Mind-Munitions

156
Propaganda in the Age of Revolutionary Warfare
in 1795 and Austria in 1797, Britain stood virtually alone in the
war against France. A second Coalition was formed in 1798, but
this too was characterized more by disunity than harmony. As Clive
Emsley has written: ‘Pitt’s government was faced with the problems
of maintaining and boosting morale and, as ever, raising money and
men for the conflict.’ The aggressively loyal Anti-Jacobin was
founded in 1797 to aid this task and to combat the anti-war faction
of Charles Fox. A new ‘British War Song’ was published which ran:
Let France in savage accents sing
Her bloody revolution;
We prize our Country, love our King,
Adore our Constitution;
For these we’ll every danger face,
And quit our rustic labours;
Our ploughs to firelocks shall give place,
Our scythes be changed to sabres.
And clad in arms our Song shall be,
‘O give us Death – or Victory!’
As fears of a French invasion mounted, a surge of patriotism
gripped the English as the Anti-Jacobin and other publications
summoned the spirit of Crécy and Agincourt, recalled the Spanish
Armada, and found a new national hero in Horatio Nelson, who
destroyed the French fleet in Aboukir Bay in 1798. James Gillray’s
famous political cartoons attacking the French and the Foxites were
widely reprinted, especially his series depicting the ‘Consequences
of a Successful French Invasion’. Riding this upsurge, the government
persecuted the anti-war factions, suspended the Habeas
Corpus Act, and arrested conspirators and hostile publicists; but
the rising cost of the war, poor harvests, and growing popular
discontent at home was accompanied by Russian and Austrian
withdrawal from the Second Coalition and the peace of Amiens
was signed in 1802.
The peace was short-lived – just fourteen months in fact. The
renewal of hostilities between France and England saw continued
invasion scares, but while Napoleon remained superior on land
Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar in 1805 was a reminder of British
superiority at sea. A Third Coalition was constructed, coastal
fortifications built, and patriotic propaganda promoted. The poet
William Wordsworth praised the ‘Men of Kent’, now in the front