Years of Victory 1802 - 1812 (46 page)

Napoleon's blockade depressed and at first gravely injured Britain, but it failed to break her strength or
spirit
.
The
very degree to which it struck at the individual enhanced the fighting spirit of a people who could be lulled into sloth and complacency but never intimidated by violence. Apart from the "croaking" of the Opposition—more inspired by hatred of the Government than any fear of France—it seemed, after the initial shock, to have a stimulating effect on morale. The Speech from the Throne in January, 1808, spoke of the nation's inflexible resolve; "the eyes of the whole world," the Houses were told, "are fixed upon the British Parliament. "'There were, of course, a few waverers who hinted at a stalemate peace, but the general attitude was summed up by Thomas Campbell after Tilsit: " if Bonaparte has beat Russians, he has not yet beaten English freemen on their own soil!" That winter saw
an unprecedented demand for Walter Scott's
Marmion
with its patriotic Introduction; Coleridge in his lectures spoke of the inisled Ararat on which rested the ark of the hope of Europe and of civilisation. "I trust," wrote Ensign Boothby from his outpost beside the Messina Straits, " our dear old sturdy State will still be superior to the Continental commotion. She never saw the time more calculated to try whether she be a solid fabric or no." His trust was not misplaced.

Napoleon was therefore forced to resort to more drastic measures. His victories in northern Europe had released his immense military forces for operations exclusively against England. Once more, as in the days before Nelson and Pitt thwarted him, he felt free to revert to his dream of a drive across the Mediterranean towards the Orient—the source as he always believed of England's power and the goal of his early ambitions. The first hint of coming events was a Report by the French War Minister which appeared in the opening* days of January, 1808. It dwelt not only on-the necessity of closing all ports to France's irreconcilable enemy, but stressed the importance of being ready to seize every chance of carrying the war into the bosom of England, Ireland and the Indies. "The English influence must be attacked wherever it exists," it declared, "until the moment when the aspect of so many dangers shall induce England to remove from her councils the oligarchs who direct them and confine the administration to men wise and capable of reconciling the love and interest of the country with the interest and love of mankind."

The new design to break the ring of British sea power envisaged a triple military drive across and round both ends of the Mediterranean. A joint Franco-Russian-Austrian host was to strike, or pretend to strike, at the crumbling Empire of the Turks and the distant approaches to India, where the English had been having trouble with their Sepoy levies. In the central Mediterranean King Joseph's troops were to invade Sicily. In the west a third and greater French army was to march through Spain, besiege Gibraltar and cross the narrow waters dividing Europe from Africa. Once the coasts of Barbary were closed to them, the British blockaders off Cadiz, Lisbon and Cartagena would be deprived of their supplies. As soon as they had abandoned their posts, French and Spanish raiding squadrons would sail for the Cape and the Indian Ocean. In the meantime the small fleet at Toulon under Ganteaume, reinforced by Allemand's squadron from Rochefort, was to escape in the spring gales, and, re-provisioning the Frenc
h forces in Corfu, heighten the
threat to Sicily and draw Collingwood's Mediterranean Fleet eastwards.

On February 2nd Napoleon addressed a letter to Alexander of Russia, explaining how an army of 50,000 French and Russians, crossing the Bosphorus at Constantinople, could force England to bow the knee to the Continent. " By the last of May our troops can be in Asia. . . . Then the English, threatened in the Indies and chased from the Levant, will be crushed under the weight of events." A Convention with the Shah had already secured a passage across Persia. The Czar, whose relations with Napoleon had been clouded by disputes over the spoils of central and south-eastern Europe, was delighted, especially by an invitation to seize Finland and advance on Stockholm. For Napoleon had a double aim: to draw British troops from the Mediterranean to defend Sweden and to divert Slavonic ambitions from the Balkans. For, though he sought Russian aid in the Levant, it was no part of his design to establish the Russians in Constantinople. He wanted that city for himself. "Constantinople! never!" he remarked to Meneval, "it is the empire of the world!"
¹

Even before writing to the Czar, Napoleon had started to move in Italy. Reggio, re-garrisoned by the Neapolitans after Maida, was taken on February 2nd; Scylla, which Napoleon, with his eye on Sicily, flamboyantly described as "the most important point in the world," on the 17th. Meanwhile Allemand, the most resourceful of his Admirals, had sneaked out of Rochefort and reached the Mediterranean, hotly followed by Sir Richard Strachan, "in a proper stew," as one of his captains put it, at being given the slip. Encouraged by his arrival, Ganteaume sailed for Corfu, where he revictualled the Ionian Islands and caused Collingwood a good deal of anxiety.

