The Years of Endurance (36 page)
On February 17th, 1797, this fearsome force—designated the Black Legion—sailed from Brest in a lugger and a corvette escorted by two frigates. It proved scarcely worthy of its instructions. On the 19th at the mouth of the Bristol Channel it missed a chance of capturing the Dublin packet boat, which it mistook for a man-of-war. Next day it came to anchor off Ilfracombe, where a small party landed and burnt a farmhouse. But on hearing that the North Devon Volunteers were on the march, the expedition hastily weighed anchor and, abandoning all ideas of Bristol, made for the Welsh coast. Here on the 22nd it landed near the lonely village of Fishguard. But even this secluded spot proved too exposed for its courage. The local aristocrat, Lord Cawdor, instead of running away or waiting to be roasted by his peasants, called them out in their respective corps—the Castle Martin Yeomanry, the Cardigan Militia and the Fishguard Volunteers—and, though outnumbered, boldly advanced against the invaders. Colonal Tate thereupon surrendered, " upon principles of humanity," he explained. It was all his captors could do to prevent the Welsh women along the London road from cutting his throat.
The only lasting effect of the expedition was to convince the common people of Britain that the Government cartoonists were right and that the French from Bonaparte downwards were a collection of ragged, plundering, cowardly scarecrows who burnt barns, stole chickens and raped servant girls. But the immediate consequence threatened to be more serious. For Tate had sailed on his filibustering raid just when the delicate mechanism on whose destruction the French had so long counted was on the verge of breaking down. Pitt's policy of financing war out of loans and the drain of bullion to keep the Allies in the field had strained the credit of the country to breaking point. After Bonaparte's Italian victories and the naval withdrawal from the Mediterranean, Consols had fallen to 53—a level as yet only equalled during the most disastrous year of the American War.
The Irish Government's despairing appeal for funds to equip the Army after the Hoche scare reduced the depleted reserve of specie in the Bank to little more than a million and a quarter.
1
With invasion fears causing farmers and traders to withdraw their bank balances for more primitive forms of hoarding, a run began in the middle of February on the north country banks. The news of Tate's landing on the evening of February 23rd precipitated a financial panic. By the time the Government was able to announce the sequel on the 25th, the country was within a few hours of bankruptcy. Queues of clients besieged the doors of every bank and general repudiation seemed certain.
Pitt acted promptly. On Saturday the 26th the Cabinet agreed to authorise the suspension of cash payments. The King came up from Windsor and the Privy Counsel met to issue a Proclamation pending parliamentary sanction. The Bank of England was empowered to issue
£
1
and £
2 paper notes as legal tender. For two days it was touch and go: then on the 27th a reassuring statement showed that, after meeting all liabilities, the Bank had legal assets amounting to nearly ten millions. The sound sense of the country did the rest, and by the time Parliament had passed the necessary legislation, the worst was over. " The French do not know this wonderful people," wrote Southey afterwards. " It was supposed that the existence of the English Government depended upon the Bank and that the Bank would be ruined by an invasion: the thing was tried, men were landed in Wales, away ran the Londoners to the Bank to exchange their bills for cash, and the stock of cash was presently exhausted. What was the consequence? Why, when the Londoners found there was no cash to be had, they began to consider whether they could not do without it, mutually agreed to be content with paper and have been contented ever since. The Bank is infinitely obliged to France for the experiment."
2
Once again the adaptability of the national character proved Britain's greatest asset.
Yet for a few weeks, until the City and the provinces had adjusted themselves to the situation, the position of Pitt's Gov
ernment was seriously shaken.
Restoration of national credit had been his
1
It had stood at £8,000,000 two years before.—
Pitt and the Great War,
308.
