But, that Frederick William, from whom he had hoped so much, to whom he was on the point of advancing a great subsidy, should now fall away, should talk of peace with Napoleon and claim Hanover, should forbid an invasion of Holland and request the British forces to evacuate North Germany—­this was a blow to George III., to our military prestige, and to the now tottering Ministry.  How could he face the Opposition, already wellnigh triumphant in the sad Melville business, with a King’s Speech in which this was the chief news?  Losing hope, he lost all hold on life:  he sank rapidly:  in the last hours his thoughts wandered away to Berlin and Lord Harrowby.  “What is the wind?” he asked.  “East; that will do; that will bring him fast,” he murmured.  And, on January 23rd, about half an hour before he breathed his last, the servant heard him say:  “My country:  oh my country."[61]

Thus sank to rest, amidst a horror of great darkness, the statesman whose noon had been calm and glorious.  Only a superficial reading of his career can represent him as eager for war and a foe to popular progress.  His best friends knew full well his pride in the great financial achievements of 1784-6, his resolute clinging to peace in 1792, and his longing for a pacification in 1796, 1797, and 1800, provided it could be gained without detriment to our allies and to the vital interests of Britain.  His defence lies buried amidst the documents of our Record Office, and has not yet fully seen the light.  For he was a reserved man, the warmth of whose nature blossomed forth only to a few friends, or on such occasions as his inspired speech on the emancipation of slaves.  To outsiders he had more than the usual fund of English coldness:  he wrote no memoirs, he left few letters, he had scant means of influencing public opinion; and he viewed with lofty disdain the French clamour that it was he who made and kept up the war.  “I know it,” he said; “the Jacobins cry louder than we can, and make themselves heard."[62] He was, in fact, a typical champion of our rather dumb and stolid race, that plods along to the end of the appointed stage, scarcely heeding the cloud of stinging flies.  Both the people and its champion were ill fitted to cope with Napoleon.  None of our statesmen had the Latin tact and the histrionic gifts needful to fathom his guile, to arouse the public opinion of Europe against him, or to expose his double-dealing.

But Pitt was unfortunate above all of them.  It was his fate to begin his career in an age of mediocrities and to finish it in an almost single combat with the giant.  He was no match for Napoleon.  The Coalition, which the Czar and he did so much to form, was a house of cards that fell at the conqueror’s first touch; and the Prussian alliance now proved to be a broken reed.  His notions of strategy were puerile.  The French Emperor was not to be beaten by small forces tapping at his outworks; and Austria might reasonably complain that our neglect to attack