William Pitt and the Great War by John Holland Rose (book club reads txt) 📕

It surely cannot be difficult for Prussia to add

    30,000 to that number within a very few weeks on increased

    subsidies beyond the number they now propose, and that without

    at all impairing the effort against Bonaparte's army. As to your

    stay at Berlin I can only say that if your health will permit,

    _everything that we value most_ may depend on your remaining

    till you have seen the leading points of the negociation fairly

    through. As to details with Saxony and Hesse, they cannot be

    worth your waiting for, if they require any time, which,

    however, supposing you once to settle with Prussia, they cannot.

    The important moment seems to be that when the issue of

    Haugwitz's negociation shall have been known in Berlin and time

    given to communicate with Austria and Russia on the result.

    Under these circumstances it will I am afraid hardly be as

    pleasant to you as it is to me to know that Parliament will not

    meet till the 21st of Jany [1806] and that you have not on that

    account any reason for your immediate return. If, however, (as I

    most earnestly hope will not be the case) you should really find

    the fatigue and anxiety too much for you, it is certainly among

    _the things that we value most_, that you should return, having

    suffered as little as possible. A frigate will be sent to wait

    your orders at the Elbe, but I hope you will have no occasion to

    use it, till after you have signed a provisional treaty, and

    seen the Prussians on their march against the enemy.

 

                                   Ever most sincerely yours,

P.

 

Three days before Pitt poured forth this sanguine forecast, Napoleon

struck the Coalition to the heart. As "the sun of Austerlitz" set, the

two Emperors were in flight eastwards, while their armies streamed after

them in hopeless rout, or struggled through the funnel of death between

the two lakes (2nd December). Marbot's story of thousands of Russians

sinking majestically under the ice is a piece of melodrama. But the

reality was such as to stun the survivors. In his dazed condition the

Emperor Francis forthwith sent proposals for a truce. It proved to be

the precursor of the armistice of 6th December, which involved the

departure of the Russian army and the exclusion of that of Prussia from

Austrian territories. In the calculating balance maintained at Berlin,

this diplomatic surrender proved to be a greater calamity than the

military disaster. True, the news of the battle caused consternation;

but for the present Frederick William held firm and on 8th December

ordered part of the Prussian army (now 192,000 strong) to enter Bohemia

for the succour of the Allies.[750] Not until after the 13th, after the

arrival of news of the armistice, did he seek to evade his obligations

to Russia; and, obviously, a new situation arose when Alexander gave up

the campaign, and Francis promised to bar out the Prussians. Hardenberg

sought to hide from Harrowby this change of front, hinting, however,

that Prussia might have to consult her own interests. In the light of

the events of 1795, that phrase was clear enough; and Harrowby forthwith

sent orders to General Don to countermand the advance of his troops

towards Hanover.[751]

 

To complete this chapter of misfortunes, Harrowby's health broke down.

On discovering the truth about Prussia's secret demand for Hanover, he

fell into the depths of despair and nervous prostration, as appears from

the postscript of his letter of 24th November to Pitt:

 

    This horrible secret article has finished me. It stood with its

    mouth open, and from mere cowardice I have run into it, and it

    will devour me. I am persuaded, however, that it would equally

    have caught me if I had run away. There is something, however,

    in every view of it which agonises me. I am anxious beyond

    imagination to know what passes in England upon it and conclude

    I shall by the next newspaper. Would it be impossible to prevail

    upon the King to listen to the idea of a sort of Barrier-treaty

    for Hanover, which would give Prussia a military frontier but

    not the territorial possession?[752]

 

On 8th December, after hearing the first news of Austerlitz, he writes

in equally dolorous strains, concluding with a request that Pitt would

send a frigate to the mouth of the Elbe to bring away his coffin. Again

he writes in these pathetic terms:

 

    _Most secret._

                                     Berlin, _12 Dec. 1805_.[753]

 

    DEAR PITT,

 

    The current of events has been so rapid, and the embarrassments

    they produce from every quarter is [_sic_] so intolerable, that,

    weakened as my brain has been by nervous spasms of giddiness, I

    hardly keep my senses. Cool judgment is required; and I can only

    take steps in a state of agitation--repent; and there is

    something more to be repented of. I shall not long stand it;

    but, in the meantime, what mischief may not have happened! The

    sacrifice of myself is nothing. All is over with me even if I

    survive. I am tolerably at intervals, but every fresh occurrence

    brings with it distraction. I tremble at the consequences. You

    can conceive no state of mind, or rather of mind and body

    operating upon each other; you cannot even pity it; you can only

    despise it. Good God. If it be possible, do not betray me. I may

    recover. I try to disguise my feelings. I write to my wife with

    affected cheerfulness. She would not survive. For heaven's sake,

    keep this to yourself.

 

                                           Yours ever,

                                                        HARROWBY.

 

To what mistake Harrowby here alludes is a mystery. But George Jackson

states that he had three fits at Berlin, besides spasms every day.

