Britain Against Napoleon

by Roger Knight

  The dispute culminated in September 1809 when the outwardly unemotional Castlereagh called Canning out, demonstrating his inward-seething anger when he pulled the trigger of a gun on Putney Heath. This duel was not a formal ritual for the restoration of honour, in which opponents fire into the air, but one in which Castlereagh, at least, fired to kill his opponent, a view supported by his call for a further round after both shots had missed in the first. Canning was hit by the second shot in the thigh. Had the ball deviated even slightly, it would have gone through an artery, leaving him dead, and Castlereagh in the dock for wilful murder.107 Both ministers immediately resigned. Castlereagh, however, was soon rehabilitated and became foreign secretary in 1812. Canning was much in evidence at Westminster thereafter, but he never joined a ministry, and eventually withdrew to Lisbon as ambassador in 1814, giving the fragile health of his son as the reason for doing so. After the war, Canning reflected on how much he had missed:

  The station in Europe and in history, which I have thrown away … having refused the management of the mightiest scheme of politics which this country ever engaged in, or the world ever witnessed, from a miserable point of etiquette, one absolutely unintelligible … at a distance of more than six miles from Palace Yard.108

  When his old mentor Canning left office in October 1809, William Huskisson followed two months later. Though junior at the Treasury, Huskisson was the most valuable of the financial ministers, and was a great loss to Spencer Perceval, who was then chancellor of the Exchequer under Portland. Throughout 1809 Huskisson had been in the thick of a great financial crisis: in March, Austria had declared war on France and without warning drew large amounts of money on the British Treasury, at a time when it was short of specie.109 Huskisson was already concerned over the Treasury’s heavy borrowing, and doubted whether the government would be able to raise enough taxes to pay the interest on the loans. A related problem was a shortage of silver and gold coin during the boom years of trade, particularly from the beginning of 1809 to the middle of 1810, when much of what the government had was required to pay the army in the Peninsula. Huskisson proposed cutting the budget of the army and navy by £2 million each, and the Ordnance by £1 million, but his recommendations were not accepted by Perceval and the cabinet.110 In fact, the economy expanded in 1809 and 1810, and revenue from taxes exceeded estimates, so the government’s credit was maintained and the immediate crisis averted.

  The political situation was rendered even more unstable by the condition of the king. At the age of seventy-two, George III’s mind had again given way, although no one expected the condition to be permanent. The role of the prince regent was formalized by parliament in February 1811, with the proviso that he should do nothing irreversible for a year. After many years of friendship with the Whigs, it was expected that when the year was over, and if the king had not recovered, he would ask them to form a government. The Opposition was politically and personally divided: Grenville and Grey did not trust each other; Tierney, Sheridan and Whitbread similarly. The issue of Catholic emancipation, still much espoused by the Whigs, was still to cause them difficulties at court. The transition of the prince regent’s loyalties from Whig to Tory was helped by the installation of a new and Tory mistress, Lady Hertford.

  These factors intensified political feeling, and the stresses and fatigue suffered by ministers. The only exception was the vain and ambitious Irishman Richard, Marquess Wellesley, who had so greatly expanded British power in India. There he had enjoyed unbridled personal power and he never accepted the constraints of cabinet government. He was foreign secretary in Perceval’s government, and contemptuous of that ascetic, evangelical prime minister. But Wellesley’s laziness and inefficiency were breathtaking. He kept his ambassadors waiting for replies for months, not least because of his affairs. His brothers were infuriated by him. William Wellesley-Pole, by now chief secretary in Ireland, wrote to Arthur Wellesley in March 1810: ‘I understand that he hardly does any business at his Office, that nobody can procure access to him, and that his whole time is passed with Moll’, a well-known courtesan.111

