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

from the confines of his beloved

Electorate until the autumn of 1795. In April of that year the infantry,

now reduced to some 6,000 effectives by the rigours of winter, embarked

at Bremen.

 

Thus ended an expedition unprecedentedly fatal to the British arms. The

causes of the disaster are not far to seek. The campaigns of 1793-4 were

undertaken heedlessly, in reliance upon the strength of a Coalition

which proved to have no strength, and upon the weakness of the French

Republic which proved to be unconquerably strong. The Allies were

powerful enough to goad France to fury, too weak to crush its

transports. Their ill-concealed threats of partition bound France to the

cause of the Jacobins, which otherwise she would have abjured in horror.

Thus the would-be invaders drove France in upon herself, compelled her

to organize her strength to the utmost; and that strength, when

marshalled by Carnot, was destined to shatter the Coalition and overrun

neighbouring lands. She then learnt the fatal secret that she could

conquer Europe.

 

In a later chapter I propose to survey Pitt's conduct as War Minister.

Here I need only point out that his mistakes resulted mainly from his

unquenchable hopefulness. A singular proof of this admirable but

dangerous quality is seen in his effort during the months of February

and March 1795 to frame one more plan of co-operation with the Court of

Berlin, which had so cynically deceived him. To this proposal Grenville

offered unflinching opposition, coupled with a conditional threat to

resign. Pitt persuaded him to defer action until the troubles in Ireland

were less acute. But the King finally agreed with Pitt, and Grenville

was on the point of retiring when news arrived of the defection of

Prussia.[361] For some time she had been deep in negotiations with

France, which had the approval of Möllendorf and the officers of her

Rhenish army.[362] The upshot of it all was a treaty, which Hardenberg

signed with the French envoy at Basle on 5th April 1795. By this

discreditable bargain Frederick William of Prussia enabled France to

work her will on the lands west of the Rhine, on condition of his

acquiring a general ascendancy over North and Central Germany, which now

became neutral in the strife. Austria and the South German States

remained at war with France for two years longer, by which time the

tottering Germanic System fell beneath the sword of Napoleon Bonaparte.

 

Prussia's bargain with France marks a reversion to her traditional

policy, which viewed that Power as the friend and Austria as the enemy.

It undid the life-work of Prince Kaunitz, now nearing his end at Vienna,

and left the Hapsburg States enfeebled. True, they had a profitable

share in the third and last Partition of Poland, which soon ensued; but

this scarcely made good the loss in prestige due to the undisputed

hegemony of Prussia in the greater part of Germany. The House of

Hohenzollern, impelled by men like Lucchesini, Haugwitz, and Hardenberg,

took the easy and profitable course and plumed itself on over-reaching

its secular rival at Vienna. In reality it sealed the doom not only of

the truly conservative policy of Pitt, but of the European fabric.

Prussia it was which enabled the Jacobins to triumph and to extend their

sway over neighbouring lands. The example of Berlin tempted Spain three

months later to sign degrading terms of peace with France, and thus to

rob England of her gains in Hayti and Corsica. Thanks to Prussia and

Spain, France could enter upon that career of conquest in Italy which

assured the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte and the temporary ruin of

Austria. The mistakes of Pitt were great; but, after all, they might

have been retrieved were it not for the torpor of the Viennese Court and

the treachery of Prussia.

 

FOOTNOTES

 

[335] "Troilus and Cressida," act i, sc. 3.

 

[336] "Dropmore P.," ii, 452.

 

[337] Thugut in the autumn of 1793 sketched a scheme for annexing the

north of France from the Somme to Sedan.

 

[338] "Dropmore P.," ii, 628. So, too, Morton Eden wrote to Grenville on

1st January 1793: "The steadfastness of the Emperor does not equal his

moral rectitude" ("F. O.," Austria, 32).

 

[339] "Dropmore P.," ii, 491; "Malmesbury Diaries," iii, 17-19, 69.

 

[340] "Dropmore P.," ii, 494; "Malmesbury Diaries," iii, 31, _et seq._

 

[341] "Malmesbury Diaries," iii, 50; Sorel, iv, 17.

 

[342] Seeley, "Stein," i, 65.

 

[343] "F. O.," Austria, 36. Eden to Grenville, 15th and 27th February.

 

[344] "Malmesbury Diaries," iii, 81, 82.

 

[345] Sorel, iv, 13.

 

[346] Vivenot, iii, 89-96; "Dropmore P.," ii, 505-7.

 

[347] "F. O.," Austria, 36, Eden to Grenville, 31st March, 9th April.

See, too, Vivenot, iii, 172, for proofs that Kosciusko sought to delay

the rising, and looked to Vienna for help against Russia and Prussia.

 

[348] "Malmesbury Diaries," iii, 85, 89.

 

[349] "Dropmore P.," ii, 516.

 

[350] "F. O.," Prussia, 33. Grenville to Malmesbury, 21st April.

 

[351] _Ibid._, Same to same, 23rd May.

 

[352] "Malmesbury Diaries," iii, 96.

 

[353] "W. O.," I, 169. See an admirable article in the "United Service

Mag." (Aug. 1897), by Colonel E. M. Lloyd, founded on the papers of

General Sir James Craig, Adjutant-General of the Duke of York.

 

[354] "Parl. Hist.," xxxii, 1132.

 

[355] "Dropmore P.," ii, 599.

 

[356] "F. O.," Austria, 38. Despatch of 19th July.

 

[357] Pitt MSS., 180. See, too, "Dropmore P.," ii, 617-20, 626.

