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Introduction
By Betty T. Bennett
- This is a collection of British poetry written during the years 1793
through 1815. Its special significance lies in the fact that its theme
is war and war was, if we take the mass of poetry of the period into
account, perhaps the principal poetic subject in an age in which society
was being restructured in terms of the French Revolution, the Napoleonic
wars, industrialization. The three hundred and fifty poems presented
here, selected from more than three thousand poems collected from contemporary
publications, are representative of the massive number of war poems
which were then widely circulated, but which have not been previously
collected, or edited, or, with some exceptions, reprinted. They have
been selected to illustrate not only the attitudes of the poets toward
the war, which is of importance to a full understanding of the historical
background of Romanticism, but they also trace in a broad, popular spectrum
the development of the poetic styles of Romanticism. Their continuity
of subject matter is especially useful in revealing this development.
- War was the single most important fact of British life from 1793
to 1815. The poetry of the major Romantic writers concerned with the
war—Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, and Shelley—reflects
this imperfectly because their war poetry constitutes only a part of
the total poetic response. To understand in full historical context
both poetic and public attitudes toward the war and the poetic means
developed by the poets themselves to embody their feelings, it is necessary
to see the corpus of war poetry as a whole. This collection does not
include the works of the major Romantic poets, since they are readily
accessible; rather, it is intended to offer, in its overview of the
influence and effects of war on the age, new perspectives on these poets
and their responses, both poetic and political.
- Among the many war poems that appeared in journals and newspapers,
there are some which were published anonymously or are identified by
initials or pseudonyms. Included in this group are unsigned verses by
minor poets as well as well-known poets, such as Leigh Hunt and Coleridge.
The authors of a number of these poems have been identified in this
study, often through multiple publication. For example, Walcheren
Expedition; or, the Englishman's Lament for the Loss of His Countrymen
appeared anonymously in The Examiner [1]
and in The Morning Chronicle.[2]
However, The Poetical Register and Repository of Fugitive Poetry
reprinted the poem and gave the author as Leigh Hunt.[3]
In the case of the poet who signed himself "Hafiz," The
Gentleman's Magazine noted in the December, 1801 issue that both
"Hafiz" and "T.S." were signatures of Thomas Stott
of Dromore, Ireland.[4]
Despite this identification, Stott's many verses continued to appear
under "Hafiz" or "T.S." In a few instances, works
appeared in periodicals and newspapers which have not been included
in the collected works of a poet, such as Leigh Hunt's The
Field of Battle and The
Olive of Peace.[5]
Footnotes to particular poems include information on multiple publication
as well as other unusual publishing history, and, wherever possible,
identify authors not named at the time of original publication.
- The representative verses in this collection have been gathered from
a variety of sources, chiefly from newspapers, such as The Morning
Chronicle, The Examiner, The Cambridge Intelligencer, The Morning
Post, The Champion; from periodicals, such as The European Magazine,
The Gentleman's Magazine, The Scots Magazine (Edinburgh), and Exshaw's
Gentleman's and London Magazine (Dublin), The Anti-Jacobin,
The Monthly Magazine, The New Monthly Magazine. This main body of
poetry is supplemented by works from contemporary anthologies, collections,
individually published poems, and broadsides. The periodicals and newspapers,
however, are the chief source, since it was through their pages that
most poets reached the public. As Walter Graham has pointed out, "nearly
every literary periodical of note has had its section devoted to the
muse" [6]
and it was common practice for newspapers to print poems, or, in some
instances, include poetry as a part of the paper's regular format.[7]
This was true of The Morning Post, The Courier, The Examiner
and The Morning Chronicle.
- The Introduction to this collection is in four parts. The first speaks
to the nature of the poetry included. The second is historical and discusses
the relation of politics and poetry in terms of the publishing practices
of the journals in which most of this poetry appeared. The third section
details the shifting ideologies of "liberty" and "justice"
around which the poems revolve. Finally, the poems have a literary significance
apart from their subject matter. The fourth part of the Introduction
discusses the poems as a crucial link in the development of Romantic
poetic styles. These popular poems illustrate the transition from Percy's
Reliques and Burns to Wordsworth and Coleridge. They reflect
the evolution of styles, subject matter, and attitudes that have come
to be called Romantic.
- The poems are annotated sufficiently, it is hoped, for their significance
to be understood by the contemporary reader. Information is given, where
possible, about lesser known poets. Often all that seems to be known
about some of the poets are their names and titles of other works. It
is hoped that readers may be familiar with some of these figures, and
may share their information, thereby filling in some of the biographical
gaps. The poems are arranged chronologically according to the year in
which they first appeared and full imprint data is included with the
text. Titles in brackets indicate that the poem was published without
a title; sub-titles in brackets, however, are as they appeared in the
original. The poems are reproduced with no editorial emendation, since
the variant punctuation and spelling cause no major difficulties in
reading the poems while allowing the reader to become acquainted with
some of the publishing practices of the day. In instances where meaning
may be confused, a bracketed [sic] or a footnote is given for clarification.
- This collection is offered not in any sense as definitive, but rather
as an exploration of a relatively untapped resource of Romantic studies.
The shortcomings in the collection are my own; however, those aspects
which may enlighten and inform have come about through the assistance
of a number of people and institutions, whom I am pleased to here acknowledge.
First, I am grateful to Kenneth N. Cameron, who guided me into the age
of Romanticism, and has been a constant example of excellence in scholarship
and human compassion. My gratitude is due also to Donald H. Reiman for
his careful reading of the manuscript and his many suggestions about
form and substance. For furnishing me with poems and information, I
thank David V. Erdman and Roland Bartel. For kindly permitting the use
of their facilities and collections, I thank the Carl H. Pforzheimer
Library, the New York Public Library, the Yale University Library, the
Princeton University Library, the Library of Congress, the British Museum,
the Bodleian, and the Library of the State University of New York at
Stony Brook. In particular, I wish to thank Norman O. Jung of the Stony
Brook Library for accompanying me in long, sometimes unfruitful, searches
for details about the poetry and poets. For her diligent accuracy in
typing, I thank Lynn C. Kelly. The initial manuscript was completed
with the aid and advice of Joseph T. Bennett, and read and commented
on by Paul J. Dolan. The final manuscript was read and commented on
by Rosalind A. Teicher who, along with Ruth A. Dolan, gave many words
of encouragement. To all, I am particularly grateful.
- Finally, I wish to express my gratitude to my sons Peter and Matthew
to whom "dining-room table" has become synonymous with "desk,"
for their patience and love and peacefulness in a war-zone.
Betty T. Bennett
State University of New York
at Stony Brook
[1976]
- From the fall of the Bastille on July 14, 1789 throughout the revolutionary
and Napoleonic wars, which continued almost without cessation until
Napoleon's final defeat at Waterloo on June 18, 1815, British poets
responded to war activities to an extent unprecedented in British history.
Blake's The French Revolution, passages of Wordsworth's The
Prelude as well as a number of his sonnets, Coleridge's France:
An Ode and Fears in Solitude, Byron's Napoleon's Farewell
and parts of Childe Harold, and Shelley's Henry and Louisa
are among the best known representatives of this poetic response.
But many of these poems were unpublished during the war period. Furthermore,
these poems have generally been examined within the context of the total
body of work of the principal Romantic poets, an approach which has
served to obscure the fact that the war was a primary poetic preoccupation
of the age. However important, the war poems by the major poets constitute
a small segment of a vast body of contemporary verse both in favor of
and opposed to the war. To understand more fully the larger, generalized
tradition of Romanticism, one must consider the more specific, topical
tradition of war verse which influenced and was influenced by both the
greater and lesser Romantic poets.
- The quality of the war verses varies greatly, ranging from plainly
nationalistic songs, which embody rhetorical effect rather than intrinsic
poetic merit, to the most seriously intended works of art with their
metaphoric use of the war experience. As many varieties of poetic mode
as possible are included within this collection to present the poetically
as well as the politically revolutionary aspects of the period. The
doggerel and the simple call-to-arms in song, for example, are not only
historical facts of the time; they are the out-growth of the will to
write for an ever-expanding, more democratic audience, one that for
the first time included the workingman. Nationalistic verse had been
written before, but with the growth of the popular periodical press
and with both readers and writers of poetry drawn from the middle and
the working classes, the simple stanza-plus-refrain form acquired a
poetic respectability which it had not previously had. The virtue of
this form was its accessibility to readers accustomed to the simple
rhythms and repetitive patterns of the familiar jingle or nursery rhyme
as well as to the popular ballads customarily found in chap books [1]
and broadsides.[2]
- The French Revolution provided a ready focus for British poets. Even
before the Revolution took place, the thinking which inspired it—the
writings of Voltaire, Rousseau, and others—had excited many minds
in Britain, and there was wide-spread sympathy for victims of Bourbon
oppression.[3]
This attitude may be attributed to the more republican nature of British
political philosophy which was buttressed by the recent revolt against
Britain itself by the American colonies.[4]
The American Revolution seemed to have had many of the same republican
objectives as the French, and the favorable considerations it provoked
in some British minds were readily applied to French revolutionary action.
