William Pitt and the Great War by John Holland Rose (e book reader for pc .TXT) 📖

1-200.

 

CHAPTER VIII (PITT AND THE ALLIES (1794-5))

 

    The main object of His Majesty is the keeping together by

    influence and weight this great Confederation by which alone the

    designs of France can be resisted, and which, if left to itself,

    would be too likely to fall to pieces from the jarring interests

    of the Powers engaged in it.--GRENVILLE TO MALMESBURY, _21st

    April 1794_.

 

    The disgraceful failure of every military operation His Prussian

    Majesty has undertaken since the year 1791 has destroyed the

    reputation of the Prussian army; and the duplicity and

    versatility of his Cabinet put an end to all confidence and good

    faith.--MALMESBURY TO GRENVILLE, _20th September 1794_.

 

 

As in parliamentary life, so too in the wider spheres of diplomacy and

warfare, a Coalition very rarely holds together under a succession of

sharp blows. This is inherent in the nature of things. A complex or

heterogeneous substance is easily split up by strokes which leave a

homogeneous body intact. Rocks of volcanic origin defy the hammer under

which conglomerates crumble away; and when these last are hurled against

granite or flint, they splinter at once. Well might Shakespeare speak

through the mouth of Ulysses these wise words on the divisions of the

Greeks before Troy:

 

          Look how many Grecian tents do stand

    Hollow upon this plain, so many hollow factions.

    ...

    Troy in our weakness stands, not in her strength.[335]

 

Pitt and his colleagues were under no illusion as to the weakness of the

first Coalition against France. They well knew the incurable jealousies

of the Houses of Hapsburg and Hohenzollern, the utter weakness of the

Holy Roman Empire, the poverty or torpor of Spain, Sardinia, and

Naples, the potent distractions produced by the recent partition of

Poland, and the Machiavellian scheme of the Empress Catharine II to busy

the Central Powers in French affairs so that she might have a free hand

at Warsaw. All this and much more stood revealed to them. But they

grounded their hopes of success on two important considerations; first,

that the finances of France were exhausted; secondly, that the rule of

the Jacobins, fertile in forced loans, forced service, and guillotining,

must speedily collapse. On the subject of French finance there are many

notes in the Pitt Papers, which show that Pitt believed an utter

breakdown to be imminent. Grenville, too, at the close of October 1793,

stated that France had lost at least 200,000 soldiers, while more than

50,000 were in hospital. The repugnance to military service was

universal, and the deficit for the month of August alone was close on

£17,000,000.[336]

 

Above all, Pitt and Grenville believed the French Government to be

incompetent as well as exasperatingly cruel. In their eyes Jacobins were

sworn foes to all that made government possible. The mistake was

natural. The English Ministers knew little of what was going on in

France, and therefore failed to understand that the desperadoes now in

power at Paris were wielding a centralized despotism, compared with

which that of Louis XIV was child's play. As to the Phoenix-like

survival of French credit, it is inexplicable even to those who have

witnessed the wonders wrought by Thiers in 1870-3. All that can be said

is that the Jacobins killed the goose that laid the golden egg, and yet

the golden eggs were laid. Let him who understands the miracle of

revolutionary finance cast the first stone at Pitt.

 

The Prime Minister also erred when he believed the French social

structure to be breaking up. Here again the miscalculation was perfectly

natural in an age which regarded kings, nobles, and bishops as the fixed

stars of a universe otherwise diversified only by a dim Milky Way. The

French were the first to dispel these notions. In truth the strength of

the young giant bore witness to the potency of the new and as yet allied

forces--Democracy and Nationality. In 1792 Democracy girded itself

eagerly against the semi-feudal Powers, Austria and Prussia; but the

strength latent in the French people appeared only in the next year

when, on the accession of England, Spain, and the Empire to the

Coalition, plans were discussed of detaching Alsace, Lorraine,

Roussillon, and Flanders.[337] To these sacrilegious schemes the French

patriots opposed the dogma of Rousseau--the indivisibility of the

general will. "Perish 25,000,000 Frenchmen rather than the Republic one

and indivisible." This perfervid, if illogical, exclamation of a

Commissioner of the Convention reveals something of that passion for

unity which now fused together the French nation. Some peoples merge

themselves slowly together under the shelter of kindred beliefs and

institutions. Others again, after feeling their way towards closer

union, finally achieve it in the explosion of war or revolution. The

former case was the happy lot of the British nation; the latter, that of

the French. Pitt, with his essentially English outlook, failed to

perceive that the diverse peoples grouped together under the French

monarchy had now attained to an indissoluble unity under the stress of

the very blows which he and his Allies dealt in Flanders, Alsace, and

Provence.

 

For by this time the counter-strokes dealt by the Republicans were

telling with fatal effect on their adversaries. The failure of the

Spanish campaign in Roussillon and the irruption of a French force into

Catalonia dashed the spirits of that weak and wavering monarch,

Charles IV; and already whispers were heard that peace with France was

necessary. The disputes with England concerning Nootka Sound and affairs

at Toulon predisposed the King and his people to think with less horror

of the regicides of Paris. As for Sardinia, the childish obscurantism of

the Court of Turin had nursed to quick life a mushroom growth of

Jacobinism. The army defending the Alpine passes was honeycombed with

discontent; and the suspicious conduct of Austria towards her little

ally foreshadowed the divisions and disasters which quickly followed on

the advent of Bonaparte at that theatre of the war.

