Britain and the First Coalition in the Western Mediterranean in 1793

Meeks, Joshua

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-44078-1_4

Joshua Meeks⁵

Part of the book series: War, Culture and Society, 1750-1850 ((WCS))

300 Accesses

Abstract

The main focus of this chapter is the formation and actions of the First Coalition in the Western Mediterranean. It begins by examining the claim that the First Coalition was Counter-Revolutionary in nature, problematizing this notion with the disparate motivations from the policymakers in London. The role of the First Coalition was further problematized by the main event in this chapter: the taking of Toulon in October 1793. Although this event is often seen as a key example of early Counter-Revolutionary aims by the British, the author argues that this is in fact an ambiguous moment in international politics that only served to deepen the rifts incipient in the First Coalition and to push all the participants further from Restoration of the Old Regime.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Chapter: USD 29.95; Price excludes VAT (USA)

eBook: USD 99.00; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Softcover Book: USD 129.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Hardcover Book: USD 129.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

1.
On the First Coalition, see Charles Esdaile, The French Wars, 1792–1815 (Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge, 2001); Owen Connelly, The Wars of the French Revolution and Napoleon, 1792–1815 (Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge, 2006). For a broad view, see Paul Schroeder’s masterful The Transformation of European Politics, 1763–1848 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).
2.
British National Archives (hereafter BNA), FO 72/27, Lord St. Helens to Grenville, 19 July 1793. Lord St. Helens reported 3500 sick landed at Cartagena.
3.
On British foreign policy during this period, see Jeremy Black, Debating Foreign Policy in Eighteenth Century Britain (Ashgate, 2011); Jennifer Mori, Britain in the Age of the French Revolution (Harlow: Longman, 2000); John C. Clarke, British Diplomacy and Foreign Policy, 1782–1865 (London: Unwin Hyman Ltd, 1989); D. B. Horn, Great Britain and Europe in the Eighteenth Century (Gloucestershire, UK: Clarendon Press, 1967); Michael Duffy, “British policy in the War Against Revolutionary France,” in Colin Jones, ed., Britain and Revolutionary France: Conflict, Subversion and Propaganda (Exeter: University of Exeter, 1983), 1–4.
4.
C. A. Bayly, Imperial Meridian: The British Empire and the World, 1780–1830 (Reading, MA: Longman, 1989). In this shift, the Mediterranean was only of limited importance, with the British mainly concerned with the safety of the Levant Trading Company and providing a counterweight to the French fleet at Toulon.
5.
Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 1999.
6.
Jennifer Mori, “The British Government and the Bourbon Restoration: The Occupation of Toulon, 1793,” The Historical Journal 40, no. 3 (Sep 1997): 699–719; Jeremy Black, Natural and Necessary Enemies: Anglo-French Relations in the Eighteenth Century (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987).
7.
Mori, “The Bourbon Restoration,” 702.
8.
Sir Gilbert to Lady Elliot, 18 Dec. 1792, printed in Life and Letters of Gilbert Elliot, First Earl of Minto, ed. Nina, countess of Minto, London, 1874, vol. II, 80. Hereafter cited as Life and Letters.
9.
