CITIZENS OF ENGLAND
YOU HAVE BEEN TOLD THAT
BONAPARTE
WILL NOT ATTEMPT
Invasion:

Read the following detailed Account of his Preparations, and ask yourselves whether those who tell you so, are your Friends or your Enemies.

‘The Alertness of our People, employed in the several Yards along the Coasts, never had a parallel. I reckon 11,000 Ship-Carpenters, and their necessary Assistants, Labourers, &c., employed here, and at Calais, Dunkirk, and Ostend, besides those at Work on the Boats preparing at Ghent, Bruges, and Antwerp.

‘At Boulogne, we have 36 Gun Boats ready, each carrying three heavy Pieces of Ordnance, Two fore, and One aft; besides 152 of what are called Flat Bottomed Boats; but they are now generally rounded below, and keeled. In three Weeks Time, we expect to have as many more in a State of perfect Readiness.

‘At Calais, several of the Floating Batteries, that opposed Lord Nelson, when he attacked Boulogne, are now fitting up, and about seventy boats that will carry 150 Men each.

‘At Dunkirk, and the adjacent Canals, there are 47 Gun boats ready, with remarkable heavy Ordnance; and not less than 220 Boats for carrying men. They count upon being able to send 400 of these vessels (great and small) to Sea, in less than Three Weeks.

‘At Ostend, the Gun Boats, Floating Batteries, and Vessels for carrying Soldiers, that are now, and will be, completed during the present month, amount to 487. They work here during the Whole of the Moonlight nights.

‘I cannot, at present, exactly ascertain what Number of Men are employed, at Bruges and Ghent; but they are extremely numerous. Such is the case at Antwerp.’

But not one of these vessels dared shew her nose out of harbour, for every French port in the Channel was blockaded by English men-of-war, of which there were some five hundred, of different sizes, afloat. Sometimes this blockading business got tiresome, and it was relieved by an occasional landing, on which occasions mischief to the French, in some shape or other, was always included in the programme; or a vessel would be cut out, or a few shells would be thrown into a town such as Dieppe or Havre—anything to vary the monotony. At home they were bragging and blustering of what they would do; afloat they were doing, and we cannot tell from what fate their action saved us.

Woodward drew an amusing sketch of ‘John Bull shewing the Corsican monkey’ (September 3, 1803), who is represented as seated on a Russian bear, which is muzzled and led by John Bull, who thus expatiates on his charge to the delighted audience: ‘My friends and neighbours, this is no monkey of the common order; he is a very cholerick little gentleman, I assure you. I had a vast deal of trouble to bring him to any kind of obedience—he is very fond of playing with globes and scepters—so you may perceive, I let him have one of each made of Gingerbread—in order to amuse him in a strange country.’

A not very witty picture, ‘Buonaparte on his Ass,’ by an unknown artist (September 14, 1803), represents Bonaparte on a donkey, which has got itself in a terrible mess through trampling on Italy, Switzerland, Holland, and Hanover, and is endeavouring to reach Malta, which, however, is protected by the British Lion. Napoleon opines that, ‘This d—d ass gets so entangled and unruly, I’m afraid I shall never be able to reach Malta.’

O’er countrys I’ll trample, where threats may prevail,
But must let those alone where they will not avail,
For on looking around me to find where to prance,
To touch Malta, might be destruction to France.

Woodward drew (September 16, 1803) ‘The Corsican Macheath,’ with Napoleon singing:—

Which way shall I turn me?
How can I decide
The Prospects before me?
I long for to stride.
But ’tis this way—or that way,
Or which way I will,
John Bull at his Post,
Is prepared with a Pill.