 

It was clear that only from London could come the impulse which would

invigorate this anaemic Coalition. Pitt sought to impart such an impulse

in the King's Speech at the opening of the Session of 1794. It had

throughout a defiant ring. The capture of three of the northern

fortresses of France, the gains in the East and West Indies (they

amounted to Pondicherry, Chandernagore, and Tobago, together with

Miquelon and St. Pierre), the blow dealt to her navy at Toulon, and the

impossibility of her continuing the recent prodigious exertions, were in

turn duly emphasized. And on 21st January 1794, when Fox moved an

amendment in favour of peace, the Prime Minister spoke even more

strongly of the madness of coming to terms with the present rulers of

France. Could any statesman not gifted with second sight have spoken

otherwise? At that time the Reign of Terror was approaching its climax.

The Goddess of Reason had lately been enthroned in Notre Dame amidst

ribald songs and dances. The schism between Robespierre and the

atheistical party was beginning to appear; and few persons believed that

France would long bend the knee before the lords of the guillotine,

whose resources were largely derived from the plunder of churches and

banks, forced loans from the wealthy, and a graduated Income Tax

resembling the Spartan proposals of Thomas Paine.

 

In such a case Pitt naturally repeated his statement of the previous

session, that he altogether deprecated a peace with France, unless it

possessed some elements of permanence, and secured due indemnity to

Great Britain. Nay, he declared that he would rather persevere with war,

even in the midst of disasters, than come to terms with the present

rulers of France, who were alike enemies of order and rabid foes of

England. They drove men into battle by fear of the guillotine; they

formed rapine and destruction into a system, and perverted to their

detestable purposes all the talents and ingenuity derived from the

civilization around them. He was careful, however, to correct the

mis-statement of Fox, that the Government was struggling for the

restoration of the French monarchy. While believing that that nation

would live most happily under a King, Pitt denied that a restoration was

the object of the present war. We have already seen that he held this

view in his correspondence with the Austrian Court. The House supported

Ministers by 277 votes to 59.

 

These declarations, backed by so large a majority, caused great

satisfaction at Vienna, and heartened that Government in the midst of

its many uncertainties. There was every need of encouragement. In that

age, when the great monarchs of the eighteenth century had passed, or

were passing, away, Francis II stood somewhat low among the

mediocrities on whom fell the strokes of destiny. He was a poor replica

of Leopold II. Where the father was supple and adroit, the son was

perversely obstinate or weakly pliable. In place of foresight and

tenacity in the pursuit of essentials, Francis was remarkable for a more

than Hapsburg narrowness of view, and he lacked the toughness which had

not seldom repaired the blunders of that House. Those counsellors swayed

him most who appealed to his family pride, or satisfied his other

dominant feelings, attachment to the old order of things and a pedantic

clinging to established usages. But the weakness of his character soon

became so patent as to excite general distrust, especially as he was

swayed by the wayward impulses of his consort, a daughter of

Ferdinand IV and Maria Carolina of Naples. From her mother she inherited

a hatred of French principles and the bent towards intrigue and

extravagance which wrecked the careers of that Queen and of her sister,

Marie Antoinette. Francis II and his consort longed to stamp out the

French plague; but they lacked the strength of mind and of will that

commands success. Our special envoy at Vienna, Thomas Grenville,

questioned whether the Emperor "had steadiness enough to influence the

Government."

 

According to the same competent judge, the Chancellor Thugut was the

only efficient Minister, being very laborious in his work, and indeed

"the only man of business about the Court."[338] Yet Thugut was rather a

clever diplomat and ideal head-clerk than a statesman. In forethought he

did not much excel his master. Indeed, his personality and his position

alike condemned him to aim at cheap and easy gains. His features and

figure were mean. Worse still, he was of low birth, a crime in the eyes

of nobles and courtiers who for nearly half a century had seen the

prestige of the Chancery enhanced by the lordly airs and whims of

Kaunitz. Fear of courtly intrigues ever obsessed the mind of Thugut; and

thus, whenever the horizon darkened, this coast-hugging pilot at once

made for the nearest haven. In particular, as the recovery of Belgium in

the year 1793 brought no financial gain, but unending vistas of war, he

sought other means of indemnity, and discovered them in Alsace-Lorraine,

South Poland, and Venice. The first was a concession to the pride of

the House of Hapsburg-Lorraine; but Thugut saw in Venetia and in the

land south of Warsaw the readiest means of indemnifying Austria for the

loss of her Belgic Provinces, which after the defeat of Wattignies

(October 1793) he probably expected and welcomed.

 

In this orientation of Hapsburg policy Thugut did but follow the impulse

first imparted by Hertzberg at Berlin. As we have seen, Frederick

William II entered on the French war in one of his chivalrous moods,

which passed away amidst the smoke of Valmy. The miseries of the retreat

Rhinewards, and the incursion of the French into the valley of the Main

taught him prudence, while the ease of his conquest of Great Poland

early in the year 1793 assured the victory of statecraft over chivalry.

Morton Eden reported from Berlin that, had the preparations for the

Valmy campaign equalled in thoroughness those for the invasion of

Poland, events must have gone very differently in Champagne. The

circumspection with which the Prussians conducted the siege of Mainz in

the summer of 1793, and the long delays of the autumn, have already been

noticed. The result of it was that at Christmastide of the year 1793

Pichegru and Hoche threw back Wurmser in disastrous rout, and compelled

Brunswick hurriedly to retire to the