But the most crucial part of Napoleon's design turned on the occupation of Spain and north-west Africa. For this he had prepared the ground with the greatest care. After Godoy's presumptuous show of independence before Jena he had insisted on the dispatch of 15,000 of the best Spanish troops to police his north German conquests. In October, 1807, having reduced that petty dictator to a state of abject servility,
²
he skilfully used a secret correspondence of his

¹
To secure Constantinople Napoleon was already endeavouring to stir up
a pro-French rising in the mis
governed Turkish provinces. On February
20th, 1808,
Collingwood wrote to the Pasha of Egypt to warn him that one of his cruisers had taken a small French vessel bound for Syria, "full of books printed in the Turkish language, which were to have been distributed amongst the subjects of the Porte for the purpose of persuading them that resistance to the French was folly and that it was their interest to betray their country and attach themselves to France."—Collingwood,
346.

²
"This Prince of Peace, this mayor of the palace, is the rascal who will himself open t
o me the gates of Spain."—Fouche
,
Memoires,
I,
365
.

own with the heir apparent, Ferdinand, to have the prince—the one member of the Spanish royal family with any following—arrested by his father for high treason. At the same time he secured through the secret Treaty of Fontainebleau permission for French troops to occupy the principal towns of Biscay and Navarre. This they at once proceeded to do under pretence of supporting Junot.

Early in the New Year the
Moniteur
began openly to attack Godoy. On February 16th, 1808, all disguise was abandoned. On that day a French Brigade at Pampeluna rushed the gates of the citadel after challenging the garrison to a snowball match, seized the magazine and barred out its allies. Similar acts of treachery occurred at San Sebastian, Figueras and Barcelona. Then, having secured the entrances to the Peninsula, Napoleon poured 100,000 troops through the passes and proceeded to take Spain over, lock, stock and barrel, as the essential preliminary to attacking Gibraltar and invading Morocco.

For a few weeks it looked as if the Spanish adventure had succeeded. Murat, advancing from Burgos, entered Madrid, acclaimed by the populace as a liberator; at Aranjuez the mob rose, prevented the flight of Godoy and the Royal family to South America and forced the King to abdicate in favour of Ferdinand. The latter was then induced by specious promises to cross the French frontier and meet Napoleon at Bayonne. Here he was made prisoner, asked to resign the throne and, when he refused, confronted by his own father and mother who denounced him as a bastard. By May 6th his powers of resistance, never strong, were exhausted and, in return for a French pension, he joined with his father in surrendering his rights to Napoleon. A stroke of the pen, supported by a little force and treachery, had secured France the Iberian Peninsula and the Spanish Empire of South and Central America. The Pyrenees had been eliminated.

Up to this point everything had gone as Napoleon had planned. The rulers of Spain had been tricked out of their rights like those of a dozen outworn States before them. But the Spanish people now took a hand in the game. They were proud, they were ignorant and they hated and despised all foreigners. Though unanimous in their loathing of Godoy, they had a deep-rooted affection for the Throne which now took the form of a wave of irrational enthusiasm for Ferdinand. When they discovered he had been kidnapped, they became passionately angry. Instead of acquiescing in French rule they rose against it—spontane
ously and without the slightest
warning.

The storm broke even before the curtain had fallen on the sordid abdication scene in Bayonne. On May 2nd the Madrid mob poured into the streets' to massacre the French garrison. Every French soldier found was instantly cut down or shot. After three hours the invaders' main forces began to regain control. Then it became the Spaniards' turn to be slain. No mercy was shown; an English lady whose room was invaded by eight fugitives saw them bayoneted under her eyes while her children clung to her in terror.
¹
By nightfall the French guns, sweeping every street, had restored a dreadful travesty of order. Almost every person still abroad was stained with blood, and the dead lay piled in heaps in the roadways.

