by Roger Knight
There is much in the political world of Britain during the last fifteen years, too, that can be recognized in the period between 1793 and 1815. The danger to the state 200 years ago was more obvious and long-lasting, but unaccountable secret service dealings, the difficulties of judging incomplete intelligence and military operations of doubtful legality have a familiar ring. Echoes can be heard in some of the less benign consequences – of prolonged, unassailable parliamentary majorities, overconfidence, unminuted meetings, bitterly violent cabinet splits – though, as far as we know, no duels have been fought in recent times. The difficulties and compromises of coalition politics have lately been much in evidence, but 200 years ago similar political debates took place about the number of civil servants required and their cost, about the respective roles of the state and the private sector, and about the national debt and lax government accounting.
Yet these resemblances are not the reason why I wrote this book. Since my research student days I have been intrigued by the mechanics of eighteenth-century and early-nineteenth-century British government; and here I attempt to show these at work, in relation to the armed forces and to society as a whole, at a time when extraordinary pressures were placed upon them. My academic curiosity was further whetted by my career as an administrator in the National Maritime Museum, which, as an institution partly publicly and partly privately or commercially funded, was subject to fluctuating financial resources and shifting political expectations. Exercising the art of the possible was a day-to-day necessity. I thus identify with Professor Bruce Collins, who reflected on his career in academic administration in the acknowledgements for his recent book on these wars, War and Empire. His career, he writes, was ‘an experience which has led me to be less ready to write loftily of military blundering and poor decision-making among those faced with uncertainty and confusion’.4
Since the scope of the book is very wide, and space is limited, I have omitted any explicit mention of debates among historians, and differing shades of interpretation, of which there have been many in the writing of the political, social and military histories of Britain in these years. Disagreeing with colleagues takes up too much space. For the same reason I have avoided the mention of recent concepts and code words used by the historical profession. The phrases ‘fiscal-military state’, ‘contractor state’ or ‘network theory’, for instance, cannot be found outside this Foreword: nor, indeed, the word ‘trope’. Specialists in the period will be able to discern where I stand on most of these interpretations, and this book very obviously rests on the shoulders of the work of many scholars.
Though I have been thinking about some of the issues that this book addresses for more than forty years, its genesis came about, almost unconsciously, when I read Philip Harling’s The Waning of ‘Old Corruption’ in the quiet of the Huntington Library in the course of a short fellowship there in 2007. It could have hardly been written, however, without the extensive scholarship and thoughtful writing, over forty years, of Piers Mackesy and the late John Ehrman.5 The work of the present generation of naval historians, Michael Duffy, Roger Morriss and Nicholas Rodger, has been invaluable; so, too, have Rory Muir’s and Christopher Hall’s work on the government, strategy and the army, and John Cookson’s on the militia and volunteers in Britain.6 Dominic Lieven’s recent book includes valuable work on the supply and logistics of the Russian Army between 1812 and 1813.7 In these days of searchable internet databases, I would also like to mention how critically important books of reference have been to me. I have referred constantly to recent comprehensive compilations on the navy by Rif Winfield and on the army by Robert Burnham and Ron McGuigan.8 It would have been impossible to navigate the government of the time without the House of Commons volumes, edited by Roland Thorne (1986), or the Office-Holders in Modern Britain series, compiled with exact scholarship by Sir John Sainty and Michael Collinge in the 1970s and 1980s.9
A word on the book’s structure. Presenting twenty highly complex years of politics and warfare requires more than a simple narrative, particularly as the war grows in size and scope after the end of the Peace of Amiens in May 1803. The book’s chapters become more strongly themed and cross-referenced in order to analyse what was happening on different fronts – intelligence, diplomacy, communications, supply, finance and technology. The first appendix lists ministers and the senior government boards; the second lays out the parliamentary commissions that reformed the administration of the army and navy in the Napoleonic War, and is of special relevance to Chapter 11.
Friends and colleagues who kindly read individual chapters have been enormously helpful. Patricia Crimmin, a source of sage advice for over forty years, cast a shrewd eye over the chapters on administration. Other chapters have also been read by Sarah Palmer, the founding director of the Greenwich Maritime Institute, and my recent partners there in the Leverhulme-funded project on the victualling of the Royal Navy between 1793 and 1815, Martin Wilcox and James Davey. Jonathan Coad, Huw Davies, John Houlding and Stephen Wood also generously gave their time to read various sections. Michael Duffy and Bruce Collins read the complete script in great detail at a late stage. My warmest thanks to them all. Any errors that remain are of course my responsibility.
