Book

Britain Against Napoleon

Roger Knight

Captain Horatio Nelson also went to France in 1784 to try to master the language, but fell in love, was rejected and came home without having learnt anything.
Some pieces on how Britain used the private sector to gain an advantage in war procurement:

“Britain had the great advantage of being able to draw on the strength and innovations of private industry, which benefited from government departments awarding contracts to industrialists and businessmen. By the 1790s, the state victualling and ordnance yards and dockyards alone had nowhere near enough capacity to achieve the increased levels of industrial production needed for prolonged war.”

“The government obtained advantages from its dealings with contractors and needed the market expertise and flexibility provided by merchants and agents, and it profited from the innovations of private manufacturers, who were, in general, more creative than their counterparts in the state establishments.”

Interesting bits on industrial espionage. Tales of the French going to great lengths to learn cutting edge industrial processes. One One example is the export of a cutting-edge coke smelting iron process to France. The French then go and set up a large cannon foundry at Nantes using this technique. A brief snippet on French spy tradecraft:

“We found that there was nothing difficult getting a good view of English manufacturers. One needs to know the language with facility, not show any curiosity, and wait till the hour when punch is served to instruct oneself and acquire the confidence of the manufacturers and their foremen.”

Procurement fraud was investigated and punished. Christopher Atkinson, a very large grain merchant, was found to be padding his prices to the victualing board. They go on to prosecute him resulting in a year in prison. He had to stand in the pillory and was expelled from the House of Commons.
The government took statistics seriously. Here’s a little excerpt. “The ability of government to formulate policies was to a large extent dependent upon the reliability and quality of the evidence at its disposal.” One example is the debate over the population size, which leads to the 1801 census and the first accurate statistics - “It silenced the pessimists and reassured the political world that a sufficient tax base could be provided to fund the war.”
On intelligence: “the whole operation in the Vendee in 1795 was flawed because of over-optimistic assessments of the strength of the Royalists. The evidence for their effectiveness came from the Royalists themselves, leading to exaggerated claims, a classic intelligence mistake.”
There’s some interesting stuff on the early development of the intelligence services. One example, “Wycombe organised the surveillance of radicals in the London Corresponding Society by planting agents within it. On the 8th of May 1794, Wycombe provided Pitt with clear evidence that some in society were bent on revolution rather than on purely parliamentary reform. The government, alarmed that weapons were being stockpiled by potential revolutionaries, made rapid arrests. With Dundas steering the suspension of habeas corpus through parliament in two weeks, the society was broken.”
A piece on Admiralty reform in 1801. Pitt has resigned. Lord St Vincent is appointed First Lord of the Admiralty. He demands an inquiry into the running of the Navy, the Commission of Naval Inquiry. An excerpt:

“The new men of the Admiralty were convinced that the administration of the Navy was corrupt to the core, and they brought brusque and unceremonious methods of management to an organization more used to negotiation, respect for precedent and the push and pull of politics. No one denied that the administration could be improved, but imposing harsh and radical change at such a time was ill-judged. Looking to save money immediately, the Board cancelled shipbuilding and timber contracts, and further savings were made in the Royal Dockyards. The result was an immediate loss of morale and near paralysis of the Dockyards and victualing yards.”

One of the things that strikes me in this book is how long it took to travel by land because there were no trains, no cars. A huge advantage to having naval dominance was being able to move goods faster. “For a dozen years, every one of Napoleon’s moves in the Mediterranean was countered by Britain’s ability to move troops and supplies faster by ship than he could move them by land.”
Sometimes a little bit of tech goes a long way. For example: “gunlocks to fire the long guns gave the British gunners a considerable advantage at sea, as for example in the slow Atlantic swell in the early stages of the Battle of Trafalgar. They were quicker, safer for the gunner, and far more accurate at long range than the old slow match still used by the French.”
Competition for shipbuilding tenders was intense. Compare this to now when BAE Systems are the sole builder for the Type 26 frigate.

“Between October 1809 and September 1813 a total of 140 warship building tenders were received, with just 21% successful. Shipyards in more distant areas of the country, including the north-east, now tended for and were awarded warship contracts. Very small naval vessels were even built abroad. Private yards on the Medway, hitherto spurned, were taken up. A surviving copy of the contract of 1812 for a 36 gun frigate built in this yard is 100 pages in length and indexed, demonstrating just how complex such hugely detailed specifications were by this stage in the war.”

Interesting example of an entrepreneur, Robert Davy of Wear. His three shipyards launched 26 warships of nearly 9,000 tonnes. Davy had other businesses, lime-burner, coal and timber merchant, farmer grazier and even a little trading to Newfoundland. Davy’s yard produced warships steadily through the war, accelerating production in the last three years. In 1813 he sent four government vessels downriver in one tide. The writer of a memoir recalled that:

“he was so exact and prompt in completing his government contracts within the time specified that he never had a complaint, or many others were fined the most heavily. But when the government offered Hanson premiums per day during the hottest part of the war, just prior to the close of it, about say 1812 to 1815, to all those who could complete their contracts prior to the time stated, he received very large sums in that shape. Having finished all his ships more or less before time, shrewd and well capitalised Davy took on no more contracts after 1814 when the naval shipbuilding boom came to an end.”

