“I wished to bring together forty or fifty sail of the line by operating their junction from Toulon, Cadiz, Ferrol, and Brest; to move them all together to Boulogne; to be there for a fortnight master of the Channel; to have 150,000 men and 10,000 horses encamped on the coast, with a flotilla of nearly 4000 vessels, and then, upon the arrival of my fleet, to embark for England and seize London.... To secure a prospect of success it was necessary to collect 150,000 men at Boulogne, with the flotilla, and an immense materiel, to embark the whole, yet to conceal my plan. I accomplished this though it appeared impossible, and I did so by reversing what seemed probable.”
Thus, in the spring of 1805 Napoleon collected within ten leagues of our shores a flotilla of nearly 4000 vessels, which, moored under the batteries of Boulogne, and armed with very heavy cannon, had long repelled our attempts to destroy them. Encamped around lay the veteran legions which had been selected for the descent, and had been trained with such care to embark and expedite the passage, that Napoleon writes, “150,000 men with a due proportion of guns and horses could within four tides effect a landing.”
His plan was marked with much ingenuity. The aspect of an armed flotilla induced our Admiralty to think that Napoleon relied on it alone to cross; and they felt assured that when at sea, three or four ships would suffice to destroy it. Accordingly, our Channel fleet was reduced to a force of not more than six sail; and the mass of the British Navy was employed either in blockading the enemy’s squadrons or in distant expeditions on the ocean. Could, therefore, one of the blockaded fleets effect its junction with another, and penetrate into the unguarded Channel, a temporary ascendancy at sea might be gained, under cover of which the flotilla could cross and ferry over the French army.
It is only in this volume that we see how nearly Napoleon’s design succeeded so far as regards the descent, and also what were the causes of its failure. Whatever we may think of his project as a whole, it must be allowed that in August, 1805, when Villeneuve put to sea from Ferrol, the Emperor had good reason to expect that his Admirals would fulfil their mission:—
“The squadrons of Nelson and Calder have joined the fleet off Brest, and Cornwallis has been foolish enough to send twenty sail to blockade the French fleet off Ferrol. On the 17th of August—that is, three days after our squadron left Ferrol, Calder left Brest for Ferrol with a northerly wind. What a chance was there for Villeneuve! He could either, by keeping a wide offing, avoid Calder, reach Brest, and fall upon Cornwallis, or with his thirty sail-of-the-line beat Calder’s twenty, and acquire a decided preponderance. So much for the English, whose combinations are so talked of.”
In England the Whigs laughed at the idea of the invasion as a ministerial bugbear. “Can anything equal,” says Lord Grenville in 1804, “the ridicule of Pitt riding about from Downing-street to Wimbledon, and from Wimbledon to Cox-heath, to inspect military carriages, impregnable batteries, and Lord Chatham’s reviews? Can he possibly be serious in expecting Bonaparte now?” So also wrote Fox a year afterwards—“The alarm of invasion here was most certainly a groundless one, and raised for some political purpose by the Ministers.” Whatever the Whigs might then think, there is no doubt now as to Bonaparte’s intentions. “Let us be masters of the Channel for six hours, and we are masters of the world,” are his famous words. His design to invade this country was never relinquished, was cherished as the darling scheme of his life, until within a month or two before Pitt’s death, when the battle of Trafalgar destroyed his hopes for ever.—Selected and abridged from reviews in the Times.
Fate of the Duc d’Enghien.
While the First Consul was meditating the descent upon England, in 1804, his life and government were imperilled by the conspiracy of Georges, Moreau, and Pichegru. The Duc d’Enghien, as is well known, was the innocent victim of this affair, having been arrested on neutral territory, and shot in a ditch, without a trial, in order to strike the Bourbons with terror. While the printed account shows that the plot was a formidable one, that the death of Napoleon and a counter-revolution were really not remote contingencies, and that there were some slight grounds to suspect an intrigue between Dumouriez and the Duke, it also impliedly acquits that Prince of any share in the main conspiracy, and throws the guilt of his cruel fate exclusively on the First Consul. From the list of charges against the Duke, entirely in Napoleon’s writing, it is plain that he did not possess any proofs, sufficient even for the tribunal of Vincennes to convict the prisoner of a design against his life.
These monstrous charges speak for themselves, and accord well with the midnight dungeon, the irresponsible conclave, the undefended prisoner, and the grave dug before the trial for the victim! Moreover, the volume of Napoleon’s Correspondance in which these details are given, has not a trace of the alleged over-rapidity of Savary, of the suppression of the Prince’s letter by Talleyrand, of the order said to have been given to Real to suspend the execution after the sentence, and to await the result of a regular examination—of the hundred and one excuses, in short, which have been urged for Napoleon by his apologists. On the contrary, from the following letter we infer that he wished to avoid discussion about a purpose already determined, and that he feared lest public opinion should condemn his design on the Duc d’Enghien. It is addressed to the Commandant of Vincennes:—
“A person, whose name is to remain unknown, will be brought to the fortress confided to your care; you are to put him in a vacant cell, and to take every precaution for his safe keeping. The intention of the Government is to keep all proceedings concerning him most secret. No question is to be put to him as to who he is, or why he is detained. Even you are not to know who the prisoner is. No one is to communicate with him but yourself; no one else is to see him until fresh orders. He will probably arrive this night.”