The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire 1793-1812, Vol II

By naval combinations and by holding the Neapolitan ports Bonaparte sought to preserve Egypt and force Great Britain to peace. "The question of maritime peace," he wrote to Ganteaume, ⁴⁸ "hangs now upon the English expedition to Egypt." Portugal, the ancient ally of Great Britain, was designed to serve other purposes of his policy,—to furnish equivalents, with which to wrest from his chief enemy the conquests that the sea power of France and her allies could not touch. "Notify our minister at Madrid," wrote he to Talleyrand, September 30, 1800, "that the Spanish troops must be masters of Portugal before October 15. This is the only means by which we can have an equivalent for Malta, Mahon, and Trinidad. Besides, the danger of Portugal will be keenly felt in England, and will by so much quicken her disposition to peace."

A secret treaty ceding Louisiana to France, in return for Tuscany to the Spanish infante, had been signed the month before; and Spain at the same time undertook to bring Portugal to break with Great Britain. Solicitation proving ineffectual, Bonaparte in the spring again demanded the stronger measure of an armed occupation of the little kingdom; growing more urgent as it became evident that Egypt was slipping from his grasp. Spain finally agreed to invade Portugal, and accepted the co-operation of a French corps. The first consul purposed to occupy at least three of the Portuguese provinces; but he was outwitted by the adroitness of the Spanish government, unwillingly submissive to his pressure, and by the compliance of his brother Lucien, French minister to Madrid. Portugal made no efficient resistance; and the two peninsular courts quickly reached an agreement, by which the weaker closed her ports to Great Britain, paid twenty million francs to France, and ceded a small strip of territory to Spain.

Bonaparte was enraged at this treaty, which was ratified without giving him a chance to interfere; ⁴⁹ but in the summer of 1801 his diplomatic game reached a stage where further delay was impossible. He saw that the loss of Egypt was only a question of time; but so long as any French troops held out there it was a card in his hand, too valuable to risk for the trifling gain of a foothold in Portugal. "The English are not masters of Egypt," he writes boldly on the 23d of July to the French agent in London. "We have certain news that Alexandria can hold out a year, and Lord Hawkesbury knows that Egypt is in Alexandria;" ⁵⁰ but four days later he sends the hopeless message to Murat, "There is no longer any question of embarking" ⁵¹ the troops about Taranto, sent there for the sole purpose of being nearer to Egypt. ⁵² He continues, in sharp contrast with his former expectation, "The station of the troops upon the Adriatic is intended to impose upon the Turks and the English, and to serve as material for compensation to the latter by evacuating those provinces." Both Naples and Portugal were too distant, too ex-centric, and thrust too far into contact with the British dominion of the sea to be profitably, or even safely, held by France in her condition of naval debility; a truth abundantly witnessed by the later events of Napoleon's reign, by the disastrous occupation of Portugal in 1807, by the reverses of Soult and Masséna in 1809 and 1811, and by the failure even to attempt the conquest of Sicily.

Russia and Prussia had grown less friendly since the death of Paul. Even their agreement that Hanover should be evacuated, disposed as they now were to please Great Britain, was to be postponed until "it was ascertained that a certain power would not occupy that country;" ⁵³ a stipulation which betrayed the distrust felt by both. Since then each had experienced evasions and rebuffs showing the unwillingness of the first consul to meet their wishes in his treatment of the smaller states; and they suspected, although they did not yet certainly know, the steps already taken to incorporate with France regions to whose independence they held.⁵⁴ Both were responding to the call of their interests, beneficially and vitally connected with the sea power of Great Britain, and threatened on the Continent by the encroaching course of the French ruler. Bonaparte felt that the attempt to make further gains in Europe, with which to traffic against those of Great Britain abroad, might arouse resistance in these great powers, not yet exhausted like Austria, and so indefinitely postpone the maritime peace essential to the revival of the French navy and the re-establishment of the colonial system; both at this time objects of prime importance in his eyes. Thus it was that, beginning the year 1801 without a single ally, in face of the triumphant march of the French armies and of a formidable maritime combination, the Sea Power of Great Britain had dispersed the Northern coalition, commanded the friendship of the great states, retained control of the Mediterranean, reduced Egypt to submission, and forced even the invincible Bonaparte to wish a speedy cessation of hostilities.

