The War of Wars

by Robert Harvey

  In May 1790, equipped with his fantastic plan, Miranda had met the cold, analytical Pitt. He asserted to Pitt that the South American people would rise up in revolt as soon as a British fleet appeared, although he was in no position to give this assurance, having not set foot in South America for twenty years and being in contact only with a handful of wealthy criollo dissidents. He had not the slightest idea of the real opinion of the educated classes there, much less that of the populace. Pitt made it clear that he would help only in the event of a war between Britain and Spain. This, at that time, looked to be imminent, which was why Pitt’s officials had set up the encounter in the first place: Spain was claiming as its own the Nootka Sound, high up on the Pacific coast of North America, then in Britain’s possession. Miranda no doubt left the meeting with a spring in his step.

  Five months later, however, the Nootka Sound dispute was settled, and the project was off. Miranda, given financial support by the British government so long as his potential nuisance value to the Spaniards was useful, now found this source of funds drying up, and was upset that he had revealed his plan to Pitt. Miranda them moved on to France. After a series of breathtaking exploits in the French Revolution (see pages 36–46), during which he narrowly escaped the guillotine, Miranda set off to try and launch an invasion of Venezuela on his own. This duly proved a fiasco.

  Miranda had however, convinced the British that the Spanish colonies were indeed ripe for the picking, and that Britain could soon help itself. With Spain effectively under the control of the decadent Manuel Godoy and Queen Maria Luisa of Parma (her amiable but vacant husband Charles IV was virtually powerless), the opportunity seemed to present itself. After a brief conflict between Spain and revolutionary France, Godoy, fearful of French incursions across the frontier and heartened by the re-emergence of moderate elements after the fall of Robespierre, sued for peace in 1795 – a catastrophically inept move which undermined every diplomatic gain of the first four years of his ascendancy. As well as ceding to France Santo Domingo (the western half of the island of Hispaniola, of which Haiti was the eastern half), Godoy sought to appease the French further by introducing some of their reforms into Spain; these included an attack on the Inquisition and on clerical privileges, the threat of land redistribution, and permitting the circulation of revolutionary texts. At a stroke, he alienated Spanish sympathisers and the still dominant Spanish colonial classes, who viewed France’s ambitions in the Caribbean with deep suspicion, facilitated the spread of revolutionary ideas and, not least, reinvigorated the old enmity between Spain and a Britain dismayed by this pro-French tilt.

  The British moved to disrupt Spanish trade with the Americas, and the colonists made up their shortfall by trading illicitly with Britain and the United States. British landings were staged in Puerto Rico and Central America, and Trinidad was occupied. Then the Spanish fleet was mauled off Cape St Vincent in 1797. In the space of just three years, Spanish Americans acquired a withering contempt for the weakness of the mother country. This was added to the sense of grievance and injustice they had long borne against Spain for her commercial monopoly and the dismal quality of the administrators and traders sent to lord it over them. Meanwhile Godoy, supposedly dismissed in 1800, continued to act as the court’s chief adviser, pursuing his policy of appeasement towards France.

  A dramatic new turn ensued with the accession to power in France of Napoleon Bonaparte. His policy towards Spain was to bully her. She and Portugal must close their ports to the British; this the Spanish did promptly, while the Portuguese put up only a show of resistance. The criollo upper class was horrified afresh by these signs of Spanish cowardice, and by the arrival on their doorstep in 1802 of the French force of 20,000 under the command of Napoleon’s brother-in-law, General Leclerc. Leclerc’s attempt to reintroduce slavery into Haiti was met by a fresh black revolt, ending with the expulsion of the French into Santo Domingo and in 1804 the assertion of Haitian self-government – the first declaration of independence in Latin America.

  Spain was now involved in an unpopular alliance with France; and the British were again bent on subverting her empire, desperate for commercial outlets now that Napoleon had closed the continent to them, and very aware of tempting opportunities. The seriousness of Britain’s long-term desire to add the supposedly suppurating Spanish empire to her dominions – thereby making good the losses in North America – should not be underestimated.

