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

    The trumpet's silver sound is still

    The warder silent on the hill.

                       SCOTT, _Marmion_.

This noble epitaph to the memory of Pitt conveys an impression alike of

heroic endeavour and of irretrievable failure. It is the Funeral March

of Chopin, not of Handel, and it echoes the feeling of the time. An

impenetrable darkness hung over England. Ulm, Austerlitz, the armistice,

and the desertion of the Allies by Prussia were successive waves of

calamity, which obliterated all landmarks and all means of safety. The

dying words of Pitt found response in every breast, with this

difference, that, while he was proudly conscious of the correctness of

his aims, the many, who judge solely by tangible results, imputed to him

the disasters of the war and the collapse of the Coalition. Even

Auckland exclaimed that the continental alliances had been wretchedly

mismanaged, a remark which Malmesbury treated with quiet contempt.

Grenville, who was about to move a vote of censure on the Ministry,

burst into an agony of tears on hearing that Pitt was at death's door.

His distress of mind probably arose from a belated perception of the

factiousness of his own conduct and from grief at the unrelieved gloom

of the end of a career whose meridian splendour had shed lustre upon

him.

The House of Commons did not whole-heartedly accord to the deceased

statesman a burial in Westminster Abbey in the tomb of Chatham. A motion

to that effect, moved by Lascelles and seconded by the Marquis of

Titchfield, was strongly opposed by Fox, George Ponsonby, Windham, and

three other speakers. It passed by 258 votes to 59. Still more painful

was the discussion in the Common Council of the City of London, where a

proposal to erect a monument to Pitt was carried only by 77 votes to 71.

It is safe to say that, if the fortune of war had gone against France at

Ulm and Austerlitz, Pitt would have been ecstatically hailed as the

saviour of Europe, as indeed he was at the Guildhall after Trafalgar.

How long was it before it dawned on Auckland, Windham, and the

seventy-one councillors of the City of London, that the censures cast on

the memory of Pitt ought to have been levelled at the defender of Ulm,

the Czar Alexander and his equally presumptuous advisers at Austerlitz,

and most of all at the cringing politicians of Berlin?

It is now abundantly clear that Pitt fell a victim to his confidence in

the rulers of three great monarchies, whose means were vast, whose

promises were lofty, and whose surrender after the first reverses

baffled all forecasts. The descendants of Maria Theresa and Catharine

tamely retired from the fray after a single adverse blow; and the

successor of the great Frederick sheathed his sword after the

unpardonable insult at Anspach.

In truth, the career of Pitt came to a climax at a time of unexampled

decadence of the ancient dynasties. The destinies of the allied Houses

of Bourbon rested upon Louis XVI of France and Charles IV of Spain. To

the ineptitude of the former the French Revolution was in large measure

due. To the weakness and falsity of the latter we may ascribe the

desertion of the royalist cause by Spain in 1795-6, with the train of

disastrous results in the Mediterranean and the West Indies. In Central

Europe Francis of Austria was scarcely more than a tool in the hands of

those subtle schemers, Thugut and Cobenzl. The boundless resources of

Russia were at the disposal of Paul and Alexander, who, with all their

generous impulses, were incapable of steadily applying them to one

definite end. Only after weary years of subservience to Napoleon did

Alexander develop that firmness of character which finally brought

salvation to the Continent. From Frederick William even deeper

humiliations failed to evoke any heroic resolve. Among the statesmen of

those three monarchies at the time of Pitt there is but one who was a

fit compeer to him; and the fates willed that Stein should not control

affairs until the year 1807. The age of Pitt was the age of Godoy,

Thugut, and Haugwitz--weavers of old-world schemes of partition or

barter, and blind to the storm gathering in the West.

The importance of his achievements in curbing their ambitions and

saving the smaller States has not received due recognition. He did much

to rescue the Dutch Netherlands from anarchy, and Sweden and Turkey from

the clutches of powerful neighbours. He failed, indeed, in his

diplomatic contest with Catharine; but the duplicity of the Court of

Berlin, and the factious opposition of the Whigs, made success

impossible; and he had thereafter to look on helplessly at the final

Partitions of Poland. Only those who have probed the policy of Russia,

Austria, and Prussia in the years 1787-92 can fully realize the

difficulties which attended his efforts to frame a solid league against

Revolutionary France. As well might one attempt out of rubble to build a

cannon-proof rampart.

At home Pitt had to deal with George III. Now, even under a limited

monarchy the fortunes of a statesman depend largely on the character of

his Sovereign. While possessing the initiative which proffers timely

advice, it should be under the control of unfailing tact. Dowered with

insight into character and foresight as to the trend of events, the

Monarch must, for the most part, subordinate energy to self-repression

and the prophetic instinct to the warnings of courtly sagacity. Yet the

ideal British ruler must at times assert his will, albeit indirectly,

and with the personal charm which ensures the smooth working of this

delicately poised machine. He should therefore be the embodiment of all

the political virtues. Will even the admirers of George claim that he

realized that ideal? However excellent as Elector of Hanover, he was a

doubtful blessing as King of Great Britain and Ireland.

