The Years of Endurance

by Arthur Bryant

  As usual the Government failed to make up its mind. It did bring itself to inform its Viceroy in Corsica—where a provisional government had been set up at the islanders' request under the British crown1—that the 5000 troops promised as a reinforcement could not be sent. But it allowed its cavalry to remain in Hanover, continued to prepare a West Indian expedition and drifted into becoming a party to operations in Brittany.

  Such irresolution arose from the dual nature of the coalition Government. Carried away by the enthusiasm of Burke and Windham, the Portland Whigs had made themselves champions of the emigres, in opposition to the King, who represented the typical John Bull distrust of all Frenchmen.2 Against his judgment Pitt was gradually brought to a grudging recognition of their right to

  1 Thus technically making Napoleon Bonaparte a British subject.

  2 " My own inclination would tend to oblige every one of that perfidious nation here either to go on that service or, by the Aliens Act, be removed from this country.''—George III to Grenville, 2nd Aug., 1794. H. M. C. Dropmore, II, 609.

  British support. Thousands of them had been released from the Allied armies by the end of the war in northern France. There was an opportunity to enrol them in British pay and in the growing royalism of Brittany a field for their services.

  This policy was strengthened by the arrival in England of Count Puisaye, a giant Breton who had embraced the monarchical cause rather late in the day. He made up for it by the vehemence with which he now pressed it on his hosts. His idea was to* band all the Emigres in Europe into a white army which, equipped by British money, should make a descent on Brittany during the summer. By its threat to Brest the landing would help the Navy—a consideration for an overstrained Admiralty—and, by carrying the war into the enemy's country, forestall any attempt to invade England.

  Unfortunately—though Puisaye's enthusiasm obscured the fact —the Royalists were far from united. They suffered from the feuds common to political exiles in all ages. The aristocratic Court refugees who followed the murdered King's brothers, the Counts of Provence and Artois, regarded upstart rustics hke Puisaye with contempt. In Paris the Royalist committee was jealous of the provincial leaders. In La Vendee, after the ravages of the Republican " infernal columns," the peasants had settled down to an uneasy truce confirmed by a mutually insincere pact between their chieftain, Charette, and the Convention. The other Vendean leader— the grim ex-gamekeeper, Stofflet—refused to recognise it and maintained a guerrilla war in the woods.

  Yet the Royalist cause was undoubtedly gaining ground. Despite her victories the Republic was showing renewed signs of the spiritual and financial bankruptcy which Pitt had always foretold. The currency was discredited, the price of provisions soaring, and the peasants, trusting no one, were holding back their corn. The cities were full of bread queues and unemployed artisans. In the capital the Terror had been succeeded by a vicious reaction, directed by unprincipled profiteers and enforced by gangs of youthful nouveaux riches called Muscadins, who ran a counter-terror of their own in the streets and theatres. In May, 1795, a rising of the starving faubourgs was followed by a purge of the Popular Party: in this even Carnot, the organiser of victory, nearly lost his head. Thousands of decent and moderate folk began to think of a restoration as the only hope of justice, bread and peace. Several towns even elected Royalist mayors.

  Seeking the establishment in France of a stable government with which an honourable peace could be made, Pitt could scarcely refuse the entreaties of Puisaye and his parliamentary backers. In May an official invitation was sent out to all the emigres in Europe. An army of invasion was formed in Hampshire under the Bourbon flag. The Government provided money, arms and uniforms. It even—very unwisely—released a number of French prisoners who, wishing to return home, affected a Royalist conversion. It still hesitated to provide troops of its own. But it undertook to escort the expedition across the Channel and land it on the Quiberon peninsula.

  On June 17th an advance guard of 4,000 with arms for 20,000 more sailed from Southampton. A British squadron under Commodore Sir John Borlase Warren accompanied it, while the Channel Fleet made a sweep under Hood's brother, Admiral Lord Bridport. On the 20th the latter encountered the French Fleet off Lorient and chased it back to port, taking three capital ships. A few days later the emigres disembarked. They were greeted as saviours by thousands of Breton peasants. On July 3rd they captured the fort of Quiberon and some 600 Republican prisoners.

