Robson Martin. Britain, Portugal and South America in the Napoleonic Wars: Alliances and Diplomacy in Economic Maritime Conflict (ENG)

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Till is Director of the Corbett Centre for Maritime Policy Studies, which

is part of the Defence Studies Department, and I am thankful to fellow

‘Corbettians’, notably Professor Greg Kennedy and Drs Jon Robb-Webb

and Andrew Gordon, for the open and wide-ranging conversations such

an organisation thrives upon and which ultimately bear relevance and

have an impact upon one’s work. I studied with a number of my now

colleagues and possess a shared heritage of the entire PhD process, in

particular the endless trips to the Public Records Office (now The Na-

tional Archives) with Dr Chris Tripodi who enlivened the daily

‘experience’ of the London transport system.

I would like to thank staff at a number of archives and libraries in-

cluding The National Archives, the British Library, the National Mari-

time Museum, Durham Palace Green Library, Cambridge Country Re-

cord Office, the Institute of Historical Research and the West Yorkshire

Archive Service for their helpful assistance in my research. I am also

grateful to King’s College London for the award of a small grant to visit

the George Canning Papers and I am grateful to Lord Harewood for

permission to quote from the same.

The production of this book has been greatly assisted by a number of

people. Robert Jones (GAC) and Julie Cochrane (NMM) helped with the

sourcing of images while Geoff Hunt very kindly supplied his splendid

painting of the Portuguese arrival in Brazil. Pearson Education Limited

kindly granted permission to reproduce the map of Europe in 1806.

Tanya Phillips helped me with some of the more convoluted transla-

tions, Malcolm Day proved a diligent copy-editor and Diana LeCore an

excellent indexer, while Jo Godfrey at I.B. Tauris displayed unbelievable

patience as well as coming forward with valuable comments, support and

feedback. Of course, any errors that remain in the work are entirely my

own. I am extremely grateful to the trustees of the Scouloudi Founda-

tion, in association with the Institute of Historical Research, who pro-

vided a grant to assist with the publication of this book.

I would not even have been in a position to undertake my studies, let

alone to write this book, without the kind and generous support of my

chosen career from my parents. Finally, and certainly most importantly,

Charlotte and Horatio provide a constant source of inspiration and a

welcome distraction from the intricacies of the British maritime eco-

nomic empire of the early nineteenth century.

Martin Robson, Ide, August 2010

RITAIN, PORTUGAL AND SOUTH AMERICA

Europe in 1806.

and Europe, (London: Pearson Education Limited, 2001)

‘Oh, my country! How I leave my country!’

The last reported words of William Pitt, aged just 46 years and 8 months,

uttered in the early hours of 23 January 1806 seem a suitable point with

which to begin this study. His passing, set against the backdrop of

French hegemony of Western and Central Europe, left Britain in a dire

situation: without a leader, without a strategy and, seemingly, without

allies.

For Britain, Pitt was the war leader. Not, perhaps, a great war leader in

the mould of his father William Pitt the Elder or, taking a more recent

example, Winston Churchill, but a leader nonetheless, a personality capa-

ble of bringing some continuity and focus to the British political situa-

tion, both domestic and foreign. Pitt had been in office as Prime Minis-

ter for the majority of his adult life. Accepting George III’s proposal to

form a government on 19 December 1783 aged just 24, Pitt held office

for the next 17 years, resigning over Catholic Emancipation in March

1801. These years had witnessed his careful management of the fiscal

challenges facing Britain, though the strategic challenges posed by the

French Revolution were far more difficult to combat. Pitt’s war strategy

had been to balance the requirements of overseas security against the

formation of Continental coalitions to achieve British war aims in

Europe. Continental policy had already been twice trumped by French

military success. It had been the Austrians who, in the face of French

military success, made peace with Revolutionary France in the Treaty of

Campo Formio in 1797, thereby signalling an effective end to the First

Coalition. The Second Coalition suffered a similar fate, with the Russians

already opting out due to disagreements with Britain over maritime

rights. French success and Austrian defeats led the latter to make peace

at Lunéville in February 1801. Britain and France agreed to a short-lived

peace at Amiens in 1802. With the war renewed in 1803 and with Pitt

back in office in May 1804 he was again the driving force behind British

Preface

The Death of Pitt

strategy. Now Pitt resolved to concentrate his efforts solely on the war in

Europe.

