Years of Victory 1802 - 1812

by Arthur Bryant

  He, therefore, tried to temporise while tricking or scaring the English out of their defiant mood. He was not successful. His attempts to please no longer carried conviction. Though he bestowed his most fascinating smiles on English visitors and talked ostentatiously of projects for reviving French trade, he failed to make any impression in responsible* quarters. When, fishing for the goodwill of the Prince of Wales, he spoke at a Levee of the interest he took in his affairs, his gracious message was only regarded at Carlton House as insolence. Moreover, try as he might to play the international philanthropist, the old Adam of Jacobinism kept breaking through.

  1 Minto, III, 271.

  A North Country baronet, who applied to him for the return of some pictures seized in Venice, was met with a jocular assurance that they were far too fine to be parted with and an offer to show them to him at St. Cloud.1

  On the main point on which Bonaparte required satisfaction, the British remained immovably obstinate. When, to offset their claims to compensation in Europe for the violated status quo, he demanded the early evacuation of Malta in accordance with the Treaty, he encountered a rock. Over Egypt they made no difficulty; the delay in the departure of their troops, Whitworth explained, had been purely technical and was at an end. But to withdraw from Malta while every condition on which they had agreed to surrender it remained unfulfilled, they politely but firmly refused. For despite repeated applications, neither the revenues from Spain, France and Italy which were to have supported the restored Order of St. John nor the guarantees of the island's independence by the European Powers stipulated for in the Treaty, had been forthcoming. To hand it over without these to a penniless and corrupt Order, they explained, would be to place it at Napoleon's mercy.

  Malta was a barren rock offering little in itself either to England or France. The fortifications of its capital, Valetta—long the terror of Tunisian and Algerian pirates—could add nothing to the First Consul's control of the Continent. Yet, if he was again to carry his conquests eastwards, it was vital for him to deny its anchorage to the British Fleet. It was for this that he had seized it from the Knights of St. John on his voyage to Egypt in '98; to expel him the British had besieged Valetta for two years. They had only agreed to restore it to its former owners on condition that Bonaparte withdrew from Southern Italy and the Ionian Isles. Now that he was again edging towards the Levant and had secured a potential stranglehold on the overseas passage to India by the return of the Cape to the Dutch, they dared not relinquish the one remaining obstacle to a new French drive on Egypt and the overland route to the East. Though they admitted the two thousand Neapolitans who, under the Treaty, were to garrison the island for a year, their redcoats remained in the fortifications. Their resolve was confirmed when, on the election of an independent Grand Master for the reconstituted Order of St. John, the messenger carrying the news to the Papal nominee in England was stopped in Paris by the First Consul, who substituted a message of his own ordering him to hasten to his Court and on no account to communicate with the British Government.

  1 Malmesbury, IV, 195-6; Argyll, I, 35; Plumcr Ward, 70; Browning, 98-9, 103-5, 107; Minto, in, 273.

  So long as there was a chance for his projects in the West, Malta was not vital to Bonaparte's plans for world dominion. The earth was round and he could shatter the flimsy British commercial web as easily in one hemisphere as the other. His West Indian colonies had been restored, Spain with her transatlantic Empire was his dependent, and his secret treaty with her had secured him the hinterland of Louisiana. Already he and his ally owned nearly twice as much American soil as Britain and her revolted colonies. In a few years of peaceful development his inexhaustible energy might create a new France across the Atlantic far more powerful than the haphazard, commercial empire of the English. With this and the fleet he planned to build it would be easy to wrest their sceptre of sea power and world trade.

