of the contest seemed destined to fall to the one who should bring its peculiar force to bear decisively upon the other, and so strike it down in mortal encounter. This, however, was difficult on either side; for if England could master the French fleets, and wrest from France her remaining colonies, attempts of this kind were of little avail against the gigantic military power which already swayed nearly half the Continent; and if France could with ease repel any hostile demonstration on her coasts, she could hardly expect to throw her armies upon the territory of her adversary, while England retained her naval ascendency. Could the Channel, however, be once crossed, the power of France for attack was greater than that of England could possibly be; and if a French force of imposing strength could be safely landed upon our shores an opportunity seemed afforded of delivering an overwhelming blow which might be expected to close the struggle. In this state of things the extraordinary man to whom France had committed her fortunes, resolved, true to his characteristic strategy, to aim straight at a decisive point, and to invade England with such a host, that, if the descent could be accomplished, resistance, he thought, would be impossible. Yet when, in the spring of 1803, Napoleon formed this daring design, the difficulties in his way would have seemed insuperable to any less eager and aspiring genius. The first and obvious condition of success was the command of the sea to effect the passage; and how could this be reasonably hoped for in the state of the naval resources of France compared with those of her powerful enemy? The fleets of France and of her dependencies could hardly muster, even on paper, more than half the ships of the English navy; they were very inferior in organization and armament; the crews that manned them were largely composed of landsmen and raw military conscripts; and their officers and commanders were generally inexperienced, and demoralized by continual reverses. On the other hand, though necessarily disseminated to guard our numerous colonial provinces, the fleets of England were masters of the sea; their numerical force and thorough efficiency made them absolutely without a rival; and they were commanded by men of whom Nelson was only the most conspicuous figure, and, who, to perfect profession

al skill, added the self-confidence and moral ascendency acquired by a long series of victories. In these circumstances how was it possible to obtain that control of the Channel which was requisite to lead an army across and to attempt the invasion of England?

Such were the conditions under which Napoleon resolved to risk a descent on our coasts and to stake the fortune of France on the venture. There is clear proof that he was fully aware of the great hazard of such an enterprise; indeed he had avowed to Lord Whitworth that it might determinate in his destruction; and there is reason to believe that he would have preferred not to have renewed the war in 1803, and to have waited until his marine was able to cope on better terms with the far more powerful one of his enemy. Nor was he ignorant of the immense inferiority, not only in numerical strength but in all that constitutes real worth, of his fleets to those of Great Britain; though, spoiled by his wonderful military successes, he never made sufficient allowance for one chief cause of his naval weakness-the practical inexperience of his seamen and the moral discouragement of his admirals. Nevertheless he persisted in his resolution; and, notwithstanding the obstacles in his path, the plan he formed and fully matured was well nigh attended with success, so far as regards the making the landing; and its ultimate failure, it must be acknowledged, was due far more to the errors of those who were intrusted with carrying it out than to any inherent defects in it, or to the ability or the perception of English naval officers and statesmen. This project, in its final development, was founded upon the double principle of openly concentrating in view of our coasts means apparently sufficient to effect the descent, deceiving the enemy, in this way, as to the true nature of the intended operation, and throwing him partly off his guard, and then of collecting from a distance and moving to the decisive scene of action a preponderating force, which for a time would command the sea at the point of passage and open an avenue for the invaders. For this purpose an immense flotilla was to be drawn together from the ports of France, and made capable of holding an army of from one hundred and forty thousand to one hundred and sixty thousand men, with its guns, horses, and other appliances; and it was to

be placed in the narrowest part of the Channel, and to receive on board the formidable host which, marched from the interior to the sea, was to cross over and effect the descent. The flotilla and the accompanying transports were to be armed with heavy guns, in order, partly, to repel attack, but principally to conceal the real design; and it was to be ostentatiously proclaimed that this armament was more than equal to the task of ferrying the invaders over. By this expedient Napoleon calculated that the English Admiralty would be induced to suppose that small vessels only were to be employed in the attempt to get the French across; that accordingly the defence of the Channel would be left principally to similar craft, and that an opportunity would thus be given him for accomplishing the great operation which was the main feature of the entire project. This operation was, to combine a powerful fleet from a variety of points and to bring it suddenly into the Channel, when, being for the moment in overwhelming force, it would without difficulty put down all resistance, and so effectually cover the flotilla and make the way for the invaders secure. Great as was the inferiority of the French navy, Napoleon believed that it was not impossible to effect a concentration of this kind, and experience showed that his calculations in this respect were not ill founded, and very nearly turned out correct.