  Fortunately, others were more conscientious at this critical time. Castlereagh, reinstated in government as foreign secretary in February 1812, even with his immense capacity for work, found that he, too, had his limits, as he related to his step-brother Charles Stewart in April: ‘I have been very hard work’d since I came in. A heavy Job in every Quarter. I don’t recollect ever to have had so tough a task.’112 The post of first lord of the Admiralty was, as we have noted, particularly strenuous. Tom Grenville’s successor was Lord Mulgrave, an active soldier until 1801, who came to the post in 1807 when he was fifty-two.* It was not long before he was pressing Perceval to relieve him of his office; as the prime minister told the king, ‘the laborious duties of the Admiralty have been pressing for some time so heavily upon Lord Mulgrave’s health, that he has told Mr Perceval repeatedly that it was impossible that he should be able to hold the office much longer.’113 Perceval neatly sacrificed the less than energetic Lord Chatham after Walcheren: he was forced to resign as master-general of the Ordnance after an angry cabinet meeting. Perceval installed Mulgrave in his place, a post with much lighter duties than those at the Admiralty, and which he held until 1818.114

  Mulgrave’s successor as first lord, Charles Philip Yorke, also felt the ministerial strain. He had been made secretary at war in 1801, the best, according to the king, that he had ever had.115 He had been less of a success as home secretary between August 1803 and May 1804, when he was overworked and had much to defend in parliament: accepting that office was, he said later, ‘the most foolish thing I ever did in public life’. When the Talents were in government Yorke attacked Windham continually over the latter’s military measures. Now, Perceval persuaded him to take the Admiralty, although Yorke had no great appetite for it and one observer thought that Yorke would be ‘much too hot, and headstrong for such an office’.116 But he did well, though he was never at ease in the post. He backed the ship-construction improvements advocated by Sir Robert Seppings against the conservative shipwright establishment and drove through the building of the Plymouth breakwater. He took his appointment duties seriously and, according to John Barrow, set a day aside to listen to naval officers, ‘to their numerous tales of distress and disappointment, and too frequently to listen to them without the possibility of affording relief. Few, I believe, experienced this painful duty more strongly than Mr Charles Yorke.’117 One MP thought that Yorke was ‘a very humane, good man, and with a great deal more feeling than generally belongs to politicians’.118 He was thus much affected by the loss of lives when three ships of the line, St George, Defence and Hero, returning at Christmas 1811 from the Baltic, were caught in a great storm and went ashore off Jutland and the Texel: in two days 2,000 men were drowned.119 Yorke resigned in March 1812. He was fifty-eight and riddled with gout.

  The home secretary, Richard Ryder, was the most unhealthy of all the ministers. Honourable but undistinguished, he could not, for instance, cope with defending in parliament his handling of the Luddite riots in Nottingham and York (which required a good number of militia units to bring under control) and the prime minister had to come to his aid in debate. From this point rumours abounded that Ryder would resign and he did so in May 1812, and took to his bed.120

  The twelve months from the spring of 1811 had been the nadir of British fortunes. It was true that the French had been neutralized at sea, but on land the situation appeared dire. The Continent had experienced nearly two years of peace, on Napoleon’s terms. For most of 1811 Napoleon had been gathering his forces for a massive invasion of Russia, and fears of an invasion of Britain were lessening, after long years of building defensive counter-measures. The French economy still seemed healthier than that of the British as the resources of more conquered nations came under Napoleon’s control. His armies were stretched in the Peninsula, but at the beginning of 1812 a French victory remained the most probable result.121

>   In London the crisis also came at the same time and the cards that were played during these tumultuous months could have fallen another way. Had the prince regent not backed the Tories in an uncharacteristic attack of common sense in February 1812, the Opposition might have formed an administration. In the event, the prince abandoned the Whigs and put to lords Grey and Grenville an impossible proposition that they join Perceval’s government, which they immediately refused. After so many years of political friendship with the prince, the Whigs were furious. But if Grenville had returned to power at this critical moment, Britain might well have changed course. In February 1812 Tom Grenville described his brother’s ‘deep despair’ at finding ‘that besides three and a half millions of deficit, there are forty-two millions of unfunded Exchequer Bills’.122 Lord Grenville’s inflexibility and his long-held belief that Britain could not afford to fund a war on the Continent could easily have led to a loss of nerve and an attempt to make peace.* Grey’s view, on the other hand, was that not enough was being done by Perceval’s government to support the army in the Peninsula. A Whig cabinet would therefore have been divided and at odds with parliament. In the middle of April 1812, Napoleon did in fact send a message proposing a peace treaty, with each side to retain its conquests.123 The Tory government took the French overture for what it was, part of a delaying tactic to allow the emperor to make his preparations for the invasion of Russia. The Whigs might well have chosen to open negotiations.

