The Years of Endurance (47 page)

out of the clouds giant waves labelled with the names of Howe, Duncan, St. Vincent, Gardner and Curtis.

The naval authorities did not, however, guarantee that the French would be unable to land. In the view of Admiral Sir Charles Middleton, expressed in a letter to Dundas of January 28th, 1798, invasion would be quite a feasible operation. " The truth is," he wrote, " that there are very few things impracticable to active minds with sound judgments, and, if the French will venture to sacrifice 50,000 men, of which there cannot be much doubt considering what has already passed, I see no insuperable difficulties in landing 30,000."
¹
At the end of February there was an alarm when a report of unidentified ships south of Pordand was flashed to London over the new semaphore telegraph which, with its giant arms and shutters and chain of towers stretching from the naval ports to the roof of Westminster Abbey, brought news to the Admiralty from the coasts in a few minutes. Only after a special Cabinet meeting had been called was it learnt that the strange sails belonged to a fleet of homecoming West Indiamen. A few days later there was another alarm when guns were heard firing out at sea at Eastbourne and mysterious lights seen at Brighton.

But the Admirals who advised the Government were not relying on defensive measures. Like Drake, they advocated carrying the war into the enemy's country. They envisaged a number of small, highly-trained, joint naval and military units capable of striking-sudden blows at every opportunity.
²
These were to attack the flat—

¹
Spencer Papers,
II,
269.

²
"
Nothing
appears
better
calculated
on
the
one
hand
to
keep
this
country in
a
state
of
security,
and
on
the
other
the
enemy
in
a
constant
state
of
awe and
apprehension,
than
a
sufficient
movable
sea-and-land
force,
calculated to
act
with
celerity,
and
to
seize
every
favourable
occasion
of
destroying their
preparations
and
attacking
them
on
their
own
coast.
Considered
as
a plan
of
humbling
and
distressing
the
enemy,
creating
a
conviction
in
France that
all
their
projects
of
invasion
are
fraught
with
disgrace
and
ruin,
and thereby
to
increase
the
clamour
for
peace
and
against
the
present
government,
it
is
the
best
that
can
be
undertaken
with
our
present
means.

"
It
is
also
the
best
in
another
view,
not
less
essential
to
the
support
of the
war
at
home,
namely,
as
affording
the
most
effectual
means
of
counteracting
the
manoeuvres
of
the
disaffected
and
the
alarms
of
the
desponding, of
showing
the
energy
of
the
nation,
and
above
all
of
keeping
alive
the
spirit of enterprise
by
which
alone
our
public spirit
(now
fortunately
raised
by
the late
conduct
of
the
enemy)
can
be
maintained
in
a
disposition
suitable
to
the
· difficulties
of
our
situation."—
Anonymous Memorandum
(possibly
by
Dun
das),
Spencer Papers,
II,
235.

bottomed invasion boats in shallow waters, pounce on their ports, shipping and arsenals and generally keep the French in a constant state of tension and confusion. In the event of a landing they were to transport picked troops by sea and to harass the enemy's rear. General Sir Charles Grey, commanding the south-eastern District, issued from his headquarters at Barham Court, Canterbury, special instructions to all troops in danger zones to train men for such operations. They were to carry only blankets, haversacks and canteens: " not one woman," it was added, " must on this occasion accompany
the
soldiers
. . . . The General is sure that every thinking good soldier will readily see the convenience to themselves and propriety of
this order and cheerfully submit to a short separation."
¹

These vigorous offensive measures commended themselves to Secretary Dundas, who was indeed their principal patron and protagonist. First nurtured in the school of Chatham, he was a strong believer in the principle that the worst defence is to sit still and let the enemy attack. " Our Army is a very small one," he told his colleague of the Admiralty, whom he was constantly favouring with his projects, " but we must make the best use we can of it with a view to the
joint
defence of Great Britain and Ireland, comprehending under that view some mode of at least alarming our enemies along the coast." His mind was full of projects for sinking old ships in the mouth of enemy ports, landing small raiding parties and testing, in his own words, how far Calais or Boulogne or Gravelines might be proper subjects for a few bombs or fireships.
²
" We cannot so effectually annoy the enemy," he wrote, " or keep alive the spirits of our country as by constant and unremitting offensive operations during the whole summer."
³
But the weakness of Dundas's method of waging war was
that
its technical execution never came up to its strategic conception. Incurably a politician, he never grasped the overriding necessity for flawless accuracy of detail that even the simplest operation of war requires. Any expedient or compromise which promised to avoid or turn a difficulty satisfied his mind, and he left the rest to hope.

