Pitt’s transcendence over normal politics was partly due to his incorruptibility – ‘Honest Billy’ never sought rewards for himself, as his bankers well knew. But his concept of incorruptibility was applied strictly to himself, and did not prohibit dealing with others on the only terms they understood. In 1784 he had not hesitated to deploy the patronage of the Crown in his great confrontation with Fox. If the Irish House of Commons now required an even greater flow of favours in order to vote itself out of existence, then so be it. Thus Cornwallis was authorised by Pitt to carry out ‘a little quiet coercion if it should be necessary’.5 By May, Cornwallis was so deeply into this ‘coercion’ that it repelled him: ‘It has been the wish of my life to avoid all this dirty business, and I am now involved in it beyond all bearing … How I long to kick those whom my public duty obliges me to court!’6 He and Castlereagh embarked on a programme of public persuasion which would eventually be accompanied by every known device of influence: pensions and appointments were handed out in order to create a parliamentary vacancy or win over a vote; £1.5 million was eventually put on the table to purchase Irish seats from those who controlled them. Peerages were touted on an unprecedented scale, with Cornwallis sending a regular stream of requests for them to Pitt. By August, Cornwallis could report ‘cordial approbation of the measure of Union’.7
Pitt was equally determined to screw down the lid of anti-sedition laws on the boxed-in activities of the radical Societies. He had become adept in financial matters at setting up a House of Commons Committee to inquire into a certain subject in order to buttress his eventual actions with the findings of a cross-section of MPs. 1799 Provided a good example of the broader use of this technique: a Commons Committee on sedition reported in March, and Pitt responded in April with a new Bill to suppress new radical organisations such as United Scotsmen and United Englishmen. It contained tighter regulations on lecturing and printing; Pitt argued that the liberty of the press was ‘the most invaluable bulwark of liberty’, but that provisions to enable the tracing of all publications to their publishers were necessary because ‘we have seen the liberty of the press abused in a way most calculated to pervert and mislead the lower orders’.8
This is a typical illustration of the arguments Pitt deployed for each aspect of his ‘terror’ – the restrictions were necessary in order to preserve the essence of traditional liberties. To opponents, of course, the measures themselves represented the removal of important freedoms. Pitt gave no trace of agonising over such measures: ‘We must feel ourselves bound to accommodate our precautions to the evil which we have discovered.’9 He has been criticised over the years for taking such harsh measures, and sometimes seen as changing his philosophy markedly over the years, but the truth seems to be that his liberal disposition was always subject to practical considerations. In his mind, progressive instincts were subject to the need to preserve the constitutional framework he cherished.
Pitt continued to treat the House of Commons with great respect. Although the remnant of the Whigs could provide only token opposition, he had not forgotten that the Commons was the source of his power. Lord Holland’s analysis, that Pitt missed the absent Fox because he needed an enemy against which to rally his supporters, certainly rings true: ‘Mr. Pitt earnestly laboured to draw his opponents back to Parliament, and that, with that view, he sometimes taunted and attempted to exasperate the absent members, and at others studiously magnified the talents and importance of those who were left behind … he is also said to have found, that the want of opponents in Parliament deprived him of the readiest weapon which he could hold up in terrorem to the King, to force his compliance with any unpalatable measure, or to deter him from insisting on unreasonable objects.’10
Once again, on 7 June 1799, Pitt set out a budget at great length and in intricate detail. While he celebrated the flourishing of British trade, he already had to admit that the much-vaunted income tax was not going to produce the sums envisaged, principally because of evasion. He was thus obliged to borrow more than he intended, and even so had to stretch his financial ingenuity still further with fresh taxes on sugar, coffee and, remarkably, a small tax on banknotes.
