French ships were building and French armies mustering in the
channel ports for the invasion of England. The character of the
strife had now radically changed. At the outset, ten years
before, England had joined hands with the continental monarchies
to check the spread of the liberal ideas which the French
republican armies were carrying on their bayonets in a species of
crusade in the name of liberty. But with the accession of
Bonaparte to the throne of the Bourbons, England was plunged into
a struggle for existence. Napoleon himself said that peace could
never prevail in Europe so long as England had the power to
disturb it, and all parties in England were resolved to combat to
the last the establishment of a vast and menacing military
despotism beyond the Straits of Dover.

The genius of Admiral Nelson preserved the command of the narrow
seas for England, and forced the Emperor to abandon his project
of invasion which had aroused the English nation to unprecedented
military activity. Pitt's subsidies had again set the continental
armaments in motion, but Napoleon's brilliant dash into Germany
brought these to naught in the battle of Austerlitz, which
destroyed the Third Coalition and brought Austria to terms. It
was this news that the great Prime Minister of George III. took
so to heart. He survived the disaster but a few weeks. But the
ministry of "All the Talents" took up his task with no thought of
abandoning the struggle. The death of Fox soon broke up this
administration, but those of Portland, Perceval, and Liverpool,
which followed, were as dogged in their resolution to spend the
last pound, and the last man, if need were, in ridding Europe of
the conqueror whose existence England had now come to regard as a
threat against her national independence.