The Years of Endurance (70 page)

But once again when Bonaparte's boasted projects encountered the solid fact of British sea power, they proved wholly insubstantial. Nelson, after his initial disgust, threw himself with his innate enthusiasm into the task of defeating the French invasion plans, real or imaginary. On the assumption that a flying force of 40,000 picked troops in 500 gunboats and barges would be used for a simultaneous landing in Kent and Essex, he worked out his usual minutely careful dispositions for dealing with them. His hope was to encounter Bonaparte in mid-ocean and make him " feel the bottom of the Goodwins." Once at sea, the enemy was to be harried by every vessel under his command and allowed no rest. " The moment they touch our coast, be it where it may," he ordered, " they are to be attacked by every man afloat and ashore."

Almost immediately the initiative in the Channel passed from France to England. With a young officer, Commander Parker, whom he had singled out for promotion in the Baltic, Nelson set in train plans for attacking the French flotilla in its own ports. On August 4th he bombarded Boulogne harbour for sixteen hours. Eleven nights later he resumed the attack with a force of fifty-seven boats. His object was to capture the enemy's barges and tow them back to England.

In this he was disappointed. The French shore-batteries, Latouche-Treville's gunboats moored off Boulogne pier, and above all the Channel tides and currents were too strong. The operation was technically a failure; forty-four lives, including that of the gallant Parker, were lost to little apparent purpose. But the event, by showing the impracticability of landing operations in the treacherous and intricate water of the Channel, even when conducted by only a few picked vessels under a superlative naval commander, removed all real fear of invasion. Nelson returned convinced of its impossibility. " The craft which I have seen," he wrote, " I do not think it possible to
row
to England; and sail they cannot."
¹

But by this time the First Consul had secured all he could hav« hoped for when negotiations started. He had discovered that, once the slow-witted English had been brought to concede a point, they regarded themselves as unalterably bound by whatever subsequently happened. Of this unaccountable and, as it seemed to his Italian mind, childlike and pedantic affectation, he took full advantage. Nor was it difficult to obtain colonial concessions, one by one, from the English milords. For they were by now so obsessed with the supposed advantages of peace that they were reluctant to risk missing it by standing out for trifles. And unlike their predecessors, the new Ministers seemed to regard colonial possessions as trifles compared with Continental concessions. This naturally suited Bonaparte, who wanted colonies and could dispose of the Continent as he chose.

For to such barndoor statesmen as Addington and Hawkesbury, Bonaparte's latest
faits accomplis
in Europe—the annexation of Piedmont, the occupation of the Neapolitan ports, the subjection of Portugal and the re-Gallicising of the Batavian Republic—seemed so vast and threatening that to obtain some modification of them they were ready to sacrifice any number of remote colonial conquests. Noblemen of the
ancien regime
with minds that moved only in well-worn grooves, they regarded Naples as far more important than outlandish Cape Town and a petty German or Italian principality as worth all Canada. They did not share the imperial vision of Dundas or the new commercial horizons of Pitt: theirs were bounded by the capitals and courts of eighteenth-century Europe: the narrow world of the past and not the oceanic world of the future. For a little transient ease and popularity they not only agreed to restore to France all her pre-war possessions—Martinique, St. Lucia and Tobago in
the
West Indies, her forts and factories in India, Goree and Senegal in Africa, and
the
North Atlantic islands of Miquelon and St. Pierre—but conceded, step by step, the return to the puppet Batavian Republic of the Cape of Good

¹
Mahan,
Nelson,
II,
138.

Hope, Demerara, Berbice, Essequibo, Surinam, Curacoa, Malacca, Cochin China, Negapatam and
the
Spice Islands. Of Britain's conquests from Holland they retained only Ceylon and of those from Spain—in deference to the City—Trinidad. In the Mediterranean they relinquished the last remaining fruits of Nelson's victories: Malta to the Knights of St. John, Minorca to Spain, and Elba to France.

In return for all this Britain obtained from the First Consul the restoration of Egypt to Turkey, a guarantee of Portuguese territorial integrity and a promise to withdraw the French garrisons from the south Italian ports. The importance of the first concession was dwindling daily as a result of British triumphs in the desert, while the rest depended on Bonaparte's good faith and readiness to refrain from future aggression. But on one point, at least, the Government had cause to be proud: the restitution which its protection secured for its helpless allies. England might have asked too little for herself, but she had not betrayed those who had trusted her: the character of the country, as Pitt said afterwards, remained on high ground. In the autumn of 1801, for all her adversary's power, it is doubtful if her credit on the Continent had ever stood higher. In every country the English name was held in respect while the French were universally detested for their spoliations.
¹

Such was the position reached by the middle of September—a month after Nelson's attempt on the Boulogne flotilla. Bonaparte, impressed by the almost limitless elasticity of the English mind when in an appeasing mood as contrasted with its obstinacy in battle, was still standing out in the hope of further concessions, and the few in England who knew of the secret negotiations were growing hourly more depressed. On September 17th, Lord Corn-wallis, representing the view of a little minority of tired, disillusioned leaders of the older generation, wrote that he could see no prospect of peace or of anything hopeful. " We must, I am afraid," he added, " lose many more good men in Egypt."

But on that very day Bonaparte, from his geographical vantage-point in Paris, received news that his garrison at Alexandria was at its last gasp. Within a few weeks at the outside the British Government and the world would learn that France's arms and prestige had received a shattering blow and that her chief con
cession

¹
Farington,
I,
338.

to England was become valueles
s. Unless .the First Consul coul
d conclude the negotiations at once, all he had gained might be lost. For all his bold front, peace for a time was essential to him: unlike the British Ministers who did not live in Europe and feel its effects, he was only too conscious of the power of the blockade. Its continuance for another winter might ignite the whole Continent.

