by Roger Knight
The manpower shortage ensured that the government was unable to contemplate any major initiatives. By the end of 1795 Pitt’s cabinet belatedly realized that success was not likely to come easily or early, and concerns were growing about the possibilities of an invasion, for on 1 October 1795 France had annexed the Austrian Netherlands. Two major policy changes were initiated in 1796. The first was a serious effort at making peace with France. At the end of 1794, secret peace overtures from the moderate constitutional monarchist politicians had reached London. Convoluted negotiations with French opposition groups followed, conducted chiefly through William Wickham, transferred in haste from London to Berne in Switzerland.78 The mood became more pacific in London. In the House of Commons, on 27 May 1795, Pitt signalled the end of the propaganda conflict that had marked the first years of the war, admitting that there might now be room for negotiation with Paris. He finally abandoned his hostile ideological stance on 8 December 1795.79 James Harris, now the earl of Malmesbury, was despatched to Paris to negotiate with the Directory on 15 October 1796. In England there was support for peace, though some, including Edmund Burke, still opposed it. Malmesbury arrived in Paris on 22 October, taking a full week for the journey, which led Burke to make the witty, bitter comment that ‘he went the whole way on his knees.’80 Peace negotiations continued for two months, with Austria reluctant to be involved. Malmesbury resumed the talks in Lille in July 1797, but was finally ordered to leave in September 1797, when the French broke off negotiations and Malmesbury came home empty-handed. The constantly shifting political situation in France made it difficult to know if the French were ever serious. With the now-subdued Vendée no longer a threat to Paris, serious plans for French invasion attempts on Ireland were in hand, with a fleet and troops preparing in Den Helder and in Brest, while a flotilla was gathering at Dunkirk.81
The second major policy shift – to abandon the Mediterranean – stemmed from a weakening strategic situation in southern Europe. Led brilliantly by the dashing 27-year-old Napoleon Bonaparte, the French Army was overrunning Italy, and in August Spain changed sides, signing the secret Treaty of San Ildefonso with France and declaring war against Britain in October. In August the cabinet ordered Admiral Sir John Jervis, who had taken command of the Mediterranean Fleet in December 1795, to evacuate Corsica and to withdraw the fleet to Lisbon and Gibraltar, the latter potentially under threat from Spain. Jervis, who was ruthlessly instilling discipline in the fleet, was mortified by the order to retreat, received just when he had a real prospect of success against the weak Spanish Navy. Despite the cabinet’s apparently decisive move, fissures were apparent, particularly the differences between Dundas and Spencer, whose inexperience was turned into excessive caution by the naval officers on the Admiralty Board. On 19 October the cabinet countermanded the previous order, intending to offer Corsica to Russia. Fortunately, Jervis received the second order too late, for his fleet had already evacuated the army from the island. He wrote to Spencer that it was ‘a great blessing that the evacuation of Corsica had taken place before I received the orders to maintain the Viceroy in the sovereignty of it’.82
The government was also on the defensive financially, for by the fourth year of the war expenditure had increased to over £42 million, of which £28 million had been spent on the army, navy and Ordnance. Government income from taxes had hardly increased in recent years and in 1796 was £19.3 million.83 Government credit was weakened, as shown by the fluctuations in the value of the 3 per cent Consols, the abbreviation for the ‘Consolidated Annuities’. The price of this stock, always the best indicator of the financial health of the government, had stood at 81 at the beginning of the war in 1793, had slowly decreased in 1794 to between 72 and 63, but by 1796 had sunk to 53 and was to hit its lowest point in 1797, at the time of the naval mutinies, of 47½.* The chief loan contractor to the government, Walter Boyd, had become overextended, and began to fail, filing for bankruptcy in 1799.84 Up to this point, Pitt’s financial strategy was based on the assumption that the war was unlikely to last long, and that the imposed loans and rampant inflation in France would bring the enemy to the negotiating table.†
