hat hill? You and yours shall be drawn
up on it, where you will make a most formidable appearance to the enemy,
while I with the soldiers will be fighting on the beach." Pitt was
highly amused at this professional retort; but at the close of 1804 his
regiment was pronounced by General David Dundas fit to take the field
with regulars. Life in the open and regular exercise on horseback served
to strengthen Pitt's frame; for Hester, writing in the middle of January
1804, when her uncle was away in London for a few days, says: "His most
intimate friends say they do not remember him so well since the year
'97.... Oh! such miserable things as these French gunboats. We took a
vessel the other day, laden with gin--to keep their spirits up, I
suppose." Bonaparte was believed to be at Boulogne; and there was much
alarm about a landing; but she was resolved "not to be driven up country
like a sheep."

This phrase refers to the arrangements for "driving" the country, that
is, sweeping it bare of everything in front of the invaders. The plans
for "driving" were thorough, but were finally pronounced unworkable. His
efforts to meet the Boulogne flotilla were also most vigorous. On 18th
October 1803 he informs Rose that he had 170 gunboats ready between
Hastings and Margate to give the enemy a good reception whenever they
appeared. He adds: "Our Volunteers are, I think, likely to be called
upon to undertake permanent duty, which, I hope, they will readily
consent to. I suppose the same measure will be recommended in your part
of the coast [West Hants]. I wish the arrangements for defence were as
forward everywhere else as they are in Hythe Bay under General Moore. We
begin now to have no other fear in that quarter than that the enemy will
not give us an opportunity of putting our preparations to the proof, and
will select some other point which we should not be in reach of in the
first instance." On 10th November he expresses a hope of repelling any
force that attempted to land in East Kent, but fears that elsewhere the
French cannot be stopped until they arrive disagreeably near to
London.[662]

It is clear, then, that Pitt was not dismayed by the startling disparity
of forces. On the coast of Flanders and Picardy were ranged regular
troops amounting to 114,554 men seemingly ready for embarkation on an
immense flotilla of small craft, part of which was heavily armed. It is
now known that these imposing forces were rarely, if ever, up