Indeed his state was so pitiable that his selection for this difficult

post was matter of general comment. The physicians strongly urged him to

return to England at once.[754] Pitt cannot have received Harrowby's

pathetic confession when he replied as follows, probably to the letter

of the 8th:

 

                                    Bath, _Dec. 21st, 1805_.[755]

 

    DEAR HARROWBY,

 

    I was prevented from writing a few lines as I intended by the

    messenger we sent from hence yesterday. We are sending orders

    for another today to pass through Berlin on his way to the

    Emperor's head-quarters, to remind them of sending the

    ratification which we have never yet received. We have nothing

    very authentic from the armies later than your despatch of the

    9th by estafette, but there are accounts thro' Hamburg from

    Berlin of the 10th, corroborated by reports from various

    quarters, which lead us to hope that the sequel of the battle at

    length terminated in great success on the part of Russia. If

    this proves true, I flatter myself your subsidiary treaty will

    have been soon brought to a prosperous issue, and you will be

    delivered from all your fatigue and anxiety. I am quite grieved

    to think how much you have suffered, tho' I trust your complaint

    is only temporary, and that a good battle and a good treaty will

    send you back to us in better health than you went. I see no

    danger of your exceeding our limit in the amount of subsidy, as

    we looked if necessary to an actual annual payment of

    £3,000,000, and the number proposed in the treaty, of 180,000

    Prussians and 40,000 Allies, will not require more than

    £2,750,000, which still leaves room for 25,000 men more if they

    are wanted and can be had. I have been here for ten days and

    have already felt the effect of the waters in a pretty smart fit

    of the gout from which I am just recovering, and of which I

    expect soon to perceive the benefit.

 

                                            Ever yours,

PITT.

 

    I need hardly tell you that every step you have taken has been

    exactly what we should have desired.

 

He who wrote these cheering words was in worse health than Harrowby. The

latter lived on till the year 1847; Pitt had now taken his last journey

but one. Sharp attacks of gout had reduced him to so weak and tremulous

a state that he could scarcely lift a glass to his lips. So wrote Mrs.

Jackson on 9th December, long before the news of Austerlitz reached

these shores.[756] So far back as 27th November, Canning, in prophetic

strains, begged him not to defer a projected visit to Bath until it was

too late for the waters to do him good. But "the pilot that weathered

the storm" refused to leave the tiller in case decisive news came from

Harrowby. He also prepared to strengthen his Cabinet against the attacks

certain to be made in the ensuing session, by including in it two

excellent speakers, Canning and Charles Yorke, the latter taking the

Board of Control. Why he did not complete these changes, as Canning

begged him to do, is far from clear. Possibly the sharp though friendly

criticism which Canning levelled against the Anglo-Russian expedition to

Hanover made him apprehensive of divisions in the Cabinet on a question

which was very near his heart. Certainly much could be said in favour of

an expedition to Walcheren, which Canning urged should be entrusted to

General M[oore?]. Pitt preferred the Hanoverian enterprise, doubtless

because it would lay Russia and Prussia under a debt of honour to

co-operate to the utmost of their power.

 

At last the strain became too great, and on 7th December Pitt set out

for Bath, arriving there on the 11th. He resided at Harrowby's house,

11, Laura Place. His stay in Bath aroused interest so intense that he

found it necessary to vary the time of his visits to the Pump Room in

order to escape the crowd which would otherwise have incommoded

him.[757] As has just appeared, he expected a speedy recovery; for, as

was the case with his father, if the attack of gout ran a normal course,

the system felt relief. Freedom from worry was the first condition of

amendment. After his retirement from office in 1768 Chatham recovered so

quickly that his opponents gibed at the illness as a political

device.[758] Ten years later he succumbed to excitement and strain.

 

During the first part of his stay at Bath, Pitt was in good spirits and

wrote cheerfully about his health. The following letter to his London

physician, Sir Walter Farquhar, is not that of a man who feels death

approaching:

 

                                      Bath, _Dec. 15. 1805_.[759]

 

    The gout continues pretty smartly in my foot; and I find from

    Mr. Crooks that it is attended with a feverish pulse and some

    other symptoms of the same nature. I have communicated to Mr.

    Crooks your directions, and he is to send me the saline draughts

    with some little addition, which he will explain to you. I

    thought he would detail symptoms more precisely than I could,

    and have therefore desired him to write to you. On the whole, I

    have no doubt the plan you have laid down will answer, and I do

    not at present see the smallest occasion to accept your kind and

    friendly offer of coming here.

 

    P.S. 4.30 P.M. I enclose Mr. Crooks' letter to you. His account

    to me of the pulse was that it was not strong, but quick and

    beating near an hundred. One of the saline draughts which I have

    taken since I wrote the foregoing letter, seems, as far as I can

    judge from feeling, already to have had a very good effect.

 

Not until ten days later do we find signs of alarm in the letters of his

friends; for it is characteristic of his buoyant nature that he never

wrote despondingly about himself. There is a well-known story to the

effect that, on hearing the news of Austerlitz, he called for a map of

Europe, to see where the place was, and then said with a sigh: "Roll up

that map: it will not be wanted these ten years." One version assigns

the incident to Shockerwick House, near Bath. Pitt is looking over the

picture gallery, and is gazing at Gainsborough's portrait of the actor

Quin. His retentive memory calls up the lines in Churchill's

"Characters":

 

    Nature, in spite of all his skill, crept in--

    Horatio, Dorax, Falstaff--still 'twas Quin.

 

At that moment he hears the beat of a horse's hoofs. A courier dashes

He comes in, splashed with mud, hands the despatches. Pitt tears

them open and hurriedly reads them. His countenance changes, he calls

for brandy, then for a map, and is finally helped to his carriage,

uttering the historic phrase.[760] In another