Years of Victory 1802 - 1812 (11 page)

This belated admission of England's right to compensation induced Whitworth and the Cabinet to make .a last search for a solution. Suggestions were made for substituting a term of years for permanent occupation of Malta and for the purchase of the neighbouring island of Lampedusa from the King of the Two Sicilies as a British naval base. But Bonaparte, though to win time he allowed Joseph and Talleyrand to flirt with the idea, never for a moment intended to give the British a lease long enough to impede his plans for conquest. There was no formula, though Whitworth and Joseph searched for it assiduously, that could reconcile two diametrically opposed forces. The First Consul wanted a world that he could shape to his will; Britain one in which private men could

¹
Browning, 159-60, 162-6, 168-9.

trade and grow rich as they pleased. So long as the British could bar the sea-passage of. armies eastwards in the Sicilian Narrows and westwards in the Atlantic Approaches, their conception stood a better chance of prevailing in the long run than his.

Already Bonaparte's plans for an invasion were taking shape; from the Scheldt to the shores of Biscay, dockyard officials and harbour-masters, sailors and shipbuilders were receiving secret, imperious orders. And while British Ministers debated the precise number of years they would need to retain Malta for their security until Lampedusa could be fitted out as a naval base, he took the final, irrevocable decision to cut his losses in the West so that he could throw his entire force against them. During the night of Easter Sunday he wrestled with his last hopes of an American empire; by dawn his decision was taken. "Irresolution and deliberation are no longer in season," he wrote to Talleyrand. "I renounce Louisiana!" For eighty million francs he sold the great territory with its illimitable future to the United States.

As soon as the Cabinet saw that the French were trifling, it took its decision. On St. George's Day it drew up final instructions for Whit worth. Ten years was to be the minimum term for the lease of Malta; if this and the other conditions of its earlier ultimatum were not accepted, he was to leave Paris within seven days. Outside the rattling windows of Downing Street, where north-easterly gales blew the dust in eddies across the Horse Guards, the country waited quietly.

For men knew now that there was no alternative. Though a few still hoped for a miracle to save their quiet lives and the world from the folly of another war, the great majority saw that peace with Bonaparte could never be more than armed truce. " Dreadful indeed were the state of our existence," wrote Thomas Campbell, "the very front and picture of society would grow haggard if that angry little savage, Bonaparte, should obtain his wishes. I think I see our countrymen trampled under by his military like the blacks of San Domingo on their own fields!—our very language abolished for that of the conqueror, America and all the world lost for want of our protection, and the fine spirit of our political economy changed into the politics of a drill sergeant."
¹

When the Government's new instructions reached Paris, they

¹
Campbell, I, 426, 429;
Berry Papers,
238-40, 259-61; Nicolas, V, 51, 55; Dyott, I, 236; Auckland, IV, 176; Farington, II, 88; Minto, III, 279;
Espriella,
III, 129-30; Malmes
bury, IV, 243.

evoked renewed efforts to gain time. For the next few days, while Whitworth packed and reports circulated of troop movements on the coastal roads, he was subjected to a persistent drip of unofficial hints. The picture painted by Joseph and his collaborators was of an almost despairing entourage of peace-loving Ministers and relations pleading with a wilful, unhappy, hurt tyrant who in his secret heart wanted peace as much as they and was only persisting in his suicidal course until someone could find a formula to save his face. The First Consul had already declared that, whatever London did in its anger, nothing would induce him to recall his Ambassador. A little more patience by the English, a little more trust, a minor concession here and there, and all would be well: Whitworth and Addington would go down to history among the permanent benefactors of mankind, and the peaceful progress and happiness of the world would .be assured.
¹

As the day of Whit worth's departure approached, these unofficial soundings were redoubled. His failure to appear at a Consular Levee on May ist led to another scene in the diplomatic circle; the cornered and anguished dictator, it was said, had expressed his agitation in the most disordered fashion. Yet still the unfeeling Ambassador continued to pack and, in default of unconditional surrender to his demands, turned a deaf ear to all Talleyrand's and Joseph's insinuations.

