For these reasons great operations on land, or a conspicuous share in the continental campaigns became, if not absolutely impossible to Great Britain, at least clearly unadvisable. It was economically wiser, for the purposes of the coalitions, that she should be controlling the sea, supporting the commerce of the world, making money and managing the finances, while other states, whose industries were exposed to the blast of war and who had not the same commercial aptitudes, did the fighting on land. This defines substantially the course followed by the ministry of the day, for which the younger Pitt has been most severely criticised. It is perhaps impossible to find any historian of repute who will defend the general military conduct of the Cabinet at whose head he stood; while the brilliant successes of the Seven Years' War have offered a ready text for disparagers, from his contemporary, Fox, to those of our own day, to draw a mortifying contrast between his father and himself. Yet what were the military enterprises and achievements of the justly famed Seven Years' War? They were enterprises of exactly the same character as those undertaken in the French Revolutionary War, and as those which, it may be added, are so constant a feature of English history, whether during times of European peace or of European war, that it may reasonably be suspected there is, in the conditions of the British empire, some constant cause for their recurrence. Like the petty wars which occur every few years in our generation, they were mixed military and naval expeditions, based upon the fleet and upon the control of the sea, scattered in all quarters of the world, employing bodies of troops small when compared to the size of continental armies, and therefore for the most part bearing, individually, the character of secondary operations, however much they may have conduced to a great common end.
It is an ungracious task to institute comparisons; but, if just conclusions are to be reached, the real facts of a case must be set forth. The elder Pitt had not to contend with such a navy as confronted his son at the outbreak of the French Revolution. The French navy, as is avowed by its historians, had received great and judicious care throughout the reign of Louis XVI.; it had a large and splendid body of ships in 1793; it enjoyed the proud confidence of the nation, consequent upon its actions in the war of 1778; and, although its efficiency was fatally affected by the legislation of the National Assembly and by the emigrations, it was still an imposing force. Not until years of neglect had passed over it, and the fatal Battle of the Nile had been fought, did its character and weight sink to the same relative insignificance that the elder Pitt encountered in the Seven Years' War. The elder, like the younger, shaped his system of war upon the control of the sea, upon the acquisition of colonies, upon subsidizing allies upon the Continent, and, as main outlines of policy, these were undoubtedly correct; but the former had in his favor heavy odds in the weak condition of the French navy, and in having on his side the great military genius of the age. On the side of the elder Pitt fought Frederick the Great, against a coalition, numerically overwhelming indeed, but half-hearted, ill-knit, and led by generals far inferior to their great opponent, often mere creatures of the most corrupt Court favor. Against the younger Pitt arose a greater than Frederick, at the very moment of triumph, when the combined effects of the sea power of England, of the armies of Austria, and of the incompetency of the Directory had brought the Revolution "to bay,"—to use the words of a distinguished French naval officer and student. [476] In 1796 and in 1799 Bonaparte, and Bonaparte alone, rescued from impending destruction—not France, for France was not the object of Pitt's efforts—but that "system of aggrandizement and aggression" to which France was then committed.
The elder Pitt saw his work completed, though by weaker hands; the younger struggled on through disappointment after disappointment, and died under the shadow of Austerlitz, worn out in heart and mind by the dangers of his country. Contemporaries and men of later generations, British and foreigners, have agreed in attributing to him the leading part in the coalitions against Revolutionary France; but they have failed to admit the specific difficulties under which he labored, and how nearly he achieved success. It is easy to indulge in criticism of details, and to set one undertaking against another; to show the failures of expeditions landed on the French coast in the Seven Years' War; to point out that Wolfe's conquest of Canada in 1759, by freeing the American colonies from their fear of France, promoted their revolt against Great Britain, while Nelson in 1798, and Abercromby in 1801, saved Egypt, and probably India also, to England; to say that the elder Pitt did not regain Minorca by arms, while the younger secured both it and Malta. Martinique fell to the arms of both; the Cape of Good Hope, Ceylon, Trinidad, prizes of the later war, may fairly be set against Havana and Manila of the earlier. In India, Clive, the first and greatest of British Indian heroes, served the elder Pitt; yet before the arms of the younger fell Mysore, the realm of Hyder Ali and Tippoo Saib, the most formidable enemies that Britain had yet met in the Peninsula. Such comparisons and arguments are endless; partly because there is much to be said on both sides, but chiefly because they concern details only, and do not touch the root of the matter.
The objects of the two Pitts were different, for the circumstances of their generations were essentially diverse. The task of the one was to extend and establish the great colonial system, whose foundations had been laid by previous generations, and to sustain in Europe the balance of power between rival, but orderly, governments; that of the other was to steady the social order and political framework of Great Britain herself, and of Europe, against a hurricane which threatened to tear up both by the roots. Each in his day, to strengthen his country and to weaken the enemy, pursued the same great line of policy, which in the one age and in the other fitted the situation of Great Britain. To extend and consolidate her sea power; to lay the world under contribution to her commerce; to control the sea by an all-powerful navy; to extend her colonial empire by conquest, thereby increasing her resources, multiplying her naval bases, and depriving her enemy alike of revenues and of points whence he could trouble English shipping; to embarrass the great enemy, France, by subsidizing continental allies,—such was the policy of both the Pitts; such, alike in the Revolution and in the Seven Years' War, was the policy imposed by a due recognition, not only of the special strength of Great Britain, but of her position in relation to the general struggle. Frederick in the one case, Austria in the other, needed the money, which only the sustained commercial prosperity of England could supply. The difference in the actual careers run by the two statesmen is that the son had to meet far greater obstacles than the father, and that, so far as the part of Great Britain herself was concerned, he achieved equal, if not greater, successes. The father had to contend, not against the mighty fury of the French Revolution, but against the courtier generals and the merely professional soldiery of Louis XV. and his mistresses; he had an allied America; he met no mutiny of the British fleet; he was threatened by no coalition of the Baltic Powers; he encountered no Bonaparte. It was the boast of British merchants that under his rule "Commerce was united to and made to grow by war;" but British commerce increased during the French Revolution even more than it did in the earlier war, and the growth of the British navy, in material strength and in military glory, under the son, exceeded that under the father.
