Invasion fears were still high in early December. Pitt postponed going to Westminster for the session which had opened at the end of November because ‘I shall be so constantly occupied all next week in going round to my different battalions.’41 But for all the scares, the French were not going to make a serious attempt to invade England that year. Their ships of the line were scattered and bottled up in their ports by the Royal Navy’s blockade. While Napoleon was already famous for his forced marches and surprise manoeuvres on land, he could not take the risk of sending an entire army into what might easily have been a massacre at sea. In the words of the rather complacent First Lord of the Admiralty, Earl St Vincent, ‘I do not say the French cannot come. I only say they cannot come by water.’42
Pitt returned to the Commons on 9 December, his ability to pursue his strategy of pushing and outshining the government strengthened by the first-hand experience he had now acquired. Rose had urged him not to ‘pass over in silence the disgraceful misconduct of ministers, which he felt on various points at least as strongly as myself’,43 while not entering into ‘systematic opposition’.44 As the government came under strong attack from Windham in the debate on the ninth for its handling of the volunteer regiments, Pitt gave Addington succour by rebutting the criticisms, but then went on to suggest a number of improvements to the organisation, distribution and officering of the volunteers. Some of his points were so well founded that the government brought in a Bill the following day in order to accommodate them. Pitt returned to Walmer for Christmas, enjoying the immersion in politics and military affairs sufficiently to cancel a planned restorative visit to Bath. It was the start of an intensified pattern of behaviour, to which he had always been susceptible, of considering his duties to be much more important than his health.
Pitt had reason enough that New Year to think his health a low priority. Hester Stanhope wrote on 14 January: ‘We are in almost daily expectation of the coming of the French, and Mr. Pitt’s regiment is now nearly perfect enough to receive them … His most intimate friends say they do not remember him so well since the year ninety-seven.’45 In addition, opposition factions were beginning to manoeuvre as the Addington ministry faltered. On New Year’s Eve 1803, Grenville wrote to Pitt to urge him to lead the opposition against Addington – ‘An understanding between the considerable persons in the country, forgetting past differences, and uniting to rescue us.’46
Pitt agreed to meet his cousin and old ally. In the course of three meetings in London in early January a deeply frustrated Grenville, who was fed up with ‘middle lines, and managements and delicacies’,47 failed to persuade Pitt to change his stance. Just as Pitt’s negotiations with Addington had failed because he had wanted to retain the possibility of working with Grenville, so he would not form an opposition with Grenville because he wished to retain the goodwill of many members of the government when it came to forming his own administration – and the government did currently enjoy a sizeable majority in Parliament. Strident opposition would therefore make it ultimately harder to form an alternative administration and, he told Grenville, ‘have very little chance of accomplishing its object of changing the administration, and certainly none of doing so in time to afford the country the benefit of abler counsels’.48 Pitt’s line of thinking had not changed: while he was willing to return to office, the call to do so must come from within the existing government and with the ready agreement of the Crown.
Grenville was bitterly disappointed. Determined to seek a change of government by frontal attack, he now took the step which would separate his career from that of Pitt, irrevocably as it turned out. On 31 January 1804 he wrote to Pitt to explain that he had agreed with other opponents of Addington ‘that the government which now exists is manifestly incapable of carrying on the public business’, and that ‘an administration comprehending as large a proportion as possible of the weight, talents and character to be found in public men of all descriptions’ should be formed.49 He had come to this agreement with none other than their prime enemy of the last twenty years, Charles James Fox. The message to Pitt was clear: if he wanted to stick to his ‘middle course’, he would have to do it on his own.
