Arthur Bryant > Quotes

“Liberty to have any meaning had to be based on law, and law in its turn on morality: that is, on justice. For Burke brought to the French Revolution the historic English touchstone of every political pretension: its compatibility with fair and kindly dealing. “Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice,” he wrote, “neither is safe.”
― Arthur Bryant, The Years of Endurance, 1793-1802

“In all ages statesmen have found it hard to understand the psychology of revolutionary governments bound to the wheel of armaments and debts. For it is a cycle that cannot be reversed. It can only be broken or its pace accelerated.”
― Arthur Bryant, The Years of Endurance, 1793-1802

“People of Italy!” they were told, “the Army of France has broken your chains: the People of France is the friend of all other Peoples! Come to greet it!” Their joy vanished when the young hero presented them with his bill. An immediate contribution of twenty million francs, vast stores of provisions and thousands of horses were demanded as the price of French protection. A hundred of the finest carriage horses in the province were dispatched across the Alps to grace the coaches of the Directors. The Grand Duke of Parma, who had been slower to acclaim the liberator than the fickle Milanese, had to yield twenty of the best pictures in his gallery and a crushing tribute. And when the people of Pavia contested Bonaparte's requisitions, they were quickly enlightened as to the conditions of Italian emancipation. The magistrates and leading inhabitants were shot, the city sacked and all who resisted massacred. A few weeks later a village near Bologna was burnt to the ground and the entire population murdered to strike fear through Italy. For Bonaparte, once a follower of Robespierre, did not believe in terror for its own sake but only as an instrument of policy.”
― Arthur Bryant, The Years of Endurance, 1793-1802

“Good men were not to be made merely by laws which relied for their sanction on force but only by religion and morality, which appealed to the conscience. Only when the people, he wrote, had emptied them-selves of all the lust of selfish will—and without religion it was impossible they should—could absolute power be safely entrusted to the State.”
― Arthur Bryant, The Years of Endurance, 1793-1802

“His faith was rewarded. Hard on its tail came astonishing news from the Mediterranean. Since the arrival of Lord Hood's blockading fleet, the great naval arsenal of Toulon, isolated by the general anarchy of France, had been threatened with starvation. On August 27th, moderate elements in the town, terrified by the holocaust of massacre, rape and arson at Marseilles, ran up the white flag and invited Hood to take possession of the town in the name of Louis XVII. Thus it came about that the greatest arsenal in France and thirty ships of the line passed into the hands of a British fleet of only twelve. When eleven days later the news reached England people could scarcely believe their ears.”
― Arthur Bryant, The Years of Endurance, 1793-1802

“The West Indian campaign had even graver effects on the course of the war. In January, 1794, Lieutenant-General Sir Charles Grey's 7,000 troops, after a six weeks' voyage, reached Barbados. Despite their small numbers they at once attacked the French islands, and as a result of brilliant co-operation between Grey and Vice-Admiral Sir John Jervis overcame all resistance in Martinique, St. Lucia and Guadeloupe by the end of May. But the real campaign had scarcely begun. Almost at once the victors were simultaneously assailed by reinforcements from France and a negro and mulatto rising. For by denouncing slavery—the gap in Britain's moral front—the French had secured a formidable ally. With the help of the revolted slaves the force from Rochefort, which had evaded the loose British blockade, was able to reconquer Guadeloupe before the end of the year. Yet it was yellow fever more than any other cause which robbed Britain of her West Indian conquests. Within a few months the dreaded “black vomit” had destroyed 12,000 of her finest soldiers and reduced the survivors to trembling skeletons.”
― Arthur Bryant, The Years of Endurance, 1793-1802

“other words they were men and women. Frederick the Great might correspond with Voltaire, but he left his subjects cowed and stupid—“one cane to every seven men"—and his neighbours, who had suffered from his enlightened aggressions, fearful and suspicious. Kings with the power of reason were not uncommon, but they lacked morality. Moreover they were too often succeeded by half-wits and weaklings. Reason was not hereditary.”
― Arthur Bryant, The Years of Endurance, 1793-1802

