is vast Empire. The
preparations on the northern coast were now wellnigh complete, and
there was only one question to be solved--how to "leap the ditch." It
seems strange to us now that no attempt was made to utilize the great
motive force of the nineteenth century--steam power. And the French
memoir-writers, Marmont, Bourrienne, Pasquier, and Bausset, have
expressed their surprise that so able a chief as Napoleon should have
neglected this potent ally.

Their criticisms seem to be prompted by later reflections rather
than based on an accurate statement of facts. In truth, the
nineteenth-century Hercules was still in his cradle. Henry Bell had in
1800 experimented with a steamer on the Clyde; but it aroused the same
trembling curiosity as Trevithick's first locomotive, or as Fulton's
first paddle-boat built on the Seine in 1803. In fact, this boat of
the great American inventor was so weak that, when at anchor, it broke
in half during a gale, thus ridding itself of the weight of its
cumbrous engine. With his usual energy, Fulton built a larger and
stronger craft, which not only carried the machinery, but, in August,
1803, astonished the members of the French Institute by moving, though
with much circumspection.

Fulton, however, was disappointed, and if we may judge from the scanty
records of his life, he never offered this invention to Napoleon.[321]
He felt the need of better machinery, and as this could only be
procured in England, he gave the order to a Birmingham firm, which
engined his first successful boat, the "Clermont," launched on the
Hudson in 1807. But for the war, perhaps, Fulton would have continued
to live in Paris and made his third attempt there. He certainly never
offered his imperfect steamship to the First Consul. Probably the fact
that his first boat foundered when at anchor in the Seine would have
procured him a rough reception, if he had offered to equip the whole
of the Boulogne flotilla with an invention which had sunk its first
receptacle and propelled the second boat at a snail's pace.

Besides, he had already met with one repulse from Napoleon. He had
offered, first to the Directory and later to the First Consul, a boat
which he claimed would "deliver France and the world from British
oppression."

This was a sailing vessel, which could sink under water and then
discharge under a hostile ship a "carcass" of gunpowder or
_torpedo_--another invention of his fertile brain. The Directory