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Re-Assessing the Napoleonic Wars

British Strategy and the Struggle with France 1793–1815

Pages 553-569 | Published online: 01 Jul 2008
 

Abstract

This article examines the various constraints under which the conduct of British strategy operated during the French Wars – examples include its political and geographical situation, its far-flung colonial interests and its limited military resources and its need to maintain a strong alliance system in continental Europe – and shows how the direction that it took closely mirrored a variety of campaigns in the eighteenth century. That said, the position in which Britain found herself in the struggle against the French Revolution and Napoleon was frequently contradictory, and it is no coincidence that it was some time before the ideal combination of strategies was found that marked the period 1808–14. The fact that the difficulties involved were overcome said a great deal for the underlying strength of the British state.

Notes

1J.B. Hattendorf, England in the War of the Spanish Succession: A Study of the English View and Conduct of Grand Strategy, 1701–1712 (New York: Garland 1987).

2R.J.B. Muir and C.J. Esdaile, ‘Strategic Planning in a Time of Small Government: The Wars against Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, 1793–1815’, in C.M. Woolgar (ed.), Wellington Studies (Southampton: Hartley Institute 1996), I, 1–90.

3R. Harding, Amphibious Warfare in the Eighteenth Century: The British Expedition to the West Indies, 1740–1742 (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer 1991).

4P. Mackesy, War without Victory: The Downfall of Pitt, 1799–1802 (Oxford: OUP 1984).

5P. Mackesy, ‘Strategic Problems of the British War Effort’, in H.T. Dickinson (ed.), Britain and the French Revolution 1789–1815 (Basingstoke: Macmillan 1989), 147–64.

6State of Forces in Great Britain, Feb. 1798, [London] B[ritish] L[ibrary]: Add[itional Manuscript] 59281, fol. 15.

7Thomas, Lord Pelham, ‘Further Considerations on the Plan for a General Enrolment of the People’, 2 July 1803, BL. Add. 33120, fol. 135.

8Memorandum, Oct. 1796, BL. Add. 59280, fols 189–90.

9Major-General Isaac Brock to Earl of Liverpool, 25 May 1812, BL. Bathurst Papers 57/21, fol. 82.

10W. Seymour (ed.), A History of the Ordnance Survey (Folkestone: Dawson 1980), 21–31; W. Ravenhill, ‘The Southwest in the Eighteenth-Century Re-mapping of England’, in K. Barker and R.J.P. Kain (eds.), Maps and History in South-West England (Exeter: Exeter UP 1991), 20–1.

11Auckland to Morton Eden, 10, 31 Aug. 1792, BL. Add. 24444, fols. 55, 169, 179.

12George III to Henry Dundas, 1 June 1793, BL. Add. 40100, fol. 79.

13George III to Dundas, 16 Nov. 1793, George to Grenville, 1 Dec. 1794, BL. Add. 40100, fol. 103; ibid., 58858 fol. 114; M. Duffy, Soldiers, Sugar and Seapower: The British Expeditions to the West Indies and the War against Revolutionary France (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1987).

14George III to Dundas, 16 Nov. 1793, BL. Add. 40100, fol. 105.

15George III to Grenville, 13 Sept. 1794, BL. Add. 58858, fol. 83.

16Memorandum by George III of 30 Nov. 1794, enclosed with George to Grenville, 1 Dec. 1794, BL. Add. 58858, fol. 113.

17George III to Grenville, 7 June 1795, BL. Add. 58859, fol. 18.

18George III to Grenville, 30 Nov. 1795, BL. Add. 58859, fol. 42.

19George III to Grenville, 24, 20 Nov. 1799, BL. Add. 58861, fols 64, 61.

20George III to Pitt, 28 June 1800, [ London, Kew, the] N[ational] A[rchives], 30/8/104 fol. 287; Pitt to Dundas, 28 July 1800, BL. Add. 40100, fol. 272.

21George III to William Grenville, 1 Jan., 27 June, 26 Aug. 1800, George III to Dundas, 16 Sept. 1800, BL. Add. 58861, fols 81, 108, 133; ibid., 40100, fol. 278.

22Mackesy, War without Victory, 139.

23George to Henry Addington, 15 Jan. 1801, Exeter, Devon County Record Office, Sidmouth Papers, 152 M/C1801/OR4.

25Memorandum, 22 Nov. 1806, BL. Add. 59282, fols 76–81.

24J.W. Strong, ‘Russia's plans for an invasion of India in 1801’, Canadian Slavonic Papers, 7 (1965), 114–26; H. Ragsdale, Détente in the Napoleonic Era: Bonaparte and the Russians (Lawrence, 1980); O. Feldback, ‘The Foreign Policy of Tsar Paul I, 1800–1801: an interpretation’, Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, 30 (1982), 16–36.

26P.W. Schroeder, The Transformation of European Politics 1763–1848 (Oxford: OUP 1994).

27N.A.M. Rodger, ‘Seapower and Empire: Cause and Effect?’ in B. Moore and H. van Nierop (eds.), Colonial Empires Compared: Britain and the Netherlands, 1750–1850 (Aldershot: Ashgate 2003), 110.

28Schroeder, Transformation, 523.

29NA. WO 6/35, pp. 5, 17, 54–9, 75–9, 118–19, 331; C.D. Hall, British Strategy in the Napoleonic War 1803–15 (Manchester UP 1992), 20–1.

30M. Duffy, ‘British Diplomacy and the French Wars 1789–1815’, and P.K. O'Brien, ‘Public Finance in the wars with France 1793–1815’, in H.T. Dickinson (ed.), Britain and the French Revolution 1789–1815 (Basingstoke: Macmillan 1989), 139, 142, 165–87, 270; J.M. Sherwig, Guineas and Gunpowder: British Foreign Aid in the Wars with France, 1793–1815 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP 1969); Anon. memorandum, ‘Reflexions sur quelques imputations dirigées contre l'Angleterre’, 1809, Vienna, Haus-, Hof-, und Staatsarchiv, Staatskanzlei, England, Varia 13.

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