The Years of Endurance (48 page)

¹
See
Wynne Diaries,
II,
213,
217. 255

even an assault on Ireland that Bonaparte was planning. His inspections of the ports had convinced him that even temporary command of the narrow seas was at present beyond the reach of France. In a report on his return to Paris on February 23 rd he declared that a seaborne invasion without it would be " the boldest and most difficult operation ever attempted." It was idle to underestimate one's opponent. She was still a great Power, and the Republic must never threaten in vain.

So Bonaparte assured the Dire
ctory. Yet it was not of the Re
public nor of France that the
little
Corsican was dunking. He had no fear of British shopkeepers playing at soldiers: the veteran army of Italy, even if only a third of it reached the Kentish shore, would soon make short work of these. As for Ireland the country was already nine-tenths conquered: a few French cannon rumbling over the Cork or Dublin cobble stones that an
gry spring, and every British th
roat in the island would be cut. But the chances of tide and wind were too great to stake a world conqueror's course on. There were surer and richer prizes to be won first. After all, it would profit Bonaparte
little
to revolutionise Ireland and overturn Pitt's England only to lose his life or mar his bright star in some sordid, watery skirmish with a chance cruiser. He was not going to waste his incomparable genius to make the world—his oyster —safe for Barras and the plutocrats of the Luxembourg.

For Bonaparte believed that Britain, with her antiquated feudalism, corroding commercial habits and loosening colonial ties, was already doomed. There was no need to strike prematurely at her heart when she was dying at the extremities. Her trade with Europe was at an end, for the greater part of the Continent had entered the Revolutionary order. If her commerce with Asia could be cut also, her bankers and oligarchs would face ruin. Without the colonial produce with which they paid for the grain of the Baltic and supported their unreal structure of usury and broking, the Navy would rot for lack of money. Invasion would become unnecessary.

So Bonaparte told his political masters. The best way to injure England was by an expedition to the Levant and a threat to India where France could avenge herself for lost colonies. The selfish, greedy Directors believed him or pretended to. He wished to be gone. " I can no longer obey," he told a confidant, " I have tasted
command and I cann
ot give it up. Since I cannot be master I shall leave France." There was nothing the Directors more ardently desired. If Bonaparte chose to take himself, his ambitions and his Caesarian army to Egypt he should be enabled to do so.

But had the Directors been able to penetrate his disguise, they would have thought him even more dangerous than they supposed. To the few to whom he dared confide his dreams, he declared that he was about to conquer an eastern empire surpassing the fables of antiquity. He would not only destroy England's sordid hegemony in the Orient but found another, far vaster, in its place. In the East, he told his brother Lucien, there were six hundred million men. Compared with Asia, Europe was " a mere molehill." He would not only become its dictator but its prophet. He would found a new religion. His genius and passionate will would mould not only the present but the remote future.
¹
" We shall change the fate of the world," he told Talleyrand.

The road to the East was open. By his Italian conques
ts he had driven the Engli
sh battleships from the Mediterranean and secured a line of stepping-stones stretching along the Dalmatian and Ionian coasts towards Egypt. It would be child's play to seize that sandy, fabulous land in the name of its remote Turkish Sultan and " free " its effete people from the despotism of its Mameluke " aristocrats." It would only be another repetition of the familiar Revolutionary
technique of
conquest.

Even before he had completed his inspection of the Flemish ports, Bonaparte had requested the naval authorities at Toulon to hold up the warships ordered for Brest and assemble transports. Three weeks later on March 5 th he drew up detailed plans for an Egyptian expedition. Thereafter events, as alwa
ys when he directed, moved swiftl
y. On April 12th engineers, openly wearing French uniforms, landed at Alexandria and began to prepare for the reception of military forces and to collect information about the desert roads to Suez, the navigation of the Red Sea and British dispositions in the Indian Ocean. Already French agents were stirring up trouble in the great Indian state of Mysore, and its ruler, Tippoo Sahib, had

¹
"
In
Egypt,'
he
told
Madame
de
Remusat,
"
I
found
myself
free
from the
weariness
and
restraints
of
civilisation.
I
created
a
religion
with
a
turban on
my
head
and
in
my
hand
a
new
Koran
which
I
should
compose
according to
my
own
ideas."
It
is
interesting
to
compare
the
crazy
dreams
of
Hitler as
outlined
in
Dr.
Rauschning's
Hitler
Speaks.

sent ambassadors to the Jacobin governor of Mauritius to invite a Franco-Arab army to India.

