William Pitt and the Great WarRose, J. Holland (John Holland)
History
William Pitt and the Great War
Rose, J. Holland (John Holland)
Europe -- History -- 1789-1815; Great Britain -- History -- George III, 1760-1820; Pitt, William, 1759-1806
The favourite soon perceived that the war with France pleased neither
the Court, the merchants, nor the people. Charles IV had gone to war for
the restoration of royalty; but, thanks to the perfidy of Prussia and
the vacillations of Austria, that ideal had vanished; and in its place
there appeared the spectres of want and bankruptcy. By the end of 1794
the Republicans had gained a firm foothold in Catalonia and Biscay; and
the prospect of further campaigns was highly distasteful to a Court
which kept up the traditional pomp of the Spanish monarchy. Even when
the Spanish forces in Catalonia and Biscay were wellnigh starving, the
Court borrowed L160,000 to defray the expenses of the usual migration to
San Ildefonso; and the British ambassador computed that the cost of a
campaign could be saved by a sojourn in Madrid for the whole year. But
parsimony such as this was out of the question. Accordingly the only
possible alternatives were, peace with France, an issue of paper money,
or a bankruptcy. Godoy inclined strongly to peace, and discovered in
Anglophobia a means of betraying the French House of Bourbon. England,
so he averred, had entered on the war solely for her own aggrandisement,
with the view of appropriating first Dunkirk, then Toulon, and, failing
them, Corsica and Hayti, to the manifest detriment of Spain. The
argument was specious; for Pitt's resolve to cripple France by colonial
conquests necessarily tended to re-awaken the old jealousies of the
Spaniards; and herein, as in other respects, the son had to confront
difficulties unknown in the days of his father. The task of the elder
Pitt was simple compared with that of humouring and spurring on five
inert and yet jealous Allies.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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