XLV. CHAP. in security; dealing thus with the greatest potentate in Europe, at the very moment when he was perilling his very crown in our cause, as well as his own, in the same manner as a Jewish pawnbroker does with a suspicious applicant for relief. 1807. glaring ne glect of the Rus The battle of Eylau should have been the signal And their for the contracting the closest alliance with the Russian Government; the instant advance of loans to sian War. any amount; the marching of sixty thousand English soldiers to the nearest points of embarkation. This was the crisis of the war; the imprudent confidence of Napoleon had drawn him into a situation full of peril; for the first time in his life he had been overmatched in a pitched battle, and hostile nations, besetting three hundred leagues of communication in his rear, were ready to intercept his retreat. No effort on the part of England could have been too great in order to turn to the best account so extraordinary a combination of favourable circumstances; no demonstration of confidence too unreserved to an ally capable of such sacrifices. Can there be a doubt that such a vigorous demonstration would at once have terminated the hesitations of Austria, revived the spirit of Prussia, and, by throwing a hundred thousand men on each flank of his line of communication, driven the French Emperor to a ruinous retreat? Is it surprising that when, instead of such co-operation, Alexander, after the sacrifices he had made, met with nothing but refusals in his repeated and most earnest applications for assistance, and saw the land force of England wasted on useless distant expeditions, when every bayonet and sabre was of value on the banks of the Alle, he should have conceived a distrust of the English alliance, and formed the resolution of extri cating himself as soon as possible from the hazardous CHAP. conflict in which he was now exclusively engaged?* XLV. To these general censures on the foreign policy of 1807. "In the Foreign office," said Mr Canning, when Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1807, "are to be found not one but twenty letters from the Repeated Marquis of Douglas, Ambassador to the Whigs at St Petersburg, inti- and ineffectual apmating, in the strongest terms, that unless effectual aid was sent to the plications Emperor of Russia, he would abandon the contest." Ample proofs of which this exists in the correspondence relating to that subject which was laid Alexander before Parliament. On 28th November 1806, the Marquis wrote to had made for aid Lord Howick, afterwards Earl Grey, from St Petersburg-"General from Eng- and Holland, for the purpose of distracting the attention of the enemy, war. XLV. 1807. The Dar danelles CHAP. England at this juncture, an exception must be made in the case of the expedition to the Dardanelles. It was ably conceived, and vigorously entered upon. The stroke there aimed by England was truly at the heart expedition of her adversary; the fire of Duckworth's broadsides is an ex- was concentric with that of the batteries of Eylau; the general if successful, they would have added forty thousand men to the Russian standards. This object was so important that it completely vindicates the expedition; the only thing to be regretted is, that the force ception to inexpe dience of their foreign po licy. On Jan. 13, Lord Howick wrote "In looking forward to a protracted contest, for which the successes and inveterate hostility of the enemy must oblige this country to provide, his Majesty feels it to be his duty to preserve as much as possible the resources to be derived from the affections of his people." It is difficult to find in history an example of a more ill-judged and discreditable parsimony; "husbanding," as Mr Canning afterwards said, "your muscles till you lose the use of them." The infatuation of this conduct appears in still more striking colours, when the vast amount of the disposable force then lying dormant in the British Islands is taken into account. Notwithstanding the useless or pernicious expeditions to Buenos Ayres and Alexandria, England had still a disposable regular force of eighty thousand men in the British Islands. Her military force, Jan. 1807, was as follows: But of this immense force, lying within a day's sail of France and Holland, and including eighty thousand regulars, certainly seventy or eighty thousand might without difficulty have been sent to the Continent. In fact, in 1809, England had above soldiers at one time in Spain and Holland. force conquered Napoleon at Waterloo. March or April 1807, it would at once have decided the contest.-See Parl. Paper, July 18, 1807; Parl. Deb. ix. 111; Appendix. seventy thousand regular Little more than half this Thrown into the scale in XLV. put at the disposal of the British admiral was not CHAP. such as to have rendered victory a matter of certainty. As it was, however, it was adequate to the object; 1807. and this bold and well-conceived enterprise would certainly have been crowned with deserved success, but for the extraordinary talents and energy of General Sebastiani, and the unfortunate illness of Mr Arbuthnot, which threw the conduct of the negotiation into the hands of the British Admiral, who, however gallant in action, was no match for his adversary in that species of contest, and wasted in fruitless efforts for an accommodation those precious moments which should have been devoted to the most vigorous warlike demonstrations. feats were beneficial. After all, the unsuccessful issue of these expeditions, and the severe mortification which their failure These deoccasioned to the British people, had a favourable ultimately effect on the future stages of the contest. It is by experience only that truth is brought home to the masses of mankind. Mr Pitt's external policy had been distracted by the number and eccentric characters of his maritime expeditions; but they were important in some degree, as wresting their colonial possessions from the enemy, and overshadowed by the grandeur and extent of his continental confederacies. Now, however, the same system was pursued when hardly any colonies remained to be conquered, and continental combination was abandoned at the very time when sound policy counselled the vigorous and simultaneous direction of all the national and European resources to the heart of the enemy's power. The absurdity and impolicy of this system, glaring as they were, might have long failed in bringing it into general discredit; but this was at once effected by the disasters and disgrace with which its last exer ། XLV. CHAP. tions were attended. The opinion, in consequence, became universal, that it was impolitic as well as un1807. worthy of its resources for so great a nation to waste its strength in subordinate and detached operations: England, it was felt, must be brought to wrestle hand to hand with France before the struggle could be brought to a successful issue: the conquerors of Alexandria and Maida had no reason to fear a more extended conflict with land forces; greater and more glorious fields of fame were passionately desired, and that general longing after military glory was felt which prepared the nation to support the burdens of the Peninsular war, and share in the glories of Wellington's campaigns. |