  Even so, Perceval’s position was not strong and the prime minister also had to deal with the machinations of his foreign secretary, Richard Wellesley, who was manoeuvring to replace him.124 Then, on 11 May 1812, Spencer Perceval was assassinated in the lobby of the House of Commons by John Bellingham, a depressed and deranged Baltic merchant who had been bankrupted by the trade blockades, and who blamed Perceval for his ruin. Even though he was not built on a heroic scale, Perceval’s success in keeping his ministry together and nursing the country’s finances had been critical. He was described by one MP as ‘not a ship of the line, but he carries many guns, is tight built, and is out in all weathers’.125

  It fell to Lord Liverpool, as Hawkesbury had become on the death of his father in December 1808, to form a government. He, too, was not a dominant character, and became irritable under the constant pressure (which was to earn him the nickname the ‘Grand Figitalis’).126 Yet he was persistent, prudent, discreet and trusted. Forming his administration was complex and difficult. Yorke regretfully refused a post, saying that his health ‘has greatly altered for the worse during the last two years and is attended with such unpleasant symptoms, affecting my spirits and nerves as well as my Frame’.127 Castlereagh continued as foreign secretary, Lord Sidmouth became home secretary, Earl Bathurst the secretary of state for war and the second Viscount Melville, Henry Dundas’s son, the first lord of the Admiralty. Despite this unpromising start, the administration was to achieve success, which started in November 1812 at the general election, when Liverpool’s supporters gained twice as many seats as the Opposition.128 Few would have predicted when Liverpool formed his government that he would remain as prime minister for fifteen years.

  9

  The Invasion Threat 1803–1812

  Every town was … a sort of garrison – in one place you might hear the ‘tattoo’ of some youth learning to beat the drum, at another place some march or national air being practised upon the fife, and every morning five o’clock the bugle horn was sounded through the streets, to call the volunteers to a two hours’ drill … and then you heard the pop, pop, pop, of the single musket, or the heavy sound of the volley, or distant thunder of the artillery.

  – George Cruikshank, A Pop-Gun Fired off … in Defence of the British Volunteers of 1803 (1806)1

  The possession to an Enemy of Dover Castle [and] of the opposite Entrenched Height and of the town and port … and defended by 6 or 7,000 men would establish a sure communication with France and could not be easily wrested from his hands. The conquest of this alone would be to him a sufficient object could he arrive with means of immediately attacking it. Its preservation to us is most important …

  – Henry Dundas, War Office memorandum, 17982

  Addington’s cabinet had seized the initiative by its sudden declaration of war on 18 May 1803. For a few weeks the British held it, but the government knew that this might be very temporary. Napoleon’s dominance on the Continent and his ‘Army of England’ – a force, when at maximum strength, of 167,000, concentrated in the French Channel ports – left the politicians and people in no doubt of his intention to invade. We will never know, if Napoleon’s army had sailed, whether he would have managed to land his troops successfully or, even more problematic, to have kept them supplied. By the summer of 1804 just over 70,000 well-trained Frenchmen were encamped at Bruges, St Omer and Montreuil. With the reserves, Napoleon’s army numbered 100,000. In concentrating such a large force, the emperor and his chief of staff, Marshal Berthier, were experiencing their own logistics problems.3 Basins and breakwaters had to be built to protect the invasion flotilla from damage by the sea at several of the ports, including Boulogne, Étaples, Ambleteuse and Wimereux.4 A year later, in August 1805, the emperor had accumulated enough landing craft in the Channel ports to carry 167,000 troops.5

