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The 9th volume of the Correspondance de Napoléon I., published at Paris, in 1862, brings to light, for the first time, the whole of his schemes for invading England, which he planned in 1803, when he led a mighty host to Boulogne, in the hope of repeating the scene of the Conquest. The following passage in this volume shows how Napoleon struggled to remove his inferiority in fleets:

“Collect 3000 workmen at Antwerp. Wood, iron, and materials can be brought there from the North. War is no impediment to shipbuilding at Antwerp. If we are three years at war, we must build there not less than 25 ships of the line. Anywhere else this would be impossible. We must have a powerful fleet; and we should not have less than 100 ships of the line. We must also commence building frigates and smaller vessels. St. Domingo cost us 2,000,000f. a month; the English having captured it, this sum must be appropriated to the increase of our navy.”

Such were the conditions of this attack; and such the forces with which Napoleon expected “to conquer the world in London;” and his letters to Soult, to Bruix, to Déeres must convince the reader that he was in earnest in his scheme of “planting the tricolour on the Tower.” The problem for Napoleon to solve was how to transport across the Channel an army of 150,000 men, with horses, cannon, baggage, and equipments, in spite of the naval superiority of England. In these first preparations we must allow he succeeded beyond our worst expectations. Within fourteen months from the commencement of the war he had gathered within ten leagues of our coast, and had placed beyond the power of attack, a flotilla mounting 2000 guns, and able to transport his superb army, which, though numbering 150,000 men, could embark in less than a single tide, and were fully trained for a naval encounter.

So far, at least, as regards the Government, it must be confessed that our preparations to meet this attack were unequal to the danger. In the Channel especially—the point menaced—the naval arrangements made by the Admiralty were very faulty and even ridiculous. Such a Power as England should never have allowed the flotilla to assemble at Boulogne at all; and when it had assembled it should have been assailed by a mass of gunboats and light vessels, which we might have sent out in enormous numbers. Yet the Admiralty persisted in encountering the flotilla with 18 and 12-pounder frigates, which drew too much water to close the shore, and, at long range, were no match for their powerfully armed, though small antagonists; the result was that on no occasion were we able to damage the enemy seriously, and that on some we suffered severely.

In England as well as in France it was thought that the flotilla was to risk the passage unaided, its heavy armament suggesting the notion that Napoleon believed it a match for our fleet in the narrow strait between Dover and Calais. We now know, however, that this was an error, and that Napoleon never intended to embark unless supported by a covering squadron, which, having for a time the command of the Channel, would completely protect the flotilla and the army. In order to have the mastery of the Channel for the forty-eight hours required for the transit, the problem was so to manœuvre his fleets as to bring a superior force off Boulogne, in spite of the numerous English squadrons which watched or blockaded them in all their harbours. He devised a twofold scheme for this end, adapted to the circumstances of the seaboard, and which experience proved to be feasible.

This volume, however, proves sufficiently that, brilliant as were Napoleon’s designs, he could not inspire Villeneuve and Ganteaume with the daring energy of Nelson and Cochrane, or make British seamen of his sailors. The want of discipline, the timidity, and the inexperience, of which there are proofs, explain how Napoleon’s deep-laid designs were brought to an end on the day of Trafalgar.

However, in 1805, Napoleon renewed his invasion scheme, the details of which he thus narrates in the 11th volume of his Correspondance, 1863:

“I wished to bring together forty or fifty sail of the line by operating their junction from Toulon, Cadiz, Ferrol, and Brest; to move them all together to Boulogne; to be there for a fortnight master of the Channel; to have 150,000 men and 10,000 horses encamped on the coast, with a flotilla of nearly 4000 vessels, and then, upon the arrival of my fleet, to embark for England and seize London. … To secure a prospect of success it was necessary to collect 150,000 men at Boulogne, with the flotilla, and an immense materiel, to embark the whole, yet to conceal my plan. I accomplished this though it appeared impossible, and I did so by reversing what seemed probable.”

Thus, in the spring of 1805 Napoleon collected within ten leagues of our shores a flotilla of nearly 4000 vessels, which, moored under the batteries of Boulogne, and armed with very heavy cannon, had long repelled our attempts to destroy them. Encamped around lay the veteran legions which had been selected for the descent, and had been trained with such care to embark and expedite the passage, that Napoleon writes, “150,000 men with a due proportion of guns and horses could within four tides effect a landing.”

His plan was marked with much ingenuity. The aspect of an armed flotilla induced our Admiralty to think that Napoleon relied on it alone to cross; and they felt assured that when at sea, three or four ships would suffice to destroy it. Accordingly, our Channel fleet was reduced to a force of not more than six sail; and the mass of the British Navy was employed either in blockading the enemy’s squadrons or in distant expeditions on the ocean. Could, therefore, one of the blockaded fleets effect its junction with another, and penetrate into the unguarded Channel, a temporary ascendancy at sea might be gained, under cover of which the flotilla could cross and ferry over the French army.

It is only in this volume that we see how nearly Napoleon’s design succeeded so far as regards the descent, and also what were the causes of its failure. Whatever we may think of his project as a whole, it must be allowed that in August, 1805, when Villeneuve put to sea from Ferrol, the Emperor had good reason to expect that his Admirals would fulfil their mission:—

“The squadrons of Nelson and Calder have joined the fleet off Brest, and Cornwallis has been foolish enough to send twenty sail to blockade the French fleet off Ferrol. On the 17th of August—that is, three days after our squadron left Ferrol, Calder left Brest for Ferrol with a northerly wind. What a chance was there for Villeneuve! He could either, by keeping a wide offing, avoid Calder, reach Brest, and fall upon Cornwallis, or with his thirty sail-of-the-line beat Calder’s twenty, and acquire a decided preponderance. So much for the English, whose combinations are so talked of.”

In England the Whigs laughed at the idea of the invasion as a ministerial bugbear. “Can anything equal,” says Lord Grenville in 1804, “the ridicule of Pitt riding about from Downing-street to Wimbledon, and from Wimbledon to Cox-heath, to inspect military carriages, impregnable batteries, and Lord Chatham’s reviews? Can he possibly be serious in expecting Bonaparte now?” So also wrote Fox a year afterwards—“The alarm of invasion here was most certainly a groundless one, and raised for some political purpose by the Ministers.” Whatever the Whigs might then think, there is no doubt now as to Bonaparte’s intentions. “Let us be masters of the Channel for six hours, and we are masters of the world,” are his famous words. His design to invade this country was never relinquished, was cherished as the darling scheme of his life, until within a month or two before Pitt’s death, when the battle of Trafalgar destroyed his hopes for ever.—Selected and abridged from reviews in the Times.