The Amiens Truce: Britain and Bonaparte 1801 - 1803

THE AMIENS TRUCE: BRITAIN AND BONAPARTE 1801 - 1803 John D. Grainger

THE AMIENS TRUCE

In 1801 Britain and Bonaparte made an armistice, which became the Treaty of Amiens in March 1802. The brief period of peace which followed saw a major change in British attitudes, so that when war began again in May 1803 there was little or no dissent on the British side from the view that the war had to be fought to a finish – until Bonaparte’s power was destroyed. This was partly the result of the deceptive and deceitful methods Bonaparte used in the negotiations. It was also due to the conclusion reached by the many British visitors to France during the interval of peace that Bonaparte was extremely dangerous, anger at Bonaparte’s stealthy political advances in Europe and America, and outrage at the detention and imprisonment of British civilian visitors who were in France when the war began again. This is the first detailed examination of all these matters, based on the original materials produced by the participants, politicians and civilian visitors. The attitude of the British government headed by Henry Addington and, in particular, the diplomatic methods of the Foreign Secretary Lord Hawkesbury (later the Prime Minister Lord Liverpool) were decisive in countering Bonaparte’s methods. Here they receive their due. John D. Grainger is a historian with publications in the Hellenistic, Roman and modern periods.

THE AMIENS TRUCE BRITAIN AND BONAPARTE, 1801–1803

John D. Grainger

THE BOYDELL PRESS

© John D. Grainger 2004 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner First published 2004 Published by The Boydell Press An imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. PO Box 41026, Rochester, NY 14604–4126, USA website: www.boydell.co.uk ISBN 1 84383 041 8 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Grainger, John D., 1939– The Amiens truce : Britain and Bonaparte, 1801–1803 / John D. Grainger. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-84383-041-8 (alk. paper) 1. Treaty of Amiens (1802) 2. Second Coalition, War of the, 1798-1801—Peace. 3. Second Coalition, War of the, 1798-1801—Diplomatic history. 4. Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, 1769-1821. 5. Great Britain—Foreign relations—France. 6. France—Foreign relations—Great Britain. 7. Napoleonic Wars, 1800-1815—Public opinion. 8. Public opinion—Great Britain—History—19th century. I. Title. DC222.5.G73 2004 940.2′72—dc22 2003016907

Typeset by Keystroke, Jacaranda Lodge, Wolverhampton Printed in Great Britain by St Edmundsbury Press Limited, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk

CONTENTS Abbreviations Introduction

vii ix

Prologue: the emergence of the first consul

1

1

Negotiation: the tortuous route to a preliminary peace

7

2

Pacification: the slow journey to a treaty

49

3

Peace

81

4

Argumentation: the steady unravelling of peace

125

5

Collision: the descent into crisis

154

6

War again

178

Conclusion

210

Index

212

v

ABBREVIATIONS BL Add Mss

British Library, Additional Manuscripts

Browning

O. Browning (ed.), England and Napoleon in 1803, Dispatches of Lord Whitworth, London 1887

DNB

Dictionary of National Biography

Hardman, Malta

W. Hardman, A History of Malta during the Period of the French and British Occupations, 1798–1815, edited by J.H. Rose, facsimile edition, Malta 1994

HMC

Historical Manuscripts Commission

Parl. Hist.

Parliamentary History

PRO FO Adm WO CO

Public Record Office, Foreign Office documents Admiralty documents War Office documents Colonial Office documents

Ross

C. Ross (ed.), The Correspondence of Charles, First Marquis Cornwallis, London 1859 – all references are to volume 3

vii

INTRODUCTION The short peace between Britain and France in 1802–1803 is usually treated only briefly, and even cavalierly, as a minor episode interrupting a long war. Blame is usually cast on the government of Henry Addington for making the peace, and then also for allowing it to end. Addington gets a poor press from historians, in thrall as they are to the greater esteem of William Pitt and Lord Grenville. Grenville’s obdurately antiFrench policy is generally seen to have been the ‘correct’ policy, which eventually, in the hands of Castlereagh and Lord Liverpool, prevailed, even though it had clearly failed by 1801. I exaggerate and perhaps distort, of course, but not by very much. It is in fact necessary to distinguish between the two wars, as their differing names given them for historians’ covenience – ‘Revolutionary’ and ‘Napoleonic’ – suggest. It is no less necessary to look at the ways in which the British government decided to make peace, and why it came to the decision to declare war again in 1803. For this is an episode above all in Franco-British history, with other European and American and Asian lands and powers only marginally involved in both divisions. Further, it was the British government’s decision in each case – to make peace and to make war. Even Napoleon Bonaparte, necessarily central to all of this, was the object of British attention, and did not control events. Given that position, it follows that the sources to be used in this book are necessarily mainly British, and above all those from the Foreign Office. The essential bases for this work are partly published, and partly still in the original manuscript. Two sets of documents are published, the collections concerning Lord Cornwallis in the negotiations at Amiens, and the correspondence of Lord Whitworth during his embassy in Paris. In addition to these there are the letters of Lord Hawkesbury preserved in the British Library, of which the most significant are those relating to the negotiations with Louis Guillaume Otto for the Peace Preliminaries, and Foreign Office papers in the Public Record Office. The main result which to me emerges from a study of these documents is the consistency with which the Addington government operated towards Bonaparte. Prepared to give him the opportunity to keep the peace, from the very beginning, the Foreign Secretary Lord Hawkesbury was conscious of the fact from the first that Bonaparte did not keep to his agreements – the continuing presence of French troops in Holland in contravention of the Treaty of Lunéville, concluded in February 1801, ix

INTRODUCTION

was a clear sign of this. Hawkesbury emerges clearly as the man in control of foreign policy right from the start, taking advice from Addington and Pitt and others, but he was the man in control. That he was not a charismatic figure such as Bonaparte, or a tragic one such as Pitt, should not hide the fact that he controlled foreign affairs with a clear vision and determination. It should not be forgotten, in estimating this man, that he had been in government for over ten years before Pitt resigned, and was later Prime Minister for no less than fifteen years. Changing names and titles, from Robert Jenkinson to Lord Hawkesbury to Earl of Liverpool, tends to obscure this continuity. He was out of office for only one year between 1790 (when he was only 20 years of age) and his death in 1827. Two relatively minor matters of nomenclature require a preliminary explanation. It is all too common for historians – who above all people should know better – to refer to ‘England’, when they should use the term ‘Britain’. England ceased to be an independent state in 1707 when it united with Scotland; in 1801 the full name of the state became the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, for which, given Ireland’s clear and persisting subordinate status, ‘Britain’ is a useful short form. The use of ‘England’ to mean ‘Britain’ is a clear sign of sloppy and careless thinking in modern historians. The second matter is the name to be used for the French ruler. Again, like Hawkesbury, his title changes, from first consul to, eventually, emperor. As first consul he was ‘Bonaparte’, but when he became consul for life he began to be referred to, royal fashion, as ‘Napoleon’, though he continued to sign his letters simply as ‘Bonaparte’, during the period covered by this book. He will be referred to here, therefore, consistently as ‘Bonaparte’. To use his first name rather implies recognising his right to the royal title he had not yet taken, and similarly implies that the historian is rather dazzled by the man’s charisma. I hope I have not been so dazzled. This book is therefore largely an exploration of British policy towards the new power of Napoleonic France, so close and so great, just across the Channel and disposing of half a million soldiers. It is not, therefore, a similar exposition of the French position and policy, which would require a much larger book. I have, of course, taken account of published sources on the French side, but there is no doubt that they are portrayed in relatively crude terms. I would hope therefore that this study of the British side of the story might provoke a similar study of the French version of events – and Austrian and German and Prussian and Russian and Spanish. It is a big subject.

x

PROLOGUE The emergence of the first consul Making peace between Britain and France after the French Revolution was a task of difficulty and great complexity. Neither side was willing to abandon its war aims; both sides seized on momentary successes to derail any negotiations which were under way. The Peace Treaty which was finally concluded at Amiens in March 1802 was the result of a full year of negotiations, and they had also been preceded by intermittent discussions spread over the previous five years. Furthermore, the resulting treaty ensured peace for no more than fourteen months: even at the time it was often regarded as no more than a truce. The earliest attempts at negotiation had begun in 1796, but had collapsed after long talks when the French Directory next year perceived the straits to which Britain had been reduced: defeated on land, with an apparently insurrectionary population, a run on the Bank of England, and a mutinous fleet, it seemed that Britain was about to go along the same revolutionary way as France.1 The British recovery during the next year, by way of the defeat of a great Irish rebellion and naval victories at Cape St Vincent and Camperdown, and off the coast of Egypt, demonstrated that the British governmental system was, after all, very resilient. By contrast, the French government of the Directory proved to be as rickety and unstable as it had thought the British system had become, and its collapse was constantly hoped for by its enemies. And in September the next coup came, by which a vehemently republican group seized power; peace with Britain was less interesting to them than it had been to their less committed predecessors. The re-entry of Austria and Russia into the war, and the victories the alliance gained in 1799 in Italy and Switzerland, gave support to the British and encouraged the notion of French collapse. But the overall French system, if not the actual Directory, proved to be resilient as well. A British invasion of Holland was repulsed, the Austrian and Russian armies in Italy and Switzerland were either

1

A much investigated topic, producing no definite conclusions: R. Wells, Insurrection, the British Experience, Stroud 1983, is the most detailed consideration. 1

PROLOGUE

defeated or blocked, and disputes developed between them.2 Then in October 1799 the commander of the French army in Egypt returned to France, having deserted his command, though his army continued to control his conquest. This was General Napoleon Bonaparte, and within a month he succeeded in overthrowing the Directorial government in the coup d’état of 18 Brumaire, Year VIII.3 In this enterprise he was assisted by members of the Directory itself, by units of the army, by the profound weariness of the French with revolution politics and the corruption of the Directory, and by the unease and fear which the various Austrian, Russian and British victories had stimulated. The new regime, the Consulate, was not Bonaparte’s own idea, but it rapidly became his vehicle. He insisted on becoming first consul, out of three, and in allotting minimal powers to his two consular colleagues. In effect, these three officials replaced the five directors. They deliberately chose to meet, at first, in the same place the directors had used, so as to maintain the illusion that little had actually changed; a carefully filleted account of the events of the coup d’état was published, minimising the opposition encountered. That this interpretation was widely accepted is suggested by the profound lack of reaction in Paris, and in the rest of France, to the coup. The constitution of the Consulate, when put to a plebiscite, attracted only about 2,000 ‘non’ votes, in the face of over three million who approved.4 That Bonaparte planned in any detail to expand his own power from the first is unlikely. That he intended to do so is quite certain. During the coup the decisive moment had been when the troops Bonaparte had with him had believed that his life was threatened; they had stuck their bayonets under the noses of the men of the Council of Five Hundred and frightened them into surrender. This told Bonaparte, if he had ever doubted it, that the army was his, and he used that backing to push himself into the position of first consul, where originally there was supposed to have been equality between the three. By the time the new constitution was issued for plebiscitary approval, Bonaparte was named in it as first consul, with a salary 60 per cent greater than those of the other two; and Bonaparte’s original consular colleagues, Roger Ducos and Sieyes, were replaced by Cambacérès and Lebrun. The coup had been Sieyes’ notion, as was the general idea of a consular regime, though 2 A.B. Rodger, The War of the Second Coalition, Oxford 1964; P. Mackesy, Statesmen at War: The Strategy of Overthrow 1798–1799, London 1974. 3 H.C. Deutsch, The Genesis of Napoleonic Imperialism, Cambridge, Mass. 1938, has a good account of 18 Brumaire. 4 Ibid.; for an older account of the Constitution, cf. G. Bruun, Europe and the French Imperium, 1799–1814, New York 1938, ch. 2; useful extracts from the Constitutions are in M. Crook, Napoleon Comes to Power: Democracy and Dictatorship in Revolutionary France, 1795–1804, Cardiff 1998.

2

PROLOGUE

his original constitution had been much altered between the coup and its publication. He and Ducos had held office as directors; their replacements had not. The message of the reality of Bonaparte’s power was clear, as was the implication of a clear break with the discredited recent past. By this time the true nature of the new regime had become clear to many observers; political antennae had been sensitised by the rapid and variously shocking events of the previous ten years, and the new system was quickly understood: it was a military government, that is, a system of government which relied on the application of military force to solve its problems, and in which the most powerful personnel were soldiers.5 This was an ominous development for both internal and external opponents. Internally the increase in police powers and numbers, the use of widespread surveillance of the population, complete with regular reports of public opinion to the rulers, the use of secret police and paid informers, the practice of sudden arrest and unexpected searches, the regular use of the firing squad after the most perfunctory of legal processes, all combined to control the population of France.6 The consular regime’s inheritance of measures taken by the Directory included a conscription law which was more efficiently applied. This dealt with several interlinked problems. It removed a large and politically hostile, and potentially vigorous, element of the population from circulation, criminalised opponents as deserters or evaders, gave the government hostages, and at the same time provided it with the greater quantities of military manpower needed both to suppress internal dissent and to face its external enemies. It was a typically soldier’s solution to political problems; it was also a much simpler process than actually persuading people, as in a parliamentary system.7 But Bonaparte – and he was always the engine of the regime – was not so militarily narrow-minded and tunnel-visioned as to be constrained by military ideas. He was, after all, politically a child of the Revolution, and like many of the revolutionaries his opinions had veered about wildly in the past decade: he had been a wild Jacobin for a time, and had been imprisoned for it, and now emerged as an essentially conservative figure – that is, one who wished to conserve the achievements of the Revolution, not one who wished to go back to the past. From the

5 Deutsch, Napoleonic Imperialism, is good on this; A. Forrest, ‘The Military Culture of Napoleonic France’, in P.G. Dwyer, Napoleon and Europe, London 2001, ch 2. 6 On the police system, cf. M. Sibalis, ‘The Napoleonic Police State’, in Dwyer, Napoleon and Europe, ch. 4. 7 I. Woloch, ‘Napoleonic Conscription, State Power and Civil Society’, Past and Present 111, 1986, 101–129.

3

PROLOGUE

Revolution’s child he had become its heir. He set himself and his regime to tidying up the mess. The legal system, the legislative system, the processes of government, were all subjected to his quick intelligence and ordering mind. And after the Revolution’s wildness most of the French were content that this should happen, even, or in some conservatives’ cases, especially, at the expense of the democratic elements in all these areas.8 It was clearly the right time for this to be done, but Bonaparte was not the only man who could do it; Sieyes would perhaps have produced a system with less of an authoritative stamp about it, though it would have been more fragile, with more of a whiff of academic dust about it. The fact that it was largely done at Bonaparte’s behest, and under his direct supervision, and so with a considerable impress of his personality, gave the government an especially powerful grip. But perhaps even without Bonaparte’s participation this might have happened: the Revolution had had these powerfully centralising and authoritative elements in it from the first; the process was one of consolidation, not invention – most of the consular administrative system was well foreshadowed by the Directory. The erratic foreign policies pursued by the Directory, whose composition had changed regularly, meant that some foreign governments also saw in Bonaparte’s accession to power a progress towards French stability. This is, of course, exactly what the internal French reaction was seen to be. But Bonaparte, under the military gloss, was also a revolutionary, a former Jacobin, and he was as ambitious for personal power as the generality of the French population was for French pre-eminence in the world. His accession to power was thus at home a process of stabilisation, but in international affairs it was rather the reverse. He came to power, after all, in a state which had already incorporated the former Austrian Netherlands, Germany west of the Rhine, and southern Holland into itself, which had controlled and dominated Italy in various ways for several years, and which had been facing military defeat. Potentially, in such a condition France was the most powerful state in Europe; its internal mess had been the main restraint on the full international realisation of that power, and the main reason for its recent defeats in Germany and Italy. And now Bonaparte’s regime was busy sorting out that mess. If the French were weary of revolution politics, and generally acquiescent before Bonaparte’s consolidation of the Revolution’s achievements, they were by no means willing to acquiesce as readily in the continuation of the war. The Directory’s conscription law had been widely resented and opposed, both by the victims and by their communities, who had 8

Bruun, Europe, ch. 2. 4

PROLOGUE

no wish to lose the services of a whole generation of young men. So one leading element in Bonaparte’s early measures was a strong leaning towards peace, even if he had no real wish to achieve it. The seizure of the reins of power inside France was therefore followed by a series of diplomatic thrusts, as much designed to convince the French of his pacific intentions as to achieve peace. In December 1799, when he began his peace moves, Bonaparte had been consul for less than a month, and he was no more secure in his position than the directors had been, perhaps less so. There was no real sign yet that he would last. Any power which tried to make peace with him would simply burn its fingers if, or when, he fell and his successor took revenge. In a way, the time of year operated in his favour. Military movements were unlikely in the winter, so he could proclaim his wish for peace without fearing an immediate attack. A letter to George III, in defiance of British protocol, was both a true revolutionary levelling gesture and a sign to the French of his apparent pacific intentions. An appeal to Austria could do no harm. An appeal to Russia, on the other hand, could reap dividends, since Tsar Paul had already pulled out of the enemy coalition in disgust at Austrian conduct.9 It was not actually necessary to enter into negotiations with any of these enemies, still less to make peace. All that was needed was for the French to identify the new regime with the desire for peace. Since there was no real indication that the Consulate would last, and since Bonaparte’s rhetorical and propagandistic peace appeals contained no hard facts or proposals, neither Britain nor Austria, France’s current foes, could respond to his overtures. As a result, both states’ replies were held up to the French as being in actuality threats of blind enmity, and helped to solidify Bonaparte’s internal support. The state of war with Russia continued, but in a condition of suspense; Britain could not be got at. So Austria, the old Bonapartist enemy, had to be the real enemy in the next campaigning season. Not that the British and Austrians were wrong to be cautious. In his first year in power Bonaparte was the target of a good dozen plots aimed at his assassination, plots which were of increasing sophistication, ingenuity, and effectiveness. Some came very close to success. He still faced, for some months, an active insurrection in the south-west of France, until this was reduced by a mixture of military defeat and amnesty in late January 1800. He was quite unable to impose his authority on General Moreau, the commander of the French forces on the Rhine, in March and April, in his plans to attack Austria, so much so that the main campaign had to be switched from Germany to Italy. In

9

H. Ragsdale, Détente in the Napoleonic Era: Bonaparte and the Russians, Laurence, Kan. 1980. 5

PROLOGUE

June, however, he contrived a victory over the Austrians in Italy at Marengo, followed it up with an immediate armistice and peace talks, and his authority in France was thereby largely confirmed. The regime had thus lasted nearly eight months and had proved to be generally sensible at home, victorious abroad, and conciliatory to its internal enemies. Diplomatically Bonaparte had succeeded in keeping other potential enemies neutral and was making headway with persuading Tsar Paul into friendship – Franco-Russian talks had begun indirectly in March. With Britain, however, he was making no progress at all. He had offended the government of William Pitt by addressing his appeal for peace directly to King George III, a violation of normal diplomatic and constitutional procedure with regard to Britain, and, despite several private and public messages claiming sincerity, he had wholly failed to evoke any response other than a refusal to take him seriously. And, on 20 June, six days after the battle at Marengo, which was followed by a Franco-Austrian armistice, Austria and Britain signed a new treaty of alliance at Vienna.

6

1

NEGOTIATION The tortuous route to a preliminary peace The alliance between Britain and Austria agreed in Vienna on 20 June, in the aftermath of the Austrian defeat at Marengo, included two terms which were crucial to the next events: the grant of a subsidy to Austria, and a reciprocal agreement by Austria not to make a separate peace with France.1 The armistice which Bonaparte had agreed with General Melas, the Austrian commander in Italy, on the day after Marengo was therefore to be only temporary. He followed it up with a peace offer, and then with an armistice in Germany, which was followed in turn by a peace conference, but Austria, assured of British support and British gold, was able to use the period of the armistice to recover militarily, and had not been beaten so decisively as to be forced to a peace. In the interval of the Austrian truce Bonaparte renewed his peace approach to Britain. In London was Louis Guillaume Otto, a Germanborn French diplomat, the French commissioner in matters of prisoners of war, who organised paroles and exchanges of prisoners. The British had posted a major to do the same job in Paris, but Otto was not an army man. He was from Alsace, no doubt originally Ludwig Wilhelm, and had an American wife, and so he presumably spoke at least three languages. He was a welcome guest at London dinner tables, and an accomplished diplomat, but he was in fact kept on a tight rein by his masters in Paris. He had been sent to London originally to open negotiations at the end of the previous year, 1799; those had failed, in part due to Bonaparte’s clumsiness in addressing the king rather than his ministers, but Otto was still in London and available.2 On 24 August he wrote again to Lord Grenville, the Foreign Secretary, first with a routine request for passports for some couriers, and second to report that the British ambassador in Vienna, Lord Minto, had given a note to the Austrians who had asked that it be sent to London through France.

1

Parl. Hist. XXXV, cols 431–433, actually signed on 23 July, but backdated to the 20th. 2 Bonaparte’s letter, in translation, is in the New Annual Register for . . . 1800, 56 and in Parl. Hist. XXXIV, cols 1197–1198, with the subsequent documents following. 7

NEGOTIATION

(This was in fact official notification of the Anglo-Austrian treaty of alliance.) Otto took the opportunity to put forward the suggestion that the military armistice which was in operation in Germany and Italy should be extended to a naval armistice on similar terms between Britain and France, and that all states at war should meet in a general peace conference.3 In principle the British were by no means averse to a conference, or to a peace treaty, as their earlier talks in 1796, 1797 and 1799 had shown, but Grenville rapidly pointed out that a naval armistice was not at all the same thing as an armistice between armies on land.4 In the latter case, as with the Franco-Austrian armistice, the armies stood still in their positions, but there was no restriction on re-supply and re-armament; a truce thus permitted both sides to recover their strength. By definition this situation was quite impossible at sea, and to lift the naval blockade of France – as was clearly implied by the notion of an armistice – would be to negate all the advantages acquired by Britain in the previous years, and immediately transfer them to France. It would allow French trade to revive, permit the French naval bases to be re-equipped; French ships could be built and manned, all of which was unnecessary for Britain. A naval armistice in the conditions of 1800 and 1801 could only bring advantage to France. It is inconceivable that the French did not understand this. Similarly the French would not expect the British to miss the significance, so it must be assumed that the French did not seriously expect the British to agree. It is therefore difficult to find plausible reasons for the proposal. It may, of course, have been a deliberate insult, implying a lack of intelligence on Grenville’s part. More likely it was simply Bonaparte taking a chance, putting forward a proposal with the thought that a one in a hundred chance just might come off. For it had to have been Bonaparte’s idea. The only other authority who could suggest terms to Otto was Talleyrand, who would scarcely take such a chance by himself. But Bonaparte was a gambler, and impatient. The idea has, that is, all the hallmarks of Bonaparte’s brain, blunt, chancy and wild. It would also look very good in a propaganda announcement. Embedded inside it, however, were elements which just might be practical. There were, in fact, some elements of a military armistice which could be applied to the case of a naval war between Britain and

3

Parl. Hist. XXXV, Papers Relative to the Negotiations with France, cols 540–547, nos. 1 and 2; and H.M. Bowman, The Preliminary Stages of the Peace of Amiens, University of Toronto Studies, I, 2, 1899, are the sources and explanation for this and what follows. 4 Parl. Hist. XXXV, nos. 6 and 7, Grenville to Captain Rupert George, 29 August 1800. 8

NEGOTIATION

France. Three Austrian garrisons, at Ulm, Phillipsburg and Ingoldstadt, had been under siege by French forces at the time of the armistice, and by its terms they were allowed to receive limited supplies, just enough to keep them going, but not enough to build up their power. No doubt, both sides were tempted to cheat, and often got away with it, but it was not possible to do a great deal in the way of reinforcing or re-supplying under the noses of the supervising officers. It may have been this aspect which Bonaparte had in mind when he suggested a naval truce. There were two French forces overseas which he could claim were under siege, or at least cut off from France. In Malta a French force was under a formal siege in Valetta by a force composed mainly of Maltese soldiers, helped by important contingents of Portuguese, Sicilian and British troops, and the Royal Navy kept up an intermittent blockade of the city as well. The siege had lasted a long time, and repeated French attempts to run supplies past the British naval blockading forces, or to send in reinforcements, had been frustrated, sometimes within the very view of the slowly starving French garrison.5 Bonaparte’s special interest here was in the fact that he had captured Malta in the first place. The island had been ruled by the crusading Order of the Knights of St John of the Hospital since 1530, but this was an organisation which was far gone in irrelevance by the 1790s. It had been dealt a damaging blow by the French Revolution, for the revolutionary government had sequestrated its lands in France, which had produced the largest single element in the Order’s income. It was also from France that perhaps half of its knights came. (They were recruited by areas, called Langues, and three out of the eight were French: Provence, Auvergne and France.) With almost half its income gone, and now unable to recruit in France, the Order proved quite incapable of defending Malta when Bonaparte, with a fleet and an army, arrived in 1798. The grand master, Ferdinand von Hompesch, who had been elected only a year before, made an attempt at defence behind Valetta’s terrific fortifications, and had persuaded many Maltese to help, by fighting and by loans. Then he crumbled and capitulated.6 Bonaparte, with typical energy, reorganised the place quickly. He expelled the knights, set up a government, collected some Maltese volunteers, swept up all the spare cash and much of the precious metal in the islands, and then went on, with the fleet and most of his army, to conquer Egypt. In Malta the French Republican government rapidly

5 Hardman, Malta, chs X–XV; see also the briefer account in D. Gregory, Malta, Britain and the European Powers, 1793–1815, Madison and London 1996, ch. 5. 6 Hardman, Malta, chs 2–4; Gregory, Malta, Britain, ch. 2; see also the useful set of essays in V. Mallia-Milanes (ed.), Hospitaller Malta, 1530–1798: Studies on Early Modern Malta and the Order of St John of Jerusalem, Msida, Malta 1993.

9

NEGOTIATION

alienated the Catholic Maltese, who were annoyed at the failure of the new government to honour von Hompesch’s debts, many of which had been incurred in his election campaign. French revolutionary rule of the islands was an object lesson in how to alienate a nervous population; no attempt was made to understand Maltese susceptibilities or to quieten their suspicions. Within three months the whole of Malta was in revolt, and the French, rather to their surprise, were driven into Valetta by a peasant army and there besieged. (If it had not been a Catholic and peasant revolt, this would be classified by historians as the first national revolt against the French, a precursor to Spain, Portugal, Russia, Prussia, and so on.) The siege of Valetta was still continuing in 1800. The great walls and forts of Valetta were proof against any assault the Maltese could make upon them, and against any battering train the British could provide. For two years the military situation was at a stalemate. During that time, however, the political and diplomatic situation of Malta became steadily more and more complex.7 The knights had been expelled from the island by Bonaparte’s treaty, though those who were ill or aged were allowed to remain. In effect Malta had been annexed to France. But the knights did not have the legal power to surrender the island’s sovereignty, which technically belonged to the king of Naples and Sicily. Meanwhile Tsar Paul of Russia had shown an interest. The former Polish Priory of the Order had been reconstituted as the Russian Grand Priory in 1797 after the final partition of Poland; Paul’s interest in the island was maintained by the Russian knights, and by accusations that von Hompesch was a traitor. In an attack of romanticism, Paul accepted election by that group of knights as grand master, declaring von Hompesch deposed. This was something which the Pope, as the spiritual head of the Order, who was empowered to install the grand master, once chosen, refused to accept. Thus the siege of Malta was the still centre of a diplomatic storm involving Russia, France, Sicily, the Pope, and Britain, while von Hompesch himself had taken refuge in Austria. Von Hompesch protested vigorously, but, never very determined or consistent in anything he did, he then resigned his office. The Pope refused to accept that resignation.8 The British fleet which had destroyed the French at Aboukir Bay had established a blockade of Malta in September to assist the Maltese insurgents who were besieging Valetta. The knights had never been popular with the Maltese, and were now as detested as were their French supplanters. The Maltese initiation of the siege was a clear signal to all

7

Hardman, Malta, ch. 5; Gregory, Malta, Britain, 52–57. R.E. McGrew, ‘Paul I and the Knights of Malta’, in H. Ragsdale (ed.), Paul I: A Reassessment of his Life and Reign, Pittsburgh 1979, 44–75; R.E. McGrew, Paul I of Russia, Oxford 1992, 256–262 and 271–275; Gregory, Malta, Britain, 106–108. 8

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who cared to notice that they were insistent in being consulted about the future government of their island. This was not something many actually did take note of, but the British sailors who provided assistance at the fighting did notice. In early 1799 the Maltese were organised in a Congress at the suggestion of Captain Alexander Ball, who was sent to assist at the siege and had been asked by the quarrelling Maltese captains to assume command. The Congress asked that the Sicilian king let them accept British protection, to which he agreed. Food and supplies were brought in by Portuguese, British and Sicilian ships, and promises came from a nearby Russian force. In December 1799 two British regiments were sent from Messina where they had been bolstering the defence in case of a French attack, and in the next month a company of Sicilian artillerymen arrived. The French tried to relieve their beleaguered garrison, but the British blockade was tight enough to prevent too many ships reaching Valetta. In February the ship of the line Généraux and a storeship were captured, and the ships carrying the reinforcing troops were driven off. Maltese volunteers were organised into formal infantry companies, and still more British troops – two more regiments from Port Mahon in Minorca – arrived before the French were reduced to the final extremity.9 In August 1800 the end was clearly near, and this was one reason why Bonaparte instructed Otto in London to restart talks with a view to achieving an armistice. The second French force Bonaparte had in mind in these negotiations was that in Egypt. The original 40,000 men he had used to conquer the country were now somewhat reduced in numbers, by plague, casualties, accident and desertion, but it was a formidable force still, composed of the men who had already conquered Italy before they went to Egypt. They had been taken to Egypt by Bonaparte himself and he was keen to collect help for them from the homeland. Nelson’s naval victory in Aboukir Bay had severed the sea-link with France, and although the army was not short of any supplies, nor in any danger of defeat by any enemy within range in August 1800, it would waste away unless the link with France could be re-established – and without more strength, it could not be used for further conquests.10 The strategic threat of the French army in Egypt had also withered since Bonaparte’s initial conquest. He had failed to extend his control over Palestine and Syria, but he had managed to establish full control over the Nile valley and over the main Red Sea ports at Suez and Kosseir, and the Turkish attack from Palestine had been defeated. At Suez Bonaparte

9

Hardman, Malta, chs X–XV. P. Mackesy, British Victory in Egypt, 1801: The End of Napoleon’s Conquest, London 1995, 53–60, for a brief account of the French situation in Egypt in 1800. 10

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had given orders for ships to be built, and from there contact had been made with various authorities in Arabia, which was dependent on Egypt for food. The existence of a French naval force and base in the Red Sea was intended as, and perceived by the British to be, a direct threat at British control of the Indian Ocean, and at British power in India, which was by no means firmly established.11 The British had reacted to the threat by sending a small naval force to the Red Sea under Rear-Admiral John Blankett, and by mounting a major military expedition to eliminate the one Indian power, the Sultan Tippu of Mysore, which would have welcomed a French force. By May 1799 Tippu had been crushed, his capital at Seringapatam stormed,12 and in August Admiral Blankett in the Red Sea bombarded Kosseir to destruction, thereby effectively blocking any possible move by the French towards India by sea.13 Yet, even if the immediate threat to India was thus removed, and the French naval presence in the Red Sea eliminated, in the longer term a French colony in Egypt would be a major disaster for British power in the east and in the Mediterranean. Were peace to be made – or a truce concluded – while the French army held Egypt, Bonaparte’s power would be founded securely in the Near East; and a naval armistice would enable him to re-establish contact with that army. French ships could sail to the east and to the Red Sea, which a small French force could dominate, and a larger force would be able to reach India. In the event of a further war it would be possible to send a French army from Toulon to Egypt and then on to India in half the time it would take for the British to send a force to the same destination by way of the Cape of Good Hope. It was thus a major concern of Bonaparte to hold Egypt, and it gradually became a major British concern not merely to block French moves out of Egypt, but also to remove the French from Egypt altogether. For all these reasons, but mainly because of its disproportionate disadvantages, Lord Grenville rejected the whole idea of a naval truce in his reply to Otto’s suggestion of 24 August, but he also left the door ajar just a fraction by wondering on paper just how the French imagined such a truce would work.14 Perhaps this was no more than a rhetorical

11 The potency of the French threat to India is uncertain; cf. E. Ingram, Commitment to Empire: Great Britain and the Middle East 1797–1800, London 1981, and In Defence of British India: Great Britain and the Middle East 1775–1842, London 1984, esp. chs V and VI. 12 A good account is in J. Weller, Wellington in India, London 1972, chs 3 and 4; also D. Forrest, Tiger of Mysore: The Life and Death of Tipu Sultan, London 1970. 13 C.N. Parkinson, War in the Eastern Seas, 1789–1815, London 1954, 151–152. 14 Parl. Hist. XXXV, no. 15, Grenville to Capt. George, 28 August 1800; cf. Bowman, Preliminary Stages.

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question, even a sarcastic one, but it was one which the French could seize on if they wished; in effect it was an invitation to them to negotiate seriously. Grenville’s reply went by way of Captain Rupert George, the army officer with whom Otto normally dealt in matters of prisoners. It was thus at a fairly low diplomatic level, suggesting Grenville’s lack of interest; Grenville was also in no special hurry, for he knew full well that the Valetta garrison was nearly finished, and the French in Egypt were largely isolated. Beyond this he was also at the time deeply involved in a series of Cabinet discussions which were directly relevant to the French army in Egypt. Earlier in the summer a combined navy and army expedition had been sent to attack France’s ally Spain. The army had been put ashore at Ferrol, a naval base in the north-west of Spain. The place was thus a prime target, particularly from the British point of view, but the force had been withdrawn fairly quickly when the defences proved to be more formidable and better manned and prepared than had been expected. This was disappointing, particularly on top of an earlier failed landing in June at Belleisle on the coast of France, but the joint force had then sailed on southwards to mount an attack on Cadiz, another major Spanish naval base. This was, for Britain, a major military force, comprising 22,000 soldiers, and was in fact the sole offensive force available to the British government.15 There had been heavy military casualties in the Dutch expedition of the previous year, principally from disease. During 1800 there were increasing signs of difficulty in Britain itself, which soon required the use of troops for internal security. A bad harvest in 1799 had been followed by hunger during the following summer, and when it became clear that the harvest in 1800 was also bad, food riots spread through many towns and cities. These had to be controlled by the army, which was seconded by the militia, which could not always be relied on to put down relatively peaceful disturbances by their own neighbours. The government had successfully encouraged the importation of food, from North America, from Greece, from within enemy-controlled Europe, but this had scarcely helped to lower the prices asked in the short term.16 So the government had relatively few troops available for an overseas expedition. And for a time it seemed that the men afloat in the transports off the coast of Spain would not be put to any effective use. The debate in the Cabinet in August and September concerned what was to be done with the force after Cadiz, which was only intended to

15 P. Mackesy, War Without Victory: The Downfall of Pitt. 1799–1802, London 1984, ch. 1. 16 C. Emsley, British Society and the French Wars 1793–1815, London 1979, 85–88; Wells, Insurrection, ch. 9.

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be raided. Some members of the Cabinet, in particular Lord Grenville and William Windham, the Secretary at War, wanted to use it in Europe, perhaps to support Austria, perhaps to defend Portugal, or even to invade France. France, victorious at Marengo, and with the Vendée insurrection at an end, had an army ten times the size of the British force, but it was assumed by some, certainly by Windham, that the arrival of a British army of 20,000 men would be sufficient to rouse the French population to evict the consular regime. Other members of the Cabinet, notably Henry Dundas, the Secretary of State for War, wanted to use the force against the French in Egypt, a much more numerically sensible target – he thought the French army was only about 15,000 strong, though this was only half its actual size. Other members of the Cabinet had to be convinced, and this took time. The discussions were so unpleasant that Windham accused Dundas of wanting to throw away an army to the plague in addition to that lost to yellow fever in the West Indies in the past few years.17 But British invasions of Europe in the past seven years had all failed, including an even larger one only the year before in Holland. There, none of the Dutch had shown any interest in rebelling; they may not have particularly liked the French domination of their country, but a British conquest was not an acceptable alternative.18 The pacification of the Vendée and the exhaustion of western France generally made it just as unlikely that there would be any support forthcoming for Windham’s project of a landing in Brittany. The alternative was to assist Portugal, which was under a vague threat from Spain or France or both, and for a time troops were ordered to Lisbon, but no Cabinet member was really very keen on that option, which would leave the troops stuck in Lisbon, just in case an attack came. Because of this the discussions with the French envoy Otto could not be pursued with any vigour until the Cabinet had reached a conclusion on the use of the floating expedition. After Otto and Grenville had batted the idea of a naval armistice back and forth for a fortnight, Lord Grenville produced his own suggestion on 7 September, in reply to a near-ultimatum from Otto three days before. Grenville pointed out that the Franco-Austrian armistice looked unlikely to lead to a peace treaty, and suggested that a naval armistice should be coincident with that on land between France and Austria, and that both should end together; prizes taken during the armistice were to be restored; Malta and Egypt were to be treated as besieged fortresses, and allowed to receive supplies

17

J. Ehrman, Pitt the Younger, vol III, London 1996, 401–411; Mackesy, British Victory, 4–6. 18 Mackesy, Statesmen at War, parts II and III; S. Schama, Patriots and Liberators: Revolution in the Netherlands, 1780–1813, London 1977, 389–399. 14

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in the same way that the besieged Austrian fortresses were; the blockade would be discontinued, but as he stipulated that the French ports were not to receive any naval or military stores this was a meaningless concession; effectively he claimed that such places as Brest and the other blockaded naval bases should be treated in the same way as the besieged land fortresses in Germany.19 Otto seems to have been somewhat taken aback by this, and replied next day that he needed to get further instructions, which took a week to arrive. On the 16th he answered by effectively repeating his original suggestion for a full-scale naval truce, to which Grenville gave a blank refusal. Otto had obviously been told to try again; perhaps Bonaparte saw in Grenville’s unusual flexibility a sign of the crumbling of the British position. This ploy having failed, on the 21st Otto accepted Grenville’s suggestion, but then went on to claim that the French forces in Valetta should be supplied on the basis of their being 10,000 men strong – their actual strength was about 4,000 – and that six French frigates should be allowed to sail to Egypt without being inspected; that the blockade of the French ports might continue, but ships smaller than ships of the line should be free to sail; and that no British troops should be landed in Italy. This last was a new stipulation, which rather indicated Bonaparte’s sensitivity – the British had been active in supporting Austria in the fighting in Italy before Marengo. Next day, Otto claimed that the peace negotiations between France and Austria were almost concluded, and that he expected a peace treaty to be signed soon. Lord Grenville took all this with his habitual coolness. He sent his under-secretary, George Hammond, to see Otto two days later to investigate Otto’s new ideas. Otto produced some strange justifications for his claim for 10,000 rations for Malta – that officers of high rank needed more food than private soldiers, for example. He was exceedingly vague on the purpose of the six frigates for Egypt, which only fuelled British suspicions. The need for ships to sail through the blockade was also justified on vague terms such as the need to communicate with overseas colonies, of which the French now controlled very few. Again British suspicions were inevitably aroused. On the other hand, Otto was quite explicit over Italy: he made clear threats of French attacks on Naples and Sicily, which he pointed out would supply the French with the bases in the central Mediterranean from which both Malta and Egypt could be reached.20 19

Parl. Hist. XXXV, no. 15, Otto to Grenville, 4 September 1800; and nos. 24 and 25, Grenville to Otto, 7 September 1800; Bowman, Preliminary Stages. 20 Parl. Hist. XXXV, nos. 26–28, Otto to Grenville, 8 and 16 September 1800, nos. 29 and 30, Grenville to Otto, 20 September 1800, nos. 31–33, Otto to Grenville, 21 and 22 September 1800, no. 39, Hammond to Grenville, 25 September 1800. 15

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This all rather suggests that Bonaparte in Paris had already heard that the Valetta garrison in Malta had capitulated on 5 September. The siege had been a sore trial to all involved. The untrained Maltese had made several unavailing assaults, suffering unpleasant casualties; the hungry garrison had received few supplies. The blockade was never fully effective, and occasional ships had got through from France or Italy or the Levant with supplies, but only one ship had reached Valetta after February 1800. Both the garrison and the besiegers suffered the usual siege diseases, fever and dysentery. The French commander, General Vaubois, who despite it all remained well-liked by the Maltese, did hold out until all were starving. By the time the garrison had exhausted its food, the besiegers were prepared to grant almost any terms to get rid of the siege. BrigadierGeneral Thomas Graham, who had been in command of the British troops transferred from Messina and had assumed command of the siege, negotiated terms with Vaubois by which the French would leave on parole, but he did so as a deal between the two of them, and did not include the Maltese or the Neapolitan commanders in the document. The British commander, Major-General Henry Pigot, who had arrived with a British force from Minorca, and had superseded Graham in overall command, compounded this error by hoisting only the British flag over the city after the capitulation took effect. Also ignored was the Hospitaller Order, partly no doubt because of the confused state of that organisation – the tsar’s pretensions to be grand master were not accepted, von Hompesch had resigned, but this had not been accepted, and almost all the knights had left the island – and the whole process provided lots of material for inter-allied quarrels, though no matter what terms had been negotiated, there would have been disputes. At least the siege was over.21 The news of the capitulation of the fortress took longer to reach Britain than it did Paris, but Grenville certainly knew by mid-October, and Dundas had known well in advance that the end was near. All Otto’s schemes collapsed: Malta was gone, there was no naval armistice, and there was no Austrian peace treaty. While the truce discussions continued, and Grenville stalled for time, the British Cabinet, though Otto did not know this, had finally resolved its own discussions. Orders were sent for the combined force at Gibraltar to attack the French army in Egypt. The Cabinet’s decision was made, it seems, on 3 October, and Dundas sent off his orders on the 6th. A final series of discussions

21

Hardman, Malta, ch. XV; note also that Hardman includes General Vaubois’ own account of the siege as his appendix III, 556–642; also, 315–324; Gregory, Malta, Britain, 90–93. 16

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between Otto and Hammond in the next three days ended their negotiations for a truce: there was not to be one.22 Dundas’s orders launched two expeditions. The force afloat off the coast of Spain was to go on to invade Egypt from the north, to clear out the French army. A second, smaller expedition was to go round Africa to attack the French from the Red Sea. This idea had been suggested by the man who was to command it, naval Captain Sir Home Riggs Popham, an ingenious, even maverick, naval officer. He had entertained Tsar Paul on board his ship a year before and had been invested as a Knight of Malta as a reward; this was regarded with some disdain in Britain, but the title became generally used – Popham was a determined and persistent fellow. There were delays in launching this expedition: Popham’s ship, the line-of-battle ship Romney, was damaged in a storm in the Downs as it was about to sail, but the ships were finally able to get away on 1 December, convoying a regiment of soldiers which was to be landed at the Cape, where another regiment, already acclimatised to the tropics, was to be collected. In combination with a force to be sent from India, this was to be landed on the Red Sea coast, march inland across the desert to the Nile, and tackle the French in Egypt from the south.23 This would all take time, and delays were inevitable. Meanwhile the expedition against Cadiz was proving to be yet another fiasco. Even as Dundas was composing his orders for the attack on Egypt, the Cadiz attack was begun, and then called off, and then the fleet was scattered by a storm. It was not until 24 October that the new orders were received: a third of the force was to be left at Lisbon; the rest, 15,000 men, were to invade Egypt. The intention of Dundas was an invasion in December, but once again delays multiplied. At least the expedition had a task and a target, and a commander, Sir Ralph Abercromby, whose professionalism would ensure that proper preparations were made. He and the naval commander, Admiral Lord Keith, another Scot, were both capable of learning from past mistakes. The landing in Egypt was to be organised properly.24 By October, while all these preparations against his conquest in the east were beginning, Bonaparte was fairly sure that Austria was not going to agree to a peace treaty – for which he tended to blame the British subsidy – but he had also become sure that Tsar Paul was his friend, and Paul had been much offended at his and the Order’s exclusion from the events at Malta, for which he also blamed the

22

PRO WO 1/345, Dundas to Abercromby, 6 October 1800; Parl. Hist. XXXV, nos. 42–47, 26 September–9 October 1800. 23 H. Popham, A Damned Cunning Fellow, Tywaedraeth, Cornwall 1991, 84–89. 24 Mackesy, British Victory, 2 and 13. 17

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British.25 In September, after the failure of the British attack on Ferrol, Bonaparte had prompted Spain to attack Britain’s Portuguese ally, though the Spaniards had not responded. They were themselves facing an imminent British attack on Cadiz, after all. But a secret treaty between France and Spain on 1 October, the Treaty of San Ildefonso, promised French help in the attack on Portugal, and the accession of a Spanish prince to the throne of Tuscany, in return for a Spanish promise to return Louisiana to France.26 All this was little more than potential for the moment. In the north of Europe, however, a bright new possibility opened up a month later. Britain had fallen into a dispute with Denmark over neutrals’ rights. At first the dispute was smoothed over without much difficulty by negotiations between the Danish Foreign Minister Count Bernstorff and the British special envoy Lord Whitworth – who was assisted in his argument by the presence off Copenhagen of a fleet of nine British warships. Such disputes were part of the constant low-level diplomacy of any naval war. During this particular dispute, however, the Danes had appealed to Russia for support. Tsar Paul, already annoyed with Britain over Malta, had promised this help, but not until the spring. In the meantime the news of the British capture of Malta reached St Petersburg; after a pause for thought, Paul laid an embargo on British trade and detained all the British ships he could lay his hands on, sending their crews and the merchants into detention in the Russian interior. The net result of this combination of disputes was the revival of the Armed Neutrality of the North, composed of Russia, Prussia, Denmark–Norway and Sweden, an alliance designed to break the British blockade by refusing all trade with Britain. This was originally a Prussian suggestion, and was being discussed between Paul and the Swedish King Gustav IV Adolf at St Petersburg in November, but it was not fully agreed until December. By that time the main ports of the Baltic were frozen in for the winter, so there was thus now some time for everyone to reconsider what it all meant and what they were doing.27 These northern events coincided with, and were encouraged by, the breakdown of the Franco-Austrian peace talks. On 22 November the armistice ended, and the French armies moved eastwards and southwards. On 3 December the main Austrian army was comprehensively defeated at Hohenlinden, the French invaded Austria, and new armi-

25

McGrew, ‘Paul I’, 314. A.P. Whitaker, ‘The Retrocession of Louisiana in Spanish Diplomacy’, American Historical Review 39, 1934, 454–476. 27 O. Feldbaek, Denmark and the Armed Neutrality, 1800–1801, Copenhagen 1980, chs 2 and 3; McGrew, ‘Paul I’, 313–314, runs Malta and the Baltic into one unsatisfactory account. 26

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stices were arranged in Germany and Italy, with French forces within fifty miles of Vienna. Britain’s main ally on the continent was clearly finished. A renewed peace conference was organised, to take place at Lunéville in Lorraine. In Italy the only state which was still fighting, or rather not fighting, was Naples. Lord Grenville’s cold realism could see clearly that Austria was now compelled to submit, and that as a result Bonaparte would soon be able to turn on Britain. The Armed Neutrality of the northern powers was anti-British, and so in effect it was a pro-French alignment. Grenville therefore responded to a new French approach – this time by way of the French banker Perregeaux through his client Lord Auckland – by enquiring what terms Bonaparte suggested as a basis for peace. The intention was for Britain to join in the Franco-Austrian talks being held at Lunéville, and Grenville’s younger brother Tom was nominated as the British representative. But Bonaparte could see greater advantages in keeping his enemies apart. He had built up his hopes on the defeat of Austria, and on his ally Spain attacking Portugal, and on the Armed Neutrality of the North presenting a hostile front to Britain. Furthermore, his personal comfort was scarcely increased by the near success of the latest attempt at his assassination. On 24 December, just as Perregeaux’s letter was on its way to Lord Auckland, Bonaparte set out to visit the Opera; on his route a dray cart had been carefully placed to block the Rue Niçaise, and an ‘infernal machine’ inside it exploded. Bonaparte’s coachman had not actually been stopped by the cart as was intended, and the coach was too far away for the explosion to have a serious effect on the targets. Bonaparte and his party were shaken but uninjured, though they were showered with glass from the coach’s windows, and several people nearby were killed. It had been very close, and Bonaparte used the incident as an excuse for imprisoning various antipathetic groups, particularly Jacobins, though the plotters had been royalists, as he well knew. The rumour spread, or was spread, that the whole affair was British-inspired. In a way this was true enough, in that a restoration of the old Bourbon monarchy was a possible war-aim for the British to pursue; in a larger sense, it was not true, even if some of the plotters were in British pay. The target was, specifically, Bonaparte, and beyond that, his consular regime.28 It may have been as a result of this, or maybe just as a result of second thoughts, but Bonaparte now abandoned the tentative peace move he

28

M.J. Sydenham, ‘The Crime of 3 Nivose (24 December 1800)’, in J.F. Bosher (ed.), French Government and Society, 1500–1850, London 1973, 295–320; E. Sparrow, Secret Service: British Agents in France, 1792–1815, Woodbridge 1999, 217–222. 19

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had just begun. No doubt he was encouraged by the British action in mid-January in detaining ships of the Northern powers in British ports, an action taken in response to the declaration of the Armed Neutrality. This was not much of a hostile action, more a reaction to the Russian embargo and arrest of the British ships and crews, and it rather suggested a British willingness to negotiate once more. Bonaparte, however, could now see further possibilities. On 23 January, a French fleet under Admiral Ganteaume escaped from Brest when the British blockading force was blown off station by a storm. It was a fortnight before the Admiralty knew for certain what had happened, and then they had no idea where the ships had gone. In fact, Ganteaume had gone to Toulon with the eventual aim of reinforcing the French in Egypt.29 Here was a nightmare for the Admiralty, for Abercromby’s transports were still at sea, so far as anyone in Britain knew. A report from Captain d’Auvergne (the royalist Prince de Bouillon), who ran an intelligence network in France from his headquarters in Jersey, finally produced, from his contacts in Brest, the confirmation that Ganteaume had sailed on 23 January with six sail of the line and two frigates. D’Auvergne reported that there were rumours that the destination of the fleet was San Domingo in the Caribbean, but he rather thought Toulon and Egypt was more likely; he noted that forty-five assistant surgeons had been ordered to Toulon to be taken to Egypt. The commander-in-chief of the Channel fleet, Earl St Vincent, got the report on 3 February, and wrote off at once to Admiral Keith in the Mediterranean, to inform him. The prospect of Ganteaume’s ships, together with those in Toulon, encountering Keith’s fleet while it was encumbered by the transports was the stuff of British nightmares. Six ships of the line were detached from the Channel fleet in pursuit of Ganteaume.30 Bonaparte, on the other hand, dreamed great dreams on the basis of Ganteaume’s exploit. Another great set of schemes evolved in his mind: a new French invasion of Ireland, an attack on the British colonies in the West Indies, an attack on the Portuguese in Brazil, a reassertion of French power in the Mediterranean.31 The settlement of affairs in central Europe and Italy, which would come about when the Lunéville negotations were completed, would provide further platforms for still more advances.

29

Naval Chronicle V, 174–175. R. Morriss (ed.), The Channel Fleet and the Blockade of Brest, 1793–1801, Navy Records Society, 2001: 790, Capt. Fayerman to Earl St Vincent, 27 January 1801; 796 and 796a, Capt. d’Auvergne to St Vincent, 31 January 1801; 801, St Vincent to Admiral Keith, 3 February 1801; 803, St Vincent to Admiralty, 5 February 1801. 31 Bowman, Preliminary Stages. 30

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As it happened, the British expedition was safe for the moment. With Turkish permission the transports were sheltered in the enclosed harbour of Marmaris, on the southern Anatolian coast. There the two commanders, Abercromby and Keith, collected information about the Egyptian coast, about the French forces in Egypt and their disposition, about supplies, about the climate, about the possibilities of Turkish assistance. The troops, who had been confined for months to the noisome transports, could be landed in detachments, fed fresh food for once, exercised, and trained. After two months, on 22 February, the whole armada sailed for Egypt.32 Ganteaume’s sortie from Brest was well-timed. By then, the diplomatic European configuration had changed drastically. On 9 February, the negotiations at Lunéville ended with a Franco-Austrian peace treaty. The negotiators, Count Ludwig Cobenzl for Austria and Joseph Bonaparte for France, had produced a document which bears all the marks of Napoleon Bonaparte’s mind – Lunéville was much closer to Paris than to Vienna, and the talks could be supervised and controlled easily; and, of course, the armistice had left the Habsburgs totally at French mercy. The fruits of Marengo were the reconstitution of the French-dominated Italian republics, the Ligurian and the Cisalpine (to which had been added the area of Novara already); the boundary of Austrian Venetia and the Cisalpine Republic was fixed at the Adige river. In addition the duchy of Parma was to be annexed to the Cisalpine Republic, and the duke was to become king of Etruria, the former grand duchy of Tuscany. This was to accomplish two useful changes. The dispossessed grand duke of Tuscany was a Habsburg archduke, and had been popular with his Tuscan subjects; his removal would clearly restrict Habsburg influence. The new king was a Spanish Bourbon, Louis to the French, Ludovico to the Italians, Luis to his Spanish family, and his promotion would accomplish one of the articles of the San Ildefonso treaty, by which France was to recover Louisiana in exchange for the accession of a Spanish prince to the Tuscan throne. In Germany the Lunéville treaty included an Austrian recognition of French sovereignty over the former Austrian Netherlands, and over western Germany as far as the Rhine; the three-century-old rule of the Habsburgs there was never to return. In his capacity as Holy Roman Emperor, Francis II also agreed that the rulers who were thus dispossessed of their lands, which were now French, should be compensated by being allotted other lands east of the Rhine; the former grand duke of Tuscany was similarly to be compensated in Germany. An Imperial Diet was to be convened to organise this, and France was to be a participant. It was understood, if not actually put down in writing, that these

32

Mackesy, British Victory, 14–26, 38–49. 21

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compensations would be at the expense of the various ecclesiastical principalities and free cities in the empire.33 Since these states were the traditional allies of the emperor in internal imperial politics – both having an interest in restraining expansion by the secular princes – here was another cleverly calculated method of degrading Habsburg power. Virtually expelled from Italy, the emperor was now to find himself largely excluded from Germany. The secular princes licked their lips in anticipation at the prospect of seizing control of neighbouring ecclesiastical territories and imperial cities, and counted their cash reserves in preparation for their campaign of persuasion. With French participation the Diet at Regensburg became a long and complex process of negotiation and bribery, with Talleyrand the most greedy recipient. It also kept every ruler and politician in central Europe busy for nearly two years.34 With Lunéville under his belt, Bonaparte could polish off southern Italy. The king of Naples and Sicily had recovered his throne during the Austrian reconquest of northern Italy in 1799, and had sent his army to retake Rome from the French and had even invaded Tuscany. The French recovery had left him without hope, and General Murat was sent to drive him out. As soon as Murat, whose headquarters were in Florence, moved, King Ferdinand sued for peace. An armistice was agreed on 16 February, without the need for a French invasion further than Rome, but it was clear that as part of the treaty of peace which would inevitably follow shortly, and which would be overwhelmingly on French terms, France would require access to and the use of Neapolitan ports. Sir Arthur Paget, the British ambassador in Naples, forthwith declared that the armistice did not affect Britain, and that the British would attack any French ships which reached any Neapolitan or Sicilian port.35 The Lunéville treaty’s repercussions in the Iberian peninsula were also immediate. The French ambassador in Madrid was Napoleon’s brother Lucien Bonaparte. He dealt with the slippery Manuel de Godoy, the Spanish Prime Minister. Between 13 February and 21 March three agreements were made by these two, dealing with Portugal, Parma, and

33 A. DeClercq (ed.), Receuil des traités de la France, Paris 1883–1917, vol. 1, 424–429; for discussion cf. P.W. Schroeder, The Transformation of European Politics 1763–1848, Oxford 1992, 210–213. 34 H.A.L. Fisher, Napoleonic Statesmanship: Germany, Oxford 1903, 38–47; C. Gagliardo, Reich and Nation: The Holy Roman Empire in Idea and Reality, Bloomington, Ind. 1980, 292–305; Deutsch, Genesis, 38–55; C.T. Atkinson, Germany in the Eighteenth Century, London 1908, 455–466. 35 Sir A.R. Paget, The Paget Papers, 2 vols, London 1896, vol. 1, 336, T. Jackson to A. Paget, Rome, 31 March 1801, reporting on the armistice; D. Gregory, Napoleon’s Italy, London 2001, 53–54.

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military and naval affairs. The Parmese agreement put the former duke onto the Tuscan throne, and ceded Louisiana to France in return, this time supposedly definitively. The question of Portugal was to be settled by a Spanish invasion of that country. This had been promised by Spain already in the previous autumn and, of course, nothing had happened for a time. But the installation of the new King Ludovico in Florence took place on 21 March, and with this clear evidence of an apparent Spanish Bourbon achievement, Godoy could venture more. A Spanish ultimatum went to Lisbon on that same day; six days later Spain declared war.36 From 9 February to the end of March, therefore, the fruits of the French military victories of the year before were gathered on all sides. Italy was under French control, Austria was humbled, Germany ripe for plucking, the Armed Neutrality effectively a French friend, Britain’s last ally on the continent, Portugal, was about to be invaded, and a French fleet had sailed from Toulon under Admiral Ganteaume to reinforce Egypt. And yet the whole structure, as with all diplomatic constructs, was exceedingly rickety. One blow, perhaps two, would bring it down. It must have put the final icing on Bonaparte’s cake to learn that the government of William Pitt, the one constant enemy of the revolutionary government of France, had collapsed, and that Pitt and Grenville, the two men who had blocked all his peace moves, had lost office. It was even more pleasurable, no doubt, to learn that it was a refusal to grant any favours to the Catholic population of Ireland which had been the immediate cause of the government’s collapse, for Bonaparte was at the very same time in negotiations with the Pope for a restoration of Catholic worship in France. Pitt’s government had actually foundered on the rock of the king’s conscience, though it had been wallowing badly for some time. George III had refused to consider any measure of Catholic Emancipation, which had in effect been promised by Pitt as the price of Irish acquiescence in the union of Britain and Ireland. It was, the king maintained, wholly against his coronation oath as Supreme Head of the Church of England, and no argument of constitutional interpretation or political expediency, or even common justice to his Catholic subjects, could move him. The actual union had taken place formally on 1 January 1801, without any legislative measures of emancipation, though promises and half-promises and hints had been given in Ireland for months beforehand in Pitt’s name. Pitt had neglected to raise the issue with the king, knowing full well what the reaction would be, a neglect which was more deliberate than inadvertent. In personal as well as political terms Pitt was wholly beholden to the king, and he was quite incapable of

36

J. Chastenet, Manuel Godoy et l’Espagne de Goya, Paris 1961, 96–102. 23

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going against his royal master’s deepest convictions – as in fact were all the ministers. When the king discovered in late January, in a roundabout way, what Pitt had promised, he reacted angrily. Pitt, after no more than a perfunctory attempt at persuasion, then resigned. The king picked Henry Addington, the sensible, if colourless, Speaker of the House of Commons as his new Prime Minister. Addington set about recruiting ministers to his Cabinet, but then the king fell seriously ill, before Pitt’s resignation had been formally accepted, and before Addington’s men had been formally appointed but after all the changes had been arranged. For a month the government existed as a duality, Pitt’s administration still formally in office, shadowed by Addington’s. Sometimes the two Cabinets met together, sometimes separately, though they overlapped in many ways – the duke of Portland continued in office as Home Secretary, for example, and the other ministers had often held junior office under Pitt. Addington made approaches to the Foxite opposition, and to former ministers who had resigned, but without result. In other words, the new government was very largely a new version of the old, without gaining new blood, but also without three of the political powerhouses of the past decade, Dundas, Grenville and Pitt. What is really extraordinary is that, despite this strange dual administration, major decisions continued to be taken without serious dispute, either within the two separate Cabinets or between them. It was a phenomenon which should have given Bonaparte pause.37 In particular the crisis in the Baltic produced a clear Cabinet consensus that only the presence of a British fleet would resolve the issue. Three of the members of the Armed Neutrality, Russia, Denmark and Sweden, possessed notable naval forces, and to prevent them combining was the first necessity. A letter published in the Naval Chronicle in August of the previous year had listed in round figures their naval forces as forty ships of the line of Russia, thirty of Denmark, and twenty of Sweden, ninety in all, only a little less than Britain’s total strength, and all concentrated in a relatively small area, whereas British strength was spread throughout the European and American seas. The Channel fleet had, according to the Chronicle a little later, forty-nine ships of the line, and there were seventeen in the Mediterranean, and eight in the West Indies.38 A combination of all the Baltic fleets was thus to be strictly avoided if at all possible. And just to emphasise the impossibility of the various British fleets combining, Ganteaume sailed from Toulon late in March with troops and supplies for Egypt.39 In the Baltic, however, there was no immediate need for 37 Mackesy, War Without Victory, ch. 9; Ehrman, Pitt, ch. 15; P. Ziegler, Addington, London 1965, 96–104. 38 Naval Chronicle IV, 158–160 (by ‘J.R.’ of 25 August 1800); and V, 83–88 for the ‘State of the British Naval Force’ in 1800. 39 Naval Chronicle VI, 71.

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action on the water; the Russian fleets at Cronstadt and Reval would not be able to move until the ice thawed in March or April. Furthermore, it was also understood in London that Tsar Paul was unlikely to remain in power much longer, though exactly how and when he would lose that power was unclear. Yet it was still necessary to deal with the Danish and Swedish fleets, which in combination would be formidable. All this was fully agreed in both British Cabinets. So a fleet was collected from the ships in the North Sea, and others were detached from the Channel fleet. The new First Lord of the Admiralty was Earl St Vincent, who had in fact been commander-in-chief of the Channel fleet until February. Meanwhile diplomatic pressure on Denmark was maintained, and Copenhagen was clearly to be the first target of the fleet. The commander of the striking force was to be Sir Hyde Parker, but the presence of Vice-Admiral Nelson as second-in-command was sufficient to send real chills down Danish spines.40 Admiral Parker delayed at the entrance to the Sound, the strait between Denmark and Sweden, then spent several days in discussions and in naval preparations. He has been accused of needless prevarication, even of cowardice, certainly of an unwillingness to fight, though the previous crisis at Copenhagen the year before had resulted in a Danish capitulation in the face of the presence of a British fleet; it was obviously hoped that the same result could be achieved this time. Nelson, true to form, wanted to get to grips with the enemy, and identified that enemy as Russia, even though Russian ships were locked in their ice-bound harbours. Parker’s delays did not, in the event, produce any weakening of the Danish position, and he sent Nelson with much of the fleet to approach Copenhagen by the southern channel. Nelson took several days to get into position and after all that there was still no indication from the Danes that they would relinquish membership of the Armed Neutrality. Nelson thereupon attacked the Danish fleet which had been ranged before the city. When all the ships within range of the British fleet had been eliminated, he offered a truce, and initiated peace talks. Even then the Danes for several days resisted the British demands. But, in the end, with a line of British bomb vessels facing the city and ready to fire, there was really no hope. They claimed to fear the reaction of the tsar to deserting the Armed Neutrality, but when news of Paul’s death reached them, an armistice was quickly agreed.41 40

D. Pope, The Great Gamble, London 1972; this book is packed with detail, rather as trees pack a forest, obscuringly; yet, if one can elide the author’s pseudopatriotic editorials, it is a valuable account; for the internal Baltic background, cf. H.A. Barton, Scandinavia in the Revolutionary Era, 1760–1815, Minneapolis 1986, ch. 10. 41 Pope, Great Gamble, 259–473; Feldbaek, Denmark, 151–165; note that, despite more careless accounts, the city was not bombarded. 25

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The British fleet sailed on to intimidate the Swedes at Karlskrona, and then Parker was ordered home. Nelson went off to Russia, to find that the tsar was dead – the Danes had kept the news a secret from him – and that the Russian ships at Reval had gone to Kronstadt, producing such a concentration of naval power that even Nelson would not tackle it. There was then considerable sailing about and discussion, but eventually, as was inevitable once the news from Copenhagen and St Petersburg spread, the Armed Neutrality collapsed. The decisive event which signalled its end was the agreement of the Russians to lift their embargo on British trade and to release the arrested ships and crews, but the almost simultaneous destruction of the Danish fleet and the assassination of the tsar marked the real end.42 Tsar Paul had been the object of an internal Russian aristocratic conspiracy, though some foreigners were also involved. It was a wideranging plot, which involved large numbers of men, including the tsar’s two sons, and the subversion of the tsar’s own guards, including the knights of Malta. The sheer extent of the plot is a striking sign of the tsar’s deep unpopularity. The intention was originally, or was later claimed to be, to sequester Paul, giving out that he was temporarily insane; his behaviour had certainly been erratic, but insanity accusations are all too easy to make after the event. In fact, he simply seems to have had a rather violent temper, which was combined with a quixotic chivalric streak – as with his odd affection for the Maltese Order, best ascribed to his romantic notions. His acceptance of the grand mastership of the Maltese Order was a sign of these chivalric feelings; that it was at the same time also a shrewd and intelligent diplomatic move could be ignored by his enemies, who carefully misinterpreted it. The plotters gained access to the royal bedroom, past all the guards, both in the guardrooms and at his door (these latter being knights of Malta, whose loyalty to their benefactor was thus so rapidly dissolved), but he woke up and then resisted so effectively – he was an excellent swordsman – that he had to be physically subdued and then strangled. The only intervention came from the tsarina, who had to be forcibly restrained. There were no protests afterwards, and the official story of a fatal attack of apoplexy was accepted with cynical resignation. Within a day or two the new tsar, Alexander, was in place, surrounded by the successful plotters, and Paul’s foreign policies were under serious review.43

42

Pope, Great Gamble, 492–506; Feldbaek, Denmark, part VI. McGrew, ‘Paul I’, 350–355; another, somewhat different, account is in Sparrow, Secret Service, ch. 13; J.J. Kenney, ‘The Politics of Assassination’, in Ragsdale (ed.), Paul I, 125–145, emphasises the plot’s aristocratic origins and participants.

