Chapter 27

FRANCE AND ENGLAND IN ARMS[27]

[Footnote 27: In addition to the authorities already given, see Rose's Napoleon and Napoleonic studies; Philippon in the Revue Historique for March, 1901; Bourgeois, Manuel de Politique Étrangère; Castlereagh's Letters and Despatches; Mahan's Sea Power and Life of Nelson; Pellew's Life of Lord Sidmouth; and the Memoirs of the Earl of St. Vincent.]

A Debatable Question -- The Attack on English Commerce -- Bonaparte Abandons his Colonial System -- The Neighbors of France -- The Feint against England -- The Army at Boulogne -- England Aroused -- Enthusiasm in France.

The much debated question as to whether or not Bonaparte was victor in the diplomatic struggle, desired the rupture as it occurred and wanted war, is, in the light of the fullest information, apparently unanswerable. If he were a profound philosopher and constructive statesman disposed to abandon the struggle for mastery on the high seas and confine the expansion of France to the Continent, he was ready and his wishes were fulfilled; if, on the other hand, he intended to confront England by sea and her allies by land, he was unready, for he had no fighting navy and he had not expected war so soon. There were the beginnings of colonial empire in Australia, Decaen was on his way to Réunion with a squadron to establish a base of action against British India, the Cape of Good Hope was French, there was every prospect of a powerful Mahratta-French alliance in India itself. There were high hopes in the Ionian Isles, in Greece, and for Egypt. Malta might be wrested from England, and so forth. Ten of his battle-ships were far away, the remaining thirty-three were just available and no more; there were orders out for building twenty-three new ones, and a visit to Normandy convinced him that all sixty-six could be manned by splendid crews from western France. He indulged in much bravado about possibilities. But the hard fact is that in May, 1803, the French naval power was negligible, while the French land power was in the highest state of efficiency. Pitt had his enormous fleets and his possible coalition in hand, Bonaparte his army and his incomparable military genius.

Hostilities began by the seizure of many French merchantmen which were constructively in English harbors, though in many cases really at sea. The reply of the First Consul to this conduct was equally high-handed: every Englishman between the ages of eighteen and sixty within the borders of France was seized and thrown into confinement. For twelve long years these unfortunate persons were held as prisoners of war. The French embargo on hostile ships antedated England's by three days, and simultaneously with its publication Clarke was instructed to drive English ships from the harbors of Tuscany. In the last days of May an army under Mortier occupied Hanover, and, closing both Bremen and Hamburg to British commerce, exacted large contributions of money from them. In June another force under Saint-Cyr entered Naples, which in strict observance of the treaty of Amiens had been evacuated, and laid a similar embargo on the ports of Taranto, Brindisi, and Otranto. In the case of Hanover, France utterly disregarded the fine point in international law which had so far distinguished between George III as King of England and the German Elector whose patrimony was Hanover; in that of Naples she displayed a disregard for treaty obligations not entirely consistent with Bonaparte's maledictions on those who did not observe them.

Finally, in July the famous "Continental System" was instituted by the decree which absolutely forbade the importation of all English wares into France or the sphere of her influence. In order to cut his enemy off from another quarter of the globe, to strengthen a maritime power hostile to England, and to secure new resources, Bonaparte had already extended the hand of friendship to the United States, having sold to them in April the immense territory then known by the name of Louisiana. The event was second in importance to no other in their history; for it gave them immediate control of the entire intercontinental river-system and later that of the Pacific coast, while indirectly it prepared the way for the conflict of 1812, which finally secured their commercial independence. Thenceforward Bonaparte concentrated his energies for the control of Europe. His financial condition was acute, for Barbé-Marbois had failed in his efforts to negotiate a loan of forty million francs from the Dutch bankers. It was possibly a conversation between Bonaparte and Ralph Izard of South Carolina which turned the attention of the First Consul to Louisiana as a quick asset. The United States easily secured the cash where the French had failed, in Amsterdam by the intermediation of Stephen Girard. With sixty million francs in hand as security, Bonaparte raised as much more on credit, and the purchasing power of this hundred and twenty million francs was fully equal to that of four times the sum to-day. With it he refitted his little fleet, and purchased two hundred and fifty thousand muskets, a hundred thousand cavalry pistols, thirty thousand sabers, and a hundred batteries of field artillery, all arms of improved quality and pattern, the arms used at Austerlitz, and to which, as he told Latour-Maubourg, he owed that signal victory. The West Indies and Louisiana in one hemisphere, in the other the Cape of Good Hope, Egypt, and a portion of India, with St. Helena and Malta as ports of call--of this he had dreamed; but the failure to secure San Domingo, and England's evident intention to keep Malta, combined to topple the whole cloud castle into ruins. The Continent must be his sphere of action.

