assembled in the camps at St Omer, | a want of that unity and decision of movement which was requisite to insure success. Selecting a medium between these two extremes, Napoleon adopted a double division. His army was divided, in the first instance, into corps composed of from twenty to thirty thousand men each, the direction of which was intrusted to a marshal of the Empire. Each of these corps had, in proportion to its force, a suitable allotment of field and heavy artillery, its reserve, and two or three regiments of light cavalry; but the heavy cavalry and medium horse, or dragoons, were united into one corps, and placed under the command of one general. Bruges, Montreuil, and Boulogne, besides 24,000 at the Texel and Helvoetsluys, 10,000 on board the combined fleet, and the like force at Brest, ready to embark in the squadron of Admiral Gantheaume; in all, 158,000 men, in the highest state of discipline and equipment. The stores of ammunition, warlike implements, and provisions collected, were on an unparalleled scale of magnitude, and amply evinced the reality of the design which the Emperor had in view. Each cannon had 200 rounds of ammunition; the cartridges were 13,000,000; the flints, 1,200,000; the biscuits, 2,000,000; the saddles, 10,000; and 5000 sheep were ready to accompany the army in its embarkation. Provisions for the immense multitude for three months had been collected: the hospital arrangements were perfect; and 2293 vessels -capable of transporting 160,000 men and 6000 horses-of which 1339 were armed with above 3500 pieces of cannon, independent of the artillery which accompanied the army, awaited, in the harbours of Boulogne, Etaples, Ambleteuse, Ostend, and Calais, the signal to put to sea. 58. During its long encampment on the shores of the Channel, this great army had been organised in a different manner from any that had yet existed in modern Europe. It is a curious circumstance, that the genius of Napoleon, aided by all the experience of the revolutionary wars, reverted at last to a system extremely similar to that of the Roman legions; and to the vigour and efficiency of this organisation, which has never since been departed from, the subsequent extraordinary successes of the French armies may in some degree be ascribed. At the commencement of the Revolution, the divisions of the army, generally fifteen or eighteen thousand strong, were hurried, under the first officer that could be found, into the field; but it was soon found that there were few generals capable of skilfully directing the movements of such considerable masses of troops; while, on the other hand, if the divisions were too small, there was 59. The organisation of the Imperial Guard was precisely the same, with this difference only-that it was considered as the reserve of the whole army, and as such more immediately under the command of the Emperor himself. Each corps was formed into four or five divisions, varying in strength from five to seven thousand men, commanded by generals of division, who received their orders from the general of the corps. The troops in these divisions always remained under the same officers; the divisions themselves belonged to the same corps; no incorporation or transposition, excepting in cases of absolute necessity, arising from extraordinary casualties in war, disturbed the order established in the camps. In this way the generals came to know their officers, the officers their soldiers; the capacity, disposition, and qualities of each were understood. An esprit de corps was formed, not only among the members of the same regiment, but among those of the same division and corps; and the general of division took as much pride in the precision with which the regiments under his orders performed their combined operations, or the marshal in the perfection of the arrangements of the corps under his direction, as the captain of dragoons did in the steadiness with which his men kept their line in a charge, or the sergeant in the cleanness of the appointments of the little subdivision intrusted to his care. Next to the Imperial Guard, and noways inferior to it in the splendid appearance which it presented, was the Corps d'Elite of grenadiers which Junot had formed at Arras. It consisted of ten battalions of 800 men each, selected from the grenadier companies of regiments not intended to form part of the expedition. Their appearance and martial air were in the highest degree magnificent; and Napoleon, by whom these qualities were highly appreciated, destined them for the perilous honour of being first landed on the British shores. 61. Satisfied with their lot in this great encampment, the soldiers were singularly tractable and obedient. Constantly occupied and amused by the spectacle of sea-fights, or frequent reviews and mock battles, they neither murmured at the exactions of a rigid discipline, nor experienced the usual monotony and languor of a pacific life in camps. The good effects of distributing the corps into divisions were here soon rendered conspicuous. The general commanding each division became not only personally acquainted with all his officers, but had an oppor in the discipline of the men; and the soldiers, from constant exercises, and the habit of acting together in large masses, acquired a degree of precision in the performance of manœuvres on a great scale, which never before had been equalled in the French armies, and embraced everything that was really useful or suitable to the French character in the discipline of the Great Frederick. 