The Years of Endurance

by Arthur Bryant

  A nation which had never had a very clear grasp of first principles had temporarily forgotten what it was fighting for. The changes of the European scene had been so dazzling, the exhaustion

  1 The Friend, Section I, Essay 10.

  of the war so great, that the British people were in a state of bewilderment. Again and again Pitt had told them they were contending for security, but, an empirical Englishman and not a philosopher like Burke, he had never made it clear in what their security consisted. They supposed that it had been achieved because the French Revolution had been liquidated. They forgot that it was not the Terror and the red Cap of Liberty—the propagandist's bogey—that had endangered Britain's existence and her sober philosophy of law and liberty, but the Revolutionary thesis that there was no law but the untrammelled will of a single Party or Nation and the Revolutionary practice which threatened at the cannon's mouth all who opposed that will. A people unversed in abstractions failed to see that, though the First Consul had succeeded the pitiless Tribunes of the mob, French claims and practice remained unchanged. There was no law or morality in Europe but the will of the " Great Nation " and its leader. There could be no security for libertarian England in such a Europe.

  The Government failed to make this clear. Addington was a weak, well-meaning, inexperienced mediocrity, little given to examining, let alone enunciating first principles. He was merely a stop-gap. His Cabinet of second-rate peers and sons of peers contained no one who commanded the slightest confidence except the sailor, St. Vincent. Such an Administration was incapable of controlling the new tide of public opinion. ' On the contrary, conscious of its own weakness, it tried to anticipate it. In the dark days of the Baltic League when it first took office it had put out peace-feelers through Bonaparte's agent in London, Monsieur Otto: an approach which the First Consul treated with contempt so long as he thought there was a chance of obtaining his ends by smashing instead of tricking Britain. And when Nelson's and Abercromby's unexpected achievements and the death of the Tsar changed the face of affairs, the Cabinet resumed its overtures. Like good Mrs. Fremantle, it welcomed British victories chiefly because they made peace possible.

  For it could see no other end in them. To an unimaginative mind like Addington's it now seemed impossible that Britain could win the war. The fate of the First and Second Coalitions had shown that though she could annihilate every fleet France and her allies sent to sea and seize their colonies at will, she was powerless to prevent the French armies from overrumiing the Continent. Oa the terra firma of the old world—the home of traditional civilisation —Bonaparte with his forty million slaves and dupes could not be challenged. The balance of power had gone and the hegemony of France, against which Dutch William and Marlborough had fought, was become an established fact. There was no further point in struggling against it. Continental nations could not be saved in their own despite: in yielding they had signed away their right to Britain's protection. And perhaps it was better for the world that Europe, like France, after so much useless anarchy and destruction* should pass under Bonaparte's strong, orderly, unifying rule. It would be good for trade and might conceivably make for ultimate progress.

  Material security, in fact, which had formerly depended on waging war, now seemed to such rootless minds to depend on making peace. A prolonged war always brings in its train of exhaustion and unnatural sacrifice a feverish aftermath of materialistic longing. France experienced it under the Directory; Britain under Addington. A cant phrase—" the blessings of peace "—became much in vogue about this time. The nation, it was felt, having proved itself unconquerable and given an unparalleled if useless example to the world, had earned a respite from alarm, starvation prices and high taxation. It could now reap the rich reward to which its manufacturing skill and commercial enterprise entitled it.1

  In other words, materiaUy-minded Englishmen were already anticipating the peaceful harvest of wealth and empire which was to fall to their children and children's children in the golden reign of Victoria. Even in the midst of war's alarms their trade had passed all previous bounds and their dominion had been enlarged, not only by their conquests from France and her allies but by their colonising and imperial activities elsewhere. In India the great State of Mysore had passed under their beneficent control, and Lord Wellesley, by his proconsular gifts, had already transformed and nearly doubled the territories of the old East India Company. In Australia a new continent and in Canada a new half continent were quietly and imperceptibly entering upon the first stage of their

  1 See Southey's interesting summary of this view in his Letters of Espriella, I, 131.

  wondrous march to imperial nationhood. The spectre of the Revolution militant having been exorcised, a race of shopkeepers could enter upon its peaceful and boundless heritage.

