The Years of Endurance (26 page)
and surprised the Dutch battleships ice-bound in the Texel. So sudden was the advance that Lord Malmesbury, returning to England from Brunswick with the future Princess of Wales, only narrowly escaped capture.
All hope of a stand inside Holland now vanished. The hungry and demoralised survivors of the British army fell back into North Germany, where they were insulted and neglected by the Prussians who, having no further hope of subsidies, treated them as a pack of contemptible and defeated tradesmen. Early in March the Government sent transports to the Weser to evacuate them. On April 13 th, 1795, the infantry embarked at Bremen, the cavalry and a small force of artillery remaining behind to protect Hanover.
For northern Europe the war was over. Prussia had already made her peace with the Revolution. The French were in an arrogant mood, but the Ministers of Frederick William preferred to stomach it. For they saw in the ruthlessness of
the
new France—its centralisation, contempt for established morality and unabashed acquisitiveness—a temper akin on a grander scale to their own. Like the Jacobin Republic, the Kingdom of Prussia kept its eye on the main chance and its neighbours' territories.
1
If its rival, Austria, chose to weaken itself by continuing the war for ideological reasons, so much the better. On April 5th a treaty was signed at Basle by which France retained all German lands west of the Rhine until a general peace. If thereafter France still kept them, Prussia, with French connivance, was to compensate herself elsewhere: in other words at the expense of the Hapsburgs and the lesser Teuton states. The Republic was formally approved by a European Power which in return was left ruler of north Germany. " The treaty," wrote Malmesbury, "instead of one of a shameful and ignominious peace, may be considered as one of a predatory alliance; and such a league
1
A valuable contemporary appreciation of Prussia is preserved among Lord Grenville's Foreign Office papers : " The character of this people, formed by
a
succession of rapacious Princes, is turned towards usurpation. The war with France was disagreeable to them because it melted down the accumulations of old Frederick, and did not present an immediate accession of territory. But the
War
with, or rather against, Poland was not unpopular, because the moral principles of
a
Prussian go to the possession of whatever he can acquire. And so little is he the slave of what he calls vulgar prejudice that, give him opportunity and means, he will spare you the trouble of finding
a
pretext. This liberality of sentiment greatly facilitates negotiation, for it is not necessary to clothe propositions in honest and decent
form."—
H.
M.
C.
Dropmore,
III, 232.
between two such Powers may have very serious consequences."
1
It certainly shocked what remained of the conscience of Europe. King George when he heard the news could scarcely credit it.
2
But countries within the Jacobins' reach took a more realistic view and followed Prussia's example. Tuscany even managed to make peace before her. In May the new Dutch or Batavian Republic concluded an alliance with France, granting her the use of its fleet against Britain, an annual tribute of four and a half millions and the permanent maintenance of a French army in Holland. Luxemburg surrendered in June, and Sweden made peace in the same month. In July Spain withdrew from the Coalition, ceding Hispaniola to the Republic and secredy promising to use her influence to turn Portugal against England. Only Austria, little Piedmont and the Two Sicilies remained languidly faithful to the Grand Alliance. All were far away from Britain. Between them and her lay victorious France with its dependent population swollen by conquest from twenty-six to thirty-five millions. " Dread and terrible times," noted Woodforde in his diary, " appear to be near at hand."
1
Malmesbury,
III, 250.
2
H. M. C. Dropmore,
III, 57
CHAPTER
SIX
The Home Front
1794-5
" It matters little whether the disasters which have arisen
are to be ascribed to the weakness of Generals, the intrigues
of camps or the jealousies of Cabinets ; the fact is that they
exist, and that we must anew commence the salvation of
Europe."
Pitt.
" Let us trust to nothing but God and ourselves, for I
repeat it again and again, there is nothing else left on which
we can rely with safety."
Major
Calvert
.
The
collapse of Holland and the evacuation of the British army changed the character of the war. It gave the enemy the entire continental coastline facing England. It placed him on the flank of her trade-route with northern Europe and the Baltic—the lifeline along which she imported naval stores and, in time of bad harvest, grain. It doubled the work of the Navy by extending the blockade. On the day that Amsterdam fell five ships of the line had to be withdrawn from the Channel fleet to watch the Dutch ports.
Britain was thus forced back on to her last line of defence. Simultaneously
the
Navy on which she had become more dependent than ever was crippled by the loss of her former allies' bases and ships. Holland's considerable fleet not only withdrew from the fight, but on May 16th, with the Batavian Republic's declaration of war, passed over to the enemy. Spain, with naval resources equal to France's own, was an even greater loss. Only
the
unsea
worthy and ill-disciplined squadrons of Sicily and Portugal remained to the Grand Alliance.
It seemed doubtful if the Navy could bear the strain. Many Continental observers thought not. Despite brilliant frigate ex
ploits and the victory of the 1
st of June, it had already shown signs
of finding its world-wide burden too heavy. The American convoy had been allowed to reach Brest. Sierra Leone, on the West African coast, had been plundered by a Republican squadron in September, 1794,
1
and there had been moments in the summer when the King at Weymouth had seemed in some danger of being kidnapped by French smugglers who put nightly into the Dorset coves. During an alarm in September the frigates on guard in Portland Bay actually opened fire on one another.
2
In November, through Howe's policy of keeping his main fleet in harbour for the winter, a British battleship had been captured by a French division 200 miles off Ushant, and a fortnight later reinforcements for Guadeloupe had been allowed to sail from Brest. Nor was naval discipline satisfactory: a ship of the line, ordered to the West Indian station, had mutinied at Spithead, and had only been brought back to duty after the guns of the Fleet had been levelled against her.