He showed no weakness. As on the field of battle, when things were going against him, he acted with speed and decision. He at once instructed his agent in London to conclude the preliminaries by October 2nd: before, that is, the British could receive news of their final triumphs in Egypt. Unless an armistice was signed by that date, he was to inform Hawkesbury that negotiations would be broken off.

The bluff succeeded. As he had done so often before, Bonaparte snatched victory out of defeat. In its haste to retrieve the vanishing mirage of peace the Cabinet forgot every card in its hand: the blockade, the victories in Egypt, the imminent fall of Alexandria, the control of the Channel. It fell into the trap, grasping peace while it could. Vital points which were still unsettled it left, on a few vague verbal assurances from Monsieur Otto, to further discussion after the cessation of hostilities. Nothing could have suited Bonaparte's purpose b
etter. On the night of October 1
st,
1801, Hawkesbury signed the Preli
minary Treaty.

Next morning news arrived that the last French garrison in Egypt had begun to negotiate a surrender. Simultaneously the announcement of a general armistice was made to England in an Extraordinary Gazette. It came as an overwhelming surprise. In the popular joy and relief every other consideration was forgotten. As mail coaches, decked with laurels, bore the tidings into market-towns and villages, cheering crowds filled the streets; at Torbay, where Collingwood was about to sail for Brest, his servant, running in as he sat at breakfast, could only stammer out the ecstatic words: " Peace! Peace!"

The general view was that the terms were as good as could be expected, and that no mere territorial gains could have been worth the continuance of the war. It was put by a London lady who wrote to a country correspondent of those who found fault with the Treaty and said it should have been better: " I only say it should
have been sooner, yet better late than never! "
¹
For the moment the country did not feel dishonour or fear future danger: the victories of Nelson, Saumarez and Abercromby had made too deep an impression in men's minds for that. Alone among the nations who had contended against France; Britain had lost nothing: on the contrary she had increased her territories. The hungry mob, believing that peace spelt plenty, welcomed the envoy who brought Bonaparte's ratification with hysterical delight: surrounded his carriage, took out the horses and dragged it from Portman Square to Downing Street. Cheers were even given for the First Consul, whose picture was sold in the streets; by one of those bewildering transformations endemic to English politics, " the Atheistical Usurper " and " Corsican Adventurer " of yesterday became the " Restorer of Public Order," " the August Hero " and even—on one solitary inscription—" the Saviour of the World."
²
Nelson could not restrain his disgust at this ignorant exultation. " There is no person rejoices more in the peace than I do," he wrote, " but I would sooner burst than let a damned Frenchman know it! "

Only a few refused to welcome a peace which their reason told them could not endure. The King, after reading the Preliminaries, lifted his hands and eyes to Heaven, heaved a sigh and thereafter kept silence on the matter.
³
Grenville and Windham, in their new freedom from official ties, declared that Britain had " given up everything everywhere," and described the Treaty as the death-warrant of the country. But the official Opposition under Fox supported it, its most patriotic member, Sheridan, speaking of it as a peace " which every man ought to be glad of but no man can be proud of." It was defended in the Commons by Addington, Wilberforce and Pitt, and in the Lords by Hawkesbury, Nelson and St. Vincent. Pitt argued that the security for which he had so long contended had been achieved, that the financial situation made peace necessary, and—on surer ground—that a period of rest had become indispensable to England. Though he regretted the loss of the Cape, he welcomed the retention of Trinidad and Ceylon as permanent keys to the West and East Indies and the two most valuable acquisitions that could have been chosen. In the Lower House no Division was taken, an
d even in the Upper, where Gren
ville

¹
Bamford,
214.
²
Crabb
Robinson,
I,
105
-6.

³
Windham
Papers,
II,
176
.

and Spencer stood out fiercely, the resolution approving the Treaty was carried by 114 votes to 10. The gift of peace seemed too precious after so many years of war and suffering to be scrutinised over-closely.

But those who sup with the devil need a long spoon. It fell to the Government—as it deserved—to be the first to test the truth of this. After the official cessation of hostilities and the raising of the blockade on October 22nd, the preliminary Armistice had to be turned into a definitive Treaty of Peace. The questions left indeterminate on Monsieur Otto's verbal assurance in the eleventh-hour hurry to sign had now to be adjusted. There was the question of compensation to Britain's proteges, the Prince of Orange and the King of Sardinia, the delimitation of the Newfoundland fisheries and the recognition by Spain and Holland of the retention of Trinidad and Ceylon. There were the provisions for securing the absolute independence of Malta and its guarantee by a third Power. Most important of all there was the negotiation of the commercial facilities on the Continent to which British merchants looked forward as the fruits of the peace for which their statesmen had sacrificed so much. Given the same good will and good faith on the French side as on the British, little remained but a few formalities. It was not anticipated that they would take long.

The task of negotiating them was entrusted to that most distinguished soldier and proconsul, the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. The Marquis of Cornwallis had taken little part in the war; he was a hero—if a somewhat tragic one—of an earlier contest. He had always been held in reserve as a national trump card to be played at supreme moments: in 1794 Pitt and Grenville had proposed him to the strangely unimpressed Austrian General Staff as a possible Commander-in-Chief to save the First Coalition from disruption and defeat. Needless to say, he shared the Government's views about the necessity for peace: American defeats, a decade of campaigning in India and his experiences at Dublin Castle had made him at sixty-two a profound pessimist. He described himself in September, 1801, as " out of sorts, low-spirited and tired of everything."
¹
He was a great gentleman and a great patriot. But his vision of England's place in the world derived not from the sunrise over Aboukir Bay but from the melancholy twilight of Yorktown.