other faults may have been, Bonaparte was no free trader, and had no idea of throwing up a very necessary revenue for the chimerical chances of increased commerce. In this he was supported by his people, who are, and ever will be, protectionists. One thing the First Consul had in his favour: we had not used him exactly well in that matter about Malta, and he had an excuse for a declaration of war. At present this is wanting to the third Napoleon, but we know not what may happen ere long in Eastern waters.

It was easy enough for the First Consul to declare war, but he had a difficulty in carrying it out; for, with all his wondrous resources, he could not create a fleet out of nothing. The French were bad sailors, and the repeated blows their marine had experienced during the past century had shown them the fallacy of trying conclusions with the English on their native home. If the Leopard were to be killed, he must be followed to his repaire, and destroyed by artillery and musketry. Hence arose the idea of the great Channel flotilla, which occupied Bonaparte's attention through so many years, It has been the fashion with French writers to argue (because the expedition never came off) that Bonaparte merely employed it as a feint; but recent revelations prove to us sufficiently that he had set his heart on it, and felt sanguine of success at last.

The idea of the invasion appears to have occupied the First Consul's mind during the Italian war, for immediately after the signature of the treaty of Campo-Formio he proceeded at once to the coast of Normandy; and after a careful inspection of the means at his command, we find from his Correspondence (vol. iii.) that he wrote the following rather desponding statement to the Executive Directory:

I.

Paris, 5 Ventôse, an VI (Feb. 23, 1798). Whatever efforts we may make, we shall not acquire the superiority on the seas for several years.

To effect a descent on England without being master of the sea is the boldest and most difficult operation yet made.

If it be possible, it is by surprising the passage, either by escaping the squadron blockading Brest or the Texel, or by arriving in small boats during the night, and after a passage of seven to eight hours, on one of the points of Kent or Sussex.

For this operation long nights are needed, and hence the winter. The month of April past, and it is no longer possible to undertake anything.

Any operation we might wish to make in boats during the summer, profiting by the calms, would be impossible, because the enemy would offer insurmountable obstacles, both at the embarkation and disembarkation.

Our navy is to-day as little advanced as at the period when the army of England was created; that is, four months ago.

At Brest there are only fourteen vessels equipped, and they are far from ready to take the sea. The English blockade us there with several vessels.

I heard, wherever I passed, the jests of the sailors at the little activity displayed in the equipments.

The ports are occupied in building letters of marque; the workmen of the rivers and canals, who, in all extraordinary occasions, are put in requisition for the navy, have not even been called upon.

Little privateers of thirty to forty tons have a crew of sixty to eighty sailors. The crews of all neutral vessels in our ports are one-third, in some cases onehalf, French. Many sailors are living quietly at home.

In Dunkirk arsenal there are six superb frigates, with their armaments in store; not one of them is equipped. Some sixty men are engaged in careening the first. The others have not yet been touched, and the English come daily with a corvette or frigate to pursue our vessels within cannon range.

We have gun-boats at Nantes, Brest, Lorient, and Cherbourg, where they are not indispensable; no orders have yet been given for these boats to collect at Havre or Dunkirk.

In the latter port, there are a dozen gun-boats in the basin, disarmed; no preparations have been made to equip them. For the last four months not a single boat has been built, but one hundred and twenty are now being laid down. The expedition to England does not, therefore, appear to me possible till next year; and then it is probable that the embarrassments arising on the Continent will be an obstacle to it. The right moment for preparing this expedition is lost, perhaps, for ever.

II.

Our ports, from Havre to Antwerp, contain the requisite boats to carry fifty thousand infantry and four thousand cavalry. We have a hundred gun-boats from Bordeaux to Ostend. One hundred and twenty more are being built, which will be useful, though not indispensable; and, besides, there is no occasion to await their construction.

All that is necessary is :

1. To arm and assemble at Havre and Dunkirk all the gun-boats stationed from Bayonne to Ostend.

2. Lay an embargo on, and equip, the vessels which are to serve as horse transports.

3. Equip the vessels which the Citizens Andreossy and Forfait have selected along the coast from Cherbourg to Antwerp.

4. Request the Batavian Republic to supply the vessels I have asked for. 5. Lay an embargo on the best privateers between Bordeaux and Antwerp, less than one hundred tons, and send them to Havre and Dunkirk; as they will only be employed as transports, only the necessary crew will be left them.

If by March next we could have delivered at Havre, Dunkirk, and Ostend the objects designated in the above articles, which is easy of execution, the expedition to England would still become possible.

To obtain this object, it is necessary:

1. To appoint a rear-admiral inspector of the coast from Cherbourg to Antwerp.

2. Appoint Citizen Forfait auditor of the navy of this part of the coast. 3. Appoint Brigadier-General Andreossy to the military equipment of these different boats.