60. The camps in which the soldiers were lodged, during their long sojourn on the shores of the Channel, were cha-tunity of correcting anything defective racterised by the same admirable system of organisation. They were laid out, according to the usual form, in squares intersected by streets, and composed of barracks constructed on a uniform plan, according to the materials furnished by the country in which they were situated. At Ostend they were composed of light wood and straw; at Boulogne and Vimireux, of sharp stakes cut in the forest of Guenis, supported by masonwork. These field-barracks were extremely healthy: the beds of the soldiers, raised two feet above the ground, were composed of straw, on which their camp-blankets were laid; the utmost care was taken to preserve cleanliness in every part of the establishment. Constant employment was the true secret both of their good health and docile habits. Neither officers nor soldiers were ever allowed to remain any time idle. When not employed in military evolutions, they were continually engaged either in raising or strengthening the field-works on the different points of the coast, or levelling down eminences, draining marshes, or filling up hollows, to form agreeable esplanades in front of their habitations, and where their exercises were performed. The different corps and divisions vied with each other in these works of utility or recreation: they even went so far as to engage in undertakings of pure ornament; gardens were created, flowers were cultivated, and, in the midst of an immense military population, the aspect of nature was sensibly improved. 62. No man knew better than Napoleon, from his own experience, as well as from the calamities which an obstinate adherence to the opposite system had inflicted upon his opponents, that the general-in-chief, especially if far removed from the theatre of operations, cannot with advantage prescribe the details of subordinate movements. In his campaigns, consequently, each marshal received general instructions as to the line of operations which he was to adopt, and the end to which his efforts were to be directed; but he was left entirely master of the means by which these objects were to be attained. And although Napoleon was frequently extremely minute in his directions to his lieutenants, yet he always left them a general discretion to adopt them or not, according to circumstances; insomuch that a commander, in his estimation, would have committed a serious fault if he had followed the letter of his instructions when a change of circumstances called for a deviation from them. The same system of confidence was established between the marshal and his generals of division, to all of whom a certain discretionary power in the execution of orders was intrusted; a confidence for the most part well deserved by the ability and experience of these officers. In one respect only the changes of Napoleon at this period were of doubtful utility, and that was in virtually suppressing the état major, or general staff, by enacting that the rank of colonels in it should be abolished; an ordinance which, by closing the avenue of promotion, at once banished all young men of ability from that department, and degraded what had formerly been the chief school of military talent into a higher species of public couriers. 63. But though Napoleon left to each officer, in his own sphere, those discretionary powers which he knew to be indispensable, it is not to be supposed that he was negligent of the manner in which their several duties were discharged, or that a vigilant superintendence was not kept up, under his direction, of all departments in the army. On the contrary, he exercised an incessant and most active watchfulness over every officer intrusted with any service of importance in the vast army subject to his orders. Nothing escaped his vigilance. Continual reports addressed to headquarters informed him how every branch of his service was conducted; and if anything was defective, an immediate reprimand from Berthier informed the person in fault that the attention of the Emperor had been attracted to his delinquence. Incessant and minute instructions, addressed to the generals, commissaries, and functionaries of every description connected with the army, gave to all the benefit of his luminous views and vast experience. With the extension of his forces, and the multiplication of their wants, his powers appeared to expand in an almost miraculous proportion; and the active superintendence of all, which seemed the utmost limit of human exertion when only fifty thousand men required to be surveyed, was not sensibly diminished when five hundred thousand were assembled. Above all, the attention of the Emperor was habitually turned to the means of providing for the subsistence of his troops; a branch of service which, from the prodigious increase of his forces, and the rapidity with which he moved them into countries where no magazines had been formed, required, in an extraordinary degree, all the efforts of his talent and reflection. To such a length was this superintendence of the Emperor carried, that it was a common saying in the army, that every officer who had anything of importance to perform imagined that the imperial attention was exclusively directed to himself: while, in fact, it was divided among several hundreds, perhaps thousands, who stood in a similar predicament.