  On hearing this the Government sent a fast frigate to Bremen for the Comte d'Artois who, through the death of his nephew in a Paris prison, had become Bourbon heir presumptive. It also decided to send a British force under Lord Moira to support Puisaye, who was now boasting that in a few weeks he would have 80,000 men in arms. Yet these hopes were offset by news of heavy Republican , troop concentrations in the west. The liquidation of the Spanish war had released large new forces, and Hoche, the hero of France, was appointed to their command. The young giant's resolution contrasted ominously with the jealousies and delays in the Royalist camp. The aristocrats sneered at the clownish " Chouan " peasants and their fanatic, ignorant priests. The " converted " prisoners from England revealed their real sympathies, 'the Royalist commanders quarrelled among themselves, for the British Government with characteristic vagueness had failed to define their responsibilities.

  The result was disaster. On the night of July 19th the Republicans entered the fort by treachery and destroyed or captured the entire Royalist force. Only Puisaye and a handful of fugitives escaped to the fleet. The prisoners, including the flower of the French aristocracy, were massacred, in spite of Hoche's safe conduct, by the orders of the Convention leaders, who hoped in this way to cover their own treasonable correspondence.

  This bloody fiasco, for which it was severely taken to task by the Opposition, placed the Government in a dilemma. It had committed itself to a campaign in support of the French Royalists and had invited Artois to England. But the Royalists had been defeated and their foothold in France lost. To make matters worse, the terms of the Peace of Basle on July 22nd revealed the treacherous cession of the Spanish half of Santo Domingo, taming what had hitherto been an Allied base into hostile territory. This, combined with bad news from the Windward Isles, made the dispatch of reinforcements to the West Indies essential. Of the 20,000 British troops intended for Brittany, not more than 5000 could now be spared. Nor was Moira's comment on those that reached him at Southampton encouraging. " The foot want arms, the cavalry saddles; I hear that the 40th are a serviceable body of men, but they have never fired powder yet."

  The proper course would have been to apologise to the French Princes and call off the expedition. But this would have injured the prestige of the Portland Whigs in the Cabinet. Sooner than endanger the coalition the Government decided to carry out its plan without either a landing-place on the mainland or an effective force to land. As Moira refused to undertake this, 4000 troops were sent off under General Doyle to occupy the island of Noirmoutier, off the mouth of the Loire, and use it as a base for renewed operations in La Vendee. The Comte d'Artois accompanied them with the ostensible hope of joining the heroic Charette. No one apparently asked how the expedition was to be maintained in the hurricane season on the most dangerous coast in Europe.

  As a landing even on Noirmoutier proved impracticable, Doyle occupied his secondary objective, the small, barren island of Yeu. The hungry soldiers quickly ate the inhabitants out of hut and home. On the mainland the Vendeans, hearing that their prince was off the coast, rose in their thousands and acclaimed his coming. After some weeks of nervous hesitation, Artois declared his inability to land in person and sent Charette a sword of honour.

  The rebellion fizzled out, and a few months later its betrayed leader died on the scaffold. A rising in Paris in October—the Thirteenth Vendemiaire—was suppressed by a timely " whiff of grapeshot." It marked a decisive step in the rise to fame of Brigadier Bonaparte, whom Barras had resurrected for the occasion,
shabby and almost starving, from the discarded followers of Robespierre. Meanwhile, after several hundred men and horses had died from famine and exposure, Doyle's expedition was recalled to England. The evacuation evoked a superb piece of rescue work by the Navy in the Atlantic gales.

  For the second time in six months Britain had been reminded that the gates of western Europe were shut to her inadequate armies. The invasion of the Continent was beyond her powers: she had too many responsibilities elsewhere. All through the summer of 1795 Dundas was on tenterhooks for news of the race to the Cape which he had set in motion in the spring. Not till November 23 rd did the Park and Tower guns proclaim that the gateway to India was safely in British hands. Major-General Craig had reached False Bay with the first contingent early in June, only to find that the Dutch Governor refused him leave to land. He had had to wait a month until reinforcements from home and St. Helena enabled him to gain a foothold at Simon's Town. Thence with 4000 troops and too little artillery he had fought his way through the pass of Muizenberg to Cape Town, which he had entered on September 16th. A Dutch naval expedition to regain the colony in the following year was destroyed by British warships in Saldanha Bay before it could land.

