Napoleon's Wars_ An International History, 1803-1815 - Charles Esdaile [154]
Russia, then, was not going to suffer France to penetrate areas that she regarded as her traditional sphere of interest. That did not mean, however, that Alexander was genuinely happy about fighting on (the treaty with Prussia, for example, was above all a defensive measure). In this respect, he was much influenced by events in Britain. Here, the death of Pitt had produced a complete change in the administration rather than simply a new prime minister. There was no Pittite who could form a government, still less keep one in power. All the men who were in later years to play prominent roles in the struggle against Napoleon - such figures as Lord Wellesley, Lord Hawkesbury, Lord Castlereagh, Spencer Perceval and George Canning - were either too junior, too discredited or too lacking in credibility. In this situation, there was nothing for it but to look elsewhere. Amongst the Tories there was still Addington, now Lord Sidmouth, who, though very much in favour of continuing the war and eminently acceptable to George III, would have nothing to do with the Pittites as the men he believed had brought about his downfall (a feeling which they heartily reciprocated). The king was most unhappy - he begged Hawkesbury, who had been serving as Home Secretary, to take over as premier - but in the end there was nothing for it but to form a coalition ministry that has gone down in history as that of ‘all the talents’. Thus, Lord Grenville became Prime Minister and Charles James Fox Foreign Secretary, though George III hated him as a dangerous radical who was suspected of having passed information to, first, the Americans in the war of 1776- 83, and, second, the French in the war of 1793-1801. Also part of the Cabinet were William Windham as Secretary of State for War and the Colonies and Sidmouth as Lord Privy Seal, the latter also insisting on the appointment of his loyal supporter, Lord Ellenborough. The Whigs would have preferred to do without Sidmouth, but his presence was necessary to reassure George III. As for Sidmouth, who in turn hated Grenville and Fox, he only accepted their invitation out of a desire to oblige George III and to keep watch on men whom he regarded with the utmost suspicion and mistrust.
The new government, then, was hardly a strong one, while it faced great hostility on the part of the now-excluded Pittites. Nor was there much enthusiasm in the press and among educated opinion in general. Yet sentiments about the war were just as pessimistic, and it has to be said that if any government could achieve peace it was one such as that now headed by Grenville. Thus, given that Grenville was an introvert entirely lacking in charisma, the dominant figure in the Cabinet was the warm, generous and ebullient Fox, a man fiercely against war with France. A leading supporter of parliamentary reform, Fox had welcomed the French Revolution as a latter-day 1688, and thereafter had continued to exude sympathy for it. When peace had come in 1802 he had been delighted and, naturally enough, had travelled to France to see Napoleon at first hand. Powerless to do anything to end the war of 1792-1802, he was not going to pass up the chance of a reconciliation with the French ruler now, and especially as he genuinely saw no hope of victory. ‘If Bonaparte does not by an attempt at invasion or some other great impudence give us an advantage, I cannot but think this country inevitably and irretrievably ruined,’ he told Grenville. ‘To be Ministers at a moment when the country is falling and all Europe sinking is a dreadful situation.’45
Very soon, therefore, the French capital was playing host to a British peace mission headed by Lord Yarmouth, a wealthy peer of radical tendencies who had been interned in France since 1803. In fairness to Fox, these overtures were communicated to the Russians, who