William Pitt and the Great War Part 5

[64] "Wealth of Nations," bk. iv, ch. iii.

[65] "Gower's Despatches," 165, 171.

[66] Sorel, ii, 216.

[67] Fersen, "Diary" (Eng. edit.), 255.

[68] Clapham, "Causes of the War of 1792," 231.

[69] On the Tobago proposal see "Dropmore P.," ii, 260.

[70] Pallain, 215-9. The original is in Pitt MSS., 333.

[71] Fersen, "Diary" (Eng. edit.), 316, 319.

[72] "Dropmore P.," ii, 267. See, too, further details in "Dumouriez and the Defence of England against Napoleon," by J. H. Rose and A. M.

Broadley.

[73] Pitt MSS., 333. Chauvelin to Dumouriez, 28th April.

[74] "Parl. Hist.," xxix, 1522.

[75] "Rights of Man," pt. ii, ch. v.

[76] "Dropmore P.," ii, 282; "Auckland Journals," ii, 410.

[77] "Ann. Reg." (1792), 178-82, 225-32; Sorel, ii, 445-54; Heidrich, pt. ii, ch. ii. I fully agree with Dr. Salomon ("Pitt," 537) as to the sincerity of Pitt's desire for neutrality.

[78] Sybel, ii, 142.

[79] For the discussions between the three Powers on Poland see Heidrich, 165-219; and Salomon, "Das Politische System des jungeren Pitt und die zweite Teilung Polens" (Berlin, 1895).

[80] "F. O.," Poland, 6. Hailes to Grenville, 16th and 27th June 1792.

[81] "Dropmore P.," ii, 142; see, too, ii, 279.

[82] "Mems. of Fox," iii, 18.

CHAPTER III

PEACE OR WAR?

It seems absolutely impossible to hesitate as to supporting our Ally [Holland] in case of necessity, and the explicit declaration of our sentiments is the most likely way to prevent the case occurring.--PITT TO LORD STAFFORD, _13th November 1792_.

One of the first requisites for the study of a period whose outlines are well known, is to bar out the insidious notion that the course of events was inevitable. Nine persons out of ten have recourse to that easy but fallacious way of explaining events. The whole war, they say, or think, was inevitable. It was fated that the Duke of Brunswick should issue his threatening manifesto to the Parisians if violence were offered to Louis XVI; that they should resent the threat, rise in revolt, and dethrone the King, and thereafter ma.s.sacre royalists in the prisons. The innate vigour of the democratic cause further required that the French should stand their ground at Valmy and win a pitched battle at Jemappes, that victory leading to an exaltation of soul in which the French Republicans pushed on their claims in such a way as to bring England into the field. History, when written in this way, is a symmetrical mosaic; and the human mind loves patterns.

But events are not neatly chiselled; they do not fall into geometrical groups, however much the memory, for its own ease, seeks to arrange them thus. Their edges are jagged; and the slightest jar might have sent them in different ways. To recur to the events in question: the Duke of Brunswick objected to issuing the manifesto, and only owing to the weariness or weakness of old age, yielded to the insistence of the _emigres_ at his headquarters: the insurrection at Paris came about doubtfully and fitfully; the issue on 10th August hung mainly on the personal bearing of the King; the ma.s.sacres were the work of an insignificant minority, which the vast ma.s.s regarded with sheer stupefaction; and even the proclamation of the French Republic by the National Convention on 21st September was not without many searchings of heart.[83]

Meanwhile Pitt and Grenville had not the slightest inkling as to the trend of events. The latter on 13th July 1792 wrote thus to Earl Gower at Paris: "My speculations are that the first entrance of the foreign troops [into France] will be followed by negotiations; but how they are to end, or what possibility there is to establish any form of government, or any order in France, is far beyond any conjectures I can form."[84] This uncertainty is illuminating. It shows that Pitt and Grenville were not fa.r.s.eeing schemers bent on undermining the liberties of France and Britain by a war on which they had long resolved, but fallible mortals, unable to see a handbreadth through the turmoil, but cherishing the hope that somehow all would soon become clear. As to British policy during the summer of 1792, it may be cla.s.sed as masterly inactivity or nervous pa.s.sivity, according to the standpoint of the critic. In one case alone did Pitt and Grenville take a step displeasing to the French Government, namely, by recalling Gower from the emba.s.sy at Paris; and this was due to the fall of the French monarchy on 10th August, and to the danger attending the residence of a n.o.ble in Paris.

