Sebastian of Portugal to the coast of Africa; also the several descents
of the French into the United States of America, into Egypt and St.
Domingo, of the English to Egypt, Holland, Copenhagen, Antwerp,
Philadelphia. I say nothing of Hoche's projected landing in Ireland; for
that was a failure, and is, at the same time, an example of the
difficulties to be apprehended in such attempts.

The large armies kept on foot in our day by the great states of the
world prevent descents with thirty or forty thousand men, except against
second-rate powers; for it is extremely difficult to find transportation
for one hundred or one hundred and fifty thousand men with their immense
trains of artillery, munitions, cavalry, &c.

We were, however, on the point of seeing the solution of the vast
problem of the practicability of descents in great force, if it is true
that Napoleon seriously contemplated the transportation of one hundred
and sixty thousand veterans from Boulogne to the British Isles:
unfortunately, his failure to execute this gigantic undertaking has left
us entirely in the dark as to this grave question.

It is not impossible to collect fifty French ships-of-the-line in the
Channel by misleading the English; this was, in fact, upon the point of
being done; it is then no longer impossible, with a favorable wind, to
pass over the flotilla in two days and effect a landing. But what would
become of the army if a storm should disperse the fleet of ships of war
and the English should return in force to the Channel and defeat the
fleet or oblige it to regain its ports?

Posterity will regret, as the loss of an example to all future
generations, that this immense undertaking was not carried through, or
at least attempted. Doubtless, many brave men would have met their
deaths; but were not those men mowed down more uselessly on the plains
of Swabia, of Moravia, and of Castile, in the mountains of Portugal and
the forests of Lithuania? What man would not glory in assisting to bring
to a conclusion the greatest trial of skill and strength ever seen
between two great nations? At any rate, posterity will find in the
preparations made for this descent one of the most valuable lessons the
present century has furnished for the study of soldiers and of
statesmen. The labors of every kind performed on the coasts of France
from 1803 to 1805 will be among the most remarkable monuments of the
activity, foresight, and skill of Napoleon.