Now, with the peace talks faltering, Pitt risked the launch of a voluntary Loyalty Loan on 1 December 1796 – money raised from the public for government bonds issued at a generous percentage. Despite an atmosphere of foreboding, institutions and individuals responded readily and the issue was a success. The East India Company subscribed £2 million, the Bank of England £1 million. Members of the cabinet tried to raise a respectable amount to set an example. Within four days £18 million had been gathered, most of it from individuals spurred by feelings of national insecurity.85 But it was still not enough, and Pitt needed to raise more by taxes. In January 1798 he introduced the Triple Assessment, a form of graduated income tax based on the assessed taxes of the previous year; by 1799 he had gone a stage further and brought in an income tax of two shillings in the pound on individuals with a total income over £200, with abatements for incomes between £60 and £200.86
The foundering peace negotiations were the precursor to another series of failures, most conspicuously at sea, where Britain was traditionally unassailable. It was difficult to maintain the blockade of the French Channel ports during the storms of the winter months, and the French began to undertake naval operations in winter. Between 1796 and 1806 seven French squadrons escaped from Brest and three left Rochefort, all but three of them in winter.87 Senior British admirals could and should have done better, especially as victualling supplies were steadily improving through these years. From 1797 the Channel Fleet was led weakly by the unwell and demoralized Alexander Hood, Lord Bridport (the brother of Samuel, Lord Hood), now nearly seventy, who had long been second-in-command to Howe. Bridport’s fleet was more often to be found sheltering in Torbay than off Brest. When he belatedly received his commission as commander-in-chief after Howe had gone ashore, he wrote a disgruntled letter to Lord Spencer, complaining about his situation and the number of ships at his disposal. Spencer passed it on to the king. The king, however, had no truck with either of the Hood brothers. Recalling that Bridport’s brother Samuel had been dismissed by Lord Chatham for demanding more ships in the Mediterranean in 1794, His Majesty commented that ‘it appears too plain that in his family self value is so predominant.’88 Yet Lord Spencer kept Bridport in command of the fleet until April 1800, retiring him at the age of seventy-three. The dramatic and immediate improvement in close blockade brought about by his tough replacement, Lord St Vincent, served to underline Bridport’s ineffectiveness.
In December 1796 Bridport’s second-in-command, Vice-Admiral John Colpoys, cruising off Brest, was, through faulty intelligence, to make a mistake that led to the most dangerous single moment in the French Revolutionary War. Because the Admiralty was convinced that the Brest Fleet was heading for Portugal, Colpoys allowed a considerable French invasion force to slip through his blockade by returning to Portsmouth to resupply – but the French were making for Bantry Bay in Ireland. The young Castlereagh, commanding the Derry Militia as it hurried south, reported to his stepbrother, Charles Stewart: ‘Colpoys could not venture so far from home as Portugal, his water being almost expended, but might well have follow’d them to Ireland.’89 Colpoys should have ensured that he was never short of water.
The government in London hadn’t the slightest idea what was happening. Commanded by General Lazare Hoche, the French expedition was a substantial fleet of 44 ships, 17 of them ships of the line, but with only 7 transports for 14,000 troops; each ship of the line had 600 troops on board, in addition to a crew of approximately the same size. The sailing ability of these hopelessly overcrowded warships was adversely affected, particularly when going to windward.90 In the event, the winter storms proved too much for the French Navy, and after a week of gales they turned for home without landing. It was a near-run thing. Had the weather been more moderate, or the French leadership more daring, Cork, with its sheltered harbour, would have
been open to an attack, its defences neglected by General Lord Carhampton, the commander-in-chief in Ireland. Since winter was the season when the quays of the city were piled with thousands of barrels of newly slaughtered beef and pork, and plenty of biscuit awaiting distribution, Hoche’s army would have needed no resupplying, and could have held out against any attempt to dislodge it. Such a turn of events would have dramatically altered the course of the war. The episode created an expectation in ministers that the French would attempt an invasion of Ireland at some point in the future.