43

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The murder took place in St Petersburg in the early hours of 24 March. One of the first acts of the new rulers was to summon from Berlin Count Panin to become the new Foreign Minister. Panin was an anglophile, and his appointment was a clear indication that Russian foreign policy would cease to be so overtly pro-French. This did not necessarily mean, however, that it would, therefore, become pro-British. Alexander would clearly be on an unstable throne for some time, and, surrounded by his father’s assassins, he could be expected to make internal stability and his own continued life his priority for the present. Certainly Admiral Nelson, cruising the Baltic, was quickly assured of Russian friendship, and thereupon withdrew.44 The assassination and the battle had thus destroyed the Armed Neutrality, which had hardly been a very cohesive organisation at any time. The various arrangements in the Baltic were completed by 1 June, by which time the repercussions of the tsar’s death and of the destruction of the Danish fleet had spread. The assassination in particular brought Bonaparte’s dreams crashing to the ground. He is recorded as giving a cry of despair when he was told of Paul’s killing.45 And there was worse to come for him. The day before the tsar was murdered the British army under General Abercromby had fought the French in Egypt for the third time. The British troops had been put ashore on 8 March from the transports in an operation which had gone without a hitch, facing French fire in their boats and an immediate French counter-attack on the beach as they landed. To French astonishment the landing was disciplined and wholly overwhelming, not the ragged affair they had expected. As a result the landing force arrived in formed groups, companies and battalions, and it was the French counter-attackers who were disorganised and outnumbered. Five days later Abercromby’s force had beaten the French again, a few miles away at Mandara. In both cases, the French had been badly outnumbered, but the third fight, close to Alexandria on 21 March, was between more or less even numbers: an army of nearly 12,000 French veterans of the revolutionary wars in Italy and Egypt against one of just over 12,000 British troops who had nothing but defeat to look back on for the past eight years.46 The battle foreshadowed in uncanny fashion the characteristic pattern of later Italian and peninsular fights, and even Waterloo. The British took up a strong defensive position, which the French then attacked in column. Repeatedly the French columns closed with the thin British defensive line, whose fire was held until the heads of the columns were

44

Feldbaek, Denmark, 183–184. Reported by the Prussian ambassador to Paris, Lucchesini, quoted in Ragsdale, Détente in the Napoleonic Era, 103. 46 Mackesy, British Victory, chs 6–12. 45

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close, and repeatedly the crashing British volleys stopped the columns in their tracks and forced their retreat. The key to the British line was a ruined building on the right flank, where the fiercest fighting took place between a small British force holding the ruins, and several attacking French demi-brigades. The final French throw was a cavalry charge which penetrated the British line so that some of the French troops got inside the ruins and behind the defenders. In a display of discipline and intelligence such as will win battles, a line of the men of the 28th Foot was ordered to about-face, and cleared the invaders out from their rear with a single volley.47 In such a close and prolonged fight the attackers’ casualties are always the greater, especially if, as in this case, they are beaten. The British suffered about 250 killed, the French four times as many; but the British dead were only a sixth of their total casualties, and in that case the dead and wounded on the French side must have consisted of perhaps half their force.48 It is indicative of this result that the French in Egypt were never again to stand in a full battle against this British force. The commanding general, Abercromby, was fatally wounded in the closing stages during the last, desperate French cavalry charge, but he had done his work. It was his method and example which provided the model for the British army for the next century: fighting in line against columns, close and careful attention to logistics and to the welfare of the soldiers. Above all his choice of ground at Alexandria prefigured Wellington’s methods in the peninsula and at Waterloo. And several of Abercromby’s commanders showed in the coming years that they had learned the lesson. The future General Sir John Stuart was present, fighting in the ruined building, and he used the same tactics at Maida in 1806 (against the French general Reynier, who was also present at Alexandria); Sir John Moore was in command of the defence of the ruins, and he went on to apply Abercromby’s methods in the famous training camp at Shorncliffe; many of the field officers at Alexandria rose to higher command in the peninsula, and they became familar names from 1809 onwards – Thomas Graham, Rowland Hill, Richard Fletcher, Edward Paget, and a dozen others. Men who gained experience in the Egyptian campaign turn up in every campaign of the British army for the next thirty years, usually in command.49 And at Waterloo the French were held up by the British defence of the outlying posts at La Haye Sainte and Hougoumont, just as they were by the ruined building 47

D.S. Daniell, Cap of Honour: The Gloucestershire Regiment 1694–1950, London 1951, 81–82; Mackesy, British Victory, 127–128. 48 British casualties for 21 March are detailed by Mackesy, British Victory, 132–133; he is not so specific on French casualties, but notes 1,040 French dead buried by the British in the next few days (p. 138). 49 See Mackesy, British Victory, ch. 22. 28

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at Alexandria; and the final French cavalry charge, by the Imperial Guard, was destroyed when a British regiment coolly wheeled into line in the midst of the charge and fired a volley into the flank of the Guard, just as the line of men of the 28th Foot cleared the ruins at Alexandria. The day after the Alexandria battle, Rear-Admiral Blankett bombarded Suez and landed a small detachment to occupy the town, which he found to be deserted. His action here and at Kosseir ensured the forward defence of India, for no French force could move while Blankett’s ships patrolled the Red Sea. And though he did not yet know it, he was about to be reinforced by Popham’s small squadron from Britain by way of the Cape, and by a force from India under General Sir David Baird, over 5,000 troops in all. After the Alexandria fight it was thus only a matter of time before the French in Egypt had to surrender. But General Menou, who had inherited the command after General Kléber was assassinated in June of the previous year, knew perfectly well that the longer he held out, the more likely it was that the French would retain Egypt at any peace which resulted. And Menou, as a Muslim convert, and married to an Egyptian woman, had a personal stake in this, though his men were not so enamoured of the place. Menou withdrew his troops along the Nile towards Cairo. He still had a larger force under his command than that facing him, though it is not certain whether he knew this. Certainly the British had no real idea of the size of the French force.50 By the time the news of the British successes in Egypt and the Baltic reached London, the new British government was in place, the king having recovered enough of his wits to appoint the new ministers in a formal ceremony in mid-March. The absence of Pitt from the government front bench was disorienting for many in the political world in London, after his seventeen years as Prime Minister, and there was a widespread assumption, whispered into diaries and proclaimed out loud at parties and dinners, that the new administration could not, would not, last. Many of the doubters had personal or political interests in seeing Addington fail, of course, but Pitt made his support for the Addington government clear to all. In fact most of the men in office had been in Pitt’s team before he resigned, and though their offices at the time had been fairly junior, they were hardly inexperienced.51 One element which was crucial was the displacement of Lord Grenville from the Foreign Office. Grenville would not support Addington, for he 50 C.N. Parkinson, War in the Eastern Seas, 1793–1815, London 1954, 173–179; Popham, Damned Cunning Fellow, 89–98; Mackesy, British Victory, chs 14 and 15. 51 The ministers on the Treasury Front Bench automatically made to give Pitt room to sit with them when he first appeared in the Commons on 16 March, according to the, perhaps fanciful, Morning Post (17 March 1801). Reactions to Addington as Prime Minister were tinged with class contempt, as with Lord Holland (Memoirs of the Whig Party, London 1852, vol. II, 212–213).

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knew that the foreign policy of the new government was peace, and he was wholly opposed to it. From now on, he began a slow drift towards a rapprochement with the parliamentary opposition. This was the alliance, between Charles James Fox and Lord Grenville and many of their followers, which created the nineteenth-century Whig party; Addington’s team were the future Tories. The change-about of personnel was widely recognised as signalling a greater willingness to achieve peace with France. Lord Grenville and William Windham had been the most obdurate in seeking to pursue the war with revolutionary France, and both of them had refused to serve under Addington. Their policy was, in fact, the one which was eventually to ensure a lasting peace, by the Restoration of the Bourbon monarchy, but this was only achieved by the exhaustion of France and the combined military efforts of all Europe. Neither of these conditions obtained in 1801. France was visibly expanding in internal power and cohesion, and Bonaparte had successfully divided his political enemies and extended his power in Europe. Of the continental states, only Portugal was a British ally, and was in the process of being defeated by Spain. Otherwise Austria was down and out for the present, Prussia was determinedly neutral and had been throughout the recent wars, and Russia was wobbling under the new tsar, and could hardly be expected to adopt any meaningful foreign policy for some time. The new Foreign Secretary was Lord Hawkesbury, one of the least experienced of the new men, though his political career had already lasted ten years, and he had held government office for eight. He took up the correspondence and discussions with the French which had been dropped by Grenville in February. He wrote to Otto, still in his post as prisoners’ representative, on 21 March, saying openly that he would like to discuss peace terms.52 Otto had in fact only just returned to London, having been recalled to Paris in response to the arrest of French fishing boats which had been ordered by the Admiralty late in January in order to deprive the French naval authorities of the trained seamen and so further cripple their naval effort. The Admiralty’s order had, in fact, been too late, being issued just the day before Ganteaume’s squadron sailed. It was a breach of the understood convention whereby each side’s fishermen were left alone – which was applied, of course, mainly by the Royal Navy since few French naval vessels could interfere with British fishermen – and the French were understandably annoyed.53 It was the sort of relatively small matter which always rankled in Bonaparte’s mind. 52

BL Add Mss 38316, 1, Hawkesbury to Otto, 21 March 1801. Morriss, Channel Fleet, 793, St Vincent to Admiralty, 28 January 1801, acknowledging the order ‘to seize or destroy any fishing boats or other vessels belonging to France . . . and to detain their crews as prisoners of war’. 53

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This may have been only the public reason for Otto’s recall to Paris. He had returned to London by 11 March, by which time it was understood that Bonaparte would certainly listen to any British peace proposals. His visit to Paris thus also allowed him to receive instructions with regard to the forthcoming negotiations. The new government in London was fully installed by 14 March, and so it took only a week for Hawkesbury to begin the talks. It is worth noting the timing of all this. 21 March was a busy day: the new king of Etruria was installed; Spain and France concluded the Treaty of Aranjuez, whereby Spain again ceded Louisiana; Abercromby’s army defeated the French at Alexandria; the St Petersburg plotters were putting the finishing touches to their assassination scheme; the British fleet under Parker reached the entrance to the Sound. Two days earlier Admiral Ganteaume had left Toulon to try to reach Egypt; in the West Indies, a British squadron under Admiral Duckworth had already captured one Danish island, and would snap up three more, and one Swedish, in the next week or so. None of these events was known in London when Hawkesbury re-opened the talks with Otto on the 21st. They were all known to be in train, but results were, if not wholly unpredictable, at best uncertain. The British decision to discuss peace was thus made at a time when Britain was in a weak position, with the whole continent from Brest to St Petersburg apparently united against her or beaten down in defeat, and though the succession of British victories which were announced in the next two months strengthened that position, they did not alter the fact that peace was still the government’s policy. As the Danes at Copenhagen and General Menou in Cairo were to demonstrate, to make policy from a weak position requires obstinacy in its execution, a quality which Hawkesbury demonstrated he possessed in quantity over the next six months. As Bonaparte’s overwhelming position in mid-March slowly degraded, he showed he could be obstinate too – as well as full of tricks, deceit, and cleverness. The contest between the two was almost a caricature of the fiery Latin and the stoic Saxon. Any peace talks between Britain and France would be slow and difficult. So, from the very moment of the initial British request for talks, matters became complicated, and infinitely tortuous. Otto replied to Hawkesbury’s initiative on 2 April, reporting that the first consul was certainly keen for peace terms to be agreed, but insisted that it was the British fleet which was spreading war to new corners – he obviously had Copenhagen in mind, where the battle was raging even as he wrote the letter, but he also instanced Portugal and Hanover, where it was in fact French responsibility. Finally he suggested a general truce.54

54

BL Add Mss 38312, 2–3, Otto to Hawkesbury, 2 April 1801. 31

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By this time rumours of the willingness of the ministers to surrender conquests were spreading through the London society scene. Lady Spencer, wife of the former First Lord of the Admiralty, thought that Minorca, the Cape and Gibraltar were at stake. She mentioned this to Lord Malmesbury, who feared that a naval armistice would be concluded.55 These, of course, were both political enemies of the new administration, and so their notions cannot be taken seriously as evidence of the ministers’ intentions. These fears, if they were not just malicious gossip, were certainly exaggerated. Hawkesbury replied to Otto at once. He declined to consider a truce, but he did agree to talk on other issues. Otto stated that he had full powers to negotiate and was able, he said, to present a set of terms. The two men discussed which other states should be included – ‘stipulated’ was the technical diplomatic term – France wanting Spain and the Batavian Republic, Britain wishing to include Portugal, Naples and the Ottoman empire; neither wished any of the northern powers to be involved, and Otto specifically excluded them. Otto suggested that Egypt might well be the main issue to be resolved, thereby no doubt revealing his master’s immediate anxieties.56 Between that meeting and the next, news of developments elsewhere arrived. Spain had declared war on Portugal on 27 March, though no military action had yet taken place. The destruction of the Danish fleet on 2 April had become known, and the assassination of the tsar had undermined Bonaparte’s plans. Peace had been made between France and Naples, with provision for the French occupation of the Neapolitan ports in Apulia. And Ganteaume’s sortie from Toulon had been unsuccessful. He had almost been intercepted by Admiral Sir John Borlase Warren, who commanded a squadron in the central Mediterranean. Whether he turned back because of Warren, who actually lost sight of the French almost at once, or because of storm damage, Ganteaume returned to Toulon without reaching Egypt. But the threat of all this to Egypt was patent – what if Ganteaume had actually gone into Taranto or Brindisi? – and helps explain Otto’s comment that Egypt was likely to be the main issue. Warren assumed, correctly, that Ganteaume’s target was Egypt, and reported that a French frigate, L’Africaine, had been captured after a fight with the Phoebe frigate; when brought into Port Mahon in Minorca, it was found to be carrying 500 soldiers and 350 sailors; another French ship was taken into Gibraltar. Warren was writing to Sir Arthur Paget – brother of the Edward Paget who was a colonel in the British force fighting in Egypt – who was the 55 Earl of Malmesbury, Diaries and Correspondence of James Harris First Earl of Malmesbury, London 1844, vol. IV, 52–53. 56 BL Add Mss 38316, 1–2, Hawkesbury to Otto and Minute of Conversation, 2 April 1801.

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British envoy to the king of Naples and Sicily; Paget was based now at Palermo in Sicily, and had absolutely no doubts about the French plans for Naples. He was confirmed in this by information from Thomas Jackson, the British agent in Rome, who reported details of the Treaty of Florence, between France and Naples, and its aftermath. The French intention, he reported, was to send 12,000 to 15,000 troops into southern Italy, who were to be maintained by the Neapolitan authorities, and would be allowed to embark for Egypt. Naples, as part of the treaty, had promised to deliver three frigates to France: no doubt, they would be used for this purpose.57 At least some of all this was known in London and Paris by the time of the next meeting of Otto and Hawkesbury on 12 April. Hawkesbury, having persuaded Otto to get down to cases, drew up a memorandum, pointedly stated to have been composed in Otto’s presence, which listed the terms each side suggested, stated as ‘Propositions’. The British terms were only briefly summarised: the French were to evacuate Egypt and Britain would give up her conquests. The French terms were more detailed: France would keep Egypt; Britain would keep its principal conquests in India – thus Mysore was being equated with Egypt, while the use of the term ‘principal’ by implication excluded the French and Dutch factories in India, which were to be returned; Malta was to be restored to the Order; Minorca and Trinidad were to be returned to Spain; Spain was to return its Portuguese conquests; the French claims to Corfu and the Seven Islands were to be abandoned; the Cape of Good Hope was to be returned to Dutch rule, and Cape Town was to become a free port; all the British conquests in the West Indies were to be restored.58 This set of terms would be a conqueror’s peace, by which Britain would gain nothing, but France would gain Egypt, domination of the Mediterranean, access to the east, and recovery of all her losses in the colonies. It was also a curious collection of concrete matters and others which were inconsequential and frankly speculative. The inclusion of Corfu and the Seven Isles had nothing to do with a peace between Britain and France, for they had been taken by Russia, and Russia had been specifically excluded from the talks earlier. The inclusion of Spain and Portugal was certainly a result of the rival ‘stipulations’ of the first meeting, but to specify that Spain would return its conquests when the fighting had not even yet begun, and without Spanish participation in the talks, was somewhat imprudent. But Portugal was one of Britain’s sensitivities, just as Egypt was Bonaparte’s. And, of course, it was not expected that these would be the terms as finally agreed. 57

Paget Papers, I, Warren to Paget, 29 March 1801, and Thomas Jackson to Paget, Rome, 31 March 1801; Naval Chronicle V, 204–205. 58 BL Add Mss 38316, 4, Memorandum by Hawkesbury, 12 April 1801. 33

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Otto’s prediction that Egypt would be the main issue was only partly borne out. Egypt was certainly the main issue for Bonaparte, whose sensitivity over the fate of his old army was clearly being rasped by the news of the landing and victories of the British expeditionary force. He was also always keen on expanding French power in the east. The uncertainty at the fate of the colony, with Abercromby’s army on shore and Ganteaume’s sortie clearly unsuccessful for the moment, was obviously exasperating. Bonaparte may not have known the full details, but he probably knew that the British had made a successful landing; certainly by 14 April the British in London knew that the landing had been followed by the victory at Mandara. So, when Hawkesbury sent an expanded set of the British peace terms to Otto on the 14th, two days after recording Otto’s list, he could feel he had moved into a stronger position. This time he went into details: the French, as before, were to evacuate Egypt, but a list of British conquests to be returned was also given: Pondichéry, Chandernagore and Mahé in India were to be returned to France; Malacca, Amboyna and Banda in Indonesia, and Cochin in India were to return to Dutch rule; the Dutch were also to receive back the Cape of Good Hope, Surinam and Curaçao in the West Indies; also in the West Indies the French were to recover Martinique, St Lucia and the Saintes islands, together with St Pierre and Miquelon in the Gulf of St Lawrence, which were bases for French participation in the Grand Banks fishery; St Martin, a joint French–Dutch island in the West Indies, was also to be restored. The prince of Orange, the deposed Dutch stadholder, was to receive territorial compensation for his sequestered Dutch lands.59 What Hawkesbury had done was to provide a list of territories which he suggested should be returned; he did not provide a list of those he proposed Britain should keep. These were, in fact, fairly substantial. In the east the island of Ceylon was to be lost by the Dutch, marking the British determination to defend the sea-approaches to India; in the West Indies, Trinidad was to be lost by Spain and its neighbour Tobago by France; on the South American mainland only Surinam was to go back to the Dutch; the areas called Essequibo and Demerara were to be retained by Britain, and eventually became British Guiana, now Guyana. Nor was mentioned the Franco-Spanish agreement to hand over the Spanish half of San Domingo to join the French (western) half. The French were thus to make a substantial net gain in America, without taking the cession of Louisiana into account. The real victim was to be Spain. But, of course, French San Domingo was currently in revolt. In the light of the long siege, and of later events, Malta is notable by its absence in Hawkesbury’s list. But it was also notably not emphasised 59

Ibid., 2–3, Hawkesbury to Otto, 14 April 1801. 34

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in Otto’s Bonapartist list. Clearly Bonaparte had switched his attention to Egypt. It seems probable that both sides assumed that the island would be returned to the Order, which Otto’s terms had suggested; by omitting Malta, Hawkesbury was implying that he agreed with this. Before he could have heard of Hawkesbury’s list of the 14th, Bonaparte had instructed Otto to get busy, and Otto sent in new messages to Hawkesbury on the 16th. He made no reference to Hawkesbury’s letter, on which he had as yet no instructions, and so the two communications are curiously at odds. Hawkesbury had laid out precise terms as an answer to Otto’s terms which were set out in their joint memorandum of the 12th. But now Otto’s new letter bore no obvious relation to anything that had gone before. It was a set of complaints, clearly dictated by Bonaparte, about the supposed British involvement in the ‘infernal machine’ explosion in the Rue Niçaise four months before, about British support for ‘Georges’, the militant royalist who was addicted to insurrections and raids in western France, and about the verbal attacks on Bonaparte personally by elements of the British press. This was scarcely a meeting of minds, and Otto, perhaps conscious that Bonaparte’s letter could only provoke derision and exasperation in Britain, simultaneously suggested that oral negotiations should now be pursued rather than a constant exchange of letters. Hawkesbury two days later indignantly refuted the allegations of involvement in the Rue Niçaise bomb, but also agreed to oral discussions.60 As a result, for the next six weeks there is no indication of what the two men discussed. Lord Malmesbury, for instance, who had led for Britain in the negotiations in 1796 and 1798, and who was regularly consulted by the governments of Pitt and Addington on the subject, recorded nothing about the talks in his diary after the end of March, which is a good indication that nothing leaked. Hawkesbury had begun by regularly asking Grenville’s advice, but Grenville became steadily more acid and critical of the government until he ceased to be listened to, and Hawkesbury stopped sending him details of the talks. With Pitt, on the other hand, Hawkesbury dined regularly, about every fortnight, and there seems no doubt that Pitt’s advice was freely given and gratefully accepted.61 The course of the negotiations on the British side, therefore, was a well-kept secret, but the talks were based on well-discussed and -understood positions. The exchanges in March and April, of which we have documentary evidence, suggest that two different methods of negotiation were being pursued. Hawkesbury was looking to a bargaining situation. He had

60

BL Add Mss 38312, 3–4, Otto to Hawkesbury, 16 April 1801; 38316, 3–4, Hawkesbury to Otto, 18 April 1801. 61 Malmesbury, Diaries, IV, 57; N. Gash, Lord Liverpool, London 1984, 40–41. 35

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made Otto set out the French terms in the memorandum of 12 April, and had replied with a British set on the 14th. Neither side regarded its own list as final, or even complete, and both held back on some matters, and on many of the details. Given this basis, Hawkesbury might have expected to be able to conclude negotiations fairly quickly. Otto’s note of 16 April, however, changed the whole position. It was a signal that the terms of the memorandum were not a basis for the discussions, but no more than a possibility. There was clearly a whole set of other lists which Bonaparte might produce. It was a sign that Bonaparte’s method of negotiation was not straightforward and logical; it was rather much more personal, even erratic, with vindictive elements. It was not that Bonaparte needed to delay the negotiations with Britain in order to conclude business elsewhere; by this time Britain was the only serious object of his diplomatic attention, apart perhaps from the proposed Concordat with the Pope. Otherwise only Germany was a matter to be dealt with, and there the serious discussion had not yet started, and could not start until the Diet met at Regensburg later. Bonaparte did impose a constitution on Switzerland in April, which caused trouble in that country, but the opposition there developed fairly slowly during the next year: this did not become a Bonapartist preoccupation for some months yet. In effect, Bonaparte did not have any other major issues on hand in the summer of 1801. Had he wished to do so he could have concentrated fully on the British discussions, and had he wished to he could have concluded them fairly rapidly. It may be that he was hoping to conclude the matter by a military campaign, an invasion of southern England; a military camp was set up at Boulogne during April, which the Royal Navy had to detach ships to observe. Shipping and soldiers were both accumulated in the Channel ports. This may be taken as a bluff, or it may be that the talks were a blind to lull the British in preparation for a sudden attack. More likely, both policies were being pursued simultaneously on the basis that an alternative was valuable if one should fail, and that an intimidatory military stance was likely to produce diplomatic concessions. Neither side, that is to say, relaxed its guard. For Hawkesbury, the difficulty seems to have been to pin down the French to clear and sensible negotiations. For all the advice he got from his Cabinet collegues, from Pitt at their regular dinners, from Grenville, or from the Foreign Office professionals, Hawkesbury in fact was the first British statesman to make a serious attempt at negotiation with the first consul. Earlier sets of talks, in December 1799 and in August and September 1800, had not progressed farther than a discussion on the possibility of a truce. Peace terms had not been reached. So neither Grenville nor Pitt could give Hawkesbury serious advice based on past experience of Bonapartist negotiating methods. Eventually Hawkesbury realised that there was only one way of dealing with the apparent waywardness: stick to your 36

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own set of terms and ignore the Bonapartist flummery. But it took time for this to become apparent. When it did, the realisation got him through to a conclusion, to the Peace Preliminaries in October, and eventually to a full treaty six months later, but it was a method which necessarily left out subjects which perhaps should have been included in the discussions, and was thus one of the causes of the later breakdown of the peace. By early June it is clear that the conversations between Otto and Hawkesbury had got essentially nowhere, and on 1 June Otto asked that they revert to written communication. He remarked that the British had all along proclaimed their wish for peace, and noted that military affairs had reached some sort of a balance. In other words, the French had become much more apprehensive with regard to Egypt, while the Spanish attack on Portugal (but perhaps not the almost immediate armistice) provided that ‘balance’, at least in the French view. It was the offer of a trade, in a sense: Egypt for Portugal.62 During the six weeks of informal discussions between Otto and Hawkesbury, military matters had become somewhat clearer. In the north the Armed Neutrality finally dissolved, and the British fleet in the Baltic returned to port, thus increasing British strength in the North Sea and the Channel. Since the Copenhagen battle Britain and Russia had been edging closer to each other, in a careful sequence of joint diplomatic and naval moves. The British fleet had withdrawn to Køge Bay in Denmark and the new Russian Foreign Minister Panin had indicated clearly the Russian wish for it to be withdrawn wholly from the Baltic; in exchange he offered, in effect, peace and trade. The restoration of diplomatic relations by the despatch of the experienced Lord St Helens to St Petersburg, and the restoration of Simon Vorontsov, the longtime Russian ambassador to London (he had not left the country even during the fighting), got serious negotiations under way. In 17 June an AngloRussian Convention restored normal peaceful relations and re-opened the Baltic and British ports to mutual trade.63 Thus one of the foreign problems inherited from Pitt’s ministry was resolved. In Egypt the defeat of the French army on the coast and its retreat inland after 21 March were a clear sign of French difficulties; Ganteaume sailed from Toulon again on 27 April, but did not reach Egyptian waters until June.64 In Iberia the Spanish forces invaded southern Portugal on 19 May, but then agreed to an armistice on the 23rd. This ‘War of the Oranges’ was scarcely the major threat to a British ally which Bonaparte

62

BL Add Mss 38312, 4–6, Otto to Hawkesbury, 1 June 1801. O. Feldbaek, ‘The Anglo-Russian Rapprochement of 1801’, Scandinavian Journal of History 3, 1978, 205–227. 64 Naval Chronicle VI, 66–67; Mackesy, British Victory, 151–153. 63

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had wanted, but controlling his allies, and getting them to do his bidding – particularly Spain – was always a difficulty.65 Hawkesbury replied to Otto’s suggestion of a return to written communications on 6 June. He stonily denied that any delays were Britain’s responsibility and presented a new and quite extraordinary set of suggested terms: Britain would give up all its conquests if the ‘Powers of Europe’ were restored to the positions and boundaries of 1792.66 He cannot have meant this to be taken seriously. Bonaparte would scarcely agree to surrender Belgium and the Rhineland, nor would he retire from Italy and Switzerland without being forced out. He would break off any talks if the British put this forward without any provisos. Sure enough, Hawkesbury added that, if these terms could not be accepted, then Britain expected to make some gains at the peace, just as France did. The extraordinary terms he suggested were presumably the result of French demands, complaints and prevarications during the oral conversations, and suggest that Bonaparte had got Otto to be especially extravagant in his suggestions. Hawkesbury ended his letter by commenting that he had actually set out Britain’s terms in his letter of 14 April. In other words, he required that the French become serious and set down some intelligible terms. It took Otto nearly a fortnight to reply, and when he did so, on 18 June, he suggested that the French gains in Europe be equated with those of the British in the rest of the world, but then coolly contradicted this by stating that the French terms remained the restoration of the situation which obtained before the war in Portugal, India and in the West Indies. This was perhaps exactly the sort of negotiating ploy which Hawkesbury had been protesting against in his ‘1792’ terms. A second note from Otto of the same date reported that peace talks were taking place at Badajoz between Spain and Portugal, after what he claimed was the Spanish conquest of the southern Portuguese province of Alemtejo. As tasters Otto quoted two of the suggested terms: that Portugal was to close its ports to British ships, and French Guyana’s territory was to be extended into Brazil, with the boundary drawn along the Rio Arrawarry; this would effectively double the territory of the French colony. Then, with further effrontery, he reported the French demand for the restoration of the status ante bellum.67 This was, perhaps, the sort of thing Hawkesbury had faced in the oral discussions. He was being peppered with comments, suggestions, threats and ideas, presumably with the intention of unbalancing him and provoking him into an intemperate response. Otto, surely on

65 66 67

Chastenet, Godoy, 102–105. BL Add Mss 38316, 4–6, Hawkesbury to Otto, 6 June 1801. BL Add Mss 38312, 6–10, Otto to Hawkesbury, 18 June 1801. 38

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Bonaparte’s instructions, was also being basically dishonest, for his series of statements was not only contradictory, but very selective. It was scarcely a sensible method of negotiation to present as facts information which could be seen to be false, incomplete, or deliberately misleading within a few days. After being subjected to this sort of treatment once or twice, Hawkesbury could not accept anything Otto said without having it checked independently. In fact Otto, and Bonaparte, had already had their last, Brazilian, card dashed from their hands. Ten days earlier, on 6 June, Spain and Portugal had made peace at Badajoz, which was ratified on the 19th. The section of Guyana Otto referred to was in fact ceded by Portugal to Spain, for onward transmission, if the French could ever persuade the Spaniards to do so. The Spanish government was a past-master at delay on such matters.68 Otto’s strange demand for a restoration of lands in Europe and Asia was taken with mock seriousness by Hawkesbury. He replied to Otto’s letters of 16 June by a letter of his own a week later which effectively stopped the French in their tracks. Taking literally the demand for a restoration of the status ante bellum, he assumed that the war referred to was that between Britain and France which had begun in 1793, a fact which perhaps both Bonaparte and Otto had forgotten, and listed a few of the items which he presumed the French meant to include: the restoration of Egypt to Ottoman rule (which was already British policy); the evacuation of the comtat of Nice, annexed by France from Piedmont in 1796; the restoration of Piedmont to the king of Sardinia; the restoration of the grand duchy of Tuscany to its Habsburg archduke. He did not mention Belgium and the Rhineland, but he had made the point that the French suggestion was in fact the same as the British suggestion of a return to the situation of 1792; and if the French would not accept 1792, why should they accept 1793? And, as for America, the French case, Hawkesbury solemnly announced, was wholly unreasonable, without going into details. He gave only these instances, but he could have gone on to deal with many other places, all over Europe. He ended the letter with a return to practicalities: if French ‘influence’, as he called it, was to continue to be maintained in and over Italy, then Britain would require to control Malta.69 This was the first appearance of Malta as a single specific issue since these negotiations had begun. Otto had included it in his list in the joint memorandum of 12 April – though subsequent events had shown that that list was of no relevance to actual French terms. There the island was to be returned to the Order, but it was there only as one item in a longer

68 69

DeClercq, Receuil, I, 435–463. BL Add Mss 38316, 6–8, Hawkesbury to Otto, 25 June 1801. 39

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list. There had been no mention of the island by Britain at all. But in and concerning Malta itself, matters were developing. The strategic usefulness of the island had been demonstrated by Bonaparte: his initial conquest had allowed him to use it as a base for attacking Egypt, but for the British it was made even clearer soon after the end of the siege in 1800. In November and December of that year Sir Ralph Abercromby had used the island as a base from which to launch his own invasion of Egypt. He had collected reinforcements for the forces there, had left a sickly regiment to recover on the island, and the navy had been fully appreciative of the splendid harbours. Earlier Abercromby had appointed General Pigot, who had been in command in the latter stages of the siege, as Civil Commissioner and Military Commander, and had returned Captain Alexander Ball to his naval duties. Pigot was a poor administrator, leaving his duties to venal subordinates, but his was clearly no more than an interim appointment. In Britain, note was taken of the complaints about Pigot and his men, and of the developing usefulness of the place. The Secretary of State for War, Lord Hobart (in Addington’s government), separated Pigot’s two posts, leaving him in position as Military Commander, and appointed a separate Civil Commissioner, Charles Cameron. This was done formally on 19 May, and Hobart’s instructions implied, but did not state, that Britain intended to remain in control of the island. The international complications of the island had also somewhat lessened. Tsar Alexander declined to take up his dead father’s office as grand master of the Order. His election had anyway never been accepted by any other state, nor by the remaining knights, nor by the Pope. It was not worth reviving, but Alexander did continue his protection of the Order – it had been Russian knights on guard outside Paul’s bedroom who had let the murderers enter, and Alexander owed them this debt – nor did he abate any of his father’s more general claims to the island. Von Hompesch, the expelled grand master, thought this might be a chance for his reinstatement and he addressed appeals to the new Pope Pius VI and to George III, without result. The Treaty of Florence between France and Naples resulted in the return of the Neapolitan troops on Malta to their homeland in May, and this clearly eased the local situation by removing one player from the complexity; it is ironic, in view of later events, that this was a by-product of Bonaparte’s policy. The news of the French stipulation in the Treaty of Florence that they wished to occupy and use the Neapolitan ports made the British all the more conscious of Malta’s usefulness. For the only use Bonaparte could make of the ports of the heel of Italy was to use them to send expeditions eastward.70 70

Mackesy, British Victory, 14–15; Hardman, Malta, 306–308, 350–358 (PRO, CO 158/1, 53–97, Lord Hobart to Charles Cameron, 14 May 1801), and 391–392; Gregory, Malta, Britain, 108. 40

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The peace terms under discussion in London had included a willingness by Britain to return Minorca to Spain, and for much of the previous hundred years Port Mahon had been a valued naval base for Britain in the French and Spanish wars. Malta would be a very useful replacement. At the other end of the Mediterranean the army fighting the French was partly reliant on Malta for forwarding supplies, and more troops were sent there from Malta during the campaign. The French, after their initial defeats on the coast, had retired upriver to Cairo, showing clearly enough that they were unwilling to leave Egypt without being physically expelled. In the meantime Malta’s usefulness as the only British base east of Gibraltar steadily increased. Opinion in Britain was slowly coming round to the view that the island might be too valuable to give up. Otto took nearly three weeks to reply to Hawkesbury’s scornful commentary on his assertion of French claims. By 14 July, the date of his reply, he knew of the Spanish–Portuguese Treaty of Badajoz, he knew of the retreat of the French army in Egypt, and he knew that Ganteaume’s attempt to deliver reinforcements to Egypt had failed. Ganteaume had come close to Egypt, but had shied away from the British ships at Alexandria and had tried to land his 5,000 soldiers near Derna in Cyrenaica on 8 June; local opposition was discouraging, and no doubt the French officers and soldiers objected to being abandoned in such a remote spot. Ganteaume was then alarmed by the distant view of the sails of a merchant ship, and mistook them for the British fleet which he knew guarded Alexandria. He therefore returned to Toulon with the soldiers; on the way he captured the British ship of the line Swiftsure as a consolation prize.71 The result of the knowledge of all this is clear in Otto’s letter. At long last he actually engaged with the British proposals of 14 April. Otto paraphrased the British proposals as a retention of Ceylon and Martinique, with Malta to be neutralised; he then listed other places which he complained the British had later added to the basic list. France, he stated, had offered to return the Portuguese conquests, but, given the extra British demands, he threatened to resume the campaign in Portugal. This was, of course, both a travesty of the British proposals and nonsense with regard to Portugal, where the Spanish campaign at the behest of Bonaparte had lasted a mere five days. It was extremely unlikely that Spain would be prepared to resume it. But at least Otto had come down to actual cases. Hawkesbury replied patiently, by referring Otto yet again to the list he had provided on 14 April; he added that the Spanish conquests in Portugal would require Britain to retain Trinidad – though this was not a new demand, only an added reason for it. After all, as he explained once again, Britain was 71

Naval Chronicle VI, 502–504. 41

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entitled to compensation for the French conquests in Europe.72 In effect, Hawkesbury had not shifted an inch from his terms of 14 April (where, by implication, he had proposed to keep Trinidad) either in response to the events in Egypt or to those in Portugal. And, at last, he had received a tangible French answer. The Spanish–Portuguese war had simply provided another reason to retain Trinidad. This obduracy at last had had its effect on the French. From the middle of July also Hawkesbury had a better contact with the French government than through Otto. Otto was still technically in his post in London as transport commissioner for prisoners of war, though he was of a rather higher diplomatic standing than such a post normally called for; now Hawkesbury posted to Paris a similar figure, also of sub-ambassadorial rank, but substantially more useful diplomatically than the soldier he replaced. This was Anthony Merry, like Otto a professional diplomat. His arrival in Paris was a clear signal to the French that the British were serious in their negotiations, and also enabled Hawkesbury to evade Otto, who he may have felt was not reporting the British position clearly. Certainly the replies Otto provided to Hawkesbury’s letters were sometimes so at odds with the earlier discussions that Hawkesbury would be entitled to be suspicious, though in fact the problem was probably Bonaparte, not Otto. Merry reported back to Hawkesbury for the first time on 16 July, explaining that he had seen an official called Caillard at the Foreign Ministry, and that he had emphasised to him that British policy was not to overthrow the present French regime, as Hawkesbury’s letter referring back to 1792 might have implied, but actually to seek peace with the consular regime. Caillard was clearly up to date on the negotiations in London, and complained that Hawkesbury’s latest note was not an advance. But Merry’s meeting may have had an effect, for the next French communication was wholly different, and for the first time really constructive.73 On 26 July, Otto produced a detailed statement of French terms. For the first time Hawkesbury, and any other British minister he showed the letter to, had a clear idea of the maximum French terms. At last, after four months of talks, the French had got down to details. The letter divided the terms into sections according to geography. Of these the really important part concerned the Mediterranean: Egypt was to be returned to the Ottoman empire, the Republic of the Seven Isles was to be recognised by Britain, all the Papal and Neapolitan ports under French occupation were to be evacuated, Port Mahon (that is, Minorca) was to be returned to Spain, and Malta was to be returned to the Order,

72

BL Add Mss 38312, 10–11, Otto to Hawkesbury, 14 July 1801; 38316, 8–11, Hawkesbury to Otto, 20 July 1801. 73 PRO FO 27/63, 1, Merry to Hawkesbury 16 July 1801. 42

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with its fortifications razed. Elsewhere, Britain was to keep Ceylon, but all other British conquests were to be restored. This included Martinique, about which there was some disagreement as to how Britain gained control, and Trinidad. The really important points in this are those relating to Egypt. For the first time Bonaparte had signified his willingness to abandon his Egyptian conquest, and, by taking the French troops from the Italian ports – specified as those of the Pope and of Naples on the Adriatic and Mediterranean coasts – he was also indicating that a surprise expedition from those ports against Egypt, which was what the British feared, was not in prospect. In return Britain was to retreat out of the Mediterranean to Gibraltar, abandoning both Malta and Minorca; the destruction of the Maltese fortifications would substantially reduce the value of the island as a naval and military base. It was the corollary to the neutralisation which was implied by the restoration of the Order. Hawkesbury replied briefly on 5 August on the point about Martinique, claiming that it had been placed under British protection by its inhabitants, and that therefore it could be retained since it was not, technically, a ‘conquest’. Shortly afterwards he received a letter from Merry in Paris, written on the 2nd. Merry reported that he had spoken to Talleyrand, the French Foreign Minister, and had explained the British position to him. Hawkesbury’s letter to Otto was not therefore a surprise in Paris. Hawkesbury’s main reply to the French proposals came on 14 August. He noted that it was in the West Indies that the main disputes continued; he agreed after all to give up Martinique, but insisted on Britain retaining Trinidad and Tobago, half of the former Dutch Guyana, and St Lucia. By implication the suggested French terms for the Mediterranean were acceptable.74 Once again there was a pause, this time lasting a month. No doubt this was in part to allow Talleyrand and Bonaparte to digest the implications of what had been discussed, although, since it was their proposals which had finally got serious negotiations under way, this seems unlikely. But there were other matters to consider, and events which had to be coped with. In mid-July, after a last flurry of meetings and negotiations, Bonaparte had signed the Concordat with the Pope, though it was not yet made public. He was saving it up for later celebration.75

74

BL Add Mss 38312, 11–13, Otto to Hawkesbury, 26 July 1801; 38316, 11–14, Hawkesbury to Otto, 5 and 14 August 1801; FO 27/62, 2, Merry to Hawkesbury, 2 August 1801. 75 Printed in Crook, Napoleon Comes to Power, document XXIV, 128–130; the agreement was dated ‘Paris 15 July 1801’; it was not publicly announced until April 1802. 43

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There were other, less cheering, events to consider. It did not help the negotiations to know that one of the few West Indian islands to have been retaken by the French, the Dutch island of Curaçao, had been recaptured by a single British frigate after the French and Dutch on the island had begun fighting each other. When the men from the frigate – ironically it was the Nereide, originally a French ship – attacked both parties, the Dutch rapidly surrendered on condition that the British protect them from the French. News also arrived of a complicated series of naval actions in the Straits of Gibraltar. Three French ships of the line from Toulon reached Algeciras; there they were attacked on 7 July by a British squadron, detached from the blockade of Cadiz, under Rear-Admiral Sir James Saumarez. An initial contest went in the French favour with the loss of one British ship, Hannibal, which ran aground and was captured after losing half her crew as casualties. All the ships involved on both sides were badly damaged, but the proximity of Gibraltar allowed the British to conduct rapid repairs. While these were going on, however, a Spanish squadron of six more ships of the line came up to reinforce and protect the French. The joint force of nine ships was then attacked on 12 July while sailing for Cadiz by the British squadron, which had now been reduced to four ships. The action took place in the Straits in the dark. By sending a ship to attack from the inshore side, Saumarez achieved a concentration of two against one at the rear of the allied line. Two huge Spanish ships, each of 112 guns, Real Carlos and San Hermenegildo, fired on each other in the confusion induced by the British attack, both took fire, and both blew up; a French ship, St Antoine, was also captured; the rest escaped to Cadiz.76 The news of these events arrived in pieces spread over nearly a month. The final result was not known in London until early August, though it was probably known in Paris a few days before. By that time also it was known in both places that much of the French army in Egypt had been driven back to Cairo, which had been invested early in June by the British forces and an invading Turkish army. General Belliard in command in the city capitulated early in July, and the French then slowly marched to Rosetta to be repatriated. The British were astonished, and rather shocked, to discover that their capitulated enemies were over 13,000 in number, and there was still another French force holed up in Alexandria under General Menou. The French in Egypt had been double the British strength all along. Belliard’s men embarked for France on 15 August, though the news of their capitulation had reached Europe already.77 The British then turned to deal with Alexandria, where 76

Naval Chronicle VI, 440 and VI, 64–66, 108–116 and 146. Mackesy, British Victory, ch. 17; the embarkation return is summarised on p. 202.

77

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Menou understood that he had to hold out as long as possible, so that the French hand in the peace negotiations was strengthened. He did not know that Bonaparte had already given up hope of holding Egypt a month before. In the English Channel the French preparations for the invasion of England had been going ahead for four months. The British had beefed up their land defences, bringing Marquis Cornwallis across from Ireland to command in eastern England, and posting Nelson to Sheerness to command a force of frigates in the eastern Channel and the Straits of Dover. On 4 August Nelson took a squadron of his frigates and smaller craft to Boulogne, where the French had lined up twenty-four armed ships to prevent access to the harbour where most of their invasion vessels were. Using shells both sets of ships had been bombarded, with Nelson’s strict instructions to avoid the town; several of the ships were sunk, and others disabled. He tried again on the 16th, but with no greater success. But the actions did demonstrate the navy’s vigilance, and the numbers of Nelson’s ships were clearly intimidatory.78 All this was known in Paris by early September. Belliard’s surrendered army had sailed from Rosetta on 15 August, the day before Nelson’s second raid on Boulogne. The prospects of invading Britain were slim, of holding Egypt non-existent. Perhaps also news had reached Paris of the reaction of the people of Calais to the passage through their town of Sir Arthur Paget, formerly at Palermo, and now appointed as British Minister at Vienna. He had been given a passport enabling him to travel through France, and had landed at Calais on 1 September. He reported to Hawkesbury later that he had at first received a cheerful reception from the locals, but this then gave way to depression when the people realised that his arrival did not mean peace. Now Calais was a special case, since much of its peacetime commerce was concerned with communications with England, so that the long war had had an especially depressing effect on its prosperity. But it was only a worse depression than the rest of France, not a total exception. Paget reached Paris on 3 September, and claimed to have detected a ‘universal wish’ for peace there. Even if those he spoke to were only being polite, this was a feeling which was widespread enough that Bonaparte could not possibly ignore it.79 The delay of a month in resuming the negotiations in London ended on 17 September, when Otto sent a new letter to Hawkesbury. In it Otto rejected most of the British claims in the West Indies, naming in particular Tobago and the Guiana territories, but significantly not Trinidad

78

Naval Chronicle CI, 152–160; despite Nelson’s self-glorification, these raids are generally reckoned to be British defeats. 79 Paget Papers, II, Paget to Hawkesbury, 14 September 1801. 45

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or St Lucia. He had, that is, resumed the position of a bargainer. In addition, however, the problem of Malta had grown more serious. By this time it must have become clear that the British were becoming most unwilling to leave the island, and there was the Russian dimension to be considered as well. Otto’s letter tried to accommodate these various problems by suggesting that Russia become a protecting power for the Order and Malta, which was what Alexander claimed to be. The indemnity for the prince of Orange could be settled by mediation in Berlin, where the king of Prussia was a relative of the prince. The French were proving to be quite flexible, in other words, when they reached a bargaining mode, but this was the first sign of it. Hawkesbury was not prepared to surrender anything of his own position. After another week he replied by listing the disputes which remained – Malta, Guyana, Tobago, the French Guianian acquisition from Portugal by way of Spain – and insisted that no British conquests would be unilaterally returned: compensation was required.80 By this time it was clear that an agreement was at least within reach. Otto and Hawkesbury met on 19 September to compose a document which became the basis for the Peace Preliminaries, which in turn would be the basis upon which a final treaty would be negotiated. Hawkesbury also about this time summarised the areas of disagreement which remained. He was sufficiently confident, however, to contact Marquis Cornwallis to appoint him as the British plenipotentiary for the definitive peace talks, which were to be held at Amiens.81 The final details were settled on 29 and 30 September. On the West Indian islands, the French gave way all along the line. On Malta, Hawkesbury accepted the idea of Russia as a protecting power, now described as a ‘guarantee’. Otto tried to threaten a rupture at the last minute over these last items, but it was a hollow gesture, and he must have known it. Hawkesbury ignored it. The last item was a secret article on Portugal as a way of hiding their disagreements over the results of the Spanish–Portuguese war. The Peace Preliminaries were finally agreed late on 30 September, and published next day.82 It is instructive to compare the final document with the original French and British terms as outlined on 12 and 14 April. On all points the French had given way. The islands the British promised to return in April were those they promised to return in the Preliminaries, and those they did return in the final treaty; those which Hawkesbury,

80 BL Add Mss 38312, 15, Otto to Hawkesbury, 17 September 1801; 38316, 15–17, Hawkesbury to Otto, 22 September 1801. 81 BL Add Mss 38312, 18–32, Procès Verbale, 19 September 1801. 82 BL Add Mss 38316, 14–15 and 17, Hawkesbury to Otto, 29 and 30 September 1801; BL Add Mss 38312, 32–36, Otto to Hawkesbury, 29 and 30 September 1801.

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by omission, indicated that Britain intended to keep in April were those Britain kept in the treaty. Hawkesbury’s negotiating technique, of stating his terms and sticking to them without deviation, had been wholly successful. Had the French got down to a serious process of bargaining in April they could have had peace within a month, and perhaps with rather better terms, but the tricks and rhetoric they flourished simply drove Hawkesbury deeper into his obstinacy. The impression one gets is that the French government was only marginally interested in making peace. The several long gaps in the discussions – notably those in June/ July and August/September – were the result of the French delays, and both came after Bonaparte had begun building up his forces on the Channel coast. The assumption must be that he either hoped to invade, or was trying to extract concessions from Hawkesbury. By mid-August the distance between the two sides was so small that it would have been difficult to justify breaking up the talks – and Bonaparte knew that it was the British practice to publish the documents after a failed negotiation. Nelson’s raids in the first half of that month had emphasised the superiority of the Royal Navy in the Channel and the likely disaster which an attempt to invade would lead to; the French position in Egypt had already been given up; the argument in the end was actually over part of Guiana, which was Dutch, and Tobago, the only formerly French possession in contention. By mid-September, when Bonaparte finally bit the bullet and initiated the final discussions, the season was growing dangerously late for a maritime expedition in flat open boats in the unpredictable waters of the Channel, even ignoring the presence of the Royal Navy, and the final negotiating gestures were futile. Already, though neither side knew it, the French army in Egypt had surrendered, on 2 September. General Menou had tried to encourage the French troops in Alexandria to continue the fight with the uninspiring exhortation to ‘remember the importance of Egypt in the balance of the negotiations’. No one told him, then or later, that he had been written off by Bonaparte three months before his final surrender.83 In London it had been assumed for as long that this would take place, and there is little evidence that the situation in Egypt had any effect on the negotiations. Lord Hervey, Hawkesbury’s under-secretary, is said to have remarked that had the Egyptian news arrived before the conclusion of the Preliminaries Hawkesbury would have had to demand better terms.84 Maybe so, but these were still only the Preliminaries, and no

83

Quoted by Mackesy, British Victory, 162, from F.R. Rousseau, Kléber et Menou en Egypt, Paris 1900, 404–405; C.J. Fedorak, ‘The French Capitulation in Egypt and the Preliminary Anglo-French Treaty of Peace in October 1801: A Note’, International History Review 15, 1993, 525–534. 84 Fedorak, ‘French Capitulation’. 47

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attempt was made to use the capitulation in Egypt to extract better terms in the final treaty. It is only historians who complain that the French held back the news,85 and, above all, Hawkesbury had stated his terms back in March, and had scarcely shifted from them. (And Otto was quoting Hervey’s opinion, not Hawkesbury’s.) Hawkesbury got what he wanted, which was peace. Had Bonaparte not been so dazzled by his own trickiness, he could have had peace as early as April.

85

J.W. Fortescue, History of the British Army, London 1906, vol. IV, 868–869. 48

2

PACIFICATION The slow journey to a treaty The agreement on the Peace Preliminaries was not the end of the AngloFrench negotiations; it was the end, however, of any active fighting. For the next six months further negotiations would continue, slowly and painfully, with the object of converting the preliminary agreement into a fully definitive Treaty of Peace. Meanwhile, the end of the active war did mean that, for the first time since 1793, it was possible to travel relatively freely between Britain and France, and a substantial number of people did so, in both directions, though it seems that, for the moment, more British visited France than the other way about. There are, therefore, three aspects of Franco–British affairs in the next six months: the negotiations for a definitive peace treaty, the experiences of the visitors, and the effects of the new and uncertain peace on the internal affairs of both Britain and France. This chapter will be mainly concerned with the negotiations, but the other aspects cannot be wholly divorced from them. In particular, in Britain the government of Henry Addington had to be even more active in foreign affairs than before, balancing the negotiations with France with the relations with other states, and had to be as vigilant at home. The combination of the difficult peace, firsthand knowledge of what France had become, as gained and disseminated by the visitors, and the government’s measures during the peace, was to be the national foundation for the conduct of the next war. This was soon realised to be not far off, and proved to require a sustained effort for nearly twice as long and to be infinitely more difficult than the preceding war had been. The news of the Peace Preliminaries’ agreement on 1 October was sent by Addington and Hawkesbury to several of their political colleagues even before their publication. Pitt and Grenville were both told; Lord Malmesbury had declared on 29 September that peace was close, from the elation he saw on Addington’s face.1 Lord St Vincent waited until the publication of the terms before writing to his admirals: he gave the news to Nelson, who was at Deal, but had to repeat them to Dungeness three days later. Admiral Sir William Cornwallis, commander-in-chief of the

1

Ehrman, Pitt, 558; Malmesbury, Diaries, IV, 59. 49

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Channel fleet, was told on 2 October; one of his ships had been in action only a fortnight earlier, driving a French convoy onto the rocks near La Rochelle; before he received St Vincent’s letter, he seems to have been informed by the French commander-in-chief in Brest, who sent him a copy of the telegraph message he had received from Paris giving the news. St Vincent also noted that Cornwallis’s brother was to lead in the negotiations for a definitive treaty. Letters went to Admiral Lord Hugh Seymour, commanding in Jamaica, and Rear-Admiral Duckworth, in the Leeward Islands, telling them of the end of the fighting; also no doubt elsewhere, particularly to Keith in the Mediterranean.2 The discussions for a definitive treaty were to take place at Amiens, but could not start until the Preliminaries had been ratified. Marquis Cornwallis had already been alerted nearly a month before, and he knew on the 30th that his services would soon be required.3 But ratification took some time, a good deal longer than anyone expected. The publication of the news in the London Gazette on 2 October, and then more widely the next day, was greeted with widespread pleasure, for a time. Lord Braybrooke, Lord Lieutenant of Essex, who had been kept busy organising to resist invasion, claimed that ‘the world was delighted with the Peace’. Mail coaches in Ireland spread the news by having ‘Peace with France’ chalked on their sides. Celebrations were instant and general, though the London mob turned somewhat violent, stoning the windows of those who did not illuminate in celebration. The general pleasure was due to the assumption that peace meant an absence of troops, particularly recruiting sergeants, a reduction of taxation, and lower prices. In Newcastle, Dr Pearson displayed a skeleton in one window as ‘the effects of war’, and in another ‘the benefits of peace’ were personified as a large loaf and a large cheese. In Sheffield the news ‘lightened every face with joy’ (just as it had Addington’s) ‘bells were rung, bonfires were kindled in the streets and cannons were discharged on all sides’. In Durham Britannia was crowned with a cap of liberty and a placard celebrating ‘No Income Tax’ placed in her hand, a curious mixture of symbols.4 These sentiments typified the general early reception of the news. 2

D. Bonner Smith (ed.), Letters of Admiral of the Fleet the Earl of St Vincent . . . 1801–1804, Navy Records Society, 1922, vol. 1, 273–274, St Vincent to Nelson, to Duckworth, and to Lord Hugh Seymour, 2 October 1801; HMC Various Collections VI, Mss of Cornwallis Wykeham-Martin, 396; Morriss, Channel Fleet, 836, Commander C.J. Crawford to Cornwallis, 14 September 1801, and 837, 837a, Cornwallis to Admiralty, 8 October 1801, and enclosure. 3 Ross, 382–383, 22 and 30 September 1801. 4 Emsley, British Society and the French Wars, 92, quoting a letter of Lord Braybrooke to Lord Glastonbury in Berks R.O. D/EZ 6, vol. 2, Newcastle Chronicle, 17 October 1801, and 92, quoting a letter from John Fenwick, of 11 April 1803; Wells, Insurrection, 225. 50

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The celebrations were in part the result of the surprise, for the existence of the negotiations with Otto had not been publicised, and of course they were concluded very quickly and rather suddenly in the final two days. So there was little in the way of preliminary information to prepare the celebrants for the news. Malmesbury, who did get to know the terms on the day the agreement was made, regarded the celebrations as ‘childish’; but he also noted that as the knowledge of the terms spread, ‘the people’s joy . . . abated’.5 While this decline in public celebration was obviously to be expected as time passed, it is certain that the political class looked askance at the terms from the start. And not only the politicians. In Cheshire Lady Stanley heard the news by 4 October, called it ‘delightful’, and reported that the coaches and the drivers and guards were bedecked with celebratory ribbons; her correspondent, her sister Louisa, however, replied a week later that it was ‘necessity’ which made the peace, and ‘it is absurd in the ministerial papers insisting on its being glorious’.6 In London, Pitt was generally supportive of the government, cannily criticising one aspect, the return of the Cape to the Dutch, while welcoming the agreement as a whole, and so defusing the automatic cries of treason from his more annoyed former colleagues. The other ex-ministers were largely hostile. Grenville had become so antipathetic to all Hawkesbury did that his criticism was already discounted; he described the Preliminaries as ‘measurably defective’; Dundas lamented the likelihood of ‘calamitous consequences’; Spencer pointed out that France had gained, but Britain had not, a hasty and unjust judgement; Camden lamented the surrender of the Cape and the West Indian islands. The really crucial thing for the government of Addington, however, was that these complaints and comments were made in private, usually in letters to Pitt or to each other. Further, not all the terms were disagreeable – Egypt, Malta, Trinidad and Ceylon could not be complained of. Pitt’s complaint about the Cape was echoed by others on other issues. But they really hoped for Pitt’s – and their – return to power, and if Pitt himself supported the terms, his former Cabinet colleagues had to keep quiet.7 At the same time, the Cabinet held together, the populace cheered for a time, and when they came to debate the terms in Parliament, both Houses gave their support. That these debates did not take place until early November meant that the Members and Lords had had plenty

5

Malmesbury, Diaries, IV, 60. J.A. Adeane (ed.), The Early Married Life of Maria Josepha, Lady Stanley, London 1899, 221–222. 7 Ehrman, Pitt, III, 559–560; HMC Dropmore VIII, 50–51, Grenville to Pitt, 6 October 1801. 6

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of time to digest the terms and to discuss them privately. Their approval was thus not the reaction of relief and surprise which the popular reaction to the news seems to have been, but more an appreciation that better terms could not have been gained in the circumstances. In the Lords Grenville broke cover and made a strong attack and forced a division; only nine peers voted with him, while ten times that number supported the government. In the Commons Windham spoke against the terms, but opinion was so overwhelming that he did not divide the House.8 This parliamentary victory permitted the government to go on to the negotiation of a definitive treaty at Amiens in some confidence. The French ratification had already arrived, in the person of General Lauriston, an aide to Bonaparte, who reached London on 12 October. Presumably by his dress he was recognised as a French officer by a ‘Jacobin saddler’ in Oxford Road, who persuaded a crowd to unhitch the coach and drag it to Otto’s house in Hertford Street in celebration. Malmesbury was predictably scathing in his comments in his diary, and William Cobbett, whose windows had been broken on the night of celebration because he refused to illuminate them, was just as scathing, but in public in his new journal, the Porcupine. He made the point, as did Edward Paget in Vienna when he heard of these events, that it was Hawkesbury and Addington who had made the peace, not Lauriston. To be sure, Lauriston had been mistaken for one of Bonaparte’s brothers, but the point stood all the same.9 The mutual ratification of the Peace Preliminaries was no guarantee of the conclusion of a final definitive Treaty of Peace, but it was sufficient to encourage the British government to organise itself for the necessary conference. Marquis Cornwallis had already been appointed to head the negotiating team, and he collected a staff of five assistants. He took with him his son, Lord Brome, two lieutenant colonels, Edward Littlehales, who had been his military secretary since his Irish appointment, and Nightingall, and Francis Moore, the brother of General Sir John Moore, as assistant secretary. The final member, to be collected in Paris, was Anthony Merry, who had been in Paris since July, and was known to, and knew, the principal men on the French side. In addition Cornwallis had the use of three King’s Messengers, and sixteen servants. Amiens had been chosen as the scene of the negotiations because it was reasonably accessible to both London and Paris. Cornwallis, however, could only expect to receive a reply to any letter to London in four or five days; the French negotiators needed only two days to communicate

8

Parl. Hist. XXXVI, 29–191, 3 and 4 November 1801. Malmesbury, Diaries, IV, 61; L. Nattrass (ed.), William Cobbett: Selected Writings, London 1998, vol. 2, 16–20; Paget Papers, II. 9

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with Paris. It was known by mid-October that the French delegation would be headed by Joseph Bonaparte, elder brother of the first consul, who had performed the same function in the negotiations at Lunéville with the Austrians. But neither side intended to leave the agreement up to their principal negotiators: Cornwallis would have Addington, Hawkesbury and the Cabinet peering over his shoulder all the time, just as Joseph Bonaparte could only proceed with the agreement of Talleyrand and, above all, of his brother.10 Cornwallis was no longer young. Born in 1738, he was now well over 60 years of age. He had had a long career of public prominence. He had served in the army since the Seven Years’ War, and had been a member of the House of Lords since his twenties. He had been in high command for the past three decades. He is best known now perhaps for his defeat by the Franco-American forces at Yorktown in 1781, but he had also governed India as Governor-General for seven years (1786–1793), and Ireland for three years in the aftermath of the great rebellion of 1798. In between he had been in the Cabinet for four years as Master-General of the Ordnance. When chosen to negotiate at Amiens he had been in command of forces in eastern England for several months, facing the possible French invasion. He was one of the most experienced and illustrious Britons still active, a little slow now, perhaps, but devoted to his duty and sensible of his country’s condition and of his government’s requirements.11 He expected to leave for France at the beginning of November. The day after Lauriston’s tumultuous arrival in London with the French ratification, Hawkesbury told Merry in Paris to inform the French ministers of Cornwallis’s appointment.12 The British government was clearly confident of receiving parliamentary approval of the Preliminaries. Even before the debates in Parliament on 3 and 4 November, Cornwallis was given his written instructions for the negotiations. One set came from Hawkesbury; another from the king. The latter was concerned over Hanover, of which he was elector, and which was vulnerable to French attacks and French intrigues – it was occupied by Prussia at the time, as part of the Prussian participation in the Armed Neutrality. The king was anxious that the prospective elimination of the ecclesiastical principalities in Germany should lead to Hanover’s expansion, particularly over the two neighbouring bishoprics of Münster and Osnabrück. He was also keen to see that the prince of Orange, who had been in exile in Britain since his expulsion from

10 Ross, 383–384; The Times, 26 October 1801; FO 27/62, 5, Merry to Hawkesbury, 18 October 1801. 11 F. Wickwire and M. Wickwire, Cornwallis, 2 vols, Chapel Hill, NC 1970– 1980. 12 Ross, 383; BL Add Mss, 38316, 18–19, Hawkesbury to Merry, 13 October 1801.

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Holland, should receive compensation for his lost lands, again from German ecclesiastical lands. Hawkesbury faithfully repeated all this in his own instructions, but added that all these must be subordinate to ‘higher interests’, which were unspecified, but by which he presumably meant the peace agreement as a whole; they were not, he ended, ‘to risk or to retard the general peace of Europe’.13 All this was to a degree ambiguous, particularly to a man like Cornwallis, to whom duty was binding; the differing emphases of king and Cabinet might paralyse. It was to get worse. His progress through Kent was cheered, and his carriage was unhitched and dragged through Canterbury by the crowd. In northern France he had military escorts, civic welcomes, and a newly repaired road for his three carriages from Calais to Paris, where he played the tourist for a couple of days, visiting the legislature and the Tuileries.14 But then he met Talleyrand, who obliquely insinuated that Paris might be a more suitable site for the negotiations; Cornwallis rebuffed this at once, then raised the question of diplomatic representatives being posted to each other’s capital; to this Talleyrand agreed, but insisted that they be at a lower level than fully accredited ministers. This was reasonable, since the two countries were technically still at war, but the whole experience was hardly encouraging. A week later Cornwallis was warned by Hawkesbury that Talleyrand was a slippery customer ‘likely to take any unfair advantage’, and he must be ‘treated with more than usual caution and circumspection’. It is unlikely that he really needed this warning. Cornwallis hoped to see the first consul fairly soon, but in the event he did not do so for three weeks.15 The situation between Britain and France was certainly uneasy, a condition of neither war nor peace. On a scale from war to peace, passing through truce and armistice, the two were somewhere between armistice and peace, but were technically still at war. The peace negotiations at Amiens were by no means certain to end in a full peace treaty, though of the several attempts made this clearly had the best chance of success so far. Yet it was perfectly possible that the Peace Preliminaries would fail to be converted into a treaty. And the early ploys to which Cornwallis was subjected in Paris showed that the French in particular were hoping to expand the advantage they felt they had gained so far. This effect had already been felt in London, where Otto – who continued in post as the French envoy – had given notice that the French

13 Ross, 384–385, George III to Cornwallis, 1 November 1801, 388–389, Hawkesbury to Cornwallis, 1 November 1801. 14 Wickwire and Wickwire, Cornwallis, II, 256. 15 Ross, 390, Cornwallis to Ross, 8 November 1801; BL Add Mss 38312, 36–37, Cornwallis to Hawkesbury, 8 November 1801.