The great aim of the first consul now was to bring Great Britain to terms before news of the evacuation of Alexandria could come to hand. Negotiations had been slowly progressing for nearly six months; the first advances having been made on the 21st of March by the new ministry which came into power upon Pitt's resignation. Both parties being inclined to peace, the advantage necessarily belonged to the man who, untrammelled by associates in administration, held in absolute control the direction of his country. The Addington ministry, hampered by its own intrinsic weakness and by the eagerness of the nation, necessarily yielded before the iron will of one who was never more firm in outward bearing than in the most critical moments. He threatened them with the occupation of Hanover; he intimated great designs for which troops were embarked at Rochefort, Brest, Toulon, Cadiz, and ready to embark in Holland; he boasted that Alexandria could hold out yet a year. Nevertheless, although the terms were incontestably more advantageous to France than to Great Britain, the government of the latter insisted upon and obtained one concession, that of Trinidad, which Bonaparte at first withheld. ⁵⁵ His eagerness to conclude was in truth as great as their own, though better concealed. Finally, he sent on the 17th of September an ultimatum, and added, "If preliminaries are not signed by the 10th of Vendémiaire (October 2), the negotiations will be broken." "You will appreciate the importance of this clause," he wrote confidentially to the French envoy, "when you reflect that Menou may possibly not be able to hold in Alexandria beyond the first of Vendémiaire, that at this season the winds are fair to come from Egypt, and ships reach Italy and Trieste in very few days. Thus it is essential to push them to a finish before Vendémiaire 10;" that is, before they learn the fall of Alexandria. The question of terms, as he had said before, hinged on Egypt. The envoy, however, was furnished with a different but plausible reason. "Otto can give them to understand that from our inferiority at sea and our superiority on land the campaign begins for us in winter, and therefore I do not wish to remain longer in this stagnation." ⁵⁶ Whatever motives influenced the British ministry, it is evident that Bonaparte was himself in a hurry for peace. The preliminaries were signed in London on the first of October, 1801.

The conditions are easily stated. Of all her conquests, Great Britain retained only the islands of Ceylon in the East Indies and Trinidad in the West. How great this concession, will be realized by enumerating the chief territories thus restored to their former owners. These were, in the Mediterranean, Elba, Malta, Minorca; in the West Indies, Tobago, Santa Lucia, Martinique, and the extensive Dutch possessions in Guiana; in Africa, the Cape of Good Hope; and in India, the French and Dutch stations in the peninsula. France consented to leave to Portugal her possessions entire, to withdraw her troops from the kingdom of Naples and the Roman territory, and to acknowledge the independence of the Republic of the Seven Islands. Under this name the former Venetian islands, Corfu and others—given to France by the treaty of Campo Formio—had, after their conquest in 1799 by the fleets of Russia and Turkey, been constituted into an independent state under the guarantee of those two powers. Their deliverance from France was considered an important security to the Turkish Empire. The capitulation of the French troops in Alexandria was not yet known in England; and the preliminaries merely stipulated the return of Egypt to the Porte, whose dominions were to be preserved as they existed before the war. Malta, restored to the Knights of St. John, was to be freed from all French or British influence and placed under the guarantee of a third Power. Owing to the decay of the Order, the disposition of this important naval station, secretly coveted by both parties, was the most difficult matter to arrange satisfactorily. In the definitive treaty its status was sought to be secured by a cumbrous set of provisions, occupying one third of the entire text; and the final refusal of Great Britain to evacuate, until satisfaction was obtained for what she claimed to be violations of the spirit of the engagements between the two countries, became the test question upon which hinged the rupture of this short-lived peace.

