The Rape of Venice (2 page)

‘May I ask, Sir, if through neutral sources you have recently sounded the French Government on the subject of entering into negotiations?'

Mr. Pitt was looking across the battlements out to sea. A frown creased his high forehead, and without turning, he
replied: ‘I have; and I confess the result was disappointing. Our Austrian allies insist on the return of their Netherland territories. It was with a view to having something to offer in exchange for them that, at a great cost in men and money, I pressed our operations in the West Indies. Despite the furore it would raise in the City, I'd give the French back their rich Sugar Isles if they would agree to evacuate the Low Countries and undertake to cease their subversive activities in others. But it seems that the Directory that now rules the roost in France is not even willing to discuss my proposals.'

The reply confirmed Roger's belief that his master was once more a victim of the unfounded optimism that had led him to hope for a speedy peace ever since the fall of Robespierre. As gently as he could he said, ‘Can you be altogether surprised at that? The armies of General Moreau and General Jourdan are more than holding their own upon the Rhine, and all France must be cock-a-hoop at the brilliant successes of the young Corsican General, Buonaparte, these past three months in Italy.'

‘I would not be did I not know that France is bankrupt. Her armies are in rags and her cities starving. Military triumphs can temporarily raise the morale of a people, but they cannot be used as a substitute for bread.'

‘You must permit me to disagree with you about that,' Roger said firmly. ‘Do you recall the report on my dealings with General Buonaparte that I submitted to you on my return from France last April?'

‘Indeed I do.' Mr. Pitt gave one of his rare smiles. ‘It was largely due to your skilful machinations that Madame de Beauharnais agreed to marry him, and that he was diverted from his assignment to prepare an army for the invasion of England by being given command of the Army of Italy.'

Roger made a little grimace. ‘It was my knowledge of how ill-prepared we were to resist invasion which led me to take that course; yet more than ever now I have the feeling that it would have been wiser to let him risk destruction in the Channel. It was not of that, though, that I was thinking.'

‘I see. You meant to remind me of your assessment of him as the most intelligent and dangerous of all the French generals. It was a shrewd appreciation, since he had never then directed a battle.'

‘I had had the advantage of seeing him in the field; for I met him when he was still an unknown Artillery officer.'

‘That was at the siege of Toulon, was it not?'

‘It was.' Roger gave a sudden laugh. ‘It might almost be said that we won our spurs together. I got myself into a pretty fix, and as Citizen Representative Breuc was under the necessity of leading French troops in a daylight charge against a Spanish battery. It near cost me my life, but later paid most handsomely; for ever since, the little Corsican has accounted me a gallant fellow and worthy of his friendship. But for that he would never have discussed so frankly with me last February the project for invading England, and offered me a Colonelcy on his staff. There was, though, another project on which he spoke to me with equal frankness, and 'twas to that part of my report that I was hoping to direct your memory.'

‘You refer to the Italian campaign. Yes, I remember now. It was his pet hobby-horse and he had long been endeavouring to persuade the Directors to accept his plan for it. No wonder he so readily abandoned all else when given the chance to carry it out himself, and within forty-eight hours of his marriage jumped out of his bride's bed to gallop off and take up his new command. Well, he has certainly justified your belief in his capabilities; but what of it?'

Since Roger's tactful references to his report had failed to ring the right bell in his master's brain, he felt that he now had no alternative but to speak out and endeavour, once and for all, to shatter his dangerous illusions.

