From this moment on, the two sides in the war fought with an entirely different level of intensity and commitment. On the one side were imperial powers seeking to contain France, maintain or adjust a balance of power, and keep one hand free for Poland or the West Indies. On the other was a huge population fighting for national survival and ideological objectives, and driven by all-pervading fear. When the fortress cities on the borders duly fell to the Austrians and Prussians, fully 25,000 French troops were allowed to march out of them with the traditional honours of war, on condition they no longer fought against the allied powers. But the French were not playing by these old-fashioned rules. The troops in question were marched to the Vendée and elsewhere to crush peasant uprisings with the utmost ruthlessness.
Once more the forces of the Revolution were about to go violently onto the offensive, this time with the Duke of York’s advance on Dunkirk in their path. York cannot be fully blamed for what happened after he laid siege to Dunkirk in August: some British forces intended for his army had been diverted to the Mediterranean as Pitt sought to stretch his small forces still further, the siege train of heavy guns was late in arriving due to confusion at the Admiralty, and the Prussians called off an offensive which would have drawn French forces away from Dunkirk because they resented the Austrian advance into Alsace. Thus the problems which characterised the allied war effort were all present, as was the renewed vigour of the French. The British heavy guns arrived just in time to be abandoned in early September, as the Duke of York’s 14,500 men fell back before 45,000 French under General Jean Houchard. Days later, Houchard defeated another allied force under the Prince of Orange. By the end of that year northern France would again be free of the enemy. The most salutary illustration of the contrasting cultures of the two sides is that while the beaten allied commanders retained their posts, Houchard was guillotined for failing to pursue the enemy with sufficient aggression. The power of numbers and terror was beginning to tell.
Pitt reacted to the defeat at Dunkirk with his customary optimism and resilience: ‘It is certainly a severe check,’ he wrote to Rose, ‘but I trust only a temporary one; and it ought only to have the effect of increasing, if possible, our exertions.’19 He had certainly learnt one or two lessons himself, since his way of doing business through personal intervention and failure to take minutes had probably contributed to the failure to provide timely naval assistance at Dunkirk, because a promise to the army Chief of Staff to investigate what could be done was not followed up;20 from then on, as another biographer has pointed out, ‘He saw commanders before they embarked, but ceased to correspond with them in the field.’21 His innate optimism, which had probably been strengthened by his many peacetime successes against the odds, was reinforced by the surprise news shortly after the retreat from Dunkirk that British forces had taken possession of the Mediterranean port of Toulon after being invited to do so by the local population. Ministers were delighted by the news, dining the next night ‘in the highest spirits’ on a good deal of turtle and claret, with Pitt considering this blow to the French ‘in every view the most important which could be struck towards the final success of the war’.22
He and Dundas were determined to use Toulon as a base for expanded operations in the south of France. With the expedition for the West Indies about to sail, however, York embattled in Flanders, and other forces being assembled to assist royalists in Brittany, the troops required simply did not exist. Nevertheless, Pitt set out to find them, almost as if he was inventing a new tax or fund with which to balance the budget. On 16 September he drew up a list showing how 34,000 troops could be found for Toulon, including items such as five thousand Hessians from Flanders, six thousand Neapolitans, three thousand Spanish and so on. His memo concluded: ‘It seems not unreasonable to expect that, by the Beginning of next year, there may be an army in the south of France of near 60,000 men.’23
