A History of England, Period III. Constitutional Monarchy

by J. Franck Bright

This wholly unpolitical mutiny was followed by a more formidable movement among the ships at the Nore. It began on board the 'Sandwich,' the flagship of Admiral Buckner. As in the former case, delegates from the seamen met on board the 'Sandwich,' but the chief management of the mutiny fell absolutely into the hands of a seaman called Parker, a man of good education, and at one time an officer in the navy, but whose abilities as a leader were spoiled by his arrogant assumption of dictatorial power. Under his influence the demands of the mutineers assumed a political character; they required a revision of the Articles of War, an increase of prize-money, and the dismissal of officers not agreeable to the ships' companies. All efforts to bring the men to reason were unavailing. Lord Spencer himself, the First Lord of the Admiralty, had an interview with Parker, but was met with nothing but insult. After this the mutineers fired upon some frigates who would not join them, and blockaded the Thames. It became necessary to take vigorous measures. Bills were passed without opposition strengthening the hands of Government, and making it felony to hold intercourse with the mutinous ships. Ships were got ready, the navigation of the Thames was rendered difficult by the removal of marks, and batteries were erected along the river. Cut off from the shore, and finding no sympathy among the fleets at Portsmouth and Plymouth, nor among even the most advanced radicals on shore, although they were joined by the fleets of Admiral Duncan, the mutineers began to give way. Ship after ship slipped her cable and escaped from the mutinous fleet, and on the 15th of June the 'Sandwich' herself was brought within range of the batteries. Parker was at once apprehended, sentenced to death, and hanged. But though the firmness of the Government had secured them complete victory, they were too conscious of the real abuses in the navy to be severe. Only four or five executions followed.

Real loyalty of the sailors.

The great peculiarity of the mutiny was the ease with which it was ultimately suppressed and the proofs of underlying loyalty which are visible throughout it. In the Channel fleet all the offers of the Admiralty, and even of Parliament, were regarded as delusive till the King's own sign manual was exhibited, upon which all signs of mistrust at once vanished. When one of the ships threatened to leave the fleet and join the French, the guns of the rest of the mutinous fleet were at once turned upon it, and it was carefully blockaded by guard-boats; and again, so far from sympathizing with the mutineers of the Nore, the sailors of the Channel fleet, after their return to allegiance, wrote to the delegates declaring that their conduct was a scandal to the British navy. Even at the Nore, where the mutiny had taken a more political form, every ship but one struck the red flag and hoisted the royal ensign on the King's birthday, and within a few weeks of the suppression of the disaffection, the battle of Camperdown, one of the severest engagements of the time, was chiefly won for England by the crews of the lately insurgent fleet.

Disorganization of the French Government.

It was well for England that the Government of France was at this time so disorganized that no vigorous effort could be made to take advantage of her deplorable condition. The place of the assignats had been taken by another form of paper money called "mandats," but these too had been rejected by the people, who could no longer be brought to believe in paper money of any description. Forced to have recourse to the use of specie, the Directory had also found itself compelled to have recourse to the old means of raising money; compulsory loans were established, the receipts of future years anticipated, the national goods sold for whatever they would fetch, and money raised at the most ridiculous interest. These financial arrangements gave rise to much nefarious speculation and stock-jobbing; the business of the army to still more; and the newly enriched speculators, emancipated from the pressure of the terror and devoid of all the nobler sentiments of republicanism, were a mere set of selfish voluptuaries. In such a dissolution of morality and public spirit it was plain that the royalists had their chance, and in the year 1797 sufficient members of their party were elected to change the majority of the two councils. The representative body immediately entered into a struggle with the executive Directory; and in that Directory were Barras, a revolutionary at heart though the leader of all the dissoluteness of the time, Barthélemy, the negotiator of Basle, who appears to have been royalist in his tendencies, and Carnot, an upright republican, but yet under the influence of the dread of the old terror. It was plain that if the Revolution was to be saved it must be done by violent means, and Rewbell and Laréveilière, the remaining directors, with the assistance of Barras, determined to save it at the cost of a coup d'état carried out by the army. On the night of the 18th Fructidor (Sept. 4, 1797), Carnot and Barthélemy, with fifty of the obnoxious majority, were arrested, and all chance of a royalist reaction was for the time over. Bonaparte was now convinced that the ultimate fate of France must be with the army, in other words, that it must lie with himself, but with great wisdom he determined to wait the turn of events.

Negotiations at Lisle.

While the parties were thus struggling in France, and there seemed a chance of an entire change of feeling, the English ministry, very seriously anxious for peace, again opened negotiations. The Preliminaries of Léoben had in fact removed what should have been the sole difficulty; it was ridiculous that England should continue to hold out on the subject of the Low Countries when Austria had herself entered into a private treaty to abandon them. A passport was therefore demanded, and, somewhat unfortunately, Lord Malmesbury was again fixed upon as the negotiator. He went to Lisle, presented his plan of a treaty, and had every reason to believe that all was going well. England consented to restore all her conquests with the exception of the Isle of Trinidad, the Cape of Good Hope, and Ceylon. But this was at the very moment when the quarrel was at its height in Paris; intent upon its own affairs, the Directory suffered the negotiations to drag on, and when at length the republican party won their victory on the 18th Fructidor, the negotiations were suddenly broken off on the old ground that Malmesbury had not got full authority. The real reason is obvious,—the party in power, who relied on the army, knew that the power of the army was immensely increased by a state of war.

Battle of Camperdown. Oct. 11, 1797.

The termination of the negotiations was at once followed by a vigorous continuation of the war. Lord Malmesbury had been but a few weeks in England when the Dutch fleet found itself ready at length to sail from the Texel. But the delay—caused by the weather, the absence of Hoche, and the factions of Paris—had almost deprived it of its terrors. Even when the greater part of his fleet had been in mutiny in the Thames, Duncan had maintained the appearance of a blockade; keeping his two faithful ships within sight of the land, he had kept up so regular a succession of signals, as though sending his orders to a fleet outside, that the Dutch never found out that there were only two ships watching them. When at length they sailed Duncan's fleet outnumbered theirs by one ship. He had withdrawn for an instant to Yarmouth roads to refit, but apprised in time, he was enabled to fall upon the Dutch fleet before it had left the coast of Holland. He contrived, although the enemy was in close order, to come between them and the shore, and after a close combat, which recalled the old days of the rivalry between England and Holland, by four o'clock on the 11th of October he had succeeded in capturing the flagship of Admiral Winter, together with seven other ships of the line, two 56-gun ships, and two frigates. The bold manœuvre of passing between the enemy and the shore was a source of some danger, as the fleets drifted close inland during the action, but Duncan skilfully saved both his own fleet and his prizes. The action was watched by crowds from the Dutch shore. This battle put an end to the danger of immediate invasion, though it seems to have inspired the French with a determination to carry on that invasion on a larger scale in the following year, when great preparations were made under the personal superintendence of Bonaparte.

Peace of Campo Formio. Oct. 17.