Chapter Five
The Struggle against France Renewed (1793–1815)
Great Britain has no greater obligation to any mortal on earth than to this ruffian [Napoleon]. For through the events which he has brought about, England’s greatness, prosperity, and wealth have risen high. She is the mistress of the sea and neither in this dominion nor in world-trade has she now a single rival to fear.
Comment of General von Gneisenau,
reproduced in G. J. Marcus, A Naval History of England,
2 vols. to date (London, 1961–71), ii, p. 501.
The two wars which Britain fought against Revolutionary and Napoleonic France are of particular interest to this survey because they represent the culminating point in the country’s rise to naval mastery and encompass all the aspects of the many previous conflicts since Elizabethan times. Not only did the period 1793–1815 lead to the establishment of a virtually unchallengeable British maritime predominance in the narrow sense of the possession of a vastly superior fleet, backed by numerous dockyards and naval bases and by a massive merchant marine; but it also confirmed Britain’s control in the colonial world and her lead in foreign trade; it witnessed the collapse of the French efforts to upset the continental and colonial status quo, and led to the stabilization of the European balance of power; and it saw further significant advances in Britain’s unique industrialization process. The victory of 1815 was far harder to achieve than that of 1763 and, in crude imperialist terms of securing fresh territory, less impressive; but one only has to compare the country’s international position in the few decades following the Napoleonic War with that in the years following the Seven Years War to recognize that the former struggle produced much more significant and longer-term effects than the latter. The Peace of Paris had acknowledged a British advantage that was soon to be challenged and overthrown; the Congress of Vienna admitted a maritime mastery which foreign powers, despite their various efforts, found impossible to break. A new era in international politics had begun, fundamentally different from that eighteenth-century world of swiftly changing alliances and frequent wars between the great powers, and one of its most prominent features was the ‘Pax Britannica’ which flowed from Britain’s naval, colonial and economic lead.
It was during these struggles of 1793–1802 and 1803–15 that the long, drawn-out duel for command of the sea between the fleets of the Royal Navy and the French navy (with the latter assisted by various allied fleets) came to a climax. In terms of the battles fought by the main squadrons, the story is one of repeated British successes.1 Howe’s victory of ‘The Glorious First of June’ in 1794 resulted in the capture or destruction of seven French ships of the line, although admittedly the important grain convoy they were escorting escaped detection by British patrols; Jervis’s squadron took on a greatly superior Spanish force off Cape St Vincent in February 1797 and captured four enemy ships in an engagement chiefly memorable for Nelson’s breaking of ‘the line’; in October of the same year Duncan’s fleet emerged from the hard-fought battle of Camperdown with no less than eleven Dutch warships as prizes; in August 1798 Nelson smashed Napoleon’s Egyptian adventure in the famous battle of the Nile, from which only two of the thirteen French ships of the line escaped; and the sinking or seizure of eighteen of the combined Franco-Spanish fleet in what was probably the most famous naval battle in history, that of Trafalgar on 21 October 1805, was so decisive that the Royal Navy’s command of the sea was never seriously challenged in a fleet action for the rest of the war. When one adds to these victories the many smaller ones, the frigate actions in distant waters, and the attacks upon such harbours as Copenhagen (1801 and 1807) and Aix Roads (1809), then it is scarcely surprising that the Nelsonic period has been regarded as the high point of British naval history.
The reasons for this ability to deal devastating blows at the enemy were many, but it seems clear that numerical superiority was not usually one of them. Fleet numbers were equal at ‘The Glorious First of June’; Jervis’s fifteen ships of the line encountered twenty-eight Spanish off Cape St Vincent; numbers were again equal at the battle of Camperdown, although the Dutch warships were less heavily armed; at the Nile they were once more equal; and at Trafalgar twenty-seven British ships of the line fought against thirty-three of the Combined Fleet. It is worth adding here that the British vessels were usually smaller and less heavily armed than their French and Spanish equivalents. Nor was an overwhelming numerical superiority evident when the balance of naval power as a whole is examined. In 1793 the Royal Navy totalled 115 ships of the line to France’s seventy-six, and the latter was shortly to be reduced by the surrender of the royalist fleet at Toulon; but the defection of Spain and the Netherlands, with their respective if nominal fleet strengths of seventy-six and forty-nine, quite changed the picture;2 and the prospect of one or several of the northern states entering the war over the vexed question of neutral shipping rights was ever present. In 1803 the British superiority was much more pronounced and their enemies found it difficult to obtain the vital naval stores for warship building because of the blockade, yet at no time could purely arithmetical calculations take into account the widespread nature of the Royal Navy’s tasks; its capital ships and frigates were needed to hold the Mediterranean, to maintain an unremitting vigil over the French and Spanish fleet bases in the Atlantic, to guard against the Dutch, to patrol the Baltic, to assist the colonial expeditions, to cover the coastal operations of British and allied troops, and to escort the convoys. All this not only dispersed Britain’s naval forces throughout the globe but it subjected them to a far greater exposure to the sea and the weather than the enemy fleets snugly ensconced in their harbours. The Royal Navy’s losses to the elements during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars were always much heavier than those to hostile forces.3 French and Spanish losses, in contrast, were predominantly the consequence of battle.
Yet this constant exposure to Atlantic storms and Channel fogs also had positive consequences for the service, whose seamanship was of an exceedingly high standard. Although British warships were, vessel for vessel, slower than their adversaries, the squadrons could manœuvre more swiftly and more precisely because of their greater discipline, efficiency and cohesiveness; in battle after battle British commanders were able to take advantage of ‘gaps’ in the enemy’s line or some other tactical mistake. Another manifestation of this seamanship was the British practice of sailing into shallow, unchartered waters, relying upon pure skill to avoid navigational hazards; at the Nile and at Copenhagen (1801), for example, some of Nelson’s ships of the line sailed on the landward of the anchored enemy vessels, throwing them into confusion by this surprise move.