4. Form of these three officers a commission, receiving its orders directly from the general commanding the expedition.

5. Charge the ministers of marine and war with the duty of supplying all the subalterns this commission may need for its organisation and service.

6. Place four millions, payable 800,000 fr. per decade, at the disposal of this commission, and specially destined to cover all the expenses relative to it: this sum is sufficient.

7. There are at Brest thirty vessels of war; in a month we must have twentyfive, and an equal number of frigates in the roads, ready to set out. This seems to me feasible. The measure adopted by government of sending there the minister of marine, must expedite the works at that port.

8. Take the sailors of all the privateers we shall not employ.

9. Arrest all French and English sailors on board neutrals.

10. Appoint commanders of vessels and squadrons.

The minister of marine, in addition to defraying the expenses of the Channel expedition, must also meet those of the Brest fleet.

If it be not possible to procure the exact sums demanded in this memorial, or if, owing to the present organisation of our navy, it is thought impossible to

obtain that promptness of execution which the circumstances demand, we must renounce the expedition to England, hold it as a feint, and fix our attention and resources on the Rhine, in order to take Hanover and Hamburg from the English; or we might send an expedition to the Levant, to menace the India trade. If neither of these operations be feasible, I see no other mode than concluding a peace with the English. I am persuaded that they would now accept the propositions to which Malmesbury would not adhere.

It was under these circumstances that Bonaparte directed his attention to Egypt, as he found it impossible to invade us at present. Still he bore the idea about with him in his head, and, consequently, when war again broke out, in 1803, with England, he renewed his preparations at Boulogne with increased vigour. Marmont, in his Memoirs, gives us a very sensible idea of the motives which urged Bonaparte to undertake this apparently desperate enterprise :

It has often been argued whether Bonaparte ever had the serious intention of making the expedition to England, and I reply, with certainty and assurance, yes; this expedition was the most ardent desire of his life, and his dearest hope for a long period. But he certainly did not wish to undertake it in a hazardous manner; he would only make the enterprise with suitable means, that is, as master of the sea, and under the protection of a good squadron, and he proved that, despite the numerical inferiority of his navy, he could execute it. His manifested design of employing the flotilla to fight, was meant to distract the enemy's attention, and make him overlook the real project. Never did he see in the flotilla aught but the means for transporting an army. It was the bridge destined to serve for the passage; the embarkation could be effected in a few hours, the debarkation in the same, the passage being short. The only considerable delay required would be in quitting port (two tides being wanted). Nothing was easier than to employ the flotilla for this object; and as each of these boats would bear with it a complete organisation in troops, provisions, ammunition, artillery, &c., the army possessed the means of fighting so soon as it touched British soil. With a navy inferior in the number of vessels, the combinations had been made in such a way as to render us very superior in the Channel during a given period; and facts proved the possibility. When all the preparations were in an advanced state, Admiral Villeneuve received orders to leave Toulon with fifteen vessels. The crews were reinforced by detachments from the army, under the orders of General Lauriston. This squadron was destined for the Windward Islands; its object was first to alarm the English, do their commerce as much injury as possible, revictual the colonies, and then return to Europe, to pick up the Rochelle fleet, and attack the English.

Bonaparte was much too clever to think of forcing the passage of the Channel with his gun-boats, and built upon the support Villeneuve would give him. Unfortunately, that admiral fell in with Calder off Cape Ortegal, and, after an undecided action, retired on Cadiz. But this gave Nelson time to come up, and Trafalgar was the death-blow to all ideas of invasion. Thenceforth Napoleon had no fleet, but allowed the English undisputed supremacy of the ocean, which a third Napoleon appears desirous to wrest from us if he can. The colossal preparations made by the first Bonaparte deserve our serious consideration, and we will, therefore, condense them from a very opportune book recently published.*

In his last great attempt, Napoleon assembled around Boulogne an

*Perils and Panics of Invasion, 1796-1805, and at the Present Time. By Humphrey Blunt. London: T. C. Newby.

army of one hundred and fifty thousand men, openly designed for the invasion of England. As we said before, his great want was a navy; for during the eight years, from 1793 to 1801, we had increased our fleet from two hundred and sixty-eight sail of the line and frigates, to four hundred and eighty. The French, on the other hand, had been reduced by repeated defeats to little more than one hundred sail; her allies had suffered proportionately, and her mercantile marine had been nearly destroyed. Under these circumstances, Napoleon decided on distracting the attention of the British government, by sending out his fleets in various directions, and seizing on the moment when the English navy should be most scattered in pursuit, to reassemble and cover the passage of the army which he had collected for the attack, and was to be conveyed in the flotillas he was forming. These consisted of twelve thousand flat-bottomed boats, so constructed that they might be run on our coast and land their men without delay.