* By this unexampled vigilance, seconded by the great abilities of the officers and generals under his command, the army destined for the invasion of England acquired a degree of perfection, in point of discipline, organisation, and military habits, unprecedented since the days of the Roman legions. 64. The arrangements connected with the flotilla were as extraordinary and perfect as those of the land forces. It was organised in as many subdivisions as there were sections in the army; and all the stores, baggage, and artillery, were already on board; so that nothing remained but the embarkation of the * Ample evidence of the truth of these observations exists in the correspondence of the Emperor, still preserved in the archives of Paris, or in the custody of his generals, and which, if published entire, would amount to many hundred volumes. From the valudices to General Mathieu Dumas, and the able fragments of it published in the appen. works of General Gourgaud and Baron Fain, on the campaigns of 1812, 1813, and 1814, as well as the letters of Napoleon, contained in Napier's History of the Peninsular War, some idea may be formed of the prodigious mental activity of the man who, amidst all the cares of empire, and all the distraction of almost incessant warfare, contrived, during the twenty years that he held the reins of power, to write or dictate probably more than the united works of Lope de Vega, Voltaire, and Sir Walter Scott. His secret and confidential correspondence with the Directory, published at Paris in 1819, from 1796 to 1798 only, a work of great interest and rarity, amounts to seven large closely printed volumes; and must have been at least twice as volumihis letters to his generals during that time nous. straits for six hours, and we are the masters of the world." * men. The French genius, adapted beyond that of any other people in Europe for the organisation of large bodies, 66. The object of Napoleon, in this shone forth here in full lustre. Such immense accumulation of gun-boats and was the perfection to which the ar- armed vessels, was not to force his way rangements had been carried, that not across the Channel by means of this only every division of the army, but novel species of naval force, but merely every regiment had a section of the to provide transports for the conveyflotilla allotted to it, consisting of nine ance of the troops, and withdraw the gun-boats for each battalion; the point attention of the enemy, by their seemand vessel of embarkation was assigned ing adaptation for warlike operations, to every man, horse, gun, and carriage from the quarter whence the force in that prodigious array; and, from con- really intended to cover the descent stant practice, they had arrived at such was to be obtained. The problem to precision in that most difficult branch be solved was, to transport one hunof their duty, that it was found by dred and fifty thousand men in safety experiment that a corps of twenty-five to the shores of Kent; and no man thousand men, drawn up opposite the knew better than Napoleon that to envessels allotted to them, could be com-gage in such an enterprise, while the pletely embarked in the short space of English were masters of the sea, was ten minutes. a vain, or, in the most favourable view, a perilous attempt. From the beginning, therefore, he resolved not to hazard the embarkation till, by a concentration of all his naval forces in the Channel, while the English fleets were decoyed to distant parts of the world, he had acquired, for the time at least, a decided command of the passage. The great object, however, was to disguise these ultimate designs, and prevent the English government from adopting the 65. The chances of success with this immense force and flotilla was anxiously discussed in Napoleon's presence by Admirals Decrès and Bruix, who deservedly stood highest in his confidence. "In a narrow sea, or near the shore," said the former, "when it can bring its thousands of guns to bear on a few vessels, the flotilla is exceedingly formidable; that is like attacking an army in a defile with a cloud of intrepid sharpshooters. But suppose them in the open sea, with a fresh gale, which would facilitate the movements of the English vessels as much as it would impede those of your small craft, would they not run the greatest risk of being run down or sunk by the giants whom they would have to combat?" "We might lose," answered Bruix, “perhaps a hundred vessels out of two thousand; but with the remaining nineteen hundred you would get clear over, and that is enough for the ruin of England."-"Yes," replied Decrès, "if the destruction of that hundred did not produce discouragement to the nineteen hundred, which would induce confusion and ruin, especially if, as is not unlikely, the naval officers lost their presence of mind at the sight of so vast and awful a disaster." Napoleon took a deep interest in their discussion, but with his usual intrepidity, he inclined to the bolder side. "Let us," said he, "but be masters of the The enemy "The Rochefort squadron, consisting of five vessels, a three-decker, and four frigates, is ready to weigh anchor; it has only five hostile ships to face. There are twenty-one vessels in the Brest squadron. These have weighed anchor in order to harass Admiral Cornwallis, and compel the English to maintain a large number of ships in that quarter. to blockade the Dutch squadron, consisting have also six vessels before Texel, of five ships, four of them frigates. General Marmont has got his army on board. Between Etaples, Boulogne, Vimereux, and Ambleteuse, two new ports which I have caused to be constructed, we have 270 sloops carrying guns, 534 gun-boats, 396 small transports, in all 1200 vessels, carrying 120,000 men strait for six hours, and we are masters of and 10,000 horses. Let us only command the the world. By the return courier, let me know when you will be able to weigh anchor, inform me as to the movements of the enemy, and where Nelson is. Consider well the mighty enterprise with which you are charged, and before I affix my signature to your final orders, let me know how you propose to carry these out."