Pitt appointed Dundas, now Lord Melville, his able but corrupt party manager, as First Lord of the Admiralty. He immediately took steps to reverse St Vincent’s anti-corruption policy, but he was soon censured for corruption himself in the House of Commons and Pitt lost one of his closest lieutenants.
The huge burden of defending Britain’s shores against Napoleon’s colossal war machine was now in the hands of a sick man. Pitt rose to the task magnificently. He resolved to take the war to France. In October and November of 1804 Boulogne was bombarded with rockets. Pitt also took the war to Spain, whose neutrality was a cover for an alliance with France. Spain had already paid some £3 million towards French naval costs and offered fifteen line-of-battle ships and 40,000 troops in support. The British demanded that Spain close her dockyards to French shipping. Then in September four British frigates intercepted four Spanish treasure ships returning from the Spanish colonies off Cape Santa Maria. The Spanish resisted: one ship blew up and the other three were captured with £1 million aboard. On 12 December Spain declared war upon Britain and committed twenty-five ships of the line and eleven frigates to the fight against Britain. On paper this enormously strengthened Napoleon’s position; but Pitt had been right in regarding the Spanish as effectively already part of the enemy war effort.
Pitt’s third offensive was to try and renew the land war against Napoleon. Once again he trawled the European continent for allies. First in his sights was Russia under its new young Tsar, Alexander. By November the latter, appalled by the murder of the Duc d’Enghien, was moving towards an alliance, and was tempted further by Pitt’s offer of £1.25 million for every 100,000 troops Russia put into the field. An Anglo-Russian alliance was formally signed at St Petersburg in April 1805.
Alexander, the grandson of Catherine the Great, had as his main aim a revival of the policy of expansionism. He wanted Russia to be in the front rank of Europe. Both Britain and France before 1792 had viewed Russian expansionism as the main threat to European peace, but now Pitt judged it could be well employed defeating the more immediately aggressive French expansionism.
The next target for Pitt’s proactive diplomacy was Austria. Both the Emperor Francis and his best soldier, his younger brother the Archduke Charles, favoured peace, partly to reinvigorate the Austrian army. Public opinion in Vienna was favourable to peace. But in February 1803 the French had imposed terms on Germany’s western statelets, which Austria had long regarded as being within its sphere of influence. Forty-one historic free cities and sixty-six ecclesiastical principalities were done away with and replaced by a handful of bigger entities loyal to France. Austria was fobbed off with three small prince-bishoprics along the Tyrol. The Prussians were given a majority in the electoral college that chose the Holy Roman Emperor, which would have the effect of excluding the Habsburgs from that honorific title. Austrian irritation turned to outright anger when Piedmont and Elba were seized.
This was followed by Napoleon’s coronation, which outraged the Austrian court as presuming to give the Corsican upstart the same rank as their Emperor. As already noted, Beethoven, who had so admired Napoleon’s progressive credentials that he had dedicated his Third Symphony to him, struck out the dedication, calling it the Eroica instead. Austria became increasingly irritated as Napoleon appropriated the sword of Charlemagne, as well as a crown with the Charlemagne circlet, and secured the Pope’s attendance at the coronation. Austrian diplomats, horrified at this upstaging of their Emperor, with Napoleon by now claiming Charlemagne as King of the French rather than the Germans, responded with derision that at the coronation ‘one sister [of Napoleon] sulked, another held smelling salts under her nose and a third let the mantle drop; and this made things worse because it then had to be picked up.’
Napoleon them went a stage further. He travelled to Milan to become King of Italy on 26 May. For this occasion he wore Charlemagne’s 800-year-old crown, taken from Monza. This was effectively an annexation of much of Italy and contrary to the Treaty of Luneville. It is hard to see Napoleon’s behaviour in any other light than that he was spoiling for a fight. He took pleasure in bullying Austria and did not care if the Austrians were finally provoked into standing up for their interests because he was sure he would win. By now even Austria’s feeble court party was fuming with impatience and had decided this was the right time to strike, with Napoleon’s main army encamped outside Boulogne in preparation for the invasion of Britain. The news that Alexander’s Russia was preparing to join Britain in war against Napoleon finally tilted the balance.