This widespread willingness to take risks and to heed the Nelsonic motto that ‘no captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of an enemy’ was a clear sign that the formal ‘line’ tactics, which had gradually evolved and hardened from the Dutch wars onwards, were now breaking down completely.4 In earlier conflicts too, of course, there had occasionally been a mêlée between the fleets, which provided the best opportunity for a decisive victory; but with the amended Fighting Instructions and the spirit of aggressiveness and initiative in the officer corps, close-range fighting and grappling became much more common. Annihilation of the enemy’s forces was once again the main object of a battle. ‘Had we taken ten sail’, commented Nelson bitterly upon Hotham’s cautious policy during a clash with the Toulon fleet in 1795, ‘and allowed the eleventh to escape, when it had been possible to have got at her, I could never have called it well done.’5
A great deal of this eagerness for battle can also be attributed to the superiority of British gunnery. Particularly effective here was the carronade, an easily-manœuvrable, quick-firing gun which fired a large shot at short range and required a much smaller crew to man it;6 from 1779 onwards more and more of these were introduced into the fleet and at the Battle of the Saints they wrought terrible damage upon the French warships. The very existence of this short-range armament offered a great incentive to British captains to close with the enemy and break through his lines, raking him from right and left in the process. In all the great battles of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars – ‘The Glorious First of June’, Cape St Vincent, Camperdown, the Nile and Trafalgar – the carronades took a fearful toll, although the poor gunnery of the opposing French and Spanish forces may have led to their effects being exaggerated by British observers; in clashes with the Dutch and American navies the casualties were more evenly distributed. What is certain is that this weapon would not have been so effective had it not been for the constant training of the crews and for the intense interest in gunnery displayed by so many notable commanders – Broke, Douglas, Troubridge and, of course St Vincent and Nelson.
The sheer professionalism and zest and efficiency of the Royal Navy’s commanders in this period stands in stark contrast to the quality of the French and Spanish leading officers. Throughout the eighteenth century the French navy had shown circumspection and prudence in battle rather than initiative, and the revolution led to the dismissal of many royalist officers and to a further deterioration in morale; ideological fervour and élan might create wonders in land battles, but to work a large fleet competent officers, trained crews and years of experience were required. This the French, with rare exceptions, did not possess. On the other hand it must be admitted that they were facing a remarkable galaxy of naval talent once the inadequate British officers were weeded out in the early stages of the war. If Nelson towers above them all by his unique combination of leadership, charm, tactical genius, intelligence and eagerness for victory, there were many others who also deserved respect: St Vincent, tough, thorough and intolerant of fools; Duncan, Cornwallis, Keith, Collingwood, Howe and Hood amongst the leading admirals; Troubridge, Darby, Foley, Hardy amongst a whole host of outstanding captains; Blackwood, Riou, Cochrane and other brilliant frigate commanders. Behind the officers at sea stood Barham and later St Vincent himself, directing the overall naval strategy carefully, yet always willing to support their bolder admirals – particularly in the Mediterranean – even if this involved some weakening in home waters. Moreover, it was due to the logistical and dockyard support, built up by Barham, that the enormous British fleet was sustained throughout the war. The administrative difficulties remained formidable: the supply of naval stores was always a critical problem, especially during the time of the Continental System; the dockyards were still too slow in refitting and repairing warships; and the navy could never secure enough sailors, thanks to conditions of service so primitive and brutal that in 1797 they provoked serious mutinies. Nevertheless, the overall achievement of the Admiralty in the face of such problems was remarkable.
Parallel to, and dependent upon, the Anglo-French duel for command of the sea went their struggle for overseas bases and colonies; here, too, the culminating point in a century-long race was reached, with Britain emerging in 1815 with a position so strengthened that she appeared to be the only real colonial power in the world.
That the fighting against France in what was originally and essentially a European war should have spread so swiftly to the tropics was a result of many factors, most of them predictable. In the first place Pitt, Dundas, Castlereagh and other British ministers were to a great extent advocates of a ‘maritime’ strategy. As Dundas argued in 1801:
From our insular position, from our limited population not admitting of extensive continental operations, and from the importance depending in so material a degree upon the extent of our commerce and navigation, it is obvious that, be the causes of the war what they may, the primary object of our attention ought to be, by what means we can most effectually increase those resources on which depends our naval superiority, and at the same time diminish or appropriate to ourselves those which might enable the enemy to contend with us in this respect …. It is therefore as much the duty of those entrusted with the conduct of a British war to cut off the colonial resources of our enemy as it would be that of a general of a great army to destroy or intercept the magazines of his opponent.7
By so doing, it was felt, Britain would contribute more to the defeat of France than by the dispatch of military forces to fight on the continent. This was a return to the strategy of non-involvement, a rejection of the main lesson of all previous eighteenth-century Anglo-French wars; and it is not surprising to see that it had to be abandoned after years of peripheral and overseas operations revealed that Napoleon could only really be defeated on land. But the consequence of this attitude was that colonies occupied a high place in British policy throughout the wars.
There were, naturally enough, other motives present to reinforce this inclination. The Admiralty was eager to secure naval harbours across the globe, partly to gain advantageous positions alongside the major trade routes but chiefly to eliminate enemy bases from which commerce-raiders might operate: the second occupation of the Cape of Good Hope provides a good example of this strategical motivation.8 More powerful still, perhaps, was the economic factor. The West Indies, which provided four fifths of the income from Britain’s overseas investments and which were now the concern of Lancashire cotton manufacturers as well as sugar planters, shippers and financiers, were deemed to be so important that London had no hesitation in sending numerous expeditions to that unhealthy region – causing, in the words of one historian, ‘100,000 casualties while contributing nothing to the main course of the war’.9 Furthermore, since the war with France, Spain and the Netherlands automatically affected British trade with the continent, there arose a desperate need as Dundas put it, ‘to provide new and beneficial markets, as a substitute for those in which there is a temporary interruption’. With the introduction of the Continental System, this search became ever more pronounced.
As always, the course of the colonial struggles between Britain and her European rivals was ultimately decided by sea power; the Royal Navy’s ability to contain the hostile fleets within European waters and to punish them severely whenever they emerged from port determined the fate of the various overseas possessions in the Americas, Africa, the Indian Ocean and the East Indies. In 1793 Tobago, part of San Domingo, Pondicherry and St Pierre and Miquelon were taken; in 1794 the important West Indian islands of Martinique, Guadeloupe, St Lucia, the Saints, Maria Galante and Deseada; in 1795 the vital eastern territories of Ceylon, Malacca and the Cape of Good Hope; in 1796 Dutch possessions in the East and West Indies; in 1797 Trinidad was taken and the French colony at Madagascar destroyed; in 1798 Minorca was captured and Napoleon’s strike at Egypt blunted; in 1799 Surinam fell into British hands; in 1800 Goree, Curaçao and Malta; in 1801 Danish and Swedish islands in the West Indies were overrun; and in India the brothers Wellesley smashed pro-French native princes and greatly extended the British hold upon the sub-continent. All of these territories, with the exception of Ceylon, Trinidad and parts of India, which were retained as British possessions, and Malta, which was ‘neutralized’, were handed back to their former owners at the Treaty of Amiens in 1802. When that precarious peace broke down in the following year, the British simply repeated their colonial conquests, aided by a still greater naval superiority. St Pierre and Miquelon, St Lucia, Tobago and Dutch Guiana were taken before Trafalgar, and further advances were made in India; the Cape fell in 1806; Curaçao and the Danish West Indies in 1807; several of the Moluccas in 1808; Senegal and Martinique in 1809; Guadeloupe, Mauritius, Amboyna and Banda in 1811; Java in 1811. ‘There were no spectacular victories or dramatic feats of arms, but quietly the overseas empires of France and Holland disappeared into Britain’s grasp.’10 By 1814, as Napoleon himself admitted, the British were strong enough to retain all these captured territories at the conclusion of peace, had they so desired it.