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were about to send troops to San Domingo, sailing from Brest. The request more or less coincided with information from Merry in Paris in a letter to Hawkesbury of 18 October. Merry claimed that the French expedition was 25,000 strong, and was to be commanded by General Bernadotte. Preparations had been under way for a month, he was told, but when he enquired at the French Ministry of Marine, Admiral Decrès was notably vague about it all. St Vincent was disturbed, and told Addington that he thought they should only go when they had received passports. This, of course, would allow the British to decide who should go. It was a grey area, not covered by the Peace Preliminaries, since San Domingo was, so far as the British were concerned, indisputably French territory. It was also in revolt. The slaves had risen against the French years before, a revolt which was exceedingly uncomfortable for the British, whose own slaves on other West Indian islands also occasionally rebelled. The suppression of the slave revolt in San Domingo would certainly reduce tension in the Caribbean in one way, but the presence of a large French force there was equally to be deplored. It was all made the more delicate in that the Lieutenant-Governor of Jamaica, General Sir George Nugent, had been in negotiations with the rebel leader Toussaint L’Ouverture, for an antiFrench alliance. This was about to be finally agreed when news arrived of the Peace Preliminaries, and Nugent called it all off, to bitter complaints of bad faith from L’Ouverture. Further, if a French fleet were to go to the Caribbean, the British fleet there would need to be reinforced, and the sailors of the Channel fleet were already anticipating their demobilisation. It was thus a shock to their crews when twelve ships of the line under the command of Vice-Admiral Sir Andrew Mitchell were sent from Plymouth on 2 November to be held ready in Bantry Bay to sail to the West Indies if necessary. This was not made any more palatable by the gale which accompanied their voyage to Ireland.16 Cornwallis saw Napoleon Bonaparte on 10 November, and they exchanged mutual compliments. Bonaparte was always interested in soldiers, and in the East. No doubt Cornwallis relished the opportunity of discussing Britain’s power in India, which Bonaparte was known to covet. But then Bonaparte talked about Malta, and how he would like to see the British leave that island and dismantle the fortifications, an item which had not been covered by Cornwallis’s instructions.17 The next day Cornwallis received a specially transmitted Cabinet Memorandum instructing him to involve himself in the problem of the 16 Smith, St Vincent, I, 253, St Vincent to Addington, 22 October 1801; FO 27/62, 5, Merry to Hawkesbury, 18 October 1801; The Times, 15 March 1802; Smith, St Vincent, I, 263, quoting an uncredited source, which may be The Times. 17 Ross, 390–391, and BL Add Mss 38312, 37, Cornwallis to Hawkesbury, 10 November 1801.

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French expedition to San Domingo. And so, on 14 November, he protested to Talleyrand at French plans for that country. Talleyrand claimed they had been long in preparation – which was probably untrue and in any case irrelevant – and that the ships being sent were ill-armed and weakly manned, and that many were en flûte, that is, with many of their guns removed to enable them to carry more soldiers. Some of the ships would be Dutch and Spanish, which would return to Europe at once. When pressed, however, Talleyrand could not provide any precise details, which cast strong doubts on the accuracy of all his earlier assurances. Next day, 13 November, he provided details: only six ships, three French and three Dutch, were to sail, and they would be armed, since the ‘honour and dignity’ of France would not permit an armed ship to be disarmed. And there would be no delay in sailing, whatever that meant. Cornwallis, the soldier and administrator, could see no dishonour or humiliation in disarming ships. Despite thus puncturing Talleyrand’s rhetoric, he had clearly not persuaded the French to stay at home.18 This was to some degree beside the point for Cornwallis, who only got the task of tackling Talleyrand on the subject because he was actually in Paris at the time. Nevertheless he was now thoroughly involved with the preparations for the conference. Hawkesbury, having had some time to contemplate the approaching negotiations, now highlighted Malta as an issue in the letter which warned Cornwallis, surely superfluously, of Talleyrand’s slipperiness. Hawkesbury’s first priority was to keep Malta out of French hands, but he clearly appreciated that a continued British presence on the island would be no more acceptable to the French. A third-power guarantee by Russia had been suggested in the Preliminaries; now Hawkesbury took up that suggestion. This would have the advantage that it used the Russian interest in the island which had been inherited by Tsar Alexander from his father. Cornwallis was sent a despatch from Lord St Helens, the British Minister at St Petersburg, on the subject; a direct Russian involvement, with a Russian garrison on the island, was thought to be as unacceptable to France as a British garrison, so Hawkesbury suggested that a Neapolitan garrison covered by a Russian guarantee would suffice. The king of Sicily, after all, had been the original suzerain of the island when the knights were in control. As to the French expedition to the Caribbean, Hawkesbury tried to be conciliatory, though not very hard, promising the availability of supplies at Jamaica if they were not required by British ships, but he insisted that the French ships be disarmed, and wanted to be able to verify this. He was, that is, insisting that the expedition could only sail with British permission. 18

Ross, 391; BL Add Mss 38312, 37–40, Cornwallis to Hawkesbury, 12 November 1801, 42–44, Cornwallis to Hawkesbury, 13 November 1801. 56

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Two days later, after further thought, Hawkesbury set out further points about Malta. This time he assumed that the Hospitaller Order would return, but that the Maltese should have some sort of selfgovernment under the Order’s ‘direction’, while a Neapolitan garrison under a Russian guarantee was also included. Clearly the more he considered it, the more the problem of Malta looked intractable. He repeated in a separate note that the French were hostile to the idea of a Russian garrison.19 Almost as a counter-balance to all this concern with Malta, Cornwallis’s reply on 20 November scarcely mentioned the island at all. He commented that moving to Amiens, away from Talleyrand’s direct influence, would be an advantage, and he hoped that the atmosphere there would be more relaxed than in Paris. He listed the matters which had to be dealt with: Ceylon and Trinidad had to be ceded by Holland and Spain, who would have to be coerced into this by France; Malta and Tobago were other difficulties, as was the issue of paying for the maintenance of prisoners of war. He did not expect the issue of the compensation for the prince of Orange, or that of the king of Sardinia’s lands in Piedmont, would be worth discussing. Hanover he did not mention. So much for the king’s instructions.20 He and his staff gained an insight into the French government and its distribution of powers by a visit to the Corps Legislatif. Colonel Littlehales was scathing about the scene in a letter describing the visit, remarking that it was more like ‘an exhibition on the stage, or even a puppet-show, than a solemn proceeding of a legislative body’. He took note of sentries posted in the building, with fixed bayonets, and concluded that the Consulate was a despotism.21 Whatever was concluded by the negotiations, in other words, would not be upset by public discussion, unlike in London. It was just a few men – Talleyrand and above all Bonaparte – who had to be satisfied. Hawkesbury’s assumptions about Malta were largely confirmed by Joseph Bonaparte, who called on Cornwallis on 24 November for a preliminary discussion. The French rejected the idea of a Russian garrison, and Naples was not strong enough to be a guarantor. Bonaparte then ‘proposed nearly word for word the plan suggested by Lord Hawkesbury’. Cornwallis concluded that both had the same source in the person who had suggested it to Hawkesbury; in fact both were reverting to the language of the Peace Preliminaries. Trinidad, the prisoners of war, and the Newfoundland fisheries were identified as other problems by the

19

Ross, 392–393, Hawkesbury to Cornwallis, 14 November 1801, and 393–394, 16 November 1801. 20 Ross, 394–395, Cornwallis to Hawkesbury, 20 November 1801. 21 Ross, 397, Col. Littlehales to Maj.-Gen. Ross, 21 November 1801. 57

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French side. On the prisoners of war Bonaparte was presented with a bill and expressed surprise at its size; Cornwallis pointed out that Britain had already paid the cost of British prisoners in France, and that France had a recognised obligation in return. He then suggested that France might surrender Tobago in exchange, pointing out that the planters on that island were all British anyway.22 Before going to Amiens, Cornwallis had another audience with the first consul. Cornwallis had clearly located the centre of power by now and at the meeting he systematically raised the main issues. Again the French dislike of a Russian garrison in Malta was voiced, and Bonaparte suggested that the fortifications of Valetta should be blown up; Cornwallis then pointed out that the knights would scarcely want to take back a disarmed island. (Next day Talleyrand said that the French would agree ‘according to the tenor and spirit of the preliminary articles’, which simply put the matter off without deciding anything.) Bonaparte casually promised an increased compensation for the prince of Orange; Cornwallis refused to consider recognition of the French annexation of Piedmont; Bonaparte would not give up Tobago, but offered to exchange it for something else, such as an enlargement of the French territory around Pondichéry in India. Cornwallis replied that Britain would not give up Tobago either, nor agree to enlarge Pondichéry. Similarly they touched on the fisheries question, and could reach no agreement. Cornwallis had already raised the matter of the French fleet preparing for San Domingo. Bonaparte refused to remove the ships’ guns, and claimed that the reduction of Toussaint L’Ouverture was being done in part as a favour to Britain, for an independent San Domingo would be a ‘piratical’ state. Then, right at the end of the interview, Bonaparte raised another issue, suggesting that each country should expel the disaffected refugees they had received. He suggested that he would expel the United Irishmen if Britain would expel the French Royalists. He claimed that the ‘infernal machine’ of the Rue Niçaise had been a plot by the Comte d’Artois and the Archbishop of Arras, both living in Britain. Cornwallis appears not to have replied.23 Here the problem Cornwallis faced for the next five months was encapsulated in a single half-hour’s conversation. Bonaparte was the man who had to be persuaded, but Bonaparte was unwilling to surrender any item unless he could gain more by doing so. (His suggestion of expanding the territory of Pondichéry was made so that the French would be in contact with the ‘Nabob’; Cornwallis explained that no

22

Ross, 397–399, Record of a Conversation of Cornwallis and Joseph Bonaparte, 24 November 1801. 23 Ross, 399–404, Cornwallis to Hawkesbury, 3 December 1801. 58

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‘Nabob’ – Bonaparte must have meant either the Nawab of Arcot or the Nizam of Hyderabad, or possibly the Sultan of Mysore – existed anywhere near Pondichéry; he did not comment that putting the French in contact with any of the Indian ‘country powers’ was not something any British government would ever permit.) Bonaparte was willing to make airy promises – as he did for the prince of Orange – without allowing himself to get involved in any detail, knowing full well that the negotiations on detail could be infinitely extended if he had promised too much. And extraneous matters – the ‘infernal machine’, the exiles – were liable to be thrown in without notice, and without any obvious logic, but with the obvious intention of compelling a British concession somewhere. One matter which still had to be organised was the necessary presence of the Dutch and Spanish delegates: Talleyrand reluctantly promised next day to see that they arrived. It was clear that the talks were going to take a long time, and that, if the British wanted to reach an early conclusion, the easiest way was to accept French terms. Cornwallis went to Amiens on 30 November, taking Merry with him. Merry was replaced as British envoy in Paris by Francis Jackson. Travelling the usual route by Calais, Boulogne, Abbeville and Amiens, Jackson and his party had reached Paris on the 16th. Before leaving London they had dined with Otto and his wife, and had collected many letters and packages for people in France, sent by émigrés, and Madame Otto had given him a cap for Madame Bonaparte. At several places on the journey they received enthusiastic welcomes, for Jackson’s presence in France was one more sign of an imminent definitive peace.24 Jackson was accompanied by his younger brother George, who acted as his secretary for a time, and by his chaplain, whose diary is preserved. By the end of November the chaplain had noticed that the ‘number of English’ in Paris ‘is greatly increasing’.25 The announcement of the Peace Peliminaries had begun a process by which these travellers had taken the chance of visiting France for the first time in eight years. Organising such a visit took time. It was necessary to acquire a passport from the Foreign Office, and in France various bureaucratic procedures allowed visitors to be noted and tracked. J.G. Lemaistre was first off the mark, acquiring a passport on 3 October, though he did not reach Calais until the 30th; in the meantime Francis William Blagdon got to Calais on the 16th, and claimed to be the first non-official Englishman to land there since the fighting stopped. Both of these men produced books describing their visits – Lemaistre in fact produced two – and this was presumably

24

FO 27/61, 2, Jackson to Hawkesbury, 16 November 1801; Lady Jackson (ed.), The Diaries and Letters of Sir George Jackson, 2 vols, London 1872, 9–14. 25 A.M. Broadley, (ed.), The Journal of a British Chaplain in Paris during the Peace Negotiations of 1801–1802, London 1913, 60. 59

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their object in making the journey. Another purpose is that of Joseph Forsyth, who left England in November and stopped only briefly in Paris before heading south to Nice, which he reached on Christmas Day, and on into Italy. He then spent eighteen months moving slowly from city to city, revelling in the ‘Antiquities, Arts and Letters’ of the land, as the title of his book has it, but in the process developing only contempt for most of the Italians he met.26 It is clear that this traffic developed only fairly slowly. Blagdon may or may not have been the first to reach Calais, but he was certainly welcomed as if he was. The sudden end of the fighting, and the ambiguity of the ‘Peace Preliminaries’, had caught most people by surprise, and it took some time to appreciate the possibilities and then more to get moving. Like Cornwallis, many travelled with a lot of equipment. Lord Mount Cashell’s journey was recorded by Catherine Wilmot, the companion of his wife, and two daughters, and he took with him four servants, and was later joined by his three sons and a governess.27 It was people like these whom the Jacksons’ chaplain began to notice by the end of November. And many had come to Paris for extended stays. Lord Mount Cashell called on Cornwallis as he passed through Amiens, and the family was disturbed at supper by the cheers which welcomed Joseph Bonaparte to the city.28 Two days later the two principals had their first formal meeting and exchanged their credentials. Bonaparte reported that the Dutch and Spanish delegates had been appointed; the Dutchman, Schimmelpenninck, would arrive soon; the Spaniard, however, had declined the appointment. Cornwallis and Bonaparte agreed not to wait for them. Cornwallis would produce a draft for discussion, and he identified Malta particularly as a problem. Since the first consul had rejected the idea of giving up Tobago in exchange for the cancellation of the prisoners’ charge, he expected that to be settled quickly. Cornwallis’s report is optimistic as to an early conclusion.29 Gradually during December this optimism faded once more. Joseph Bonaparte seemed to Cornwallis to be ‘a very sensible, modest and gentlemanlike man’ on 15 December, but he was not wholly in control of the talks. He reported daily to Paris and received instant replies from his brother. This had been, it seems, the main reason for the careful 26

J.G. Lemaistre, A Rough Sketch of Modern Paris . . . , London 1803, 7; F.W. Blagdon, Paris as it was and as it is, or a Sketch of the French Capital, 2 vols, London 1803, 1–3; J. Forsyth, Remarks on Antiquities, Arts and Letters during an excursion in Italy in the Years 1802 and 1803, London 1813. 27 T.V. Sadleir (ed.), An Irish Peer on the Continent (1801–1803), London 1920, 1–2. 28 Ibid., 6–8. 29 Ross, 404–406, Cornwallis to Hawkesbury, 6 December 1801. 60

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repair of the road to Amiens and Calais, rather than, or perhaps more than, the need to impress Cornwallis. So where a sensible agreement might be reached in Amiens one day, it could well be overtaken next day by new instructions from Paris. Cornwallis was not in such rapid contact with London, but then he did not need to be, since he clearly understood what was required. His early optimism led Hawkesbury to expect, on 17 December, an agreement to be completed in ‘a week or ten days’. But ten days later the French side produced their own draft of a definitive treaty, despite the fact that Cornwallis had agreed to produce one first. This led Cornwallis to comment to the Prime Minister that he expected a long conference after all. No doubt the French had come to realise the tactical advantage of working from their own draft rather than a British one. At first Cornwallis blamed the British side for the change in atmosphere, by insisting on bringing in the question of Tobago again, and wanting to include a clause concerning the compensation for the prince of Orange, even after the first consul had refused them, but three days later, he was despondent, and now he blamed the French. ‘I feel it as the most unpleasant circumstance attending this business that, after I have obtained his acquiescence, on my part I can have no confidence that it is fully settled, and that he will not recede from it in our next conversation.’30 The change in French attitudes detected by Cornwallis may well be connected with their success in finally getting the expedition to San Domingo to sea. This had taken a long time. In a typically flamboyant Napoleonic fashion it was to involve ships and men from all round western Europe. As early as mid-October 1801 General Augereau at Flushing had been trying to organise a sailing, but by the end of the month he had to admit defeat owing to a lack of transport ships. All through November, as we have seen, France and Britain were dancing around the issue, the first not quite asking permission to sail, the second not quite refusing permission. The British had been making naval preparations at the same time, using ships of the Channel fleet now no longer needed for blockade duty: one detachment of eight ships of the line had gone to Bantry Bay on 2 November to await orders to sail; on 19 November five more ships of the line were sent direct to Jamaica.31 The crews of the squadron in Bantry Bay were unhappy at their situation, the place being bleak and wet and most inhospitable by contrast

30

Ross, 413, Cornwallis to Ross, 15 December 1801, 414–415, Hawkesbury to Cornwallis, 17 December 1801, 418–419, Cornwallis to Addington, 27 December 1801, 420–421, Cornwallis to Hawkesbury, 30 December 1801. 31 E.W. Lyon, Louisiana in French Diplomacy, 1759–1804, Norman, Okla., 1934; Smith, St Vincent, 262. 61

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with Plymouth. The rumour soon spread that they were intended for the West Indies, a notoriously unhealthy station. All this was a great disappointment to men expecting to be released from the service by the conclusion of peace. On 5 and 6 December there were disturbances on the Temeraire, the flagship of the second in command; Rear-Admiral the Hon. George Campbell, and men on the Formidable, the Majestic, and the Vengeance were thought to be disaffected. The disturbances did not amount to much, but the general atmosphere in the ships was bad enough that they were ordered back to England, arriving at St Helens on 29 December. The grim procedures of court martial, condemnation, and execution went on all through January.32 The French fleets sailed while this British detachment was thus paralysed, though there is probably no connection between the two events. The French purpose – to put down the slave rebellion – was viewed with much sympathy in Britain,33 and it was difficult to prevent the French from sailing without jeopardising the peace talks; if the French were determined, the Royal Navy would need to fire on the ships to stop them. So in the middle of the month, French squadrons and fleets sailed from Brest, from Lorient, from Rochefort, from Toulon, and from Cadiz, in a grand display of Napoleonic organisation and planning. They were accompanied from Brest by some of the Spanish ships which had been blockaded there, and from the Texel by a Dutch squadron. Virtually the whole French navy was on its way to the West Indies, carrying about 12,000 troops. It was a notable feat of organisation and co-ordination, which, however, as was later proved in 1805, was only really possible in peacetime. Had the Royal Navy interfered, matters would have been very different. In effect, then, the whole expedition sailed by tacit British permission.34 A month later Hawkesbury made the enigmatic comment in the House of Commons that the Brest fleet ‘did not sail without a proper previous communication between this country and the government of France’.35 Decoded, this means that the British could not bring themselves to block the French move because of the widespread anticipations of peace. However, the issue is wider than that. The discussions on the subject of the expedition had focused almost entirely on the fleet in Brest, which was certainly the largest French force, and was the 32

Smith, St Vincent, 264–265; Lord Colchester (ed.), Diary and Correspondence of Charles Abbot, Lord Colchester, London 1861, 395–399. 33 As in The Times, 16 October 1801; Naval Chronicle VI, 505 and VII, 267–268. 34 Smith, St Vincent, 267–268; Naval Chronicle VI, 267–268; in the Chronicle’s memoir of William Budge (XXXV, 2–5) there is a story of a secret article in the Peace Preliminaries referring to British permission for this sailing; there was a secret article, but it referred to Portugal, not the West Indies. 35 Parl. Hist. XXXVI, 19 January 1802. 62

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headquarters of Admiral Villaret de Joyeuse, who commanded the naval expedition, and the place where General Leclerc, the army commander, and Jérôme Bonaparte, the political commissar attached, embarked. It is not clear, however, that the British fully understood that the other French squadrons, whose participation effectively doubled the French naval strength in the West Indies, would also be involved. It was only realised that the Toulon squadron was involved, for instance, when news arrived that it had passed through the Straits of Gibraltar on the 20th.36 It might be argued that the British government should have anticipated something like this, but the fact is it did not; nor did the Admiralty, whose First Lord had experience of warfare in the Channel, the Mediterranean and against the combined Franco–Spanish fleets. The French had been, it seems, deliberately misleading about the whole matter, Talleyrand referring at one point to an expedition from Brest of only six ships. But the really important part of the French deception was in simply failing to correct British assumptions about the scale of the deployment. And this had its echo in the peace negotiations. There were several aspects to Franco–British relations which were not mentioned in the Peace Preliminaries, nor in the subsequent Treaty of Peace: trading relations particularly, but also various diplomatic matters. The British assumed that relations on these matters would revert to the pre-war condition: the French did not raise the issues because they had other intentions. The result therefore came as an unpleasant surprise to the British. It was a translation into diplomatic practice of the practices of French revolutionary and Napoleonic warfare: it is not a surprise that the peace did not last long. The French fleets got to sea on or about 15 December. At Amiens neither the Spanish nor the Dutch delegates had yet arrived, and Cornwallis raised the question of what ‘restoration’ meant when the term was applied to Pondichéry – did this mean that the demolished fortifications should be rebuilt as well as the town returned? Since Cornwallis as Governor-General in India had been responsible for ordering the demolitions, this was perhaps his own idea. But a note from Hawkesbury ‘correcting’ the total of British charges in respect of French prisoners from £1.2 million to £2.3 million was hardly going to speed things along. Cornwallis sent the French draft of a treaty on to London, and three days later sent his own comments on it. He pointed to some of its deficiencies as they seemed to him: there was no mention of the cession of Ceylon and Trinidad, no article on the integrity of the Portuguese

36 Ross, 417–418, Cornwallis to Hawkesbury, 25 December 1801, 416–417, Hawkesbury to Cornwallis, 30 December 1801; BL Add Mss 38313, 25–27.

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possessions, a crucial omission in the article on prisoner costs, the guarantee on Malta was to be Sicilian, not Russian. Nor had he received an answer on the question of the languages for the treaty – the British required it to be in English and French. He and Joseph Bonaparte had had a long discussion, during which other matters also emerged: Bonaparte did not have power to admit a Dutch delegate to the conference (and earlier it had emerged that the French had rejected a Spanish nominee as delegate). Not unreasonably Cornwallis came to the conclusion that the French were deliberately delaying matters. An examination of the French draft by Hawkesbury had also exposed even more omissions than Cornwallis had noted, and some unwelcome extras. There was no mention of the compensation for the prince of Orange, or of Tobago, or of the provisions for extradition. Inclusions which were unexpected related to the restoration of the French Indian territories, the Newfoundland fisheries, the Falkland Islands, and other items. He sent back detailed notes on all these, comparing British and French requirements, and adding that the Maltese article was ‘objectionable’ in general, though certain elements were acceptable. Hawkesbury’s comments were backed up by a letter from Addington. The Prime Minister concentrated on the questions of Malta and the prince of Orange. The ramifications of the Maltese problem clearly concerned him, and he was sensitive, as Hawkesbury was not, to the feelings of the Maltese themselves. He was also clearly subject rather more than Hawkesbury to pressure from the king, who was much exercised by the problem of Orange. Yet Addington was interested also in possibly arranging the matter directly with the government of the Batavian Republic, which, he claimed, ‘appears to be desirous of cultivating a good understanding with our own’ government.37 Here was a fairly new development, an aspect not covered in Cornwallis’s instructions, but one which the government in London had to be very conscious of. The pressures of warfare on the continent were now relaxed. The alliances which republican France had with republican Holland, Bourbon Spain, conquered northern Italy, and the occupied Helvetic Republic were by no means as firm in peacetime as they had been when facing a joint enemy, and even in the war there had been problems. Spanish pride was seriously engaged in resisting French domination, and while Spain had been pushed into war with Portugal in May 1801, participation had been limited to five days’ campaigning and had been concluded with a rapid peace treaty with minimal French involvement. Twice treaties had been made by which Spain promised

37 Ross, 421–423, Cornwallis to Hawkesbury, 30 December 1801, 426–431, Hawkesbury to Cornwallis, 1 January 1802, 431–432, Addington to Cornwallis, 2 January 1802; BL Add Mss 38313, 25–27; BL Add Mss 38317, 53–57.

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to cede Louisiana to France, but no Spanish move had yet been made to implement that cession; French demands had simply been ignored.38 And Spain resented the French agreement to cede Trinidad to Britain; being powerless to do anything active about it, the Spanish government delayed and prevaricated over appointing a delegate to the Amiens conference, since all he would be required to do was to agree to the cession. The Batavian Republic was similarly resentful of the agreement to cede Ceylon to Britain, a resentment increased by the involvement of the French in the latest political crisis. In mid-September 1801 a coup removed one group of Dutch politicians and put another group in power. By request General Augereau had lent French troops to the coup leaders in a version of Bonaparte’s actions on 18 Brumaire – though Augereau did not panic. A referendum on a new constitution which followed was a clear indication of Dutch resentment: less than 17 per cent of the electorate voted, and of these less than a quarter approved the new constitution. Only 4 per cent thus actively approved. Quite unfazed by this the new rulers simply lumped the abstainers in with those voting ‘ja’ and called them ‘tacit affirmations’. This was a technique already used in consular France. It was clear that the French domination of the Dutch government was complete.39 No Dutch government was going to be happy at the news that in the Peace Preliminaries (signed on the same day as the constitutional referendum, 1 October) Ceylon had been ceded to Britain. Nor was any Dutch government, whose republic, despite its repeated crises, was home-grown, at all keen to see the prince of Orange compensated. On the other hand, the real requirement of the Dutch was peace, which alone would permit the recovery of their economy, heavily dependent as it was on trade. Also the arrival of peace would bring into operation one of the elements of their alliance with France, whereby the French troops stationed in, and supported by, Holland, should be removed to French territory. For the moment they remained in place, during this curious condition of near-peace, and Dutch ships had participated in the West Indian expeditions – where Dutch islands were due to be returned on the definitive peace – but to some in Britain it seemed possible to separate the two republics by some deft diplomacy; and a start could be made at Amiens. The earlier peace concluded at Lunéville had also brought the condition of Italy to French attention. The warfare which had swept repeatedly across Italy since 1796 had loosened the political foundations of the old states, and had caused serious economic damage, aggravated

38 39

Lyon, Louisiana, 101–120. Schama, Patriots and Liberators, 416–419. 65

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by the pressure of a large French army which had to be supported by Italian taxation, and by constant French demands for tribute. The result was a complex internal situation of internal feuds, peasant turbulence, and much resentment all round. All this was brought to Bonaparte’s attention repeatedly, and at the end of December a great congress was convened at Lyon to sort things out. This congress, of nearly five hundred delegates from the Cisalpine Republic, made relatively little progress, as one would expect from such a large gathering. Bonaparte sent Talleyrand to Lyon on 23 December, when Jackson in Paris commented that Bonaparte’s intentions were not clear, though the result would be to bring the Cisalpine Republic under his control. Jackson had long supposed this to be the situation.40 Already Piedmont had been brought within the French area of control in April, and it had been divided into six departments and made into a French military district, though its definitive annexation was delayed. Similarly Genoa was made a French military district, then given a constitution under which the doge and the thirty senators who formed the government of the Ligurian Republic were all nominated by Bonaparte, though the actual ruler was the French commissioner Saliceti. Further south, Tuscany had already been made into the kingdom of Etruria for the Bourbon Ludovico, and was occupied by still more French troops. The Cisalpine Republic, sprawling from Milan to Ravenna, and including all or parts of six pre-Revolution states, was the richest and strategically the most important area. It had suffered badly from both French and Austrian occupations, and from Jacobin and clerical actions. The old animosities between its constituent parts continued as well. The disorder, particularly in the countryside, both reduced its value and made it vulnerable. Talleyrand’s work among the delegates at Lyon prepared the way for Bonaparte’s presence. He left Paris on 8 January, after the celebration of the marriage of his brother Louis to his stepdaughter Hortense de Beauharnais. He stayed in Lyon until 26 January, emerging from the congress as President of the Italian Republic – the soi-disant Cisalpine – which now had a new constitution and an Italian Vice-President, Count Melzi d’Eril, an efficient and conciliating diplomat loyal to Bonaparte personally.41 North of Italy was Switzerland, brought under effective French control in the Directory’s wars, but equally restive. It was, as was Italy, occupied by French forces, who were supported by taxation levied on the local population. Its reconstitution under the Directory as the Helvetic Republic was disliked by many Swiss, but their inability to

40

FO 27/61, 13, Jackson to Hawkesbury, 23 December 1801; Colchester, Diary, 388–390. 41 D. Gregory, Napoleon’s Italy, London 2001, 47–51, 54–59. 66

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resist was clear to all, as Jackson noted in a despatch to Hawkesbury on 18 December.42 Bonaparte had performed one adjustment in April, restoring the former cantons, and restricting the franchise drastically, but disorder and disputes continued. These matters were supposed to have been settled by the Treaty of Lunéville, and since then France and Britain had been involved in their long negotiations. Bonaparte always insisted that, since the Lunéville agreement was between France and Austria, Britain had no say in its observance. For the present, while never accepting this point, the British had enough on their hands without becoming involved in interpreting that treaty. Insisting on the observation of its terms should in fact have been Austria’s job, but the emperor apparently did nothing. The British were certainly concerned over Bonaparte’s stealthy advances and his failure to carry out his treaty obligations; both were unpleasant indications of what could be expected once their own peace was made. But the first essential was to achieve that peace. Addington’s reference to the feelings of the Maltese, a matter which had been ignored until January 1802, was prompted by a series of letters from Malta, which accompanied petitions and messages from notable Maltese. The news of the Peace Preliminaries had reached Malta in midOctober, from France by way of a cartel vessel, and the detail of the article dealing with Malta some time later. Most of the Maltese were horrified. The prospect of being returned to the rule of the Order was clearly abhorrent to a large part of the population. By 19 October Charles Cameron was transmitting an appeal that Britain take the island into its protection. But he, Alexander Ball and Cameron’s adviser William Eton were themselves particularly keen to keep the Order out and to see that Malta became a British island, and they all minimised the differences of opinion in the islands. Ball himself set off to Britain as soon as possible with the appeal. A month later Cameron sent on another document, signed by representatives of most of the villages of both islands, and by most of the chiefs and lieutenant-governors, protesting at the intention to return the islands to the Order. Five prominent men, four from Malta and one from Gozo, were deputed at public meetings to go to Britain to put their case in person. A letter from Cameron to Lord Hobart made it clear that these men were important in the island and needed to be listened to.43 These messages, sent at intervals from 21 October, preceded the arrival of the five delegates, who only reached London on 1 February, though Ball had reached London much earlier, and it was no doubt his forceful advocacy which was behind Addington’s invocation of the

42 43

FO 27/61, 11, Jackson to Hawkesbury, 18 December 1801. Hardman, Malta, 405–417; Gregory, Malta, Britain, 120. 67

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feelings of the Maltese at the beginning of January. Meanwhile at Amiens virtually no progress was made during January, presumably because the first consul was dealing with Italian affairs at Lyon. The Dutch delegate to the peace conference, Rutger Jan Schimmelpenninck, an important politician who was in temporary exile as Dutch ambassador at Paris, arrived at last on the 9th, and on the 18th Jackson reported from Paris that the Spanish plenipotentiary, the Marquis Azara, had at last been prevailed on to accept the appointment. Meanwhile Hawkesbury reported that the Portuguese had agreed not to press to be included, trusting that the British would see to Portuguese interests. Cornwallis was exasperated by the delays, but there was nothing he could do to hurry things along, and he did not allow himself to be distracted.44 Cornwallis and his people were generally bored to distraction. Colonel Nightingall described their life to Major-General Ross during this time of tedium. He did not like the looks or the manners of any of the members of the local society at Amiens. Julie Bonaparte, Joseph’s wife, was ‘very short, very thin, very ugly, and very vulgar’, her husband ‘has not at all the manner of a gentleman’, Schimmelpenninck ‘is rather above par’, and his wife ‘has been pretty’. The local Prefect, a republican and regicide, was ‘a very ill-looking scoundrel’, with a ‘tall, plain, vulgar’ wife. With opinions like this, it is hardly surprising that Nightingall was unhappy. They went riding whenever possible in the morning, dined with Joseph Bonaparte and Schimmelpenninck each once a week, but ‘when we go out we get nothing fit to eat or drink’. Cornwallis, however, perhaps did not find conditions weighing so heavily on him, and wrote with a degree of optimism to Ross on the 16th, that the conclusion ‘is still distant’, but that he felt matters were now ‘more favourable’.45 This conclusion reached London about the same time, perhaps even in the same Messenger’s bag, as a letter from Jackson in Paris. Jackson’s duties included periodic commentaries on the condition of France. On 8 December, for example, he had sent a report on the government of consular France, in which he made it clear that the first consul was the centre of power and that he clearly felt himself under threat, at least politically, from others. He picked out Talleyrand and the Police Minister Fouche as particularly powerful ministers, and noted that Sieyes’ influence had been wholly removed, but that several generals, of whom he named Masséna and Lannes, were considered potential

44

Ross, 434; Cornwallis to Hawkesbury, 10 January 1802, 438, Hawkesbury to Cornwallis, 16 January 1801. 45 Ross, 435–437, Nightingall to Ross, 10 January 1802, 437, Cornwallis to Ross, 16 January 1802. 68

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replacements for the first consul. Other ministers, notably BarbéMarbois and the War Minister Berthier, were regarded as Bonaparte’s men. Jackson ended by commenting that Bonaparte very largely isolated himself in the Tuileries under a strong guard; there were isolated cases of disaffection in Paris, at the coffee houses, for instance, and Madame Bonaparte had been insulted at the Opera, but Jackson reasonably concluded that Bonaparte was quite secure for the present. A month later, while Bonaparte was at Lyon, Jackson sent a further report, prompted, it seems, by the purge of the Tribunate early in January 1802. This led him to comment again on the sources of opposition to the consular regime, which he categorised as royalists, Jacobins, and generals. (He had already written a special letter on General Moreau, the victor of Hohenlinden, who was widely regarded as the main challenger to Bonaparte’s position.) Jackson clearly regarded the consular regime as still unstable, and pointed out that a foreign affairs success was clearly important to it. ‘Thus it is that England is affected by the interior state of France, and thus we may account for the delays that occur in the conduct of the French Plenipotentiary at Amiens’, and it was not external but internal affairs which explained the ‘uncertainty’, and the ‘inconsistency, and even contradiction’ of French policy.46 This was a shrewd assessment, but one which left the British government and its negotiators stuck in a dilemma. A peace treaty would bolster the first consul’s internal power, which would be still more threatening to everyone else. Equally the failure to conclude a treaty might enable him to blame Britain for continuing the war, an attitude which might well be acceptable on the continent. The only way out of this was for the British to consult their own interests above all. Long attempts to undo the Revolution either by war or by subversion over the past decade had failed. The stage was thus being set once again for the next war, a much more nationalistic and less ideological conflict. This, of course, was only to be fully understood after some time, when the real nature of the Napoleonic regime became clear to all: Jackson’s situation in Paris was in a sense privileged, and his commentaries did not reach much further than the Foreign Office. Meanwhile it was clearly necessary to reach a peace agreement if at all possible, but one in which the real, fundamental British interests were not too seriously damaged. As far back as mid-December Joseph Bonaparte and Cornwallis had agreed that the main problems to be settled were Malta and the prisoners’ costs.47 This was still the case late in January. Bonaparte had produced

46 FO 27/61, 8, Jackson to Hawkesbury, 8 December 1801, 15, Jackson to Hawkesbury, 29 December 1801, 2, Jackson to Hawkesbury, 15 January 1802. 47 Ross, 411–412; Cornwallis to Hawkesbury, 13 December 1801.

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a ‘projet’ – a technical diplomatic term for a suggested wording – for the Maltese article, but it was not good enough for Cornwallis, who pointed out that a Neapolitan garrison would never be able to prevent the island from being taken by France. The ‘feelings of the Maltese’, which Addington had invoked, were never much on Cornwallis’s mind, but the need to keep the French out of the island certainly was. He also did not think agreement would be reached on the prisoners’ costs, but this was scarcely enough to restart the war. This was his view on 21 January, in a summary of the situation which seemed to look forward to an early conclusion of the talks, as he had also thought likely on the 16th. Two days later, however, Bonaparte presented ‘a long string of requests respecting India and the Newfoundland fisheries’, to which Cornwallis replied that he knew the British would not accept an expansion of the French territory at Mahé or a French resident at Travancore, and that he thought other requests would not be agreed either. In a private conversation between the two principals later, after the formal meeting, it also appeared that several other matters, including prisoners’ costs, the return of British property in France which had been sequestrated during the war, provision for the prince of Orange, recognition of the Ligurian and Italian Republics, and provision for the losses on the Italian mainland suffered by the king of Sardinia, were still unsettled. This bears all the marks of the mind of Napoleon Bonaparte, who, seeing agreement almost near, was assuming that he could push just a little more, on the assumption that the British were so anxious for an agreement they would give way.48 Cornwallis was in effect now negotiating also with Schimmelpenninck. Perhaps, as Addington had hoped, he was trying to separate the Dutch from the French: he remarked that they seemed to be ‘more apprehensive on the part of France than of England’, which is not surprising in the circumstances. By 1 February he could report having reached an effective agreement with Schimmelpenninck on the cession of Ceylon, a free port at the Cape (which was to be returned to Dutch control), and on an article for the indemnification of the prince of Orange, though when he saw the list, Joseph Bonaparte asked for a delay to consider it. It also appeared that he could not treat with the Spanish or Dutch plenipotentiaries, which Cornwallis found ‘surprising and inexplicable’, but which can be easily explained by the first consul’s need to keep all the strings in his own hands.49 Malta remained unsettled. Cornwallis pointed out that, if the knights were to return, the Neapolitan garrison would be required to protect

48 Ross, 440, Cornwallis to Hawkesbury, 21 January 1802, 437, Cornwallis to Ross, 16 January 1802, 441–442, Cornwallis to Hawkesbury, 23 January 1802. 49 Ross, 443–446, Cornwallis to Hawkesbury, 29 January and 1 February 1802.

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them against the Maltese – news of their feelings had clearly at last penetrated to Amiens. The French had also refused to pay half the costs of the Neapolitan garrison at their previous meeting, perhaps as a ploy to try to get the British to reject the plan first. Cornwallis was clear that some protection for the knights from the anger of the Maltese was necessary. But then Bonaparte reversed himself and rejected the idea of a Neapolitan garrison, provoking Cornwallis to another exasperated complaint of French bad faith, and he was so incensed that he suggested that the British government must decide to ‘break off, or give way, or bring forward another plan of accommodation’. He suggested that the British might hold Malta for three months to assist the knights to return and re-establish themselves. If enough knights failed to arrive in time, then the fortifications should be demolished. He had already, two months before, insisted that demolition was a sensible option, since the island was very vulnerable without fortifications, and so even if the French did seize Malta in a war, it would be relatively easy to evict them.50 Joseph Bonaparte read to Cornwallis a letter from the first consul, in which he complained bitterly about a French émigré newspaper, published in London by Jean-Gabriel Peltier, and Cornwallis was asked to transmit this complaint to the British government. While no doubt sincere in his complaint, it is noticeable that Jackson in Paris, the accredited envoy, was ignored in this, though he was the channel through which such a message would normally be sent. It was, that is, in part also a tactic to exert more pressure on Cornwallis, and perhaps on the government in London, in the matter of the peace negotiations. Cornwallis stoutly defended the freedom of the British press, to which Joseph Bonaparte replied that he knew full well there were ways by which Peltier could be controlled or silenced. He may have meant the French method of closing a newspaper down – the first consul had closed sixty at a single blow a year before – but the British government had its own effective methods as well.51 The Spanish plenipotentiary Azara finally arrived on 1 February, and at the first meeting with Cornwallis he objected to ceding Trinidad, though this was probably only a gesture, since both men knew that he would have to do as the French said in the matter. He also presented Cornwallis with a set of terms. He wanted the new Portuguese boundary, as settled at the Treaty of Badajoz, to be accepted, the British to recognise the new king of Etruria – something Bonaparte had asked for as well – and Spanish access to the free port at the Cape and to the

50 Ross, 446–447, Cornwallis to Hawkesbury, 5 February 1802, 408–409, Cornwallis to Hawkesbury, 12 December 1802. 51 Ross, 446–447, Cornwallis to Hawkesbury, 5 February 1802.

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East Indies. Cornwallis thought only the first could be accepted, but Hawkesbury refused even that, making recognition of Etruria conditional on the return of Olivenza to Portugal. On the 5th Azara suggested that Britain and Spain should conclude a separate agreement, which Cornwallis thought was actually an attempt to get concessions from Britain, though it was more likely to be an attempt to distance Spain from the French embrace. But there was clearly not enough at stake to risk a breakdown of the French talks, which a separate agreement might produce.52 It was clear that the French would not permit Spanish or Dutch agreements to be made separately, and to this the British had long agreed, though the French were less reticent in introducing unexpected extras into the discussions. So it was with France that the treaty had to be negotiated, and that meant reaching an agreement on Malta. They had another attempt on 9 February. Taking up Cornwallis’s idea of a British force remaining to supervise the re-establishment of the knights, Bonaparte now suggested a six-month period rather than three, and that the grand master should recruit new knights from Germany, hiring them from the usual German entrepreneur-princes. Since several generations of nobility were required of newly joining knights, it was no longer possible to recruit in France or in most of Italy where degrees of nobility had been abolished. Cornwallis patiently pointed out that the relevant area of Germany was under effective French domination. (The Maltese had pointed out months before that the existing knights came from territories under French control or French influence – France, Germany, Italy, Spain.) Azara was a Knight of the Order himself, and he pointed out that the Pope had not yet accepted the resignation of Grand Master von Hompesch, whose minimal authority would hinder any chance of recruitment contracts being concluded. Cornwallis, rightly, detected ‘an unlimited field for cavil and chicane’.53 Hawkesbury pointed out that the French proposals on Malta were not in fact new, merely the old ones revived. He now, at last and finally, focused on the Order itself, which was supposed to be returned to Malta. This was certainly prompted in part by messages from Russia, but perhaps also by the presence in London of the Maltese delegation. The Order had been badly weakened by its recent disasters, first by the sequestration of its French properties by the Revolution, which had been applied also in Italy and Belgium and the Rhineland, then by its military defeat in Malta and the subsequent dispersal of the surviving knights. 52

BL Add Mss 38314, 2–3, Cornwallis to Hawkesbury, 1 February 1802, 10–12, Cornwallis to Hawkesbury, 5 February 1802, and 11–13, Hawkesbury to Cornwallis, 4 February 1802; Ross, 448–449, Cornwallis to Hawkesbury, 1 February 1802. 53 Ross, 450–452, Cornwallis to Hawkesbury, 9 February 1802. 72

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Of the three hundred or so knights in Malta when the French conquered the islands, a third joined the French attack on Egypt or went to France where they received state pensions, and half were scattered through Europe. Von Hompesch was still officially the grand master, despite having tried to resign. One suggestion for strengthening the Order had been to constitute a new Langue for the Maltese, but this ran up against the difficulty that there were not sufficient Maltese with the required noble ancestry; a dozen Maltese had been accepted as knights in the 1780s, but that would be about the maximum possible for so small a population. The Order thus had no accepted grand master, had suffered a bad reduction of its resources and its manpower, and was disliked, if not worse, by many of the Maltese. Messages from Russia insisted on the maintenance of the noble integrity of the Order, but these were suspect in that it was assumed that, even if they were instigated by the knights about the court at St Petersburg, they also seemed to lean towards Russian interests more than the Order’s.54 In effect the Order had only survived in its Maltese bastion because it was accepted as neutral by all the European powers, even to a large extent by the Ottomans. That neutrality having been removed by the French, it could not be resumed. Hawkesbury was clear that the Order was quite incapable of defending the islands as it was constituted and manned at the time, and he followed that observation by asking just who the Order included by then, and who was to be the Order’s international protector. The French had now rejected Naples as that protector, but no alternative had been proposed, though Russia had in effect volunteered, and Britain was in place, and the French had seemed to accept their role. The presence of some protecting force was clearly necessary. When this was put to the French by Cornwallis, Joseph Bonaparte rejected Naples once again, commenting that the alliance of Naples and Britain in the late war meant that France could not trust that kingdom. He suggested that the Order could hire mercenaries from the countries where there still were Langues in existence – but then he had to agree that there was no grand master who could do this. A longer British presence – six months – was then agreed as an interim measure until the knights could become established once more. At the same time it was clear that any French assurances on compensation for the prince of Orange had been withdrawn – Bonaparte claimed he had only been offering his good offices to secure a settlement – and that no French contribution to either the costs of garrisoning Malta or the Prince’s compensation was to be expected.55 54

Hardman, Malta, 432. Ross, 452–454, Hawkesbury to Cornwallis, 12 February 1802, 454–456, Cornwallis to Hawkesbury, 18 February 1802.

55

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In Britain the results of the congress at Lyon had sunk in, with its clear extension of Bonaparte’s personal power. Jackson had reported on this two weeks before, claiming that Bonaparte had insisted that he should have the office. This may not be strictly accurate, but the outcome was the same. Some in Britain were now even wishing to renew the war because of it, a feeling which would only strengthen if the peace terms were too unfavourable. Hawkesbury on the 12th was adamant that there would be no recognition of the new king of Etruria without French and Spanish surrender of Olivenza to Portugal, the Tuscan Presidios to Naples and – the really shocking part for the French – the return of Piedmont to the king of Sardinia. This all produced an atmosphere in Britain in which even a small disagreement at Amiens might trigger a breakdown and a resumption of the fighting. It was necessary that Britain give no ground in the peace negotiations, and that the British proposals on Malta should be fully acceptable.56 Both sides then dug in on all disputes. The British became firm, the French had said their last word. A new problem had arisen over the inclusion of an Ottoman delegate – the French had signed a preliminary peace treaty with the Turks back in October, and Britain still had an army in Egypt, Ottoman territory. Cornwallis had already asked that the Ottoman envoy in Paris, Ali Effendi, should be sent on to Amiens; Jackson had reported that Talleyrand had objected to this.57 It took a month’s discussion and correspondence to sort this difficulty out. Addington exerted himself to instruct Cornwallis to insist on a treaty, ignoring the French tactics. And, at the next meeting, on 6 March, Cornwallis was led to complain publicly to the delegates about the French conduct. By this time both leaders had been given instructions to go for a treaty, and they set to and produced a new ‘projet’ on Malta, based on competing versions. With the two side by side they could merge them. One issue, the claim of Russia to supervise the election of a new grand master, was removed by giving the task to ‘interested powers’ of whom Russia was certainly one. At the end of the discussion Joseph Bonaparte claimed that his government could still not accept the suggested article, but Cornwallis simply refused to refer back to London on the issue. So either the French accepted this latest draft on Malta or the war resumed. Two new clauses had meanwhile been proposed by the French, for the recognition of the Ligurian Republic, and for the continued French occupation of Otranto until the British forces left

56

FO 27/61, 13, Jackson to Hawkesbury, 2 February 1802; Gregory, Napoleon’s Italy, 60–63; BL Add Mss 38317, 17, Hawkesbury to Cornwallis, 12 February 1802; Ross, 457, Hawkesbury to Cornwallis, 12 February 1802. 57 FO 27/61, 14, Jackson to Hawkesbury, 2 February 1802. 74

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Malta, but Cornwallis again rejected them. On the 9th Bonaparte accepted the Maltese article and withdrew the other two clauses.58 The French having apparently agreed the Maltese article for the treaty, Cornwallis hoped it was now almost over, with only minor matters – the prince of Orange, the matter of the border of Portugal and Spain, Guiana – to be dealt with. In Paris the first consul had agreed that the Ottomans could be invited to accede to the treaty, which was acceptable to the British. By 13 March some final adjustments led Cornwallis to claim that ‘with this the whole treaty is settled’.59 Not quite. Cornwallis had added to his claim of completion that the article on the prisoners’ costs was still not agreed. Then, on the next day, and so before the adjustments Cornwallis mentioned had reached London, the Foreign Secretary sent him a draft of the final treaty with several pages of comments in explanation, and the instruction that Cornwallis must give the French just eight days to agree, and that if no agreement was reached within that time, ‘you must leave Amiens’. Hawkesbury’s comments covered most of the contentious issues: the prisoners’ costs, Malta, the prince of Orange. The rest was agreed. The principle of payment of prisoners’ costs was to be included, with the precise figures to be agreed later by a commission; this seemed to provide Britain with a future benefit, and France with an excuse to avoid paying. The Order’s grand mastership was to be considered vacant, and the establishment of a Maltese Langue would be facilitated by requiring fewer proofs of nobility than for other Langues; the Neapolitan garrison must be composed of Neapolitans, not mercenaries recruited from elsewhere. A variation on the wording of the article on the prince of Orange’s compensation would permit him to be awarded German territory as well as, or instead of, cash.60 Cornwallis ignored the attempt to force the pace by Hawkesbury’s ultimatum, which he never mentioned.61 He met Joseph Bonaparte on the 17th, and presented him with a paper, presumably in part based on Hawkesbury’s comments, and they met repeatedly for the next eleven days, going over and over the text until every last detail was agreed, in both languages. As always the problem centred on Malta, the prisoners, and the prince of Orange’s compensation, and Cornwallis gave a sardonic summary of the differences after the 17 March meeting:

58

Ross, 461–462, Addington to Cornwallis, 2 March 1802, 463–467, Cornwallis to Hawkesbury, 10 March 1802. 59 Ross, 469–472, Cornwallis to Hawkesbury, 13 March 1802. 60 Ross, 472–477, Hawkesbury to Cornwallis, 14 March 1802. 61 This must be emphasised, since it has been generally mentioned as the means by which the negotiations were concluded. But Cornwallis is specific: he did not issue the threat to leave: Ross, 477, Cornwallis to Hawkesbury, 17 March 1802. 75

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the prisoners, for which we did not mean France to pay, though we could not express it; the Prince of Orange, whom they meant to indemnify fully for all his losses, yet they could not suffer it to be explained in the manner we thought necessary to state them; the Ottoman Porte, whom they will admit as a party to the peace, but cannot allow it to be inserted in words which bear the sense of its being included as a contracting party; Baron Hompesch, whom they are willing to exclude, but at whom they cannot point so distinctly as we insist upon; lastly the Neapolitan garrison for Malta, the quality of which they require to be defined in words which we demand to be omitted.

If anyone still believes that Cornwallis was hoodwinked, browbeaten or inveigled into the treaty, this summary of these last issues should disabuse them. Together with his refusal to shift on the major issues and his ignoring of Hawkesbury’s ultimatum, these words show quite clearly that he knew what he was doing, had confidence in his work, and was responsible for the treaty as much as anyone. The cross-purposes he instanced were essentially minor matters, and Hawkesbury accepted that Cornwallis’s failure to press the ultimatum was ‘judicious’. But then he gave the reason for his ultimatum: ‘the Treasury is almost exhausted’ and ‘Mr Addington cannot make his loan in the present state of uncertainty’, and this was reinforced by a note from Addington himself.62 The result of this pressure, and of similar pressure from the first consul on his brother, was another session of discussions on 24 March which went on through to three the next morning. Both sides gave way on details at the end: the French admitted the principle of payment of prisoners’ costs, the British gave way on the compensation for the prince of Orange, a matter which Cornwallis said was ‘nearly fatal to the negotiations’. But it was, again, details on Malta which were more numerous. Even so, the final copy, though agreed on 25 March, took three more days to be produced. Cornwallis wrote after the nocturnal session, on the 25th, that ‘peace is made’, but the treaty was not signed until the 27th, and even the next day he was writing detailed explanations of the final details.63 The treaty had thus been achieved at long last, and was to be ratified in the next weeks by both sides. Two aspects in particular require to be considered. The first is the actual terms, whose details and implications have been rather lost in the intricacies of the negotiation; the second is the process of negotiation itself and what that meant for the prospects of the peace. 62 Ross, 477–480, Cornwallis to Hawkesbury, 17 March 1802, 481–482, Hawkesbury to Cornwallis, 22 March 1802, 482, Hawkesbury to Cornwallis, 22 March 1802, 482–483, Addington to Cornwallis, 22 March 1802. 63 Ross, 483–487, Cornwallis to Hawkesbury, 25, 27 and 28 March 1802.

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The treaty64 contained twenty-two articles, of which the first was preliminary, but which included the provision that neither side should offer ‘assistance or protection’ to those opposed to peace, which was what remained of a French attempt to get the British to expel the royalist émigrés. The territorial clauses 3 to 8 were straightforward and reflected the provisions of the Peace Preliminaries, except that the Cape Town free port was abandoned in favour of a uniform duty on all vessels. Recognition by Britain of the various new Italian states was omitted, and the only new state therefore which was accorded British recognition as independent was the Republic of the Seven Islands. The French were to evacuate Naples and Rome, while the British were to leave the Mediterranean ports and islands they had occupied. The lengthy article 13 covered the rights of people affected by the transfers of territory and restorations, and article 12 had a stipulation on the terms to be allowed for evacuations and so on. Article 2 provided for the mutual restoration of prisoners and hostages, and the payment of their debts; a commission was to be appointed to decide on the costs liable to be paid by each state, but their meetings, and indeed the composition of the commission, were to be subject to a later agreement. The question of sequestrations was dealt with in article 14, providing for their removal, with disputes to be settled with ‘prompt and ample justice’. Similarly article 16 dealt with the ending of the war at sea, which was more difficult to enforce and publicise than on land, and from which disputes were liable to arise. French fishermen were to be allowed to return to the Newfoundland fisheries and cut wood in specified bays for a year; the prince of Orange was to receive compensation for his lost estates, but article 18 on this was notably vague: something else left for the future. Article 10 on Malta was the longest of all, a good third of the whole text, and comprised of thirteen sub-sections. Detailed provisions were made for the restoration of the island to the rule of the knights of the Order, which was to have no English or French Langues, but which was now to include a new Maltese Langue, whose recruits would not have to show the same rigorous social qualifications as members of other Langues; at least half of the local administration was to be staffed by natives of the islands. The British occupying forces were to be evacuated within three months of ratification, when they were to deliver the islands to the grand master, so long as he or his commissioner, and the replacement Neapolitan troops, had arrived. The garrison under the Order was to be half Maltese, and half others, under overall Order command. Until this force was recruited and organised, the garrison was to consist of 2,000 Neapolitan soldiers,

64

Parl. Hist. XXXVI, 337–564. 77

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whose posting to Malta was to last for one year or until the Order’s forces were sufficient to replace them. The independence of the islands, and the system as laid out in the treaty, was to be guaranteed by six European powers: ‘Great Britain, France, Austria, Russia, Spain and Prussia’; of these, three – Britain, France and Spain – were signatories of the treaty. The Order and Malta were declared perpetually neutral. Other sub-sections dealt with internal and commercial matters. The Maltese article stands apart from the rest not only by virtue of its length, but also by its combination of specificity in details, and the long timetable laid down for putting it into effect. The other articles divided into those which were easy to implement, and those subject to further negotiations. The number of matters which were left to be dealt with later is notable, and is a mark of the difficulty of the negotiations. There had been major disagreements over the question of prisoners’ costs, sequestrations, and Malta, and in all these cases the problem had been left to be dealt with later, by separate agreements. There was nothing especially disturbing or sinister about this, and indeed it is fairly clear that the British had given up any serious hope of receiving what they considered their due on the question of prisoners’ costs. It was more of a difficulty that the French had not been willing to be specific over the return of sequestrations. The long article on Malta was a major problem. The detailed and apparently specific timetable for the restoration of the islands to the Order was one thing; but this timetable depended far too much on a whole string of other details being achieved – the election of a grand master, the arrival of the Neapolitan troops, the agreement of the other guarantor powers, the recruitment of Maltese as knights, as soldiers, as administrators. All of the articles with provision for later agreements would actually be no problem if the two parties involved, Britain and France, were willing to negotiate further in good faith (as article 21 insisted they were). Time would tell on this, but already there had been certain indications that this goodwill would not be forthcoming. The fate of the Treaty of Lunéville was cautionary in this respect. It had provided for several matters which the French had subsequently ignored, such as the evacuation of French forces from Holland. And the French had then pushed at the confines of various articles until their original intentions had been so distorted that French power was substantially expanded – the subordination of the French satellite states was the major example. It did not take too much imagination to see that no loophole at all could be left for the French to take advantage of. One could see the guarantee-provision on Malta being used by the French, for example, to re-introduce their own forces into the island in the guise of protectors. There was also one further article (article 20) which provided for extradition of fugitive criminals accused of ‘murder, forgery or fraudu78

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lent bankruptcy’. This was in itself a quite normal provision, but it had also to be seen in the context of the complaints Bonaparte had made and continued to make over comments on him in the French exile press in London, and in the light of the wording of article 1, pledging both states to move against anyone acting in prejudice of the peace. This was to provide an unexpected loophole for French demands. But the main worrying sign of problems likely to come was the actual process of negotiation itself, taken with the failure of the French side to carry out the provisions of the Lunéville treaty. Marquis Cornwallis, old, tough, vastly experienced, and conservative, had in fact, by those very qualities, been an ideal interlocutor for the fairly lightweight and smooth Joseph Bonaparte. Cornwallis could be unfailingly polite but unbudging in negotiation, quite able to fend off the mercurial darts and dodges which the first consul and Talleyrand produced through Joseph. Thus the fairly inexperienced Hawkesbury was protected from those unsettling tactics. Hawkesbury had also learned quickly, particularly in the negotiations with Otto, and he and Cornwallis made a very competent team. Once again the French tactics did not work, except to prolong the whole process. The terms Hawkesbury was prepared to settle for were set out at the beginning of the preliminary negotiations with Otto in March 1801, and were essentially the same as those embodied in the final treaty a year later. But the whole affair had been unsettling in the extreme. The treaty was criticised in Britain, particularly by Pitt’s former colleagues, but none of them, Grenville and Windham particularly, had any real experience of dealing with the Bonapartes in detail over a lengthy period. Hawkesbury could compare the French negotiations with those he had conducted, at a similar long range, with the Russian court in 1801. There were distinct similarities in the two situations: both Tsar Alexander and the first consul were on unsteady thrones, both men had highly experienced subordinates as their Foreign Ministers, in Panin and Talleyrand. But these similar situations had actually produced different processes and results. The negotiations with Russia, through Panin and Lord St Helens, had been sensible and businesslike, with both sides taking full cognisance of the other’s situation and difficulties. The result had been a relatively speedy conclusion of the discussions, within about three months; given the physical distances involved, the matter could scarcely have been concluded more quickly. With France, much closer geographically, the same process had taken a year, and was still unsatisfactory at the end. The reason was the French methods and tactics, characterised by one historian as ‘what’s mine is mine; what’s yours is negotiable’.65 This was a reasonable stance to 65

Schroeder, Transformation, 226. 79

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take in diplomatic negotiations, but only if some consideration was also to be given to the opponent’s situation, and only as an opening move; to maintain such a practice all through was counter-productive. In Cornwallis’s case it simply made him mulish, in which condition he simply rejected each new French ploy and stuck to the original formulation. In terms of reaching a treaty text, the aim of gaining every slight advantage and expanding on it would never work, since it would eventually lead to the breakdown of the negotiations, or to a treaty which would cost the British government its internal support. There was no point in making a peace treaty if the British government was to be brought down for making it. The whole process came down once again to a question of good faith. It became ever clearer in the months following the treaty that the French side lacked this essential quality. It must have become clear to Hawkesbury and Addington and Cornwallis earlier than most, that is, during the actual negotiations. But to fail to make a treaty after such a long negotiation would be to leave them open to the accusation of being addicted to war, a sentiment all too widespread in Europe already,66 as well as subject to attack at home. The peace, therefore, was never regarded, at least in Britain, as really satisfactory, though it was just about good enough to preserve Addington’s government in power. In that sense Bonaparte and his negotiators judged it well enough. But he had set up such a barrier of mistrust that the peace was recognised from the first as being unlikely to last long. King George III, as so often an accurate personifier of his subjects’ reactions, called it an ‘experimental peace’. It was an experiment whose subject was French good faith.

66

Cf. A.D. Harvey, ‘European Attitudes to Britain during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Era’, History 63, 1978, 356–365. 80

3

PEACE The transition from war to peace had been curiously uneven, mediated as it had been by the long negotiations to convert the Preliminaries of October 1801 to the definitive Treaty of Amiens six months later. In the same way the succeeding period of peace, after March 1802, was as uncomfortable and confusing as the near-peace of the half-year preceding. As soon as the Preliminaries were announced some opportunists had headed across the Channel to France, but the main flow of visitors came after the final treaty. The conclusion of the definitive Treaty of Peace, in fact, came as something of an anti-climax to the people of both countries, not surprisingly given the celebrations which had greeted the Peace Preliminaries six months before. The French government dutifully fired guns and illuminated the Tuileries and other government buildings, and the text was published at once. But J.G. Lemaistre, who was in Paris at the time compiling a guide book, found that the treaty was scarcely mentioned at all in conversation, an impression gained also by Miss Berry, who was dining with Minister Jackson at the time: ‘the news in no way occupied any part of the conversation or attention of the rest of the company’.1 The long, slow grind to a final treaty had demonstrated clearly enough that neither side trusted the other, and the obvious difficulty both governments had experienced in making any concessions at all made it clear that the peace was unlikely to be permanent. The contrast with the Lunéville treaty, where France could use its military victories to exert powerful diplomatic pressure, was strong. And the first consul’s comment on the Amiens treaty, that ‘as far as it depends on me it will be permanent’, was as clear a statement of distrust for Britain as could be made.2 This conclusion was, of course, based on more than the perception of the difficulty in reaching a single agreement. It was based rather more profoundly on the history of the previous century and more. The peace treaty of 1802 was the sixth treaty of peace between Britain and France

1

Jackson, Diaries, 79; Lemaistre, Rough Sketch, 179; Lady Theresa Lewis (ed.), Extracts of the Journals and Correspondence of Miss Berry, 3 vols, London 1865, 157. 2 Jackson, Diaries, 789. 81

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since 1697, and only one of the previous five had lasted more than a decade. More immediate was the even deeper ideological gulf separating the two states. Britain had developed into a bastion of conservatism during the war against Revolutionary France, if not indeed an advocate of reaction, and such a government as emerged in such circumstances – and that of Addington was no less conservative than that of Pitt – must inevitably be suspicious of the French consular regime, which proclaimed itself the heir to the achievements of, and the completion of, the Revolution. All this did not mean, of course, that the treaty of 1802 was inevitably doomed, but it did mean that there were many obstacles to its long continuance, and that neither side could expect it to be, as Bonaparte said, ‘permanent’. Indeed, he was warned as early as 2 May, by Otto in London, that ‘the general opinion in England is that the peace is no more than a truce’.3 But then very few treaties lasted for very long, being overtaken by events as the diplomatic kaleidoscope was shaken and stirred, which would require their original terms to be adapted and at times renegotiated. Yet no one would have expected the peace to break down into renewed war within as little as fourteen months. Another reason for the lack of excitement over the peace was its inevitability. Neither side could allow the expectations raised by the Preliminaries in the general population to be dashed. Most people had assumed that agreement on the Preliminaries automatically meant that a full and definitive peace would follow. In that expectation considerable numbers of visitors had crossed the Channel in each direction during the Amiens negotiations. The general welcome these people had received in the other country had shown well enough where the general population wished the negotiations after the Preliminaries to end. Neither the French nor the British government was politically secure enough to wish to disappoint that general expectation. A large number of the British visitors to France published accounts of their visits, but there are few by the French travellers in the other direction. This was partly because the French did not travel with the same expectations of cultural interest as the British, and so Britain has never been as great an attraction for the French as France has been for the British, but also because French society under Napoleon Bonaparte’s rule was less open than the British. Bonaparte’s rule could not encompass praise for an enemy; the British oligarchic regime would take published accounts of France in its stride. But beyond all that there was another, more basic, reason: beneath all the expectations of French society, all the cultural pursuits, and the seeking after pleasure, the accounts of visitors to France were essentially hostile to the first consul, an attitude which was in part the result of those very visits. 3

Quoted in A. Sorel, L’Europe et la Révolution Française, Paris 1885–1904, vol. VI, 155. 82

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The majority of British visitors to France went by way of Dover and Calais, taking advantage of the shortest crossing – which indeed might take days rather than hours. Their main target was always Paris and many of them got no further than that city. The first guide books produced by the earliest visitors did not appear until it was too late to provide much guidance, the resumption of war in May next year spoiling the market.4 Nevertheless most visitors knew what they wanted to see, for certain sights of Paris had become famous, or notorious. The journey to Paris from Calais was along that same road which Cornwallis had used and which had been resurfaced recently: by Boulogne, Abbeville, Amiens and Chantilly to Paris. Those who noticed the land they were passing through remarked on the good cultivation of the land, that it was almost entirely arable, grain and vegetables, and commented on the absence of pasture and meadows, and thus of animals; 18-year-old Lord Aberdeen also noticed, and approved of, the apple orchards of Picardy, and saw also that a superior type of plough was in use.5 In the towns several travellers commented on the large numbers of beggars, and some were given clear evidence of national hostility. Although at the ports the re-opening of contact with the English ports was popular for obvious economic reasons – at Dieppe the first packet boats were greeted with ‘shouts of joy’6 – when they moved inland visitors could well be greeted by less amiable expressions, particularly if the visitor in question was rich or an aristocrat. The removal of the old aristocracy was clearly one of the Revolution’s most popular achievements. Perhaps in the knowledge of this very attitude, Lord Cornwallis with his coaches emblazoned with his coat of arms had been escorted by a troop of cavalry all the way from Calais to Paris, and no doubt there was a discreet guard at Amiens all during the negotiations, both to protect him and to ensure the safety of the first consul’s brother. But Lord Aberdeen, still only 18, walked about Abbeville wearing ‘regimentals’, probably his uniform as an officer of the Third Aberdeenshire militia regiment, and was hissed by the women, and mobbed by beggars and women in the cathedral.7 This was a combination of effects – the red coat of the enemy army, a member of the aristocracy, his wealth, his 4

For example, Lemaistre, Rough Sketch, Edmond John Eyre, Observations made at Paris during the Peace, Bath 1803, Blagdon, Paris as it was. The basic research on all this was by J.G. Alger, Napoleon’s British Visitors and Captives, London 1904. 5 M.C. Chamberlain, Lord Aberdeen, London 1983, 31; The Remains of the late Mrs Richard Trench, ed. the Dean of Westminster, London 1862, 136; Sir Samuel Romilly, Memoirs, 3 vols, London 1840, 79. 6 Rev. W. Hughes, A Tour through several of the Midland and Western Departments of France, London 1803, 5. 7 Chamberlain, Lord Aberdeen, 31. 83

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Britishness, the cathedral as a part of the old system’s exploitation – which tended to concentrate in his person and the moment so many of the objects of hostility in the Revolution that a similar hostility to him personally is hardly surprising. Also at Abbeville a group which was described by their anonymous chronicler as a ‘party of pleasure’ was hissed by a crowd gathered outside an ‘alehouse’.8 On the other hand, less obviously aristocratic visitors commented on the general courtesy of their hosts, if also on their lack of obsequiousness. Abraham Raimbach, a professional engraver, thoughtfully described ‘the manners of the people’ as being ‘somewhat abrupt and familiar’, though he also insisted they were by no means ‘rude or insolent’. A fine line is perhaps being drawn here. Colonel Thomas Thornton, on the other hand, travelling with coach and horses, hunters, servants, and a pack of hunting dogs, lamented the absence both of ‘decency and order’ and of ‘that urbanity which was formerly their most distinguishing characteristic’ – an attitude which Raimbach thought had in fact been ‘gentle and conciliatory’. These differing perceptions emanated from the differing class attitudes and positions of the authors – Thornton was a hunting squire, Raimbach a skilled workman – and still another perception came from a middle-class friend of the Revolution, Thomas Holcroft, a journalist. He detected that ‘the revolutionary spirit . . . has pervaded every department of life’ and commented that clothing had ceased to distinguish the classes, not a matter which could yet be said to have developed in Britain. Lord Aberdeen, despite his experience in Abbeville, thought the people to be ‘civil and obliging’, a comment reinforced by Raimbach who explained that ‘an Englishman had abundant cause to be satisfied with his reception in Paris’. This might be due, of course, to the widespread impression that, as the Rev. William Hughes in Normandy noted: ‘an Englishman’s riches are in a French imagination inexhaustible’. Overall, however, Aberdeen thought the French had ‘lost some of their natural gaiety’ – a judgement based on no previous experience whatsoever – and he likened them to the ‘Scotch’ in their general gloom.9 The effects of the Revolution were apparent everywhere, again for those who had eyes to see, and particularly in the countryside, where wrecked buildings contrasted with the neat fields and careful cultivation.

