In 1798 he had told the then government of France that to make a descent upon England, without being master of the sea, would be the boldest and most difficult operation ever attempted.

Conditions had not changed since then, nor had he now the time or the money to embark in the extensive preparations, which afterwards gave assurance that he was in earnest in his threats.

An adept in making false demonstrations, perfectly appreciative of the power of a great name, he counted upon his own renown, and his amazing achievement of the apparently impossible in the past, to overawe the imagination of a nation, whose will, rather than whose strength, he hoped to subdue.

Boulogne and the small neighboring ports, whose nearness clearly indicated them as the only suitable base from which an invasion could start, were in that year in no state to receive the boats necessary to carry an army.

This the British could see with their own eyes; but who could be sure that the paper flotilla at Boulogne, like the paper Army of Reserve at Dijon a year before, had not elsewhere a substantial counterpart, whose sudden appearance might yet work a catastrophe as unexpected and total as that of Marengo?
And who more apt than Bonaparte to spread the impression that some such surprise was brewing?
"I can venture to assure you that no embarkation of troops can take place at Boulogne," wrote Nelson, immediately after his first reconnoissance; but he says at the same time, "I have now more than ever reason to believe that the ports of Flushing and Flanders are much more likely places to embark men from, than Calais, Boulogne, or Dieppe; for in Flanders we cannot tell by our eyes what means they have collected for carrying an army." "Great preparations at Ostend," he notes a week later; "Augereau commands that part of the Army.