In a diary kept by Rear-Admiral Sir George Cockburn’s secretary during Napoleon’s voyage in the Northumberland to St Helena, a conversation is recorded in which the ex-Emperor referred particularly to the West Indies. He said that “had he continued at the head of the French Government, he never would have attempted the re-occupation of St Domingo; that the most he would have established with regard to that island would have been to keep frigates and sloops stationed around it to force the blacks to receive everything they wanted from, and to export all their produce exclusively to, France; for, he added, he considered the independence of the blacks there to be more likely to prove detrimental to England than to France. This latter remark is a reiteration of his feelings with respect to England, as in all the calculations he makes, the proportion of evil which may accrue to our nation seems to bear in his mind the first consideration.”
In the early days of 1803 the First Consul’s attention was distracted by events nearer home, and he had no alternative but to abandon his dreams of a Colonial Empire. If, as he afterwards stated, “the Saint Domingo business” was “the greatest error in all my government I ever committed,” he had been able to obtain Louisiana from Spain in exchange for an extension of territory in Italy, and also to secure Guiana.
CHAPTER XV
The Dawn of the Empire (1803–1804)
While neither party kept strictly to the terms of the Peace of Amiens, Napoleon’s aggressive policy was such as to disturb other Powers as well as Great Britain. There was no knowing who might be the object of his unwelcome attentions. Frontiers seemed suddenly to have lost their significance and usefulness, treaties became of less value than the parchment on which they were written. Great Britain complained that whereas the Treaty of Lunéville had guaranteed the independence of the Batavian Republic, French troops were stationed within her borders, as well as in those of Switzerland. Napoleon retorted by saying that Great Britain still kept Malta. Eventually England declared war on the 18th May 1803, and it was to be a duel to the death.
Napoleon, usually so wide awake, was taken by surprise. He did not anticipate so quick a decision on the part of Addington’s administration. He retaliated in an utterly senseless and cruel way by ordering that every British subject on French territory should be arrested and imprisoned. Small wonder that English newspapers vilified the First Consul as the Corsican Ogre, that the pens of Gillray, Cruikshank, Woodward, and a host of lesser artists caricatured him almost out of recognition; that poets poured forth vituperation in minor verse, and that Scott and Wordsworth wrote battle cries. Few people in England entertained the sympathy and admiration for the ruler of France shown by Dr Parr. “Sir,” he once remarked, “I should not think I had done my duty if I went to bed any night without praying for the success of Napoleon Bonaparte.”
To strike a mortal blow at the very heart of the British Empire and to ruin her commerce on the Continent now became the consuming object of Napoleon’s ambition. He would cross the Channel, march on London, subjugate the United Kingdom, and while preparations for this bold move were being made, close the ports of Europe against her. “They want to make us jump the ditch, and we’ll jump it,” to quote an expression he used at an audience of ambassadors on the 1st May 1803. Frenchmen joyfully anticipated the triumph of the man with so bold an ambition; Englishmen armed themselves as eagerly to defend hearth and home. A Territorial Army of which posterity may well be proud quickly came into being. In March 1805 no fewer than 810,000 troops—Militia, Volunteers, and Fencibles—were prepared to defy Napoleon. The politician and the publican, the ploughboy and the squire, joined hands in the mutual cause as though no difference of class existed. George III. announced his intention of leading the troops in person if necessary. Pitt was acting-colonel of a regiment, and Charles James Fox became a humble private.
On the Sands at Boulogne