Pitt’s careful diplomacy was given added impetus when Nelson won

his greatest naval victory at Trafalgar on 21 October 1805, but British

success at sea was countered by French military prowess on land. If the

surrender of an entire Austrian army at Ulm on 19 October was bad

enough, worse was to follow. The Battle of Austerlitz on 2 December

1805 over the combined Austro-Russian army was, perhaps, Napoleon’s

greatest victory. Austerlitz knocked Austria out of the war. Following the

Treaty of Pressburg, 26 December 1805, Austrian security was now de-

fined by France. Russia, however, still possessed the means to continue

fighting but would do so on her own terms retreating eastwards from

central Europe. As Paul Schroeder has succinctly noted, it took Pitt two

years of diplomacy to create the Third Coalition – it took Napoleon four

months to smash it.

Austerlitz therefore marked the end of Pitt’s last

attempt at building a European coalition to fight France. News of the

significant events in Europe trickled into Pitt in the weeks before his

death, though the details and implications were not entirely clear until

the last days of 1805 when news of an armistice reached London.

Once

digested the situation became clear: Austria was now out of the war (and

would stay there until 1809). Prussia had, for all intents and purposes,

remained out of the war. Although there had been plans for a British

army to operate in Northern Germany, French military success put paid

to any hope of cooperation with Prussia (though she would fight and be

defeated in 1806). To the east the Russians remained active but isolated

and on the defensive; unable to influence the situation in the heartland

of Europe. France had achieved hegemony in Western and Central

Europe. Pitt had failed.

Where did all this leave Britain? We cannot be sure when, where or

even if Pitt, in response to the news of Austerlitz, asked for a map to

find the obscure place name and, upon finding it, really did utter the

prophetic words ‘Roll up that map: it will not be wanted these ten

years’.

Pitt’s health had been in decline since 1797; heavy drinking had

left him suffering from gout and various digestive ailments. Visits to take

the waters in Bath, where he received news of Austerlitz, provided tem-

porary respite but the strain of the premiership eventually took its toll.

He initially met the reverse of his great plan with stoicism, though this

could not hide the fact he had received a mortal blow. Close friends now

noticed his degenerating health, yet the shock of his death was profound

RITAIN, PORTUGAL AND SOUTH AMERICA

xiv

and was, perhaps, symptomatic of his withdrawal from sociable com-

pany.

The challenges facing the ministries that followed Pitt’s death, ‘The

Ministry of All the Talents’ and the Portland Ministry, were considerable.

How they met those challenges is the subject of this work. In order to

assess British policy in these years it is first necessary to address the issue

of British war aims: essentially what Britain fighting for and what she

was not. Once those aims have been identified the means of achieving

them can be examined. This question of aims and means will be exam-

ined with the framework of the concept of maritime economic war,

thereby contextualising British policy towards Portugal and South Amer-

ica, which is at the heart of this study.

…

REFACE

Set against the maelstrom of Napoleonic Europe, British policy towards

Portugal and South America in the years 1806-1808 might seem a side-

show, albeit an interesting one, to the main events.

The years following

Admiral Lord Nelson’s crushing tactical and operational naval victory

over the combined Franco-Spanish fleet at Trafalgar on 21 October

1805 were marked by successive military defeats inflicted on Austria,

Russia and Prussia by Napoleonic France. Following the collapse of

Pitt’s final attempt at coalition building British statesmen initially hoped

to salvage something from the situation in Europe, even engaging in

tentative (if unsuccessful) peace talks with France. But the French victo-

ries of 1805-1807 culminated in the Treaties of Tilsit where Russia, Brit-

ain’s last continental hope, allied with France. British ministers faced a

situation of diplomatic and strategic isolation akin to that of 1940; it

‘marked the end of an epoch in British strategy’.

On the other side of

the Channel, unable to mount an invasion attempt, Napoleon tried to

use the power of Continental Europe to hit Britain where it would hurt

most: in the pocket. The Continental blockade was designed to ruin the

British economy by excluding British goods from European markets. To

achieve this, France would have to control the coastline of Europe, an

aim ‘central to French policy from 1807 onwards’.

