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Corbett : The Campaign of Trafalgar 77
with the development of the Third Coalition. Among the schemes
under discussion by the Allies was included the expulsion of the French
from Southern Italy by a joint Anglo-Russian force. England's contribution
to this
project was the force under Sir James Craig, some 6,000 to
8,000 strong, which sailed for the Mediterranean early in 1805, and, after
various perils on the way, an episode well told by Mr. Corbett, ended by
occupying Sicily on the collapse of the Coalition after Austerlitz and
maintaining its hold on that island till the conclusion of peace in 1814.
According to Mr. Corbett this combined action with Russia is the key
to the events of the year. He regards all Napoleon's plans for a naval
combination to give him command of the Channel as wholly impracticable
(p. 15), as a desperate attempt to free himself from the toils Pitt and the
Czar were weaving round him, in the hope that the threat of an invasion
would cause England to keep her troops at home and paralyse
her proposed
offensive. This is certainly a view of the case for which there is much to
be said, but one cannot help feeling that Mr. Corbett goes a little further
than is quite reasonable. He is much too positive about the hopelessness of
the invasion to be
failed to grasp the
altogether convincing. Admitting that
great difficulties of wind and tide and
Napoleon
that the
still he had
arrangements for the invasion were never quite completed,
achieved many of his greatest successes by attempting things which his
enemies had believed impossible. There is nothing in the version which
ascribes all the luck to the English, and represents Napoleon's non-success
as an inexplicable marvel. The chances were certainly very much in our
favour, but there is a great difference between the ' '
most unlikely and
the *
impossible,' and if we had not had strategists like Barham and
Cornwallis to direct the operations of a strong and thoroughly efficient
fleet Napoleon's discomfiture might not have been such a
certainty: the
favourite does not always win. But, quite apart from this there is
another caution to be urged against accepting in full Mr. Corbett's
estimate of Craig's expedition. One cannot overlook its numerical
weakness, even when one allows for its possibilities as an 'amphibious'
force. Despite Mr. Corbett's comments on it, there is a good deal in
'
Napoleon's criticism : plans of continental operations based on detachments
of a few thousand men are the plans of pygmies.' The lesson of the
Seven Years' War is that mere diversions cannot produce any decisive
effect, there must be something substantial behind ; as Mr. Corbett himself
has shown their
efficacy
lies more in the threat than in the performance,
and a threat with nothing behind it is of a short-lived efficacy.
Pitt
did attempt a true counter-stroke after the abandonment of the invasion, not
with Craig's little force but with the much larger and equally
little-studied
expedition to the Weser under Cathcart, which was ruined by the precipitation
of the Czar in
fighting prematurely at Austerlitz and by the fatal
delays and hesitation of Prussia, it though must also be allowed that it would
have had a better chance had it landed a month earlier. However, while we
should still regard the foiling of Napoleon's invasion-project
as
really more
important than the counter-stroke with Craig's force, Mr. Corbett has
certainly made out a clear case for his theory that it was this counter-