Eventually Pitt yielded to his brother’s entreaties for a meeting, but only on the basis that ‘I trust your decision will have been such as to relieve me from the most anxious of all situations. My own opinion remains and must remain the same.’ His feelings, however motivated, had led him to great generosity towards his brother – a seat in the Cabinet, the rank of Knight of the Garter, and possibly also sending him money he could ill afford. Ultimately, however, his head ruled his heart, and his family was subordinate to the needs of the state. Chatham duly surrendered his portfolio but remained in the Cabinet. The brothers exchanged dutiful letters of devotion, but their relationship was seriously affected.
Events were crowding in on Pitt. Just before these dismissals he had suffered the embarrassment of being called to court as a defence witness in the trial of Horne Tooke for high treason. He was called upon to confirm that he had himself campaigned for parliamentary reform at extraparliamentary meetings in 1782, one of the very things for which the defendant was now on trial. The discomfort of this experience was not alleviated by the verdict of not guilty delivered soon afterwards: all the main London trials under the new legislation failed in similar fashion and further prosecutions were abandoned, while the Edinburgh courts did achieve one hanging. On top of all this, Holland was on its last legs by the end of the year, and when the new session of Parliament was opened on 30 December 1794 it was none other than William Wilberforce who moved an amendment to the King’s Speech ‘advising his Majesty to order a negociation [sic] for peace on such terms as should be deemed just and reasonable’.41
Wilberforce had announced at the time of his religious conversion that he would ‘not be so much a Party man’, and now he showed it. What is more, he was supported by another of Pitt’s old friends, Sir Henry Bankes from Dorset. Pitt gave a spirited response, arguing that a peace made with the expansionist French government would be meaningless. ‘Do the gentlemen who now desert the war … hope for a free and useful commerce? Do they expect that the armies on both sides will be disbanded, and the fleets be called home?’42 He said he was still confident of success: ‘All wars depend now on the finances of the nations engaged in them,’43 and the objective was to ‘oblige France to make efforts to which she is now unequal’.44 Wilberforce’s amendment mustered seventy-three votes, against 246 for the government, but the debate was personally wounding to Pitt – Portland thought him ‘pretty seriously hurt by it’.45 At the very least it showed that a stronger body of opinion was now swinging towards peace.
Within days, still worse was to follow. The severe winter froze the rivers of Holland, allowing French troops to launch an unexpected invasion across the ice. Amsterdam fell on 20 January: at the end of the month the icebound Dutch fleet became the first ships in the history of warfare to surrender to a force of cavalry. Holland was knocked out of the war, and her resources could soon be expected to be deployed on the French side.
With so many misfortunes accumulating so rapidly it is not surprising that there was some discontent with the government, even among Pitt’s regular supporters. Disillusionment with the war fed dissatisfaction with government departments and a feeling amongst Pitt’s long-standing friends that he was surrounded by the wrong people. John Mitford, the Solicitor General, wrote to Pitt with a blunt analysis on two occasions in early 1795: ‘The present situation of publick affairs … sours the minds of the best friends of government; & they are particularly affected by observing, as they conceive, a languor in every department … That you have called to your assistance those who only bring you weakness, who want every moment your protection, & daily consume your good fame.’46 A few weeks later he wrote: ‘You must be aware that almost all your friends feel something of the same uneasiness. Many of them apprehend that what they long ago foretold has at length happened; that you are completely surrounded, that you stand in effect alone, that you are no longer your own master, & that if you can extricate yourself from the chains prepared for you, you have not a moment to lose. What has happened in Ireland seems to be generally considered as a death blow.’47
Once again Ireland, and in particular Fitzwilliam’s conduct and policy, was exploding onto the political scene. Pitt had been preoccupied throughout January: Holland was falling, the army in retreat towards northern Germany, reinforcements being found for the West Indies, and major Commons debates on the army estimates and a renewed opposition motion for peace with France demanded his time. Fitzwilliam would subsequently complain that a despatch he sent to London on 15 January, which took twelve days to arrive, was not even considered for another eleven days, thus greatly extending the confusion which arose in this period. Pitt and his senior colleagues were simply too busy to turn their minds back to Ireland in late January – by the time they did so in mid-February, a major political storm had erupted.
