Yet the Finance Bill passed the Commons—on January 5th, 1798 —by 196 votes to 71, and the Lords by 75 votes to 6. For it expressed, if not the wishes of all taxpayers, the will of the country. Down in Somerset, Hannah More reported that the poor villagers of Blagdon, fired by the glories of Camperdown, went in a body to their parson and stated their readiness to be taxed double. And after a little reflection and a good deal of characteristic grumbling, their betters proved worthy of them. By a happy suggestion of the Speaker, the pill of compulsion was sweetened by the addition of a self-imposed or voluntary contribution towards the cost of defending the country. And this, illogically enough, was subscribed with enthusiasm. Pitt, a poor man heavily in debt, headed the list with ^2000: every member of the Government gave a fifth of his
official salary, the King £20,000 a year—a third of his Privy Purse income—the Bank of England £200,000. A rough Lancashire calico maker named Robert Peel, whose son was one day to lead Pitt's party, subscribed £10,000 and was rebuked by his partner on his return to Bury for not having given double. The manager of Covent Garden, with the habitual loyalty of the theatre, devoted the profits of a special performance to the patriotic contribution. At the Royal Exchange, where a platform was erected in the piazza for the receipt of donations, subscriptions came in at the rate of £400 a minute, and when the Lord Mayor left the hustings on the first day a merchant called out, " Gentlemen, let us give a cheer for old England." In all, nearly two and a half millions was received in sums ranging from the £100,000 of the Duke of Bedford—hitherto a strong opponent of the war—to the 10s. subscribed by every seaman of H.M.S. Argonaut " to drive into the sea all French scoundrels and other blackguards." 1
Danger alone could not explain the national revival, for Britain had long been on the verge of disaster. But danger there was, and as 1797 drew to a close it grew more urgent. On October 17th, a few days after Camperdown, the formal treaty between Austria and France was signed at Campo Formio. It was accompanied by the cynical elimination of an ancient sovereign state—for many centuries the bulwark of Europe against eastern barbarism—and most ominously for England, a commercial oligarchy. A week later the Directory appointed " Citizen General " Bonaparte Commander-in-Chief of the Army of England.
There could be no doubt what that army was for. " Either our government," its chief wrote to Talleyrand, " must destroy the English monarchy or must expect to be destroyed by the corruption and intrigue of those active islanders. The present moment offers us a fair game. Let us concentrate all our activity upon the navy and destroy England. That done, Europe is at our feet." After a brief stay at Rastadt, where he attended the Imperial Conference
1 Nelson, now recovered from the loss of his arm and waiting at Bath for orders, wrote on January 29th, " I hope all the Nation will subscribe liberally. You will believe that I do not urge others to give and to withhold myself; but my mode of subscribing will be novel in its manner, and by doing it I mean to debar myself of many comforts to serve my country, and I expect great consolation every time I cut a slice of salt beef instead of mutton."— Nicolas, III, 5.
which was arranging the new French orientation of Germany, Bonaparte set out for Paris. " Conquest," he declared, " has made me what I am, and conquest can alone maintain me."
He was received with wild enthusiasm. But he saw with the perception of genius that the corrupt, pleasure-loving capital was not ready for his sway. With Madame Tallien enthroned at the Luxembourg by her keeper, Barras, with society a huge demimonde, and the only conversation of fashions and balls, theatres and restaurants, terror-purged Paris could not yet brook the yoke of the Caesars. Hungry, desolate France—the embittered peasants and ragged provincials who cheered the young conqueror so deliriously in every town and village on the road—would have to wait a little longer. So would Bonaparte. " After all," he remarked to his aide-de-camp, Junot, " we are only twenty-nine."
So, back in Paris, he bided his time and left the politicians to weave their own ruin. With his slender form, pale face and ascetic ways and his talk of " peace for men's consciences " and " unity for the common good," he seemed more of a Cincinnatus than a Caesar. He simulated an almost embarrassing modesty, wore in the midst of gilded receptions his old shabby uniform, and ostentatiously affected the society of artists, bookworms and savants. All the while he busied himself with preparations for the downfall of England. He spent much time in conversations with naval and port officials, attended secret midnight rendezvous with smugglers and privateers familiar with the English coasts, and even gave three interviews to Wolfe Tone, for whom, however, and his country he quickly conceived an immense contempt. Over all he met he exercised his usual extraordinary ascendancy: his lightning mind and dominant will seemed to evoke all the latent energy of men. Even the sleepy'French naval authorities began to stir.