F. O’Gorman, The Whig Party and the French Revolution (London: Macmillan, 1967); L.G. Mitchell, Charles James Fox and the Disintegration of the Whig Party, 1782–1794 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971); Jennifer Mori, “The Bourbon Restoration”; Roger Wells, “English society and revolutionary politics in the 1790s: The case for insurrection,” in Mark Philp, ed., The French Revolution in British Popular Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 189–190.
10.
BNA FO 30/8/195, 28 Aug. 1793.
11.
Acklaund Correspondance, II, Auckland to Grenville, 18 May 1793, 62–63; G. Laurent, “Pitt et les projets de l’émigration en 1793,” Annales historiques de la Révolution Française, II (1925), 164–168.
12.
Duffy, ‘British policy’, 13–4; Historical Manuscripts Commission, The Manuscripts of B. Fortescue Preserved at Dropmore (Hereafter HMC Dropmore), part V (10 vols., 1894–1927) II (1894), George III to Grenville, 27 April 1793.
13.
W. R. Fryer, Republic or Restoration in France? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), 23; Robert Griffiths, Le centre perdu: Mallouet et les ‘monarchiens’ dans la révolution française (Grenoble: Presses universitaires de Grenoble, 1983), 66–69.
14.
For the list of French ships in the Mediterranean, see BNA ADM 1/98. For the British complaints concerning shipments of grain, see FO 28/6 for Genoa, FO 67/11 for Sardinia, and FO 79/8 for Tuscany.
15.
J. Holland Rose, Lord Hood and the Defence of Toulon, 10.
16.
HMC Dropmore, II, 403.
17.
HMC Dropmore, II, 404. Michael Duffy, Soldiers, Sugar and Seapower: The British Expeditions to the West Indies during the French Revolutionary Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986); J. Holland Rose, Lord Hood and the Defence of Toulon, 11.
18.
For a concise breakdown of these orders, see J. Holland Rose, Lord Hood and the Defence of Toulon, Appendix A, “Admiralty Instructions to Vice-Admiral Lord Hood,” 95. For the corresponding instructions at the National Archives, see BNA ADM 2/124 “Additional Instructions to Lord Hood,” 138.
19.
Ibid.
20.
J. Holland Rose, Lord Hood and the Defence of Toulon, Appendix C, 104, “Logs of the Victory, Britannia, Princess Royal, St. George, Windsor Castle.”
21.
BNA FO 3/7.
22.
BNA FO 12/11, Trevor to Grenville, 25 April 1793.
23.
BNA FO 72/27, Lord St. Helens to Grenville, 25 May 1793. The overall dynamics of the relationship between Spain, France, and Great Britain is best explored in Barbara Stein and Stanley Stein, Edge of Crisis: War and Trade in the Spanish Atlantic, 1789–1808 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009).
24.
BNA FO 72/27, Lord St. Helens to Grenville, 25 May 1793.
25.
Ibid., Lord St. Helens to Grenville, 29 May 1793.
26.
BNA FO 165/162, Hamilton to Grenville, 12 July 1793.
27.
BNA ADM 2/124, FO 77/3.
28.
MS Anderson, “Great Britain and the Barbary States in the Eighteenth Century,” Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 29 (1956): 87–107.
29.
See J. Holland Rose, Lord Hood, 15. They were ultimately acquitted.
30.
BNA FO 67/12, Hood to de Revel, 10 August 1793.
31.
Ibid., Mulgrave to Hood, 13 August 1793.
32.
BNA FO 79/8 Hervey to Serristori, 23 May 1793.
33.
Ibid., Grenville to Hervey, 5 July 1793.
34.
Richard Long, “The Relations of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany with Revolutionary France, 1790–1799” (Florida State University Dissertation, 1972), 96.
35.
MAE, Corres. Polit., 145bis, Toscane, 4 June 1793. These documents mention nothing of Tuscan complicity.
36.