This was the memorable design for the invasion of England, which Napoleon characterized as one of the most profound which he conceived in his wonderful career. The ability of the plan consisted evidently in the notion of leading the enemy to believe, by the formidable armament of the flotilla, that the passage was to be made with this force alone, and in the project of collecting a fleet and covering the descent at the decisive point, the English being there comparatively weak. Napoleon's matchless skill in stratagem and his capacity for grand combinations were here illustrated in the highest degree; nor was his scheme of attacking our country unworthy of the great master of war who had executed the Alpine march to Marengo. We think however that, as in 1800, Napoleon underrated the strength of his foe. Had his project succeeded in every particular, we can not believe that a French army of a hundred and fifty thou

sand or a hundred and sixty thousand men could have completely subdued England; and his calculations, as the event showed, did not take enough into account the disorganization of his naval forces. In the summer of 1803 the First Consul, already wearing the shadow of an imperial crown, applied himself with characteristic energy to the carrying out of his bold design. His first care was to combine the elements of the force which was intended to carry his army across "the fosse of the Channel," but which as yet was wholly unprepared. Orders were given for the building of boats and flat-bottomed vessels of different sizes, in all the French ports, from Brest to Antwerp, then recently added to the republic; and the inland districts of France were urged to coöperate, as light craft of this description could be made to descend to the sea by the rivers which on all sides ran down to the coast. It is unnecessary to notice with what minute care Napoleon superintended this work, through the able officials intrusted with it; what numberless experiments were made to determine the type and character of the constructions best suited for the intended purpose, or with what alacrity France lent her aid to second the aims of her chief; suffice it to say that, within a few months, the means of carrying a great army across the Channel were fully completed, though as yet not organized or concentrated. By the beginning of 1804, considerably more than two thousand craft of the requisite quality and dimensions had been finished, and were scattered along the French seaboard at many places, from Ushant by Dunkirk and Ostend to Antwerp. This force, divided into two great sections, the flotilla proper, intended to carry the soldiers of the invading army, with field artillery and the necessary horses, and the transports, designed to follow with the heavier matériel and impedimenta, now awaited only the skillful direction of the First Consul to be brought together and aggregated on the scene of action. Each unit of the flotilla, according to the original plan, was heavily armed; and these small vessels, when united, bore three thousand cannon of large calibre, besides an immense number of small pieces.

While the means of bridging over the Channel were being thus actively prepared, arrangements were made for the concentration of the flotilla upon the points

of embarkation, and for moving to them the invading army. The reach of coast from Cape Grisnez to Etaples, had been selected by the First Consul as the base from which to operate the descent; and Boulogne and the small adjacent harbors were chosen for the reception of the immense collection of armed vessels and warlike arrays which were to land on the shores of England. Nothing that industry and forethought could do was spared to render these places fitting to be the starting points of the enterprise, and extraordinary exertions were made to accumulate the requirements needed for the expedition. The beds of the little tidal rivers that flow into the sea through this tract, were enlarged, deepened, and turnen into roadsteads; and the Liane and the Canche were made real harbors, capable of holding the main contingents of the flotilla. Meantime batteries were raised on the coast to keep away the enemy's cruisers; Boulogne, Etaples, Wimereux, and Ambleteuse, the points designated for embarking the army, were protected by hundreds of heavy guns, of which the fire defied an assailant; and vast establishments were created for the encampment and support of masses of troops along the immediately adjoining coast and for facilitating their transport to sea. We have no space to describe how miles of temporary huts and barracks were thrown up, how stores, ammunition, and all kinds of matériel were brought down, in prodigious quantities, to lines of quays constructed in haste as landing places for the flotilla; how, in a word, nothing was left undone to provide for the embarkation of the force intended to fall upon our shores; and for these details we must refer our readers to the Correspondence of Napoleon himself, a monument, in this as in other instances, of his great capacity for military administration. Meanwhile the army designed to strike the blow that was to overwhelm England had been gradually drawn together, and was being moved to the sea-coast and made ready for the great venture. That army, the flower of the soldiery of France and the best that Napoleon ever led, had been raised by assiduous care to the highest state of efficiency for war; and, filled with confidence in itself and its chief, and admirably disciplined, trained, and organized, it was certainly capable of great exploits. It was now divided into three

masses; and by the early spring of 1804, each of these had taken its appointed station along the seaboard of Artois and Flanders, awaiting only the signal to cross the channel. The left, forming a wing under Ney, was encamped in the neighborhood of Montreuil, and was intended to embark at Etaples; the centre, with Soult, lay around St. Omer, its destination being Boulogne; and the right wing, commanded by Davoust, filled the country between Ostend and Bruges, its point of departure being Ambleteuse, could that port be reached by the flotilla in the Scheldt. The whole force, with its reserves, placed at various distances in the rear, numbered 132,000 men, with 15,000 horses, and 400 guns; and Napoleon intended that it should be seconded by 20,000 or 24,000 additional troops on board his fleets, at Brest and the Texel, thus making up the 150,000 which, he calculated, would suffice for the enterprise.