Lessons were quickly learnt. Spencer ordered Colpoys off station, and improvements were made to the system of blockade. Within government there was much concern at the lacklustre performance of the Irish military, particularly the slow movement of troops south to meet the danger, while the sour relations between Lord Camden, the Viceroy in Dublin Castle, and General Lord Carhampton, worked against efficiency.91 But the government had denuded Ireland of regular troops: at the time of the attempt on Bantry Bay, only 2,000 regular infantry and 3,640 cavalry remained in the country, and the defence of Ireland rested on 17,000 militia troops. Of these, however, 10,000 were in the north, unable to march south to meet the French because of a discontented population and the threat of civil revolt.92 Only the loyalist yeomanry emerged with any reputation.93 The defence of Ireland had been on a knife-edge. From Dublin, Edward Cooke confessed to Lord Auckland that ‘had a complete landing been effected, I fear that there would have been another tale’.94
The government now regarded Ireland as neither safe nor loyal. All the Irish generals were replaced, and in October Abercromby finally agreed, after much hesitation, to serve as commander-in-chief. He attempted to instil some discipline into the Irish Army by concentrating it in several centres, but this resulted in its losing much of its capacity to maintain civil order. Disputes flared between Abercromby and Lord Camden, the viceroy in Dublin Castle, unsure of their respective lines of authority.95 Abercromby issued a ‘General Proclamation’ that scathingly referred to the army’s ‘state of licentiousness which makes it formidable to everyone but the enemy’. This was too much for Camden, who secured Abercromby’s early return to England.96 The United Irishmen in Ulster were systematically repressed, leading to a worsening of relations and finally to outright rebellion in 1798. With such a sullen mood prevalent in Ireland, particularly in the north, a successful French invasion could have been disastrous for the British cause. As the duke of Portland remarked to Lord Camden: ‘There is little distinction to be made between indifference and disaffection.’97
Two months after the Irish emergency a ragamuffin French force of criminals and adventurers landed at Fishguard in South Wales. They were quickly rounded up by the local militia under Lord Cawdor, but the country was so jittery that the idea of a successful landing caused a run on the banks and the Bank of England was forced to suspend payments of bills into cash.* The 1797 Bank Restriction Act prohibited the Bank of England from issuing anything other than paper notes, and the export of gold was made illegal.98 Britain thus came off the gold standard. Remarkably, the financial crisis did not lead to any change in British strategy. Not a great deal of specie had been exported, and most of the subsidies to allies had been remitted in bills of exchange.† The government borrowing continued. By the end of the Revolutionary War, the national debt was close to £700 million, more than twice what it had been when Pitt came to power in 1784.99
Notice was now taken of those who had been warning about the military threat to England itself. One such was Colonel George Hanger, who had published in March 1795 Military Reflections on the Attack and Defence of the City of London. He argued persuasively that the British Fleet was no guarantor of defence, citing the 1779 fiasco in the American Revolutionary War, when the combined French and Spanish fleets had threatened Plymouth, and the British Fleet was well to the west of the Scilly Isles. Hanger thought that the main danger was to the Thames on the Essex side, describing very exactly how invasion could be accomplished; and he urged that defence works should be thrown up around London.100
Systematic defence planning did not start until the second half of the 1790s, when agreement on the coastal areas most at risk from invasion was reached between the army, the Ordnance and the Home Office. Detailed assessments of the most likely beaches to be chosen by the French were made. There was not much likelihood of invasion west of the Solent, since a south-west wind which would assist an invasion flotilla from Brest or the Brittany ports would throw up heavy surf on beaches in the West of England. The main area of danger lay between Suffolk and the Solent, though the shoals of the inner Thames Estuary were seen as a natural defence. Immediate preparations on the south coast included provision for flooding the Pett and Pevensey levels.101 A strategy of pre-emptive strikes against French ports was put forward by Henry Dundas in January 1798. Those ports in which shipping was concentrated, and where invasion preparations were suspected, were to be attacked.102 The first successful raid took place in May of that year, against Ostend, led by Captain Sir Home Popham, blowing up the lock gates there, at the cost of the loss of the troops taking part, who could not be re-embarked because of a gale springing up.103 Attacking ports where the French were making invasion preparations continued until the end of the Napoleonic War.
