's reply exhibited his hopeless mediocrity; but,
thanks to Pitt, Ministers triumphed by 398 votes to 67. As they resented
the absence of definite praise in his speech, he withdrew to Walmer,
there to serve his country and embarrass his finances by raising the
Cinque Ports Volunteers.

Before recounting Pitt's services in East Kent, I must mention a
bereavement which he had sustained. His mother died, after a very short
seizure, at Burton Pynsent on 3rd April 1803. Thus was snapped a link
connecting England with a mighty past. A quarter of a century had
elapsed since her consort was laid to rest in the family vault in
Westminster Abbey; she followed him while the storm-fiends were
shrouding in strife the two hereditary foes; and the Napoleonic War was
destined to bring her gifted son thither in less than three years. The
father had linked the name of Pitt with military triumphs; the son, with
futile efforts for peace and goodwill; but the lives both of the
war-lord and of the would-be peacemaker were to be ended by tidings of
national disaster.

No parleying now. In Britain is one breath;
We all are with you now from shore to shore;
Ye men of Kent, 'tis victory or death!

We all know these lines of Wordsworth. Do we know equally well that on
Pitt, as Lord Warden, fell the chief burden of organization on the most
easily accessible coast, that which stretches from Ramsgate to Rye?[657]
It was defenceless but for the antiquated works at Sandown, Deal,
Walmer, Dover, and a few small redoubts further west. Evidently men must
be the ramparts, and Pitt sought to stimulate the Volunteer Movement,
which now again made headway. He strove to make it a National Movement.
At the close of July he sent an official offer to raise 3,000 Volunteers
in Walmer and its neighbourhood; and he urged Ministers to have recourse
to a _levee en masse_, whereupon Yorke, Under Secretary at War, proposed
a scheme somewhat on those lines. Probably the encouragement offered to
Volunteers was too great; for, while they were required to do less than
was necessary to ensure efficiency, they were freed from all risk of
compulsory enrolment in the Militia. This force and the Army
consequently suffered, while the Volunteer Associations grew apace. On
27th October 1803 the King reviewed in Hyde Park as many as 27,000 of
the London Volunteers and showed his caustic wit by giving the nickname
of "the Devil's Own" to the Inns of Court Volunteers.