as provocative, how much more provocative was England's refusal to
evacuate Malta and Alexandria and to return Pondicherry and other
enclaves in India to French rule? As Napoleon and others many times
pointed' out, the former were matters for Austria and were not mentioned
in the treaty, while the latter were expressly mentioned in the text of
Amiens and concerned no one but France and Britain.
The sober conclusion must be that on paper Britain went to war in
1803 out of a mixture of economic motives and national neurosis - an
irrational anxiety about Napoleon's motives and intentions. The sale of
Louisiana and the withdrawal from Haiti exposed the hollowness of the
threat in the western hemisphere, while if Addington took the advice of
his secret agents rather than the nonsense of Whitworth, he would have
known that Admiral Denis Decres, the French Navy Minister, did his
best to sabotage any expedition Bonaparte proposed fitting out against
India, and was particularly negative about the Consul's favourite project
- a two-pronged assault on India and Egypt.
On the other hand, if we judge by the long-term rather than the short
term circumstances of 1803, the British decision for war contains more
rationality. Napoleon was certainly no pacifist and his long-term plans
clearly envisaged both further European expansion and a decisive settling
of accounts with England. But for Napoleon in 1803, as for Hitler in
1939, the war came too soon. He had not yet built up his navy to the
point where it had any prospect of challenging Britain's: he had just
thirty-nine ships of the line and thirty-five frigates to throw against the
massive power of the Royal Navy, whose numbers were 202 and 277
respectively. Nor had he finished the task of domestic consolidation.
From the point of view of ultimate British self-interest, as opposed to the
pharisaical reasons actually advanced, Britain made the right choice,
catching Napoleon before he was ready to fight in time and circumstances
of his own choosing. The problem for London was that it was going to be
a very long haul and she faced the prospect of going it alone in the
foreseeable future. Napoleon's rightward drift in France meant there was
no enthusiasm or indeed occasion, as in 1792 for an ideological anti
Revolutionary crusade. None of the other powers wanted war or saw it as
conducive to their interests. And there was little sympathy for the
transparent 'justifications' of perfidious Albion.
Even as he wrestled with foreign and domestic policy, Napoleon had
constantly to indulge or satisfy the aspirations of a large family of prima
donna-ish siblings and an unscrupulous tail of in-laws and other hangers
on in the family circle. In many ways the least troublesome was Joseph,