Only by a display of firmness did Gower and his secretary, Lindsay, succeed in obtaining pa.s.sports from the new Foreign Minister, Lebrun.[85]

That follower of Dumouriez had as colleagues the former Girondin Ministers, Claviere, Roland, and Servan. Besides them were Monge (the physicist) for the Navy, and Danton for Justice, the latter a far from rea.s.suring choice, as he was known to be largely responsible for the ma.s.sacres in the prisons of Paris early in September. Little is known about the publicist, Lebrun, on whom now rested the duty of negotiating with England, Spain, Holland, etc. It is one of the astonishing facts of this time that unknown men leaped to the front at Paris, directed affairs to momentous issues, and then sank into obscurity or perished.

The Genevese Claviere started a.s.signats and managed revolutionary finance; Servan controlled the War Office for some months with much ability, and then fell; Petion, Santerre, the popular Paris brewer, and an ex-hawker, Hanriot, were successively rulers of Paris for a brief s.p.a.ce.

But of all the puzzles of this time Lebrun is perhaps the chief. In his thirtieth year he was Foreign Minister of France, when she broke with England, Holland, Spain, and the Empire. He is believed by many (_e.g._, by W. A. Miles, who knew him well) to be largely responsible for those wars. Yet who was this Lebrun? Before the Revolution he had to leave France for his advanced opinions, and took refuge at Liege, where Miles found him toiling for a scanty pittance at journalistic hack-work.

Suffering much at the hands of the Austrians in 1790, he fled back to Paris, joined the Girondins, wrote for them, made himself useful to Dumouriez during his tenure of the Foreign Office, and, not long after his resignation, stepped into his shoes and appropriated his policy. In order to finish with him here, we may note that he voted for the death of Louis XVI, and, as President of the Executive Council at that time, signed the order for the execution. He and other Girondins were driven from power on 2nd June 1793 (when Hanriot's brazen voice decided the fate of the Girondins) and he was guillotined on 23rd December of that year, for the alleged crime of conspiring to place Philippe Egalite on the throne. Mme. Roland, who helped Lebrun to rise to power, limns his portrait in these sharp outlines: "He pa.s.sed for a wise man, because he showed no kind of _elan_; and for a clever man, because he was a fairly good clerk; but he possessed neither activity, intellect, nor force of character." The want of _elan_ seems to be a term relative merely to the characteristics of the Girondins, who, whatever they lacked, had that Gallic quality in rich measure.

Chauvelin, the French amba.s.sador in London, is another of these revolutionary rockets. Only in fiction and the drama does he stand forth at all clearly to the eye. History knows him not, except that he had been a marquis, then took up with the Girondins, finally shot up among the Jacobins and made much noise by his intrigues and despatches. With all his showiness and vanity he had enough shrewdness to suit his language at the French emba.s.sy in Portman Square to the Jacobin jargon of the times. After the September ma.s.sacres the only hope for an aristocratic envoy was to figure as an irreproachable patriot.

Chauvelin's dealings with the English malcontents therefore became more and more p.r.o.nounced; for indeed they served both as a life insurance and as a means of annoying Pitt and Grenville in return for their refusal to recognize him as the amba.s.sador of the new Republic.

Londoners in general sided with the Ministry and snubbed the French envoys. Dumont describes their annoyance, during a visit to Ranelagh, at being received everywhere with the audible whisper, "Here comes the French emba.s.sy"; whereupon faces were turned away and a wide s.p.a.ce was left around them.[86]

Such, then, were the men on whom largely rested the future of Europe.

Lebrun mistook fussiness for activity. At a time when tact and dignity prescribed a diminution of the staff at Portman Square, he sent two almost untried men, Noel and, a little later, Benoit, to help Chauvelin to mark time. Talleyrand also gained permission to return to London as _adjoint_ to Chauvelin, which, it appears, was the only safe means of escaping from Paris. Chauvelin speedily quarrelled with him. But the doings of the French emba.s.sy concern us little for the present, as Pitt and Grenville paid no attention to the offers, similar to those made in April, which Lebrun charged his envoys to make for an Anglo-French alliance. It is not surprising, after the September ma.s.sacres, that Ministers should hold sternly aloof from the French envoys; but we may note that Miles considered their att.i.tude most unwise. He further remarked that the proud reserve of Grenville was almost offensive.[87]

We made the acquaintance of Miles as British agent at Paris in 1790 and noted his consequential airs. In 1792 they were full blown.

The opinions of George III and Pitt on the events of that b.l.o.o.d.y harvest-time in Paris are very little known. The King's letters from Weymouth to Pitt in August-September are few and brief. On 16th September, after the arrival of news of the ma.s.sacres, he writes to say that his decision respecting the Prince of Wales's debts is irrevocable.

