William Pitt and the Great War

by J. Holland Rose

The efforts put forth at Toulon and in Corsica were the outcome of the treaties with Austria, Sardinia, and Naples, which required the appearance of a British fleet off the coasts of France and Italy. While seeking to strengthen both the Coalition and the Royalists of Provence, Admiral Hood's force found an unexpected sphere of action at Toulon. In August 1793 that city admitted the British troops and a Spanish force a few days later. Thereupon Pitt claimed the help which he had a right to expect from his Allies. Naples and Sardinia sent contingents deficient in quality or numbers; and the Court of Vienna, after promising to send 5,000 troops from the Milanese, neglected to do so. Quarrels and suspicions hampered the defence; but the arrival of the Austrian contingent would probably have turned the scale. Owing to the length of time required for despatches from Toulon to reach London, Pitt and his colleagues did not hear of the remissness of Austria until 22nd December, that is, five days after the fall of that stronghold. Had they known it a month earlier, they could have sent thither the large force, then mustering in the Solent, which on 26th November set sail for the West Indies.

This seems an unpardonable diffusion of efforts. But Ministers must already have regretted their readiness to take up the duties incumbent on Prussia in Flanders; and doubtless they resolved not to play the part of the willing horse at Toulon. In the early days of every league there comes a time when an active Power must protest against the shifty ways which are the curse of Coalitions. Besides, Pitt had to keep in view the interests of Great Britain. These were, firstly, to guard the Low Countries against French aggression, and, secondly, to gain an indemnity for the expenses of the war either in the French West Indies, or in Corsica. The independence of the Low Countries was a European question. The maritime conquests concerned England alone. Were Britons to shelve their own interests for a question of international import? The statesman who does so will not long hold the reins at Westminster. Besides, no device for weakening France was deemed more effective than that of seizing her wealthiest group of colonies. On the other hand, there was pressing need of armed help for the Royalists of Brittany; and on this ground we must pronounce the West India enterprise ill timed. A still worse blunder was the continued inactivity of Moira's force in the Solent and the Channel Islands. The reports of an intended French invasion form a wholly inadequate excuse for his inaction. His troops could have rendered valuable service either in Brittany, Flanders, or at Toulon. The riddle of their inaction has never been solved. Ultimately the blame must rest with Pitt, Dundas, and Lord Chatham.[413]

In 1794 Pitt hoped to retrieve the failures of the first campaign and to wear down the French defence. For this purpose he liberally subsidized Austria and concluded with Prussia a treaty which, with better management, might have brought a second highly efficient army into Flanders. The compacts of that springtide warranted the hope that 340,000 allied troops would advance on the north and north-east frontiers of France. They were not forthcoming; but, even as it was, the Imperialists and the Duke of York routed the French levies in Flanders and seemed about to open the way to Paris. Earl Howe's victory, named "the glorious first of June," ensured supremacy in the Channel. Brittany and la Vendée were again aflame. The Union Jack replaced the tricolour on the strongholds of Corsica and in the most fertile parts of the West Indies. In April–May 1794 the collapse of the Jacobins seemed imminent.

But these early triumphs of the Allies were almost as fatal as their later disasters. Indeed they were largely the cause of them. Believing that they had the game in their hands, Prussia and Austria relaxed their efforts at the very time when France girded herself for a mightier struggle. Moreover, the emergence of the Polish Question in an acute phase served once again to distract the German rivals and to weaken their efforts in the West. Moreover, the Anglo-Prussian Treaty of May 1794 prescribing the valley of the Meuse as the sphere of action of the 62,400 Prussians subsidized by England and Holland was so rigid as to furnish their generals with good excuses for refusing to march from the Palatinate across the front of the French columns now pressing forward. The upshot was that England and the Dutch Republic got nothing in return for their subsidies, while the Prussians on their side chafed at the insistent demands from London and The Hague for the exact fulfilment of the bargain. The situation was annoying for military men; and the British Government erred in tying them down too stringently to a flank march, which was fraught with danger after the long delay of Pitt in ratifying the compact (6th–23rd May); while the postponement in the payment of the first subsidies gave the Prussians a good excuse for inaction.[414] His remonstrance to the Prussian envoy in London, at the close of September 1794, was also unwise. For it exceeded the more measured protests of Grenville, and furnished the Berlin Court with the desired excuse for recalling its troops from the Rhine. In short, the campaign of 1794 failed, not so much because the French were in superior force at the battles of Turcoing and Fleurus, as because the Allies at no point worked cordially together. The intrusion of political motives hampered their generals and turned what ought to have been an overwhelming triumph into a disgracefully tame retreat.

