"1803, ‘A grand coalition’ " Topic
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Tango01 | 11 Oct 2014 1:12 p.m. PST |
"The general view of Napoleon in the capitals of Europe has already been examined. However, the absence of any real ideological hostility towards him was not the only reason why the French seemed to have some chance of winning the race to build an overwhelming coalition. Setting aside the fact that Spain, the Batavian Republic, the Cisalpine Republic, the Helvetic Confederation and the south German states were all highly vulnerable to French pressure, if not actually pro-French, the British were hampered in their search for allies by a whole range of factors. Not the least of these was the influence of French propaganda. Even before hostilities had resumed, it had been a standard line in France that the chief culprit for Europe's misfortunes was British greed and ambition, and this message now became one of the central rallying cries of the French war effort. Hardly had Napoleon marched against Austria in September 1805 than he was denouncing the Third Coalition as ‘this new league woven by the hatred and gold of England', and threatening the destruction of ‘the Russian army which the gold of England has transported from the extremities of the universe'. As Madame de Staël recalled, ‘The official gazettes were ordered to insult the English nation and its government. Every day absurd descriptions, such as "perfidious islanders" and "greedy merchants", were repeated in the papers without cease . . . In some articles the authors went back to William the Conqueror and described the battle of Hastings as a revolt.' In taking this line Napoleon was helped by the simple fact that there was no love lost for Britain on the Continent. One of the chief difficulties faced by London in 1803 was its distinctly unimpressive war record: on land the British army had hardly a victory to its credit, while at sea its ships had won only four major victories – victories, what is more, that seemed to have more to do with enshrining Britain's commercial monopoly than they did with defeating the French. As late as the Waterloo campaign of 1815, bitter distrust of Britain continued to be rampant, and this despite all Wellington's victories in Spain and Portugal. In 1803, however, there was no Salamanca or Vittoria to draw upon. Indeed, the British army was at that point a force of little or no account in terms of continental warfare. There had been some minor successes in the campaign of 1793-5 in the Low Countries, and then again in the invasion of Holland in 1799, but the British had never put sufficient troops into the field to have a major impact, and in both 1793 and 1799 operations had concluded in retreat and evacuation. However, what stuck most in the craw of foreign observers was not so much that the British army had failed to distinguish itself in the European campaigns in which it had served, but rather that Britain's commitment to the fighting beyond the frontiers of Europe had the appearance of being of an entirely different order. In the fighting in Holland, Belgium and Flanders, there was nothing to equal, say, the triumphant battle of Alexandria, nor, still less, the energy and enterprise which was displayed in seizing colony after colony in the West Indies. Equally, British troops were always in short supply in Europe, but always seemed to be available in abundance when it came to dispatching expeditions to the colonies: in the whole of 1793 less than 4,000 redcoats appeared in the Low Countries, whereas in September 1795 alone 33,000 men set off for the Caribbean. If there was a general feeling that London was completely unreliable as an ally, that it was in fact quite willing to let everybody else do all the fighting, it was therefore hardly surprising…" Full article here weaponsandwarfare.com/?cat=25 Amicalement Armand |
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