It would be easy to think, particularly in the light of later events, that Pitt made an error of judgement in rebuffing Grenville and sending him into the arms of a rival. After all, he did not disagree with Grenville’s central objective of forming an alternative and broadly based government, making clear to him in March that he would seek to include him, and even Fox, in any administration he might form. The argument that old rivalries should be set aside at a time of national extremity in no way offended Pitt, yet he was almost certainly right in believing that the Addington government was less likely to break up if faced by a united but minority coalition in Parliament. The best chance of effecting a change of government was for Pitt to be available as a figure above parties. Furthermore, Pitt had never believed in ‘storming the closet’ with a government unwelcome to the King. His power had been born through repulsing a similar assault on George III when Fox had made an earlier alliance of convenience with Lord North. The fact that the King was once again seriously unwell that February made this consideration all the more important. And since Addington would shortly contemplate resigning only on the condition that Grenville and Fox would not come in with Pitt, Pitt’s refusal of Grenville’s offer seems to have been based not only on integrity but also on sound tactics.
The risk, of course, was that the widening difference with Grenville and his followers would become unbridgeable, and that even a new government would face a united Grenville—Fox coalition against it. But in the uncertain atmosphere of early 1804 it would have seemed a risk worth taking. The government’s difficulties were mounting, and there was talk once again of a Regency, in discussion of which Lord Moira advised the Prince of Wales ‘that the Prince’s only chance for governing the country without Mr. Pitt, with any degree of comfort, was at least to satisfy the public that the refusal came from Mr. Pitt’.50 Since, however, the Prince would be unlikely to offer Pitt the leadership of the government, he would end up giving just such a refusal. Pitt confirmed this to Dundas when he wrote of receiving intelligence that Fox would advise the Prince, in the event of a Regency, to ask Pitt to join ‘a strong and comprehensive Government’. Pitt had not changed his long-standing position – ‘I do not see how under any circumstances I can creditably or usefully consent to take part in any Government without being at the Head of it.’51 He needed the government to fall soon and to be invited back by George III himself, unencumbered by commitments and alliances.
So would Addington fall? The truth was that nearly a year of renewed war had produced no dramatic successes, but no great disasters either. The French had moved into northern Germany and taken over George III’s Electorate of Hanover. On the other hand, the British were recovering territories in the East and West Indies which they had evacuated at the beginning of the short-lived peace; the French army had proved so far unable to cross the Channel; and Nelson was in position in the Mediterranean to protect Malta and Naples. The situation was somewhat analogous to that of early 1940. A government with an ostensibly secure parliamentary majority had so far survived a rather ‘phoney’ war with one or two administrative foul-ups but no obvious catastrophe. Yet, also as in 1940 under Neville Chamberlain, there was an expectation that the greatest trial of strength still lay ahead, and that a worthy Prime Minister who had been appointed in peacetime did not possess the panache and authority required during all-out war. Addington simply could not win the respect of his opponents. Fox dismissed his performance with the words: ‘It is no excuse that he is a fool,’52 and Canning was still fashioning his verses into rapiers:
If blocks can from danger deliver,
Two places are safe from the French:
The one is the mouth of the river,
The other the Treasury bench.53
This atmosphere, possibly along with the risk of Fox and Grenville actuall
y succeeding in making themselves the alternative government, propelled Pitt from late February 1804 to accentuate the critical side of his middle course rather than the supportive one. On 27 February he made what Canning described as a ‘Most magnificent speech, of details’54 attacking the government’s preparedness for invasion. Canning exulted, ‘Yesterday was a nice day. They cannot stand many such, and many such they will have.’55 Relations between Pitt and Addington fell to a new low, Addington visibly annoyed and Pitt miffed that many of his criticisms were rejected. On 15 March in a debate on the navy he went further, and Ministers who had been alternately stroked and prodded by his oratory now felt its lash. France, he said, had ‘attained new and extraordinary energies … We ought to meet them with at least equal, not inferior, activity and energies.’56 Yet the navy ‘is at the present moment much inferior, and less adequate to the exigency of the danger, than at any period in former times’.57 He attacked the competence of Lord St Vincent – ‘between his Lordship as a Commander on the Sea, and his Lordship as First Lord of the Admiralty, there is a very wide difference’ – and contrasted ‘the terrible activity of the enemy with the alarming supineness of our Government’. At the end of the debate, Addington could still muster a majority of seventy-one (201 to 130), and Pitt was disappointed that there were ‘no converts, no convinced country gentlemen, no honest good sort of people quitting the Ministry’.58