As the first article of the preliminaries stipulated that upon their ratification hostilities in all parts of the world, by sea and land, should cease, they were regarded in both Great Britain and France as equivalent to a definitive treaty; the postponement of the latter being only to allow the negotiators time to settle the details of the intricate agreements, thus broadly outlined, without prolonging the sufferings of war. To France they could not but be acceptable. She regained much, and gave up nothing that she could have held without undue and often useless exertion. In Great Britain the general joy was marred by the severe, yet accurate, condemnation passed upon the terms by a body of exceptionally able men, drawn mainly from the ranks of the Pitt cabinet, although their leader gave his own approval. They pointed out, clearly and indisputably, that the disparity between the material gains of Great Britain and France was enormous, disproportionate to their relative advantages at the time of signature, and not to be reconciled with that security which had been the professed object of the struggle. They asserted with little exaggeration that the conditions were for France to hold what she had, and for Great Britain to recede to her possessions before the war. They predicted with fatal accuracy the speedy renewal of hostilities, under the disadvantage of having lost by the peace important positions not easy to be regained. The ministry had little to reply. To this or that item of criticism exception might be taken; but in the main their defence was that by the failure of their allies no hope remained of contesting the power of France on the Continent, and that Trinidad and Ceylon were very valuable acquisitions. Being insular, they were controlled by the nation ruling the sea, while, from their nearness to the mainlands of South America and of India, they were important as depots of trade, as well as for strategic reasons. The most assuring argument was put forward by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, who had negotiated the preliminaries. At the beginning of the war Great Britain had 135 ships-of-the-line and 133 frigates; at its close she had 202 of the former and 277 of the latter. France had begun with 80 of the line and 66 frigates, and ended with 39 and 35 respectively. However the first consul might exert himself, Lord Hawkesbury justly urged that the British might allow him many years labor and then be willing to chance a maritime war. ⁵⁷

Material advantages such as had thus been given up undoubtedly contribute to security. In surrendering as much as she did abroad, while France retained such extensive gains upon the Continent and acquired there such a preponderating influence, Great Britain, which had so large a stake in the European commonwealth, undoubtedly incurred a serious risk. The shortness of the peace, and the disquieting disputes which arose throughout it, sufficiently prove this. Nevertheless, could contemporaries accurately read the signs of their times, Englishmen of that day need not have been dissatisfied with the general results of the war. A long stage had been successfully traversed towards the final solution of a great difficulty. In 1792 the spirit of propagating revolution by violence had taken possession of the French nation as a whole. As Napoleon has strikingly remarked, "It was part of the political religion of the France of that day to make war in the name of principles." ⁵⁸ "The Montagnards and the Jacobins," says the republican historian Henri Martin, the bitter censurer of Bonaparte, "were resolved, like the Girondists, to propagate afar, by arms, the principles of the Revolution; and they hoped, by hurling a defiance at all kings, to put France in the impossibility of recoiling or stopping herself." ⁵⁹ Such a design could be checked only by raising up against it a barrier of physical armed opposition. This had been effected and maintained chiefly by the Sea Power of Great Britain, the prime agent and moving spirit, directly through her navy, indirectly through the subsidies drawn from her commerce; and the latter had nearly doubled while carrying on this arduous and extensive war. In 1801 the aggressive tendencies of the French nation, as a whole, were exhausted. So far as they still survived, they were now embodied in and dependent upon a single man, in which shape they were at once more distinctly to be recognized and more odious. They were also less dangerous; because the power of one man, however eminent for genius, is far less for good or evil than the impulse of a great people.

The British statesmen of that day did not clearly distinguish this real nature of their gains, though they did intuitively discern the true character of the struggle in which they were engaged. As is not infrequent with intuitions, the reasoning by which they were supported was often faulty; but Pitt's formulation of the objects of Great Britain in the one word "security" was substantially correct. Security was her just and necessary aim, forced upon her by the circumstances of the Revolution,—security not for herself alone, but for the community of states of which she was an important member. This was threatened with anarchy through the lawless spirit with which the French leaders proposed to force the spread of principles and methods, many of them good as well as many bad, but for whose healthful development were demanded both time and freedom of choice, which they in their impatience were unwilling to give. "Security," said Pitt in his speech upon the preliminaries, "was our great object; there were different means of accomplishing it, with better or worse prospects of success; and according to the different variations of policy occasioned by a change of circumstances, we still pursued our great object, Security. In order to obtain it we certainly did look for the subversion of that government founded upon revolutionary principles.... We have the satisfaction of knowing that we have survived the violence of the revolutionary fever, and we have seen the extent of its principles abated. We have seen Jacobinism deprived of its fascination; we have seen it stripped of the name and pretext of liberty; it has shown itself to be capable only of destroying, not of building, and that it must necessarily end in a military despotism." ⁶⁰ Such, in truth, was the gain of the first war of Great Britain with the French Revolution. It was, however, but a stage in the progress; there remained still another, of warfare longer, more bitter, more furious,—a struggle for the mastery, whose end was not to be seen by the chief leaders of the one preceding it.

