The Treaty of Amiens
Pitt’s resignation came at a time when the nation was war-weary. Taxation was high, prices were rising and there was no immediate hope of military success. It was a crucial point in the war when Napoleon seemed to have Europe within his grasp, and Britain was without allies. The demand for peace was irresistible.On 1 October 1801 the peace preliminaries were signed and accepted by Parliament with comparatively little opposition. In a Commons speech Pitt strongly endorsed the peace. The Treaty of Amiens was signed on 27 March 1802. The terms were not advantageous to Britain, who finally acknowledged French hegemony in Europe, and took no account of recent British victories. Britain handed back the Cape of Good Hope to the Dutch and Trinidad to Spain. It recognised French dominance of northern Italy. However, the treaty’s popularity was confirmed by a comfortable win for Addington’s government in the general election of 1802.
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| James Gillray, The First Kiss Library of Congress Public domain |
In the interval of peace, there was a spate of British visitors to France, including Fox, who travelled to France in the autumn of 1802 with Mrs Armistead. On 2 November he finally met First Consul Bonaparte, and was deeply disillusioned to learn that he was a dictator!
Addington did not believe that the peace was permanent. He did not withdraw troops from the West Indies and made only moderate cuts to the army and navy. Meanwhile the French invaded and occupied Switzerland. By the spring of 1803 Britain’s defences were sufficiently good for Addington to take the initiative, declare war on 18 May and take Bonaparte by surprise.
The second phase of the war and the re-alignment of politics
The second phase of the French wars entailed far greater sacrifices for the British people than the first. Subsidies to allies were much larger, taxation was higher. Nearly two thirds of government expenditure went directly on the army and navy. Napoleon was now planning the invasion of England, and in 1804 Spain joined the war on the side of France.Addington’s hold on power was increasingly precarious, while the Opposition was reforming. Pitt’s cousin, Lord Grenville, disgusted with Pitt’s stand on Catholic Emancipation, formed an alliance with Fox. In May, Addington resigned and Pitt was returned as prime minister. Addington had not been as bad a prime minister as many had feared. He had done better than Pitt in providing a fiscal underpinning for the war. His property tax (a shilling in the pound on all incomes over £150 pa) had adopted the principle of deduction at source. Nevertheless he was seen as an uninspiring leader at a time of national danger.
However, Pitt was a shadow of the prime minister he had once been. His government was weak. He was confronted with an an Opposition that was now back in business - and and he faced an invasion threat.
The invasion threat
In May 1804 Bonaparte confirmed his position as dictator by his elevation as Emperor (he was crowned in Notre Dame on 2 December 1804). In the summer of 1804 more than 80,000 Frenchmen were assembled at and around Boulogne in preparation of invasion. As a response the Royal Military Canal was constructed in haste to provide a water obstacle to seal off the Dungeness Peninsula and Romney Marsh. The sluice gates were protected by Martello towers. A total of 73 of these circular towers were built by the end of 1806 - by which time they were no longer needed. |
| James Gillray, The Plum Pudding in Danger published in February 1805 when it was briefly believed that Pitt and Napoleon would reach an agreement. Public domain. |
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| Admiral Villeneuve, the unfortunate French commander. |
This left Nelson with an agonizing decision. Where had Villeneuve gone? His hunch was that he was planning an attack on Jamaica. But suppose he was wrong and the Channel fleet was lost?
‘If they are not gone to the West Indies, I shall be blamed. To be burned in effigy or Westminster Abbey is my destiny.’On 7 May Nelson passed Gibraltar. In 24 days he crossed the Atlantic (it had taken Villeneuve 34 days). On his arrival he found Villeneuve had sailed back to Europe. His despatches, sent by fast frigate, warning of Villeneuve’s probable return, were in London almost a fortnight before the French fleet arrived back in European waters. The element of surprise had been lost and the British forces were ranging against him to the northward. On 22 July Admiral Calder fought an indecisive battle off Cape Finisterre. The Combined Fleet made port in Cadiz on 21 August, and after this, the invasion scare was effectively over. On 15 September Calder sailed from Portsmouth, with instructions to cover Gibraltar, Cape St Vincent and Cadiz.
Napoleon's priorities had now shifted. He was once again at war with Austria, who then entered a coalition with Britain (paid for by the British taxpayer). He withdrew his troops from Boulogne and headed for the Danube. On 7 October the Austrian general Mack was defeated at Ulm.
Trafalgar
On 20 October, reluctantly obeying orders from Napoleon Villeneuve sailed out of Cadiz in order to join the fleet off Naples for a minor engagement. Historians are still debating about why Napoleon gave his unfortunate admiral such a crazy order. On the following day the Combined Fleet was defeated at Trafalgar, an astonishing achievement for Nelson. His controversial tactic was to sail head-on into the French fleet and take the inevitable punishment until he could get near enough to inflict huge damage on the enemy. It was a tactic that relied on an extraordinary degree of skill and professionalism.
