Introduction
Fear of invasion rippled across the British Isles in 1798 as General Napoleon Bonaparte’s “Army of England” amassed along the Channel coast of France. The possibility of a successful foreign incursion on British soil had long been weighed against the cost of supporting a large standing army. This uneasiness was revived when it became clear that the terrors of the French Revolution had moved beyond discarding absolutism for a liberal constitution similar to the British model. Reports of property confiscations and the execution of King Louis XVI added to the concerns. The 1796 landing of French Revolutionary forces in Ireland further unnerved Britain. Yet it was General Napoleon’s flotilla and encampment at Boulogne seen from the south coast of England that propelled the British to call for action.
The English anxiety surrounding the possibility of “actual invasion” manifested itself in numerous ways. As the British government sought peace agreements with the French, it also began to expand its military and reinforce its coastal fortifications. On the home front, concerned citizens sounded the alarm and calls went out for volunteers to drill as homegrown armies and cavalries. The public was soon mobilized through a flurry of propaganda in the form of broadsides, pamphlets, newspapers, satires, poems, and songs. Emphatically demonized in all capitals as a “CORSICAN DEVIL,” a “TYRANT” and a “USURPER” who indiscriminately killed men, women, and children in Egypt and Syria, Napoleon’s threats were sure to make England’s “FREEMEN” into a “NATION OF SLAVES.” This pervasive rhetorical outcry often evoked the proud British tradition of common law, private property, free press, and other rights that stemmed back to the Magna Carta.
In reality, Britain was not nearly so vulnerable nor was Napoleon as invincible despite his dominant position in continental Europe at the time. For the French to even contemplate a land invasion of England, it first had to get past the indomitable English navy. The threats of invasion, however, successfully galvanized the British to support preparations for war that included the recruitment of upwards of 350,000 citizen volunteers prepared for self-defense.
This exhibit looks at reactions to Napoleon’s threatened land invasion of England. It begins from the vantage point of the diplomats and policy-makers who tried to broker peace and continues through the spate of nationalist sentiment expressed in popular publications and satires, the voluntary responses of citizens willing to form local defensive units, and finally some of the more grandiose, if improbable, strategies including the use of hot air balloons to convey troops across the Channel and analyzing Napoleon’s astrological chart as a way to forecast his downfall.
DePaul University Library’s Special Collections and Archives currently holds approximately 4,500 books, pamphlets, broadsides, maps, and ephemera items related to Napoleon and the French Revolution. A selection of broadsides and pamphlets has been digitized and can be accessed as part of the library’s Digital Collections.