  On 27 June 1806 the Spanish Viceroy of La Plata, Rafael, Marques de Sobremonte, was at the theatre in Buenos Aires when he was informed that a British army of 1,600 men had landed outside the city. The first-ever overthrow of a Spanish colonial administration in South America had begun. British soldiers commanded by General William Carr Beresford and naval forces under Commodore Sir Home Popham had sailed from Cape Town, having retaken it in the name of the British Crown following the breakdown of the Peace of Amiens and Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar.

  Although the British government claimed to have no hand in the Popham–Beresford expedition – Popham sailed without orders – the roots of it ran deep. William Pitt had long coveted South America as a potential market for the products of Britain’s growing industrialization, and other eminent men of the time also interested in its possibilities included Lord Melville, First Lord of the Admiralty between 1802–6, Nicholas Vansittart, a young Tory politician who later became chancellor of the exchequer, and the prominent trading house of Turnbull & Sons. Popham later recorded that in 1805:

  I had a long conversation with [Pitt] on the original project of the expedition to South America, in the course of which Mr Pitt informed me, that from the then state of Europe, and the confederation in part formed, and forming against France, there was a great anxiety to endeavour, by friendly negotiation, to detach Spain from her connection with that power, and, until the result of such an attempt should be known, it was desirable to suspend all hostile operations in South America; but, in case of failure in this object, it was his intention to enter on the original project.

  The British forces occupied Buenos Aires with the loss of only a single man and twelve wounded, while Viceroy Sobremonte fled inland to Córdoba with the treasury. Beresford proclaimed himself governor on behalf of King George III, but promised that private property and the Catholic faith would be respected by the British Crown, and announced the establishment of free trade – a display of breath-taking arrogance. Popham later noted: ‘The object of this expedition was considered by the natives to apply principally to their independence.’

  A French-born officer, Santiago de Liniers, assembled a force of irregular soldiers outside Buenos Aires, while inside the city Juan Martin de Pueyrredón, an able criollo aristocrat, organized opposition in the form of passive resistance and a general strike. Six weeks later the two forces joined up; the British were surrounded, Popham was taken prisoner, and with impressive magnanimity the whole expedition was placed aboard ship and despatched ignominiously to London. Liniers was treated as a hero while Sobremonte, now regarded as a coward, was informed he would be shot if he returned to Buenos Aires. It was unprecedented for a Spanish viceroy to be so humiliated; he took refuge in Montevideo, capital of the Banda Oriental across the Plate estuary, and Buenos Aires’ traditional rival.

  When news of Beresford’s and Popham’s success in Buenos Aires reached London, the City went wild – crowds thronged the streets, singing ‘God Save the King’ and ‘Rule, Britannia!’ Britain’s trade with South America was already running at £1 million a year, and it seemed as though her next great colonial adventure was beckoning. Windham bristled with ideas: Cape Horn would be navigated and the port of Valparaiso in Chile seized, then an expedition eastwards across the Andes would establish a chain of forts before conquering the whole Audiencia of Buenos Aires and thus securing the southern half of the continent. Sir Arthur Wellesley, recently returned from his successes in India, would be appointed to replace Beresford. Grenville himself favoured the seizure of Montevideo, and the despa
tch of troops from India to take Manila from the Spanish and then sail on across the Pacific to land on the west coast of New Spain (Mexico).

  The news of Beresford’s subsequent surrender of Buenos Aires in August 1806 did not reach London until 25 January 1807; when it did, all these dreams crashed to earth with the implication that here were no ill-used children grateful to exchange the harsh paternalism of the Spanish Crown for the comparative benevolence of the British, but a mature and sophisticated people. However, the affront to British arms could not be tolerated; all other plans were to be shelved until Buenos Aires was regained, and an expedition under General Samuel Auchmuty and Lieutenant-General John Whitelocke was despatched to this end. The unfortunate Sobremonte was still in Montevideo when news reached him that 12,000 British had landed on the east bank of the Plate estuary. The inhabitants of Buenos Aires, across the water, unilaterally deposed him as viceroy, proclaiming Liniers their chief.