That same British naval mastery which disposed of the enemy’s fleet challenges and invasion attempts (apart from a few sporadic French raids upon Ireland), and permitted the swift overrunning of hostile colonies, also forced the weaker navies to revert to the strategy of guerre de course. In this respect, too, the wars of 1793–1802 and 1803–15 witnessed the culmination of another major aspect of the Anglo-French naval rivalry since 1689–the contest between a main battle-fleet strategy and commerce-raiding as a means to defeat the enemy. To the navalist historians of the later nineteenth century, the outcome of this conflict was never in question. The French, wrote Mahan, had hoped to bankrupt England by commerce-raiding alone: ‘what they obtained was the demoralization of their navy, the loss of the control of the sea and of their own external commerce, finally Napoleon’s Continental System and the fall of the Empire.’11 Insofar as the maritime supremacy of the British allowed them to frustrate invasion attempts, to send expeditionary armies to the continent and to protect their own and seize enemy colonies, this preference for battle-fleet operations was entirely justified; but it should in no way lead to any sweeping dismissal of the possible effects of a well-organized guerre de course. During the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, in fact, the attack upon British seaborne trade was more successful than any since the War of the Spanish Succession. As in that previous conflict, the run-down of the French main fleets and of the merchant marine freed thousands of Frenchmen for privateering, which remained the only occupation left at sea – and a highly profitable one at that. In addition, raiding squadrons of perhaps four or six naval vessels were sent to scour the trade routes and, when other countries fell into the French orbit, British shipping was subjected to attacks from most of the nations of Europe. The majority of these assaults took place in the Channel, Bay of Biscay, North Sea, Baltic and Mediterranean, but the larger and more powerful privateers joined the raiding squadrons in commerce-destroying operations all over the globe. From such bases at Martinique, Guadeloupe and Mauritius the valuable West and East Indies trade was under frequent attack. Finally, two additional factors made this campaign more formidable than ever before. The French, although deficient in fleet commanders, had at this time many daring raiders, Blanckmann, Leveille, Lemême, Surcouf, Dutertre, Hamelin, Bouvet, who exploited every opportunity to disrupt trade; and the overseas commerce of Great Britain was now so enormous that a vast array of targets lay open to their attacks. London, which carried on more than half the commerce of the country, recorded entries and departures averaging between 13,000 and 14,000 each year.12 To safeguard all these ships all of the time was clearly beyond the bounds of possibility.
Almost 11,000 British merchant vessels, if we are to believe contemporary lists, were captured by the enemy in the years 1793–1815; and, although Mahan has calculated that even this figure represented only 2½ per cent of both the total numbers of ships and tonnage involved, the absolute losses were nevertheless quite unprecedented. Marine insurance rates rose dramatically, complaints poured into the Admiralty from shipping and trading firms, and the Press criticized the laxness of the navy’s counter-measures. In 1810, after Napoleon had struck against British commerce in the Baltic and the total shipping losses reached the highest ever – 619 – for one year, the Committee of Lloyds was formally censured by its members. When taken in consideration with the effects of the Continental System itself, the French campaign to disrupt British seaborne trade had severe economic consequences and should not be lightly dismissed.
Prodded on by an agitated mercantile lobby, and itself only too aware of the importance of giving adequate protection to overseas trade, the Admiralty instituted a whole series of measures designed to neutralize the guerre de course. Patrols were deployed in focal areas such as the Soundings and the lower North Sea, and frigates were dispatched to watch enemy ports. ‘Q-ships’, armed vessels disguised as peaceful merchantmen, operated along the English coast, hoping to surprise the many privateers which sailed in those waters. Expeditionary forces were sent out to eliminate enemy naval bases overseas, from which the attacks upon the rich colonial trades were mounted. No great speed attended this strategy, however, for it was not until 1810 that Mauritius, that nest of daring commerce-raiders, was taken; with its fall, and with the occupation of Java in the following year, the guerre de course in Eastern waters petered out.13 But the most effective measure of all was the institution of a worldwide convoy system, which the Admiralty worked out in conjunction with Lloyd’s and which the two bodies, by reference to the Convoy Acts of 1793, 1798 and 1803, imposed upon the mass of reluctant shipowners. In so doing, the navy and the insurers gave protection to the important overseas trade routes and undoubtedly reduced the rate of shipping losses. Only the large ships of the East India and Hudson’s Bay companies and certain other specialized vessels were exempted from the obligation to collect in port for a convoy; then, when the escort arrived, vast fleets would set off and proceed under naval direction to their destination. Often 200, and occasionally as many as 500 merchantmen would be assembled at a south coast harbour such as Portsmouth and escorted out of the ‘danger zone’ by ships of the line and frigates. Extraordinary steps were undertaken for special circumstances; to protect merchant vessels sailing through the Belt from Danish attacks in 1808, for example, the Admiralty stationed ships of the line at each end and at intervals along the way.14 Through a combination of all these measures, the British were able to beat off the continuous assault upon their commerce and thereby to safeguard the prosperity upon which their entire war effort depended. But perhaps the most astonishing thing about this whole struggle was the way in which the clear strategical lesson about the use of convoys was disregarded by later Admiralties, with consequences which nearly proved disastrous for Britain in 1917!
In this epic and drawn-out contest, in which, to use Mahan’s words, ‘France and Great Britain swayed back and forth in deadly grapple over the vast arena’, the ancient dispute between sea power and land power re-emerged in heightened form. Napoleon was, after all, the personification of the latter element, conquering nations and dominating the continent in a way which Philip of Spain and Louis XIV had never done; and in Nelson we have what Mahan in his biography called ‘the embodiment of sea power’.15 Once again, the British faced the problem of how to defeat a country which was not greatly susceptible to the workings of sea power but which possessed the potential – under Napoleon’s genius and drive, at least – to conquer Europe and to threaten the security of the British Isles.