After that there is a long silence. Pitt's reserve is equally impenetrable. We know, however, from the letters of Burke that the conduct of Ministers deeply disappointed him. Writing to Grenville on 19th September he says that the crisis exceeds in gravity any that is recorded in history; and he adds these curious words: "I know it is the opinion of His Majesty's Ministers that the new [French] principles may be encouraged, and even triumph over every interior and exterior resistance, and may even overturn other States as they have that of France, without any sort of danger of their extending in their consequences to this Kingdom."[88] Can we have a clearer testimony to the calm but rigid resolve with which Pitt and his colleague clung to neutrality? On the following day (the day of the Battle of Valmy) Pitt frigidly declined the request of the Austrian and Neapolitan amba.s.sadors, that the British Government would exclude from its territories all those who should be guilty of an attack on the French royal family. On 21st September Grenville issued a guarded statement on this subject to the _corps diplomatique_; but it was far from meeting the desires of the royalists.[89]

Reticence is a virtue over-developed in an aristocracy--"that austere domination," as Burke terms it. The virtue is slow in taking root among democracies. The early Radical clubs of Great Britain regarded it as their cherished privilege to state their opinions on foreign affairs with Athenian loquacity; and the months of October and November 1792, when we vainly seek to know the inner feelings of Pitt, are enlivened by resolutions expressing joy at the downfall of tyrants, and fervent beliefs in the advent of a fraternal millennium, the first fruits of which were the election of Paine as deputy for Calais to the National Convention.

In the dealings of nations, as of individuals, feelings often count for more than interests. This was the case in the last four months of the year 1792, when the subjects in dispute bulked small in comparison with the pa.s.sions and prejudices which magnified and distorted them. The psychology of the time therefore demands no less attention than its diplomacy. Its first weeks were darkened by news of the September ma.s.sacres. Even now the details of that cowardly crime arouse horror: and surely no part of Carlyle's epic sinks so low as that in which he seeks to compare that loathsome butchery with the bloodshed of a battlefield.[90] No such special pleading was attempted by leaders of thought of that period. On 10th September Romilly, a friend of human progress, wrote to Dumont: "How could we ever be so deceived in the character of the French nation as to think them capable of liberty?...

One might as well think of establishing a republic of tigers in some forest of Africa." To which the collaborator of Mirabeau replied: "Let us burn all our books; let us cease to think and dream of the best system of legislation, since men make so diabolical a use of every truth and every principle."[91] These feelings were general among Frenchmen.

Buzot stated that the loss of morality, with all its attendant evils, dated from the September ma.s.sacres.

It seems strange that the democratic cause made headway in England after this fell event. Probably its details were but dimly known to the poor, who were at this time the victims of a bad harvest and severe dearth.

The months of September and October were marked by heavy and persistent rains. The Marquis of Buckingham on 23rd September wrote at Stowe to his brother, Lord Grenville, that he was living amidst a vortex of mud, clay, and water such as was never known before--the result of six weeks of unsettled weather, which must impair the harvest and increase the difficulty of maintaining order.[92] Certainly the stars in their courses fought against the _ancien regime_. The rains which made a receptive seed-bed for the writings of Paine also hampered the progress of Brunswick towards the Argonne, crowded his hospitals with invalids, and in part induced that inglorious retreat. As the storms lasted far into the autumn, disaffection increased apace.

The results serve to enliven the dull tones of our Home Office archives.

There one reads of bread riots and meal riots so far back as May 1792, in which stalls are overturned and despoiled; also of more persistent agitation in the factory towns of the North. Liverpool leads off with a dock-strike that is with difficulty ended. Then the colliers of Wigan stop work and seek to persuade all their comrades to follow their example. Most threatening of all is the situation at Manchester and Sheffield. There, in addition to disorder among the townsfolk, disaffection gains ground among the troops sent to keep order. This again is traceable to the dearness of food, for which the scanty pay of the trooper by no means suffices. Here, then, is the opportunity for the apostle of discontent judiciously to offer a cheap edition of the "Rights of Man," on which fare the troop becomes half-mutinous and sends in a pet.i.tion for higher pay. This the perplexed authorities do not grant, but build barracks, a proceeding eyed askance by publicans and patriots as the beginning of military rule.[93]

