A history of England

by Charles Oman

But, for the moment, to put down Austria and Russia was his task. Already, before Trafalgar had been fought, he had crushed the vanguard of the Austrians at Ulm, where the imbecile General Mack laid down his arms with nearly 40,000 men, while the Russians were still miles away, toiling up from Poland. Vienna fell into his hands before the allies were able to join their forces. A month later they met the French on the snow-covered hillside of Austerlitz, a village some eighty miles north-east of the Austrian capital. Here Napoleon beat them with awful slaughter. Left with only the wreck of an army, the Emperor Francis II. asked for peace, and got it on humiliating terms. He had to cede his Italian dominions, as well as the Tyrol, the very cradle of the Hapsburg dynasty. Moreover, he gave up his old title of head of the "Holy Roman Empire"—the imperial style which had lasted since the days of Charlemagne, and had remained in the Austrian line for 350 years—and was constrained to take the new and humbler name of Emperor of Austria.

Death of Pitt.—The Ministry of "All the Talents."

The news of this disaster to the coalition which had cost him so much trouble to knit together, and from which he had expected so much, broke Pitt's heart. He had been in ill-health ever since he took office in 1804, the constant stress of responsibility, while the invasion was impending, having shattered his nerves. He died on January 23, 1806, aged no more than forty-six. He had been prime minister for nearly half this short span of life, and had certainly done more for England in his tenure of office than any man who has ever occupied that position. The death of Pitt, and the public dismay at the break up of the coalition of 1805, led to a demand for a strong and united ministry that should combine all parties for the national defence. There was no man among the Tories great enough to take up Pitt's mantle, and Addington, the late prime minister, Lord Grenville and several other leaders of that party were ready to admit the long-exiled Whigs to a share in the administration. The king was discontented at having to receive his old foe, Charles James Fox, as a minister, but bowed to the force of public opinion. Thus came into being the short Fox-Grenville cabinet, which contemporary wits called the ministry of "All the Talents," on account of its broad and comprehensive character, for it included all shades of opinion, from Addington at the one end to Fox at the other.

Failure of negotiations with Napoleon.—Death of Fox.

Fox had always opposed war with France, and had maintained that if the late ministry had met Napoleon in an open and liberal spirit they might have secured an honourable peace. But when he himself was given the opportunity of testing the Corsican's real temper, he met with a bitter disappointment. Napoleon was too angry with England to think of any accommodation. He offered Fox terms which were absolutely insulting, considering that England had held her own and successfully kept off invasion. Fox died soon after, worn out by the hard work of office, to which he had been a stranger for twenty years (September, 1806).

End of the Grenville Ministry.—Abolition of the Slave Trade.

After his decease and the failure of the peace negotiations, the Grenville Ministry had no great reason for existence; it was forced to continue the war-policy of Pitt, but met with no success in several small expeditions that it sent out to vex the French and Spaniards. In March, 1807, the ministers resigned, after a quarrel with the king on the same point which had wrecked Pitt in 1802—the question of Catholic Emancipation. The only good work which this short administration had done in its thirteen months of office was to abolish the slave-trade. On the resignation of the Whigs the Tories came back into power. Their nominal chief was now William Bentinck, Duke of Portland, an aged man, one of the Whigs who had been made Tories by the French Revolution. But the shrewd and ambitious Spencer Perceval, the new Chancellor of the Exchequer, was the real leader of the Tories. He was a narrow-minded man of moderate ability, whose only merit was that he clung to the policy of Pitt, and continued to hammer away at the French in spite of all checks and failures.

The Confederation of the Rhine.

After Austerlitz, Napoleon assumed the position of tyrant of all Central Europe. He created his younger brother Lewis king of Holland, and drove out the Spanish Bourbons from Naples, in order to make his eldest brother Joseph king of the Two Sicilies. He formed the smaller German states into the "Confederation of the Rhine," of which he declared himself protector.