It was true that Britain was not now so diplomatically isolated as it had been during the War of American Independence; but the repeated efforts to cobble together coalitions against France were frustrated time and again by Napoleon’s military achievements.16 Even the First Coalition, which ranged virtually all the states of western and central Europe against the disorganized French revolutionaries, had begun to crumble by 1795 and with the defeat of Austria two years later Britain was, apart from her link with Portugal, isolated. The failure of Napoleon’s stroke against Egypt permitted British diplomacy to tempt Austria and Russia into the War of the Second Coalition, yet the abstention of Prussia, the withdrawal of Russia and the defeat of Austria again revealed the fragility of this alliance.17 Instead of Britain finding allies to contain the French on land, the latter had browbeaten the Dutch and Spanish governments into cooperating against the Royal Navy at sea and the League of Armed Neutrality had been recreated; even Portugal had been eliminated as an ally by 1801. By the Peace of Amiens in 1802 both sides acknowledged that a strategical stalemate existed similar to that at the end of the War of the Austrian Succession: Britain dominated the seas and the colonial world, France, the European continent, and neither could get at the other. When war broke out again in 1803 the British remained alone for two years until the Third Coalition, with Austria and Russia, was formed; but in the period 1805–7 Napoleon knocked out Austria, Prussia and Russia in turn, and with the establishment of the Continental System practically the whole of Europe was united against Britain, which was forced to concentrate upon peripheral operations in Spain, the Baltic and the Mediterranean. Only with the failure of Napoleon’s attack upon Russia in 1812 was it possible to build up a coalition determined and united enough to overcome France’s military power finally.
Britain’s problem, as Professor Brunn has pointed out, was that it required a combination of herself and the three great military powers of Austria, Prussia and Russia to defeat a regenerated France; yet each of these states was at times prepared to abandon the coalition and to ally with Napoleon, either out of fear or of greed.18 Only Britain was consistently anti-French but without this combined ‘continental sword’ she could do little. While this explains why it took the British so many years, despite the most intense diplomatic efforts, before their arch-enemy was defeated, it also illustrates the limited influence of sea power in a struggle for control of the entire continent. After all, the post-Trafalgar years, when the predominance of the Royal Navy had reached an unprecedented level, were also the years during which Napoleon enjoyed the most unchallenged mastery in Europe. The whale and the elephant, to use Potter and Nimitz’s phrase, were finding it difficult to grapple with each other;19 and if this strategical discrepancy ensured the security of the British Isles, Egypt and the colonies, it did not help London in its basic war aim of restoring the status quo of 1789.
The task was further compounded by London’s poor diplomacy in the early part of the struggle and by the reluctance of the British government to become involved in military operations on the continent in the manner of Marlborough or the Elder Pitt – which European allies always regarded as the necessary proof that Britain was serious and would not desert them. She was willing, as we have seen, to engage the fleets of France and her satellites and to drive them from the seas; she was willing to undertake costly expeditions across the globe against enemy colonies, although it was difficult to persuade the Austrians or the Prussians that such actions were for the common good; she was willing to exclude French commerce from the oceans by a vigorous blockading policy, so that by 1800 France’s trade with Asia, Africa and America was less than $356,000;20 she was willing, as the actions against Denmark showed, to disregard international law in her determination to reduce France’s influence in Europe; she was willing to offer continuous naval support in the Baltic and Mediterranean to allied armies involved in coastal operations; she was willing to pour out ever-increasing sums in subsidies to her allies, so that by 1815 the total financial support amounted to a colossal £65 million;21 and, finally, she was willing to dispatch her own soldiers upon ‘hit-and-run’ raids along the shores of French-dominated Europe.
By these latter measures especially, it could be argued, the British revealed that they were not oblivious of the need to engage or divert French military strength. In 1795 they captured Corsica and held it for a year. In 1799 an Anglo-Russian naval and military force operated at the Texel but soon withdrew. In 1800 an expedition sent to Ferroll was quickly re-embarked. In the same year Malta was seized, two years after the capture of Minorca. In 1807 Stralsund was occupied in an effort to help the Swedes and an army was landed near Copenhagen to support the operation to capture the Danish fleet. In 1809 the largest raid of all took place, when 40,000 troops were made ready for the strike against the Dutch. However, whilst these widely dispersed peripheral assaults demonstrated the strategical benefits accruing to the power which possessed command of the sea, few of the attacks had any influence upon the European balance of power; indeed, many were undertaken for purely naval purposes. Corsica and Minorca were seized to mask the naval base at Toulon; Malta to cover the eastern Mediterranean; Stralsund to protect the supply of naval stores. Yet in 1800, whilst the Cabinet wavered over the relative advantages of raiding Brest, Cadiz or Ferroll with the 80,000 men at its disposal, their Austrian ally was being beaten at Marengo, a closely-fought battle in which a British contribution might well have been decisive.22 Similarly, the massive investment in men and resources for the ill-fated Walcheren expedition, precisely at a time when the Spanish campaign was getting under way, has appeared inexplicable to most historians of the Napoleonic War; and, as in so many other ‘conjunct’ operations of this period, the British troops never stayed long enough to produce a major diversion of the enemy’s armed strength. Much of the decisive continental fighting in the years 1793–1815 took place in areas which were remote from the sea and therefore less sensitive to British flanking assaults; but this inability to influence events significantly was simply furthered by the transitory nature of these amphibious raids.
The campaign in the Spanish peninsula proved to be the brilliant exception to this rule and, as such, has always been regarded as ‘the classical example of one of the great strategical advantages conferred by sea power’.23 However, while the Royal Navy’s mastery gave logistical support and an added mobility to the British army, it is doubtful if even this campaign would have succeeded had it not been for the cautious genius of Wellington; the crucial fact that the Portuguese and Spanish populations were by now bitterly anti-French; and Napoleon’s concentration upon matters elsewhere in Europe, notably in Germany and Russia. Whatever the weight assigned to these individual elements, it remains true that their combination produced the first lasting check to Napoleon’s ambitions, amply justifying the British government’s decision to continue the Peninsular War after 1809 despite the opposition to it at home. The campaign occupied much of the French army – at one time, some 370,000 French troops were trying to hold down Spain – and eventually cost the death of 40,000 of them; it breached the Continental System by boosting British trade not only with Spain and Portugal but also with their colonies; and it provided an example of resistance to the rest of Europe.
