ss was in
the eyes of the Government out of all proportion to the probable loss by
failure. So when Napoleon least expected it they determined to act, and
caught him napping. The defences of Antwerp had been left incomplete. There
was no army to meet the blow--nothing but a polyglot rabble without staff
or even officers. For a week at least success was in our hands. Napoleon's
fleet only escaped by twenty-four hours, and yet the failure was not only
complete but disastrous. Still so entirely were the causes of failure
accidental, and so near had it come to success, that Napoleon received a
thorough shock and looked for a quick repetition of the attempt. So
seriously indeed did he regard his narrow escape that he found himself
driven to reconsider his whole system of home defence. Not only did he deem
it necessary to spend large sums in increasing the fixed defences of
Antwerp and Toulon, but his Director of Conscription was called upon to
work out a scheme for providing a permanent force of no less than 300,000
men from the National Guard to defend the French coasts. "With 30,000 men
in transports at the Downs," the Emperor wrote, "the English can paralyse
300,000 of my army, and that will reduce us to the rank of a second-class
Power."[6]

[6] _Correspondance de Napoleon_, xix, 421, 4 September.

The concentration of the British efforts in the Peninsula apparently
rendered the realisation of this project unnecessary--that is, our line of
operation was declared and the threat ceased. But none the less Napoleon's
recognition of the principle remains on record--not in one of his speeches
made for some ulterior purpose, but in a staff order to the principal
officer concerned.

It is generally held that modern developments in military organisation and
transport will enable a great continental Power to ignore such threats.
Napoleon ignored them in the past, but only to verify the truth that in war
to ignore a threat is too often to create an opportunity. Such
opportunities may occur late or early. As both Lord Ligonier and Wolfe laid
it down for such operations, surprise is not necessarily to be looked for
at the beginning. We have usually had to create or wait for our
opportunity--too often because we were either not ready or not bold enough
to seize the first that occurred.

The cases in which such intervention has been most potent have been of two
classes. Firstly, there is the intrusion into a war plan which our ene