According to Thiers, we find that the arrangements of this flotilla were made with the most remarkable perfection, and added further lustre to Napoleon's organising talent. The flotilla consisted of three classes: each vessel of the first class carried one hundred soldiers and a crew of twentyfour seamen, two heavy guns, arms, and ammunition. The second class carried a field-piece, a limber, and two artillery horses. The third class consisted of vessels of lighter construction, worked by sixty oars, the soldiers being trained to pull them. The second flotilla was to convey the rest of the artillery horses, between seven and eight thousand cavalry horses, a park of heavy artillery, and ammunition for an entire campaign. Altogether, two thousand vessels of various descriptions were built in the different harbours of France and collected at Boulogne, Wimereux, and Ambleteuse, by keeping along the coast under the cover of the French batteries. The motive for this armament Bonaparte has himself explained:

If fifty ships of the line were to assemble to cover the descent upon England, nothing but transport vessels were required in the harbours of the Channel, and all that assemblage of gun-boats, floating batteries, and armed vessels, was totally useless. Had I assembled three or four thousand unarmed transports, no doubt the enemy would have perceived that I awaited the arrival of my fleets to attempt the passage, but by constructing praams and gun-boats I appeared to be opposing cannon to cannon, and the enemy was in this manner deceived. They conceived that I intended to attempt the passage by main force by means of my flotilla. They never penetrated my real design, and when, from the failure of the movements of my squadrons, my project was revealed, the utmost consternation pervaded the councils of London, and all men of sense in England confessed that their country had never been so near her ruin.

Still, we were not idle on our side the Channel in the face of this enormous demonstration. Our regular army amounted to 180,000, with 80,000 militia, and the levy en masse was proclaimed. In a few weeks 300,000 volunteers were collected, armed, and disciplined. We had 60,000 sailors granted, and 40,000 more when the war actually broke out. Seventy-five ships of the line and 270 frigates and smaller vessels were put in commission. As Sir A. Alison triumphantly records, "the harbours of France and Holland were closely blockaded; Lord Nelson rode triumphant in the Mediterranean; and, excepting when their small craft were stealing round the headlands to the general rendezvous at

Boulogne, the flag of France, at least in large fleets, disappeared from the ocean." But, for all this, the French frigates managed to steal out of port without our knowledge, and only the depredations they performed in our colonies evidenced that they had forced our blockade.

If success were possible, Napoleon desired to achieve it, such remarkable attention did he pay to "little things," from which he knew that great ones so frequently depended. From Ney's Memoirs we find that the Emperor's instructions were so minute that every man, down to the lowest drummer, was apprised of the boat and the place in the boat where he was to seat himself.

The 3rd of August, 1803, was the scene of a mighty drama at Boulogne, for the Emperor in person gave his troops orders to take their places in the boats. In ten minutes and a half twenty-five thousand men were embarked. But the troops were soon disappointed by the signal of recal, and the expedition was again deferred. Villeneuve's incapacity gave it the death-blow, and the Emperor avenged himself the same year on the field of Austerlitz. On the principle that "fas est et ab hoste doceri," we may here quote what Thiers says on the chances of success in an invasion of England:

The question of invasion rested wholly upon the passage of the straits. Although the flotilla might have been able to pass in a calm in summer, and in winter during a fog, the passage in either case was hazardous. Thus, Napoleon had considered the presence of a fleet necessary to protect the expedition, and an able combination was made which would have had every chance of success in the hands of an abler man than Villeneuve. . . . . The enterprise of Napoleon was not, then, a chimera; was perfectly possible of realisation in the mode he had proposed to carry it out; and, perhaps, the enterprise, which had no result, did him more honour than those which had been crowned with the most startling success. It was not a feint, as some persons have imagined, who would search out profundities where none exist. Some thousand letters of the Emperor and ministers leave no doubt in this respect of the fact. It was a serious undertaking, pursued for several years with real earnestness. It has also been asserted that if Napoleon had not repelled Fulton, who came to offer him steam navigation, he would have crossed the straits. The character of steam navigation it is impossible to predict now in relation to future events. That it furnishes greater means to France of acting against England is probable; that it renders the straits more easy to cross must depend on the efforts France makes to assume a superiority in the employment of the new power. That will depend upon her patriotism and foresight. But what may be affirmed in regard of Napoleon's refusal is, that Fulton proposed to him an art in its perfect infancy, which at the moment could not have been of the smallest aid to his objects. Napoleon did all that he was able to do. There is not a single fault under this head with which to reproach him. Providence, no doubt, intended that he should not succeed.

Opinions, of course, greatly diverge as to what chance of success the flotilla would have had on reaching our shores. It is just possible that Villeneuve might have managed to hold our Channel fleet in check, and that the flotilla would then have put out into deep water; but it must not be forgotten that our coasts were defended by a cordon of small vessels, which would have desired nothing better than to come into collision with the clumsy, rolling gun-boats. Their immense number would have acted against them: crowded with troops, they would have fallen an easy prey to our active cutters, and many must have been sunk. Na