Napoleon now resolved to visit Belgium and the departments of the Rhine. Josephine accompanied him. He was hailed with transport wherever he appeared, and royal honors were showered upon him. Every where his presence drew forth manifestations of attachment to his person, hatred for the English, and zeal to combat the determined foes of France. But wherever Napoleon went, his scrutinizing attention was directed to the dock-yards, the magazines, the supplies, and the various resources and capabilities of the country. Every hour was an hour of toil--for toil seemed to be his only pleasure. From this brief tour Napoleon returned to Boulogne.
The Straits of Calais, which Napoleon contemplated crossing, notwithstanding the immense preponderance of the British navy filling the channel, is about thirty miles in width. There were four contingencies which seemed to render the project not impossible. In summer, there are frequent calms, in the channel, of forty-eight hours' duration. During this calm, the English ships-of-the-line would be compelled to lie motionless. The flat-bottomed boats of Napoleon, impelled by strong rowers might then pass even in sight of the enemy's squadron. In the winter, there were frequently dense fogs, unaccompanied by any wind. Favored by the obscurity and the calm, a passage might then be practicable. There was still a third chance more favorable than either. There were not unfrequently tempests, so violent, that the English squadron would be compelled to leave the channel, and stand out to sea. Seizing the moment when the tempest subsided, the French flotilla might perhaps cross the Straits before the squadron could return. A fourth chance offered. It was, by skillful combinations to concentrate suddenly in the channel a strong French squadron, and to push the flotilla across under the protection of its guns. For three years, Napoleon consecrated his untiring energies to the perfection of all the mechanism of this Herculean enterprise. Yet no one was more fully alive than himself to the tremendous hazards to be encountered. It is impossible now to tell what would have been the result of a conflict between the English squadron and those innumerable gun-boats, manned by one hundred and fifty thousand men, surrounding in swarms every ship-of-the-line, piercing them in every direction with their guns, and sweeping their decks with a perfect hail-storm of bullets, while, in their turn, they were run down by the large ships, dashing, in full sail, through their midst, sinking some in their crushing onset, and blowing others out of the water with their tremendous broadsides. Said Admiral Decris, a man disposed to magnify difficulties, "by sacrificing 100 gun-boats, and 10,000 men, it is not improbable that we may repel the assault of the enemy's squadron, and cross the Straits." "One loses," said Napoleon, "that number in battle every day. And what battle ever promised the results which a landing in England authorizes us to hope for!"