The Treaty of Amiens
Origins of the War
of the Third Coalition

Conclusions

by John Cook, UK

That there were failures to abide by the provisions of the Treaty of Amiens by both parties is patently obvious but it was largely a matter of French actions and British reaction. The failure to agree a commercial agreement was the principal factor which made the Treaty of Amiens unacceptable to the British government in the long term. For a little over a year after the signing of the treaty, even though some tariffs were adjusted, all the paraphernalia of wartime restrictions on British trade were maintained by a France with which she was at peace.

Nevertheless, trade through the Hanseatic ports was increasing, which was to be expected, as trade formerly entering through Antwerp moved to the Baltic, and the British government was as cynical as any where national interests were concerned. London might have lived with Napoleonic expansion on the continent, provided that she was able to trade with the expanding Grand Empire. Commerce was Britain’s life-blood and it was a simple matter of national security.

If Britain was the paymaster of the Third Coalition, its architect was undoubtedly Napoleon. There can be no doubt whatsoever that it was his actions which generated the climate that made the Third Coalition possible. After the failure of the Third Coalition, the British Government ceased, for the time being, to seek continental allies with which to form another coalition and its policies became ones of survival. Britain would take the war to France by out-trading her and to do this she would seek the overseas markets which her maritime and naval supremacy made possible and, in the meantime, any opportunities to land small expeditions on mainland Europe would be taken. British naval superiority did not, however, provide the means to achieve a decision on land, and this was something Britain knew she could never do alone. Ultimately Britain would need and seek allies in Europe again but, in the meantime, she would play a waiting game. It was to be a war of commercial attrition, though one of national survival nonetheless, and one which France could never win so long as Britain commanded the seas. Trafalgar, in October 1805 put paid to any French aspirations in that context.

In the years that followed, the rest of Europe was to come to realise two things. The first that Britain could be utterly ruthless in her pursuit of a final successful outcome to the war on which she had embarked and, none more so than Denmark and Portugal, that neutrality was not an option.

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