Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (1118 page)

This great war was caused by the “French
Revolution.” It was the old story of France desiring to dominate the world; and it began in this way: The French people had a series of real grievances against their clumsy, stupid,
old-fashioned system of government by an
“absolute” king; and they demanded a parliamentary system and a “limited” monarchy like our own. But at the first touch the whole fabric of old France fell to pieces. Kings, nobles,
society itself were hurled down; all in the nameof some imaginary “natural rights” of everybody to have an equal share in government.
A Republic was set up; King Louis XVI was put to death. A new kind of “Gospel” was preached; “all men are equal,” “all government is tyranny, all religion is a sham,” “down with everything and up with ourselves” (“ourselves” being the bloodthirsty mobs of Paris and other great cities). This precious Republic proceeded to offer its alliance to all the peoples of Europe who wished to abolish their kings, and “recover their liberty.” It declared war on Austria and Prussia, and began by invading Belgium and threatening Holland, which had been our ally since 1688.

Then, at the opening of 1793, Pitt felt bound to interfere. The nation was heartily at his back. Scenes of the utmost horror and cruelty had taken place in France, and the French people, once the most civilized in Europe, seemed to have gone mad. There were a few noisy politicians in Britain, both in and outside Parliament, who sympathized with the French, and cried out for “Radical Reform” and a “National Convention” of the whole British people;
but they were very few. The worst of them was the Whig orator, Charles Fox, who had rejoiced over every disaster of his country during the war against America. A good dealof wild nonsense was also written in some of the Whig newspapers. Daily newspapers began early in the eighteenth century; but they were still expensive, and, as yet, few of the poorer classes could read, so the newspapers used to be passed from hand to hand, or read aloud in the public-house. On the whole, the voice of the newspapers was thoroughly patriotic.

But if there were few sympathizers with
France in Britain, there were many in Ireland.
Ireland still had real grievances, though during the last thirty years they had steadily been removed. She had shown little gratitude for their removal, and many Irishmen had openly sympathized with the American rebellion. In
1782 her Parliament had been declared to be absolutely free from the laws of the British
Parliament, and there was therefore a real danger that Ireland might refuse to go to war to help Great Britain. The Catholics were still shut out from this Parliament; but, excepting in Ulster, nearly all the poorer Irishmen were Catholics. Pitt, as I told you,
wanted to admit Catholics to both Parliaments;
but it was not the time to make such a great change, when Britain was in the middle of a dangerous war, and when the mass of the Irish peasants, poor, disloyal, and ignorant, were quite ready to welcome a French invasion of

Ireland. From 1795 there was almost a state of civil war between Irish Protestants and
Catholics; and, in 1798, the latter openly rebelled. England had very few troops to spare, and the rebellion took nearly a year to put down. French invasion was hourly expected, though only once a very few French troops were able to land. When the rebellion was over, Pitt rightly decided that the best thing for both countries was to abolish the
Irish Parliament, and to make one united
Parliament for the two islands (1800). In this united Parliament Pitt intended to allow the Catholics to sit; but King George foolishly and obstinately refused to agree, and so Pitt had to resign the office of Prime Minister,
which he had held for eighteen years.

And now for the “great war.” For Britain it would necessarily be a sea war, and therefore a war for empire, trade, and colonies. For
France, as far as she could make it so, it would be a land war, since it was Europe that France wanted to conquer, not sea or colonies. At first, as I told you, she professed to be con- «
quering other states for their own good, “to liberate them from their tyrants,” and all that sort of nonsense. But most nations,
even those that really were badly governed,
soon found out that French invasion was much

worse than any amount of bad government by their own “tyrants.” So nation after nation rose and fought against France, either one by one or in great alliances of nations.
All were beaten; France was the greatest land power in the world, and her soldiers the bravest,
cleverest, and fiercest fighters. All the nations in the world appealed to England to help them with the one thing which all knew she had got in heaps, money. We actually paid Dutchmen, Prussians, Austrians, Spaniards, Russians and even Turks to fight for their own interests against France.

How could we afford to do this? Simply because of the power of our Navy, which in a few years became so great, that it was able to crush the commerce and to take the colonies of any nation that would not fight against
France. Soon it was only in Britain that people could buy the goods of the far East and the far West, silk, coffee, tobacco, sugar, tea,
spice. And at last only in Britain could they buy manufactured articles at all. Even the very Frenchmen who fought us had to buy the clothes and shoes they wore from English merchants!

This control of the world’s trade did not come to us at once, and not without hard fighting. Pitt, as I told you, had neglected

the Army and Navy. Our admirals were old,
our generals were at first very stupid. We sent some troops to help the Dutch, and they were very badly beaten. Holland became a daughter-republic of France, and Belgium became a French province. The poor Dutch
I did not gain much by the exchange, for the
British navy simply took away all their colonies notably Ceylon and the Cape of Good Hope,
just as it was taking the French West Indian
Islands. Nearer home our fleet did not do so well. The French Republic did not have so good a navy as the old French Monarchy had had; but its sailors made up in gallantry what they lacked in skill and efficiency, and it was not until 1797 that we won a great naval battle in European waters. The Spaniards had been forced into the French alliance, and in that year Sir John Jervis and Captain Nelson
(soon to be Lord Nelson) utterly defeated a big French and Spanish fleet at Cape St.
Vincent on the Spanish coast.