  Auchmuty announced that the royal court of the Audiencia had been abolished and the Spanish King’s authority set aside, and that the Spanish flag should no longer be hoisted. He wrote later:

  These reports were circulated with avidity, and I soon found that they were acceptable to the principal part of the inhabitants. The persons who before appeared hostile and inveterate, now pressed me to advance a corps to Buenos Aires; and assured me, if I would acknowledge their independence, and promise them the protection of the English government, the police would submit to me . . . The party now in power are mostly natives of Spain . . . It has been their policy to inflame the minds of the lower orders against the English, by every species of exaggeration and falsehood, and to lead them to such acts of atrocity as may preclude the possibility of any communication with us. The second party consists of natives of the country, with some Spaniards that are settled in it . . . they aim at following the steps of the North Americans and erecting an independent state.

  If we would promise them independence, they would instantly revolt against the government, and join us with the great mass of the inhabitants. But though nothing less than independence will perfectly satisfy them, they would prefer our government, either to their present anarchy or to the Spanish yoke, provided we would promise not to give up the country to Spain at a peace. But until such a promise is made, we must expect to find them open or secret enemies.

  Whitelocke made the same point: ‘It has been repeatedly told to me . . . that had General Beresford and the Admiral, on their first arrival, and before any blood was shed or property confiscated, declared South America an independent state, we should now have her as an ally without her witnessing any of the horrors attendant on revolutions.’

  The British government favoured establishing their own foothold on the Plate, and in the summer Whitelocke’s forces were ferried across the huge estuary to march on Buenos Aires. After crossing the swamps of Quilmes, Whitelocke drove back a force of 6,000 under Liniers. But as they entered Buenos Aires, calamity ensued: ‘The British troops,’ as General Mitre wrote later, ‘worthy of a better general, marched resolutely to their sacrifice, advancing as fearlessly as on parade along those avenues of death, enfiladed at right angles every 150 yards: Whitelocke remaining with the reserve at the Miserere, entirely cut off from the rest of his army. The result of such tactics could not but prove disastrous.’ By nightfall 2,200 Britons had been killed, wounded, or taken prisoner, and Whitelocke had promised to evacuate the Plate region within two months.

  Complimented on their good behaviour in defeat, the British sailed away from Montevideo after this latest debacle. A former protégé of Liniers, Francisco Xavier de Elio, was installed as governor of the city, as Liniers was a Bonapartist stooge, and the Spanish took advantage of this to send out their own viceroy, Baltasar Hidalgo de Cisneros. Neither Montevideo nor Buenos Aires was happy with this imposition. In 1808, in the wake of an incendiary pamphlet on the subject of free trade written by Mariano Moreno, a brilliant local economist, Cisneros was obliged to offer to open Buenos Aires as a free port. Twice now the city had cocked a snook at the Spanish government – first in appointing Liniers, now in breaking the Spanish trade monopoly. The British intervention had, unwittingly, sparked off local defiance.

  The expedition to South America represented a British distaste for continuing entanglement in continental politics. With Pitt’s passing, the British government, under Lord Grenville, was now prepared to offer Napoleon peace in Europe in exchange for a free hand elsewhere around the globe.