‘Sir,' he said. ‘You have evidently forgotten the salient point that has reference to our conversation. It is my having informed you that General Buonaparte spoke to me of Italy as the treasure-chest of Europe. And he was right. Nowhere in the world is there so much accumulated wealth. We know, too, that the French Republicans have no scruples in plundering unmercifully the cities that their armies overrun, by means of indemnities, forced loans, fines for alleged wrongs, and open looting. I think Buonaparte too big a man, and too confident in his own future, to exact for himself more than he requires for his immediate needs; but you may be sure that one thing he is set upon is to be allowed the continuance of a free hand in Italy. To ensure that he must keep the good-will of the Directors, and the one way in which he can make certain of doing so is by supplying them with money. I would wager all Lombard Street to a China Orange that during these past few weeks treasure convoys despatched by him have carried many million ducats across the Alps into France. And those ducats will buy
the food she needs so badly. Yet worse, there is no reason to suppose that this river of gold will cease to flow until Buonaparte's victorious advance is halted. Distressed as I am to disabuse you of your hopes, I am convinced that there is not the least foundation for the supposition that France must shortly collapse as the result of an empty Treasury.'

Mr. Pitt's grey face had gone a shade greyer. Slowly removing his arm from a stone crenellation on which he had been leaning, he walked over to a painted iron table that had on it a decanter of port and two glasses. Refilling them both he drank from his own, set it down and remarked sourly:

‘I have often found you a disconcerting person with whom to discuss foreign affairs, Mr. Brook; but never more so than this morning.'

Roger, too, took a swig of port, then murmured, ‘I am truly sorry, Sir, but I would serve you ill did I not give you my opinions with complete frankness.'

‘That is true'; the Prime Minister laid a friendly hand on his elbow; ‘and believe me, far from resenting it, I am grateful to you. Yet, if you are right, and the rejection by the French Government of my overtures implies that you are, it means that we must resign ourselves to another year or more of war. I would to God I could be certain that the nation will stand up to that.'

‘What!' exclaimed Roger. ‘You cannot mean it! In the last war we stuck it out for twice the time we have been involved in this, and as a nation we still have all those advantages over the French of which you were speaking a while ago.'

‘Alas, there you are quite wrong.'

‘Wrong! How so? The nation is united under a stable government. The Coalition gives you an overwhelming majority in the House. We are still sustained by our Christian faith. The war may again be making heavy in-roads on our resources, but we still adhere to our traditions and are as determined as ever to maintain our rights.'

‘Mr. Brook, having lived for so long abroad it is understandable that you should have remained unaware of the changed feeling in your own country. Last October, on His Majesty's going to open Parliament his coach was stoned by the mob.'

‘So I heard, Sir, and was most deeply shocked; but I took it to be an isolated act by a small group of fanatics.'

‘It was far from that. Thousands thronged the Mall and booed him. No such demonstration against a British Monarch
has taken place within living memory. That it should do so is clear evidence that the loyalty of the masses has been undermined by the pernicious doctrines of the French. During the past two years they have spread like wildfire, and every town now has its proletarian club at which agitators preach revolution. Were the franchise universal at the next election there would be a real danger of this country becoming a Republic. So you may rid your mind of the idea that the people are still united.'

Roger finished his glass of port, then said with a frown, ‘I was, of course, aware that hot-heads like Horne Tooke had long been creating trouble, and of the near-treasonable activities of the London Corresponding Society; but I had not a notion that sedition had become so widespread.'

‘Last autumn the Society of which you speak convened a meeting in Islington Fields. It was attended by no less than fifteen thousand persons, and resolutions were passed at it advocating armed rebellion. God knows what might have happened had I not promptly ordered numerous regiments of troops from their stations in the country to the outskirts of London. Norwich, Birmingham, Sheffield, Bristol, and a score of other cities have become hot-beds of revolution. I am at present holding the masses down only by having suspended Habeas Corpus and having put through a Treason Act making malcontents who speak against the Constitution liable to transportation for seven years,

‘You spoke, too, of the Christian Faith,' Mr. Pitt went on. with a shrug of his narrow shoulders. ‘It has recently suffered as serious a decline as loyalty to the Crown. John Wesley's teachings detached a great part of the masses from the Established Church. Methodism is a revolt from religious discipline and on doctrinal matters near synonymous with Freethinking. What more fertile breeding ground could you have for complete disbelief? Those who preach anarchy also preach atheism and, alas, thousands, many thousands, of the proletariat have now accepted both.