8

Anon., Journal of a Party of Pleasure to Paris in the month of August 1802, London 1802, 21. 9 M.T.G. Raimbach (ed.), Memoirs and Recollections of the late Abraham Raimbach, esq, Engraver, London 1843, 101; Col. Thomas Thornton, A Sporting Tour Through France . . . , 2 vols, London 1806, 24–25; Thomas Holcroft, Travels from Hamburg through Westphalia, Holland, and the Netherlands to Paris, 2 vols, London 1804, 169; Hughes, Tour, 44. 84

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The ‘party of pleasure’ author made the point that Abbeville ‘seems to have suffered particularly from the revolution’. He noted a destroyed church, and that the ‘best houses’ were closed up. The road to Paris was marked by damaged chateaux, and Francis Blagdon commented that the corpses and bones of the kings buried at St Denis had been ‘reduced to ashes’. Several visitors commented on the ruined churches. On the road from Le Havre to Rouen, John Carr ‘saw ruined corn rents, and a roofless village church’, though this, he admitted, was ‘surrounded by the most romantic scenery of woods and corn fields’, no doubt made all the more ‘romantic’ by the ruin. The Rev. Hughes, travelling unusually in western France – Normandy, Maine, Anjou, Touraine – repeatedly came across evidence of the violence of the Chouannerie in 1799 and 1800, and was particularly critical of the excesses of the ‘Christian army’, several examples of whose savagery he noted.10 At Paris the tourist had to register with the police within a day or so of his arrival, but then could move about more or less unhindered. One of the main attractions for all was the Louvre, where the loot of western Europe, and in particular of Italy, acquired by the recent French campaigns, was on display. Raimbach describes it, ‘as may readily be supposed’, as ‘the grand centre of attraction for the English in Paris’, and it was particularly a place for the several artists who made the journey. The list of such artists is a roll-call of the most prominent artists and royal academicians of the time, beginning with the President himself, Sir Benjamin West, who travelled with his wife and son and Joseph Flaxman. John Carr, who describes the Italian loot as Bonaparte’s ‘gifts’, explained that the museum was open to the public for three days a week, when he was surprised to see ‘sun-bronzed rugged plebeians’ among the connoisseurs. On other days it was accessible to students and to strangers with passports.11 Most of the British artist visitors spent much time sketching and examining unfamiliar paintings. J.M.W. Turner spent several weeks in Paris and worked in the Louvre frequently, as did his friend Farington, an indefatigable diarist, who recorded the presence of many of these people. They and others also went to visit French artists. JacquesLouis David was a particular target, but he turned out to be morose and barely welcoming, which is hardly surprising given the number of foreigners who turned up. John Carr was one, inevitably, as was Henry Redhead Yorke. Lord Aberdeen was an admirer of David’s work, whose success he partly attributed to government patronage. The earl of Westmorland described the artist as ‘the most frightful of men’

10

Chamberlain, Lord Aberdeen, 31–32; Party of Pleasure, 22; Blagdon, Paris as it was, 5; John Carr, The Stranger in France, London 1803, 34; Hughes, Tour, passim. 11 Raimbach, Memoirs, 49; Carr, Stranger in France, 110–112. 85

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– Aberdeen had restricted himself to ‘old man’ – and claimed that he had ‘committed some of the most atrocious acts of any of the monsters of the Revolution’.12 Thomas Phillips was able to persuade Bonaparte to pose for a portrait, and several others made attempts at portraying the first consul; the most original portraitist was Mary Linwood, who pioneered art needlework, and did a portrait of Bonaparte in that unusual medium. Bertie Greatheed, the son of a diarist from Warwickshire of the same name, spent several months working on a Bonaparte portrait without evoking much enthusiasm even from his father.13 David took pupils, among them Richard Cosway and his wife Maria, who published a set of etchings made from items in the Louvre in 1802. Raimbach, an engraver, visited a wider circle of French artists, among them several living in a group of apartments close to the Louvre. He noted that David was charging admission to view his latest work, The Rape of the Sabines, and that many English visitors went to see it, though they reacted ‘with a mixed feeling of surprise and dissatisfaction at the novelty of the style’.14 A destination which attracted even more visitors than the Louvre was the Palais Royal. This former royal palace had become notorious in the Revolution as ‘that hotbed of revolution and crime’, according to Henry Redhead Yorke. It was now a mixture of ‘libraries, restaurants, gambling houses, coffee houses, pawnbrokers, jewellers, haberdashers, opticians, ice houses, exhibition rooms for dwarfs and giants, chess clubs’ and so on, not to mention brothels, and was populated by a mixture of tourists, criminals, and assorted touts and pleasure seekers. It had a mix of attractive and repellent features guaranteed to bring it fame the length of Europe, or as Carr put it, more or less licking his lips: ‘it presents a sum of profligate voluptuousness not to be equalled upon any spot in Europe’. The guide books, such as that by Lemaistre, merely mention the Palais without much detail, and some of those who published their reminiscences did not refer to it at all, perhaps from shame, but it is clear that it was one of the main attractions of the city for many of the visitors. It was regarded as unsafe for ‘women of character’ and it was thought that ‘no woman of delicacy’ should go there, at least according

12 Anthony Bailey, Standing in the Sun: A Life of J.M.W. Turner, London 1997, 63–66; K. Garlick, A. Macintyre and K. Cave, The Farington Diaries, New Haven and London 1978–1984, vol. VI, 27 August–10 October 1802; Carr, Stranger in France, 95; Chamberlain, Lord Aberdeen, 33; HMC Westmorland, 56. 13 DNB, Linwood and Phillips; J.P.T. Bury and J.C. Barry (eds), An Englishman in Paris, 1803: The Journal of Bertie Greatheed, London 1953, passim. 14 DNB, Cosway, Maria and Richard; Raimbach, Memoirs, 54.

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to the men who wrote these books. The Reverend William Stephens and his travelling companion, ‘Mr R.’, left their wives at their lodgings before venturing to the Palais, though all they did there – or all Mr Shepherd said they did – was to read the English newspapers at the Café de l’Angleterre. Francis Blagdon was more observant, or more adventurous, or more willing to publish his observations: ‘in the space of a few minutes’, a man could be ‘equipped from top to toe as if he had all the tradesmen in London at his command’, and shortly after ‘he is as completely stripped as if he had fallen into the hands of a gang of robbers’. At the same time the Palais Royal concentrated many of these dubious activities into one place, rather than have them spread throughout the city. This seemed quite deliberate to the author of the ‘party of pleasure’: ‘I must observe that they are not seen in any other part of Paris’, he remarked, and he compared this with London, where such activities seemed to him to be more widely allowed. This he attributed to the Parisian police, ‘for these ladies’ – previously he had defined them as ‘so very indecently naked and so profligate’ – ‘are confined as far as the violation of public decency goes, entirely to the palais royal’. It seems clear that this man thoroughly enjoyed his visit, savouring to the full both the sights and the frisson of disgust, though it is perhaps not necessary to accept the accuracy of his assumption of the absence of vice elsewhere in the city.15 Many visitors went to the Tivoli and Frascati gardens, where it was safe to take their wives, and where indeed women were able to go alone. Farington described Frascati as ‘a prettily formed light building calculated for amusement’, but the main attraction seems to have been ‘dark walks and light walks, and many whimsical places and things to make up a variety for those who have an hour or two to lounge in the evening’. Carr estimated that there were three thousand women of the first beauty and distinction in the city at these gardens at times, though perhaps not all at once. Several authors comment on the public dancing, in particular the waltz. Or there was the regular parade of coaches and carriages in the Bois de Boulogne, where Lemaistre noted that the fashions were ‘a mixture of French and English’. The Longchamp parade of carriages had restarted, but Lemaistre was disappointed at the display, complaining of the great mixture of vehicles and the variety of costumes; it was, he thought, ‘a wretched and pitiful imitation of Hyde Park on an ordinary Sunday’. He clearly missed the implication that it was now less an aristocratic display than before the Revolution, and also the implication

15

H.R. Yorke, France in 1802, London 1803, 198; Sadleir, Irish Peer, 8; Carr, Stranger in France, 77; Party of Pleasure, 33; Rev. William Shepherd, Paris in 1802 and in 1814, London 1814, 53; Blagdon, Paris as it was, 209. 87

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of its being resumed. The Opera and the many theatres were all well patronised by the visitors, and several took due note of the censorship exercised by the consular government; a play called ‘Edouard en Écosse’ managed only two public performances before being banned. The Edward in question was Prince Charles Edward Stuart, the Young Pretender; in the circumstances of a usurping proto-monarchy (the Consulate) a ban on a play with clear resonances of an exiled royal family is hardly surprising, but also a sign of a certain uneasiness in the regime.16 The pursuit of pleasure was one major motive for visiting Paris, though the pleasures available seem to have been those available just as easily and as expensively in London. Others had other, more serious purposes in mind. The names of over 550 British visitors to France during the peace are known.17 Of these 46 were Members of Parliament in 1802, before and/or after the election of that year, and 36 more were former or future members; 31 were members of the House of Lords, and another 35 were heirs of peers. There were also nineteen men who were government officials of one sort or another, casting that net as widely as possible to include diplomats, colonial governors, and even physicians to King George III – and this number included one member of the Cabinet, the earl of Westmorland, who was Lord Privy Seal from 1798 to 1829 except for just one year. Another forty visitors were army or navy officers. Some men fall into more than one of these categories – though the list is clearly incomplete and could be easily extended – but it may be said that a good two hundred at least of the British visitors were men with influence of one sort or another in the British ruling class. These men may well have travelled for pleasure, but they also had a sharp eye for matters pertaining to their professional expertise. Experienced politicians could, with little difficulty, discern the sources and location of power in France, just as army officers could reasonably accurately determine the military effectiveness of the French soldiers they saw. Their reactions and impressions were clearly important for the change in sentiment which was apparent in British political and military circles and even beyond during the fourteen months of the peace. It is, of course, not possible to conduct a direct poll of their opinions, and the recollections which were actually written down may well be affected by their later activities and by their subsequent knowledge that a long hard war had to be fought. Those who did leave notices in one or another form, however, are highly suggestive.

16

Garlick et al. Farington Diaries, vol. VI, 2 September 1802; Carr, Stranger in France, 135–139; Lemaistre, Rough Sketch, 103, 175, 211; FO 27/61, Jackson to Hawkesbury, 28 February 1802. 17 Alger, Napoleon’s British Visitors, appendix. 88

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Many of the visitors took a ghoulish pleasure in visiting the site of the Bastille or the Temple prison, or in contemplating the spot where King Louis XVI had been executed, and John Carr even sought out Robespierre’s house – all sites associated with the more notorious episodes of the Revolution. This shows a distinctly indefatigable approach to tourism, an enthusiasm which others directed to less sanguinary sights. The Invalides hospital for wounded and maimed soldiers attracted several visitors, and many had heard of and visited the Institution for the Blind, where major progress was being made in the rehabilitation and education of the unsighted, or Sicard’s College, for the lectures.18 A major exhibition was mounted at the Louvre, displaying the medal winners of a national competition for excellence in industrial design and production. Several of the British visitors went along, but were generally unimpressed by the quality, particularly of the cotton goods, which in Britain were by this time largely factory made, and so of a higher and more uniform quality. Holcroft was impressed by the cabinet work, and by the attendance of the working people. He saw the first consul, who spent three hours touring the exhibition on 22 September, and gave out the gold medals two days later, but Holcroft quoted him as commenting that the goods may well be as good as the English, but were too expensive.19 The greatest tourist attraction for the British visitors, however, was Napoleon Bonaparte himself. All wanted to see him, attend one of his receptions, speak with him, if possible. There were certain set-pieces where he could be seen in public, at parades and in audiences, and at levees where it was possible to be introduced to him. J.G. Lemaistre importuned Minister Jackson to get him into a levée for just such an introduction; the meeting of Charles James Fox with the first consul was widely anticipated, at least among the British. And several of the great public events of the year of peace were witnessed by the visitors. On the whole, however, for most of the time Bonaparte was largely invisible. As early as November 1801 the Jacksons’ chaplain noted that ‘His Consular Majesty . . . dwells awfully retired from the public eye’ and John Carr complained that he was ‘almost as inaccessible as the Chinese emperor’. Tourists, of course, expected him to display himself at their convenience, omitting to recall how busy the man was, but it was also noted that he was unusually well guarded. Indeed Carr likened the Tuileries to ‘a line of magnificent barracks, at the balconies and upon the terraces of which soldiers are everywhere to be seen lounging’, and he noted that no one was admitted carrying a parcel. 18

Carr, Stranger in France, 215. Holcroft, Travels, 200ff.; L. Garros, Itineraire de Napoleon Bonaparte, Paris 1947, 198. 19

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The military emphasis of the regime was also well noted, from the prevalence of military uniforms on the streets to the regular monthly parades which were performed for Bonaparte to inspect. One visitor recommended that male British visitors should wear regimental dress in Paris and quoted the experience of ‘a young man in the Wiltshire militia’, who wore his uniform on visiting the Tuileries, ‘when someone tapped him on the shoulder and asked him to what regiment he belonged; it proved to be Bonaparte himself, who takes frequent opportunities of speaking to our officers’. And Lemaistre, who got in to his levee in March 1802, reports that Bonaparte was especially interested in several British officers who were present, including a Colonel Graham who had been in Italy and Syria – the latter a Napoleonic defeat which he did not seem to resent. When Colonel Thornton was introduced Bonaparte went out of his way to say to Merry, the British Minister: ‘Be pleased, Sir, to inform your countrymen that I highly esteem their nation’; this had no noticeable diplomatic effect, however. Lord Aberdeen’s unpleasant experience when walking about Abbeville in his regimental dress was clearly not repeated in more sophisticated, better policed (and wealthier) Paris. Even Paris was startled, however, by ‘the dress of a Scotch officer in his national costume who gained admission on a public day in the palace of the Tuileries’, as Holcroft reported. He had the information from the ‘public journals’, and he commented that ‘la décence française could not endure such a costume’. And this, it may also be noted, in a country and city where parts of women’s dress, at least in the most fashionable classes, had become all but transparent.20 Bonaparte’s residence in Paris was normally the Tuileries, and, as the example of the Scottish officer showed, it was possible to walk about with only minimal supervision, despite the ubiquitous guards. Miss Berry penetrated to the private apartments of Bonaparte and his wife, and described the furnishings in some detail, commenting that republicans ‘might well be . . . startled at such magnificence’. The Bonaparte women were only less the objects of interest than the great man himself. Miss Berry went with Maria Cosway the artist to visit Madame Mère, the first consul’s mother, and several men took care to comment on the appearance of Josephine Bonaparte. Lord Westmorland described her appearance as ‘very pleasant, her manners were quiet and genteel’, but rather ungallantly added that ‘her figure was extremely good’. Her presence at levees and at the theatre was regularly noted, but without the avidity with which her husband was viewed and commented on.21

20

Broadley, Journal of a British Chaplain, 34; Carr, Stranger in France, 83, 114–115; Raimbach, Memoirs, 102; Holcroft, Travels, 170 and 280; Party of Pleasure, 60; Lemaistre, Rough Sketch, 156, 161; Thornton, Sporting Tour, 126. 21 Lewis, Extracts, 163–165; HMC Westmorland, 58. 90

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It was always her husband who was the main attraction. His physical appearance, his dress, his conversation, were all carefully noted. Lord Aberdeen, still an impressionable teenager, could never forget him. He was invited to dine with the first consul at Malmaison, an unusual honour which was no doubt due to the fact that he was a ward of William Pitt. Decades later he recalled his smile and ‘his eye’. Lord Westmorland, however, wrote that ‘his features are regular and he had a pleasing expression about his mouth, with small eyes very hollow in his head’. And so on, all observers seeing the man a little differently, just as all the portraitists produced different images.22 Westmorland thought ‘his best appearance is when on horseback’, and many visitors only saw him at the regular parades. Some were carried away. Henry Redhead Yorke was told by one man in the audience as Bonaparte inspected the lines of soldiers: ‘“Voila le maître de la terre”’, and he waxed scathing about some Englishmen venting ‘ecstatic exclamations of adulation’, and he quoted one who shouted ‘“By G-d, the man deserves to govern the world”’. But it was not only vain and empty-headed English gentlemen who were impressed: Abraham Raimbach remarked long afterwards that his sight of Bonaparte ‘is still fresh in my memory’.23 Some were deliberately unimpressed. Charles James Fox attended a parade, but it was noted that he spent the whole time in conversation with Count A.I. Morkov, the Russian ambassador to Paris. Some refused even to attend these parades: Sir Samuel Romilly refused to be presented, on the grounds that Bonaparte was ‘a usurper and a tyrant’; Lord Westmorland attended some parades on his first stay in Paris, but ‘did not feel inclined to pay homage to Bonaparte’; he went off to spend time in Austria and eastern France, and on returning to Paris later he avoided all official places and functions. Others failed even to catch a glimpse despite valiant efforts: Edward Stanley ‘has taken his station opposite his box at the opera, has attended the relieving guard early and late, and has taken various measures within Paris’, but always failed to see the man. Stanley was clearly incompetent: Bonaparte’s appearances were well choreographed and well advertised. Miss Berry was reported to be going about Paris very noticeably, with the main intention of having herself noticed so that she could be presented at one of Bonaparte’s levées.24

22

Chamberlain, Lord Aberdeen, 32; HMC Westmorland, 55. HMC Westmorland, 55; Yorke, France in 1802, 119; Raimbach, Memoirs, 69. 24 J.B. Trotter, Memoirs of the Latter Years of Rt Hon. Charles James Fox, London 1811, 253; Romilly, Memoirs, vol. 2, 91; HMC Westmorland, 57; Adeane, Lady Stanley, 236; C. Barratt (ed.), Diary and Letters of Madame d’Arblay, 4 vols, London 1891, vol. IV, 148–149. 23

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There were two great public occasions which British visitors especially noted. In April 1802 the Concordat which Bonaparte had concluded with Pope Pius VII a year earlier was finally published, and on Easter Day it was officially promulgated. The worship of God in the Catholic manner was reinstated, bishops and priests were once more recognised and recruited, and Westmorland noted ‘at St Denis and other towns’ a placard on the churches: ‘“le peuple Français reconnait un Dieu et la vie immortelle”’. A celebratory mass was conducted in Notre Dame in the presence of all three consuls, their families, the legislators, and lots of other notables. This was an event which would stir strange emotions in a patriotic British breast – more particularly in that of a patriotic Englishman. A conservative anti-revolutionary would surely applaud the apparent return to old values implied by the reinstatement of an official religion, even if it was publicised in the curious wording of the placard noted by Lord Westmorland. The conservatism of a Church such as the Roman Catholic being once more acceptable to the French government would certainly suggest that the excesses of the Revolution were over. At the same time, it was a Roman Catholic establishment which was reviving, and any Englishman with a spark of historical information within him would bridle at that thought. The alliance of the most powerful state on the continent with the Roman Church had very disturbing historical resonances: thoughts of Philip II and Louis XIV inevitably occurred. This set of contradictory emotions resulted in comments by the British visitors which concentrated above all on the externals of the events. C. Burrell Massingberd described the parade to Notre Dame for the Te Deum, noting those who attended, but also commenting that the legislators did not affect much state (for ‘they are (many of them) of the lowest extraction’) and they arrived ‘in hackney coaches with the numbers taken off’. J.G. Lemaistre, characteristically, got into the cathedral to witness the ceremony. He claimed that the crowd had to be pushed back by the guard – which Massingberd claimed was 10,000 strong. The large crowd may have been present for a celebration of the event, or it may simply have been there to see the grandees who attended. Henry Redhead Yorke thought that the people were indignant at the implications of the restoration of religion, and Miss St George, who seems to have seen the ceremony as well, could not detect ‘any appearance of devotion’ and thought ‘there was nothing to record or of pleasure or admiration’ in the scene. The Rev. William Shepherd, who also seems to have been present in the cathedral, thought only two hundred were present for actual worship, and considered that the whole ceremony was ‘a strange mixture of religious solemnity, military state, and levity’. The grandees who attended in their official capacities were often men who had participated enthusiastically in the Revolution, one of whose principal achievements had been to remove the incubus of 92

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religion from the state and the people: such men were now quite freed from the superstition of Catholicism, and could hardly take its restoration seriously except as a political gesture. Massingberd detected this, putting it rather cruelly: the French will ‘have one grand object to look up to, and whether it happens to be a king or a consul they will be equally servile to either’ – not, he might have added, like true-blue, freedom-loving Englishmen.25 The indifference of the Parisians which several of the British visitors claimed to detect was based on very little evidence, and few of them made any serious investigation of the religious situation in the city. But Fanny Burney, Madame d’Arblay, was travelling through northern France at the time and noted a different reaction: ‘we saw at almost all the villages, neat and clean peasants going to or coming from mass, and seeming indescribably elated and happy’ at the change (though this is, once again, only an impression, not a census). Had the visitors looked for it, no doubt such a reaction would have been visible also in parts of Paris, but most of the British visitors concentrated in and on a few areas – the official, the palatial, the military, and the pleasure-providing parts of the city – where religion and its influences were effectively absent, at least in a personal sense. But Fanny Burney, able to use her French married name, and to speak good French, was perhaps able also to converse more naturally than the more grand and aloof Englishmen with the ‘peasants’ on the subject of ‘the restoration of Dimanche and the abolition of Decade’.26 The essential superficiality of much of the British observations during this brief period of peace is emphasised by the fact that none of the visitors who were there and who made written comments paid any attention to other works of Bonaparte in this period. The Concordat celebrations were mentioned in large part because it was a great public spectacle, which the visitors could scarcely have missed, and where the great men were on public display, but the plebiscite in August on the appointment of Bonaparte as consul for life is wholly ignored, though it was a country-wide event of major political importance. The first consul’s acceptance of this honour is reported, but only, it seems, because it took place when some of the British visitors were present. Lord Cloncurry thought the whole ceremony was intended to seem spontaneous, and Lord Holland remembered that the speech of Barthelémy, the leader of the delegation, was poorly delivered. Cloncurry decided that it was in fact ‘a set oration’, and that Bonaparte ‘responded in an

25

HMC Westmorland, 55; Harriot Georgina Mundy (ed.), The Journal of Mary Frampton from the Year 1779 to the Year 1846, London 1885, 109–111; Lemaistre, Rough Sketch, 220; Yorke, France in 1802; Dean of Westminster, Remains, 139. 26 Barratt, d’Arblay, vol. IV, 148–149. 93

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extempore speech, which nevertheless he read from a paper concealed in the crown of his hat’. This is all quietly amusing, but none of the English spectators seem to have caught the real significance of the occasion, with its powerful whiff of royalism and the visible retreat of republicanism. At least none seem to have commented on it, though their accounts do not necessarily give their reactions at the time. When these comments were published Bonaparte had gone a further step, to be emperor, and the consulship for life decreased in apparent significance.27 Similarly the promulgation of the ‘Constitution of the Year X’ at the same time (August 1802) was wholly ignored. These were major public events, perhaps more important than the achievement of the Concordat. If the visitors missed them it was perhaps because they did not understand what was going on, though more likely it was because they were self-absorbed. Sir Philip Francis, for example, was an intelligent and politically aware observer, and he and his son were present at the ceremony to make Bonaparte consul for life, but his letter home on the occasion is wholly taken up with the meeting with Bonaparte, not with wider affairs.28 If a man such as Francis did not appreciate these matters, it is not so surprising that the British visitors ignored other, but essentially administrative, measures, such as the creation of the lycée school system, and the institution of the Légion d’honneur, both in May. Instead, the event which caught the eyes of many of the British visitors was one which was characteristically insular: the meeting of Bonaparte with Charles James Fox. For some reason, perhaps because he scented a possible political ally, though more likely because of Fox’s somewhat outdated and inaccurate reputation as a friend of the Revolution, Bonaparte evinced an admiration for the fat Whig orator. Mrs Damer, the sculptress who was travelling with Miss Berry, promised him a bust of Fox, though she did not deliver it until 1815, and it was noted by Miss Berry that there were busts of Fox and Lord Nelson, a curious pairing, in Bonaparte’s private apartments in the Tuileries. This Bonapartist sentiment was well known, though Fox’s attitude to Bonaparte was less admiring, and Bonaparte’s steady political shift into authoritarianism had separated him decisively from Fox, and Fox was in fact fairly clear-eyed about the political situation in France by this time.

27

Valentine Lawless, Baron Cloncurry, Personal Recollections of the Life and Times, Dublin 1849, 184; Lord Holland, Foreign Reminiscences, London 1850, 191–192. 28 Beata Francis and Eliza Kenny (eds), The Francis Letters (n.d.), vol. 2, Philip Francis to Sarah Francis, 14 August 1802; also J. Parker and H. Merivale, Memoirs of Sir Philip Francis with Correspondence and Journals, London 1867, Philip Francis the younger to Sarah Francis, 14 August 1802. 94

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Fox had sailed to the continent with Lord and Lady Holland and several others of his friends, acquaintances and hangers-on in July 1802, after the British election, and had travelled through Flanders and the Netherlands before reaching Paris in August. Fox claimed to be conducting research in the French archives on James II, but soon he surrendered to the pleasures of France, sightseeing, visits to friends, and conversation. He was presented to Bonaparte at a levée, which was also attended by the Hollands, Lord Cloncurry, Sir Philip Francis, and several others. The occasion was, of course, anti-climactic, for whatever anyone expected, neither man was going to allow the meeting to be politically memorable. Both were polite, both mouthed bland phrases and compliments, but neither was particularly impressed by the other. Lady Holland claimed that Bonaparte made a short speech which praised Fox as ‘the greatest man of one of the greatest nations’, who had always spoken for humanity and justice; and Trotter, Fox’s secretary, recalled him praising Fox’s voice for peace. Fox said little or nothing in reply, and indeed Bonaparte had himself said nothing of any consequence. Fox’s characterisation of Bonaparte later as ‘a young man considerably intoxicated with success’ had a touch of sour grapes about it, for his own career could only be seen as a failure. A more accurate representation of their relationship is the distant and wary diplomatic contact of 1806, when Bonaparte was emperor and Fox Foreign Secretary. At that time Fox blocked Bonaparte’s peace moves, despite the latter’s professed admiration. Fox’s reputation in France was double-edged, of course. As an eloquent supporter of the Revolution in its early days, his presence might, as Bonaparte clearly hoped, lend support to the new regime as the heir and consolidator of the Revolution’s achievements. But Fox’s opinions could also be construed as a criticism of the consular regime, which was scarcely the near-democracy which Fox had advocated and supported. The visit, however, was the source of some pride to the British visitors, as Raimbach noted. He saw that the French were excited by Fox’s presence in Paris, yet he also noted ‘with what delicacy of tact they managed to indulge an ardent curiosity . . . without the slightest approach to rudeness and vulgarity’.29 Raimbach himself, however, with several others of the more thoughtful British visitors, also sought out another famous British resident of Paris, the democrat and author Tom Paine. Paine was one of a number

29

Lewis, Extracts, 163–165; Trotter, Memoirs, 259–262; Earl of Ilchester, The Journal of Elizabeth Lady Holland, London 1908, vol. 1, 150; Holland, Foreign Reminiscences, 191–192; Cloncurry, Personal Recollections, 184; Christopher Hobhouse, Fox, London 1934, 237–239; L.G. Mitchell, Charles James Fox, Oxford 1992, 200; H. Butterfield, The Peace Tactics of Napoleon, 1806–1808, Cambridge 1929; Raimbach, Memoirs, 50. 95

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of British people who had been living in France all during the revolutionary years. Most of them were sympathisers with the Revolution, such as Helen Maria Williams, whose account of France since the Revolution had been published in London just before the conclusion of the Peace Preliminaries. She was visited by several of her friends – Yorke, Holcroft, Lord Cloncurry, the Rev. Shepherd – though others were less friendly than simply curious, such as the novelist Maria Edgeworth and C.J. Fox. Another revolutionary sympathiser who attracted visitors was the Polish revolutionary, Thaddeus Kosciusko, an old sympathiser with both the American and French revolutions, who was admired as practising a personal Voltairian philosophy in his cottage and garden. There were also British people who simply worked in France, like the man Thompson who was the keeper of an elephant originally confiscated as loot from the prince of Orange and who had moved to Paris with his charge.30 The best known of these residents, however, was Paine. He was a French citizen, a man who had escaped execution in the Terror by an administrative error, and who had since seen the ideals which had inspired the Revolution, and which he had expounded, perverted and betrayed. He was also poor, not for the first time in his life. Abraham Raimbach, who had known him in England, met him in a workingmen’s café in the Faubourg St Germain, and thought him ‘povertystricken . . . much withered and care-worn’. Henry Redhead Yorke tracked him down to his lodgings, an apartment in the Rue du Théâtre Française, which Yorke described as filthy. Yet, poor as he was, Paine was still passionate about politics. Yorke found himself arguing with him almost at once, particularly on religion, which Paine was especially ardently against. They discussed Bonaparte, who had originally claimed to admire Paine, but then, when he found no support from him for his plans to invade Britain, turned against him. Paine was a welcome dinner guest in certain democratic and Jacobin circles, but these were not popular with the new consular regime, which was not above using royalist plots as an excuse to jump on Jacobins as well, as in late 1800 after the Rue Niçaise explosion. Paine, a democrat, was instinctively against Bonaparte as consul, and had personally annoyed Bonaparte in the past, and Bonaparte bore a grudge. One of Paine’s friends, Bonneville, found his journal closed down when he compared Bonaparte with Cromwell, and this further evidence of

30

H.M. Williams, Sketches of the State of Manners and Opinions in the French Republic, 2 vols, London 1801; Yorke, France in 1802, 80 and 240; Cloncurry, Personal Recollections, 186; Shepherd, Paris in 1802 and 1814, 70; Trotter, Memoirs; Augustus Hare (ed.), Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, vol. 1, London 1894, 118. 96

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consular Bonapartist rancour may have been the final straw which drove Paine to leave France. Paine had attempted to leave several times since his hair’s-breadth escape from the guillotine during the Terror, but with the high seas under effective British control, he found it too hazardous – if the British government had got hold of him, his trial and execution would have speedily followed. His preferred destination was always the United States, where his republican and democratic ideals were closest to being realised, and where he was always assured of a welcome, in part because of his support during the War of Independence. He corresponded with Thomas Jefferson, and when Jefferson became President in March 1801 he wrote to offer Paine passage to the United States in an American frigate, an offer which created a journalistic fuss amongst Jefferson’s American political opponents. It is unlikely Paine knew much about this, though it had probably been he who stimulated it by publicising Jefferson’s offer in the French press, perhaps as a means of evoking a certain diplomatic protection for himself. Paine did not, or perhaps could not, take advantage of the offer when it was made in early 1801, but once the Franco–British peace was signed he did not need American naval protection and could sail in a merchant ship. Instead, he needed money. Two of his British friends, Sir Francis Burdett and ‘Colonel’ William Bosville, radicals both, gave him five hundred louis d’or – such coins still circulated in France – to clear his debts and pay his passage. He sailed at last, from Le Havre, on 1 September, landing at Baltimore on 30 October. He was generally welcomed, even by the newspapers which had criticised Jefferson’s offer.31 Paine’s leaving France is a significant moment, which is echoed more or less clearly by several of the more perceptive British accounts. Paine had been disillusioned with the Revolution in France at least since 1795, and probably before, though that had been the first time he had tried to reach America. Actually leaving France at last, however, was a much more public sign of his feelings than a threat to do so – hence no doubt one of his motives in revealing the move to the press. The fact that he had planned to leave three times and cancelled his plans each time, moreover, made the gesture all the more pointed when he finally went. The more politically aware and active of the British visitors, who might be either democrats or reactionaries, tended to converge at a similar conclusion to that of Paine, though with differing emotions. Tom Paine’s democratic convictions had survived all his experiences intact, and so he was naturally disillusioned by the creeping militarism and growing dictatorship he witnessed. Abraham Raimbach, also a

31 Raimbach, Memoirs, 79; Yorke, France in 1802, 231–242; J. Keane, Tom Paine, a Political Life, London 1995, 448–457.

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democrat, saw the same symptoms, identifying the condition less by Paine’s close and lengthy acquaintance with many of the men of power than by the ubiquity of the military in the Paris he saw: ‘the visible sign of this oppressive power’, he noted, referring to the new ‘tyranny’, ‘was the universal appearance of a military detachment at every place of public amusement’, and he further remarked that ‘it was somewhat startling . . . to meet at every turn, patrols of various different regiments, both horse and foot’, in the city. One can see why Bonneville had made the comparison with Cromwell, and why his journal was then shut down. Sir Samuel Romilly discerned it in another way: he visited the Palais Bourbon, where the Legislative Assembly met, going there with Jeremy Bentham. No doubt the two came to the same conclusion, but Romilly put it in words: ‘The hall is very beautiful and admirably adapted to a country where the nominal legislature is a mere ornament, a toy to amuse the nation with.’ From a somewhat different political direction, Lord Westmorland – later to be one of the ‘stern, unbending tories’ who broke even with Wellington when he enacted Catholic Emancipation – took note of the same phenomenon. He commented that the celebration of the peace with Britain was a review of a parade of 14,000 troops – no such parade had been mounted in London, nor perhaps could be – with Bonaparte, in his plain dress, surrounded by generals and aides in their blazing ‘uniforms’ – each one more splendid than his neighbours’ and each individually designed. Westmorland was certainly impressed by all this display on his visit in July and August 1802, but after his visit to Vienna, he returned to Paris in November, by which time he ‘did not feel inclined to pay homage to Bonaparte’, oddly echoing Romilly’s refusal to be presented. Lord Aberdeen, despite being personally mesmerised by Bonaparte, was fully aware of the expanding military rule and the growing power of his host.32 From both the democratic and the conservative-reactionary ends of the contemporary British political spectrum, therefore, the conclusion was the same: that France had fallen under the control of a military man of great ability and attractiveness, but a man who required the support of the French military to stay in power. He was certainly reasonably popular, but largely because he had brought internal tranquillity to the country after the widespread disturbances and distresses of the Revolution. This was not the popularity of a permanent and settled government, however, and it might be that the internal stability was only temporary, for it was clear that the French political scene was thoroughly fractured: Jacobins, democrats, royalists, military, Bonapartists,

32 Raimbach, Memoirs, 102; Romilly, Memoirs, 90–91; HMC Westmorland, 55; Chamberlain, Lord Aberdeen, 33–34.

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and others, could all be met with. Dissidents like Paine and the Jacobins were being suppressed; others like the royalists wooed. For the British visitors of all political persuasions, this was a distinctly menacing situation. Fox, for one, was clearly subdued by it all, and more than one observer sensed that the whole French condition was still deeply unstable. Fox described to Charles Grey after his return the situation as he had judged it, concluding that ‘Bonaparte can do what pleased him without consulting the nation’. John Carr, the indefatigable tourist with few political convictions other than a normal unemphatic conservatism, carefully visited a long list of places recently made famous by the history of the last ten years: the Bastille for the start of the Revolution, Robespierre’s house for the Terror, the Invalides military chapel, where he gloated that he could find only one smoke-blackened British jack from a single captured man-of-war among the many other standards taken from enemies of the Republic, the Tuileries for the present regime, Versailles for the past, the bomb site at the Rue Niçaise for the present instability. Even he, therefore, understood the potential for another upheaval in France.33 This situation was curiously paralleled in Britain, where another new and unsteady government was in office. But the British government’s concern was not so much with assassinations and rebellions – though this was not absent – but more over keeping control of Parliament. As with Bonaparte’s successive transformations from general to first consul to consul for life to emperor, which were validated by referenda, so in Britain the new government had to undergo the ordeal of a general election, but first it had to be successful in Parliament. The conclusion of peace was, of course, a good start, but, as in France, the main celebration had been in October of the previous year, at the announcement of the Preliminaries, and no special note was taken in Britain of the final conclusion of the treaty at Amiens. In London Lord Minto thought the ‘the town has been very flat and dull about it’, though in Edinburgh his wife reported that ‘orders were given for a general illumination’, presumably by the city council. Yet even this was scarcely an enthusiastic endorsement, but more in the nature of officials going through the motions. When she drove out to see the display Lady Minto found that everyone else was doing the same – just seeing the sights, and not really celebrating the peace. This is in some contrast to the large-scale official celebrations in Paris, where there was the great parade witnessed by British visitors, though, again, there was little that was spontaneous in this. Both the British and the French populations, that is, had assumed that the Peace Preliminaries were the real thing; Bonaparte’s regime had

33

Durham University Library, Grey Papers, box 16, C.J. Fox to Charles Grey, 29 December 1802; Carr, Stranger in France, passim. 99

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delayed its main celebrations until the official peace treaty; in Britain the terms of the peace were sufficiently inglorious to foil any serious celebration.34 The Addington government, partly as a result of the long period of negotiations at Amiens, had no difficulty in securing Parliament’s ratification of the treaty. Few members really liked the terms, and they were widely seen as marking, if not a clear defeat for Britain, then at least a failure to win. But this was scarcely the fault of the present government. Once the treaty was out of the way, therefore, the government had to set about the transition to peace, had to start mending diplomatic fences all over Europe, had to watch France with unblinking attention, and had to see to its own survival. One of the constant concerns of Addington and his Cabinet was always Parliament, and in particular the haunting presence of William Pitt. Since being displaced as Prime Minister in March 1801 Pitt had always and repeatedly made his support for Addington clear, but he was attended and often surrounded by a group of other politicians who constantly urged him to abandon that position in favour of opposition to the government. Of these George Canning was the most vehement and vociferous, but he was not alone by any means. And, of course, it was reasonable to assume that Pitt hoped and intended to return to the position of Prime Minister when he could. The fact that Pitt had to make his support for Addington clear again and again was itself destabilising, since it made it seem that such support was essential to maintain Addington and his team in power. So Addington had to be constantly on the alert for plots and insurrections in Parliament. One of the most pleasurable aspects of the conclusion of peace for many people was that it would be possible to return to some semblance of normality in matters of taxation – that is, a reduction in taxes was widely expected. Above all, there was the prospect of the extinction of the income tax. This had been a scheme of Pitt’s which had been introduced in 1799, but it had never worked well, had never produced the revenue expected, and it had been regarded, by those who had to pay it, as unpleasantly intrusive. Yet it had been productive enough for Addington to make it clear in June 1801, three months after taking office, that ‘this resource was too great to be let go during the war’, words which made it clear that it would be ‘let go’ when peace did arrive. The long-drawn-out talks at Amiens had forced the postponement of the Budget, which had been due early in 1802, and in February the bureaucratic process of issuing income tax notices for the coming

34

Countess of Minto, Life and Letters of Sir Gilbert Elliott, first Earl of Minto, London 1874, vol. 3, 244ff., Lord Minto to Lady Minto, 31 March 1802, and Lady Minto to Lord Minto, 2 April 1802. 100

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year had begun. The conclusion of peace in March, therefore, permitted the Budget finally to go ahead in April, and in it Pitt’s income tax was repealed. The money which would have been produced, however, was still needed. Not only was there a heavy charge to be met for the interest payments on government borrowings, but it was impossible to do more than reduce the level of military and naval preparedness in the continuing tense international situation; any question of returning to the situation as it had been before the war was wholly excluded. In these circumstances Addington proved to be a most competent, even creative, Chancellor of the Exchequer. He, for the first time, produced an intelligible statement of the state’s finances, its requirements, and its expenditures – a modern budget, in fact. He organised a huge loan of £98 million, the interest on which was to be paid for by additional levies on malt and beer, and he increased import and export duties, no doubt hoping that the peace would also revive trade and so further increase the customs revenues. The abolition of the income tax which all this permitted cloaked the newly increased taxes, and by the time income tax necessarily returned to the political agenda – as it did when war returned in May 1803 – these taxes had become regarded as acceptable, and Addington was able to maintain them at their new level, and add the emergency war taxes on top. Furthermore, when he introduced the next Budget, in December 1802, Addington was able to raise a new loan of £10 million without recourse to new taxation, since the product of the increased taxes of the April Budget was higher than expected and covered the interest charges on the new loan. In all this Addington was, in effect, extending and improving on Pitt’s financial administration, though Pitt growled that he thought Addington incompetent in such matters. But finance was not an issue of contention in Parliament, where all could see the need for taxation, and where Addington’s expertise was clearly respected. It was the possibilities opened up by the removal of Pitt and the apparent breaking of his administration which mainly excited the major politicians: those who had long been excluded from power scented a chance; those who were newly excluded hungered to return.35 Thus there were, besides Pitt, several groups of other politicians who were conscious that the weakness of the new government constituted an opportunity for their own advancement. Unlike Pitt, who saw his way back to power by way of the king, and so was determined to support the king’s man, Addington, at least for the time being, these others could afford to be quite openly antagonistic to the new ministry;

35 A. Farnsworth, Addington Author of the Modern Income Tax, London 1951; Ehrman, Pitt, 579; Ziegler, Addington, 148–149.

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yet since their enmity was in the open it was rather less dangerous than Pitt’s. Charles James Fox maintained his opposition to Addington as he had to Pitt, and he had with him a varying group of men, including Charles Grey and Lord Holland, and others such as Robert Adair and Sheridan, who echoed his opposition, though not always for the same reasons. In the Lords Lord Grenville, who had been Pitt’s longtime Foreign Secretary, denounced the peace negotiations from the time of the Preliminaries in October 1801 onwards, and he had with him another group of followers, particularly members of his own family: his two brothers, the Marquess of Buckingham and Tom Grenville, and Earl Fitzwilliam and Earl Carysfort, among them. He was, however, personally unpopular, as was his elder brother the Marquess, who had been only too markedly acquisitive of well-paid sinecures. So Grenville could not rely on a wider source of support outside Parliament, as Fox could. Grenville therefore really required a more charismatic ally than he himself was if he was to displace Addington, and the slow working out of this conundrum during 1802 and 1803 was one of the main political developments of Addington’s ministry. It was, in fact, the process of bringing into existence, for the first time in a decade, a parliamentary opposition which had sufficent numbers to be able to put itself forward as a potential alternative government. Grenville’s choice of ally was in reality limited to either Pitt or Fox; he refused to join Addington and no one else had the authority and strength he lacked. Grenville made several attempts to bring Pitt to his side, but each time he failed. They differed above all on the issue of the peace, which Grenville detested as a failure of will by Addington, and Pitt saw as pragmatically necessary.36 Addington, had, however, fortified his own political position by some clever measures. The first, of course, was the peace, which was widely accepted for the moment, and which clearly had the support of Pitt; Fox could be expected to accept it also, if from different motives. The lengthy process of reaching a treaty was thus to a degree in Addington’s interest, since it was clearly only his government which had the authority to conclude a treaty and the longer the negotiations lasted the more time Addington would have to bed his ministry down and learn the ropes. Also a general election was due, partly because the last election were already six years in the past, but also because the union with Ireland, the new government, and the peace treaty had all created a political situation which demanded that Parliament be refreshed. Addington called it for July and August, dissolving Parliament on 29

36 Mitchell, Fox, 201–202; J.J. Sack, The Grenvillites, 1801–1829, Urbana, Ill., 1979, ch. 3; R.E. Willis, ‘Fox, Grenville and the Recovery of Opposition, 1801–1804’, Journal of British Studies 11, 1971, 24–43; P. Jupp, Lord Grenville, London 1985, 315–319.

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June. The end result was a new House of Commons which turned out to be much the same as the previous one, but this in effect meant a vote of confidence in Addington’s ministry. Further, the timing of the election meant that no real internal challenge to Addington could be mounted until after it was over and the new Parliament met, which came in November.37 In October, when the elections were over, and the composition of the House – with a hundred new Irish members – was seen to be generally supportive of the Addington administration, Grenville paid a three-day visit to Pitt at Walmer Castle, his seat as Warden of the Cinque Ports. Pitt had recently been brought up to date on the state of affairs by a visit from Lord Castlereagh, who had joined the government in July as President of the Board of Control. Castlereagh had been an old colleague of Pitt’s and had master-minded the carrying through of the Act of Union with Ireland. His presence in the Cabinet both strengthened it administratively, and gave Pitt yet another means of influencing its policies. Pitt also had a visit from Canning, who will have made another attempt to persuade Pitt to attack Addington in the coming parliamentary session. And then Grenville arrived. Grenville detected a change, but it was not in Pitt’s political intentions. Indeed, Grenville found that he and Pitt agreed on many things, and this was undoubtedly due to Pitt’s own powers of persuasion and exposition. They did discuss the form of a possible future Cabinet, and Pitt insisted that Addington and Hawkesbury should be included. Grenville found afterwards, however, that these two men were not acceptable to his own people. He had, as usual in these meetings, fallen under Pitt’s spell, which seems to have worked exceptionally well at close quarters. By the time Parliament assembled in November, Grenville knew that Pitt would go on supporting Addington. Addington no doubt also knew it; he had survived another threat. But Grenville was now distancing himself from Pitt, at least in private.38 During the latter stages of the election campaign, and in the period before the meeting of the new Parliament, from August to November, another kind of politics provided an apparent threat to the ministry, a threat not of a coup in Parliament, but of an uprising from below. Pitt’s success in containing the widespread disaffection with the British oligarchy in the 1790s had been based on a series of Acts of Parliament which were justified as war measures and which were limited in duration. As peace arrived the several repressive statutes expired. The Suspension of Habeas Corpus Act was not renewed, for instance, and

37

J.G. Rogers, ‘Addington and the Addingtonian Interest in Parliament, 1801–1812’, B. Litt. thesis, Oxford. 38 Ehrman, Pitt, 575; Sack, Grenvillites, 65–66. 103

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those detained were, as a result, released. The group of Irish leaders being held at Fort George in the Scottish Highlands were released and many were deported. But there had been a set of bad harvests in 1800 and 1801, accompanied by the usual riots and widespread distress. Just the atmosphere, it was thought, for insurrectionists to flourish. Sure enough, the Home Office investigators and spies and agents provocateurs detected a continuing process of conspiracy designed to mount an insurrection, though the improved harvests of 1802 and 1803 took some of the force out of the discontent. The cloak of rural riot was thus removed, and the detected conspiracies were seen to be largely political in nature. There seems, in fact, to have been only a minimal connection between the shortage of food and popular political opposition, just as the proto-Luddite shearman disturbances in Wiltshire were effectively movements which were independent of any political agitations.39 Nevertheless, meetings to organise petitions and marches, money gathering, deposits of arms and equipment, were reported from Lancashire and Yorkshire, centred particularly on Manchester, Sheffield and Leeds, under the umbrella name of the United Britons. In London there were similar meetings particularly associated with the United Irishmen, who were based among the large Irish population of the capital. These movements are known mainly from the reports of the several agents of the central government who got to know about them, and their full accuracy is not guaranteed. Above all the details of the plans are distinctly dubious, since it looks very much as though the plans which were reported were actually extrapolations from the collected information rather than the intentions of those at the meetings.40 In fact, the peace had partly scotched any serious plots, for the main threat from the revolutionary forces of the United Irishmen and the United Englishmen had been predicated on a French invasion, which it was reckoned was needed to draw the military forces away from the cities. The repression of the Pitt government had been so successful – and so well grounded on the basic loyalism of the great majority of the population – that it had been seen that no insurrection could succeed without outside help; further, in 1798 it had been demonstrated that such outside help had to be very substantial – a widespread rebellion in Ireland had been assisted by French landings, but these had been small, 39

W.F. Galpin, The Grain Supply of England during the Napoleonic Period, a Thesis, New York 1925; Wells, Insurrection, 226, 229–230; A.J. Randall, ‘The Shearmen and the Wiltshire Outrages of 1802: Trade Unionism and Industrial Violence’, Social History 7, 1983, 283–304. 40 For all this see: Wells, Insurrection, chs 10 and 11; Emsley, British Society and the French Wars, chs 4 and 5; H.T. Dickinson (ed.), Britain and the French Revolution, 1789–1815, London 1989; M. Elliott, Partners in Revolution, New Haven 1982; E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, London 1963, passim. 104

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badly timed, and almost useless. The rebellion had been suppressed by British forces without too much difficulty, but with considerable brutality – just as the Vendéan and Chouannerie rebellions had been harshly put down in France. The government’s internal spy system had not been dismantled at the peace, and it had so infiltrated the several United groups and plots that any central insurrectionary organisation had become a weakness. There was thus deliberately no central direction of any note. This effectively prevented the revelation of any widespread and co-ordinated plots to the government agents, but it also made it impossible to control the supporters, who thought the advent of peace was an ideal moment to rise, or to make any worthwhile country-wide plans. The arrival of peace, however, did hold out the prospect of a much weaker government, and of the removal of the repressive Acts, and the moment of political instability which was a general election was to be anticipated. The evidence is that it was principally in the period between the dissolution of Parliament at the end of June and the opening of the new Parliament in November that insurrectionary activity was at its most feverish. In addition, there was the prospect of demobilised soldiers and sailors arriving on the streets, hungry yet militarily trained. There were thus both excellent prospects for recruiting such men into the ranks of the insurrectionists, and the perception that the moment was ripe for action. The leaders of the movement, if that is not too definitive a term for the inchoate situation, did not want an insurrection to happen without outside support. They were wedded still to the need for help from abroad. They were in touch with friends in France, who optimistically expected that the war would restart soon and that when it did there would be an early French invasion of England. The internal insurrection must thus be prevented from occurring until that happy event arrived. None of the working-class leaders had the authority to control the fever of expectation among their supporters, who were particularly keen in London, and the deliberate non-existence of a central organisation left the initiative to local groups. At this point, in August 1802, there appeared Colonel Edward Marcus Despard, a man much better known to the rank and file of the movement than most of the others, a respected figure who could, by virtue of his considerable military experience, also speak military sense. Despard was an Anglo-Irishman, a soldier who had served for many years in the West Indies. He was charged with various offences in 1790 by officials in Honduras where he had been serving but was exonerated in the end, though he left the army as a result. In the 1790s his political beliefs moved steadily leftward, by way of a generalised radicalism, to military republicanism. He was a member of the London Corresponding Society for a time, but the Society’s relative moderation did not suit him, 105

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and by 1798 he was a central figure in the United Britons. He was also in contact, at the very least, with the parallel United Irishmen, and with the French government of the Directory. Despard was thus a central figure in the revolutionary movement in Britain, and his arrest and that of many of the other leaders in early 1798 stopped their plans in their tracks. Their release in March 1801 as a result of the conclusion of the Peace Preliminaries allowed them to restart. Despard himself had gone home to Ireland on his release, and was only brought back into action on returning to England in February 1802, and only in August did his actions seriously attract Home Office attention. He was observed making a series of visits to several working-class London pubs during the late summer. In these visits he was apparently attempting to calm expectations of a rising. In other words he still wanted to wait for a French invasion. Elsewhere in England, there were rumours, which reached government ears, of likely movements. But these largely turned out to be remnants of the old organisations, in Yorkshire, in Lancashire, in the West Midlands, who all had diverse and usually differing aims, and who were poorly organised, if at all. The rumours became magnified in power as they were passed along, particularly where the transmitter was a government spy. But it was the situation in London which particularly concerned the government. There the large Irish community was especially excited, apparently organising under the cover of hurling matches, and as Despard struggled to contain the hopes and wishes of the potential insurgents, the government became convinced that he was actually organising them for a rising. In a sense, of course, the Home Office was quite correct, since Despard was clearly brought in to act as the head and commander of the rising when it should take place. His meetings in the late summer and autumn of 1802, while probably aiming at the postponement of a rising to a more propitious time, were also familiarisation meetings. They formed the skeleton of an organisation, its places of assembly, the identification of local leaders, and perhaps the locations of supplies and arms. The approaching opening of the new Parliament, on 16 November, was an obvious danger point. The king and the government would all be together in one building, close to the centres of disaffection in London, when the Address from the Throne was made, and everyone in England remembered Gunpowder, Treason and Plot in November two centuries before. The timing was to some extent inexact, since the Commons had to transact certain business first, which would take several days at least, but the apprehensions of the government were real enough, and there is evidence that some of Despard’s supporters expected action at that time. On the night of the 16th, therefore, Despard and a group of his friends – co-conspirators in the view of the Home Office – were arrested as they met in an upper room of the Oakley Arms in Lambeth. 106

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This was not the plot the government thought it had stopped, but the pre-emptive arrest of Despard and his fellows did succeed in blocking the real plot – as in 1798 – which was intended to be a rising when the French army landed, and it also scotched the alternative which was a sudden rising in London by the enthusiasts. To that extent the government’s actions were successful and intelligently defensive. It would have been better, from the strictly legal point of view, to have waited until something more definite was planned, but to do that, when the conspirators deliberately eschewed a system, a clear plan, and an organisation, would have been to risk the uprising taking place and causing chaos – for it does seem highly unlikely that it would ever have succeeded. Having pounced too early, however, the government found it had all too little evidence, since there was as yet none to find, and certainly little or nothing in writing. And the real plot still eluded them.41 The apprehensions of the government had not been lessened by the excitements of the general election in July and August. To be sure, the great majority of local contests passed off peacefully, even somnolently, and large numbers of seats were not even contested, but the one great contest, which generated much noise, took place in Middlesex, right on Parliament’s and Whitehall’s doorstep. Middlesex was an open constituency, with an electorate in the thousands, and it had been the scene of turbulent elections several times in the past half-century, usually resulting in the election of men inimical to the government. In 1802 Sir Francis Burdett was persuaded to stand as a third candidate to face the two sitting MPs who were up for re-election. Burdett had become a radical hero, and a thorn in the government’s side, in the 1790s, by championing in Parliament the rights of men detained without trial in various prisons, among them Colonel Despard. He had insisted on actually visiting the jails and on seeing the conditions in which they were being kept, and he had successfully exposed the government’s assurances of good treatment as lies. He was very rich, and had married a rich wife of the Coutts banking family, and was able to defy government threats with something like impunity. His candidature in Middlesex provided a splendid period of street theatre, and, of course, a long subsequent period of dispute in Parliament as to the legality of the result. When the polls opened on 13 July it was with a great parade for Burdett from his home in Piccadilly to Brentford, where the hustings were, and the campaign, the noise, the drinking, and the polling continued for thirteen more days. Burdett’s politics were no secret, and his beliefs were proclaimed by the banner displayed in his parade on 13 July: ‘Burdett and no Bastille’. 41

Elliott, Partners, 290–297. 107

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The anniversary of the fall of the Bastille on 14 July was the excuse for much rowdy behaviour and every day of the poll was one of marches, near-riots, and drunkenness. When the polling finally ended on 26 July Burdett had been elected along with a Whig, defeating the chairman of the Middlesex bench of magistrates by almost three hundred votes; almost ten thousand votes were counted. It was, of course, a corrupt, violent and perjured proceeding, and was bound to be challenged by Mainwaring, the loser. It was also viewed by the government as a clear manifestation of the likely support which would be forthcoming in the event of a French invasion. The excitements may also have acted to convince many of the anti-oligarchic forces in London that they had strong support which could be mobilised in the event of an insurrection. Yet the government and its supporters knew full well that much of the noise and shouting was only effervescence, and would fall away as quickly as it arose, as it did. There was a fundamental difference between a rowdy election and an insurrection, a difference fully engrained in the attitudes of both Burdett and his Whig and Middlesex supporters, and the insurrectionists in London, focused as they were on their own ideas and beliefs, may not have appreciated it. Pitt knew this full well. He wrote to Addington three days after the Middlesex result was declared, with heavy irony: ‘I shall be impatient to hear the result of Burdett’s triumphal entry, though I think it will end without his being proclaimed first consul’.42 This election took place next door to London, and the majority of voters in Middlesex probably thought of themselves as near-Londoners. Within London there were many groups who were enemies, active or passive, of the oligarchic government order. English plans to seize power always included the need to seize control of certain parts of London, and included as initial steps the assassination of the king, the seizure of the Tower of London, and the capture of the Houses of Parliament. The elimination of as many members of the government as possible was also intended. No government could permit a plot of such a kind to come to the point of action; any such conspiracy had to be discovered, and plucked out, even if the legal evidence was insufficient. Despard’s activities in visiting a series of working-class pubs in London and holding meetings there with known plotters and conspirators may well have been for the purpose of holding his followers in check, but the government could scarcely take the risk. Hence his arrest on the day of the meeting of the new Parliament. There was still another dimension to the tale. During October Despard was contacted by, or made contact with, one of Bonaparte’s agents in

42

M.W. Patterson, Sir Francis Burdett and his Times, 1770–1844, 2 vols, London 1931, who quotes Pitt to Addington, 29 July 1802. 108

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Britain, Colonel Josephe-Eugène Calmet de Beauvoisins. Beauvoisins had been with Bonaparte in Egypt and Syria and was sent back to France from Acre in 1799, though he was captured by a Barbary corsair and imprisoned at Constantinople for two years. He was sent to London on 20 October 1802 and so must have met Despard only a few days before his arrest. Beauvoisins is said, on the rather dubious authority of Lewis Goldsmith several years later, to have been sent to arrange the assassination of the king, and to achieve the destruction of the arsenals at Portsmouth and Plymouth. Goldsmith was interested in working his passage back into the good graces of the British government after a flirtation with the French before and during the Amiens peace, and he was a journalist of the type prone to exaggeration, distortion and invention, so his word alone is not good enough. But Beauvoisins was certainly a Bonapartist, he was an agent of the Bonapartist regime, and he was certainly sent to Britain in October. That his mission was both secret and as a spy may be judged by his expressed intention, in a letter from Calais before he sailed, not to sign his reports with his name. A letter of Bonaparte to his aide General Duroc of 3 December, after Beauvoisins had returned to France, shows that the colonel was to report on political affairs in Britain but also to contact French émigrés with a view to discovering the intentions of the Bourbons. He was to collect examples of anti-French and anti-Bonaparte journalism, and to travel to various possible landing places along the Thames, the Bristol Channel, Plymouth, Edinburgh, and the Scottish coasts. How far he accomplished this formidable list of tasks is not known, but if he did even a tenth of them, his activity was scarcely friendly to the British government. A consultation with Despard, if only to discover what his plans were, was a very likely part of his work, and of course this was either a resumption or a continuation of such contacts which had also taken place in the 1790s. That is, Despard was still a central figure in the republican movement in Britain.43 Beauvoisins was only one of the numerous agents sent to Britain after the peace, including some, such as the consuls appointed to several port-cities, who were later expelled. Despite the doubts inspired by Goldsmith’s exaggerations in the matter of Beauvoisins and others, therefore, there is no doubt that the consular government in France made it its business to investigate and encourage disaffection in Britain during the time of peace – just as, it has to be said, the Directory beforehand had done, and just as the British government did in France.

