William Pitt the Younger: A Biography
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Thirteen years before, Pitt could only have dreamt of such parliamentary and electoral dominance. Yet by all accounts his mood that summer was bleak, and in private his usual air of confidence and optimism often deserted him. Rumours abounded that the Austrians were making peace. Pitt wrote to Grenville of his anxiety to negotiate: ‘In this situation it would be inexcusable not to try any chance that can be tried, honourably and safely, to set on foot some decent plan of pacification … either now or a few months hence, we shall be left to sustain alone the conflict with France and Holland, probably joined by Spain, and perhaps favored more or less openly by the Northern powers. But with proper exertion we can make our party good against them all.’16 He was described by friends as ‘not in his usual spirits’.17 Wilberforce would later comment that the mounting stress meant ‘his temper was not so entirely free from those occasional approaches to fretfulness’.18
One description of Pitt’s working habits is contained in the diary of Charles Abbot, later Speaker of the House of Commons.
March 17, 1796. – Dined at Butt’s with the Solicitor-General and Lord Muncaster. Lord Muncaster was an early political friend of Mr. Pitt, and our conversation turned much upon his habits of life. Pitt transacts the business of all departments except Lord Grenville’s and Dundas’s. He requires eight or ten hours’ sleep. He dines slightly at five o’clock upon days of business, and on other days after the House is up; but if thrown out of his regular dinner of one sort or the other, he becomes completely ill and unfit for business for a day or two. This has happened to him in the present Session. He will not suffer anybody to arrange his papers, and extract the important points for him. In his reception of the merchants, when they wait upon him, he is particularly desirous of satisfying them that his measures are right. Lord Hawkesbury, on the contrary, entertains them with telling them what he knows of their business, instead of hearing what they have to tell him.19
It is not surprising that Pitt was depressed and irritable that summer. From April onwards, Bonaparte had rampaged across Italy, repeatedly defeating the Austrians and knocking Piedmont out of the war. It was a campaign of brilliant manoeuvres, forced marches and stirring rhetoric. Bonaparte told his troops: ‘Soldiers, in fifteen days you have gained six victories, taken twenty-one flags, fifty-five cannon and several strongholds … You have won battles without cannons, crossed rivers without bridges, you have made forced marches without shoes, bivouacked without brandy and often without bread. Only soldiers of liberty were capable of undergoing all that you have undergone.’20
The French had discovered one of the greatest military commanders of all time. Bonaparte’s victories totally distracted the Austrians from their intended efforts on the Rhine, and further encouraged Spain to join with France in assuming control of the Mediterranean while invading Portugal. Madrid signed an offensive alliance with Paris in August, and declared war on Britain on 5 October 1796.
Nevertheless, the morale of Pitt and his Ministers picked up towards the end of the summer. He went to Weymouth in early September to visit the King, and from there wrote to his brother to tell him that Lord Mansfield’s death meant he could now be President of the Council, a rather meaningless promotion intended to assuage the humiliation of the previous year. He also mentioned that a mission to Berlin to try to stir the renewed involvement of the Prussians had come to nothing. ‘We therefore see nothing left (in order to bring the question of peace and war to a point) but to send directly to Paris. The step of applying for a passport will be taken immediately … Our great apparent difficulty is finance, which can only be removed by bringing people to a temper for very unusual exertions.’21 Pitt stressed again in this letter that it was important to ‘satisfy the country that we have done enough towards general peace’,22 particularly in view of an imminent war with Spain. Much of his greater predilection for negotiations than that shown by his colleagues stemmed from his sensitivity to public opinion.
Against this background, and with the additional encouragement of fresh internal troubles in France, with large numbers of royalists being elected to popular assemblies, Pitt decided to mount another peace initiative. He wrote to his mother from Downing Street on 6 September, explaining that he would not make it to Burton Pynsent until the end of the year at the earliest, referring to the state of France as ‘of itself very encouraging’.23 Military developments had also taken a turn for the better. The Austrians, under the Archduke Charles, were making progress against the French in western Germany, moving back across the Rhine on 20 September. Britain was again on top of the seesaw of conquest in the West Indies, with Abercromby’s expedition retaking St Vincent, St Lucia and Grenada along with some smaller Dutch colonies. Further encouragement came from St Petersburg. Catherine the Great, having annihilated Poland, was now more interested in waging war against the French Revolution. October brought news that the Russians were prepared to send 60,000 men to join the war in return for a subsidy, and it was decided to offer them about £1½ million. Corsica was also to be offered to the Empress, although by November the entry of Spain into the war was forcing the evacuation of all British troops and ships in the Mediterranean.
