was essentially naval: in addition to putting her small fleet at France’s disposal, the Ligurian Republic had to guarantee the recruitment of 6,000 sailors. Nor was this an end to France’s demands: Holland had to provide transports for 62,000 men and 4,000 horses; Genoa to find large quantities of naval stores; and the Italian Republic to pay an annual subvention of million francs. Yet even this did not exhaust the list of support for France beyond her borders. Permitted to remain neutral, Switzerland was nevertheless in September 1803 forced to maintain the various Swiss units in the French army - some sixteen infantry battalions and four artillery batteries - at a strength of 16,000 men, for the duration of the war. Eager to stay out of the conflict, Spain secured this privilege at a cost of a monthly subsidy of 6 million francs. If she was forced to enter the war, however, Spain could in theory call upon an army of 130,000 men (153 infantry battalions, ninety-three cavalry squadrons, forty artillery batteries), a navy of thirty-two ships-of-the-line, and all the resources of her Latin American empire. And, last but not least, all of these states were forced to close their ports to British ships, Napoleon’s grand design for a continental blockade already being well under way. As yet unaffected by the trade embargo, there were also the middling states of southern Germany. All these states were for the most part in the process of a programme of state-building which brought with it a major increase in their efficiency - a development which also affected France’s formal satellites - and could be expected to lend France considerable military support in the event of a continental war. In 1805, for example, Bavaria could field twenty-eight infantry battalions, twenty-four cavalry squadrons and eleven artillery batteries, and Baden nine infantry battalions, seven squadrons of cavalry and two artillery batteries. And mention should also be made here of Denmark. Negligible as a land power - the Danish army had a mere thirty infantry battalions and thirty-six cavalry squadrons - even after the defeat of Copenhagen of 1801 Denmark retained a powerful fleet of twenty ships-of-the-line. Though she was currently neutral, her maritime interests remained such as to suggest that sooner or later she must come into conflict with the British, and so she too must, at least potentially, be placed in the French camp.
Of France’s various auxiliaries, few were in any sense ready to go to war. Of the Dutch, for example, Lord Malmesbury wrote, ‘Their fleet is left as it was at the peace: no new ships building or old ones fitting out.’19 As for the Spaniards, their navy was in dire straits: with the government’s finances in a state of collapse, all shipbuilding had come to an end in 1796, while a terrible epidemic of yellow fever that was currently assailing her Mediterranean coast was literally wiping out much of the manpower on which she relied to crew her fleet. Nor was the Spanish army in much better condition: run down in favour of the navy in the reign of Charles III (1759-88), it had since 1796 experienced a variety of attempts at reform, but these had come to nothing. ‘The means of recruiting this army are in general very slender,’ wrote the French diplomat, Bourgoing. Nor was the officer corps very impressive: ‘The obscure and monotonous life they lead, without any manoeuvres on a grand scale, and without any reviews, at length deadens all activity or leads to unworthy objects.’20 But notwithstanding all these deficiencies and supreme at sea though she was, Britain’s chances of making headway against such an array on her own were very limited. In Germany, George III was Elector of Hanover, but such benefit as might have accrued from this was nullified by the latter’s military weakness - it had only twenty-six infantry battalions, twelve cavalry squadrons and six artillery batteries - and strategic vulnerability. Though unrivalled in its training, seamanship and morale, the Royal Navy had been greatly reduced in size since 1801 (only thirty-four