The Years of Endurance (69 page)

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 Ne
lson's shattering blow at Copen
hagen, 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 eagerness 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
battle
ships 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 f
orced to surrender. Paris magni
fied 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 repli
ed 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-d
isciplined Turks and he was with
out 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, Bo
naparte steadily manoeuvred Haw
kesbury 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 artil
lerymen of the Armies of the Rh
ine 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 ruinous 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.