The year 1803. Think what that means.
Napoleon Buonaparte was alive—not only alive, but in full vigour; and he had entered on his career of conquest, and the world was in terror of his name. Nelson was alive, and five years earlier he had won the great battle of the Nile; two years earlier the great battle of Copenhagen; though his crowning victory of Trafalgar had not yet finally established British supremacy over the ocean. Wellington was alive, but his then name of Sir Arthur Wellesley had not yet become widely famous, and no one could guess that one day he would be the Iron Duke of world-wide celebrity. Sir John Moore, the future Hero of Coruña, was alive, and, though not yet knighted, was already "the most renowned military character of his age."[A]
Napoleon was not yet Emperor of the French. He was only climbing towards that goal, and thus far he had not advanced beyond being First Consul in the Republic. By English people generally he was viewed with a mingling of detestation and disgust, dread and disdain, varied in some quarters by a certain amount of admiration.
The peace between England and France, lasting somewhat over twelve months, had been hardly more than an armed and uncertain truce, a mere slight break in long years of intermittent warfare. As the old king, George III., remarked at the time, it was "an experimental peace," and few had hopes of its long continuance. For the Firebrand was still in Europe, and barrels of gunpowder lay on all sides. Both before the peace began, and also while it continued, Napoleon indulged in many speculative threats of a future invasion of England, and preparations were at this date said to be actually begun.
England alone of all the nations stood upright, and fearlessly looked the tyrant in the face. And Great Britain, with all her pluck, had then but a small army, no volunteers, and few fortifications, while her chief defence, the fleet, though splendidly manned, was weak indeed, compared with the mighty armament which she now possesses.
Whether the peace should last, or whether it should speedily end, depended mainly on the will of one man, an ambitious and reckless despot, who cared not a jot what rivers of French and English blood he might cause to flow, nor how many thousands of French and English widows might break their hearts, so long only as he could indulge to the full his lust of conquest, and could obtain plenty of what he called "glory." Another and truer name might easily have been found for the commodity in question.
Yet it is impossible not to accord admiration to this man's transcendent genius, and even Napoleon was not altogether bad. Perhaps, in the bitterness of incessant war, even he sometimes was more harshly judged than he fully deserved. But if so, he brought the evil upon himself.
(To be continued.)
