The War of Wars (129 page)

In essence he was a military dictator, a superb general, and a conqueror utterly unprincipled and ruthless in the pursuit of his own self-promotion, subordinating France to his own glory even though his country and the French people sacrificed themselves in the hundreds of thousands in his cause – and then, after much suffering, destroyed it. He was a military genius, a political and diplomatic third-rater, and a monster.

How then, in retrospect, should Britain have responded to the challenge posed by revolutionary France and, later, Napoleon? As this book has tried to recount, the early period, that of revolutionary war, was met with by much wishful thinking, indecision and appeasement by William Pitt’s government, which sincerely did not want to go to war. The military outcome of the early British expeditions were catastrophic, as was too their failure to support the resistance in France. The West Indies’ campaign was militarily successful only at a huge cost in life.

As the war progressed, Pitt, his foreign secretary Grenville and William Windham, his war secretary and chief spymaster, became more resolute and pursued a skilful policy of building continental coalitions against Napoleon, supported by colossal amounts of British money, coupled with a dazzling naval campaign which has never been exceeded in history. All the time, however, both Pitt and Grenville preached peace and reconciliation.

When Napoleon came to power both men decided to continue the war, Pitt eventually dying of nervous exhaustion and Grenville acting only briefly as his successor. Foreign policy devolved, after a brief interlude dominated by the mercurial George Canning, to the unlovely triumvirate of the brilliant but cold Lord Castlereagh, the mediocre figurehead Lord Liverpool and Richard Wellesley and his brothers. Ironically, this was one moment when peace might have been possible, albeit with the continent under French domination and Napoleon content to rest upon his laurels. Instead, probably rightly, the British prosecuted the Peninsular War and sought to bribe and persuade their continental allies into re-entering the fight. They succeeded in both. By this time the British army had been transformed from being brave but inefficient under incompetent commanders to being brave, effective and well-officered. When war broke out on the continent again, Britain’s confrontational policy was implacably pursued and ended in a total victory, first in 1814 and then in 1815, with the charmless Castlereagh pursuing a carefully structured settlement for Europe.

Pitt and Grenville can be faulted for rising to the French challenge too slowly, then complimented for pursuing it vigorously. Castlereagh and Liverpool can be faulted for ignoring the possibility of peace with France, and instead seeking war regardless. While many mistakes were
made by both administrations, it is hard to fault Britain’s implacable commitment to the war in the belief that the war party under Napoleon would learn nothing except from defeat.

With the bumbling Louis XVIII’s restoration, France was neutralized for decades as a political or military power: Britain could be said to have attained its objective. For Britain the Napoleonic war was a thrice-just war – Britain had to take arms against the disruption caused to British commerce, the slaughter wrought throughout the continent, and the threat to British interests not just in the Baltic, the Mediterranean and the Low Countries, but around the world.

Who, in the end, defeated Napoleon? All the coalition members at one time or another now claim to have been the principals. Dogged Austria deserves a large share of the credit for rising from defeat again and again. Prussia, after its lamentable initial performance, renewed some of its national pride at the end. Russia can claim credit for the 1812 campaign, in which although there was no great feat of Russian arms, the French were completely routed.

Yet the lion’s share must surely go to Britain, with Pitt and Grenville’s policies of coalition-building on the continent, the astounding feats of Britain’s navy under Nelson and a host of other outstanding commanders, and Wellington’s relentless performance during the Peninsular War. It was the failure of France to invade or strangle Britain economically that first frustrated revolutionary and Napoleonic France when continental Europe lay prostrate at its feet: and it was the Peninsular War that first exposed France’s weakness and tied down huge French armies, encouraging first Russia and then Austria and Prussia back into the war. Waterloo was, for all its fame, essentially a postscript, the coup de grâce for an indomitable fighter who had failed to accept his own demise the year before. Nor was it a brilliantly fought battle, although Wellington prevailed: Wellington’s true greatness lay in the Peninsular campaign and the resistance of his Spanish and Portuguese allies which brought down a continental giant by the feet. It was through men like him, Moore and Hill in the British army and Howe, St Vincent, Duncan, Nelson, Cochrane and Collingwood in the navy that Britain achieved its deliverance and continental Europe its independence.

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