CHAPTER XIV

Outline of Events from the Signature of the Preliminaries to the Rupture of the Peace of Amiens

October, 1801.-May, 1803

THE preliminaries of peace between Great Britain and France, signed on the first of October, 1801, were regarded by both parties, at least ostensibly, as settling their relative status and acquisitions. In their broad outlines no change would be worked by the definitive treaty, destined merely to regulate details whose adjustment would demand time and so prolong the distress of war. This expectation, that the basis of a durable peace had been reached, proved delusive. A series of unpleasant surprises awaited first one party and then the other, producing in Great Britain a feeling of insecurity, which gave point and added vigor to the declamations of those who from the first had scoffed at the idea of any peace proving permanent, if it rested upon the good faith of the French government and surrendered those material guarantees which alone, they asserted, could curb the ambition and enforce the respect of a man like Bonaparte. Bitter indeed must have been the unspoken thoughts of the ministry, as the revolving months brought with them an unceasing succession of events which justified their opponents' prophecies while proving themselves to be outwitted; and which, by the increase given to French influence and power in Europe, necessitated the maintenance of large military establishments, and converted the peace from first to last into a condition of armed truce.

The day after the signature of the preliminaries news reached London ⁶¹ of the surrender of Alexandria, which completed the loss of Egypt by the French. It was believed that Bonaparte had, at the time of signing, possessed this information, which would have materially affected the footing upon which he was treating. However that was, he was undoubtedly assured of the issue, ⁶² and therefore precipitated a conclusion by which to France, and not to Great Britain, was attributed the gracious act of restoring its dominion to the Porte. Concealing the fact from the Turkish plenipotentiary in Paris, the French government on the 9th of October signed with him a treaty, by which it undertook to evacuate the province it no longer held. In return, Turkey conceded to France, her recent enemy, commercial privileges equal to those allowed Great Britain, to whose sea power alone she owed the recovery of Syria and Egypt. This bargain, concluded without the knowledge of the British ministry, was not made public until after the ratification of the preliminaries. At the same time became known a treaty with Portugal, signed at Madrid on the 29th of September. By the preliminaries with Great Britain, Portuguese territory was to remain intact; but by the treaty of Madrid so much of Brazil was added to French Guiana as to give the latter control of the northern outlet of the Amazon.

