The war of words : French and British propaganda in the Napoleonic Era

In April 1816 the British foreign minister Castlereagh justified continued government funding of French-language propaganda newspapers to Parliament in strikingly contemporary language. They were, he said, for 'Conveying instruction to the Continent when no other means could be found.' This brief statement reveals much about international propaganda warfare in the Napoleonic period. First, Castlereagh implies that British use of these newspapers was a reaction to a novel set of circumstances which created unprecedented difficulties 'Conveying instruction' to mainland Europe. Second, this situation arose because normal channels of communication had broken down. Ten months after Waterloo, when Castlereagh addressed Parliament, they were still not back to normal. Third, he implied that the British propaganda effort was about information ['instruction'] rather than polemic. This explains why newspapers were the preferred propaganda vehicle. Fourth, he revealed that the British government response to this situation was to farm out responsibility for conducting its propaganda war to the motley collection of French emigre journalists who produced these newspapers. Finally - since the British government only subscribed for about 600 of these newspapers - Castlereagh intended to instruct a very narrow political elite spread across several continental states. This was a very different readership to the 'bourgeois' audience that, according to most recent historians, was by the late eighteenth century the primary constituent of a political 'public' whose 'opinion', across much of Europe, was increasingly influential