What followed revealed four common problems with the allied campaign. First, the numbers set down on paper never existed in reality. The effective forces engaged in the defence of Toulon would never exceed 12,000 (not 34,000), with around two thousand British among them (not 6,200). Secondly, allied commitments could not be relied on – the Austrian contingent only set off after the battle was over. Third, distant Ministers did not always appreciate whether a particular town or city was militarily defensible. Toulon is a port at the mercy of the hills and peninsula around it, and could not be held against a large army. Fourth, cooperation with French royalists raised a delicate question of whether Britain shared their objectives. Pitt and Grenville were soon differing over the emphasis to be placed on this, with Grenville resisting any public commitment towards the restoration of monarchy as an objective, while Pitt was prepared to say when sending Sir Gilbert Elliot as Commissioner to Toulon that Britain was not precluded from dealing with other forms of ‘regular Government’, but that monarchy was ‘the only one from which we expect any good, and in favour of which we are disposed to enter into concert’.24
It is hard to escape the conclusion that the British war effort in 1793 suffered from the lack of a consistent strategic thrust. Furthermore, the mismatch between chosen objectives and the materials available to deliver them was itself a failure of strategy. Pitt ran the war through Dundas, who as Secretary of State for Home Affairs and the Colonies had direct responsibility for it, and through Grenville as Foreign Secretary. Their efforts in these early stages suffered from inexperience and a tendency to interfere in operational matters, which combined with Pitt’s naturally optimistic nature to produce unrealistic assumptions. On the other hand, Pitt brought to the leadership of the war effort his usual diligence and capacity for controlling government departments. Through his two Secretaries of State he oversaw the whole effort of the British state in a way Lord North in the American War of Independence would never have contemplated. He even deputised for them if they were away, writing to Grenville, who had borrowed Walmer Castle for a holiday in October 1793: ‘You need have no scruple in sending me as much business as you please, as … I have at present nothing to do.’25
As usual, when the burden of work increased, Pitt’s controlling nature led him to take more of it upon himself. Wilberforce’s diary depicts him racing back and forth between Holwood and Downing Street: ‘June 22. To Holwood with Pitt in his phaeton – early dinner, and back to town,’ and a little later, ‘To town, 14th of September, to see Pitt – a great map spread out before him.’26 But Pitt’s mind was not as easily adapted to warfare as had been that of his father, who thrived on it, or as would be that of Winston Churchill, who had concerned much of his life with it. Grenville would later complain that in military matters ‘he has very little knowledge of that detail, and still less habit of applying his mind to it, and his sanguine temper is very apt to make him think a thing done in that line when it has been shown that it may be done whereas unfortunately the difference is infinite’.27
In Pitt’s defence, his strategy was evidently to employ Britain’s naval and financial strengths while using the army wherever possible to discomfort the French and give encouragement to allies. Since the defeat of France on land could only be accomplished through the success of Continental armies, this approach was by no means irrational. It was designed to produce minimum risk during a short war and maximum leverage at the end of it, and if the French had duly collapsed before the weight of Austrian and Prussian columns in 1793, the British strategy would no doubt have been thought entirely appropriate and successful. It may have been a mistake that the government allowed British forces to be drawn ever more deeply into the Low Countries, and it was certainly a major failure that the assault on Dunkirk was seriously delayed. No doubt too, Pitt and his colleagues would have been wiser to think twice before investing their resources and credibility in Toulon. In each case, however, they faced agonising decisions: inaction on the Low Countries would have been strange for a country which went to war specifically to defend them, and a refusal to try to make the most
of the uprising in Toulon would have sent a signal to all potential rebels against Paris that Britain could not help them even when it had a large fleet outside the harbour. The alternative strategy advanced by the Duke of Richmond, throwing everything into an invasion of the Vendée in the north-west, could only have succeeded in ending the war if accompanied by successful allied advances into eastern France. As these did not happen, it is probable that no conceivable British strategy in 1793 would on its own have brought France to her knees.