  For a few weeks, therefore, in the Christmastide of 1802, the First Consul trifled with the idea of letting the British keep Malta in return for a free hand in Europe. But with the New Year disastrous tidings arrived from San Domingo. Twenty-five thousand French troops were dead of yellow fever, including their commander, Bonaparte's brother-in-law, General Leclerc. Still more fatal to his Western project was the alarm of the United States at the threat to the Gulf of New Orleans. The bare rumour of restrictive measures in the Mississippi valley had roused a hornet's nest. Talleyrand's plan to stretch a French belt from the Caribbean to the Pacific and enclose the Americans " within the limits which nature seemed to have traced out for them" broke on the rough, unyielding surface of American character. Faced by a threat to his dreams of the future peace and unity of the western Hemisphere, the pacific President Jefferson prepared for war and sent James Monroe to Paris to urge the immediate resale of West Florida and New Orleans to the young Republic.1

  Bonaparte might tame freemen with the bayonet in Switzerland but he could scarcely do so across three thousand miles of ocean with the British Navy on his flank. He saw that he was beaten and, like the great man he was, cut his losses. For a few weeks at the beginning of 1803 he pretended to fit out a new Western expedition, causing the British Ambassador to write jubilant letters about efforts to achieve the impossible. But in an interview in his bathroom with his brothers, Joseph and Lucien, who favoured pacific expansion in America in preference to a clash with England, he announced his intention of selling Louisiana. When they suggested that the Legislature might oppose such a sacrifice, he sprang into the air

  1 The American Minister in Paris told Whitworth that the transfer of Louisiana to France would unite every American in Britain's cause.—Browning. 37.

  with a peal of scornful laughter and drenched his" brethren to the skin.

  · ·······

  From this moment all Bonaparte's plans turned on the destruction of England in the East. On January 15th he issued secret instructions to General Decaen, an ambitious young Anglophobe, to proceed as Captain-General to Pondicherry, taking counsel en route with the newly-restored Dutch authorities at the Cape. In India he was to open negotiations with the native princes for the expulsion of the British. Should war break out before September, 1804, he was to fall back on some point d’appui, such as Mauritius, which could be held against a hostile fleet-In the meantime, as part of the grand design for securing stepping-stones to the East while the French fleet was being re-built, it was necessary to get the British out of Malta. Since they could not be coaxed, they must be bullied. Napoleon wasted no time. At the end of January, 1803 he showed his strength. On the 29th he made a threatening speech to the Swiss delegates in Paris; sooner than allow the English to meddle in their affairs, he told them, he would sacrifice a hundred thousand men. Next day he published in the Moniteur a report on the state of Egypt by Colonel Scbastiani, a young swashbuckler who had just returned from a pretended "trade" mission in North Africa and the Levant. The Report, which only mentioned trade incidentally, was couched in arrogant and provocative terms. It stated that the Arab, Greek and Mameluke subjects of the Turkish Empire were longing for deliverance, that the departing British troops at Alexandria were weak and disorganised and that Egypt was ripe for immediate reconquest.

  But though, as Bonaparte had anticipated, publication of this document diverted French opinion from the West Indian disaster, its effect in London was the exact opposite of what he intended. Instead of terrorising the Cabinet, the Sebastiani Report stiffened its resistance. British fears for Egypt and the Ottoman Empire were now confirmed by the First Consul's official journel. Some new annexation, dressed up in the usual tinsel of Republican philanthropy, would doubtless follow. To yield what Whitworth called " the rock of Malta" now would be insanity. To Bonaparte's demand for the Treaty and nothing but the Treaty, Ministers replied by demanding the vanished status quo on which it had been based. Nothing, they instructed their Ambassador, would induce them to leave Malta till they had received restitution for its violation.1 When Bonaparte learnt of h
is failure to intimidate London he

  1 C. H. F. P., I, 316-17; Browning, 56-7, 61-3, 66-8; Castlereagh, V, 75.

  sent for Lord Whitworth. Seating himself at the other side of a table on which he placed both elbows, he warned him that he must make his views clear. His sacrifices for peace, he declared, had been in vain: the Treaty of Amiens had produced nothing but mistrust. The English had repaid his efforts by libels in the Press and warmongering speeches in Parliament. They had offered a refuge to his enemies and had allowed them to revile him in their newspapers and plot his assassination. And now they had the effrontery to refuse to evacuate Malta—a breach of treaty which no consideration could make him condone. He would sooner see them in possession of the Faubourg St. Antoine! Every wind from across the Channel brought enmity and hatred. His patience was exhausted.

