Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century | Page 2

Coalition" had been shattered by the defeat of the Allies at
Hohenlinden. The Peace of Amiens which shortly ensued (March, 1802,
to May, 1803) was but a delusion. England greeted it with joy and hope,
but soon discovered its unreality. From the renewal of hostilities, in
May, 1803, until the final triumph of the allies, in 1815, the war
resolved itself into a struggle between Napoleon and England. This
young Corsican lieutenant had raised himself by sheer force of genius
and unscrupulous ambition to absolute power. His scheme for the
subjugation of Europe beat down every obstacle except the steady and
unbending opposition of England. Pitt, who had withdrawn from the
government because of the stupid King's refusal to honor his Minister's

pledges of equal rights to the Irish Catholics, was recalled by the
universal voice ot the nation to organize the resistance. Napoleon had
assembled immense armaments upon the Channel coast of France for a
descent on England, and had created a vast flotilla to transport the force
to Kent. Great Britain trembled with excited apprehension. Three
hundred thousand volunteers offered their services to the government.
But, as often in the past, Britain's best defense was her wooden walls,
and the sagacity, seamanship, and valor of her sailors, who out-
manoeuvered the combined fleets of France and Spain, crushed their
power at Trafalgar (October, 1805), and secured the Channel against
the invader. Pitt's gold had called into existence a third coalition
(England, Russia. Austria, and Sweden), only to see Napoleon hurl it to
the ground on the field of Austerlitz (December, 1805). England's
isolation seemed as complete as the Emperor's victory. Russia, Austria,
and Prussia made humiliating peace with the victor, who carved his
conquests into new states and kingdoms. Pitt, who, at the news of
Austerlitz, had pointed to the map of Europe with the words "Roll up
that map, there will be no use for it these ten years," survived the
calamity scarcely a month.
Unable to meet, as yet, the English troops in battle on the land as he
had met and defeated those of the Continent, and unequal to England
on the seas, Napoleon devised a more insidious plan of campaign.
Believing that a "nation of shop-keepers" might be attacked through its
trade, he issued from the Prussian capital, in 1806, the famous Berlin
Decree, which was the first note of that "Continental System," which
was intended to close the ports of Europe to British goods. The British
government met this boycott by its "Orders in Council," which placed a
blockade upon French ports, and authorized the capture of neutral
vessels endeavoring to trade with them. This inconclusive commercial
warfare lasted several years, but was far from being successful in its
object of ruining England. Indeed, it is said that the most stringent
enforcement of the "Decrees" and "Orders" did not prevent the
Napoleonic armies from wearing uniforms of English cloth and
carrying English steel in their scabbards.
England first began to make head against the French conqueror when

that far-sighted minister George Canning sent Sir Arthur Wellesley to
Portugal to take command of the British forces in the Peninsula.
Wellesley had recently returned from India, where he had achieved a
brilliant reputation for thoroughness of organization, precision of
manoeuver, and unvarying success, qualities which at that time were
lamentably rare among British generals. In Portugal first, and later in
Spain, the sterling qualities of the new commander steadily gained
ground for England, driving out the French marshals, and carrying this
Peninsular War to a triumphant conclusion by the invasion of France
(1814). Created Duke of Wellington for his successes in the Peninsula,
Wellesley held command of the allied forces on the Belgian frontier
when, on the 18th of June, 1815, they met and routed the French at
Waterloo. That day made Napoleon an exile, and "the Iron Duke" the
idol of the English lands in which he continued to be the most
conspicuous personage for nearly half a century.
THE RESETTLEMENT OF EUROPE
Waterloo brought England into new relations with the nations of
Europe. The Congress of Vienna, in which the victors endeavored to
restore the damage wrought by the Corsican intruder, added Cape of
Good Hope, Ceylon, Malta, and a few less important islands, to the
growing colonial empire of Great Britain. The Holy Alliance, which
had been suggested by the Czar in 1815, at the friendly meeting of the
Russian, Austrian, and Prussian sovereigns at Paris, was in theory a
compact between these powerful rulers--"an intimate union on the basis
of morality and religion"--but it soon degenerated into an unholy league
for the mutual protection of these three despotic dynasties against the
dormant forces of constitutional liberty, which began to stir again in
every European state as soon as the Napoleonic specter had been