Napoleon's Wars_ An International History, 1803-1815 - Charles Esdaile [230]
Setting aside the distraction offered by the Spanish insurrection - Gustav IV appears to have suspected that Moore was looking for a pretext to withdraw his troops so as to get a share of the glory in the Peninsula - at issue were two fundamental problems. In the first place, behind the Swedes’ intransigence was fear of Britain’s underlying intentions. Were a British garrison to be installed in Göteborg, what guarantee was there against that city becoming a Baltic Gibraltar? And, in the second, Gustav had expectations of Britain which she simply could not satisfy. To the embattled Swedish monarch, Britain’s resources seemed infinite - in 1807 he had, after all, been offered one of the most generous subsidy deals of the entire Napoleonic period - but Moore was deeply conscious that the 12,000 men that he commanded represented a substantial part of Britain’s disposable resources. In consequence, they had to be carefully husbanded, but the British commander’s insistence that this was the case produced a total breakdown of relations that ended with Moore being placed under house arrest in Stockholm. Escaping from custody in disguise, Moore fled to Göteborg, and within a matter of hours his troops were under sail for England. Assisted by a British squadron that had also been sent to the Baltic, the Swedes fought on, but the relationship between the two allies never recovered. Indeed, the winter of 1808-9 was to see a fresh crisis. Faced by the need to renew his subsidy treaty with Britain, Gustav IV resorted to very aggressive tactics. The unfortunate British ambassador was suddenly confronted with the announcement that unless the subsidy for 1809 was raised to £2 million from its current level of £1,2 million, and £300,000 found for him immediately, Gustav would cut off all trade with Britain. Somewhat shaken, the ambassador caved in, and made over the £300,000 while at the same time referring the subsidy issue to his superiors. London, however, was made of sterner stuff, and a furious Canning vetoed the increase. Desperate for money to carry on the war, the king gave way in his turn, but he only did so with the worst possible grace. In this, it is at least arguable that Gustav had a point. Given British support, it is possible that an invasion of Danish-ruled Norway might have succeeded, the defenders being in such disarray that they had been forced to negotiate an armistice, while the generous aid sent to Spain and Portugal left Gustav feeling that he had been abandoned. And so, in a sense, he had. The Baltic entanglement had become a nightmare for Britain, and all the more so as Canning was convinced that without it Russia would long since have been reconciled with Britain. Few tears, then, were shed when Gustav was overthrown by a military coup a mere twelve days after he had accepted the new subsidy deal, even though the regime that replaced him under Gustav’s uncle, the aged and childless Charles XIII, made peace, accepting the terms of the Continental Blockade and surrendering Finland and the Åland islands to Russia.
To return to Iberia, from the very beginning the Spanish alliance in particular posed immense problems. In part, the cause lay with the overheated atmosphere in which the alliance had emerged in June 1808.
Despite claims that William Pitt and others predicted such a development, the news of the Spanish insurrection arrived in England as a bolt from the blue. Nothing was known about it until two messengers that had been dispatched from Asturias arrived in London on 8 June 1808 (as a matter of fact, the British governor at Gibraltar, Sir Hew Dalrymple, had been contacted about a potential uprising a few days after the Dos de Mayo, but only his first reports on what was going on had turned up in London by the time the deputation arrived from Asturias). With the French cause clearly in the ascendant, the result was the most wild excitement. For the Whigs, the