Only the victory of Admiral Jervis in February 1797 at Cape St Vincent brought relief to the gloom, when at last a rapidly improving Mediterranean Fleet dealt the Spanish Fleet a blow from which it never really recovered. But any feelings of confidence and safety that a successful navy might have engendered were quashed, when, less than three months later, mutiny broke out in the fleet at Spithead, a protest against over-zealous discipline and insufficient pay. There was little violence, and the men negotiated with the first lord of the Admiralty, who sped down to Portsmouth. Though the government publicly blamed subversive republican or Irish elements for the trouble, privately they acknowledged that, in Lord Spencer’s words, ‘the wages were undoubtedly too low in proportion to the times.’104 The government largely agreed to the men’s demands, and parliament started to draft legislation to enable the men to be paid more.* This took time, and the men at Spithead began to feel that they were being deceived. On 7 May, Admiral Colpoys, on board his flagship the London, ordered his marines to fire on the mutineers, killing several. He and his officers were captured by the seamen and confined to their cabins. Just when the lieutenant who had given the first order to fire was about to be hanged, a seaman who had been elected a delegate for the ship intervened. According to the intended victim, ‘I had fifty pistols levelled at my head, and the yard rope round my neck, and by his manly eloquence procured a pardon from the delegates for the Admiral and Captain when everyone conceived it impossible that they could be saved.’105 The lives of Colpoys, his captain and the lieutenant were all spared. It was a critical moment in the mutiny, and in the war. The mutineers at Spithead showed remarkable discipline and self-restraint. Afterwards Lord Howe travelled from Bath to the fleet, making his way from ship to ship, re-establishing trust by agreeing that unpopular officers should be replaced, probably exceeding his brief from the Admiralty.
The mutiny at the Nore, however, which broke out a month later, was much uglier, and the warships controlled by the mutineers blockaded the port of London, refusing entry to merchant ships. The first lord of the Admiralty, now at Sheerness, refused further concessions and stopped food supplies from going aboard the mutineers’ ships. The government was worried that this disaffection would spread, and in the Downs and at Plymouth there were real signs of disaffection.106 The mutiny eventually collapsed: Richard Parker, the leader, was hanged for high treason.†
Rebellion then spread to the ships under Admiral Adam Duncan at Great Yarmouth, whose ships were blockading the Dutch Fleet in the Texel, where troops destined for Ireland were embarking. One by one Duncan’s ships sailed to join their fellows at the Nore. Here was an immediate strategic threat, but, worse still, the Nore mutineers threatened to sai
l up the Thames and hold the city to ransom under their guns. A worried Pitt wrote in early June to Spencer, asking for a chain and boom to be laid across the river from Tilbury to Gravesend to stop the mutinous ships (though the Ordnance Board reported that it would take two weeks to prepare one, and nothing was done).107 Duncan persuaded the mutineers aboard his flagship the Venerable to return to their duty and the mutiny petered out. Duncan then, with remarkable presence of mind, went on to blockade the Dutch by anchoring his ship across the tide at the mouth of the Texel, making signals to an imaginary fleet out at sea, thus fooling the Dutch into believing that the British Fleet was at full strength. It was little wonder that Lord Spencer wrote on 14 June to tell Duncan that ‘At the Trinity House dinner on Monday last, your health was drunk with universal applause. Your firmness on this occasion has indeed most deservedly secured you the approbation of your country.’108
Westerly winds prevented the Dutch from sailing out of the Texel through the summer of 1797, although the Dutch troops, accompanied by the Irish patriot Wolfe Tone, were embarked by July. Meanwhile, Duncan built up the number of ships in his fleet off the Texel. By mid August the Dutch, still in harbour, had run out of provisions, and the troops were disembarked.109 Duncan rightly received further praise when he caught the Dutch Fleet off Camperdown in October, breaking their line and comprehensively defeating them, taking as prizes six ships of the line and six smaller ships. This put an end to any threat from foreign troops reaching Ireland from the North Sea.