The South of England, too, is beset by fears of a novel kind. After the overthrow of the French monarchy on 10th August fugitives from France come fast to the coasts of Kent and Suss.e.x. The flights become thicker day by day up to the end of that fell month of September. Orthodox priests, always in disguise, form the bulk of the new arrivals. As many as 700 of them land at Eastbourne, and strain the hospitality of that little town. About as many reach Portsmouth and Gosport, to the perplexity of the authorities. When a.s.sured that they are staunch royalists and not apostles of Revolution, the commander allots shelter in the barracks at Forton, where for the present they exist on two pence a day each. Plymouth, which receives fewer of them, frowns on the newcomers as politically suspect and economically ruinous. The mayor a.s.sures Dundas that, if more priests arrive, or are sent there, they will be driven away by the townsfolk for fear of dearth of corn. In Jersey the food question eclipses all others; for 2,000 priests (so it is said) land there, until all ideas of hospitality are cast to the winds and the refugees are threatened with expulsion. Only in the vast obscurantism of London is there safety for these exiles. A subscription list is started on their behalf; the King offers the royal house at Winchester for the overplus at Portsmouth: and by degrees the scared throngs huddle down into the dire poverty and uneasy rest that are to be their lot for many a year.[94]

Strange adventures befell many of the French n.o.bles in their escape. The Duc de Liancourt, commanding the troops at Rouen, was fain to flee to the coast, hire a deckless craft, and conceal himself under f.a.ggots. In that manner he put to sea and finally made the opposite coast at Hastings. There, still nervous, he made his way to the nearest inn, and, to proclaim his insularity, called for porter. The beverage was too much for him, and he retired to his room in a state of unconscious pa.s.sivity.

On his awaking, the strange surroundings seemed those of a French lock-up; but as he crept down to make his escape, the mugs caught his eye; and their brightness convinced him that he was in England. Such was his story, told to the family at Bury, where f.a.n.n.y Burney was staying. Several of the wealthier French refugees settled at Richmond, and there found Horace Walpole as charmer and friend. But the most distinguished group was that at Juniper Hall, near Dorking where finally Mme. de Stael and Talleyrand enlivened the dull days and long drives with unfailing stores of wit. We shall later on make the acquaintance of the French _emigres_ in a more active and bellicose mood.

Such, then, was the mental condition of our folk. Depressed by rain and dear food, beset by stories of plotters from Paris, or harrowed by the tales of misery of the French _emigres_, Britons came to look on France as a land peopled by demons, who sought to involve other lands in the ruin to which they had reduced their own. In this state of nervousness and excitement little was needed to bring about a furious reaction on behalf of Church and King.

The follies of English democrats helped on this reaction. Whispers went about of strange and threatening orders of arms at Birmingham. A correspondent at the midland capital informed Dundas at the end of September that a Dr. Maxwell, of York, had ordered 20,000 daggers, which were to be 12 inches in the blade and 5 1/4 inches in the handle. The informant convinced the manufacturer that he must apprise the Home Secretary of this order and send him a specimen of the weapon. Probably it was the same which Burke melodramatically cast down on the floor of the House of Commons during his speech of 28th December. The dimensions exactly tally with those named by the biographer of Lord Eldon, who retained that dagger, though Bland Burges also put in a claim to have possessed it. The scepticism which one feels about this prodigious order of daggers, which others give as 3,000, is somewhat lessened by finding another letter, of 2nd October 1792, addressed to Dundas by James Maxwell of York, who stated that he highly disapproved of the "French"

opinions of his younger brother (specimens of whose letters he enclosed), and had just given him 500 so as to dissuade him from going to Manchester to stir up discontent there.[95] This unbrotherly conduct condemns the elder Maxwell, but his information to some extent corroborated that which came from Birmingham. The whole affair may have been merely a device to frighten Ministers; but report says that Pitt took it seriously and ascribed to him the singular statement that Ministers soon might not have a hand to act with or a tongue to speak with.[96]

Certainly there was a good deal of discontent in the manufacturing towns, but it is not easy to say whether it resulted more from dear food or from political reasons. At Stockport a new club styled "The Friends of universal Peace and the Rights of Man," issued and circulated a manifesto a.s.serting their right to inquire into political affairs:

It is our labour that supports monarchy, aristocracy, and the priesthood.... We are not the "swinish mult.i.tude" that Mr. Burke speaks of. A majority of the House of Commons is returned by less than 6,000 voters; whereas, if the representation were equal (and we sincerely hope that it shortly will be), nearly that number will elect every single member. Not one-twentieth part of the commoners of Great Britain are electors.... We have a National Debt of more than 270,000,000, and pay 17,000,000 a year in taxes. More than one fourth of our incomes goes in taxes.[97]

The Radical clubs also showed a desire to pry into foreign affairs; witness the following letter from Thomas Hardy to Dr. Adams, Secretary of the London Society for Const.i.tutional Information: