final and most difficult step—­in our post-Trafalgar policy of using the army to perfect our command of the sea against a fleet acting stubbornly on the defensive.  It began with Copenhagen in 1807.  It failed at the Dardanelles because fleet and army were separated; it succeeded at Lisbon and at Cadiz by demonstration alone.  Walcheren, long contemplated, had been put off till the last as the most formidable and the least pressing.  Napoleon had been looking for the attempt ever since the idea was first broached in this country, but as time passed and the blow did not fall, the danger came to be more and more ignored.  Finally, the moment came when he was heavily engaged in Austria and forced to call up the bulk of his strength to deal with the Archduke Charles.  The risks were still great, but the British Government faced them boldly with open eyes.  It was now or never.  They were bent on developing their utmost military strength in the Peninsula, and so long as a potent and growing fleet remained in the North Sea it would always act as an increasing drag on such development.  The prospective gain of success was in the eyes of the Government out of all proportion to the probable loss by failure.  So when Napoleon least expected it they determined to act, and caught him napping.  The defences of Antwerp had been left incomplete.  There was no army to meet the blow—­nothing but a polyglot rabble without staff or even officers.  For a week at least success was in our hands.  Napoleon’s fleet only escaped by twenty-four hours, and yet the failure was not only complete but disastrous.  Still so entirely were the causes of failure accidental, and so near had it come to success, that Napoleon received a thorough shock and looked for a quick repetition of the attempt.  So seriously indeed did he regard his narrow escape that he found himself driven to reconsider his whole system of home defence.  Not only did he deem it necessary to spend large sums in increasing the fixed defences of Antwerp and Toulon, but his Director of Conscription was called upon to work out a scheme for providing a permanent force of no less than 300,000 men from the National Guard to defend the French coasts.  “With 30,000 men in transports at the Downs,” the Emperor wrote, “the English can paralyse 300,000 of my army, and that will reduce us to the rank of a second-class Power."[6]

  [6] Correspondance de Napoleon, xix, 421, 4 September.

The concentration of the British efforts in the Peninsula apparently rendered the realisation of this project unnecessary—­that is, our line of operation was declared and the threat ceased.  But none the less Napoleon’s recognition of the principle remains on record—­not in one of his speeches made for some ulterior purpose, but in a staff order to the principal officer concerned.