In truth, the Hanoverian strain in his nature had not been toned to the

degree of fineness needful for the kingly office in these islands. In a

time of peculiar difficulty he sought to govern almost absolutely by

means which ensured the temporary subservience of Parliament, and in a

spirit which brought disruption upon the Empire. The former half of

Pitt's career was largely occupied in repairing the financial waste

consequent on the American War, or in making good long arrears of

legislation. Here, indeed, is his most abiding contribution to the

national welfare. But his indebtedness to the King on questions of

foreign and domestic policy is rarely apparent. Reform, whether

Economical or Parliamentary, encountered the more or less declared

opposition of the Sovereign. On the other hand, George showed marked

ability in the support of corporate interests and the management of

men; so that his relations to Pitt were not unlike those of the Duke of

Newcastle to Chatham. The Pitts supplied the brain power while the

Monarch or the Duke by the award of favours ensured the needful degree

of subservience at the polls or in the lobbies of St. Stephens.

After the "surrender" at the close of the American War, the attitude of

George towards his British subjects was one of scarcely concealed scorn.

Now and again his feelings burst forth uncontrollably. Shortly before

his second attack of lunacy, which occurred near the end of the fortieth

year of his reign, he astonished the congregation in church by repeating

in loud and emphatic tones the response: "Forty years long was I grieved

with this generation and said: 'It is a people that do err in their

hearts, for they have not known My ways.'" The tones of the voice

betokened the approach of lunacy, but the conviction of the mind was

always the same. For the most part, however, scorn was tempered by

calculation. His letters to Pitt are full of commendation of the House

of Commons when it unquestioningly passed Government Bills or the

Supplies; whereas he looked on Fox and Burke as baneful and wearisome

talkers, consumers of time, and foes to healthful slumber. Similarly, in

his political catechism, the whole duty of Parliament was to help

Ministers to govern; while their proper function was to raise the

maximum of revenue with the minimum of fuss and change. In short, to

maintain the existing social order; to allow no change in a constitution

which aroused the wonder or envy of other nations; to use peerages and

bishoprics, pocket boroughs and sinecures, as a means of buttressing

that fabric, such were the aims of the third George.

Failing materially to weaken the force of this mighty engine of

patronage, Pitt was fain to make the best of things as they were. The

defeat of his Reform Bill in 1785 was the chief crisis in his early

career; for it involved the failure of the Abolition Bill, perhaps also

of the schemes for the relief of the poor which he outlined in 1797. In

fact, after the year 1785, and still more so after 1790, he had to

govern mainly as King's Minister, not as the people's Minister. Worst of

all, the centre of political gravity remained dangerously high

throughout the storms of the Revolutionary Era. How much of the nation's

energy then went forth in justifiable discontent and futile efforts at

repression has already appeared. Up to the year 1798 the struggle

against France was largely one of the governing class against a nation;

and for this the King and the British oligarchy, not Pitt, were

responsible. Personal charm and the magnetic gift of evoking enthusiasm

have in some monarchs counterbalanced defects of narrowness and

intolerance. George was not deficient in courtly grace and tact--witness

his remark to Pitt at their first interview after the long separation of

the years 1801-1804. When Pitt ventured to compliment the King on his

looking better than after the illness of 1801, the latter at once

replied: "That is not to be wondered at: I was then on the point of

parting with an old friend. Now I am about to regain one." But these

gracious remarks came rarely in his closing years, which were marked by

increasing harshness to his family, petulance on the most trivial

affairs, and an outlook more narrowly personal than ever.

Such a nature chafes its surroundings. It arouses no enthusiasm; it

merely begets heat by friction. Pitt has been blamed for spending too

much time and energy in speeches about the war. But there was no other

way of kindling the nation's zeal. The Princes very rarely spoke in the

House of Lords, except under an overmastering fear of the abolition of

the Slave Trade. None of the Ministers, except Windham, had the gift of

oratory. On Pitt alone devolved the task of arousing a national spirit;

and a cruel destiny cut short his life at the very time when his

inspiring presence was most needed. How much England then lost can never

be known. Vorontzoff, Russian ambassador at London, who had earlier been

a bitter enemy of Pitt, now expressed the fervent desire that death had

carried off his weary old frame, rather than that of the potential

Saviour of Europe. The words are instinct with prescience. The

personality and the actions of Pitt were alike a summons to a life of

dignity and manly independence. His successors had perforce to take a

course not unlike that which they were about to censure in him; and the

distrust which the Czar Alexander felt for them in part accounts for the

collapse at Tilsit and the ensuing years of bondage to Napoleon.

The disintegrating effects of the party system, or rather of its

factious use by the Whig leaders, have been explained in these pages.

Its first result was seen in the divergence of the careers of Pitt and

Fox. The cause of Reform ought to have received their undivided support;

but little by little they were edged apart, and their hostility was

perhaps the most lasting of the many evils wrought by the unnatural

Coalition of Fox and North. For a time Pitt gathered around him a

national party, which became avowedly so on the junction of the Old

Whigs in 1794. But in the last years of his life the denuding influences

of partisan and personal feuds disastrously thinned his following. From

the refusal of George to grant Catholic Emancipation, and the consequent

resignation of Pitt in the spring of 1801, we may trace three sinister

results. The Union with Ireland was bereft of its natural sequel,

Catholic Emancipation; the Ministerial ranks were cleft in twain; and

the crisis brought to the front Addington, a man utterly incapable of

confronting Napoleon. Had Pitt remained in power, the Peace of Amiens

would have been less one-sided, its maintenance more dignified; and the

First Consul, who respected the strong but bullied the weak, would

probably have acquiesced in a settlement consonant with the reviving

prestige of England. But though the Union Jack won notable triumphs in

the spring of 1801, yet at London everything went awry. Moved by

consideration for the King, then recovering from lunacy, Pitt weakly

promised not to