Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated)

by Rudyard Kipling

  Irish Parliament, and to make one united

  Parliament for the two islands (1800). In this united Parliament Pitt intended to allow the Catholics to sit; but King George foolishly and obstinately refused to agree, and so Pitt had to resign the office of Prime Minister,

  which he had held for eighteen years.

  And now for the “great war.” For Britain it would necessarily be a sea war, and therefore a war for empire, trade, and colonies. For

  France, as far as she could make it so, it would be a land war, since it was Europe that France wanted to conquer, not sea or colonies. At first, as I told you, she professed to be con- «

  quering other states for their own good, “to liberate them from their tyrants,” and all that sort of nonsense. But most nations,

  even those that really were badly governed,

  soon found out that French invasion was much

  worse than any amount of bad government by their own “tyrants.” So nation after nation rose and fought against France, either one by one or in great alliances of nations.

  All were beaten; France was the greatest land power in the world, and her soldiers the bravest,

  cleverest, and fiercest fighters. All the nations in the world appealed to England to help them with the one thing which all knew she had got in heaps, money. We actually paid Dutchmen, Prussians, Austrians, Spaniards, Russians and even Turks to fight for their own interests against France.

  How could we afford to do this? Simply because of the power of our Navy, which in a few years became so great, that it was able to crush the commerce and to take the colonies of any nation that would not fight against

  France. Soon it was only in Britain that people could buy the goods of the far East and the far West, silk, coffee, tobacco, sugar, tea,

  spice. And at last only in Britain could they buy manufactured articles at all. Even the very Frenchmen who fought us had to buy the clothes and shoes they wore from English merchants!

  This control of the world’s trade did not come to us at once, and not without hard fighting. Pitt, as I told you, had neglected

  the Army and Navy. Our admirals were old,

  our generals were at first very stupid. We sent some troops to help the Dutch, and they were very badly beaten. Holland became a daughter-republic of France, and Belgium became a French province. The poor Dutch

  I did not gain much by the exchange, for the

  British navy simply took away all their colonies notably Ceylon and the Cape of Good Hope,

  just as it was taking the French West Indian

  Islands. Nearer home our fleet did not do so well. The French Republic did not have so good a navy as the old French Monarchy had had; but its sailors made up in gallantry what they lacked in skill and efficiency, and it was not until 1797 that we won a great naval battle in European waters. The Spaniards had been forced into the French alliance, and in that year Sir John Jervis and Captain Nelson

  (soon to be Lord Nelson) utterly defeated a big French and Spanish fleet at Cape St.

  Vincent on the Spanish coast.

  It was just at this time that the greatest

  | soldier that ever lived came to lead the French

  — Napoleon Bonaparte. He appeared first

  1 as a victorious general in 1796, then as “First

  Consul” (that is, President) of the French

  Republic, 1799; then in 1804 as “Emperor of the French.” By this time France had

  given up all idea of delivering peoples from

  “tyrants,’’ and simply meant to conquer all the world for her own benefit. Napoleon at once saw that this was impossible as long as Britain remained free and victorious at sea.

  To invade Britain, or to destroy in some other way the wealth and commerce of Britain, became his one desire. But to invade Britain while our fleet watched outside all French harbours, while it prevented French ships from sailing out, and smashed them if they did, was not so easy. The mere fear of invasion was enough to set the hearts of all Britons beating.

  Volunteers flocked to arms from every parish in our island; and by 1804 we had nearly half a million men in fighting trim in a population of little over eleven millions. If we were to keep the same proportion to-day, we ought to have nearly three millions of men under arms. How many have we got?

  But in truth Napoleon’s chances of invading us were not great. Nelson had broken his

  Mediterranean fleet to splinters at the Battle of the Nile, 1798, and had also finished a Danish fleet (which had been got ready to help France)

  at the Battle of Copenhagen in 1800. A few months of peace, 1802-3, followed the retirement of Pitt from the Government. But the war began again in 1803; Pitt came back inthe next year, and governed Britain until his death at the beginning of 1806. The years

  1803-4-5 were the most dangerous. Napoleon had got a great army at Boulogne (which is almost within sight of the shore of Kent, not three hours’ sail, with a fair wind, from Folkestone), ready to be rowed across the Channel in large, flat-bottomed boats.

  But what was the use of that without a French fleet to protect the flat-bottoms? If they had tried to get across unprotected, a single British warship could have pounded them into a red rice-pudding in a few minutes; and so our real task was to watch the French harbours and prevent their ships of war getting out. The final struggle came in 1805. The French

  Admiral Villeneuve managed to get out from

  Toulon; drove off the British force which was watching the Spanish ports, and so freed the

  Spanish fleet. He then sailed across the Atlantic and back again, in the hope of drawing all

  British ships away from the Channel. After a long chase Lord Nelson met him off the

  Spanish coast, and won the Battle of Trafalgar in October, 1805. It was almost a dead calm all the morning as the great fleets crept slowly toward each other — they must have looked like moving thunder-clouds. Lord Nelson’s famous signal “England expects that everyman will do his duty” wasspelled out in little!

  flags from the mast of his great ship the Victory.