  On this basis, therefore, the Addington Government approached the First Consul and proposed a business deal. Its principle was to be that of uti possidetis. France was to keep her Continental conquests, Britain her colonial, or at least the more important of them: Malta, Ceylon, Trinidad, Martinique and the Cape. The rest might be returned as the price of the restitution of Egypt to Britain's ally, Turkey. In view of the fact that France had incorporated Belgium, Westphalia and Savoy and increased its European population to nearly three times that of Britain, while establishing suzerainty over the adjoining Batavian, Cisalpine, Ligurian and Helvetic Republics, it seemed a reasonable enough proposal.

  But there was a dragon in the path. Bonaparte also wanted peace. But he wanted it only to gam the power to destroy England. So long as her fleets remained intact he could not achieve the mastery of the world. So long as she maintained her merciless stranglehold on his ports, he could not even consolidate his power over France and her neighbours. The peoples of western Europe, deprived by the British blockade of colonial products and seaborne goods, were growing increasingly restive. Illogically they laid the blame, not on England but on the " Great Nation." Russia, Prussia and Austria were still formidable military Powers: a third Coalition and a general rising against France might reverse the decision of Marengo and Hohenlinden. Without a pause for commercial and industrial recovery the French people could not yet sustain such renewed war. More strained and exhausted than their island adversaries by an unbroken decade of revolution, anarchy and battle, they had raised Bonaparte to supreme power to give them peace. He was First Consul only for a term: his consolidation and continued lease of rule depended on his ability to fulfil that promise. More quick victories on land would be useless, if he could not first end the interminable resistance of the British. Only when that bulldog grip was relaxed would the French people be able to recover the buoyant enthusiasm and vigour he needed of them for grander projects.

  After the Tsar's death and Nelson's shattering blow at Copenhagen, Bonaparte knew that he could not, so long as the present war continued, destroy Britain at sea. No further naval combination against her was possible for no other fleets anywhere remained. Since 1793 she had sunk, burnt and captured 81 sail of the line, 187 frigates and 248 sloops. New navies could neither be built nor equipped while the ports and arsenals of France, Spain and Holland were blockaded and denied naval stores. Whereas the First Consul, for all his Continental victories, could do little more to injure Britain, every day that the contest continued weakened France's commercial position and diminished her wealth and ultimate strength. Already she had lost her entire colonial empire except Guadeloupe and Mauritius: and these could be taken from her whenever the British chose to concentrate their military forces, now released by Bonaparte's own conquests from continental commitments. The greater part of the rich Dutch empire had passed into British hands. So had the more valuable of Spain's remaining possessions in the West Indies. It was only a matter of time before the omnipresent islanders seized on the greatest prize of all: the restless Spanish colonies of South America.

  Bonaparte therefore did not reject the secret British peace overtures. Like a good negotiator, he hid his eager
ness and instructed Monsieur Otto to take a high line with the inexperienced Hawkes-bury. He was to insist that it was beneath the dignity of the Republic to yield any of France's pre-Revolutionary possessions, whether in Europe or overseas. Only on such terms, the British Government was to be informed, was peace obtainable. Neither of the chief protagonists could be expected to give up anything permanently theirs. But if they chose to negotiate on the uti possidetis principle for the conquered possessions of each other's allies, that was another matter.

  Having established this basis of negotiation, the First Consul took immediate steps to increase his own bargaining power by attacking Britain's remaining allies and proteges. With the threat of a French Army of Occupation he forced Spain to invade Portugal and extort an abject surrender from the helpless court of Lisbon. In pursuance of his recent treaty rights with the terrified Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, he garrisoned Brindisi, Otranto and the ports of Calabria with French troops. He sent another force from the Italian mainland to Elba to drive the British garrison from

  Porto Ferrajo. And he tightened his grip on the satellite Republics at France's gates, particularly Holland. From all, as from Portugal and Naples, British trade was rigidly excluded. For within the watery line which the British cruisers kept round his dominion in western Europe Bonaparte could do as he chose.

