The Years of Endurance

by Arthur Bryant

1 Wheeler and Broadley, I, 112.

  2 Cornwallis, II, 333-4.

  at the deficiency in equipment, the endless muddle and delays, the vague indecisiveness of the dispositions which the Cabinet was perpetually discussing and amending.1

  Not that the Cabinet was without a plan. It had many. " I hope," Pitt wrote in January, 1798, " we shall have to make the option between burning their ships before they set out, or sinking them either on their passage or before their troops can land, or destroying them as soon as they have landed, or starving them and taking them prisoners afterwards." Innumerable suggestions were canvassed, ranging from an antiquarian's report on the measures used against the Armada to an ingenious Pimlico machinist's new war chariot, " in which two persons, advancing or retreating, can manage two pieces of ordnance (three-pounders) with alacrity and in safety, so as to do execution at the distance of two furlongs." 2 Directors were appointed to evacuate cattle and vehicles and waste the countryside in the enemy's path and elaborate instructions issued to the public for the house to house defence of London. Blockhouses were to be built in every square, barricades erected in the principal streets with bells to summon the inhabitants to their stations, hand-grenades served out to corner-houses, night cellars searched for aliens, underground tunnels blocked, fire engines mobilised, guards posted at water works and on bridges, and all boats moved to the north bank of the Thames.

  But these preparations would probably have availed little had the country's first line of defence not been the sea. The Channel Fleet with its advance division of great ships off Brest, the light squadrons of frigates and gunboats in the Downs, St. Helens, Portland Road, Cawsand Bay and the Western Approaches, were the real bulwark against the invader. The Admiralty was full of vigour and new-found confidence that spring. It even abandoned its professional conservatism to enrol from the hardy smugglers and fishermen of the south coast an amateur force of Sea Fencibles, to serve in flotillas, gather intelligence and guard the lesser creeks and coves. Gillray came out in February with a cartoon, " The Storm Rising," portraying Fox and his traitor crew vainly hauling over the embattled raft of" Liberty " with its bloody banners of Slavery, Murder, Atheism, Plunder, Blasphemy, while Pitt to repel it blew

  1 The Diary of the Rt. Hon. William Windham (ed. Baring) 395.

  2 Wheeler and Broadley, I, 119.

  out of the clouds giant waves labelled with the names of Howe, Duncan, St. Vincent, Gardner and Curtis.

  The naval authorities did not, however, guarantee that the French would be unable to land. In the view of Admiral Sir Charles Middleton, expressed in a letter to Dundas of January 28th, 1798, invasion would be quite a feasible operation. " The truth is," he wrote, " that there are very few things impracticable to active minds with sound judgments, and, if the French will venture to sacrifice 50,000 men, of which there cannot be much doubt considering what has already passed, I see no insuperable difficulties in landing 30,000." 1 At the end of February there was an alarm when a report of unidentified ships south of Pordand was flashed to London over the new semaphore telegraph which, with its giant arms and shutters and chain of towers stretching from the naval ports to the roof of Westminster Abbey, brought news to the Admiralty from the coasts in a few minutes. Only after a special Cabinet meeting had been called was it learnt that the strange sails belonged to a fleet of homecoming West Indiamen. A few days later there was another alarm when guns were heard firing out at sea at Eastbourne and mysterious lights seen at Brighton.

  But the Admirals who advised the Government were not relying on defensive measures. Like Drake, they advocated carrying the war into the enemy's country. They envisaged a number of small, highly-trained, joint naval and military units capable of striking-sudden blows at every opportunity.2 These were to attack the flat—

  1 Spencer Papers, II, 269.

  2 " Nothing appears better calculated on the one hand to keep this country in a state of security, and on the other the enemy in a constant state of awe and apprehension, than a sufficient movable sea-and-land force, calculated to act with celerity, and to seize every favourable occasion of destroying their preparations and attacking them on their own coast. Considered as a plan of humbling and distressing the enemy, creating a conviction in France that all their projects of invasion are fraught with disgrace and ruin, and thereby to increase the clamour for peace and against the present government, it is the best that can be undertaken with our present means.

