ABSTRACT
The essays collected in this volume focus centrally on Britain’s resistance to the threat of invasion posed by Napoleon, first as Commander of the Army of England in 1797-8, and subsequently as First Consul and then Emperor in 1803-5. The war with Napoleonic France continued for another ten years, and Napoleon’s capacity to threaten Britain’s naval supremacy was not broken once and for all at Trafalgar in 1805, as is often assumed.1 But 1803-5 was the longest and most sustained threat of French invasion, with an army of some 80000 camped along the Channel, more troops stationed within three or four days’ march of the ports, a massive flotilla of barges and boats constructed to transport troops across the narrow stretch, and a sizeable naval presence mustering to challenge Britain’s command of the sea.2 In 1797-8, in the light of the experience of Hoche, who had sailed to Bantry Bay late in 1796 only to have his fleet dispersed by poor weather, Napoleon quickly decided that he lacked sufficient command of the seas to effect a landing, and he persuaded the Directory to allow him to take his army to Egypt to threaten Britain’s connections to the East.3 Following a mixed campaign of successes against Egyptian and Turkish forces and major reverses against English forces, especially the disastrous loss of the French fleet after the devastating attack by Nelson at Aboukir Bay and the repulse of the siege of Acre, which forced Bonaparte to return to Egypt with little to show for his Syrian campaign, Napoleon left his troops and slipped back into France, where he was received with sufficient enthusiasm for him to emerge as First Consul in the triumvirate that overthrew the Directory in November 1799. To gain a respite, France put out feelers for peace with Britain, which Pitt fiercely resisted. Pitt was replaced by Addington in February 1801, and following new preparations for invasion by Napoleon in the summer, peace negotiations developed in earnest, although the final treaty was not ratified until March 1802.4 The Peace of Amiens lasted only fourteen months, with Britain declaring war again in May 1803. With Britain as his sole enemy, Napoleon turned his whole attention, and very considerable resources, some earned through the sale of Louisiana to America, to establishing his invasion force. No other military endeavour distracted him from the task until September 1805, when he seems to have abandoned the idea of an assault – a decision half enforced by the loss of a substantial part of the
French fleet at Trafalgar in October and then confirmed by the commitment of troops to defeating the Austrians at Austerlitz in December.