-Napoleon à l'Amiral Latouche-Tréville, à Toulon, 2d July 1805. THIERS, Consulat et l'Empire, v. 189. means by which they might have been frustrated. For this end it was that the Boulogne flotilla was armed, and the prodigious expense incurred of constructing above two thousand warlike vessels, bearing several thousand pieces, of cannon. Not one of these guns was meant to be fired; they were intended only as a veil the real covering force was to assemble at Martinique, and was to return suddenly to Europe, while the British squadrons were despatched to distant points to succour their menaced colonial possessions. The stratagem, thus ably conceived, was completely successful. Not one person in the British dominions, except the sagacious Admiral Collingwood, penetrated the real design. The French fleets returned in safety from the West Indies to the European latitudes, leaving Nelson three weeks' sail in the rear; and when the Emperor was at Boulogne, in August 1805, at the head of one hundred and thirty thousand men, sixty ships of the line were assembled in the Bay of Biscay, where the united British squadrons did not amount to much more than half that force.* 67. Towards the success of this profound design, it was of importance to accumulate as much as possible of the flotilla at Boulogne; and in the prose *The following valuable note, written by Napoleon at the time of his leaving the camp at Boulogne, in September 1805, explains fully the particulars of this great project: "What was my design in the creation of the flotilla at Boulogne? "I wished to assemble forty or fifty ships of the line in the harbour of Martinique, by operations combined in the harbours of Toulon, Cadiz, Ferrol, and Brest; to bring them suddenly back to Boulogne; to find myself in this way, during fifteen days, the master of the sea; to have one hundred and fifty thousand men encamped on the coast, three or four thousand vessels in the flotilla, and to set sail the moment that the signal was given of the arrival of the combined fleet. That project has failed. If Admiral Villeneuve, instead of entering the harbour of Ferrol, had contented himself with joining the Spanish squadron, and instantly made sail for Brest and joined Admiral Gantheaume, my army would have embarked, and it was all over with England. "To succeed in this object, it was necessary to assemble one hundred and fifty thousand men at Boulogne; to have there four thousand transports, and immense matériel, cution of this object, many actions took place between the English cruisers and the vessels advancing round the coast. They answered the double purpose of habituating the sailors to naval warfare, and perpetuating the illusion that it was by means of the armed force of the flotilla that the descent was to be effected. The vigour and boldness of the British cruisers knew no bounds in their warfare against this ignoble species of opponents, when coasting along under cover of the numerous batteries by which the coast was guarded. But notwithstanding all their efforts, the success achieved, from the impossibility of getting sufficiently near the enemy, was more than counterbalanced by the severe loss of life sustained in those perilous services. The most important of these was a series of actions from the 17th to the 19th July, when the Dutch flotilla, under the command of Admiral Verhuel, accomplished the passage from Dunkirk to Ambleteuse, near Boulogne. They were annoyed almost the whole way by the English vessels under the command of Sir Sidney Smith, and Captain Owen in the Immortalité frigate; but the weight of the attack was reserved for the rounding of Cape Gris Nez. The British ships approached within musket-shot, and poured in their to embark all that, and nevertheless to prevent the enemy from divining my object. It appeared scarcely practicable to do so. If I had succeeded, it would have been by doing the converse of what might have been expected. If fifty ships of the line were to assemble to cover the descent upon England, nothing but transport-vessels were required in the harbours of the Channel, and all that assemblage of gun-boats, floating batteries, and armed vessels was totally useless. Had I assembled together three or four thousand unarmed transports, no doubt the enemy would have perceived that I awaited the arrival of my fleets to attempt the passage; but by constructing praams and gun-boats, I appeared to be opposing cannon to cannon; and the enemy was in this manner deceived. They conceived that I intended to attempt the passage by main force, by means of my flotilla. They never penetrated my real design; and when, from the failure of the movements of my squadrons, my project was revealed, the utmost consternation pervaded the councils of London, and all men of sense in England confessed that England had never been so near its ruin."-See the original in DUMAS, xii. 315, 316; and Napoleon in MONTHOLON, iii. App. 384. |