But Pitt was following a strategy to which his followers had not been party: his objective was a junction of parties if it could be attained. For him, this was not only about winning the war but also about securing his flanks in the longer term, giving him a dominance which would add to his power and security in any future Regency crisis or comparable instance. He intended the coalition to be permanent, and to that end was happy to give the newcomers a liberal helping of honours as well as responsibilities: there were peerages for some of Portland’s faction, a Lord Lieutenancy for his son, and a Knighthood of the Garter for Portland himself. The King, who would have preferred to bestow this most prestigious of knighthoods on the victorious Howe, grumbled, ‘I cannot see why on the D. of Portland’s head favours are to be heaped without measure.’23 But Pitt could certainly see why. He wanted his new allies to be bound tightly to him.
Cabinet reshuffles are sensitive moments among politicians, often determining for years to come the course of careers or the concentration of power. In the eighteenth century such events were usually more important than elections, and this was the most radical shuffle on which Pitt had ever embarked. In fashioning the new Cabinet, he produced a political masterpiece – provided it could hold together. Two vacancies in the existing Cabinet were created by the death of Lord Camden and the amicable retirement of the Marquis of Stafford. The addition of three new places therefore meant he had five to give away. Grenville would be unaffected as Foreign Secretary, but the overworked Dundas would retain responsibility for War and Colonies while shedding Home Affairs. The Home Department would become the preserve of Portland, for whose benefit a third office of Secretary of State would be revived. Pitt would thus be able to retain direct control of the war through Dundas and Grenville while Portland would be in charge of domestic order, pitting him into the most direct possible confrontation with his erstwhile colleagues. Windham, the one opposition Member of the Commons to join the Cabinet, and then considered the most able of the recruits, would become Secretary at War, in the Cabinet but working under Dundas. Three great Earls of the Whig aristocracy were the others to be included: Mansfield for his experience, Spencer for his ability, and Fitzwilliam for his connections as the new master of Wentworth Woodhouse, the nephew and heir of Rockingham.
This was a neat construction, but not surprisingly it suffered from two common hazards of radical ministerial reconstruction: the presence of ambiguously phrased understandings which helped the reaching of initial agreement but would cause disputes later on, and the shock of individual Ministers not privy to the negotiations when the full picture became apparent to them. Each of these defects came close to blowing apart Pitt’s new creation over the next four months. First came the shocks to the individuals. Windham was disappointed not to be a Secretary of State, and believed that as a junior to Dundas he would be shut out of any real control over the war. This caused the Whigs to demand a larger role for Portland, who now wanted the Home Office with its power over the colonies intact. On 5 July the negotiations were deadlocked, having already lasted six weeks and with less than a week to go before Parliament would rise for the summer recess and some of the key players would disperse. Pitt then proposed swapping Grenville with Portland, which Grenville, who had already shown some signs of exasperation with Foreign Affairs, assented to but Portland did not. A compromise of leaving the West Indies with the Home Office while India went with the War Office evidently satisfied Portland, but it was now the turn of Dundas to be unhappy. Rather than give up the great powers and patronage of the Home Office, he decided to resign altogether. He was probably exhausted, and very likely angry with Pitt for excluding him from the negotiations.