Rumours of these pre
parations, which had been secretl
y going forward ever since Bonaparte's rape of Venice, had been slowly filtering through to England. In January Captain Sidney Smith, who was much employed by Grenville in confidential missions, smuggled a message out of Paris, where he was imprisoned, reporting that France had designs on Egypt and the Levant trade. But in its preoccupation with invasion and Ireland, the Government paid little attention to such warnings. It had more urgent dangers to consider. With every available ship concentrated in the Channel and off the Irish coast and with St. Vincent blockading a superior force in Cadiz, nothing could be spared for the Mediterranean. A Britain expecting invasion in Sussex could not police the Levant. Since the Mediterranean was now a French lake, information from that quarter was in any case notoriously unreliable and took many months of perilous travel to reach England.

Yet by a strange combination of coincidence and daring, the British Government in the crucial spring of 1798 weakened its naval defences at home and sent a fleet into the Mediterranean. It did so without much thought of defeating Bonaparte's grandiose eastern designs, of which it was either ignorant or wholly sceptical. Its object was rather to prompt the European powers to revolt against the Jacobin yoke. For Pitt, knowing that his country could not contend for ever alone against the armed Revolution, was again endeavouring to build up a Coalition. It seemed the surest way of saving Britain.

Already there were signs that this was no empty hope. Prussia still refused to rouse herself from selfish sloth; Russia under her half-mad Emperor Paul remained a remote and inscrutable factor. But Austria, jockeyed at the council table at Rastadt from her ancient leadership of Germany and insulted by upstart Jacobins, was growing restive. In March Chancellor Thugut instructed his ambassador Starhemberg to ask if Britain would aid his country against " a fierce nation irrevocably determined on the total subversion of Europe." And he suggested the return of a British fleet to the Mediterranean.

At the beginning of April Pitt therefore raised the question in Cabinet. Lord Spencer and the naval authorities were wholly unfavourable. With thirty Spanish battleships at Cadiz and thirty French—in whatever state of readiness—at Brest, with the seven Dutch survivors from Camperdown still at the Helder, Britain would need at least seventy capital ships to justify the risk of detaching even the smallest force to the south. At the moment, though several new ships were nearing completion, she could only dispose of fifty-eight, twenty-four off Cadiz and the remaining thirty-four in home and Irish waters. The dispatch of a battle squadron to the Mediterranean, the Junior Sea Lord reported, might be attended by the most dreadful consequences.
¹

These professional counsels failed to dispirit Pitt. His instinct, which was in accord with that of his country, told him that the moment had come to change to the offensive and that the only real security lay in so doing. Something of his father's spirit and genius for war seemed to have entered into him that spring. He saw clearly that St. Vincent's position off Cadiz would soon be untenable unless the European situation was radically changed in England's favour. Ever since the autumn the feeble Portuguese Court, terrified by the threatening preparations of Spain, had been plotting to free itself from its British treaty commitments and close the Tagus to St. Vincent's provision ships. The intimidating presence of the old Admiral at Lisbon and the masterly handling by General Stuart of a small British force from Elba, which had landed for the defence of Portugal, had so far staved off surrender. But it was ultimately inevitable, for though reports from Cadiz showed that the Spaniards, who had nothing to gain and everything to lose by further Gallic triumphs, were heartily sick of the war, the Directory's contemptuous hold over the dictator Godoy was far too strong to be shaken so long as the French were masters of the Continent.
²

¹
Observations
of
Rear-Admiral
William
Young,
wrongly
dated
February,
1797,
in
Spencer Papers,
II,
231.
For
Spencer's
opinion
see
ibid.,
322.

²
Captain
Collingwood
wrote
on
January
26th, 1798,
that
Spain
was
no longer
an
independent
nation.
Five
months
later
he
added
:
"
The Spaniards
are
well
disposed
to
peace
and
the
interest
of
their
country
requires
it;
but
God
knows
whether
their
French
friends
will
allow
that.
.
.
. Nothing
is
more
certain
than
that
the
continuance
of
the
war
is
disastrous to
Spain."—
Collingwood,
62, 67-8.
British
and
Spanish
naval
officers corresponded
on
the
friendliest
terms,
exchanged
presents
of
wine
and
food and
even
on
occasion
entertained
one
another,
while
Spanish
peasants
sold supplies
to
British
sailors.
It
is
interesting
to
compare
this
enforced
Franco-Spanish
alliance
with
the
present
relations
between
Germany
and
Italy.

Pitt, as always when his mind was resolved, carried the Cabinet with him. The increased risk of invasion was not too high a price to pay to bring Austria and her satellite Naples back into the war, and he felt sufficient confidence in the newly-revived spirit of Britain to take it. He was strongly supported by Dundas, whose mind, true to the Chatham tradition in which it had been cradled, always ran on the offensive.
¹
For all his ignorant and wasteful blunders, the sturdy Scot never lost confidence. " If we can be alive in our offensive movements at home and can strike some great stroke in the Mediterranean," he wrote to the First Lord, " the game must be up with the French government."
²
Grenville and the Foreign Office, with their eyes on the wider interests of Europe, also backed the Prime Minister. So did the chivalrous Windham.
³