‘With regard to money: in the present war I have had to find vast sums to subsidise our allies. Without British gold they could never have kept their armies in the field so long, and the drain has near ruined us.

‘As for myself, 'tis true that I have the backing of a large majority in the House; but I no longer possess the confidence of the people. If ever I now drive abroad I am greeted with
shouts of “Peace! Peace! Stop the War! Stop killing our friends! Murderer! Stop sending our money to the foreign tyrants! Give us bread! Give us peace!”'

‘Tell me, Sir,' Roger asked, ‘what is the cause of this extraordinary change in the people's attitude?'

‘The Whig aristocracy is fundamentally to blame. Unlike us Tories, they have never lifted a finger to protect the common people. Democracy means for them equality among themselves and striving to bring the Monarch down to their own level. They prate of Liberalism and the Rights of Man, yet did not scruple to take advantage of the Enclosures Act and increase their own properties by grabbing the land that for centuries had been held in common by the peasantry of each village. Robbed of free tillage, pasture and firewood, the peasants migrated to the towns. There they were sweated, brutalised from being forced to live in slums, and at bad times turned off to starve. Then came the French Revolution, and from it there emerged this wave of agitators who promise that the dethronement of Kings and the murder of the rich will bring about a Utopia. Yet can it be wondered at that any prospect of bettering their appalling lot should light a flame among the slum dwellers? I do not blame them. On the contrary, it fills me with despair that we should have to spend on war the millions that I might otherwise use in wise measures to ameliorate their lot.'

After a moment the Prime Minister went on: ‘That is the root cause; but the positive factor that has turned widespread discontent into smouldering revolution is the failure of last year's harvest. Early this year the best wheat was fetching six guineas a quarter—a positively phenomenal price; and bread now costs far more than the ordinary worker can afford to pay.'

Roger nodded. ‘I was aware of that, Sir; and that you had taken measures to counteract it. Prohibiting the manufacture of whisky, putting a tax on flour used for powdering the hair, urging the bakers to use one-third barley when making loaves, and having the members of the House set an example by voluntarily denying themselves pastry until the crisis is over, should have gone a great way to restoring the situation.'

‘Nevertheless, considerable numbers of His Majesty's poorest subjects have actually died from starvation. Should the harvest fail again this year, I'll not answer for it that events here will not follow the pattern they took in France, and a
guillotine be set up in Whitehall as a means of terminating the activities of people such as you and I.'

‘Plague on it!' Roger protested. ‘'Twould be prodigious hard if having lived through the Terror in Paris I were called upon to spit in the basket no more than a quarter of a mile from my own Club.' Then he added in a more sober tone, ‘I no longer wonder now at your anxiety to secure a peace. Yet I see no way to it short of betraying our Austrian allies and submitting to ignominious terms.'

‘That I would never do,' replied the Prime Minister haughtily. ‘Nor, did I make such proposals, would His Majesty consent to them.'

‘Do you believe, Sir, that the Austrians will stand equally loyally by us?'

‘I believe the Emperor has the will to do so, but whether he has the means is another question. Only this week I received from him a request for a further one million two hundred thousand pounds. He asserts that without it he will be unable to pay his troops through to the end of this year's campaign.'

‘Is it your intention to let him have it?'

‘Legally, I cannot do so without the consent of Parliament, and the House does not reassemble until October.'

‘By then he would receive it too late for the purpose he requires it.'

‘I had thought to shelve the matter, hoping that by the late summer the French would find themselves compelled to enter into negotiations for a general pacification.'

Roger turned away to gaze out across the battlements. Far below some children were paddling in the gently creaming surf. The blue-green sea was calm, the sun glinting on its wavelets. A few miles out a brigantine with all sail set was heading down Channel. Otherwise the sea stretched unbroken to disappear in a heat-haze on the horizon. Without looking at Mr. Pitt, he said:

‘Should it be not France, but Austria, that has to give in through lack of funds, the whole power of the Republic will be turned against us. You must face it, Sir, that before this time next year we would then be at death-grips with General Buonaparte's troops upon these very beaches.'