Britain Against Napoleon

by Roger Knight

  In spite of enormous efforts and expenditure during the Revolutionary War, the verdict on the overall defence intelligence performance must be one of continual British failure, although it was offset by the inability of French naval organization and seamanship to take advantage of Britain’s shortcomings. Ministers did not receive a coherent intelligence picture and suffered from lack of information about the reliability of sources; and when intelligence was available, it was often misinterpreted. Three main disadvantages were never overcome. The first was that Britain was facing an unstable regime. The cabinet did not come near to understanding the erratic minds of those who took strategic decisions during the rule of the Directory. French intentions were difficult to read, and complex situations were made yet more confusing by French counter-intelligence. The second major factor was Ireland. Time and again the judgements of ministers were skewed by their fear of a French invasion force combining with the rebellious population of Ireland. The weakness of Britain’s Irish defence and the hostility of a large percentage of the population led the politicians into ‘mirror imaging’ – erroneously thinking that the French were bound to do what they themselves would have done in similar circumstances. The third disadvantage was that the anti-republican elements in France with whom Britain tried to cooperate and whom it financed, the constitutional monarchists and the royalists, were bitterly divided. The groups hated each other as much as they hated the republican regime in Paris. The information they provided was often wildly optimistic and in some cases fraudulent, with royalists attempting to fool the British in order to ensure the next payment of British secret service funds. Within each group, the existence of several factions made coherent plans impossible. The French royalists, as Talleyrand was later to remark, ‘learnt nothing and forgot nothing’.100

  The year leading up to the signing of the Peace of Amiens in March 1802 saw some germs of improvement. The secret service had been hardened by a tough war in which it had taken on French counter-intelligence, with casualties on both sides.101 Lessons had been learnt in Whitehall, and Henry Dundas’s post-mortem was not wasted. The vast collection of intelligence in Whitehall was beginning to make a difference. True, Admiral Ganteaume broke out of Brest through the blockade with seven warships in January 1801 in a final attempt to relieve the French Army in Egypt, but once he got to the Egyptian coast he found British warships and retreated, like Bruix, having achieved nothing.102 However, before the expedition to Copenhagen in March 1801, Admirals Hyde Parker and Nelson were well briefed by those who had served in the Russian Navy, including Etches, who supplied hydrographic information and charts. Nelson was warned that the shallowness of the water south of Copenhagen would mean that ships of the line would have to decrease their draught, by unloading their guns, to get through the Sound into the Baltic, which is exactly what Nelson’s larger ships had to do.103

  Pitt’s ministers were strong personalities, frequently at odds with each other and driven by differing agendas.104 Moreover, dependence on important individuals led to delay when ministers were frequently absent from London during the summer, when military and naval activity was at its height. The dispersal of authority led to the rise of over-powerful figures, particularly of Nepean, whose intelligence experience over twenty years gave him too much responsibility and a licence to spend secret service money without check. Consistent intelligence success would not come until the ministers around the cabinet table stopped involving themselves in interpreting intelligence, and concentrated on the policy decisions for which they alone were responsible.

  6

  Feeding the Armed Forces and the Nation 1795–1812

  Our Beef perhaps has been in salt for seven years. Our pork is good but very salt: our Butter, Cheese & Bread not good and to Crown all allowed only one Quart of Water per day for washing and drink. Its true we have a Quart of Grog a day, but those things is of little import at present. I am glad to inform you I am quite well both in health and limbs at present.

