The Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815), page 23
135. Hall, British Strategy, pp. 178–9; Muir, Britain and Napoleon, pp. 102, 105–7. For details of Walcheren, see G. Bond, The Grand Expedition: The British Invasion of Holland in 1809 (Athens, GA, 1979); C.A. Christie, ‘The Royal Navy and the Walcheren Expedition of 1809’, in C.L. Symonds et al. (eds.), New Aspects of Naval History (Annapolis, 1981).
136. C. von Metternich, Memoirs, 1773–1815 (2 vols, New York, 1970), II, p. 365; E. Kraehe, Metternich’s German Policy (2 vols, Princeton, 1963–84), I, p. 104.
137. Rothenberg, Napoleon’s Great Adversaries. p. 171.
138. See L. Harford, ‘Napoleon and the Subjugation of the Tyrol,’ CREP (1989); Gill, Eagles, pp. 350–84.
139. See Petre’s comments in Charles, p. 224.
7
* * *
Trade Patterns and Resource Constraints
Politics has been defined as ‘the art of the possible’; and war as ‘the continuation of policy by other means’. Axiomatic though it might be, it is frequently overlooked that, in the pursuit of a given objective, the availability of resources often determines what can and cannot be attempted. Seldom have armed services in particular been wholly content with the personnel, equipment and supporting infrastructure at their disposal; some qualitative or quantitative improvement is almost always seen as desirable, if not essential, to meet this or that contingency, to bestow a supposed advantage, or to offset a perceived weakness. But whereas the demand for resources is potentially limitless, their supply is finite. Those that are available have to be allocated in the light of identified priorities; and, while, in war, the application of triage is perhaps at its most glaring in the treatment of wounded, difficult choices are ubiquitous.
Coming hard on the heels of those of the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars posed as many financial and political challenges to the belligerents as they did military ones. Although a far cry in many respects from the ‘total’ wars of the twentieth century, the struggle with France which dominated European affairs for some 25 years surpassed anything that had gone before in terms of its scale and costs. This resulted in, among other things, a far greater degree of state interference in the lives of individuals and across a much broader swathe of economic activity than had hitherto been the case. While the ruling dynasties of Europe had often been prepared to foster certain industries which were regarded as central to the preservation of state power, such as mining and the manufacture of armaments, this was essentially a byproduct of Realpolitik rather than part of a wider attempt to orchestrate their countries’ economic development. In Frederick the Great’s Prussia, for instance, military considerations dictated that economic self-sufficiency be developed as far as possible. Thus, agricultural reforms were aimed at securing an adequate supply of homegrown foodstuffs, while the Crown established a state bank, shipyards and its own agencies for the marketing of basic commodities such as salt, timber and iron ore. Although some private enterprise was encouraged through the provision of cheap supplies of materials from the royal monopolies, with protective tariffs, or with licences to engage in state-controlled activities, this was only done in so far as it was compatible with the Crown’s aspirations; where it existed at all, interest in economic development as a modernizing power was governed by the creeds of cameralism.
Such state-regulated mercantilism contrasted with the thinking of Adam Smith and other laissez-faire theorists who believed that each individual was the best judge of his own interests and, if left to pursue them, would by so doing promote the wellbeing of all the members of society. Indeed, in some regards, libertarian attitudes constrained the interference of the state in the lives of individuals and of the population as a whole. Property was largely seen as sacrosanct. Similarly, the imposition of a graduated tax system was politically unthinkable and would in any case have sorely tested most government bureaucracies. While Pitt introduced a general income tax for the war against France,1 it is doubtful whether, prior to the French Revolution, any government in the Europe of the eighteenth century could have contemplated, let alone levied, a graduated surtax, leaving low, flat-rate exactions as the only alternative.
Historians remain divided over the role played by such economic factors as taxation policies in the causes of the French Revolution. What appears to have been of significance, however, was not the burden of tax per se but rather its distribution: because of the vagaries of assessment and various exemption privileges, direct taxes fell primarily on the middle bands of the social spectrum, leaving the very poor and extremely rich comparatively unscathed. In fact, as a share of per capita output, the tax burden in Britain was significantly heavier than that in France at the time of the Revolution and had been for some 60 years.2 Nevertheless, France’s bankruptcy was the immediate cause of the Revolution, and her new, republican government was quick to introduce more uniform taxes as well as abolishing some aspects of feudalism, notably dues and tithes.
Other parts of Napoleon’s legacy from the Revolutionary period also merit consideration, above all the land settlement. As the republic dared not risk alienating the lesser peasantry by engaging in the sort of grand teneurial reforms which would have revitalized French agriculture economically speaking, it sought to distribute land confiscated from the Church and nobility in a fashion which would both slow the peasantry’s inevitable decline and give it a stake, however tiny, in the new order. The result was a patchwork of farmsteads, many too small to be efficient, and the preservation of some feudal practices. Strip farming and common grazing were still encountered, together with the concomitant customs of leaving land fallow and limiting crop rotation. Indeed, enclosure was often impracticable owing to a combination of the expense involved and the fragmentary nature of holdings; with millions tied to nugatory pieces of land, both labour and capital were largely immobile.