On 8 August 1805, all Pitt’s frenzied diplomatic efforts bore fruit: the Third Coalition was formed. Sweden and Naples also decided to join. Prussia hinted it might do so at a later date. This time it seemed the French had taken on too much. By provocation they had turned Britain against them. By abducting and murdering the Duc d’Enghien, they had aroused the ire of the Tsar. By crowning himself King of Italy, Napoleon had finally pushed the Austrians to breaking point.
This time the allied forces seemed overwhelming. The Austrian army was 250,000 strong and had never been completely defeated by the French in battle. The Russians had 200,000 at their disposal, while the other allies could assemble another 50,000 between them. Britain would continue to contribute its naval forces.
France faced war on several fronts: a Russo-Swedish attack from Pomerania; a Russian force of 40,000 to support the Prussians – if they chose to join the coalition – moving along the northern frontier towards Hanover and Hall; an Austrian thrust under Archduke Frederick with 90,000 men into Bavaria, where it would be reinforced by a Russian army of some 50,000. Further south Archduke Charles was to command 100,000 men to secure northern Italy; he would then join up with a smaller force of 20,000 men under Archduke John in the Tyrol. By the summer of 1805 Pitt had thus assembled the mightiest coalition ever to face France on land. It had been a remarkable achievement for a sick man, assembled in little more than a year.
Elsewhere round the globe, the tide also seemed to be turning Britain’s way. The withdrawal of the French fleet from the Caribbean enabled Samuel Hood and General Grinfield to reoccupy St Lucia and Tobago and, later, Demerara, Berbice and Essequibo – the Dutch settlements which had been restored to Holland at the Peace of Amiens. Surinam was soon taken too. The French army in Haiti submitted to the British, so as not to be slaughtered by Christophe’s slave army. Only the large islands of Martinique and Guadelupe remained French, along with Curaçao which succeeded in beating off a British attack.
Meanwhile General Decaen, reaching India, had demanded the fort and enclave of Pondicherry under the terms of the Peace of Amiens. The British governor-general, Lord Wellesley, refused, even before news of the outbreak of hostilities between Britain and France reached him. Wellesley promptly struck out at the Marathas, the central Indian rulers whom the French had been courting in the autumn of 1803. After two spectacular campaigns in different regions he secured the ancient Moghul capital of Delhi, along with Hindustan and the Deccan. Meanwhile, his thirty-four-year-old younger brother Arthur Wellesley won a triumph at Assaye in September 1803.
Chapter 46
TO THE WEST INDIES
Within barely more than a year Napoleon’s dreams of an empire in the West Indies had been completely dashed; the same had now happened in India; he had been deterred from reinvading Egypt; and he faced encirclement by the great powers of Europe. Pitt’s waning but tough statecraft seemed more than a match for Napoleon’s military skills. Yet, entirely undaunted, the new Emperor proceeded with his intention of destroying his most dangerous foe.
In January 1805 the French at last got their break. Admiral Missiessy, with four ships of the line and 3,500 troops, escaped from Rochefort in a snowstorm, evading the blockading fleet, which was sheltering in Quiberon Bay; and a week later Villeneuve escaped with nine ships of the line from Toulon while Nelson was loading supplies in Maddalena Bay in Sardinia. Nelson immediately sailed to Cagliari and to Palermo to defend these ports. He
then proceeded all the way to Alexandria and found nothing. To Napoleon’s fury, the cautious Villeneuve had returned to Toulon in a storm. However, Missiessy’s fleet and army was soon wreaking havoc in the West Indies.
Now Napoleon unveiled his grand design for landing in Ireland and stirring up a rebellion there, attacking the West Indies and staging his invasion from across the Channel. He ordered Ganteaume to sea on 26 March to carry out the first stage. The French admiral’s twenty-one ships found their way blocked by fifteen British ships. He asked for permission to engage. Napoleon refused; so he remained bottled up.
Villeneuve, spurred on by the wrath of the Emperor, slipped out of Toulon again at dead of night on 30 March. There now began the greatest naval chase in history. Villeneuve’s objective was to fulfil his assigned role in Napoleon’s latest plan, which at least had the merit of simplicity. Villeneuve’s fleet was to rendezvous with that of Ganteaume at Martinique as well as the troops in the West Indies. The aim was to lure the British fleets after them; the joint French fleet would then return across the Atlantic, pick up more French ships and at last defeat what remained of the British fleet in the Channel so that the French invasion force could cross.
