smaller bases at Wimereux and Ambleteuse; the four principal army
corps, each with artillery park, would be held back at Utrecht, Bruges,
St-Omer and Montreuil until the very last minute, to keep the enemy
guessing, but a fifth corps would prepare only at Brest as if an invasion of
Ireland was the real project.
Whereas the Cherbourg flotilla was to consist of twenty sloops and
eighty gunboats, the much larger one at Dunkirk would comprise one
hundred sloops and 320 gunboats. A variety of boats was used, but
principally the prames, sailing barges one hundred feet from bow to stern,
twenty-three feet in the beam, rigged like a corvette and armed with
twelve 24-pounders. A smaller version of the prame, armed with three 24-
pounders and an 8-inch howitzer, and rigged like a brig, was the chaloupe
canonniere. For transporting horses, ammunition and artillery there were
the three-masted bateaux canonnieres, resembling a fishing smack, with
stables in the hold, a 24-pounder in the bow and a howitzer at the stern.
Then there were the peniches, undecked vessels, sixty feet long by ten
wide, basically converted trading craft and fishing smacks. Finally, there
were sixty-foot sloops propelled by lug sails and oars and used exclusively
fo r troop transport.
In his early period of invasion euphoria Napoleon displayed an
amazing concern fo r detail. Nothing seemed too small to be beneath his
notice, and at St Orner Marshal Soult was astonished to receive a virtual
manual of drill fo r soldiers operating the peniches which contained detail
that would have occurred only to a cox of oarsmen. He squeezed Dutch,
Spanish and Portuguese allies fo r money to finance the invasion but even
so could not drum up enough to cover the huge expenses and was in the
end fo rced to raise a loan at the prohibitive interest rate of I 5%. Some
idea of the cost can be seen from a shipowner's tariff at the time: a prame
cost 70,000 francs; a chaloupe canonniere 35,000 francs, a bateau cannoniere
I8-23,ooo francs and a peniche I2-I5,000 francs.
Still hugely confident, he dubbed his forces 'the Army of England' and
wrote to Cambaceres that he had viewed the English coast across the sea
from Ambleteuse on a clear day and the Channel was merely 'a ditch will
be leapt as soon as someone has the guts to tr y'. A week later he wrote to
Admiral Ganteaume in Toulon: 'Eight hours of night in favourable
weather would decide the fate of the universe.' By October I 8 o3 Minister
of Marine Decres reported the flotilla in possession of I ,367 vessels of all
types; all major embarkation ports had been improved by deepening; and
the problem of getting an invasion off from Boulogne on a single tide,
which had so bedevilled French invasion attempts in I745, 1759 and
I798, was to be solved by building a breakwater and sluice.
marcin
(Marcin)
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