But in many areas the lesser peasantry were not the cardinal beneficiaries of reform. Whereas numerous peasants who began with no holdings actually remained landless, those who already had some property acquired more. Although this led to a net increase in the number of peasant proprietors, it strongly consolidated the position of the bourgeoisie rurale, the moderately wealthy peasants who formed the most conservative faction among French agriculturalists and who saw their holdings not as capital assets to be exploited but as patrimonies which endowed their families with a degree of independence.3 Given the mutually reinforcing mentalities and structures that thus emerged within France’s rural communities, they were unable and unwilling to make a direct contribution to the wider economy, unlike their counterparts in some other countries. The profit margins of the innumerable small and medium-sized plots were inevitably slim, generating little in the way of taxes or capital surpluses for investment, while low returns gave producers few incentives to venture beyond self-sufficiency. Not only did this mean that internal trade was stifled but also that peasants became entrenched in a sedentary, parochial life style, rendering manpower immobile and thereby depriving the industrial–urban sector of the economy of much-needed labour.
These trends, begun by the republic, could scarcely be reversed by Napoleon without dire political consequences for his regime. Indeed, he had to confirm them in some instances as he strove to reconcile opposing factions within French society. Whereas, for example, primogeniture had been outlawed during the Revolutionary epoch, equal inheritance, which had been a peasant custom, was formalized by him. Thus, handkerchiefs of land continued to shrink still further as they were divided up within families.4 The outcome was that in 1815, and for decades thereafter, French agrarian society was to be much as it had been in 1789, while, across the country as a whole, the family unit had been firmly established as the cornerstone of economic activity.
This latter development can also be partly attributed to another aspect of the Revolution’s legacy, the growth of individualism throughout French society. While this was to yield some benefits in the military field, notably in the initiative shown by the rank and file, which made them naturally adept at skirmishing and other activities where the onus fell on the individual soldier, so far as economic enterprise was concerned it was frequently a drawback. Not only did labourers exhibit a profound preference for individual work, they also shunned, and were rather inefficient in, collaborative, large-scale ventures. These tendencies manifested themselves at both the macro and the micro level. To the peasant, remaining on his morsel of soil and pursuing his own chosen life style seemed far more attractive than joining the faceless masses who toiled in urban employment. In proclaiming the gospel of liberty, equality and fraternity, the governments of the 1790s also shared this distaste for grand capitalism, be it in the guise of farmers, manufacturers or merchants, which exploited workers and turned inequality into profits. Despite ideological enthusiasm for free trade among the revolutionary leaders, they were suspicious and fearful of unfettered enterprise. Equally, manufacturers sought to safeguard their companies against reliance on capital from banks or the state, against merger, and even against expansion in order to retain their autonomy. As Clive Trebilcock has concluded:
French-style individualism bred a passion for independence, and that, logically, required economic self-sufficiency, which in turn entailed a preoccupation less with risk-taking than with security. And security, under nineteenth century conditions, correlated readily with thrift. Little farms with gold coin bricked into their mantels or small firms ‘drowning in their own liquidity’ could be constructed with thrift, but not industrial empires or ‘transformed’ manufacturing sectors.5
A developed, unitary state, second only in population to Russia and with considerable natural resources, France was already one of the leading European powers on the eve of the nineteenth century. However, in his attempts to unlock more of her latent strength, Napoleon was to be thwarted by intractable structural problems. Above all a pragmatic rationalist, a child of the Enlightenment, who subordinated rights to efficiency where necessary, he strove to create an environment in which enterprise might flourish: French law in its entirety was codified; logical, versatile weights and measures, the metric system, were imposed; the Bank of France was established to support business credits and regulate government finance; international industrial exhibitions were staged; and, while the national bank was permitted to issue some notes in Paris, a metal-based currency – with the franc fixed at five grains of silver – replaced the Revolutionary assignats. Napoleon also centralized the control of education, concentrating, in contrast to the Revolutionary legislators who had favoured mass education instruments in general and primary schools in particular, on elitist secondary schools, the lycées, which drew their pupils principally from middle-class families and prepared them for a life of public service as doctors, functionaries and officers. Again, uniformity was stressed, both to ensure the maintenance of standards – the baccalauréat was introduced in 1809 – and to help foster a sense of national identity.6 By 1813, the lycées were arguably the finest secondary schools in Europe, producing, among other state servants, that generation of bureaucrats who, amid the political instability which bedevilled France for so much of the nineteenth century, consistently served their country well.
As the empire expanded and the demand for qualified officials grew, however, Napoleon had to look to his vassals to provide some of them. Since the bourgeoisie was insufficiently developed in many countries to be used in this regard, local notables had to be employed, few of whom were of the same quality as the lycée graduates. Moreover, Napoleon had to curb his reforming zeal so as not to antagonize them; they were often allowed to retain their traditional, feudal privileges.7 In other regards, too, in the light of local circumstances, pragmatism overrode principle, with the result that the Code Napoléon, though conceived as a set of universal principles founded on reason, was applied unevenly beyond France’s frontiers. Moreover, although Napoleon’s reforms created an environment conducive to economic opportunities, he could not guarantee that it would be exploited. Indeed, more use was made of the apparatus he forged in parts of Germany, notably in the Rhineland, where his imported system of government ‘was in close harmony with the needs of a buoyantly industrialising economy’,8 than in France itself.