Such problems seemed manageable when compared to the apparently parlous state of the French Republic. Quite apart from the economic consequences of high taxes, confiscations, soaring inflation and interruption of trade, France now faced a military situation which was the most adverse since her experience of invasion and revolt in 1793. The French had at first dealt successfully with the renewed outbreak of hostilities in Italy, when the Neapolitans jumped the gun and marched on Rome in November 1798. This had led to a spat between London and Vienna, since the Austrians believed the presence in Naples of Nelson and Lord and Lady Hamilton had contributed to their ally going to war without consulting them. Within weeks the French had routed the Neapolitan forces, Nelson was evacuating the Royal Family and the Hamiltons, and yet another republic was declared. But from then on military events turned sour for the overstretched French forces: a counter-revolution had swept them from southern Italy by June; Napoleon’s advance against the Turks had been stopped at Acre (partly by a small British force led by Sydney Smith) and he was forced to retreat towards Cairo; revolts were brewing in Belgium, Luxembourg and formerly royalist regions of France such as the Vendée and Brittany; fighting broke out between the French and Austrian armies on the Rhine in March; and both Russia and Prussia seemed to be readying themselves for war. Austria formally declared war on France on 11 March.
The Second Coalition against France was therefore coming together, but doing so in a shambolic and accidental manner analogous to the First. Negotiations had been fraught for many months: Austrian refusal to honour the terms of an earlier loan agreement with Britain led Grenville to concentrate on Prussia rather than Austria, and also led to the collapse of a draft convention with Russia at the end of 1798. By February 1799 an Anglo – Russian agreement had been reached, extending subsidies to the Russians of well over £1 million a year in return for 45,000 troops. So far so good, but the presence for months in Berlin of Tom Grenville failed to arrest the continual seesawing of the attitudes of Frederick William III, who varied at one extreme from asking for a subsidy for fully 230,000 troops, to the other extreme of not fighting at all. By May it was clear that the Prussians could not be counted on – Tom Grenville thought them ‘past the help of man’.11 The Second Coalition was thus to be very far from the Quadruple Alliance with prior agreement on war aims which Pitt and Grenville had set out to form: the absence of Prussia and the difficulties the Austrian and Russian armies experienced in working together made it flawed from the outset.
Nevertheless, there was still hope that the coalition could be completed and could deliver a crushing blow to a momentarily stricken France. By late March the Austrian Archduke Charles was advancing across the Rhine. In early April the French were also defeated in Italy at Austrian hands, and by the end of the month the Russian General Suvorov was triumphantly entering Milan. Great swathes of Italian territory were passing into allied hands, including the capture of Turin at the end of May. Except in Switzerland, the French army was now in desperate straits, with Pitt and Grenville additionally contemplating a massive £3 million subsidy to entice the Prussians into the war. There was the real prospect that France could be defeated. From the disparate elements of the Second Coalition, an overall plan was indeed created: the Prussians and Austrians would invade eastern France, Suvorov would take on the French in Switzerland, the Austrians would maintain the pressure in northern Italy, and Britain, with additional Russian support, would mount an invasion of Holland, encouraging a Dutch revolt against the French as they did so.
For Pitt and Grenville this was a return to a Continental strategy with a vengeance. While more risky than a naval and colonial strategy, it offered the prospect of actually ending the war. For years Dundas had warned, always correctly, about the danger of putting British forces ashore on the Continent. Now he cast doubt on
the likelihood of ‘the Dutch coming forward to aid the progress of our arms’.12 But for Grenville, a British intervention on the Continent was fundamental to providing vigour and even some coordination to the allies, and Pitt was happy at this point to be guided by Grenville and to sanction a strategy which at least provided some hope of final success.
The summer of 1799 saw French difficulties deepen. Zürich fell to the Austrians in early June, and Mantua to Suvorov in July. Counter-offensives failed, and by August all of the Italian territory conquered by Napoleon had been lost. The French army was desperately short of clothing and ammunition. Meanwhile the Prussians continued to waver. Against this background of diplomatic need and military opportunity a rather unpromising British invasion force was assembled for Holland. It was to be commanded by the experienced Ralph Abercromby, albeit with the Duke of York nominally in charge as Commander-in-Chief, and Pitt’s elder brother, Chatham, would accompany it. As in previous phases of the war, it was difficult to make forces set down on paper appear in reality: the Russians could not supply the 20,000 troops intended, nor could 12,000 British troops go ashore in the first wave as had been planned because they lacked the necessary numbers of transports.
