William Pitt and the Great War

by J. Holland Rose

Pitt and his colleagues were under no illusion as to the weakness of the first Coalition against France. They well knew the incurable jealousies of the Houses of Hapsburg and Hohenzollern, the utter weakness of the Holy Roman Empire, the poverty or torpor of Spain, Sardinia, and Naples, the potent distractions produced by the recent partition of Poland, and the Machiavellian scheme of the Empress Catharine II to busy the Central Powers in French affairs so that she might have a free hand at Warsaw. All this and much more stood revealed to them. But they grounded their hopes of success on two important considerations; first, that the finances of France were exhausted; secondly, that the rule of the Jacobins, fertile in forced loans, forced service, and guillotining, must speedily collapse. On the subject of French finance there are many notes in the Pitt Papers, which show that Pitt believed an utter breakdown to be imminent. Grenville, too, at the close of October 1793, stated that France had lost at least 200,000 soldiers, while more than 50,000 were in hospital. The repugnance to military service was universal, and the deficit for the month of August alone was close on £17,000,000.[336]

Above all, Pitt and Grenville believed the French Government to be incompetent as well as exasperatingly cruel. In their eyes Jacobins were sworn foes to all that made government possible. The mistake was natural. The English Ministers knew little of what was going on in France, and therefore failed to understand that the desperadoes now in power at Paris were wielding a centralized despotism, compared with which that of Louis XIV was child's play. As to the Phœnix-like survival of French credit, it is inexplicable even to those who have witnessed the wonders wrought by Thiers in 1870–3. All that can be said is that the Jacobins killed the goose that laid the golden egg, and yet the golden eggs were laid. Let him who understands the miracle of revolutionary finance cast the first stone at Pitt.

The Prime Minister also erred when he believed the French social structure to be breaking up. Here again the miscalculation was perfectly natural in an age which regarded kings, nobles, and bishops as the fixed stars of a universe otherwise diversified only by a dim Milky Way. The French were the first to dispel these notions. In truth the strength of the young giant bore witness to the potency of the new and as yet allied forces—Democracy and Nationality. In 1792 Democracy girded itself eagerly against the semi-feudal Powers, Austria and Prussia; but the strength latent in the French people appeared only in the next year when, on the accession of England, Spain, and the Empire to the Coalition, plans were discussed of detaching Alsace, Lorraine, Roussillon, and Flanders.[337] To these sacrilegious schemes the French patriots opposed the dogma of Rousseau—the indivisibility of the general will. "Perish 25,000,000 Frenchmen rather than the Republic one and indivisible." This perfervid, if illogical, exclamation of a Commissioner of the Convention reveals something of that passion for unity which now fused together the French nation. Some peoples merge themselves slowly together under the shelter of kindred beliefs and institutions. Others again, after feeling their way towards closer union, finally achieve it in the explosion of war or revolution. The former case was the happy lot of the British nation; the latter, that of the French. Pitt, with his essentially English outlook, failed to perceive that the diverse peoples grouped together under the French monarchy had now attained to an indissoluble unity under the stress of the very blows which he and his Allies dealt in Flanders, Alsace, and Provence.

For by this time the counter-strokes dealt by the Republicans were telling with fatal effect on their adversaries. The failure of the Spanish campaign in Roussillon and the irruption of a French force into Catalonia dashed the spirits of that weak and wavering monarch, Charles IV; and already whispers were heard that peace with France was necessary. The disputes with England concerning Nootka Sound and affairs at Toulon predisposed the King and his people to think with less horror of the regicides of Paris. As for Sardinia, the childish obscurantism of the Court of Turin had nursed to quick life a mushroom growth of Jacobinism. The army defending the Alpine passes was honeycombed with discontent; and the suspicious conduct of Austria towards her little ally foreshadowed the divisions and disasters which quickly followed on the advent of Bonaparte at that theatre of the war.

It was clear that only from London could come the impulse which would invigorate this anaemic Coalition. Pitt sought to impart such an impulse in the King's Speech at the opening of the Session of 1794. It had throughout a defiant ring. The capture of three of the northern fortresses of France, the gains in the East and West Indies (they amounted to Pondicherry, Chandernagore, and Tobago, together with Miquelon and St. Pierre), the blow dealt to her navy at Toulon, and the impossibility of her continuing the recent prodigious exertions, were in turn duly emphasized. And on 21st January 1794, when Fox moved an amendment in favour of peace, the Prime Minister spoke even more strongly of the madness of coming to terms with the present rulers of France. Could any statesman not gifted with second sight have spoken otherwise? At that time the Reign of Terror was approaching its climax. The Goddess of Reason had lately been enthroned in Notre Dame amidst ribald songs and dances. The schism between Robespierre and the atheistical party was beginning to appear; and few persons believed that France would long bend the knee before the lords of the guillotine, whose resources were largely derived from the plunder of churches and banks, forced loans from the wealthy, and a graduated Income Tax resembling the Spartan proposals of Thomas Paine.

