1805-1806 off Cape Trafalgar. Nelson gave the signal of "England expects every man to do his duty." In the battle which followed the French and Spanish fleets were almost entirely destroyed, but Nelson fell mortally wounded by a shot from a French ship. Never again during the war did a French or Spanish fleet venture to put out from harbor, or had a British navy to contend for the mastery over the sea. Yet so deeply was Nelson honored in England that when the news of the triumph arrived it was doubtful whether joy for the victory or sorrow for the loss was the greater. In 1805 there was strife on land as well as at sea. In April the foundations of a third coalition against France were laid by an alliance between England and Russia. Austria joined the coalition, and in August Napoleon, knowing that by Calder's victory his scheme for the invasion of England had failed, marched his army off from Boulogne to attack Austria and Russia. His enemies had no time to combine against him. On October 14 Napoleon compelled the Austrians at Ulm to capitulate. On November 11 he entered Vienna, the Austrian army having retreated to join the Russian. On December 2 he signally defeated the two armies at Austerlitz. The Russians fell back on their own country. On December 6 the Emperor Francis signed the Treaty of Pressburg. Pitt, worn out with work and anxiety, did not recover the blow. "How I leave my country!" were the last words spoken by him. On January 23, 1806, he died. In modern times he is chiefly respected as the enlightened financier and statesman of the years of peace. His resistance to France, it is thought, was weakly planned, and his management of the war disastrous. In his own time he was regarded as "The Pilot that weathered the storm." If he failed in his military efforts against France on the Continent, where he had but governments to oppose to a nation, he made England safe by the impulse which he gave to her power at sea. "England," he once said in replying to a toast at the Guildhall, "has saved herself by her exertions, and will save Europe by her example." Such words form Pitt's best epitaph. He showed what could be done by a nation conscious of its strength, and resolute not to bow to the dictates of a despotic conqueror. Pitt's death left the king no choice but to take Fox as a minister. A ministry known as the Ministry of All the Talents was formed out of various parties. Lord Grenville, who had been Foreign Secretary at the end of Pitt's first ministry, became Prime 1806 Minister, bringing with him an air of respectability of which the Whigs were in want, while Fox was Foreign Secretary, and a place was even found for Sidmouth, the leader of the stiffest Tories. Fox did his best to bring the war to an end by opening a negotiation with France, taking advantage of the confession of a man, in all probability an agent of Napoleon himself, that he intended to murder the Emperor of the French. Fox, however, soon discovered that Napoleon was too slippery to be bound by treaties. At one time the French Emperor offered to restore Hanover to the king of England, and at another time he drew back and offered it to Prussia. Even Fox became convinced that a continuance of the war was unavoidable. He was himself suffering from dropsy, and had not many weeks to live; but, though unable to give peace to his country, he had time to signalize the close of his career by moving a resolution for the abolition of the slave trade, as far as British ships and colonies were concerned. Fox died on September 13; and though the slave trade was not abolished by law till after his death, he lived to know that all real difficulties had been surmounted. Whether, if he had held office for a longer term, he would have been distinguished among prac tical statesmen, it is difficult to say. It is true that he was not an originator of new schemes of policy; but a minister may be none the worse for that, if he has the tact and skill to secure the acceptance of the schemes of others. Fox's main defect was his want of power to forecast the temper with which his words and acts would be received, and he thus frequently, as in the cases of the coalition with Lord North and of the Regency Bill, made himself unpopular, much to his own surprise. The generous warmth of his disposition, and his hopeful sympathy with all good and great causes, give him a high place among British statesmen. The spring and summer of 1806 had been spent by Napoleon in remodeling Germany. Neither in Italy nor in the smaller states of Germany was there any feeling of offended nationality goading on the populations to resist changes which brought with them more active government and better administration. The long patience of the king of Prussia was finally exhausted. War between Prussia and France was declared; but the Prussian state and army were both completely inefficient, and before the end of November Napoleon was in military possession of the greater part of Prussia. Russia came to the aid of the now diminished