By May 3rd every arrangement had been made at the Embassy for a start at four next morning; in the evening, after rejecting a further and very unsatisfactory dispatch from Talleyrand, the Ambassador said good-bye to his friends. But the passports which were needed to obtain post-horses failed to arrive, and at midnight,* when he and his family were discussing what to do, a message was brought up that an official from the Foreign Ministry was at the door with an urgent message for a member of the Embassy Staff. It appeared that he had a proposal to make which might settle the differences between England and France in a few hours. An hour later a note arrived from Talleyrand requesting an audience on the following evening on a matter of momentous importance. Next day, when Whitworth was found to be still in Paris, the gloom of the capital turned to joy.

At the interview that evening Talleyrand officially proposed that the sovereignty of Malta should be vested in Russia on the expiry of England's tenure. With such a Power to assure the island's integrity, he declared, the tenure could be as brief as the First Consul

¹
Browning, 191-5, 198-200; Minto, III, 285; Malmesbury, IV, 244; C.
//.
F. P.,
I, 323;
Paget Papers,
II,

desired. When Whitworth insisted that it would have to be for at least ten years, pointing out that it was her own not Russia's security that his country sought, Talleyrand pressed him to refer the matter home for further instructions. In the end, sooner than incur the responsibility of precipitating war, the Ambassador agreed. He was disobeying orders, but he reflected that the French were giving ground.

When the news of these events reached England on May 7th the country was expecting immediate war. The North Sea Fleet had been reinforced and Cornwallis had been ordered to hoist his flag at Torbay to resume the blockade of Brest. For all the deep regrets for peace lost, men asked only one thing: an early end to suspense and shilly-shallying. Already speculators on the Stock Exchange were turning national anxiety to inglorious gain with false rumours to unsettle the Funds.

It was in such a mood and subject to such suspicions that the Cabinet met to discuss Whitworth's dispatch. Their decision was never in doubt. Talleyrand's proposal was dismissed as a trick to gain time. Previous British overtures to Russia to guarantee the integrity of Malta had failed, and her conditional agreement had only been obtained at the entreaty of France. It was known that Napoleon had been trying to bribe her with offers of Hanover and suggestions for a joint dismemberment of Turkey. Either Russia had already agreed with Paris to accept Malta, in which case her consent boded ill to England's Eastern interests, or,—as seemed more likely—after a delay of several weeks she would persist in her earlier refusal to commit herself.
¹
And by that time the French battle fleet would be home and Napoleon's transports safe in the colonies.

' Whitworth was therefore told that the proposals were so loose, indefinite and unsatisfactory that the French Government could never Jiave expected them to be received seriously. His instructions were repeated with categorical orders to leave Paris in thirty-six hours if they were not agreed to at once.

The last scene of the long drawn-out tragi-comedy was pure melodrama. It began on May 10th, the day the Cabinet's instructions arrived, with a row between Napoleon and his postillion, the great man's assumption of the reins, a headlong collision between his phaeton-and-six and a gatepost, and a spill into the public roadway. Next day, while the angry despot was nursing his bruises and the

¹
" Russia was now what she ever has been since she assumed a place amongst the greater Powers of Europe—cajoling them all and' courting flattery from them all, but certainly never meaning to take an active part on behalf of any of them."—,Malmesbury, IV, 246.

British colony its expectations, a dispatch from St. Petersburg put a trump-card into his hands. The Czar had agreed to the French request to mediate over Malta. This was a major triumph for Napoleon. It meant, at the worst, that the British, sooner than offend the only Continental Power who might conceivably help them, must allow him time to get his ships home from the West Indies. That evening the Council at St. Cloud resolved on uncompromising rejection of the British terms, only Talleyrand and Joseph of the seven persons present daring to vote against their master.