All this was attended with much publicity: it was part of the Revolutionary technique. It was meant not only to inspire France but to frighten England. Tales were circulated of huge armoured rafts that the great mathematician, Monge, was constructing, which, 2000 feet long and 1500 broad, guarded by hundreds of cannon and propelled by giant windmills, were each capable of carrying two divisions complete with artillery and cavalry. They were taken quite seriously by English journalists and cartoonists until an ingenious emigre, writing in the Gentleman s Magazine, pointed out
that such a raft would absorb 216,000 trees and weigh 44,000 tons.1 Fishing smacks were requisitioned in Holland and in the French Atlantic and Channel ports, the naval dockyards hummed with unwonted activity, canals and rivers far inland were reported to be full of strange, flat-bottomed barges moving towards a single destination. " Go," cried Barras at a reception to Bonaparte at the Luxembourg, " capture the giant corsair that infests the seas; go, punish in London outrages that have been too long unpunished... . Let the conquerors of the Po, the Rhine and the Tiber march under your banners. The ocean will be proud to bear you."
More immediate measures were taken against England's commerce. Neutrals, especially those of the Baltic, were warned that every ship carrying British goods or goods of British origin would be seized, and that persistence in trading with the contumacious islanders would mean war. Immense dispositions of men and ships were ordered to be completed by the end of February, 1798, and at the beginning of the month Bonaparte himself left Paris for the northern ports. He was at Dunkirk on the nth—a tornado of energy, issuing orders, rebukes and exhortations, and leaving again for Ostend on the 13 th to arrange for the building of flat-bottomed boats in the Belgian ports. One of Pitt's spies met him on the road to Furnes. The same authority reported that Lille, Douai, Cambrai, Peronne, Evreux and Rouen were full of troops moving ocean-wards. He estimated—a little wildly—that there were 275,000 of them within twenty-four hours of the coast.
The British Regular Army in the United Kingdom at that moment did not number 32,000 men, with some 25,000 temporary Fencibles serving for the war only. A further 40,000 troops were in Ireland. By an act passed in January the embodied Militia was increased from 45,000 to 100,000 men, and the Commander-in-Chief was empowered to enrol up to 10,000 existing Militiamen in the Regular Army to bring its depleted regiments up to strength. Since the evacuation of the Continent the quality of the army had been much improved by the Duke of York's administration. But owing to its premature and reckless use in the West Indies it had not been given a chance to mature. New brigades had been sent overseas before their officers had had time to train them—a politician's
1 Gentleman's Magazine, Vol. LXVIII, Part I, 1798, 315, cit. Wheeler and Broadley, I, 81.
pennywise economy that nullified every reform. 40,000 of them had died, mostly of fever, and a further 40,000 had been discharged as unfit through the ravages of that atrocious climate.
For the moment therefore, as in every previous stage in the war, Britain was short of trained troops when she most needed them. But this, though it concerned her rulers, gave little anxiety to her people, for they
had now passed far beyond anxiety. Instead of worrying they enrolled in tens of thousands as Volunteers and, lacking arms and training, confidently awaited the attack of the victors of Rivoli and Areola. In London alone, where the City Fathers called on all male inhabitants to rally to the banner of their wards, 40,000 associated volunteers enrolled. The Government, ignoring memories of mutinies, incitements to riot and treasonable Corresponding Societies, called the population to arms. " This crisis which is approaching,'' Dundas declared in the House, " must determine whether we are any longer to be ranked as an independent nation. . . . We must fortify the menaced ports, accumulate forces round the capital, affix to the church doors the names of those who come forward as Volunteers and authorise members of Parliament to hold commissions without vacating their seats. I am well aware of the danger of entrusting arms to the whole population without distinction. . . . But, serious as is the danger, it is nothing to the risk we should run if, when invaded by the enemy, we were unprepared with any adequate means of defence." 1
For the malcontents of three years before had suddenly become insignificant. Most of them had long been swept into the main tide of national consciousness and, like the erstwhile republican exciseman, Robert Burns, had donned the scarlet or blue coat and white nankeen breeches of the local volunteers. In Scotland they were still singing the dead bard's repudiation of his former doubts:
" The kettle o' the kirk and state,
Perhaps a claut may fail in't;
But deil a foreign tinker loon
Shall ever ca' a nail in't;
Our fathers' bluid the kettle bought,
And wha wad dare to spoil it;—
1 Wheeler and Broadley, I, 126.
By heaven, the sacrilegious dog
Shall fuel be to boil it." 1
In England the song of the hour was " The Snug Little Island " from Thomas Dibdin's patriotic play, The British Raft. First sung at Sadler's Wells on Easter Monday, 1797, it had quickly acquired an immense popularity:
" Since Freedom and Neptune have hitherto kept tune,
In each saying, ' this shall be my land ';
Should the army of England, or all they could bring land,
We'd show 'em some play for the island.
We'll fight for our right to the island,
We'll give them enough of the island,
Invaders should just bite at the dust,
But not a bit more of the island! "
The organisation of the Volunteer forces remained haphazard. The Prince of Wales enrolled his servants en masse in a corps attached to the parish of St. James's; the Duke of Northumberland provided clothing and equipment and service pay at a shilling a day for all his tenants and labourers; the Phoenix Insurance Office turned its firemen into gunners; and the Bank of England raised eight companies from its clerks to defend its buildings. Every type of uniform and headgear was worn, for every corps chose its own: bearskins, helmets with feathers or hair cockades, facings of red, blue, black, yellow or white.2 The only feature common to all was a small breastplate bearing the regimental name or initial. Some places even formed juvenile corps for training boys in " military manners." Every morning the King was up before dawn signing commissions for all these martial bodies: he indeed was in the heyday of glory. Gillray portrayed him—" medio tutissimus ibis "—grinning happily
1 Burns's last days were troubled by a bill for £7 4s. for his volunteer uniform. His comrades of the Dumfries Volunteers—" the awkward squad " —gave him a soldier's burial, little guessing whom they were honouring.