While still consul, Napoleon realized that France’s military power needed adequate economic roots for its nourishment; although he could and did exact indemnities from her vanquished foes, war could never entirely pay for war. Accordingly, he sought to put France’s public finances on a sturdy footing,9 a task in which his reform of her governmental apparatus assisted greatly; for with an improved bureaucracy, a rigorous cadastral survey was a practical proposition, leading to a fall in the incidence of tax evasion. More efficiency within the state’s administrative machinery also yielded considerable savings. At the same time that revenue collection was becoming more businesslike and productive, increased or new levies were also introduced: more indirect taxes were imposed, as was a 25 per cent surcharge on personal and property taxes. The result of all of this was that the public debt was kept firmly in check – it still only amounted to 60 million francs in 1814 – and Napoleon was able to count on annual tax receipts of between 430 million and 500 million francs.10
Impressive though this income was, it constituted but a fraction of the amounts raised by the great paymaster of the anti-French coalitions, Britain. Whereas almost all of the continent was, at best, at the proto-industrialization stage of development, she had been experiencing the effects of the Industrial Revolution for some time. This had sparked off significant increases in foreign trade, boosting yields from indirect taxes which were already being levied before the French wars even began. To these were added new measures, such as the introduction of an inheritance tax in 1796, the suspension of the paper pound’s convertibility in 1797 and the imposition, two years later, of a graduated tax on all incomes exceeding £60. Together with a rationalization of stamp duty regulations and other efficiency savings, these steps increased revenue dramatically without choking the economic activity that generated it or provoking dangerous internal dissent. Thus, returns from customs and excise duties alone rose from £13.57 million in 1793 to just under £45 million in 1815, while, between 1806 and the Napoleonic Wars’ end, £142 million in income tax was wrung from a population of around 18 million people – two thirds that of France.11
Nevertheless, government expenditure regularly outstripped income by between 25 and 30 per cent. Military spending alone climbed from £29 million in 1804 to nearly £113 million in 1815, while, over the whole of the ‘Great War with France’, it underwent a tenfold increase.12 Indeed, estimates of the total costs incurred by Britain during the hostilities of 1793–1815 range from £1500 million to £1657 million. Since any shortfalls in the public finances had to be made good by borrowing, Britain’s creditworthiness was central to her capacity to go on fighting. In the period 1811–13, for instance, her annual loans more than doubled to £38.4 million.13
But, for over 100 years, Britain had regularly used advances to pay for her wars. Indeed, this had been the primary consideration behind the establishment of the Bank of England, around which a network of strong and sophisticated finance houses gradually formed, headed by people such as Alexander Baring and Henry Hope. Ably assisted by these international bankers and underwriters, Pitt was able to borrow money at advantageous rates to fund the war against Revolutionary and Napoleonic France. Further, the alterations to property rights and the disruption of established trade patterns that occurred in the wake of the French Revolution and were perpetuated and extended during the course of the Napoleonic Wars not only transformed international commerce but also did so in a fashion which benefited Britain. In 1789, the stability which had prevailed on foreign exchanges since 1721 began to break down, as French and Dutch nobles and merchants started liquidating their assets and transferring the realized capital abroad. These émigrés made particular use of London’s international merchant bankers, with the result that vast sums of money were moved there. Whereas in 1794 France’s government had expropriated all French-owned foreign assets and their proceeds to finance the war against Austria and Britain, the latter responded with legislation which was both more just and politically expedient: any money owned by residents in France, ‘or in any country, territory or place’ under French control, and which was ‘in the hands of His Majesty’s subjects’ was not confiscated but sequestered, thus securing it for Britain’s use while simultaneously preserving the owner’s legal entitlement to it. The funds were then deposited with the Bank of England and, administered by commissioners, were used to help finance the national debt. As Napoleon’s empire expanded, the assets of citizens of other European countries were encompassed by this scheme, as were those of Americans following President Jefferson’s imposition of an embargo in 1808. As early as 1806, not less than 8 per cent of Britain’s national debt was being financed by such means.14
Together with millions of pounds in Bank of England deposits and accrued dividends which were effectively forfeited because their owners had died intestate,15 these sequestered monies helped give Britain the capital injection she required as investment in agriculture and heavy industry gathered pace to meet the demands imposed by the war effort. The costs of increased land cultivation and enclosure at a time of tremendous industrial expansion and diversification were thereby alleviated. In turn, this process generated yet more demand for power, machinery and labour. The production of pig-iron, for example, a good indicator of economic activity, almost doubled to 244 000 tons in the period 1796–1806. Moreover, investment in new infrastructure – toll roads, canals, docks and so on – reached new heights, with Parliament approving record amounts of legislation to permit such projects to proceed.16
