Yet even at this stage Napoleon had not come to terms with the
fu ndamental problem that would in the end bring all his grandiose plans
to grief. In a word, he had not absorbed the lesson - a commonplace to
professional sailors - that navies could not simply be switched fr om
theatre to theatre, as could land troops in war gaming or actual
operations. The Emperor had no real conception of the effects of winds
and waves and, while he vaguely understood that the peniches could not
stand up to a heavy Atlantic swell, he failed to realize that the prames also
lacked the ability to withstand a heavy sea. The eight hours glibly
referred to in the letter to Ganteaume presupposed an unlikely
combination, especially in dark winter months: the absence of the Royal
Navy and a Channel as calm as a millpond.
Another initial error - which he did later make good - was the
assumption that a z,ooo-strong invasion flotilla, containing I so,ooo troops
and so,ooo sailors and auxiliaries, could cross the Channel to a beachhead
without the support of a covering fleet. When asked about this, Napoleon
airily spoke about crossing in fog, apparently unaware of the chaos and
near-certain disaster that would ensue if an uncoordinated armada tried
to run the gauntlet in mutual invisibility. He tried to overwhelm well
grounded objections with an appeal to revolutionary zeal and French
patriotism. so,ooo labourers were set to constructing berthing places in
the Channel ports, in the process virtually constructing a new port at
Ambleteuse, but the commander of the invasion flotilla, Admiral Bruix,
nervously pointed out to the Emperor that such commendable zeal did
not actually solve the outstanding problems.
The British, aware that Napoleon was in deadly earnest, raised militias,
constructed beacons and Martello towers, and tried to dispose their fleet
to cover any contingency: Nelson invested Toulon while Admiral
Cornwallis blockaded Brest. The Emperor meanwhile showed himself
once more a master of propaganda by arranging fo r the Bayeux tapestry, a
reminder of an earlier, successful invasion of England, to be taken on
tour. Yet the British were no slouches at propaganda and disinformation
themselves, and spread panic through the French army at Boulogne in
r8o4 with a cleverly planted rumour that bales of cotton carrying a plague
virus had been cast on to the beaches around Boulogne. The war of
nerves seemed to be tilting Britain's way in the autumn of r8o3 when
news came in that Robert Emmet's pro-French coup in Dublin had failed
dismally, making it now seem implausible that the corps assembling at
Brest could be sent to Ireland.
By the end of the year Napoleon had been brought down to earth fr om
his dream-castles. All his staffwork pointed to depressing conclusions: the
marcin
(Marcin)
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