In being the first head of the Treasury directly to coordinate the conduct of a war, Pitt was accelerating the constitutional development of a true Prime Minister. He was now thirty-four years old, and had been at the nation’s helm for nearly ten years. The pressures of 1793 intensified his worst habits and occasional ailments: a harbinger of far worse to come in the years ahead. Even more letters than usual went unanswered, Rose recording in his diaries that with so much going on, ‘It is no wonder that the trivial impertinences of some of his correspondents, and the importunities of others, did not meet sometimes with that attention which in their self-complacency they thought their due. But as most people resent the appearance of being slighted or neglected, this was the source of much dissatisfaction and unpopularity.’28 Pitt’s reliance on alcohol was also becoming a little more noticeable. He himself was worried that his liberal imbibing on a visit to the Corporation of Canterbury with Addington in September 1793 would produce adverse comment in the papers. As it was, Addington recalled that the Morning Chronicle ‘only stated that the Chancellor of the Exchequer was observed, in walking to his carriage, to oscillate like his own bills’.29 His young protégés noticed the change, Canning saying after a dinner a few months later that Pitt drank ‘I know not how much madeira’,30 and Jenkinson commenting that ‘The first visible effect of Public Affairs upon his Health was in the Autumn of 1793 after the retreat of the British army before Dunkirk.’
The principal manifestation of the effect on his health was the more frequent recurrence of gout from the summer of 1793 onwards. As usual, Pitt was always anxious to reassure his mother whenever he was ill that he was actually fine. He wrote from Holwood in June: ‘The Gout, after having made a visit in due form, and staid [sic] a reasonable time, is now taking its Leave. I was able without any inconvenience to come here yesterday Evening, and your Letter found me enjoying a fine day from my window.’31 A month later he writes: ‘I have Holidays enough for a good deal of Country air, and have the advantage of having parted with my Gouty shoe, and found the full use of my legs.’32 Two weeks later, he is hoping to visit his mother at Burton Pynsent: ‘I think I may be at liberty in about a Fortnight, but I should wish to regulate my motions a little by Eliot’s and Lord Stanhope’s, tho not exactly in the same Way by each of them.’33 In other words, he wanted to be with his mother at the same time as his friend Edward Eliot, but definitely not at the same time as his cousin Stanhope who had supported the French Revolution. Pitt hated the idea of his mother being anxious, either about his health or her own finances. Later that year he again sent her money, blithely assuring her in spite of his mounting debts that it was no problem: ‘I can furnish without difficulty three hundred Pounds, and will immediately desire Mr. Coutts to place that sum to your account … I trust you will never scruple to tell me when you have the slightest occasion for any aid I can supply.’34
The late summer provided something of a lull in the administrative bustle of 1793. Pitt managed a visit to Burton Pynsent in August, and spent some time at Walmer in September, taking the sea air and shooting partridges while the despatches went back and forth. He had not forgotten domestic politics, and had once again that summer attempted to pick off some of the ablest and most conservative Whigs by inviting them to join the government. Windham was offered the Home Office to spread some of Dundas’s burden, and Earl Spencer was offered the Lord Lieutenancy of Ireland. Pitt needed more ability in his government, and he had not forgotten his longer-term aspirations. For now he was once again rebuffed, but once again he would bide his time. In the meantime, plans were being made for the military campaigns of 1794: Pitt must have dearly hoped that autumn that the next news from Belgium or Toulon would be of victories, and that within a year he could go back to presiding over ‘peace and plenty’.
It was not to be. By November not only were the Austrians being cleared from French territory in the north, but the situation in Toulon was becoming critical. The reinforcements Pitt had sketched out on paper had failed to materialise, and the 12,000 allied soldiers fit for duty were soon facing 30,000 French who had moved on from suppressing the rebellions in Lyons and Marseilles with pitiless harshness. Pitt’s perennial optimism – he wrote on Christmas Day ‘there is still a very good chance of all proving right in that quarter’35 – was misplaced. He did not know that eight days earlier, after weeks of bitter internal arguments and mounting losses, Admiral Lord Hood, who had tried to organise the defence of Toulon, ordered its evacuation. It was a sickening scene, soldiers, civilians and children screaming and scrambling for the boats, the navy trying to destroy some of the twenty-two French ships of the line which had been captured in port while taking on board 15,000 royalist refugees who knew what fate awaited them if left behind. Many drowned, thousands were indeed left behind and executed. By Christmas Toulon was back in the hands of a vengeful French army. The cost of its four-month defence, in human life, military hardware and political credibility, had been high. Meanwhile, troops held back from Toulon in order to make a landing in the Channel and join French rebels in Brittany failed to link up with the rebel force, and by mid-January 1794 were heading back home while the rebels were defeated.
