No More Napoleons: How Britain managed Europe from Waterloo to World War I

This article is from Military History Matters issue 147

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REVIEW BY GRAHAM GOODLAD

Andrew Lambert has earned a reputation as the leading naval historian of his generation with a series of books on Nelson, the Anglo-American War of 1812-1814, and the Crimean War. In 2018, his Seapower States chronicled the distinctive experience of five powers, ranging from ancient Athens to Britain, whose history was defined by their close relationship with the sea. No More Napoleons is his most ambitious work yet, putting forward an overarching thesis about British strategy in the century between the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte and the outbreak of the Great War.

Lambert contends that Britain worked consistently over this period to ensure that no single state could achieve continental dominance. In developing his analysis, he borrows two terms from political science – ‘ordering’ and ‘offshore balancing’ – meaning the maintenance of a stable, balanced European settlement without the need for a permanent military commitment. Britain succeeded, he argues, through a combination of naval strength, diplomatic skill, and a willingness to deploy its limited military forces to the continent alongside allies if necessary. The aim was to maintain peace and protect Britain’s national security, while allowing it to reduce a heavy wartime debt burden by focusing on the expansion of overseas trade.

Lambert refers to this as the ‘Wellington system’ – a phrase coined by the British defence attaché and journalist Charles Repington in 1900, but not taken up by historians until now. He regards the Iron Duke as the strategy’s most important exponent, from his victory at Waterloo through to his death in 1852. At its core was a determination to deny France control of the Scheldt Estuary and the key port of Antwerp – a ‘loaded pistol’ aimed at Britain’s heart.

According to the author, Wellington did not really fear a French invasion of Britain, as previous accounts have suggested. Instead, he sought to stoke alarm at such a prospect as a means of securing the creation of a trained militia force, capable of being deployed to Belgium. If true, it is hard to explain why he also campaigned for the construction of coastal fortifications much more extensive than the ‘Palmerston forts’ that would be built to defend Britain’s naval bases in the 1860s.

Lambert is scathing about Britain’s preparedness for war in 1914.

Concern with the preservation of a European balance of power was not of course exclusive to Wellington. Elsewhere in the book, Lambert credits Wellington’s colleagues, Lord Liverpool, prime minister from 1812 to 1827, and Viscount Castlereagh, foreign secretary for much of that period, with joint authorship of the ‘system’. He traces the concept back to the 1713 Peace of Utrecht, which ended the War of the Spanish Succession.

The treaty provided for the building of ‘barrier fortresses’ in the southern Netherlands, garrisoned by the Dutch against a resurgence of French aggression and guaranteed by Britain. This was the first time that an official document explicitly referred to the balance of power, but informally it had been a preoccupation of national leaders as far back as the Spanish Armada.

Technological change

This is in some respects an oddly structured volume. Although mainly concerned with British policy, one chapter is devoted to the heroic depiction of recent French military and naval history in works of art, collected by Napoleon and his successors and displayed in the Louvre and the Palace of Versailles. The book’s subtitle is slightly misleading as, apart from a few short passages, the four decades prior to 1914 are consigned to a single chapter of fewer than 30 pages – an emphasis also reflected in the choice of illustrations. With one solitary exception – a modern photograph of Dover Harbour – they all date from before 1870.

Perhaps not surprisingly from a writer whose earliest research focused on the transition from the sailing navy to a steam-powered fleet, Lambert provides excellent coverage of the adjustment to technological change in the two generations after Waterloo. This includes not only the transformation of Britain’s battlefleet but also the construction of a supporting infrastructure of harbours, dockyards, roads, and railways. There is some discussion, too, of Royal Navy training in areas such as gunnery, navigation, and tidal movements, which had direct application to the development of coastal warfare operations.

Although the Scheldt is Lambert’s primary focus, he discusses Britain’s response to the expansion of Cherbourg, where the French were creating a huge artificial harbour in the mid- 19th century. For a time, the Channel Islands assumed new importance as a way of countering this potential new threat. Alderney became the site of a network of forts and an enormous breakwater designed to protect the navy’s ‘harbour of refuge’, work on which was discontinued after the French threat receded.

Lambert is scathing about Britain’s preparedness for war in 1914. He characterises the government as drifting into conflict without a coherent strategy. He criticises it for failing to deter a German invasion of Belgium or to coordinate action by the army and navy. He points out that, although Britain entered the war to defend Belgium, Antwerp was lost and the British Expeditionary Force ended up tied to French strategic priorities. Yet, although Lambert unfavourably contrasts the Asquith ministry with its 19th-century predecessors, it seems doubtful that British intervention could have made a difference at any point after 1815.

With the bulk of the British army committed to the defence of the empire, there were never sufficient forces available to tip the balance against a determined continental foe. At the time of the 1864 Schleswig-Holstein crisis, Bismarck famously joked that if British troops landed on the Baltic coast, he would send the Prussian police to arrest them.

This is a thought-provoking book that will rightly encourage debate rather than uncritical acceptance of its underlying thesis. Anyone with an interest in British foreign and military policy in the long 19th century will certainly want to read and engage with its arguments.

No More Napoleons: How Britain managed Europe from Waterloo to World War I
Andrew Lambert
Yale University Press, hbk, 588pp (£25)
ISBN 978-0300275551