The overthrow of the Bastille was regarded as the overthrow of the feudal,
tyrannic rule of the Bourbons, and poets celebrated it in these terms
immediately and for some years to follow. The famous "Swan of Litchfield,"
Anna Seward wrote Sonnet to France on Her Present Exertions which
appeared in at least six publications from August through October 1789;
[5] Cowper's
section in The Task which prophetically anticipated the destruction
of the Bastille was reprinted in at least two periodicals; [6]
Coleridge wrote the Destruction of the Bastille (first published
in 1834); [7]
and there appeared a spate of unsigned works in newspapers and periodicals
expressing the same sentiments. The approbation accorded the fall of
the Bastille was also expressed in Britain through annual festivities
held on the fourteenth of July, a day celebrated by many Whigs and radicals
alike during the early years of the French Republic. The tenacity with
which some Britons held to the significance of the event is further
demonstrated by the fact that some Britons marked the date with poetic
celebration even after Britain and France were at war and the ideals
of the Revolution had become tarnished.
- The initial positive response in Britain to the French Revolution
altered as the excesses of the revolutionary tribunals were reported.
In terms of the poetry, the approval of earlier events in France perceptibly
changed in 1792 with the imprisonment of the King and Queen of France,
and particularly in 1793 with the execution of the royal couple and
Britain's official entry into the war against the Republic of France.
Much of the anti-revolutionary poetry centered upon the plight of the
deposed monarchs. Edmund Burke's personal and highly sentimental view
of the Queen, "glittering like the morning-star, full of life,
and splendor, and joy," [8]
fixed an image which could be used to full effect by the anti-revolutionary
poets. Burke's representation of Marie Antoinette as the principal figure
in a tragedy about the death of chivalry in which the "glory of
Europe is extinguished forever," was rebutted by Thomas Paine's
more factual account in The Rights of Man, [9]
but Burke's tragic queen, the wife and mother, proved more appealing,
and the majority of British poets dealt with the Queen sympathetically.
Stanzas supposed to be
Written Whilst the Late Queen of France was Sleeping, by Her Attendant
in the Temple is typical of the poetry which echoed Burke's
image of the Queen. A rare instance of an attack on the French Queen
was Blake's notebook ballad, Let the Brothels of Paris be opened,
in which the Queen is personally held responsible for the suffering
of the French people:
- Wordsworth and Coleridge reflect that awakening as well. The young
"revolutionary and radical" [12]
Wordsworth's personal and political involvement in the French Revolution
is well documented, but it is too often overshadowed by the portrait
of "the level-headed elderly man, shrewdly practical, settling
down to an uneventful domestic life, a confirmed Tory in politics."
[13]
The fact is that Wordsworth's response to the Revolution was sympathetic
and supportive:
- Coleridge treated the Revolution and the subsequent war with France
in prose and verse. Philosophically wary of the ideals of Rousseau and
his concept of "natural religion," Coleridge was concerned
with analyzing the philosophical foundations of the Revolution. France:
An Ode, 1798 is a poetical version of Coleridge's political philosophy,
and in the fifth stanza of that poem he expresses his notion that the
ideal of freedom belongs to the individual and cannot be found in a
society or in the institutions of human government. In Fears in Solitude,
1798, Coleridge presented the dilemma of war: the poem is forceful in
describing the horrors of warfare but admits the necessity for Britons
to "repel an impious foe." Coleridge believed that Britain's
war against Napoleon was a struggle of those who possessed a higher
conception of liberty and justice against a materialist foe.
- Southey, like Wordsworth and Coleridge, began as an anti-war poet who gradually reversed his position to become a staunch supporter of the war.[15] His early anti-tyrannic Joan of Arc drew fire from Anna Seward in The European Magazine, 1797 and his The Soldier's Wife was parodied in The Anti-Jacobin.[16] The 1799 Annual Anthology, which was edited by Southey, printed his The Soldier's Funeral and The Battle of Blenheim. But this and the 1800 Annual Anthology, which published war verse by Coleridge as well, [17] contained poems written during the pre-Napoleonic stage of the protracted war, though Southey had already come to favor the war against France. The biting irony of The Battle of Blenheim directed—as was so much of Southey's war poetry—against the inhumanity of war stands in striking contrast to his vindictive Ode Written During the Negotiations with Bonaparte, in January 1814 in which he argues against the peace negotiations and in favor of the complete destruction of Napoleon:
- Although the change in Southey's view of the war occurred long before
he became poet-laureate in 1813, he was attacked by Leigh Hunt, [19]
among others, for his political reversal. His shift from radical politics
to a "Philanthropic brand of Toryism" [20]
can be seen as a response to the change in 1796 in the character of
the war itself. What had begun as a revolution against French tyranny
in 1796 was seen as a war which seemed to have as its goal total European
domination by France. The concept of one tyranny being substituted for
another became the subject matter of Southey's war poetry, as well as
that of Coleridge, Wordsworth, and others. Nevertheless, the selections
of Southey included here, particularly the earlier works, proved not
only popular but influential.
- While Thomas Campbell was not so prolific a war poet as Southey, his
work was often reprinted and his war verses provided a model which was
imitated by others. Although Campbell consistently supported Britain,
he maintained a poetic objectivity which enabled him to deal artistically
and compassionately with the scourges of war, as in
The Soldier's Dream.
- The role of Robert Burns as a war poet must be considered in terms
of his influence on the poetry of the period in general, and part four
of this introduction will deal with his contribution in some detail.
Burns died in 1796, and the few war poems he wrote were of mixed quality,
from the touching The Soldier's Return to the nationalistic The
Dumfries Volunteers, but all his poetry was well received and well
circulated during this period.
- The war was so popular a subject that a commentator in The Analytical
Review noted in 1793 that it was treated by "every hireling
scribbler."[21]
The poets concerned themselves with the events of the war in such topical
poems as Nelson's Victory:
An Ode, on Nelson's defeat of the French in Egypt; they treated
the effects of the war on individuals, as Amelia Opie's The
Orphan Boy's Tale or on the country as in January,
1795; and frequently poets offered philosophical poems on the
subject as in The Age
of War. Poems were sometimes frankly hortatory as English,
Scots, and Irishmen: A Patriotic Address to the Inhabitants of the United
Kingdom, July, 1803, by John Mayne; they ranged from the satiric
A Modern Ballad
to the unabashedly sentimental The
Generous Soldier by Mr. Booker, 1800.
- Generally poetry columns contained at least one poem on the war and
some poems were published and circulated as broadsides as well, such
as The Ploughman's Ditty;
Being an Answer to that Foolish Question, What Have the Poor to Lose?
which was printed in at least four periodicals and as a broadside. In
addition, periodical verses were occasionally reprinted and circulated
in book form: The Spirit of the Public Journals [22]
was a collection of brief prose passages and verse specifically gathered
from newspapers, and The Anti-Gallican [23]
was a collection of prose and verse gathered from broadsides as well
as from newspapers and periodicals.
- The Spirit of the Public Journals, unlike most publications
of the period, avoided political distinctions or partisan connections
in its editorial policy. Instead, it published a cross-section of all
jeux d'esprits of the popular journals, although there is a notable
absence of material from radical publications. In the early editions
of The Spirit of the Public Journals such anti-war poems as The
Fruits of the War and A
Fast Day Hymn [24]
appeared, but by the turn of the century, although selections from both
Whig and Tory publications continued to appear, there is no discernable
difference in attitude towards the war. By that time, both Whigs and
Tories generally agreed that it was a necessity, if not a duty, for
Britain to defeat Napoleon and put to rest once and for all the French
threat to British liberty.
