Years of Victory 1802 - 1812 (42 page)

He had failed in the one; he accomplished the other. His last speech was to move that the House should take immediate measures to end the human commerce in negroes. With the formation of a Coalition Government the opposition of vested interests had ceased to matter, and the resolution was carried by both Houses. Fox's

¹
Years later to figure in English li
terature as Thackeray's Lord Steyne
and Disraeli's Marquis of Monmouth.

²
Lady Holland,
169, 173;
Albemarle, I,
242-3.
See also H. M. C. Dropmore, VTU,
106;
Colchester,
n,
49-51, 53, 73-4;
Lennox,
204-5, 207-8;
Marl
ay Letters,
99.

work was now done. During August, while staying at Chiswick House, he underwent two operations for dropsy. On September 7th he
learnt that the Czar, true to hi
s obligations, had refused to ratify Oubril's treaty. In a last conversation with Grey he stressed the three cardinal points to be observed in any further negotiations with France: unswerving fidelity to the Russian connection, British security and honour, and the independence of Sicily. Later in the day, while he was being wheeled in his chair to look at his favourite pictures, a gush of water broke from his wound and he fell back unconscious.

A few days later a great poet, walking in the vale of Grasmere at the close of a stormy evening, learnt from a newspaper of the impending dissolution of Mr. Fox.
"A
Power," he wrote,

“
is passing from the earth To breathless Nature's dark abyss."

On Saturday, September 13th, 1806, surrounded by what an old friend beautifully called the Privy Council of his heart, the end came. "The giant race is extinct," wrote Francis Horner, "and we are left in the hands of little ones."

With Fox died all hope of peace. Its most ardent exponent could no longer believe in Napoleon's good faith. All he wanted, it was obvious, was a year to fill his dockyards. From the Whig Holy of Holies even the chatelaine of Holland House proclaimed that further negotiation was idle: "Bonaparte is an enemy who will respect you more if you not only show your teeth but bite with them tool" When in early October it became known that Lauderdale, resisting Talleyrand's guiles, was on his way home, the mail coaches bearing the news were greeted with cheers. For eternal war, it was felt, was better than dishonourable peace.

Some had more solid grounds for rejoicing at the continuance of war. The Stock Exchange received the announcement of Lauderdale's return with jubilation. On September 13th, the day that Fox died, the City learnt that 1600 redcoats from the Cape of Good Hope and St. Helena had captured Buenos Ayres, a fortified city of 70,000 inhabitants and capital of a Spanish colony half the size of Europe. It was Sir Home Popham, the Commodore commanding the Cape convoy,'who was responsible for this
coup.
Finding little scope at the Cape, he had persuaded Sir David Baird to lend him a Scottish regiment—the 71st Highlanders—and, borrowing another 400 men from the Governor of St. Helena, he crossed the Atlantic to rouse the colonists of Spanish
South America against the yoke
of Madrid. Reaching the River Plate in June, he abandoned his project of occupying the port of Montevideo for the richer prize of Buenos Ayres. Here, to the indignation of the colonists he had come to liberate, he seized more than a million dollars from the public treasury and sent them to England, announcing his highhanded act in a flamboyant circular to the merchants of London.

Though the Government sternly censured the irregularity, the country—particularly the commercial community—was thrilled. The captured gold was lodged in the Bank amid the cheers of the mob. It seemed that, without conscious design and as a consequence of Nelson's victory, a new world was being called into existence for England beyond the Atlantic to redress the balance of the old.
¹

The fruits of absolute sea power were gathered that summer , nearer home. On September 2nd news came of an even more remarkable triumph. Thirsting for fame and realising there was nothing in his way, Major-General Sir John Stuart, the officer left in temporary command in Sicily, embarked without authority two-thirds of his garrison of 8000 British troops for a dash at the Italian mainland. Ensign Boothby drew him on his way to the quayside, "nodding kindly, drolly and significantly to the vivaing Messinese who, notwithstanding the profoundest secrecy, had a pretty good guess what he was after." In spite of this rather theatrical departure the operation was conducted with such speed and secrecy that the British, covered by the guns of a cruiser,
effected their landing on July 1
st in St. Euphemia Bay—fifty miles north of Messina—with only one casualty. After their long inactivity the troops were in the highest spirits, rounding up the Polish sharpshooters who opposed them with gleeful shouts.