Napoleon refused to take the outbreak seriously. He knew the power of artillery too well. His deputy, the bold and ruthless Murat, closed down on the country with martial law and mass shootings. A farewell proclamation of the
ci-devant
King Charles was sedulously circulated, exposing" the folly of resistance.
²
The Junta of the Regency, a body of carefully selected grandees and Court officials, was dragooned by Murat into petitioning for Joseph Bonaparte to ascend the throne. "Opinion in Spain is taking the direction I desire," Napoleon wrote, "tranquillity is everywhere established."

But on May 20th the trouble began again when the pro-French Governor of Badajoz was dragged through the streets and killed by the rabble. Two days later the Governor of Cartagena met the same fate. At Jaen peasants murdered the Corregidor and plundered the town. Everywhere the timid Court aristocracy who had yielded to the French were hunted through the streets like wild beasts. Valencia sprang to arms on the 23rd, the Asturias—five hundred mil
es away —on the 24th. Here—untin
ged by French influence—the local squirearchy and priesthood assembled at Oviedo, ordered an army of 18,000 men to be raised and declared war on France in the name of the captive Ferdinand. Seville followed suit on the 27th. At Cadiz the mob stopped a paternal harangue by the Gallophil
e
Governor on the power of France with shouts for arms and ammunition, hunted him through the town and dashed his brains out on the pavement.

While these events were taking place in the oldest of France's" satellite States, the British were doggedly continuing the war, not

¹
An. Reg.,
1808, 158-61;
Chron.,
47.

²
"All those who speak to you against France thirst for your blood; they are either the enemies of your nation or agents of England, whose intrigues would involve the loss of your colonies, the separation of your provinces or many years of calamities and trouble for your country." An. Reg,
1808;
Chron.,
43-4.

because they saw the slightest prospect of victory, but because there seemed no other course. Except for the mad King of Sweden—now more a liability than an asset—they had not a friend left in Europe. Their sole security was that they controlled the sea. They were aware that Napoleon was again attempting to break their encircling ring to the southward; by shifting their limited military forces from one threatened spot to another they were doing what they could to frustrate him. In October, 1807, as soon as their troops had been extricated from Egypt, they had withdrawn Sir John Moore's corps from Sicily in the hope of saving Portugal; by the time, however, that it reached Gibraltar, Junot was in Lisbon, and it was accordingly brought home to England. Hence it had been hurried off to Gottenburg at the beginning of May, 1808, in an eleventh-hour attempt to succour the Swedish King who, having lost his Finnish possession to Russia, was threatened by a double Franco-Russian drive across the Baltic from south and east. His finances were in ruin, his subjects on the verge of rebellion and his favourite province, Pomerania, had been overrun by the French. But, as he refused to make peace and clamoured for a British army, the Cabinet felt bound to comply. Meanwhile other troops, returned from South America after Whitelocke's capitulation, had been sent under Major-General Spencer to Gibraltar to parry the menace of a French advance into North Africa, while Collingwood by Ins vigilance at sea made up for any temporary inadequacy in the garrison of Sicily and kept watch against French designs on Turkey.

All this was purely defensive; opportunities for attack were few and remote. So far as they existed, they were mostly in the New World where, with the instinctive persistence of their race, the British were once more contemplating the offensive. Since January the Under-Secretary for Ireland, Sir Arthur Wellesley, had again been employed on a plan, conceived by the intriguing Miranda, for an expedition to revolutionise Venezuela; troops were actually being assembled at Cork to carry it out.
¹
Yet even this was forced on the Government by Napoleon's possession of the initiative: his move to acquire Spanish America and close the last remains of its trade to England was a serious threat to an industrial country which had already lost its principal markets. By the spring'of 1808 the Continental System and the ravages of French privateers against neutral shipping were having dangerous repercussions in the manufacturing