Fitzwilliam’s conduct on his arrival in Dublin at the beginning of January suggests that either he had a different understanding of the ministerial discussions of the previous November, or that he believed that the Cabinet in London would not stand in his way once he had assumed office as Lord Lieutenant. It is possible that Pitt’s formula of not proposing further Catholic relief but being prepared to ‘yield if necessary’ emboldened Fitzwilliam to depart from the agreed line. It seems likely too that in character and beliefs he was not suited to a position requiring delicate management of men and strict adherence to negotiated positions: he very strongly believed that the problems of Ireland could only be solved by putting the Catholics on an equal footing to the Protestants, and then ‘both descriptions should forget all their former differences’.48 Within days of arrival he dismissed John Beresford, Pitt’s long-standing adviser, as First Commissioner of the Revenue in Ireland. Other immediate dismissals and appointments were soon creating a new administration in Dublin, and one that would be much more in accordance with Fitzwilliam’s own views. He had only been in Ireland ten days when his despatch of 15 January suggested that he would soon wish to pass a Bill to allow Catholics to sit in the Irish Parliament, and that not to do so would be ‘exceedingly impolitik’.49 Fitzwilliam was now being borne along by the tide of Catholic sentiment which his own airing of opinions in the months before his appointment had helped to initiate.
These events caused alarm among Irish Protestants, intensely annoyed Pitt who regarded the dismissal of Beresford as ‘an open breach of a most solemn promise’,50 and forfeited Fitzwilliam’s support among his Whig friends in the Cabinet. The government’s softly-softly approach to Catholic emancipation was blown apart: on the one hand the Irish Parliament was under pressure from a petition with half a million signatures demanding passage of a Bill to secure the admission of Catholics, and on the other George III was telling Pitt that such a policy would be ‘overturning the fabrick’ of the 1688 Revolution, and was ‘beyond the decision of any Cabinet of Ministers’.51 In any case, Ministers were absolutely clear that the Bill should be resolutely opposed, and by late February were unanimous that Fitzwilliam should be brought home. Fitzwilliam then made matters worse by not departing until 25 March, while public disorder and excitement worsened.
He was replaced by Pitt’s long-standing friend, the new Lord Camden (formerly John Pratt), whose swearing in was accompanied by a huge riot but who managed to secure the defeat of the Bill in the Irish House of Commons in May. Fitzwilliam never forgave the rest of the government for the way he had been treated during his extremely brief ministerial career, but he had created a genuine crisis for the administration when it was beset by difficulties elsewhere. In one sense, however, he also helped the new ministry to pull together, for Pitt found that his new Whig colleagues gave him unstinting support when they realised that Fitzwilliam had overplayed his hand. Portland in particular had reacted as a loyal lieutenant rather than the leader of a rival faction.
Taken all round, Pitt’s Cabinet from early 1795 was stronger than in earlier years. The highly able Earl Spencer had replaced Chatham at the Admiralty, and while the Irish crisi
s was erupting Pitt finally sacked Richmond as Master of the Ordnance. Disillusioned with the conduct of the war after his advice had been rejected, Richmond had absented himself from Cabinet meetings. It was typical of Pitt that he allowed this situation to drift for some months rather than confront a man who had once provided much-needed ballast in his Cabinet, but also typical that when forced to address the situation by Richmond’s written complaints he did so with elegant bluntness. The letter of dismissal makes clear that ‘your Grace’s ceasing to attend the Cabinet, and your breaking off the habits of familiar and friendly intercourse between us, proceeded entirely from yourself … I see that your resuming a seat in the Cabinet must prove equally unpleasant and embarrassing to public business – this consideration must decide my opinion.’52 In Richmond’s place, Pitt brought in the hugely experienced Lord Cornwallis. While true power still lay with the key triumvirate of Pitt, Dundas and Grenville, departments which were vital to an effective war effort were now in more capable hands.