It was just at this time that the greatest
| soldier that ever lived came to lead the French
 — Napoleon Bonaparte. He appeared first
1 as a victorious general in 1796, then as “First
Consul” (that is, President) of the French
Republic, 1799; then in 1804 as “Emperor of the French.” By this time France had

given up all idea of delivering peoples from
“tyrants,’’ and simply meant to conquer all the world for her own benefit. Napoleon at once saw that this was impossible as long as Britain remained free and victorious at sea.
To invade Britain, or to destroy in some other way the wealth and commerce of Britain, became his one desire. But to invade Britain while our fleet watched outside all French harbours, while it prevented French ships from sailing out, and smashed them if they did, was not so easy. The mere fear of invasion was enough to set the hearts of all Britons beating.
Volunteers flocked to arms from every parish in our island; and by 1804 we had nearly half a million men in fighting trim in a population of little over eleven millions. If we were to keep the same proportion to-day, we ought to have nearly three millions of men under arms. How many have we got?

But in truth Napoleon’s chances of invading us were not great. Nelson had broken his
Mediterranean fleet to splinters at the Battle of the Nile, 1798, and had also finished a Danish fleet (which had been got ready to help France)
at the Battle of Copenhagen in 1800. A few months of peace, 1802-3, followed the retirement of Pitt from the Government. But the war began again in 1803; Pitt came back inthe next year, and governed Britain until his death at the beginning of 1806. The years
1803-4-5 were the most dangerous. Napoleon had got a great army at Boulogne (which is almost within sight of the shore of Kent, not three hours’ sail, with a fair wind, from Folkestone), ready to be rowed across the Channel in large, flat-bottomed boats.

But what was the use of that without a French fleet to protect the flat-bottoms? If they had tried to get across unprotected, a single British warship could have pounded them into a red rice-pudding in a few minutes; and so our real task was to watch the French harbours and prevent their ships of war getting out. The final struggle came in 1805. The French
Admiral Villeneuve managed to get out from
Toulon; drove off the British force which was watching the Spanish ports, and so freed the
Spanish fleet. He then sailed across the Atlantic and back again, in the hope of drawing all
British ships away from the Channel. After a long chase Lord Nelson met him off the
Spanish coast, and won the Battle of Trafalgar in October, 1805. It was almost a dead calm all the morning as the great fleets crept slowly toward each other — they must have looked like moving thunder-clouds. Lord Nelson’s famous signal “England expects that everyman will do his duty” wasspelled out in little!
flags from the mast of his great ship the
Victory.
And every man did. Almost the whole French and Spanish fleets were there sunk or taken prisoners. No such victory had been won at sea since the Greeks beat the Persians at Salamis nearly five hundred years before Christ. Nelson was killed in the battle; but the plan of invasion was over and Napoleon never resumed it. The
French navy hardly recovered from this defeat before our own days. You can see the
Victory
still moored in Portsmouth harbour, and can go into the little dark cabin in which Nelson died, happy in spite of mortal pain, because he just lived long enough to hear of England’s triumph.

The remaining colonies of France and her allies were gradually conquered during the next ten years. But at first this seemed to help little toward freeing the continent of Europe which, by 1807, France had subdued right up to the Russian frontier. Prussia had been beaten to pieces in 1806; Austria which, on the whole, had been the most steady of Napoleon’s enemies, was beaten for the third time in 1809, and was half inclined to make an alliance with him; but by that time Napoleon had run his head against something which was going to destroy him.

mfuch the worst governed, most ignorant,
most backward nation in Europe, was Spain.
Napoleon thought it would be easy to put one of his brothers on the throne of Spain, and one of his generals on the throne, of Portugal.
Spain was, besides, the oldest ally of France;
but when Napoleon tried this plan in 1808,
she became at once his fiercest enemy. She did not want to be “reformed” or better governed;
she wanted to keep her stupid, cruel Catholic kings and priests. Both Spain and Portugal at once cried out for British help; and, as the road by sea was in our hands, we began at once to send help in money, and very soon in men. With the men we sent
a man.
“ In war,”
said Napoleon himself, “it is not so much men as a man that counts.” Sir Arthur Wellesley,
one day to be known as the Duke of Wellington, was perhaps not so great a soldier as
Marlborough or as Napoleon. His previous experience of war had been mostly in India, where,
under his brother, the Marquis Wellesley, who was Governor-General of India, he had won,
in 1803 and 1804, great victories over enormous swarms of native cavalry called Mahrattas. But he was the most patient and skilful leader we had had since Marlborough, and he had complete confidence in himself and in his power to beat the French.

He landed in Portugal in 1808, won a great battle at Vimeiro, and early in the next year had driven the French back into Spain. He then made Lisbon (the capital city of Portugal)
his “base of operations.” The British fleet was able continually to bring supplies, money,
food and men to Lisbon. Wellington fortified the approach to the city very strongly, and was able to repel an enormous French army which came to attack him there in 1810. He followed it up into Spain as it retreated; and year by year advanced further into Spain,
winning battle after battle. But each winter he fell back upon his base. The fierce patriotism of the Spanish peasants, who killed every
Frenchman they met, helped us enormously,
though in the battles their armies were of little use to us, and their generals worse than useless.
At last in 1813 came a year in which Wellington did not need to retreat into Portugal. He won the great Battle of Yittoria in June, and then drove the French back in headlong flight over the Pyrenees. Early in 1814 our men were fighting their way into that French province, which, five hundred years before, we used to call “English Aquitaine.”