2
Espriella,
III, 137-8. The Bank had reason to be, for being enabled to increase its note issue at its own discretion without fear of bankruptcy, it freely lent its own paper money at
5
per cent, of its face value—a very profitable transaction. Between 1797 and 1800 the note circulation rose from £8,500,000 to £16,000,000. Cash payments were not resumed till 1821.
peculiar achievement, and with it the great finance Minister stood or fell. For some time his strength had mainly lain in the lack of any one to replace him: he had many bitter enemies and few friends. In November his coach was stoned and hooted by a mob, and he seriously confided to Wilberforce that were he to resign his head would be off in six weeks.
For Pitt was showing signs of strain. He was now just on thirty-eight and had been Prime Minister continuously for thirteen years, the last four in time of war and nationa
l peril. He felt acutely the soli
tude of his place, was often impatient, particularly with his critics in Parliament, and was much troubled by headaches. Early in the New Year—though only a few knew it—he had deliberately turned his back on what seemed his greatest hope of happiness. During his occasional visits to his Kentish home, Holwood, he fell in love with the eldest daughter of his neighbour, Lord Auckland. A lovely, vivacious girl of twenty, Eleanor Eden, naturally flattered, returned his attentions, and the Edens and Pitt's few close friends looked forward to a new and serener era in his life.
But on January 20th Pitt wrote a letter to Auckland renouncing all hope of claiming his daughter's hand. He gave no reasons, but the shocking state of his finances was the probable cause. Absorbed in public work, he had long left all private business to servants who made the housekeeping bills at Downing Street and Holwood a bottomless pit of debt. Rece
ntly
his mother and brother had made heavy drafts on his limited purse. A poor man, almost entirely dependent on his official salary, he refused like his father to use his official position to enrich himself. He even refused a modest place to his prospective father-in-law which would have provided a portion for his bride. In an age in which a certain display was regarded as an essential part of a public man's equipment, he chose to remain a bachelor because marriage with the women he loved would have compelled him either to retire or to stoop to a form of theft from his country which all the world but he practised.
But the act of repudiation seemed to shrivel his frail body. Thereafter he became even more solitary than before. At council meetings in February it was noted that his face looked swollen and unhealthy. His foes rejoiced and even his friends complained at his want of energy.
1
The Bank crisis was made the occasion of a full-
1
Farington
I,
194.
dress attack on him in the House: two days after the suspension of cash payments the Opposition carried eighty-six members into the lobbies. " We have too long had a confiding House of Commons," Fox declared, " I want now an inquiring House of Commons." The City Common Hall even passed a resolution to address the King to remove his Ministers. There was talk of a new Government under Lord Moira, excluding " all persons on either side who had made themselves obnoxious to the public."
From this trough of depression Pitt was raised by great tidings. On the evening of March
3
rd news reached London of a naval victory against Spain. For a moment the clouds of that terrible winter parted. Through them men saw the gleam of something swift and glorious, and of a new name—Nelson.
The victory which had come so unexpectedly was owing in the first place to Sir John Jervis. After a visit to Portugal to reanimate its despairing go
vernment and refit his storm-ba
ttered fleet, he had left Lisbon on January 18 th, 1797, with eleven ships of the line. He had refused to remain there a day longer than necessary: " inaction in the Tagus," he wrote, " will make us all cowards." The bad luck which had dogged the tough old man for the past two months still held, for as he left the estuary one of his only two three-deckers went aground. This, his fifth casualty since the great gale of December 10th, reduced his fleet to ten. Nevertheless, though he knew that close on thirty Spanish ships of the line were expected off Cadiz on their way from the Mediterranean to Brest, he never faltered. After escorting a Brazil-bound convoy into the Atlantic, he beat back through winter storms to his chosen station off Cape St. Vincent. Here he waited for the enemy and for the battle which he was resolved should determine the fate of Britain.
