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’s reserves of bullion. Indeed, even as it was, London sometimes experienced considerable difficulty in meeting its commitments, as in 1800 when a financial crisis in Germany caused a sudden fall in the value of British bills of exchange. Had several major powers ever needed paying at the same time, it is probable that the money would simply have run out. By the time that the Napoleonic Wars had broken out, of course, things were very different. The great increase in taxation overseen by Pitt and the abolition of the rule laying down that all paper money should be redeemable in gold had ended many of the constraints under which the governments of the s had been operating. This allowed for a massive change in British policy that would see money offered to anyone who would fight the French. But in May 1803 this change had yet to be vouchsafed to Britain’s potential partners, and such was the distrust of London that, as we shall see, even when the new largesse began to be revealed, continental attitudes were slow to change.

In financial as much as military terms, then, there was considerable reason to question British commitment to the war. Further strength was lent to France’s propaganda claims by the impact of Britain’s activities in the colonies and on the high seas. For statesmen such as Dundas, every sugar island that was filched, every merchantman that was seized and every port that was blockaded was a blow against France’s power, and, in particular, her ability to finance her war effort. But for inhabitants of the Continent with interests in the colonial trade - and this numbered not just Frenchmen, but also Spaniards, Portuguese, Dutchmen, Germans, Danes and Swedes - there was a different side to the story. Overseas trade did not cease altogether: neutral ships continued to ply the waves and a degree of indirect contact with the colonies was maintained through a variety of shifts and subterfuges. Yet the French Revolutionary Wars had none the less wrought considerable havoc. The Batavian Republic offers a good example. Here distress was very great. Between 1785 and 1789 an average of 324 ships were entering the river Maas every year, whereas in 1799 only ninety-five vessels appeared. The ports, then, were very quiet, whilst a similar fate befell the many industries that in one way or another served maritime interests. For example, West Zaandam had seven shipyards and ninety sawmills in the s, whereas in1800 it had just one of the former and seven of the latter. Fishing, too, suffered terribly: between 1793 and 1795 the villages of Middelharnis, Vlaardingen and Maasluis lost two-thirds of their vessels. As a result poverty soared: by October 1800 one third of the population of Amsterdam were in receipt of poor relief while in Vlaardingen the proportion was one half. The problems of the Batavian Republic were particularly severe: the Dutch economy was disrupted not just by the decline in shipping, but also difficulties with the import of such items as Belgian coal and German pipe-clay. However, even neutral states were not immune to the difficulties that beset Europe’s coasts. As the British envoy to Prussia reported to Lord Grenville, for example, ‘The towns want maritime trade and manufacturers.’6 All this was particularly unfortunate for Britain. It laid her wide open, of course, to France’s charges that she was only fighting the war to beggar her commercial rivals, and all the more so as her own ports were clearly booming - between 1785 and 1800 the value of the West Indian trade rose by 150 per cent, whilst the war years had seen the number of British merchantmen rise from 15,000 to 18,000 . And, despite the retreat at Amiens, the fact was that the British Empire had seen significant gains thanks to the wars of the 1790s, most notably Spanish Trinidad and Dutch Ceylon. If French propagandists who argued that all that interested the British was the enslavement of the rest of the world gained a certain audience in Europe, it was not to be wondered at.

In this struggle for public opinion, it has to be said that the