Years of Victory 1802 - 1812 (22 page)

"There's a little King Pippin,

He shall
have a rattle and crown;

Bless thy five wits, my baby,

Mind it don'
t throw itself down!"

¹
Wheeler and Broadle
y, I,
40.

2
Ham MS.

³
Farington, II,
194, 278, 281;
Minto, III,
316;
A. M. W. Stirling,
Coke of Norfolk and his Friends
(1908),
II,
37;
Creeve
y, I,
29;
Cornwallis, III,
516;
Nicolas, VI,
177, 182;
Ham MS.;
Granville, I,
467, 471.

The English never doubted that it would.

Already their attitude to the French had changed. Their new Minister thought far more about an English landing in Europe than a French landing in England. When he authorised additional expenditure on Martello towers or approved the construction of a. military canal across Romney Marsh, it was only in order to release Regulars for service overseas. When he refused to send reinforcements to the West Indies on the ground that every soldier was wanted at home, he was merely husbanding the troops to keep faith with Russia and prove that England meant business. To free his Army for the offensive he even experimented with the invention of an American named Fulton for blowing up the Boulogne flotilla at its moorings with infernals or "Catamarans" filled with explosive: a premature torpedo which, when tried on October 2nd, failed as ludicrously as a conservative Navy had always predicted it would.
¹

While Pitt planned to attack, his blockading squadrons kept the French fleets in harbour and the
seaways open. Latouche-Treville
never got out into the Atlantic because Nelson made it impossible for him to do so without fighting. Unable to remain close to the port in the perpetual Gulf of Lyons gales, the fiery little Admiral tried not so much to hold him in Toulon as to lure him out. He offered him every opportunity to put to sea, believing that once he got him there he would make it impossible for him to do further harm. "If we could get fairly alongside," he wrote,
"I
daresay there would be some spare hats by the time we had done."
²
This, however, was not at all what the French wanted: their object was to reach the Atlantic and Channel uncrippled and without an action. Once that summer, encouraged by Nelson's trick of keeping his main fleet over the horizon, Latouche-Treville edged out of port with eight sail of the line and gave chase to the British frigates. After pursuing for a few miles he realised that he was running into a trap and returned to harbour. A report of the episode in the Paris Press— the only fruit of Napoleon's first naval design—almost reduced Nelson to an apoplexy. "You will have seen Monsieur Latouche's letter," he wrote, "of how he chased me and how I ran. I keep it, and, by God, if I take him, he shall eat it!" A few weeks later he had his revenge when Latouche-Trevi
lle, worn out by overmuch climb
ing to the Sepet signal-post to watch the British fleet, died of heart-failure. "I always said that would be his death," observed Nelson.

¹
Napoleon, who had previously rejected .the invention, was equally contemptuous, and spoke of harmless explosives breaking the windows of the good citizens of Boulogne with English guineas."—Wheeler and Broadley,
1
,-314.
See H. M. C. Dropmore, VII,
235-6;
Granville, I,
462.

2
Nicolas, V,
271.
"We shall surely meet
the
m
some happy day when I have no doubt but that we shall be amply repaid for all our cares and watchings."—V,
275.

Even had Latouche-Treville lived and contrived to escape Nelson, he could not have evaded Cornwallis's Western Squadron. The ultimate function of the great British fighting force off Ushant was not, as Napoleon, like other landsmen supposed, to blockade Brest but to secure the approaches to the English and Irish Channels. Absolute blockade of a port, especially in winter, was impossible: sooner or later fog or gale was sure to offer a chance of escape. British naval strategy aimed rather at making it impossible for any French fleet or combination of fleets to enter the Channel without having to fight a superior or equal British force. For the Western Approaches were the key to England's existence. Through these · waters passed and repassed the merchant shipping on which depended her wealth, drawn from every corner of the.earth: the great convoys or " trades" which it was the unsleeping task of the Navy to secure. As they neared the danger zone close to the French ports the arms of the Western Squadron reached out to protect them. Its frigate tentacles, stretching far out into the outer ocean and southward beyond the Bay, could feel every movement of a converging foe long before he reached the Soundings. A French fleet could only enter those forbidden waters at the cost of being crippled and probably annihilated by a speedier and superior concentration. For at sea it was not the French who enjoyed interior lines. The blockaded fragments of the French Fleet were always further in space and time from the centre than the British squadrons that hemmed them in.

In a series of world wars extending over more than sixty years British seamen had been engaged in thwarting every conceivable combination of hostile navies. The task had become second nature to them, and there was scarcely a senior officer who had not mastered every move of the game. Such men were not likely to forget their business merely because an amateur of genius took to mapping out the sea in his cabinet at St. Cloud as though it were the Lombardy Plain. On August 24th the Admiralty issued instructions adapting the classic strategy of Britain—the "matured tradition" of more than two centuries—to the needs of th
e hour. The Brest fleet, Cornwall
is was warned, sailing without troops, might try to enter the Channel and cover the passage of the Grand Army to Kent. If it evaded him, he was to fall back on the Lizard ready to follow it in any direction. Since it would be suicide for Ganteaume to enter the Channel with an undefeated fleet in his rear, it seemed more likely that his destination would
be Ireland or Sicily. Any large
embarkation of troops would suggest one or other of these, and a smaller the West Indies. Cornwallis was therefore to be ready to detach a division in pursuit, while keeping sufficient force in the Bay to meet any attempt of the enemy to double back on the Channel.
¹

Possibly Napoleon had already
divined something of the plan,
though he refused to admit it to
his Admirals and the world. For
while he endangered the lives of his soldiers by showy exercises
outside Boulogne roadstead, he failed
to complete the final arrange
ments for their passage to Kent. A
s late as September, 1804, less
than three-quarters of the 131,000 troops scheduled to cross had
assembled at the embarkation points
and only eleven hundred barges
had reached the Straits. The ports,
neglected since the spring, had
begun to choke again with drifting sand, and no one knew how many tides it would take to get the flotilla to sea. Yet on such details, if success was possible at all, success depended. Gambler though he was, Napoleon usually gambled on probabilities.