  And every man did. Almost the whole French and Spanish fleets were there sunk or taken prisoners. No such victory had been won at sea since the Greeks beat the Persians at Salamis nearly five hundred years before Christ. Nelson was killed in the battle; but the plan of invasion was over and Napoleon never resumed it. The

  French navy hardly recovered from this defeat before our own days. You can see the Victory still moored in Portsmouth harbour, and can go into the little dark cabin in which Nelson died, happy in spite of mortal pain, because he just lived long enough to hear of England’s triumph.

  The remaining colonies of France and her allies were gradually conquered during the next ten years. But at first this seemed to help little toward freeing the continent of Europe which, by 1807, France had subdued right up to the Russian frontier. Prussia had been beaten to pieces in 1806; Austria which, on the whole, had been the most steady of Napoleon’s enemies, was beaten for the third time in 1809, and was half inclined to make an alliance with him; but by that time Napoleon had run his head against something which was going to destroy him.

  mfuch the worst governed, most ignorant,

  most backward nation in Europe, was Spain.

  Napoleon thought it would be easy to put one of his brothers on the throne of Spain, and one of his generals on the throne, of Portugal.

  Spain was, besides, the oldest ally of France;

  but when Napoleon tried this plan in 1808,

  she became at once his fiercest enemy. She did not want to be “reformed” or better governed;

  she wanted to keep her stupid, cruel Catholic kings and priests. Both Spain and Portugal at once cried out for British help; and, as the road by sea was in our hands, we began at once to send help in money, and very soon in men. With the men we sent a man. “ In war,”

  said Napoleon himself, “it is not so much men as a man that counts.” Sir Arthur
Wellesley,

  one day to be known as the Duke of Wellington, was perhaps not so great a soldier as

  Marlborough or as Napoleon. His previous experience of war had been mostly in India, where,

  under his brother, the Marquis Wellesley, who was Governor-General of India, he had won,

  in 1803 and 1804, great victories over enormous swarms of native cavalry called Mahrattas. But he was the most patient and skilful leader we had had since Marlborough, and he had complete confidence in himself and in his power to beat the French.

  He landed in Portugal in 1808, won a great battle at Vimeiro, and early in the next year had driven the French back into Spain. He then made Lisbon (the capital city of Portugal)

  his “base of operations.” The British fleet was able continually to bring supplies, money,

  food and men to Lisbon. Wellington fortified the approach to the city very strongly, and was able to repel an enormous French army which came to attack him there in 1810. He followed it up into Spain as it retreated; and year by year advanced further into Spain,

  winning battle after battle. But each winter he fell back upon his base. The fierce patriotism of the Spanish peasants, who killed every

  Frenchman they met, helped us enormously,

  though in the battles their armies were of little use to us, and their generals worse than useless.

  At last in 1813 came a year in which Wellington did not need to retreat into Portugal. He won the great Battle of Yittoria in June, and then drove the French back in headlong flight over the Pyrenees. Early in 1814 our men were fighting their way into that French province, which, five hundred years before, we used to call “English Aquitaine.”

  And meanwhile in 1812, at the other end of

  Europe, Napoleon himself had suffered an even worse disaster. He had invaded Russia, a

  country whose people were as ignorant, as backward and as patriotic as the Spaniards. The greatest French army that was ever put on foot had starved and been frozen among the ]

  snows of Russia. As its broken remnants ]

  retreated through Germany, the Prussians,

  whom the French had cruelly ill-treated since

  1806, jumped upon them, and called on all other Germans to do the same. The Austrians joined in. England poured money into the hands of all who would fight the French. Since

  Pitt’s death, until 1812 there had only been one great British Minister, George Canning;

  but he had resigned his office in 1809. Now in

  1812 Lord Castelreagh, a minister almost as great as Pitt, came to the front, and it was his government that really finished the war. Napoleon could, indeed, collect a new army in

  1813, but it was never so good as the one he had lost in Russia; and it suffered a fearful defeat at Leipzig. After a most gallant defence of the French roads which lead to Paris, Napoleon was compelled by his own generals to resign the throne, and Louis XVIII, the heir of the old French monarchy, was recalled to

  France as king in 1814. Napoleon was allowed to retire to the little Italian island of

  Elba, but he did not stay there long.

  In order to arrange a general peace, the

  great powers of Europe sent ambassadors to

  Vienna. But while they were doing this, in

  March, 1815, Napoleon escaped from Elba,

  landed in France, and called on the French people to follow him once more. Nearly all

  Frenchmen were tired of war; but, like other brave fellows, they loved glory, and Napoleon’s name spelt glory for them. They forgot his tyranny and his folly, and they proclaimed him Emperor yet again. Europe was utterly taken by surprise, and nearly all its armies had been dismissed. But the Prussians and English were more ready for fighting than the Russians and Austrians, and so within three months they were able to collect over two hundred thousand men for the defence of

  Belgium. Napoleon’s new army was nearly three hundred thousand strong; but he only took about half of it to attack Belgium early in the summer of 1815.