The Latin is logical. The Anglo-Saxon is not. Next day, to the bewilderment of St. Cloud, Whitworth, serenely ignoring the dramatic comings and goings that attended the Russian
demarche,
set off for Calais. All the way to the coast he was followed by surreptitious messages, some hinting at new offers, others upbraiding him for his impatience. In an eleventh-hour attempt to gain time the French Ambassador in London was instructed to acquaint the Cabinet by indirect means—of which he was to be careful to leave no trace—of the First Consul's readiness to consider a ten years' lease of Malta in return for French control of the Otranto peninsula. But nothing could now shake the unalterable resolution of Britain. The
bona f
ides
of St. Petersburg's offer was not even considered. "It appears," wrote Lord Malmesbury," that Russia has been gained over —won by France by corruption and flattery—lost by us by indolence, incapacity and ignorance. It is the manner in which Russia has declared herself favourable to. France that has terminated the discussion on war. Had Russia been neutral or passive Bonaparte would have given way."
¹

For the British Government and people, through all their sloth and blindness, saw two things clearly. They had given the experiment of peace with Bonaparte a fair and full trial and failed. They knew now that their conception of life and his could not survive together in the same world and that, since war between them was inevitable, it had better come in their time rather than his. They had chosen their ground and they would stand on it. On Monday, May 16th, after the Cabinet had unanimously rejected Andreossy's backstairs proposals on the ground that France had no right to dispose of the territory of an independent State, Parliament was informed that the Ambassadors of both countries were being recalled. The British declaration of war. followed two days later. A month earlier there had appeared in the
Morning Post
a sonnet by an obscure poet from Westmorland which explained why:

¹
Malmesbury, IV,
253.

"we
must
be
free
or
die"

"It is not to be thought of that the Flood Of British freedom, which, to the open sea Of the world's praise, fr
om dark antiquity Hath flowed, ‘
with pomp of waters, unwithstood,' Roused though it be full often to a mood Which spurns the check of salutary bands, That this most famous Stream in bogs and sands Should perish; and to evil and to good Be lost for ever. In our halls is hung Armoury of the invincible Knights of old: We must be free or die, who speak the tongue That Shakespeare spake; the faith and morals hold Which Milton held."

CHAPTER
THREE

The Great Invasion

" Red glared the beacon on Pownell,

On Skiddaw there were three;

The bugle-horn on moor and fell

Was heard continually."

James Hogg.

T

he
First Consul was furious. The war he had wanted had come—too soon. By forcing the issue before his Navy was ready, the English had regained half the ground
they had lost in the Peace. It
was not
their
trade that was now in danger but his. By committing the bulk of his fleet to a wasting campaign in the West Indies and then, in reliance on Addington's proved timidity, risking a war over Malta, the First Consul had given hostages to fortune. Nearly fifty French warships were either marooned at San Domingo or straggling home across the Atlantic. Others were on the African coast and in the Indian Ocean. At the moment the total force fit for sea at Brest was two ships-of-the-line, one frigate and two corvettes. At Rochefort and Toulon there were hardly more. The naval arsenals were empty, the gun mountings rotten, the crews incomplete, indisciplined and untrained.

The Royal Navy, on the other hand, was able to act with devastating speed. Even after a year of economy it remained a most formidable instrument. It was strong not only in ships but in something far more important—a permanent cadre of officers trained to the highest pitch of efficiency. Five ships of the line sailed from Torbay under Vice-Admiral Cornwallis on May 16th. By the 19th, with accompanying frigates, they had resumed their old station of Brest. On the day that war was declared Lord Keith hoisted his flag at the Nore, and on the same evening the greatest of all Admirals joined the
Victory
at Portsmouth. Shaken by the death of his old-friend, Sir William Hamilton, and the parting with his beloved Emma, Nelson had lost none of his passionate sense of professional duty. "The Devil stands at the door," he wrote, "the
Victory
shall sail to-morrow!" Fretting to meet the enemy, he got away on the 20th in a shower of rain. By the 22nd he was off Ushant, bound for the Mediterranean.