William Pitt and the Great War Part 18

[298] "H. O.," Scotland, 8. W. Scot to R. Dundas, 1st August.

[299] See the "Narrative of the Sufferings of T. F. Palmer and W.

Skirving" (1794), and "Monthly Mag.," xvii, 83-5, for Palmer's adventures. He died of dysentery in 1799.

[300] "H. O.," Scotland, 9.

[301] Their Memorial to Henry Dundas is in "H. O.," Geo. III (Domestic), 27. They did not claim that he was innocent, merely that the punishment was excessive and unjust.

[302] "Arniston Mems.," 240.

[303] Campbell, _op. cit._, viii, 145, 147.

[304] "H. O.," Geo. III (Domestic), 27.

[305] For the instructions see E. Smith, "The Story of the English Jacobins," 87.

[306] "State Trials," xxiii, 414.

[307] J. Gerrald had published a pamphlet, "A Convention the only Means of saving us from Ruin" (1793). It is in the British Museum.

[308] "H. O.," Scotland, 9.

[309] "State Trials," xxiii, 766.

[310] "Auckland Journals," iii, 205.

[311] "Arniston Mems.," 242.

[312] E. Smith, "The Eng. Jacobins," 93-7.

[313] See "Report of the Committee of Secrecy" (17th May 1794).

[314] C. Cestre, "John Thelwall," 77.

[315] "H. O.," Geo. III (Domestic), 30.

[316] "State Trials," xxiii, 1055-1166. For technical reasons this statement of Booth could not be given at Walker's trial. Besides Walker's Const.i.tutional Society, there were two others, the Reformation and Patriotic Societies, founded in March and April 1792.

[317] See E. Smith, "The Eng. Jacobins," ch. vi, for the meetings at Sheffield and the part played by Yorke.

[318] "H. O.," Geo. III (Domestic), 31.

[319] _Ibid._, 27, 29. Spence purveyed "Pigs' Meat," while Eaton sold "Hogs' Wash." The t.i.tles are a take-off of Burke's phrase "the swinish mult.i.tude."

[320] _I.e._, similar to the one pa.s.sed in Dublin against a People's Convention.

[321] "Report of the Parl. Comm. of Secrecy" (17th May 1794).

[322] "Parl. Hist.," x.x.x, 1363-91; x.x.xi, 1-27.

[323] _Ibid._, x.x.xi, 97-121.

[324] "Morning Chronicle" for April 1794.

[325] "H. O.," Geo. III (Domestic), 30.

[326] "Auckland Journals," iii, 213.

[327] "State Trials," xxiv, 588, 600, 601.

[328] "State Trials," xxiv, 626.

[329] E. Smith, "Eng. Jacobins," 116.

[330] "Parl. Hist.," x.x.xi, 475-97.

[331] "Life of Horne Tooke," ii, 119. It was afterwards absurdly said that Dundas, Horne Tooke's neighbour at Wimbledon, had had the letter filched from his house. Both of them lived on the west side of the "green."

[332] "Parl. Hist.," x.x.xi, 497-505.

[333] "Life of T. Hardy," 42; "State Trials," xxiv, 717, 729, 762, etc.

The evidence fills 1,207 pages.

[334] _Ibid._, 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 h.o.m.ogeneous 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 part.i.tion 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, n.o.bles, 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 pa.s.sion for unity which now fused together the French nation. Some peoples merge themselves slowly together under the shelter of kindred beliefs and inst.i.tutions. 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.