INVASION THREAT

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 60, Issue 293, 18 September 1940, Page 8

INVASION THREAT

WHEN NELSON KEPT THE SEAS. ARMY ASSEMBLED IN BOULOGNE Isolated and menaced by Europe, the position of Great Britain to-day is strikingly similar to that at the beginning of last century when Napoleon overran the greater part of the Continent and threatened England with invasion. Only the command of the seas, under Nelson, saved the nation. A vivid account of the stirring events which characterised Napoleon Bonaparte’s schemes is given in the “History of England,” by the Rt Rev. C. E. Carrington and J. Hampden Jackson, published by the Cambridge University Press in 1932

“An army of 150,000 men under Marshal Ney was ordered to assemble at Boulogne for the invasion of England, and in alTthe ports of the Narrow Seas ships were built and regiments assembled to try their strength with the nation that Bonaparte recognised as his persistent enemy. Two main fleets, at Brest, under Ganteaume, and at Toulon under Villeneuve. seconded by smaller squadrons, at Rochefort, and in the Dutch and Spanish ports, prepared to fight the English Navy again. Nelson was at once sent to blockade Toulon, Admiral Sir W. Cornwallis to blockade Brest, while Lord Keith with a squadron in the Downs watched the assembly of the Grand Army at Boulogne. “Meanwhile a great wave of loyal enthusiasm, not unmixed with panic, swept over Great Britain. The small regular army, which had not had much chance of showing its prowess in the previous war, was stationed at Shorncliffe Camp, under Sir John Moore, who trained the armies which were to win glory under Half a million men joined the volunteer corps, which were like the modern territorials and it is probable that every reader of this book had an ancestor under arms in 1803. Whigs and Tories alike rallied to the defence of their country. Pitt, who was out of office, was himself colonel of a regiment of volunteers.

“Some thought the French would land in the Thames mouth, others near Folkestone; others thought further west in Hampshire or Dorset, and all this coast was lined with Martello Towers (some of which still stand), in which the local volunteers were to hold out against Bonaparte’s veterans till Moore’s regiments could reach the point of danger from Shorncliffe Camp. “Alarums and Excursions.”

“When the French landed, stout old. King George was to take command of his army, sending the Queen, the Court and the Treasury into safety at Worcester. For two weary years (during which Nelson never set foot on dry land) the blockading fleets kept to the seas in all weathers. For two years alarums and excursions’ were frequent. Several times the rumour was spread that the Grand Army was on the way, a rumour which set the signal fires blazing on the hilltops, the volunteers rushing to arms, the farmers near the coast driving their cattle and carting their goods inland. At this time Sir Walter Scott, the novelist, was among the volunteers. “But the Corsican Ogre never put to sea. Long years afterward he asserted that he had never meant to do so. Whether he intended or did not intend there was no great danger, so long as Nelson and Cornwallis kept the seas. The Admiralty, at least, was not afraid. Nelson’s olcl commander, Jervis, now Lord St. Vincent, used to say, ‘I won’t say the French can’t come. I only know they can’t come by water.’ ”

The historians go on to relate that in 1805 Napoleon made several attempts to win command of the sea. He believed that if he could hold this for even one day he could ferry the Grand Army to England in 1500 flat-bottomed barges. In August of that year, after brilliant work by the British Navy, Napoleon broke up the camp at Boulogne, from which he had watched in vain the white cliffs of Dover and the English frigates heating up and down the Straits. Nelson returned to England for the last time and was received almost with worship.