[34] In the following year Napoleon consented to evacuate all the Prussian fortresses except three, on condition that the Prussian army should not exceed a total of 40,000 men.
[35] Annual Register, xlix. (1807), 249-70, 731-38; Rose, in English Historical Review, xi. (1896), 82-92.
[36] Captain Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire, ii., 272-357, shows that the policy of the orders in council was essential to British safety.
[37] The course of this war is related continuously in [chap. v.]
[38] Rose, Life of Napoleon I., ii., 190, note.
[39] The best account of the quarrel, especially in its relation to the composition of the cabinet, is to be found in Walpole's Life of Perceval, vol. i., chap. ix., and vol. ii., chap. i. Lewis, Administrations, pp. 314-15, finds a double ground for Canning's resignation in his failure to obtain the removal of Castlereagh from the war office and in the refusal of the king and cabinet to allow him to succeed Portland as prime minister. It is quite clear, however, that at the time of Canning's resignation no decision had been come to about a successor to Portland. Some correspondence had passed between Canning and Perceval, in which each had refused to serve under the other, but that this correspondence was unknown to the cabinet as a whole is proved by Mulgrave's letters to Lord Lonsdale of September 11 and 15 (Phipps, Memoir of Ward, pp. 210-17); in the former of these he discusses Canning's probable conduct without referring to this correspondence, while in the latter he only knows of such negotiations as subsequent to the resignations of September 6 and 8. So, too, Eldon's letter to his wife of September 11 (Twiss, Life of Eldon, ii., 88-90), places the whole correspondence between Canning and Perceval after Portland's resignation on September 6. The king was not informed of Canning's views as to a successor to Portland till September 13, and the cabinet minute of September 18, advising co-operation with Grenville and Grey, mentions the selection of Canning as prime minister as a course open to the king.
[40] This is the date commonly given. The Annual Register, li. (1809), 239, gives the 22nd, while Perceval refers to the result of the duel in a letter dated the 20th (Colchester, Diary, ii., 209). It is clear, however, that Canning did not receive Castlereagh's challenge till the morning of the 20th (see his letter in Annual Register, loc. cit., 505, also his detailed statement to Camden, ibid., 525), and therefore the duel cannot have taken place till the 21st. Lord Folkestone in a letter dated the 21st refers to the duel as having been fought at "7 o'clock this morning" (Creevey Papers, i., 96).
CHAPTER IV.
PERCEVAL AND LIVERPOOL.
The administration of Perceval, covering the period from October, 1809, to May, 1812, coincided with a lull in the continental war save in the Peninsula, though it saw no pause in the progress of French annexation. Nor was it marked by many events of historical interest in domestic affairs. When parliament was opened on January 23, 1810, it was natural that attention should chiefly be devoted to the Walcheren expedition, which the opposition illogically and unscrupulously contrived to use to disparage the operations of Sir Arthur Wellesley, now Viscount Wellington, in Spain. Grenville, who argued with some reason that 40,000 British troops could have been employed to far better purpose in North Germany, would have been on stronger ground if he had complained that for want of them the British army had been unable to occupy Madrid. Castlereagh, indeed, had confessed to Wellesley that he could not spare the necessary reinforcements, after the reserves had been exhausted in Walcheren; but it is by no means certain that Wellesley could have collected provisions enough to feed a much larger force, or specie enough to pay for them. Liverpool was driven in reply to Grenville to magnify the value of the capture of Flushing, as the necessary basis of the naval armaments which Napoleon had intended to launch against England from the Scheldt. The government was also defended by the young Robert Peel, lately elected to parliament. As the calamity was irreparable, a committee of the whole house spent most of its time on a constitutional question, regarding a private memorandum placed before the king by Chatham in his own defence. So irregular a proceeding was properly condemned, and Chatham resigned the mastership of the ordnance, but the policy of the Walcheren expedition was approved by a vote of the house of commons. Mulgrave received the office Chatham had vacated, and was himself succeeded by Yorke at the admiralty.