  Meanwhile he made desperate efforts to restore the situation in Egypt. For here Abercromby's success threatened to rob him of his most valuable card. Earlier attempts to send help by sea to the beleaguered French army of the Orient had ended in the usual frustration. Admiral Gantheaume's escape from Brest at the end of January had merely proved the effectiveness of the British blockade. For so short were his ships of naval stores that only one of his seven battleships was seaworthy by the time they reached the Mediterranean. With their crews starving and in rags, they were forced to run for Toulon. Twice in the spring and early summer of 1801 Bonaparte's wrath drove Gantheaume again to sea, but each time with the same humiliating result. At the beginning of June the harried Admiral almost succeeded in putting 4000 troops ashore at Derna to finish the last four hundred miles of their journey to Alexandria on foot. But even this desperate expedient—which must almost certainly have ended in a Western Desert tragedy—was forestalled by the appearance of British sails on the eastern horizon.

  Foiled, the First Consul tried again. During Gantheaume's race from Brest to the Mediterranean the British blockading squadrons had left their posts off Ferrol and Cadiz to pursue him. This enabled Bonaparte to concentrate twelve Spanish ships of the line at Cadiz under a French Admiral. A further three from Gantheaume's ill-fated force were ordered to join them for a new attempt to provision and reinforce Egypt. But before they could do so a British squadron under one of Nelson's Nile captains—Rear-Admiral Sir James Saumarez—had taken its station off the port. On June 21st, operating on interior lines, Saumarez with five battleships attacked the French division from Toulon in Algeciras Bay as it waited for a chance to run the blockade of Cadiz.

  The attack failed, for the wind dropped while it was still only half-developed. A British battleship, the Hannibal, ran aground, and, exposed without support from her wind-bound consorts to the Spanish shore-batteries, was forced to surrender. Paris magnified the incident into a major naval victory.

  But even before it had been announced, Britain in her terrible fury had struck back. After five days working day and night to refit his ships, Saumarez sailed again on July 12th, the entire population of Gibraltar turning out to cheer as the Admiral's musicians sounded " Heart of Oak," and the massed bands of the garrison replied with " Britons, strike home! " That night the five British seventy-fours came up with nine French and Spanish sail of the line, including two 112-gun ships, who were slowly returning to Cadiz from Algeciras with their prize. In the darkness and confusion the Spanish three-deckers opened fire on each other and after a fratricidal duel blew up in a single awful explosion with nearly 2000 men. Meanwhile the French Antoine struck her flag to the Superb. The remainder of the Franco-Spanish force, badly damaged, fled next morning under the guns of Cadiz, leaving the victors, as Lord St. Vincent put it, " upon velvet." The fierce, unconquerable spirit of the British seamen was shown by the captives in the hold of the French Formidable who, undismayed by the threats of their jailers, at every broadside directed at their prison's sides broke into triumphant cheers.

  In Egypt itself Bonaparte's plans were equally awry. Early in May, General Hely-Hutchinson, Abercromby's successor, set out to cover the hundred miles from Rosetta to Cairo. He had only 5000 British troops and 4000 ill-disciplined Turks and he was without siege guns. But by June 27th he had received the surrender of the Egyptian capital together with more than 13,000 dispirited and homesick French soldiers and 320 cannon. Other British forces from India, crossing the desert from the Red Sea port of Kosseir to Keneh and Thebes, overran Upper Egypt, while the remainder of the French army was closely invested in Alexandria. Twenty-four thousand veterans with more than 600 guns had been routed at every point by an invading force with inferior numbers and equipment based on control of the sea. It was the most humiliating reverse to French arms on land since 1793.

  ........