In the larger strategical history of the war, however, the peninsular campaign probably occupies a position similar to that which the North African fighting assumed in 1940–43 – a drain upon the enemy’s resources and a booster for Allied morale, but not the theatre in which the decisive military blow was dealt to the foe. In both wars, it is worth arguing, that blow was delivered in eastern Europe, where Napoleon, like Hitler, over-reached himself and then had to suffer the consequences. ‘Of the 430,000 men who had marched into Russia [in 1812] perhaps 50,000 found their way back and 100,000 remained as prisoners; but over 100,000 had died in battles and skirmishes, and nearly twice as many had perished of disease, cold, and famine.’24 After that disaster all of Napoleon’s discontented satellites, Austria, Prussia, and Sweden threw off the French yoke and joined in the battle. Although they were hampered by indecision and the lack of an outstanding military commander, their sheer numbers overwhelmed Napoleon’s forces, which were also suffering from a lack of cannon, wagons and other forms of military materiel. In the fighting which culminated in the ‘Battle of the Nations’ at Leipzig in 1813, the French lost nearly 200,000 troops and an exhausted remnant of 40,000 was all that reached the Rhineland by the end of that year. It was this loss of virtually two entire armies which bled French military might and ensured that, even when Napoleon attempted the gambler’s last throw on the field of Waterloo in 1815, his resources were simply too weak to conquer the armies of Wellington and Blücher.
As we shall see, it can reasonably be argued that the British support for Russia, Austria and Prussia in the form of almost unlimited subsidies and munitions in the years 1812–14 had played a large part in the victories in eastern Europe; and that it was the Royal Navy’s protection of commerce which had permitted Britain to afford assistance of such dimensions to her continental allies. Nevertheless, it is a long step from that statement to the claim that ‘it was our all-but complete sea-control, challenging Napoleon’s equally complete land-control, which not only saved us but, in the end, defeated him’.25 In actual fact, these two elements often tended to cancel each other out. ‘The Glorious First of June’ and the early colonial conquests were balanced by the defection of Prussia, Spain and the Netherlands, and the Royal Navy’s withdrawal from the Mediterranean; the battles of Cape St Vincent and Camperdown by the conquest of northern Italy and the capitulation of Austria; the Nile campaign and the formation of the Second Coalition by the withdrawal of Russia and the further defeat of Austria at Marengo and Hohenlinden; Trafalgar, it will be remembered, took place between the battles of Ulm and Austerlitz, provoking that arch-navalist, Admiral Fisher, into emphasizing a century later: ‘Trafalgar did not stop Austerlitz! And Pitt said, notwithstanding Trafalgar: “Roll up the map of Europe”, and he died of a broken heart!’;26 the fate of Britain’s allies in Italy, whom Collingwood laboured for years to help, was likewise ‘decided on the battlefields of central Europe’;27 and while the Royal Navy rendered temporary assistance to Sweden in 1808–9, it could not prevent the overrunning of Finland nor frustrate the combined Franco-Russian pressure which compelled the Swedes to adhere to the Continental System. Britain’s naval mastery preserved her independence and gained her fresh colonies overseas; but that was only one aspect of a struggle which encompassed land power as well as sea power. Only the patriotic bias of British naval historians makes it necessary to point out the truism that a war for the military domination of Europe had to be fought, logically enough, inside Europe and by armies. To defeat Napoleon, ‘maritime’ methods had to be supplemented by ‘continental’ ones.
Near the dose of Britain’s struggle with Napoleon one further aspect of previous wars manifested itself – the North American dimension. For the bitter Anglo-French conflict, into which other European states were dragged, often willy-nilly, also had repercussions upon relations with the United States, which by the beginning of the nineteenth century had become a major trading nation. America’s shipping and overseas trade, like that of Denmark, had taken advantage of its country’s neutrality and expanded swiftly, but they inevitably suffered from the British Orders in Council and the various French prohibitory decrees. Of the two pressures the British, due to the Royal Navy’s blockade, was the more effective; and American annoyance at this interference was compounded by the British policy of searching their vessels for British seamen – an indication both of London’s desperate need to man its enormous navy and of the continued lack of a satisfactory system of recruitment. Although the British government was eventually to rescind the Orders, it was too late to prevent an American declaration of war.28
In the North American struggle of 1756–63 the British had won because of their numerical superiority in that continent and because the French had been too distracted by European wars to challenge the Royal Navy’s control of sea communications. In the renewed conflict of 1776–83 the British had lost because they had attempted to subdue a vast continent with inadequate manpower and logistical support and because the French and Spaniards were free from European entanglements and able to exploit London’s colonial embarrassments. In this third and final round the result was a draw, because these various determinants were mixed and tended to cancel each other out.29 The French navy was in no position to interfere in North America, indeed, there was no cooperation at all between Paris and Washington in this war although they were both facing a common enemy; instead of the European situation assisting the French, Napoleon was engaged in a deadly struggle in Russia and Germany, which occupied all his attention, and the other European powers had no desire to embarrass the British – Russia even attempted to mediate between London and Washington in order to bring their duel to a halt. It must be admitted that the continental war distracted British attention as well – troops were withdrawn from Spain to fight in Canada yet Wellington’s campaign had to go on – but the fact remains that the international situation in 1812 was much more favourable to Britain than it had been in 1776. Opposed only by an enterprising but inferior American navy, the Royal Navy could swiftly achieve maritime control along the eastern seaboard and carry British expeditionary forces to their selected destinations. In the local naval war on the Great Lakes, and in the defence of trade from American privateers, the service was far less successful – a sign, perhaps, that Britain’s earlier naval victories had been too easily won over inefficient and demoralized French and Spanish fleets and that since Trafalgar a certain complacency had grown up. ‘Command of the sea’ by main fleets remained a British monopoly, however.
At the same time, Britain still faced that basic military problem of 1776 to 1783; how was she to conquer an enemy so enormous in size as the United States without engaging in a vast military campaign which it would be beyond her logistical and manpower capacities to sustain? After all, British politicians could hardly go on emphasizing their country’s ‘limited population not admitting of extensive continental operations’30 in Europe without seeing that the same applied to warfare in America: a successful war in either continent inevitably involved very large armies. It was true that London could count upon the support of the Canadian loyalists, but this was clearly no equivalent to the help rendered by the Austrian, Russian or Prussian armies in the wars against France; in fact, it simply extended the strategical dilemma by making it necessary to defend the lengthy American–Canadian border as well. Possibly the best solution for the British was to seize coastal points and systematically to reduce the wealth of the United States until the latter was willing to surrender, for since the Americans’ foreign trade and shipping had expanded so rapidly after 1783 they had become more susceptible than France to assaults upon these bases of their prosperity, and there were many merchants and planters who disliked the whole idea of fighting Britain in any case. Nevertheless, although this was the course the British adopted, it was by its very nature a lengthy campaign, with no prospect of a sudden and decisive victory, and there were also circles in Britain who disliked a conflict with the country which had been their best customer and had many cultural links with themselves. While the United States was suffering the most by 1814, the conclusion of peace was the most appropriate expression of the stalemate which existed between land power and sea power and of the mutual realization that the war would benefit neither of them. The argument over maritime rights was simply shelved, not settled.
