The Best of the Bureau/The_Best_of_the_Bureau_Bureau_Development_Inc._1992.iso/dp/0004/00043.txt

Text File | 1992-08-07 | 11KB | 200 lines

$Unique_ID{bob00043}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Life Of Napoleon Bonaparte And Life Of Josephine
Chapter X}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Tarbell, Ida M.}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{england
napoleon
thousand
france
louisiana
boulogne
english
french
enemy
flotilla}
$Date{1906}
$Log{}
Title:       Life Of Napoleon Bonaparte And Life Of Josephine
Book:        Life Of Napoleon Bonaparte
Author:      Tarbell, Ida M.
Date:        1906

Chapter X

Preparations For War With England - Flotilla At Boulogne - Sale Of Louisiana

     In the spring of 1803 the treaty of Amiens, which a year before had ended
the long war with England, was broken.  Both countries had many reasons for
complaint.  Napoleon was angry at the failure to evacuate Malta.  The perfect
freedom allowed the press in England gave the pamphleteers and caricaturists
of the country an opportunity to criticize and ridicule him.  He complained
bitterly to the English ambassadors of this free press, an institution in his
eyes impractical and idealistic. He complained, too, of the hostile emigres
allowed to collect in Jersey; of the presence in England of such a notorious
enemy of his as Georges Cadoudal; and of the sympathy and money the Bourbon
princes and many nobles of the old regime received in London society.  Then,
too, he regarded the country as his natural and inevitable enemy.  England to
Napoleon was only a little island which, like Corsica and Elba, naturally
belonged to France, and he considered it part of his business to get
possession of her.

     England, on the other hand, looked with distrust at the extension of
Napoleon's influence on the Continent.  Northern Italy, Switzerland, Holland,
Parma, Elba, were under his protectorate.  She had been deeply offended by a
report published in Paris, on the condition of the Orient, in which the author
declared that with six thousand men the French could reconquer Egypt; she
resented the violent articles in the official press of Paris in answer to
those of the free press of England; her aristocratic spirit was irritated by
Napoleon's success; she despised this parvenu, this "Corsican scoundrel," as
Nelson called him, who had had the hardihood to rise so high by other than the
conventional methods for getting on in the world which she sanctioned.

     Real and fancied aggressions continued throughout the year of the peace;
and when the break finally came, though both nations persisted in declaring
that they did not want war, both were in a thoroughly warlike mood.

     Napoleon's preparations against England form one of the most picturesque
military movements in his career.  Unable to cope with his enemy at sea, he
conceived the audaious notion of invading the island, and laying siege to
London itself.  The plan briefly was this - to gather a great army on the
north shore of France, and in some port a flotilla sufficient to transport it
to Great Britain.  In order to prevent interference with this expedition, he
would keep the enemy's fleet occupied in the Mediterranean, or in the
Atlantic, until the critical moment.  Then, leading the English naval
commander by stratagem in the wrong direction, he would call his own fleet to
the Channel to protect his passage.  He counted to be in London, and to have
compelled the English to peace, before Nelson could return from the chase he
would have led him.

     The preparations began at once.  The port chosen for the flotilla was
Boulogne; but the whole coast from Antwerp to the mouth of the Seine bristled
with iron and bronze.  Between Calais and Boulogne, at Cape Gris Nez, where
the navigation was the most dangerous, the batteries literally touched one
another.  Fifty thousand men were put to work at the stupenduous excavations
necessary to make the ports large enough to receive the flotilla.  Large
numbers of troops were brought rapidly into the neighborhood: fifty thousand
men to Boulogne, under Soult; thirty thousand to Etaples, under Ney; thirty
thousand to Ostend, under Davoust; reserves to Arras, Amiens, Saint-Omer.

     The work of preparing the flat-bottomed boats, or walnut-shells, as the
English called them, which were to carry over the army, went on in all the
ports of Holland and France, as well as in interior towns situated on rivers
leading to the sea.  The troops were taught to row, each soldier being obliged
to practise two hours a day so that the rivers of all the north of France were
dotted with land-lubbers handling the oar, the most of them for the first
time.

     In the summer of 1803, Napoleon went to the north to look after the work.
His trip was one long ovation.  Le Chemin d'Angleterre was the inscription the
people of Amiens put on the triumphal arch erected to his honor, and town vied
with town in showing its joy at the proposed descent on the old-time enemy.

     Such was the interest of the people, that a thousand projects were
suggested to help on the invasion, some of them most amusing.  In a learned
and thoroughly serious memorial, one genius proposed that while the flotilla
was preparing, the sailors be employed in catching dolphins, which should be
shut up in the ports, tamed, and taught to wear a harness, so as to be driven,
in the water, as horses are on land.  This novel power was to transport the
French to the opposite side of the Channel.

     Napoleon occupied himself not only with the preparations at Boulogne and
with keeping Nelson busy elsewhere.  Every project which could possibly
facilitate his undertaking or discomfit his enemies, he considered.  Fulton's
diving-boat, the "Nautilus," and his submarine torpedoes, were at that time
attracting the attention of the war departments of civilized countries.
Already Napoleon had granted ten thousand francs to help the inventor.  From
the camp at Boulogne he again ordered the matter to be looked into.  Fulton
promised him a machine which "would deliver France and the whole world from
British oppression."

          "I have just read the project of Citizen Fulton, engineer, which you
     have sent me much too late," he wrote, "since it is one that may change
     the face of the world.  Be that as it may, I desire that you immediately
     confide its examination to a commission of members chosen by you among the
     different classes of the Institute.  There it is that learned Europe would
     seek for judges to resolve the question under consideration.  A great
     truth, a physical, palpable truth, is before my eyes.  It will be for
     these gentlemen to try and seize it and see it.  As soon as their report
     is made, it will be sent to you, and you will forward it to me.  Try and
     let the whole be determined within eight days, as I am impatient."

     He had his eye on every point of the earth where he might be weak, or
where he might weaken his enemy.  He took possession of Hanover.  The Irish
were promised aid in their efforts for freedom.  "Provided that twenty
thousand united Irishmen join the French army on its landing," France is to
give them in return twenty-five thousand men, forty thousand muskets, with
artillery and ammunition, and a promise that the French government will not
make peace with England until the independence of Ireland has been proclaimed.

     An attack on India was planned, his hope being that the princes of India
would welcome an invader who would aid them in throwing off the English yoke.
To strengthen himself in the Orient, he sought by letters and envoys to win
the confidence, as well as to inspire the awe, of the rulers of Turkey and
Persia.

     The sale of Louisiana to the United States dates from this time. This
transfer, of such tremendous importance to us, was made by Napoleon purely for
the sake of hurting England.  France had been in possession of Louisiana but
three years.  She had obtained it from Spain only on the condition that it
should "at no time, under no pretext, and in no manner, be alienated or ceded
to any other power." The formal stipulation of the treaties forbade its sale.
But Napoleon was not of a nat