Overall, these developments seemed to strengthen the British government’s hand in October 1796 as the first substantive peace talks got underway in Paris. Initial approaches through Denmark for a passport had been rejected by the French, but accepted when applied for directly. The Earl of Malmesbury, one of Britain’s most experienced diplomats and hero of the 1787 triumph in Holland, was sent to France. His going did not please the hawks in the Cabinet such as Dundas, or the suspicious Austrians, or hardline opponents of the French Revolution such as Burke, who said Malmesbury’s journey to Paris was slow because ‘he went the whole way on his knees’.24
Malmesbury would spend nearly two months there gauging the atmosphere, negotiating with the French, hoping to be joined by an Austrian representative and awaiting final instructions from London. When the possible terms for peace were sent to him from London in December, Pitt had stiffened them from an earlier draft made in the relative despair of the summer. The British demands involved the Austrian Netherlands either being returned to Austria or made independent, a French withdrawal from most of northern Italy, a restoration of much of the territory formerly belonging to German states, no French control of St Domingo, and British retention of most of the colonies seized from the Dutch, including Ceylon and the Cape of Good Hope. This was compatible with France keeping the territories which she had, since 1793, occupied on her eastern and south-eastern borders, together with the return of her West Indian colonies.
Ministers do not seem to have had high hopes of this negotiation succeeding, although they thought they would at least once again put the French in a difficult position. In the meantime it was necessary to prepare for another year of war, and in particular to guard against the renewed danger of invasion. On 18 October Pitt proposed to the Commons a further expansion of the army and the militia; 15,000 men to be selected by ballot to join the armed services, 60,000 to be added to the militia and the addition of 20,000 horsemen for home defence raised by requiring every person who kept ten horses to provide one horseman and a horse. Facing the need for another loan of £18 million in the run-up to the budget, Pitt hit upon a new way of raising this amount on advantageous terms. He called it the ‘loyalty loan’ and invited the public to subscribe to it, thereby avoiding having to go back to the financial markets. The result was extraordinary: £5 million was subscribed on the first day, and the entire amount was raised by 5 December, after the books had been opened for only four days. The Dukes of Bedford and Bridgwater each subscribed £100,000, Pitt’s friend Bob Smith (who was now the first Lord Carrington) £40,000. Pitt himself went in for £10,000 (which he then had to borrow), and Dundas and Grenville felt they should do the same. The loyalty loan was a triumph, but the mounting costs of war still required increasingly serious hikes in taxation. In the budget statement of 7 December 1796, Pitt proposed £
2 million of additional taxes, levied on spirits, sugar, stage coaches, postage, auctions, fine tea and many other items. He also revealed that in the recess he had approved a loan of £1.2 million to Austria without parliamentary approval, an announcement that brought a stormy debate but a large government majority the following day.
December 1796 was also the month in which the hopes for peace were dashed. Late one Sunday night Pitt wrote to Dundas: ‘A new scene is opened on the Continent by an event of which the account is just come – the death of the Empress of Russia on the 17th of last month … I am afraid much good is not in any case to be expected from the new Emperor. It is difficult to say whether one ought to regret the most that she had not died sooner or lived longer.’25
The new Tsar, Paul I, rejected any active participation in the war. This emboldened the French, who were indeed about to send an invasion force across the Channel from Brest. Their fleet, consisting of seventeen ships of the line and twenty-six other vessels carrying 15,000 troops, sailed just as Malmesbury was presenting the new British proposals in Paris. A message was sent to stop them sailing, but it did not arrive in time. Making the best of the situation, the French then rejected what they described as a British ‘ultimatum’. Malmesbury was given forty-eight hours to leave Paris: the following week he was back in Downing Street dining with Pitt.