But the injuries he was inflicting were internal ones, and the blood began to flow within the Cabinet. On 20 March 1804 the Lord Chancellor, Lord Eldon, asked Pitt to meet him a few days later, and Pitt accepted.59 Eldon had never been much attached to Addington, regarding himself as ‘the King’s Chancellor’. He offered to act as an intermediary between Pitt and the King, for the moment keeping Addington in the dark. This seemed to provide the spur for Pitt to finally come off the fence and bring Addington down by frontal attack. He was additionally emboldened by information that the Ministers who ‘feel the insufficiency of the present Government, and wish my return to office’ included Portland; Eldon; Chatham; Castlereagh; Charles Yorke, the Secretary at War; Lord Hobart, the Secretary for War and the Colonies; and Hawkesbury.60 He informed Melville on 29 March that he intended to write to the King as soon as the latter’s health improved, ‘explaining the dangers which I think threaten his Crown and his people from the continuance of his present Government, and representing to him the urgent necessity of a speedy change’.61
From this point on, the Addington administration looked increasingly hapless as it came under merciless fire from both Pitt and Fox in the Commons and Grenville in the Lords. By 17 April Pitt was telling Dundas that ‘Government has taken very serious alarm … I am much inclined to think that in a few days they must capitulate.’62 Pitt had not joined the alliance of Fox and Grenville, but he certainly joined in the destruction of the ministry. He gave Eldon a letter for the King on 22 April, and tore into the government on the floor of the Commons on the twenty-third. This was ‘the most important and the most critical period that ever existed in [Britain’s] history’,63 fortifications had been neglected while Ministers had given only a ‘pompous enumeration of the force of the country’,64 and since this was his true opinion it would be ‘treason to the best interests of my country, if … I did not openly declare it’.65 The government majority fell to fifty-two. Two days later Pitt was on his feet again, attacking the government for maintaining the wrong proportions of militia and reserves. Its majority went down to thirty-seven (240 to 203). In the Lords, Grenville was running Ministers even closer, and sometimes inflicting actual defeats.
Addington could not take any more. A Prime Minister could live with a majority of thirty-seven, but not when it should have been hundreds. The sense of Parliament was moving against him. Even before the culminating debates at the end of April, he had sent an indirect message to Pitt that he would be ‘inclined to resign his situation’ if he could be assured that Pitt was not ‘connected’ with Grenville and Fox.66 He advised the King to commission Eldon to speak to Pitt, not knowing that such conversations had been underway for a month. On 29 April he told the Cabinet that he would be resigning as soon as possible after he had delivered the budget the following day. Eldon wrote to Pitt on the thirtieth requesting his plan of a new government to submit to the King.
Pitt had got what he wanted: he had brought down Addington and done so faster than Fox and Grenville had anticipated, or even desired. Foxites grumbled, ‘We are the pioneers, digging the foundation; but Mr. Pitt will be the architect to build the House, and to inhabit it.’67 Nevertheless, it was by no means clear as yet that he could form a strong administration. He had already told Grenville that he would do everything he could to persuade the King to permit him to form a government including both Grenville and Fox, but that ‘He was not prepared to make it a sine qua non.’68 He believed that the country needed a great coalition, but for whatever reason, perhaps because of the King’s fragile condition or perhaps because the King could still turn back to Addington, he would not refuse to serve if George III would not agree to it. Melville, with prophetic wisdom, counselled against forming a narrower government, asking ‘whether the government formed on the narrow scale would be much better than the present; and in the meantime all the jealousies and heartburnings of party spirit would be lurking, and ready to burst out the first favourable moment’.69 Yet Pitt’s confidence in himself was such that he believed that, if necessary, he could once again shoulder the immense burdens of a wartime government without the support of a broader coalition.