Set in the context of the Napoleonic War, the Anglo-American dispute appears to be more of a local quarrel, a strategical diversion, than anything else. In the wider story of Britain’s rise to naval mastery, its lessons have more significance. The war of 1812–14 provides another confirmation of the importance of the interaction between the European and North American theatres in Britain’s imperial and maritime expansion during the eighteenth century; it thereby underscores Chatham’s belief that only by having a due regard for the military equilibrium in both continents could Great Britain, an island and predominantly naval state located between the two, ensure that her vital interests were safeguarded. Furthermore, it also confirmed the limitations of British sea power, even at a time when the Royal Navy was without a serious rival, in a conflict with a continent-wide power such as the United States. It is not surprising to learn that later British statesmen took due note of this fact and, although fully prepared to defend Canada against American aggression, were privately aware of the military difficulties of such a task and were therefore always anxious to preserve good relations with the United States if at all possible.31
The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars were, finally, a test of whether the British economy was strong enough to endure the incredible strains of prolonged and costly military and naval campaigns without collapsing. As Professor Mathias has aptly remarked, ‘One of the few constancies in history is that the scale of commitment on military spending has always risen’,32 and the eighteenth-century wars proved to be no exception to this rule. The cost of all the previous struggles paled into insignificance compared with these two, however. In 1793 the British government spent £4.8 million upon the army and £2.4 million upon the navy out of a total expenditure of £19.6 million; but by 1815 total outgoings had risen to £112.9 million, out of which £49.6 million went to the army and £22.8 million to the navy – a tenfold increase in defence expenditures.33 The overall cost of the war to Britain was a staggering £1,657 million. Few Britons could believe that such sums could be paid out year after year without a drastic weakening of the economy, an expectation which Napoleon shared, though with a great deal more eagerness.
For Britain to emerge triumphant three conditions would have to be fulfilled: her industry, agriculture and commerce would need to grow sufficiently quickly to permit the government to tap this rising wealth through a variety of taxes without, however, killing off the sources of such prosperity or provoking internal opposition; the government would also have to be able to preserve its financial credit in order to raise funds from financiers; and the country would need to maintain and indeed to expand its foreign trade in order to pay its way in the world, a task which was made especially difficult by the imposition of the Continental System in 1806. Moreover, all this had to be done more successfully than in the far larger and more populous continental bloc which the French dominated. As it happened, the three conditions were fulfilled, but it was, to use Wellington’s words about Waterloo, ‘a close-run thing’. The unrest in industry and agriculture, the Bank of England’s decision not to honour its commitments in gold in 1797, the widespread relief at the Peace of Amiens, and the strain caused by the Continental System and the simultaneous American economic pressures, were all indications of the way in which the country was being stretched to its limits.
Yet, if Britain was being stretched, she rose to the challenge; once again, war was to reveal itself as a catalyst and accelerator of economic change even though its effects could also be disruptive. In respect of the first of the above three conditions, the expansion of the country’s productivity and hence its wealth, all the signs are that, despite spasmodic short-term checks, such growth did take place. Agriculture benefited from the war, because many European products, particularly grain, were cut off and English landowners rushed in to fill the gap. Industry’s rise was much more spectacular, for the years 1793–1815 revealed beyond any shadow of doubt that a real revolution in technology and output was under way. The steam-engine was being used in a variety of ways, and many further technological advances were made. A whole network of canals – the Grand Junction, the Basingstoke, the Kennet and Avon, the Caledonian, the Mersey-Humber link-up – was built to improve internal communications; new turnpikes and iron rail-tracks supplemented them. Pig-iron output soared from 68,000 tons in 1788 to 125,000 tons in 1796 to 244,000 tons in 1806. Cotton, the fastest-growing industry of all, was a catalyst or ‘multiplier’ in itself, demanding ever more machinery, steam-power, coal and labour. In 1793 cotton exports had totalled £1.65 million; by 1815 they had risen to £22.55 million, becoming Britain’s greatest export by far. The steel, machine-tools, armaments, woollen and silk industries were also expanding, although at a more modest pace. The shipyards, too, were busy catering for the Royal Navy’s orders, even if civilian demand slackened off. The population was rising rapidly, fuelling the demand for foodstuffs, clothing and household goods, and already the hastily built industrial townships of central and northern England were beginning to change the landscape. Banking and insurance companies naturally encouraged, and shared in the profits from, this boom.
So, too, did the British government under Pitt and his successors, whose fiscal and taxation policies contrived to stimulate and to partake in the benefits of the country’s increasing prosperity; there was, after all, no other way to pay for the spiralling costs of the war. Customs and excise receipts automatically grew with the expansion in foreign trade, from a total of £13.57 million in 1793 to £44.89 million in 1815; land taxes rose less spectacularly, from £2.95 million to £9.50 million in the same period; whilst income and property tax, first introduced in 1799, was bringing in £14.62 million by the final year of the Napoleonic War.34 To contemporaries this taxable strength of the British was astonishing; ‘between 1806 and 1816 a population of less than fourteen million people paid nearly £142,000,000 in income taxes alone’.35 Upon this solid base of a growing national prosperity, which could be tapped, the tenfold rise in defence spending had good prospects of being sustained.