  – James Whitworth, a 34-year-old landsman on board H.M.S. Portia, a 14-gun brig sloop anchored in the Yarmouth Roads, writing to his wife, 7 May 18121

  Complaining about rations was, and is, a time-honoured tradition, but to find direct evidence of a Napoleonic seaman’s opinion of his food is rare. James Whitworth was bored after a month’s cruising in the North Sea, and probably angry, because the ship’s log shows that two days before he wrote the letter he had been given twenty-four lashes for disobedience, about which he failed to inform his wife. For a month the ship had been endlessly watching enemy shipping in the Texel. The Portia was anchored in the Yarmouth Roads, with a strong onshore wind that threw up surf, preventing the crew from landing. The fresh beef and vegetables that would be waiting for them on shore were thus unobtainable and the purser and cook were thrown back on casks of preserved rations to feed the 58-man crew. It was another week before the weather allowed fresh food to be brought aboard.2

  The navy has long been notorious for issuing its sailors with bad food, a reputation honoured by the name given to the small beetle that infests bread and flour, called after the victualling yard on the west side of Portsmouth harbour at Weevil.3 Yet, had this reputation been wholly deserved, the navy would not have been able to function: for the sheer physical effort demanded by sailing the ship meant that seamen needed to be well fed if they were to carry out orders effectively. They were required to manhandle guns weighing up to three tons, to furl heavy canvas sails and to haul up heavy anchors. Likewise, troops needed stamina for marching long distances, and for carrying small arms and personal equipment. All this required a generous supply of vitamins and daily calories.

  Aboard a warship much depended upon the fair and methodical administration of food, a process heavily regulated by detailed naval instructions, and jealously watched over by the men. As a result, it was done with ‘scrupulous fairness’.4 Illnesses needed to be kept at bay because the crews lived in damp and cold conditions. Indeed, the improvement in the 1790s in the elimination of scurvy was critical for the maintenance of the blockade of the French naval ports. Lemon juice was issued as a preventive; this had as much to do with the determination of senior naval officers and better administration by the Victualling Board as with the advocacy of lemons by naval surgeons.5 When the fleet was off Ushant, convoys of victuallers were escorted from Portsmouth and Plymouth by sloops and cutters.6 Given that all supply operations depended upon wind-driven ships and were moved on land by horse-drawn wagon or canal boat, the scale and success of worldwide victualling for the navy and army were impressive.

  The numbers of British soldiers and seamen who enlisted or were pressed between 1793 and 1815 were of ‘an altogether different order of magnitude’ from the figures of previous wars.7 At their highest point, the armed forces were about three times larger than they had been in the American Revolutionary War. By 1801, to take one peak year, Britain was feeding 400,000 men in uniform (or, in the case of the 126,000 naval seamen, in clothes issued as ‘slops’). The regular army, militia and volunteers totalled 248,000, of whom 90,000 regulars were serving abroad in distant garrisons from the West to the East Indies, from Canada to the Mediterranean.8 Tens of thousands were discharged suddenly at the Peace of Amiens, but by the height of the Napoleonic War, numbers reached levels of between 11 and 14 per cent of the adult male population, or about three times the ‘military participation ratio’ of France.9 At the same time, the population of Great Britain and Ireland was rising remorselessly, growing by more than 20 per cent over the period, increasing the difficulties of the feeding of the armed forces.10

  To this should be added food provided for prisoners of war by contractors supplying the Transport Board and its agents in England. The prisoners were mainly French, but they were joined in time by Dutch, Danes and Russians as hostilities spread after 1803. Their rations were similar to those for British soldiers and seamen: a quart of beer, one and a half pounds of bread and a pound of beef a day. The system of exchanging prisoners bro
ke down in the Napoleonic War, and the British captured many more prisoners than their adversaries; thus the number of prisoners of war to be fed increased relentlessly year after year. Prisoners were held on old warships moored at Woolwich, Chatham, Portsmouth and Plymouth, on which conditions were harsh. When numbers increased, some were confined in vast depots which had to be built quickly. The stone prison in the middle of Dartmoor in Devon, started in 1806 and completed in 1809, was designed to hold 5,000 but at one time housed 9,000. The wooden depot at Norman Cross, built in 1797, usually held up to 7,000. Porchester Castle, at the top of Portsmouth Harbour, and Stapleton near Bristol, confined the same sort of numbers. Those totals were to increase dramatically as Wellington advanced in the Peninsula, and when the war with the Americans was joined between 1812 and 1814.11