In any case, Pitt believed he might well get his way with the King. On 2 May he submitted a forcible letter through Eldon making the case for including not only Grenville but Fox in the new Cabinet. He cited the need to raise taxes, the impression that would be made abroad, and even the advantage that Fox could not stir the Catholic issue from within the government. In the background, Rose was calculating that Pitt could command only a narrow majority in the Commons if Fox, Grenville and Addington were all in opposition.
The King’s reply was not encouraging. As Rose put it, ‘from the style of the letter, his Majesty must have been in a state of some irritation at the time of writing it’.70 It contained disparaging remarks about Grenville and Melville, and a point-blank refusal to admit Fox to the government. The King referred with irritation to Pitt’s resignation in 1801, ‘when the most ill-digested and dangerous proposition was brought forward’, and said that Grenville had become a ‘Follower of … wild ideas’. As for Fox, he expressed ‘his astonishment that Mr. Pitt should one moment harbour the thought of bringing such a name before His Royal notice’.71 He did not even agree to see Pitt to discuss the matter. On 6 May Pitt responded with a ‘temperate and respectful answer’,72 saying that he was ‘ready to acquiesce in that decision, and submit myself to Your Majesty’s commands’, but insisting on a meeting so that he could put the case directly for a broader government: ‘Unless your Majesty should so far honour me with your confidence as to admit me into your presence for this purpose, I am grieved to say that I cannot retain any hope that my feeble services can be employed in any manner advantageous to your Majesty’s affairs, or satisfactory to my own mind.’73
This letter did the trick. George III was no fool when it came to recognising political reality. He agreed to see Pitt the next day, becoming the very personification of charm and reason. When Pitt remarked that he was looking better now than at the time he resigned in 1801, George replied that ‘that was not to be wondered at as he was then on the point of parting with an old friend; as he was now about to regain one’.74 In the three-hour meeting the King even went so far as to agree to Grenville and his supporters returning to government. He could not agree to the admission of Fox, but accepted Pitt’s suggestion that Fox could be appointed an Ambassador or serve on a foreign mission. All in all, he performed a considerable climbdown. Pitt commented: ‘Never in any conversation I have had with him in my life has he so baffled me.’75 Canning was sent to tel
l Grenville the good news, and Pitt then went to him personally.
Pitt was on the brink of coming back into power with the best of all worlds – at the invitation of the King, by recommendation of the previous government, and in coalition with a good deal of the opposition. With Grenville in the Cabinet and Fox neutralised, he could use his easy dominance of the Commons to lead a strong government against Napoleon. The day after the meeting with the King, Rose found Pitt ‘in the highest spirits possible’, under the impression that ‘so fair an opening presented itself for Fox, as to afford a reasonable certainty that he would not allow it to escape him’.76 Even after a quarter of a century in politics Pitt could still let his natural optimism run away with him. In reality, his strong government was already stillborn. The previous night, even though Fox had generously made clear that the King’s veto on him need not prevent his allies from joining the government, neither his own party nor that of Grenville would agree to do so on such a condition. On principle, since they had advocated a government based on the inclusion of all the most talented people, they could not join one on the basis of ‘exclusion’.
This was bad news. Pitt would return to office as Prime Minister devoid not only of much of the health and vigour he had once possessed, but also of a broadly based Cabinet and a secure parliamentary majority. Rose even questioned whether he should take up office at all in such circumstances, and thought ‘this argument affected him a little at first, but he soon roused himself, said he was committed, and would go on, certain that all would do well; that he should go through the remainder of the session … without great embarrassment; and that in the summer he should undoubtedly be able to strengthen the administration in some way or another’.77 Apparently incensed by the behaviour of Grenville, whose impatience earlier in the year had led to the alliance with Fox while it was his own route to power that had proved successful, Pitt declared, according to Eldon, that ‘He would teach that proud man, that, in the service and with the confidence of the King, he could do without him, though he thought his health such, that it might cost him his life.’78
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