At once the states bordering on France were made to feel their position. Holland agreed to furnish five ships of the line, a hundred gunboats, eleven thousand men, and subsistence for a French army of eighteen thousand. For this France guaranteed her territorial integrity with the return of all her colonies, not even excepting Ceylon. Switzerland was to furnish half of her little army in any case, and nearly the whole of it if France were attacked. The sale of Louisiana spread consternation throughout Spain, which had always hoped to recover it, and with that end in view had included in her treaty with France a clause retaining the right of redemption for herself. Deriding her exasperation, Bonaparte despatched an army to the frontier, and demanded in place of the twenty-five ships and twenty-eight thousand men agreed upon in the treaty of 1796 a subsidy of no less than six million francs a month. Godoy, the "Prince of the Peace," who had been made chief minister of Spain, first thought of war, but his masterful opponent threatened the weak king, Charles IV, with a public exposure of the scandalous relation between his queen and that minister, and before the end of the year the demand was granted. Portugal purchased neutrality by a contribution of one million francs a month, and Genoa agreed to furnish six thousand sailors for the French fleets. In consequence England began to prey on Spanish commerce.

The second preparation for war was the much discussed equipment of an expedition to invade England. It is a commonplace of history that the British empire has ever been fortified in the separation of the kingdom from the continent of Europe by a narrow but stormy estuary. There had been repeated invasions from the days of the Anglo-Saxons themselves down to the expedition of William of Orange; but growing wealth had furnished ever increasing armaments, and made access to England's shores so much more difficult with every year that, finally, successful invasion had come to be regarded by her enemies as impossible. On the other hand, the English remained skeptical, and fell into periodic panics on the question. Even now a clever fiction like the "Battle of Dorking," or a revival of the project for tunneling below the Channel, can awaken such anxiety as to insure the passage of any grant for strengthening the navy. This distrust was well known to the French. For years the project of a descent on England had been the standard pretext of the Convention and of the Directory to extort money from office-holders and patriots. This inheritance was exploited by the First Consul to its full value. In general his preparation was doubtless a feint, but there were probably times when the scheme commended itself as an alternative. He told Whitworth that there was but one chance in a hundred of its success; he never seriously tried to execute it; and in the undiplomatic but apparently sincere effusion of October twenty-third, to Otto, the whole stress of his argument is laid on the chances of continental conquest.

Nevertheless he made enormous outlays of money. Boulogne was the spot nearest to England which was available for the gathering and drill of a mighty force. Thither were summoned to form an Army of England the flower of the troops, a hundred and fifty thousand veterans and recruits, commanded by Soult, Ney, Davout, and Victor. For the first time Bonaparte could work his will in the construction of a fighting-machine. The result was the best machine so far constructed. Tactics were improved, the system of organization was reformed, equipment was simplified, discipline was strengthened, and enthusiasm was awakened to the highest pitch. Moreover, the soldiers were trained in the management of great flatboats, from which they were taught to disembark with precision and skill, both in stormy weather and in the face of opposition. Some were also instructed in the duties of the sailor in order that their services might be available if needed aboard men-of-war. In a letter to Decrès, minister of marine, dated September thirteenth, 1805, the First Consul admitted that his success in these respects had not been striking: he found that his great floats were nearly unmanageable in the currents and tides of the Channel, and that a three days' calm would be necessary for crossing. It also became clear that the attempt could not succeed without the coöperation of a fleet. The chief advantage of the camp at Boulogne, as Bonaparte then saw it, was that he could there keep from eighty to a hundred thousand men in a wholesome situation, ready at a moment's notice to be transferred to Germany.