On 21 November 1806 Napoleon issued the Berlin Decree, declaring

the British Isles under blockade and prohibiting all commerce between

European areas under his control with Britain and her colonies. French

forces occupied the ports of the Papal States and the Hansa towns of

Hamburg, Lübeck and Bremen, while declaring that the Bourbons of

Naples had ceased to reign. The following year Napoleon consolidated

Introduction

BRITISH WAR AIMS

French control of the Kingdom of Etruria. The strategy of excluding

British economic activity from the continent would reach its zenith dur-

ing late 1807 and early 1808. The signing of the Treaties of Tilsit in July

1807, between France and Russia, seemed to confirm Napoleon’s domi-

nance of Continental Europe and left Britain strategically isolated with

no major allies in Europe.

British strategic isolation had previously occurred during the Ameri-

can War of Independence with disastrous results. The failure to prevent

French intervention had ultimately cost Britain the American Colonies.

Strategic isolation had occurred again in 1795 and again in 1800; this

latter period culminating in the temporary Peace of Amiens of 1802. In

1806-1808 the outlook was bleaker than ever before; ‘England faced the

choice of protracted, and indecisive or perhaps disastrous maritime war-

fare, or an immediate peace’.

It seemed as if Napoleon would not settle

for a compromise peace comparable to Amiens but wanted to reduce

Britain to a minor power.

In response the British war effort was refocused away from coalition

building in Europe and instead towards a strategy designed to limit French

military and commercial gains in Europe while protecting British overseas

interests, vital to the long-term prosecution of the war and any post-war

reconstruction. Or, in Paul Schroeder’s words, Britain ‘concentrated...on

surviving and winning over the long haul’.

Without Continental allies and

isolated from Europe, Britain continued to fight. According to convention

this defensive phase of British strategy lasted until the Spanish nation

erupted in open revolt against French occupation in May 1808 and Britain

once more looked to Europe for offensive action. The impression is that

the period under consideration here does not, at first glance, seem like

particularly fertile ground for the British historian.

Yet, an examination of the conduct of the war during 1806-1808 pro-

vides ample evidence of what the war was actually about for Britain.

How strategy contributed to the achievement of British war aims:

‘according to what methods and above all, with what conception as to how a war

was to be brought to a successful conclusion’.

There was a clear link between

the means adopted by Britain and the desired end state:

…wars tend to take certain forms each with a marked idiosyncrasy;

that these forms are normally related to the object of the war and

to its value to one or both belligerents; that a system of operations

which suits one form may not be that best suited to another.

BRITAIN, PORTUGAL AND SOUTH AMERICA

NTRODUCTION

The conduct of war, as pointed out by Julian Corbett, can vary from

nation to nation depending on a number of factors. Wars between major

continental powers in Europe were decided in battle or by siege on land.

But for Britain, an island nation, with overseas possessions, maritime

trade and the Royal Navy, the nature of war was inherently ‘maritime’.

British strategy in this period was, therefore, naturally a maritime strat-

egy, defined by Corbett as ‘the principles which govern a war in which

the sea is a substantial factor’.

This is more than a petty argument about

semantics; defining exactly what we do and do not mean by ‘maritime’ is

important as the term has been used in a number of ways. The term

maritime activity, Geoff Till points out:

…is sometimes taken to concern only navies, sometimes navies

operating in conjunction with the ground…forces, sometimes na-

vies in the broader context of all activities relating to the commer-

cial, non-military use [sic] the sea, and sometimes inevitably the

word ‘maritime’ covers all three possibilities!

Terminology is important because the conduct of British strategy in

this period has been labelled as ‘maritime’ but without suitable definition

and this has impacted upon the debate surrounding how Britain fought

the wars. The debate surrounding these issues will be considered in some

depth below but in order to contextualise the concept of ‘maritime war’

we must realise that for Britain, an island nation, just about every war

had a maritime dimension – the key was how this maritime dimension

contributed towards the war aims for, as Corbett noted:

Since men live upon the land and not upon the sea, great issues

between nations at war have always been decided – except in the

rarest cases – either by what your army can do against your en-

emy’s territory and national life or else by the fear of what the fleet

makes it possible for your army to do.

Maritime strategy is, in a narrow sense, how to make effective use of

land and sea forces; how they can contribute towards achieving the aims

of the war.

Yet for Britain the wars with France were maritime in the wider sense

of the term. Maritime power was, and is, more than just the ability to use

force or diplomacy to achieve aims. This begs the question, what makes