This passage is extremely interesting in revealing the extent of Napoleon’s intentions. His reliance on the efficacy of a carefully fostered “fifth column” to paralyze the opposition was probably illusory, for even the most extreme Whigs in Britain were by this time fully committed to the need for the war; but before all else, it was Napoleon’s reliance on his fleet’s ability to clear the Channel that held the seeds of his eventual disappointment.
Nevertheless, the French troops were in optimistic mood as the Army of England made its bivouacs along the Channel coast and entered into training for assault landings from the sea. Every type of military store was amassed in profusion, Antwerp was converted into a naval arsenal, and flatbottomed boats and barges collected in every port between Ostend and Étaples. The early enthusiasm gradually wore off, however, as weeks lengthened into months with still no sign of Villeneuve’s fleet entering the Channel. The main camp at Boulogne near Moulin-Hubert took on a permanent and elaborate aspect. French troops were famed for their ability to make themselves comfortable, given time, and the rough shelters of the first few weeks were soon transformed into well-built huts, while elaborate gardens sprang up along the tree-lined avenues. In the end, the camp of Boulogne took on all the appearances of a prosperous provincial town rather than of a military encampment, but boredom at the continued inactivity soon began to take its toll.
The Emperor paid several visits to inspect his troops and rally their morale; these reviews were magnificent, culminating in the famous occasion on August 16, 1804, when he decorated officers and men with the coveted stars of the Légion d’Honneur in the presence of the whole army, drawn up by columns in fan formation and to the sound of 1,300 drummers beating Aux Champ. Three days after the coronation in December, another spectacular ceremony was held, in Paris this time, when the assembled colonels of the French army received their eagle standards from the hands of the Emperor on the Champ-de-Mars. Despite torrential rain the Emperor’s address caused a paroxysm of patriotic fervor: “Soldiers, here are your colours! These eagles will always be your rallying point. They will fly wherever your Emperor deems necessary for the defense of the throne and his people. Do you swear to lay down your lives in their defense, and by your courage to keep them ever on the road to Victory?” “We swear!” cried the colonels in unison, and the sodden tricolors were raised aloft.
Not all the reviews of the armed forces were so successful as these. On July 20, 1804, for instance, there occurred the notorious and revealing incident when Napoleon overrode the advice of his admirals and ordered the Boulogne naval flotillas to pass in review before him in spite of the advent of an onshore gale. Admiral Bruix was dismissed from the service and exiled to Holland on the spot for remonstrating, and a cowed Vice Admiral Magon issued the necessary orders. The result was predictable; “More than 20 gun sloops filled with soldiers and sailors were flung ashore, the unfortunate occupants crying out for aid which none could afford them as they battled against the furious waves.”13 More than 2,000 men were drowned as the Emperor prowled up and down the beach with beetling brows, seemingly totally unmindful of the disaster he had needlessly caused. Megalomanic tendencies were not far below the surface of Napoleon’s personality.
Despite revelatory incidents of this nature Napoleon’s naval policy was on the whole sounder than has sometimes been represented. Although the supremacy of the Royal Navy was never fully challenged after Trafalgar, the existence of potentially dangerous French squadrons in half a dozen ports posed a threat the British Government could never ignore. England was far more dependent on the free use of the sea lanes than was her foe, and Napoleon apparently understood this. Great efforts were accordingly made to increase the numbers of privateers preying on British merchant shipping, while the threat of a military expedition slipping out of Brest or Toulon towards Ireland or some distant colony was continually being posed even when the possibilities of a full-scale naval descent had been ruled out. Napoleon also devised further forms of applying indirect naval pressure on “the Ruler of the Waves”: cunning attempts were made to secure for France the fleets of neutral European powers, for Napoleon was also aware that the extent of Britain’s maritime responsibilities and the consequent strain on her naval resources would make even a small growth in French naval strength disproportionately serious. By these methods, therefore, Napoleon maintained a relentless military and economic pressure on his most determined adversaries. French ships-of-the-line might rot at anchor in French ports for the duration of the war, but the price of keeping them there was small compared to that of maintaining the Royal Navy’s storm-beaten and scurvy-ridden blockading squadrons at their watch-dog stations, year in, year out. And more than once the need to forestall a French seizure of neutral shipping forced illegal interventions upon the British Government (as for instance at Copenhagen in 1807), with consequent international complications. All in all, Napoleon’s naval strategy showed considerable acumen and skill, and he successfully kept his opponents at full stretch even when there was little chance of a real challenge to their overall naval supremacy.
