SOON after his majesty's declaration of war, the French, as well as the British government, made every possible preparation for war. The The line of hostilities, which each nation intended to pursue, could easily be foreseen, from their relative positions. Great Britain, being mistress of the seas, would naturally direct her principal attack against the colonies and maritime possessions of her enemy; while France, being equally powerful at land, was resolved to obstruct and attack the commerce of Great Britain, in Italy, Germany, and every country where her armies could penetrate: she was also strong enough to wrest from her weaker neighbours a full equivalent for any colonial loss she might incur in the approaching contest. In pursuance of the different systems of warfare, which each nation had adopted, the British government, soon after the king's message of the 8th of March, sent a strong reinforcement of troops to the West Indies; used every possible diligence in equipping her fleet; and increased considerably the defensive force of the country, by calling out the supplementary, as well as the established militia, and by accepting the services of a considerable number of volunteer corps. The exertions of government appeared, however, to be so entirely confined to measures of defence, that even the enemy observed: "It was strange that Great Britain should seek a war, merely to shew that she could put herself into a strong position of resistance." The fact, however, was, that notwithstanding the resolutions to break the 10th article of the treaty of Amiens, and the declaration of war which proceeded from the British cabi

net, yet it was not prepared with a plan to commeuce the contest, by any grand and efficient operation; and the taking of the small islands of St. Lucie and Tobago was the utmost that the disposable force of Great Britain, in its then state of reduction, appeared equal to the achievement of: for if, in the course of the year, the colony of St. Domingo should be rescued from the French armies, that was an event which could not well be calculated upon by the English government, as it depended entirely on the courage, discipline, and perseverance of the black army.

The conduct of the French government evinced a degree of vigour widely different, both in precautionary and executive measures. A few days after the date of the message, Admiral Linois sailed from Brest, for the East Indies, with a strong squadron, having 6,000 troops on board, who were destined not only to strengthen the garrisons of the French colonies in the East, but also to put the Cape of Good Hope in such a condition as to resist any attack made upon it by Great Britain. In Europe the French armies were immediately put in motion. The army of Italy was strongly reinforced, and pushed forward a very large detachment upon Tarentum, and all the strong posts in the kingdom of Naples, which lay on the Adriatic. The French generals, charged with the execution of those orders, expressed in their proclamations, that it was necessary, while England retained Malta, France should occupy those important positions.

On the side of Germany the French government was no less active, enterprising, and daring.

M. Talleyrand, the minister of foreign affairs, had already stated, in plain terms, to Lord Whitworth, that in the event of hostilities, it was natural that a considerable army should be assembled in Holland, and on the frontiers of Hanover: and immediately subsequent to the king's message, France began to put her threat in execution. During the protracted period of the negotiation, a considerable French army was actually assembled on the threatened points, and were in perfect readiness to commence the campaign, at the moment the negotiation broke off. His majesty's declaration of war was not laid before parliament till the 18th of May, and on the 25th, the French general, Mortier, from his head-quarters at Coeerden, summoned the Hanoverian electorate to surrender to his army.

In the attack of Hanover, Bonaparte formally professed that he wished to occupy that country only as a pledge for the restoration of Malta, agreeably to the conditions of the treaty of Amiens, and endeavoured to cover this flagrant violation of the independence and constitution of the German empire, by asserting that it was merely for the purpose of compelling the King of England to maintain the peace of Amiens, that he had ordered his armies to occupy that portion of Germany, in which the present reigning family of England were peculiarly interested. Under those weak and flimsy pretences, he was suffered, without any opposition from the great continental powers, or the states of the empire, to possess himself of that country, which not only yielded him considerable plunder, but gave him a most commanding position in the North of Europe, and which materially affected the polities of the conti

nent.