The disasters at Turcoing and Fleurus open up the second stage of the war. Realizing more and more the difficulty of defending Holland and Hanover, Pitt seeks to end that campaign and to concentrate on colonial enterprises and the war in Brittany and la Vendée. Experience of the utter weakness of his Administration for purposes of war also leads him to strengthen it at the time of the union with the Old Whigs. They demanded that their leader, the Duke of Portland, should take the Home Office. On Dundas demurring to this, Grenville generously assented to Pitt's suggestion that he should vacate the Foreign Office (6th July). Fortunately the Duke declined to take it; and Pitt resolved to make drastic changes, especially by curtailing the functions of the Secretary of State for Home Affairs, and creating a War Ministry of Cabinet rank. Some change was clearly requisite; for of late Dundas had supervised internal affairs, including those of Ireland, as well as the conduct of the war; as Treasurer of the Navy he managed its finances, and, as President of the India Board, he sought to control the affairs of that Empire. As for the War Office, it was a petty office, controlled by a nonentity, Sir Charles Yonge, who was soon to be transferred to the Mint.

In the haphazard allotment of military business to the Commander-in-Chief, Amherst, to the head clerk of the War Office, Yonge, and to the overworked pluralist, Dundas, we discern the causes of disaster. The war with France being unforeseen, Pitt had to put up with these quaint arrangements; but the reverses in Flanders and the incoming of the Portland Whigs now enabled him to reduce chaos to order. He insisted that the Secretary of State for Home Affairs should cease to direct the course of the war, but consented that colonial business should fall to his lot. On the other hand he greatly enlarged the functions of the War Office. His will prevailed. On 7th July Portland agreed to become Home Secretary, while his supporter, Windham, came into the re-organized War Office as Secretary at War, Dundas becoming Secretary of State for War and the Colonies. Despite the obvious need of specializing and strengthening these Departments, the resistance of Dundas was not easily overcome. His letter to Pitt on this subject betrays a curious cloudiness of vision on a subject where clearness is essential:

Wimbledon, July 9, 1794.[415]

... The idea of a War Minister as a separate Department you must on recollection be sensible cannot exist in this country. The operations of war are canvassed and adjusted in the Cabinet, and become the joint act of His Majesty's servants; and the Sec^y of State who holds the pen does no more than transmit their sentiments. I do not mean to say that there is not at all times in H. M.'s Councils some particular person who has, and ought to have, a leading and even an overruling ascendency in the conduct of public affairs; and that ascendency extends to war as it does to every other subject. Such you are at present as the Minister of the King. Such your father was as Secretary of State. Such you would be if you was Secretary of State, and such Mr. Fox would be if he was Secretary of State and the Duke of Bedford First Lord of the Treasury. In short it depends, and must ever depend, on other circumstances than the particular name by which a person is called; and if you was to have a Secretary of State for the War Department tomorrow, not a person living would ever look upon him, or any other person but you, as the War Minister. All modern wars are a contention of purse, and unless some very peculiar circumstance occurs to direct the lead into another channel, the Minister of Finance must be the Minister of War. Your father for obvious reasons was an exception to the rule.

It is impossible for any person to controvert the position I now state; and therefore, when you talk of a War Minister, you must mean a person to superintend the detail of the execution of the operations which are determined upon. But do you think it possible to persuade the public that such a separate Department can be necessary? Yourself, so far as a general superintendence is necessary, must take that into your own hands. If it was in the hands of any other, it would lead to a constant wrangling between him and the various Executive Boards.