Nevertheless Napoleon never appreciated all the realities of war at sea in the great age of sail. The mysteries of wind and tide were never fully understood for all his majestic intellect, and his orders to his hapless admirals reveal that he expected them to be able to move their fleets from place to place on a fixed timetable for all the world as if they were land units. As a result, the invasion project was doomed to failure from a very early date. The Royal Navy kept ceaseless watch over Brest, Cadiz and Toulon, and it was only in late March 1805 that Admiral Villeneuve, hounded by repeated orders from Paris, succeeded in eluding the blockade off Toulon and set out for the West Indies as planned. For a brief period all appeared to be going well; Nelson set off in pursuit of Villeneuve, and the Channel lay at least partially unprotected for six days, although the blockade of Brest was never fully lifted. However, Napoleon was determined to await his fleet’s return before launching the Army of England against the Kentish coastline, and the opportunity passed, never to be regained. In due course, Villeneuve returned to European waters, but not to the Channel; after a sharp but indecisive brush with Calder’s squadron the French admiral decided that any move north of Ferrol into the Bay of Biscay and the Channel approaches would be far too hazardous, and after lingering for several days in mid-August in the neighborhood of Vigo Bay, he ordered the fleet into Cadiz, where it was promptly reblockaded by the returning British fleet.
Napoleon threw several spectacular fits of rage (one guesses partly for the sake of posterity), castigating his treacherous sailors. Villeneuve, that Jean-foutre (the Emperor never minced words), had betrayed him and compromised the entire enterprise, at least for that year. However, it is possible that Napoleon was secretly relieved to have found so convenient a scapegoat to bear the responsibility for the abortive invasion scheme. There are indications that Napoleon had long been convinced of the impracticability of his plan; Bourienne, his sometime secretary, claims that he never intended anything more than a threat, but this is extremely dubious. What is certain is that Napoleon was already taking measures to call off the enterprise as early as August 8, two weeks before he received definite news that Villeneuve was heading for Cadiz. Writing to Bessières, commanding the Imperial Guard, he stated: “My Cousin; I wrote you yesterday, ordering you to make various dispositions with my Guard and send some to Boulogne. If some of the troops have already left, allow them to proceed; but I now intend that you hold the rest and prepare for any eventuality while awaiting my orders.”14 It was news of the military preparations being taken by Austria and Russia that were the immediate cause of the abandonment of the camp of Boulogne, the final decision being taken on the 25th. “My mind is made up,” the Emperor wrote to Foreign Minister Talleyrand; “My movement has begun. By September 17, I shall be with 200,000 men in Germany.”15 That same day the orders indefinitely postponing the invasion and breaking up the Army of England (soon to be rechristened
La Grande Armée) were issued from Imperial Headquarters, although elaborate measures were ordered to disguise the nature of the move from the vigilant British frigates overlooking the coast. On the 28th, the Guard was instructed to concentrate at Strasbourg, but the Emperor lingered on at Boulogne until September 3 to foster the illusion of continued invasion preparations. By that date, however, the leading elements of the corps of the newly designated Grande Armée were well on their way toward the Rhine, and the abortive “descent upon England” was in the process of being transformed into the spectacular “maneuver upon Ulm.” Nevertheless, Napoleon still considered that he was continuing his undying fight against England by this radical change of plan. As in 1798, the direction of the attack had been shifted from the heart of the Britannic monster to one of its limbs; on the earlier occasion, the target had been British interests in the Levant and the creation of a threat to India; in 1805, the new objective was the newly-created Third Coalition, built by the indefatigable William Pitt (restored to the premiership in May 1804) on a basis of British gold. By striking for the Danube, the Emperor hoped to forestall his continental enemies, crush them in detail and thus deliver a telling blow against his inveterate insular opponent.