  " It is also the best in another view, not less essential to the support of the war at home, namely, as affording the most effectual means of counteracting the manoeuvres of the disaffected and the alarms of the desponding, of showing the energy of the nation, and above all of keeping alive the spirit of enterprise by which alone our public spirit (now fortunately raised by the late conduct of the enemy) can be maintained in a disposition suitable to the · difficulties of our situation."—Anonymous Memorandum (possibly by Dundas), Spencer Papers, II, 235.

  bottomed invasion boats in shallow waters, pounce on their ports, shipping and arsenals and generally keep the French in a constant state of tension and confusion. In the event of a landing they were to transport picked troops by sea and to harass the enemy's rear. General Sir Charles Grey, commanding the south-eastern District, issued from his headquarters at Barham Court, Canterbury, special instructions to all troops in danger zones to train men for such operations. They were to carry only blankets, haversacks and canteens: " not one woman," it was added, " must on this occasion accompany the soldiers. . . . The General is sure that every thinking good soldier will readily see the convenience to themselves and propriety of this order and cheerfully submit to a short separation." 1

  These vigorous offensive measures commended themselves to Secretary Dundas, who was indeed their principal patron and protagonist. First nurtured in the school of Chatham, he was a strong believer in the principle that the worst defence is to sit still and let the enemy attack. " Our Army is a very small one," he told his colleague of the Admiralty, whom he was constantly favouring with his projects, " but we must make the best use we can of it with a view to the joint defence of Great Britain and Ireland, comprehending under that view some mode of at least alarming our enemies along the coast." His mind was full of projects for sinking old ships in the mouth of enemy ports, landing small raiding parties and testing, in his own words, how far Calais or Boulogne or Gravelines might be proper subjects for a few bombs or fireships.2 " We cannot so effectually annoy the enemy," he wrote, " or keep alive the spirits of our country as by constant and unremitting offensive operations during the whole summer."3 But the weakness of Dundas's method of waging war was that its technical execution never came up to its strategic conception. Incurably a politician, he never grasped the overriding necessity for flawless accuracy of detail that even the simplest operation of war requires. Any expedient or compromise which promised to avoid or turn a difficulty satisfied his mind, and he left the rest to hope.

  In April, encouraged by a successful bombstrdment of Havre, where a small French invasion force was waiting to attack the

  1 Annual Register, 1798. Appendix to Chronicle, 189.

  2 Spencer Papers, II, 317.

  3 Ibid., 351-2.

  British island of St. Marcou, Dundas persuaded his colleagues to embark on an ambitious venture against Ostend. The scheme originated in the mind of that clever but incurably plausible naval officer, Captain Home Popham. His idea was to blow up the Saas lock of the new Bruges-Ostend canal, along which the French were expected to move great masses of invasion barges from Holland. Secondary objectives were to destroy the port installations and carry out a raid on transport concentrations at Flushing. Popham, who had the supreme merit to a politician of being always " very sanguine' succeeded in arousing the enthusiasm of General Sir Charles Grey. Together the General and Dundas, who was enthusiastically backed by the Under-Secretary-for-War, Huskisson, so bombarded Spencer that the latter compelled the Admiralty to appoint Popham to the naval command
of the expedition. The result was that his superiors in the Service, who regarded Popham with some justice as a young man with more bounce than experience, gave the venture as little support as they could and by needless delays possibly contributed to its failure. 1400 troops, including 600 Guards wrung from a reluctant King, were embarked in flat-bottomed gunboats and landed under cover of Popham's frigates at Ostend during the night of May 19th. At first all went well: the French were taken by surprise and the sluice gates destroyed with only a few casualties. Then the wind backed into the wrong quarter and, as more experienced sailors than Popham had from the first foreseen, the rising surf made it impossible to re-embark the troops. After several hours of useless resistance, in which sixty men lost their lives, the remainder laid down their arms.