Efforts in London to energise the coalition against France produced another Cabinet crisis in March 1795, with Pitt and Grenville in sharp disagreement for the first time. Pitt was desperate to keep the coalition in being: in early March he and Grenville were still negotiating with Austria over the terms of the proposed loan, and were offering up to £1 million to Russia in return for an army of 55,000 men in action against France. Despite rumours of peace talks between Berlin and Paris, Pitt succeeded in overruling a deeply sceptical Grenville in the Cabinet (initially by six votes to five) to make a further offer of aid to Prussia if that would keep her in the war. The opinion of the Cabinet was, in George III’s words: ‘There is no Force sufficient without the co-operation of the Prussians to prevent the French seizing every port in the North Sea.’53 When Grenville threatened to resign, Pitt played for time. Grenville eventually settled for refusing to sign the despatch and having his dissent noted in the Cabinet Minutes on 8 April – within days he was vindicated by the news that a Franco – Prussian treaty had been signed at Basle.
Pitt had kept his Cabinet together through a series of crises, but his international coalition was now disintegrating. Tuscany had made peace with France in February, and soon Prussia’s treaty with France, acknowledging French possession of the whole left bank of the Rhine, was additionally signed by Sweden. In May, Holland concluded a humiliating treaty with Paris, giving up several cities, a vast fine and a commitment to support a French army. The Spanish, also beaten on the battlefield, were working towards a treaty with France which would be signed in July, restoring the previous frontier. Russia was not yet ready for active participation, still digesting the territory of Poland. It was now only Britain and Austria, along with Piedmont and the two Sicilies, fighting against the might of a rampaging France. What was left of the British army on the Continent was no longer operating alongside the Austrians, and embarked from Bremen for England in early April. Meanwhile, in the West Indies, Guadeloupe and St Lucia had been lost to French forces and local insurrection.
Pitt affected to be undismayed by this series of disasters. In late April he wrote one of his cheerful ‘please don’t worry’ letters to his mother, describing his latest sufferings from gout as ‘very moderate and regular’, and referring to ‘the Weakness & distraction of France, which seems likely to lead to the best solution of all our difficulties’.54 In May he responded to a renewed motion for peace from Wilberforce by calling for perseverance not negotiation. He contrasted the ability of Britain to finance the war with the French only maintaining their efforts ‘by requisitions, by robbery, and plunder’. He concluded: ‘By a vigorous prosecution of the war for a short time longer, we have every reasonable prospect that we shall be able to procure for ourselves a solid, permanent, and honourable peace.’55
While the Austrians geared up for an autumn offensive, Windham persuaded Pitt, against the better judgement of Dundas, to support a landing by French émigrés on the coast of Brittany. Accordingly, on 6 June four thousand were put ashore at Quiberon Bay, achieving initial success and surprise as well as adding to their forces from the local peasantry. But the émigrés were too timid and their force too small to exploit their success with sufficient speed, and in July they faced a strong French counterattack which drove them back to the sea. The survivors were taken prisoner. Later they were slaughtered on the orders of the Convention in Paris. The human cost of mistakes in a revolutionary war was very high.
For all his professed optimism, it cannot have been anything but an unhappy time for Pitt. What would be wholly successful expeditions had been sent to seize the Dutch colonies in Ceylon and Cape Town in the light of Holland’s defeat, but every other initiative of 1795 had ended in diplomatic failure or military defeat. While overall the economy had continued to expand after the brief downturn of 1793, there was a serious shortage of wheat after a series of poor harvests, which brought sharp price rises in the summer of 1795. Pitt had refused grain exports to France in 1789 because the price was over forty shillings a quarter, but in the summer of 1795 prices reached seventy-eight shillings, and in August briefly touched 108 shillings. There were riots in Downing Street, with Pitt’s windows being broken, and serious disturbances in many cities. Huge but orderly meetings were held, such as one alleged to have mustered a hundred thousand people at St George’s Fields in London at the end of June to demand peace, reform and cheaper food.