On 9 July Pitt had to drop everything to try to keep his most reliable colleague and drinking companion by his side. At a quarter to noon he wrote to Dundas:
I shall give up all hope of carrying on the business with comfort, and be really completely heart-broken, if you adhere to your resolution. Had I had the smallest idea that it would be the consequence, no consideration would have tempted me to agree to the measure which has led to it; and yet, after all that has now passed, it seems impossible for me to recede. Under these circumstances you must allow me to make it a personal request in the strongest manner I can, that you will consent to continue Secretary of State in the way proposed. On public grounds, and for your own credit, I feel most sincerely convinced that you ought to do so; but I wish to ask it of you as the strongest proof you can give of friendship to myself; and of that you have given me so many proofs already that I do flatter myself you cannot refuse this, when you know how anxiously I have it at heart.24
He asked for an immediate answer and a meeting. Dundas wrote back from Wimbledon expressing his ‘most poignant concern’ for his friend but showing no sign of backing down or coming into London where Pitt could persuade him. For Pitt this was a true crisis: to gain the Whigs but to lose Dundas would leave him personally bereft and politically defeated. He hastened to St James’s Palace, and persuaded George III himself to write a note to Dundas. As the King put it: ‘Though I do not quite approve of the West Indies being added to the Home Department, I will reluctantly acquiesce in the arrangement; but I at the same time, in the strongest manner, call on Mr. Secretary Dundas to continue Secretary of State for the War.’25 Pitt then proceeded to Wimbledon carrying this letter himself, and interrupted Dundas at dinner with his family. Dundas relented. The new Cabinet was complete.
Fresh from this close shave, a triumphant Pitt was able to announce the new government on 11 July, the day Parliament rose for the summer. It was a sad day for Fox, for over half his party had now gone over to Pitt. He wrote to his nephew: ‘I cannot forget how long I have lived in friendship with them, nor can I avoid feeling the most severe mortification, when I recollect the certainty I used to entertain that they would never disgrace themselves as I think they have done … I feel nothing but contempt.’26 He and his remaining followers were marginalised for the duration of the war.
But the birth pangs of the new ministry were not finished yet. Pitt and Portland had left one large area of ambiguity in their agreement, and it would soon catch up with them. Earl Fitzwilliam had joined the Cabinet on the express understanding that he would become Lord Lieutenant of Ireland as soon as Pitt’s friend the Earl of Westmorland could be removed from that position; Pitt was in any case happy for the Whigs to take on the responsibility of keeping peace and order across the Irish Sea. The ambiguity lay in the speed and scale of the Whig expectations, for while Pitt was in no hurry to make this change and expected other Irish officeholders to be unaffected, Fitzwilliam was soon letting it be known that his arrival in Dublin was imminent, and was envisaging a whole new administration. The opposition in Ireland, urged on by the brilliant oratory of Henry Grattan, became excited at the prospect of Fitzwilliam’s arrival, partly because of an anticipated shift in the control of patronage, and partly because of Fitzwilliam’s liberal attitude to Catholic emancipation. All parties had agreed on the previous year’s Catholic Relief Act of 1793, which had admitted Catholics to the holding of various civil and military posts and given them voting rights akin to those of Protestants based on property ownership (which in practice gave the vote only to a small minority). Fitzwilliam and other Whigs favoured building on this by giving Catholics the right to sit in the Irish Parliament – not that very many of them would be elected on the existing franchise. Pitt himself had always taken a liberal view of Irish affairs and sought to accommodate Catholic concerns. His line on further Catholic relief was ‘not to bring it forward as a government measure; but if Government were pressed, to yield it’.27
By October disagreements over Ireland and Fitzwilliam’s appointment were threatening to break up the new Cabinet. Fitzwilliam threatening to resign from the Cabinet if he was not formally appointed, and it was clear that the other Whigs would go with him if he went. On the other hand, if he took office, it was clear that he intended to make a ‘clean sweep’ of many offi
ces, including that of the Irish Chancellor, Lord Fitzgibbon. Dundas was disgusted with the new members of the Cabinet – ‘I would rather give them the government altogether than to be so swindled’28 – while Pitt searched for a solution while thinking, ‘I have nothing to reproach myself with, in what has led to this misunderstanding; and I must struggle as well as I can.’29
The result was a meeting of the key Cabinet members at which Pitt succeeded in making common ground with his new colleagues and in giving Fitzwilliam clear instructions while agreeing to appoint him before the end of the year. It seems extraordinary today that no minutes were kept of such a meeting, and the only authoritative account of what was decided is contained in a memorandum written by Grenville the following year, after Fitzwilliam’s Lord Lieutenancy had exploded in a new burst of misunderstanding. The memorandum itself shows how sorely Pitt needed a private secretary at his meetings, including as it does such items as: ‘It appears that Lord Fitzwilliam conceives himself to have stated to Mr. Pitt, in their first conversations on the subject of Ireland, that he was apprehensive Mr. Beresford [whom Pitt had regarded as a highly effective head of the Revenue in Ireland since working with him so closely in 1785] should be removed, and that Mr. Pitt made no objection in reply to this. Mr. Pitt has no recollections of anything having been said to him which conveyed to his mind the impression that Mr. Beresford’s removal from his office was intended.’