  He then spoke of Egypt. British alarms at his intentions were unwarrantable: had he had the slighest inclination to seize it he could have done so at any time, and in the face of their puny and now departed garrison. Egypt must inevitably be his in the end. But it was not worth his while to go to war for it. He had nothing to gain by war. He knew that invasion—the only means he had of disciplining England—would be a dangerous enterprise. Why, then, after raising himself from little more than a common soldier to the summit of the greatest State in Europe, should he risk all in such a gamble ? None the less, if forced to it by English obstinacy, he would not hesitate and would place himself at the head of his troops. Such was their spirit—and here Whitworth's mind recurred to the five or six swashbuckling generals loitering in the ante-chamber—that army after army would be found ready for the attempt.

  Next Bonaparte stressed the disparity in strength between the two countries. France, with a population swollen by conquest to many times England's, had half a million men in arms: a number which could be doubled at any moment. Yet, since a terrible struggle would be necessary before she could out-build England's Fleet and destroy her mastery of the seas, it would be better for the two nations, acting together, to rule the world; their strife could only overturn it. But the British Government must choose between peace and war.' If peace, the Treaty must be executed, the Press controlled and protection to French traitors withdrawn. If war, it was only necessary to say so.

  He had tried to be a good friend, but his friendship had been spurned. He would now show how terrible his enmity could be. It would be useless for England to seek allies, for none would dare to aid her. What then could she do ?

  Tor nearly two hours the British Ambassador remained silent under this tirade. At last he contrived to speak of his countrymen's unchanged desire for peace. But when, he added, they saw the violent changes wrought in Europe, they could not remain silent. The very understanding both countries needed depended on British security against France's growing acquisitions. " What ?" shouted Bonaparte with a coachman's filthy oath, "you mean France has got Piedmont and part of Switzerland: two miserable bagatelles of which you thought so little at the time that you said nothing! What right have you to speak of them now?"1

  Bonaparte never believed in half measures. He had set out to bully Aldington's England out of Malta, and he was resolved to make the English people see he meant business. Two days after his interview with Whit worth he sent a message to the French Legislature boasting of France's strength. "In London," he announced, " there are two factions struggling for power; one of them has made peace, the other has sworn implaccable hatred to France. While this partisan strife lasts, the Republic must take precautions. Half a million must be ready to defend and avenge her.... Alone England can never resist her!"

  If anything could have aligned the British people against the peace, it was this taunt. A few weeks before Windham had been lamenting that their only attitude to their impending fate was "Let us eat, drink and be merry for to-morrow we die!" Fashionable conversation revolved- round the crush at Mrs. Jordan's last performance, the doings of the Pic-nic Society, or the progress of the shooting season in Norfolk. It now turned almost in a night to French atrocities in San Domingo and the iniquity of British merchants who had chartered ships to help the French in such a horrible business. In vain did the Attorney-General wring from a reluctant jury a verdict of criminal libel against the journalist Peltier for calling the head of the French State a tiger; in vain the gentle Addington explained to Lord Malmesbury that it was necessary, if peace was to be preserved, to bear the insolences of the French dictator like a gentleman those of a drunk cabman. Bonaparte, Betsey Fremantle confided to her diary, was a treacherous monster.

  By overplaying his hand the First Consul had awoken the most easily gulled and most stubborn of all his enemies. That experienced diplomat, Lord Auckland, expressed astonishment that he should have been so impolitic. " Had he amused us a year or two," he wrote, "our dupery would have been complete and we should not have had a chance of effectual resistance." Now, while far away the fast

  1 Browning, 66-8, 78-84; Castlcreagh, V, 70, 75; Malmesbury, IV, 191, 195-6, 216.

  British troops embarked at the Cape,1 the London mob, which nine months before had dragged the French envoy's carriage through the street, sang bellicose ballads, and that erstwhile appeaser, Lord Nelson, demonstrating with the Downing Street fire-irons, told the Prime Minister that it did not matter what way he laid the poker on the floor, provided that, when Bonaparte said it must be placed in one direction, he immediately insisted upon its being laid in some other.

