‘That the War Might Cease’: Awaiting and Making News, 1806–1813

Abstract

Britain’s war changed decisively in late 1805. Trafalgar and Austerlitz turned the nation from besieged to bystander. Nelson’s final victory ended the invasion threat. Yet within weeks, Napoleon’s Army of England marched away east to defeat the Austro-Russian forces. Safe but impotent, Britain grew diplomatically isolated, the two treaties of Tilsit in 1807 ratifying Prussian submission and a Franco-Russian alliance. In song, Trafalgar occasioned both grief and triumph, but continental affairs were met with a deafening silence. Even the most idealistic loyalist must have recognised that this was not the medium in which to play down the collapse of the fourth and fifth coalitions. Philp’s view on the Trafalgar songs is that they represent a transient ‘historical moment’, in which fleetingly vainglorious productions jarred with the story’s tragic resonances, the latter proving more fit for the song tradition.¹ Unlike songs of the Nile, Napoleon is barely mentioned, Trafalgar proving too complete and affective a subject in its own right to be represented as the final act in the erstwhile invasion story. Antiinvasion broadsides ceased completely, replaced for a full year by a host of new Trafalgar songs, before a handful — those portraying Nelson’s death as an undying tragedy, rather than those dwelling on the topical detail — became ‘standards’, republished intermittently for decades to come.²