positive results unless it were strongly met. Its effect, in short, was
negative. Its value lay in its power of containing force greater than its
own. That is all that can be claimed for it, but it may be all that is
required. It is not the most drastic method of intervention, but it has
proved itself the most drastic for a Power whose forces are not adapted for
the higher method. Frederick the Great was the first great soldier to
recognise it, and Napoleon was the last. For years he shut his eyes to it,
laughed at it, covered it with a contempt that grew ever more irritable. In
1805 he called Craig's expedition a "pygmy combination," yet the
preparation of another combined force for an entirely different destination
caused him to see the first as an advance guard of a movement he could not
ignore, and he sacrificed his fleet in an impotent effort to deal with it.

It was not, however, till four years later that he was forced to place on
record his recognition of the principle. Then, curiously enough, he was
convinced by an expedition which we have come to regard as above all others
condemnatory of amphibious operations against the Continent. The Walcheren
expedition is now usually held as the leading case of fatuous war
administration. Historians can find no words too bad for it. They ignore
the fact that it was a step--the final and most difficult step--in our
post-Trafalgar policy of using the army to perfect our command of the sea
against a fleet acting stubbornly on the defensive. It began with
Copenhagen in 1807. It failed at the Dardanelles because fleet and army
were separated; it succeeded at Lisbon and at Cadiz by demonstration alone.
Walcheren, long contemplated, had been put off till the last as the most
formidable and the least pressing. Napoleon had been looking for the
attempt ever since the idea was first broached in this country, but as time
passed and the blow did not fall, the danger came to be more and more
ignored. Finally, the moment came when he was heavily engaged in Austria
and forced to call up the bulk of his strength to deal with the Archduke
Charles. The risks were still great, but the British Government faced them
boldly with open eyes. It was now or never. They were bent on developing
their utmost military strength in the Peninsula, and so long as a potent
and growing fleet remained in the North Sea it would always act as an
increasing drag on such development. The prospective gain of succe