  Indeed Castlereagh, the man who had been most responsible for this change of front, was forced to counsel restraint. There was now a danger that Ministers would be stampeded into war by the force of public opinion and, in their determination to stand firm over Malta, put themselves in the wrong by clinging too rigidly to that which they had undertaken to surrender. The First Consul, since he could loosen the British grip on the island in no other way, had now secured from the Czar the provisional guarantee of Maltese independence which Russia, in common with the other great Powers, had hitherto withheld. He was also doing his best to use the disputed island to create friction between Russia and England, encouraging the former to oppose in the name of the Knights native Maltese rights which the British had promised to protect, and hinting that the latter might obtain security by dismantling the Valetta fortifications and so incurring the onus of exposing the Mediterranean to Tunisian pirates. Castlereagh, who had a far clearer head than either Addington or Hawkesbury, saw that in any prolonged war two things would be essential—the unquestioning confidence of the British people in their cause, and the goodwill of the only Continental Power which had proved its ability to stand up to the French.

  On February 28th, therefore, revised instructions were sent to Whitworth. He was to point out that Britain had fulfilled every condition of the Treaty except the evacuation of Malta, which had been delayed only for want of the Powers' guarantee and because of threatening French moves in Italy and the East. If Napoleon would guarantee the integrity of the Turkish Empire, make amends for his encroachments in Europe and offer "substantial security" for the island's independence, the British garrison would be withdrawn.

  Yet, even had Napoleon been willing to give Britain the satisfaction she asked, nothing could have stayed the tide set in motion by his anger. The British were now angry too and on their guard. On

  1 To the grief, it would appear, of the natives, who " dreaded the change of an English for a Dutch Government, fearing everything from their experienced inhumanity."— Farington, II, 114.

  March 8th, while icy gales swept out of the north, a Royal Message was read to Parliament calling for precautions against hostile preparations in the ports of France and Holland. At the same time it was revealed that French commercial agents, sent to England to collect data for a trade treaty, had been transmitting through the post detailed surveys of British harbours. An addition of 10,000 men for the Navy was voted unanimously. Nobody wanted war, but after so many shocks the country was in stubborn mood.

  These measures ac
ted on the First Consul's nature like an emetic. On March 13th, at a Sunday Drawing Room, he bore down on the British Ambassador and declared in the presence of a large gathering, " So you are bent on war!" When the astonished Ambassador replied that his countrymen, after fighting for so many years, were far too conscious of the blessings of peace, Bonaparte retorted, " But now you mean to force me to fight for fifteen more years!" Again, after telling the Russian and Spanish Ambassadors that the British did not keep their word, he paced back to Whitworth. Shaking his stick so that the tall, stately Englishman thought he was about to strike, he repeatedly demanded the reason for such uncalled-for armaments. "If you arm," he shouted, "I shall arm too; if you fight, I will fight also! You think to destroy France; you will never intimidate her!"

  The Ambassador who, though outwardly calm, was wondering what he ought to do with his sword if Bonaparte assaulted him, replied that his country did not wish to do either, but only to live on good terms with France.

  " Then you should respect treaties! Bad luck to those who cannot respect treaties! They must answer for their breach to Europe." And, repeating the last sentence, the dictator flounced out of the room.1

  Strangely enough, though it caused intense excitement, the incident reassured the English. For they supposed that in making a scene in public—to them a sure sign of weakness—the First Consul had shown that he was merely bluffing. They shared Whitworth's view, expressed after Napoleon's earlier outburst, that the only object of such tantrums was to bully them into concessions otherwise unobtainable. From this time stories multiplied of his unpopularity, the hatred of his oppressive taxes and conscriptions, the growing power of his Republican rivals. Whitworth, a great believer in such tales, reported that if the First Consul involved France in war he would be assassinated. After March 13th many Englishmen came to believe that he was a mere madman like the