Stuart's fortune held. Though there were 52,000 French in the toe of Italy, General Reynier, who commanded the nearest detachment, instead of awaiting reinforcements, advanced on the invaders with the confidence born of unbroken victory. Descending from a strong position, he crossed the Lamato river and attacked the British at Maida early on July
4th.
But, instead of breaking at the approach of the terrible French as all the world had done, the unimaginative redcoats, deployed in thin lines and superlatively trained in musketry, held their fire until they could enfilade and crush the advancing columns. They then followed up their volleys with the bayonet.
²

¹
Windham Diary,
463;
Colchester, II,
78;
Naval Miscellanies,
III,
202-3;
Fortescue, V,
311-18;
H. M. C. Dropmore, VIII,
326;
Lady Holland,
192;
Two Duchesses,
294.

²
The British displayed commendable calm. While bathing after their victory the
27th
Foot—now the Inniskillings—received orders to fall in to repel a charge of cavalry, whereupon the men doubled back to the beach, seized their belts and muskets and awaited the enemy in their wonted ranks, stark naked.—Bunbury,
249-50.

Within
two hours the veteran infantry of France were in flight, leaving a quarter of their force dead or prisoners. "Such a thing," wrote a French officer, "has not been seen since the Revolution!" The victors' loss was
45
killed and 282 wounded. Had they possessed any other cavalry but a squadron of Light Dragoons "and a few midshipmen on donkeys, scarcely a man of Reynier's army would have escaped.

Unfortunately the vanity and rivalry of Stuart and his naval colleague, Rear-Admiral Sir Sidney Smith, robbed the victory of any fruits. Outnumbered by gathering French armies, the British were soon forced to re-embark for Sicily, having effected nothing but the capture of two small mainland fortresses in the Straits of Messina. Yet the news of Maida caused an immense sensation. For it broke the legend of French invincibility and showed what British troops, properly trained and disciplined, could accomplish.

This illustration of the range of amphibian power naturally enraged Napoleon, who had not only commanded that all British invaders should be immediately captured, annihilated or hurled into the sea, but had publicly announced that they would be. It showed what a warlike island State that enjoyed complete sea-power might achieve with adequate armies; the day might come when no coast in Europe would be free from her irruptions. And it suggested, only too clearly, the importance of crushing her before it was too late.

Having failed to persuade even her most pacifically-minded leaders to make a peace that would give him ocean bases and replenish his dockyards, Napoleon sought to gain world dominion by excluding England's trade from a still wider area of land. Policy as well as ambition again forced him to extend his conquests. The winding road to London along which he had set out so confidently three years before had already carried him to Milan, Vienna and Naples. It now beckoned still further—to Berlin and the northern capitals, to Madrid and Lisbon, to Constantinople and even Moscow. At every point his stubborn adversary, with her ships and commerce, barred his way. "The struggle," he declared, "is between her and me. The whole of Europe will be our instruments; sometimes one, sometimes the other."

The main scene of the battle was laid in the maritime states of the Continental circumference. Only in their ports could a decisive verdict be obtained. Because of this, Napoleon after Austerlitz had rejected Talleyrand's advice to treat Austria leniently and make her the eastern bulwark of his new Europe against the barbarians of the Prussian North and Slavonic East. Instead he stripped and alienated her to find the means to bribe'Prussia and Russia into c
losing their
ports. His project of a universal European Order based on Roman culture and law had to be subordinated to the prior object of bending England to his will.
¹
For this he forced the Prussians to annex Hanover and embroil themselves with their former ally. For this, as much as to found a Bonaparte dynasty, he made one of his brothers King of the Two Sicilies and compelled another to mount the throne of republican Holland.

