the national uprisings against his rule by which Napoleon was destined to be overthrown. In England it was greeted with immense popular enthusiasm, and the government, without realizing the full import of the step it was taking, sent an expedition to the Peninsula. It disembarked, under the command Peninsular War. of Sir Arthur Wellesley, at Figueras on the 1st of August. It was the beginning of the Peninsular War, which was destined not to end until, in 1814, the British troops crossed the Pyrenees into France, while the Allies were pressing over the Rhine. The political and military events on the continent of Europe do not, however, belong strictly to English history, though they profoundly affected its development, and they are dealt with elsewhere (see Europe: History; Napoleon; Napoleonic Campaigns; Peninsular War; Waterloo Campaign).
The war, while it lasted, was of course the main preoccupation
of British ministers and of the British people. It entailed
enormous sacrifices, which led to corresponding discontents;
and differences as to its conduct produced
frequent friction within the government itself. A
Walcheren expedition. Cabinet crisis.
Perceval ministry.
cabinet crisis was the result of the outcome of the
unfortunate Walcheren expedition of 1809. It had been Castlereagh’s
conception and, had it been as well executed as it was
conceived, it might have dealt a fatal blow at Napoleon’s hopes
of recovering his power at sea, by destroying his great naval
establishments at Antwerp. It failed, and it became the subject
of angry dispute between Canning and Castlereagh, a dispute
embittered by personal rivalry and the friction due to the ill-defined
relations of the foreign secretary to the secretary for
war; the quarrel culminated in a duel, and in the resignation
of both ministers (see Londonderry, 2nd Marquess of, and
Canning, George). The duke of Portland resigned at the same
time, and in the reconstruction of the ministry, under Perceval
as premier, Lord Wellesley became foreign secretary,
while Lord Liverpool, with Palmerston as his under-secretary,
succeeded Castlereagh at the war office.
The most conspicuous member of this government was Wellesley,
whose main object in taking office was to second his brother’s
efforts in the Peninsula. In this he was, however, only partially
successful, owing to the incapacity of his colleagues to realize
the unique importance of the operations in Spain. In November
1810 the old king’s mind gave way, and on the 11th of February
1811, an act of parliament bestowed the regency, under certain
The regency.
restrictions, upon the prince of Wales. The prince
had been on intimate terms with the Whig leaders,
and it was assumed that his accession to power would
mean a change of government. He had, however, been offended
by their attitude on the question of the restriction of his authority
as regent, and he continued Perceval in office. A year later,
the king’s insanity being proved incurable, the regency was
definitively established (February 1812). Lord Wellesley took
advantage of the reconstruction of the cabinet to resign a
position in which he had not been given a free hand, and his
post of foreign secretary was offered to Canning. Canning,
however, refused to serve with Castlereagh as minister of war,
and the latter received the foreign office, which he was to hold
till his death in 1822. A month later, on the 11th of May,
Perceval was assassinated in the lobby of the House of Commons,
and Lord Liverpool became the head of a government that was
to last till 1827.
The period covered by the Liverpool administration was a fateful one in the history of Europe. The year 1812 saw Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, and the disastrous retreat from Moscow. In the following year Wellington’s victory at Vitoria signalled the ruin of the French Liverpool ministry. cause in Spain; while Prussia threw off the yoke of France, and Austria, realizing after cautious delay her chance of retrieving the humiliations of 1809, joined the alliance, and in concert with Russia and the other German powers overthrew Napoleon at Leipzig. The invasion of France followed in 1814, the abdication of Napoleon, the restoration of the Bourbons and the assembling of the congress of Vienna. The following year saw the return of Napoleon from Elba, the close of the congress of Vienna, and the campaign that ended with the battle of Waterloo. The succeeding period, after so much storm and stress, might seem dull and unprofitable; but it witnessed the instructive experiment of the government of Europe by a concert of the great powers, and the first victory of the new principle of nationality in the insurrection of the Greeks. The share taken by Great Britain in all this, for which Castlereagh pre-eminently must take the praise or blame, is outlined in the article on the history Foreign policy of Castlereagh. of Europe (q.v.). Here it must suffice to point out how closely the development of foreign affairs was interwoven with that of home politics. The great war, so long as it lasted, was the supreme affair of moment; the supreme interest when it was over was to prevent its recurrence. For above all the world needed peace, in order to recover from the exhaustion of the revolutionary epoch; and this peace, bought at so great a cost, could be preserved only by the honest co-operation of Great Britain in the great international alliance based on “the treaties.” This explains Castlereagh’s policy at home and abroad. He was grossly attacked by the Opposition in parliament and by irresponsible critics, of the type of Byron, outside; historians, bred in the atmosphere of mid-Victorian Liberalism, have re-echoed the cry against him and the government of which he was the most distinguished member; but history has largely justified his attitude. He was no friend of arbitrary government; but he judged it better that “oppressed nationalities” and “persecuted Liberals” should suffer than that Europe should be again plunged into war. He was hated in his day as the arch-opponent of reform, yet the triumph of the reform movement would have been impossible but for the peace his policy secured.
To say this is not to say that the attitude of the Tory government towards the great issues of home politics was wholly, or even mainly, inspired by a far-sighted wisdom. It had departed widely from the Toryism of Pitt’s younger years, which had sought to base itself on Character of the Tory party. popular support, as opposed to the aristocratic exclusiveness of the Whigs. It conceived itself as the trustee of a system of government which, however theoretically imperfect, alone of the governments of Europe had survived the storms of the Revolution intact. To tamper with a constitution that had so proved its quality seemed not so much a sacrilege as a folly. The rigid conservatism that resulted from this attitude served, indeed, a useful purpose in giving weight to Castlereagh’s counsels in the European concert; for Metternich at least, wholly occupied with “propping up mouldering institutions,” could not have worked harmoniously with a minister suspected of an itch for reform. At home, however, it undoubtedly tended to provoke that very revolution which it was intended to prevent. This was due not so much to the notorious corruption of the representative system as to the fact that it represented social and economic conditions that were rapidly passing away.
Both Houses of Parliament were in the main assemblies of aristocrats and landowners; but agriculture was ceasing to be the characteristic industry of the country and the old semi-feudal relations of life were in process of rapid dissolution. The invention of machinery and Parliament and the industrial revolution. the concentration of the working population in manufacturing centres had all but destroyed the old village industries, and great populations were growing up outside the traditional restraints of the old system of class dependence. The distress inevitable in connexion with such an industrial revolution was increased by the immense burden of the war and by the high protective policy of the parliament, which restricted trade and deliberately increased the price of food in the interests of the agricultural classes. Between 1811 and 1814 bands of so-called “Luddites,” starving operatives out of work, scoured the country, smashing machinery—the immediate cause of their misfortunes—and committing every sort of outrage. The fault of the government lay, not in taking vigorous measures for the suppression of these disorders, but in remaining obstinately blind to the true causes that had produced them.