In history the personality of the elder statesman is far more imposing than that of the younger. The salient characteristic of the one was an imperious and fiery impetuosity; that of the other, reserve. The one succeeded in power a minister inefficient as an administrator, weak in nerve, and grotesque in personal appearance; the striking contrast presented by the first William Pitt to the Duke of Newcastle, his aggressive temper, the firm self-reliance of his character, his dazzling personality, around which a dramatic halo clung even in the hour of his death, made a vivid impression upon the imagination of contemporaries, and have descended as a tradition to our own days. Save to a few intimate friends, the second Pitt was known to his fellow-countrymen only on the benches of the House of Commons. A temper as indomitable as his father's bore in silence the vastly greater and more prolonged strain of a most chequered struggle; only a few knew that the strain was endured with a cheerfulness, a calmness, and a presence of mind, which of themselves betoken a born leader of men. In the darkest hour, when the last ally, Austria, had forsaken England and consented to treat with France, when the seamen of the fleet had mutinied, and British ships of war, taken violently from their officers, were blockading the approaches to London, Pitt was awakened during the night by a member of the Cabinet with some disastrous news. He listened quietly, gave his directions calmly and clearly, and dismissed the messenger. The latter, after leaving the house, thought it necessary to return for some further instruction, and found the minister again sleeping quietly. The incident is a drama in itself.
In considering the use made of Great Britain's powers for war by the administration of the second Pitt, the broad outlines should be regarded, not as a simply military question,—such as the combinations of a general officer in a campaign,—but as efforts of statesmanship, directing arms in an attempt to compass by force the requirements considered to be most decisive in a political situation. The office of the statesman is to determine, and to indicate to the military authorities, the national interests most vital to be defended, as well as the objects of conquest or destruction most injurious to the enemy, in view of the political exigencies which the military power only subserves. The methods by which the military force will proceed to the ends thus indicated to it—the numbers, character, equipment of the forces to be employed, and their management in campaign—are technical matters, to be referred to the military or naval expert by the statesman. If the latter undertakes to dictate in these, he goes beyond his last and commonly incurs misfortune.
It is not likely that such a division of labor, between the statesman, the soldier, and the seaman, is ever formally made. It is enough if it be practically recognized by the due influence of the military element in deciding details, and by its cheerful obedience in carrying out the views of the government whose servant it is. In criticising results it is fair to assume, where not otherwise proved, that for the general direction of the war the government is responsible, and that in the particular management of military movements the advice of professional men has had just weight. A somewhat striking illustration of this is to be found in the change of naval strategy, within the limits of the Channel fleet, when, without any change in the government, the positive convictions and stringent methods of Lord St. Vincent set aside, in 1800, the traditions of Lord Howe and Lord Bridport.
What then was the general direction imparted to military movements by a government which had announced its object in the war to be the attainment of security, by "repressing the French system of aggrandizement and aggression"?
Owing to the distracted condition of France, many confusing cross-lights were at first cast upon that central theatre of European disturbance, by movements whose force it was impossible rightly to estimate. Such were the risings in La Vendée and Brittany, the revolt at Lyon, the delivery of Toulon to the allied fleets. Experience justifies the opinion that such insurgent movements, involving but a part of a nation, are best left to themselves, supported only by money and supplies. If, thus aided, they have not the vitality to make good their cause, the presence of foreign troops, viewed ever with jealousy by the natives, will not insure success. It is, however, the French Revolution itself that furnishes the surest illustrations of this truth, shedding upon it a light which Pitt did not have to guide him. Such embarrassments of the French Government were naturally thought to give opportunity for powerful diversions; the more so as the amount of disaffection was much exaggerated, and the practice of partial descents upon the French coasts had come down unquestioned from previous wars.
To this mistake, as natural as any ever made in war, and to the treaty obligation to support Holland, is to be attributed much of the misdirection given to the British army in the first two years of the war. When the illusion was over, and Holland conquered, the military effort of Great Britain was at once concentrated on its proper objects of ruling the sea and securing positions that contributed to naval control and commercial development. Even in 1793 a respectable force had been sent to the West Indies, which in 1794 reduced all the Windward Islands. Stretching its efforts too far, reverses followed; but in 1795 a powerful fleet was sent with sixteen thousand troops commanded by Sir Ralph Abercromby, the best general officer revealed by the early part of the war. From the first, Pitt had seen the necessity of controlling the West Indies. That necessity was twofold: first, by far the greatest fraction of British trade, over one fourth of the whole, depended upon them; and, second, the enemy's islands were not only valuable as producing, they were above all the homes of cruisers that endangered all commerce, neutral as well as British. To control the whole Caribbean region was, among those objects that lay within the scope of the British Government, the one most essential to the success of the general war. To sneer at the attempt as showing merely a wish for sugar islands is to ignore the importance of the West Indies to the financial stability of Great Britain; upon whose solvency depended, not only the maritime war, but the coalitions whose aid was needed to repress "the system of French aggression."