The next problem for the French to solve was the collection of the flotilla from points at wide distances along the seaboard, and its concentration in the neighborhood of Boulogne. This seemed a task of great difficulty, for small craft would be necessarily exposed to the fire and shock of the enemy's cruisers which hovered menacingly along the coast, and Napoleon reckoned on considerable losses before his squadrons should be united. The concentration was, however, effected with more facility than had been expected; for the flat-bottomed constructions of the flotilla were usually able to cling to the shore, and keep out of the range of the English vessels, in most instances of too great draught to be efficient for this service; their fire had proved far from contemptible; and at spots where a serious attack was probable they were covered by heavy land batteries, and even by powerful flying columns told off for this purpose by the First Consul. Though more or less harassed upon the passage, the entire flotilla, with the exception of that in the Scheldt under Admiral Verhuel, as yet only at Dunkirk and Calais, was congregated between Boulogne and Etaples in the summer of 1804; and it was confidently anticipated that the difficulty of weathering the headland of Cape Grisnez, which alone retarded Verhuel's contingent, would be surmounted in a few weeks. In this way, within a few months from the

the time when he had formed his design, Napoleon had created and brought together, in spite of the naval superiority of England, the means of crossing the narrow seas; and he had collected and held in his hand a magnificent army in formidable strength, which only awaited the word of its chief to occupy that accumulation of transports, and renew, as it hoped, the Norman Conquest. But though every thing seemed ready, the great combination on which the success of the enterprise hung had not been matured; and Napoleon kept his armament in its positions, resolved not to run the risk of passing until the presence of a covering fleet in the Channel should render the transit certain. The intervening time was meanwhile spent in assuring the safety of the flotilla, and in completing the details of the expedition; and these arrangements were carried out with admirable forethought, energy, and skill. Fresh batteries were piled along the coast line, and the harbors in which the flotilla was moored were made inaccessible to attack or insult. The army and the flotilla were so connected that every regiment and company had its allotted place in its set of transports; and the soldiery were trained to sea exercises, to rowing, working at naval guns, to embarking and disembarking in haste, and to forming, even at night, in order, under the fire of a supposed enemy on land. Such perfection was attained by constant practice that more than one hundred thousand men, the impedimenta of the army having been put in previously, were able, it was found, to be on board within half an hour from a given signal; and two hours only were required for the embarkation of seven thousand horses. In twenty-four hours the entire flotilla would be fairly in the open Channel, and it might be expected that within forty-eight it would have made good its way to our shores.

The gathering of this vast cloud of war had been viewed by England with mingled feelings of scorn, contempt, and angry apprehension. The Admiralty, confident in our naval superiority and relying on their ancient traditions, declared that a descent was impossible, or could be attempted by a small force only, inevitably doomed to destruction or capture; and they ridiculed the notion that Napoleon would deliberately risk a desperate venture. The cari

catures and light publications of the summer of 1803 abound in illustrations of the absurdity of imagining that, except as prisoners, the French could ever be seen among us, and the First Consul and his impertinent efforts were satirized with general self-complacency. The enterprise was considered a foolish boast, and especially it was proved to demonstration that no flotilla of sufficient strength to convey an army could be brought together while our cruisers held the command of the Channel. This over-confidence had caused the ministry to neglect the precaution of providing small craft in sufficient quantities to attack vessels of light draught in shallow waters, and, as we have seen, the immense armament in which Napoleon intended to cross had suffered comparatively little loss when being concentrated around Boulogne. This unpardonable omission, which facilitated the enemy's operations beyond his hopes, had been properly condemned by Mr. Pitt and contributed to the fall of the Addington government; but even for a time after that event the nation was disinclined to believe that an invasion in force was really imminent. At last, however, when thousands of transports lay bristling with guns in the roads of Boulogne, and when the smoke of the vast French leaguer could be seen from our shores on a clear day, the gravity of the danger was felt, and England rose to a man in arms, in one of those grand national movements which form the glory of free countries, and have so often baffled the calculations of her foes. The army, more than a hundred thousand strong, and composed of the men who in a few years were to march from the Tagus to the Garonne, was seconded by a reserve force and by the militia, amounting together to fully a hundred and fifty thousand men; and more than two hundred thousand