Notwithstanding that the attack on Hanover had been so long threatened, his majesty's English ministers had not taken the slightest step, either to succour his German territories, or to secure the retreat of the Hanoverian army, and thus procure a most valuable addition to the disposable force of the British empire. Hanover was completely abandoned to its own means of defence, and to the precarious intervention of the German empire; the powers of which, however, having suffered most materially, in the preceding war with France, were not at all inclined to begin another, for the sake of a state neglected and deserted as it was by its natural protector. Although it was not possible that the electorate alone could pretend to oppose itself with effect to the immense power of France, his royal highness the Duke of Cambridge was sent over thither from England, as commander-in-chief, and proclamations were published in his name, and that of the Hanoverian government, calling upon all the inhabitants capable of bearing arms, to defend their country to the last drop of their blood!

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It was not to be expected that such proclama- BOOK VI. tions, at such a time, could have produced any good effect; if, indeed, the inhabitants of the elec- CHAP. IV. torate had been previously armed and organized, they would doubtless have been able to repulse a much greater force than General Mortier commanded; but to suppose that citizens and peasants were to form effective armies, at a moment's notice, and when the enemy were just entering their country, was altogether as absurd as it was unreasonable. The Duke of Cambridge, it is true, pledged himself to share all their dangers, but his situation differed very materially from that of the Hanoverian people. In case of defeat, a frigate was always ready to carry his royal highness back to England; but for the army or inhabitants of that state, there was no retreat, after having irritated the power of France by an opposition, which must have been fruitless, while they were unsupported by any auxiliary means whatever. It was therefore not very surprising that they paid more attention to the proclamations of the French general, than to that of the English prince. General Mortier told them, in his address, that "he had heard of proclamations dictated by the blindest fury, for the purpose of drawing them into a contest, to which they ought to be strangers, and desired them to preserve themselves from an aggression equally absurd and useless, of which they alone would be the victims." To this advice the Hanoverians listened, and positively refused to rise in mass, for the purpose of opposing the French. The opposition therefore which that power experienced from the regular army of Hanover is hardly worth detailing.

On the 26th of May, the invading army entered the town of Bentheim, where the Hanoverian garrison, consisting of an officer and thirty-six men, surrendered themselves prisoners of war. On the 28th, the French force passed the river Ems, at Mippen; and the next day a body of 10,000 entered the principality of Osnaburgh, which had been evacuated by the Hanoverians. The main body of the latter, commanded by Gen. Walmoden, and amounting to near 18,000regulars, appeared determined to make a stand in their positions on the Hunte; and General Hammerstein occupied the town of Diepholtz, with a considerable force of infantry, cavalry, and artillery. The French immediately prepared to dislodge them; a division of their infantry, under the command of General Schiner, and another of cavalry, under the orders of General Nansouty, forced the passage of the Hunte, and directed their march to Sublingen, with a view of cutting off whatever force might be stationed between that town and Diepholtz. General Hammerstein; finding his right turned by this manœuvre, was obliged to retreat in the night, to Borstoen. On the 1st of June, there was a smart skirmish

BOOK VI. between a Hanoverian rear-guard and the French advanced pickets. On the 2d, notwithstanding CHAP. IV. a severe cannonade from the Hanoverian army, General Drouet, who commanded the French 1803. advanced army, attacked them, and after a charge of cavalry, obliged them to retire.

The river Weser was now the last line of defence for the Hanoverian army; the banks of it were well planted with artillery, and it appeared as if the passage of it would be attended with some difficulty. The town of Nieubourg was the Hanoverian head-quarters, against which General Mortier was in full march, when a deputation arrived from the civil and military authorities of the regency of Hanover, to intreat him to suspend his march; which he positively refused, until they had signed a convention, agreeing to put him in possession of the entire electorate, and all the strong places dependent upon it, together with all the artillery, arms, and ammunition. The Hanoverian army were, by the conditions of this convention, to retire behind the Elbe, and to engage not to serve during the war, against France or her allies, until regularly exchanged. The terms of the convention were, however, conditional, depending entirely on the ratification of it by the first consul and his Britannic majesty. It was evident, however, that his majesty could not ratify this convention, as King of Great Britain; and as Elector of Hanover, it would have amounted almost to a renunciation of his sovereignty were he to consent to such terms.

