foot by Napoleon against England in 1803. All other marine expeditions were of no great extent: as, for example, those of Charles V. and of Sebastian of Portugal to the coast of Africa; also the several descents of the French into the United States of America, into Egypt and St. Domingo, of the English to Egypt, Holland, Copenhagen, Antwerp, Philadelphia. I say nothing of Hoche's projected landing in Ireland; for that was a failure, and is, at the same time, an example of the difficulties to be apprehended in such attempts.
The large armies kept on foot in our day by the great states of the world prevent descents with thirty or forty thousand men, except against second-rate powers; for it is extremely difficult to find transportation for one hundred or one hundred and fifty thousand men with their immense trains of artillery, munitions, cavalry, &c.
We were, however, on the point of seeing the solution of the vast problem of the practicability of descents in great force, if it is true that Napoleon seriously contemplated the transportation of one hundred and sixty thousand veterans from Boulogne to the British Isles: unfortunately, his failure to execute this gigantic undertaking has left us entirely in the dark as to this grave question.
It is not impossible to collect fifty French ships-of-the-line in the Channel by misleading the English; this was, in fact, upon the point of being done; it is then no longer impossible, with a favorable wind, to pass over the flotilla in two days and effect a landing. But what would become of the army if a storm should disperse the fleet of ships of war and the English should return in force to the Channel and defeat the fleet or oblige it to regain its ports?
Posterity will regret, as the loss of an example to all future generations, that this immense undertaking was not carried through, or at least attempted. Doubtless, many brave men would have met their deaths; but