  The Victualling Board ran the state victualling yards at home and abroad, and awarded contracts for the primary produce and processed provisions that fed the navy. The army was supplied by the Commissariat under the Treasury, but fresh food and oats for horses were procured at regimental level. Generally the majority of warships were stationed in the Channel Fleet or elsewhere in home waters, and at least half the seamen manned warships that were within reach of the home ports. Admiral Cornwallis commanded 30,000 men off Brest in late 1805. Only in the Mediterranean were there similar concentrations of seamen: by 1796 there were over 20,000 seamen there to be fed; exceptionally, in the summer of 1799 the fleets of admirals Keith and Nelson together contained 44,000. After Trafalgar the men under Admiral Collingwood increased year by year, until they peaked in 1810 at 33,000. A substantial fleet was kept in the Baltic under Saumarez for four years from 1808, although most ships came home in winter to escape the ice. The numbers of seamen on distant stations were much smaller. The East Indies Station, for instance, reached 10,000 in 1797 and 1806, and averaged far less, although Britain’s establishment was larger than that of France.12

  The army kept its stores at St Catherine’s, quays immediately downstream from the Tower of London. From 1793 Pitt’s administration agreed that the Victualling Board should have the responsibility for feeding the army abroad. By December of that year 10,000 troops had to be provided for in the West Indies and 20,000 for the Continent. The expeditions to the West Indies in the next five years comprised 89,000 soldiers.13 The measurement of bread or biscuit alone required in 1801, at a pound of biscuit a day for each seaman, and a pound and a half for each soldier, amounted to 83,428 deadweight tons, distributed in 400,000 separate rations.14 In addition salt beef and pork, pease, butter, cheese, vinegar, beer, wine, spirits and other minor items had to be procured. As much in the way of fresh beef and vegetables as possible was taken in ships that sailed from the home port. Often as many as thirty head of live cattle were carried on the main gun-deck when a ship sailed, and when these had been consumed fresh meat and vegetables were purchased abroad.

  This enormous logistical task required skilled planning through the year. Usually late in the autumn, after decisions about the next year’s campaigns had been taken in cabinet, the Victualling Board was informed of the number of men, where they were to serve and their requirements for the following year. The secretary of state for war and the Treasury issued the orders for the army, while the Admiralty, through the Navy Board, issued them for the navy. The Victualling Board had to liaise, again through the Navy Board, with the Transport Board, to ensure that enough transports were available to distribute the food. It had to buy well ahead for the requirements of both the navy and army abroad, and then account for its spending, an administrative task that lasted well into the Napoleonic War. It became even more difficult at the end of 1811 and the beginning of 1812, when the supplies of imported grain from the Baltic were disrupted by French dominance of the region.

  Acquiring sufficient amounts of food and distributing it, particularly during the three periods of civilian food shortages and dramatic price rises (in 1795–6, 1800–1801 and 1809–10), was no easy task. Even before hostilities started in 1793 the country could no longer grow enough wheat to feed itself, and throughout the period the country had to import grain in large quantities, mostly from northern Europe. Poor harvests in 1792 and 1794 were followed by very cold winters. The 1795 yield averaged fifteen bushels to the acre, instead of the more usual twenty-four. The price of a sack of flour, which cost 44s. in 1794, rose to 83s. in 1795, nearly double, the result of real scarcity rather than market speculation. Appeals to the Privy Council for wheat supplies came from every county.15 The inhabitants of some wheat-growing districts prevented the despatch of purchases made by large towns, sometimes involving considerable violence, until a law at the end of 1795 prohibited the obstruction of the free passage of grain within the kingdom. Bread riots were widespread from Lancashire to the Forest of Dean, from the south-west counties to East Anglia. In Birmingham a new steam flour-mill was invaded by rioters: two were shot by the militia.16 Even in prosperous and peaceful areas there was trouble. In April 1795 a large crowd in Chichester in Sussex, swelled by people from the nearby countryside and some soldiers from the Herefordshire Militia, attempted to fix prices: they marched out to an adjoining village and forced a farmer to agree to bring his grain to market the next day at 5s. a bushel. Similar incidents took place elsewhere in Sussex and Kent. In Brighton about 200 country women demonstrated in the market, carrying a loaf and some meat on sticks, which they raised and lowered to demonstrate their demand for lower prices.17

