Britain was vexed by what appeared to be French abrogations of
the Treaty of Amiens so declared war on 18 May 1803. Bonaparte
immediately resumed planning for a military invasion of England and
placed his Grand Army at Boulogne. He collected 20 ships at Brest
and Antwerp and persuaded Spain to declare war on Britain. The
invasion threat would continue until 1805, when Napoleon decided to
move his army to Germany. All hope of naval supremacy in the
English Channel was to be denied to Napoleon by Nelson's victory at
Trafalgar in October 1805.
Please
log in to
consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing
institution (
see List), you should be able to access the LE on
campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we
offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a
personal user account with your institutional email address. If
you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal
subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under
Individual Subcriptions.
89 words
Citation:
Editors, Litencyc. "Britain declares war on France". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 12 December 2007 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=4352, accessed 20 April 2025.]
Save this article
If you need to create a new bookshelf to save this article in, please make sure that you are logged in, then go to
your 'Account' here