  Everywhere that Bonaparte encountered the forces of Britain that spring and summer of 1801 he was thwarted. Even the minute garrison of Porto Ferrajo in a five months' siege successfully defied 6000 veterans supported by the entire resources of the French army of Italy. But though unable to defeat his adversaries in the field, the cunning First Consul was more than a match for them in the Cabinet. While stubborn redcoats closed in on the despairing Republicans in the fly-blown, plague-stricken furnace of Lower Egypt and fierce Jack Tars poured their shattering broadsides into French and Spanish galleons, Bonaparte steadily manoeuvred Hawkesbury and Addington from position to position. He wanted peace for the moment as much as they; he needed it far more. But his motives, being the exact opposite of theirs, gave him an enormous advantage. His object was to blackmail them into yielding as many strategic and commercial vantage-points as possible for his next leap. Theirs was merely to secure the minimum essential to a rich country's security.

  All, therefore, he had to do was to make them think that almost any price was worth paying for peace and quiet. Entering with uncanny precision into their innocent minds, he concentrated a bogus army of invasion on the Channel shores. He was under no illusions as to the feasibility of a successful crossing now that the Northern battle-fleets had been scattered. But he was at great pains to suggest that such a venture was imminent. The Paris newspapers, anxiously scanned by British politicians, were filled with boastful proclamations; the harbour works of Boulogne were enlarged and batteries erected along the coast from the Garonne to the Scheldt to drive off British cruisers. An ordinance of July 12th divided the still largely legendary flotilla of invasion barges into nine divisions and posted all the artillerymen of the Armies of the Rhine and Maine to its gunboats.

  These Napoleonic feints served their purpose. A strong Government would either have suspended negotiations until they had ceased or temporised while it gathered in new spoils overseas to offset French threats in Europe. But that of Addington, like a rabbit in the presence of a boa-constrictor, became unable to think of anything but the intended invasion. Had it chosen, it could have snapped its fingers in Bonaparte's face. Instead, a body of well-meaning, honourable but not very astute English gentlemen swallowed the wily Corsican's line and let him play it. It never seemed to occur to them that he was bluffing. Once more Volunteers drilled on every village green and paraded in Hype Park before their Sovereign. In July a secret circular was directed to District Commanders warning them on the imminence of a French descent;

  Parson Woodforde in Norfolk attended a parish meeting to consider what was to be done in the event of an enemy landing. As with such overwhelming British superiority at sea a full-scale conquest was hardly possible, the Cabinet decided—as the First Consul meant it to do—that a swift and ruinou
s raid on London was to be made at the Empire's commercial heart. To his inexpressible disgust, Nelson, home from the Baltic, was appointed to the command of a miscellaneous force of light craft to guard the Channel. When, pining for a quasi-domestic interlude ashore, he protested, the Prime Minister explained that nothing else could quiet the public mind.

  But once again when Bonaparte's boasted projects encountered the solid fact of British sea power, they proved wholly insubstantial. Nelson, after his initial disgust, threw himself with his innate enthusiasm into the task of defeating the French invasion plans, real or imaginary. On the assumption that a flying force of 40,000 picked troops in 500 gunboats and barges would be used for a simultaneous landing in Kent and Essex, he worked out his usual minutely careful dispositions for dealing with them. His hope was to encounter Bonaparte in mid-ocean and make him " feel the bottom of the Goodwins." Once at sea, the enemy was to be harried by every vessel under his command and allowed no rest. " The moment they touch our coast, be it where it may," he ordered, " they are to be attacked by every man afloat and ashore."

  Almost immediately the initiative in the Channel passed from France to England. With a young officer, Commander Parker, whom he had singled out for promotion in the Baltic, Nelson set in train plans for attacking the French flotilla in its own ports. On August 4th he bombarded Boulogne harbour for sixteen hours. Eleven nights later he resumed the attack with a force of fifty-seven boats. His object was to capture the enemy's barges and tow them back to England.