The Rt. Hon. William Pitt, 1759-1806, Prime Minister of Great Britain
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PROSPECTS OF WIDER WAR
By early 1805 continental affairs had undoubtedly taken a turn for the worse from France’s point of view, and in the light of Pitt’s inspired diplomatic activity Napoleon was certainly justified in switching his main strategic effort from the Channel to Germany. “A motive more powerful than the difficulty of its execution prevented me from attempting this enterprise [the invasion of England]; this was the equivocal situation of my relations with the Continent, and especially with Russia. Austria, at the instigation of Russia or England, might renew the war the moment I set foot on the British Isles, and we might, by this doubtful expedition, lose the fruits of ten years of victory. It is certain that such an expedition would never have been prudent without the alliance of one of these powers….”16
Why had France’s relations with the great continental powers deteriorated so abruptly? The answer lies partly in British diplomatic activity and partly in unwise though often deliberate provocations on the part of France. For several years, Imperial Russia had been subjected to strong British diplomatic and economic pressure. The young Tsar Alexander I (reigned 1801-25) was in many ways the very antithesis of “Mad Tsar Paul,” his father.
In the last years of his reign, Paul had become increasingly bewitched by Bonaparte’s achievements (with dire results for Pitt’s Second Coalition), and few men of affairs were surprised when his son, after a brief period of enchantment with the First Consul’s abilities, adopted a hostile policy toward France. Until the spring of 1803, however, these Francophobic tendencies were held in check by Russia’s other traditional interests which tended to clash with British policy. Alexander was a typical Romanov in his territorial ambitions, and he cast increasingly covetous eyes on the weak Baltic states, the growing chaos of the Turkish empire, on the Mediterranean world in general and the island of Malta in particular. Whitehall, on the other hand, was largely dependent on the Baltic for supplies of timber, tar, hemp and other vital supplies for the Royal Navy, and had no wish to find these raw materials exclusively under Russian control. As far as Turkey was concerned, it was British policy to support “the Sick Man of Europe” and exclude other power groupings from the Levant. Vital British trading interests were also involved in the Mediterranean, and British merchants had little desire for Russian competition in the area; hence London’s unwillingness to part with Malta for all the complicated terms of Amiens, which decreed that the island should be restored under an international guarantee to the Knights of St. John, whose Grand Master, by one of those historical ironies, happened to be the Tsar of all the Russias.
Understandably, therefore, it took considerable time for British and Russian diplomats to overcome their mutual suspicions, but it soon became evident that Napoleon would have to be cut down to size. Following the Peace of Lunéville, France and Russia had become regarded as coexecutors of the German territorial adjustments, but the French Government lost no time in imposing its own settlement on the area without troubling to consult its partner. Furthermore, in his dealings with Italy, the First Consul deliberately flouted Holy Russia’s declared interests in the region, and the list of French annexations in the Po valley appeared to be deliberate insults flung in Russia’s teeth. Colonel Sébastiani’s mission to the Levant appeared to presage a French occupation of the Morea or Montenegro, and in response the “Little Father” deemed it necessary to seize Corfu. The murder of the Duke of Enghien was the final provocation. Alexander prided himself as the doyen of European royalty, and the execution of the Bourbon princeling appeared a deliberate insult to all the crowned heads of Europe; it also constituted a flagrant violation of German neutrality, of which Russia was a guarantor. Beneath all these surface grievances lay Russia’s deep-seated desire to play an influential role in European affairs, and France’s high-handed actions gravely aggravated Russia’s ancient inferiority complex vis-à-vis the West, which went back at least as far as Peter the Great. Little wonder, then, that Alexander broke off diplomatic relations with France in the summer of 1804 and began cautious preparations for war, although a definitive treaty of alliance with Great Britain was not signed until the following April.