These events were surprises, and disagreeable surprises, to the British ministers. On the other hand, the existence of the secret treaty of March 21, 1801, by which Spain ceded to France the colony of Louisiana, was known to them, ⁶³ though unavowed at the time of signing. While impressed with the importance of this transaction, following as it did the cession of the Spanish half of San Domingo, the ministry allowed the veil of mystery, with which Bonaparte had been pleased to shroud it, to remain unlifted. The United States minister to London had procured and forwarded to his government on the 20th of November a copy of this treaty, ⁶⁴ which so closely affected his fellow countrymen; but it was not until January, 1802, that the fact became generally known in England. Gloomy prophecies of French colonial aggrandizement were uttered by the partisans of the Opposition, who pictured the hereditary enemy of Great Britain planted by the Spanish treaty at the mouth of the great river of North America, and by the Portuguese at that of the artery of the southern continent; while the vast and rich colonies of Spain, lying between these two extremes, would be controlled by the supremacy of France in the councils of the Peninsular courts. In a generation which still retained the convictions of the eighteenth century on the subject of colonial expansion, these predictions of evil struck heavily home,—enforced as they were by the knowledge that full one fourth of the trade which made the strength of Great Britain rested then upon that Caribbean America, into which France was now making a colossal intrusion. Faithful to the sagacious principle by which he ever proportioned the extent of his military preparation to the vastness of the end in view, the expedition sent by Bonaparte to reassert in Haïti the long dormant authority of the mother-country was calculated on a scale which aroused intense alarm in London. On the 4th of December, 1801, only ten weeks after the preliminaries were signed, and long before the conclusion of the definitive treaty, fifteen ships-of-the-line and six frigates sailed from Brest for Haïti; and these were rapidly followed by other divisions, so that the whole force dispatched much exceeded twenty ships-of-the-line, and carried over twenty thousand troops. The number was none too great for the arduous task,—indeed experience proved it to be far from adequate to meet the waste due to climatic causes; but to Great Britain it was portentous. Distrusting Bonaparte's purposes, a large division of British ships was ordered to re-enforce the squadron at Jamaica. Weary of a nine-years war and expecting their discharge, the crews of some of the vessels mutinied; and the execution of several of these poor seamen was one of the first results of Bonaparte's ill-fated attempt to restore the colonial system of France.

The apprehensions shown concerning these distant undertakings partook more of panic than of reasonable fear. They overlooked the long period that must pass between possession and development, as well as the hopeless inferiority of France in that sea power upon which the tenure of colonies must depend. They ignored the evident enormous difficulties to be overcome, and were blind to the tottering condition of the Spanish colonial system, then rapidly approaching its fall. But if there was exaggeration in an anticipation of danger, which the whole history of her maritime past entitled Great Britain to reject with scorn, there was no question that each month was revealing unexpected and serious changes in the relative positions of the two powers, which, if not wilfully concealed by France, had certainly not been realized by the British ministers when the preliminaries were signed. Whether they had been cheated or merely out-manœuvred, it became daily more plain that the balance of power in Europe, of which Great Britain was so important a factor, was no longer what it had been when she made such heavy sacrifices of her maritime conquests to secure the status of the Continent.

At the same time was unaccountably delayed the work of the plenipotentiaries, who were to settle at Amiens the terms of the definitive treaty. The British ambassador left London on the first of November, and after some stop in Paris reached Amiens on the first of December. The French and Dutch envoys arrived shortly after; but the Spanish failed to appear, and on different pretexts negotiations were spun out. That this was contrary to the wishes of the British ministers scarcely admits of doubt. They had already made every sacrifice they could afford; and the position of a popular government, under the free criticism of a people impatient for a settled condition of affairs, and forced to temporizing expedients for carrying on the state business during a period of uncertainty, was too unpleasant to suggest bad faith on their part. While this suspense still lasted, a startling event occurred, greatly affecting the balance of power. The Cisalpine Republic, whose independence was guaranteed by the treaty of Lunéville, adopted toward the end of 1801 a new constitution, drawn up under the inspection of Bonaparte himself. Delegates of the republic, to the number of several hundred, were summoned to Lyon to confer with the first consul on the permanent organization of their state; and there, under his influence, as was alleged, offered to him the presidency, with functions even more extensive than those he enjoyed as ruler of France. The offer was accepted by him on the 26th of January, 1802; and thus the power of the Cisalpine, with its four million inhabitants, was wielded by the same man who already held that of the French republic. A few days later for the name Cisalpine was substituted Italian,—a change thought to indicate an aggressive attitude towards the remaining states of Italy.

These proceedings at Lyon caused great alarm in England, and many persons before pacifically disposed now wished to renew the war. The ministers nevertheless ignored what had passed so publicly, and continued the effort for peace, despite the delays and tergiversations of which their envoy, Lord Cornwallis, bitterly complained; but by the beginning of March, when negotiations had lasted three months, their patience began to give way. A number of ships were ordered into commission, and extensive naval preparations begun. At the same time an ultimatum was sent forward, and Cornwallis instructed to leave Amiens in eight days if it were not accepted. The first consul had too much at stake on the seas to risk a rupture, ⁶⁵ when he had already gained so much by the protraction of negotiations and by his astute diplomacy. The definitive treaty was signed on the 25th of March, 1802. The terms did not materially differ from those of the preliminaries, except in the article of Malta. The boundary of French Guiana obtained from Portugal was indeed pushed back off the Amazon, but no mention was made of the now notorious cession of Louisiana.