Reports of the riots in Downing Street brought a typically concerned letter to Pitt from his mother. Pitt’s reply reflects his constant wish to assure her that all was well even in the most troubled times: ‘I take shame to myself for not reflecting how much a mob is magnified by Report; but that which visited my Window with a single Pebble was really so young and so little versed in its Business, that it hardly merited the Notice of a News Paper. The Ceremony has not been repeated since.’56
Further embarrassment was caused that summer for the government, and indeed for the entire political establishment, by the vast debts of the Prince of Wales. As the Prince sulkily prepared for his marriage to Caroline, daughter of the Duke of Brunswick, it had become apparent that his debts were of the order of £600,000, despite the large sums given to him over the previous twelve years. Pitt’s plans to raise the Prince’s allowance, with a proportion of it set aside for creditors, ran into trouble from all sides in Parliament, where demands were made for larger sums to be reserved for debt repayments – all of which took up a good deal of Pitt’s time at the height of a war and during a serious food shortage.
The paying off of his debts was the only reason the Prince had agreed to what would be a catastrophic marriage, solemnised on 8 April 1795 in St James’s Chapel Royal. He sent his mistress, Lady Jersey, to greet his bride at Greenwich, asked for brandy as soon as he saw her, was drunk at the wedding, and slept with her once only – although thereby producing Princess Charlotte nine months later. For her part, Princess Caroline was soon embarking on her own life of political mischief and sexual adventure: the Queen had warned before the marriage that the Princess’s ‘passions are so strong’ that in Brunswick ‘she was not to be allowed even to go from one room to another without her Governess’.57 The rivalry and hatred which characterised the marriage would culminate in Caroline banging on the doors of Westminster Abbey in 1821 while the Prince was being crowned George IV without her.
The military failures and domestic disturbances of the summer of 1795 led Pitt quietly to reappraise his aspirations for the war. The idea of a humiliated France coming to terms under pressure of revolt and invasion was now only a dream. Pitt was being forced back on the naval and colonial strategy advocated by Auckland the previous year, writing to his brother in early August after news of Quiberon Bay and the Spanish treaty: ‘I incline to think that our plan must now be changed, and that the only great part must be in the West Indies, where I trust enough may yet be gained to counterbalance the French successes in Europe.’58 This is what Dundas had long since wanted.
In September
the two of them travelled to Southampton to wave off a huge expedition to the West Indies under Sir Ralph Abercromby which eventually totalled 32,000 men. They believed that British success in the West Indies would combine with the internal state of France, also suffering serious food shortages, to create the circumstances for an honourable negotiated peace. With that in mind, Pitt was hopeful too of the results of the latest round of political change in Paris, where a government of five ruling Directors entrenched itself in August. Previous French governments during the Revolution had collapsed under attack from revolutionary crowds: this one dealt with rebellion by firing cannon loaded with grapeshot at point-blank range into the hostile protesters, and was highly pleased with the skill and ruthlessness of the rising young artillery officer who was prepared to order this, one Napoleon Bonaparte – who had earlier distinguished himself by being instrumental in driving the allied fleet out of the harbour at Toulon. In September Pitt described the more stable constitution emerging in France as ‘a very fortunate event’.59
Whether it was to be peace or continued war, the new British strategy was the only effective one which could be mounted in late 1795. But as Parliament met on 29 October it was easy to see which outcome Pitt and his colleagues preferred. The King’s Speech referred to ‘a general sense … throughout France, that the only relief from the increasing pressure of these difficulties must arise from the restoration of peace, and the establishment of some settled system of government’.60 The reference to France wishing for peace was political code for Britain being prepared to contemplate it. On the way to deliver the speech, the window of the King’s carriage was shattered by a bullet or other projectile. The crowds outside chanted ‘No war! No Pitt! Peace, Peace, Bread, Bread!’
William Pitt the Younger: A Biography Page 43