Prussia. The 1807 Czar Alexander I. anxiously looked to England for aid, thinking that if an English army were landed on the coast of the Baltic, Napoleon would be obliged to detach part of his forces to watch it, and would thereby be weakened in his struggle with Russia. The Ministry of All the Talents, however, had no capacity for war. They frittered away their strength by sending useless expeditions to the Dardanelles, to Egypt, and to Buenos Ayres, leaving themselves no troops for the decisive struggle nearer home. On March 24 they were expelled from office by the king, because, though they agreed to relinquish a project which they had formed for allowing Catholics to serve as officers in the army and navy, they refused to promise that they would never under any circumstances propose any measure of concession to the Catholics. On March 25, the day after their resignation, the royal assent was given to a bill for the abolition of the slave trade. The new Prime Minister was the inefficient Duke of Portland, who had been the nominal head of the Coalition Ministry in 1783. The ablest members of the new Cabinet were Lord Castlereagh, who had managed the Irish Parliament at the time of the Union, and the brilliant George Canning, who had been one of the staunchest of the followers of Pitt. The remainder of Portland's colleagues were narrow in their views, and all were pledged to resist Catholic emancipation. A dissolution of Parliament took place before long, and it was found that the constituencies supported the king and the new ministry. The reaction against the principles of the French revolutionists was still so strong that it was difficult to obtain a hearing even for the most necessary plan of reform. Canning, who was Foreign Secretary, would readily have sent to the Baltic the forces which his predecessor had refused to the Czar. Before, however, they could be got ready, Napoleon defeated the Russians at Friedland on June 14, and on the 25th he held an interview with the Czar on a raft on the Niemen. Alexander was vexed at the delay of the English, and the first words he uttered to Napoleon were, "I hate the English as much as you do." The Treaty of Tilsit, signed between France and Russia on July 7, was the result of the conference by which they divided Europe between them for conquest. While Napoleon was establishing a dominion over the western and central part of the European Continent, Great Britain made use of her dominion of the sea to enlarge her colonial possessions. 1807 No one at that time thought much of the establishment in 1788 of a settlement of convicts in Botany Bay, or what afterwards came to be known as New South Wales. The two points at which British ambition aimed were the security of the sea route to India and the extension of the production of sugar in the West Indies. The first design was satisfied in 1806, by a second and permanent occupation of the Dutch territory at the Cape of Good Hope; the second, in 1804, by the taking from the Dutch of the territory on the mainland of South America, afterwards known as British Guiana, and by the capture of West Indian islands which had hitherto been held by the French and Dutch. In India the Mahrattas were overthrown by Arthur Wellesley. In the meanwhile Napoleon, hopeless of overpowering Britain at sea, attempted to subjugate her in another way. On November 21, 1806, soon after his victory at Jena, he issued the Berlin Decree, closing all European ports under his influence that is to say, almost all the ports from the Vistula to the Adriatic-against British commerce. All British ports were declared in a state of blockade, though Napoleon could not watch any one of them with a single vessel, and all goods coming from Great Britain or her colonies were to be destroyed. On November 11, 1807, Great Britain retaliated by Orders in Council declaring all ports of France and her allies to be in a state of blockade, and all vessels good prize which attempted to enter them unless they had previously touched at a British harbor. To this, on December 17, 1807, Napoleon replied by the Milan Decree, declaring all neutral vessels liable to seizure if they touched at any British ports before attempting to land their cargoes in any part of Europe under the control of France. The Berlin and Milan Decrees together established what is known as Napoleon's Continental System. Ultimately the effects of the Continental System were most injurious to Napoleon. As the British fleet controlled the sea, no colonial goods could be obtained except through British vessels. A gigantic system of smuggling sprang up, and the seizure and destruction of British goods only served to raise the price of those which escaped. Sugar, coffee, and calico grew dear, and the laborer soon discovered that, in consequence of the Continental System, he had to pay more for the coffee which he drank and for the shirt which he wore. A strong feeling opposed to Napoleon manifested itself for the first time among the conquered populations. |