Villeneuve did not yet know that Ganteaume’s fleet had been blockaded. Villeneuve steered south, believing Nelson’s fleet to be off Barcelona. In fact Nelson had deliberately appeared off the great Spanish port to lull Villeneuve into a sense of false security and then sailed eastwards to the Gulf of Rhodes, still believing that Napoleon’s navy might be headed towards Egypt. But Villeneuve learnt of Nelson’s eccentric course from a merchantman and steered north of the Balearics, for concealment, and then escaped south and west through the Straits of Gibraltar.
Nelson cruised anxiously back to Sicily, unsure of the enemy’s intentions. Reaching Cartagena, Villeneuve signalled to the single French and fifteen Spanish battleships there to join him. Vice-Admiral Sir John Orde, who was supposed to be blockading Cadiz, decided that discretion was the better part of valour and withdrew his five battleships. The French ship and six Spanish battleships joined Villeneuve, who disappeared over the western horizon.
There was considerable shock in England that Villeneuve had escaped: on the London Stock Exchange consoles fell to 57. The French ‘can get out when they choose’ declared a fashionable lady. Nelson was blamed. The British admiral, having gone in entirely the wrong direction, now had to battle against unfavourable winds across to the western Mediterranean. His progress was slow, averaging ninety miles a day in the end.
Napoleon was delighted by news of Villeneuve’s escape. Never convinced by Nelson’s reputation, he had watched the British commander repulsed off Boulogne in 1801 and now outwitted by Villeneuve. The Emperor instructed Ganteaume to stay where he was while Villeneuve was to arch round the north coast of Scotland and then convoy the invasion fleet from the Texel, as in the original plan. He was then to overwhelm the British blockading fleets at Ferrol and Brest and with an impregnable armada of sixty battleships guarantee the safe crossing of the invasion transport.
The new First Lord was Admiral Sir Charles Middleton, now Lord Barham, the genius who as Controller of the Navy had revived the senior service after the American war. Now seventy-eight, but still in full possession of his faculties, he had ordered Sir Alexander Cochrane to reinforce the five British warships in the West Indies with his own. He ordered a flying squadron of seven more warships under Collingwood to reinforce Cochrane.
Pitt meanwhile had assembled a ‘secret expedition’ of several thousand soldiers under Sir Eyre Coote, a British Indian veteran, and Sir James Cruz to sail for the Mediterranean where they were to liaise with a Russian force from Corfu. Pitt feared that Villeneuve had sailed to intercept it and Nelson, who was supposed to be protecting the Mediterranean, had disappeared. Barham ordered Collingwood to go to the rescue of the secret expedition, stripping the western approaches of the Channel of ships so as to bring his force up to eighteen warships.
To the astonishment of both Barham and Napoleon, Missiessy suddenly turned up with his four battleships off Rochefort. The reports had been false: he had not fled to Dominica or Tobago but had returned across the Atlantic. Meanwhile Nelson, who had at last reached Gibraltar, learnt of the secret expedition which had then arrived at the mouth of the Tagus in Portugal and had occupied the forts there in anticipation of the arrived of Villeneuve’s fleet. The expedition’s commanders in turn learnt that Nelson was nearby, and they sailed in delight to meet him. There, escorted by two battleships, they made their way eastwards towards Gibraltar. Pitt’s expedition was safe.
After this wholly unnecessary diversion, Nelson decided to leave in pursuit of Villeneuve to the West Indies. He remarked: ‘I was in a thousand fears for Jamaica, that is a blow which Buonaparte would be happy to give us. I flew to the West Indies without any orders, but I think the ministry cannot be displeased . . . I was bred, as you know, in the good old school, and taught to appreciate the value of our West India possessions.’ This was very nearly a colossal misjudgement.
He had left twenty of his twenty-three cruisers behind in the Mediterranean; so he now had ten ships of the line and three frigates to pursue a fleet twice as large. Soon after he departed, Collingwood arrived to escort the secret expedition; he despatched two further battleships across the Atlantic to reinforce Nelson.