  The prime minister was more than aware of the dangers of civil disorder if the French Army reached English shores. The measures that he proposed to take would not have been half-hearted, as outlined in ‘Memorandum of Circumstances to be Determined and Acted upon Previous to & at the Moment of Invasion’, a document written before the Peace of Amiens in February 1801, the month in which he began his administration.* One passage reads:

  Strong Proclamations and strong General measures to be prepared and ready for the preservation of internal Quiet, and strong Examples must necessarily be made. Foreigners must be watched; Suspicious and Turbulent Persons secured … Patrols will be everywhere established on the great Roads near the great Towns. The Towns, Counties and Districts of Counties, Committees of Magistrates will be formed and some constantly sitting (as well as Parochial Committees at the Church) to answer Requisitions and enforce Orders. The Supply of Markets must be kept open and protected, and any attempt to disturb them punished in the most summary manner.6

  To anticipate the need to apply stern measures to discipline a truculent British population in the face of an invasion was wise, for in any case some of the government’s anti-invasion measures were resisted. Almost immediately after the declaration of war, in June 1803, instructions were promulgated from Whitehall to the lords lieutenant of the counties to present an evacuation plan and consider how all food stocks, forage and livestock useful to the enemy could be removed or destroyed. This measure was stopped in its tracks by the protest of the duke of Richmond, the lord lieutenant of Sussex, a county seen as directly in danger of occupation. Richmond was also by then a field marshal, and sixth senior officer in the Army List, and his views held sway. On 7 and 8 July 1803, at the general meeting of the lieutenancy of Sussex, chaired by Richmond, and attended by General David Dundas as general commanding the Southern District, it was resolved unanimously to ask the king to reconsider laying waste ‘one of the richest provinces in England’.7 The general was reminded that anti-invasion measures had to work with local interests, and the scorched-earth plan was quietly shelved.8

  Moreover, the alarm could too easily be raised and several invasion scares ran through the country, in the main caused by the mistaken lighting of primitive fire beacons.9 Just how easily a town could be rendered panic-stricken is illustrated by a letter of late 1803 from Colchester from the author Ann Taylor to her sister:

  On Tuesday night between 8 and 9 intelligence was conveyed by the telegraphs from Camp to Camp from there to Colchester and from Colchester to London that an enemy’s fleet was off the coast … At this time the theatre and a book auction at Barlows were full but in one instant they were either depopulated or filled with cries and lamentations …
The volunteers were flying to arms. The officers at the play were scampering out to gallop home to their camps … The scene would have been truly ludicrous, for in their great anxiety to be at their quarters in time all the horses, post-chaises, etc., in the town were hired within half an hour, crammed full of red coats and even in some instances two or three upon one horse tearing away to their different camps. The ladies in the theatre [were] shrieking and crying and tumbling out until there was scarcely a creature in the place. Women running out of their houses screaming murder and in fact a scene of most alarming tumult and confusion … and I am afraid that in case of many more alarms or of actual invasion, the demand for salts vinegar, etc., etc., will be more than our perfumers will be able to supply. However, in about half an hour signals were made to inform us that a mistake had been made by the first telegraph which announced an enemy’s instead of a friendly fleet, and of course we all recovered.10

  It was always assumed by the government that London was to be Napoleon’s main objective. One of the prime minister’s concerns was that the capital would be overwhelmed by refugees fleeing ahead of the French invading forces. Flour, rice and salted provisions, as well as 250 tons of biscuit meal, were stockpiled in depots in and around London, at places such as Fulham, Brentford and Staines. These emergency stores were sufficient, according to the commissary-general, Brook Watson, in a letter of November 1803, six months after the conflict had resumed, to the worried prime minister, ‘to supply the whole capital a fortnight at the extreme extent of its consumption … and at the Mills in its vicinity is, I compute, at least equal to three weeks more. The Ovens within our reach are equal to Baking for double the number of inhabitants.’ If really necessary, stocks of provisions held by the Victualling Board could also be used.11 The Commissariat hired 200 teams of horses and wagons, extra Commissariat staff and storekeepers, and four master bakers with teams of journeymen bakers. As with preparations for other invasions that never came, of course, the effectiveness of these measures can only be guessed at.*