from sailing out, and smashed them if they did, was not so easy. The mere fear of invasion was enough to set the hearts of all Britons beating. The Volunteers, 1803–5.Volunteers flocked to arms from every parish In our island; and by 1804 we had nearly half a million men in fighting trim in a population of little over eleven millions. If we were to keep the same proportion to-day, we ought to have nearly three millions of men under arms. How many have we got?
Battles of the Nile, 1798, and Copenhagen, 1800.But in truth Napoleon's chances of invading us were not great. Nelson had broken his Mediterranean fleet to splinters at the battle of the Nile, 1798, and had also finished a Danish fleet (which had been got ready to help France) at the battle of Copenhagen in 1800. Peace of Amiens, 1802–3.A few months of peace, 1802–3, followed the retirement of Pitt from the Government. War again, 1803–15.But the war began again in 1803; Pitt came back in the next year, and governed Britain until his death at the beginning of 1806. The years 1803–4–5 were the most dangerous. Napoleon had got a great army at Boulogne (which is almost within sight of the shore of Kent, not three hours’ sail, with a fair wind, from Folkestone), ready to be rowed across the Channel in large, flat-bottomed boats.
The critical year, 1805.But what was the use of that without a French fleet to protect the flat-bottoms? If they had tried to get across unprotected, a single British warship could have pounded them into a red rice-pudding in a few minutes; and so our real task was to watch the French harbours and prevent their ships of war getting out. The final struggle came in 1805. The French admiral, Villeneuve, managed to get out from Toulon; drove off the British force which was watching the Spanish ports, and so