According to the memorandum, it was made clear at the meeting that Fitzwilliam’s wish to strengthen the government in Ireland did not extend to creating an entirely ‘new system’, and that on important policy issues ‘Lord Fitzwilliam should transmit all the information he could collect, with his opinion, to the King’s servants here, and that he should do nothing to commit the King’s government in such cases without fresh instructions from hence.’ On Catholic relief, no firm view was expressed except that ‘A strong opinion was stated that Lord Fitzwilliam should, if possible, prevent the agitation of the question at all during the present Session.’30
As far as Pitt was concerned, the matter was now resolved. Fitzwilliam wrote that ‘I go to Ireland – though not exactly upon the terms I had originally thought of,’31 but the Cabinet had remained united and misunderstandings had apparently been cleared up. Once a sinecure was found for Westmorland, Fitzwilliam set out for Ireland in December 1794. Pitt would not have expected that in January the whole issue of Fitzwilliam and Ireland would be back on his desk with a vengeance. But it would be a crowded desk, for by the end of 1794 the whole political and military sky had darkened.
Pitt had always been well known for his ability to bear a cheerful countenance during adversity. Sir Gilbert Elliot had noted after Dunkirk in 1793 that ‘Pitt seemed to carry it off better than the rest, treating it as a misfortune, but as an occurrence to be looked for in all wars.’32 From the summer of 1794 that sang froid would be sorely tested, and by the following year he would be experiencing bouts of strain, illness and depression, to which he was not accustomed.
On 10 July, the day before the new Cabinet was announced, Pitt made a spirited defence of the war in the Commons. It would be ‘the most shameful weakness and timidity’ and ‘the meanest dereliction of their duty’ to lose heart now because of ‘some towns in Flanders, the possession of which had in all wars been the fluctuating and unstable consequence of every temporary advantage’.33 He continued to rail against the Terror underway in Paris: ‘It was impossible to put an end to this most furious tyranny, without destroying the present government of France.’34 As it happened, that very government was about to fall. In the coup of 9 Thermidor (the French Republican equivalent of 27 July) the members of the French Convention, many of whom knew they would be Robespierre’s next victims, indicted the dictator and took control of the National Guard. That night, Robespierre shot himself in the jaw but failed to kill himself, and the next day he followed his many victims to the guillotine. His death marked an end to the Terror and the return of greater social and political freedom in Paris, but in no way did it bring any diminution in French determination vigorously to prosecute the war. Ironically, it was the easing of some of the military and financial pressures on France which gave the Convention the confidence to bring the Terror to an end. By autumn 1794, the French had not only retaken Belgium, but had driven the Austrians completely from the west bank of the Rhine, secured the way into northern Italy, and pushed the Spanish across the eastern Pyrenees. Even in the West Indies, British progress had petered out as sickness began to take a heavy toll on the expedition despatched by Pitt; an attack on Saint Domingue had been unsuccessful and the French had managed to regain half of Guadeloupe.
The French success on all fronts created major challenges for the British government in matters of strategy, diplomacy, finance and personnel. The basic strategic question was whether to make a renewed attempt to attack France on the Continental fronts, subsidising allied armies where necessary, and by these means try to prevent the fall of Holland while hoping to exhaust the French; or to do as Auckland now urged and withdraw from ‘all continental exertions and interference’,35 concentrating almost exclusively on naval power to blockade France and sweep the West Indies in order to force a negotiated end to the war.