Pitt was in Kent with Dundas at the end of July when the final decisions about the expedition had to be made. By then it was clear that the Austrians under Archduke Charles were not supporting the Russian flank north of Switzerland as intended, but were instead proceeding to Mainz, motivated partly by uncertainty about British intentions in the Netherlands. News of a more dramatic shock arrived on 1 August – the Prussians categorically refused to join the war, and proposed to negotiate with France for a peaceful withdrawal of French troops from Holland. A Swedish contingent intended to join the British invasion of Holland was withdrawn at the same time. Should the invasion now go ahead, without a Prussian army engaging the French in the same region and without many of the forces originally envisaged? The military advice was that it should be postponed. Pitt, more accustomed to taking risks after the previous year’s success in the Mediterranean, overruled the doubters. Once the decision was made, he told Grenville, ‘we shall now hear no more of difficulties’.13 He decamped to Walmer, and sailed through the invasion convoy on the morning of 14 August to see it off.
Pitt was in good spirits that summer. The many frustrations seemed surmountable. Even without Prussia, the combined forces of Austria, Russia and Britain could defeat a weakened France. In Parliament, his budgetary measures had been approved, although renewed attempts to abolish or mitigate the slave trade had been defeated. Early in July he had thrown his weight behind the Slave Trade Limitation Bill, intended to restrict the area of the West African coast open to the trade, but while it passed the House of Commons it got nowhere in the Lords. The old enemy, Thurlow, teamed up with a younger son of George III, the Duke of Clarence, to defeat the measure outright. It remained the case that the one reforming liberal measure to which Pitt was still committed could not yet be carried through Parliament. Wilberforce never doubted Pitt’s determination to abolish the slave trade; the failure to make progress after so many years meant that many others did.
It was far more important to Pitt that the war was at last going his way. The news of French defeats amidst new fighting on the Continent had buoyed his spirits, Grenville reporting that ‘Pitt’s health and spirits are revived by this tide of success in every quarter.’14 In the spring and summer of 1799 he even relaxed a little and showed his old social sparkle, becoming friendly with Princess Caroline – although not as friendly as Canning, who was seen too often with the Princess in the light of her voracious sexual appetite: he was described by Lady Minto as ‘charming’ and ‘captivating’ to the ladies at her house. At another dinner party, ‘Lady Charlotte [North] was to present the Queen of Prussia’s bust to Mr. Pitt, and make him kiss it, which, after some difficulty, he performed.’15 Wilberforce described a more conventional social scene that May: ‘To Holwood by half-past four. Pitt riding out … Pitt, Canning, and Pepper Arden came in late to dinner … Evening: Canning and Pitt reading classics.’16
The pressure of war had lifted a little from Pitt’s shoulders, and the prospect of clear-cut victory was greater than at any time in perhaps five years. He had once again rolled the boulder to the top of the hill. But once again, it would soon come crashing down, bringing with it most of what remained of his health and his hopes.
Four events would combine to turn the sunny optimism of the summer of 1799 into the bleak events of 1800. The first was the rain, which fell heavily on much of England in August 1799, damaging the harvest and beginning a cycle of bad weather which would culminate in serious shortages of corn and record prices over the following two years. Before long, inflation and an uncertain food supply would undermine the economic growth and political order of which Pitt was understandably proud.
The second adverse development was the failure of the allied advance on France at the very point it was meant to be strongest: Switzerland. This was very largely due to lack of coordination and understanding among the allies. Suvorov, whom the Austrians despised in spite of his victories, was still in northern Italy with most of the Russian forces when the Archduke Charles set off north from Switzerland with the Austrians, partly motivated by concern over the British move on Holland, which the decidedly anti-Austrian Grenville had declined to explain fully to Vienna. The result was that in August an inviting gap had opened up between the allied armies: Suvorov conducted an epic march into the mountains in an effort to fill it, while Austrian attempts to repair the damage were belated or delayed, Grenville commenting on the Austrian Chancellor Thugut: ‘If he were paid to thwart all our measures and to favour those of France, he could not do it more effectually.’17 Suvorov stormed his way into Switzerland to find an allied force had already been defeated in a fresh battle at Zürich; short of troops and bereft of any of the Swiss volunteers he had been promised, he was pulling out of Switzerland by October, retreating with great honour but with the frontiers of France intact.
