William Pitt and the Great War Part 13

In view of these considerations I cannot endorse Lecky's censure (vi, 134) on Pitt's "blindness" as to the character of the war.

[201] Sir James Murray, our envoy at Frankfurt, was a.s.sured on 1st February that 138,419 Austrians were ready for the campaign.

[202] B.M. Add. MSS., 34448.

[203] See Martens, v, 530-5, for the Russo-Prussian treaty of 13th July 1793.

[204] Murray to Grenville, 19th January 1793; see "Pitt and Napoleon Miscellanies," which also contain the new letters of Burke referred to above.

[205] Vivenot, ii, 498-506.

[206] Martens, v, 438-42.

[207] Hon. J. W. Fortescue, "Hist. of the British Army," iv, 77-83.

[208] Pretyman MSS.

[209] Chevening MSS.

[210] Murray reported to Grenville on 10th and 18th February that the Allies at Frankfurt were disturbed by news of the negotiation with Dumouriez. See too, Vivenot, ii, 489.

[211] "Dropmore P.," ii, 377-81; "Dumouriez," by J. H. Rose and A. M.

Broadley, 162-75.

[212] "F. O.," Austria, 32, Morton Eden to Grenville, 30th March.

[213] "War Office" 6, (7); 23rd February, to Duke of York; B.M. Add. MSS 34448, Grenville to Auckland, 23rd February; Calvert, "Campaigns in Flanders and Holland," chs. i, ii.

[214] This letter (for which see "Pitt and Napoleon Miscellanies") corrects Mr. Fortescue's statement (iv, 125) that Ministers alone were responsible for the Dunkirk scheme. George III was morally responsible for it.

[215] "Dropmore P.," ii, 387.

[216] "F. O.," Austria, 33, Eden to Grenville, 27th and 28th March, 10th April; Vivenot, ii, 541; Hausser, i, 483.

[217] _Ibid._, Eden to Grenville, 15th April. This probably refers to Alsace; but it may possibly hint at a part.i.tion of Venice which had been mooted at Vienna before. A slice of Piedmont was also desired (Eden to Grenville, 8th June).

[218] _Ibid._, Eden to Grenville, 30th March.

[219] The West India expedition was again and again deferred in favour of that to la Vendee or Toulon (Vivenot, iii, 383).

[220] Sybel, iii, 38-40; Hausser, i, 488, 489.

[221] Pretyman MSS. I have published the letter of 5th April 1793 almost in full in the "Eng. Hist. Rev." for April 1910.

[222] "Dropmore P.," ii, 388-93, 399.

[223] "F. O.," France, 42. I cannot agree with Sorel (iii, 405) in taking the French overtures seriously.

[224] "W. O.," 6 (10), Dundas to Murray (now secretary to the Duke of York).

[225] Calvert, 80.

[226] Calvert, ch. iii; Fortescue, iv, 111.

[227] "Dropmore P.," iii, 493.

[228] "Dropmore P.," ii, 436.

[229] Sybel, iii, 136, 137.

[230] "Mems. of Sir G. Elliot (Earl of Minto)," ii, 159.

[231] "W. O.," 6 (10), 1st August, to Sir J. Murray, which corrects the statement in Sybel (iii, 140), that England meant to keep Dunkirk.

[232] "Malmesbury Diaries," iii, 18.

[233] Calvert, 119-21.

[234] "Mems. of Sir G. Elliot," ii, 160.

[235] Pitt MSS., 196.

[236] Vivenot, iii, 352, 353.

[237] _Ibid._, 320, 321, 339, 379, 380; "Dropmore P.," ii, 470, 536. In the last pa.s.sage Yarmouth accuses the King of Prussia of deliberately thwarting the action of the Austrian army under Wurmser.

CHAPTER VI

TOULON

Delay leads impotent and snail-paced beggary: Then fiery expedition be my wing, Jove's Mercury, and herald for a King.

--SHAKESPEARE, _King Richard III_, act iv, sc. 3.

The enterprise destined to develop into the occupation of Toulon arose out of the negotiations for alliance with Austria, Sardinia, and Naples.

By the first of these England pledged herself to send a considerable fleet into the Mediterranean, as an effective help to the military operations then going on in the Maritime Alps and the Genoese Riviera.

Indeed, the Court of Vienna made this almost a _sine qua non_ of its alliance. On its side the British Government gained a.s.surances of military aid from Sardinia and Naples, the former of those States agreeing to furnish 20,000 troops in return for the annual subsidy of 200,000.

Here, then, were the foundations of a Mediterranean policy on which Pitt and his colleagues began to build in the years 1793-4, with the singular and unforeseen results at Toulon and in Corsica. Everything favoured some such design. The French marine was enfeebled by mutiny, and, as the spring of 1793 merged into summer, there came ominous signs of revolt in the South against the Jacobin faction supreme at Paris. Accordingly Grenville urged the Hapsburg Court, in return for British help in Flanders, to a.s.sist an expedition of the Allies to the coast of Provence. The conduct of the Austrian Chancellor, Thugut, was characteristic. Far from strengthening the Imperial forces in Italy, he prepared to withdraw some of them for the Rhenish campaign, now that a British fleet spread its covering wings over the Kingdom of Sardinia.[238]

Nevertheless the British Ministers persevered with their scheme; but whether they at first aimed at Corsica or Toulon is uncertain.[239]

Certain it is that Pitt on 19th July proposed to detach three line regiments from the Duke of York's force in Flanders and send them to the Mediterranean along with one brigade of the Hessian corps and a body of Wurtembergers. He pointed out that the naval superiority of Hood and the Spanish fleet in that sea would enable us to strike a telling blow at Provence if we were helped by Sardinians, Neapolitans, and Austrians from the Milanese. He admitted the strength of the arguments in favour of our land forces acting together on one point; but he added: "What I now mention seems to offer a fair chance of doing something material in the South [of France], and, if we distress the enemy on more sides than one, while their internal distraction continues, it seems hardly possible that they can long oppose any effectual resistance."[240]

Pitt wrote thus at the time when Mainz and Valenciennes were on the point of surrender, and the Bretons, together with nearly the whole of the South of France, were in open revolt against the regicide Republic.

Equally characteristic of his sanguine temperament is his Memorandum of 23rd August 1793 as to the allied forces which ought to be available for service against France in June 1794, namely, 30,000 in Flanders, while 50,000 marched thence on Paris; 50,000 to attack Brest, and as many more to attack Toulon.[241]