43

Lewis Goldsmith, Secret History of the Cabinet of Napoleon Bonaparte, London 1811, vol. 2, 21; Olivier Blanc, Les Espions de la Révolution et de l’Empire, Paris 1995, 219–224, quoting the relevant letters. 109

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Much of the information about the French agents in fact comes from British sources. It is evident that the Home Office had good and plentiful ways of discovering what was going on, from a variety of individuals, Justices of the Peace, territorial magnates, merchants, its own agents, and spies. It also had within it the Alien Office, technically devised as a means of registering and supervising the considerable numbers of foreigners in Britain, but which also acted as a cover for British espionage and subversion in enemy territory. This was one of the agencies which should have disappeared with the peace, but the duke of Portland, who had been Home Secretary under Pitt, continued in that office for several months under Addington, partly to ensure the delicate windingup of the networks on the continent, and partly to see that the Alien Office should continue, in which he was successful.44 The Home Office was thus as busy in peacetime as it had been in the war, and the same must be said of the military departments. Of these there were in fact four, but the commander-in-chief, the duke of York, was no longer reckoned a Cabinet member, and the Master-General of the Ordnance, the earl of Chatham (Pitt’s older brother) was also outside the Cabinet for a time under Addington. The pre-eminent political-military offices of state were the Secretary for War, Lord Hobart, and the First Lord of the Admiralty, Earl St Vincent. Both the duke of York and St Vincent set to with a will on reforms and the reduction of expenditure. One of the reasons for the relatively good financial position of the government in 1802 was that the retrenchment accomplished by these two men was both drastic and successful. The reforms, however, were less so, though in the case of the navy, they were certainly drastic. The duke of York had been steadily working to make the army more effective since his agonising experiences in command of the expeditionary force in the campaign in Flanders in 1794 to 1795, and the fruits had been seen in the efficient conduct of the Helder campaign in 1799, even though that had been a defeat, and above all in the efficient and intelligent Egyptian campaign in 1801, a remarkable victory against odds. He could not seriously reduce the size of the regular army during the peace, for much of the army had to be stationed overseas, and anyway the international situation scarcely permitted it. The peacetime strength of the army was to be 95,000 men, with a further 18,000 in Ireland, and with reserves of 48,000 militia and a reserve force of 24,000. This was an embodied force double that which had been considered necessary at the conclusion of peace after the American war in Pitt’s first year as Prime Minister, in 1784. The duke was also able to

44

E. Sparrow, ‘The Alien Office 1792–1806’, Historical Journal 33, 1990, 361–384; Secret Service Sparrow, 1999, ch. 14. 110

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work towards further improvements, making it a practice to implement them one at a time, such as having professional surgeons inspect the physical condition of new recruits, and the institution of freedom of worship in the army. The fact that large numbers of Irishmen and Scottish Highlanders had been recruited meant that this measure of toleration was only a recognition of an established fact, but formalising the matter would open the recruiting field to more men. Both of these measures were put in place in 1802. Recruiting, of course, could be relaxed during the peace, and this would save something, though not very much, but above all the period of peace meant that preparations could be made for the resumption of war, which, certainly by late in 1802, looked increasingly likely and even imminent. Addington had promoted a revision of the Militia Act during 1802, and the introduction of the Army of Reserve Bill as early as June 1803, only a month or so after the resumption of war, shows that a good deal of preparation for these measures had already been done, just as the re-introduction of income tax in the Budget in the same month indicates that Addington had been thinking the new measure through in the time of peace.45 Rather more obvious and spectacular events had been emanating from St Vincent at the Admiralty. It had seemed a good idea that a professional sailor should be installed as First Lord when St Vincent had been appointed; it had worked in the past (with Admiral Anson) and was to do so in the future (with Admiral Fisher), but with St Vincent it was rather less successful. He was a notoriously rigorous commander, but also a victorious one, and he lent a glow of naval glamour to a Cabinet generally regarded as somewhat below the standard of quality of its predecessor. But St Vincent arrived in office with a set of professional prejudices as well as his victories, in particular with the fixed idea that the shore establishment of the navy was corrupt and inefficient, and that the contractors who were engaged by the navy to supply its needs, and in many cases to build its ships, were dilatory, probably corrupt, and generally addicted to overcharging. St Vincent took to heart the determination of the Addington government to reduce costs once the peace had been concluded. He imposed drastic reductions in naval manpower, dismissing almost half the employed sailors by reducing the number of men employed from 130,000 to 70,000 in the first months of peace, and he hoped to reduce that number by half again in the next year, though that target was never reached. Ships were laid up by the score. By December 1802, only thirty-

45

J.S. Watson, The Reign of George III 1760–1815, Oxford 1960, 412; R. Glover, Peninsular Preparation: The Reform of the British Army, 1795–1809, 219, 229–231. 111

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eight ships of the line were still in commission, and none of them were stationed in the Irish Sea, the English Channel, or the North Sea; 134 line-of-battle ships were out of commission in one way or another. He kept a higher proportion of the smaller ships in commission – half the frigates and more than half the sloops – but essentially within six months of the peace treaty Britain had largely disarmed at sea. On 2 December, the House of Commons debated the Naval Estimates for the coming year, which were based on employing just 50,000 seamen; a further reduction in the ships in commission would necessarily be the result. Eleven days later another debate was begun on the need for an inquiry into the abuses and frauds in the navy. St Vincent’s original intentions were somewhat watered down in the course of the debate, and further reduced again in the Lords, but essentially he got the inquiry he wanted. But St Vincent was not a supple politician, and was not used to dealing with civilians. He alienated all too many men, and of course he had enemies in the service as well. The result was resistance to his aims even when these aims were sensible. The naval disarmament which St Vincent carried through was not particularly dangerous in itself, for it could be reversed quickly enough. Where it was necessary to keep adequate forces in being, as it was in the West Indies in order to watch over the French activities in San Domingo, the forces were available, so that in late 1802 there were more ships of the line in the West Indies than in any other single area except the Mediterranean. In European waters the frigates and sloops were the best ships to use to keep the French and Dutch naval situation under surveillance. There may well have been no ships of the line in commission in the waters around Britain at the end of 1802, but there were forty-one of the smaller ships. St Vincent was not so blinded by his prejudices and anger as to be careless of his country’s defences by sea.46 The basic reason for the Amiens peace to be regarded as purely a temporary truce was the paradoxical situation as it was between France and Britain. On a superficial view the two states were seriously mismatched. Bonaparte’s power lay in his control not only of France, but of the various satellite republics on the French borders as well, with a combined population in the region of 55 million compared with that of the British state of about 16 million;47 and even during the period of peace, in February 1803, the consular army amounted to almost 450,000 men – three times that of Britain.48 (To this would be added 46

Naval Chronicle VIII, 511–513 and IX, 47–49; R. Morriss, ‘St Vincent and Reform 1801–1804’, Mariner’s Mirror 69, 1983, 269–290. 47 Calculated from figures in B.R. Mitchell, European Historical Statistics, 1750–1970 (abridged edition), London 1978, 1–9. 48 E. Desbrière, Projets et Tentatives de Debarquement aux Iles Britanniques, Paris 1900–1902, vol. 3, 6–9. 112

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a substantial Italian contingent, once the conscription law passed in the Italian Republic during 1802 became fully effective.) The disparity between the two great powers was largely cancelled, of course, by the power of the Royal Navy, but the military strength of France and its satellites was sufficiently unnerving for the British government to be on the constant search for friends elsewhere in Europe. This, however, was not easy. The conclusion of peace had left Britain as isolated as at any time during the war. In the past year her allies, Austria and Naples, had made separate peace agreements with France, having earlier agreed not to do so; the only other ally, Portugal, was defeated rapidly by Spain. France as a result bestrode Italy, Switzerland and Holland, and was actively insinuating its influence into Germany. A war between Britain and Russia had been only narrowly avoided when the British picked on the weakest member of the Armed Neutrality of the North, Denmark, and destroyed its naval power, and perhaps connived at the assassination of Tsar Paul. The conclusion of peace with France scarcely altered this condition of diplomatic isolation, but it did open up possibilities to end it. While the war continued it was impossible for any European state to have friendly diplomatic relations with Britain for fear of French enmity; but now a semblance of diplomatic normality had revived, and it was possible for the British diplomats to begin to explore the possibilities of new, or renewed, friendships. There was, in reality, only one state which could be approached for an alliance. France was out of the question, and so therefore were all her allies and satellites, including Spain. Austria, pummelled into the ground by the French armies in 1800–1801 and brought to a disadvantageous peace early in 1802, needed time to recover, and was heavily preoccupied with the situation in Germany; the reports of the ambassador in Vienna, Sir Arthur Paget, were wholly discouraging. Prussia was inert, and under strong Russian influence, and also concerned in the German changes. Russia was thus the only possibility, and the problem of the Armed Neutrality had been briskly and satisfactorily dealt with in the Anglo–Russian Convention of June 1801. In 1802, however, Russia, as much as Austria and Prussia, was deeply involved in the German negotiations, and neither Lord Hawkesbury nor his two successive ambassadors in St Petersburg, Lord St Helens and Admiral Sir John Borlase Warren, made much headway. Yet the hand of friendship and co-operation had been held out very clearly towards Russia as soon as the peace was signed.49 49

H. Beeley, ‘A Project of an Alliance with Russia in 1802’, English Historical Review, 49, 1934, 497–602; C.J. Fedorak, ‘In Search of a Necessary Ally: Addington, Hawkesbury and Russia, 1801–1804’, International History Review 13, 1991, 221–245. 113

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It would take time for any new relationship with Russia, or any other eastern European power, to develop. In the meantime France had to be coped with, and Bonaparte’s activities were in fact the main support and argument for the renewal of friendship and alliance between the various non-French powers. The peace treaty concluded at Amiens turned out to be, despite the long and intricate negotiations which produced it, both extremely difficult to implement and productive of much disputation. The day before the new Parliament gathered at Westminster, the new British ambassador to France arrived in Paris. There had been a minor diplomatic dance to ensure that both he and the new French ambassador in London arrived in their posts more or less simultaneously. It had also taken seven months – since the conclusion of the treaty in March – to organise this exchange, and the respective instructions which these two ambassadors had received made it clear that any trust between the governments of the two countries was still in short supply. The two ambassadors were a contrasted pair. Lord Whitworth, sent to Paris, was so upwardly mobile that he had married a duchess, the widow of the duke of Dorset; she foxed French society in Paris by retaining her previous married name and title, making some Parisians assume that she and Whitworth were not married. She was also known in Paris, for her first husband, the duke, had been British ambassador there during the early years of the Revolution. Whitworth had begun as a soldier, and had become a tough diplomat who had served previously in St Petersburg in Tsar Paul’s time – Paul had expelled him – and at Copenhagen during the crisis of 1801 which led to the battle and the destruction of the Armed Neutrality of the North. His appointment to Paris was a deliberate indication of British determination, and should have been a clear warning to the French. The French ambassador in London was General Antoine François Andréossy, one of Bonaparte’s many military diplomats, and another of the men who had been with him in Egypt. By contrast with the tough civilian Whitworth, he was distinctly pliable as a diplomat, and was deeply convinced that peace between Britain and France was necessary for the well-being of his own country; he was not above distorting British views expressed to him in order to try to prevent conflict, nor ignoring his instructions for the same purpose; as a result he was not entirely trusted by either government.50 These men had been nominated as ambassadors in June, but it had taken five months for them to take up their posts, partly because considerable personal preparation was needed, but also, and perhaps mainly, because both sides were concerned that as many as possible of the provisions of the peace treaty should be carried into effect before

50

Browning, 11–12; DNB, Whitworth; Jacques Henri-Robert, Dictionnaire des Diplomats de Napoléon, Paris 1990. 114

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the ambassadors were exchanged. In this it was the British who were slow off the mark, but the reason was not so much a reluctance to implement the treaty as an understandable suspicion that Bonaparte was a confirmed treaty-breaker, as a result of the fate of the peace between France and Austria. The Treaty of Lunéville had included an apparent guarantee of the independence of the republics in northern Italy – the Ligurian and the Cisalpine – and of the Batavian and Swiss Republics, all of which were regimes set up by the invading French revolutionary armies. But since then the Cisalpine Republic had been reorganised and renamed the Italian Republic, and the new state had then elected Bonaparte as its President; the French consular government had repeatedly interfered in Switzerland and continued to do so; in the Netherlands the French garrison had been left in place instead of being removed, and when this had proved embarrassing the government and constitution of the republic had been adjusted to meet French wishes by a coup carried through with the support of a French general. In other parts of Italy – in Tuscany, Rome and Naples – which had not been mentioned in the treaty, Bonaparte’s tentacles had also spread. There was now a Frenchnominated king of Etruria, propped up by a French garrison; and a treaty with Spain had promised Parma in exchange for Louisiana; meanwhile Parma remained in French hands after the death of the duke in September, Tuscany had a strong French garrison, and Elba had been handed to France; a Concordat with the Pope implied also increased French influence in Rome; mainland Naples was clearly as vulnerable in 1802 as it had been before. French power thus now excluded Austria from most of northern Italy, and competed with British and Russian power in Naples. The southern boundary of the French consul’s power now lay south of Rome, just as his northern boundary lay in Friesland.51 In Germany there had been provision made in the Lunéville treaty for ‘compensation’ to be arranged for the princes dispossessed by the changes in Italy and by the French annexations along the left bank of the Rhine. This provision was supposed to be left to the Germans to arrange by means of a meeting of the Imperial Diet at Regensburg, but that meeting was soon dominated by French diplomacy, with Talleyrand manipulating the whole process from Paris. The only conclusion to be drawn from all this was that the Lunéville treaty had turned out to be not so much a treaty of peace as a further step on the way to French domination of the western European continent, a set of provisional arrangements which could be exploited for his own increased power by the French first consul. The British were hardly surprised. The exploitation of the Lunéville terms had begun even during Cornwallis’s negotiations at Amiens, 51

Gregory, Napoleon’s Italy, ch. 2; Schama, Patriots and Liberators, ch. 10. 115

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and the Peace Preliminaries had also been exploited by Bonaparte at British expense, when he extended his naval power into the Caribbean. Bonaparte had attended the meeting of the Italian congress at Lyon at which he had been elected President, and there was a well-justified suspicion that his professed reluctance to accept that position was a sham and that the meeting had been stage-managed all along with the object of Bonaparte achieving that conclusion. No protests he could make on this would ever be believed. Since the Amiens treaty the Ligurian Republic – that is, the city of Genoa and its nearby territory – had been given a new constitution in early July 1802. A doge and a Senate of thirty men now ruled the city, but all of them were nominated personally by Bonaparte and the chief authority in the city was in fact one of Bonaparte’s most loyal Italian henchmen, the French Commissioner Saliceti. A month later Bonaparte annexed Elba (from Spain) and in October Piedmont was annexed to France, after having been a French military district for a year and more, in an attempt to control the widespread brigandage. In every case there was a good deal of local sense for the move, and in a larger sense it was really no more than a process of French power filling a political vacuum, but from a more distant perspective it seemed to Bonaparte’s contemporaries and enemies to be a planned, underhand, creeping process of deliberate imperial expansion. In the case of Piedmont, the former ruler, the king of Sardinia, was supposed to be compensated under the terms of the Lunéville treaty, but nothing had been done, and nothing was even being contemplated. He remained ruler of the island of Sardinia, but the failure to provide compensation for his losses on the mainland was a constant irritant in French relations with Britain and Russia. In Germany the Lunéville treaty had specified that those rulers who had been dispossessed by French annexations should be compensated for their losses by being allocated lands which would be confiscated – or ‘secularised’ – from the many ecclesiastical principalities. This turned out to be the ideal method of infiltrating French influence throughout southern and western Germany. The treaty had finally recognised French annexation of the lands of the Holy Roman empire as far as the left bank of the Rhine, which meant the dispossession of a considerable number of former rulers, but also the loss of some lands by major German states, including Bavaria and Prussia. Together with the prince of Orange, who had been expelled from the Netherlands, and the duke of Modena and the grand duke of Tuscany, relatives of the Habsburg emperor, whose lands had been lost, all these deprived princes could now claim ‘compensation’. At the same time the rulers of the lands beyond the Rhine were intent on expansion by acquiring lands from the secularising ecclesiastical states as well. As a result it took a lot of intrigue and manoeuvring before even a method by which the decisions could be made was agreed, and this did not produce a result until October 1801. The 116

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chosen method was to form a group called the Deputation, consisting of four members of the College of Electors – Bohemia (that is, the Habsburg emperor), Brandenburg (that is, Prussia), Mainz (one of the ecclesiastical victims) and Saxony – together with four of the members of the College of Princes – Baden, Bavaria, Württemberg, and the grand master of the Teutonic Order (this last also destined for secularisation). The victims were thus very largely excluded, and only three ecclesiastical principalities survived the whole process, two of whom just happened to be Mainz and the Teutonic knights, members of the Deputation. (The third was the Order of St John of the Hospital.) The Deputation met at Regensburg, but did not begin work until late in August 1802. The long delay between the setting up of the group and its first meeting permitted the invention of many schemes of apportionment, much interference from outside, and the involvement of all the powers of Europe. France was involved because it had been her annexation of the left bank which had forced the process to begin, and the Lunéville treaty made provisions for compensation for the deprived Italian princes; Russia was interested because Tsar Alexander’s mother was a princess of Württemburg and his wife was from Baden; King George III of Britain was also elector of Hanover, and King Frederick William IV of Prussia was keen to expand; both kings were involved also because they were relatives of the prince of Orange, whom they wanted to see compensated, and indeed one of the clauses of the Treaty of Amiens had been directed at that very issue; the emperor was involved because of his hereditary and elective position, but also as a participant in the Treaty of Lunéville and in the Deputation, as an affected ruler himself, and as a relative of the Tuscan and Modenan princes – the grand duke was his brother, the duke his cousin. It is no wonder that the Deputation took a long time to meet, and that its deliberations took a long time to complete. The real power in the matter was Bonaparte’s, but he was keen to involve Russia as well, as a means of bringing pressure on both Prussia and Austria. He was no doubt also conscious of the fact that, for much of 1802, the British government was angling for an alliance with Russia. Apart from the antipathy of both towards Bonaparte, both states were keen to seek compensation for the deprived king of Sardinia, which France carefully avoided agreeing to. But more time had to elapse before a public reconciliation could take place, and Britain, though involved and eager to be so, was not actually a major player in central Germany, where Alexander was particularly concerned to support his relatives. The solution was thus for France and Russia to agree a settlement between them and then to present their plan to the Deputation, which in fact meant that most of it was a French scheme worked out by Talleyrand in Paris, where his labours were well lubricated by large bribes from the interested parties. This was not to the liking of Austria, 117

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which manufactured a crisis in July 1802 by seizing control of the bishopric of Passau, on the Danube between Austria and Bavaria, which was supposed to go to Bavaria in the Franco–Russian scheme. This nearly resulted in a new war, but all Germany, as well as France and Russia, was in favour of attempting the scheme, and Austria had to withdraw. Bonaparte then organised sufficient concessions to Austria to secure the emperor’s agreement, which was reached by December 1802. The formal decision of the Deputation, called the Rezes of Regensburg, was finally announced on 25 February 1803, but the main work had long been done, and apart from some details it was, in all essentials and in much of the detail, the Franco–Russian plan of September of the previous year. The result was a happy period of gluttony for the major German states. There was sufficient ecclesiastical territory to feed some new lands to all of them, and most of the imperial cities were thrown in as well. The main gainers were Prussia, which expanded into territories in the west, and Bavaria, which spread north and west into central and south-west Germany, but Württemberg and Baden emerged from virtually nowhere as second-rank states for the first time. King George’s Hanover snapped up the bishopric of Osnabrück, but did not improve its strategic position very much; the prince of Orange, the former duke of Modena, and the former grand duke of Tuscany all received small principalities. Austria gathered in more territory also, including the archbishopric of Salzburg, which was the Tuscan grand duke’s compensation, and which would soon revert to the emperor. In the process many of the smaller German states came under strong French influence – indeed Bavaria had concluded a formal alliance with France as early as August 1801. The Arch-Chancellor of the Empire, the coadjutor of the archbishopric-electorate of Mainz, Karl von Dalberg, received the only largish ecclesiastical principality to emerge from the negotiations, and was henceforth fully attached to the French interest, as were Baden and Württemberg, despite the interest of Russia there – after all, France was next door, Russia far off. Austria thus found that its influence over the Holy Roman empire, which had been based above all on the ecclesiastical states, was now virtually destroyed, and had a series of French allies arrayed across southern Germany to within a hundred and fifty miles of Vienna.52 All this was going on while the Amiens negotiations were inching forwards to their conclusion in March 1802, and then also while the exchange of ambassadors was hanging fire until November. The Amiens treaty, like the Lunéville treaty, contained some clauses which appeared

52

C.T. Atkinson, History of Germany, 1715–1815, London 1908, 455–466; H.A.L. Fisher, Napoleonic Statesmanship: Germany, London 1903, 38–47; Schroeder, Transformation, 233–238. 118

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to be quite clear and concrete, and others which, despite appearances, were actually rather woolly. The return of conquered French and Dutch colonies was apparently a fully clear-cut issue, but they were all far away, and the British government showed no interest in speeding the process of return, and rather chose to delay over instructing its agents in the matter. The French expedition to reconquer the rebellious San Domingo, which set out in late 1801, did in fact recover the West Indian islands and South American territories due to revert to France and the Batavian Republic, but neither the Cape of Good Hope nor the French Indian outposts showed any signs of being returned quickly. The main problem, however, was Malta. The clause on Malta in the Amiens treaty was the longest of them all, the most detailed, and apparently the most prescriptive, laying down a timetable, a process, and a goal. And all this was effectively for nothing, since the very comprehensiveness of the procedure ensured that something would inevitably go wrong. There were simply too many details for everything to happen as intended, and it took only one small item to be mislaid for the whole business to be derailed. As a result the whole matter was wide open for each side to accuse the other of bad faith; and each side would be right and at the same time each side would also be innocent. The evidence is that the British government fully intended to carry out the evacuation of Malta and to hand it back to the knights (whose existence in Germany had been carefully preserved, be it noted). This is what Lord Hobart, the Secretary of War, stated in April to the Maltese deputies who had gone to Britain with the express intention of persuading the British to keep control of the islands. Without such an intention there would have been no point in the long negotiations on the subject at Amiens, and no point in the elaborate procedure which had been laid down. If the British government intended to break the agreement on Malta they could simply have agreed to a single simple clause in the treaty, which they would then have ignored. In India the Governor-General, Marquis Wellesley, carefully organised delaying measures over handing back to the French authorities the several exFrench colonial outposts detailed in the treaty. Of course, Wellesley was effectively a law unto himself because of the distance he was from London, but his action was just what a government intent on breaking the treaty would have done. And the British government did begin the process of the return of Malta to the Order: Lord Hawkesbury was prepared to accept the election of a new grand master; Lord Hobart, a month later, less than a fortnight after the exchange of ratifications of the treaty, wrote to General Henry Fox, commanding in Malta, ordering him to hand over the island to the Order, and to evacuate British forces, with the only conditions that the Order must send representatives to accept the handover, and that the authorised Neapolitan troops who were to form the temporary garrison should have arrived before the 119

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British forces left – all as provided for in the treaty. All the evidence is that for several months the British government fully intended to implement the provisions of the treaty. In India also an order went out on 5 May, again from Lord Hobart, to restore the French posts to the French authorities.53 However, evidence began to accumulate to persuade the British ministers that Bonaparte was once more intending to exploit the situation to his advantage, just as he was doing in Italy and Germany. A report came from Naples that he had remarked to the Neapolitan ambassador in Paris that the Maltese clause was ‘a romance, which could not be executed’. He was, of course, quite correct, given the complexity of the clause, but this could too easily be taken to be a statement of his intention not to comply, not merely as his opinion. Then, on 27 April 1802, less than a month after the treaty was signed, the king of Spain seized the assets of the Maltese knights in his dominions, though there is no evidence that Bonaparte had anything to do with this; indeed by weakening the Order still further it made it less likely that Malta could be returned to it. The Spanish king thus removed one of the few major remaining sources of funding of the Order, and effectively suppressed two more of the Langues, those of Castile and Aragon. The three French Langues had already been suppressed at the time of the Revolution, the English Langue had been abolished by the terms of the Amiens treaty, and that of Bavaria also went about this time as a part of the process of secularisation in the Bavarian state. There were now left only the Langues of Germany, also suffering from the secularisations, Italy, where a good deal had also gone as a result of the French conquest of Piedmont and northern Italy, and the Polish-Russian Langue, now effectively under the tsar’s control. By the treaty a Maltese Langue should be organised and recruited, but this looked less and less likely to appear, given the general unpopularity of the Order in Malta. These were only straws in the wind, and it was difficult for a levelheaded government to get too concerned about any one of them, particularly in the pleased and popular aftermath of the conclusion of peace. Near the end of May both governments concerted plans to emplace their ministers in Malta accredited to the Order: for Britain this was Captain Sir Alexander Ball, RN, one of the men involved in the British conquest, who was notably popular with the Maltese; for France it was to be General Vial. Ball arrived on the island early in July, Vial late in August. The discrepancy in arrival-times could perhaps be taken as an index of the importance of the islands to the two governments.54 53 Hardman, Malta, 424–425, 436–438, 460–462; C. Northcote Parkinson, War in the Eastern Seas, 1793–1815, London 1954, 200–202. 54 Hardman, Malta, 436, 443.

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The essential preconditions for the return of authority in the islands to the Order were three: the installation of 2,000 Neapolitan troops as garrison, the election of a new grand master, and the acceptance by the six states named in the Amiens treaty of their appointment as guarantors of the settlement, in effect as joint protectors of the Order. None of these conditions was to be met before the war began in May 1803, but it is difficult to lay blame on either Britain or France for the failure. Of the six countries who were to act as guarantors, Britain and France had accepted that position by ratifying the Amiens treaty, and so presumably had Spain, also a signatory, despite its subsequent secularisation of the Order’s possessions in Spain. The other three, Prussia, Austria and Russia, were all in one way or another reluctant. The Prussian king never showed any interest at any time, but would probably furnish a guarantee if the others did, particularly if Russia prodded him to join in. The Habsburg emperor eventually did so, his position being complicated by the deposed grand master von Hompesch having been given refuge in Habsburg territory. The real problem was Russia. The British occupation of the islands was supposed to end three months after the ratification of the treaty, that is, in mid-August, and on 21 August the French government asked that the Neapolitan troops be given a lift from Sicily to Malta by the British. Hawkesbury pointed out in reply two days later that this could only be done, and the British forces evacuated, when the preconditions – the election and the guarantees – were fulfilled. He noted that the British envoy at Naples had blocked the Neapolitan troops’ move until he knew that Sir Alexander Ball had reached Valetta, but since Ball was now in post that particular difficulty was removed. Yet he also noted that the guarantees were not yet in place, and his latest information was that no instructions had yet been sent to the French ambassadors in Berlin and St Petersburg to invite the governments there to become guarantors. No doubt Hawkesbury took some considerable satisfaction in pointing this out. Another delaying factor was the problem of the election of a new grand master for the Order, without which there was no authority in place for the Order’s representatives in Malta to be appointed. It was not until late September that news came out that the Bailli of the Order, Barthelémy de Ruspoli, had been appointed by the Pope, and this was still little more than a rumour at that point. On 17 October, therefore, Lord Hobart wrote to Sir Alexander Ball and to the new British commander on the island, Major-General Villettes, that all previous orders concerning the evacuation of British forces were to be regarded as suspended, and that he should stay on the island until further notice. He should also recruit any shortage of his troops from those being evacuated from Egypt as they passed the islands.55 55

Ibid., 448–450. 121

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None of this was definitive in the sense of a final decision having been taken to hold on to the island for ever, though it does mark the end of the British government’s assumption that the treaty would be carried out soon. None of the necessary preliminary conditions had yet been put in place, and the situation was unclear on all of them. The election of Ruspoli was unpopular in Malta, and among some of the Order, and soon it appeared that not only was Ruspoli himself reluctant to take up the office, but there was also some doubt as to the legal validity of the choice. French pressure was being exerted on Britain to comply with some of the treaty provisions, particularly in the replacement of British troops by the Neapolitans, and yet it was clear that the French themselves had little concern about the other conditions. To a suspicious mind – and the whole British government was composed of suspicious minds by this time – it seemed that Bonaparte was aiming at producing a situation where Malta would be vulnerable to a new French attack. No one ever supposed that the few remaining knights of the Order plus 2,000 Neapolitan soldiers could resist any attack by a French force. That was why the guarantees were supposed to be in place. In view of the perception in Britain of Bonaparte’s previous exploitations of other treaties, it seemed only sensible to insist on the letter of the conditions being fulfilled properly. The British stance seemed to have an effect. The exchange of ambassadors between London and Paris now went ahead, so that the two men were in place in mid-November. Perhaps as a result of this achievement the British government sent orders to the Cape for the colony there to be evacuated and handed back to Dutch rule, and Lord Hobart sent new orders to India that the French posts be returned to French rule. But the Cape and Pondichéry, though of particular concern for British rule in India, were distant, and the Cape was a place which many in Britain found unimportant: Nelson had derided it as merely ‘a tavern on the high seas’. Malta seemed a more immediate problem, and the more it was discussed between Britain and France, the more suspicious the British became of French motives. Bonaparte, though personally interested in India, and liable to discuss it with any British soldiers he encountered in the Tuileries who had served there, had actually captured Malta and then lost it. He was known to be especially interested in Egypt and the Near East, of which the British expedition had, again, deprived him. It was all too easy to envisage a repeat of the Egyptian expedition – all the more so if Malta was returned to the feeble and unpopular rule of the Order. And 2,000 Neapolitan soldiers would scarcely be able, and perhaps not even willing, to fight in its defence. They had arrived in Malta at last, but had been shunted off to a remote camp well away from Valetta. All this could be seen as no more than the normal disputation to be expected of two countries which had fought each other to a standstill for 122

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nearly a decade and had then made peace only with great difficulty. It could be argued that the disputes were simmering down, that the great majority of the terms were being implemented without difficulty, if after some delay, and that both sides were working towards solutions for those which remained. The Cape was about to be handed back; the French had not yet attempted to recover the Indian outposts, but orders had been sent to deliver them when a new governor sailed. Malta was certainly a difficult matter, but it was hardly the fault of either side that not all the guarantors had yet fallen into line, or that the new grand master was not yet in place. The Austrian government accepted the position as guarantor provisionally in July; but the tsar was still unhappy about details, yet it was only details and a certain pride which blocked his agreement; the participation of Prussia seemed unlikely, and perhaps depended on Russian prompting, but a Prussian guarantee could probably be dispensed with if Russia and Austria agreed. The new grand master was proving reluctant to take up the position, no doubt realising the horrible problems he would face – loss of financial support, the continued existence of the former grand master von Hompesch, who now claimed to have withdrawn his resignation, the international dispute over Malta, the weakness of the Order and its unpopularity in Malta, the lack of power he would have, the overbearingness of Russia, the looming presence of Bonaparte, the arrogance of the British. As late as December 1802 Ruspoli had still not accepted the post, and neither Russia nor Prussia had yet taken up the proposed positions as guarantors. And the more Bonaparte made a fuss over Malta the less inviting was the position of guarantor, for it did, after all, require that a guarantor power should go to war in defence of the Order if it was attacked in Malta. This now appeared to mean war with either Britain or France: not an inviting prospect for any state. Malta, however, was not by any means the only area of dispute between Britain and France, not even the only area of uneasiness, and perhaps not the most important of their mutual problems. Whitworth’s instructions may be taken as a summary of British anxieties at the time of his arrival in Paris in November. The instructions themselves were fairly bland and general, but they were supplemented by a letter from Hawkesbury which went into more detail. In this letter Malta came a long way down the list of matters he should attend to. At the head came a ringing declaration that the British government insisted on its right to take an interest in, and be active on, the continent, and in particular the condition of peace gave that government ‘a special right to interpose in any case which might lead to the extension of power and influence of France’. This was followed by what was in effect a list of places along the French eastern borders which the British saw as just those areas in which French influence was insidiously present and expanding: Piedmont, Parma, Switzerland, the Batavian Republic – with especial 123

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emphasis on the last. After this the question of Malta was relegated to the status of an unfinished item from the peace treaty, though Hawkesbury did remark that, in face of the French advances elsewhere, ‘Britain could claim Malta as a counterpoise’. Whitworth was instructed, however, not to raise Malta as an issue, though this, of course, could not prevent the French from doing so, and, since it was a continuing problem, it would surely emerge all by itself at intervals.56

56

Browning, 1–6 (instructions) and 6–10 (letter). 124

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ARGUMENTATION The steady unravelling of peace On 17 October 1802 Lord Hobart wrote to Major-General Villettes in Malta, to the Governor-General in India, Marquess Wellesley, and to Major-General Francis Dundas, the acting governor of the Cape of Good Hope, instructing all three men that the process of restoring the status quo ante bellum in Malta, at the Cape, and in the French Indian posts should be suspended.1 Until then the British government’s policy had been, albeit lethargically, to implement the peace terms agreed at Amiens, an attitude reciprocated by the French, who operated with equal lethargy. But in September and October 1802 it seemed to the British that the French policy of extension and exploitation in Europe had moved up a gear, though in fact in most cases it was simply that processes long in train had finally come to a resolution. In Germany at the beginning of October the Diet at Regensburg had at last formally appointed the Deputation to discuss the implementation of the secularisation changes, and the Franco–Russian mediation had effectively imposed those changes on the Deputation, a fact which implied a great extension of French influence eastwards. In September Piedmont had been annexed to the French Republic, an annexation which followed that of the island of Elba, and the duchy of Parma continued to be occupied by the French when the Habsburg duke died in October. There continued to be a French force also in Holland, despite the clause in the Treaty of Lunéville providing for its withdrawal, and in Tuscany French occupation continued even though a new Bourbon king had been installed there; in both of these cases the occupation forces were financed and supplied from local sources. But what seems to have triggered the British colonial action in the immediate term was a crisis which developed in Switzerland. It is in a way curious that, of all the territories into which French power had been exported, or was intruding, it should be Switzerland into which the British government most actively intervened. Of them all, Switzerland – the Helvetic Republic – was the most remote from Britain, for the others were of much easier access. Holland was just across the North Sea, and a French force there was a much more immediate threat 1

Hardman, Malta, 449–450; Parkinson, War in the Eastern Seas, 200. 125

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to Britain itself; northern Italy was accessible from the Mediterranean, where the largest single British naval force dominated the sea; and southern Germany was under French influence but not occupation, and so more amenable to British influence. The Swiss were a minor power, had no friends or allies, and had been recognised as within the French sphere in the Treaty of Lunéville, so that Austria, the only great power with easy access to, or immediate interest in, Switzerland, was debarred from interfering by its treaty obligations, even if it was interested in doing so while preoccupied with the German problem. The reason for the British decision to become involved would seem to be that it was the only one of Bonaparte’s satellites which showed any resentment at its status. There had been disturbances in the country of varied intensity for several years, but in the autumn of 1802 these disputes developed into an armed conflict. The French watched the situation, which was essentially a struggle for power between those who had been beneficiaries of the earlier French intervention by which the Republic had been reformed and to some extent democratised, and those who had lost by it, the counter-revolutionary anti-French party, or oligarchs.2 The latter soon contacted the British government through Anthony Merry in Paris, requesting official British recognition of the anti-French government.3 But that party never had a position of countrywide control which remained unchallenged by its rivals, and France was both more interested in the situation and more knowledgeable about it, and, crucially, had troops on hand. Bonaparte in fact was reluctant to use force. He had agreed to lend French troops – perhaps the Helvetic contingents in the French forces – to the Republic, but a fortnight later, on 3 October, Colonel Mulinen, an envoy of the ‘Provisional Government’ – the anti-French party – was in Paris to negotiate with the first consul, hoping for a French abstention from interference. Mulinen also contacted the Parisian ministers of the other powers, but none replied immediately. Merry, of course, had reported all this to London as the situation developed, but it was only on 9 October that he was informed that decisions had been taken in the Cabinet to provide support to the anti-French party.4 Addington was very keen on using the Swiss problem to score points for his administration. This was just the sort of issue, the liberation of an oppressed people, to appeal to the opposition. By taking it up, Addington blocked their criticism. So the temporary success of the 2 G. Lefebvre, Napoleon 1799–1807, trans. H.F. Stockhold, London 1969, 119–121; J.R. Surrateau, ‘Un Paradoxe: l’echec de l’unité nationale suisse et le developpement du nationalisme helvetique (1792–1815)’, Actes, 1973, 53–84. 3 FO 27/64, 71, Merry to Hawkesbury, 25 September 1802. 4 FO 27/64, 75, Merry to Hawkesbury, 3 October 1802, and 77, Hawkesbury to Merry, 9 October 1802.

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counter-revolutionary party in Switzerland seemed at the least an opportunity for British intervention in continental affairs, and at the best the beginning of the collapse of the whole set of revolutionary regimes, including that of France. This was so resonant within influential sections of the political world and the British press that the Cabinet was induced to take action.5 The message to Merry was that Hawkesbury would give Otto in London a note on the subject for transmission to Paris, and Merry was given a copy to be handed to Mulinen for his chiefs in Berne. The British, said Hawkesbury, would provide assistance to the Swiss in securing the country’s independence, and an agent called Moore was to be sent to Berne to act as the British representative. In addition, attempts were to be made to rouse the interest of other powers, that is, in the geographical and political situation of the time, Austria and Russia. This, of course, whether by accident or design, fitted in well with Mulinen’s purpose in Paris, which was to ask the powers, except the French, to take Switzerland under their joint protection – which meant protection against a French reaction. The attempt to negotiate a French abstention had failed, for Bonaparte refused to meet Mulinen, thereby showing that France still recognised the former republican regime. In the event, neither Austria nor Russia, fully preoccupied as both were by the situation in Germany, and both wholly beholden to Bonaparte for a favourable resolution of the problems there, made any move. The emperor and the tsar and their advisers may have been personally and privately in favour of the counter-revolution in Switzerland, but none of them could afford any public gesture on the issue. Therefore only Britain had eventually responded to Mulinen, with Hawkesbury’s note and the despatch of Moore, but only after a considerable delay. Bonaparte had been extremely patient until then over the Swiss, though he had made the French position clear some months before: he had no wish to fight in Switzerland, he announced, nor had he any wish to conquer it, but he could not accept a government in power there which was hostile to France. This was a quite reasonable position for a great power to take, exactly similar to the British attitude to its neighbours in India, and to the Austrian attitude to southern Germany. Switzerland had, after all, been used as a route for the Austro-Russian attacks on France in 1798– 1799. A friendly government in Berne was something every French government would require. During 1802 the Valais, controlling the routes from France to northern Italy, had been detached from Switzerland and constituted as a separate state, and roads began to be made suitable for military use.6 5

Ehrman, Pitt, III, 575. F. Beaucour, ‘Napoleon and the Valais’, Proceedings of the Consortium for Revolutionary Europe 1989, Tallahassee, Fl. 1990, 838–846. 6

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But the counter-revolution had won the struggle for the moment, and Colonel Mulinen’s arrival as its envoy in Paris was a sign of this. Further, Mulinen’s request for great power protection was, in effect, a request for a European war, though he may not have appreciated this. Possibly the British Cabinet may not have appreciated it either. If any power actively provided that protection, France would feel entitled to assume its enmity, and neither Austria nor Russia could contemplate a new war at the time. In fact neither they nor Britain were given the time to do anything serious, for Bonaparte reacted to Mulinen’s mission and its implications with impressive speed and force. He protested that the Swiss were now under the rule of a small number of aristocratic families – which would justify his action in France by the invocation of revolutionary principles – and commented that this was the result of three years of internal conflict, thus emphasising his earlier forbearance. He issued a ringing declaration emphasising his patience, and stating his terms: the restoration of the republican party to power. This was sent to Switzerland by the hand of his aide-de-camp Colonel Rapp, who was to present the terms to the counter-revolutionaries. At Geneva General Ney was in command of the French intervention force, amounting in all to thirty thousand French troops, stationed all round the Swiss borders, from eastern France to the Po valley. Colonel Rapp carried contingency orders for Ney to move if the Swiss rejected Bonaparte’s terms. On 15 October Ney moved, though he did not need to use more than a fifth of his allocated forces.7 All this had been done even before Hawkesbury’s message reached Merry in Paris, which as a result was far too late to have any effect in Switzerland. Moore reached no further than Konstanz, where he met the anti-French oligarchs fleeing from Berne in the face of the Frenchled conquest: they had sensibly given up the fight as soon as Rapp appeared. By 17 October Merry could report from Paris that the crisis in Switzerland was effectively over, and that the Swiss had submitted to Bonaparte’s terms.8 though scattered fighting went on for some time, and it was not until February 1803 that the final settlement was reached. In the meantime, also on 17 October, the orders had gone out to delay the evacuation of Malta and of the Cape and the French Indian settlements. This coincidence in timing does make it seem that the Swiss crisis resulted in the reversal of the British position on the colonies. So it did, in a sense, but there are, as one must expect, rather more elements involved in the decision. There had been a number of incidents of less

7 8

Napoleon I, Correspondence, 6359, 6370. FO 27/64, 81–82, Merry to Hawkesbury, 17 and 21 October 1802. 128

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gravity than the Swiss crisis since the ratification of the peace terms in May, and these had constituted a repeated irritant in Franco–British relations. Of these Malta was one of the least important, since it was recognised on both sides as being very complicated, and the timetable set out in the treaty was clearly unworkable. The Swiss crisis was another of these incidents, and like Malta it had been in effect a continuous problem for some time. There had also been a series of maritime incidents which had begun to ring alarm bells in London over commercial relations. A law of Robespierre’s time prohibited British shipping from sailing within four leagues of the French coast, though it had been effectively a dead letter during wartime. It was now being enforced, occasionally and randomly, and apparently at the whim of local port authorities. In December 1801 the Fame, a packet, was seized in Cherbourg when it took refuge there from a storm. This seizure might be excused since the two countries were still officially at war while the treaty was being negotiated, but in July, three months after the Amiens treaty was concluded, the Nancy was similarly seized and confiscated at Flushing, a port under joint French–Dutch control. Again, in September, the Jennies, a brig carrying coal to the Charente, was detained there; the ship and the rest of its cargo, which was destined for Cadiz, were confiscated. In each case protests were made, but effectively ignored, the French government explaining that they were only enforcing an existing law.9 But such a law was effectively hostile to all trade between Britain and France, since if even a ship carrying goods to a French port, as the Jennies had been, could find itself confiscated, no British ship was safe. Of course, the law was not enforced in such a way in every case, and it was clearly a matter in many cases of local initiative, yet this was all the more unsettling. Commerce did exist, of course, but for British sailors it was clearly a problematic and chancy business. The British had always hoped, and expected, that the Amiens treaty would be followed by the conclusion of a new commercial agreement, a matter much higher on the British agenda than it was on Bonaparte’s, but it was a reasonable assumption that such an agreement would eventually be made. The slowness in exchanging ambassadors had not delayed such negotiations, since a French Commercial Counsellor had arrived in May 1802; little progress was in fact made.10 The apparently sudden decision in October 1802 to delay implementation of some of the clauses of the Amiens treaty was thus in fact the result of several continuing problems between Britain and France, of

9 C. Gill, ‘The Relations between England and France in 1802’, English Historical Review 29, 1909, 75. 10 Deutsch, Genesis, 96–99, 104–105.

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which the Swiss crisis was only one, though perhaps it was the trigger for the decision. On a different and more personal level, however, relations between Britain and France were becoming more normal, if peace is regarded as normality. One of the irritants of political relations had always been the presence in Britain of refugees from the French political turmoil, whom the French called émigrés. This was another of the Revolution’s unpleasant legacies which Bonaparte worked to remove. Within less than a month of the conclusion of the treaty, the consular government announced an amnesty for most of the émigrés, who until then had been regarded as deserters and so as criminals. The conditions of their rehabilitation were that they must return to France and register themselves by September 1802, and must then submit to official supervision for the next ten years. The permitted returnees did not include, of course, the Bourbon royal family, many members of which were established in Britain; about a thousand others, regarded as irreconcilable, were also carefully excluded. Nor was there any provision for the recovery of the exiles’ confiscated and resold lands. Large numbers of émigrés had already returned to France clandestinely and unofficially, and this amnesty thus regulated their ambiguous status. Some émigrés, of course, returned and behaved as though the Revolution had been cancelled, arrogantly attempting to re-assume their lands and their old local authority, but the majority reconciled themselves to their new situation. In this the Concordat, which re-established Catholicism as the state religion, and the re-emergence of monarchy under Bonaparte, certainly helped. Opinions amongst the less accommodating of the émigrés were divided over the wisdom of accepting the amnesty, but most did eventually avail themselves of the opportunity to return. An example of the process is Fanny Burney’s husband d’Arblay, who had been a soldier in the royal army until he fled. After an agonising wait, he was eventually employed by the new French government.11 Another sign of returning normality was the large number of British visitors to France, and this was reciprocated also in French visitors to Britain. The British Minister in Paris issued passports to those wishing to travel to Britain and periodically sent a list to the Foreign Office. Between June and December 1802, Merry issued over 2,500 passports, and one must assume, since their recipients went to the trouble to obtain them, that they made the journey; a further 785 were issued

11 M. Weiner, The French Exiles, 1789–1815, London 1960; K. Carpenter, Refugees of the French Revolution, London 1999; D. Greer, The Incidence of the Emigration during the French Revolution, Cambridge, Mass. 1951; Barratt, d’Arblay, vol. 4, 161 onwards.

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between December 1802 and April 1803 while Whitworth was ambassador, though the list is not complete. This is a minimal total of 3,300 passports.12 A considerable number of these were issued to British people who were in France, but many went to French people intending to visit Britain. The vast majority were people who travelled for the usual great variety of reasons – to tour, to visit friends and relations, to find work, to escape, or simply to travel – though the reasons for travelling were not apparently asked for, or at least were not recorded in Merry’s lists. (In the same way the reasons for travelling to France were many and various. Colonel Thornton sailed to France on a hunting holiday, and in the ship he was in the company of group of artificers from Yorkshire who were looking for work, presumably in the French woollen industry.13) We know of some Frenchmen who travelled to Britain in search of employment, or for other economic opportunities. Several of these had British surnames: Joel Barlow was an American merchant and a friend of Tom Paine; John Gamble was a paper maker and travelled with his French partner Didot St Léger; Robert May O’Reilly manufactured engraved glass; another American traveller was the inventor Robert Fulton. Often these men had failed to realise their aims in France and hoped to do so in England. André-Jacques Garnerin was a well-known balloonist who had made the first successful descent by parachute. He travelled to London to stage displays, including a flight by balloon from London to Colchester in just forty-five minutes, and a parachute descent from 10,000 feet, witnessed by the duke of York and Lord Stanhope among a great crowd. Balloons had been used by the French armies in the revolutionary wars; the duke no doubt hoped for tips. Others took advantage of the peace to take their skills to England, though it is not always possible, or sensible, to classify people into rigid divisions. Mme Sophie Gay, for example, was a novelist, but also a declared anti-Bonapartist. The wax artist Mme Tussaud, having been successful in Paris, moved to London to establish another of her exhibitions. And, like the British artists who went to France, other French artists travelled to London, notably Mme Vigée-Lebrun, who crossed the Channel in April 1802, soon after the conclusion of the treaty, and stayed for three years.14 The exceptions made to the émigré amnesty indicated the basic fear of the Bonapartist regime of a royalist reaction based on loyalty to the ancestral royal line. After several months during which the amnesty’s effect was seen to have been largely successful in drawing back to France

12 13 14

FO 27/63, 64, 67. Thornton, Sporting Tour, vol. 1, 15. L.C.T. Rolt, The Aeronauts, Gloucester 1985, 107–108. 131

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the great majority of the émigrés who were entitled to return, Bonaparte made an attempt to persuade the British government to remove the Bourbons and their supporters from Britain. On 17 August Otto gave Hawkesbury a list of demands. They related principally to men who had been active in internal resistance to the Revolution: the Chouan leaders, and the Vendéan insurrectionists, including Georges Cadoudal, who were to be removed from Jersey, where they were clearly felt to be too close to France for comfort. The Bourbon princes were to be expelled – Warsaw was suggested as a suitable destination – and two royalist bishops removed. This list rather emphasised the insecurities of Bonaparte. He cannot seriously have expected the demands to be accepted or acted on – after all, France gave refuge to just as many British and Irish political revolutionaries. Hawkesbury ignored the demands to remove the Bourbons and the bishops, by implication therefore rejecting them, and pointed out that the others were leaving Jersey of their own accord. He promised that Cadoudal would be sent out of Britain, but actually did nothing about it, and Cadoudal continued to live in Bond Street. Bonaparte was apparently satisfied for the moment, even though none of his demands had been met. No comparable British demand to expel disaffected Irishmen from France appears to have been made. After all, if they were in France they were far less dangerous than if they were closer to home.15 The French visitors to Britain were clearly numerous, but they did not produce the wealth of well-observed accounts which visiting Paris stimulated among the British. Indeed, it is not always easy to distinguish the visitors from the émigrés. Several of the new visitors were enemies of Bonaparte and his regime, which was thus inventing yet another kind of émigré. These might be republicans who had been angered at the new monarchic tenor of the Consulate – for example, Henri Grégoire, a cleric who had been made a ‘constitutional bishop’ in 1791, and who had proposed the abolition of the monarchy in 1792. He was elected to the Senate in 1801, but voted very publicly against the award of the consulship for life to Bonaparte the next year. His visit to England may well have been to establish contact with the British government; on the other hand he went back to France fairly soon, so his visit may have been only as a tourist, and he went on to vote against the establishment of the empire in 1804 and against the revival of orders of nobility in 1808. But then he accepted one of those titles two years later.16 The poet Jacques Delille similarly, having been an émigré in Germany and

15

FO 27/66, Otto to Hawkesbury, 17 August 1802, a copy of a letter dated the 15th. 16 Dictionnaire de Biographie Française, 10, 836–837. 132

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England since being released from a revolutionary jail, now returned to France and busied himself with poetry.17 These men may not have liked the Bonapartist regime, but they eventually accepted it at least to the extent of living in France. Others avoided it conscientiously, while still others worked for whatever regime was in control. An example of these last, the vicar-of-Bray types, was Joseph Fiévée. Essentially a journalist-for-hire, who had also worked as a printer and a novelist, he had survived the various French regimes of the last decade only to be jailed by Bonaparte’s policeman Fouché after the coup of 18 Brumaire. He had had contacts with royalists in Paris, but he also had potent protection, and was soon released. He went further, and persuaded the first consul that he was now one of his supporters. Bonaparte had him sent to London whence he was supposed to send back reports on the British press, and to write letters for publication in Parisian journals; he had become, that is, a Bonapartist propagandist. He was a thoroughly unsavoury type, a journalist who had at one time worked as a censor. In Paris a French lady remarked to Holcroft that Fiévée had been sent to London to procure the suppression of anti-French, or perhaps just anti-Bonaparte, comments in the English press; if his activities were so open and well known, he was less than useful. He did not in fact stay long in England, for his notoriety alerted everyone to his activities.18 Fiévée might be regarded as a semi-official visitor; more official French visitors included a brother of Talleyrand, Colonel Archambauld, whose mission may perhaps be best characterised as a type of espionage.19 There were also the new French consuls who were to be sent to the main ports. The man who was posted to Dublin, Colonel Fauvelet, had his mail intercepted; indeed probably all the French consuls were subject to a similar supervision, but after the French invasions of Ireland in support of the rebellion of 1798, and the continuing activities of the United Irishmen – including Colonel Despard – it is hardly surprising that consular letters were read. Fauvelet was found to have been instructed to make plans of Irish harbours, among a whole long series of other questions requiring answers, most of which were relatively innocuous and well within normal consular responsibilities. In the circumstances, however, the British government, as always hypersensitive about Ireland, could only conclude that the deeper purpose was to prepare for a French invasion – another French invasion. It was reasonably assumed that the other military men who were appointed

17

Ibid., 16, 1139–1142. Olivier Blanc, Les Espions de la Révolution et de l’Empire, Paris 1999, 213–217 (based on Lewis Goldsmith); Holcroft, Travels, 320. 19 Alger, Napoleon’s British Visitors. 18

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as consuls at Bristol, Hull, Glasgow, Cork and Jersey, had similar assignments, though Ireland was a much more likely target for French intrigues than other areas of the United Kingdom. All the consuls were ordered to leave.20 Several other men on similar missions can be detected. Colonel Beauvoisins has already been mentioned in connection with Colonel Despard; he had an apparently general mission to report on conditions in Britain; his activities must be characterised as being espionage, though he had such a long list of tasks that he was clearly expected to be in Britain for a long time.21 His meeting with Despard certainly took him beyond espionage and into conspiracy against the British government, though he was perhaps only investigating Despard’s chances rather than encouraging him. A more successful visitor was a young mining engineer, August Henri de Bonnard, who travelled to Britain to investigate British mining methods. De Bonnard was in his early twenties, a recent graduate of the École Polytechnique, and so one of the fruits of the Revolution, and he was later employed as secretary of the Conseil Général des Mines, a department of the French government. He was, that is to say, an industrial spy. He joined up with a Swedish mining engineer, Eric Svedenstierna, who was on a similar mission from his homeland to investigate British methods of ironmaking, and whose account of their journey is the source for de Bonnard’s travels.22 De Bonnard was introduced to Svedenstierna by General Andréossy, the French ambassador in London, who presumably knew perfectly well what de Bonnard’s purpose was. Svedenstierna made no attempt to disguise his own purpose; de Bonnard rather used him as his shield and cover, and persuaded him to start their investigations in Cornwall, which was scarcely central to Svedenstierna’s interest in ironmaking, but which was the scene of the most advanced methods of mining in Britain. In most cases these two had no trouble in finding things out from the various British manufacturers they visited, in Cornwall, in South Wales, and in the Midlands; indeed Svedenstierna had been provided with letters of introduction to most of them while he was in London, and he had also been able to load himself up with guide books while there; it scarcely needed an active spy to find out much of the information he collected.

20

L. Goldsmith, Secret History of the Cabinet of Bonaparte, London 1812; Parl. Hist. XXXVI, 1256–1513, Declaration [of Reasons for declaring war] and debates. 21 Blanc, Espions, 219–224. 22 E. Svedenstierna, Svedenstierna’s Tour of Great Britain, 1802–3, the Travel Diary of an Industrial Spy, trans. E.L. Dellow, Newton Abbot 1973, intro. by M.W. Flinn. 134

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Svedenstierna was repeatedly amazed at the scale of the plant which had been erected in various parts of Britain. He came from one of the most active ironmaking countries on the continent and his astonishment at what he saw is a striking testimony to the advanced nature of the British iron and steel industry. The two men were particularly astonished at the scale of developments in South Wales; Svedenstierna wrote of the railroads, the canals, the furnaces, the processes, the mines, the steam engines, the costs, the methods, all of which de Bonnard clearly noted also from his own perspective. Indeed at one point Svedenstierna refers to an article on Cort’s puddling process – developed by an employee of the Royal Navy – which had appeared in the French Journal des Mines the year before, a reference which surely came from de Bonnard. They went on to the Midlands, visiting the Coalbrookdale region, the heartland of the new processes in ironmaking, and on to the Black Country and Birmingham. By this time it was April of 1803, and the international tension made de Bonnard the object of some suspicion, at long last: ‘particularly if one, as a stranger, presents oneself in the company of a Frenchman’, refusal of access to industrial premises became likely, as Svedenstierna now discovered. De Bonnard was, however, still able to meet and talk with James Watt, since he had a letter of introduction from Riche de Prony in Paris, the author of the best contemporary account of the steam engine in any language, and both men saw John Wilkinson and his great Bradley iron works. From Birmingham de Bonnard decided to go home. His companion Svedenstierna says it was de Bonnard’s ‘affairs’ which ‘hastened his return to France’; the approach of war was no doubt an even more urgent element in his decision. De Bonnard published an article in the Journal des Mines on British methods within a year of returning to France. There was an active traffic in industrial technology between Britain and the continent even during the war years, and this traffic included the emigration of artisans from Britain to the continent. This was illegal under British law, and several men were caught and imprisoned for trying or succeeding in attempting to leave. A Belgian called Leuven Bauwens went to London in 1798 with an Englishman called Paul Harding to collect and export cotton machinery, and to recruit the workers to operate it. Harding was jailed and his machines confiscated, but Bauwens reached Hamburg with both machines and recruits; several of his recruits promptly deserted him, but he reached Paris in the end with five artisans and some machines. He was able to set up a cotton mill in Ghent by 1800. At about this same time William Cockerill, originally from Lancashire, arrived at Verviers in Belgium and began making carding and spinning machinery. He visited England during the period of peace to collect his wife and youngest son, and while there recruited a skilled mechanic 135

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from Nottingham called James Hodson. These men set up a thriving machine-making business over the following decade. Charles Albert from Strasbourg had been imprisoned at Lancaster Assizes in 1791 for doing exactly what Cockerill did ten years later – recruiting a mechanic to work abroad – but when he finally got back to France after his release he had several British artisans with him, and in 1803 he set up a factory to make textile machinery in Paris.23 The twenty or so artisans who sailed to France on the same ship as Colonel Thornton were sure of a welcome if they could find a French employer. Colonel Beauvoisins and de Bonnard trod the line between clandestine espionage and honest investigation very warily. Beauvoisins was just about on the clandestine side in most of his activities, and certainly so in his dealings with Despard, while de Bonnard was just about on the open side of the line. Other French visitors were more clearly spies: FrançoisDominique de Regnaud, former Comte de Montlosier, like Fiévée a journalist, was sent with instructions from Bonaparte (via Fouché) as early as April 1801. He was to contact Otto, and to report back on the émigrés. He attempted this last by pretending to be a convert to royalism – the war was still on, so any other guise would get him expelled – but this did not work.24 The problem such men faced was that they were all too obviously French or foreign – de Bonnard and Svedenstierna found this also – and by the latter part of 1802 all Frenchmen were under some suspicion, while the émigrés all knew each other all too well after ten years of exile, particularly after their ranks were thinned by the returnees after 1799. There was also the likelihood of other ‘moles’ being introduced, not just into émigré circles, but into the British espionage service as well. The case of Méhée de la Touche is one example. He claimed to be an escaped prisoner of Bonaparte’s but he was at least initially disbelieved by those he saw in the Foreign Office.25 On the whole it seems unlikely that these French spies had much success. Nor did the Commercial Counsellor, who arrived even before the new ambassador, have much success either. This was Charles-Etienne Coquebert de Montbret, an experienced diplomat who was sent to Britain expressly to discuss a commercial treaty; his credentials were accepted on 24 June.26 In the event the British government might have characterised his purpose, as the negotiations went on, not so much to

23 W.O. Henderson, Britain and Industrial Europe 1750–1870, Leicester 1972, 25–26, 107–109, 46–47. 24 Blanc, Espions, 203–206. 25 A. Cobban, ‘The Great Mystificaton of Méhée de la Touche’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 41, 1968, 100–106; Sparrow, Secret Service, 264–265, 270–277. 26 FO 27/66.

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make a trade treaty which facilitated trade as to develop an Anglo– French agreement which would protect French industry from British competition. One of the assumptions behind the conclusion of peace on the British side had been that trade would rapidly revive. In this they were quite mistaken. The consular regime was protectionist to the core, even if Bonaparte, as his outburst at the Louvre exhibition showed, fully appreciated the high quality of British manufactures. French manufacturers, particularly of textiles, were adamant that they could not compete with British goods. The regime was generally sympathetic to them, and maintained a ban on certain British imports which had been imposed in Directorial days, and on 19 May 1802 raised tariff rates – only temporarily, so it was said – and also put a tax on British reexported colonial goods which was half again higher than that paid on French goods. The return of the French colonies to French control would now permit the importation of colonial goods direct from their source. It was a move which was purely mercantilist.27 Coquebert de Montbret was certainly an expert in this field. He had been French consul-general to the German Hanse at Hamburg in the reign of Louis XVI, and consul at Dublin during the early years of the Revolution until 1792 – so he was Colonel Fauvelet’s predecessor there. In the revolutionary years he was employed in the Administration des Mines, and then in the weights and measures administration until 1799, during which time the new metric system was introduced. He was thus well acquainted with economic and commercial matters in the North Sea area, and as consul-general at Amsterdam from 1800 he had also been involved with matters related to the exchange and welfare of prisoners of war. He rapidly accepted the new Bonapartist regime, just as he had happily worked for both royalist and revolutionary governments. His Bonapartism, if it even existed, was no doubt helped by his son’s participation in the Egyptian expedition as a young officer. During his time at the Administration des Mines he had established the Journal des Mines in 1795, and may well have known August Henri de Bonnard, the industrial spy.28 Coquebert, for all his apparent expertise, proved quite unable to reach any commercial agreement in London in 1802–1803, despite spending almost a year there – he arrived in May 1802, soon after the British ratification, well before the arrival of the ambassador. The British wanted to return to the provisions of the Eden treaty of the years before the wars, which the French manufacturers had quickly come to regret, though the wine exporters in the south of France had benefited. This

27

E. Tele, ‘Napoleon Ier et les Intéréts économiques de la France’, Revue du XIXe Siècle–Napoleon 15, 1926, 117–137. 28 Henri-Robert, Dictionnaire des Diplomats. 137

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had established a much freer trade than the manufacturers had liked, largely, as they thought, to the advantage of the British manufacturers. Coquebert himself at times advocated free – or at least freer – trade, but recognised that between Britain and France at the time it was a political impossibility. He first suggested a return to the Eden treaty, but with ‘temporary’ safeguards to protect French industries. His superior, the French Minister of the Interior Jean-Antoine Chaptal, was also a freetrader at heart, but moderately protectionist in practice. Coquebert then suggested a system by which trade of equal value should be permitted, but this was not going to be acceptable to the British, and was ridiculed by Chaptal as being heavily bureaucratic and requiring a licensing system. No doubt this was a major factor in the British rejection as well.29 It is clear that there was little chance of a commercial agreement being concluded – indeed Coquebert’s idea for equal-value trade has about it the air of a final desperate suggestion aiming to rescue a failed negotiation. In addition, Bonaparte could not be shifted from his instinctive protectionist position, for he was, in this and in many other ways, a man of the mercantilist eighteenth century. Any agreement he accepted would need to have obvious advantages for France, in commercial matters as in political, and the British would never ratify such an agreement. In September the French tried to insert Pierre Chépy as a ‘sous-commissaire’, under Coquebert, to be stationed in the Channel Islands. Since this was a major espionage base for the British, both in peace and war, as well as a well-garrisoned and important naval station, the appointment was transparently an espionage device. The lack of progress in the commercial talks was used as a reason for refusing Chépy accreditation. Trade was not flowing as it should, wrote Hawkesbury to Otto, and it was being exposed to numerous vexatious delays; until a new agreement was made, therefore, Chépy’s recognition as a commercial agent was deemed to be ‘postponed’.30 After his work in London Coquebert was sent to Germany, where the political weight of the French regime made his task much simpler; by 1804 he was able to organise the free movement of goods along the Rhine valley, and later he was sent into the Netherlands to reorganise the Dutch Customs service – all to the benefit of the consular, and later the imperial, regime, of course. He was clever and supple enough, in other words, to negotiate successfully in many political climates. Had he had the authority, there is little doubt be could have succeeded in London. His failure was the result of his lack of authority. And it

29

Lefebvre, Napoleon 1799–1807, 168–169. FO 27/66, Otto to Hawkesbury, 15 September 1802 and Hawkesbury to Otto, 18 September 1802. 30

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was failure which Bonaparte always intended. Protectionism was his intention all along. In this matter the statistics, such as they are, tend to support the French policy. The conclusion of peace had opposite effects in Britain and France. In Britain imports rose in 1801, but then fell to a plateau for the next three years. This may be in part due to better harvests in 1801 and 1802. In France imports rose by nearly half as much again between 1800 and 1802, and then fell back slightly: a result, no doubt, of the new French access to the non-European world after the ending of the British naval blockade. But it is in exports that the real story is clearest. French exports rose steadily from 1800 to 1804 at between 7 per cent and 12 per cent annually, so that in the first year of the new war (1804) they were 40 per cent higher than in the last year of the old (1801). Britain’s exports rose more slowly for two years, but fell by nearly a quarter in 1802, and then recovered only slowly; in 1804 exports were still 10 per cent down on 1800. The British statistics reveal the cause: the most serious fall was in re-exports, no doubt the result of the renewed access of western Europe to colonial produce. But Britain’s domestic exports, which began by rising, fell back in 1803. Thus the initial surge in exports was not sustained, and trade fell back to earlier levels; for France, on the other hand, peace saw a great increase in trade.31 Addington’s government was unhappy about the failure to reach a commercial agreement with France, an area of policy much more central to its concerns than it was with Bonaparte, but was probably not really surprised. The disillusion of the French with the Eden treaty was well known in Britain, and the heightened nationalism produced by the Revolution, together with the obvious arrogance of Bonaparte and his regime, would make any French concessions highly unlikely. But a formal treaty was not the only part of the relations of the two states which had a commercial aspect. It was commerce which was one of the driving forces behind the new French colonial campaign, as a means of acquiring those exotic tropical products which otherwise were only obtainable through Britain. The recovery of San Domingo from the rebelling slaves had begun as soon as possible after the conclusion of the Peace Preliminaries, and for a time the campaign had gone well. The re-establishment of French power in the Caribbean was of pressing concern to Britain, which was signalled by the early despatch, at the cost of a brief naval mutiny, of a substantial naval force to the area which had the object of keeping watch on the progress of the French. The expedition of General Leclerc was gradually successful in conquering the French part of the island, and a sideshow under General Richepanse reconquered Guadeloupe, where the rebels 31

Statistics from Mitchell, European Historical Statistics, 297–298. 139

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were reduced once more to slavery.32 In many ways these successful campaigns were quite acceptable to the British, who had no wish to see a successful slave insurrection in the West Indies, which might well spread to their own islands. At the same time, French power in the region was now suddenly very great, for with the recovered islands they had also taken over the other half of San Domingo, formerly the Spanish part, and the presence of their large army and navy in the area emphasised their power. On the other hand, this was not a dispute or a discussion only between Britain and France. In Paris, the Legislative Assembly had agreed to restore slavery in Martinique and other islands, and Bonaparte had given secret instructions for its restoration when the time was opportune in Guadeloupe and San Domingo. General Richepanse in Guadeloupe accomplished this at once, but Leclerc in San Domingo was not in sufficient control to do so, and kept these instructions secret for the present. He had returned French control over much of the land, and had arrested and deported Toussaint L’Ouverture, one of the insurgents’ main leaders, but large areas of the north of the country were still out of his control. His army had suffered considerable casualties in the fighting and as the summer heat arrived it also began to suffer even heavier casualties from disease. Few of Leclerc’s pleas for reinforcements were answered, still less acceded to. When a ship carrying former Guadeloupan rebel-slaves arrived at Le Cap in San Domingo and some of the deportees escaped, the news of the reimposition of slavery in that island spread rapidly and stimulated a new general insurrection in San Domingo.33 The inability of either side to decisively defeat the other produced a hideous war of massacre and destruction. When Leclerc died in November, his successor Rochambeau continued the fight, having received the reinforcements never sent to Leclerc. On the side of the blacks the many chieftains and generals were gradually brought under the control of Dessalines (or were killed), so that by early in 1803 the war was no longer one for freedom from slavery but one for independence from France. And the French army wasted and died as much from disease as from enemy action.34 Again, the British watched all this with quiet satisfaction. Bonaparte does not appear to have appreciated the seriousness of Leclerc’s situation for some time, and certainly he did little to help the expedition until after the general’s death. The first consul was, of course,

32

C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins, London 1938, 288–339; Naval Chronicle VI, 267–268, XXXV, 2–5. 33 James, Black Jacobins, 292–294, 339–341. 34 Ibid., 341–369. 140

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extremely busy, yet he did not fail to pursue his known interest in the possibilities of expanding eastwards, both in the Mediterranean and in India. In September, in the midst of the Swiss crisis, he had sent Colonel Horace Francis Sébastiani de la Porta on board the French frigate Caroline to make a tour of the lands of the eastern Mediterranean. He was to visit Tripoli to ensure the recognition there of the flag of the Italian Republic, then Egypt to see conditions there, where the British were long past the time when they should by treaty have evacuated the country; he was to make contacts with local chiefs, Arab sheikhs, and surviving Mamelukes; in Syria he was to meet Djezzar Pasha and Christian groups, to whom he was to offer French protection, and then visit the French ambassador in Constantinople, the newly installed General Brune, with fresh instructions; on the return journey he was to call in at Corfu and see the condition of the Republic of the Seven Islands. Merry reported Sébastiani’s mission on 25 September, after he had left Paris for the Mediterranean. At the time this was just one of several issues which he was commenting on. On 29 September he reported that French pressure was increasing on Portugal, and thereafter throughout October and for much of November he was preoccupied with reporting on Swiss affairs. At the end of November he reported that Sébastiani was to stop at Acre – the scene of the defeat of Bonaparte by British and local Syrian forces – and he remarked that Sébastiani’s travels were a mark of Bonaparte’s continuing interest in Egypt.35 Sébastiani was able to make this journey – all his stops except the last were in Ottoman territory – because France and the Ottoman empire had agreed a preliminary peace in October 1801, converted to a full peace in June 1802. In the process Ottoman sentiments had been successfully altered: the continued British presence in Egypt was now resented in Constantinople – and in Egypt – and France could pose as the Turks’ friend. One of the provisions of the treaty was that French ships could pass through the Straits into the Black Sea. Russia already had the right to send warships through the Straits in the other direction.36 The results of the news of this peace treaty were twofold: Sébastiani’s mission of investigation, which began only days after the exchange of ratifications, and an increased appreciation on the British side of the strategic importance of Malta. Lord Whitworth arrived in Paris to take up his post as ambassador in November, and now made his own reports to Lord Hawkesbury.

35 FO 27/66, 72, 73, 92, Merry to Hawkesbury, 25 and 29 September and 27 November 1802. 36 S.J. Shaw, Between Old and New: The Ottoman Empire under Sultan Selim III, 1789–1807, Cambridge, Mass. 1971, 271–282.