As the New Year began, the forces of the French Revolution had held or expelled the armies of the First Coalition on every front, while simultaneously suppressing major revolts and hugely increasing their own strength. The French had successfully exploited the advantages of superior numbers and interior lines of communication and supply, giving them an ability to move large forces to the right point which could not be matched by their disparate and far-flung enemies. They had succeeded in creating a culture of total war, with an army in which failure was drastically penalised and merit rewarded: 275 French Generals were dismissed in the course of 1793. By contrast, the allies often appeared to focus more on the post-war world than on the war itself: Prussia and Austria seemed to fear that too great an effort would leave them vulnerable to the other at a later stage. Above all, the Continental allied powers were preoccupied by Poland, Austria looking over its shoulder while huge Prussian and Russian forces were committed there. To British observers this was a squalid land-grab; to the imperial courts it was a battleground as vital for their future stability and security as the frontiers of France. Whatever the justification, the effect was undeniable: revolutionary France was stronger at the end of 1793 than it had been at the beginning. Richmond had feared earlier that year ‘that the moment is so critical and pressing, that if time is given, France, with her Resources, may recover’.36 The opportunity for a quick victory had passed.
Pitt could have been forgiven if he had wept. Yet in fact his belief that a rapid victory could be achieved was still strong. He knew the importance of finance, and he considered the French to be unable to escape the consequences of bankruptcy. Wilberforce recalled: ‘How well do I remember his employing in private, with still greater freedom and confidence, the language which in a more moderate tone he used in the House of Commons, that the French were in a gulf of bankruptcy, and that he could almost calculate the time by which their resources would be consumed!’37
Furthermore, Pitt’s experience of Britain left him unable to believe that a government based on expropriation and arbitrary murder could endure. The French were only ‘compelled into the field by the terror of the guillotine’, and as a result would not maintain their exertions. ‘On this ground, the more monstrous and terrible the system has become, the greater is the probability that it will be speedily overthrown.
From the nature of the mind of man, and the necessary progress of human affairs, it is impossible that such a system can be of long duration; and surely no event can be looked for more desirable than a destruction of that system, which at present exists to the misery of France, and the terror of Europe.’38
Pitt spoke these words in the House of Commons in January 1794. That same month the government received intelligence reports of growing unrest around Britain and a plan by radicals to call a national convention. Much as he might predict the speedy collapse of France, it was at home that Pitt now had to contemplate the danger of insurrection.
18
Frustrations of Supremacy
‘I mean to submit to the house, that at the present moment, perseverance in the contest is more wise and prudent, and more likely in the end to effect a safe, lasting, and honourable peace, than any attempt at negotiation.’
WILLIAM PITT, 27 MAY 17951
THE FAILURE TO GAIN a decisive advantage over France in 1793 was arguably the single most calamitous occurrence in the life of Pitt, for from it so much of the pain and tragedy of later years unfolded. On the surface, as we have seen, he retained his sanguine disposition. Jenkinson noted that ‘I never saw any Public Man who appeared so little desponding or who bore up so firmly against misfortunes. He had particularly the faculty of laying his cares aside, of amusing himself with an idle book, or a comparatively trivial conversation, at the time he was engaged in the most important business, & I have heard him say that no anxiety nor calamity had ever seriously affected his sleep.’2 But as the war progressed Pitt would find it harder to sleep soundly, and from 1794 onwards the opportunities for enjoying trivia and idle books would become rarer: ‘I am however fully persuaded that the public misfortunes which he was doomed to witness had the most sensible effect in undermining his Constitution.’3 The mental pressures would now become intense, and would begin to take a physical toll.
William Pitt the Younger: A Biography Page 40