which suggests that Napoleon may have collected the boats with a view to their being so attacked, so as to occupy the British fleet and British public opinion, with the possible idea of using the boats as a nucleus for some effort in the future if several other plans succeeded.
When war broke out again, the invasion question once more came to the fore. More boats were collected: but the boats were never so plentiful nor the army at Boulogne so large as was believed in England, and it is even possible that to the end the whole thing was merely a mask for Napoleonic intentions which found their expression later on at Austerlitz. Indeed, Napoleon himself, despite his explicit instructions to Villeneuve,[1] spoke of the boat flotilla as a sham and told Metternich that the Boulogne army 'was always an army assembled against Austria.' . . . 'I could not place it anywhere else without giving offence,' he is reported by Metternich to have said when in conversation with the prince. Whatever Napoleon said or wrote never revealed to a certainty his plans and intentions, so this alone need not go for too much; but equally it may well have been that in impressing upon Villeneuve the necessity of coming off Boulogne he was only taking steps to insure a battle in the Channel which Villeneuve might otherwise be disposed to evade.
- ↑ 'The principal end of the whole operation is to give us, for some days, a superiority before Boulogne. Masters of the Straits for four days 150,000 men embarked in 2,000 vessels will entirely complete the expedition.'—Draft instructions to Villeneuve.