Yet even this colossal effort could not bridge the gap between the government’s revenue and its expenditure; in the crucial year of 1813, for example, taxes could only produce £73 million of the £111 million which were spent. The difference had to come from loans, but here the government possessed yet another trump card. Because of Pitt’s stabilization of the economy of the country after 1783 the government’s credit was high; and because of the very flexible and superior financial facilities of the country, public borrowing was already a long-established and successful expedient, particularly in wartime. As soon as war broke out, Pitt adopted a policy of heavy long-term borrowing, to which the public eagerly responded. Even the ‘suspension of cash payments’ in 1797, it is worth noting, did not check this willingness, and the alarm was soon over. ‘In practice’, an economic historian notes, ‘the Bank of England had so secured itself in the public confidence that its now unbacked money was just as acceptable as it had been when gold could be got for it at a fixed price … The banking and mercantile community in London and the provinces, with virtual unanimity, pronounced its readiness to carry on business as normal with a pure paper currency.’36 – which was just as well, for the government had to raise over £440 million by loan in the years 1793–1815, this representing between one quarter and one third of its total expenditure.37 As a consequence, the National Debt soared from £299 million in 1793 to an enormous £834 million in 1815, without any visible sign of the country going bankrupt or of the lenders doubting the government’s ability to repay in the future. French credit, despite Napoleon’s brilliant military successes, the greater population and natural wealth of France, and the more concrete securities offered by its government, was never able to match this performance. Britain had gained greatly in the eighteenth century by having made clever alliances, comments P. G. M. Dickson; ‘More important even than alliances, however, was the system of public borrowing … which enabled England to spend on war out of all proportion to its tax revenue, and thus to throw into the struggle with France and its allies the decisive margin in ships and men without which the resources previously committed might have been committed in vain.’38
Both the growing industrialization and the continuing high credit of the government depended upon a third factor: the expansion of foreign trade, particularly exports, which allowed Britain to pay her way in the world. Since the American war of 1776–83 commerce had been booming, but there was always the danger that the conflict with France would disrupt this process; after all, the greater part of Britain’s trade was still with Europe. At first, such fears turned out to be groundless. War stimulated various trades, such as the British armaments industry, whose products were now highly valued in Europe. More important still, a great deal of British overseas trade was scarcely affected by the European struggle: commerce with the United States, for example, continued to soar, as did that with Asia and the West Indies, although how much of this was stimulated by the desperate need to discover and exploit new fields of commerce, because of troubles in Europe, is an open question; and when Britain overran enemy colonies, she automatically gained fresh markets for her own goods. Conversely, French, Dutch and Spanish industries were hit, not only by the loss of protected colonial markets but also by the Royal Navy’s blockade in European waters. Naval power, together with commercial flexibility, enabled the British to switch the flow of their products from one part to another: when the French increased their hold upon the Mediterranean, British trade with northern Europe suddenly multiplied, and vice versa. Ultimately, the British were prepared to relax the Navigation Laws, electing to protect their commerce and industry even at the temporary expense of their traditionally protectionist shipping policy. Despite the domestic stresses, therefore, the economy remained sound. As one contemporary writer boasted in 1799:
We can most incontrovertibly prove that, under the pressure of new burdens, and during the continuance of the eventful contest in which we are engaged, the revenue, the manufactures, and the commerce of the country, have flourished beyond the example of all former times. The war, which has crushed the industry, and annihilated the trade and shipping of her rival, has given energy and extent to those of Great Britain.39
The country’s two major economic assets in any trade war were obvious to all observers: she was, thanks to her industrialization, producing finished goods of a quality and cheapness and variety which had no equal in the world; and she possessed, because of her extensive empire and her naval mastery, a near-monopoly in colonial produce. Whatever the decrees emanating from Napoleon, the European nations found it impossible to get along without British manufacturers on the one hand or tobacco, tea, coffee, sugar, spices and other tropical goods on the other. Nevertheless, the establishment of the Continental System in 1806 did involve the most determined and systematic attempt ever to prevent this flow of British exports and re-exports; it was the logical consequence of the Franco-Spanish defeat at Trafalgar, the recognition that unless Britain’s economic strength was undermined, Napoleon would never be able to force her to her knees.40 After he had bludgeoned Austria, Prussia and Russia into acquiescence, the prospects for Britain looked gloomy. Virtually the whole of Europe was ordered to boycott British goods. Worse still, the increasing friction with the United States affected trade with that valuable market and customer as well. Together, this combined pressure spelt a mortal danger for British industry.
The chief reason why such a disaster did not occur was that the Continental System was not applied long or consistently enough to take full effect. By 1808 the economic situation in Britain was very serious, but the revolution in Spain blew a hole in the Napoleonic system and the products of Lancashire and the Midlands poured into the peninsula. In the Baltic, Sweden, too, provided an exception until she broke under the Franco-Russian pressure. Then British industry suffered again – until the Russian rebellion against Napoleon and the decisive campaigning of 1812 destroyed for ever the French attempt to ‘isolate’ the continent. Since Anglo-American relations had deteriorated to the point of war by then, Britain had once again been relieved just in time. Even before that date, however, the difficulties of carrying out Napoleon’s decrees had revealed themselves. Few non-Frenchmen in Europe wished to deprive themselves of British or colonial produce; they therefore contrived in all manner of ways to obtain the forbidden goods. Forged documents disguised the real place of origin of such imports. Smuggling was rife, particularly where officialdom was prone to look the other way; and when the French hold upon a certain region was tightened, trade was switched to another channel. Goods destined for Germany were landed in places as distant as Archangel and Salonika. Britain herself encouraged this flouting of the regulations whenever possible. Ports and countries dependent upon or friendly to London, such as Malta, Gibraltar, Sicily, Heligoland and Sweden, became vast depots for British manufactures. The Navigation Acts were again relaxed to permit neutrals to carry these goods. Significantly enough, even the French themselves worked against the system. Commerce with the overseas world was permitted in France and the Netherlands under certain conditions, and this provided the opportunity for much evasion. ‘Deals’ across the Channel were arranged, during which sugar and coffee was exchanged for brandy and wine. The export of farm produce, a measure favoured by Napoleon, clashed with the strategy of interdicting trade with Britain. Even some of the boots and uniforms for the Grand Army were ordered in England! In the same way the New England ports, abetted by the British and Canadians, continued to trade with the enemy during the war of 1812–14.
Finally, the British were able, because of their near-monopoly of trade and maritime power outside Europe and the United States, to export more and more of their goods to this overseas world. Even before the outbreak of war this branch of foreign commerce had been growing rapidly, but the need to find new markets, together with the increasing domestic production of cotton cloth, household goods and metal wares, led to a real boom. Trade with the British West Indies rose from £6.9 million in 1793 to £14.7 million in 1814; with the foreign West Indies and Latin America, both newly opened during the war, rising from virtually nothing to £10.5 million.41 Asia, Africa and British North America were also growing in importance. The enormous expansion of the London dockyard system – where the West India, Brunswick, London, East India and Commercial Docks were opened between 1802 and 1813 – was a reflection of this development in Britain’s overseas, and particularly her entrepôt, trade. All provided useful crutches when British commerce was suffering in its traditional operating areas.