  Elsewhere, too, Dundas's bold initiative against the Dutch colonies was rewarded. The bread he had cast upon the waters returned to him. Malacca, with its command of the vital highway to the Spice Islands and China seas, was captured on August 18th by a force from India. A week later Trincomalee, in the north of Ceylon, surrendered to Colonel James Stuart of the 72nd and 1100 Europeans and two Indian battalions. Colombo and the rest of the island were taken early in the following year, together with Dutch Amboina and Banka. The wealth of these places, thus denied to France, was deflected to swell the rising customs of Britain.

  The new expedition to the West Indies was delayed by lack of men and equipment till the autumn. It sailed on November 16th under Sir Ralph Abercromby and Admiral Christian, and was at once overwhelmed by a terrific storm off the Chesil Beach. It sailed again early in December, only to be dispersed by a second storm.1 Not till March 17th, 1796, did Abercromby reach Barbados, and not till the end of April could he assemble sufficient force to begin his work of putting down rebellion in the British islands. With only half the troops originally intended he succeeded in capturing St. Lucia, where he left the able John Moore—now a brigadier—in command and sent a detachment to seize Demerara, Berbice and Essequibo, the Dutch colonies on the South American mainland. These last brought Britain a rich return: during the next three years their exports to her of cotton, sugar and coffee multiplied tenfold. The story of these successes and the pains endured by Englishmen to achieve them—prickly heat, yellow fever, loathsome reptiles, salt pork and dry biscuits, no medicines or comforts and a barbarous " enemy determined to dispute every inch "—are epitomised in a survivor's proud if characteristically complacent phrase: " It was sometimes dubious how the affair would end; but British valour, perseverance and resolution, as it does on all occasions, triumphed at last." 2

  The price was far too high. During the autumn disease reduced the British force in Santo Domingo from 9000 to 1600, and the garrisons of the other islands proportionately. Abercromby—a veteran of 61 with a love for his men—did his best by abolisning drills and parades in the heat, adapting stiff, stuffy uniforms to the tropics and improving camp sanitation. But nothing could have halted the wastage of the climate but the one measure which deference to vested interests forbade: the enrolment of a native West Indian army. Between 1794 and 1796, 40,000 British troops perished in these fatal islands.

  The drain on the country's man-power had serious repercussions on the continental campaigns of 1795 and 1796. After the defection of Prussia and the fall of Holland the Austrians had concentrated their forces against France's southern frontier. On June 13 th, 1795,

  1 Among those who suffered in the two storms was the future victor of Waterloo, who but for them might have perished of yellow fever in a West Indian swamp.

  2 Dyott, I, 103.

  after the usual delays, they took the offensive, driving the French army of Italy southwards from the Apennines to the Genoese riviera. The capture of Vado with its fine anchorage opened a door to British amphibious operations on the enemy's flank.

  The opportunity could not be taken because the reinforcements originally intended for Corsica had been deflected to La Vendee and the West Indies. Even without them the Navy might have seriously interfered with the French army's communications along the vulnerable Corniche Road. But Lord Hotham was incapable of initiative. In June he failed for the second time to destroy the Toulon fleet in a " miserable action " off the isles of Hyeres. It is true that he sent Captain Nelson to Vado Bay to co-operate with Devins, the aged Austrian commander. But the force detached for the purpose was so weak that even Nelson's restless zeal could not make it effective. The latter at first was full of hope, expecting to see the Austrians in Nice by the autumn. But by September he was convinced that the only object of his allies was to touch another four millions of English money.

  The opportunity of destroying the French army of Italy passed. Ragged and ill-disciplined though it was, it was not of the stuff that yields to a supine foe. In the autumn it received strong reinforcements from the Spanish frontier. Before the winter a plan of General Bonaparte's, now working in the Topographical Bureau of the Committee of Public Safety, was applied with startling results. On November 23rd General Scherer surprised the Imperial troops at Loano and drove them back beyond the Apennines.