BNA FO 79/8 Hervey to Grenville, 31 Aug. 1793. Though he does not admit to feigning the illness that hypothetically prevented him from deciphering Hood’s instructions, his “illness” did not prevent him from deciphering and corresponding with several other Ministers during that same period, perhaps most notably William Hamilton in Naples. They jointly made plans to force their respective French counterparts from Naples and Tuscany, although Hamilton admittedly had an easier time of it. BNA FO 528/7 features the correspondence in question, specifically, Hamilton to Hervey, 4 June 1793, and Udney to Hervey, 17 June 1793.
37.
BNA FO 79/8 Hervey to Grenville, 31 Aug. 1793. This dispatch to Grenville contains Hervey’s extensive recounting of all of the events in question.
38.
J. Holland Rose, Lord Hood and the Defence of Toulon, Appendices B and C.
39.
BNA FO 79/8, Hervey to Grenville, 31 August 1793.
40.
Ibid.
41.
Ibid.
42.
BNA ADM 1/3841, 22 July 1793.
43.
BNA ADM 1/3841, Drake to Hood, 20 July 1793; ADM 1/3841, Hood to Drake, ADM 1/391 3 August 1793.
44.
BNA ADM 1/3841, Hood to Hamilton, 20 August 1793.
45.
René Boudard, Gênes et la France dans la deuxième moitié du XVIII siècle (Paris: Mouton, 1962).
46.
The three main authorities on the Toulon affair are J. Holland Rose, Lord Hood and the Defence of Toulon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922); Paul Cottin, Toulon et les Anglais en 1793 (Paris: P. Ollendorf, 1898); and more recently Malcolm Crook, Toulon in War and Revolution (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1991), especially Chap. 6. The former two also feature extensive appendices including the relevant source material from both British and French sources.
47.
Crook, 136–138.
48.
Ibid.
49.
Paul Hanson, The Jacobin Republic Under Fire (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003).
50.
M. Isnard, Isnard a Fréron, an IV, 18.
51.
French Archives Nationales (hereafter AN) AF II/297.
52.
William Cormack, Revolution and Political Conflict in the French Navy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Étienne Taillemite, Histoire ignorée de la marine française (Paris: Perrin, 2003).
53.
Archives du Ministère de la Guerre (hereafter AMG), BB 4/21 f. 173, 177, 179; Cormack, Revolution and Political Conflict in the French Navy, 189.
54.
BNA FO 95/4/6; ADM 1/391 Hood to Grenville, 25 August 1793.
55.
BNA 30/8/334, Pitt’s draft of Toulon Commissioners’ Instructions, fos. 20I-2.
56.
M. Duffy, “‘A particular service’: The British government and the Dunkirk expedition of 1793,” The English Historical Review, 91, no. 360 (July 1976), 529–554.
57.
BNA 30/8/334, Pitt’s draft of Toulon Commissioners’ Instructions, fos. 20I-2.
58.
The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, VII, ed. P. J. Marshall and J. Woods (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960), 344: Burke to Loughborough, 15 Sept. 1793; Paul Kelly, “Strategy and Counter-Revolution: The Journal of Sir Gilbert Elliot, 1–22 September 1793,” English Historical Review, XCVIII (1983), 334.
59.
Quoted in Kelly, “Strategy and Counter-Revolution,” National Library of Scotland, MS 11159, 1 Sept. 1793, Minto.
60.
Ibid., 12 Sept.
61.
Burke Correspondence, vii, 430–435.
62.
Kelly, “Strategy and Counterrevolution,” 15 Sept.
63.
Ibid., 20 Sept.
64.
Ibid.
65.
W. Copeland, ed., The Correspondence of Edmund Burke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958–78), VIII, Burke to Elliot, 22 Sept. 1793, 434; Ibid., VIII, Burke to Windham, 6 Nov. 1793, 476.
66.
By October the custodial relationship was mostly forgotten by Pitt and Dundas, and Toulon was referred to as having “surrendered.”
67.
BNA FO 20/1, 18 Oct.
68.
Ibid.
69.
Ibid.
70.
BNA FO 20/2, Hood to Linzee, 8 Sept.
71.
Ibid., Linzee to Hood, 7 Oct.
72.
Ibid., 24 Oct.
73.
ADHC 3L1/41.
74.
J. Holland Rose, Lord Hood and the Defence of Toulon, Appendix E, Draft from Lords Commissioners to Hood, Whitehall, 1 Oct.
