ABSTRACT
The Pitt administration had made use of French royalism, certainly: supporting the various insurgents and conspirators associated with the Bourbons was a useful diversion that on occasion both tied down large numbers of troops and caused considerable disruption. At the same time, many British politicians supported Pitt's clamp-down on domestic radicalism and were happy to make much use of anti-revolutionary propaganda. In the wake of the French Revolutionary Wars, there were also many reasons to suspect that the fresh conquests which the rule of Napoleon clearly presaged were unlikely to rest on secure foundations. Virtually all shades of French opinion were heartily sick of war by 1799, the new First Consul's great advantage being that he seemed to be able to combine peace with the protection of the Revolutionary settlement. Whilst Grenville argued for a march on Paris, what the latter favoured was a colonial and economic struggle that would allow the British simply to outlast the French.