On the 5th of June, the French were in possession of Hanover, where they found a prodigious quantity of artillery and ammunition. Besides the absolute value of the electorate as a conquest, which enabled them to remount their cavalry, and recruit their treasury, the French were now masters of the navigation of the Elbe and Weser, and were determined to use their power there to the injury of the British commerce in Germany. Being in the immediate neighbourhood of the rich commercial Hanse Towns of Hamburgh and Bremen, they were also enabled, under the shape of loans, to levy considerable sums of money upon them; and were the continental powers patient, under this outrageous violation of the German empire, there seemed but little prospect of the possibility of limiting their future encroachments. Under all those circumstances, there can be no doubt, but that the conquest of Hanover was a most important and advantageous acquisition to France, which she had been allowed to make without the slightest opposition from the English government.

The real value of Hanover was not generally known or understood, until France had possessed herself of it. It had always been one of the vulgar prejudices of the English nation, (there were occasionally also ministers to be found, who,

in order to court popularity, gave it their support,) that Hanover was rather to be considered as a clog and an incumbrance to Great Britain, than an advantageous possession: but when it was seen how eager France was to ease his majesty of that incumbrance, the tide of popular opinion ran the contrary way; and, whether with respect to the honor or interest of the nation, the great majority of the people began to think that it should have been defended and maintained.The conquest of Hanover was undoubtedly of the utmost consequence to France, at the same time that it limited her conquests in the course of the year.

Bonaparte endeavoured to push the effects of this acquisition to the utmost possible extent, by aiming at the destruction of the commercial navigation of the British merchant vessels on the rivers Elbe and Weser. A measure which his generals excused by the contemptible sophistry, that as the fortune of war had given them the occupation of the King of England's dominions in Hanover, it could not be expected that British ships would be allowed to pass within the reach of a French battery. If this principle were admitted, it followed that they had gained on the same principle a right to prevent British vessels from going up to Hamburgh or Bremen. The British government, however, with becoming resolution, would by no means admit of this reasoning. They laid it down as a principle, that the conduct of France, in the invasion of Hanover, was an unauthorized and outrageous violation of the independence of the German empire; that it would be an act of hostility in Germany to permit British vessels to be fired at or captured when navigating in the ports and rivers of Germany; and, therefore, (retaliating in some measure on the empire, for not having defended Hanover) took ample measures that the mouths of the Elbe and Weser should be strictly blockaded by British squadrons, and no vessels allowed to pass, so long as British vessels were excluded from their navigation.

The Hanse Towns of Hamburgh and Bremen were now placed in a most deplorable and distressing situation. By the blockade of their harbours, their foreign trade was cut off, while the neighbourhood of the French armies placed them in perpetual danger of military violence and exaction. In this situation they applied to the King of Prussia, as guarantee and protector of the neutrality of the north of Germany; but the cabinet of Berlin, either entering into the views of France, or under the impression of its vast and irresistible power, refused to interfere, and thus were abandoned all the smaller states of the north of Germany to the mercy and discretion of the French government.