The outcome was that for the moment the Continental strategy remained in place, with the addition of much stronger plans than hitherto, favoured by Windham, to assist an invasion of France by émigrés and counter-revolutionaries. There was no sign, however, of effective and coordinated action by Britain’s allies: Pitt and Grenville were soon deeply frustrated with Prussian inactivity, Dutch apathy about their defences, and Austrian demands for money. Pitt evidently spoke sharply to the Prussian Ambassador at the end of September about Berlin’s failure to deliver any results in return for more than £1 million so far sent to it. The subsidy was cancelled, and it was in any case soon known in London that the Prussians had begun talks with the French. Britain’s Triple Alliance with Holland and Prussia was reaching its end. Meanwhile the Austrians were demanding a £6 million loan, guaranteed by the British government, in return for 200,000 soldiers in the field. Pitt was already raising a loan of £18 million that year, in a country whose total government revenues in the year before the war were less than £16 million, but he found a way of going ahead and the Austrian commitment to a 1795 campaign was kept alive.
It was clear by now that the British war effort had not been as well run as it should have been. Pitt had to steel himself for some delicate decisions on senior personnel, starting with the Duke of York. The King’s second son no longer commanded the respect of the troops in the field. As Pitt put it to his brother at the end of September, ‘There is more and more reason to fear that his general management is what the army has no confidence in, and while that is the case there is little chance of setting things right.’36 In November he wrote a ‘very honest and firm’ letter to the King, requesting the recall of the Duke of York. George III replied that he was ‘very much hurt’ and maintained that the defeats were not the fault of his son but of ‘the conduct of Austria, the faithlessness of Prussia, and the cowardice of the Dutch’.37 Nevertheless, he agreed to his son’s removal from the field.
Some days later Pitt embarked on a yet more distasteful task, beginning a letter, ‘My Dear Brother, I do not write to you till after a very painful struggle in my own mind …’ Chatham had not distinguished himself as First Lord of the Admiralty. While he never opposed his younger brother on a matter of policy, he lacked the drive and intellectual grasp to run the navy at the height of a global war. It had evidently become increasingly embarrassing and irritating to Pitt that this was obvious to all concerned, and he referred to an earlier meeting which he had hoped would clear the air: ‘After the full explanation passed between us some time since, I had really flattered myself that there was an end of the distressing embarrassment which we had experienced … But I cannot disguise from you that from various circumstances (which I see no good in dwelling upon), and especia
lly from what passed at the Cabinet yesterday, I foresee too evidently the renewal of that embarrassment and the utter impossibility that business should permanently go on between you and those with whom in your present department you must have continual intercourse without that cordiality and complete mutual confidence which at the present moment is indispensable.’ Coming to the crunch, the letter stated ‘fairly though reluctantly’ that Pitt believed ‘the time is come when it will be the best for us both, as well as for the public service, if you will exchange your present situation for one of a different description’.38
Pitt had taken a risk six years earlier in making his brother First Lord of the Admiralty. Now he knew he had to remove him, but offered him either of two Cabinet positions without portfolio (President of the Council or Privy Seal) instead. He cannot have enjoyed his brother’s immediate reply, asking for a meeting, asserting that he had not failed in his duty and fearing that his removal would be ‘subjected to great misconstruction’.39 But Pitt was unyielding, replying the next day that whether his brother thought him right or wrong he hoped he would give him credit for the sincerity of his opinion, and entreating him to make the matter ‘as little painful as possible by reconciling your mind to what I have proposed’. He did not agree to a meeting: ‘I hoped I had said enough in my former letter to show you that my opinion was formed (however reluctantly) on grounds which will not admit of its being changed.’40
William Pitt the Younger: A Biography Page 42