Soult, Ney, Davoust, and Victor were in command of the army designed to invade England, and the Chief Consul personally repaired to Boulogne, and inspected both the troops and the flotilla.  He constantly gave out that it was his fixed purpose to make his attempt by means of the flotilla alone; but while he thus endeavoured to inspire his enemy with false security (for Nelson had declared this scheme of a boat invasion to be mad, and staked his whole reputation on its miserable and immediate failure, if attempted), the Consul was in fact providing indefatigably a fleet of men-of-war, designed to protect and cover the voyage.  These ships were preparing in different ports of France and Spain, to the number of fifty; Buonaparte intended them to steal out to sea individually or in small squadrons, rendezvous at Martinico, and, returning thence in a body, sweep the Channel free of the English for such a space of time at least as might suffice for the execution of his great purpose.  These designs, however, were from day to day thwarted by the watchful zeal of Nelson and the other English admirals; who observed Brest, Toulon, Genoa, and the harbours of Spain so closely, that no squadron, nor hardly a single vessel, could force a passage to the Atlantic.

Napoleon persisted to the end of his life in asserting his belief that the invasion of England was prevented merely by a few unforeseen accidents, and that, had his generals passed the sea, they must have been successful.  The accidents to which he attributed so much influence, were, it is to be supposed, the presence and zeal of Nelson, Pellew, Cornwallis, and their respective fleets of observation.  As for the results of the expedition, if the Channel had once been crossed—­Napoleon never seemed to doubt that a single great battle would have sufficed to place London in his hands.  Once arrived in the capital, he would, he said, have summoned a convention, restored the mass of the English people to their proper share of political power,—­in a word, banished the King, and revolutionised England on the model of France:  the meaning of all which is—­reduced this island to be a province of the French empire, and yet bestowed upon its people all those rights and liberties of which he had already removed the last shadow, wherever his own power was established on the continent.

There can be little doubt that Napoleon egregiously underrated the resistance which would have been opposed to his army, had it effected the voyage in safety, by the spirit of the British people, and the great natural difficulties of the country through which the invaders must have marched.  Nevertheless, it is not to be denied that, had the attempt been made instantly on the rupture of the peace, the chances of success might have been considerable—­of success, temporary and short-lived indeed, but still sufficient to inflict a terrible injury upon this country—­to bathe her soil in blood—­to give her capital to the flames—­and not impossibly to shake some of her institutions.  The enemy himself was, in all likelihood, unprepared to make the attempt, until England had had time to make adequate preparation for its encounter.  It was otherwise ordered of God’s providence, than that the last bulwark of liberty should have to sustain the shock of battle at its own gates.