ed forward, and the coast from the Seine to the Rhine became "a
coast of iron and bronze"--to use Marmont's picturesque phrase--while
every harbour swarmed with small craft destined for an invasion.
Troops were withdrawn from the Rhenish frontiers and encamped along
the shores of Picardy; others were stationed in reserve at St. Omer,
Montreuil, Bruges, and Utrecht; while smaller camps were formed at
Ghent, Compiegne, and St. Malo. The banks of the Elbe, Weser, Scheldt,
Somme, and Seine--even as far up as Paris itself--rang with the blows
of shipwrights labouring to strengthen the flotilla of flat-bottomed
vessels designed for the invasion of England. Troops, to the number of
50,000 at Boulogne under Soult, 30,000 at Etaples, and as many at
Bruges, commanded by Ney and Davoust respectively, were organized
anew, and by constant drill and exposure to the elements formed the
tough nucleus of the future Grand Army, before which the choicest
troops of Czar and Kaiser were to be scattered in headlong rout. To
all these many-sided exertions of organization and drill, of improving
harbours and coast fortifications, of ship-building, testing,
embarking, and disembarking, the First Consul now and again applied
the spur of his personal supervision; for while the warlike enthusiasm
which he had aroused against perfidious Albion of itself achieved
wonders, yet work was never so strenuous and exploits so daring as
under the eyes of the great captain himself. He therefore paid
frequent visits to the north coast, surveying with critical eyes the
works at Boulogne, Calais, Dunkirk,

Ostend, and Antwerp. The last-named port engaged his special
attention. Its position at the head of the navigable estuary of the
Scheldt, exactly opposite the Thames, marked it out as the natural
rival of London; he now encouraged its commerce and ordered the
construction of a dockyard fitted to contain twenty-five battleships
and a proportionate number of frigates and sloops. Antwerp was to
become the great commercial and naval emporium of the North Sea. The
time seemed to favour the design; Hamburg and Bremen were blockaded,
and London for a space was menaced by the growing power of the First
Consul, who seemed destined to restore to the Flemish port the
prosperity which the savagery of Alva had swept away with such profit
to Elizabethan London. But grand as were Napoleon's enterprises at
Antwerp, they fell far short of his ulterior designs. He told Las