The third major setback was the state of Britain’s own invasion of Holland. This started promisingly enough in the second half of August, with the capture of key forts and the surrender on 30 August of the entire Dutch navy, or at least what was left of it after Camperdown. Celebrations were held in London, and Pitt’s mind raced on, envisaging a sympathetic Dutch insurrection and the speedy withdrawal of British forces, to using the same troops to attack Brest and destroy the main French fleet. At the same time he was complaining of ‘the blind and perverse selfishness of Austria’s counsels’,18 but hopes still ran high. By 10 September the Duke of York had joined Abercromby in Holland with 20,000 British and Russian troops, making up an allied force of around 30,000 in all.
This was all well and good, but the invasion of Holland had been originally conceived as one prong of intense military pressure being applied to the French on many fronts. Without the participation of the Prussians, and in the absence of further progress by other allies, the French were under no immediate pressure to withdraw from Holland, and the Dutch did not have the confidence to rise against them. Poor intelligence about French strength and movements discouraged Abercromby from taking risks with the only land strike-force Britain possessed. The result was a bogged-down conflict not far from the coast. A series of pitched battles in late September and early October produced mixed success, but casualties were far too high for a relatively small army to sustain. By mid-October the Duke of York was negotiating with the French to withdraw his army peacefully in return for the release of thousands of French prisoners held in England.
Pitt had been assiduous in writing to his mother and sister-in-law throughout the Dutch campaign to assure them of the safety of his brother. His letter to Lady Chatham from Holwood on 21 October illustrates his ability to maintain a cheerful countenance in abject circumstances:
We have just received accounts from Holland, by which I find my brother is perfectly well, and all further suspense a
nd anxiety is happily removed, as an agreement is being concluded, by which our army is to evacuate Holland within a limited time, and is ensured from all molestation in doing so. It is certainly no small disappointment to be coming away by compromise instead of driving the enemy completely before us, as we once had reason to hope; but under all the difficulties which the season and circumstances have produced, it ought to be a great satisfaction to us to know that our valuable army will be restored to us safe and entire. The private relief it will be to your mind as well as to my own is of itself no small additional consolation.19
True enough, the army had been preserved, and indeed the Dutch fleet captured. But overall, the Dutch expedition had only added to the chapter of humiliation which the record of British incursions on the Continent now formed. Of course, there were recriminations. Chatham told Pitt that the failure could ‘fairly be attributed to the misconduct of the Russian General and the Russian troops’.20 On the other hand, Abercromby considered the Duke of York ‘the most ungracious weak prince in Europe … he knows as little of the country as if [he] had been bred in Sweden’.21 In reality, the responsibility went all the way to the top: Pitt and Grenville had overridden Dundas and military advice to send an under-equipped expedition across the Channel with uncertain objectives. Grenville’s faith in a Dutch uprising and a Prussian alliance had been too strong, and Pitt’s readiness to take risks in the hope of victory had become too prevalent.
The fourth dangerous event was yet another dramatic change in the Paris power structure, the consummating upheaval of the French Revolution as it began to turn back towards monarchy. For Napoleon now executed a daring personal escape from Egypt, having won a sufficiently devastating victory over the Turks at the end of July to return to France with honour. His westward voyage across the Mediterranean took forty-five days and required the evasion of many Royal Navy patrols, but culminated in mid-October in his return to France and the adulation of a beleaguered population. The speech in which he thundered: ‘In what sort of state did I leave France, and in what sort of state do I find it again?’22 set the stage for the coup of 18 and 19 Brumaire (9 and 10 November), in which the Directory was abolished and power vested in three Consuls: the Abbé Sieyès, Roger Ducos and Napoleon. There was little doubt which individual was in charge: beset by enemies and shortages, the French had tired of revolutionary ideals and sought a strong leader. In the words of François Furet: ‘In 1789, the French had created a Republic, under the name of a monarchy. Ten years later, they created a monarchy, under the name of a Republic.’23
William Pitt the Younger: A Biography Page 52
