The Years of Endurance

by Arthur Bryant

  A week later the Spanish Ambassador, making a flimsy excuse, left London. Already Pitt, seeing the writing on the wall, was buying naval stores for a long siege: ship timber from the Adriatic, masts and hemp from North America, corn, tallow, hides, hemp and iron from the Baltic.2 On the 1st the Cabinet, anticipating an early surrender by Austria, reached the momentous decision to abandon Corsica and withdraw the fleet from the Mediterranean. Orders were at once dispatched to Jervis and Elliot. To defend her scattered possessions a concentration of Britain's effort had become essential. She could not longer contain the power of France from the circumference.

  Yet just when Austria, reeling under Bonaparte's blows, seemed at her last gasp, the clouds for a moment lifted. A second attempt of Wurmser to relieve Mantua had ended in the discomfited old man being forced to take refuge with a remnant of his army in the fortress he had come to deliver. But in Germany, where both French and Austrians had planned their main campaign, the tide of war turned unexpectedly in Austria's favour. At the end of May the French armies had crossed the Rhine and pressed into the heart

  1 Nelson to Jervis, 20th Aug., 1796 ; Nicolas, II, 248-9.

  2 Mahan, Sea Power, I, 74.

  of Germany, laying waste Suabia, Franconia and Bavaria, and threatening Vienna itself. An urgent application to Pitt for aid was promptly met with an advance of £1,200,000 on the Prime Minister's personal responsibility.1

  This help enabled Austria to make a last effort. Her new commander-in-chief, the Archduke Charles—a man no older than Bonaparte—having shown patient stoicism in retreat, now successively defeated Bernadotte at Neumark on August 16th, and Jourdan at Wurzburg on September 3 rd. Had it not been for Austrian fears of Prussia, which kept 80,000 troops watching the Silesian frontier, the French retreat to the Rhine might have become a rout. As it was, for the third time the Empress of Russia unwittingly aided the Republic by concentrating an army on her western borders. For it was the weakness of the German powers that, facing both ways, they could never decide in which direction to act or consistently pursue any policy without becoming distracted.

  The autumn of 1796 in Germany had consequences even more important than the military. For it first crystallised the real as opposed to the idealistic issue between Revolutionary France and Europe. Hitherto the Jacobins in all countries had been able to represent the war as an ideological one: a crusade to liberate the peoples from the despotism of selfish rulers and outworn laws. As a result the poorer and to a large extent the middle-classes had been lukewarm in their support of their governments, and many had openly sympathised with the French and welcomed their coming. Only in Britain had patriotism proved a stronger force than horizontal discontent, though even here a minority had displayed Jacobin leanings.

  But after the invasion of southern and central Germany these illusions began to fade. For the invaders, carrying fire and sword, inflicted immense suffering. It fell, as always, most heavily on the poor. The plundered hen-roost, the emptied granary, the burning cottage represented the entire wealth of the peasant: not only his income but his capital. The Jacobin doctrine of making the conquered countryside maintain the victor's army awoke in its victims feelings of patriotism and national unity that had scarcely existed in the medieval medley of the older Europe. By making Germans

  1 Fox subsequently tried to impeach Pitt, but the House condoned the Premier's brave action by 285 votes to 81.

  aware that they hated Frenchmen, it made them conscious that they were Germans.1

  The growth of this feeling was slow. For the moment its effects were confined to acts of revenge against French stragglers. Nor did the spirit of patriotism touch the governments, which continued in Germany as in Italy to be actuated by dynastic and personal motives. The Franconian and Suabian States bought a selfish peace with the invader who was fighting the titular Emperor of Germany. Prussia, on news of Bonaparte's victories, sought a closer understanding with France and encouraged the larger north German states to enlarge their territories at the expense of their smaller neighbours. In its jealousy of the Hapsburgs, the House of Hohenzollern exploited the Revolution to destroy what was left of the old Christian Reich and the fabric of European civilisation. By a secret pact signed in early August it agreed to recognise France's right to the Rhine frontier in return for compensation at the expense of the German ecclesiastical princes.