volunteers started into existence to lend the arms of brave and true men to repel the invader. Admitting all that French historians have fairly said as to the inexperience of a considerable portion of these arrays, and as to the inferiority of their commanders to the great genius opposed to them, we can not believe that on their own soil they would have been struck down at a blow by the relatively small numerical force which alone they would have had to encounter; and Napoleon, we think, immensely underrated the mili

tary resources of his adversaries. At the same time vigorous preparations were made for the defence of our coasts. Batteries were thrown up at accessible points, signals were established for the rapid concentration of troops to prevent a landing, and swarms of frigates and light vessels held armed and constant watch in the Channel. The Admiralty, however, had not seen through Napoleon's design. As he anticipated, they believed that he would cross, if at all, with the flotilla alone; and accordingly they thought it enough to oppose rather small craft to much smaller constructions, and they did not provide for the contingency of a powerful fleet protecting the passage. The Channel remained comparatively unguarded; at no time, it would appear, were more than five or six sail of the line in the narrow waters before Boulogne.

While France and England were thus in arms, each watching the other across the Straits, Napoleon was tasking his powers to the utmost to arrange and complete the combination on which he had staked the success of his project. Great as was the inferiority of his naval power, three circumstances concurred in his favor which he calculated might give him the brief ascendency at the decisive point for a few days, which was all he asked or expected from Fortune. In the first place, the enemy evidently had no conception of his real design; they had made no preparations against a covering fleet, and they had left the Channel comparatively open. In the second place, he knew generally what he was about to do and how to attack, whereas the English Admiralty would be obliged to resist his movements in uncertain haste, and to stand doubtingly on the defensive. And in the third place, the fleets of England were necessarily scat tered all over the ocean, protecting a vast colonial empire, whereas those of France could be concentrated; and this largely contributed to solve a problem which was, not that of general superiority at sea, but that of being able for a short time to be in commanding force in the Channel. These were the data on which Napoleon reasoned, and it is idle to say that they were baseless, though, in our judgment, he greatly underrated in some respects the difficulties in his way. During 1803 he had pressed forward the construction and equipment of his fleets, and by the spring

NEW SERIES.-VOL. XVI., No. 2.

of 1804 he had arrayed a force which, on paper at least, seemed equal to any likely to oppose it, and which certainly was by no means contemptible. In the summer of 1804, when the mass of the flotilla had reached Boulogne, and just after his victorious soldiery had saluted him Emperor with acclamation, he gave the first orders for the naval operations which were to second and cover the descent. At this juncture he had eight or nine sail of the line at Toulon, one at Cadiz, five or six at Ferrol, about an equal number at Rochefort, twenty or twenty-one in the roads of Brest, and a Dutch fleet of great force in the Texel, intended to carry over, if possible, the extreme right wing of the invading army. These squadrons had been as yet blockaded by fleets of nearly the same numerical strength, but very superior in quality and power; and in England it was generally believed that they would not venture to leave their harbors. But in those days blockades were extremely precarious, ships being at the mercy of the winds; and Napoleon's project was not hindered by an obstacle at the outset which, at this time, under similar conditions, might be insuperable. Acting on the ordinary experience of years, he directed La Touche, his most trusted admiral, to put to sea with the Toulon fleet whenever a storm should blow off Nelson, in watch for the Frenchman in the Gulf of Lyons, and then, making for Gibraltar, to rally the single ship at Cadiz, and, avoiding Ferrol, to drive away the weak Engglish force before Rochefort, and combiring with the friendly squadron at that place, to advance resolutely into the Channel. Meanwhile Ganteaume, with the Brest fleet, was to engage or detain Cornwallis, who observed the roads with a British squadron; and as Ganteaume's force was exceedingly powerful, it was expected that he would at least accomplish this object and keep the passage for La Touche open. In this way the Emperor calculated some fifteen or sixteen sail of the line would effect their junction with the flotilla about the first or second week of October; and this force, being more than sufficient to overpower the enemy in the Channel, would enable the French army to make the descent.

This plan which, if dangerous in some respects, was certainly not without promise, was never attempted to be executed,

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