It was with these two phases of one and the same condition that Europe had to deal between 1793 and 1814. In the one instance a people unified by a common passion and common aims, in the other the same people concentrated into a common action by submission to the will of a sovereign, apparently resistless in the council as in the field. It is true that the affections of his subjects soon ceased to follow him, except in the armies by whose power he ruled, but the result is the same. All the energies of the nation are summed up in a single overpowering impulse,—at first spontaneous, afterwards artificial,—to which during the first half of Napoleon's career was given a guidance of matchless energy and wisdom.
Such a combination is for the time irresistible, as the continent of Europe proved during long and weary years. Absolute power, concentrated force, central position, extraordinary sagacity and energy, all united to assure to Napoleon the dazzling successes which are matters of history. The duration and the permanent results of this startling career depended, however, upon the staying power of the French nation and upon the steadfastness of the resistance. Upon the Continent, the latter in its actuality ceased. Potentially it remained,—men's hearts swelled to bursting under the tyranny they endured; but before the power and the genius of the great conqueror outward rebellion shrank away. States dared not trust each other,—they could not act together; and so men went silently in the bitterness of their spirits.
There remained one small group of islands, close on the flank of the would-be ruler of the world, with a population numbering little more than half that of his immediate dominions, whose inhabitants deeply sympathized with sufferings and oppression they were powerless directly to relieve. The resistance they had offered to the aggressive fury of the Revolution they continued to oppose to its successor and representative; but it was not by direct action in the field, but only by operations aimed to abridge the resources and endurance of France, that they could look forward to a possibility of success. For seven years went on this final silent strife, whose outlines have been traced in the preceding chapter of this work. During its continuance Great Britain herself, while escaping the political oppression and national humiliation undergone by the continental peoples, drank deep of the cup of suffering. Her strength wasted visibly; but the mere fact of her endurance and persistence compelled her enemy to efforts more exhausting, to measures more fatal, than those forced upon herself. And, while thus subjected to a greater strain, Napoleon was by Great Britain cut off from that greatest of all sources of renewing vitality—the Sea.
The true function of Great Britain in this long struggle can scarcely be recognized unless there be a clear appreciation of the fact that a really great national movement, like the French Revolution, or a really great military power under an incomparable general, like the French empire under Napoleon, is not to be brought to terms by ordinary military successes, which simply destroy the organized force opposed.
Of the latter, the protracted and not wholly hopeless resistance, which in 1813 and 1814 succeeded even the great Russian catastrophe, is a signal instance; while to subvert such a power, wielded by such a man, by any reverse less tremendous than it then underwent, is hopeless. Two Napoleons do not co-exist. In the former case, on the other hand, the tangible something, the decisive point against which military effort can be directed, is wanting. Of this the struggle between the North and South in the American Civil War affords a conspicuous example. Few, probably, would now maintain that the capture of Richmond in the first year of the war, when the enthusiasm of the Southern people was at its height, their fighting force undiminished, their hopes undimmed by the bitter disappointments of a four years' struggle, would have had any decisive effect upon the high-spirited race. Positions far more important fell without a sign of such result. No man could then have put his finger here, or there, and said, "This is the key-stone of resistance;" for in the high and stern feeling of the moment resistance was not here nor there, but everywhere.
So was it in the early flush of the French Revolution. The "On to Paris" of 1793 would probably have had no more decisive results than the "On to Richmond" of 1861, had it been successful. Not till enthusiasm has waned before sorrow, and strength failed under exhaustion, does popular impulse, when deep and universal, acquiesce in the logic of war. To such exhaustion France was brought when Bonaparte took the helm. By his organizing genius he restored her military strength, the material of which still remained, economized such resources as the wastefulness of preceding governments had left, and above all secured for her a further power of endurance by drawing upon the life-blood of surrounding nations. So exhaustion was for the time postponed; but, if the course of aggression which Bonaparte had inherited from the Revolution was to continue, there were needed, not the resources of the Continent only, but of the world. There was needed also a diminution of ultimate resistance below the stored-up aggressive strength of France; otherwise, however procrastinated, the time must come when the latter should fail.
On both these points Great Britain withstood Napoleon. She shut him off from the world, and by the same act prolonged her own powers of endurance beyond his power of aggression. This in the retrospect of history was the function of Great Britain in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic period; and that the successive ministries of Pitt and his followers pursued the course best fitted, upon the whole, to discharge that function, is their justification to posterity. It is the glory of Pitt's genius that as he discovered the object, "Security," so likewise he foresaw the means, Exhaustion, by which alone the French propaganda of aggression would be brought to pause. The eloquent derision poured upon his predictions of failure from financial exhaustion, from expenditure of resources, from slackening of enthusiasm, recoils from the apprehension of the truth. He saw clearly the line of Great Britain's action, he foresaw the direction of events, he foretold the issue. How long the line would be, how the course of events would be retarded, how protracted the issue, he could not foretell, because no man could foresee the supreme genius of Napoleon Bonaparte.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] See, for instance, his letter to Lady Hamilton, Oct. 3, 1798 (Disp., vol. iii. p. 140), which is but one of many similar expressions in his correspondence.