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His first set of instructions, originally dated in September, had then been fairly general, with at that time a particular note to report on French activities in the East and West Indies, but an updated set, of 14 November, laid more emphasis on events in Germany, Switzerland and Italy. Peace, Hawkesbury remarked, gave Britain ‘a special right to interpose in any case which might lead to the extension of the power and influence of France’, and he picked out Switzerland as a particular problem, and the continued presence of French troops in the Batavian Republic where ‘His Majesty has a peculiar right to interpose on the present occasion’, because in the Treaty of Amiens Britain had recognised the republic as an independent state. It was really too late to assert British interest in Switzerland for the decisive move had been Ney’s invasion, so the assertion was in effect a defiant one. In other words, Whitworth’s instructions applied only to the situation as it was at the time they were issued, not for all time; the only instruction which was always relevant was that to watch out for British interests, as widely defined. These instructions cannot be used as a yardstick to measure British diplomatic performance, for the situation changed constantly.37 Within a week of his arrival in Paris, Whitworth had to comment on Sébastiani, for he forwarded to London a set of despatches which he had received from Talleyrand, and which seemed to be from General Stuart in Egypt. In some unexplained way these had been intercepted by the French. In these despatches Stuart was, it seems, commenting on Sébastiani’s visit to Egypt. Shortly after, perhaps alerted by this and by Merry, who remained in Paris as the ambassador’s minister, Whitworth commented that Bonaparte’s ambition was still to gain control of Egypt, and that in such a case the British must needs hold on to Malta, and must watch the naval situation at Toulon and Ancona as well. It is clear that Whitworth had arrived in Paris fully alert to the possibilities of expansionary ambitions on Bonaparte’s part, and had instantly found confirmation of those suggestions.38 The question of Bonaparte’s ambitions and intentions in the Mediterranean and the East and West Indies was, of course, of paramount concern to the British government in its imperial mode; that of French policy in central Europe rather less so, but still of great importance with regard to homeland security. The first had a direct impact on British imperial dispositions and on its trade, the second suggested even more French expansion, but in Germany instability was seen as an opportunity for Britain to cause trouble for Bonaparte. In the reverse case, Bonaparte was clearly interested in destabilising the Addington govern-

37

Browning, 1–10, Instructions to Whitworth, and Hawkesbury to Whitworth, 15 November 1802. 38 Browning, 15–17, Whitworth to Hawkesbury, 22 and 27 November 1802. 142

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ment, though, since the obvious alternative was a government headed by William Pitt, which was likely to be even more difficult to deal with, the opportunities were less enticing. Hence Bonaparte’s interest in the affairs of Colonel Despard, by way of Colonel Beauvoisins. Despard’s arrest in November effectively blocked any possibility of a change of regime in London. French attention therefore concentrated once more on Ireland. Several of those involved with Despard, and not caught because the raid on the tavern in Lambeth had been premature, were Irish, and they had thereupon fled to Ireland. Their presence and the considerable sympathy for Despard – another Irishman – helped to stimulate more anti-government and anti-British plotting there. And in Ireland there was a good deal more likelihood of success for a plot than in England, though that is not saying much. There had been more than one Irish rebellion during the last war, and the result had been defeat, widespread destruction, many deaths, the abolition of the Irish Parliament, and a much greater British control. This, of course, had by no means lessened the wish of the majority of the Irish population to be rid of the ‘English’ government. It did, however, make it all very much more difficult to persuade sympathisers to contribute to the cause. It was long recognised that it was probably beyond the strength of the Irish alone to expel British rule, and two possible methods of gaining help were recognised. One was to join an English republican rising, a combination which was to destroy the oligarchic regimes in London and Dublin more or less simultaneously. The other was to rise in rebellion in concert with a French armed invasion, either of England or of Ireland. These methods had both been attempted in the 1790s, and each time had failed. Despard’s intentions in London had, in fact, been a combination of both of these: they were predicated on an English rising jointly with one in Ireland and a French invasion, though neither of these had in fact been in prospect at the time. The absence of any plans or indications for either the Irish or French elements is one of the most compelling items of evidence to support the idea that Despard was in fact counselling delay in his London meetings. The co-ordination of these military events was all but impossible. To plot simultaneous risings in Ireland and England and a French invasion was all very well, but to imagine that all three could be accomplished at the same time was military naïveté of the highest order. Despard surely knew this, as would any soldier. This was the first difficulty the Irish plotters faced. For the Irish the need for help from either England or France, or both, posed an even more difficult problem, which insistently confronted those who were working in 1802 for a new rising. Their aims were to establish an independent state in Ireland, but if they waited to launch their rising until after a French invasion began they would be politically beholden to the French, and, given the condition to which 143

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northern Italy, Switzerland and the Netherlands had been reduced, and which was now in 1802 apparently happening to parts of Germany, the net result would be to reduce Ireland to the status of another French satellite. The change would amount to an Irish government being imposed and supported by a French army instead of English direct rule. This was not what they were aiming for. On the other hand, if they rose before a French invasion took place, they would expose themselves to the full power of British reaction, which had been proved to be both brutal and successful in the past. For the leaders of the plot which was forming in 1802 and 1803, therefore, the ideal sequence would be for them to seize power in Ireland, form an independent government, and then at once – that is, within days – receive French armed assistance. This army would then assist in the defeat and expulsion of the British government and forces. An alternative, which might avoid the unpleasant political consequences, would be a French invasion of England, which it was assumed would draw British forces away from Ireland, leaving the island even more vulnerable to an internal rebellion. With the establishment of peace from March 1802 onwards a French invasion of either England or Ireland became highly unlikely. A growth in tension between Britain and France beforehand was certainly required, and the British government was sufficiently suspicious to keep its guard well up. But Beauvoisins had certainly contacted Despard, and Despard will have known something of what was hoped for in Ireland. The failure of whatever it was that Despard intended in England left the Irish to fend for themselves, and at the same time made it all the more necessary that the French dimension should be brought into play. Without the distraction of a rising in England, French military help had become essential. The leaders of the great Irish insurrections of 1798 had been imprisoned in Scotland until the Treaty of Amiens, at which point they had been deported, mainly to the continent, though some, including Despard himself, had been able to return to Ireland. The exiles scattered across western Europe, and for a time they were understandably despondent, and several began to settle down with their families.39 Then in October 1802, before the exchange of ambassadors between Britain and France cooled the air somewhat, Beauvoisins had been despatched to England on his wide and varied mission, and in Paris about the same time the Foreign Minister Talleyrand used Pierre Claude de Poterat to investigate the situation among the expatriate Irish in France. Poterat’s main contact was William James MacNeven, one of the exiled ’98ers, who had been living in Paris, but he also discussed matters with another of them, Thomas Addis Emmet. 39 J.G. Gallaher, Napoleon’s Irish Legion, Carbondale, Ill. 1993, 18–19; M. Elliott, Partners in Revolution, New Haven 1982.

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This is a curious business, capable of more than one interpretation. It may have been just what it seems, Talleyrand investigating. But Poterat already had contacts in émigré circles, and he may have been being used by Talleyrand as a means of warning the British, through the émigrés, who in this interpretation would pass on the news of French interest in Ireland to the British government, that if they continued harbouring Bonaparte’s enemies, Bonaparte was also harbouring Britain’s enemies. This sort of oblique warning had also happened before when Talleyrand had asked that the Bourbons be expelled. That is, the Irish themselves were also being used, and were not really being valued as direct threats to Britain. The continued presence of French forces in Holland led to rumours that they were intended for Ireland rather than the West Indies, and the name of General Humbert, the commander of the French expedition to Ireland in 1798, was linked to this. All of this was very nebulous, and there is no guarantee, nor could there be, that all the hints reached British ears, nor that if they did they were correctly interpreted. It is all, however, very much in accordance with Talleyrand’s methods. But then it all blew away when the expedition in Holland finally sailed for Louisiana.40 The quantity of firm intentions in all this is impossible to gauge. There were certainly French forces in the Netherlands; there were certainly plans to send those troops to Louisiana, and they did sail in January. Yet there were also certainly contacts between the French government and the Irish exile leaders in Paris, and between those Irishmen and their colleagues in Dublin. It looks rather as if the French government was happily keeping several irons heating nicely all at the same time. If anything had happened with Despard or in Ireland, that French force in the Netherlands was well placed to sail to England, or to Ireland, even more easily than to Louisiana. The repeated delays it was subjected to might be no more than carefully staged interruptions, in the hope that Despard, or later the Irish, might move and so provide an opportunity for a sudden invasion. The revelation of the situation in San Domingo in January, just before the Louisiana force sailed, might have been the point at which it was finally decided to send the force to Louisiana. All this meant that the British government could be kept alert, and under apparent threat, and that the Irish plotters and exiles could also be encouraged, all at no obvious cost to the French, for even the French troops in Holland were maintained and supplied at Dutch expense. It was a pleasantly comprehensive scheme involving virtually no French resources, but keeping several other groups occupied. Meanwhile in Ireland the plotters were energised above all by the arrival from France 40

Elliott, Partners, 298–300. 145

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in October 1802 – again – of Robert Emmet, Thomas’s brother, and also a survivor of ’98.41 He stayed quiet for a time, but, given the relationship to Thomas, and Thomas’s involvement with the surviving members of the United Irishmen Directory, it is difficult to believe that Robert was innocent of involvement in the French plotting. There were other troubles in Ireland at the time, the winter of 1802–1803, but they had little to do with the political situation, being mainly what are rather blandly classified as ‘agrarian’ troubles, that is, widespread shortages of food and starvation in the countryside. The government in Dublin was, of course, concerned, but decided that there was nothing that was political or seriously threatening in the situation.42 In the winter of 1802–1803 there was little about the Irish situation to concern the British government in immediate terms, and so, for the present, little to attract French interest. The Irish exiles in France were scattered, out of touch with each other and with the situation in Ireland, and ignored by the consular government. Some, like Thomas Addis Emmet, were planning to emigrate to the United States. In the list of complaints he delivered to Hawkesbury on 17 August, Louis Guillaume Otto had included, along with comments on the Bourbons and on the émigrés, a bitter complaint about the conduct of the newspaper press in Britain. No doubt in this he will have evoked some sympathy in the minds of British ministers, who, like government officials everywhere, would have much preferred to get on with their work without the press watching. But, as every British minister knew full well and instinctively, there was only a very limited amount which they could do to limit press actions and comments. Bonaparte – for it was clear that all during this he was the complainant – had one particular group of newspapers as his target, the journals which were written and published by the émigrés in London, though other papers also incensed him. These émigré journals were clearly effective in their comments on the great enemy, as was evidenced by his reaction, but they were also scurrilous and practised at inventing calumnies; Bonaparte had a good foundation for his ire. At the same time his treatment at the hands of the English press was no worse than that meted out to British politicians. In one cartoon Bonaparte may be shown as a conjuror, producing from a steaming cauldron such delights as ‘anarchy, pride, murder, confusion, treason, war’, and so on.43 Yet in another Charles James Fox and his wife and companions in France would be drawn grossly fat and fawning on the first consul, or elsewhere

41

Ibid., 302. Ibid., 298. 43 J. Ashton, English Caricature and Satire on Napoleon I, London 1888, 119–120. 42

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being depicted as ‘English Patriots at the Shrine of Despotism’.44 There is no sign that Fox complained. The French had complained repeatedly about the émigré press, in particular about the work of Jean-Gabriel Peltier who had published a long succession of émigré journals since the Revolution.45 Bonaparte’s government had complained several times since 1800 about him, and at one point during the Amiens treaty negotiations had threatened to hold up progress in the talks if their demands were not met. In May, and more than once in July, the French had tried to get the British to suppress Peltier, and when Hawkesbury would not comply, had simply made even more fuss, branding Hawkesbury’s reluctance as feebleness.46 Bonaparte’s complaints on this score certainly had considerable justification, but at the same time they were also calculated and carefully timed. In August, for example, Hawkesbury had replied to Otto’s complaints by a blunt refusal to do anything at all. Britain ‘cannot and never will in consequence of any representation from a foreign power make any concession which can be in the smallest degree dangerous to the liberty of the press as secured by the constitution of this country’, he explained, through Merry.47 Respect for constitutions was somewhat less engrained in France than it was in Britain, and Bonaparte seems to have believed the British government should simply crush Peltier, as he himself could have done. What had sparked the note of 17 August was an issue of a new émigré paper, L’Ambigu, edited by Peltier, which was more than usually vituperative, and which appeared to call for the assassination of Bonaparte. Since Bonaparte was correctly convinced that the attempted assassination of December 1800, the Rue Niçaise incident, also emanated from émigré activities, this struck home. The question went to Spencer Perceval, the attorney-general in Addington’s government, who agreed that a case for criminal libel could be laid against the newspaper’s editor. In the meantime, however, Bonaparte had published, in Moniteur, an article accusing the British government of bad faith over the press issue; the article was not signed, but was recognised to be by Bonaparte. This struck a chord in London just as L’Ambigu had in Paris. Hawkesbury, having consulted his Cabinet colleagues, ordered Merry to confront Talleyrand over the two complaints, and to make the entirely valid point

44

E.g., in Gillray’s cartoon of Fox and his wife at Bonaparte’s audience, Ashton, Caricature, 122–123. 45 H. Maspero-Clerc, Un Journaliste contre-revolutionnaire: Jean-Gabriel Peltier (1760–1825), Paris 1973; S. Burrows, French Exile Journalism and European Politics 1792–1814, London 2000, 109–117. 46 Burrows, French Exile Journalism, 113–115. 47 FO 27/66, Hawkesbury to Merry, 28 August 1802. 147

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that whereas the Ambigu article was in a privately produced journal, that in Moniteur was in an official publication; Merry was to demand an official retraction.48 Talleyrand assumed the offensive in the interview, demanding that the British government accede to the French demand on the grounds that the ‘general law of nations’ – by which he meant Bonaparte’s requirements – overrode the individual laws of any single nation. Merry blocked this by pointing out that this would ‘subvert the independence’ of any state, and would render it subject to ‘the arbitrary opinion of another’. Perhaps Talleyrand took the point that this was a sword which could cut both ways; perhaps it was the news that proceedings had been instituted against Peltier by the British government; but the subject was effectively dropped for several months. It was not, of course, solved. It lay between the two disputants, available for use if needed.49 For it was quite likely that Bonaparte felt personally aggrieved at the comments in the various British journals, yet it is scarcely an issue of such national importance that it can be thought of as vital. He certainly made other attempts to procure a diminution of the anti-French and anti-Bonaparte journalistic rhetoric in London. Joseph Fiévée’s visit to London in summer 1802 was in part to investigate the state of public opinion in Britain, but he was also involved in attempts to ‘buy’ journals, by which we might understand a variety of expedients, such as bribery of the editors, or payments for placing articles, or even the purchase of a whole newspaper. It is highly doubtful if any of these measures would have had much effect, and Fiévée must have quickly realised this. Later, General Andréossy, the French ambassador, tried to influence coverage of France and Bonaparte, but he was equally unsuccessful, which he blamed on Fiévée having queered his pitch by his earlier efforts.50 In reality the journalistic scene in London was so unstable and competitive that these attempts would have quickly become known and so would have failed in their purpose. These were, in fact, fairly unimportant attempts, as well as being unsuccessful, and in Paris the matter was clearly seen as only a part of the whole scene. The way in which it was taken up, dropped, and taken up again, indicates quite clearly that it was an issue which the French government used when it wished to distract the British government’s attention, or when it wished to find an issue with which to attack Britain when Britain had raised a problem which the French did not wish to answer. Historians who have studied the newspaper issue intensively have tended to overestimate the importance of the matter; it was one element only in 48

Burrows, French Exile Journalism, 116–119; FO 27/67, Hawkesbury to Merry, 13 April 1802. 49 FO 27/64, Merry to Hawkesbury, 5 September 1802. 50 Deutsch, Genesis, 113. 148

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the situation, and when the issue was war or peace, not simply pointscoring, as it became in April and May 1803, the journalism problem was wholly absent. Thus it seems more than a coincidence that the press issue was raised in August just at the time when Bonaparte had ordered officials not to operate some parts of a post office treaty between the two states, apparently because Bonaparte had taken against the person of the secretary of the Post Office, who owned some shares in two of the London antiFrench newspapers.51 This may have been part of the press issue, so that the French government could continue to prevent the arrival of British newspapers, though Merry, in reporting it, put the change down to Bonaparte’s ‘intoxication with power’.52 A fortnight later Talleyrand denied any knowledge of the whole matter, and there it rested.53 That is, the press issue had effectively distracted British attention from the post office issue. The French action, however, was a clear breach of the Treaty of Amiens. The same sequence can be seen in January. Talleyrand raised the press issue again on 27 January 1803 in rather stronger terms than before. There had been no provocation by the French, he insisted, and went on to claim that some of the London newspapers were under ministerial control, by implication asserting that the British government was responsible for some at least of the hostile accounts.54 This was certainly the case in France, where the numerous journals of the revolutionary years had been progressively reduced on one pretext or another to no more than a handful. In general these did as the government bid, this being the only way they could continue to publish. And Talleyrand was not wholly wrong on the power of British ministers, even if Whitworth denied it. Ministers knew plenty of ways of influencing newspapers, from bribery, to regular pensions to editors, to allowing some journalists privileged access to news. All these methods were in use, but none of them ever ensured that newspapers always did the government’s bidding; all too often, so ministers might say, these same newspapers exhibited a disconcerting independence. To claim that ministers ‘controlled’ newspapers was to misrepresent the case; in that, Whitworth’s disclaimer was quite correct, as ministers could ruefully confirm.55 However, the truth or otherwise of the matter was not the real issue. Talleyrand’s new complaint came at a time when the British had raised

51

FO 27/65, Feeling (Secretary to the Post Office) to Lord Harvey, 27 August 1802, and FO 323/4, Hawkesbury to Whitworth, 27 September 1802. 52 FO 27/63, Merry to Hawkesbury, 18 August 1802. 53 FO 27/64, Merry to Hawkesbury, 3 September 1802. 54 Browning 52–54, Whitworth to Hawkesbury, 27 January 1803. 55 A. Aspinall, Politics and the Press, c. 1780–1850, London 1949. 149

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one of the issues which had supposedly been settled by the Amiens treaty. Neither side had been especially expeditious in implementing all the terms. The British had been lax in handing back conquered colonies, and the French had been slow in even preparing to reclaim them. Indeed, General Decaen had been appointed to command at Pondichéry some time earlier, but he had not yet sailed. Similarly the great difficulties involved in getting all the European powers lined up behind the Maltese settlement and the delay in electing a new grand master had been the real causes of the delay of the British evacuation of those islands. At the same meeting at which he complained about the press Talleyrand asked about British intentions on the evacuation of Malta, and Whitworth claimed to be without instructions on the question. Talleyrand pointed out that the election of the grand master would soon be completed, and that the Russian tsar had agreed to become a guarantor. The tone of this part of the interview was more enquiring than hostile; both governments knew of the difficulties and the reasons for the delay. So Talleyrand’s reason for raising the press issue was not because of the conduct of the British press as such, for Bonaparte could control the press in France and could largely prevent the circulation there of émigré journals published in London – and the last journal given to quoting the British press had been suppressed in September.56 It was therefore a distraction from something else. A fortnight earlier, on 14 January, Whitworth had been told by Hawkesbury to raise the issue of the return of sequestrated property, that is, British-owned property in France which had been seized during the war.57 In the Amiens treaty an article had been devoted to this, in which it had been agreed that there should be a mutual restitution of such property. The British government had complied relatively readily; the French had done nothing. At the same time, Whitworth reported two unrelated incidents which were good examples of the arrogant behaviour of the French government. Count Morkov, the Russian ambassador in Paris, had been charged by the tsar to obtain, or at least seek, compensation for the king of Sardinia for his lost mainland territories. Whitworth had been doing some investigating, it seems, and reported now that Morkov thought he had an agreement that Elba should go to the king, but then saw, in the Moniteur, that the island had been annexed to France. This had happened in August 1802, and Whitworth was reporting it five months later. Presumably Morkov had revealed the story on purpose, as an example of Bonaparte’s tactics; not that Whitworth really needed the implied warning.58

56 57 58

FO 27/64, 68, Merry to Hawkesbury, 12 September 1802. Browning, 47–48, Hawkesbury to Whitworth, 14 January 1803. Browning, 49–52, Whitworth to Hawkesbury, 24 January 1803. 150

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In the same letter, Whitworth reported on the problems of Mr Edgeworth, the father of the novelist Maria. The family had been in France since October, visiting Flanders and then the Paris region, and meeting many celebrities, in the usual way of well-connected or famous British visitors. Suddenly on 24 January Edgeworth was ordered to leave France. The problem was his name, for he was assumed to be related to, or even to be the brother of, the Abbé Edgeworth who had attended Louis XVI on the scaffold. No doubt some functionary had recalled the name and jumped to a wrong conclusion; the bureaucracy then spat out an order. Like a sensible man, Edgeworth had turned to Whitworth for aid, and Whitworth had smoothed matters over without trouble.59 This was not the first case of this type. In September Merry had reported the arrest and imprisonment in the Temple of the ci-devant prince de Bouillon, who, as Captain d’Auvergne of the Royal Navy, had organised a highly efficient and effective intelligence system from Jersey during the late war. The French knew this, of course, and it was perhaps foolhardy of the man to visit Paris, even in times of peace, even with all the necessary documents in full order. He also wore naval uniform all the time, and even attended one of Bonaparte’s parades. Like Edgeworth it was some time before anything happened – though in d’Auvergne’s case only a few days: he was recognised at the parade he attended. Then he was arrested at seven in the morning, interrogated, and jailed for several days before being released with an order to leave France in twenty-four hours. Without the intervention of Merry – d’Auvergne had sent a servant to the Minister as soon as he was arrested – he would not have been released, there is no doubt.60 The affair of d’Auvergne in particular is an overt sign that both governments were alert to the secret activities of each other. Several men sent to Britain can be identified as spies and agents of one sort or another – Beauvoisins, de Bonnard – and a similar traffic went the other way. The British had the advantage in that their agents were often native Frenchmen or women, and so could travel with less difficulty in France than the French could in Britain, though they needed passports and identity papers. Also they were liable to arrest on suspicion. Two British agents, Charles Le Bourgeois and Louis Picot, landed in France in January 1803, having expressed their intention of killing the first consul, but were arrested before they even reached Paris and were incarcerated in the Temple.61 In Britain the representative of the Bank of France was

59

Hare, Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, vol. 1. FO 27/64, 64 and 66, Merry to Hawkesbury, 8 and 12 September 1802; G.R. Balleine, The Tragedy of Phillippe d’Auvergne, London and Chichester 1973, ch. 12. 61 Sparrow, Secret Service, 265–266. 60

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also Bonaparte’s agent, Laubeypie, and reported to both the ambassador Andréossy, and to Bonaparte.62 In Paris the embassy was staffed by men who had long been active in clandestine work. Merry had had as his secretary John Mandeville, who also acted as his courier and who continued in these posts under Whitworth; he was thus familiar with Paris and with Merry’s work; he continued in Foreign Office employment for another four decades. The First Secretary of the embassy was James Talbot, who had been engaged in espionage in Paris, Switzerland and Germany in the 1790s. And Whitworth himself, of course, had experience of such work in Denmark and Russia. With such men in post French suspicions were automatic and fully justified.63 None of this – the press, the sequestration question, the spies, the suspicion – was of especial concern to either government. These issues dropped from the agenda when concerns developed over matters of real power. On the same day that Talleyrand bombasted over the émigré press, Whitworth noted that Colonel Sébastiani had returned from his tour of the eastern Mediterranean.64 Three days later his report was published in the Moniteur. This is a remarkably swift process, particularly in view of the fact that the original manuscript had been extensively edited by the first consul. Perhaps Sébastiani had sent it off in advance. Rumour later had it that it had been in part Bonaparte’s own work rather than Sébastiani’s, but it seems that, if anything, a good deal of it was edited to cause less offence than Sébastiani’s original would have done. If that was the intention, it failed utterly.65 Sébastiani’s mission had been partly political in purpose, partly diplomatic, partly commercial, and wholly espionage. Bonaparte had been steadily rebuilding French influence in the Muslim territories around the Mediterranean since he seized power. Sébastiani visited Tripoli to extract diplomatic recognition. The Dey of Algiers had also been the object of Bonapartist attentions in the winter, with the aim of stopping the old payment of protection money which the Italian states which had fallen under French control had been accustomed to make to prevent raids and the enslavement of their peoples. For a time an invasion of Algiers seemed imminent, and a detailed naval and military plan was made (to be eventually used successfully in 1830), but the Dey submitted.66 In the Ottoman empire the invasion of Egypt had been 62

Ibid., 26. DNB, Mandeville, Talbot, Whitworth. 64 Browning, 54–56, Whitworth to Hawkesbury, 27 January 1803. 65 Deutsch, Genesis, 117–118. 66 Browning, 54–56, 56–58, Whitworth to Hawkesbury, 27 and 31 January 1803; J.B. Wolf, The Barbary Coast: Algeria under the Turks, New York 1979, 326–329. 63

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succeeded by a British occupation, rapidly becoming just as unpopular, and viewed with increasing suspicion by the Sultan.67 The report contained derogatory comments on General Stuart, the British commander in Egypt, and predicted that the occupation would continue a long time. Already in July 1802 Bonaparte had made a commercial treaty with the Ottoman Sultan permitting French ships unfettered access to the Black Sea through the Straits.68 Now Sébastiani’s report commented that only a few thousand French troops would suffice for a new conquest of Egypt, and he had had meetings with Egyptian mamelukes and sheikhs, and with Djezzar Pasha in Syria and various Christian groups in Egypt and Syria. On his way home he had visited Corfu and reported that annexation of the Republic of the Seven Isles would be simplicity itself. The publication of all this and more in the Moniteur on 30 January was a European sensation. Every government in Europe was alarmed at the implications, and the Ottoman empire felt directly threatened. Britain felt fully justified in holding on to Malta, and was given a new argument to do so, even though this had been done in the first place for very different reasons. It rapidly became clear to Talleyrand, and to Bonaparte himself, that the publication of the report had been a mistake, at least in the way it had appeared. It is, indeed, difficult to account for it. Maybe it was a warning of what France could do if it wished and so it was intended as an indication of French restraint. Maybe it was for some unfathomable Bonapartist reason which made sense only to the first consul himself. It certainly marked the point at which the British government came to the conclusion that further attempts to conciliate the French government would be pointless, and that only by adopting a vigorously antagonistic stance would it be possible to preserve the peace. For it is clear that both sides in the dispute were seriously attempting to maintain the peace between them; only the methods, not the aims, of the British government had changed. On the French side, the Foreign Minister Talleyrand and the ambassador in London, Andréossy, were equally intent on preserving the peace, though their methods were hardly helpful. And Bonaparte, once he realised what had happened, made apparently sincere efforts in the same direction, though hindered somewhat by Whitworth, who certainly did his best at the end. For all that they all failed.

67 E. Ingram, ‘The Geopolitics of the First British Expedition to Egypt – IV: Occupation and Withdrawal, 1801–3’, Middle Eastern Studies 31, 1995, 317–346; Shaw, Between Old and New, 274–278. 68 V.J. Puryear, Napoleon and the Dardanelles, Berkeley and Los Angeles 1951; Shaw, Between Old and New, 281.

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COLLISION The descent into crisis At the beginning of 1803 the British political situation had remained fragmented. The general election of the previous year had made little or no difference, though one politician noted that the new House of Commons was ‘more loose and unsettled’ than before;1 perhaps this was due to the relaxation of the pressures of war. The government of Henry Addington still commanded a firm majority in Parliament, but there was a disturbing number of prominent political figures who were outside the government. Indeed, it was common for it to be remarked that all the talent in the House was on the opposition benches – a facile and inaccurate remark all too often repeated by later historians; it is worth noting that Addington’s ministry included three future Prime Ministers (Portland, Perceval and Hawkesbury), as well as Lord Castlereagh, the great Foreign Secretary. Nevertheless, although Addington had succeeded in bringing in such secondary figures as Castlereagh and Tierney during the past year, Pitt, Grenville, Melville, Canning and Windham, to say nothing of Fox and Grey, all remained out. In January 1803 more discussions took place between the main leaders, in part with a view to a reconstitution of the Cabinet. Addington had regularly consulted or informed Pitt ever since he took office, either through his brother or his colleagues, or sometimes by letter. Grenville and his people were out of Addington’s reach by now, showing themselves to be thoroughly disgruntled at almost everything he did. It had never been worth attempting to bring Fox in. And yet all these men and groups had connections of various sorts as well as differences. Fox, for example, though insistent always that a war with France was quite unjustified, was now no longer such a friend of the French regime as he had been, particularly since his visit to that country, where he noted that liberty was ‘asleep’.2 He and his friends were socially connected with many of Grenville’s family and friends, and they had all been politically connected as well before the split of 1794. The only thing keeping

1 2

Durham University Library, Grey Papers, Tierney to Grey, 4 December 1802. C. Hobhouse, Fox, London 1934, quoting Creevey quoting Fox. 154

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them apart was foreign policy, and as Fox’s position modified, so did the distance between them all lessen.3 The differences between Pitt and Addington, on the other hand, were over Addington’s financial policies which Pitt thought in some ways unwise; Pitt also thought he had detected in some of Addington’s words a criticism of Pitt’s own earlier policies. This was probably not intended as such, but in fact Addington’s more than competent conduct of the public finances was an implicit criticism of Pitt’s earlier work.4 On foreign affairs, on the other hand, Pitt and Addington were at one, and by this time it was foreign affairs which divided Grenville from both Pitt and Addington, even though Pitt and Grenville were cousins and friends. There were thus plenty of ways in which connections between the groups and parties could be made if the will was there. Pitt was the key. If he joined either Addington or the Grenvilles the move would probably be decisive, yet he himself was curiously indecisive on the whole matter. He was at Bath in December and agreed to meet Addington in the New Year, but travelled to the meeting by way of other meetings with his vehement supporters George Rose and Lord Malmesbury, who were strongly anti-Addington, and a short stay at Dropmore with Lord Grenville.5 With Pitt, Grenville as usual found himself in cordial agreement on policy matters, but he also found Pitt quite unwilling to join in any movement to overthrow Addington’s ministry.6 With Addington Pitt had a similarly inconclusive meeting, being assertive and lecturing the Chancellor of the Exchequer over finances, though he was supportive over foreign affairs. Just as he was unable to join Grenville to overthrow Addington, he was also unable to agree to join Addington by taking up a government post. Fox, meanwhile, though opposed to Addington on many grounds, was reluctant to attack him too strongly, for he had at least made peace with France. The various political discussions of January therefore brought no immediate result, though they did rather clarify matters: Pitt would be likely to support Addington, Fox and Grenville likely to oppose him. The ground was thus prepared for the decisive change which took place a year later when Pitt took office with Addington, and Fox and Grenville formed a more-or-less united opposition. It was only after all this was talked through that Colonel Sébastiani’s report appeared, and was soon reported in detail in Britain. The report was one produced by a soldier, a cavalryman who had been looking at possibilities for victories; it was reviewed and edited by Bonaparte,

3 4 5 6

Sack, Grenvillites, 71–75. Ehrman, Pitt, 569. Ibid., 579–580; Ziegler, Addington, 174. Ziegler, Addington, 174–175; Ehrman, Pitt, 580; Sack, Grenvillites, 66–67. 155

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another soldier, whose appetite for victories in the old eastern lands had only been whetted by his Egyptian adventure. Between them the colonel and the consul had allowed soldierly keenness to overwhelm diplomatic and political sense. It is quite certain that Talleyrand did not see the report before it was published, for he would never have allowed it out in the provocative form in which it appeared in the Moniteur. Whitworth mentioned the report in a letter to Hawkesbury the day after it was published, but only after a rather longer discussion of the French quarrel with the Dey of Algiers, and then only in relation to Sébastiani’s comments on General Stuart.7 Presumably he had not yet had a chance to read the whole thing. But Talleyrand, or perhaps Bonaparte, does seem to have appreciated the difficulty the French were in quickly enough, and at a dinner where Whitworth and he were both present Colonel Sébastiani himself retracted his remarks about Stuart.8 The issue could not but be linked with the problem of Malta, and on 7 February Whitworth, having digested the report, wrote two despatches. One was mainly about Malta, warning the government in London that the nomination of a new grand master was likely soon. (The Bailli de Ruspoli, his election flawed, had been discarded and the Pope had nominated the Bailli Giovanni Tommasi, whose election was confirmed in March.9) Despite this development Whitworth was adamant that Britain must nevertheless hold on to Malta. He pointed out that the French had a force of 8,000 men in Corsica, and ships at Genoa, clearly implying that he thought Malta could be seized very swiftly, if the British troops in the island were withdrawn.10 There is in fact no necessary relevance in this to Malta, but Whitworth was willing to use any argument or instrument which came to hand to persuade the government on Malta. Whitworth’s second despatch was a report on a meeting he had just had with Talleyrand, in which they had discussed Sébastiani’s report. Talleyrand dismissed this as unimportant and tried to explain it away, but he then asked when the British forces would leave Alexandria and Malta, thereby showing he also linked the report and Malta. Whitworth pointed out, yet again, that the detailed prescriptions in the Amiens treaty had not yet been complied with. Talleyrand denied any intention on Bonaparte’s part to re-occupy Egypt, or to interfere there, despite the manifest interest shown by Sébastiani in fortifications, the condition of local forces and the relations between Turks and Arabs and Mamelukes. Having made it thus quite clear that such a move was indeed under

7 8 9 10

Browning, 56–58, Whitworth to Hawkesbury, 31 January 1803. Browning, 59, Whitworth to Hawkesbury, 3 February 1803. Hardman, Malta, 466. Browning, 60–61, Whitworth to Hawkesbury, 7 February 1803. 156

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consideration – for Whitworth had not suggested it – Talleyrand ended the meeting with one of those vague but menacing remarks which authoritarian figures pronounce in order to end conversations where they are on weak ground: he was now prepared, he said, for any British moves and actions, whatever they were.11 This conversation rather supports the idea that the publication of the Sébastiani report was intended as a warning to the British of what could happen, or would happen, if war broke out again between Britain and France; it was certainly provocative.12 It was somewhat lessened in its impact, if this was the case, by all the surrounding material which was also mentioned – Malta and the treaty, in particular – and still more so by yet another French complaint that the activities of French émigrés in Britain were inimical, which Whitworth passed on to Hawkesbury on 9 February. Four days later also, Talleyrand complained about an article in the Morning Post.13 He must have known that the Post was an opposition organ if anything, and even less amenable to British government influence than most papers; the fact of its hostility towards France should also have given the French pause, since some of the leaders of that opposition – Fox and others – had so recently been in Paris and been entertained by Bonaparte. That is, the same old methods were being used by Talleyrand in an attempt to soften the impact of Sébastiani’s report: just as the British government raised an issue in which they were in the right, or had strong grounds for a grievance, Talleyrand issued a series of complaints designed to distract British attention – the press, the émigrés, Malta, and so on. All this time the British government had been searching for means to strengthen its hand against Bonaparte. Complaints about his treatment of the French satellites had been made repeatedly, but in the one case where a satellite, Switzerland, had seemed likely to slip the leash, no support had been forthcoming from the better-placed continental powers, in particular Austria. Nevertheless Russia had been bothered by the Swiss affair, and the replacement of Panin by Alexander Vorontsov was an encouraging sign of Russian policy. Panin had been an anglophile, certainly, but Alexander Vorontsov was the brother of the Russian ambassador in London, Simon Vorontsov; his appointment was a good sign of Russian benevolence towards Britain. Tsar Paul had been very keen on expanding his power in the Mediterranean, and had been annoyed when Britain took and occupied

11

Browning, 61–64, Whitworth to Hawkesbury, 7 February 1803. Lefebvre, Napoleon 1799–1807, 175–177. 13 Browning, 64–65, Whitworth to Hawkesbury, 7 February 1803, 68–69, Whitworth to Hawkesbury, 11 February 1803. 12

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Malta without reference to, or participation by, Russia. Tsar Alexander inherited his father’s Mediterranean interest, but without his obsessiveness. The Republic of the Seven Islands he regarded as a Russian protectorate, and the Sébastiani report’s comments on that subject were annoying – an example of the carelessness of the colonel and the arrogance of the first consul in publishing such inflammatory comments. The continuing British occupation of Malta could well, therefore, have been an annoyance to the tsar and could have soured Russo–British relations as they had with his father. But this was not the case. From December various Russian ministers began hinting that the British should retain the Maltese islands, at least for a time. On 20 January 1803 the Foreign Minister Adam Czartoryski stated plainly to the British ambassador, Admiral Sir John Borlase Warren, that the tsar wished the British to keep the islands. Warren’s report on this reached Hawkesbury in the middle of the Franco–British row over the implications of Sébastiani’s report, on 8 February.14 This was a substantial encouragement to the British in their argument with Bonaparte and Talleyrand. It did not mean that the tsar would go so far as forming an alliance with Britain, but it did indicate that a degree of Russian diplomatic support over the question of Malta could be expected. And if the tsar was thus involved, the other eastern powers, Austria and Prussia, could well be encouraged to take a less subservient position. Yet Russian help was still distinctly limited, and it had been made clear to Hawkesbury more than once that a Russo–British alliance would be far too provocative a move, which might well provoke Bonaparte to construct his own anti-Russian alliance.15 As a result of all this, the French diplomatic flannel early in February which was designed to distract British attention from the Sébastiani report and its implications did not work. Hawkesbury had seen the Moniteur article and had fastened on two aspects of it with which to confront Talleyrand and through him Bonaparte: the insult to General Stuart, and the general threat to British dominions. The fact that the report appeared in the Moniteur, that ‘it purports to be the report to the first consul of an accredited agent . . . published in the official papers with an official title prefixed to it’, meant that the whole thing ‘must be considered as authorised by the French government’. Hawkesbury emphasised this in a long letter to Whitworth of 9 February, and at the same time he insisted that Malta would be kept as compensation for the French advances elsewhere.16 Whitworth thoroughly approved of this attitude and reported in his reply some suspicious troop movements in

14 15 16

FO 65/52, Warren to Hawkesbury, 18, 19 and 20 January 1803. Fedorak, ‘In Search of a Necessary Ally’, 221–245. Hardman, Malta, 463–465. 158

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the Mediterranean and in Flanders, and the arrival in Paris of a Russian officer, an aide-de-camp of the tsar, who he guessed had come to discuss the partition of Turkey.17 This was all mere guesswork; he had no hard information and was merely extrapolating. And in fact Hawkesbury was well aware of Russian policy in that matter. Whitworth had come to France in the first place with the fixed idea that Malta had to be retained, and he took every opportunity to repeat this. When he next saw Talleyrand, on 14 February, Whitworth went on the offensive at once, taking up Hawkesbury’s point about Malta as compensation for French advances elsewhere, which he claimed, wrongly, had been a principle of the peace treaty. All had been in train for a settlement, he claimed, but then came Sébastiani’s report. ‘I concluded with the distinct declaration that it was impossible for His Majesty to enter into any further discussion relative to Malta unless he received satisfactory explanations on the subject of the first consul’s views.’ Talleyrand fully appreciated the near-ultimatum thus pronounced and asked what the British government required to satisfy their fears. This Whitworth could not say, of course, since it all depended on the views of Bonaparte himself. It seems unlikely, however, that Whitworth really expected what happened next.18 The next day, before Whitworth’s report on the conversation with Talleyrand could have reached London, but surely in the knowledge that Whitworth had made his point in Paris, Hawkesbury had a similarly blunt talk with General Andréossy. He pointed to French advances in Italy, the failure to evacuate Holland in clear violation of the Lunéville treaty, and announced that Malta was being retained as compensation.19 These two meetings – two barrels fired more or less together – clearly had a strong effect in Paris. On the 21st, six days after Andréossy’s meeting with Hawkesbury, and seven days after Talleyrand’s conversation with Whitworth, that is, after enough time had elapsed for the two shots from the British diplomatic guns to have registered, and discussions to have taken place in detail at the Tuileries, Whitworth had a meeting with Bonaparte alone. ‘He desired me to sit down,’ Whitworth reported, ‘as he himself did, on the other side of the table, upon which he placed his elbows.’ In this workmanlike way, the first consul now endeavoured to provide Whitworth with the exposition of his views for which he had asked. For two hours Bonaparte talked, ‘frequently flying from one subject to another’, and Whitworth found ‘very few opportunities of saying a

17

Browning, 70–73, Whitworth to Hawkesbury, 14 February 1803. Browning, 73–75, Whitworth to Hawkesbury, 17 February 1803. 19 P. Coquelle, Napoleon and England, trans. G.D. Knox, London 1904, 36, with references. 18

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word’, a minor Bonapartist victory in itself. Bonaparte began with the immediate problems as he saw them, which were the failure of Britain to evacuate Malta and Alexandria, and went on to complain of the abuse in the British press, particularly the émigré papers. But then his exposition broadened, and he was apparently talking under no restraint. What did France have to gain by a war with ‘England’, he demanded, when France was already the most powerful state in Europe? He made a European tour d’horizon to demonstrate the impossibility of Britain finding an ally, clearly believing that this was a precondition for a new war. He compared the forces at each country’s disposal – France with 480,000 troops, Britain with its fleet which France could not equal in ten years. The Amiens treaty, he said, ‘must be fulfilled’. ‘His purpose was evidently to convince me that on Malta must depend peace or war’, or so Whitworth claimed, though Whitworth’s own fixation on Malta has to be taken into account here. When Whitworth could get a word in, apparently towards the end, he pointed to French advances in Switzerland and Piedmont since the Amiens treaty, which Bonaparte dismissed as ‘bagatelles’; he also pointed to the French failure to deal with the sequestration problem, or to satisfy British claimants for redress over the shipping arrests, even though French claims had been settled within a month of the treaty.20 This interview is the sort of event for which any historian would give his eye teeth to see a full transcript – or perhaps an arm and a leg for a videotape. Whitworth was a good reporter, as any diplomat must be, but his letter reporting the conversation is no more than a summary of what was said and it is perhaps rather better organised than was the oral and apparently unscripted exposition itself; his own ideas also clearly intruded at times. He was clearly not persuaded, nor were Hawkesbury and Addington when they read Whitworth’s comments. Yet Bonaparte must be given credit for the attempt. He was evidently quite sincere in his attempt to set British fears and suspicions at rest, and he was responding to the suggestion by Whitworth in his meeting with Talleyrand that this was a sensible way forward. So Whitworth now had heard an exposition of the first consul’s views at first hand. But Bonaparte had not actually been addressing British suspicions in his long talk; instead he was repeating his own preoccupations. He wholly failed to acknowledge that any of the British complaints or claims were worth answering or had any merit. Instead he complained of the London press, boasted of his own power, emphasised British isolation, and dismissed his own substantial territorial advances as ‘bagatelles’. This last in particular was a characterisation which could only chill the blood of anyone already suspicious of his motives and 20

Browning, 78–85, Whitworth to Hawkesbury, 21 February 1803. 160

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ambitions. Which next advance would be no more than a bagatelle and not worth bothering about? Malta? The Ionian Islands? Parts of Germany? Egypt? And by complaining of the British occupations of Malta and Alexandria, without acknowledging the very real difficulties involved in the situations at both places, he could only enhance British suspicions, which, as he must have known, were that these very places were high on his own list of lands to be seized. He notably also quite failed to make any explanation for the continued French occupation of Holland. To anyone with any political or strategic imagination, this was a much more serious matter to the British at home even than Malta; nor did he consider the sequestration issue, which was part of the Amiens treaty. After all this, the British government could only conclude that while Britain was expected to fulfil its own obligations in the peace treaty to the letter and perhaps beyond, Bonaparte did not feel under a similar obligation himself. The reactions to this series of arguments, rows, discussions and expositions in Paris and London were various. Lord Malmesbury spoke with Addington about it all in mid-February, and Addington was clear that he took Sébastiani’s report seriously, having allowed the ‘insolence and impertinence to pass’. He discussed matters in terms of diplomacy, speaking as he was to the diplomat in Malmesbury. He suggested that a French move in the Mediterranean, particularly against the Republic of the Seven Isles, might rouse Russia, which had an interest in those islands. Lord Pelham had earlier assured Malmesbury that the Cabinet was ‘determined to notice’ the report.21 In other words, Hawkesbury’s talk with Andréossy on the 15th and his letter to Whitworth of the 9th were both the result of Cabinet discussions. Two other ongoing problems came to a head soon after. On 7 and 8 February Despard and his accused co-conspirators were tried and found guilty, despite the flimsiness of the evidence against them. The jury recommended mercy, but the government ignored this. On 21 February Despard and six others were publicly hanged, before a large crowd which was clearly sympathetic to him – but then his opponents did not need to attend. His speech from the scaffold was excoriated by the aristocracy, while copies of it sold widely among his supporters. Yet at the end of it he was dead and his plot with him.22 The same day the trial of Jean Gabriel Peltier for criminal libel had finally begun, six months after the original decision had been taken to prosecute. He was next day found guilty of advocating the assassination of a foreign head of state, by direction of the judge, Lord Ellenborough. The jury took no more than one minute to render its verdict. His subsequent publication

21 22

Malmesbury, Diaries, 208 and 195. Elliott, Partners, 295–297. 161

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of the trial’s details and proceedings sold even more widely than Despard’s dying speech.23 This was all a curious coincidence of timing, and it amounted to a double defeat for Bonaparte. Talleyrand had made substantial efforts in the month or so before the trial of Peltier to rouse the British government to take further measures against the hostile press, as mentioned above, though without success. The British ministers may well have had some idea of just what the result of the trial would be, whether Peltier was condemned or not – after all, Lord Ellenborough was a supporter of Addington’s ministry. They certainly made no attempt whatsoever to stop him publishing other writings while under indictment, nor to prohibit him publishing his version of the trial; and the hostility of the Morning Post towards Bonaparte was a pleasant development. Despard’s death was a clear indication that any attempt at violent revolution in England would be blocked by a vigilant government, even at the cost of tarnishing the judicial process – for the evidence at Despard’s trial had been unconvincing, to say the least. Nevertheless Bonaparte had got what he wanted in Peltier’s conviction; it would be some time before Peltier’s riposte would become known. For some time he must have expected that the result would be the muzzling of the émigré London press. Perhaps in reply to this apparent success Bonaparte shut down the Argus, an English language paper published in Paris under his auspices. It was edited by Lewis Goldsmith (the author of the later Secrets of the Cabinets of Bonaparte, with its assertions of French espionage), who had been publishing vituperative comments on the British government for some time, though it was not taken much note of. Its disappearance was welcomed by Whitworth, who noted that Bonaparte had now made still more complaints.24 Whitworth had only rumours and his own preoccupations to report for the two weeks after his interview with the first consul. Talleyrand had told him that the visit of the Russian aide-de-camp had been in pursuit of an agreement to preserve the integrity of the Turkish empire, and Whitworth passed on a note from Count Morkov on the subject which seemed to confirm that.25 Otherwise it seems that the French were deliberately waiting to see what effect their recent diplomatic activity would have. Whitworth did report what seemed to him to be divisions of opinion among those around Bonaparte. Talk of war over Malta emanated, he thought, not from those closest to Bonaparte, but from a less well-

23 24 25

Burrows, French Exile Journalism, 121–125. Browning, 91–95, Whitworth to Hawkesbury, 28 February 1803. Browning, 98–102, Whitworth to Hawkesbury, 3 March 1803. 162

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informed outer group; similarly he heard that plans for the invasion of Britain were being revived, though others were said to dislike the idea.26 All this was far too nebulous to form a basis for any serious conclusions. On Malta, Hawkesbury now provided a summary of the situation, pointing out that the economic and international base of the Hospitaller Order was steadily eroding, and that the British were gradually fulfilling their part of the Treaty of Amiens in other areas, as with the (presumed) evacuation of Egypt, and he insisted that ‘His Majesty cannot consent that his troops should evacuate the island of Malta, until substantial security has been provided’.27 The trouble with Sébastiani’s report was not that it was official French policy – it clearly was not, despite Hawkesbury’s emphasis on the official nature of its publication – but that it meshed all too neatly with British perceptions of what Bonaparte intended. Actual preparations for an attack on Malta or Egypt or Corfu or anywhere in the eastern Mediterranean were not visible anywhere, despite Whitworth’s guesses about Corsica and Genoa, and the memory of the invasions of Egypt by the French and the British in 1798 and 1801, which in both cases had required thousands of men and hundreds of ships, should have warned even Whitworth that any French intentions in that area would be well signalled in advance by much activity in the Mediterranean ports. The British were, in fact, paying much more attention to the situation on the continental coast facing them than to anything which might be happening in the Mediterranean, and it was to this that the government reacted. Bonaparte had made a tour of Normandy in October and November of the previous year, visiting Rouen, Le Havre and Dieppe, and inspecting fortifications and port facilities, among other things, all of which played upon British nerves.28 A constant watch was kept by the British on the various continental ports facing Britain, largely by the seamen of the regular packets which passed to and fro, who kept their eyes open for any changes.29 The French forces in Holland were a particular concern, because there was also a concentration of shipping very close by, both French and Dutch – Flushing was partitioned between them – and the forces there were rumoured to be destined for Louisiana or Ireland or England or elsewhere. The variety of possible destinations may have been a deliberate element of confusion sown by the French; so, if they had been deliberately spreading rumours on this, they had only themselves to blame for what happened next.

26

Browning, 85–88, Whitworth to Hawkesbury, 28 February 1803. Browning, 92–94, Hawkesbury to Whitworth, 28 February 1803. 28 Garros, Itineraire de Napoleon Bonaparte, 199–201 (29 October to 14 November 1802). 29 Smith, St Vincent, II, 267–268, St Vincentto Nepean, 5 January 1803. 27

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The French had been attempting, with a curious display of incompetence, to get an expedition under way for Louisiana for several months. In October 1802 Bonaparte had finally extracted from Charles IV of Spain an order instructing the Spanish authorities at New Orleans to transfer Louisiana back to France. The long delay was not just a matter of Spanish lassitude and reluctance; the transfer was conditional on the emplacement of a Spanish Bourbon as king of Etruria. When this was accomplished it emerged that the French assumed that ‘Louisiana’ included not just New Orleans and the territory west of the Mississippi river, but Florida as well, a territory which stretched all along the Caribbean coast from New Orleans westwards as far as the Atlantic. This the Spaniards swiftly and emphatically denied. It was thus not until August that it was practical to start organising an expedition specifically for Louisiana. The Minister of Marine, Decrès, ordered it to assemble at Helvoetsluys: 3,000 soldiers and the necessary shipping. The assembly of ships was slow, but on 4 November, the Spanish order of transfer acquired, General Victor was placed in command of the expedition, and was told it should sail late in that month; on 29 November Decrès wrote to him that all was ready. Victor then went to Helvoetsluys to see for himself the condition of the expedition, but found all was not in fact yet ready. (It is a commentary on the slackness of the French preparations that this was Victor’s first inspection, yet he was to command.) Victor reported this, improvements were made, and he was then ordered off again on 19 December. But now the plans were changed. He was now to land one regiment at San Domingo as reinforcements – Leclerc had now died – and then he was to go on to assume control of Louisiana at New Orleans, with 1,800 to 2,000 men. Finally in early January all was ready and the expedition sailed on the 10th, taking the new prefect of the colony of Louisiana, Pierre-Clément Laussat, with it. Three days before it sailed, the news was finally released that Leclerc and most of his men in San Domingo had died – the progress of the San Domingo war had been kept secret, so the shock was all the greater. In the meantime the United States had become very concerned about the future of Louisiana. As early as November 1801, the American ambassador in London, Rufus King, had obtained a copy of the treaty ceding Louisiana to France, and had alerted his government to what was intended. To have a lethargic Spanish regime in New Orleans replaced by a vigorous and expansionist French government was not a prospect to please any United States government. Britain would also be very displeased at the French re-occupation of either Louisiana or Florida, or both. King had been told so by Lord Hawkesbury even before the Peace Preliminaries had been agreed, and King had replied that if they were to leave Spanish control, the United States was only willing that those colonies should go to the United States, not to any other state. 164

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The British were thus also seriously interested in all this. In the event of war it was the British intention to re-occupy all the French and Dutch colonies, and Louisiana could thus be another of their conquests. But a British occupation and possible annexation was a prospect as little pleasing to the United States as a French takeover. The United States had only just got rid of British forces from a whole series of forts along its border with Canada, and of Spanish forces from several other forts in American territory close to New Orleans. The arrival of either French or British forces at the mouth of the Mississippi would close off any chance of freeing trade along the river, and would also constrain the United States’ expansion west of the river. Either British or French control was thus a prospect for further trouble, far more so than Spanish. While Laussat and his forces were at sea, therefore (Victor did not go, in the event), a series of developments changed his situation. In the United States President Jefferson and the Senate both became concerned. In the Senate a resolution was passed, belligerent in tone, hostile to the French cession. More practically, Jefferson consulted, and decided to send James Monroe as a special envoy to Paris.30 The disaster in San Domingo had brought Bonaparte to exclaim ‘Damn sugar, damn coffee, damn colonies’, but this was only a momentary sentiment and he did not in fact deviate from his imperialist chosen path. He thought he had a year or two before a new European war began. When Decaen was sent to take up the post of Governor-General of the French (East) Indies his instructions envisaged the fairly early resumption of war with Britain – and these instructions had been originally composed in mid-1802, soon after the ratification of the Amiens treaty. Decaen was to intrigue with Indian powers and recruit an army locally, to command which he sailed with no less than seven general officers and a large number of non-commissioned officers (and an armed force of only 1,250 men), and within six months of his arrival he was to send home a plan of action.31 Decaen sailed early in March, from Brest. At that time also, still another expedition was in preparation at Helvoetsluys to go to America, and part of this was certainly intended for Louisiana. This would leave a very substantial force of several thousand French troops in place there. By late March it was being so carefully watched by British ships that Talleyrand complained of a British blockade.32 The expedition never sailed, for the transports were badly damaged in a storm in April, and the whole enterprise was ordered to be abandoned.33 30

Lyon, Louisiana, 125–126, 191–195. M.W. Sloane, ‘Napoleon’s Plans for a Colonial System’, American Historical Review 4, 1899, 439–455; Parkinson, War in the Eastern Seas, 189–192. 32 Browning, 147, Talbot to Hawkesbury, 31 March 1803. 33 Lyon, Louisiana, 124. 31

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Therefore, early in March, the French imperial enterprise, though checked in San Domingo, was fully operational in the rest of the West Indies, had been re-activated in India, and was expanding into North America. Laussat arrived to take over at New Orleans more or less simultaneously with the departure of Decaen from Brest for the east. But these events also took place more or less simultaneously with the departure of James Monroe as Jefferson’s special envoy to France – and with British measures which derailed the whole scheme. Decaen sailed with a useful naval force as well as his small army, one sail of the line (Marengo), three frigates and two sloops. He was to call at the Cape, then Mauritius, and then to install a new French administration at Pondichéry, where he would take up the post of captain-general. None of this was known in detail to the British in either Britain or India, but Decaen’s own anglophobia was well known and his hostile intentions could thus be assumed. There were therefore two substantial French overseas expeditions despatched within two months, and there were still in the Channel and North Sea ports of France and the Batavian Republic 13 line-of-battle ships, 21 frigates and sloops, and over 200 gunboats. Over 40,000 French soldiers were stationed within two or three days’ march of the French coast, dispersed from Brussels to Rennes, and there were also almost 7,000 French soldiers in Holland, mainly in the south of the country, and so also within easy reach of the ports.34 There was also another nightmare for the British government which it did not take much imagination to envisage: Ireland. It was only five years since the great rebellion, which had been accompanied by several landings by French troops. The presence of substantial French forces in coastal ports from the mouth of the Rhine to Brest, and even more within marching distance, might be for America or for internal security, or for the east, as French sources insisted, or they might, as French rumours also supposed, be intended for Ireland. Or, of course, for any or all of these, depending on the situation. Ireland was a continual headache for British governments – largely as a result of their own policies, of course. The great rebellion of 1798 had been beaten down, but there were still many of the Irish who were unreconciled to defeat, and some still with arms in their hands. Most of the Irish, of course, were unwilling to participate in any new rebellion, still less in the conspiracy beforehand, until it was successful, at least. But the irreconcilables had their own vision of the future. The main area of trouble in Ireland in 1802–1803 was in fact in Munster, the south-west, which was a sensitive enough area in all conscience. It was there that landings from France had been attempted 34

Desbrière, Projets, III, ch. 1. 166

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in 1798, and where a Royal Naval mutiny at Berehaven had only just been put down. To the surviving leaders of the United Irishmen – the clandestine organisation which had produced the ’98 rebellion – the situation in Ireland appeared to be promising, and they decided that the discontent was worth exploiting. They set about planning a new rising. The arrival from France in January 1803 of William Hamilton seems to have been the trigger. He helped to raise some money and made investigations about the feasibility of a rising, then returned to France to raise support there. At this point he also brought in Thomas Addis Emmet, MacNeven, Russell, and others of the ’98ers who were exiled on the continent. From Dublin, Robert Emmet contacted a number of other survivors, and sent out enquiries to the nearby countryside regarding the possibility of armed support. All this was done quietly, and on the basis of possibilities, but the answers were encouraging. From early in March the enquiries into possibilities had graduated to active planning. They can only have been encouraged by the continuing and increasing tension in Franco–British relations. A successful rising in isolation was an impossibility: a war was necessary.35 The enquiries in Ireland, however, had been made among men who were hardly objective in their judgements. The degree of support for a new rising in the countryside was seriously exaggerated in the minds of the Dublin leaders, and it is likely that this delusory optimism was transmitted also to France. If so, the French government was thus under the impression that the situation in Ireland was much more volatile than it really was. Similarly, the plot which was supposed to have been scotched by the arrest of Despard in November of the previous year had implied an unstable political condition in England. The consular government was well used to potential instability and may well have transferred its own internal fears to the British. It seems likely therefore that Bonaparte was expecting internal turmoil in Britain and Ireland from October 1802 onwards. The situation early in March 1803 was thus threatening, and threatening especially in British eyes. The Decaen expedition had sailed, and was surely bent on mischief in India; the Laussat expedition was at sea, to expand the French American empire; another expedition was in preparation at Helvoetsluys, intended, so it was said, for America, but this was by no means certain. And the French forces in and near the Channel ports were numerous, amounting to a total land force which was half the size of the whole regular British army as established for peacetime; in terms of ships the potential Franco–Dutch force in the North Sea and the Channel was overwhelming, for there were no British line-of-battle ships in those areas, and only a dozen frigates. Bonaparte 35

Elliott, Partners, 302–303. 167

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had casually pointed out to Whitworth that he had an army of 480,000 men, so the French forces near the Channel ports were less than onetenth of the whole French army, without counting Dutch and Italian forces. Bonaparte, it could be argued, was pinning down the British by a threatened invasion with a fraction of his army, while expanding not simply into Italy and Switzerland and southern Germany, but also towards India and in the West Indies and North America. Yet at the same time a simple calculation suggested that a surprise French invasion was quite possible, of Ireland at least, if not England. The troops in Holland were particularly troublesome to the British imagination because they were supposed to have been withdrawn by the terms of the Treaty of Lunéville. A new Franco–Dutch agreement was concluded in February by which the Dutch agreed to accept a French force of 4,000 on their territory, which they would support financially and with supplies; yet the actual French force in Holland was nearly double that which had been agreed.36 This was the background to the war scare of early March. On 2 March Pitt commented in a letter to George Rose that he concluded from the first consul’s ‘exposé’ to Whitworth that it ‘amounts I think to a declaration that we must soon expect avowedly to receive the law from him, or to encounter war’.37 He was also presumably bearing in mind the recent Peltier libel case, where the French government was attempting to enforce its own laws in Britain. If Pitt felt that way about Bonaparte’s ambitions, it is certain that the Cabinet had come to the same conclusion. Among the government’s opponents, the Grenville group had never had any serious doubt that Bonaparte was intent on aggrandisement, and had always advocated the most strenuous resistance. There is also some evidence that precautions were in train. For instance, on 26 February the First Lord, Earl St Vincent, had established a new command in Ireland, based at Cork, ‘to dispose of the frigates stationed on that coast’, and had appointed Rear-Admiral Arthur Philip, the former governor of New South Wales, to the post.38 This was clearly intended to set up a system of patrols to watch for the possibility of a surprise French invasion of Ireland. This sort of precaution could be taken by an administrative decision within the Admiralty, and by moving some ships, but to do more required parliamentary sanction, because it would necessitate spending more public money. The accumulation of incidents, rumours, apparent threats, and pressures, finally brought the British government to an action whose

36

Desbrière, Projets, III, 7–9; Schama, Patriots and Liberators, 438–440. L.V. Harcourt (ed.), The Diaries and Correspondence of the Rt Hon. George Rose, London 1860, II, 11. 38 Smith, St Vincent, II, 272. 37

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purpose was to force the French government to face up to British requirements. That is, the British were issuing a challenge to Bonaparte, requiring him to accede to their demand that, as he himself had insisted, the Treaty of Amiens should be implemented in full by both sides, or new and substantive negotiations should take place to sort out the various problems. It was a carefully calculated action, designed to be defensive, and in no way threatening to France or its allies, but also to give due warning that any sudden move by the French could be countered. On 8 March Addington brought a special Royal Message to the House of Commons, announcing that, ‘as very considerable military preparations are carrying on in the ports of France and Holland’, it was necessary to be better prepared. A request was made for an increase of 10,000 in the number of seamen authorised, and for the embodiment of the militia. There was some discussion, and Lord Moira asked in a perfunctory fashion what the evidence was for the allegations, but there was no opposition in either House to the measure as requested, which was agreed to on that day.39 In point of fact, there is little or no evidence for any specific French military moves at the time, though it is clear that the British government thought that some had taken place; the continued presence of French and Dutch ships in close proximity to nearly 50,000 French troops, combined with Bonaparte’s boastful words on 21 February, was quite enough. At the same time, however, there was in the message the point that ‘discussions of great importance are now subsisting’ between Britain and France. This clearly referred back to the first consul’s talk with Whitworth, but it also looked forward to further talks in which it was presumably hoped that the differences between France and Britain could be removed, or at least alleviated. Hawkesbury’s most recent letter to Whitworth, of 28 February, had pointed out that Britain was steadily implementing the terms of the Amiens Treaty, and he mentioned in particular that Egypt was evacuated by this time. (He was wrong, in fact, but only in a chronological sense, for the evacuation did not take place until 11 March, but by February the decision had been taken and transmitted.40) Hawkesbury rehearsed the problem of Malta yet again, and refused to implement the evacuation of British forces without ‘substantial security’, which was left carefully vague.41 This was all related to Talleyrand by Whitworth on 3 March, but he began the discussion with the Ottoman empire, which he knew had recently been the subject of talks between Talleyrand and the Russian envoy.