In such a case Pitt naturally repeated his statement of the previous session, that he altogether deprecated a peace with France, unless it possessed some elements of permanence, and secured due indemnity to Great Britain. Nay, he declared that he would rather persevere with war, even in the midst of disasters, than come to terms with the present rulers of France, who were alike enemies of order and rabid foes of England. They drove men into battle by fear of the guillotine; they formed rapine and destruction into a system, and perverted to their detestable purposes all the talents and ingenuity derived from the civilization around them. He was careful, however, to correct the mis-statement of Fox, that the Government was struggling for the restoration of the French monarchy. While believing that that nation would live most happily under a King, Pitt denied that a restoration was the object of the present war. We have already seen that he held this view in his correspondence with the Austrian Court. The House supported Ministers by 277 votes to 59.

These declarations, backed by so large a majority, caused great satisfaction at Vienna, and heartened that Government in the midst of its many uncertainties. There was every need of encouragement. In that age, when the great monarchs of the eighteenth century had passed, or were passing, away, Francis II stood somewhat low among the mediocrities on whom fell the strokes of destiny. He was a poor replica of Leopold II. Where the father was supple and adroit, the son was perversely obstinate or weakly pliable. In place of foresight and tenacity in the pursuit of essentials, Francis was remarkable for a more than Hapsburg narrowness of view, and he lacked the toughness which had not seldom repaired the blunders of that House. Those counsellors swayed him most who appealed to his family pride, or satisfied his other dominant feelings, attachment to the old order of things and a pedantic clinging to established usages. But the weakness of his character soon became so patent as to excite general distrust, especially as he was swayed by the wayward impulses of his consort, a daughter of Ferdinand IV and Maria Carolina of Naples. From her mother she inherited a hatred of French principles and the bent towards intrigue and extravagance which wrecked the careers of that Queen and of her sister, Marie Antoinette. Francis II and his consort longed to stamp out the French plague; but they lacked the strength of mind and of will that commands success. Our special envoy at Vienna, Thomas Grenville, questioned whether the Emperor "had steadiness enough to influence the Government."

According to the same competent judge, the Chancellor Thugut was the only efficient Minister, being very laborious in his work, and indeed "the only man of business about the Court."[338] Yet Thugut was rather a clever diplomat and ideal head-clerk than a statesman. In forethought he did not much excel his master. Indeed, his personality and his position alike condemned him to aim at cheap and easy gains. His features and figure were mean. Worse still, he was of low birth, a crime in the eyes of nobles and courtiers who for nearly half a century had seen the prestige of the Chancery enhanced by the lordly airs and whims of Kaunitz. Fear of courtly intrigues ever obsessed the mind of Thugut; and thus, whenever the horizon darkened, this coast-hugging pilot at once made for the nearest haven. In particular, as the recovery of Belgium in the year 1793 brought no financial gain, but unending vistas of war, he sought other means of indemnity, and discovered them in Alsace-Lorraine, South Poland, and Venice. The first was a concession to the pride of the House of Hapsburg-Lorraine; but Thugut saw in Venetia and in the land south of Warsaw the readiest means of indemnifying Austria for the loss of her Belgic Provinces, which after the defeat of Wattignies (October 1793) he probably expected and welcomed.

In this orientation of Hapsburg policy Thugut did but follow the impulse first imparted by Hertzberg at Berlin. As we have seen, Frederick William II entered on the French war in one of his chivalrous moods, which passed away amidst the smoke of Valmy. The miseries of the retreat Rhinewards, and the incursion of the French into the valley of the Main taught him prudence, while the ease of his conquest of Great Poland early in the year 1793 assured the victory of statecraft over chivalry. Morton Eden reported from Berlin that, had the preparations for the Valmy campaign equalled in thoroughness those for the invasion of Poland, events must have gone very differently in Champagne. The circumspection with which the Prussians conducted the siege of Mainz in the summer of 1793, and the long delays of the autumn, have already been noticed. The result of it was that at Christmastide of the year 1793 Pichegru and Hoche threw back Wurmser in disastrous rout, and compelled Brunswick hurriedly to retire to the Rhine.

As always happens between discordant allies after defeats, Berlin and Vienna indulged in a war of words, amidst which the Coalition would probably have broken up but for the efforts of British diplomacy. The Pitt Ministry had despatched to Berlin the ablest of British diplomatists, Lord Malmesbury, with a view to strengthening the accord between the three Powers; and the mingled charm and authority of his presence did much to thwart the petty prejudices and intrigues prevalent at that capital. He took Brussels and Frankfurt on his way to Berlin, and his diary shows the listlessness or discontent which had infected the officers of the British army. Many of them openly brought against the Duke of York the most outrageous and unfounded charges, and it seems that about fifty of them went on furlough to England, where they spread those slanders and played into the hands of the Opposition.[339] Malmesbury's converse with the Duke and others at Ath convinced him that the commander-in-chief was striving manfully and generously against a situation full of difficulty.