The Rise of Napoleon
When Napoleon Bonaparte returned to France and staged a successful coup, installing himself as First Consul and the de facto ruler of France, it presented what Great Britain had feared for more than two centuries – a universal monarch of the European States. Desperate to stop the French ascendancy, Great Britain, again using allies to support its relatively small army, attempted to thwart French control of the continent. Fighting primarily at sea after being defeated in the German states, Britain threatened and then attacked neutral Denmark, destroying its fleet at Copenhagen in order to deny its support to the French.
On land the French armies were nearly invincible. The Austrians were defeated in the German states and in Italy, and sued for peace. Portugal was conquered by combined French and Spanish Armies. French domination of the continent, economically and militarily, was all but ensured by the end of 1801 and the British negotiated the Treaty of Amiens with France, which marked the end of the French Revolutionary Wars. Despite the Revolution’s turmoil and the cost of the wars which followed it, France was the dominant European power. Great Britain’s influence on the continent continued to wane as French economic power grew.
Both the British and French ignored those parts of the Treaty of Amiens which posed inconveniences to their respective national interests. Disputes between the rivals over Malta, Switzerland, and Cape Colony (part of today’s South Africa) increased tensions which were fed by the British press hostile to the French. Napoleon sought to avoid war through diplomacy, both with the British and his neighbors on the continent but in the United Kingdom the primacy of France was unacceptable, especially in regard to its economic influence on the rest of Europe. The British also opposed the improving relationship between France and the young United States.
It was in the Treaty of Amiens that the British monarch finally relinquished claims to the throne of France, which as a republic was no longer ruled by a monarch. The British did not relinquish its aim of economic power in Europe, and it was this more than any other reason which led to the United Kingdom declaring war on France in 1803. For the next decade Great Britain, protected from invasion by its Navy, paid continental partners to wage war against the French, committing relatively small armies of its own. Throughout the rest of the Napoleonic wars, Great Britain ignored international neutrality laws as part of its crusade to end French dominance of Europe.
British policies led to another war with the United States, and to preemptive attacks on neutral states. Ships of all nations, but in particular of the United States, were stopped on the high seas and searched for contraband. Sailors were kidnapped in violation of international law. Britain claimed the right to seize any ship bound for European ports if it did not first stop in a British port and submit to a search. Massive sums of money, as well as promises of territorial gains, were distributed to European monarchs in return for active warfare against Napoleon and the French. The rivalry had become a fight to the death.