An imaginary project for a descent upon England—including a channel tunnel and a rudimentary form of airborne forces
Pitt and Bonaparte Share Out the Globe—a contemporary English cartoon
Austria had even more justification for distrust and hatred of France. There were two lost wars and two unfavorable peace treaties to be avenged, and the victor had lost no time in exacting the maximum advantage from his position along the Rhine and in North Italy to the detriment of Austrian interests. Between 1801 and 1803 the First Consul enforced a reconstruction of Germany which was very unfavorable to Austria; the mass of small principalities and powers that made up the bulk of the Holy Roman Empire were ruthlessly reduced from 350 to a mere 39, and France supplanted Austria as the protector of these remaining Rhineland princes; the Peace of Leoben had guaranteed territorial compensation from the sequestrated ecclesiastical states for the dispossessed landowners on the west bank of the Rhine, but all that Austria received in return for her losses in the area were two minor Bishoprics while her rivals, Bavaria and Prussia, waxed fatter than ever before. Worse was to follow; the French “Act of Mediation” in Switzerland was a breach of the Lunéville agreements and posed a strategic threat to Austrian security by driving a deep wedge between her remaining German and Italian spheres of influence. More threatening still was French acquisitiveness in Italy. The annexation of Piedmont and Elba was hard enough to swallow, and the French occupation of Naples (1803) was particularly painful as the Queen was the Emperor of Austria’s mother-in-law. But the final blow to Austrian Hapsburg pride was Napoleon’s royal visit to Italy in May 1805, culminating in his brazen crowning of himself as King of Italy, placing the ancient Iron Crown of Lombardy atop his Imperial Crown to signify the union of France and Italy in a splendid ceremony held in the Duomo at Milan. Total exclusion from influence in North Italy was utterly inacceptable to the Hapsburgs, and from that moment a renewal of hostilities became practically certain. Pitt’s agents had been fighting an uphill struggle against the wily Austrian statesman Metternich for several years, and even in January 1804, the Emperor Francis had been pleased to declare that “France has done nothing to me.” His tone was very different seventeen months later, however, for by that time Francis had swung away from the pacifist policies of the Archduke Charles, who advocated a strategy of inaction which would allow Napoleon to become inextricably involved in a life-and-death struggle with the British people following the French crossing of the Channel. Instead the Emperor now turned to listen to his Francophobe minister
Wratislaw and his Quartermaster-General, Mack, who had “imbibed the true essence of the French national spirit” and preached that “in war the object is to beat the enemy, not merely to avoid being beaten.”17 General Mack was confident that Austria would emerge triumphant from a new war, and his enthusiasm swayed the Emperor as decidedly as the Archduke’s pessimism now repelled him. In consequence, on June 17, the Aulic Council agreed to consider Pitt’s offer of an alliance. In August 1805, a formal protest was delivered to Napoleon concerning the French seizure of Savoy, which the latter declared represented a casus belli, and the same month a formal alliance was signed with King George III and the Tsar Alexander I.
Thus Pitt’s diplomacy secured another notable triumph, and the Third Coalition, which had first come into existence in unimpressive fashion when England signed an agreement with Sweden in December 1804, grew into ostensibly a very powerful alliance. Great Britain had successfully broken out of isolation, and the war with France again assumed a European character. The aims of the new alliance were summarized in the Convention of St. Petersburg of April 1805. The signatories pledged themselves to “return peace to Europe” by removing French forces and influence from Hanover, North Germany, Holland, Switzerland, North Italy and Naples. Secret clauses further stated that France was to be restricted to her frontiers of 1791, implying the confiscation of Savoy, Nice and the territories to the east of the River Moselle. The war of the Third Coalition was aiming at nothing less than the return of Europe to the status quo of the Ancien Régime and the liquidation of the territorial as well as the idealistic aftermath of the French Revolution.
The Campaigns of Napoleon Page 43