“At the heart of the English character lay a fund of kindliness. Though in the mass rough and often cruel, and passionately addicted to barbarous sports like bull-baiting and cock-fighting, they led the world in humanitarian endeavour. It was an Englishman who in the 'seventies and 'eighties, at extreme risk and personal inconvenience, travelled 50,000 miles visiting the putrid, typhus-ridden jails of Europe; and it was Englishmen who at the close of the century first instituted organised opposition to cruelty to children and animals. But nothing so well illustrates the slow but persistent national impulse to mitigate inhumanity as the popular condemnation of the slave trade. This movement ran directly counter to the immediate material interests of the country; it none the less steadily gained strength from its inception by a handful of Quakers in the 'sixties until at the end of the century it was espoused by the Prime Minister himself and the overwhelming majority of thinking Englishmen.”
― Arthur Bryant, The Years of Endurance, 1793-1802

“There was nothing unusual in Britain finding herself at war with France. Six times in just over a century had the summons come and always against the same foe. At such moments the ordinary Englishman instinctively obeyed the precept Captain Nelson taught his midshipmen: to hate a Frenchman like the devil.”
― Arthur Bryant, The Years of Endurance, 1793-1802

“Such considerations caused Pitt to hope that the war he had striven so hard to avoid might not be so serious a matter after all. To the eye of reason the French were doing almost everything calculated to destroy their own country. They had slain or banished their leaders, alienated every friendly state in Europe, undermined the discipline of their defenders and neglected the arts of life for windy abstractions. Their frantic boasts that they were about to “dictate peace on the ruins of the Tower of London” and show up the weakness of Britain's “corrupting wealth” did not impress Pitt.”
― Arthur Bryant, The Years of Endurance, 1793-1802

“Burke foresaw that by worshipping an abstract ideal of the Popular Will and calling it liberty, the revolutionary philosophers were unconsciously preparing the way for an intolerable tyranny. “If the present project of a Republic should fail,” he predicted, “all security to a moderate freedom must fail with it. All the indirect restraints which mitigate despotism are removed: insomuch that, if monarchy should ever again obtain an entire ascendancy in France under this or any other dynasty, it will probably be the most completely arbitrary power that ever appeared on earth.”
― Arthur Bryant, The Years of Endurance, 1793-1802

“the town. But, with the enemy massing beyond the river, the position ceased to be tenable after the 13th when a partially masked battery was disclosed commanding the broken bridge. General Paget’s small force had no alternative but to withdraw in haste, leaving the French free to cross. A battle under the walls of Corunna could no longer be avoided. Fortunately on the evening of the 14th the missing transports arrived, 110 sail strong, bringing the total at anchor in the harbour to 250. With them came a squadron of battleships – Ville de Paris, Victory, Barfleur, Zealous, Implacable, Elizabeth, Norge, Plantagenet, Resolution, Audacious, Endymion, Mediator – a glorious spectacle, thought an onlooker, had it been possible to forget the service for which they had come. Yet it was one which brought relief to thousands of British hearts. That night Moore, not daring to waste an hour lest a sudden change in the wind should enable the French artillery to destroy the fleet at anchor, embarked the remainder of his sick, all but eight of his guns and, since the rocky terrain did not admit of their use in battle, the whole of his cavalry. Only a thousand horses could be taken. The remainder, having foundered during the retreat – not for want of shoes but for nails and hammers – were shot on the beach. During the morning of the 15th Soult, forcing back Paget’s outposts, occupied the heights round the town, overlooking and partially enclosing the inferior British positions on the slopes of Monte Mero. Sharpshooting and cannonading continued all day, about a hundred men falling on either”
― Arthur Bryant, The Years of Victory

“Good and evil will grow up in the world together; and they who complain, in peace, of the insolence of the populace, must remember that their insolence in peace is bravery in war.”
― Arthur Bryant, The Years of Endurance, 1793-1802

“That winter the fever of mass murder, atheism and reckless spending in Paris seemed to be approaching its climax. At Christmas the obscene and diseased journalist, Hebert, presided over the Feast of Reason in Notre Dame, where a whore was elevated at the high altar amid Rabelaisian rites. In the prisons thousands of innocent men and women, flung there by some Party sadist's whim, fed out of troughs on offal or were driven in droves chained like cattle through the streets. (1) To decent English minds it seemed unthinkable that men could survive who broke every law of God and man, who robbed and murdered and blasphemed, who denied justice, pity and humanity itself in their ruthless search for power. “From the nature of the mind of man and the necessary progress of human affairs,” Pitt declared in Parliament, “it is impossible that such a system can be of long duration.” “Surely,” cried the high-minded Windham, “Heaven will presently put a whip into every honest hand to lash these villains naked through the world.”
― Arthur Bryant, The Years of Endurance, 1793-1802