The provisions touching the little island of Malta and its dependencies, Gozo and Comino, were long and elaborate. The object of each country was to secure the exclusion of the other from a position so important for controlling the Mediterranean and the approaches thereby to Egypt and India. The Order of Knights was to be restored, with the provision that no citizen either of Great Britain or France was thereafter to be a member. The independence and neutrality of the Order and of the island were proclaimed. The British forces were to evacuate within three months after the exchange of ratifications; but this stipulation was qualified by the proviso that there should then be on the spot a Grand Master to receive possession, and also two thousand Neapolitan troops which the king of Naples was to be invited to send as a garrison. These were to remain for one year after its restitution to the Grand Master; or longer, if the Order had not then provided the necessary force. Naples was thus selected as guardian of the coveted position, because its weakness could arouse no jealousy. The independence of the islands was placed under the guarantee of Great Britain, France, Austria, Spain, Russia, and Prussia; the last four being also invited to accede to the long list of stipulations. The presence of a grand master and the guarantee of the four powers—whose acquiescence was not first obtained—were thus integral parts of the agreement; and upon their failure Great Britain afterwards justified the delays which left Malta still a pledge in her hands, when she demanded from France explanations and indemnities for subsequent actions, injurious, as she claimed, to her security and to her dignity.

By another clause of the treaty Great Britain consented to evacuate Porto Ferrajo, the principal port in Elba, which she had up to that time held by force of arms. It was then known that this was in effect to abandon the island to France, who had obtained its cession from Naples and Tuscany, formerly joint owners, by conventions first made known some time after the signature of the preliminaries. Elba was by its position fitted seriously to embarrass the trade of Great Britain with Northern Italy, under the restrictions laid wherever Bonaparte's power extended; but the most important feature of the transaction was the impression produced by the long concealment of treaties thus unexpectedly divulged. These sudden, unforeseen changes imparted an air of illusion to all existing conditions, and undermined the feeling of security essential to the permanent relations of states.

Despite the shocks caused by these various revelations, the treaty of Amiens was received in Great Britain with satisfaction, though not with the unmeasured demonstrations that followed the announcement of the preliminaries. In France the general joy was no less profound. "It was believed," writes M. Thiers, "that the true peace, the peace of the seas, was secured,—that peace which was the certain and necessary condition of peace on the Continent." The enthusiasm of the nation was poured out at the feet of the first consul, to whose genius for war and for diplomacy were not unjustly attributed the brilliant, as well as apparently solid, results. Statesmen might murmur that France had lost her colonial empire and failed to hold Egypt and Malta, while Great Britain had extended and consolidated her Indian empire by overthrowing the Sultan of Mysore, the ancient ally of France and her own most formidable foe in the peninsula; but the mass even of intelligent Frenchmen stopped not to regard the wreck of their sea power, of which those disastrous events were but the sign. Facts so remote, and whose significance was not immediately apparent, were lost to sight in the glare of dazzling deeds wrought close at hand. All eyes were held by the splendid succession of victories in Italy and Germany, by the extension of the republic to her natural limits at the Rhine and the Alps, by the restoration of internal order, and by the proudly dominant position accorded their ruler in the councils of the Continent. To these was now added free access to the sea, wrung by the same mighty hand—as was fondly believed—from the weakening of the great Sea Power. At an extraordinary session of the Legislature, convoked to give legal sanction to the treaties and measures of the government, the Treaty of Amiens was presented last, as the crowning work of the first consul; and it was used as the occasion for conferring upon him a striking mark of public acknowledgment. After some hesitations, the question was submitted to the nation whether his tenure of office should be for life. The majority of votes cast were affirmative; and on the 3d of August, 1802, the senate formally presented to him a senatus-consultum, setting forth that "the French people names, and the senate proclaims. Napoleon Bonaparte consul for life."