He felt happier, in fact, on land.
In the very month that Latouche
-Treville was to have appeared in the Straits, the Emperor left Boulogne for a tour of the Rhineland. Having reaffirmed his faith in his destiny before Charlemagne's tomb at Aix, he drew up a new plan against the English. Realising that they might make the task of his scattered squadrons progressively harder as they neared their destination, he sought instead to lure them away from the entrance to the Channel. Sailing at the end of October for diversionary raids on the West Indies and South Atlantic trade routes, the Toulon and Rochefort squadrons were to present the greedy islanders with the alternative of losing their wealth or uncovering their heart. Having drawn half their Fleet away on wild-goose . chases, the two Admirals were to double back to support Ganteaume, who was to escape from Brest in November, land 18,000 shock troops in Ireland and, running up Channel or rounding Cape Wrath according to the wind, convoy either Marmont's 25,000 from the Texel to Ireland or the Grand Army from Boulogne to Kent. In either case the war would then be won.

For Napoleon treated the Admiralty as though it were the Aulic Council. He chose to see the English as puppets who could be made to dance to any tune he piped. He overlooked the fact that they were as much masters in their own element as he in his. He forgot that because of their blockade his officers and crews were unpractised and his ships ill-equipped for manoeuvring in Atlantic gales. He forgot that there were not 18,000 troops waiting to embark at
Brest but less than 7000. He even forgot that the Irish Legion did not exist.

¹
Corbe
tt,
13-15.

Meanwhile the enemy whom Napoleon so despised was secretly preparing to attack him.. All that summer and autumn Pitt wrestled with the task of creating a Third Coalition. By November his efforts were beginning to bear fruit. His new ambassador to St. Petersburg, the handsome Lord Granville Leveson-Gower, proved almost as popular with Slav statesmen as with English ladies. On the 16th a confidential agent of the Czar arrived in London to formulate a treaty. An armed League to enforce peace, led by Russia and financed by Britain, was to insist on a French withdrawal from Italy, north Germany and Holland and—in deference to Alexander's wishes— establish an international order to preserve peace and "the sacred rights of humanity." Many old mutual suspicions—of Russian designs in the Orient and British ambitions in the Mediterranean —still remained to be exorcised, and the other Continental Powers, Nelson's "set of dirty fellows," were still shy of committing themselves.
¹
But Napoleon's hot-headed arrogance continued to bring the allies together. In the middle of October his armed agents pounced on a British diplomat on German soil and bore him off to Paris. A fortnight later an alarmed Austria signed a defensive alliance with Russia to take effect on the next French aggression in Germany or Italy. For even the most timid saw that, unless they exerted themselves, the whole Continent would soon be ruled by Napoleon's secret police.

Yet before any alliance could become effective Pitt had to secure his communications with the Mediterranean. His readiness to send troops to that sea was the touchstone of Russian confidence.
²
And across his path lay Spain. His transports had not only to pass the French naval ports in the Bay of Biscay but the Spanish coast from Finisterre to Cartagena. At Ferrol were the five French battleships from the West Indies, now nearly ready for sea. Farther south, enfilading the entrance to the Mediterranean, were the great naval arsenals of Cartagena and Cadiz. All three held powerful Spanish squadrons. "We should be short-sighted, indeed," wrote the First Lord of the Admiralty, " if we did not look on the fleet of Spain as added to that of our other enemies at any moment it suits the interests of France to call upon it."

For though few Spaniards wished to engage in another war with

¹
" Would to God these great Powers reflected that the boldest measures are the safest." —Nicolas, VI,
290.

²
Third Coalition,
45, 76-7, 79;
Corbe
tt,
10.

Britain, their dictator, Godoy, was bound hand and foot to France. So long as there was any chance of preserving peace the British were ready to overlook Spanish breaches of neutrality. But by the autumn of 1804 it was equally plain that Napoleon was about to demand the active aid of the Spanish fleet and that the Spaniards were preparing to give it. Early in September it became known in London that 1500'French troops were marching across Spain from Bayonne to man the French warships at Ferrol.

Pitt could no longer afford to have an undeclared enemy on his flank. To safeguard his communications he decided to force Spain's hand. He instructed his Ambassador, Hookham Frere, to demand an immediate explanation from Madrid and the demobilisation of the Spanish fleet. Failing this l^e was to ask for his passports. Simultaneously Cornwallis was ordered to detach four frigates to intercept the homecoming Mexican treasure fleet off Cadiz. The Cabinet's idea was that, by temporarily impounding the silver needed to equip the Spanish Fleet, it would incapacitate and so free Spain from aiding France. Unfortunately it failed to reckon with Spanish pride. The Dons refused to surrender to so small a force, and in the ensuing fight their flagship blew up with a loss of three hundred lives, including the family of the Captain-General of Peru.
¹
Before news of this high-handed action reached Madrid, the British Ambassador had already left. The formal Spanish declaration of war followed on December 12th.