The terms of the convention at Sublingen had

placed the French general in possession of the whole of the electorate of Hanover lying on the south side of the river Elbe, the Hanoverian army having retired across the Elbe to the duchy of Lauenburgh: but as this convention was only conditional, and required to be ratified by the British and French governments, so soon as it was known in Paris, that the courier had arrived, announcing his Britannic majesty's refusal to ratify it, Bonaparte sent express orders to his generals to re-commence the campaign. General Mortier thereupon sent a letter to Field-marshal Count Walmoden, the Hanoverian general, informing him, that the refusal of his Britannic majesty to ratify the convention had rendered it null and void. He therefore sent him a fresh proposition, to surrender with his army prisoners of war, to be sent into France. The field-marshal replied, that those terms were so very humiliating, that his army preferred perishing with their arms in in their hands; that they had already made sufficient sacrifices for their country; and that they must now defend their own honor. The officer, however, who carried this answer, was empowered to state, that if any acceptable terms were offered, they would probably not be rejected. General Mortier refused to make any other propositions, and immediately prepared to cross the Elbe in the face of the Hanoverian army, who had taken a strong position on the banks of the river, which was well defended with artillery. But General Walmoden seeing that the French army was determined to force its passage, sent new propositions, which were at length agreed to, and on the 5th of July a convention was settled, by which the Hanoverian army was to be disbanded, and return to their homes upon their parole, not to serve against France or her allies until regularly exchanged; and its artillery, horses, and military stores, were to be given up to the French. General Mortier, in his letter to the first consul, said, that "it was only from generosity to an enemy imploring clemency, that he granted those terms; that General Walmeden signed the capitulation with an afflicted heart; and that it was difficult to paint the situation of the fine regiment of the King of England's guards at dismounting."

The French government, in possessing themselves of Hanover, professed, in a laboured manifesto, that it was their intention to retain it merely as a pledge for the restitution of Malta, and trusted by that pretence to prevail on the other powers of Germany to look with indifference on this invasive violation of the independence and integrity of the empire. The apathy of those powers encouraged the French to the levying large contributions upon the Hanse Towns, and to commit farther encroachments on the

German territory. The Prince Regent of Den

CHAP. IV.

1803.

mark had, indeed, upon the first news of the march BOOK VI. of the French army, advanced a considerable body of troops into Holstein; but after the conquest of Hanover, it was intimated to him, that the French government saw with displeasure preparations which appeared hostile and menacing; in consequence of which he thought it adviseable to withdraw his army, and Hanover, and the adjacent country, remained in the undisputed possession of France.

The aggressions of Bonaparte were not, however, confined to Germany, under the pretext of retaining pledges, for Malta: notwithstanding the conditions of the separate peace with Naples, a considerable French army was in motion to occupy all the Neapolitan ports on the Adriatic, and particularly the town and port of Tarentum, to which Bonaparte had always attached vast importance, and which in the negotiations with Lord Whitworth, it appeared the French government considered as an equivalent for Malta. Ancona, and the principal possessions of the pope on that sea, were seized on by the French army at the same time. And now the moment was arrived, when the avowed system of France in her war with England might be developed, and be put in execution, namely, first, to increase her strength and reinforce her treasury, by the possession and plunder of the weaker states in her neighbourhood; and, finally, to apply her whole collected strength and resources to the invasion and conquest of Great Britain. In was to this darling object of his ambition that Bonaparte applied the large sums which he had obtained from America for the sale of Louisiana, those from Portugal as the price of peace, and the contributions from Spain, Italy, and the Hanse Towns either in the shape of military levy or of loan.

From the very commencement of the war, every preparation was made to carry into effect the menace which he had thrown out to Lord Whitworth of invading England. Independently of his grand fleet at Brest, which was presumed to be destined for the invasion of Ireland, an immense number of transports was ordered to be built, and collected with the greatest expedition. The success of the Spanish gun-boats off Algeziras, during the preceding war, had made the French believe that it would be possible for some thousands of similarly constructed vessels, but built on an improved plan, to force their way across the channel in spite of the British navy. This idea was universally received in France, and in the course of the year such astonishing exertions were made, that a sufficient flotilla was assembled at Boulogne, to carry over any army that France should choose so to employ. This menacing disposition, and the mighty preparations for carrying it into effect, were perhaps ultimately advantageous to Great Britain. The evident

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BOOK VI. necessity of defending the country against invasion obtained a ready consent to every plan CHAP. IV. which could be proposed for increasing its military defence. Independently of the regular and supplementary militia, an additional army of 50,000 men was proposed, under the title of an army of reserve, and a general levy en masse of all persons capable of bearing arms, was universally approved of: this measure was however rendered unneccssary by the spirit of the country, which in a short time presented above 300,000 effective volunteers, as an additional defence to the country. This vast reinforcement to its military strength, placed it on so proud a footing of security, that the English nation no longer feared the visit of their invaders, but felt so conscious of their strength as rather to wish the enemy to try that experiment.