39 40 41

Parl. Hist. 1256–1513. Ingram, ‘Geopolitics – IV’, 335. Browning, 92–94, Hawkesbury to Whitworth, 28 February 1803. 169

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Whitworth was therefore making it clear that Malta was being retained not merely to spite France and Bonaparte, or as a means of exerting pressure on them, but as a forward defence for the whole of the eastern Mediterranean. Rumours of a Franco–Russian plan to partition Turkey (as Austria, Prussia and Russia had dealt with Poland in the recent past) had circulated. Britain was ranging itself against that ambition. Indeed Talleyrand admitted that possession of Egypt remained a desire of Bonaparte’s, but claimed he did not think it worth a war. This could only mean he hoped to seize the country without fighting. And Talleyrand said he had instructed Andréossy to demand a clear answer on Malta from the government in London. At this Whitworth warned him that he should prepare Bonaparte for a rebuff.42 Whitworth’s report on this conversation will have been with Hawkesbury by the time the Cabinet decided to make its move on 8 March. The letter was sent on 3 March, and the courier usually took two days on the journey from London, possibly three. The Cabinet presumably took its decision the day before it was announced in the form of the Royal Message to Parliament, that is on 7 March. It would seem probable therefore that Whitworth’s report of the meeting with Talleyrand was one of the major elements in that decision. It was in fact apparent confirmation of all Britain’s Mediterranean fears. Combined with the effective British naval disarmament in the North Sea and the Channel, and the ability of the French to mount naval expeditions, demonstrated most recently on 3 March, the presence of large numbers of French forces in near proximity to the Channel and Dutch ports makes the Cabinet’s decision seem thoroughly justified. The fact that Bonaparte appears to have had no immediate plans to undertake either British or Mediterranean attacks is largely irrelevant; the British government clearly felt that he could do so, and perhaps at short notice, and Talleyrand’s confirmation of his eventual intention to retake Egypt was enough. But this does not explain the whole purpose of the mobilisation. It is worth repeating that there were two elements in the message: the naval and military precautions, and the remark that negotiations were in process. It is to the latter that the mobilisation measures would seem to have been particularly addressed. In combination, the tough talk by Whitworth on Malta and the measures of preparation against a putative French move in the north were clearly designed to drive home the message that Britain was serious in its wish to restrain Bonaparte by defending itself and holding Malta. Whitworth had made it clear that the situation was not one which would necessarily lead to war; indeed he had stated quite plainly that the matter of British security was one for 42

Browning, 98–102, Whitworth to Hawkesbury, 3 March 1803. 170

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negotiation, and the Royal Message had repeated that point, in saying that discussions were going on. The extra sailors and the embodiment of the militia, all of which measures would take some time to have any effect and which were essentially defensive, were in the nature of an alert, to gain Bonaparte’s full attention. It seemed that it made some impression. Even on the same day as his meeting, Whitworth had received a note from Talleyrand indicating that some hopes could be held out for the British claimants for sequestration compensation.43 On the 7th, the day before the British measures were announced, Whitworth spoke with Bonaparte again. This time the first consul was concerned to discuss his encouragement for French industry, yet at the same time Whitworth reported that pressure was being exerted on the Portuguese, another sensitive British concern.44 Then on the 10th, and so before the French had any details of the British actions on the 8th, Whitworth reported ‘on good authority’ that an officer was on his way to Naples to demand passage for a French force to Sicily ‘as a preparatory step to the expulsion of the English from Malta’.45 Nothing more is heard of this officer or his mission, just as Whitworth does not mention again the force on Corsica which he thought might be intended for an expedition to some part of the eastern Mediterranean. Both reports are indications of the febrile atmosphere around Whitworth, and of the basic inaccuracy of much of the information he was receiving. But both are also likely to derive from rumours originating among high French officers or officials. The result of all this came in meetings between Whitworth and Talleyrand on 11 March and Whitworth and Bonaparte two days later. The second meeting gained all the publicity, but the first was the more important in terms of content. At the meeting on the 11th Talleyrand was considerably agitated over the British measures of the 8th, and Whitworth spent some time emphasising that they were purely precautionary, pointing out that in Britain it was necessary to go through Parliament, which took time, whereas in France the first consul could simply order a thing to be done; he could also have pointed out that it would take time for them to be effective. It was a reply, he explained, to the French forces in France and Holland, and to the French expansion which had taken place in time of peace. Talleyrand blustered for a time, but then, after a talk with Bonaparte, he saw Whitworth again. This time he made a series of points which amounted to a preliminary set of negotiating positions. He insisted that the expedition assembling

43

Browning, 96–98, Whitworth to Hawkesbury, and Talleyrand to Whitworth, 3 March 1803. 44 Browning, 103–105, Whitworth to Hawkesbury, 7 March 1803. 45 Browning, 106–109, Whitworth to Hawkesbury, 10 March 1803. 171

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at Helvoetsluys was for America; at the same time it was necessary to have troops in Holland because of the threat from Britain, and it was necessary to have forces facing Hanover, which was also ruled by George III. As for the French ports it was obviously necessary to have troops in Calais and other places as a security measure, if nothing else. The first consul was on the verge of evacuating Switzerland, Talleyrand declared, but now he would not do so; also it was necessary to have forces in Italy which were ready to re-occupy Taranto if this was needed as a precaution. And finally, since Britain was arming, France must also do so.46 None of this was in any way satisfactory from the British point of view, particularly the implication that the British were preparing to attack France, Holland, or Italy. But it did indicate movement of a sort, and it contained the seeds of a possible deal between the two countries. Talleyrand had certainly admitted that another expedition was in preparation in Holland, but others of his points were clearly spurious. There was no real threat to Holland from either Britain or Hanover, and to claim that France was threatened by the British army or navy was to wilfully ignore the performance of the British army in western Europe over the past decade, and to pay no attention to the absence of the navy’s main ships from the Narrow Seas. But the point about Switzerland was germane, since this had been where the British had stiffened their diplomatic attitude six months before. Implicit, in fact, in all the points about Holland, Switzerland and Taranto, was the possibility of French withdrawal from all these countries if Britain would reciprocate. But the only point at which Britain could respond in like terms was over Malta. And there were no guarantees mentioned. Nevertheless there were glimmerings of a possible future agreement in all this. It was unlikely, to say the least, that Bonaparte would voluntarily withdraw from Italy, but removing his forces from Holland would be a major confidence-builder. The agreement with Russia not to partition the Turkish empire, if it was adhered to, made the continued British occupation of Malta less likely to be obnoxious to Bonaparte, and at the same time less necessary to Britain. Austria was certainly still resentful about the loss of territory and influence in Italy and southern Germany, but if Bonaparte could make agreements with both Russia and Britain, Austria’s resentfulness could be borne. This is all to say that this moment in early March 1803 was the decisive time for Bonaparte and France. The future lay within his choice, for the various possible agreements all depended on his response to the British move. If he could be persuaded, or compelled, to honour the treaties he had made, and to make new agreements which he would then 46

Browning, 110–115, Whitworth to Hawkesbury, 12 March 1803. 172

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also honour, there would be no requirement for further wars, at least in the immediate future. France could subside into its new monarchic embrace, protected by the might of the revolutionary army and by the French influence in the satellite states, and by its annexations; that is, a version of the old eighteenth-century international system would clearly revive, in which France would replace Austria as the dominating power in the key provinces of the Low Countries and northern Italy, but in which no single European state would be obviously predominant over all the rest. The difficulty was that Bonaparte would not keep his word, and could not stop himself from cheating. An agreement made by him was taken by him as the opportunity for new gains, not the settlement of a problem. Leaving his forces in Holland was one example; they were supposed to be withdrawn by the Treaty of Lunéville, but by a coup in Holland he was able to conjure up an agreement enabling his troops to stay there. There were other similar forces in Italy also, being supplied by similar satellites. Spain had agreed to give up Louisiana in exchange for a kingdom in Etruria for a Spanish Bourbon, but no sooner had the American territory been received, and a French prefect despatched to New Orleans, than Bonaparte decided to sell the whole land to the United States, thereby breaking the Treaty of San Ildefonso. The Amiens treaty’s provisions on the post office had been broken unilaterally by the French, and that for the return of sequestrated property showed no signs of being implemented, and yet Bonaparte was insistent on Britain implementing all its own obligations, in Malta and Egypt, to the letter. All these were relatively minor matters compared with the great issue of war or peace. In the old diplomatic system – that is, that which had existed before 1789 – they would be dealt with diplomatically, by discussion and negotiation, with agreed concessions by both sides. At least that was the assumption, though all too often these negotiations had resulted in conflict, as the frequency of eighteenth-century wars had demonstrated. Yet since the Amiens agreement Britain had in fact been implementing the various peace terms, gradually and slowly, certainly, and rather later than originally envisaged, but by March 1803 the only items left to be dealt with on the British side were Malta and the French Indian outposts. (The Cape of Good Hope was returned to Dutch rule in February and Egypt was evacuated in March.) On the French side, however, there was no sign of an acceptance of this notion of equal treatment. Bonaparte seemed determined to keep anything he held, legally or not. Britain’s repeated requests for discussions on such subjects as Bonaparte’s territorial expansion, his forces in Holland, a commercial treaty, and the settlement of the sequestration problem, had all been ignored, or brushed aside, or were met by trivial complaints about the conduct of the British press by way of distraction. Yet these 173

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were all matters which, in the old diplomatic system, would have been negotiable; they were certainly matters which were of legitimate concern to Britain, whether or not they were in the original treaty. And yet each time the British government expected a quid pro quo from France after implementing some item of the Amiens treaty, nothing appeared. And now there was virtually nothing left with which to exert any pressure on France. It is this diplomatic behaviour – or perhaps misbehaviour – which has led one historian of the period to brand Bonaparte’s foreign policy as ‘a criminal enterprise’. It was not that, since there was no agreed system of international law by which crimes could be defined, but one sees what he means.47 Only Malta was left for the British to use as a lever to force Bonaparte to honour his agreements. On 13 March, Whitworth attended an audience at Madame Bonaparte’s drawing room in the Tuileries Palace. It was something of an occasion, for she was to be attended by maids of honour for the first time, and so it was another small step towards a full hereditary Bonapartist monarchy, with the usual court trappings and ceremonies. The ambassadors were present in force. Not only Whitworth of Britain, but Cobenzl of Austria, Morkov of Russia, and Lucchesini of Prussia were all present, as were other diplomats. There were also the usual hangers-on and guests, which in this case included Bertie Greatheed from Warwickshire, his wife and son, and the Reverend J. Sanford, who all came with Whitworth’s party. Both Greatheed and Sanford later wrote accounts of the event, the former right away in his private diary, the latter fifty years later in a letter to Lord Braybrooke, who had it published. Whitworth himself did not make as much of the meeting as those in Britain, at least at first, and his own first account is as everyday as his usual reports. Since Greatheed’s account is the most immediate, and probably the most objective, including a convincing vagueness of recollection in some things, it seems best to follow it in the main, though there are some elements in Sanford’s account which are important also.48 Bonaparte wrote two accounts of his own, but they were contradictory and were sent to his ambassadors, and are therefore not reliable.49 Talleyrand’s account to Andréossy in London is not that of an eye witness. Bonaparte had not been expected to attend the audience, having held one already in his own rooms, but he arrived with his wife, perhaps attending on this occasion in order to emphasise its importance. While 47

P.W. Schroeder, ‘Napoleon’s Foreign Policy: A Criminal Enterprise’, Journal of Military History 54, 1990, 147–161. 48 Browning, 115–117, Whitworth to Hawkesbury, 14 March 1803; Bury and Barry, Englishman, 93–94; Notes and Queries, 3 April 1852, note sent by Lord Braybrooke. 49 Napoleon I, Correspondence, 6630 and 6636. 174

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she sat in her armchair he went round the circle of visitors. When he got to Whitworth, he enquired after his wife, who had a cold, and asked if he had any news from London, remarking that they had had fifteen years of war; according to Sanford Whitworth replied by agreeing that it was fifteen years too much, though in Greatheed this was Bonaparte’s own comment. Also according to Greatheed Bonaparte added that the French were not arming more ships, which was a pointed remark, since the British had just voted to recruit 10,000 more seamen. He moved on to greet Morkov, then talked joshingly to Greatheed’s wife. It seems clear that he was in high good humour. He spoke to the American and Danish ambassadors in a similar vein, but then returned to Whitworth, and this time demanded why the conditions of the Amiens treaty were not yet fulfilled. Whitworth replied that he believed that Alexandria was now evacuated, and that Malta would also be evacuated when confidence existed that the other conditions of the treaty would also be fulfilled. This second conversation was clearly sharper in tone than the first. What is to be made of this meeting is difficult to say. Whitworth later claimed that Bonaparte was irritable and spoke loudly, but Greatheed did not suggest this, while Sanford much later positively denied it. According to Sanford Whitworth only seemed offended some time after the end of the conversation. It seems clear that Bonaparte was not being intentionally offensive, though, as Sanford said, such comments as he had made were more suited to a private conference than a public audience. Count Morkov was offended by Bonaparte’s tone, which suggests that he was even more blunt than usual, and Bonaparte was reproved by his brother Joseph afterwards and agreed he had been wrong.50 In effect, as Whitworth clearly came to believe, Bonaparte was insulting him and his country by accusing them publicly of bad faith, though this seems unlikely to have been a deliberate and pre-planned gesture. But Whitworth had given as good as he got in the conversation, since he had thrown the accusation back in the first consul’s face. It also seems clear that Whitworth then brooded on the event and later he tended to exaggerate it in his reports home. The next day, when he wrote his report to Hawkesbury, Whitworth described the scene in a more dramatic way than either Greatheed or Sanford. He also wrote to Sir John Borlase Warren in St Petersburg with a warning that trouble was soon likely.51 But when he saw Talleyrand 50

A.W. Ward and G.P. Gooch, Cambridge History of British Foreign Policy, 1793–1919, Cambridge 1922, 319 (on Morkov’s reaction); Hortense Bonaparte, Mémoires de la Reine Hortense, Paris 1931, vol. 1, 147 (for Joseph’s words and Bonaparte’s admission). 51 Browning, 117–120, Whitworth to Hawkesbury, and Whitworth to Warren, 14 March 1803. 175

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on the 17th the French Foreign Minister dismissed Bonaparte’s words as unimportant, which may well be how the French saw the incident, or by then affected to do so, and he assured Whitworth that no military preparations were being made.52 Over the next days Whitworth very reluctantly came to accept this. On the 18th he complained to the Foreign Office about the use of Captain Wesley Wright as an official messenger – Wright had been a notorious British agent during the late war and Whitworth had had to hide him in the embassy – but Wright did report that he had seen no evidence of preparations at Le Havre on his way through, and as an experienced naval officer his powers of observation could be trusted.53 As a result of such observations, and of the repeated French assurances, the crisis of early March slowly died away. The normal disputatiousness of Franco–British relations at this time returned, with each side finding minor matters to accuse the other of, such as the supposed landing of some ‘brigands’ on the Belgian coast from a British ship. But the expedition which the British government thought was being organised in Dutch ports was now, Whitworth said, countermanded, though he thought other preparations were continuing. He reported that major military camps were to be established at four places, Breda, Dunkirk, Bayonne and Verona. This was inaccurate, for what was planned were artillery parks at Breda, Boulogne and Bayonne; even so this was difficult to fit into any supposed aggressive plans.54 But all the time the issue of Malta recurred. Hawkesbury had seen Andréossy on 10 March and had insisted that the issues in dispute were not simply Malta, but other matters as well. He had sent a copy of his subsequent note to Whitworth,55 but Whitworth does not seem to have fully appreciated Hawkesbury’s attempt to broaden the discussion. For, if only Malta was in dispute, the matter was unresolvable, with Britain refusing to evacuate, and French insisting on it; if, on the other hand, other issues could be included – the sequestrations, Bonaparte’s troops in Italy, his forces in Holland, his continental advances, and so on – then there was room for both sides to manoeuvre diplomatically. Whitworth, however, partly by his own predilection, for he had not shifted from his early view that Malta must be retained, and partly because it was Bonaparte’s and Talleyrand’s own intention, found himself concentrating on Malta to the exclusion

52

Browning, 125–129, Whitworth to Hawkesbury, 17 March 1803. Browning, 131–132, Whitworth to Hawkesbury, 18 March 1803. 54 Browning, 135–144, Whitworth to Hawkesbury, 24, 26 and 31 March 1803; Napoleon I, Correspondence, 6642, on 22 March 1803. 55 Browning, 120–125, Whitworth to Hawkesbury, 15 March 1803, and Hawkesbury to Andréossy. 53

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of the other areas in the dispute; on 24 March, he reported that ‘this government must be convinced that the question is – Malta or war’. This was in effect a refusal by the French to address the other British concerns.56 Hawkesbury repeated on 4 April that the French were still evading discussion and were confining themselves to the demand that Malta be evacuated. He now insisted that the negotiations between the two countries be concluded soon.57 That is to say, it was because the French were concentrating on Malta alone that the only alternative was war. If the French wished to avoid war then the other items the British wanted to discuss would have to be talked about. There were in fact other items which were being raised, but only those which the French felt would put the British on the wrong foot. The supposed landing of the ‘brigands’ was one, as was a dispute over the return of the French colony at Gorée in West Africa. Talleyrand was meanwhile fending off any discussion on the question of sequestrations with bland words and vague promises of action which never produced results.58 In the face of all this, therefore, the original crisis of early March had faded away. There was no more talk of the projected or presumed plot to launch an expedition from Flushing, and the damage it suffered in a storm in April helped push it into the background. Yet the relations between the two countries had in fact changed in a major way. The absence of any more talk about the expedition, and the tacit British acceptance of their mistake in assuming it, did not cancel the measures they had taken when they had perceived the threat. All during March and April laid-up line-of-battle ships were being manned, and others were being brought back to British waters from more distant stations. All this was presumably known to the French, though they do not seem to have mentioned it officially; it was, however, the basis of Bonaparte’s barbed comment to Whitworth on 13 March that France was not arming any of her ships – which was also, as it happened, not true. The balance of sea power, which in February in the Channel and North Sea had in many ways favoured the French, by April had inclined Britain’s way. Thus the scene was set for the last crisis.

56

Browning, 135–137, Whitworth to Hawkesbury, 24 March 1803. Browning, 148–150, Whitworth to Hawkesbury, 4 April 1803. 58 Browning, 147–148, Whitworth to Hawkesbury, 31 March 1803 (a copy of a note from Talleyrand on the ‘brigands’), 153–154, Whitworth to Hawkesbury, 4 April 1803 (on Gorée), 145–146, Whitworth to Hawkesbury and Whitworth to Talleyrand, 31 March 1803. 57

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6

WAR AGAIN The war scare of early March 1803 was a diplomatic matter in the main and it faded away, as diplomatic contretemps do, but the sharpness of the exchange between Bonaparte and Whitworth in the public audience of 13 March was soon public knowledge, and the British partial mobilisation made it clear to all that something unusually serious was now involved. Most people outside the diplomatic arena, however, seem to have been confused rather than alarmed. Bertie Greatheed noted in his diary on 24 March that ‘the rumours of war [are] rather abating’, but two days later he thought that they ‘increase every hour’; on 1 April he resignedly noted that there were ‘contradictory opinions’.1 This, of course, referred to the opinion within the British community in Paris. In London Thomas Graham on 17 March wrote to his brother in Scotland that ‘reports are more pacific’.2 The British visitors who had travelled on to Italy, however, recorded nothing like these rumours, and it seems that they and the diplomatic crisis were largely confined to the two capitals. This did not last. The diplomatic temperature began to rise again in April, and this time many more people took notice and took it seriously. The key diplomatic moment was Hawkesbury’s letter to Whitworth of 4 April, in which he had insisted that a conclusion must be reached on the Franco–British disputes soon. Along with the letter he included two other documents. One was a note for Talleyrand, the other was a paper listing the ‘heads of agreement’, which Hawkesbury presented as the basis for a new treaty. The letter was in effect almost an ultimatum: Whitworth was to insist that relations between Britain and France could not go on as they were, and he was instructed that he should leave Paris unless progress was made. The ‘heads of agreement’ were to be presented only when the French showed that they were serious about providing an equivalent in exchange for a British evacuation of Malta.3 Whitworth presented the first note to Talleyrand on 7 April.4 In the meantime the French had been working to try to line up all the treaty preconditions on Malta so as to give the British no excuse for further

1 2 3 4

Bury and Barry, Englishman, 104 and 112. HMC, Graham of Fintry, T. Graham to R. Graham, 17 March 1803. Browning, 148–151, Hawkesbury to Whitworth, 4 April 1803. Browning, 156–159, Whitworth to Hawkesbury, 7 April 1803. 178

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delay. Had they succeeded in doing this earlier it is likely that the British would have evacuated the islands, but by this time it was obviously unlikely. The British Cabinet had come to the conclusion that only a comprehensive settlement could include an evacuation. But the French did not succeed even now, and the British government knew that they would not. A French envoy had gone to Berlin some time earlier, and had at last secured Prussia’s agreement to be a guarantor.5 But Russia had still not agreed, instancing several objections. In other words Britain had a good excuse still to avoid evacuation if the French tried to be tough, and Hawkesbury knew that this was the case all along. Talleyrand replied to Hawkesbury’s note on the 9th, after having consulted with Bonaparte. Whitworth explained that the French advances on the continent meant that Britain had a right to seek a ‘counterpoise’, an interesting term in the context. In reply, Talleyrand suggested a variety of expedients on Malta – a Neapolitan garrison, a mixed garrison, a British occupation for a number of years – to which Whitworth replied positively only to the last, by suggesting that a British occupation would need to last for at least eight years. Afterwards Whitworth spoke to Joseph Bonaparte, who, as the negotiator of the Amiens treaty, was suddenly newly re-engaged in the talks, an indication that the French were taking the matter more seriously. He suggested that Britain should occupy Corfu or Crete instead; Whitworth insisted that only Malta would do.6 This was a version of a month-old suggestion that Lampedusa might do, which the British had perfunctorily investigated and rejected.7 It is noticeable that none of these places was actually under French control: Bonaparte was offering something he did not possess, presumably in order to embroil Britain with one of its friends – the Ottoman empire, the Republic of the Seven Isles, or Naples; all of these were notably sensitive areas for Russian policy-makers as well. Neither Whitworth nor Hawkesbury treated these French ‘offers’ at all seriously. A day or two later Whitworth suggested that the British should hold just the Maltese forts and Valetta harbour, while the Order was restored to control over the rest; Joseph Bonaparte again suggested other bases, all again unacceptable to Britain. Whitworth now had the impression ‘that they will at last come down to something on which we may build such an arrangement as may answer our purpose’.8 Hawkesbury responded to the first report by telling Whitworth to present the ‘heads of agreement’, as modified by the idea of a partial

5

Napoleon I, Correspondence, 6626. Browning, 162–166, Whitworth to Hawkesbury, 7 April 1803. 7 Smith, St Vincent, 277, St Vincent to Lord Keith, 18 March 1803; Naval Chronicle IX, 357–361. 8 Browning, 167–169, Whitworth to Hawkesbury, 11 April 1803. 6

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occupation of Malta. This he did on the 18th, when he saw Joseph Bonaparte again. Hawkesbury’s terms – for this was in fact the outline of a new treaty – were that the French should evacuate Holland and Switzerland; in return Britain would recognise the new king of Etruria and the French annexation of Elba; the legitimacy of the Italian and Ligurian Republics would be recognised, provided a settlement of compensation for the king of Sardinia for his loss of Piedmont was negotiated; the Order would rule in Malta, where Britain would occupy the forts and harbour. Joseph Bonaparte’s immediate – and sensible – reply was that the Order could scarcely be regarded as independent if another power held the Maltese forts, but he said he would take the paper to his brother. Whitworth suggested that British control of the forts should last for twenty years, but to Hawkesbury he said he thought he would settle for ten; he also acknowledged that it would take a long time to organise the evacuation of French troops from Holland and Switzerland.9 These negotiations were going on in Paris at the same time as serious discussions were being pursued in England with the aim of reconstructing the British government. The process began in late March with Addington using Lord Melville (the former Henry Dundas) as his intermediary to contact Pitt, who had not stirred from Walmer Castle since January. Melville, like Pitt, was regularly consulted on his areas of expertise, notably India, and he had retained his effective management of Scottish political affairs. Addington said he was prepared to resign in favour of Pitt, but he imposed a few conditions, the most important of which was that the Grenvillites not be given office, at least not for some time. Addington should perhaps have seemed more reluctant, or have suggested more and more difficult conditions. Pitt clearly felt that excluding the Grenvillites was so minor a condition that he was in effect being given a free hand to form a completely fresh ministry; and he offered Addington a peerage and the non-existent post of Speaker of the House of Lords, which Addington took to be an insult, which perhaps it was. By this time Charles Long, an old friend of Pitt’s, whose home was at Bromley, geographically midway between the homes of the two men, was acting as the intermediary, but any chance of an agreement – which was slim enough in all conscience after Pitt’s terms were pronounced – disappeared when Grenville arrived at Walmer and persuaded Pitt that he and his people must be included in the government. Pitt had overplayed his hand all along. Addington might not be a charismatic politician or a great orator, he might not be personally very popular or even a very interesting person, but he was Prime Minister, he had a majority of the House of Commons behind him, and he had the 9

Browning, 176–179, Whitworth to Hawkesbury, 18 April 1803. 180

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favour of the king. He was therefore in a very powerful political position. It must be presumed that Pitt had forgotten all that, and had come to believe, helped in this by Addington’s repeated reference to him, that his active participation in government was necessary. Furthermore, and perhaps outweighing all these factors, Addington also had the support of his Cabinet. On 13 April he reluctantly put the proposition to his colleagues, who decisively rejected it.10 This Cabinet meeting took place on the same day that Hawkesbury wrote to Whitworth with the suggestion that the Hospitaller Order might be returned to Malta so long as a British garrison held the forts and the harbour. He cannot have been under any serious illusion that this would be accepted, particularly as this idea was to be presented as part of the list of demands in the ‘heads of agreement’. The Cabinet will therefore have understood when they lined up behind Addington to exclude Pitt that they would probably be fighting a war in the near future, and that they would not have the great war leader in the Commons in their ranks. This may well have aroused some misgivings among at least some of the Cabinet members, but it seems not to have affected in any way the conduct of foreign affairs, though, to be sure, Pitt had been regularly consulted on relations with France since he resigned and, through both Hawkesbury and Castlereagh, he still was. The policy pursued by Hawkesbury – with Addington in support, though it seems to have been Hawkesbury very largely in charge – shows a clear continuity all through the Addington government. It had clearly always been a possibility that the peace treaty with France would not work for long, and indeed more than one minister had said so, though it surely had to be tried. If that was the case then a renewal of war was always in the back of their minds, and so they were all along to a degree mentally prepared for it. At the same time, it was clear that this would be a different type of war from the previous one. France could no longer pretend to be a revolutionary force. With Bonaparte’s steadily increasing internal power went a Europe-wide perception that France had reverted to its old imperial pretensions. Bonaparte was Louis XIV writ larger; indeed he himself harked back even further, to Charlemagne, as his predecessor, and he had medals minted showing both men, while a statue of Charlemagne was projected for a site in Paris.11 For the British government, therefore, a new war held out far fewer terrors than they had faced in the previous ten years. The revolutionary appeal to the British

10 Ehrman, Pitt, III, 583–589; Ziegler, Addington, 176–189; Sack, Grenvillites, 67–68. 11 Napoleon I, Correspondence, 6717.

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working class was now distinctly muted, a change symbolised by the sailing of Tom Paine to America, and the lack of active response in the country to the Despard plot was very noticeable. True, Despard had been regarded with sympathy, copies of his gallows speech sold widely, and the evidence at the trial had been transparently and emmbarrassingly poor at best – but none of this evoked any serious threat to the government or the oligarchic regime. In part this was surely due to the large Irish involvement in Despard’s affairs, for this was not something which was popular with much of the British working class, and partly it was the result of the lack of enthusiasm for revolution among the British population as a whole. Mainly, though, it was due to the wide perception that Despard’s purpose, and that of many of his supporters, Irish or British, could only be accomplished through a French invasion. And this was hardly a popular notion anywhere in Britain. The lack of popular support forced the revolutionaries to rely on the prospect of French support, which automatically further lessened their appeal at home. So the government in London could be reasonably confident that a new war would not be accompanied by the same sort of overtly political plotting and unrest which had happened between 1793 and 1801. In addition the ministers had other reasons for seeing the coming war with a good deal of equanimity. In the first place, the final year or so of the old war had given grounds for a certain optimism that a new war would not be militarily disastrous – the successes at Copenhagen and in Egypt and the rapprochement with Russia all implied that Britain was safe in its islands: the navy was efficient, the army had a success to celebrate at last, and the friendship of Russia meant that there was a constant threat to France from the east. Mounting an invasion of Britain would be a task, therefore, of enormous risk and difficulty, which even Bonaparte might well flinch from. And if he tried it, Britain had the forces to defeat it. The crisis of March had allowed Britain to mobilise both its army, in the form of the militia, and its navy, and there was thus little to fear in terms of immediate invasion. War would certainly be expensive and would require higher taxation, but experience suggested it would not be ruinous; it would be even more costly for Bonaparte, whose finances were known to be precarious, and whose huge military establishment, which had been retained even in time of peace, had not permitted any serious financial reform or reconstruction, as had happened in Britain under Addington. The Cabinet was clearly prepared for a return to war long before it became an active possibility early in 1803, or a probability from March of that year. It seems probable that the French had become resigned to an imminent war as well, and their final diplomatic efforts were devoted to trying to cast Britain in the role of aggressor and treaty-breaker and to delaying the moment of war’s outbreak, and to eliminating, at a profit, some 182

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vulnerabilities. And this despite Bonaparte’s statement, expressed for example in his instructions to Decaen, that he would be ready for a new war himself by late 1804 or 1805. It is unlikely that any of this late French diplomacy had any effect on the British government, which had after all been busy preparing for war for two months when the declaration was finally made, a declaration which was made at British timing and convenience. Bonaparte had exclaimed revealingly against colonies in January under the impact of the San Domingo disaster, yet he had persisted in the fight in San Domingo, had sent Decaen to the east to revive the French posts there, and had despatched Laussat as prefect to New Orleans. There is no doubt that, given peace on the seas, he would have devoted energy and resources to these colonies, and would have hankered for more. He showed considerable interest in Spanish America later, and there was always Egypt, of course. But these measures had been taken in January and March – Laussat had sailed in January and Decaen in March. Since then there had been serious disagreements with Britain, no British evacuation of Malta was in prospect, and the Royal Navy had revived, fully armed and manned, out of the waters of the Channel and the North Sea, while the British regular army had been reinforced by as many militia soldiers. By the end of March it will have become clear that a new war was imminent and in that case the French colonies were hopeless cases. All of them had been conquered by the British in the last war, and they would no doubt go the same way in the next, perhaps a lot more quickly. Before even beginning the fighting the British government had thus won its first victory: Bonaparte decided to cut his colonial losses even before war began. Some hint of this attitude had reached Whitworth by early in April. On 7 April he reported that ‘there is talk’ that French ships already at sea – which might be either merchant or naval vessels, probably both – had been written off as lost, but it was assumed that they would all be recovered once Britain had been invaded, and, by implication, conquered.12 In April more than half of France’s naval stength was in the West Indies (13 ships of the line out of 23, and 12 frigates out of 25); Dutch vessels of war were similarly scattered (3 ships of the line in the East Indies out of 16, and only 5 frigates out of 14 in Dutch waters). On the other hand six line-of-battle ships were under construction in French Atlantic ports and two more at Toulon, and these were expected to be finished within a few months. Given a relatively short time in which to gather the scattered forces together and to complete those under construction, Bonaparte could have had a naval force of up to 24 French and 13 Dutch line-of-battle ships in northern waters and 6 more at 12

Browning, 156–159, Whitworth to Hawkesbury, 7 April 1803. 183

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Toulon. A battle fleet of 37 ships would be formidable indeed: the British forces in British waters by October 1803, by which time such a French force could have been collected, amounted to only 33 such ships.13 This is all hypothetical, of course, but it is an indication of French naval potential in 1803 (and the old British argument that the French sailors and officers were inexperienced and would thus be inefficient would no longer hold, for they had now had two years of peace to gain that experience, and French naval power had in that time stretched from the Black Sea to the Pacific; many of these were the men who fought so hard at Trafalgar). The fact is that Bonaparte knew this potential, but he still, in Whitworth’s words, wrote it off. This was the moment, 10 April, when James Monroe arrived at Le Havre from the United States, sent by President Jefferson to explore the implications of the French acquisition of Louisiana. He was thus able to operate in a highly favourable diplomatic atmosphere, since Bonaparte was already thinking of ridding himself of the place. On the same day that he arrived, Bonaparte discussed with François de Barbé-Marbois, the Minister of the Public Treasury, the possibility of selling Louisiana to the United States. Three days later Barbé-Marbois spoke to the United States ambassador Robert Livingston and offered to sell it for 50 million francs. Monroe and Livingston came into personal conflict over the matter but finally agreed to offer 40 million, at which Bonaparte characteristically doubled his asking price to 100 million francs, but threw in the whole of Louisiana, where before the discussion had been only about New Orleans. On 29 April the two sides agreed on 60 million, and that the United States would take over 20 million francs of French debts.14 Long before then it was assumed by Whitworth that the matter would be concluded amiably: on 14 April he noted in his report to Hawkesbury that ‘the differences which occasioned his [Monroe’s] mission’ had been ‘nearly adjusted’.15 It took some time to finalise the details, and organise the payments, which were to be through the London bank of Barings and spread over twenty years.16 The matter was concluded only just in time. On 9 May Rufus King wrote from London to Monroe and Livingston that, if war began, the British would send an expedition to take Louisiana. He had been approached on the subject already by the Prime Minister a month before. Addington had suggested that, in the event of war, Britain would 13

Desbrière, Projets, III, ch. 3; Naval Chronicle VIII, 513. Lyon, Louisiana, 211–228. 15 Browning, 173–175, Whitworth to Hawkesbury, 14 April 1803. 16 R.W. Hidy, The House of Baring in American Trade and Finance, Cambridge, Mass., 1949, 33–34; payments were transmitted regularly through London during the war, thus enabling Barings, with increased assets, to lend substantially more than normal to the British government. 14

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take New Orleans and hand it on to the United States. King had been horrified at the idea of receiving such a poisoned chalice, recognising instantly the likelihood in such a case of becoming embroiled in war on the British side. No doubt this was in part Addington’s intention. In fact orders had already been sent to the West Indies to British commanders there to take over all French territories as soon as war began. Ambassador King’s message to Paris was thus very timely. And war came only two days after his letter.17 In actual fact, the danger of a British capture of Louisiana was not quite so imminent. Laussat had reached New Orleans in March and, after some delay and with some difficulty, had persuaded the Spanish authorities there to accept his credentials and to cede control over the colony to him. But he had few French troops with him, for the main centre of French power in the Caribbean remained San Domingo, even when their opponents there had driven the French forces under Rochambeau back to the coast. The former Spanish half of the island had not been involved in the fighting and remained under French control, and there were more French forces on both Guadeloupe and Martinique than at New Orleans. So the British would inevitably concentrate their attentions on these places before even considering taking over Louisiana, particularly as it was quite possible that, if attacked, the French forces in New Orleans might abandon the city and retreat upriver, which could lead to a long and fruitless campaign if the French commander was skilful enough. There was certainly plenty of scope for conflict with the United States in all this. So the prospect of a British colonisation of Louisiana was not in fact an immediate one, and Addington’s comments to King were surely an attempt to ginger up the United States over Louisiana, which from the British point of view would be better in American hands than French, if war came. In actual fact, what permitted the United States to take Louisiana was not the threat of British power at the mouth of the Mississippi, but the obdurate fighting skills of the rebellious blacks of San Domingo, and the mosquitoes of the island which carried the yellow fever virus. The blacks fought so hard because it became clear to them that Bonaparte intended to reimpose slavery on them, as in Guadeloupe. Had Bonaparte really been a believer in the revolutionary slogans of liberty, equality and brotherhood his war in San Domingo would have been unnecessary – but then had he believed in them he would never have been first consul. In all this, in American terms, he shot himself in the foot. It was, of course, more than mere annoyance which persuaded Bonaparte to make the decision to sell Louisiana, and that decision had implications for more than just that colony. It meant, first of all, that 17

Lyon, Louisiana, 119–120, 227–228. 185

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Bonaparte was resigned to an early resumption of the war with Britain, and so that he had reached that point by early April. As with the ships already at sea, he could assume that the loss of colonies would be no more than temporary: after defeating Britain – which he knew from past experience would have to be by means of an invasion across the Channel – France would be able to recover any lost colonies, and would be able to add to them any number of others. Of these additions one would suppose that India would be high on his list, perhaps Canada also, while his satellite Holland would recover any of its recent losses.18 It was also just at this time that a renewed quarrel with Portugal developed. Bonaparte had sent one of his too-popular generals, Lannes, to Lisbon as ambassador. Lannes had been rude and bombastic to an unusual degree, but without success, since not only was Portugal separated from France by the whole of Spain, but Portugal could also usually rely on British support. By early April, the matter was approaching a crisis, no doubt quite deliberately. Lannes demanded the dismissal of the Portuguese ministers, and Whitworth heard that the French had demanded the right to pass 30,000 soldiers through Spain if war should result. This is most likely a deliberately distracting rumour, since Whitworth also reported in the same letter that the French navy was said to have forty ships of the line and forty frigates available in various ports, which was a great exaggeration. This therefore all looks like scare tactics.19 So while he was on the one hand attempting to distract and frighten the British government into at least delaying the start of the war which both sides believed would soon begin, Bonaparte was also in effect liquidating his most extended responsibilities. But he also intended to recover them as soon as he had won his British war. The Napoleonic empire would be a world empire, not just one in Europe. So the surrender of Louisiana signified a decision to concentrate on a naval and military attack on Britain. It was a withdrawal in order to butt the harder. One would not suppose that, after a Napoleonic victory over Britain, the United States would be expected to keep Louisiana for very long, nor would Portugal’s empire survive for long either. For the next month there were repeated meetings in Paris and London between the two governments and the ambassadors. In Paris, the meetings between Whitworth and either Talleyrand or Joseph Bonaparte

18

Bonaparte and revolutionary France were instinctively imperialist, and there is a consistent policy of colonial acquisition visible all through: J.H. Rose, Napoleon I, London 1902, vol. 1, ch. XV; Sloane, ‘Napoleon’s Plans’; C.L. Lokke, ‘French Dreams of Colonial Empire under Directory and Consulate’, Journal of Modern History 11, 1939, 237–250. 19 Browning, 173–175, Whitworth to Hawkesbury, 14 April 1803. 186

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in the days following Whitworth’s presentation of the ‘heads of agreement’ were largely futile exercises in repetition. Despite the fact that British complaints were numerous and specific, and referred to Holland, Switzerland and Italy, the French side repeatedly talked only about Malta. Since there was clearly no chance of the British leaving the island in the near or foreseeable future, the French aim was clearly to gain time. A variety of ploys were used by means of rumours and scares: the possible crisis concerning Portugal; there was a serious assault on the British consul at Hamburg, though this was perhaps just a local matter; the French also made an attempt to involve Russia on Malta once more; the claim was floated that France had ‘forty’ line-of-battle ships at sea, whereas the total was half that, a rumour which was presumably an attempt at intimidation. In fact, Bonaparte had been energising his administration since 11 March – when he received news of the king’s message to Parliament – in order to expand his forces, and relocate them in preparation for the coming war. Orders went out to recruit Italians, incorporate the Swiss troops into the French army, and develop artillery parks in several locations. Two new naval flotillas were designated, at Dunkirk and Cherbourg, with a strength primarily in gunboats of various sorts, and orders were given to double their numbers, to a total strength of 1,120 boats. Fortifications were ordered for various places along the French Channel and Atlantic coasts. As early as 25 March troops were ordered forward to Boulogne, Ostend, Nieuport and Calais. A month later General Lauriston was sent on a tour of inspection of Normandy and Brittany.20 Much of this was just the sort of precautionary measures any government would take in response to the threat of war, and many were purely defensive – just as the British measures which were being taken at the same time were defensive. But certain of the French measures also envisaged aggressive warfare. The concentration of gunboats under unified command, principally centred at Dunkirk, was one, as was the decision to double their numbers. Another measure, however, was begun on 16 April, when Bonaparte ordered the appointment of an officer to make secret contact with the Irish and Scottish ‘chiefs’ who were in Paris, to find out their plans and intentions, their numbers, and what use could be made of them in case of war.21 So far as can be seen little or nothing resulted immediately from this instruction, but the intention was clear. Bonapartist plans were invasion and subversion. Whitworth ignored all these rumours and scares, apart from tersely reporting them to Hawkesbury. He was told by Hawkesbury on 23 April

20 21

Napoleon I, Correspondence, vol. VIII, 6621 onwards. Ibid., 6692. 187

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that he had the authority to present an ultimatum. France was to agree that: Malta should be occupied by a British garrison on a ‘temporary’ basis; French forces in Holland were to be evacuated within a month, but the evacuation of Switzerland was not to be insisted on; the Italian satellites were to be recognised only when an agreement on Sardinian compensation had been agreed. That is, Hawkesbury had moved on some items, but would not change on Malta, Sardinia, or Holland, an indication of some flexibility, but also of the absolute bedrock demands. And Whitworth was ordered to leave Paris within seven days of receiving these instructions, if the French did not accept.22 He presented the ultimatum to Talleyrand on the 27th, who demanded a copy of it in writing, and when Whitworth refused to provide this Talleyrand failed to transmit it to Bonaparte; Whitworth therefore repeated it to Joseph Bonaparte later in the day.23 Two days later he asked Talleyrand to provide passports for himself and his family and staff for Tuesday 2 May, and on that day he wrote to London saying that he expected to be at Calais by Saturday, but that there should be a packet waiting by Friday in case he arrived early.24 Just how much of this was bluff and how much he was in earnest is not clear. Whitworth regarded the ultimatum as a negotiating ploy – just as Cornwallis had at Amiens – and did not take Hawkesbury’s stated time limit seriously. He was also operating in a situation in which the French were receiving conflicting signals. On the one hand, he was presenting an ultimatum and he probably assumed, correctly, that the French were intercepting and reading his reports; on the other hand, the information the French were receiving from London was not so brutal. General Andréossy in particular was doing his best to prevent matters reaching a final break, and was sending optimistic reports to Paris, though the British government was rather exasperated at this. Whitworth heard that his own tough stance in Paris was reported to have no support among the ministers in London, which presumably originated in Andréossy’s optimism. In such circumstances, the French were quite justified in taking Whitworth’s threats less than wholly seriously.25 On the other hand, Bonaparte clearly felt that the British demands were not reasonable, at least given the balance of power between the two states. On 1 May, at the regular levée, from which Whitworth had

22

Browning, 182–183, Hawkesbury to Whitworth, 23 April 1803. Browning, 192–196, Whitworth to Hawkesbury, 27 April 1803. 24 Browning, 198–201, Whitworth to Hawkesbury, 29 April 1803, Whitworth to Hammond, 2 May 1803. 25 Deutsch, Genesis, 124–125; Browning, 202–203, Whitworth to Hawkesbury, 30 April 1803. 23

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excused himself, the first consul made some pointed remarks to the Russian and Prussian ambassadors. To Morkov he characterised the British attitude as one in which France was regarded as a ‘power of the lightest order’. To Lucchesini he was more explicit, showing that he had been studying up on the matter. He compared the British attitude this time to that of its government’s negotiating methods at the time of the treaty of Utrecht in 1712, and claimed that he might be forced, if the British went on as they had been, to admit a British commissary at Dunkirk once more, as had been the case after the Peace of Paris in 1763. France would not, he declaimed, submit to such treatment. It is doubtful that either ambassador took the details seriously, but the general point was clear: the possibility of agreement was virtually nil. After the levee, Bonaparte addressed the senators, this time alluding directly to the likelihood of war. To admit any modification of the Amiens treaty, he said, would be the first link in a chain which reduced French power. And he prefigured one of his future strategic measures, speaking of the long coast the French had to defend, but which would also form a ‘coastal system’ which would exclude British power, so that ‘England will weep tears of blood if she goes to war’.26 Talleyrand was less bloodthirsty than his master, and the apparent ambiguity in the British position, which resulted from Andréossy’s optimism, meant that Whitworth’s requested passports did not arrive. Instead he heard of French warlike preparations, which included the formation of a force at a camp at Nijmegen in Holland to attack Hanover, with a division intended for Hamburg; another force was being prepared in Corsica to attack Sardinia, and a third, of 30,000 men, was ordered to invade Naples; other measures were being taken to coerce Portugal, and boats had been ordered to be built at every port. Again it is not altogether clear how much of this was bluff and how much was serious preparation for war – the forces for Hanover and Naples were certainly real, and there had never been a halt in the building of boats. Whitworth’s authority for all this was General Masséna, no less, who claimed to have been told it all by Bonaparte himself. But why should Masséna relay such information to the British ambassador, if not by Bonaparte’s own wishes as a means of relaying misinformation or intimidation? Then Talleyrand weighed in with yet another proposal on Malta, by which Russia would take over the island after the British garrison had occupied it for several years. This was sufficiently interesting to persuade Whitworth to delay his departure from Paris, but Count Morkov squashed the idea that same day.27 26

Quoted in A. Sorel, L’Europe et la Révolution Française, Paris 1885–1904, vol. VI, 217–218. 27 Browning, 212, Whitworth to Hawkesbury, 4 May 1803, 213–215, Whitworth to Hawkesbury, 4 May 1803. 189

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Whitworth wrote a succession of five letters to Hawkesbury on 4 May with these various items of news, an indication in itself of the French desire to delay a decision. They were so far successful that Whitworth stayed in Paris beyond the deadline set by Hawkesbury, and Hawkesbury replied to these letters on 7 May by setting out a set of terms as a ‘projet’. These were the same in essence as the ‘heads of agreement’ of a month before, with the addition that Britain would acquire Lampedusa and that Malta would be held only until Lampedusa had been developed as a suitable naval base: after that Malta would be independent. A secret clause would put the period of the British occupation at ten years.28 Hawkesbury thus abandoned his softer terms of 23 April and reverted to those of 4 April, the ‘heads of agreement’, by reinstating the requirement that the French should evacuate Switzerland. The reason is presumably because there had been no response to that second set of terms. To the British perception the French were once again operating on the old method of accepting any concessions in a negotiation, failing to respond in kind, and then requiring still more; this had been the pattern in the Peace Preliminaries, and in the Amiens treaty. Hawkesbury was fully alert to the practice, which must be part of the explanation for his insistence on setting time limits. His own practice as a result was to offer concessions but then to cancel them when they did not produce a full agreement. Whitworth fully approved: on 9 May he contrasted British moderation with the behaviour of the first consul. Three days later he saw Talleyrand at last, and presented the projet, but he also bluntly refused to negotiate any further. There were other futile talks with Joseph Bonaparte and Count Morkov. The end was marked by the arrival of his passports at 5 p.m. and he left Paris that evening.29 Yet it was still not quite over. Talleyrand sent after him with a projet of his own, by which Britain was to hold Malta for ten years, and France was to occupy Otranto and Taranto; there was no mention of Holland, Switzerland, or Italy. Whitworth did not stop his journey, but sent this projet on ahead to Hawkesbury, who rejected it and ordered Whitworth to leave France as soon as possible. Whitworth delayed again, taking the evening rather than the morning tide from Calais on the 16th in the hopes of a French acceptance of the British terms. He could have saved himself the trouble, for these last exchanges were mainly for public consumption, for each side aimed to lay the blame for the break on the other.30 28

Browning, 224–226, Hawkesbury to Whitworth, 7 May 1803; Lampedusa, as Hawkesbury knew, would never reach the required status. 29 Browning, 227–228, Whitworth to Hawkesbury, 9 May 1803, 233–238, Whitworth to Hawkesbury, 12 May 1803. 30 Browning, 241–263, Whitworth to Hawkesbury, 13, 14 and 16 May 1803, Hawkesbury to Whitworth, 16 May 1803. 190

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In this the French tactics have been largely successful, in that the issue of Malta has generally been seen as the break point, and the French concentration on Malta in the negotiations and the subsequent propaganda has been followed by historians. But this was not, in fact, the main issue, since for Britain Malta was only one item in a long list of Franco–British problems. Holland and Switzerland under French control and occupation, Italy as Bonaparte’s second kingdom, the failure of the French to carry out their obligations under the Treaty of Amiens, the commercial cold war which had continued in peace in much the same way as during the war, the continued French military posture, with almost half a million men under arms permanently, a condition which was clearly threatening – and intended to be so – to all France’s neighbours, the Bonapartist insistence on interfering in British internal affairs (the matters of Despard and Peltier), were all issues involved in the break, equal at least to the issue of Malta. But the French had steadfastly ignored virtually all of these issues in favour of concentrating entirely on Malta, which was the one point at which Britain was technically in breach of the Amiens treaty – and then only if the rest of the article dealing with Malta in that treaty was ignored; there were not sufficient guarantors, no grand master until late in the day, and the power of the Order to hold, rule and defend Malta had been destroyed by the sequestration of its properties in France, Spain, Germany and Italy. The French carefully ignored all these factors, an attitude which could only lead to the presumption that they wished the Order to return to Malta because it was too weak to hold the island. Whitworth had left behind him in Paris his embassy staff, Talbot and Mandeville. Talbot reported on the 14th that rumours were being spread to calm public apprehensions, but he also commented that he was constantly busy supplying passports.31 The long-drawn-out crisis had been perceived in Paris as a period of uncertainty rather than as threatening, as Bertie Greatheed had understood. Reactions had varied, and among the British visitors some took heed quickly and left, but others, perhaps deceived by the earlier crisis in March which had petered out, did nothing; large numbers were still in France when the war began. In Britain, on the other hand, work had gone ahead since March on preparations for war. The naval press had been active in the coastal towns, and most of the necessary ships were more or less manned and supplied.32 The British government had had as much warning of the likely

31

Browning, 263–264, Talbot to Whitworth, 14 May 1803. J. Leyland (ed.), Despatches and Letters relating to the Blockade of Brest, 1803–1805, vol. 1, Navy Records Society, 1909, 1, 2, 8, 9; Smith, St Vincent, II, 289. 32

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timing of the outbreak of war as the French, since General Andréossy had asked for his passports as soon as he heard that Whitworth was intending to leave Paris. He had delayed leaving until he knew that Whitworth was on his way, and the two men timed their departures to coincide. Cornwallis, therefore, had been appointed to the Channel fleet on the same day that Andréossy got his passports, 6 May.33 On 15 May, the day the news arrived that Whitworth had left Paris, the Admiralty advised all commanders-in-chief that Franco–British relations ‘had taken an unfavourable turn’, and that all French ships they encountered, in port or at sea, merchant and naval, were to be detained. The three main commanders-in-chief had been alerted days earlier: Sir William Cornwallis for the Channel and the Brest blockade, Lord Keith for the North Sea, Lord Nelson for the Mediterranean. Cornwallis was on board by the next day, and Keith by the 18th; Nelson sailed from Portsmouth in Victory, from which he was to exchange into the Amphion frigate for the voyage south, leaving Victory for Cornwallis’s use.34 Cornwallis sent a frigate, Doris, Captain Pearson, to cruise off Brest to observe the French and Dutch vessels there, clearly with the intention of gathering information in advance of the commencement of fighting. Pearson met the French lugger L’Affronteur, which had come out on a similar mission to observe the British ships; Pearson attacked and captured the French ship on the 18th, an action in which fourteen French sailors died. Next day off Audierne the French brig Jeanne had been taken by two frigates. These were both rather premature actions, and were regarded with some indignation in Paris, since they were claimed to have taken place before news of the outbreak of war could have reached the victims, though the captain of L’Affronteur clearly had a good idea of what was afoot, and so no doubt had everyone in Brest; and if Brest knew, so will the other French ports have known. Doris had also left her station in pursuit of L’Affronteur, and Captain Pearson had to be ordered back.35 In London the effective declaration of war came on 16 May, when a Privy Council ordered the implementation of naval warfare against France, in which any French ships were to be ‘detained’. Two days later the formal declaration of war was published, giving at length Britain’s reasons for going to war once more. The story of the previous year and a half since the Peace Preliminaries was rehearsed from the British point of view, emphasising French bad faith and invidious actions. Probably no one paid much attention, but it had to be said.36 33

Leyland, Blockade of Brest, 3. C. Lloyd, The Keith Papers, vol. 3, Navy Records Society, 1955, 4–5; Leyland, Blockade of Brest, 9 and 14. 35 Leyland, Blockade of Brest, 15–16, enclosure and note p. 14. 36 Parl. Hist. XXXVI, 1256–1513; Naval Chronicle IX, 407–416. 34

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The real target of these justifications, besides the British public, most of whom did not really need to be persuaded, was the tsar of Russia, and perhaps the Austrian emperor as well. For three years, ever since the collapse of the Armed Neutrality after the Copenhagen battle and the conclusion of the Anglo–Russian Convention of June 1801, which permitted the British fleet to leave the Baltic and the Baltic trade to resume, Hawkesbury and the Russian government had been edging closer to each other. Communication had been constant, and Hawkesbury had kept the Russians apprised of his difficulties with Bonaparte, and the state of the negotiations. But whereas Hawkesbury was sanguine about a new war, Tsar Alexander was not. Alexander was not yet wholly secure on his throne, he did not have full confidence in his ministers, and he needed time to settle his internal affairs. A new war was a complication he did not look for. Further, he had co-operated with Bonaparte reasonably well over Germany in the past year or so, while Britain looked to be dangerously bellicose. And Malta was a sore point. Hence the need for the British government to justify its actions. The outbreak of a new war clearly affected everyone else in Europe, and the British determination to fight made them seem to be the aggressors. Bonaparte had hoped also to involve Russia, at least as a friend, and had asked Alexander to mediate. This request had been made in the midst of the March crisis, and when that subsided Alexander did not answer. As the later crisis worsened, however, Alexander agreed to do so, though his letter offering to mediate, written on 22 April, did not reach Hawkesbury until 14 May, by which time Whitworth had left Paris, and the essential decisions had been made.37 By this time the British were not particularly interested, though it would have been impolitic to reject Alexander’s offer out of hand, for such an act could be construed as hostility. It was quite clear that Alexander had no wish to be involved in a new war, at least not yet, and so it was not too difficult to avoid his offer of mediation and yet maintain a certain friendship.38 Austria was a rather different matter, and British relations there had been cool since the separate Lunéville treaty. Yet Austria was scarcely pleased at Bonaparte’s repeated advances in Italy, in Germany, in Switzerland, and his immediate invasion of Naples on the outbreak of war could be seen as another threat to Austria.39 So once more Bonaparte’s actions assisted his enemies, or at least helped to drive his various enemies towards co-operation, though there was no immediate appetite on the continent for more fighting. So, while the British fleets instituted blockades and ‘detentions’ at sea,

37 38 39

Fedorak, ‘In Search of a Necessary Ally’. Ibid., 239–240. Napoleon I, Correspondence, 6767; Fedorak, ‘In Search of a Necessary Ally’. 193

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capturing French vessels and taking them into harbour, actions which were essentially small-scale and often invisible to landsmen, French armies, much more visibly, invaded Hanover and Naples. As early as 13 May Bonaparte had ordered forces in the camp at Nijmegen to move forward to Coeverden in preparation for the invasion of George III’s electorate of Hanover, and on the same day he advised General Clarke in Florence that he intended that Etruria should participate in the French embargo on British goods. Neither of these measures would take place unless war began. By the 17th he was writing of the imminence of the outbreak of war to the Regent of Portugal and the Pope, and asking the latter for the right to march troops through Roman territory. On the 20th he announced the outbreak of war to the Senate in Paris, and ordered measures to block British trade and to issue letters of marque to privateers. These measures were also applied to Italy, and further orders went to General Murat to send a French army into Naples to occupy the ports of Apulia.40 Hanover had not been involved in the main crisis until now. It had been occupied by Prussia during the Armed Neutrality and restored to George III at the restoration of peace in 1801. It had been used by French republican governments as a lure to keep Prussia neutral, but this policy was abandoned by Bonaparte. George III’s youngest son, the duke of Cambridge, had been sent to the electorate as inspector of infantry and cavalry in the local army – in effect, as putative viceroy – in 1802, but the country had not had long to recover from its earlier troubles: the Prussians had been almost as rapacious as any French army. It was a large state, geographically, at least by German standards, one of those of the second rank, along with Bavaria and Saxony, well behind Prussia and Austria, but it was neither rich nor populous. Its capital, Hanover city, had a population of less than 20,000, and most of the trade of the electorate went through the independent Hanseatic cities of Hamburg and Bremen. Its army was unpractised in war and was commanded by the 77-year-old field marshal Johann Ludwig von Wallmoden, an illegitimate son of George II, who was barely competent at anything other than collecting art. But the army was fairly large, 22,000 strong, and it was theoretically backed by almost the same number of militiamen, though these men were quite untrained.41 The French made preparations. An aide of Bonaparte’s, Jean-Claude Lacuée de Cessac, was sent in April to make a tour of Holland and

40

Napoleon I, Correspondence, 6742, 6743, 6749, 6751, 6752, 6755, 6758, 6763. See D.S. Gray, ‘The French Invasion of Hanover in 1803 and the Origins of the King’s German Legion’, Proceedings of the Consortium on Revolutionary Europe, 1980, 198–211, and H.A.L. Fisher, Napoleonic Statesmanship: Germany, Oxford 1903, ch. 3.

41

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Hanover to estimate the strength of the electorate.42 In Holland an army was collected at the same time, amounting to about the same strength in numbers as that of the Hanoverians, and was put under the command of General Mortier, less than half Wallmoden’s age and more than twice as active. Prussia made some ineffectual gestures towards a pre-emptive occupation, but both Britain and France ignored them. Mortier began his march eastwards on 26 May, using only 13,000 of his soldiers, with very few cavalry and only eight guns. On 3 June, after a single skirmish, the civilian government of Hanover capitulated, though they could not speak for the army. The Hanoverian forces retreated to the Elbe and then across that river into the duchy of Lauenberg, part of the electorate which bordered on Denmark. Eventually the army learned the terms of the capitulation from a Hamburg newspaper. Even in retreat the army outnumbered its opponents, in horse and foot and guns. There followed a pause, while the capitulation, the Convention of Suhlingen, was referred to Bonaparte and George III for ratification. Bonaparte did no more than initial it; George III refused even to do that. As a result Mortier had to arrange another capitulation, this time directly with the army. Wallmoden was willing, and by the Convention of the Elbe the Hanoverian army was to be disbanded; the men were to be paid a pension, and all their arms and equipment were to be delivered over to the French. The duke of Cambridge had left in the meantime, boarding a British ship at Cuxhaven which had been stationed there for that very purpose. Many of the soldiers eventually followed his example. During the pause between the two capitulations, several hundred of them had already deserted, and afterwards rather more quietly moved northwards towards the ports of the North Sea and the Baltic, in the territories of Denmark, the Hanseatic cities, or even Mecklenburg, to take ship for Britain. There they were formed into the King’s German Legion, which was operational by the autumn. Hanover itself was then mulcted without mercy. The capitulations had included provision for respecting Hanoverian property, and a Hanoverian administration still technically existed. But these details were quickly circumvented or ignored. Properties of George III were soon removed, by order of the first consul, on the argument that as property of the king of England they were enemy property. The army of occupation, as usual with French armies, was to be supplied, paid and maintained at Hanoverian expense. The French army of conquest had been only 13,000 strong, but the occupation force contained 31,000 men. The pay for this force was computed at 900,000 francs a month, while its daily expenses were 100,000 francs – an annual cost of almost 50 million francs. Here was yet another example of an apparently 42

Napoleon I, Correspondence, 6658. 195

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straightforward agreement being stretched and twisted afterwards by Bonaparte’s government until it was unrecognisable. The result for Hanover was, of course, impoverishment, but there were other effects as well. The pensions of the disbanded Hanoverian army were either not paid at all or paid only in part, which further encouraged the men to leave. When Bonaparte attempted to recruit local men into his own Hanoverian legion, from July, very few joined. Instead there was a constant and steady flow of eligible men to Britain. By October the King’s German Legion had 800 men, by November 1,500, by December 2,000. The colonel of the legion, the duke of Cambridge, was authorised to recruit it to a total of 5,000 men. This was a significant movement of men, an indication to Bonaparte that individual German states might be easily overrun and dominated, but that to gain the loyalty of their people was to be very much more difficult. There was, apparently, no declaration of war before the French invasion of Hanover, the country being considered by Bonaparte part of the British dominions, a conclusion to which most Hanoverians, and all Germans, would have taken exception. In the West Indies also the commander-in-chief of the Jamaica station, Admiral Sir John Duckworth, took advantage of early information to sweep up French and Dutch shipping – at a great profit to himself in prize money – and to blockade the French forces in San Domingo.43 General Rochambeau was thus trapped between the British at sea and the Haitians on land. This was all very impressive, but most of the major French warships in the West Indies escaped; that is, they evaded interception by the British forces, not just in the West Indies, but also by the blockading fleets in European waters. One, the 74-gun ship of the line Duquesne, was intercepted and captured in July; the rest got back safely to French or Spanish ports – and nine of them fought at Trafalgar.44 Duckworth’s blockade of Rochambeau’s army was thus only in the nature of a mopping-up operation. The real fighting was done by the blacks, who suffered appalling casualties, and it was only when Rochambeau’s remaining ships were threatened with destruction by heated shot from the captured forts – which would thus leave them with no final refuge – that he agreed to onerous British terms. And as soon as his army had surrendered to the British, General Rochambeau began to dispute the terms which he had agreed. It did him no good, as he and his men remained prisoners in Britain until either death or peace released them.45

43 44 45

James, Black Jacobins, 365–366; Naval Chronicle XVIII, 16–17. Leyland, Blockade of Brest, p. xxiv and note on p. 89. James, Black Jacobins, 366–369; Naval Chronicle XXI, 478–490. 196

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Elsewhere in the region Commodore Samuel Hood of the Leeward Islands command took over the French and Dutch parts of Guiana, Essequibo, Berbice and Cayenne, with no difficulty, using only a couple of small ships and a small military detachment. No fighting was needed. Hood blockaded the major French islands, Martinique and Guadeloupe, and took, with little difficulty, St Lucia and Tobago. To make sure the blockade of Martinique was effective, he set his sailors in the Centaur to scale the near-vertical cliffs of Diamond Rock, an inhospitable island which lay in the mouth of the harbour. They established guns on the pinnacle and at the landing place, and thereupon commanded access to the capital; the island was then commissioned, by a splendid piece of Admiralty whimsy, as H.M. Sloop Diamond Rock, under a commander and with a garrison of a hundred sailors.46 Admiral Nelson sailed in the frigate Amphion to take command in the Mediterranean, leaving the battleship Victory for Cornwallis’s use; meanwhile orders went out overland to the French forces in Italy, to General Gouvion St-Cyr, to occupy the Apulian ports. Nelson reached Malta after a month’s voyage, and went straight on to Naples; there he learned that St-Cyr was marching through the Neapolitan kingdom, with the Neapolitan court trembling over whether he would attack them personally. St-Cyr, however, ignored Naples city; Nelson sailed off to check on the blockade of Toulon.47 The overall result of these movements in the Mediterranean was a stalemate. St-Cyr’s army in Apulia was a threat to a whole circle of possible targets – Corfu, Greece, Egypt, Sicily, the rest of southern Italy, even Malta – and Malta was now required as a British base to prevent any of those moves, or to counter them, if any were made. Yet at the same time St-Cyr did not have the naval capability to make seaborne threats credible, which diminished the immediate value of his move, and at the same time made the blockade of the French ships at Toulon all the more important. That blockade could not be based at Malta, which was too far distant, and too agriculturally unproductive to provide adequate supplies for the ships. The British fleet mounting the blockade had to be supplied from Naples, or Sicily, or, eventually, Sardinia. The Toulon blockade was a precarious business. The blockading force was in fact thought to be only just at parity with the French force they were facing. Nelson commanded nine ships of the line in July, when he reached the fleet off Toulon, and inside Toulon there was an uncertain number of French ships, perhaps seven, maybe nine – the actual numbers were unclear – of equivalent or possibly greater strength. Further,

46

Naval Chronicle X, 501–502, XXI, 478–490, XII, 205; J. Corbett, The Campaign of Trafalgar, London 1910, 125–126. 47 P. Mackesy, The War in the Mediterranean, 1803–1810, 21–29. 197

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Nelson had to detach ships to watch other places: one ship of the line had to be stationed permanently in the Bay of Naples to provide a refuge for the Neapolitan royal family if a new move by St-Cyr or another French force made it necessary; and now ships from the Mediterranean fleet had to watch the Apulian ports as well. Further, the blockade could only be maintained if ships were detached in rotation to re-victual; Nelson’s nine battleships in effect meant an actual blockading force, all too often, of only six or seven off Toulon.48 All these Mediterranean initial moves, naval and military, had thus merely shaken up the political and military pieces, which had then settled back into a new pattern, which was almost as much of a stalemate as in the final days of peace. The net result was an important extension of French power by land, with St-Cyr’s army now in a good position for further adventures in several possible directions, and a significantly increased strain on British naval resources. Malta at last could be seen to have some practical value in acting as a protection for the eastern Mediterranean against French threats. This was compared with the largely symbolic value it had had so far for the British, but it had only come about because of the French move into Apulia, which was itself in part a result of the British occupation of Malta. Further, Bonaparte was using over 30,000 men in his move into southern Italy, and without a naval force to hand they were no more than an occupation army, while the British garrison of Malta was only a sixth of that.49 This new pattern in the Mediterranean laid all the more emphasis on the attitude of Spain, the only uncommitted naval power in western Europe, and one which had forces both in the Mediterranean area and in the Atlantic. The naval balance between Britain and France in the Mediterranean was about even; the French were largely concentrated at Toulon, while the British ships were spread precariously about the western basin from Gibraltar to Malta and Apulia; the Spanish ships therefore could hold the balance. They were, however, also divided between several bases – Cartagena on the Mediterranean coast, Cadiz, Corunna and Ferrol on the Atlantic side – and they were thus separated further, as were the main French fleets, by the British forces at Gibraltar, and by the intervening and neutral state of Portugal. The Spanish ships were quite unready for sea at the time the war began, unmanned and unsupplied, and it would take some considerable time, expense and effort for them to achieve seaworthiness. But they were good ships, and five of them were enormous vessels with well over a hundred guns. The Spanish navy was a distinct threat to the naval balance in the

48 49

Ibid., 30–32. Ibid., appendix 2. 198

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Mediterranean, and the condition of the ships had to be constantly monitored by inquisitive British consuls, such as James Duff at Cadiz.50 French ships returning home from the West Indies ran into all these Spanish Atlantic ports for refuge at various times during the next months, and at Ferrol five Dutch ships – three of the line, a frigate, and a sloop – had taken refuge when the beginning of the war had caught them during their voyage home to Holland from Lisbon.51 Cadiz, the most important Spanish base, could be watched by ships based at Gibraltar. Cartagena could be monitored from either the Gibraltar or Toulon squadrons, but Ferrol and Corunna fell to the Channel fleet under Cornwallis, who also had to watch the French ports of the Biscay coast, Bayonne, Bordeaux, Rochefort, Lorient and Brest. Meanwhile Admiral Keith, based in the Thames estuary, had to watch the French and Dutch coasts from Cherbourg to the Elbe estuary: one of his ships had to be at Cuxhaven to provide a refuge, soon needed, for the duke of Cambridge in Hanover, and after the French conquest of the electorate, the blockade was extended to the River Elbe.52 The two commands of Cornwallis and Keith were responsible essentially for the defence of the British south and east coasts and the approaches to Ireland, which meant first bottling up as many as possible of the enemy warships in their home ports, and then preventing them, if they got out, from reaching those coasts. Within weeks of the declaration of war, therefore, both sides had completed their initial moves. The Royal Navy was in process of mopping up the French empire in the West Indies, substantially assisted by the victory of the black regiments of Dessalines in Haiti, and by Bonaparte’s unnecessary and precipitous sale of Louisiana to the United States: both of these reduced the British task to a series of easily accomplished minor actions. Bonaparte had intended all along that the war should be fought in Europe, and his initial moves into Apulia and Hanover were partly designed to deprive Britain of means of access to the continent and partly to stretch the naval resources of his enemy so that the real target, Britain itself, would be all the more vulnerable. Bonaparte knew of the likely war on the day it was announced in London, and made extravagant predictions of it to Lucchesini, the Prussian ambassador, but it was not officially announced at Paris until the 20th, by which time the measures taken in London were known.53

50

Parl. Hist. XXIV, January 1805, papers on the war with Spain, 20, Admiralty to Nelson, 18 May 1803, and appendix. 51 Leyland, Blockade of Brest, 17, Cornwallis to Nepean, 28 May 1802, and enclosure. 52 Lloyd, Keith Papers, 7. 53 Garros, Itineraire de Napoleon Bonaparte, 206. 199