  It was the Prussian attempt to form a northern federation— friendly to France and non-belligerent towards Britain—which, even more than the lowering aspect of Spain and Bonaparte's victories, made the British Government again contemplate peace. A threat to Hamburg and the Baltic ports—the chief source of naval stores and of surplus grain for the growing industrial towns —touched Pitt's most sensitive spot. It had been the Armed Neutrality of Prussia and the Baltic States that had tipped the scale against his country when he stood at the threshold of public life in the dark hours of the American war. A friendly Prussia and the trade of the North had always been corner stones of his foreign policy. At the end of June, 1796, he wrote to Grenville that since Austria would almost certainly be unable to continue the struggle after the end of the year, it would be inexcusable not to try " honourably and safely to set on foot some decent plan of pacification." For either now or in a few months Britain would find herself " left to sustain alone the conflict with France and Holland,

  1 " Have you seen," wrote an English lady a few years later, " a German Hymn for the Emperor Francis in the manner of our God Save the King ? and set by Haydn ; the words are translated by Dr. Burney into English— the music is very fine." (Bamford, 20 x.) The hymn, expressing the Austrian peasant's love for his fatherland, was Deutschland uber Alles.

  probably joined by Spain and favoured more or less openly by the Northern Powers." I

  But the road to peace was not easy. The King was still against any concession and, like Burke, looked on a "Jacobin peace " as a deal with Satan.2 And though every report showed that the French people were heartily sick of war, their rulers gave no sign of readiness to meet Britain half-way. A feeler through the Danish Charge d'Affaires was met by an insolent demand for a direct application. " If such a communication," wrote the King, " will not rouse the British lion, he must have lost his wonted energy! " Yet peace was so needful that even pride was worth sacrificing to obtain it. In July there was a financial crisis during which Consols fell below 60: the City said openly that unless Pitt made peace before Christmas the Bank would force him to resign.3

  The Government, therefore, decided to swallow its scruples and to apply to the Directory for a passport for a Minister Plenipotentiary. With Pitt's approval a pamphlet of Lord Auckland's was published to prepare the public mind. The King was assured that the internal state of the country required it and that only when the opponents of war had been convinced of its necessity by a French refusal to conclude even the most reasonable peace, would the nation be united enough to face a world in arms.4 "As Lord Grenville and Mr. Pitt think a further step of humiliation necessary to call forth the spirit which used to be characteristic of this island," the old man wrote, " I will not object." The first diplomat in Britain, Lord Malmesbury, was selected for the mission. The embodiment of English tact, good nature and common sense, " the white Hon," as his friends called him, was the perfect appeaser.

  It had been hoped to bring Austria into the negotiations. But by the time Malmesbury set out for Calais on October 16th the Court of Vienna was veering once more. Bonaparte's Italian victories had been offset by the Archduke Charles's German campaign, and the old imperial hauteur had revived. Thugut had hopes of inducing Russia to join in stemming a French advance to the Adriatic—a sea in which the scheming Empress Catherine was interested as protector of the Orthodox Christians. The scene

  1 Pitt to Grenville, 23rd June, 1796.—H. M. C. Dropmore, III, 214.

  2 King to Grenville, 30th July, 1796.—H. M. C. Dropmore, III, 227.

  3 Farington, I, 158.

  4 H. M. C. Dropmore, III, 242.
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  was thus set for a counter-offensive in Italy and a new attempt to relieve Mantua. For this reason, three days after Malmesbury left London the Cabinet countermanded its earlier orders to abandon Corsica. For, forgetting both its defencelessness and the promise made to its inhabitants, the politicians supposed that the island might be useful as a bribe to bring Russia into the war.