The death of Nelson was obviously a serious blow, but Admiral Collingwood, who succeeded him as commander of the fleet, kept the French fleet in a state of psychological subservience after 1805.
On 5 November news of Nelson’s death reached London. Later in the month, Pitt delivered his speech at the Lord Mayor’s banquet. To the Lord Mayor’s toast to the ‘saviour of Europe’ he replied,
‘Europe is not to be saved by any single man. England has saved herself by her exertions, and will, as I trust, save Europe by her example.'On 9 January 1806 Nelson was given a state funeral of great magnificence – far more than that afforded to any monarch. He had become the national icon.
Austerlitz and the death of Pitt
In spite of its iconic significance, Trafalgar was not a knock-out blow for Napoleon. From September, his first priority had been to destroy the Austrian army and, following his victory at Ulm, he defeated a combined Russian and Austrian army at Austerlitz, his greatest victory. He was almost at the height of his power. On 6 December the thousand-year Holy Roman Empire was ended. The Third Coalition was over. The British people were now faced with an enemy whose ambitions seemed limitless, and there seemed little alternative to prolonged resistance.Pitt recognised that the news was a disaster for Britain. He said, ‘Roll up the map. It will not be wanted these ten years’. He had been unwell, and he died on 23 January 1806, leaving debts of £40,000. He was buried at Westminster Abbey on 22 February.
The Ministry of All the Talents
With the death of Pitt, politics entered a new phase. George III was forced to abandon his hostility to the Whigs. He offered the premiership to Lord Grenville, now an ally of the Whigs, who formed a Whig-dominated Ministry of All the Talents, with Fox as Foreign Secretary. Addington, now Lord Sidmouth, was Home Secretary.Following Austerlitz, Napoleon defeated the Prussians at Jena-Auerstedt in October 1806. Berlin was occupied and the Grand Army pushed into Poland. France was dominant from the Baltic to the Mediterranean coast.
Fox had come into government with two aims: to secure peace with France and to end the slave trade. However, as Foreign Secretary, he was a failure – he misread France’s intentions, realising too late that Napoleon was not interested in peace. He died on 14 October 1806. The slave trade was abolished the following March - his greatest (though posthumous) achievement.
On the same day that abolition received the royal assent (25 March the Talents ministry resigned when the king blocked a bill to allow Roman Catholics to hold commissions in the armed forces.
By the end of March 1807 the ‘friends of Mr Pitt’ were back in a ministry led by the Duke of Portland. This government has retrospectively been seen as Tory.
Economic warfare
Meanwhile, Napoleon had embarked on a strategy of economic warfare known as the ‘Continental System’. The Berlin decree of November 1806 closed all ports under French control to vessels from Britain and her colonies. In January 1807 Grenville’s government replied with the Orders in Council, which confined Europe's trade to neutral shipping and forced all vessels to proceed via British ports.Fearing that Napoleon was about to bring Denmark into the Continental System, the Royal Navy launched a pre-emptive bombardment of Copenhagen from 16 August to 5 September 1807 – an episode that was widely seen as immoral.
The British blockade damaged France far more than the continental system damaged Britain, and British entrepreneurs began to open up South America to British goods. New markets were found in the Cape of Good Hope and India. However, the manufacturing areas were hit, and the manufacturers of the north and Midlands looked to the Whigs to mount a parliamentary assault on the Orders in Council.
The Peninsular War
Portland’s government was determined to follow up the shelling of Copenhagen and the Orders in Council by landing an expeditionary force in Europe. The opportunity was provided by Napoleon himself.In March 1808 he took advantage of a crisis in Spain to occupy Madrid and impose his brother Joseph as king of Spain. This gave France the potential to annexe the huge Spanish Empire. But the French occupation inspired a popular nationalist advance in May, which gave Britain her opportunity.
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| Francisco Goya, The Third of May 1808 Museum of the Prado, Madrid Public domain. |
In July a British expeditionary force of 9,000 men under Sir Arthur Wellesley (created Viscount Wellington in 1809 and Duke of Wellington in 1814) landed in Portugal and defeated the French at Vimeiro. The British then controversially retreated from the Peninsula, but in April 1809 Wellington returned. The Peninsular War had begun.
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| Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington by Sir Thomas Lawrence Public domain. |
Wellington, commanded an army of 60,000 British troops, reinforced by the Spanish and Portuguese armies and guerrilla brigades. A French army was now tied down in Spain. The cost to the British taxpayer was £18 million.
Conclusion
- In 1805/6 Britain experienced the highs and lows of the war: Nelson’s victory and death, and the death of Pitt.
- With Pitt’s death, politics refocussed and a revived Tory party began to emerge.
- Britain entered a period of economic warfare that caused considerable hardship.
- The Spanish crisis enabled a British army to land in Europe once again.