Not only was peace not available, but the French invasion force was now at sea. Their chosen destination was Bantry Bay, on the reckoning that an invasion of Ireland would meet with a partly sympathetic population and create immense difficulties in London. The expedition turned out to be a fiasco, meeting December gales, driving snow and the intrepid attacks of a single British frigate, the Indefatigable. When they gathered off Bantry Bay on 21 December they were missing eight ships, one of which was carrying the Admiral and the General who were meant to be in charge. A fresh storm then drove them back out to sea on Christmas Day. By mid-January they were back in Brest, apart from one ship of the line which British vessels drove aground on the coast of Brittany. Not for the first time, the British Isles were saved by the weather. A French force on this scale would have outnumbered the Irish militia if it had been able to disembark, and would quite probably have triggered civil war in Ireland.
There could be no doubt in Westminster now that the war would go on, and that it had to be won. Pitt addressed the Commons on 30 December, saying his sentiments were ‘only those of disappointment’. He defended the proposed peace terms as ‘fair, just, and reasonable’, and asked: ‘Are we to persevere in the war with a spirit and energy worthy of the British name and of the British character?’26 He used his speech to show his own spirit and resolve. But he also knew the situation was grave: after four years of war Britain was left with one exhausted ally and a powerful alliance against her. The war had already driven him to impose burdens and restrictions on the people which he could not have imagined in 1792. They were not enough. Now he would have to find fresh reserves of energy within himself and the nation for a war without end.
Pitt had not managed to visit his mother that autumn, but he had found some recreation closer to home. The endless discussion of Foreign Office business frequently threw him together with his twenty-six-year-old protégé George Canning, whom he had made a Foreign Office Under Secretary. Canning’s rapid elevation to the front bench was a recognition of his obvious ability, but may also have been partly the result of a wish by Pitt to keep a closer eye on Grenville in the light of the recent differences between them. Canning had made it his business to get to know Pitt well; well enough to press his claims for promotion on an indulgent Prime Minister. There had already been grumbles around Parliament that he was too close to Pitt, and much too familiar. He had once even been seen to touch Pitt on the shoulder, an action unthinkable to the majority of MPs. Canning wrote his own explanation of this in his journal:
The complaint was that my manner with Pitt in the House of Commons is too familiar – But whereas other persons, Country gentlemen and others, some of great consequence, and who have known and supported Mr. Pitt for years – treat him with the utmost respect and distance, and if they venture to address him at all, do it in a manner, the most humble and deferent, I, it seems, stand in no awe whatsoever – but talk to him without reserve or hesitation at all times and laugh and make jokes – and once was seen, when I wanted to speak to him, and he was looking another way, to put my hand on his shoulder. How can you conceive a more silly thing to trouble people’s heads than this? … I know indeed that I have, with people whom I like, old or young, great or small, something of a caressing manner (I think I must call it so, for I do not recollect any other word to express it) and so have a great many other people – a great many have it not – and with that class it is not right to make use of it … They consider Mr. Pitt, naturally enough, as one of the latter class, the non-shakers – whereas he is in fact a very hearty, salutation-giving, shake hands sort of person – and one therefore whom I feel it is natural to take by the arm, or to touch upon the shoulder even (which is the great offence) … But if it be wrong it must be altered.27
Canning then learnt to ride, and found the advantages of this included being able to call on Pitt at Holwood. He sometimes found his hero alone, and would spend hours talking and riding with him. He told a friend: ‘I think I have never left him without liking him better than before. I could not admire or love him more, even if I had no obligations to him; though in that case, I should give a freer, because less suspicious testimony of the claims which, I think, he has to be both loved and admired.’28 We cannot know for sure that this hero – protégé relationship had no physical aspect; some may have suspected it at the time: Pitt behaved in a strange, trancelike way at Canning’s wedding in 1800, and in 1804 Lady Hester Stanhope told Canning that Pitt ‘is attached to you in a way unlike what he feels about anybody else’.29 But, as other biographers have pointed out, there is no evidence that the friendship was possessive.30 Pitt seemed actually to encourage Canning’s marriage, and was in general happy to take or leave the friends who wandered into his life, enjoying the company of those who managed to provide companionship and political ability at the same time.
