ef peace of Amiens
broke out, Napoleon framed a great and daring plan for the invasion of
England. French plans for the invasion of England were somewhat
numerous a century or so ago. The Committee of Public Safety in 1794,
while keeping the guillotine busy in the Place de la Revolution, had
its own little plan for extending the Reign of Terror, by means of an
invasion, to England; and on May 27 of that year solemnly appointed one
of their number to represent the Committee in England "when it was
conquered." The member chosen was citizen Bon Saint Andre, the same
hero who, in the battle of the 1st of June, fled in terror to the
refuge of the French flagship's cock-pit when the _Queen Charlotte_,
with her triple lines of guns, came too alarmingly near. But
Napoleon's plans for the same object in 1803 were definite, formidable,
profound. Great Britain was the one barrier in the path of his
ambition. "Buonaparte," says Green, in his "Short History of the
English People," "was resolute to be master of the western world, and
no notions of popular freedom or sense of popular right ever interfered
with his resolve. . . . England was now the one country where freedom
in any sense remained alive. . . . With the fall of England, despotism
would have been universal throughout Europe; and it was at England that
Buonaparte resolved to strike the first blow in his career of conquest.
Fifteen millions of people, he argued, must give way to forty millions."

So he formed the vast camp at Boulogne, in which were gathered 130,000
veterans. A great flotilla of boats was built, each boat being armed
with one or two guns, and capable of carrying 100 soldiers. More than
1000 of such boats were built, and concentrated along twenty miles of
the Channel coast, and at four different ports. A new port was dug at
Boulogne, to give shelter to the main division of this flotilla, and
great and powerful batteries erected for its protection. The French
soldiers were exercised in embarking and disembarking till the whole
process could be counted by minutes. "Let us," said Napoleon, "be
masters of the Straits for six hours, and we shall be masters of the
world."

When since the days of William the Conqueror were the shores of Great
Britain menaced by such a peril? "There is no difficulty," said
Moltke, "in getting an army into England; the trouble would be to get
it out again." And, no doubt, Englishmen, fighting on their own soil
and fo