But the effect in England at the inception of the enterprise was electrical. Her standing army was already a hundred and thirty thousand strong, the militia numbered seventy thousand, and the reserve fifty thousand. In addition there was a body of volunteers which eventually reached the number of three hundred and eighty thousand in England and of over eighty thousand in Ireland. A system of signals was arranged between vessels of observation in the Channel and stations on the shore, beacons were ready on every hilltop, and the whole land was turned into a camp. The navy was not less strengthened: the number of men was raised from eighty to a hundred and twenty thousand, and a hundred vessels of the line, a hundred or more frigates, and several hundreds of smaller vessels, such as cruisers and gunboats, were gathered to protect the coasts. Pitt undermined the Addington ministry by calling for ever greater means of defense, and appeared daily for a time at the head of three thousand volunteers raised on or near his own estates. Even Fox laid aside his French sympathies for a while. Parliament authorized a loan of twelve millions sterling, which was promptly taken, and raised the taxes so as to double the revenue. The "nation of traders," as the First Consul sneeringly called them, again stood at ease ready to face her hereditary foe, under a burden of expense which the people a year before had believed would crush them. These were the "slight derangements" which, as the exile of St. Helena told Las Cases, had permanently thwarted the invasion, then represented in his bitterness as having been a serious purpose. It is true that during the period of extravagant preparation a medal was struck with Bonaparte's profile on the reverse, and on the obverse Hercules strangling a Triton, and that measures were discussed for administering the conquered island and for stripping it of its art objects. But further evidence that the entire movement was in the main a pretext for assembling and drilling a great land force to be held in readiness against Austria and Russia will be given in another connection, and on the whole it seems to outweigh that which indicates a definite, uninterrupted intention to invade England. In view of the stupendous land and sea forces assembled by Great Britain, it is altogether conceivable that the First Consul might have formed the notion of an invasion of the inverse sort, of an English army landing on the eastern shores of the Channel, and an offensive movement by English troops against the French armies. If so, he kept it deep in his mind, but for that alternative he was likewise in readiness by reason of the camp at Boulogne.