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Three days later came an unpleasant surprise, a decree making prisoners of war of all men who were enrolled in the British militia or British officers of the army or navy, if they were in France.54 This was certainly an unusual measure, but it had point. The exact words of the decree were that ‘all the English enrolled in the militia, from the age of 18 to 60, holding a commission from his Britannic Majesty’ were liable to arrest. In other words this was a fairly limited group of men, who would become soldiers on active duty as soon as they reached home – the militia had been embodied since March. The problem was that this decree was issued by a dictator, and his officials were all too keen to accomplish what they thought he wanted, and to go beyond the exact words. They vigorously interpreted the decree, ignoring the limitations inherent in the words. As a result virtually all the British in France, men, women and children, of whatever age and status, were rounded up.55 This may have been a sensible move at first, if the intention had merely been to sort out those liable to arrest by the terms of the decree, and then let the rest go. But that is not what happened. Instead every Briton who could be found was rounded up and kept under arrest. Even Talbot, with a diplomatic passport, was prevented from embarking at Calais.56 After a certain time, once attention had been drawn to their situation by British protests, it became politically more and more difficult for Bonaparte to reverse his instruction. A carelessly worded decree, issued on the spur of the moment when Bonaparte heard of the initial naval clashes on the 18th, and then interpreted with too great enthusiasm by his minions, and without his correction, left him in a position where he was compelled to hold on to his unwanted prisoners for years. Among the visitors to France the crisis of May had had the same varied effect as that of March. Some took alarm and left speedily and in time; indeed the continued poor relations between Britain and France since March had persuaded a steady stream of visitors to go home. The author of A Tour in France was ‘electrified by a rumour of another war’, and amongst his group ‘flight was the order of the day’; he left via Dieppe on 16 April.57 Bertie Greatheed, on the other hand, who certainly heard the same rumours of war, and was in contact with Lord Whitworth and with the governing circles in France, and knew when

54

M. Lewis, Napoleon and his British Captives, London 1962, ch. 1; the Italian version is in Napoleon I, Correspondence, 6759. 55 This was already clear within four days: Browning, 274–275, Mandeville to Whitworth, 26 May 1803. 56 Browning, 276, Talbot to Hawkesbury, 27 May 1803. 57 Anon., A Tour in France, London 1808, 86. 200

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Whitworth left Paris, nevertheless made no effort to leave. Nor, to be fair, did Whitworth urge him to go. He did intend to ask Talbot if he should get a passport, but yet another rumour that Whitworth was returning to Paris deflected him from this. He dithered for days, and finally went for his passports on 23 May – the day after the decree was issued – to be told that he was a prisoner of war.58 Others had moved out of Paris to various destinations. Lord Mount Cashell had spent eight months in Paris and had then moved on to Italy by way of the south of France. He and his party were in Florence when they heard of the new war. His wife’s companion, Catherine Wilmot, described in her diary how ‘every soul ran about to know what his neighbour would do before he would determine himself’. Lord Mount Cashell himself could not leave, but Catherine got away by way of Germany.59 Also in Florence was Lord Cloncurry, who was ‘privately warned’ of the coming war by the commander of the French forces in Etruria, General Clarke. Clarke had himself been told by Bonaparte in a letter dated 13 May that war was imminent and to institute an embargo on British goods in Etrurian ports. Cloncurry moved on to Rome where he stayed for two more years. His political sympathies with the cause of the United Irishmen were probably responsible for this favourable treatment; he was able to return home by way of Bonaparte’s Italian territories when he chose to go.60 Geneva had been annexed to France in 1798 and was now part of Bonaparte’s state. There, Miss Berry and Mrs Damon, making a second visit to France from October 1802, arrived in early May. On the 27th they were woken by Lord John Campbell, son of the duke of Argyll, with the news of the war and that the British visitors at Lyon were being arrested. Next morning, leaving a servant ‘to get our coach from the coachmakers’, our clothes from the washerwoman, and our gowns from the mantua-maker’, they and Campbell and his companion all left for Lausanne in the Helvetic Republic, whence they travelled home through Germany. They sailed from Husum in Denmark on the same ship as Catherine Wilmot, and in company with several former Hanoverian soldiers going to Britain to enlist in the King’s German Legion.61 The news of the detention decree of 22 May was spreading rapidly. In Italy Joseph Forsyth had travelled in search of art from city to city since January 1802. He reached Turin on 25 May and was arrested next day. The news of the decree had thus arrived by the 26th, and must have been at Lyon earlier. Forsyth managed to write a book on his experiences

58 59 60 61

Bury and Barry, Englishman, 144–154. Sadleir, Irish Peer. Cloncurry, Personal Recollections, 189; Napoleon I, Correspondence, 6743. Lewis, Extracts, 258. 201

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while under arrest, ending with the cry, in capitals, that in 1812 he was ‘now passing the TENTH YEAR OF MY CAPTIVITY’.62 The reaction of the British was a combination of anger and outrage mixed with contempt. Though there had been occasional precedents for such a measure, nothing like Bonaparte’s sweeping arrest of all the nationals of a particular country had taken place before. It was claimed by the French authorities that they had 7,500 in custody, but it is reckoned that this is an exaggeration by several times. The deprivation of the British armed forces of even a few thousand men would make no difference to the war as a whole, and many of those arrested were not and would never have become officers, or even soldiers. The problem Bonaparte faced, his orders having been interpreted so exaggeratedly, was that he could not disown his enthusiastic officials, without creating resentment and appearing inefficient. He was thus stuck with many of these prisoners for the duration of the war. It seems likely that he put them out of his mind as quickly as he could. The British government, however, continually complained. Nor did many of the prisoners co-operate. They also complained, and when their complaints and their insistence on their right to leave failed to achieve release by persuasion, they began to escape. Most of these escapes are only known from the (incomplete) registers the French kept, but it was fairly common for men to gain release on parole and then break that parole, on the argument that their detention had been illegal in the first place. The ‘détenus’, as they were termed, mainly remained in Paris for a month or so, but were then progressively dispersed to various provincial towns, of which Verdun, with its fortress, became the main detention centre. Until the terms of detention were thus tightened, it was not too difficult to escape, but many did not attempt to do so since they assumed that they would soon be allowed to go. The escapes therefore tended to begin only after several months, in the autumn of 1803. This was both provoked by, and provoked, the dispersal to the provinces. Distinction of some kind could secure release. The inventor of the lifeboat, Henry Greathead, who had been fêted in several European capitals during a tour in 1803, was arrested in Paris, but released late in 1804. James Forbes, a Fellow of the Royal Society, and his wife were released at the request of Sir Joseph Banks and Dr Edward Jenner. Sir Elijah Impey, former Chief Justice of Bengal, was released at the intercession of Talleyrand, whose wife had been granted a welcome divorce by Impey in India many years before. Richard Trench, a London barrister, was detained in Paris and then removed to Orleans. He had married in April at the embassy, and his wife, the former Miss St George, 62

Forsyth, Remarks on Antiquities; capitalisation in the original. 202

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was not detained. By sheer persistence, however, she secured his release in 1807.63 On the other hand, distinction could also provoke detention. Lord Yarmouth went to Calais as war approached in order to collect his wife and children, and was caught by the war’s outbreak; his presence was later useful as he was the intermediary in the unsuccessful peace negotiations in 1806. The earl of Elgin, returning overland from his post as ambassador in Constantinople, was assured by Talleyrand that he could take the French waters even though there was a war on, but was detained at Orleans; it seems astonishing that he should have taken the risk, and equally surprising that his diplomatic status should have been so blatantly ignored. He was not allowed to leave until 1807.64 Those of less or no distinction were usually not allowed to leave at all. Most of the détenus, despite the intention stated in the decree, were in fact ordinary people, neither rich nor officers; many were women, usually wives who refused to leave their detained husbands. Many of these simply settled into a condition of acceptance of their lot, keeping up appearances, complaining cheerfully, being exploited by French suppliers and guards.65 The whole business looks at this distance to be a complete waste of time and energy for everyone, French and British, involved. But after a relatively short time, Bonaparte’s personal reputation was involved; cancellation had thus ceased to be possible. The advantage of a dictatorship with a massive bureaucracy is that the dictator can simply hand the matter over to the bureaucrats; releases, negotiations, punishments and so on went on for years. Meanwhile Bonaparte had bigger problems to deal with. There can be no doubt that Bonaparte fully appreciated the enormous difficulty of the task he had set himself in falling into war with Britain. As early as 16 May he remarked to Lucchesini that he had undertaken a ‘most difficult enterprise, but one most fertile of political results’, and he fantasised about marching into London, capturing Parliament and the Bank.66 What the political results he was imagining were are unknown, but without British hostility, the rest of the world would have been open to French penetration – as it had been during the brief oceanic peace – and with the resources of the British Isles under his control the rest of Europe would scarcely be able to resist him. The combination of the French army and the naval resources of Britain would be unbeatable. But Bonaparte also saw the real danger which was involved in an invasion of Britain, which was not that he would be defeated on land 63

Alger, Napoleon’s British Visitors; Lewis, British Captives; Dean of Westminster, Remains, 150. 64 Lewis, British Captives, 75–76. 65 Ibid., chs V and VI. 66 Garros, Itineraire de Napoleon Bonaparte, 206 (16 May). 203

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– he scarcely expected that, nor did anyone else – but that he would find himself involved in a continental war at the same time. On 1 June he remarked menacingly to Cobenzl, the Austrian ambassador, that the British war would be followed ‘necessarily’ by a war on the continent, and he therefore needed either Prussia or Austria on his side.67 The enemy was left unspecified, but Cobenzl could be in no doubt that Austria was a possibility. Having thus left both of his great power neighbours under no illusions, yet also he hoped in some confusion, and having partly neutralised Russia by asking Alexander I to mediate with Britain, Bonaparte set off on 26 June for a tour through northern France and Belgium. He spent three days at Amiens, then reached the Channel at St Valéry-surSomme. He travelled north along the coast, through Boulogne, Calais, Dunkirk, Ostend, as far as Walcheren, with side trips to Lille and Bruges and Ghent. Then he visited Antwerp and Brussels, continuing along the Meuse valley to Sedan, and back to Paris.68 There were several ironies in this journey. Amiens, his first stop, was the scene of the making of the treaty he had never much bothered to observe himself, while expecting Britain to do so to the letter. At Calais he stayed at an inn, the Hôtel d’Angleterre, which had accommodated Cornwallis on his journeys to and from Amiens for the peace negotiations. And everywhere he went there were places where English armies of the Middle Ages and British armies of the eighteenth century had marched or camped or campaigned; Marlborough had besieged and taken Lille. Very few French armies had ever been able to do the same sort of thing in England. At Boulogne he conferred at a long meeting with Decrès, the Minister of Marine, discussing, no doubt, the possibilities of invasion and the necessities involved. Up again at dawn on 30 June, he inspected the whole area in and around the town, accompanied by Generals Soult and Lauriston, looking at the ramparts, the harbour, the beach, the nearby land, all areas which became important sites involved in the great armed camps which were soon to be established for the Army of England, and in which the Grande Armée was to be assembled, trained, organised, and infused with the spirit which took it victoriously as far as Moscow. Next day he rode to Calais, reviewed the troops there, and then went on to Dunkirk, Ostend, Walcheren, inspecting, reviewing, planning all the way. It was at Walcheren on 12 July that the plan to assemble the force for the invasion was worked out on paper.69 Meanwhile across the Channel, in the country which was the object of his intended expedition, the Addington government had been organ67 68 69

Ibid. (1 June) Ibid., 207–210. Desbrière, Projets, III, 432. 204

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ising its defences. The naval aspects had been straightforward, essentially a repetition of the measures of colonial conquest and continental blockade which had been in place at the end of the last war. But this time it was clear from the beginning that the war would be difficult and of unpredictable length, and the first enemy intention was all too obviously to invade. Preparations therefore had to be made both for the long haul and for the immediate danger. By the time Bonaparte at Walcheren had set down his plan for the invasion and for collecting the naval and military forces required, the British government had set in place most of what was needed to prevent the invasion succeeding, and had set out its intentions for the war as a whole. The immediate danger of invasion was clearly limited, for Bonaparte was not ready, but the British home army was steadily expanding; the peacetime force of 52,000 troops in Britain was expanded by recruitment, and was backed by the embodied militia, and by a supplementary militia of another 70,000 men (by July 1803), and by a naval force of ‘sea fencibles’; by January 1804 there was an armed force of over 230,000 men in Britain ready to face an invasion, and 400,000 men had joined the volunteers – though their usefulness was comparable to that of those who had been so hopeless in Hanover. To pay for all this, Addington’s budget of June 1803 had built on his financial reforms of peacetime, by re-introducing income tax in a much more effective form, which raised almost as much as Pitt’s income tax at half the rate. And active diplomacy was working on the three great powers of the continent. Hawkesbury had been wooing Russia for the past two years, though with little concrete result so far. But Bonaparte’s advances in Naples and Hanover had annoyed all three powers, and British diplomacy was laying the groundwork which resulted two years later in the Third Coalition. It was the existence of that alliance which deflected Bonaparte’s army from his invasion plans.70 Lord Keith, on board his flagship Utrecht – captured from the Dutch at the battle of Camperdown – set down his intentions in a letter to the Admiralty dated 1 July, the day Bonaparte reached Calais, and the day after his long conference with Decrès. He detailed the ships he commanded and their stations. Off Calais – and they were on station already, of course – he had placed one ship of the line, the Leda, Captain Honeyman, with a frigate, the formerly French Immortalité, four sloops, and a gun vessel. These ships also patrolled all along the French coast as far as Cherbourg. Bonaparte and Decrès would have been able to see

70 C.D. Hall, ‘Addington at War: Unspectacular but not Unsuccessful’, Historical Research 61, 1988, 306–315; E.McC. Renn, ‘England Faces Invasion: The Land Forces, 1803–1805’, Proceedings of the Consortium on Revolutionary Europe, 1974, 129–140.

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one of them as they discussed the possibilities and logistics of crossing the Channel in the face of the power those ships represented, and Bonaparte would have seen another of them the day before when he clambered over the Boulogne ramparts with Soult and Lauriston. As Bonaparte went along the coast, he would see other patrolling British ships; off Dunkirk were a sloop and two gun vessels; off the Dutch coast, another 74-gun ship of the line, the formerly French Raisonnable, flagship of Rear-Admiral Thornborough, along with two frigates and four sloops. There were other ships, mainly sloops and gun vessels spread along the English coast as far as Leith in Scotland.71 The British naval screen was deceptively thin, composed as it was in the main of relatively small vessels. No Frenchman will have been deceived, however, and Decrès was no doubt quite clear as to the naval problem the first consul faced. And Bonaparte, who had already had to consider in detail the problem of an invasion across the Channel at least twice in his military career so far – in 1798 and 1801 – took a long hard look at the whole coast before setting out his plan. But the problem, as he will have known, was essentially quite simple: he had to acquire sufficient warships to defeat or contain the Royal Navy, and sufficient transport ships to carry his army across the Channel. This was what he set out to do in his plan of 12 July. Another aspect of the war against Britain had been set in train even before Bonaparte went north from Paris, though it had failed even before he had finished his travels. If the naval cordon along the Channel was deceptively thin, concealing great power, it was well understood that the real weakness in Britain’s political armour was Ireland. The developing and repeated crises in Franco–British relations in the spring of 1803 had attracted to Paris the leaders of the Irish exiles. Arthur O’Connor came from Italy, Thomas Addis Emmet from Brussels, and both men could lay claim to an authority derived from the Directory of the United Irishmen of 1798, and both were clear that they should be entrusted with some form of overall control of Irish affairs on the continent. So when the French government, at war with Britain, and in response to Bonaparte’s month-old instruction to General Berthier, the Minister of War, began casting around for men to deal with on the subject of Ireland, there were two. On 30 May Colonel Alexandre Dalton interviewed Emmet. Dalton was on Berthier’s staff, and was the son of an Irishman who had served in the old Irish Brigade, recruited from Irish exiles, which had been a part of the old royal army for a century before the Revolution. Dalton announced that an expedition of 25,000 men under General Masséna was being planned for later in the year, to be landed in Ireland. Its object, said Dalton, was to establish Irish inde71

Lloyd, Keith Papers, 18, with the lists of ships’ stations on pages 16 and 23–24. 206

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pendence. He then asked Emmet to enquire among the Irish in France if there were enough of them to form an Irish force to be part of the invasion army. Soon afterwards Colonel Dalton saw O’Connor, laid out the same scenario, and asked him to make the same enquiries.72 Dalton was some way down the chain of command, but he did have access to the makers of policy. The question arises, though, whether the 25,000-man expedition ever existed other than in his words. Dalton suggested that it would take place something over six months after his meetings, which, since this was the end of May, meant early in the next year. Winter would hardly be a good time to sail to Ireland from France, though no time was good in face of Admiral Cornwallis’s blockading ships. Dalton was speaking before Bonaparte had even begun his examination of the Boulogne camp site and the nearby ports, and therefore before any serious planning had been done, so whatever plans existed for an Irish expedition could only have been tentative at best. Dalton also announced that the object of the expedition was to establish Irish independence. Since he was speaking to men who had devoted their adult lives to that very cause, he could scarcely say anything else and hope to retain their attention. It did not mean that this was official French government policy, and both Emmet and O’Connor had seen enough of Europe in the years before 1803 to understand exactly what was involved in being presented with independence at French hands – they had had to reach Europe by way of Hamburg, that being the nearest port to Britain not under French control; O’Connor had been in Italy and Emmet in Holland and (annexed) Belgium. The conclusion must be that the expedition described by Dalton was no more than a possibility at the time, perhaps not even that, and that the promise of Irish independence after a French victory was unlikely ever to be realised other than as a satellite of France. This leaves the final item in Dalton’s discussions with both men as the real purpose of his mission: to get Emmet and O’Connor to recruit Irish exiles into an auxiliary force with which to spearhead the possible expedition. That is, the French Ministry of War was tapping all possible sources of military manpower. (A month later a Hanoverian legion was being set up in analogous circumstances.) Having been recruited, an Irish legion could be used in an Irish expedition if one was ever sent, or elsewhere if it did not. (In the event it fought in Holland and Spain, and in the last agonising retreat through Germany, but never in Ireland.)73 How far either Emmet or O’Connor accepted Dalton’s word is not known, but they both began to make the enquiries about forming the legion among the exiles which he had asked for. Two men doing the same

72 73

Gallaher, Bonaparte’s Irish Legion, 22–23; Napoleon I, Correspondence, 6692. Gallaher, Napoleon’s Irish Legion. 207

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task was bad enough, but there were soon even more. The day after the meeting between Dalton and Emmet, on 31 May, Patrick Gallagher arrived in France from Ireland, as a messenger from the plotters in Dublin, asking that the French supply military officers, on the argument that there were enough willing Irish fighters in Ireland to provide private soldiers. Then another man from Berthier’s staff, General Oliver Harty (like Dalton, a former member of the Irish Brigade), contacted John McGuire, yet another of the Irish Parisian exiles, to collect information on other available exiles. Again, the context was to be an actual French expedition to Ireland. Both Emmet and O’Connor were annoyed at McGuire’s appearance on the scene, but this did nothing to dissipate their own mutual hostility. The French began to experience the exasperation usual to those dealing with political exiles.74 Meanwhile in Ireland Emmet’s brother Robert was actively organising a new rising. The hope was to achieve independence independently of the French, but Gallagher, the messenger, was also sent to try to co-ordinate matters with the French. He was one of Emmet’s group, and it seems that they were in two minds. There was, in fact, no enthusiasm for a rising without French help except among a few individuals, but they convinced each other they could do it. They were also convinced that there was active help available in other parts of Ireland, but again they were largely dealing only with people of like mind. Emmet and his people acquired properties in Dublin, manufactured pikes, made efforts to acquire muskets, and contacted possible supporters. They had a plausible plan, to seize Dublin Castle by surprise, which was to be accompanied and followed by attacks on several government buildings around the city. It is certain that news that the Castle, the centre of Irish power, was in Irish rebel hands would have galvanised Irish supporters. The pressing need for secrecy, however, restricted the number of conspirators to a few men, and kept the making of plans to a minimum and details were all avoided.75 The outbreak of war between Britain and France made communications between the Irish in Dublin and the Irish in France much more difficult. Any co-ordination of action between the two was thus impossible. The French plans for a large expedition meant a long delay; but the Irishmen in Dublin risked discovery with every load of wood they bought to be made into pikes. More delay in France came from the animosity between the Irish exiles in Paris, so that no credible organisation among them resulted; in mid-July an explosion at one of the depots in Dublin warned the government that something was up, though only hints reached the officials and the soldiers.76 74 75 76

Ibid., 23–26; Elliott, Partners, 306. Elliott, Partners, 306–307. Gallaher, Napoleon’s Irish Legion, 27; Elliott, Partners, 308. 208

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In the end Emmet was compelled to begin his attempt because it seemed clear to him that he in turn was about to be attacked by the British. Yet the absence of detailed planning meant that few involved knew what to do, and the only result was confusion. One man was deputed to collect several hackney carriages, and when a soldier on duty challenged them, he was killed, and the carriage-men at once fled, with their carriages. Another man was sent to alert the Wicklow supporters, but stayed drinking until it was too late. A rising using men such as these to accomplish vital tasks was bound to fail. The rising began, began to go wrong, and the government reacted, all more or less simultaneously. Soldiers appeared in numbers in the streets, and the leaders of the rising abandoned the enterprise almost as soon as they had begun. The major casualty was Lord Kilwarden, killed by a group of rebels when they met him by chance; about thirty others were killed in various incidents.77 The whole affair was hopeless from the start, and only a blind belief that Ireland was full of fervent patriots simply waiting for a signal to rise drove the rising on. Ireland was full of patriots, certainly, but these were people who had seen what had happened in ’98, and knew full well that without outside help, specifically French armed assistance in quantity, a rising would fail. Even the surprise capture of Dublin Castle would only have been a start, and there is no indication that Emmet and his men had thought what to do next. Without a French army, the British forces would surely have prevailed against ill-armed, ill-prepared, and badly led Irish rebels, no matter how inspired. And the French could not get to Ireland in sufficient quantity so long as the Royal Navy patrolled the Narrow Seas. This was, in effect, the last chance Bonaparte had, though he did not know it, of defeating Britain decisively. A rising in Ireland on the scale of ’98 would be required, however, together with a readiness on the part of the French forces in the Channel to invade southern England. Neither of these conditions ever existed, either singly or in combination. Bonaparte therefore could never defeat Britain; but then, neither could Britain ever hope to defeat Bonaparte – unless allies were forthcoming. The war was going to be long.

77 Elliott, Partners, 310–318; Robert Kee, The Most Distressful Country, London 1976, 161–169.

209

CONCLUSION The peace made between Britain and France, first by the preliminary agreement in London in October 1801 and then by the final treaty at Amiens in March 1802, was regarded by both sides, in George III’s all too accurate description, as ‘experimental’. But in this case the experiment was regarded as having a different purpose by the two participants. For the British government the experiment was in living alongside a swollen French Republic controlled by a charismatic military dictator; for the military dictator the experiment was in expanding his power in times of peace rather than by conquest. Bonaparte thus had a certain interest in maintaining the peace for as long as possible, and the longer it lasted the more he would be able to consolidate and expand his power, both domestically and internationally. From the start the British were alert to the difference between the two countries’ approaches to the peace, though Bonaparte perhaps was not. Bonaparte’s actions at home established his personal power, and internationally his expansions took place within territories which he already in many ways controlled – in Holland, in northern Italy, in Switzerland – or into colonies returned to him as part of the peace treaty. In such circumstances it was difficult for the British to do anything to hinder him, as the Swiss crisis and the mounting of French expeditions to San Domingo and New Orleans clearly showed. The absence of any apparent concern on the part of the continental powers also prevented the application of British power in the interior of the continent. But the result of Bonaparte’s moves was to consolidate his power even more, and to refresh his finances, and to reduce the internal options for action which he still had. With full control of France and the satellites, his next expansions had to be into other lands. Germany was one target, Spain and Portugal another, the colonies a third. All these possibilities provoked concern in Britain, particularly the overseas expansions, and Bonaparte’s actions in Germany and Iberia alerted other powers. The acquisition of Louisiana was done by treaty, but its disposal for cash broke that treaty. The expedition of Decaen to India and the Indian Ocean was explicitly designed as an anti-British move, a fact fully appreciated in London and India. And the repeated French complaints about the continued British occupation of Malta emphasised the vulnerability of the eastern Mediterranean to French penetration – as Sébastiani saw so clearly. The French parallel complaints about the British press, the émigré 210

CONCLUSION

press, the activites of émigrés, and so on, were met by similar British complaints about the presence of French forces in Holland, the arrest of British ships in French ports, the failure to carry out the post office and sequestration provisions of the Treaty of Amiens, and the failure to make any progress towards a commercial agreement. None of these, not even Malta, was unsolvable, and none of them, not even Malta, was the cause of the new war which broke out in May 1803. All of these difficulties could have been solved by negotiation. The near-war between Britain and Russia in 1801 had produced just as bad feelings between the two states, but these had been reduced and the mutual problems were negotiated away. All it took was a willingness to negotiate properly – that is, by taking account of the needs and points of view of the man across the table. Bonaparte, for instance, made commercial agreements with other states, including the Ottoman empire, but wholly failed to make one with Britain; such discrimination was clearly deliberate, and deliberately hostile. Good faith was what was missing in Franco–British negotiations – at least it was missing on the French side. The evidence is that the British were willing to take account of French conditions and sensitivities, but there was no sign of a similar French attitude towards the British. The French forces in Holland were relatively small, and in themselves did not provide a serious threat of an invasion of Britain. But they clearly worried the British. It would have cost Bonaparte little or nothing to remove them, and would have demonstrated to Britain that he was sensitive to British needs and concerns. Similarly, if, as Talleyrand had said, France had no ambitions in the eastern Mediterranean there was no need to bother about the British occupation of Malta. Eventually all the preconditions in the Treaty of Amiens would be met, or could be altered by negotiation – if, for example, Prussia continued to be unwilling to act as guarantor – and then the British would withdraw. It would have cost Bonaparte nothing, and it would have brought him considerable goodwill, if he had simply awaited the inevitable application of the preconditions. But he would not wait, and thereby roused suspicions, both in Britain and in Russia. Nor would he deal with the problem of sequestration, and he blocked the application of the post office agreement. All the faults were on the French side. The British had fulfilled all their obligations, except Malta, where the preconditions were not in place. It all showed, all too clearly, that the French side was not trustworthy, that Bonaparte was not capable of keeping his agreements. The British government declared war with a united country at its back, a condition which had not existed when the peace was made. That unity came about because it became steadily clearer during the period of peace that Bonaparte was not a ruler who could be lived with. The experiment had failed on the British side; on the French side it had been successful. And since, on the British side, the period of peace was explicitly recognised as ‘experimental’, it therefore fully deserves the appellation of a ‘truce’. 211

INDEX Abbeville, 59, 82–3, 85, 90 Abercromby, General Sir Ralph, 17, 20, 21, 27–8, 31, 34, 40 Aberdeen, earl of, 82–3, 86, 90, 91, 98 Aboukir Bay, British victory at, 10, 11 Acre, 109 Adair, Robert, 102 Addington, Henry, Prime Minister, vii–viii, 24, 55, 108, 126, 184–5; and crisis of March, 169–72; government of, vii, 24, 29, 49, 82, 99, 100–3, 110–11, 126, 139, 142, 154–5, 161, 180–1; and peace negotiations, 53, 64, 67, 76, 79; and preparations for war, 182, 204–5; see also Britain Adige, river, 21 Admiralty, British, 20, 30, 168, 192 L’Affronteur, French lugger, 192 Africa, 17 L’Africaine, French ship, 32 Albert, Charles, 136 Alemtejo, Portugal, 38 Alexander, I, tsar, 26, 40, 46, 56, 79, 117, 158, 193, 204 Alexandria, Egypt, 27–9, 31, 41, 44–5, 156 Algeciras, battle near, 44 Algiers, Dey of, 152, 156 Ali Effendi, Ottoman envoy in Paris, 74 Alien Office, 110 Alsace, 7 L’Ambigu, French émigré newspaper, 147–8 Amboyna, 34 Amiens, 1, 52, 54, 57, 59, 60–1, 63, 68, 82, 204 Amiens, Treaty of, 76–80, 81; breakdown, 125, 128–9, 149, 150, 163, 169, 173, 191, 210–12; celebrations for 99–100; durability, 81–2, 112–13, 114, 118–19, 121, 210 Amphion, HMS, 197 Amsterdam, 137

Ancona, 142 Andréossy, General Antoine François, French ambassador in London, 114, 134, 148, 152, 153, 161, 170, 174, 176, 188, 189, 192 Anjou, 84 Antwerp, 204 Apulia, 32, 194, 197, 198, 199 Arabia, 12 Aranjuez, Treaty of, 31 Archambauld, Colonel, French agent, 133 Arcot, Nawab of, 59 Argus, French newspaper, 162 Armed Neutrality of the North, 18, 19, 20, 23, 24, 53, 114, 194; collapse of, 25–7, 37, 113, 193 army, British, reform of, 110–11; reinforcements 169; size of, 205 army, French, size of, 160, 166, 168, 169 Arras, Archbishop of, 58 Arrawarry, Rio, Brazil, 38, 39 Auckland, Lord, 19 Audierne, 192 Augereau, General, 61, 65 Austria, 1, 5–6, 170; British alliance 6, 7–8, 14, 15; and France 7–9, 14–15, 17, 18–19, 21, 23, 112, 158; and Germany 115–18, 127, 172; and Malta 78, 121, 123; and new war 193, 204; and Switzerland 127; and von Hompesch 10 Azara, Marquis, Spanish negotiator at Amiens, 68, 71–72 Badajoz, Treaty of, 38, 39, 41, 71 Baden, 117, 118 Baird, General Sir David, 29 Ball, Captain Sir Alexander, RN, 11, 40, 67–8, 120, 121 Baltic Sea, 24–7 Baltimore, Maryland, 97 Banda I., 34 Banks, Sir Joseph, 202 Bantry Bay, Ireland, 55, 61–2

212

INDEX Barbé-Marbois, French minister, 69, 184 Barings, British bank, 184 Barlow, Joel, 131 Barthelémy, 93 Bastille, 89, 99 Batavian Republic, 32, 115, 123, 142; and Amiens negotiations, 59, 60, 64–5, 68; and Cape of Good Hope, 51, 119, 122, 123, 125, 128, 173; coup d’état in, 65; navy of, 199; and San Domingo expedition 62, 65, 119; see also Holland and Netherlands Bath, 155 Bauwens, Leuven, 135 Bavaria, 116, 117, 118, 120, 194 Bayonne, 176, 199 Belgium, 38, 39, 72, 136–7, 176 Belleisle, France, 13 Belliard, General, 44, 45 Bentham, Jeremy, 98 Berbice, 197 Berehaven, Ireland, 167 Berlin, 27, 46 Bernadotte, General, 55 Berne, 127, 128 Bernstorff, Count, Danish Foreign Minister, 18 Berry, Miss, 81, 90, 91, 94, 201 Berthier, French War Minister, 69, 206 Birmingham, 135 Black Country, 135 Black Sea, 141, 153 Blagdon Francis William, 59, 60, 85, 87 Blankett, Rear-Admiral John, 12, 29 Bois de Boulogne, Paris, 87 Bonaparte, Jerome, 63 Bonaparte, Joseph, 21, 53, 57, 60–1, 64, 69–75, 79, 175, 179, 186, 188, 190 Bonaparte, Mme Josephine, 59, 69, 90, 174–5 Bonaparte, Mme Julie, 68 Bonaparte, Louis, 66 Bonaparte, Lucien, French ambassador at Madrid, 22 Bonaparte, ‘Mme Mere’, 90 Bonaparte, Napoleon, first consul, vii–viii, 2–4; agents of, in Britain, 108–9, 133–4, 136; ambitions of, 142, 168, 181, 210–11; and Armed Neutrality, 20; assassination target,

5, 19, 35, 147; and Austria, 7–9, 17, 18–19, 21; British attitudes towards, 98–9, 157; and British press, 133, 146–9, 157, 160, 162, 211; and commerce, 129, 137–9; compared with Cromwell, 96, 98; detains British visitors, 200–4; early peace policy, 4–6; and Egypt, 2, 11–12, 45, 109, 122, 141, 156, 160, 161, 170; and émigrés, 130, 131–2, 211; on French products, 89; and Germany, 115–18, 196; and invasion of England, 36, 47, 143–5, 182, 203–4, 206; and Ireland, 167, 187; and Italy, 66, 74, 113, 115, 125, 172, 191; and Louisiana, 184; and Malta, 9, 17, 55, 58, 120, 122, 160–1; meets Cornwallis, 57–8; meets Fox, 95; methods of negotiation, 36, 59, 70, 172–4, 191; and Papal Concordat, 23, 36, 43, 91–3; peace policy towards Britain, 7–8, 31, 35, 47, 55, 81; portraits of, 86; and preparations of a new war, 182–3, 186, 187, 189, 199; regime, 88, 90, 93–4, 98, 173, 174; requests Russian mediation, 193; and Russia, 27; and Sébastiani’s report, 152–3, 155–9; and Spain, 18, 19; and Switzerland, 126; tour of Normandy and Flanders by, 163, 204–5; tourist attraction, 89–91; victory at Marengo, 5–6, 7; and Whitworth, 159–61, 170, 174–6, 178; see also army, French; France Bonneville, 96, 98 Bordeaux, 199 Bosville, ‘Colonel’ Thomas, 97 Boulogne, 59, 82; military camp, 36, 176, 187, 204, 205; naval raids on, 45 Bradley iron works, 135 Braybrooke, Lord, 50, 174 Brazil, 20, 38 Breda, 176 Bremen, 194 Brest, France, 20, 21, 31, 50, 55, 62, 63, 165, 166; blockade of 192, 199 Brindisi, 32 Bristol, 134 Britain: agents of, in France, 151; assumptions about peace, 82, 105; Cabinet, 13–14, 16, 24; declaration of war, 192; and Denmark, 18; 213

INDEX election, 102–3, 154; emigration of artisans, 131, 135–6; expedition to Egypt, 13, 16–17, 27–8, 44–5; French agents in, 108–9; French visitors, 130–1, 132–4; harvest in, 13, 104; industry in, 134–5; and Ireland, 23–4; and Malta, 9–11; naval blockade, 193–4; and return of sequestrated property, 150, 171; and Russia, 18, 79, 182, 193; and San Domingo expedition, 55–6, 62; threat of French invasion, 143–5, 203–4; trade and commerce of, 129, 137–8; unrest in, 13, 104–5; visitors to France detained, 200–4; see also Addington; army, British; Royal Navy Brittany, 14, 187 Brome, Lord, 52 Bruges, 204 Brune, General, French ambassador at Constantinople, 141 Brussels, 166, 204 Buckingham, Marquess of, 102 Burdett, Sir Francis, 97, 107–8 Burney, Fanny, Mme d’Arblay, 93 Cadiz, Spain, 13, 17, 18, 44, 62, 129, 198, 199 Cadoudal, Georges, 132; see also ‘Georges’ Caillard, French official, 42 Cairo, Egypt, 29, 41, 44 Calais, 45, 54, 59, 61, 82, 172, 187, 188, 190, 200, 203, 204, 205 Cambacérès, French consul, 2 Cambridge, duke of, 194, 195, 196, 199 Camden, Lord, 51 Cameron, Charles, Civil Commissioner in Malta, 40, 67 Campbell, Rear-Admiral George, 62 Campbell, Lord John, 201 Camperdown, battle of, 1, 205 Canada, 165, 186 Canning, George, 100, 103, 154 Canterbury, 54 Cape of Good Hope, 12, 29, 32, 33, 34, 166; in negotiations at Amiens; 70; returned to Dutch rule, 51, 119, 122, 123, 125, 128, 173 Cape Town, 33; free port, 71, 77 Caribbean Sea, 20 Carr, John, 85, 86, 87, 89, 99

Cartagena, 198, 199 Carysfort, Earl, 102 Castlereagh, Viscount, vii, 103, 154, 181 Cayenne, 197 Centaur, HMS, 197 Ceylon, 34, 41, 43, 51, 57, 64, 65, 70 Chandernagore, India, 34 Channel Is, 138 Chantilly, France, 82 Chaptal, Jean-Antoine, French Minister of the Interior, 138 Charente, river, 129 Charles IV, king of Spain, 164 Chatham, earl of, Master General of the Ordnance, 110 Chépy, Pierre, French agent, 138 Cherbourg, 129, 187, 199, 205 Cheshire, 51 Chouannerie, 85, 105 Cisalpine Republic, 21, 66, 115; see also Italian Republic Clarke, General, 194, 201 Cloncurry, Lord, 93–4, 95, 96, 201 Cobbett, William, 52 Cobenzl, Count Ludwig, 21, 174, 204 Cochin, India, 34 Cockerill, William, industrialist, 135–6 Coeverden, Netherlands, 194 Constantinople, 109, 141 Copenhagen, 18, 25, 26, 31, 114, 182, 193 Coquebert de Montbret, CharlesEtienne, French commercial diplomat, 136–9 Corfu, 33, 141, 153, 163, 179, 197; see also Seven Islands Cork, 134, 168 Cornwall, 134 Cornwallis, Marquis, vii, 45, 60, 82, 204; meets Bonaparte, 56, 58; in Paris, 54, 55; peace negotiator, 46, 52–4, 56, 60–1, 63–4, 68, 69–76, 79, 188 Cornwallis, Admiral Sir William, 49–50, 192, 197, 199, 207 Corsica, 156, 163, 171, 189 Corunna, 198, 199 Cosway, Maria, 86, 90 Cosway, Richard, 86 Crete, 179 Cronstadt, Russia, 25, 26 Curacao, 44 214

INDEX Dungeness, 49 Dunkirk, 176, 187, 189, 204, 206 Duquesne, French ship of the line, 196 Durham, 50

Cuxhaven, 195, 199 Czartoryski, Adam, Russian minister, 158 Dalton, Colonel Alexandre, 206–8 Damer, Mrs, 94, 201 d’Arblay, Alexandre, 130 d’Artois, Comte, 58 d’Auvergne, Captain, RN, Prince de Bouillon, 20, 151 David, Jacques-Louis, 85–6 Deal, Kent, 49 de Beauharnais, Hortense, 66 de Beauvoisins, Colonel Josephe-Eugene Calmet, 109, 134, 136, 143, 144, 151 de Bonnard, August Henri, industrial spy, 134–5, 136, 151 Decaen, General, 150, 165–6, 167, 183, 210 Decrès, Admiral, French Minister of Marine, 55, 164, 204, 205, 206 Delille, Jacques, poet, 132–3 Demerara, 34 Denmark, 18, 24, 25, 113, 195 de Poterat, Pierre Claude, 144–5 de Prony, Riche, author, 135 de Regnaud, François-Dominique, journalist and agent, 136 Derna, Cyrenaica, 41 de Ruspoli, Barthelémy, 121, 122, 123, 156 Despard, Colonel Edward Marcus, 105–7, 108–9, 133, 134, 136, 143–4, 167; trial and execution, 161–2, 182 Dessalines, Haitian general, 140, 199 Diamond Rock, 197 Dieppe, 82, 163, 200 Diet, Imperial, 21, 22, 36, 115–18, 125 Djezzar Pasha, 141, 153 Doris, HMS, 192 Dorset, duchess of, wife of Lord Whitworth, 114 Dover, 82 Dublin, 133, 137, 143, 145, 167, 208 Duckworth, Rear-Admiral Sir John, 31, 50, 196 Ducos, Roger, French consul, 2–3 Duff, James, 199 Dundas, Major-General Francis, 125 Dundas, Henry, Lord Melville, 180; Secretary of State for War, 14, 16–17, 24, 51

Eden treaty of commerce, 137, 139 Edgeworth, Abbé, 151 Edgeworth, Maria, 96, 151 Edinburgh, 99 Egypt, 1–2; British expedition to, 13, 16–17, 20–1, 27–8, 44–5, 110, 142, 153, 182; evacuation of, 121, 156, 169, 173; French in, 11, 14, 20, 23, 24, 27–9, 41, 47, 122, 137, 141, 152–3, 163, 170; in peace negotiations, 33–4, 39, 42, 43, 47–8, 51 Elba, 115, 125, 150, 180 Elbe, river, 195, 199 Elgin, earl of, 203 Ellenborough, Lord, 161–2 émigrés, French, 130, 131–2, 135, 146–9, 157 Emmet, Robert, 146, 167, 208–9 Emmet, Thomas Addis, Irish plotter, 144, 146, 167, 206–8 England, Bank of, 1, 210 Essequibo, 34, 197 Essex, 50 Eton, William, 67 Etruria, 21, 31, 66, 71, 74, 115, 164, 173, 180, 194, 201; see also Tuscany Falkland Is, 64 Fame, British ship, 129 Farington, Joseph, artist and diarist, 85 Fauvalet, Colonel, French consul at Dublin, 133, 137 Ferdinand, king of Naples, 22 Ferrol, Spain, 13, 18, 198, 199 Fiévée, Joseph, journalist and agent, 133, 136, 148 Fitzwilliam, Earl, 102 Flaxman, Joseph, artist, 85 Fletcher, General Richard, 28 Florence, Italy, 22, 23, 194, 201; Treaty of 33, 40 Florida, 164 Flushing, 61, 129, 163, 177 Forbes, James, 202 Formidable, HMS, 62 Forsyth, Joseph, 60, 201–2 Fort George, Scotland, 104

215

INDEX Fouché, French Police Minister, 68, 133 Fox, Charles James, 30, 146; and opposition in Parliament, 102, 154–5; in Paris, 89, 91, 94–5, 96, 99, 157 Fox, General Henry, 119 France: agents of, in Britain, 151–2; army of, 2, 3, 112–13, 160, 166; British visitors to, 59–60, 81, 82–99, 191; Consulate, 2–4, 69, 88; Directory, 1–3, 4; and Egypt, 11, 14, 20, 23; embargo on British goods, 194; émigrés from, 130, 145, 157; expedition to San Domingo, 55–6, 62, 112; and Germany, 72; and Ireland, 20, 143–5; and Louisiana, 18, 22; and Malta, 78, 121; and Naples, 33; navy of, 15, 166, 183–4, 186, 187, 196; peace celebrations, 81, 99–100; and Pope, 23; and return of sequestrated property, 150, 170, 177; trade and commerce of, 129, 137–9; visitors to Britain, 130–1, 132–4; see also Bonaparte, Napoleon Francis, Sir Philip, 94, 95 Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor and Austrian Emperor, 21 Frascati Gardens, Paris, 87 Frederick William IV, king of Prussia, 117 Fulton, Robert, 131 Gallagher, Patrick, 208 Gamble, John, 131 Ganteaume, Admiral, 20, 21, 23, 24, 30, 31, 32, 34, 37, 41 Garnerin, André-Jacques, 131 Gay, Mme Sophie, 131 Généraux, French ship, captured, 11 Geneva, 201 Genoa, 66, 116, 156, 163; see also Ligurian Republic George, Captain Rupert, 13 George III, King, 5, 6, 23–4, 29, 40, 53, 80, 88, 117, 172, 194, 195, 210 ‘Georges’, 35; see also Cadoudal, Georges Germany, 4, 7, 19, 72, 138, 201; and Austria, 113, 172; and Bonaparte, 36, 126, 161, 210; in Lunéville treaty, 21–2, 23, 115; reorganisation of, 115–18, 125, 193

Ghent, Belgium, 135, 204 Gibraltar, 16, 32, 41, 43, 44, 198, 199 Glasgow, 134 Godoy, Manuel de, Spanish Prime Minister, 22, 162 Goldsmith, Lewis, 109, 162 Gorée, West Africa, 177 Gozo, 67 Graham, Brigadier-General Thomas, 16, 28 Graham, Colonel, 90 Graham, Thomas, 178 Greathead, Henry, 202 Greatheed, Bertie, 86, 174–5, 178, 191, 200–1 Greece, 13 Gregoire, Henri, 132 Grenville, Lord, vii, 24; alienation from Addington’s government, 35, 51, 100, 154; Foreign Secretary, 7, 14, 29–30; negotiations for peace, 7–8, 12–13, 14–15, 16, 19–20, 36; and opposition in Parliament, 102, 154–5; and peace terms, 49, 51–2, 79, 168; and Pitt, 103, 180 Grenville, Tom, 19, 102 Grey, Charles, 99, 102, 154 Guadeloupe, 139–40, 185, 197 Guiana, Guyana, 45, 47, British, 34; Dutch, 43, 197; French, 38 Gustav IV Adolf, king of Sweden, 18 Habsburgs, 21, 39, 117, 121 Haiti, 199; see also San Domingo Hamburg, Germany, 135, 137, 187, 189, 194, 195, 207 Hamilton, William, 167 Hannibal, HMS, 44 Hanover, 31, 53, 57, 117, 118, 172, 189; French conquest, 194–6, 199, 205 Harding, Paul, 135 Harty, General Oliver, 208 Hawkesbury, Lord, 154; Foreign Secretary, vii–viii, 205; methods of negotiation, 36–7, 47; negotiations for peace, 30–2, 33–7, 38–9, 41–3, 45–6, 48; and negotiations for treaty, 53, 57, 73, 75–6, 79; and negotiations leading to war, 150, 158, 163, 169, 175–7, 178–81, 187–8, 190, 193; and relations with France, 103, 113, 121, 124, 132, 138, 147; and Switzerland, 127–8;

216

INDEX and United States, 164; see also Lord Liverpool Helvetic Republic, 64, 66, 115, 125, 201; see also Switzerland Helvoetsluys, 164, 165, 167, 172 Hervey, Lord, under-secretary, 47 Hill, General Rowland, 28 Hobart, Lord, Secretary of State for War, 40, 110, 119–20, 122, 125 Hodson, James, 136 Hohenlinden, battle of, 18, 69 Holcroft, Thomas, 83, 89, 90, 96, 133 Holland, vii, 1, 4, 14, 78, 125, 145, 161, 163, 166, 168, 172, 173, 180, 186, 188, 195, 210; see also Batavian Republic and Netherlands Holland, Lady, 95 Holland, Lord, 94, 95, 102 Honduras, 105 Honeyman, Capt., RN, 205 Hood, Commodore Samuel, 197 Hospitallers, see St John Hughes, Rev. William, 83, 84 Hull, 134 Humbert, General, 145 Husum, Denmark, 201 Hyderabad, Nizam of, 59 Immortalité, HMS, 205 Impey, Sir Elijah, 202 income tax, 100–1 India, 12, 29, 33, 38, 53, 69, 125, 127, 180, 210; French outposts, 119, 120, 122, 123, 125, 128, 165, 166, 173 Indian Ocean, 12, 210 industry, in Britain, 134–5 Ingoldstadt, 9 Invalides hospital, 89, 99 Ionian Is, 161; see also Corfu and Seven Islands Ireland, 50, 166–7; dissidents in, 104, 132; failure of emancipation, 23–4; and France, 20, 133, 143, 146, 163, 166, 187, 206–8; new naval command, 168; plans for rising in, 143–6, 167, 206–8; rebellion, 1, 104–5, 143, 209; Union with Britain, 23–4, 102, 103 Irish Brigade, 206, 208 Irish legion, 207 Italian Republic, 66, 70, 115, 141; see also Cisalpine Republic

Italy, 1, 4, 5–6, 11, 15, 19, 38; British visitors to, 60, 90, 178; French control of, 64, 65–6, 72, 85, 115, 116, 126, 172, 194, 210; in Lunéville treaty, 21, 22, 23, 115 Jackson, Francis, British envoy to Paris, 59, 66, 67, 68, 74, 81, 89 Jackson, George, 59 Jackson, Thomas, British envoy at Rome, 33 Jacobins, 19, 98, 99 Jamaica, 50, 56, 61, 196 Jeanne, French brig, 192 Jefferson, Thomas, President of the United States, 97, 165, 166, 184 Jenkinson, Robert, see Lord Hawkesbury and Lord Liverpool Jenner, Dr Edward, 202 Jennies, British ship, 129 Jersey, 20, 132, 134, 151 Karlskrona, Sweden, 26 Keith, Admiral Lord, 17, 20, 21, 50, 192, 199, 205 Kilwarden, Lord, 209 King, Rufus, US minister in London, 164, 184–5 King’s German Legion, formation of, 195–6, 201 Kléber, General, 29 Koge Bay, Denmark, 37 Konstanz, Switzerland, 128 Kosciusko, Thaddeus, 96 Kosseir, Egypt, 11, 12, 29 Lacuée de Cessac, Jean-Claude, French spy, 194–5 Lampedusa, 179, 190 Lancashire, 104, 106, 135 Lancaster, 136 Lannes, General, 68, 186 La Rochelle, 50 Laubeypie, French banker and agent, 151–2 Lauenberg, duchy of, 195 Lauriston, General, 52, 53, 187, 204, 205 Lausanne, 210 Laussat, Pierre-Clément, French prefect for Louisiana, 164, 165, 167, 183, 185 Le Bourgeois, Charles, British agent, 151

217

INDEX Lebrun, French consul, 2 Leclerc, General, 63, 139–40, 164 Leda, HMS, 205 Leeds, 104 Leeward Is, 50, 197 Le Havre, 85, 97, 163, 176, 184 Leith, 206 Lemaistre, J.G., 59, 81, 86, 87, 89, 90, 92 Ligurian Republic, 21, 66, 70, 74, 115, 116, 180; see also Genoa Lille, 204 Linwood, Mary, 86 Lisbon, 14, 17, 23 Littlehales, Colonel Edward, 52, 57 Liverpool, Lord, Prime Minister, vii; see also Hawkesbury, Lord Livingston, Robert, US ambassador in Paris, 184 London, peace celebrations, 50 Long, Charles, 180 Lorient, France, 62, 199 Lorraine, 19 Louis XVI, king of France, 89, 151 Louisiana, 18, 22, 31, 34, 65, 115, 163, 173, 210; French expedition to 145, 164; United States acquisition of, 164–5, 184–6, 199 L’Ouverture, Toussaint, 55, 58, 140 Louvre, 84 Lucchesini, Prussian ambassador in Paris, 174, 189, 199, 203 Ludovico, king of Etruria, 21, 23, 66 Lunéville, Treaty of, vii–viii, 19, 21, 65, 67, 78, 81, 115, 125, 168, 173 Lyon, France, 66, 68, 69, 74, 116, 201 McGuire, John, 208 MacNeven, William James, Irish plotter, 144, 167 Madrid, 22 Mahé, India, 34, 70 Maida, 28 Maine, 85 Mainz, 117 Majestic, HMS, 62 Malacca, 34 Malmaison palace, 91 Malmesbury, earl of, 32, 35, 49, 51, 52, 155, 161 Malta, Maltese: and Britain, 11, 40–1, 43, 64, 67–8, 119–25, 128, 141, 142, 153, 156, 158, 163, 169–70, 193, 197, 210; and French

occupation, 9–10; in peace negotiations, 33, 34–5, 39–40, 42–3, 46, 51, 55–7, 60, 64, 69–71, 72–5; possession of, as cause of war, 174, 176–7, 178–9, 181, 187, 188, 190, 191, 211; in Treaty of Amiens, 76–8, 150 Manchester, 104 Mandara, battle at, 27, 34 Mandeville, John, British diplomat, 152, 191 Marengo, battle of, 6, 7, 14, 21 Marengo, French ship of the line, 166 Marmaris, Turkey, 21 Martinique, 34, 41, 43, 140, 185, 197 Massena, General, 68, 189, 206 Massingberd, C. Burrell, 92 Mauritius, 166 Mecklenberg, 195 Mehée de la Touche, French agent, 136–7 Melas, General, Austrian commander, 7 Melzi d’Eril, Count, 66 Menou, General, 29, 31, 44–5, 47–8 Merry, Anthony, British envoy in Paris, 42, 43, 52, 53, 55, 59, 90, 126–8, 130, 141, 142, 147–9, 151, 152 Messina, 11, 16 Middlesex, election, 107–8 Midlands, English, 134–5 Milan, 66 Minorca, 11, 16, 32, 33, 41, 43 Minto, earl of, British ambassador in Vienna, 7, 99 Minto, Lady, 99 Miquelon, 34 Mitchell, Vice-Admiral Sir Andrew, 55 Modena, duke of, 116, 117, 118 Moira, Lord, 169 Moniteur, French official newspaper, 147–8, 150, 152–3, 156, 158 Monroe, James, US special envoy to France, 165, 166, 184 Moore, British agent, 127, 128 Moore, Dr Francis, 52 Moore, General Sir John, 28 Moreau, French general, 5, 69 Morkov, Count A.I., Russian ambassador in Paris, 91, 150, 162, 174–5, 189, 190 Morning Post, 157, 162 Mortier, General, 195 Mount Cashell, Lord, 60, 201 Mulinen, Colonel, 126–8

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INDEX Münster, bishopric of, 53 Munster, Ireland, 166–7 Murat, General, 22, 194 Mysore, 33 Nancy, British ship, 129 Naples and Sicily, kingdom of, 10, 15, 19, 197, 198; and France 22, 43, 77, 113, 115, 171, 189, 193, 194, 197–8, 205; and Malta 56–7, 70–1, 73, 77–8, 119–22, 179; and peace treaty 32, 33 Nelson, Vice-Admiral Lord, 11, 94, 122; commands in Channel, 45, 46, 49; commands in the Mediterranean, 192, 197–8; at Copenhagen, 25; at Reval, 26, 27 Nereide, HMS, 44 Netherlands, 138; see also Batavian Republic and Holland Netherlands, Austrian, 4; see also Belgium New Orleans, 164–5, 173, 183, 184, 185, 210 Newcastle, 50 Newfoundland fisheries, 57, 64, 70, 77 Ney, General, 128, 142 Niçaise, Rue, Paris, 19, 35, 58, 96, 99, 147 Nice, 39, 60 Nieuport, 187 Nightingall, Colonel, 52, 68 Nijmegen, 189, 194 Nile, river, 11, 17, 29 Normandy, 83, 85, 163, 187 Notre Dame, Paris, 92 Nottingham, 136 Novara, Italy, 21 Nugent, General Sir George, 55 O’Connor, Arthur, 206, 207 Olivenza, 72, 74 Opera, Paris, 19, 69, 88 Orange, prince of, 34, 46, 53–4, 57, 58, 61, 64, 70, 73, 75, 77, 96, 116, 117, 118 O’Reilly, Robert May, 131 Orleans, 203 Osnabrück, bishopric of, 53, 118 Ostend, 187, 204 Otranto, Italy, 74, 190 Otto, Louis Guillaume, vii, 54–5, 59, 82, 127, 132, 136, 138, 146–7; and negotiations for Peace Preliminaries

7–8, 11, 12–13, 14–15, 16–17, 30–2, 33–7, 38–9, 41–3, 45–6, 79 Otto, Mme, 59 Ottoman Empire, 32, 39, 42, 73, 74, 141, 169–70, 179, 211; and Sébastiani 152–3; see also Turkey Paget, Sir Arthur: British Minister in Naples, 22, 32–3, 45; British ambassador in Vienna, 45, 52, 113 Paget, General Edward, 28, 32 Paine, Tom, 95–8, 99, 131, 182 Palais Royal, Paris, 86–7 Palermo, 45 Palestine, 11 Panin, Count, Russian Foreign Minister, 27, 37, 79, 157 Paris, 2, 7, 16, 21, 82; British visitors to, 82, 84, 85; Cornwallis in, 52, 54 Parker, Admiral Sir Hyde, 25–6, 31 Parma, Italy, 21, 22, 23, 115, 123, 125 Passau, bishopric of, 118 Paul I, tsar, 5, 6, 17, 157–8; and Armed Neutrality, 18; assassination of, 25–7, 113; and Malta, 10, 17–18 Pearson, Capt., RN, 192 Pearson, Dr, 50 Pelham, Lord, 161 Peltier, Jean-Gabriel, 71, 147–8, 161–2, 168 Perceval, Spencer, 154; attorney-general 147 Perregeaux, French banker, 19 Philip, Rear-Admiral Arthur, 168 Phillips, Thomas, 86 Phillipsburg, 9 Phoebe, HMS, 32 Picardy, 82 Picot, Louis, British agent, 151 Piedmont, 39, 57, 58, 66, 74, 116, 123, 125, 160, 180 Pigot, Major General Henry, 16, 40 Pitt, William, vii–viii, 29, 91, 108, 143, 168; and Addington 100, 103, 154–5, 180–1; advises Addington and Hawkesbury 35, 36; and peace terms 49, 51; Prime Minister 6, 23–4, 82 Pius VII, Pope, 40, 92; see also Pope Plymouth, 55, 109 Poland, 10, 170 Pondichéry, India, 34, 58–9, 63, 122, 150, 166

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INDEX Pope: and France, 24, 36, 43, 91, 115, 194; and grand mastership of Order of St John, 10, 40, 72, 121; see also Pius VII Popham, Captain Sir Home Riggs, RN, 17, 29 Port Mahon, Minorca, 11, 32, 41, 42 Portland, duke of, 154; Home Minister, 24, 110 Portsmouth, 109, 192 Portugal, 9 10, 14, 38, 198; ally of Britain 30, 32, 68, 113; and France 141, 170, 186, 187, 189, 194; and Spain 18, 19, 22–3, 32, 33, 37, 39, 46, 64, 113 Presidios, Tuscan, 74 press, British, 133, 146–9 prisoners of war, costs of, 57–8, 63, 69–70, 75 Prussia, 10, 18, 46, 53, 116, 118, 158, 170, 194; and Malta, 78, 121, 123, 179 Raimbach, Abraham, 83, 85, 86, 95, 96, 98 Raisonnable, HMS, 206 Rapp, Colonel, 128 Ravenna, 66 Real Carlos, Spanish ship of the line, 44 Red Sea, 11–12, 17, 29 Regensberg, 22, 36, 117 Rennes, 166 Reval, Russia, 25–6 Revolution, French, 1, 3–4, 69, 82, 83–4, 89 Reynier, General, 28 Rhine, river, 4, 5, 21 Rhineland, 38, 39, 72 Richepanse, General, 139–40 Robespierre, 89, 99 Rochambeau, General, 140, 185, 196 Rochefort, France, 62 Rome, 22, 77, 115, 201 Romilly, Sir Samuel, 91, 98 Romney, HMS, 17 Rose, George, 155, 168 Rosetta, 45 Ross, Major-General, 68 Rouen, 85, 163 Royal Navy: and French fishing boats 30; at Malta 9–11; mutiny 167; reforms in 110, 111–12; reinforcements for 169; strength of 24, 37, 111–12, 167, 177

Russell, Irish plotter, 167 Russia, 1, 5, 10, 127–8, 170; and Britain 113–14, 157, 179, 182; Knights’ Grand Priory 10, 73; and Malta 24, 56–7, 72–3, 74, 78, 121, 123, 150, 187, 189; and new war 193, 205 St Antoine, French ship, 44 St-Cyr, General Gouvion, 197, 198 St Denis, France, 85, 92 St George, Miss, 92, 202–3 St Helens, 62 St Helens, Lord, British ambassador at St Petersburg, 37, 56, 113 St John of the Hospital, knights of and Order of, at Malta, 9, 16, 26, 42, 57, 71, 72–3, 75, 77–8, 117, 119, 163, 180, 181, 191; election of new grand master 121, 150, 156 St Léger, Didot, 131 St Lucia, 34, 43, 46, 197 St Martin, 34 St Petersburg, Russia, 18, 26–7, 31 St Pierre, 34 St Valéry-sur-Somme, 204 St Vincent, battle of, 1 St Vincent, Admiral Earl of, RN, 20; First Lord of the Admiralty 25, 49–50, 110, 168 Saintes, 34 Saliceti, French commissioner at Genoa, 66, 116 Salzburg, archbishopric of, 118 San Domingo, 20, 34; French expedition to 55, 58, 61, 62, 112, 119, 139–40, 145, 164, 165, 183, 185, 196, 210 San Hermenigildo, Spanish ship of the line, 44 San Ildefonso, Treaty of, 18, 21, 173 Sanford, Rev. J., 174–5 Sardinia, 189, 197; king of, 57, 70, 74, 116, 117, 150, 180, 188 Saumarez, Rear-Admiral Sir James, 44 Saxony, 117, 194 Scotland, 144, 178, 180 Sébastiani de la Porta, Colonel Horace Francis, French agent, 141, 142, 152–3, 155–9, 163, 210 Sedan, 204 Seringapatam, 12 Seven Isles, Republic, 33, 42, 77, 141,

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INDEX 153, 158, 179; see also Corfu and Ionian Is Seymour, Admiral Hugh, 50 Sheerness, 45 Sheffield, 50, 104 Shepherd, Rev. William, 92, 96 Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 102 Shorncliffe, 28 Sicily, 9, 11, 197 Sieyes, French consul, 2–3, 4, 68 Soult, General, 204, 205 Spain, 10, 13; and France, 113, 186; and Louisiana, 164–5; and Malta, 78, 120; naval forces of, 198–9; participation in Amiens negotiations, 59, 64, 65, 68, 71–2; and peace treaty, 32, 33; and Portugal, 18, 19, 22–3, 30, 32, 37, 39, 64; and San Domingo expedition, 62 Spencer, Earl, 51 Spencer, Lady, 32 Stanhope, Lord, 131 Stanley, Edward, 91 Stanley, Lady, 51 Stephens, Rev. William, 87 Straits, the, 141, 153 Straits of Dover, 45 Straits of Gibraltar, 44, 63 Strasbourg, 136 Stuart, General Sir John, 28, 142, 153, 156, 158 Suez, Egypt, 11–12, 29 Svedenstierna, Eric, Swedish industrial spy, 134–5, 136 Sweden, 18, 24, 25 Swiftsure, HMS, 41 Switzerland, 1, 36, 38, 64, 66–7, 113, 123, 125–9, 142, 157, 160, 172, 180, 188, 190, 210; see also Helvetic Republic Syria, 11, 90, 109, 141, 153

Teutonic Order, 117 Texel, 62 Thompson, elephant keeper, 96 Thornborough, Rear-Admiral, 206 Thornton, Colonel Thomas, 83, 90, 131, 136 Tierney, George, 154 Tippu, Sultan of Mysore, 12 Tivoli Gardens, Paris, 87 Tobago, 34, 43, 45–7, 57, 58, 60, 64, 197 Tommasi, Giovanni, elected grand master, 156 Toulon, France, 12, 20, 23, 24, 31, 32, 36, 41, 44, 62, 63, 142, 183, 197–8, 199 Touraine, 85 Travancore, India, 70 Trench, Richard, 202 Trinidad, 33, 41–2, 43, 45–6, 51, 57, 63, 65 Tripoli, Libya, 141, 152 Trotter, B., 95 Tuileries, 69, 81, 89–91, 94, 99, 122 Turin, 201 Turkey, Turks, 11, 157, 158, 162, 172; see also Ottoman Empire Turner, J.M.W., 85 Tuscany, 18, 21, 22, 39, 125; grand duke of 115, 117, 118; see also Etruria Tussaud, Mme, 131

Talbot, James, British diplomat, 152, 191, 200, 201 Talleyrand, French Foreign Minister, 8, 22, 43, 53, 54, 56–9, 66, 68, 74, 79, 143, 144–5, 147–8, 149–50, 152, 153, 169–70, 174, 178–9, 186, 188–9, 202; diplomatic methods 157, 158, 190; and Germany 115, 117; and Sébastiani’s report 156–9 Taranto, 32, 172, 190 Temeraire, HMS, 62 Temple prison, Paris, 89, 151

Valais, Switzerland, 127 Valetta: fortifications of, 58, 71; siege of, 9, 10–11, 14–16 van Schimmelpenninck, Rutger Jan, Dutch negotiator at Amiens, 60, 68, 70 Vaubois, General, 16 Vendée, France, 14, 105 Venetia, 21 Vengeance, HMS, 62 Verdun, 202 Verona, 176

Ulm, 9 United Britons, 104, 106 United Englishmen, 104 United Irishmen, 58, 104, 106, 146, 167, 201, 206 United States of America, 146, 164, 184–6 Utrecht, HMS, 205

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INDEX Versailles, 99 Verviers, Belgium, 135 Vial, General, French commissioner at Malta, 120 Victor, General, 164, 165 Victory, HMS, 192, 197 Vienna, 19, 21, 45, 118 Vigée-Lebrun, Mme, 131 Villaret de Joyeuse, Admiral, 63 Villettes, Major-General, 121, 125 von Dahlberg, Karl, 118 von Hompesch, Ferdinand, grand master of Order of St John, 9–10, 16, 40, 72, 73, 123 von Wallmoden, Field Marshal Johann Ludwig, 194–5 Vorontsov, Alexander, 157 Vorontsov, Simon, Russian ambassador in London, 37, 157 Walcheren, 204–5 Wales, South, 134 Warren, Admiral Sir John Borlase, 32; British ambassador at St Petersburg, 113, 158, 175 Waterloo, 27–8 Watt, James, 135 Wellesley, Marquess, Governor-General of India, 119, 125 West, Sir Benjamin, 85

West Indies, 14, 20, 31, 33, 38, 43, 55, 62, 105, 112, 166 Westmorland, earl of, Lord Privy Seal, 85–6, 88, 90–1, 92, 98 Whitworth, Lord, vii; and Bonaparte 159–61, 162, 168, 170, 174–6, 178; British ambassador in Paris 114, 131, 141–2, 149, 151, 152, 162–3, 200–1; in Denmark 18, 152; instructions 123–4, 142; leaves Paris 191–2; negotiations leading to war 150, 169–70, 186–7, 190; and Sébastiani’s report 156–7 Wicklow, 209 Wilkinson, John, ironmaster, 135 Williams, Helen Maria, 96 Wilmot, Catherine, 60, 201 Wiltshire, 104 Windham, William, 154; Secretary at War 14, 30, 52, 79 Wright, Capt. Wesley, RN, 176 Württemberg, 117, 118 Yarmouth, Lord, 203 York, duke of, commander-in-chief, 110–11, 131 Yorke, Henry Redhead, 85, 86, 91, 92, 96 Yorkshire, 104, 106, 131 Yorktown, 53

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