War declared, 18 May, 1803. at Boulogne, war was declared on the 18th of May, 1803, after a peace of only a year and a half.[1]
Joy of the shipowners.
Preparations in England for defence.
Captures of French merchantmen.
The shipowners and merchants of London, after
what had taken place, heard the news of the formal
declaration of war with tumultuous exultation;
indeed war seemed then more acceptable than
peace had been eighteen months before. Nelson was
appointed to take charge of the Channel fleet,
and a force of volunteers was speedily embodied,
sufficient to convince Bonaparte that the invasion of
England was not so easy as he had anticipated, even
"although all France rallied around the hero which
it admired."[2] The English government, not waiting
for the formal declaration of war, seized upon all
the French merchant vessels they could meet with.
Indeed, the news reached Paris, just after Lord
Whitworth left that capital, that two English frigates
had captured in the bay of Audierne some French
merchantmen which were endeavouring to get into
Brest. The intelligence of other captures soon followed.
There had been an agreement between France
and the United States on the subject of such captures
(30th of September, 1800); but, strangely enough,
the treaty of Amiens was silent upon this subject;
hence the English government, viewing the prodigious
military preparations of Bonaparte on land,
retaliated in the only way they could retaliate effectively,
by claiming the supremacy of the ocean. In
- ↑ The English Legislature was nearly unanimous in supporting the Declaration of War; the numbers in the House of Commons being three hundred and ninety-eight for, sixty-seven against; and in the House of Lords, one hundred and forty-two to ten (Alison, v. p. 126).
- ↑ Speech of M. de Fontanes in his reply to the Corps d' l'Etat, when war was announced by Bonaparte.