In April, encouraged by a successful bombstrdment of Havre, where a small French invasion force was waiting to attack the

¹
Annual Register,
1798.
Appendix
to
Chronicle,
189.

²
Spencer Papers,
II,
317.

³
Ibid.,
351-2.

British island of St. Marcou, Dundas persuaded his colleagues to embark on an ambitious venture against Ostend. The scheme originated in the mind of that clever but incurably plausible naval officer, Captain Home Popham. His idea was to blow up the Saas lock of the new Bruges-Ostend canal, along which the French were expected to move great masses of invasion barges from Holland. Secondary objectives were to destroy the port installations and carry out a raid on transport concentrations at Flushing. Popham, who had
the
supreme merit to a politician of being always " v
ery sanguine
' succeeded in arousing the enthusiasm of General Sir Charles Grey. Together the General and Dundas, who was enthusiastically backed by the Under-Secretary-for-War, Huskisson, so bombarded Spencer that the latter compelled the Admiralty to appoint Popham to the naval command of the expedition. The result was that his superiors in the Service, who regarded Popham with some justice as a you
ng man with more bounce than ex
perience, gave the venture as little support as they could and by needless delays possibly contributed to its failure. 1400 troops, including 600 Guards wrung from a reluctant King, were embarked in flat-bottomed gunboats and landed under cover of Popham's frigates at Ostend during the night of May 19th. At first all went well: the French were taken by surprise and the sluice gates destroyed with only a few casualties. Then the wind backed into the wrong quarter and, as more experienced sailors than Popham had from the first foreseen, the rising surf made it impossible to re-embark the troops. After several hours of useless resistance, in which sixty men lost their lives, the remainder laid down their arms.

Yet the raid at the moment when all Europe was expecting the invasion of England showed men the dauntless character of the islanders. " The spirit and courage of the country," wrote Pitt,

" has risen so as to be fairly equal to this crisis The French go on,

I
believe in earnest, but the effect here is only to produce all the efforts and all the spirit we can wish."
¹
A distinguished foreign writer, Mallet du Pan, visiting England that May, paid a striking testimony to the national temper. " Here we are in the full tide of war, crushed by taxation, and exposed to the fury of the most desperate of enemies, but nevertheless security, abundance, and

¹
Lord
Rosebery,
Pitt
(1891), 208.

energy reign supreme, alike in cottage and Palace. I have not met with a single instance of nervousness or apprehension. The spectacle presented by public opinion has far surpassed my expectation. The nation had not yet learnt to know its own strength or its resources. The government has taught it the secret and inspired it with an unbounded confidence almost amounting to presumption."

CHAPTER
ELEVEN

Britain Strikes Back
1798

" I trust my name will stand on record when the money-
makers will be forgot."
Nelson.

" Britannia needs no bulwarks,
No towers along the steep ;
Her march is o'er the mountain waves :
Her home is on the deep."
Campbell.

O
n
Thursday, April 12th, 1798, Parson Woodforde dined on a neck of pork roasted. " By the public papers," he noted, " everything appears most alarming not only respecting Great Britain but every state in Europe and beyond it.
O
Tempora O Mores!
" England was expecting invasion, Ireland on the verge of rebellion and the Continent lost. With Austria's surrender the last barriers to French aggression had gone. In February, in flagrant defiance of their own promises, the French marched into Rome, emptied the Papal treasury and sacked the city. In March, on a trumped-up pretext, they invaded Switzerland, seized sixteen million gold francs, annexed Geneva and Mulhausen and proclaimed an " indivisible " Helvetic Republic. Here as in Italy their liberating march was marked by demolished houses, profaned churches, outrage, hatred and fear.
¹

Yet running through all this cruelty and destruction was a thread of policy. The Republic was refilling its coffers before its next pounce. And it was doing so at the instance of General Bonaparte. It was one of his confidential officers, Commandant Berthier, who robbed the Pope. " In sending me to Rome," he wrote, " you appoint me Treasurer to the English expedition: I will endeavour to fill the chest."

But it was no longer a direct leap at the throat of England nor