As it happened, Canning witnessed a rare development in Pitt’s life – an apparently close friendship with a woman. If he was alone at Holwood Pitt would travel to nearby Beckenham, to the home of Lord Auckland. There he mixed with Auckland’s family, including his attractive daughter Lady Eleanor Eden. Canning reported of one occasion: ‘it was a whole holiday – spent entirely in the country – in riding, and rambling about with Lord Auckland, the Chancellor and Pitt all the morning – and in playing all sorts of tricks, frolics and fooleries, with the same persons and with the addition and assistance of all the Edens from dinner-time to bed-time’.31 It was not long before rumours about the relationship between Pitt and Eleanor Eden were spreading widely, reflected in Auckland’s letter to John Beresford on 22 December 1796:
We are all well here, and I will take the occasion to add a few words of a private and confidential kind. You may probably have seen or heard by letters a report of an intended marriage between Mr. Pitt and my eldest daughter. You know me too well to suppose that if it were so I should have remained silent. The truth is she is handsome, and possessed of sense far superior to the ordinary proportion of the world; they see much of each other, they converse much together, and I really believe they have sentiments of mutual esteem; but I have no reason to think that it goes further on the part of either, nor do I suppose it is ever likely to go further.
Beresford replied:
December 27, 1796
I certainly heard of the report which you mention, and saw it in the newspapers. Lord Camden has more than once asked me if I knew anything about it. I answered, as I shall continue to do, that I knew nothing about it.
Pitt seems to have realised early in 1797 that the matter was getting out of hand. On 20 January he wrote to Auckland from Downing Street:
My dear Lor
d, – Altho’ the anxious expectation of public business would at all events have made it difficult for me to leave town during the last ten days, you may perhaps have begun to think that it cannot have been the only reason which has kept me so long from Beckenham. The truth is, that I have felt it impossible to allow myself to yield to the temptation of returning thither without having (as far as might depend upon me) formed a decision on a point which I am sensible has remained in suspension too long already. Having at length done so, I should feel myself inexcusable if (painful as the task is) any consideration prevented me from opening myself to you without reserve. It can hardly, I think, be necessary to say that the time I have passed among your family has led to my forming sentiments of very real attachment towards them all, and of much more than attachment towards one whom I need not name. Nor should I do justice to my own feelings, or explain myself as firmly as I think I ought to do, if I did not own that every hour of my acquaintance with the person to whom you will easily conceive I refer has served to augment and confirm that impression; in short, has convinced me that whoever may have the good fortune ever to be united to her is destined to more than his share of human happiness.
Whether, at any rate, I could have had any ground to hope that such might have been my lot, I am in no degree entitled to guess. I have to reproach myself for ever having indulged the idea on my own part as far as I have done without asking myself carefully and early enough what were the difficulties in the way of its being realised. I have suffered myself to overlook them too long, but having now at length reflected as fully and as calmly as I am able on every circumstance that ought to come under my consideration (at least as much for her sake as for my own), I am compelled to say that I find the obstacles to it decisive and insurmountable. In thus conveying to you, my dear Lord, what has been passing in my mind, and its painful and unavoidable result, I have felt it impossible to say less. And yet it would be almost a consolation to me to know that even what I have said is superfluous, and that the idea I have entertained has been confined solely to myself. If this should be the case, I am sure this communication will be buried in silence and oblivion. On any other supposition I know that I but consult the feelings of those who must be most in my thoughts by confiding it to your discretion. And in doing so I have every reason to rely on your prudence, kindness, and on those sentiments of mutual friendship which I hope will not be affected by any change which may at the present moment be unavoidable in what has lately been the habits of our intercourse. For myself, allow me only to add that, separated as I must be for a time from those among whom I have passed many of my happiest moments, the recollection of that period will be long present to my mind. The greatest pleasure and best consolation I can receive will be if I am enabled to prove how deep an interest I must always take in whatever may concern them.