2" The first Company of the Bath Volunteers met this day and elected for their Captain, Mr. Bossier ; First Lieutenant, Captain Young ; Second Lieutenant, Mr. Redwood. They likewise chose at the same time for their uniform, a scarlet jacket with black collar and lappels, white waistcoat, and blue pantaloons edged with red."—Bath Chronicle, 3rd May, 1798, cit. Wheeler and Broadley, I, 132.
in the midst of a crowd of his devoted people, stout, curtseying matrons, adoring damsels and cadaverous, pigtailed army officers.
" I did not enjoy much of poor Mr. Hoare's company," wrote Hannah More after a visit to town, " so occupied was he in arming and exercising. He rises at half-past four at Mitcham, trots off to town to be ready to meet at six the Fleet Street Corps, performing their evolutions in the area of Bridewell, the only place where they can find sufficient space; then comes back to a late dinner, and as soon as it is over, goes to his committees, after which he has a sergeant to drill himself and his three sons on the lawn till it is dark." 1 For the country in its sober way never doubted that the French ruffians would attempt to land any more than it doubted— provided every Briton did his utmost—that they would meet a bloody end. The venture might be a desperate one, but after five years of war every one knew that the French Jacobins were ruthless monsters who would stop at nothing. Pitt himself, writing in January, felt sure that an invasion would be attempted before the end of the year. The print shops were full of drawings of French rafts and of blood-curdling invasion posters for display on town walls and church doors predicting murders, rapes and robberies. Bonaparte's name had at last begun to circulate among a people notoriously late in their apprehension of Continental events; 2 not as the romantic young genius of patriotic French imagination but as a perverted little monster, slighdy comic and wholly horrible, who ground soldiers' bones beneath his carriage wheels, doted on the groans of the dying and perpetuated ghastly massacres, not for policy but for pleasure.
Assured of such a satanic visitation, even the clergy could hardly be restrained from flying to arms. In April, 1798, the Archbishops were forced to issue a circular enjoining them not to abandon their sacred calling for a soldier's, in which their service could be but very limited and might not even be wanted at all. " But," it added, " if the danger should be realised and the enemy set foot upon our
1 7th May, 1798, Hannah More, II, 12. It was, however, much the same in her Somerset home. " Our quiet village begins to wear a very military aspect. . . . Our most respectable neighbours were forming Volunteer corps at their own expense ; and the coast just below being one of the places which lie most open to invasion, gun-boats are stationed and fortifications erected."
2 Despite his astonishing Italian victories, there is no mention of him in the Annual Register for 1797.
shores, our hand with that of every man must in every way be against those who come for purposes of rapine and desolation, the vowed champions of anarchy and irreligion, defying the living God." A month later the Bishop of London was forced to suspend his Pastoral journey, his Essex diocesans being too full of the prospect of an invasion to pay any attention to ecclesiastical orders.
In spite of all this martial activity and the complete confidence of the average Briton in his power to deal with an invader, there were some misgivings. For one thing there was so grave a shortage of arms that in many districts balls had to be issued for use with fowling pieces. Even from first-line positions like the Isle of Wight came complaints that, though the Militia had been instructed in the use of cannon, these had never arrived.1 " Associations are forming rapidly and of a real useful kind," a local enthusiast wrote to Whitehall, " but we shall be able to do nothing without arms. . . . We must have the number required from some quarter. We must not suffer again this spirit to cool." In a commercial country much given to individual self-help and little to national planning, there was an inevitable tendency to leave such matters to chance and the laws of supply and demand. An advertisement in the Bath Chronicle shows how much:
" The Members of the Bath Armed Association may be supplied with Warranted Firelocks at £2 each at Stothert & Co.'s warehouse, No. 15 Northgate Street.
" Likewise Pistols and Swords from the first manufactory. Belts and Cartouch Boxes."
It was not only the Volunteers who raised misgivings in the few
people in England who knew something of the new continental
warfare and the technique of the Revolutionary armi
es. That fine
old soldier, Lord Cornwallis, wrote on February 23rd to a brother
of the future Duke of Wellington: " I have no doubt of the courage
and fidelity of our Militia, but the system of David Dundas and the
total want of light infantry sit heavy on my mind." 2 The new
Regular Army had had too little training in European fields to cope
on equal terms in enclosed country with a supremely active enemy
fresh from triumphs over the most powerful and warlike nations
in Europe. Even a politician like Windham was full of apprehension -
The Years of Endurance Page 32