  Of Grenville, a contemporary, Henry Lord Brougham, gave this description:

  The endowments of this eminent statesman’s mind were all of a useful and commanding sort – sound sense, steady memory, vast industry. His acquirements were in the same proportion valuable and lasting – a thorough acquaintance with business in its principles and in its details; a complete mastery of the science of politics, as well theoretical as practical; of late years a perfect familiarity with political economy, and a just appreciation of its importance; an early and most extensive knowledge of classical literature, which he improved instead of abandoning, down to the close of his life; a taste formed upon those chaste models, and of which his lighter compositions, his Greek and Latin verses, bore testimony to the very last. His eloquence was of a plain, masculine, authoritative cast, which neglected if it did not despise ornament, and partook in the least possible degree of fancy, while its declamation was often equally powerful with its reasoning and its statement. The faults of his character were akin to some of the excellencies which so greatly distinguished it; his firmness was apt to degenerate into obstinacy; his confidence in the principles he held was not un-mixed with contempt for those who differed from him. His unbending honesty and straightforward course of dealing with all men and all subjects not unfrequently led him to neglect those courtesies which facilitate political and personal intercourse, and that spirit of conciliation which, especially in a mixed government chiefly conducted by party, sometimes enables men to win a way which they cannot force towards the attainment of important objects.

  The one characteristic that this stern, hardworking, highly intelligent man possessed in abundance was principle. He was soon to leave office forever on the grounds that he could not secure Catholic emancipation; and throughout his career he fought for peaceful parliamentary reform. The finest action of his ministry, in which he must share the credit with Fox and, of course, the great William Wilberforce, was the abolition of the slave trade.

  The second goal of Grenville and Fox was not so easily obtained: peace with France. When a French dissident approached Fox with a further plot to assassinate Napoleon, the British foreign minister immediately communicated the news to Talleyrand as evidence of Britain’s goodwill. Talleyrand responded by freeing a British aristocrat with royal connections, Lord Yarmouth, from prison, to act as an emissary. This proved a mixed blessing: Yarmouth was much fonder of wine and women than diplomacy, and his conduct was later to cause a national scandal.

  Napoleon offered to respect Britain’s colonial possessions in exchange for peace. But he soon began to make further demands, insisting on the return of Britain’s only Mediterranean foothold, Sicily, and that Britain make a separate peace, abandoning Russia, which was still nominally an enemy of France. This would have been dishonourable for the British and would have poisoned Anglo-Russian relations for years. In order to secure Sicily, to complete Napoleon’s royal flush of possessions in the central Mediterranean, he offered Britain an extraordinary inducement: the Electorate of Hanover, so dear to the ageing George III. This however infuriated Prussia, which had just been given Hanover as a reward for staying out of the allied offensive before Austerlitz, to apoplexy.

  Even Fox was by now deeply disillusioned with the Emperor. He had good reason to be. Napoleon declared in March 1806, ‘48 hours after peace with England is signed, I will shut out foreign produce and manufacturers, and pass a navigation act that will exclude all but French ships from our ports.’ But on 13 September 1806,
Fox, Pitt’s great rival and friend, himself died, and with him any further prospect of peace.

  The Ministry of All Talents itself fell the following March when, almost like Pitt, Grenville pressed upon the King the need to allow Catholics to become officers in the army. The half-mad, prejudiced old man promptly dismissed him, with the bill to abolish the slave trade fortunately having passed parliament. Grenville was succeeded by a Tory administration under the Duke of Portland – ‘all Mr Pitt’s friends without Pitt’ – as a contemporary remarked, which was wholly committed to pursuing the war. Napoleon’s last chance of peace with England had passed, not because of any reluctance on Britain’s part but again because of Napoleon’s bullying tendencies. He, the master of Europe, saw no need to make peace under any terms except his own.

  Napoleon’s outlook, as he surveyed a Europe prostrate at his feet was a curious mixture of bombastic self-confidence and insecurity. Angry as he was at his failure to destroy the British threat, he could not really believe that that foppish offshore nation posed much danger except at sea and in trade. He seems genuinely to have considered that the British had no further stomach for fighting, even though they might continue subsidizing his enemies and stirring up trouble.

  His only other real opponents were the negligible Sweden, a windswept and impoverished land under another mad king, and the far more dangerous Russia. The latter was a huge and unknowable quantity. It possessed an enormous army of tough peasants, in some respects similar to the French conscript army rather than the old-fashioned ones of other European powers, and was continuously probing southwards and westwards. Now it had joined Napoleon’s enemies.