Personal questions played a baneful part in embittering the feud. Pitt and Grenville shrouded themselves in their insular and innate austerity. They judged the English Radical clubs too harshly; they ascribed to those who congratulated the Convention on 28th November treasonable aims which can scarcely have arisen in England when the addresses were drawn up. Apart from frothy republican talk, which should have been treated with quiet contempt, those congratulations contained no sign of consciousness that France was about to challenge us to conflict. We may admit that Frost and Barlow showed great tactlessness in presenting those addresses when friction between the two nations had already begun; for the incident, besides stiffening the necks of Frenchmen, gave the Reform movement an appearance of disloyalty to England which worked infinite harm. Nevertheless, on reviewing these questions, we see that Pitt treated the foolish ebullitions of youth as though they implied malice.
Surely, too, he, and still more Grenville, were unwise in placing Chauvelin under a political and social ban, which naturally led him to consort with the bitterest enemies of Government in order to annoy Ministers here and please his employers at Paris. A touchy and sensitive nature like Chauvelin's is usually open to the soothing influences of flattery. Grenville, however, drove him to open enmity, which finally wreaked its revenge;[193] for it was Chauvelin's report on the readiness of Britons to revolt which finally decided the Convention to declare war on 1st February. We may also inquire why the Court of St. James's did not make clear the course of conduct which it proposed to take in the future respecting France.[194] As outlined in the despatch of 29th December to Whitworth, it formed the basis of a practicable compromise. If it could be stated confidentially to Russia, Austria, and Prussia, why not to France? Probably the objections of George III to the faintest sign of recognition of the French Republic[195] account for the fact that these enlightened intentions remained, down to the year 1800, secret except to those Powers. But statesmen err when they bury their good intentions in the secrecy of archives and allow public opinion to sympathize with the enemy. Here was Pitt's most serious blunder. At the outset of the struggle, and throughout its course, he scorned those tactful arts and melodramatic ways which win over waverers and inspire the fainthearted. Here he showed himself not a son of Chatham, but a Grenville. The results of this frigidity were disastrous. All Frenchmen and many Britons believed that he went out of his way to assail a peaceful Republic in order to crush liberty abroad and at home. History has exposed the falseness of the slander; but a statesman ought not to owe his vindication to research in archives. He needs whole-hearted support in the present more than justification by students.
In this respect Pitt showed less of worldly wisdom than the journalists and barristers who leaped to power at Paris. Their chief source of strength lay in skilful appeals to popular passion. In reality their case was untenable before any calm and judicial tribunal. But the France of that age was anything but calm and judicial. It lived on enthusiasm and sensation; and the Girondins and Jacobins fed it almost to repletion. Unfortunately Danton, the only man who combined strength with some insight into statecraft, was away in Belgium while the crisis developed; and the conduct of affairs rested mainly with Lebrun and his envoy Chauvelin. It is only fair to remember that they were thirty and twenty-seven years of age respectively, and had had just four months and eight months of official experience. In such a case pity must blend with censure. The frightful loss of experienced men and the giddy preference for new-comers were among the most fatal characteristics of the revolutionary movement. Needing natures that were able, yet self-restrained, bold, but cautiously bold, it now found as leaders calculating fanatics like Robespierre, headstrong orators and wire-pullers like the Girondin leaders, or lucky journalists like Lebrun. To play to the gallery was his first instinct; and the tottering fortunes of the Gironde made it almost a necessity. Hence his refusal and that of his colleagues to draw back a hair's breadth from the unjustifiable position which they had taken up. Behind them loomed the September massacres, fatal to two Foreign Ministers of France; before them shone the splendours of a liberating crusade. We can scarcely blame men so ardent, so hard pressed.
But there are some rules of the game which even the most irresponsible of Ministers must observe. Here both Chauvelin and Lebrun went fatally astray. Chauvelin's pique at the interview which Pitt had with Maret on 2nd December led him flagrantly to misrepresent that incident, and Lebrun, as we have seen, reported it to the Convention in such a way as to impute to Pitt a discreditable and cowardly intrigue. This is the climax of malice. An envoy and a Minister who scatter such insinuations are the most reckless of firebrands. By this conduct both Lebrun and Chauvelin inflamed the passions of their countrymen. In truth, it was passion, not policy, that made the war. The charges which they brought against England were of secondary importance—her demand for the revocation of the decrees concerning the Scheldt and the encouragement offered to malcontents, together with her stoppage of corn ships lading for France, and her Aliens Bill. Such were the pretexts for the recall of Chauvelin, which, as we have seen, was decided at Paris before the Court of St. James's determined to dismiss him.
Another fact comes out clearly from a survey of the evidence given above, namely, that the execution of Louis XVI was in no sense the cause of the war. The question turned essentially on the conduct of France towards our Dutch Allies. Before Louis was put on his trial Pitt and Grenville had decided that the French must retract their aggressive decree against Holland, backed up as it was by a claim to support malcontents in any land. Failing this, war would have ensued, even if Louis had not been condemned to death. The tragedy of 21st January made no difference to the issue; for, as we have seen, the French Government by 10th January decided to push on its plans against the Dutch Republic. It is also impossible to attach any importance to the vague offers of Dumouriez and Maret, at which Lebrun connived probably so as to be able to say, without committing himself in the least, that he had done all he could for peace.
We may therefore conclude that the wealth and defencelessness of the Dutch Netherlands lured on the enthusiasts and intriguers of Paris to an enterprise the terrible results of which were unsuspected by them. Nothing is more remarkable than the full assurance of victory which breathes in the letters of Dumouriez, the despatches of Lebrun, and the speeches of the French deputies. Experienced statesmen were soon to stand aghast at the triumph of the Republican arms; but it fell short of the hopes of the French politicians. In this boundless self-confidence, sublime were it not so disastrous, is to be found the chief cause of war in 1793.
CHAPTER V
THE FLEMISH CAMPAIGN (1793)
The war is not only unavoidable, but, under the circumstances of the case, absolutely necessary to the existence of Great Britain and Europe.—Pitt, Speech of 11th March, 1793.
In this chapter and the following, dealing with phases of the Great War, the narrative may seem at times to diverge far from the life of Pitt. But, in truth, his career now depended upon the issue of this gigantic strife. Therefore an account merely of his domestic concerns, of the debates at Westminster, or even of British and Irish affairs, would be a one-sided and superficial sketch. For in reality his destiny, together with that of Great Britain and of Europe at large, turned upon the events that unfolded themselves in Flanders and the Rhineland, at Toulon and Quiberon, in Hayti, Corsica, and Egypt. As these in their turn were potently influenced by the policy pursued at Paris, Vienna, Berlin, and Madrid, we must take a survey, wide but minute, sometimes to all appearance diffuse, yet in reality vitally related to the main theme. In order to simplify the narrative, I have sought to disentangle the strands of war policy and to follow them severally, connecting them, however,