For the same reason, and in an eleventh hour hope of intimidating the British into peace, Napoleon threatened in August, 1806, to invade Portugal. But before the weak House of Braganza could" be coerced, his foe had forestalled him. While the advanced units of his army were assembling at Bayonne and his Staff was still grappling with the initial problem of how to maintain them over six hundred miles of barren mountain, the Admiralty demonstrated the speed and simplicity of sea communications by sending the Channel Fleet, under that formidable veteran, Lord St. Vincent, to the Tagus. The effect on the Portuguese was instantaneous : the Regent reaffirmed his fidelity to the English alliance and his readiness to defend it, if necessary, by transferring his Fleet and Government to Brazil. The whole of Lisbon, save for the French and Spanish Ambassadors, trooped aboard the British battleships, gaped with admiration at their long lines of gleaming guns and fraternised with their grinning, friendly sailors. "I have every reason to believe," wrote the old Admiral when he returned in October to his station off Ushant, "that we had the blessings of the whole country from the Prince Regent to the meanest peasant."
²

Spain as well as Portugal responded to this unexpected thrust of Britannia's trident. For two years the Spanish dictator, Godoy, had been struggling against the growing dislike of his countrymen for a war which crippled their trade and brought only taxation and misery in its train. The French alliance threatened to undermine the throne and the whole corrupt, ramshackle regime. After Trafalgar the courtesies shown by Spanish naval and military men to the Royal Navy verged almost on treason.
³
Impressed by the growing British successes in the New World and Mediterranean,

¹
See
Bonapartism,
57-60.
That shrewd diplomat, Francis Jackson, discerned this as early as June,
1807.
"It is the. first article of my political creed that Bonaparte ever since he has been at the head of the French government has entertained the intention of attempting the conquest of this country. I believe it is an object
...
to which ever other pursuit, whether of interest or ambition, is subordinate.
...
It must be so, for England is the only obstacle in his way to universal empire. To overcome her he must begin by separating her from the Continent."—Jackson, II,
33.

²
Tucker, II,
302-3;
Lady Holland,
161-2;
H. M. C. Dropmore, VIII,
243, 270-1, 296.

³
The people of
Cadiz cheered wounded British sailors in the streets. See Nicolas, VIII,
227-8;
Codrington,
73;
Fremantle, I,
442-3;
Granville, II,
137.

Godoy greeted the Channel Fleet's visit to Lisbon with a sudden
volte-face.
On October 5th, 1806, he issued an appeal for men, money and horses to defend the frontiers. The rage with which Napoleon read this document showed how clearly its purport was understood in P
aris.
· ····
.

As in the previous autumn, the Emperor countered England's strength and speed at sea by his own on land. While she struck on the circumference, he struck back from the centre. By the opening days of October a great French army was again on the march. It moved, not southwards over the barren sierras, but eastwards and northwards towards the Elbe and the Baltic to strike down Prussia. After Austerlitz Napoleon had bribed that timid Court with Hanover to bar the north German ports to the trade of her former ally. Britain had retaliated by seizing three hundred Prussian ships on the high seas. But, though to Napoleon's delight the estrangement between the former allies was complete, and Fox denounced Prussian collaboration with France as "a compound of all that was contemptible in slavery with all that was hateful in robbery," King Frederick William, like all who made terms with Napoleon, soon found that he had been swindled. Despite his patron's formation of a Confederation of Rhineland States, including Bavaria, Wiirtem-berg, Baden and Hesse-Darmstadt, under French military control, the north German Empire which had been dangled under his eyes as the reward of his connivance was withheld. Napoleon had other plans for the maritime and riparian States of Westphalia and Mecklenburg. He had other plans, too, it seemed, even for Hanover. In August the Prussian King learnt that a month earlier Napoleon had offered to restore it to England in return for Sicily and his lost colonies.