  But by a strange irony the failure of the campaign on which Austria had built her hopes for 1795 was offset by success in a theatre where she looked for none and had done her best to avoid fighting at all. On September 7th Jourdan and Pichegru with two French armies had crossed the Rhine to carry the war into Germany. The Jacobins anticipated that their offensive would complete the break-up of the ramshackle Reich, begun by the defection of Prussia in the spring. By an advance on Vienna down the Danube the French hegemony of Europe, so nearly achieved in 1704 under the Lilies, would be completed under the Tricolour in 1796. And this time, since the British had been driven from the Continent, there could be no Blenheim to save the Hapsburgs at the eleventh hour.

  But though Pichegru seized Mannheim and every petty court in Germany echoed with the cry " the French are coming," the campaign did not go as the politicians in Paris planned. For they had not reckoned with the consequences of their own corruption. Under the cynical rule of profiteers, contractors and speculators the diaphanous robe of the demi-monde was now substituted for the bloodstained cap of liberty. The citoyenne Therezia, the wife of Tallien and mistress of Barras, drove in her scarlet coach through the unswept streets where half-naked wretches picked rubbish heaps for sustenance, her hair bright with jewels and her thighs encircled with diamonds. " The reign of the san-culottes was followed by that of the sans-chemises" 1

  The eternal laws which govern the operations of war are just. Men will not the for those whom they know to be unworthy of their sacrifice. Hungry and ragged, the armies of the Rhine lost heart, for they knew why supplies were failing and their families starving. When the Austrian generals, noting the change in Republican morale, counter-attacked, the invaders crumbled. On November 22nd the Imperialists recaptured Mannheim, and a few days later Mainz and Frankfurt. By Christmas they had regained the greater part of the Palatinate. The French, driven back across the Rliine, were reduced to pillaging their own countryside.

  Thus as 1795 drew to a close the war seemed to be approaching a stalemate. In France galloping inflation had set in. The value of the paper assignat fell to almost nothing: a bushel, of haricot beans that had fetched 120 livres in the spring sold for twelve times as much by the autumn. Every one except the high livers in Paris was sad, disillusioned and hungry. The roads were breaking up, the hearths desolate, the hospitals deserted.

  And the enemies of France after three years of war were as embarrassed. Austria, before her unexpected vic
tories in the Palatinate, had seemed at the end of her resources; Piedmont had already sued for an armistice; Spain, Holland and Prussia had given up the fight and entered the Jacobin camp. Britain was suffering from food shortage and unrest. In the autumn of 1795 she sustained serious losses at sea. Hotham allowed a French squadron to escape from Toulon into the Adantic, where it captured the entire

  1 Madelin, 550.

  Levant convoy of thirty-one vessels, together with one of the three escorting battleships. This grim disaster, which spread ruin through the City, was followed by a raid on the Jamaica convoy by French frigates. Another force from Toulon harried the Levant, and in the New Year squadrons from Rochefort and the Texel, evading Bridport's cruisers, threatened the East Indies and the Cape.

  These calamities made the City think more kindly of peace. To idealists like Windham or to the old King it was still something unthinkable.1 But shrewd men of business were growing concerned at the continued failure of British military enterprises and their rising cost. The tame dissolution of the terrible Convention in October and its succession by a board of five Directors—of a somewhat commercial complexion—seemed evidence of a more reasonable frame of mind. And now that the Republican armies, after all their victories, were shown to be as liable to defeat as the Austrian and British, might not some better basis be found for future security than eternal war? Even Pitt, never very far in his vantage point at the Treasury from the general feeling of the City, began to fancy so.

  The first hint of the way his mind was moving came in a speech from the Throne at the opening of Parliament in October, 1795. Anarchy in France had at last led to a crisis: should it end in any order compatible with the tranquillity of other countries and the observance of international treaties, the Government would not be backward in readiness to negotiate a general peace. In the meantime the wisest course was to prosecute the war with vigour. A still clearer indication was contained in a royal message to Parliament a few weeks after the Directory assumed office.