Had it not been for the demoralisation of the French navy, Britain might easily have suffered disaster. But fortunately the
F
rench, though capable of inflicting damage, were not able to take the offensive. After Christmas Villaret Joyeuse's fleet, raiding in the Atlantic, lost no less than five ships of
the
line, three of them foundering in a tempest. Even this ill-fated voyage cost Britain seventy merchantmen, and enabled French naval reinforcements to reach the Mediterranean. Here also British convoys suffered, many hundreds of vessels being captured by French privateers for lack of proper protection.
3
With the coastline of Europe to patrol from Hamburg ro Genoa and convoys to protect in every part of the world the Navy needed leadership of genius. Instead it was commanded mostly by elderly men of routine. Lord Spencer, who had taken over the office of First Lord of the Admiralty from Chatham, was an upright and capable patrician who was later to show himself capable of bold decisions at a critical time. But for the present he was inexperienced and self-opinionated. Almost his first act was to quarrel with the best senior officer in the Service, Lord Hood, because the outspoken old man had given unpalatable
advice. The Mediterranean com
mand
1
The acting Governor of the little station was young Zachary Macaulay, the father of the historian.
2
H. M. C. Dropmore,
II,
634. See also 611
-13.
3
Nicolas,
11,
32-3.
thus devolved on Lord Hotham, who was well described as a gentleman-like man but past the time of day for action.
1
As a result, when the French fleet put out from Toulon in March with untrained crews it was not annihilated as it deserved. Instead it was able, by good luck, to capture a crippled British seventy-four, and regain its base after an inconclusive engagement off Leghorn. The affair was only redeemed by Captain Nelson who, with a ship much inferior in size and gun-power, pursued and badly mauled the 8o-gun
C
a Ira.
Hotham made no attempt to follow up his brilliant subordinate's feat. " We must be contented," he to
ld him, " we have done very well
" Nelson afterwards confided to a friend that, had he taken ten sail and allowed the eleventh to escape, he would never have called it well done.
The Navy had not only to keep watch in European waters, it had to conduct operations in a pestilential climate thousands of miles away on the other side of the Atlantic. Here things, so bright seemingly in the spring of 1794, were going increasingly badly. Jervis and Grey had been driven into resignation in
the autumn by an incredibly tactl
ess letter of Dundas's, who, surrendering to the city, had backed false changes of corruption brought against them by West Indian merchants. The reinforcements promised to the fever-stricken garrisons never arrived, or when they did were far below the strength announced in the Secretary of State's letters. In March, 1795, Major Thomas Picton—many years later
to become famous as the hardest-
swearing general in
the
Peninsula—found 2600 raw boys, landed at Barbados instead of 10,000 men promised, riddled with typhus, too weak to hold arms, and without clothing for tropical campaigning. All the while French reinforcements kept slipping through the blockade: 6000 troops from Brest reached Guadeloupe in January. A few weeks later a negro rebellion broke out in the Windward Islands. In Grenada the governor and leading inhabitants were murdered; in St. Vincent the garrison was forced to take shelter in the coastal forts.
The rising was the price of Parliament's decision to postpone the abolition of the slave trade. The Jacobins, whose principles were truer in this to eternal law than those of their adversaries, reaped the benefit. The black man, with his numbers and immunity
1
" His soul has got down to his belly and never mounts higher now."—
Windham Papers,
I,
294.
to the climate, fought on their side. The British Government, despite the entreaties of its commanders on the spot, even forbade the enlistment of loyal negroes lest military service should discontent them with their lot. The powerful West Indian Committee in London bitterly opposed every move towards a saner policy. Only General Vaughan'
s enrolment, in defiance of Dun
das' instructions, of a small number of slaves with a promise of emancipation as a reward for good service, averted the total eclipse of British dominion in the islands.
The Secretary of State for War deserved better of his country in the courage and promptitude with which he faced the threat to the eastern empire caused by the collapse of Holland. Dundas suffered from all the obvious failings of the parliamentary lobby-man in a rich country. But his zeal for the Imperial assets he administered was beyond doubt. The craven surrender of Amsterdam placed the Dutch East India Company's trading stations at Cape Town and Ceylon within the reach of France. Refusing to contemplate Jacobin domination of the sea route to the Orient, Dundas at once sent off duplicate dispatches to India instructing the Governor-General to take immediate steps to secure the Dutch possessions. Simultaneously he obtained from
the
lethargic Stadt
holder an order to the Governor of the Cape to receive a friendly force. By the time the Batavian Republic declared war in May, the first of three British contingents was off the coast of South Africa. To forestall a Franco-Dutch expedition, the Government took great risks, sending out of the country a considerable part of its inadequate military force and dispatching it, in the spring gales, without convoy past an unblockaded Brest. But the stake was nothing less than the safety of India.
The Dutch surrender had a further embarrassing consequence. Amsterdam was the banking centre of the world and British trade was inextricably bound up with Dutch finance. S
ince the Revolu
tion of 1688 the two countries, both libertarian and plutocratic, had been commercially interdependent. In the long run the flight of capital from Holland enriched Britain and enabled her by underground rivers of gold to sustain a long war. But for the moment it threatened the fabric of her monetary system and world-wide commerce. The French, contrasting her bagman's dominion with their own self-contained power, confidently awaited the downfall of
La nation boutique
of Barere's contemptuous phrase.