William Pitt the Younger intelligence network of spies and informers to crush the United Irishmen. In April 1797, the Pitt government was badly shaken by the mutiny of the entire fleet at Spithead with the sailors demanding a pay increase to match inflation. The Spithead mutiny occurred at exactly the same moment that the French and their Dutch allies were preparing for an invasion of Great Britain which threw the government into a state of panic. To regain control of the fleet, Pitt agreed to sailors' demands for pay increases and to have George III pardon the mutineers. By contrast, the more political "floating
William Pitt the Younger for the great war against France and cracked down on radicalism. To engage the threat of Irish support for France, he engineered the Acts of Union 1800 and tried (but failed) to get Catholic emancipation as part of the Union. He created the "new Toryism", which revived the Tory Party and enabled it to stay in power for the next quarter-century. The historian Asa Briggs argues that his personality did not endear itself to the British mind, for Pitt was too solitary and too colourless, and too often exuded superiority. His greatness came in the war with France. Pitt reacted