But the effect in England at the inception of the enterprise was electrical. Her standing army was already a hundred and thirty thousand strong, the militia numbered seventy thousand, and the reserve fifty thousand. In addition there was a body of volunteers which eventually reached the number of three hundred and eighty thousand in England and of over eighty thousand in Ireland. A system of signals was arranged between vessels of observation in the Channel and stations on the shore, beacons were ready on every hilltop, and the whole land was turned into a camp. The navy was not less strengthened: the number of men was raised from eighty to a hundred and twenty thousand, and a hundred vessels of the line, a hundred or more frigates, and several hundreds of smaller vessels, such as cruisers and gunboats, were gathered to protect the coasts. Pitt undermined the Addington ministry by calling for ever greater means of defense, and appeared daily for a time at the head of three thousand volunteers raised on or near his own estates. Even Fox laid aside his French sympathies for a while. Parliament authorized a loan of twelve millions sterling, which was promptly taken, and raised the taxes so as to double the revenue. The "nation of traders," as the First Consul sneeringly called them, again stood at ease ready to face her hereditary foe, under a burden of expense which the people a year before had believed would crush them. These were the "slight derangements" which, as the exile of St. Helena told Las Cases, had permanently thwarted the invasion, then represented in his bitterness as having been a serious purpose. It is true that during the period of extravagant preparation a medal was struck with Bonaparte's profile on the reverse, and on the obverse Hercules strangling a Triton, and that measures were discussed for administering the conquered island and for stripping it of its art objects. But further evidence that the entire movement was in the main a pretext for assembling and drilling a great land force to be held in readiness against Austria and Russia will be given in another connection, and on the whole it seems to outweigh that which indicates a definite, uninterrupted intention to invade England. In view of the stupendous land and sea forces assembled by Great Britain, it is altogether conceivable that the First Consul might have formed the notion of an invasion of the inverse sort, of an English army landing on the eastern shores of the Channel, and an offensive movement by English troops against the French armies. If so, he kept it deep in his mind, but for that alternative he was likewise in readiness by reason of the camp at Boulogne.

Although the Revolution had failed in giving the French their political freedom, it culminated under Bonaparte in giving them civil rights. In view of the hatred felt by the dynastic powers for a movement which shook their thrones, it may easily be argued that to protect this immense gain political centralization like that of the Consulate was essential. On whichever side of this question lies the truth, one thing is certain--that the nation as a whole felt as if moderate republicanism had triumphed; and much as they suffered in trade, industry, and agriculture by the renewal of war, they nevertheless were enthusiastic in upholding their leader and his measures. His bitterest enemies have admitted, and still admit, the national character of the support which he had in 1803. The government was popular, so much so that it even ventured to bestow a pension of thirty dollars a month on Mlle. Robespierre. Addresses which promised willing assistance were numerous. The masses, not yet free from the old sense of security created by the leadership of a powerful man or of a family trained in the management of public interests, were comforted by the presence and the work of their chief magistrate. In the tribunate a higher degree of the same spirit found expression in the significant phrase "consular majesty," with which an orator addressed the First Consul. There was no manifestation of discontent with the censorship of the press, which was regarded as a necessary war measure. Books could not be published until after the censors had possessed a copy for seven days and had given their permission; the newspapers could reprint no news from foreign journals, and were mercilessly controlled in the contents of their columns. When the "Moniteur" and its kindred poured contempt on English perfidy and wrote of Punic faith, when they portrayed Albion as rushing madly on her fate, the readers liked it and applauded.