  Yet the raid at the moment when all Europe was expecting the invasion of England showed men the dauntless character of the islanders. " The spirit and courage of the country," wrote Pitt,

  " has risen so as to be fairly equal to this crisis The French go on,

  I believe in earnest, but the effect here is only to produce all the efforts and all the spirit we can wish." 1 A distinguished foreign writer, Mallet du Pan, visiting England that May, paid a striking testimony to the national temper. " Here we are in the full tide of war, crushed by taxation, and exposed to the fury of the most desperate of enemies, but nevertheless security, abundance, and

  1 Lord Rosebery, Pitt (1891), 208.

  energy reign supreme, alike in cottage and Palace. I have not met with a single instance of nervousness or apprehension. The spectacle presented by public opinion has far surpassed my expectation. The nation had not yet learnt to know its own strength or its resources. The government has taught it the secret and inspired it with an unbounded confidence almost amounting to presumption."

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Britain Strikes Back 1798

  " I trust my name will stand on record when the money-

  makers will be forgot." Nelson.

  " Britannia needs no bulwarks,

  No towers along the steep ;

  Her march is o'er the mountain waves :

  Her home is on the deep." Campbell.

  ON Thursday, April 12th, 1798, Parson Woodforde dined on a neck of pork roasted. " By the public papers," he noted, " everything appears most alarming not only respecting Great Britain but every state in Europe and beyond it. O Tempora O Mores! " England was expecting invasion, Ireland on the verge of rebellion and the Continent lost. With Austria's surrender the last barriers to French aggression had gone. In February, in flagrant defiance of their own promises, the French marched into Rome, emptied the Papal treasury and sacked the city. In March, on a trumped-up pretext, they invaded Switzerland, seized sixteen million gold francs, annexed Geneva and Mulhausen and proclaimed an " indivisible " Helvetic Republic. Here as in Italy their liberating march was marked by demolished houses, profaned churches, outrage, hatred and fear.1

  Yet running through all this cruelty and destruction was a thread of policy. The Republic was refilling its coffers before its next pounce. And it was doing so at the instance of General Bonaparte. It was one of his confidential officers, Commandant Berthier, who robbed the Pope. " In sending me to Rome," he wrote, " you appoint me Treasurer to the English expedition: I will endeavour to fill the chest."

  But it was no longer a direct leap at the throat of England nor

  1 See Wynne Diaries, II, 213, 217. 255

  even an assault on Ireland that Bonaparte was planning. His inspections of the ports had convinced him that even temporary command of the narrow seas was at present beyond the reach of France. In a report on his return to Paris on February 23 rd he declared that a seaborne invasion without it would be " the boldest and most difficult operation ever attempted." It was idle to underestimate one's opponent. She was still a great Power, and the Republic must never threaten in vain.

  So Bonaparte assured the Directory. Yet it was not of the Republic nor of France that the little Corsican was dunking. He had no fear of British shopkeepers playing at soldiers: the veteran army of Italy, even if only a third of it reached the Kentish shore, would soon make short work of these. As for Ireland the country was already nine-tenths conquered: a few French cannon rumbling over the Cork or Dublin cobble stones that angry spring, and every British throat in the island would be cut. But the chances of tide and wind were too great to stake a world conqueror's course on. There were surer and richer prizes to be won first. After all, it would profit Bonaparte little to revolutionise Ireland and overturn Pitt's England only to lose his life or mar his bright star in some sordid, watery skirmish with a chance cruiser. He was not going to waste his incomparable genius to make the world—his oyster —safe for Barras and the plutocrats of the Luxembourg.

  For Bonaparte believed that Britain, with her antiquated feudalism, corroding commercial habits and loosening colonial ties, was already doomed. There was no need to strike prematurely at her heart when she was dying at the extremities. Her trade with Europe was at an end, for the greater part of the Continent had entered the Revolutionary order. If her commerce with Asia could be cut also, her bankers and oligarchs would face ruin. Without the colonial produce with which they paid for the grain of the Baltic and supported their unreal structure of usury and broking, the Navy would rot for lack of money. Invasion would become unnecessary.

  So Bonaparte told his political masters. The best way to injure England was by an expedition to the Levant and a threat to India where France could avenge herself for lost colonies. The selfish, greedy Directors believed him or pretended to. He wished to be gone. " I can no longer obey," he told a confidant, " I have tasted command and I cannot give it up. Since I cannot be master I shall leave France." There was nothing the Directors more ardently desired. If Bonaparte chose to take himself, his ambitions and his Caesarian army to Egypt he should be enabled to do so.

  But had the Directors been able to penetrate his disguise, they would have thought him even more dangerous than they supposed. To the few to whom he dared confide his dreams, he declared that he was about to conquer an eastern empire surpassing the fables of antiquity. He would not only destroy England's sordid hegemony in the Orient but found another, far vaster, in its place. In the East, he told his brother Lucien, there were six hundred million men. Compared with Asia, Europe was " a mere molehill." He would not only become its dictator but its prophet. He would found a new religion. His genius and passionate will would mould not only the present but the remote future.1 " We shall change the fate of the world," he told Talleyrand.

  The road to the East was open. By his Italian conquests he had driven the English battleships from the Mediterranean and secured a line of stepping-stones stretching along the Dalmatian and Ionian coasts towards Egypt. It would be child's play to seize that sandy, fabulous land in the name of its remote Turkish Sultan and " free " its effete people from the despotism of its Mameluke " aristocrats." It would only be another repetition of the familiar Revolutionary technique of conquest.

  Even before he had completed his inspection of the Flemish ports, Bonaparte had requested the naval authorities at Toulon to hold up the warships ordered for Brest and assemble transports. Three weeks later on March 5 th he drew up detailed plans for an Egyptian expedition. Thereafter events, as always when he directed, moved swiftly. On April 12th engineers, openly wearing French uniforms, landed at Alexandria and began to prepare for the reception of military forces and to collect information about the desert roads to Suez, the navigation of the Red Sea and British dispositions in the Indian Ocean. Already French agents were stirring up trouble in the great Indian state of Mysore, and its ruler, Tippoo Sahib, had

  1 " In Egypt,' he told Madame de Remusat, " I found myself free from the weariness and restraints of civilisation. I created a religion with a turban on my head and in my hand a new Koran which I should compose according to my own ideas." It is interesting to compare the crazy dreams of Hitler as outlined in Dr. Rauschning's H
itler Speaks.

  sent ambassadors to the Jacobin governor of Mauritius to invite a Franco-Arab army to India.

  Rumours of these preparations, which had been secretly going forward ever since Bonaparte's rape of Venice, had been slowly filtering through to England. In January Captain Sidney Smith, who was much employed by Grenville in confidential missions, smuggled a message out of Paris, where he was imprisoned, reporting that France had designs on Egypt and the Levant trade. But in its preoccupation with invasion and Ireland, the Government paid little attention to such warnings. It had more urgent dangers to consider. With every available ship concentrated in the Channel and off the Irish coast and with St. Vincent blockading a superior force in Cadiz, nothing could be spared for the Mediterranean. A Britain expecting invasion in Sussex could not police the Levant. Since the Mediterranean was now a French lake, information from that quarter was in any case notoriously unreliable and took many months of perilous travel to reach England.

  Yet by a strange combination of coincidence and daring, the British Government in the crucial spring of 1798 weakened its naval defences at home and sent a fleet into the Mediterranean. It did so without much thought of defeating Bonaparte's grandiose eastern designs, of which it was either ignorant or wholly sceptical. Its object was rather to prompt the European powers to revolt against the Jacobin yoke. For Pitt, knowing that his country could not contend for ever alone against the armed Revolution, was again endeavouring to build up a Coalition. It seemed the surest way of saving Britain.