History of the English People, Volume VIII: Modern England, 1760-1815Green, John Richard
History
History of the English People, Volume VIII: Modern England, 1760-1815
Green, John Richard
Great Britain -- History
The breach only quickened Buonaparte's resolve to attack his enemy at
home. The difficulties in his way he set contemptuously aside; "Fifteen
millions of people," he said, in allusion to the disproportion between
the population of England and France, "must give way to forty millions";
and the invasion was planned on a gigantic scale. A camp of one hundred
thousand men was formed at Boulogne, and a host of flat-bottomed boats
gathered for their conveyance across the Channel. The peril of the
nation forced Addington from office and recalled Pitt to power. His
health was broken, and as the days went by his appearance became so
haggard and depressed that it was plain death was drawing near. But
dying as he really was, the nation clung to him with all its old faith.
He was still the representative of national union; and he proposed to
include Fox and the leading Whigs in his new ministry, but he was foiled
by the bigotry of the king; and the refusal of Lord Grenville and of
Windham to take office without Fox, as well as the loss of his post at a
later time by his ablest supporter, Dundas, left him almost alone. But
lonely as he was, he faced difficulty and danger with the same courage
as of old. The invasion seemed imminent when Buonaparte, who now assumed
the title of the Emperor Napoleon, appeared in the camp at Boulogne. A
slight experience however showed him the futility of his scheme for
crossing the Channel in open boats in the teeth of English men-of-war;
and he turned to fresh plans of securing its passage. "Let us be masters
of the Channel for six hours," he is reported to have said, "and we are
masters of the world." A skilfully-combined plan, by which the British
fleet would have been divided while the whole French navy was
concentrated in the Channel, was delayed by the death of the admiral
destined to execute it. But the alliance with Spain placed the Spanish
fleet at Napoleon's disposal, and in 1805 he planned its union with that
of France, the crushing of the squadron which blocked the ports of the
Channel before the English ships which were watching the Spanish
armament could come to its support, and a crossing of the vast armament
thus protected to the English shore.
[Sidenote: Trafalgar.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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