During the conflict Britain becomes a major arms exporter. They’ve got lots of infrastructure like the Woolwich Arsenal and the Royal Laboratory. They have various proving centers as well to proof test powder, muskets, cannon, etc. Production of gunpowder had to increase sevenfold. Britain exports 70,000 muskets to the Baltic, 24,000 to Sicily. Prussia demands 40 howitzers, 10,000 muskets, 3 million ball cartridges and 100,000 flints.
Contractors come to the aid of the state to expand war production. The East India Company doubles imports of saltpetre from India from 6,000 tonnes in 1808 to more than 12,000 in 1810.
The building of the Plymouth Breakwater was an incredible engineering achievement. It was necessary to halt the Atlantic swell that endangered shipping within Plymouth Sound. The breakwater is just under a mile in length east-west across the entrance to the Sound, at a depth of 35 feet. After some five years of debate this huge project was pushed through by Charles Philip York then First Lord despite resistance from Spencer Perceval, then Chancellor of the Exchequer. John Barrow recorded that York threatened resignation if the breakwater estimate was not accepted. The quarries at Oreston near Plymouth were opened on the 7th of August 1812 and the first stones were dropped on the seabed that month. This followed authorisation in June 1812! On 31st of March 1813 the breakwater made its first appearance above the surface.
An account from a French observer:

” Those enormous masses of marble that the quarrymen strike with heavy strokes of their hammers, and those aerial roads or flying bridges which serve for the removal of the superstratum of earth, those lines of cranes all at work at the same moment, the trucks all in motion, the arrival, the loading, and the departure of the vessels, all of this forms one of the most imposing sights that can strike a friend to the great works of art.”

More on the Breakwater:

“From the quarries, the larger stones, some over 5 tons, were taken by purpose-built government barges with hinged sterns and, inside the hull, trolleys on rails on an inclined plane to aid the offloading of the stone into the sea. Smaller stones were taken by vessels provided by contractors, and every one was carefully placed when dropped. By 1816, an average of over 1,000 tons of rock were being sunk daily, and total from the start of the project, nearly a million and a half tons were sunk. The greatest quantity of stone sunk in one week was estimated at over 15,000 tons. The number of skilled men and labourers employed on the project never rose above 650. By contrast, the French had employed 5000 when they attempted to build the Cherbourg breakwaters in the 1780s.

In 1811, Hansard prints a consolidated table of annual public expenditure. Total expenditure came to just over 85 million, the largest share, 43 million, the cost of the army, navy and ordinance combined. Alarmingly the interest on the national debt, and exchequer bills totaled only slightly less, at 35 million.
“Napoleon introduces an economic blockade to slow the British economy. These restrictions damaged Hamburg’s normal port trades, resulting in very high rates of unemployment experienced in all annexed continental ports. It was therefore not difficult to find people willing to engage in smuggling. French military rule was intensely unpopular in the annexed territories, for troops were billeted at no cost to the French, and swingeing taxes were also levied. In such an atmosphere, officials could be persuaded for a price to look the other way.”
In 1812 the US declares war on Britain! Didn’t know this.
Luddite riots and various other riots break out throughout the war. The government makes a smart decision in usually deploying non-local regiments to quell disturbances. Regiments without local ties are less likely to sympathise with the rioters.
There’s a little passage on the difficulties of executing sound military strategy in the face of parliamentary opposition. Wellington is operating in Spain, pinning down large amounts of Napoleon’s troops, who are dying through lack of supply, cold, wastage, etc. But this isn’t very glamorous. The opposition are looking for news of a critical military victory. Lord Liverpool and Bathurst stick by him and the campaign is a success.
A bit on the robustness needed to fight these wars:

“Not the least of Wellington’s personal accomplishments was to remain healthy for five years, withstanding the pressure of leadership, the rigours of campaigning, the unhealthy climate and the food. He never took any leave of absence, a feat perhaps attributable to his comparative youth. In 1808 he was under 40, while his staff officers were in their 30s, and those beneath them in the Adjutant-General’s department in their 20s. Together they wielded a powerful combination of battle experience, stamina, and youth. As we have seen, only the politicians were younger.

“Through some quirks of the yeomanry and militia system, whereby you could get transferred into the regular army, Wellington receives experienced, disciplined and fit soldiers. This accounts for the exceptional endurance of his army. Contrast this with Napoleon, whose conscription in the latter stages of the war brings all sorts of unsuitable, inexperienced troops into his armies, lowering their effectiveness.
Masses of prisoners of war are taken during the conflict and they build prison hulks to house them, an example of “can-do”.
On the benefits of having a parliament.

” At the centre of the British national effort was Parliament. For all its faults, delays and doubts about costs and strategy, it was a better system of waging war than anything that could be mustered by a dictator. Although on the face of it, this would hardly seem to be the case. Between 1799 and 1812, from the years of Napoleon’s rise to supreme power in France as first consul to his defeat in Russia, there were six British prime ministers, ten foreign secretaries, seven secretaries of state for war and nine first lords of the Admiralty. But while Napoleon had the advantages of continuity and speed of decision, he eventually lost a sense of reality. By about 1810, his ministers were telling him only what he wanted to hear. Just at the time when the British government administration was jolted out of old ways, by getting up-to-date and complete information to Parliament so that estimates and policy could be fully formulated and understood. Napoleon disappeared behind a cloud of illusion, ordering ships to be built by men whom he had sent to the army to be paid for by an income that was disappearing as his control over his vassal states loosened and the continental system disintegrated.

A lovely bit on the calibre of the leaders: ” In January 1810 Tom Grenville wrote to his 56-year-old brother, “You should not retire, your mind and talents are fresh and vigorous, though neither you nor I could stand the fatigues of such a session as the last in the House of Commons. There is too much serviceable stuff in you to lie down upon your pillow, and there is too little hope of quiet or prosperity in the country to justify either you or me in going to sleep when we ought to be upon duty at our posts.”