The purpose of Bonaparte in 1801 is not to be gauged by the same measure as that of 1803-1805.  In 1798 he had told the then government of France that to make a descent upon England, without being master of the sea, would be the boldest and most difficult operation ever attempted.  Conditions had not changed since then, nor had he now the time or the money to embark in the extensive preparations, which afterwards gave assurance that he was in earnest in his threats.  An adept in making false demonstrations, perfectly appreciative of the power of a great name, he counted upon his own renown, and his amazing achievement of the apparently impossible in the past, to overawe the imagination of a nation, whose will, rather than whose strength, he hoped to subdue.  Boulogne and the small neighboring ports, whose nearness clearly indicated them as the only suitable base from which an invasion could start, were in that year in no state to receive the boats necessary to carry an army.  This the British could see with their own eyes; but who could be sure that the paper flotilla at Boulogne, like the paper Army of Reserve at Dijon a year before, had not elsewhere a substantial counterpart, whose sudden appearance might yet work a catastrophe as unexpected and total as that of Marengo?  And who more apt than Bonaparte to spread the impression that some such surprise was brewing?  “I can venture to assure you that no embarkation of troops can take place at Boulogne,” wrote Nelson, immediately after his first reconnoissance; but he says at the same time, “I have now more than ever reason to believe that the ports of Flushing and Flanders are much more likely places to embark men from, than Calais, Boulogne, or Dieppe; for in Flanders we cannot tell by our eyes what means they have collected for carrying an army.”  “Great preparations at Ostend,” he notes a week later; “Augereau commands that part of the Army.  I hope to let him feel the bottom of the Goodwin Sand.”  It was just this sort of apprehension, specific in direction, yet vague and elusive in details, that Bonaparte was skilled in disseminating.

St. Vincent, and the Government generally, agreed with Nelson’s opinion.  “We are to look to Flanders for the great effort,” wrote the Earl to him.  Neither of them had, nor was it possible for clear-headed naval officers to have, any substantial, rational, fear of a descent in force; yet the vague possibility did, for the moment, impress even them, and the liability of the populace, and of the commercial interests, to panic, was a consideration not to be overlooked.  Besides, in a certain way, there was no adequate preparation for resistance.  The British Navy, indeed, was an overwhelming force as compared to the French; but its hands were fully occupied, and the fleet Nelson had just left in the Baltic could not yet be recalled.  It was, however, in purely defensive measures, in the possession of a force similar to that by which the proposed attack