 

[358] See "Pitt and Napoleon Miscellanies" for Grenville's letters. Pitt

was the guest of Grenville at Dropmore at the end of November 1794

("Buckingham P.," ii, 319).

 

[359] "F. O.," Prussia, 35. Malmesbury to Grenville, 25th November 1794.

 

[360] See "Pitt and Napoleon Miscellanies" for this letter.

 

[361] "Dropmore P.," iii, 26-30, 50, 57.

 

[362] Ranke, "Hardenberg," i, 258; "Paget P.," i, 95, _et seq._

 

CHAPTER IX (THE WEST INDIES)

 

    Unfortunately, the war was carried on on the old principle of

    almost undivided attention to what was termed British

    interests--that is, looking to and preferring the protection of

    trade and the capture of the enemy's colonial establishments

    rather than to the objects which had involved Great Britain in

    the contest with France.--COLONEL THOMAS GRAHAM'S _Diary_.

 

 

If we try to picture the course of the war as mapped out by Pitt, it

would probably have appeared somewhat as follows. Great Britain, after

lending to the Dutch a few regiments as a protection against the

threatened raid of Dumouriez, withdraws them, leaving the Dutch and the

subsidized German corps to guard the rear of the legions of Prussia and

Austria during their conquering march to Paris. England, in the

meantime, harasses the coasts of France, thereby compelling her to

detain considerable forces at the important points, and further cripples

her by sweeping her fleets and merchantmen from the sea and seizing her

colonies.

 

In short, Pitt's conception of the true function of Great Britain in a

continental war was based on that of his father, who accorded

comparatively little military aid to Frederick the Great even in his

direst need, but helped him indirectly by subsidies and by naval

expeditions that stalemated no small portion of the French army. If

Chatham's tactics succeeded when Prussia was striving against France,

Austria, and Russia, how much more might Pitt hope to win a speedy

triumph over anarchic France during her struggle with Austria, Prussia,

Spain, Naples, Sardinia, and Holland? He expected, and he had a right to

expect, that these States would need British money, not British troops,

while the Sea Power restricted its operations to a "minor offensive"

along the seaboards of France and her colonies. Pitt's efforts in this

direction were constantly thwarted by the drain of men to Flanders; but

his letters to Murray, Chief of Staff to the Duke of York, evince his

anxiety to strike at Toulon and the West Indies, and not merely to

lighten the military duties of Austria and Prussia on the French

borders.[363] It would be tedious to recount his various attempts to

prepare an expedition for the West Indies.[364] Of more interest are the

requests for protection which he received from the French colonists of

Hayti, the western part of the great island of San Domingo.

 

As appeared in Chapter XX of the former volume, the decrees of the

National Assembly of Paris fired the negroes of the French West Indies

with the resolve to claim the liberty and equality now recklessly

promised by the mother-land. The white settlers, on the contrary, having

recently acquired autonomous rights, disputed the legality of that

levelling legislation, and rejected all authority but that of Louis XVI.

Amidst the ensuing strifes, the chief colonies, especially Hayti, were

menaced by that most horrible of all commotions, a servile revolt, when,

most opportunely, help arrived from Jamaica. The contrast between the

timely succour of England and the reckless iconoclasm of Paris struck

the imagination of the French settlers, and the Assembly of Hayti

forthwith drew up a declaration, setting forth the illegality of the

French decrees, the miseries resulting from them, and the resolve of the

colonists to sever a connection absolutely fatal to their welfare.

Citing the example of the United States fifteen years before, and

recounting the misdeeds of the mother country, they proclaimed to the

world the justice of the act of severance.

 

A copy of this declaration, signed by de Cadusey on 27th September 1791,

was sent forthwith to Pitt, with a request for the protection of Great

Britain. He received it at Burton Pynsent on 27th October.[365] One of

the chief delegates from Hayti was de Charmilly, who on 14th November

sought an interview with Pitt, and a fortnight later wrote to him,

earnestly begging the help of the only nation which could avert ruin

from those islands. France, he declared, had passed a decree of blood

against her own colonies and was powerless to stop its effects. The

National Assembly, having by its annexation of Avignon recognized the

right of that papal district to belong to whom it would, Hayti of equal

right now voted for union with England. He further advised that its

ports should remain open to all nations, a course of action which would

herald the dawn of commercial and political freedom among the Spanish

colonies of the New World.[366] These alluring prospects failed to

entice Pitt from the strict neutrality to which he had pledged himself.

So far was he from desiring to profit by the misfortunes of France, as

the French princes first, and after them the Jacobins, maliciously

asserted.

 

Once more the deputies of France flung the torch of discord across the

Atlantic. By their decree of 4th April 1792 they declared absolute

equality of rights between whites, half-castes, and blacks, and sent out

commissioners to enforce this anarchic fiat. They forthwith took the

side of the rebels, who in Toussaint l'Ouverture found a leader of

terrible force of will. Martinique and Guadeloupe and the smaller

islands were also a prey to civil war. In sheer desperation the planters

and merchants of Guadeloupe sent over a delegate, Curt, to appeal to the

British Government for protection. Lord Hawkesbury accorded to him an

informal interview in the closing days of 1792. Curt pressed him for

official help, without which his fellow colonists must lose their lives

and property, and declared that he and many others abjured the name of

Frenchmen.[367] Malouet, once prominent in the National Assembly and

destined to become famous under Napoleon, also approached our Ministers,

but with more caution. He knew that in some of the