  In the face of these disturbances the government intervened in the market to alleviate the shortages. In 1795 Pitt and Dundas commissioned a well-capitalized London wheat factor, Claude Scott, to buy grain secretly from America and Canada for the general population, and also from Poland for the Victualling Board.18 Merchants imported well over 300,000 tons of wheat, of which 95,000 tons came from America.19 The prime minister persuaded the East India Company to import grain into England from India, although the chairman was very aware that in dealing with ‘a subject highly delicate and important in its nature’ the Company should be seen to be obeying government orders.20 The Secret Minutes of the Company record ‘a verbal message from W. Pitt through the medium of W. Scott’.21 The directors ordered twenty-seven ships to be sent from India with cargoes of grain, and rice began to be offered for sale during the second half of 1796. At the end of May 1796 the directors decided that 350 tons of rice were to be sold: 17,000 bags went up for sale on 6 July, 20,000 at the end of September and a further 20,000 at the end of December.22Apart from foreign wheat, naval and military food supplies imported into Britain from abroad included wine, brandy, raisins and olive oil from southern Europe. The West Indies provided rum, molasses and sugar.

  Though there were some years of good harvests through the 1790s, by the end of the decade price rises were even higher than ever. A wet summer in 1799 produced a poor harvest, and price rises and panic set in. Parliamentary measures to prohibit the distillation of spirits, and articles in the newspapers encouraging a substitute for wheaten bread, such as a loaf of mixed wheat and potato, were ineffectual.23 In 1801 disturbances in the countryside were less widespread than in 1794 and 1795, but there were other troubles: industrial recession, particularly in the textile industry, occurred at the same time. The urban centres of the South Midlands, Lancashire and Yorkshire were badly hit,24 with hunger and illness rife in the northern industrial cities.* Over the winter of 1799/1800, soup kitchens were established in many northern towns through subscriptions; during the following winter vast queues were reported. Deprivation led to a serious fever epidemic and increased mortality in Leeds.25 From Ireland, Edward Cooke reported to Lord Castlereagh: ‘The soup-shops and House of Industry do much in Dublin, but the streets are crowded with beggars, and there is infinite distress in the parishes.’26 In London rioting centred on the Corn Exchange in Mark Lane in the City. In the naval towns of Portsmouth and Plymouth, crowds forced bakers to sell at what they thought a reasonable price and had to be dispersed by the authorities. One army of
ficer wrote to the home secretary that ‘in any other Country … this … would be called Famine.’27 In October 1800 old Lord Liverpool was very gloomy when he wrote to Henry Dundas, foreseeing ‘insurrections of a very serious nature, and that different Bodies of Yeomanry may possibly fight each other … those of the Cities and great manufacturing Towns, who are adverse to the Farmers will fight those of the Country, who will be disposed to defend them.’28

  Both these periods of shortages, 1794–5 and 1801, coincided with the concentration of demand for fresh food and provisions by the navy, required for the major amphibious expeditions setting out from British ports for the West Indies, the Mediterranean and the Baltic. This extra demand can only have helped to push up food prices, while the allocation of feed for horses had a marked effect on prices. Oats and hay for cavalry and army transport horses were procured locally when soldiers, militia or volunteers were in camp in Britain, and this would subsequently push up local prices. For overseas expeditions, fodder would be needed in significant amounts and at specific times at naval bases and other ports, all of which would have to be planned for in advance. Thus in July 1799, before the Den Helder landings, Brook Watson, the commissary-general of Great Britain, the senior Commissariat officer, ordered the Hamburg merchants Thornton & Power to purchase ten million pounds (4,464 tons) ‘of good, sound, sweet heavy oats … three million pounds of good fresh wheat … three hundred thousand pounds of Rye meal … and to deposit [them] in airy dry magazines contiguous to your navigation in order to prevent the necessity and expense of land carriage, which you are to keep secret’.29