  The Duke of Wellington and the Prussian general, Marshal Blucher, were waiting for him in a long line to the south of Brussels.

  On June 16th, Napoleon’s left wing fought a fearful drawn battle with Wellington at Quatre

  Bras, and his right wing just managed to beat

  Blucher at Ligny. On the 17th there was no fighting; but the Prussians had fallen back eastward, and had lost touch with the English.

  So, on the 18th, Wellington and the English army, ninety thousand strong, had to bear,

  for seven hours, the attacks of a hundred and twenty thousand Frenchmen at Waterloo.

  Wellington knew that Blucher would come and help him as fast as he could; but the roads were heavy from rain, and Blucher had been fearfully hard-hit two days before. But at last he came, though his men did not get into action till about 4.30 p. m., and did not produce much effect on the French for two hours more. We had then been defending our position since 11

  a. m. But soon after seven we began to advance, and the night closed with a headlong flight of the French Emperor and his army on the road to Paris.

  This battle of Waterloo ended the Great War;

  the last war, let us hope, that we shall ever have to fight against the French, who are now our best friends. Long ago Pitt had said

  “England has saved herself by her exertions,

  she will save Europe by her example.” In

  1815 she had indeed done both.

  When the final treaty was made in that year, our gains in actual territory were small.

  We gave back the greater part of the colonies we had taken from France and her allies,

  keeping only the West Indian island of Tobago, the Island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean,the Dutch colonies of Ceylon and the Cape of

  Good Hope, and the little Dutch province of ‘Guiana in South America. In the Mediterranean, we kept the island of Malta, but gave back Minorca to Spain. Our real reward,

  then, came in the commerce of the world,

  which during the war had passed wholly into our hands.

  The French Wars.

  The boats of Newhaven and Folkestone and

  Dover,

  To Dieppe and Boulogne and to Calais cross over;

  And in each of those runs there is not a square yard

  Where the English and French haven’t fought and fought hard!

  If the ships that were sunk could be floated once more,

  They’d stretch like a raft from the shore to the shore,

  And we’d see, as we crossed, every pattern and plan

  Of ship that was built since sea-fighting began.

  There’d be biremes and brigantines, cutters and sloops,

  Cogs, carracks and galleons with gay gilded poops —

  Hoys, caravels, ketches, corvettes and the rest,

  As thick as regattas, from Ramsgate to Brest.

  But the galleys of Csesar, the squadrons of

  Sluys,

  And Nelson’s crack frigates are hid from«our eyes,

  Where the high Seventy-fours of Napoleon’s days,

  Lie down with Deal luggers and French chassemarees.

  They’ll answer no signal — they rest on the ooze

  With their honey-combed guns and their skeleton crews —

  And racing above them, through sunshine or gale,

  The Cross-Channel packets come in with the

  Mail.

  Then the poor sea-sick passengers, English and

  French,

  Must open their trunks on the Custom-house bench,

  While the officers rummage for smuggled cigars

  And nobody thinks of our blood-thirsty wars!

  CHAPTER XII

  GEORGE III TO GEORGE V, 1815-1911

  The period of English History which remains for me to tell you about will bring us down to our own days. It is a much more difficult story to understand than any that I have already told you. It is also much more dif
ficult to write about.

  For people hold such diverse opinons about the events of the present day and of the last hundred years. These opinions are very often the result of their upbringing; “we have heard with our ears and our fathers have told us.”

  Men are still alive who were born before Waterloo was fought. As you get older you will form opinions about these events for yourselves; and so it is desirable for me, in this last chapter, rather to state what did take place than to try to guide your opinions. And it will be easier to do this if you, my readers, will allow me to treat the period as all one, rather than narrate the events year by year.

  On the whole, the progress of Great Britainduring the past ninfty-five years has been toward what is called “Democracy,” a long word meaning “Government by the people.”

  This form of government may be said to be still “on its trial.” Let us hope that it will prove a great success. It will only do so if all classes of the people realize that they have duties as well as rights, and if each class realizes that every other class has rights as well as itself.

  Five sovereigns have reigned and died during these ninety-five years, and the sixth is now upon the throne. George III had long been blind and insane when he died in 1820, and it was the eldest of his seven sons who became

  King in that year as George IV. This man had been acting as Prince Regent for his insane father since 1810. He was naturally clever and had some kind of selfish good nature,

  but he was mean, cowardly, and an incredible liar. Some famous lies he told so often that at last he got to believe them himself; for instance,

  he was fond of saying that he had been present at the Battle of Waterloo, whereas he had never seen a shot fired in his life.

  He was succeeded in 1830 by a stupid honest old gentleman, his brother, William IV, who,