I have long pondered the distance between the two tribes of naval historians and military historians, and my thanks go to those who welcomed me into the history of the British Army in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries: Tom Bartlett, Hugh Boscawen, René Chartrand, Bruce Collins, Tim Cooke, Andrew Cormack, Michael Crumplin, Kenneth Ferguson, Alan Guy, Yolande Hodson and Stephen Wood, among others, have been helpful at all times. Kevin Linch at Leeds and the community of historians that he has gathered on his website ‘Soldiers and Soldiering 1750–1815’ have both instructed and entertained. The meetings of the ‘Contractor State Group’ at overseas conferences considering the comparative economic history of several nations have been continually stimulating. Among the participants of these meetings, I must thank Huw Bowen, Stephen Conway and Richard Harding, while Rafael Torres Sánchez and Sergio Solbes worked hard in organizing us all and publishing the proceedings. I have also benefited from unpublished work from Dan Benjamin, Bob Sutcliffe, Margrit Schulte Beerbühl and Anais Tissot-Pontabry. For help with references and points of interpretation I am indebted to Will Ashworth, Troy Bickham, Tim Clayton, Gareth Cole, Ken Cozens, Anthony Cross, Jeremiah Dancy, Helen Doe, Stuart Drabble, John Dunne, David Edgerton, John Hattendorf, Margaret Makepeace, Robert Malster, Maria Cristina Moreira, Keith Oliver, Jan Ruger, Tim Walker, Adrian Webb, Clive Wilkinson, Glyn Williams and Richard Woodman. The late Michael Stammers was always willing to proffer help and I shall miss his support in the future.
Old friends have helped too. Jonathan Coad guided me around the fortifications at Dover that used to be in his care when he worked for English Heritage. His tour of the Western Heights, normally closed to the public, gave me a dramatic insight into the anti-invasion measures of the time. Only when you stand on these huge fortifications, looking down at the old port of Dover, is it possible to appreciate their scale and their importance to the defence of Britain, and why governments of the day poured so much money into them. Alan Frost sent me some examples of informal, unminuted government decisions, the bane of eighteenth-century and, no doubt shortly, of contemporary historians. My erstwhile colleagues at the National Maritime Museum have been most supportive, in particular Gillian Hutchinson, Pieter van der Merwe and Richard Ormond. Patricia Lynesmith made papers available at short notice at the Castle and Regimental Museum, Monmouth. Paul Catlow of the Somerset House Trust found invaluable plans of the occupancy of the offices in that great building 200 years ago. Sim Comfort allowed me to see a manuscript from his remarkable collection of eighteenth-century naval artefacts and papers. Robin Gilbert sent me the lively account of an invasion panic from his family papers. Alan Guy and Peter Boyden of the National Army Museum located an important unpublished paper by S. G. P. Ward, a soldier–scholar whose reflective au
thority is undiminished, even though he wrote more than a generation ago. To all these, I am grateful for their assistance.
I am very much in the debt of Stuart Proffitt, my publisher at Allen Lane/Penguin, who in the beginning helped me to frame the idea of this book, and who maintained steady encouragement and sure judgement throughout the years of its writing. My thanks also to my agent, Peter Robinson, and to Donna Poppy, who has been the most understanding and thorough of editors. Richard Duguid, Ruth Stimson, Stephen Ryan, Chris Shaw and Donald Futers have provided other forms of invaluable support. John Gilkes has very professionally turned my pencil-drawn tracings into attractive and I hope useful maps. Although acknowledgements for illustrations are listed separately, I would especially like to thank the present Lord Liverpool for providing an image of the Hoppner portrait of his great-great-uncle.
Documents and printed sources come from the National Archives, the Institute of Historical Research, the Bank of England Archives, the National Army Museum and the National Maritime Museum, and I am grateful as ever to the hardworking staff members who facilitated my research. I have also used material from earlier research projects over the last decade from the British Library and the Devon Heritage Centre at Exeter. During the writing of this book, most of the libraries and archives had long periods of restricted service or were closed for refurbishment; only the library of the Athenaeum soldiered on throughout, and I was willingly assisted there by Kay Walters, Laura Duran and Annette Rockall, particularly when they borrowed books for me from the London Library. Three more distant libraries had valuable manuscript collections, and permission to quote from them has come from the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin and the William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan.
I have noticed that the authors of history books, in particular, enthusiastically acknowledge the support of their spouses, perhaps because these books take a long time to write and domestic disruption becomes a way of life. My wife, Jane, has accumulated my gratitude in industrial quantities. I have been especially fortunate that she studied history into her twenties before she had to drop the subject to take up another career. For this project she has been research assistant, document transcriber, conference attendee, intelligence expert and much else besides. She has read every word I have written, several times, pencil in hand. Britain Against Napoleon is dedicated to her, with love and thanks.
Charlton, West Sussex
October 2012
Introduction: A Hard-Working Generation
Work very hard and unremittingly. Work, as I used to say sometimes, like a tiger, or like a dragon, if dragons work more and harder than tigers. Don’t be afraid of killing yourself. Only retain, which is essential, your former temperance and exercise, and your aversion to mere lounge, and then you will have abundant time both for hard work and company, which last is as necessary to your future situation as even the hard work … Be assured that I shall pursue you, as long as I live, with a jealous and watchful eye. Woe be to you if you fail me!