- The Anti-Gallican, on the other hand, was clearly intended
to bolster the war morale of its readers. It reproduces approximately
two hundred verses, in addition to many prose pieces, on the threatened
invasion of Britain by France. Many of the pieces date from before 1803,
the year Britain felt that invasion was imminent, but they are consistent
in their hostility towards the French and their insistence on the necessity
of continuing the struggle to defend Britain. The collection, printed
partially for J. Asperne, [25]
draws upon many of the broadsides which Asperne printed in 1803—to
which he frequently appends the suggestion that they be distributed
among the poor by those who could afford to do so in order to rouse
the lower classes against the French.[26]
Included in The Anti-Gallican are Wordsworth's Anticipation,
Burn's The Dumfries Volunteers, and Campbell's The
Soldier's Dream.[27]
- The broadside itself was a popular way of circulating war verses during
the war period. It has been noted that although periodicals gained in
prestige during the eighteenth century, "the broadside stubbornly
held its ground in the service not only of hack writers but of poets
of name" and continued to do so into the nineteenth century.[28]
In addition to the previously mentioned Ploughman's
Ditty, [29]
poems which appeared in broadsides as well as periodicals or collections
include John Mayne's English,
Scots, and Irishmen [30]
and several works by Leigh Hunt which were published in a special form
of broadside known as Bellman's verses, [31]
verses printed as a broadside and sold to Bellmen or Beadles [32]
for distribution as New Year's gifts. Hunt occasionally reprinted these
verses in one of his newspapers: Orange Boven appeared as a Bellman's
Verse for 1814 [33]
and in The Examiner on January 23, 1814.[34]
- Shelley also made use of the broadside to circulate war verses. His
early opposition to the war, as well as to the aristocracy and Napoleon,
is demonstrated in his Esdaile Note-Book poems, The Crisis,
To the Emperors of Russia and Austria who eyed the battle from the heights
whilst Buonaparte was active in the thickest of the fight, and Henry
and Louisa.[35]
Influenced by Coleridge's and Southey's The Devil's Thoughts,
[36]
Shelley wrote an anti-establishment, anti-war ballad entitled The
Devil's Walk and had it printed as a broadside, [37]
which resulted in the arrest of Shelley's servant as he was distributing
the broadside.[38]
- Although the broadside was employed to some effect, the chief medium
of publication of war poetry were the magazines and newspapers, which
provided poets concerned with the war a steady outlet for their encomiums,
their warnings, their arguments. Opposition to the war and acclamation
for the war were based on a variety of grounds: political, ethical,
religious, economic, humanitarian, nationalistic, moralistic. Content
and approach vary not only from poet to poet, but according to the political
stance of the medium in which the poems are found. To understand the
frequency of particular points of view, it is necessary to examine the
influence of politics on the publishing practices of the day.
- In the aftermath of the French Revolution, a new term was introduced
into British political nomenclature. The term "Jacobin," derived
from the French political club established in 1789 to develop and maintain
egalitarian government, was found to be a useful pejorative designation
and was applied indiscriminately to those who sympathized with the Revolution
as well as to British republicans, radicals, and Whigs. In fact, all
who opposed the policies of the Tory government found themselves attacked
as Jacobins.[1]
- The terms designating the two major political parties in Britain during
this period, the Tories and the Whigs, had themselves been pejorative
appellations used in 1679 during the struggle to exclude James, Duke
of York, from succession to the throne.[2]
From the Revolution of 1688-89 until the death of Queen Anne in 1714,
the Whig and Tory parties maintained a political balance of power and
opposition in England. After 1714, however, with the crowning of the
Whig nominee George I as king, and the flight of the Tory leader Bolingbroke
to France, the Tories declined as a political party. The situation was
changed in 1784, when the young Pitt became leader of a new Tory party
which represented the interests of the country gentry and the powerful
merchant classes. The Whig party, as opposition under the leadership
of Charles James Fox, was made up of dissenters, shopkeepers, and the
burgeoning industrialists.
- Pitt's Tory government was firmly opposed to the Revolution in France
and took a position of defending and maintaining the status quo. The
Whigs, on the other hand, desired electoral, parliamentary, and philanthropic
reform, and were more open to social change. Many Whigs supported the
Revolution and opposed the war with France, though the more conservative
among them supported the policies of the Pitt government. Thus, the
rather imprecise term "Jacobin" was used to suggest all those
who sympathized with France and to designate those who opposed Pitt's
policies: radicals, republicans, and Whigs alike. Jacobinism was even
extended to impute the morals as well as the politics of opponents of
the Pitt government.[3]
Indeed, the term carried so much negative weight that Wordsworth and
Coleridge published the Lyrical Ballads anonymously because they
were aware that they were "marked out as Jacobins."[4]
Coleridge gives the term some precision in an article in The Morning
Post of October 21, 1802, entitled "Once a Jacobin Always a
Jacobin," in which he states that the term has been applied to
"all who, from whatever cause, opposed the late war and the late
ministry." However, this is a definition of the term by "bigots
alarmed and detected culprits." More properly, he maintains, a
Jacobin is one who affirms:
- Coleridge intended to sum up and at the same time criticize the views
of Rousseau which, rather imperfectly understood, were those which the
French Revolution had sought to put into practice. The article attempts
to define a total Jacobin creed and to indicate that only advocates
of despotism did not subscribe to some of the tenets of Jacobinism.
While arguing that he was not a Jacobin, Coleridge tries to dispel the
emotion which had become attached to the term.
- In the context of the poetry in this collection, "Jacobin"
tells less about those who are attacked in satire, or who are impugned
in more serious poetry, than it does about the Tory position of those
who attack or impugn. Since, throughout the period, the Jacobin label
is often used without discrimination, the term "radical" might
be substituted as a more appropriate and encompassing designation for
those who opposed government policies. The range of opposition was broad—altering
as the war progressed [5]—and
the term "radical" in this discussion is intended to include
all factions which supported the French Revolution as well as those
which desired major governmental reform in England.
- While there were radical thinkers in Britain before the French Revolution,
the radicals were, for the most part, loosely organized and unenfranchised.
Those with any political power at all belonged to the tradition of Whig
"commonwealthmen," and, in fact, the radicals were not organized
into a specific political party until 1820.[6]
It was the French Revolution which became a catalystic agent for those
in England who were dissatisfied with the British government. The Revolution
became synonymous to many with the struggle of the British working class
for better living conditions and more representative government. Dr.
Richard Price's Sermon, A Discourse on the Love of Our Country
(November 4, 1789), in support of the Revolution was greeted enthusiastically
by a number of radicals and by liberal Whigs.[7]
Not all liberal Whigs, however, accepted Price's stand, and Edmund Burke
was to take him to task in his Reflections Upon the Revolution in
France.[8]
A significant number of radical thinkers took the opportunity afforded
by the French Revolution to press for consideration of the working class
and the need for reform. The Second Part of Thomas Paine's Rights
of Man, in calling the aristocracy into account, effected a bridge
between the old tradition of Whig "commonwealthmen" and the
radicals. The strong disapproval of the monarchy and of aristocratic
hereditary principles was related to the economic hardships of the poor.
Much of the anti-war poetry written during this early phase renders
these sentiments in verse, as in Effects
of War published in The Cambridge Intelligencer, February
22, 1794. The opposition was quick to attack those poets who opposed
the war on such grounds, and verses in favor of the war linked support
of France with destruction of the British establishment.
- The argument that the war was being conducted by men "Too high
to stoop, too proud to feel,/ For England's bleeding woes" who
are disinterested in the "thousands begging at their gates,/ Or
welt'ring in their gore," but who are more concerned with "gaudy
luxries" and "a scarf or garter blue," [9]
is prevalent in the anti-war poetry throughout the war years. In fact,
the image of an aristocratic class indifferent to the suffering of the
poor became so prevalent that it is used in later years of the war even
by poets who do not necessarily oppose government policies. For example,
a poet in The Scots Magazine in 1802, speaks in the voice of
The Beggar Girl
orphaned by the war:
- Debating societies in which the working man participated were formed
sporadically in England from 1776 on. Although there had been such clubs
in Sheffield, Derby, and Manchester, it was not until the London Corresponding
Society was founded in January 1792 that they were organized into a
significant vocal group.[10]
This Society, which held meetings at "The Bell" tavern off
the Strand, was composed of artisans, small shopkeepers, tradesmen,
journeymen, printers, engravers, young attorneys, apothecaries, teachers,
journalists, surgeons, and Dissenting clergy.[11]
It was a popular radical society, rather than a strictly working-class
debating society, and it was formed to discuss the current events and
to attempt to influence government. The aristocratic opponents of the
radical groups were quick to form "counter-revolutionary"
organizations directed against them. "Church and King" clubs
proliferated. (It was a "Church and King" club which caused
a riot in Birmingham in the summer of 1791 by interrupting a dinner
in celebration of the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille.) The
position of the "Church and King" groups is enunciated in
Church and King, a Song
of 1793:
- The violence and the scare tactics of "Church and King"
mobs did not succeed in repressing the early radical groups but on the
contrary helped publicize the activities of anti-war factions. Men like
John Thelwall, Thomas Spence, Thomas Hardy and other advocates of the
rights of the working class voiced their beliefs at meetings and in
broadsides and pamphlets.[12]
Their work resulted in poetic response both from sympathizers and detractors.
The detractors, for the most part, resorted to satire, much of it personal,
such as On Mister Surgeon
Thelwall which implies that Thelwall in his profession as a
surgeon has dealings with the illegal "resurrection men,"
i.e. those who stole newly buried bodies to sell for medical experimentation.
Since Thelwall is such an unsavory character, the satirist suggests,
it is no wonder that he is sympathetic to the democratic ideals of the
French Revolution. Other detractors, however, resorted to simple invective,
as John Shilettoe in his 1795 Portrait
of a Jacobin, calling the radicals "a MASS of every FILTH
combin'd!/ The horror of the HUMAN KIND!" Those who sympathized
with the French ideals attempted to respond in poetic terms to the insinuations
of the "Church and King" mobs. The editor of The Cambridge
Intelligencer, for example, on September 14, 1793 extracted the
lines entitled The Bishop
of London's Opinion on War from a poem which the bishop, Dr.
Porteous, had written while a student at Cambridge. The lines suggest
a response to Burke and the reaction to the death of the French king:
- In the beginning of their existence, the radical artisan groups were
supported by the agitation of the ever-increasing manufacturing class
and by religious groups such as the Methodist New Connexion, the so-called
"Tom Paine Methodists."[13]
As the establishment perceived that the reform groups were increasing
in strength, the semi-official agency for intimidation of reformers,
the Association for Protecting Liberty and Property against Republicans
and Levellers, was formed in the 1790's. From 1794 to 1804 there was
steady repression of reformers in England: so-called Jacobins were arrested
and tried; the London Corresponding Society was outlawed; the Rights
of Man was banned, and meetings were prohibited. However, as E.
P. Thompson points out:
- Both the establishment and the radical opposition attempted to stir
up public opinion by means of pamphlets, broadsides, and public meetings,
but recognized that the quickest and most effective means of reaching
large segments of the public was through newspapers and periodicals.
Political bias determined what was published, and it was political consideration
rather than artistic merit which was the overriding criterion in the
selection of verse.
- All the newspapers were committed to a particular party and, more
often than not, this commitment was purchased in the form of a regular
stipend from a political party or faction which then exercised control
over the publication.[15]
Lucyle Werkmeister, in summing up the situation as it was in 1789, points
out that both the government and the opposition each controlled seven
newspapers. The government had The Daily Advertiser, The Public Advertiser,
The Public Ledger, The Times, The World, The Star, and The Diary,
or Woodfall's Register; the opposition maintained The Gazetter,
The General Advertiser, The Morning Herald, The Morning Post, The Morning
Chronicle, the "spurious Star," and The Argus.
[16]
- The change in ownership of a newspaper could mean a reversal of its
political stance and a parallel change in the character of the poetry
which it published. One such instance was The Courier which,
during its Whig years 1792-1799, [17]
printed anti-ministerial as well as anti-war poetry. In 1799, however,
the paper was purchased by Daniel Stuart and Thomas George Street. Stuart,
who already owned the then radical Morning Post, left The
Courier in the hands of Street. Street, a Tory or, as an enemy called
him, an "anythingarian," proceeded to make The Courier
into the chief government organ in London.[18]
- The Morning Post, a journal which published Wordsworth and
Coleridge as well as a host of other poets, was put on the payroll of
Carleton House [19]
in 1789 when its editors threatened to make much of the Prince Regent's
secret marriage to Mrs. Fitzherbert.[20]
However the newspaper did not long remain in government hands. In 1795
it was purchased by Daniel Stuart who made The Post a leading
Whig-radical journal.[21]
Stuart gave his support to Addington's government from 1802 to 1803,
and an anti-Napoleonic, pro-ministerial position was maintained by The
Post after Stuart sold it in 1803.[22]
- The leading organ of governmental opposition throughout the war years
was The Morning Chronicle, edited and owned by James Perry.[23]
Unlike so many of the papers of the day, The Morning Chronicle
remained consistent in its adherence to the Whig position. Initially
the paper opposed the war, but it altered its policy during the uneasy
peace created by the Treaty of Amiens (1802-1803), as did Charles James
Fox, leader of the Whig opposition, to support the war against Napoleon.
Nevertheless, The Morning Chronicle maintained its staunch condemnation
of the Tory party in general, and often printed prose and poetry critical
of what it considered to be the war-mongering policies of the Tories.
Indeed, after the Battle of Waterloo, The Morning Chronicle printed
a poem entitled Napoleon
by P. Cornwall, who prefaced a letter to the editor to his verse complaining
that even the most "liberal-minded" men in the ministry were
vilifying Buonaparte and stating that The Morning Chronicle was
"the only corner left in the world of politics where one may hear
both sides of the question."
- John Walter, editor and proprietor of The Times, was in the
pay of the Tory government until 1799 when his subsidy stopped. However,
from 1801-1804, the Times supported Addington's Tory government not
for a subsidy but for a government promise that the Times would be the
only paper to have immediate access to government information regarding
events on the Continent.[24]
Thus, the Times was perhaps the first of the newspapers to cede a financial
subsidy in favor of prior intelligence. By 1814 newspapers had become
more financially independent of direct government financing, with prior
intelligence and the indirect subsidy of government advertising generally
taking the place of the more obvious, direct financial control.[25]
- The Tory government, in the interest of gaining as much support as
possible for its war policy, attempted to control newspapers not only
through direct purchase but through restrictive laws. Although the long
range effect of the Libel Act of 1792 was beneficial to the press, in
that the government could no longer arbitrarily suppress publications
and imprison newspapermen, but had to grant them full trial before a
jury of their peers, the immediate effect of the act was to increase
press prosecutions.[26]
The price of newspapers rose throughout the period as the government
tried to halt circulation of anti-Tory journals by increasing the fee
for the required newspaper stamps. The 1798 Newspaper Act not only raised
the cost of stamps; it required that all newspapers be registered with
the government.[27]
- Despite these measures, newspapers continued to flourish, and the
government attempted to find still other methods of control. By 1812
there were at least eighteen Sunday newspapers. These were attacked
on the basis of violating the Sabbath, but actually they incurred disfavor
because they were mostly democratic in nature and disapproved of governmental
positions.
- As the war continued it became increasingly difficult for newspapers
to obtain information from the continent. The government took full advantage
of this situation to apply pressure on journals to print only what government
policy favored or run the risk of obtaining no information at all. Attempted
control of newspapers by the government reached beyond London into Scotland,
Ireland, and the English provinces. Scottish "Jacobins" who
were active in pursuit of reform found no support from the press [28]
at the beginning of the nineteenth century since newspapers in Scotland
were controlled by the government and Scotland did not have a truly
independent newspaper until 1817.[29]
- The situation in Ireland differed in that most newspapers before the
Union of 1800 were anti-English.[30]
The French, aware of the hostility between Ireland and England, attempted
several landings in Ireland with the aid of Irish radicals. The landings,
however, were unsuccessful. After the Union of 1800, the attitude of
many Irish newspapers seemed more sympathetic to the British cause,
but it has been suggested that this was due to "the lavish bribery
resorted to by the government" rather than "any change in
the sentiment of the people." [31]
- As for the provincial newspapers, in the early years of the war radical
or Whig-radical journals were founded in opposition to the war and to
the Tory government. Coleridge's Watchman (1796), James Montgomery's
Sheffield Iris (1794-1824), and Benjamin Flower's Cambridge
Intelligencer (1793-1800) are outstanding examples of the small
provincial newspapers that were more than advertising sheets. After
1796, however, these papers found little support, and the provincial
newspapers generally consisted of little more than advertisements, many
of them governmental, and such poetry and news as the government saw
fit to circulate.[32]
- Throughout the war, magazines and reviews as well as newspapers were
established specifically to treat the war issue. Coleridge founded the
Watchman to protest against Pitt's war policy and agitate for
government reform. In Norwich, a group of anti-war advocates joined
together to publish The Cabinet (1795), a journal which recalled
the ideals of the French Revolution and its initial cause of liberty.[33]
On the other side of the political scale were such journals as The
Anti-Gallican Monitor (1811), The Tomahawk (1795-1796), and
The Anti-Jacobin (1797-1798), whose sole purposes were to publish
poetry and prose favoring the war and attack detractors of war policy.
One issue of The Anti-Jacobin, for example, described The
Cambridge Intelligencer as "more false than the Morning
Post, more blasphemous than the Morning Chronicle, and more
devoted to the cause of Anarchy and Blood than that exploded vehicle
of idiot frenzy, the Courier."[34]
- The Anti-Jacobin was by far the most outstanding of these publications,
its reputation based not upon its prose but upon the superior quality
of its satiric verse. Organized and contributed to by William Gifford,
George Canning, and John Hookman Frere, [35]
this weekly was quite popular, and poetry from The Anti-Jacobin
has been republished at least four times since it was first collected
in 1799. The "Introduction" to the poetry section of the first
issue of The Anti-Jacobin offers a statement explanatory of its
policy of publishing mostly satire. Moreover, it gives an ironically
candid statement on the quality of Tory vs. radical poetry:
But whether it be that good Morals, and what We should call good Politics, are inconsistent with the spirit of true Poetry—whether "the Muses still with Freedom found" have an aversion to regular Governments, and require a frame and
system of protection less complicated than King, Lords, and Commons;—
"Whether primordial nonesense springs
to life
In the wild War of Democratic strife,"
and there only—or for whatever other reason it may be, whether physical, or moral, or philosophical (which last is understood to mean something more than the other two, though exactly what, it is difficult to say), We have not been able to find one good and true Poet, of sound principle and sober practice, upon whom we could rely for furnishing us with a handsome quantity of good and approved Verse—such Verse as our Readers might be expected to get by heart and to sing, as MONGE describes the little children of Sparta, and Athens singing the songs of Freedom, in expectation of the coming of the Great Nation.
In this difficulty, We have had no choice but either to provide no Poetry at all,—a shabby expedient,—or to go to the only market where it is to be had good and ready made, that of the Jacobíns—an ex-pedient full of danger, and not to be used but with the utmost caution and delicacy. [36] - Crane Brinton's statement that "literature was often blamed as
the effective bond between Jacobins" [37]
is well underscored by the testimony of the editors of The Anti-Jacobin.
It is certainly true that literature qua literature played an
important role in unifying "Jacobin" sentiment, and it is
equally true that the literary productions of the "Jacobin"
writers were often superior to those of their political adversaries.
However, it is well to remember that "Jacobins" were as often
Whigs as republicans, and their poetry appeared both in the opposition
as well as in the more radical press. Coleridge, who was at first marked
out as a Jacobin, contributed poetry on the war to anti-war papers and
later to the government press: from 1794 his work appeared in Flower's
Cambridge Intelligencer; in 1794-1795 his series of sonnets to
radical men appeared in The Morning Chronicle; from 1797 on he
contributed to The Morning Post.[38]
During the peace created by the Treat of Amiens, Coleridge wrote anti-Napoleonic
works for The Courier [39]
and The Morning Post.[40]
He believed these contributions were instrumental in the rupture of
the treaty, and his belief is supported by the fact that The Morning
Post "was said by Fox to have helped bring about the renewal
of the war in May 1803."[41]
- Among the younger generation of poets, Byron, Shelley, Hunt, and Moore
were opposed to Pitt and those who carried out his policies.[42]
Both Shelley and Byron believed in the necessity of fundamental reform
in government, their agitation against the Tories based largely on what
they considered to be the immorality of the war. It was clear even before
Napoleon's defeat that Britain and her allies intended to restore the
Bourbons to the throne of France, thus totally defeating the democratic
spirit of the French Revolution. Byron's disappointment and disillusion
at the outcome of the war were expressed in two poems printed in periodicals;
The Champion, The European Magazine, The Morning Chronicle, and
The Examiner [43]
all published his Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte in which
he gives to the defeated Emperor:
Thanks for that lesson—it will teach
To after-warriors more
Than high Philosophy can preach,
And vainly preach'd before.
That spell upon the minds of men
Breaks never to unite again,
That led them to adore
Those Pagod things of sabre sway,
With fronts of brass and feet of clay.The only note of hope struck in the poem occurs in the concluding stanza:
Where may the wearied eye repose,
When gazing on the Great;
Where neither guilty glory glows,
Nor despicable state?
Yes—one—the first—the last—the best—
The Cincinnatus of the West,
Whom envy dared not hate,
Bequeath'd the name of Washington,
To make man blush there was but one!Byron's compassionate Napoleon's Farewell (which is discussed in the next section of this introduction) appeared in The Morning Chronicle and The Examiner.[44] All the journals which published these two poems were Whig affiliated.
- Because of the large extent to which politics determined publication,
poetic response to the war cannot be measured by a statistical evaluation
of the thousands of war verses printed. The radical press, effectively
hampered by the vilification campaign launched by the government as
well as by restrictive laws, was in a difficult position from the beginning
of the war.[45]
To oppose the war was to subject oneself to accusations of treason and
the violence of "Church and King" mobs.[46]
The Whig press, on the other hand, continued and prospered, backed as
it was by the established opposition party.
- The majority of the verses published favored the war, but surely this
can be attributed to the strong hand of the Tory government [47]
as well as to the changes in France's revolutionary and war objectives.
The poems in this edition have been gathered from Tory, Whig, and radical
publications. In selecting the works, an attempt has been made to draw
upon all political viewpoints, and less emphasis has been given to numerical
response (Nelson's victory at Trafalgar, for example, evoked hundreds
of verses praising the event, all of almost equal dullness) in favor
of offering a wide range of poetic response.
III. The Flight for "Liberty" and "Justice"
- From the time of the "Glorious Revolution" throughout the
eighteenth century, England, the sole European country governed by a
monarchy established as the result of a successful rebellion, regarded
itself as the bastion of "liberty" and "justice."
Maintaining this tradition, the poets of the war years were consistent
advocates of these two principles. Since poets who supported the war
as well as those who opposed it use the same terms, some distinction
must be made between them according to the context in which the terms
are used. Certainly the use of "liberty" in the lines:
Yet, happy Britain!—with proportion'd
weights
Guard the just balance of thy three Estates;
For, in that balance only, canst thou find
Order and rule, with Liberty combin'd.
Cautions to Englanddiffers greatly from the concept expressed by the author of Ode, Written on the opening of the Last Campaign:
. . . if on this hour
The fate of Freedom shall depend—
If o'er this earth th' Eternal Pow'r
The scale of Justice now extend.
For then, O Spring, thy sun shall see
The patriot flame triumphant shine;
GALLIA shall bid the world be free,
And WAR his blood-stain'd throne resign!And, again, from the ironic use of the term in the satiric The Soldier's Friend of 1797:
Liberty's friends thus all learn to amalgamate,
Freedom's volcanic explosion prepares itself,
Despots shall bow to the Fasces of Liberty,...And all three differ from that employed by the author of the 1797 Mutiny at Portsmouth:
The Genius of Britain went hovering round,
For she fear'd that fair Freedom had fled,
But she found, to her joy that she was
not quite gone,
But remain'd with the Fleet at Spithead. - Although "liberty" and "justice" (and synonymous
expressions) are common to much of the war poetry, the principles underlying
the terms vary according to the poet's position on the war and on the
policies of the government. The author of Cautions to England
is concerned with maintaining the status quo and is most likely a Tory.
The author of the Ode is probably a Jacobin. The satire above
is opposed to sympathy with France and to democratic notions of any
kind. But what of the Mutiny at Portsmouth? An author who finds
"Freedom" dwelling with the mutinous sailors at Spithead (April
15, 1797) may be considered radical, but in the case of the sailor's
widow who is alleged to have written the poem, she may be without political
ties altogether. Instead, she may well be continuing in a British tradition
of rebellion as a means of obtaining justice.
- To the British citizen of the 1790's, the liberty to rebel had historic
roots; there had been rebellions in 1753, 1768, and 1780.[1]
The right of rebellion against government action of which the citizenry
disapproved or "the right of resistance" as it was termed
by the lawyers was "an integral part of the national tradition."[2]
This national tradition included other freedoms as well. The Revolution
of 1688 had confirmed the Saxon laws [3]
and the British counted in their heritage freedom from foreign domination,
freedom allowed by a constitutional monarchy, "freedom from arbitrary
arrest, trial by jury, equality before the law, the freedom of the home
from arbitrary entrance and search," [4]
and, within limitations, freedom to think, believe, and speak as one
liked. The English also believed in the freedom to oppose parliamentary
decisions (either by demonstration or by petition), and to participate
in elections, even when unenfranchised, through the liberty of "huzzaing
at elections."[5]
- However, by the end of the eighteenth century, more and more Britons,
especially from the middle and working classes, were no longer satisfied
with participation in elections by parading and huzzaing. As the previous
section points out, the French Revolution was seen by many Britons as
a dramatic representation of citizens of a foreign state attempting
to gain liberties which the English already held. In Britain, a wave
of democratic agitation broke out, partly in sympathy with the Revolution
in France and partly to remind the government at home that long called
for electoral reform was due.[6]
Although there were those in Britain who were critical of some aspects
of their own government, the majority of Britons in 1789 felt as did
a writer in The Edinburgh Review some eighteen years later, "All
civilized Governments may be divided into free and arbitrary: or, more
accurately,. . . into the Government of England and the other European
Governments."[7]
- It is not surprising, then, that at the outset of the French Revolution
a wide spectrum of British poets sympathized with its objectives and
could write about them comfortably, believing that the British and the
French sought the same goals. Advocates of republican doctrine as well
as those who believed in limited monarchy (the Whig "commonwealthman")
flocked to Paris both before the 1793 declaration of war between Britain
and France and during the peace period created by the Treaty of Amiens
in 1802-1803. When Wordsworth and his friend Robert Jones went to the
continent in 1790, they were welcomed by the French as representatives
of liberty.[8]
Helen Maria Williams also traveled to Paris in 1790, to remain in France
for the rest of her life, retaining her beliefs in the ultimate success
of the ideas of the Revolution. Her Ode
to Peace testifies to her faith in ultimate liberty resultant
from the Revolution. This faith remained unbroken despite the fact that
she was twice arrested by the French: in 1793 she incurred the disfavor
of the Republican regime; in 1802 Napoleon had her arrested in irritation
at her not having mentioned him by name in her well-circulated Ode.[9]
- The initial reaction of many British poets to the Revolution was that
it was a means of bringing liberty to France, and the 1789-1792 period
is marked by a number of verses written about the destruction of the
Bastille as symbolic of new liberty. This initial reaction was not confined
to poets alone; Charles James Fox, leader of the Whig opposition, wanted
Britain to accept and recognize democratic France.[10]
However, the bloodshed involved in establishing the new republic, and
the various French internal battles which led to further bloodshed,
complicated the issue of French liberty for the British. Some poets,
such as Anna Seward in her 1789 Sonnet to France on Her Present Exertions,
immediately defended the destructive elements of the Revolution as a
necessary but temporary condition in the process of the establishment
of a new political state:
Thou, that where Freedom's sacred fountains
play,
Which spring effulgent, tho' with crimson
stains,
On transatlantic shores, and widening plains
Hast, in their living waters, washed away
Those cankering spots, shed by tyrannic sway
On thy long drooping lilies, English veins
Swell with the tide of exultation gay,
To see thee spurn thy deeply-galling chains.Wordsworth, in the 1850 Prelude, gives a more temperate justification of the Revolutionary bloodletting:
. . . When a taunt
Was taken up by scoffers in their pride,
Saying, "Behold the harvest that we reap
From popular government and equality,"
I clearly saw that neither these nor aught
Of wild belief engrafted on their names
By false philosophy had caused the woe,
But a terrific reservoir of guilt
And ignorance filled up from age to age,
That could no longer hold its loathsome
Charge,
But burst and spread in deluge through the
land.
(X, 11. 470-480) [11]Despite attempts to explain and justify the events which followed the Revolution, as the internal tumult in France continued many of those who supported British liberty and who were basically anti-aristocratic came to believe that the result of the Revolution was to substitute one form of tyranny for another. The dilemma presented by France's complete renunciation of monarch and church and the execution of the King and Queen was brought to a head by the British declaration of war with France in 1793. For many British, there was no alternative but to support their own country against what was viewed as the threatened loss of British liberty. Spurred by fear, many Britons came to agree with the sentiments expressed in Dr. Mavor's 1793 Sonnet to Rational Liberty:
No tyrant's frown, no traitor's harlot
smile,
My free born soul shall awe, my sense
shall ne'er beguile.
Rais'd on the throne of LAW and RIGHT,
O ever shield thy favourite land!
While Anarchy, with wild affright,
Flies to GALLIA'S frantic strand.
O check these scenes of dire uproar—
Revenge thy prostituted name!
And far, O far, from BRITAIN'S shore
Drive the foul deeds that clothe
thy charms with shame.Others, in sympathy with the reaction depicted by Thomas Day in The Disgusted Patriot, decided to retire to "solitude indignant" and "leave the world to courtiers, priests, and kings."
- The war brought a marked increase in the number of poems concerned
with both British and French liberty. The mocking satire of The
Humble Petition of the British Jacobins to their Brethren of France,
which hits at the French who "Mirth and murder so merrily blend"
and then goes on to attack the British who support the ideals of the
Revolution and invite then to spread to Britain, is a prime example
of the hostile attitude which became increasingly prevalent as the war
continued.
- From 1793 it was left to an ever decreasing minority to support the
original tenets of the Revolution. Among these was Wordsworth, who was
shocked by the war and the fact that he supported not his own country
but its enemy. Even in the 1850 Prelude Wordsworth portrays the
complex emotion he felt when:
. . . with open
war
Britain opposed the liberties of France.
This threw me first out of the pale of love;
Soured and corrupted, upwards to the
source,
My sentiments; was not, as hitherto,
A swallowing up of lesser things in great,
But change of them into their contraries;
And thus a way was opened for mistakes
And false conclusions, in degree as gross,
In kind more dangerous. What had been a
pride,
Was now a shame; my likings and my loves
Ran in new channels, leaving old ones dry;
And hence a blow that, in maturer age,
Would have but touched the judgment struck
more deep
Into sensations near the heart: meantime,
As from the first, wild theories were
afloat,
To whose pretensions, sedulously urged,
I had but lent a careless ear, assured
That time was ready to set all things
right,
And that the multitude, so long oppressed,
Would be oppressed no more.
(XI, 11. 174-194)Not until Napoleon assumed the title of Emperor did Wordsworth finally give up his hopes in the ideals of the Revolution. When the Pope was summoned to crown Napoleon, Wordsworth considered it:
This last opprobrium, when we see a
people,
That once looked up in faith, as if to
Heaven
For manna, take a lesson from the dog
Returning to his vomit . . . .
(XI, 11. 361-364) - Coleridge, faced with the same problem of divided allegiance, was
less a friend to France than an enemy of his own country's Tory government.
Indeed, he accused Pitt, in the pages of The Watchman, as Pitt
had accused Lord North, of being "at war with a nation of patriots."[12]
Furthermore, in his Religious Musings (1796) Coleridge indicates
that the "Giant Frenzy" of the early days of the French Revolution
was a part of divine apocalyptic justice and, as such, was a reaction
to "The Great, the Rich, the Mighty Men,/The Kings and Chief Captains
of the World."[13]
However, as the events in France progressed and when the French took
repressive measures against the right of assembly and the printing of
political news, Coleridge grew out of sympathy with the French.[14]
Napoleon's entry into Switzerland and the pillaging of Italy by the
French troops proved the turning point for Coleridge.[15]
After 1798 he supported the war against Napoleon.
- Much of the poetry written in 1793-1796 against the war with France
generally regarded the war as one in which the monarch and the Pitt
government of Britain conspired with Austria and Prussia to preserve
their own thrones. The resentment on the part of many Britons was two-fold.
It was felt that Britain, a constitutional monarchy, should not support
a war fought by totalitarian monarchs to reinstate a totalitarian government
in France, and also there was sympathy for the Revolution's ideal of
liberty.
- The twenty-six years from the fall of the Bastille to Waterloo was
a period of almost unremitting war. The ideals of the French Revolution
were practically forgotten in the course of the Napoleonic Wars. The
first generation of romantic poets experienced the fervor of witnessing
the establishment of a republican state in Europe, and then suffered
the disappointment and disillusionment caused by the turn in France's
objectives. The next generation of poets, including Byron and Shelley,
had the advantage of historical perspective. Untouched by the genuine
threats of invasion (Napoleon kept troops stationed across the Channel
until 1805), they were able to regard the ideals of the Revolution with
unqualified admiration. They recognized that the Revolution had to struggle
for survival from the very beginning against the monarchs of Europe,
a view expressed in Shelley's A Translation of The Marsellois Hymn:
Tremble, Kings! despised of Man!
Ye traitors to your country—
Tremble! your parricidal plan
At length shall meet its destiny.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
Frenchmen! on the guilty brave
Pour your vengeful energy.—
Yet in your triumph, pitying save
The unwilling slaves of tyranny;
But let the gore-stained despots bleed. [16]Shelley was opposed to aristocracy in general and to Napoleon in particular. In To The Emperors of Russia and Austria who eyed the battle of Austerlitz from the heights whilst Buonaparte was active in the thickest of the fight, Shelley addresses the Emperors as "Coward Chiefs" and bids them "Think ye on the restless fiend who haunts/ The tumult of yon gory field" concluding:
Yet may your terrors rest secure.
Thou, Northern chief, why starest thou?
Pale Austria, calm those fears. Be sure
The tyrant needs such slaves as you.
Think ye the world would bear his sway
Were dastards such as you away?
No! they would pluck his plumage gay
Torn from a nation's woe
And lay him in the obvious gloom
Where Freedom now prepares your tomb. [17] - Byron, on the other hand, makes it quite clear in his Ode to Napoleon
Buonaparte that he admired the heroic qualities in Napoleon, but
was disappointed that he "forsooth must be a king":
- To both Shelley and Byron the war represented the efforts of a group
of tyrants leagued to defeat one tyrant. The poets' radical stand on
the war was based on their accurate assessment that Napoleon's defeat
would reinstate a Bourbon regime in France and would, on a Continental
scale, retard the establishment of government on the basis of liberty
and justice.
- Byron, Shelley, and other young radicals concerned themselves with
international as well as national reform. The majority of Britons, however,
had endured the privations of many years of war and were far more concerned
with conditions at home. The French were seen by the majority of British
citizens as the enemy to be defeated and, perhaps, punished. At the
root of this enmity one finds not the bloody aftermath of the Revolution
and the subsequent tyranny of Napoleon, but the threat of invasion by
the French, potential intrusion on the English freedom.
- From the declaration of war on France, the British, through the careful
propaganda of the Pitt government, were led to expect invasion by the
enemy. This propaganda campaign was undoubtedly waged by the Pitt government
to lessen the democratic agitation in Britain by uniting Britons against
an enemy threat. A "Letter from DAVID DUNGEON to His COUSIN BILLY
PIT" in The Cambridge Intelligencer of September
7, 1793 presents this viewpoint satirically:
Allow me therefore, dear Cousin, to trespass on your well-known modesty, by congratulating you on the success of that scheme by which you fascinated two-thirds of the inhabitants of Britain, and turned the thoughts of the Swinish Multitude, [18] from grunting threats of Reform and complaints against taxes and oppression, to squeaking vengeance on the French for injuries which they never meant, and for plots into which they never entered.
- The threatened invasion of Britain by the French served as a stimulus
to British nationalism at the outbreak of the war, but the threat came
to be a very real one. While France was still under the Republic a small
band of Frenchmen landed in Ireland.[19]
And in July 1796, plans for the invasion of Ireland were drawn up by
the French, with the expectation of aid from the rebellious Irish under
Wolfe Tone.[20]
At the close of the year, a fleet under the command of the French General
Hoche actually embarked for Ireland, but turned back due to inclement
weather. In 1797, a small band of Frenchmen reached Wales, only to be
quickly captured.[21]
Not until February, 1798, when Napoleon turned his "Army of England"
from Brest towards Egypt, did the British nave any relief from their
fear of invasion. However, this proved to be a respite before the last
and most alarming threat of all when the Treaty of Amiens failed in
1803.
- Scores of verses appeared with each new sign of invasion and were
widely circulated. The repetitive theme of these often satiric verses
is the combined threat to King, to God, and to Womanhood. A
Word to the Wise is an early example of this popular type of
warning verse. Not satisfied with picturing the plight of British women
should the French succeed, the author sets up a comparison between French
and British women. The former are referred to as "fish wives"
and of questionable moral fibre:
But our ladies are virtuous, our ladies
are fair,
Which is more than they tell us your French-
women are. - In no year during the war were more of these warning verses produced
than in 1803 when it was believed invasion was imminent. Wordsworth's
response to the threat was Anticipation in which he foresaw a
"mighty Victory," where "On British ground the Invaders
are laid low."[22]
Anticipation was one of hundreds of poems written on the subject,
and it was common for journals such as The Gentleman's Magazine
to fill poetry columns almost exclusively with war verses throughout
1803. French troops remained on the coast until August 1805, but by
1804 the general alarm had considerably lessened. [23]
- With the immediacy of invasion gone, there yet remained the possibility
of French victory on the Continent, and renewed threat of the domination
of Europe by the French. This possibility was just as much a threat
to British liberty as the immediate prospect of invasion and poets continued
to use the threat to King, God, and Womanhood to keep alive the defence
of British liberty until the end of the war.
- Many of those who objected to the war labeled it a "Church and
King" enterprise because the clergy of the Church of England, as
part of the establishment, failed to take action by speaking out against
the war. As Roland Bartel has pointed out in "English Clergymen
and Laymen on the Principle of War, 1789-1802":
Judging by publications announced in contemporary journals, the church remained incredibly silent, for the records fail to show a single pulpit declaration against the war during the first four years of the French Revolution when optimism about world peace was at a peak in England. It is true that after England entered the war a few clergymen denounced the evils of war but then it was too late. [24]
True, The Bishop of London's Opinion on War, published in 1793, laments the fact that "Monarchs dream of universal empire, growing up from universal ruin" but these lines were not written in response to the war. They were extracted from a lengthy prizewinning poem, Death, written when the bishop, Dr. Porteus, had been a student at Cambridge in 1759. Porteus, far from opposing the war, was a staunch anti-Jacobin and preached against the Rights of Man. In general, the Church of England played an active role in supporting the government's policies on war, and clergymen often wrote call-to-arms verses, such as the War Song by the Reverend Richard Mant of Oxford. Disappointment in the church's position was voiced both in satire, such as Impromptu on the Late Fast and in earnest prayer-like poems such as Hymn sung at a meeting of "Friends of Peace and Reform." Most often, those who opposed the war belonged to dissenting religious groups and suffered from limited liberty due to their religious belief. The group which met at Sheffield to observe the official Fast Day during March, 1794 was a group composed of the working class and dissenters. Between five and six thousand persons held an open-air meeting, during which they heard a lecture written by a "labouring mechanic," preceded by a prayer and concluded with the above mentioned Hymn in which they called upon God to:
Make bare thine Arm, great King of Kings!
That Arm alone Salvation brings,
That Wonder-working Arm which broke,
From Israel's Neck th' Egyptian Yoke.
Burst every Dungeon, every Chain;
Give injur'd Slaves their Rights again;
Let TRUTH prevail, let Discord cease;
Speak—and the World shall smile in PEACE! [25] - Another important "liberty" which developed during the war
years was "Free Trade." Indeed, it was during the Napoleonic
Wars that the British commercial interests were converted to the cause
of Free Trade.[26]
After the destruction of the French fleet at Trafalgar, Napoleon sought
to destroy Britain commercially by organizing an economic blockade of
the British Isles. In 1806, the Decrees of Berlin prohibited all commerce
with Britain and ordered the arrest of British subjects found on French
territory as well as the seizure of British vessels and cargoes in Continental
waters. More severe decrees followed [27]
in a concentrated attempt to bring the British into submission by destroying
them financially. The British reaction to the economic boycott was to
seek markets elsewhere; to import from the Far East and from the markets
in North and South America. The British also responded to Napoleon's
blockade by a tariff policy which attempted to prohibit all neutral
countries from trade with France unless their ships put in at an English
port and paid a high duty to the English Exchequer; the high duty rate
applied to English goods as well. British manufacturers were immediately
against this policy, and the government bowed before them and opened
to Free Trade a number of German and Italian ports. The restrictions
put upon neutrals dealing with France, however, was the chief cause
of the War of 1812 between Britain and the United States.
- A growing number of poems during this period deal with commerce, linking
the protection of trade and commerce to the protection of God and Country.
This is strikingly represented in an ode written in 1812 by a clergyman,
the Reverend John Black, addressed To
the Sons of Britain and America. In bidding an end to the war
between Britain and America, the clergyman argues first in terms of
the numbers who will die in the fighting. If this argument does not
prevail, he warns:
Reflect, how Commerce must decline,
The loom stand still, and Want assail
The many that must starving pine;
And burdens weigh each nation down,
And wild Despair with fury frown.It is only in the last stanza that the clergyman-poet mentions religion.
- There were those for whom the preoccupation with commerce in Great
Britain at this time seemed somewhat of an embarrassment. The author
of an article in The Monthly Mirror protested:
The present ruler of France has called Great Britain a nation of shopkeepers; but if it had been his fortune, instead of gathering together unwilling conscripts, to have superintended the voluntary contributions to the MONTHLY MIRROR, we think he would have denominated us a nation of poets. [28]
Not all protests were so mild and good-humored. John Thelwall felt that Commerce was a "monopolizing fiend" which bred inhumane monsters at home and sent abroad the voice of war "to bellow hideous discord through the World."[29] Blake, too, considered the trade expansion, which was heightened by the Napoleonic Wars, "Fiends of Commerce," which led to war and destruction.[30] Scattered throughout the period are poems which accuse those in power—the Tories—of continuing the war for their own profit. A New Song to an Old Tune pictures Pitt and his circle as conspiring to beat Napoleon in order to raise prices on the stockmarket; the author of an 1813 poem hits at industries supported by the war and war profiteering in his title War the Source of Riches.
- However, the majority of war poems on this theme view commerce as
the very heart of British greatness. The well-known jibe of Napoleon,
noted by the author of the article in The Monthly Mirror quoted
above, "L'Angleterre est une nation de boutiquiers" [31]
had a resounding response in the verse of the day. The verse writers
ignored the contempt in Napoleon's statement and, like the author of
To Buonaparte,
refused to "a charge contradict so extremely correct." Furthermore,
many poems, such as The
Want, accused Napoleon and the French of using warfare as a
means of developing their own commerce and industry.
- Although Napoleon threatened English commerce by his system of embargoes
on British goods, he found it necessary to violate his own system. His
troops required clothing and boots and in order to supply these wants,
Napoleon imported British cloth and leather by way of Hamburg "in
perfect safety and at half-price."[32]
- The accelerated growth of industry and the development of commerce
was a potentially divisive issue between industrialists and the working-class.
A strong effort was made to convince British workers that the Revolution
had reduced the amount of liberty held by the French under the monarchy
and as the war continued, more and more poetry called upon all classes
to join forces in order to defeat their common foe. For example, the
1804 A New Song on the
Renewed Threat of Invasion calls upon farmers, artisans, tailors,
blacksmiths as well as merchants and bankers—"For, Trade is
our Sheet-anchor"—to unite; taking no chances, it also lists
"Quaker, Churchman, Presbyterian."
- The universality of this and other call to arms verses represents
not so much a political swing towards democracy as a literal call-to-arms
to the workingman. In the early years of the war, British troops were
commonly gathered through impressment or through a variety of deceitful
and devious practices called "crimping." These methods raised
a great outcry, and poets wrote of hardships endured both by those kidnapped
or otherwise forced into service and by the families of those men. The
Tender's Hold Or, Sailor's Complaint was a popular poem on the
subject. Wordsworth's Guilt and Sorrow (1793-1794) tells the
privations of:
A Sailor he, who many a wretched hour
Hath told; for, landing after labour hard,
Full long endured in hope of just reward,
He to an arméd fleet was forced away
By seamen, who perhaps themselves had
shared
Like fate; was hurried off, a helpless
prey,
'Gainst all that in his heart, or theirs
perhaps, say nay. [33]Shelley's The Voyage (1812) concludes with the sailor's return home, only to be impressed again and told:
. . . "oh! your wife
"Died this time year in the House of Industry
"Your young ones all are dead, except one
brat
"Stubborn as you—Parish apprentice now" [34] - In 1793, seventy-five per cent of the crews on British vessels consisted
of prisoners of war, convicts, etc. forced into service.[35]
In 1794, "crimping houses" in Holborn, the City, Clerkenwell,
and Shoreditch were wrecked by rioters.[36]
As a result of the public condemnation of government recruiting practices,
the government found itself caught between the strong position of those
who opposed the prevalent unjust methods of conscription and the ever
escalating need for men in the British armed forces, particularly the
Navy. The solution resolved upon in 1799 and maintained until 1815 was
to offer militiamen bounty money to join the regular British forces.
This was considered the most feasible approach since compulsory military
service was regarded as out of the question at this time.[37]
- Throughout the war period, journals and newspapers published verses
in praise of the fighting forces, and considerable anger was aroused
when military decisions led to the needless destruction of British troops,
as at Walcheren in August 1810. Forty-thousand men sent to the Continent
had succeeded in capturing Flushing. Instead of continuing their march
towards Antwerp, they remained immobile and plagued by epidemic diseases
unrelieved due to lack of provisions, the men perished by the thousands.
When, at the end of September, they set sail, they had lost 106 men
in battle and 4,000 from disease.[38]
The incompetence of the military inspired highly critical poetry, particularly
in the Whig press, none more bitter than Leigh Hunt's Walcheren
Expedition; Or, the Englishman's Lament for the Loss of His Countrymen
and Thomas Clio Rickman's Extempore
on the Invasion of Walcheren. The government was so embarrassed
by this expedition that they ordered home Peter Finnerty, the Irish
radical journalist, to whom they had granted permission to report on
the expedition for The Morning Chronicle.[39]
- British poetry of the war years demanded liberty and justice not only
for themselves but for British allies and neutral nations as well. When
the British fleet attacked neutral Denmark in September 1807, many poems
appeared deprecating a war policy which led to the deaths of more than
two thousand Danish citizens.[40]
The Morning Chronicle published Ode
On the Big-Endiuns in 1807, Song
on the New Affair of Copenhagen, and A
Danish Tale in 1808, the last a parody of Southey's The
Battle of Blenheim. Burton R. Pollin notes that Southey in private
correspondence considered the act an atrocity, whereas Coleridge defended
the attack in The Friend.[41]
Another poet to respond in the negative was the youthful Shelley, whose
Fragment of a Poem the original idea of which was suggested by the
cowardly and infamous bombardment of Copenhagen [42]
leaves no doubt of the author's anguish and his contempt for British
war policy.
- Even greater was the outcry against the "Convention of Cintra" of August 1808. In March 1808 Spain was invaded by the French under the guise of protecting the coast from the British. The Spanish monarchs, first Charles IV and then his son Ferdinand, abdicated, and Napoleon placed his brother Joseph on the throne. This resulted in a genera
I. British Poets and The War Between Britain and France
The Queen of France just touchd this Globe
And the Pestilence darted from her robe. [10]
Blake's poem was not published at that time but, as
David V. Erdman suggests, although Blake's works "did not reach
the awakening citizens who were reading Paine and rushing together in
republican societies, they did nevertheless reflect the stir and tumult
of that awakening." [11]
. . . I gradually withdrew
Into a noisier world, and thus ere long
Became a patriot; and my heart was all
Given to the people, and my love was theirs. [14]
Although Wordsworth reacted against the excesses of
the Revolutionary Tribunals, there is little evidence that he ever reacted
against his faith in man. His belief in Utopian institutions may have
been destroyed by his experience with France, but his somewhat mystical
belief in the elemental passions and sentiments of common people remained
intact and it was this belief rather than a political philosophy, which
led him into sympathy with the French Revolution in the first place.
When innocent blood
From the four corners of the world cries out
For justice upon one accursed head. [18]
II. Politics and Poetry
that no legislature can be rightful or good which did not proceed from universal suffrage. In the power and under the control of a legislature so chosen he places all and everything, with the exception of the natural rights of man and the means appointed for the preservation and exercise of these rights, by a direct vote of the nation itself—that is to say, by a constitution. Finally, the Jacobin deems it both justifiable and expedient to effect these requisite changes in faulty governments by absolute revolutions, and considers no violences as properly rebellious or criminal which are the means of giving to a nation the power of declaring and enforcing its sovereign will...
To the Rich, by whom Virtue's too often
neglected,
I tell my sad story—and crave for relief:
But Wealth seldom feels for a wretch unpro-
tected—
'Tis Poverty only partakes of her grief!
Ah, little they think that the thousands they
squander
On the playthings of Folly and fripp'ries
of Dress,
Would relieve the keen wants of the wretched
who wander,
While the soft tear of pity would soothe
their distress!
True Freedom is a temp'rate treat,
Not savage mirth, not frantic noise;
'Tis the brisk pulse's vital beat;
'Tis not the fever that destroys.
Let Britons then united sing,
Old England's Glory,—Church and King.
__________________One murder makes a
Villain,
Millions a Hero: Princes are privileged
To kill, and numbers sanctify the crime.
Ah! Why will Kings forget that they are
men?
And men that they are brethren? Why delight
In HUMAN SACRIFICE?
The author of the Sonnet
to W. Wilberforce calls upon the philanthropist to:
. . .teach a guilty Court the Rights of Man;
Not made to suffer only, and to bleed—
Though he has bled of late, and largely too,
At their command,—Tell them that GOD design'd
A nobler object when he made mankind,
And trace the noble purpose to their view.
. . . after the success of Rights of Man, the radicalism and terror of the French Revolution, and the onset of Pitt's repression, it was the plebian Corresponding Society which alone stood up against the counter-revolutionary wars. And these plebian groups, small as they were in 1796, did nevertheless make up an "underground" tradition which ran through to the end of the Wars. [14]
Thine evil deeds are writ in gore,
Nor written thus in vain—
Thy triumphs tell of fame no more,
Or deepen every stain:
If thou hadst died as honour dies,
Some new Napoleon might arise,
To shame the world again—
But who would soar the solar height,
To set in such a starless night?
(91-99)