0310A

In 1800 Britain was at war, a war that pressed on every household. Although the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars may seem distant from our standard view of the period, which is one largely based on the televising of Jane Austen's novels such as Pride and Prejudice, they impinged on every aspect of life and on society as a whole. Taxes rose, trade was disrupted, goods were produced for the war effort, men were recruited and killed, and families were left to grieve.
   With the misleading benefit of distant hindsight, the war appears less of a crisis than it was to contemporaries. 1798 was the year of Nelson's triumph at the Battle of the Nile, a decisive naval victory that put paid to Napoleon's dream of dominating the overland route to India. The image and reality of British naval power was further strengthened by victory over the Danes at the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801. These naval triumphs seem to lead towards Nelson's final victory, over a Franco-Spanish fleet, at Trafalgar in 1805, to the success of the British expeditionary force in the Peninsular War of 1808-13, and to the Duke of Wellington's victory at Waterloo in 1815. When combined with British triumphs in India - the fall of the Mysore capital Seringapatam in 1799 and Wellington's victories over the Marathas at Assaye and Argaum in 1803 - the picture is of a nation resolute, resourceful and finally triumphant.
No such comforting vista was open to contemporaries. Instead, the French capture of Amsterdam in 1795 had brought to a close the most disastrous campaign for the British in the Low Countries in over a century. An attempt to challenge the French position by invading Holland in 1799 led to a humiliating failure that left its legacy with the nursery rhyme about its commander, Frederick, Duke of York, a younger son of George III. The following year, attempted landings at Belle Isle, Ferrol and Cadiz all failed and Cornwallis described the army as 'the laughing stock of Europe'. A French landing in Pembrokeshire had been defeated in 1797 and in 1798 both an Irish rising and a supporting French landing were crushed, but the situation was precarious.
   In 1801-2, the collapse of the Second Coalition of powers against France led to negotiations between Britain and France, but the Peace of Amiens of 1802 solved little and by 1803 the two powers were at war again: disagreements over particular issues were less serious than mutual distrust.
   There was also instability at home and widespread hardship. The cost and economic disruption of the war pressed hard, leading to inflation, the collapse of the gold standard under which the Bank of England suspended its obligation to convert paper money to gold on demand (1797), the introduction of income tax, and the stagnation of average real wages. The years 1795-96 and 1799-1801, especially, were years of dearth. The real wages of Lancashire cotton weavers fell by more than a half from 1792 to 1799. In 1797, parts of the navy mutinied over conditions: the fleet at the Nore began to blockade the Thames until quelled by firm action.
   Concern about radicalism and economic unrest led to the Combination Acts of 1799 and 1800, which made combinations of employees (trade unions) for improved pay or conditions illegal. The Luddite riots of 1812 in the Midlands and the North challenged any sense of industrial order across much of England. Numerous attacks on knitting frames in Nottinghamshre in 1812 led the government to send 2,000 troops to the county, and more than 12,000 were deployed overall to deal with this particular form of popular unrest.
   Despite this, the country did not collapse. The greater popularity of George III in the 1790s helped. The King cultivated the image of being a father to all and did not inspire the negative feelings that focused on his French and Spanish counterparts. The association of radicalism with the French also helped to damn it for most (but not all) people, not least because of the anarchy, terror and irreligion associated with the Revolutionary governments. British patriotism received a new boost in the lengthy struggle, which was less divisive than the War of American Independence of 1775-83. In response to the French Revolutionaries and their British supporters, nationalism was defined in a conservative fashion, and conservatism was increasingly nationalist in tone and content. War with France was justified on moral grounds and Loyalism was a genuine mass movemerit. The widespread Volunteer movement against the French threat helped raise forces to repel any planned invasion. The number of militia rose to over 100,000 in the mid-1790s, and Volunteer numbers were comparable.
   In the 1800s, God Save the King came to be called the national anthem. His kingdom was changing in many ways. The Irish rising of 1798 encouraged an Act of Union between Britain and Ireland in 1800 which came into effect on January 1st 1801. Following the 1707 Union between England (and Wales) and Scotland, this created a single state for the entire British Isles, although it was to have only limited success in producing a lasting primary British identity. Alongside any notion of such an identity, national allegiances remained, particularly in Ireland.
   Organised and effective resistance to British authority in Ireland had collapsed on June 16th 1798, when the United Irishmen had been defeated at Vinegar Hill by a larger force supported by effective artillery. However, in County Wicklow a band under Michael Dwyer continued to defy the government, successfully employing guerrilla tactics, until Dwyer surrendered in 1803 in the aftermath of nationalist Robert Emmet's unsuccessful rising in Dublin. Having prepared a force of' about a hundred men, Emmet marched on Dublin Castle on July 23rd, 1803, but his poorly organised men were dispersed by the garrison and the rising collapsed within an afternoon. An Irish element was also prominent in Edward Despard's plot to seize the Tower of London and the Bank of England and to kill George III on his way to open Parliament in 1802. Betrayed by informants, the conspirators were arrested, tried and hanged.
   Identification with the idea of Britain and the benefits of the British empire ensured that the situation in Scotland was very different from that in Ireland. Scotland was affected by the same trends as England and Wales, not least the industrialisation, migration and urbanisation that reflected the growth of coal-based industries and the technology of steam. The 19th century was to see the development of a sense of national identity centring on a re-emergent cultural identity that did not involve any widespread demand for independence: kilts and literary consciousness, but no home rule party. The religions dimension, so obvious in Ireland, was lacking.
   The visual landscape of the new state was changing, a process encouraged by the war. This was true both of enclosure and of the expansion of' the metallurgical industries to provide munitions. The enclosure of land for farming, given serious momentum by a series of Enclosure Acts pushed forwards hard in the 1790s and 1800s, made it easier to control and enhanced the prospects for investment in more efficient agricultural regimes, such as rotations that included nitrogenous crops, for example clover. However, enclosing landowners caused serious disruption of traditional rights and expectations, common lands and routes. Those without land lost out badly, especially with the loss of communal grazing rights. Their response was often hostile. There were many disturbances, as in Caernarvonshire in 1809, 1810 and 1812. This was not a rural society of simple deference and order, but one in which the hegemony of the landowners was widely seen as selfish, and as replacing custom by harsh statutory enactments.

   Landed society celebrated its position and spent its money on splendid stately homes and on the surrounding grounds. In place of geometric patterns, the latter had been laid out for much of the previous century in a naturalistic parkland style developed by 'Capability' Brown. This was to become part of the visual character of Englishness, a counterpoint to the hedgerows of the enclosed worked landscape. Both reflected the power relationships of the period.                                          More in Part B....