Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/383

Rh THE STRUGGLE AGAINST NAPOLEON.] ENGLAND 3G3 merit, on these ignoble terms, consented to extinguish itself (1800). It depended on the English Government whether this change, by which Ireland lost the semblance of national independence, should be followed by a step in advance for that country in a serious attempt to diminish the evils of Protestant supremacy. That step Pitt had pledged himself to take, and in 1801 he had prepared a measure for admitting the Catholics to political power. The king stood in the way, and Pitt resigned office rather than forfeit his word. The year which witnessedPitt s failure in domestic legisla tion also witnessed his failure in military effort. In 1798 Bonaparte sailed for Egypt with the intention of setting up a French dominion in the East. The fleet which conveyed him was annihilated after his landing by Nelson at the battle of the Nile. Pitt seized the opportunity of the great general s absence from Europe to organize a second coalition against France. In the campaign of 1799 Italy was regained from Frapce, and in the East Bonaparte was driven back from Acre by the Turks headed by Sir Sidney Smith. The news of French disasters brought him hurriedly back to Euiope, but beforo he could take part in the war Masseua had defeated the coalition at Zurich. A coup d claf, however, placed Bonaparte, under the name of first consul, in practical possession of absolute power ; and in the following year his great victory at Marengo (1801), followed up by Moreau s victory of Hohenlinden, enabled him to dictate as a conqueror the treaty of LuneVille, by which France enteied once more into possession of the frontier of the Rhine. By this treaty not only was England again isolated, but she found herself exposed to new enemies. Her enforcement of the right of search to enable her ships to take enemies goods out of neutral vessels exasperated even friendly powers, and Russia was joined by Sweden and Denmark to enforce resistance to the claim. It was under these circumstances that Pitt s resig nation was announced. The successor of the great minister was Addington, whose mind was imbued with all the Protestant prejudices of the king, which were, it must be owned, the Protestant prejudices of the nation. He had neither force of char acter nor strength of intellect. Nelson s victory at Copen hagen, which crushed the naval power of Denmark and broke up the Northern Alliance, and the landing of Aber- cromby in Aboukir Bay, followed by the victory of Alex andria and the consequent evacuation of Egypt by the French, ere events prepared by the former adminis tration. Aldington s real work was the peace of Amiens (1802), an experimental peace, as the king called it, to see if the first consul could be contented to restrain himself within the very wide limits by which his authority in Europe was still circumscribed. In a few months England was made aware that the ex periment would not succeed. Interference and annexation became the standing policy of the new French Government. England, discovering how little intention Bonaparte had of carrying out the spirit of the treaty, refused to abandon Malta, as she had engaged to do by the terms of peace. The war began again, no longer a war against certain principles, and the extension of dominion resulting from the victory of those principles, but against aggressive des potism, wielding military force, conducted by consummate military genius, and setting at naught the rights of popu lations a.s well as the claims of rulers. This time the English nation w r as all but unanimous in resistance. This time its resistance would be sooner or later supported by all that was healthy in Europe. The spirit of England was fully roused by the news that Bonaparte was preparing invasion. Volunteers were enrolled in defence of the country, There was a general belief that the prime minister was not equal to the crisis. Addington retired, and Pitt again became prime minister put s (1804). He would gladly have joined Fox in forming an secend administration on a broader basis than his former one. min stry. But the king objected to Fox, and some of Pitt s old friends refused to desert the proscribed statesman. Pitt became the head of a ministry of which he was the only efficient member. England was strong enough to hold her own against Trafal- Bonaparte, who was now Napoleon, emperor of the French g ar and (1805). Nelson crushed the combined French and Spanish, A ^ stei &quot; fleets at Trafalgar, paying with his own life for a victory which put an end to the French naval power for the remainder of the war. The iron of Napoleon s tyranny had not yet entered into the Continental nations sufficiently to rouse them to a truly popular resistance. A third coali tion ended in as complete a disaster as that in which the first and second had ended. Austria lost a large part of her force in the capitulation of Ulm, and the Austrian and Russian armies were overpowered at Austerlitz. To effect these victories the force which threatened the invasion of England would necessarily have been withdrawn, even if the result of the battle of Trafalgar had not made the enterprise hopeless. Pitt died shortly after receiving the news of the disasters of his allies (1806). Pitt s death forced the king to accept a ministry of Ministry which Fox was a member. This ministry of All the ofA11 Talents, as it was called, was not successful in the, e , conduct of the war. Its year of office was the year in which Prussia was crushed at Jena, and it dissipated the strength of the English army in unimportant distant expeditions, instead of throwing it upon one spot to aid Prussia or Russia. Its great title to fame is the aboli tion of the slave trade. Fox s death deprived the ministry of its strongest member, and in the following year an attempt on its part to admit Roman Catholics to the naval and military service of the crown drew from the king a demand for an engagement never to propose any concession to the Catholics. They refused to make any such promise, and were summarily ejected from office. The king s firm stand was popular in England. The reaction against the French Revolution no longer demanded the infliction of penalties upon those who promulgated its doctrines; but a spirit had been produced which was inexorable against all attempts to effect any change for the better. A spirit of blind, unreasoning conservatism had taken the place of the enlightened Toryism of Pitt s earlier days. The new ministry (1807), under the nominal leadership Ministry of the duke of Portland, had to face Napoleon alone. The f tlie battle of Friedland and the peace of Tilsit left him master of the greater part of the Continent. Prussia and Austria were already stripped of territory ; and as protector of the Confederation of the Rhine, Napoleon ruled in Germany. Italy was directly subjected to his power. Unable to make war upon England by his fleets and armies, he attempted to subdue her by ruining her commerce. By the Berlin decree (1807), he declared the whole of the British islands to be in a state of blockade, though he had not a single ship at sea to enforce his declaration. He declared all British manufactured goods prohibited wherever Commer- his power reached, and excluded from his dominions even cial neutral ships which had touched at a British port. The V^jp British Government, instead of leaving Napoleon to ^bear F rance. the odium of this attack on neutral commerce, retaliated by Orders in Council conceived in the spirit of his own measure. They declared that all vessels trading with France were liable to seizure, and that all such vessels clearing from a hostile port must touch at a British port to pay customs duties. Napoleon answered by the Milan