75.
BNA ADM 1/3841, Udney to Hood, 22 July 1793.
76.
BNA FO 77/3, Hood to Magra, 19 Nov. 1793.
77.
BNA ADM 2/1346; ADM 2/124.
78.
BNA ADM 7/354.
79.
Ministre Affaire Etrangers (hereafter MAE) Gênes, Tilly to Spinoza, 2 Oct.
80.
BNA FO 28/6, Drake to Grenville, 11 Oct.
81.
MAE Gênes, Tilly to Spinoza, 18 Oct.
82.
See BNA FO 28/6 for correspondence between Nelson and Hood concerning the frustrations of the blockade.
83.
MAE Corresp. Politi., 145bis, Toscane, La Flotte to Deforgues, 5 Sept. 1793.
84.
BNA FO528/5 Udney to Hervey, 6 Sept. 1793.
85.
BNA FO 528/13, Hervey to Serristori, 9–10 Sept.
86.
BNA FO 528/14 contains the series of letters between Hervey and Serristori.
87.
BNA FO 528/14, Hervey to Hood, 9 Sept. 1793.
88.
BNA FO 528/1 Grenville to Hervey, 4 Oct. 1793.
89.
BNA FO 79/8, Hood to Hervey. 24 Sept 1793.
90.
BNA FO 79/9, Hervey to Grenville, 28 Oct. 1793.
91.
BNA FO 79/9, Hervey to Serristori, n.d.
92.
BNA FO 79/9, Serristori to Hervey, 8 Oct. 1793; MAE Corr. Political. 145bis, Toscane, Serristori to La Flotte, 8 Oct. 1793.
93.
BNA FO 79/9, Hervey to Grenville, 28 Oct. 1793.
94.
Antonio Zobi, Storia civile della Toscana (Firenze: Nabu Press, 1850) III, “Appendice di documenti al tomo terzo” VIII, Serrstori to La Flotte, 9 Oct. 1793, 15–16.
95.
BNA FO 79/9, Hervey to Grenville, 28 Oct. 1793.
96.
BNA FO 79/9. All of the details surrounding the events leading up to the renunciation of neutrality, as well as the preliminary treaties and final agreements, can be found in the packet Hervey sent to Grenville on 28 October 1793.
97.
BNA ADM 2/125, Hood to Admiralty, n.d.
98.
For the accounting of these troops, see J. Holland Rose, Lord Hood and the Defence of Toulon, 166. The individual letters can be found in BNA ADM 1/391.
99.
BNA ADM 1/391, Hood to Langara, 2 September, 1793.
100.
Ibid., King Ferdinand to Hood, 15 September.
101.
Ibid., Langara to Hood, 24 October 1793.
102.
Ibid., 25 Oct.
103.
Ibid.
104.
Ibid.
105.
In Cottin, Toulon and Les Anglais: Pieces Justicatif, 436. For the originals, see BNA FO 72/28.
106.
Ibid., 437.
107.
BNA ADM 1/391, Langara to Hood, 20 November, 1793.
108.
Ibid., Hood to Langara, 21 November.
109.
See Rose, Lord Hood and the Defence of Toulon, Chap. VI; Crook, 148.
110.
BNA FO 7/34, Eden to Grenville, 25 Sept.
111.
BNA ADM 1/391, Hood to Stephens, 23 Nov.
112.
BNA CO 91/36, Grenville to Boyd, n.d.
113.
BNA CO 91/36, Boyd to Hood, 27 October.
114.
BNA ADM 2/1097.
115.
BNA ADM 1/391, Hood to Stephens, 27 October 1793.
116.
BNA ADM 1/391, Admiralty to Hood, 20 December 1793.
117.
See J. P. McErlean, Napoleon and Pozzo di Borgo, for the narrative of Napoleon making his way to Toulon from Corsica.
118.
BNA ADM 1/391, Hood to Dundas, 20 December.
119.
See BNA FO 20/3 for details the movement of the British from Toulon to Corsica. Also see Desmond Gregory, The Ungovernable Rock, Chap. 2.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Northwest University, Kirkland, WA, USA
Joshua Meeks

Authors

Joshua Meeks
View author publications
You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Meeks, J. (2017). Britain and the First Coalition in the Western Mediterranean in 1793. In: France, Britain, and the Struggle for the Revolutionary Western Mediterranean. War, Culture and Society, 1750-1850. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44078-1_4

Download citation

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44078-1_4
Published: 02 February 2017
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-44077-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-44078-1
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics