Some 36,000 men were admitted to army hospitals in 1809.132 The permanent hospitals
at Chelsea, Gosport, Plymouth, Chatham, Deal, Isle of Wight and Selsey had to be supplemented by temporary ones, which were established at Colchester, Harwich, Chelmsford, Dunmow, Bury St Edmunds and Southampton. At Ipswich the hutted camp known as St Mary’s Barracks was completely given over to the sick.133
Public and press opinion was shocked and angry. The three-man Army Medical Board was ordered out to Holland to improve matters. Bickering among themselves, none of them went, not surprisingly in the case of the physician-general, Sir Lucas Pepys, who was nearly seventy and unwell.† At the beginning of 1810 the three officers were dismissed the service.134 The casualties after Corunna in February 1809 were understandable, but not those resulting from the palpable neglect at Walcheren.
The transports had worked ceaselessly, but there were still not enough of them. Yet the Transport Board had done well, for it had succeeded in getting the expeditions off, albeit late, and in spite of the scarcity of merchant ships to support all the operations that the government had wished to launch. This considerable achievement was recognized by the award of a baronetcy to Rupert George.135 Yet massive conjunct expeditions involving over 100,000 tons of merchant shipping were beyond the resources of the country, its inter-service relations or its communication systems. Cavalry was crucial to the warfare of the day. Napoleon made no precautionary moves to parry forces that did not possess a significant number of horses. The duke of York complained in 1806 that Continental armies never had less than a sixth of their forces as cavalry and some had as much as a quarter, but the British Army had little more than a tenth.136 This ‘shipping bottleneck’ precluded direct and successful British intervention on the shores of France and its immediate neighbours. The army’s demand for large expeditions to invade the Continent was a logical one. Captain Charles William Pasley of the Royal Engineers wrote a widely read book, published in 1810, called Essay on the Military Policy and Institutions of the British Empire, in which he argued for the use of large armies in order to avoid the ‘unnecessary inadequacy of force’.137 The strategic need for offensive conjunct expeditions, nevertheless, remained a pressing but unattainable priority until about 1810, by which time a secure foothold for British troops had been established gradually in Portugal, solving the problem of creating a bridgehead on the continent of Europe.138
Part Three
DEFENDING THE REALM
8
Political Instability and the Conduct of the War 1802–1812
The distractions of the Cabinet have at last burst into open and public violence. It will scarcely be credited by posterity, that two of His Majesty’s principal Secretaries of State should so far forget the duty that they owed to their Sovereign and the example they ought to give to the country in obedience to its laws, to fight a duel. Yet the fact is actually so … [It is] most serious that His Majesty should have committed the affairs of State to persons whose intemperate passions were so little under the controul of reason.
– Morning Chronicle, Opposition newspaper, 22 September 18091
I will engage that there is not, even amongst the lowest of the people, a single man now to be found in England, who would not laugh to scorn any attempt to make him believe that one of the parties is better than the other … it was the disclosures made from 1805 to 1809, inclusive, that procured us this great and permanent good.
– William Cobbett, Political Register, 23 March 18162
British politics during the French Revolutionary War had been notable for political stability and Pitt as undisputed prime minister, but this situation changed dramatically during the Napoleonic War. Between 1801 and 1812 parties were gripped by rivalries and riven by competing ideologies, all observed by an increasingly cynical public. As Cobbett forcefully reminded his readers, political scandals reached a climax between 1805 and 1809. These five years saw three changes of prime minister, four secretaries of state for war and five first lords of the Admiralty. Leading the country in a war that grew in scale and complexity every year became more difficult; nevertheless, as each successive government became weaker than the one that had preceded it, the unity of the Opposition also declined.3 The result was a period seldom surpassed for violent debates in parliament, broken careers and the settling of scores; at the same time, Napoleon was at the height of his power on the Continent after he defeated Prussia in 1806 and Russia in 1807, then bringing Russia into formal alliance with France by the Treaty of Tilsit in July 1807.
The instability began in February 1801, when Pitt, who had been in power for seventeen years, unexpectedly resigned over giving Catholics a role in the army and the navy, in the wake of the Act of Union, an issue that was to split British politicians for years. Pitt wanted to relax the rules by which Catholics were excluded: the king would not have it.4 He turned to a close friend of Pitt, Henry Addington, to form a government. When speaker of the House of Commons, Addington had been dignified and effective, with a modest demeanour that suited him to this role. As a debater, however, he was indecisive and had no talent. Addington was not well born: his father had been William Pitt the Elder’s physician, a profession that at the time did not enjoy much respect, and as a result the new prime minister was known slightingly as ‘the Doctor’. Pitt’s powerful friends, such as Henry Dundas, secretary of state for war, would have nothing to do with him, and Lord Spencer left the Admiralty. Addington invited Whigs into his government. The appointment that he came most to regret was that of Lord St Vincent as first lord of the Admiralty: St Vincent immediately demanded an enquiry into the running of the navy, which became the Commission of Naval Enquiry and the start of a process that drove a wedge between Addington and his eminent predecessor.5
St Vincent brought much unpopularity on the administration, and it did not take him long to become a political liability.6 He selected as Admiralty commissioners two naval officers who shared his views. Captain Thomas Troubridge, lifelong friend of Nelson, was brave, but had an extreme and even violent personality. Like his chief, he never bothered with the subtle arts of politics, nor was he wary of its dangers. He was lucky to escape disgrace when he sold, it was rumoured, £40,000 of stock in March 1803, just before the news of a press for seamen became public; as such announcements always preceded the resumption of war, the price of stocks would fall. Both Addington and his colleague on the Board, Captain John Markham, defended him in the Commons, and the matter was dropped.7 Markham had far more talent, was quick-witted and hard-working, and a competent speaker in the House of Commons, and when the Whigs came back into power in 1806 he served again on the Admiralty Board.8 The new men at the Admiralty were convinced that the administration of the navy was corrupt to the core, and they brought brusque and unceremonious methods of management to an organization more used to negotiation, respect for precedent, and the push and pull of politics. No one denied that the administration could be improved, but imposing harsh and radical change at such a time was ill-judged. Looking to save money immediately, the Board cancelled shipbuilding and timber contracts, and further savings were made in the royal dockyards, where seven officers and 1,400 workers were dismissed. The result was an immediate loss of morale and near-paralysis of the dockyards and victualling yards.
Nevertheless, Addington’s government achieved more than was expected, in spite of the new prime minister’s homely and amateurish style.* The first decision was to sue for peace with France, which was highly popular in an exhausted and disorderly Britain. Wheat prices, 170 shillings a quarter in early 1801, fell to 60 shillings on 1 October when the peace preliminaries were signed.9 Pitt, out of office, commented to Henry Dundas: ‘I find Windham (as might be expected) in Agonies, but the rest of the World, as far as one can judge, very much delighted with the peace.’10
The negotiations at Amiens were conducted by Lord Cornwallis, and the final treaty was signed on 25 March 1802. The result was a one-sided French diplomatic triumph, reflecting France’s greater negotiating persistence, and the British general’s weakness in an unaccustomed role. British int
erest in Continental Europe was perfunctory. The status quo – French domination of Europe and Britain’s hold on India and maritime supremacy – was confirmed. France retained the territories it had overrun – Venice, the Rhineland and other northern conquests – but agreed to evacuate Rome and Naples. All overseas French possessions were returned and, in spite of the misgivings of several politicians about the safety of India, the Cape was returned to the Dutch.* Britain held on to Trinidad, formerly Spanish, and Ceylon, captured from the Dutch. Malta was to be returned to the Knights of St John and its neutrality guaranteed, though the British garrison and navy did not leave.11 (The usefulness of Malta was much debated in Britain, but the weakness of the Knights, emphasized by Spain’s confiscation of the Order’s property there, increased British reluctance to fulfil the terms of the Treaty. In February 1803 even Russia, fearful of too much French power in the Mediterranean, advised Britain not to abandon the island.12)
None of these diplomatic wranglings discouraged the immediate resumption of social and commercial contacts between Britain and France. The landed elite, deprived of the Grand Tour for a decade, flocked across the Channel.† Charles James Fox went to Paris partly as a political gesture, while the engineer James Watt travelled there to seek business. William Wordsworth and J. M. W. Turner also visited.13 Not surprisingly after so long a war, relations between the two governments were still very sensitive. Captain Philippe D’Auvergne, on leave from his intelligence activities in the Channel Islands, travelled to Paris, still pursuing his claim to his French title and lands. He was recognized and arrested, and only just escaped to England with the help of the British plenipotentiary, Anthony Merry, who briefly held credentials in the French capital until September 1802.14 Merry’s place was taken by Lord Whitworth as ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary, who arrived in Paris in November. His task was to continue negotiations with the French government, though he was not confident of his dealings with Bonaparte, first consul since 1799, writing to Sir Arthur Paget, ambassador in Vienna, at the end of April 1803 of ‘the untractable character with which we have to do, I am almost inclined to despair’.15 Bonaparte was making a series of expansionist moves, despatching a substantial French fleet to San Domingo to wrest back the island from the regime established by former slaves that had taken it over in 1791. He acquired Louisiana from Spain in 1801, and annexed Elba and Parma, rendering him dominant in northern Italy. He ordered an armed intervention in neutral Switzerland in February 1803. Just before war resumed in May 1803, Napoleon sold Louisiana to the United States, bringing the French Treasury much needed money.
