1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Napoleonic Campaigns: Difference between revisions

With the collapse of the invasion scheme, the naval war between Napoleon and Great Britain entered on a new phase. It lost at once the unity given to it by the efforts of the emperor to effect, and of the British government to baffle the passage of the Channel by an army. In place of the movements of great fleets to a single end, we have a nine years story (1805-1814) of cruising for the orotection of commerce, of convoy, of colonial expeditions to capture French, Dutch or Spanish possessions and of combined naval and military operations in which the British navy was engaged in carrying troops to various countries, and in supporting them on shore. Napoleon continued to build line-of-battle ships in numbers from Venice to Hamburg, but only in order to force the British government to maintain costly and wearing blockades. He never allowed his fleets to go to sea to seek battle. The operations of the British fleet were therefore divided between the work of patrolling the ocean roads and ancillary services to diplomacy, or to the armies serving in Italy, Denmark and, after 1808, in Spain. The remaining colonial possessions of France, and of Holland, then wholly dependent on her, were conquered by degrees, and the ports in which privateers were fitted out to cruise against British commerce in distant seas were gradually rendered harmless. Though privateering was carried on by the French with daring and a considerab]e measure of success, it did not put an appreciable check on the growth of British merchant shipping. The function of the British navy in the long conflict with Napoleon was of the first importance, and its services were rendered in every sea, but their very number, extent and complexity render it impossible here to record them in detail.

 

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[[Category:EB1911:War]]