Meanwhile the man of destiny who was fated to be England's answer to Napoleon was almost boyishly challenging danger in the abandoned Mediterranean. On December 15th, 1796, Commodore Nelson had sailed from Gibraltar with two frigates to evacuate troops and stores from Elba. Off Cartagena, the main Spanish base, he fell in with two enemy frigates and at once engaged them, capturing one. He reached Porto Ferrajo on the evening of Christmas Day, just in time to escort the erstwhile Betsey Wynne, npw united to his friend Captain Fremantle, to a ball where he was
received by the delighted British colony—who were feeling a little isolated—to the strains of " Rule Britannia." On January 29th, 1797, he sailed again to rejoin Jervis.
Two days later the Spanish fleet, twenty-seven battleships and twelve large frigates, left Cartagena for the Atlantic. Their orders were to join the French at Brest and, sweeping the Channel and North Sea with their joint forces—greater than anything Britain could assemble—escort an army of invasion from Holland to Ireland. They passed the Straits on February 5th, and Nelson, who reached Gibraltar four days later, was forced to sail right through them as t
hey battled with the unwonted Atl
antic gales. While closely pursued by two Spanish battleships, one of his men fell overboard and his First Lieutenant, Hardy, lowered a boat and went to the rescue. To save him, Nelson, checking the course of his ship, risked almost certain destruction. But the Spaniards, bewildered by their tiny prey's unaccountable conduct, checked too, and Nelson got away. Next day he rejoined Jervis off Cape St. Vincent, and hoisted his Commodore's pennant in the
Captain,
74.
That night the two fleets drew near. The Spaniards were ignorant of Jervis's presence, but he, shadowing them with his frigates, was well aware of theirs. The night was misty and the Spanish ships, strung out over many miles of sea, fell into confusion, puncturing the silence with minute guns. At 5 o'clock on February 14th —St. Valentine's Day—they were sighted fifteen miles to the south-west: "thumpers," as the signal-lieutenant of the
Barfleur
reported, "looming like Beachy Head in a fog! " Jervis had been reinforced a week before by five ships from England, but he was outnumbered by nearly two to one. Of his fifteen capital ships only two carried 100 guns, while of the Spanish twenty-seven, seven were three-deckers with 112 guns or more, one of them —the four-decker
Santissima Trinidad
—the largest fighting ship in the world. Yet Jervis was determined to force a battle. For he knew that a victory at that moment was essential to his country.
But Jervis was no gambler. He had reckoned the odds carefully: he knew the strength of the Spanish fleet but he also knew its figbting capacity. He possessed in a supreme degree that comprehensive common sense and balance which, with clarity of decision and endurance, are the chief attributes of a master of war.
Defeat would spell disaster to England but so would failure to engage. As the mist lifted and the flag-lieutenant called out the odds, he remained grimly unperturbed. " There are eighteen sail of
the
line, Sir John." " Very well, sir."—" There are twenty sail of the line, Sir John." " Very well, sir."—" There are twenty-five sail of the line, Sir John." "Very well
, sir."—"There are twenty-seven
sail of the line, Sir John; near double our own." " If there are fifty sail of the line, I will go through them."—" That's right, Sir John," cried the giant Canadian, Captain Hallowell, in his enthusiasm actually slapping his Admiral on the back, " and a damned good licking we'll give them! "
In two columns, imperceptibly merging into an impenetrable line with sterns and bowsprits almost touching, the British fleet bore down on the enemy, making straight for a gap—nearly three miles wide—between the main force and a straggling division to leeward. It was like the inexorable thrust of a sword into a lanky giant's careless guard. The Spanish Admiral made a gallant effort to close it, but too late. The
Principe de Asturias
—a three-decker of 112 guns —tried to break through to join the severed squadron, only to encounter the
Victory's
broadside and drift out of the fight with tattered sails and splintered topmasts. Then with the
Culloden
leading, Jervis turned into the wind, his ships tacking in turn and meeting the Spanish line on a
parallel course. " Look at Trou
bridge," he remarked with triumph suffusing his stern countenance as the
Culloden
went into action, " he handles his ship as if the eyes of all England were upon him! "