  Therefore when Malmesbury reached Paris—travelling, wrote the infuriated Burke, " the whole way on his knees "—his proposal for a European pacification was met by an inquiry whether the Court of Vienna concurred. How, the French Foreign Minister asked, could a general peace be expected when every day brought new accounts of the Emperor's determination to carry on the war? The truth was that both sides were temporising until an issue had been reached elsewhere. The Austrians were waiting for Russia's decision, for further victories on the Rhine and the relief of Mantua; the French for an end to the Lombardy campaign and a Spanish move at sea. Malmesbury therefore remained in Paris, recording only such minor triumphs and set-backs as the civility shown to his diplomatic uniform and the necessity—repugnant to an English nobleman—of having to wear the tricolour in the streets.

  Meanwhile Spain had declared war. Godoy handed Lord Bute the official declaration on October 5 th, accompanied by a long list of imaginary Spanish grievances. Four days earlier Admiral Man, sailing to Gibraltar with seven ships of the line, was attacked without warning by nineteen Spanish battleships, losing two of the merchantmen he was convoying. Further up the Mediterranean Jervis and Nelson were putting into execution the Government's orders of August 31st—received in the last week of September—to evacuate Corsica. Here, despite the odds, the feeling was one of confidence: it was a tradition in the Navy to despise Spain. " The Dons may make fine ships," Nelson had written when they were allies, " but they cannot make men," A Spanish war was sure to bring in prize-money, and though few sailors quarrelled with the decision to leave Corsica, the desertion of the Mediterranean was regarded as unnecessary. Eight months of Jervis's discipline had given his command an astonishing assurance. " They at home," wrote Nelson to his wife, " do not know what this fleet is capable of performing; any tiling and everything. . . . I lament our present

  orders in sackcloth and ashes, so dishonourable to the dignity of England, whose fleets are equal to meet the world in arms." 1

  Yet it was probably as well that the Government's countermanding orders did not reach Jervis in time. For on putting into Gibraltar after his rough handling by the Spanish fleet, Admiral Man, his anxious mind obsessed by thoughts of being " hemmed in by superiority of numbers," decided to return to England instead of rejoining his chief in San Fiorenzo Bay. This breach of orders deprived Jervis at a critical moment of a third of his fleet. With only fourteen ships of the line against a Franco-Spanish combination of thirty-eight he waited for the errant Man until November 2nd, when he sailed in desperation for Gibraltar. Before he left the Corsican coast, the French had already landed in the island.

  On the same day the Austrian Alvinzi crossed the Piave with a force nearly twice as large as that with which Bonaparte was besieging Mantua. On November nth he drove back the French at Caldiero. For forty-eight hours it looked as though the relief of the fortress was certain. Then on the night of the 14th Bonaparte gave orders for one of the most daring marches in history. It ended three days later in the victory of Areola. The third attempt to relieve Mantua had failed.

  The same day also brought news of the death of the Empress Catherine. A fortnight earlier she had been found in an apoplectic fit on the floor of her writing-closet. Her successor, the Tsar Paul, was mad, and reputed to be opposed to Russian intervention in a western war. The French at once began to raise their terms. Malmesbury's temperate and inflexibly honest restatements of Britain's position—her readiness to surrender conquered sugar islands in return for adjustments in Europe and a vindication of the outraged law of nations—grew ever more remote from the realities of Parisian extravagance. Every time he met Delacroix, who like all revolutionary diplomats was apt to shout when excited, the French Minister became more unreasonable, insisting that all France's acquisitions were sacred and " indivisible," whereas Britain's colonial conquests were mere robbery and must be immediately restored. After the news of Areola only a glimmer of hope remained.

  1 Nicolas II, 290.

  There was another reason for France's increasing obduracy. On November 13 th Malmesbury, keeping his ears open for rumours, dispatched a courier to London with information that eleven ships of the line and fifteen thousand troops were at Brest preparing for sea. It was certain, he reported, that they were intended for Ireland. Had he been able to see the letters which since the summer had been passing between Carnot, Hoche and Wolfe Tone, the founder of the United Irishmen, then in Paris, he might have been even more alarmed. " I am practically certain the English Government is at its wits' end," Hoche had written; " the kind of war I propose to wage on our rivals is a terrible one." On Tone's assurance that half a million men would rise the day the French landed, Ireland had been selected as the first objective of Carnot's favourite project—a direct attack on the British Isles.