–Cyril Jackson, dean of Christ Church, to Robert Peel, 1 April 1810, upon Peel’s first appointment in government as undersecretary for war and the colonies, aged twenty-two1
In the late 1780s William Pitt, haughty, shy and still in his twenties, at the height of his political prestige as prime minister, would often ride down the Strand from Downing Street, turning right into the quadrangle of the newly built Somerset House. Some of his visits were for social and political dinners. Pitt’s close ally, the forceful Scot Henry Dundas – treasurer of the navy from 1784 until 1800 and, much more importantly, home secretary in 1791 and then secretary of state for war in 1794 – had an apartment here. Lady Jane Dundas was ‘at home on Monday and Friday evenings … at Somerset Place’, as the young George Canning was to note in his journal in 1794.2 Many of Pitt’s visits to Somerset House were, however, for business at the Navy Office, which administered the building and was responsible for the maintenance of Britain’s warships and kept the related accounts. The office was composed of 105 clerks and officials, housed in the most imposing part of the building, under the elegant cupola at the south end of the quadrangle.3 For a hundred years they had worked in a building in Crutched Friars in the City of London, designed by Sir Christopher Wren after the Great Fire, but by the late eighteenth century conditions were cramped, and the old building was in need of repair.
In May 1774 it was reported that large parts of the old Somerset House, built by Edward Seymour, first duke of Somerset, and appropriated by the crown after his impeachment and execution in 1552, were crumbling away and the building was close to collapse. George III agreed to its total demolition, and a radical decision was made to gather all the naval departments – at that point spread around different buildings in the City – in one place. Whose idea it was to create a ‘government centre’ is not known, though some attribute it to Edmund Burke, a consistent champion of the scheme. It appears to have been a pragmatic solution, rather than one of prestige, driven by the simultaneous decay of several different government buildings.4 The first plan for the site had been for a big, plain building that would accommodate all the naval departments as well as the Ordnance departments and the duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall, but the ‘men of taste in Parliament’ pressed for ‘an object of national splendour’.5 Nevertheless, the administration of the navy had been made more efficient by the move, which started on 29 August 1786. The new Navy Office was conveniently close to the Navy Pay Office, the Sick and Hurt Office, and the Victualling Office, all in the new quadrangle, while the Admiralty was a mile away in Whitehall.
The more senior officials had living quarters in the building, since they might be summoned to business at any time of the day or night, which was why Dundas lived there. In office hours the prime minister would visit the comptroller of the navy, Captain Sir Charles Middleton, the senior of the seven commissioners of the Navy Board (which supervised the Navy Office, responsible not only for the dockyards and warship building, but also for purchasing naval stores such as timber, iron and canvas). The senior civilian on the Board was the surveyor of the navy, who oversaw the design, construction, repairing and refitting of warships in the dockyards or under contract. The management of the six home government dockyards also took much of the Board’s time, although the larger yards – Chatham on the Medway, and Portsmouth and Plymouth on the south coast – had their own resident commissioners. The dockyard officers at the smaller yards – Deptford and Woolwich on the Thames and Sheerness at the mouth of the Medway – were responsible directly to the Board in Somerset House. The reach of the main naval offices in Whitehall also extended overseas. The Navy Board in Somerset House financed and managed bases in places such as Gibraltar, Halifax in Nova Scotia, English Harbour in Antigua and Jamaica.
Thus, when Pitt visited Middleton, the prime minister was by-passing his most senior cabinet colleague, the first lord of the Admiralty, Admiral Lord Howe, an isolated and difficult man. As comptroller of the navy, Middleton was responsible to the first lord, but, like his predecessors, exercised a considerable amount of independence. Pitt’s business, however, directly concerned ships and their condition, for much needed to be done after the failures of the American Revolutionary War, which had ended in 1783 with the loss of the colonies. Pitt was interested in administration and its operational details, and Middleton lost no opportunity to press his reforming ideas upon him, though he was later to be disappointed by the degree to which Pitt dragged his heels in actually implementing them. The prime minister could easily become unnecessarily involved in minute detail, part of what has been called his ‘government by enthusiasm’.6 During the Dutch Crisis of September and October 1787, for instance, when relations with Lord Howe were at a particularly low ebb, Pitt and Middleton were corresponding over the smallest operational movements of regiments by sea.7 Nor did Pitt’s visits to Somerset House cease when Middleton resigned as comptroller in 1790. Middleton’
s successor was Sir Henry Martin, whose son recalled,
It was no uncommon thing for Mr Pitt to visit the Navy Office to discuss naval matters with the Comptroller, and to see the returns made from the yards of the progress in building and repairing the ships of the line; he also desired to have a periodical statement from the Comptroller of the state of the fleet, wisely holding that officer responsible personally to him, without any regard to the Board.8
For most of the 1780s Pitt was without close political confidants in the cabinet, keeping his distance from his older colleagues. He conducted much business in unrecorded meetings and informal dinners. It was the young prime minister’s habit to deal with a small group of bright, talented administrators in most departments, usually at undersecretary level, to supplement the established channels of the cabinet. Pitt had a superior and subtle intellect, adept at using the state servants skilfully: as one of his biographers put it, ‘He worked with the grain and as a result became formidably well briefed.’ John Fordyce, one of the commissioners for examining the Crown Lands, remarked to Henry Dundas in 1789: ‘What I have found remarkably agreeable in any conversation I have had with Mr Pitt on business is not only the extreme quickness of his apprehension but the undivided and unprejudiced attention which he gives.’9