Nevertheless, the commercial warfare of the French and the Americans brought the country closer to an economic crisis in 1808 and 1811–12, than at any time in the two decades of war. The latter slump was particularly severe. Vast stocks of manufactures piled up outside their factories. The London docks were filled to overflowing with colonial produce. The supply of naval stores dropped off alarmingly, despite the British exploitation of the forests of the Empire as a substitute. Bankruptcies of firms rapidly increased. Unemployment and the rising cost of bread produced a spate of riots. The gap between the government’s revenue and expenditure was widening alarmingly. Napoleon’s overrunning of the Baltic saw hundreds of British vessels captured in that sea. An adverse trade balance caused the pound to depreciate. Economists such as Ricardo pleaded for peace. This was the physical reality behind the trade figures, which tell the story of that post-1810 slump in another form:42
| Imports | Exports | Re-exports | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1796 | 39.6 | 30.1 | 8.5 |
| 1800 | 62.3 | 37.7 | 14.7 |
| 1810 | 88.5 | 48.4 | 12.5 |
| 1812 | 56.0 | 41.7 | 9.1 |
| 1814 | 80.8 | 45.5 | 24.8 |
Without the Continental System and the American ‘non-intercourse’ policy it is clear that British foreign trade would have expanded continuously throughout this period, so great was the demand for British and Imperial produce. As it was, even during the worst years, a considerable amount of these goods found their way to their customers and as soon as Napoleon abandoned his efforts to strangulate trade it rapidly recovered; exports to northern Europe, which dropped from £13.6 million in 1809 to £5.4 million in 1812, bounded to £22.9 million in 1814.
By 1813–14 Britain could be seen to have withstood the test, not only in this economic struggle but in all other spheres. Her funds and munitions were pouring into eastern Europe to assist the uprisings against French hegemony. Wellington’s army had recovered Spain and entered southern France, Canada was being held and the blockade along the eastern seaboard of the United States intensified, the attacks upon British seaborne trade were petering out, and the enemies’ colonial empires had been overrun. There was still the reduction of Napoleon’s final bid for power to come, and the North American war had to be resolved; but the end was in sight, and British statesmen could begin to appreciate that their country would come through its greatest challenge to date with its national power and its position in the world consolidated and even enhanced.
At this stage, it may be possible to bring together the various strands which, interacting with each other, explain the eventual victory of Britain in 1815. Her insular position, complemented by her naval mastery, provided that basic security from a Napoleonic invasion which no other European country possessed; her stable yet relatively flexible political and social system enabled her people to endure the strains of war, without serious domestic upheaval; her rapidly-expanding industrialization and foreign trade allowed the government to tap fresh sources of wealth; her sophisticated financial system offered insurance to the merchant shipper, capital for industry, and loans to the State; this economic and credit strength in turn supported a colossal navy and a quite considerable army; that navy, by smashing all enemy attempts to dispute command of the sea, not only reduced still further the chances of an invasion of England, but it permitted the capture of hostile colonies, the elimination of the foes’ overseas trade, the protection of British commerce, and the sustenance of allies on the continent; that army, benefiting from the command of the sea, could be dispatched to seize hostile colonies and naval bases or to operate on the peripheries of Europe, in conjunction with allies and to the embarrassment of the enemy.
This symbiosis of British power was impressive to contemporaries and remains so to present-day historians; yet it is doubtful whether it alone could have succeeded in overthrowing Napoleon and enforcing a return to the status quo ante bellum. In a war with a great continental military state the Royal Navy, despite its offensive strategy, necessarily fulfilled a mainly negative role. The essential task was to defend Britain, her trade, and her wealth. The enemy’s overseas colonies and commerce would naturally be eliminated wherever possible, but this alone could not bring France to defeat. Even the Peninsular campaign, valuable though it was, was not likely by itself to undermine Napoleon’s hegemony over Europe: only the forcible uprising of the conquered peoples, and the driving of the French armies from the chief battle areas, would do that. Until then, Britain must hang on, playing a strategically passive role, but ever willing to exploit an opportunity and to assist a friend, and providing all the time an example of resistance to anti-French forces.
Why Napoleon failed was due to a combination of external and internal causes, of British pressure from without and rebellion from within. ‘Viewed in historical perspective’, Professor Brunn has argued, French expansionism ‘contradicted a dominant political trend that had been shaping European society since the later Middle Ages, the trend towards a system of individual sovereign territorial states … [Napoleon’s efforts] ran counter to the emotions and aspirations of the leading European nations.’43 In this sense, perhaps the breakdown of the French rule was inevitable; there certainly was plenty of evidence that the effect of this rule was to awaken nationalist feelings in conquered territories, rather than to invoke notions of a European unity under a Napoleonic dynasty. After the disaster to the Grand Army in Russia, the artificial and temporary nature of this unity revealed itself and Bonaparte’s grandiose design collapsed.
In this process, too, the British had played their part: for the widespread dislike throughout Europe of French domination and military plundering had been intensified by the institution of the Continental System, which dislocated the economy and was nothing other than a deliberate attempt to prevent Europeans from obtaining the British manufactures and colonial produce they desired. The Spanish and Russian resistance to Napoleon was to a considerable degree caused by a resentment at this economic deprivation. In the trade war of 1806–12 one side had to crack eventually. Britain, for reasons outlined above, had avoided that fate; and the struggle had not only devastated the French economy, but it also helped to provoke the internal European resistance which was necessary to unseat Napoleon. Secondly, the British had to be ready to utilize that rebellion even more effectively than they had done with the Spanish revolt, and here again their economic strength was vital. As Professor Sherwig puts it, ‘Britain had never been able to give her allies the will to fight France, but by 1813 the great powers had found that essential requirement within themselves. What they now required of Britain was what she could send them: the money and the arms needed to transform that will into victory over the common enemy.’44 In 1814 over £10 million was spent in subsidies, and Castlereagh was expecting that in return Austria, Prussia and Russia would each keep 150,000 men in the field against Napoleon. Only with such a massive military effort would the European balance of power be restored.
In conclusion, the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars represented the greatest test which Britain hitherto had had to encounter in its rise to naval mastery, and they confirmed once again the essential prerequisites for such a successful development: a healthy economy, a sophisticated financial system, commercial expertise and initiative, political stability, and a strong navy. The latter, it appeared, was unlikely to flourish if the other elements were not also prominent; defence meant more than armaments. Yet the conflict with France also confirmed the limitations of sea power, the necessity of watching carefully the European equilibrium, the desirability of having strong military allies in wartime, the need to blend a ‘maritime’ strategy with a ‘continental’ one. In all respects, then, the lessons of these wars had been useful ones. If they were to be well remembered by British statesmen and their public, and if the foundations upon which this successful policy had been based were not undermined, the likelihood was that this naval mastery would also continue in the future.