Notwithstanding the menaces of the French government, which boasted that an immense flotilla could be assembled at Boulogne without much interruption from the English cruisers, the people of Great Britain appeared perfectly tranquil. Indeed, the latter nation fairly accepted the challenge thrown out by France, as her government had pompously and arrogantly asserted that she was no longer able to contend singlehanded against her. The British government, in justice it must be said, wished that the war should solely exist between Great Britain and France. The latter (though the challenger) found it necessary, meanly to force the weaker powers to engage in her assistance. Holland, contrary to her evident interest and wish, as well as the Italian republic, were compelled to become parties; and consequently while the commercial interests of the latter were severely injured in the course of the year, the former lost all her West Indian colonies: Spain and Portugal were likewise compelled to furnish pecuniary assistance to France, in so open and extensive a manner, that it rested entirely with the generosity and magnanimity of Great Britain, whether they should not be considered as involved in direct acts of hostility.

Independently of these measures, which the French government embraced as part of its war system, it took a step at its commencement which had never before been heard of among civilized nations, and which had always been protested against as an act of barbarity, disgraceful even at Constantinople or Algiers. Under the pretence of making prisoners of war of those Englishmen enrolled in the militia of their country, it seized indiscriminately upon all the nobility, gentry, and commercial agents who had incautiously put themselves within the reach of Bonaparte in France, and who were engaged in travelling in any of those countries occupied by the French armies, and either shut them up in prisons, or confined them to par

ticular places as prisoners of war upon their pa role, and who were not to exceed the limits there assigned them! This violent outrage on all the established courtesies of civilized nations, did not promise even the slightest advantage to France, and could only be considered as an angry and capricious display of the power and ill-humour of the usurper who had seized upon its government: this act of wanton cruelty was farther aggravated, by its having been preceded by a perfidious promise to the English, that they should enjoy the protection of the government after the departure of the British ambassador, as extensively as during his residence. Those were the principal measures taken by France in the first year of the

war.

On the part of Great Britain, her first object was to raise the military strength of the country from the deplorable state to which it had been reduced, and to lay a foundation for its permanent defence, without being obliged to have recourse to excessive loans; and, secondly, to annoy her enemies as much as possible, both in their colonies and commerce. In the first object, the government were successful beyond its most sanguine hopes and expectations.

No territorial acquisition she could have made, would have so far raised Great Britain in the estimation of foreign nations, as the zeal and courage which was exhibited by all ranks to defend the country from French invaders. The power of France, for the first time since the revolution, appeared to have received the most serious check; and the British channel seemed a barrier beyond which it could not pass.

Although the additional strength which was gained at home was by far the most important of the advantages which Great Britain derived from the war, yet the government was not altogether inattentive to the annoyance of the enemy in the only vulnerable part of his dominions. Expedi tions against the Dutch settlements of Demerara and Issequibo, and the French islands of St. Lucie and Tobago were dispatched in the course of the year. St. Domingo, the most valuable colony that France ever possessed, was wrested from her by the black population, assisted by a British squadron; and in the East Indies the successes of Great Britain over the native princes were brilliant, glorious, and decisive.

The reduction of the French army in the island of St. Domingo was beyond all question the severest blow which France sustained in the course of the year. It had been entirely owing to the facilities which her shipping afforded, of passing troops rapidly from one strong post or town on the coast to another, that France was at all able to keep down the insurrection in that island; those facilities, however, being entirely taken away by the superiority of the English blockading