News arrived that Villeneuve had reached Martinique on 16 May. Barham immediately feared that when Nelson arrived in the West Indies, Villeneuve would sail straight back to Europe where the Straits of Dover had been stripped of most of their defences. Cornwallis, blocking Brest, was ordered to send ten of his battleships to reinforce Collingwood’s small Channel flotilla. The remainder of the scrappy Channel fleets – Cornwall’s twelve ships, the five still off Rochefort and several more in British ports – were to join together if Villeneuve suddenly materialized in British waters.
Nelson’s fleet crossed the 3,200 miles from Gibraltar to Barbados in just three weeks – an average of 135 miles a day, an extraordinary feat, as his slowest ship, the Superb, was barely seaworthy. Nelson could not be certain of finding Villeneuve, and was ready to sail back immediately if he did not. On 4 June the British fleet reached Barbados where they learned that the French had indeed arrived, and had left. Nelson was exultant, believing he had caught his man. He made the signal, ‘Prepare for battle’.
On the advice of General Brereton he sailed for Trinidad in pursuit, where he found no sign of the Franco-Spanish fleet. Nelson was furious: ‘But for General Brereton’s d—d information Nelson would have been, living or dead, the greatest man in his profession England ever saw. Now, alas! I am nothing . . .’
Nelson immediately made for Grenada to the north. There he learnt that Villeneuve had been sighted at Martinique on the 5th – the two fleets had passed within a hundred miles of each other. The unsuspecting Villeneuve, who had lost 3,000 of his men through sickness, had orders to remain in the West Indies until joined by Ganteaume and to capture as many British islands as possible. He had sailed to Guadeloupe to pick up troops, and to his shock had learned that Nelson had been anchored off Barbados just days before. In spite of his overwhelming naval superiority, that was enough for Villeneuve: he set sail immediately back across the Atlantic to Ferrol.
Nelson had succeeded in his first object without a fight. The West Indies had been saved for Britain. When Nelson reached Antigua, he discovered that he was four days behind Villeneuve, but he had no idea where the French fleet had gone. He had a difficult decision to make: had Villeneuve set off to attack Jamaica, or had he sailed for Europe? He was relieved at last to hear from a young captain that Villeneuve’s thirty-two-ship fleet had been sighted making for the north-east. On 13 June Nelson set sail for Gibraltar.
Villeneuve arched back across the Atlantic to the north. He had the choice of liaising with the Rochefort or Ferrol Squadrons and assembling a mighty fleet in the Channel of more than forty ships of the line to crush the few British ships st
ill there. Nelson sent the Curieux, his fastest ship, on ahead to warn Barham of Villeneuve’s return, and this overtook the French fleet to arrive at Plymouth on 7 July.
Hearing the news, Barham acted with a speed that belied his age and ordered ten ships from the Channel Fleet and five from the Rochefort blockade to stand in Villeneuve’s path. The unimaginative Sir Robin Calder was put in charge. On 22 July, after a delay of three days, Calder’s squadron was cruising off Ferrol in thick fog as Villeneuve’s twenty ships of the line arrived, neither fleet seeing the other. At noon the fog lifted. Calder was daunted by the size of the enemy fleet, but after five hours of hesitation he ordered his ships to engage as fog descended again. The fighting was inconclusive and confused, lasting several hours before two Spanish ships surrendered.
The following day dawned with the two fleets having drifted seventeen miles apart, again separated by fog. Neither of these cautious commanders chose to attack. It was a deeply unimpressive dress rehearsal for a much larger battle. Nelson would have shown no such hesitation. On 20 July Villeneuve reached the safety of Ferrol, which Calder had been seeking to blockade. Calder withdrew to join Cornwallis’s blockading squadron at Brest.
There Nelson had already arrived, left his ships and sailed back to England for long-deserved leave – for the first time in more than two years. He was bitterly disappointed and neurotically ill again. The great chase had failed. The French fleet had escaped. He had travelled nearly 7,000 miles in vain. The histrionic, highly-strung seeker after glory was plunged into despair.
Yet he need not have felt such disappointment. The West Indies were safe and he and Barham had between them frustrated Napoleon’s latest attempt at an invasion. Nelson’s pursuit of Villeneuve back to Europe at such speed – Napoleon believed Nelson’s fleet would tarry behind in the West Indies – and Barham ordering the interception of Villeneuve’s fleet had prevented the junction of the French fleets that would have secured mastery of the Channel before Nelson’s return.
The War of Wars Page 47