  Until the expedition was ready to start the French Foreign Minister continued to keep Malmesbury amused. Two days before the end of November he gave him a long interview, in the course of which he tried to prove that while Britain's ambitions were commercial and colonial, those of France were purely continental.1

  He did not mention that a few weeks before his Government had passed a decree confiscating every neutral ship carrying British goods. In a later and more impassioned meeting Delacroix declared that with the RJiine as the natural boundary of France the tranquillity of Europe would be assured for two centuries. At last on December 18th Malmesbury received peremptory orders from his hosts to leave Paris within forty-eight hours. For on that day it became known that Hoche had sailed for Ireland.

  Meanwhile Britain was preparing for the storm. Ever since the summer the Adjutant-General's office had been drawing up detailed plans for defending the southern counties against an invader. On October 18th Pitt met Parliament with proposals for doubling the Militia and adding 15,000 seamen to the fleet by a compulsory quota on all parishes. The House voted supplies for over 400,000 men. These included a new force of Provisional Cavalry, to be raised by compulsion, the owner or owners of every ten horses

  1 " Commerce is your empire. It is to be founded in the Indies and in your colonies. But as for France, I should be better pleased with an addition of four villages on the frontiers of the Republic than by the acquisition of the richest island among the Antilles, and should be even sorry to see Pondicherry and Chandenagore again belong to France."—Malmesbury, III, 334.

  being responsible for one fully equipped horseman; and another of sportsmen and gamekeepers to be used as riflemen and skirmishers. To meet the increase in expenditure the Prime Minister not only trebled the assessed taxes but adopted a revolutionary procedure. Instead of resorting to professional financiers he applied direct to the nation. Early in December a Loyalty Loan of eighteen millions, issued at £112 10s. per £100 of stock, and bearing interest at 5 per cent, was offered to the public. Though a more expensive purchase than other existing stock, the entire loan was subscribed in less than sixteen hours. " The Constitution,,, Pitt proudly announced, " inspires the steady affection of the people and is worth defending with every drop of our blood."

  1 War Speeches, 172.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Her Darkest Hour 1796-7

  " Be assured I will omit no opportunity of chastising the Spaniards, and if I have the good fortune to fall in with them the stuff I have in this fleet will tell.".

  Sir John Jervis to Lord Spencer, 2nd Oct., 1796.

  " And Jack the tawny whiskers singed Of the astonished Don."

  Dibdin, "A Dose for the Dons," 1797.

  ON the evening of December 15 th, 1796, the French armada for Ireland, having stood through the narrow Goulet out of B
rest, anchored in the Camaret Roads. There was no sign of the British Fleet save for three frigates cruising on the Atlantic horizon. The French had seventeen ships of the line, twenty-six smaller warships and transports, most of the 15,000 troops being crowded on board the battleships.

  For nearly six weeks the wind had been in the east. It had blown the British blockading fleet far out into the Atlantic and opened the gateway to Ireland. Wolfe Tone, the rebel Irish leader, had cursed the delays of the Directory and its chaotic Navy. " Damn them! damn them! sempiternally damn them! " There was no discipline in the Fleet and dockyards, nobody obeyed or respected anybody, nobody worked.

  But the Republican army—its wonderful enthusiasm, its ardour, its pride—had impressed the excitable Irishman as much as the navy depressed him. In the Festival of Youth in the church of a provincial town he had seen hundreds of young recruits, bareheaded before the statue of Liberty, receiving their arms from veterans to the strains of the " Marseillaise.'' Here, he felt, was true Liberty and Patriotism: a moving contrast to the depressed, drunken drafts he had seen shambling off to the colours in his own downtrodden land. And this army was led by men who shared its aspirations and passionate youth: still in their twenties and early thirties, unfettered by the caste prejudices and follies of the elderly aristocrats who misdirected their enemies.